The Second Ring of Power (31 page)

"Hours must have passed. Suddenly I felt a blow inside of me,
behind my throat, and the
sound of a bell in my cars. I
remembered what the Nagual had told Eligio and Benigno before they jumped. He
said that the feeling in the throat came just before one was ready to change
speed,
and that the sound of the bell was the vehicle that one could use to accomplish
anything
that one needed. I wanted to be a coyote then. I looked
at my arms, which were on the ground in
front of me.
They had changed shape and looked like a coyote's. I saw the coyote's fur on my
arms and chest. I was a coyote! That made me so happy that I cried like
a coyote must cry. I felt
my coyote teeth and my long and pointed
muzzle and tongue. Somehow, I knew that I had died,
but I didn't
care. It didn't matter to me to have turned into a coyote, or to be dead, or to
be alive. I
walked like a coyote, on four legs, to the edge of the
precipice and leaped into it. There was
nothing else
for me to do.

"I felt that I was falling down and my coyote body turned in the
air. Then I was myself again
twirling in midair. But before I hit
the bottom I became so light that I didn't fall anymore but floated. The air
went through me. I was so light! I believed that my death was finally coming
inside
me. Something stirred my insides and I disintegrated like dry sand. It was
peaceful and
perfect where I was. I somehow knew that I was there and
yet I wasn't. I was nothing. That's all I
can say about
it. Then, quite suddenly, the same thing that had made me like dry sand put me
together again. I came
back to life and I found myself sitting in the hut of an old Mazatec
sorcerer. He told me his name was Porfirio. He
said that he was glad to see me and began to teach me certain things about
plants that Genaro hadn't taught me. He took me with him to where the
plants were being made and showed me the mold of
plants, especially the marks on the molds. He
said that if I watched for those marks in the plants I could easily
tell what they're good for, even if
I
had never seen those plants before. Then when he knew that I had learned the
marks he said
good-bye but invited
me to come see him again. At that moment I felt a strong pull and I
disintegrated, like before. I became a million
pieces.

"Then I was pulled again into myself and went back to see
Porfirio. He had, after all, invited me. I knew that I could have gone anywhere
I wanted but I chose Porfirio's hut because he was
kind to me and
taught me. I didn't want to risk finding awful things instead. Porfirio took me
this time to
see
the mold of the animals. There I saw my own nagual
animal. We knew each other on sight. Porfirio was delighted to see such
friendship. I saw Pablito's and your own nagual too, but
they
didn't want to talk to me. They seemed sad. I didn't insist on talking to them.
I didn't know how you had fared in your jump. I knew that I was dead myself,
but my nagual said that I wasn't
and that you both were also alive. I
asked about Eligio, and my nagual said that he was gone
forever.
I remembered then that when I had witnessed Eligio's and Benigno's jump I had
heard
the Nagual giving Benigno instructions not to seek
bizarre visions or worlds outside his own. The
Nagual told
him to learn only about his own world, because in doing so he would find the
only
form of power available to him. The Nagual gave them
specific instructions to let their pieces
explode as far
as they could in order to restore their strength. I did the same myself. I went
back
and forth from the tonal to the nagual eleven times.
Every time, however, I was received by
Porfirio who
instructed me further. Every time my strength waned I restored it in the nagual
until
a time when I restored it so much that I found myself
back on this earth."

"Dona Soledad told me that Eligio didn't have to jump into the abyss,"
I said.

"He jumped with Benigno," Nestor said. "Ask him, he'll
tell you in his favorite voice." I turned to Benigno and asked him about
his jump.

"You bet we jumped together!" he replied in a blasting voice.
"But I never talk about it."
"What did Soledad say Eligio did?" Nestor asked.

I told them that dona Soledad had said that Eligio was twirled by a
wind and left the world
while he was working in an open field.

"She's thoroughly confused," Nestor said. "Eligio was
twirled by the allies. But he didn't want
any of them, so
they let him go. That has nothing to do with the jump. La Gorda said that you
had a bout with allies last night; I don't know what you did, but if you had
wanted to catch them or
entice them to stay with you, you had
to spin with them. Sometimes they come of their own accord to the sorcerer and
spin him. Eligio was the best warrior there was so the allies came to
him
of their own accord. If any of us want the allies, we would have to beg them
for years, and
even if we did, I doubt that the allies would
consider helping us.

"Eligio had to jump like everybody else. I witnessed his jump. He
was paired with Benigno. A
lot of what happens to us as sorcerers
depends on what your partner does. Benigno is a bit off his
rocker
because his partner didn't come back. Isn't that so, Benigno?"

"You bet it is!" Benigno answered in his favorite voice.

I succumbed at that point to a great curiosity that had plagued me from
the first time I had
heard Benigno speak. I asked him how
he made his booming voice. He turned to face me. He sat
up
straight and pointed to his mouth as if he wanted me to look fixedly at it.

"I don't know!" he boomed. "I just open my mouth and this
voice comes out of it! "

He contracted the muscles of his forehead, curled up his lips and made
a profound booing
sound. I then saw that he had tremendous muscles
in his temples, which had given his head a
different
contour. It was not his hairline that was different but the whole upper front
part of his
head.

"Genaro left him his noises," Nestor said to me. "Wait
until he farts."

I had the feeling that Benigno was getting ready to demonstrate his
abilities.

