I awoke hearing Clara tell me to sit up.
It took me a long time to respond; first, because I was totally disoriented; and second, because my legs were numb.
Seeing my difficulty, Clara held me under the arms and pulled me forward, then propped some pillows behind my back so I could sit without her help.
I was in my bed and I had my nightgown on. From the light, I could tell it was late afternoon.
"What happened?" I muttered. "Did I sleep all night?"
"You did," Clara replied. "I was concerned about you. You went off the deep end into a perceptual limbo. No one could get through to you. So we decided to let you sleep it off."
I leaned over and rubbed my legs until the prickling sensation stopped. I still felt groggy and strangely enervated. [* enervated- lacking strength or vigour]
"You've got to talk to me until you're yourself again," Clara said in her most authoritative tone. "This is one of those occasions when talking is good for you."
"I don't feel like talking," I said, plopping back onto the pillows. I had broken out in a cold sweat and my limbs felt limp and rubbery. "Did Mr. Abelar do something to me?"
"Not while I was looking," Clara replied, and laughed jovially at her own joke.
She took my hands in hers and rubbed the backs of them, attempting to revive me.
I wasn't in the mood for levity. "What really happened, Clara?" I demanded. "I don't remember a thing."
She made herself comfortable on the edge of the bed.
"Your first encounter with the nagual was too much for you," Clara said. "You're too weak: That's what happened.
"But I don't want you to focus on that because you become discouraged so easily.
"Also, I don't want you to read between the lines, as you're apt to do, and come up with the wrong conclusions."
"Since I don't know what's going on, how I am going to read between the lines?" I said, my teeth chattering.
"I'm sure you'd find a way," Clara sighed. "You're exceptionally adept at jumping to conclusions; unfortunately, the wrong ones.
"And it doesn't matter that you don't know what's going on. You always assume that you do."
I had to admit I hated ambiguous situations, because they always put me at a disadvantage. I wanted to know what was going on so I could deal with the contingencies.
"Your mother taught you to be a perfect woman," Clara said. "By observing the surroundings, perfect women infer everything they need to know, especially when a male is involved.
"They can anticipate their man's subtlest wishes. Perfect women are always aware of changes in his moods because they believe that these changes are caused by something they themselves said or did.
"Consequently, they feel it's up to them to appease their man."
Having seen myself, by means of my recapitulation, acting in such a fashion again and again, I had to admit, to my chagrin, that Clara was correct.
I was well trained. I only needed a look or a sigh or tone of voice from my father and I would know exactly what he was thinking or feeling.
The same was true of my brothers. They had me jumping at the most subtle cues.
What's worse, I only had to imagine that a man didn't like me and I would bend over backward to please him.
Clara nudged my side gently as if to get my attention. "If you and I had been alone last night, you wouldn't have passed out so dramatically," she said, with a most annoying smile.
I replied, "What are you insinuating, Clara? That I find Mr. Abelar appealing?"
"Precisely. When a man is around, you undergo an instant transformation. You become the woman that will do anything for a man's attention, including passing out."
"I beg to differ with you," I said. "I really wasn't trying to play up to Mr. Abelar."
"Think about it! Don't just defend yourself," Clara said:
"I'm not attacking you. I'm merely pointing out to you what I used to feel and do myself."
Deep down I knew what Clara was talking about. Mr. Abelar had such a charismatic charm that, in spite of his age, I found him utterly attractive. Yet I chose not to acknowledge this, either to myself or to Clara. To my relief, Clara didn't pursue the subject of my feelings for Mr. Abelar.
She continued, "I understand you perfectly because I too had my John Michael Abelar.
"He was the nagual Julian Grau, the most handsome and debonair being that ever lived.
"He was charming, impish and funny. He was truly unforgettable.
"Everyone adored him, including John Michael and the rest of my family.
"We all kissed the ground he walked on."
It occurred to me, listening to Clara rave about her teacher, that she had spent too much time in the Orient.
I had always been disturbed by the obscene adoration that students in the karate world felt for their teacher, or sensei.
They too literally kissed the ground their teacher walked on, bringing their heads to the floor in obeisance whenever the master entered the room.
I didn't say this to Clara, but I felt that she was lowering herself by revering her teacher so much.
"The nagual Julian taught us everything we know," she went on, oblivious to my judgements. "He dedicated his life to leading us to freedom.
"He gave special instruction to the nagual John Michael Abelar; instruction that made him qualified to become the new nagual."
"Do you mean, Clara, that naguals are like kings?" I asked, wanting her to see the danger and fallacy of too much veneration.
