Her eyes had a wild glare. She raised herself and seemed to be on the verge of striking me, but she slumped back.
“You’ve taken my soul,” she said. “You must have it in your pouch now. Why did you have to tell me, though?”
I swore to her that I had had no intentions of hurting her, that I had acted in whatever form only in self-defense and therefore I bore no malice toward her.
“If you don’t have my soul in your pouch, it’s even worse,” she said. “It must be roaming aimlessly around. I will never get it back, then.”
Dona Soledad seemed to be void of energy. Her voice be-came weaker. I wanted her to go and lie down. She refused to leave the table.
“The Nagual said that if I failed completely I should then give you his message,” she said. “He told me to tell you that he had replaced your body a long time ago. You are himself now.”
“What did he mean by that?”
“He’s a sorcerer. He entered into your old body and replaced its luminosity. Now you shine like the Nagual himself. You’re not your father’s son anymore. You are the Nagual himself.”
Dona Soledad stood up. She was groggy. She appeared to want to say something else but had trouble vocalizing. She walked to her room. I helped her to the door; she did not want me to enter. She dropped the blanket that covered her and lay down on her bed. She asked in a very soft voice if I would go to a hill a short distance away and watch from there to see if the wind was coming. She added in a most casual manner that I should take her dog with me. Somehow her request did not sound right. I said that I would climb up on the roof and look from there. She turned her back to me and said that the least I could do for her was to take her dog to the hill so that he could lure the wind. I became very irritated with her. Her room in the darkness gave out a most eerie feeling. I went into the kitchen and got two lanterns and brought them back with me. At the sight of the light she screamed hysterically. I let out a yell myself but for a different reason. When the light hit the room I saw the floor curled up, like a cocoon, around her bed. My perception was so fleeting that the next instant I could have sworn that the shadow of the wire protective masks of the lanterns had created that ghastly scene. My phantom perception made me furious. I shook her by the shoulders. She wept like a child and promised not to try any more of her tricks. I placed the lanterns on the chest of drawers and she fell asleep instantly.
By midmorning the wind had changed. I felt a strong gust coming through the north window. Around noon dona Soledad came out again. She seemed a bit wobbly. The redness in her eyes had disappeared and the swelling of her forehead had diminished; there was hardly any visible lump.
I felt that it was time for me to leave. I told her that although I had written down the message that she had given me from don Juan, it did not clarify anything.
“You’re not your father’s son anymore. You are now the Nagual himself,” she said.
There was something truly incongruous about me. A few hours before I had been helpless and dona Soledad had actually tried to kill me; but at that moment, when she was speaking to me, I had forgotten the horror of that event. And yet, there was another part of me that could spend days mulling over meaningless confrontations with people concerning my personality or my work. That part seemed to be the real me, the me that I had known all my life. The me, however, who had gone through a bout with death that night, and then forgotten about it, was not real. It was me and yet it was not. In the light of such incongruities don Juan’s claims seemed to be less farfetched, but still unacceptable.
Dona Soledad seemed absentminded. She smiled peacefully.
“Oh, they are here!” she said suddenly. “How fortunate for me. My girls are here. Now they’ll take care of me.”
She seemed to have had a turn for the worse. She looked as strong as ever, but her behavior was more disassociated. My fears mounted. I did not know whether to leave her there or take her to a hospital in the city, several hundred miles away.
All of a sudden she jumped up like a little child and ran out the front door and down the driveway toward the main road. Her dog ran after her. I hurriedly got in my car in order to catch up with her. I had to drive down the path in reverse since there was no space to turn around. As I approached the road I saw through the back window that dona Soledad was surrounded by four young women.
2
The Little Sisters
Dona Soledad seemed to be explaining something to the four women who surrounded her. She moved her arms in dramatic gestures and held her head in her hands. It was obvious she was telling them about me. I drove up the driveway to where I had been parked before. I intended to wait for them there. I deliberated whether to remain in the car or to sit casually on the left fender. I opted to stand by the car door, ready to jump in and drive away if something like the events of the previous day were going to be repeated.
I was very tired. I had not slept a wink for over twenty-four hours. My plan was to disclose to the young women as much as I could about the incident with dona Soledad, so they could take the necessary steps to aid her, and then I would leave. Their presence had brought about a definite change. Everything seemed to be charged with new vigor and energy. I felt the change when I saw dona Soledad surrounded by them.
Dona Soledad’s revelation that they were don Juan’s apprentices had given them such a tantalizing appeal that I could hardly wait to meet them. I wondered if they were like dona Soledad. She had said that they were like myself and that we were going in the same direction. That could be easily interpreted in a positive sense. I wanted to believe that more than anything else.
Don Juan used to call them “las hermanitas,” the little sisters, a most befitting name at least for the two I had met, Lidia and Rosa, two wispy, pixie-like, charming young women. I figured that they must have been in their early twenties when I had first met them, although Pablito and Nestor always refused to talk about their ages. The other two, Josefina and Elena, were a total mystery to me. I used to hear their names being mentioned from time to time, always in some unfavor-able context. I had deduced from passing remarks made by don Juan that they were somehow freakish, one was crazy and the other obese; thus they were kept in isolation. Once I bumped into Josefina as I walked into the house with don Juan. He introduced me to her, but she covered her face and ran away before I had time to greet her. Another time I caught Elena washing clothes. She was enormous. I thought that she must be suffering from a glandular disorder. I said hello to her but she did not turn around. I never saw her face.
After the buildup that dona Soledad had given them with her disclosure, I felt driven to talk with the mysterious “hermanitas,” and at the same time I was almost afraid of them.
I casually looked down the driveway, bracing myself to meet all of them at once. The driveway was deserted. There was no one approaching, and only a minute before they had been no more than thirty yards from the house. I climbed up on the roof of the car to look. There was no one coming, not even the dog. I panicked. I slid down and was about to jump in the car and drive away when I heard someone say, “Hey, look who’s here.”
I quickly turned around to face two girls who had just stepped out of the house. I deduced that all of them must have run ahead of me and entered the house through the back door. I sighed with relief.
The two young girls came toward me. I had to admit to myself that I had never really noticed them before. They were beautiful, dark and extremely lean, but without being skinny. Their long black hair was braided. They wore plain skirts, blue denim jackets and low-heeled, soft-soled brown shoes. They were barelegged and their legs were shapely and muscular. They must have been about five feet three or five feet four inches. They seemed to be very physical; they moved with great prowess. One of them was Lidia, the other was Rosa.