“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 in-sist 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 demon-strate 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 mo-ment. 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. Never-theless, when I wanted to turn around to look behind me, I could not move my bulk.