"Human nature is most strange," dona Mercedes said. "I knew that you were going to do something for me. I knew it from the first moment I laid eyes on you.
"And yet, when you did what you were here to do, I couldn't believe my eyes. You have actually moved the wheel of chance for me.
"I can say that you enticed Federico Mueller to return to the realm of the living. You brought him back to me by the force of your witch's shadow."
My retort was cut off before I had time to open my mouth. "During all these months you've been at my house," she said, "you have been under my shadow, in a minimal way, of course; yet the usual would've been for me to make a link for you, and not the other way around."
I wanted to clarify matters. I insisted that I had not done anything. But she would not hear of it.
`For the sake of understanding, I proposed a line of thought: She had made the link herself with her conviction that I was the one who would bring her something.
"No," she said, puckering her face. "Your reasoning is wrong. It makes me very sad that you seek explanations that only impoverish us."
She rose and embraced me. "I feel sorry for you," she whispered in my ear.
Suddenly, she laughed, a joyful sound that dispelled her sadness. "There is no way to explain how you've done this," she said. "I'm not talking about human arrangements or about the shadowy nature of witchcraft, but about something as elusive as timelessness itself."
She almost stammered, searching for words. "All I know and feel is that you made a link for me. How extraordinary! I was trying to show you how witches move the wheel of chance, and then you moved it for me yourself."
"I told you I can't take credit for that," I insisted and meant it. Her fervor embarrassed me.
"Don't be so thick, Musiua," she retorted in an annoyed tone that reminded me of Agustin. "Something is helping you to create a transition for me. You can say, and be thoroughly accurate in saying it, that you have used your witch's shadow without even knowing it."