Read The Second Ring of Power for Free Online Page B

that?" she said with unnecessary force.
"Do you think that perhaps the Nagual gave me a different
direction?"
    "I can tell you the direction that he gave me," I said.
    "Never mind," she snapped. "He told me that
himself."
    She seemed agitated. She changed position and lay on her stomach. My
back hurt from writing. I asked her if I could sit on her floor
and use the bed as a table. She stood up and handed me the folded bedspread to
use as a cushion.
    "What else did the Nagual do to you?" I asked.
    "After changing my direction the Nagual really began to talk to me
about power ," she said, lying down again. "He
mentioned things in a casual way at first, because he didn't know exactly what
to do with me. One day he took me for a short walking trip in the sierras. Then
another day he took me on a bus to his homeland in the desert. Little by little
I became accustomed to going away with him."
    "Did he ever give you power plants?"
    "He gave me Mescalito, once when we were in the desert. But since I
was an empty woman Mescalito refused me. I had a horrid encounter with him. It
was then that the Nagual knew that he ought to acquaint me with the
wind instead. That was, of course, after he got an omen. He had said, over and
over that day, that although he was a sorcerer that had learned to see ,
if he didn't get an omen he had no way of knowing which way to go. He
had already waited for days for a certain indication about me.
But power didn't want to give it. In desperation, I suppose, he introduced
me to his guaje , and I saw Mescalito."
    I interrupted her. Her use of the word "guaje," gourd, was
confusing to me. Examined in the context of what she was telling me,
the word had no meaning. I thought that perhaps she was speaking
metaphorically, or that gourd was a euphemism.
    "What is a guaje , dona Soledad?"
    There was a look of surprise in her eyes. She paused before answering.
    "Mescalito is the Nagual's guaje ," she finally said.
    Her answer was even more confusing. I felt mortified by the fact that
she really seemed concerned with making sense to me. When I asked her
to explain further, she insisted that I knew everything
myself. That was don Juan's favorite stratagem to foil my probes. I said to her
that don Juan had told me that Mescalito was a deity, or force
contained in the peyote buttons. To say that Mescalito was
his gourd made absolutely no sense.
    "The Nagual can acquaint you with anything through his gourd ,"
she said after a pause. "That is the key to his power. Anyone
can give you peyote, but only a sorcerer, through his gourd , can acquaint
you with Mescalito."
    She stopped talking and fixed her eyes on me. Her look was ferocious.
    "Why do you have to make me repeat what you already know?" she
asked in an angry tone. I was completely taken aback by her
sudden shift. A moment before she had been almost sweet.
    "Never mind my changes of mood," she said, smiling again.
"I'm the north wind. I'm very impatient. All my life I never
dared to speak my mind. Now I fear no one. I say what I feel. To meet
with me you have to be strong."
    She slid closer to me on her stomach.
    "Well, the Nagual acquainted me with the Mescalito that came out
of his gourd ," she went on. "But he
couldn't guess what would happen to me. He expected something like your own
meeting or Eligio's meeting with Mescalito. In both cases he was
at a loss and let his gourd decide what to do next. In
both cases his gourd helped him. With me it was different; Mescalito
told him never to bring me around. The Nagual and I left that
place in a great hurry. We went north instead of coming home. We
took a bus to go to Mexicali, but we got out in the middle of the desert. It
was very late. The sun was setting behind the mountains. The
Nagual wanted to cross the road and go south on foot.
We were waiting for some speeding cars to go by, when suddenly he tapped my shoulder
and pointed toward the road ahead of us. I saw a spiral of dust. A gust of wind
was raising dust on