"No. Not at all. Naguals have no self-importance whatsoever," she said. "And it is precisely for this reason that we can adore them."
"What I meant, Clara, was, do they inherit their post?" I corrected myself quickly.
"Oh, yes! They certainly inherit their post, but not like kings. Kings are sons of kings.
"A nagual, on the other hand, has to be singled out by the spirit because unless the spirit chooses him, he cannot set himself up as a leader.
A nagual to begin with is a person with extraordinary energy, but it is not until he is taught the rule of the naguals that he actually becomes a nagual himself."
I followed Clara's explanation, but I felt inexplicably ill at ease with it.
Upon deliberation, I realized that the part that bothered me was that the spirit has to make the selection.
"How does the spirit decide whom to pick?" I asked.
Clara shook her head. "That, my dear Taisha, is a mystery beyond mysteries," she said softly. "All a nagual can do is fulfill the spirit's biddings, or fail miserably."
I thought of Mr. Abelar and wondered what bidding the spirit had in mind for him. I remembered also that Clara had said that he might one day be a nagual to me.
"By the way, where is Mr. Abelar?" I asked trying to sound casual.
"He left last night when he realized that you were out for the count."
"Will he be back?"
"Certainly. He lives here."
"Where, Clara? In the left side of the house?"
"Yes. At the moment, he is there. Not at this precise moment," she corrected herself, "but nowadays.
"At other times, he lives with me on the right side of the house. I take care of him."
I felt a pang of jealousy so potent that it charged me with a surge of energy. "You said he wasn't your husband, didn't you, Clara?" I asked, with a most disturbing twitch in the side of my mouth.
Clara laughed so hard that she rolled backward onto the bed out of breath.
"The nagual John Michael Abelar has transcended all aspects of being a male," she assured me, sitting up again.
"What do you mean, Clara?"
"I mean, he's not a human being any longer, but I can't explain all this to you because I lack the finesse and you lack the facility to understand me.
"The way I see it, my inability to explain things to you is the reason why the nagual gave you those crystals."
"What inability, Clara? You speak perfectly well."
"Then it's you who doesn't understand perfectly well."
"That's idiotic, Clara."
"Then how come I can't convey to you what we are and what we have in mind for you?"
I took several deep breaths to settle my nervous stomach.
"What do you have in mind for me, Clara?" I asked, falling prey once more to panic.
"It's very hard for me to explain," she began:
"You and I definitely belong to the same tradition. You are an integral part of what we are. Therefore, we are compelled to teach you."
"Whom do you mean when you say 'we'? Do you mean you and Mr. Abelar?"
Clara took a moment as if giving herself time to answer correctly.
"As I've told you already, we are more than two," she said. "In fact, I'm not really your teacher, and neither is the nagual John Michael. Someone else is."
"Wait, wait, Clara. You're confusing me again. Who is this other person you're referring to?"
"Another woman like yourself, but older and infinitely more powerful.
"I'm merely your usher. I'm in charge of preparing you; of getting you to store enough energy through your recapitulation so you can meet this other person.
"And believe me, her presence is much more devastating than the nagual's."
"I don't understand what you're trying to say, Clara. Do you mean she's dangerous and will harm me?"
"That's the problem when I try to answer your questions," Clara said. "You get confused because you and I have only a superficial connection.
"You ask me a question, expecting a clear-cut answer that would satisfy you, and I give you an answer that satisfies me and throws you into confusion.
I recommend that you either don't ask questions or take my answers without getting into a dither." [* dither- an excited state of agitation]
I wanted to know more about Mr. Abelar and this other woman's plans for me; so with the hope of getting Clara to tell all, I promised that from then on, I would weigh all her answers with due consideration, but with no panic or agitation on my part.
"All right. Let's see how you take this," Clara said tentatively:
"I'm going to tell you what the nagual told you last night before you passed out on him.
"But, since I'm not a male, you no doubt are going to react differently to me than you did when the nagual talked to you. You might even listen to me."
"But I don't remember him telling me anything after I fell asleep on the mat," I protested.
She paused and searched my face, I suppose for some spark of recognition.
She shook her head to denote she found none, although I was tring to appear as calm and attentive as possible, and even smiled to reassure her.
"He told you about all the beings that live in this house," Clara began. "He told you that they are all sorcerers, including Manfred."
At the mention of Manfred's name, something inside me clicked.
"I knew it," I blurted out without thinking.
I found the idea that Manfred was a sorcerer perfectly believable, yet I hadn't the vaguest notion of why it should be so.
I told Clara that at one point I must have already entertained that thought, although I still didn't know exactly what a sorcerer is.
"Of course you do," Clara assured me with a broad smile.