"Wait, wait, Benigno," I said, "it's not necessary."

"Oh, shucks!" Benigno exclaimed in a tone of disappointment.
"I had the best one just for
you."

Pablito and Nestor laughed so hard that even Benigno lost his deadpan
expression and cackled
with them.

"Tell me what else happened to Eligio," I asked Nestor after
they had calmed down again.

"After Eligio and Benigno jumped," Nestor replied, "the
Nagual made me look quickly over
the edge, in order to catch the sign
the earth gives when warriors jump into the abyss. If there is
something
like a little cloud, or a faint gust of wind, the warrior's time on earth is
not over yet.
The day Eligio and Benigno jumped I felt one puff of air
on the side Benigno had jumped and I
knew that his time was not up.
But Eligio's side was silent."

"What do you think happened to Eligio? Did he die?"

All three of them stared at me. They were quiet for a moment. Nestor
scratched his temples
with both hands. Benigno giggled and
shook his head. I attempted to explain but Nestor made a
gesture
with his hands to stop me.

"Are you serious when you ask us questions?" he asked me.

Benigno answered for me. When he was not clowning, his voice was deep
and melodious. He
said that the Nagual and Genaro had set us up so
all of us had pieces of information that the
others did not
have.

"Well, if that's the case we'll tell you what's what," Nestor
said, smiling as if a great load had
been lifted off his shoulders.
"Eligio did not die. Not at all."

"Where is he now?" I asked.

They looked at one another again. They gave me the feeling that they
were struggling to keep
from laughing. I told them that all I
knew about Eligio was what dona Soledad had told me. She
had
said that Eligio had gone to the other world to join the Nagual and Genaro. To
me that
sounded as if the three of them had died.

"Why do you talk like that. Maestro?" Nestor asked with a
tone of deep concern. "Not even
Pablito talks like that."

I thought Pablito was going to protest. He almost stood up, but he
seemed to change his mind.
"Yes, that's right," he said.
"Not even I talk like that."

"Well, if Eligio didn't die, where is he?" I asked.

"Soledad already told you," Nestor said softly. "Eligio
went to join the Nagual and Genaro."

I decided that it was best not to ask any more questions. I did not mean
my probes to be
aggressive, but they always turned out that way.
Besides, I had the feeling that they did not know
much more than
I did.

Nestor suddenly stood up and began to pace back and forth in front of
me. Finally he pulled
me away from the table by my armpits.
He did not want me to write. He asked me if I had really
blacked
out like Pablito had at the moment of jumping and did not remember anything. I
told him
that I had had a number of vivid dreams or visions that I
could not explain and that I had come to see them to seek clarification. They
wanted to hear about all the visions I had had.

After they had heard my accounts, Nestor said that my visions were of a
bizarre order and
only the first two were of great importance and of
this earth; the rest were visions of alien worlds.
He explained
that my first vision was of special value because it was an omen proper. He said
that sorcerers always took a first event of any series as the blueprint or the
map of what was going to develop subsequently.

In that particular vision I had found myself looking at an outlandish
world. There was an
enormous rock right in front of my eyes, a rock
which had been split in two. Through a wide gap
in it I could
see a boundless phosphorescent plain, a valley of some sort, which was bathed
in a
greenish-yellow light. On one side of the valley, to the
right, and partially covered from my view by the enormous rock, there was an
unbelievable domelike structure. It was dark, almost a
charcoal gray.
If my size was what it is in the world of everyday life, the dome must have
been
fifty thousand feet high and miles and miles across.
Such an enormity dazzled me. I had a
sensation of vertigo and
plummeted into a state of disintegration.

Once more I rebounded from it and found myself on a very uneven and yet
flat surface. It was
a shiny, interminable surface just
like the plain I had seen before. It went as far as I could see. I
soon
realized that I could turn my head in any direction I wanted on a horizontal
plane, but I
could not look at myself. I was able, however, to examine
the surroundings by rotating my head
from left to right and vice
versa. Nevertheless, when I wanted to turn around to look behind me, I
could
not move my bulk.

The plain extended itself monotonously, equally to my left and to my
right. There was nothing
else in sight but an endless, whitish
glare. I wanted to look at the ground underneath my feet but
my
eyes could not move down. I lifted my head up to look at the sky; all I saw was
another
limitless, whitish surface that seemed to be connected
to the one I was standing on. I then had a
moment of
apprehension and felt that something was just about to be revealed to me. But
the
sudden and devastating jolt of disintegration stopped my
revelation. Some force pulled me
downward. It was as if the whitish
surface had swallowed me.

Nestor said that my vision of a dome was of tremendous importance
because that particular
shape had been isolated by the Nagual
and Genaro as the vision of the place where all of us were
supposed
to meet them someday.

Benigno spoke to me at that point and said that he had heard Eligio
being instructed to find that particular dome. He said that the Nagual and
Genaro insisted that Eligio understand their point correctly. They always had
believed Eligio to be the best; therefore, they directed him to
find
that dome and to enter its whitish vaults over and over again.

Pablito said that all three of them were instructed to find that dome if
they could, but that none
of them had. I said then, in a
complaining tone, that neither don Juan nor don Genaro had ever
mentioned
anything like that to me. I had had no instruction of any sort regarding a
dome.