"But I tell you, I don't."
Clara looked at me bewildered. "You're sure you don't remember the nagual explaining this to you?"
"No. I really don't."
"A sorcerer, to us, is someone who, through discipline and perseverance, can break the limits of natural perception," Clara said with an air of formality.
"Well, that doesn't make things any clearer," I said. "How can Manfred do all that?"
She seemed to appreciate my confusion.
"I think we're having a misunderstanding again, Taisha.
"I'm not just talking about Manfred. It hasn't sunk in yet that all of us in this house are sorcerers; not just the nagual, Manfred and myself, but the fourteen others you haven't yet met.
"We are all sorcerers; all abstract beings.
"If you want to think of sorcery as something concrete involving rituals and magic potions, all I can tell you is that there are sorcerers who are as concrete as that, but you won't find them in this house."
Obviously we were on different trains of thought.
I was talking about Manfred and she was talking about people I hadn't even laid eyes on.
It was only then, after she had told me so directly, that it finally struck me that Clara, Mr. Abelar and the elusive others to whom they kept alluding were all sorcerers.
Rather than ask any more questions, I remembered her advice and thought it best to remain silent.
She went on to elaborate that abstract sorcerers seek freedom through enhancing their capacity to perceive; while concrete sorcerers, like the traditional ones who lived in ancient Mexico, seek personal power and gratification through increasing their self-importance.
"What's wrong with seeking personal gratification?" I asked, taking a sip of water from a glass on the bedside table.
"Leave it to Taisha to side up with the concrete sorcerers," she said with a look of concern. "No wonder the nagual gave you those crystal darts."
In spite of my promise to stay calm, at the mention of the crystals, waves of nervousness ran through me.
My stomach began to cramp with such intensity that I was certain I was coming down with an intestinal flu.
"It's nearly impossible for me to explain to you what we do, and even harder to convey why we do it," Clara said. "You must ask those questions of your teacher."
"My teacher?"
"You're not listening to me, Taisha.
"I've already told you that you have a teacher. You haven't met her yet because you don't have the necessary energy.
Meeting her requires ten times more energy than meeting the nagual, and you still haven't recovered from that encounter. You look green and pasty."
"I think I have a case of the flu," I said, feeling dizzy again. Clara shook her head:
"You have a bad case of indulging," she interjected before continuing. "The nagual can also explain anything you ask him.
The only problem is that you think he's a male, and if he talks to you for more than a few minutes, rest assured, you're going to fall into your female mold. That's why your teacher has to be a woman."
"Aren't you making too much of this male-female thing?" I said, trying to get out of bed.
I felt weak and my legs were trembling. The room began to spin and I nearly fainted.
Clara caught me by the arm in the nick of time.
She said, "We'll soon find out if I'm making too much of it.she said.
"Let's go outside and sit in the shade of a tree. Maybe the fresh air will help revive you."
She helped me put on a long jacket and some pants, and led me like an invalid out of the room to the back patio.
We sat on some straw mats under the enormous zapote tree that shaded nearly the entire patio.
Once before, I had asked Clara if I could eat the fruit.
She had hushed me and said, "Just eat, but don't talk about it."
I did what she told me, but I felt guilty ever since; as if I had insulted the tree.
We sat in silence listening to the wind rustling the leaves.
It was cool and peaceful there and I felt relaxed and at ease again.
After a while, Manfred sauntered over from around the side of the house where he had a room with a large swinging panel cut into the door so he could come and go as he pleased.
He came up to me and began licking my hand.
I looked into his soulful eyes and I knew we were the best of friends.
As if by an unstated invitation, he eased himself across my lap, making himself comfortable. I stroked his soft silky coat and felt the most profound affection for him.
Gripped by an inexplicable compassion, I leaned forward and embraced him. The next thing I knew I was weeping, for I felt so sorry for him.
"Where are your crystals?" Clara demanded. Her harsh tone brought me back to reality.
"In my room," I said, letting go of Manfred to wipe my eyes on the sleeve of my jacket.
He took one look at Clara's disapproving stare, jumped off my lap, and moved across the walk to sit under a nearby tree.
"You should have them with you at all times," she snapped:
"As you already know, weapons like those crystals have nothing to do with war or peace.
"You can be as peace-loving as you wish and yet still need weapons. In fact, you need them at this moment to fight your enemies."
"I don't have any enemies, Clara," I sniffled. "No one even knows I'm alive."
Clara leaned toward me. "The nagual gave you those crystals to help you to destroy your enemies," she said softly:
"If you had them with you at this moment, you could make your sorcery passes with them and that would help dissipate your nagging self-pity."
"I wasn't feeling sorry for myself, Clara," I said, on the defensive. "I was feeling sorry for poor Manfred."
Clara laughed and shook her head. "There's no way to feel sorry for poor Manfred.
"No matter what form he is in, he's a warrior.
"Self-pity, on the other hand, is inside you, and expresses itself in different ways.
"Right now you're calling it 'feeling sorry for Manfred.'"
My eyes began to tear once more because, together with my insecurity, I did have a bottomless pool of pity, centered totally on myself.
I had done enough recapitulating to realize that I had learned this reaction from my mother, who felt sorry for herself every day of her life, or at least every day of my life with her.
Since I never knew any other personal expression in her, that was what I had learned to feel myself.
"You should hold the crystal weapons in your fingers and make your sorcery passes at the heart of your elusive enemies, such as self-importance, that come to you disguised as self-pity, moral indignation or righteous sadness," Clara went on.
I could only stare at her in dismay.
She went on to accuse me of being weak; of falling apart the moment a little pressure is put on me.
But what hurt me the most was when she told me that my months of recapitulating were meaningless: They were nothing but shallow reveries, for all I had done was to reminisce nostalgically about my marvelous self or wallow in pity remembering my not-so-marvelous moments.
I couldn't understand why she was attacking me so viciously.
My ears were buzzing as I experienced a surge of fury.
I began to weep uncontrollably, hating myself for having allowed Clara the opportunity to devastate me emotionally.
I heard her words as if they were coming from far away.
She was saying, "...self-importance, lack of purpose, unchecked ambition, unexamined sensuality, cowardice: The list of enemies that try to stop your flight to freedom is endless, and you must be relentless in your fight against them."
She told me to calm down.
She said she had just been trying to illustrate to me that our attitudes and feelings were our real enemies and that they were just as damaging and dangerous as any bandit armed to the teeth that we might encounter on the road.
"The nagual gave you those crystals to round up your energy," she said:
"The crystals are extraordinary for gathering our attention and fixing it. That is a quality of quartz crystals in general, and the specific intent of these crystals in particular.
"To accomplish this, all you have to do is perform your sorcery passes with them."
I wished I had the crystals with me then.
Instead I looked at Manfred's sympathetic, shiny eyes. The thought occurred to me that they were reflecting light just as the quartz crystals had done.
For a moment, his eyes held my gaze; and as I stared at them an irrational certainty popped into my mind.
I knew Manfred was a sorcerer of the ancient tradition, a sorcerer's spirit that had somehow gotten trapped in a dog's body.
The moment I thought that, Manfred let out a sharp yelp as if in affirmation.
I wondered, too, if it wasn't Manfred who had found the crystals for me in a cave, or rather had led the nagual to them, the same way he had led me to my favorite lookout point in the hills overlooking the house and grounds.
"You asked me once how it was possible that I knew so much about crystals," Clara said, interrupting my speculations:
"I couldn't tell you then because you hadn't yet met the nagual.
"But now that you've been introduced to him, I can tell you that..." She took a deep breath and leaned toward me, "We are sorcerers from the same tradition as those of ancient times.
"We have inherited all their esoteric rituals and incantations, but although we know how to use them, we aren't interested in making them work."
"Manfred is an ancient sorcerer!" I exclaimed in sincere amazement, but forgetting that I hadn't mentioned to her my mental speculations.
Clara looked at me as if questioning my sanity and then laughed so hard that conversation stopped.
I heard Manfred barking as if he too were laughing, and the eerie part was that I could have sworn that either Clara's laughter had an echo or that someone hiding behind the comer of the house was also laughing.
I felt like a complete imbecile. Clara didn't want to hear the details about hght being reflected in Manfred's eyes.
"I've told you that you are slow and not that intelligent, but you didn't believe me," she chided. "But don't worry, none of us is that intelligent either. We are all arrogant, dumb, thick-headed apes."
She gave me a rap on my head to bring the point home.
I didn't like being called a thick-headed ape, but I was still so excited about my discovery that I let the remark pass.
"The nagual has many other reasons for giving you those crystals," Clara continued, "but he will have to explain them to you himself. The one thing I know for certain is that you will have to make a pouch for them."
"What kind of pouch?"
"A sheath made with whatever material you feel is right. You can use suede, felt or quilt, or even wood if that is what you want to use."
"What kind of pouch did you make for yours, Clara?"
"I didn't get any crystals myself," she said, "but I handled them at one time in my youth."
"You speak of yourself as if you were old. The more I see you, the younger you look."
"That's because I do plenty of sorcery passes to create that illusion," she replied, laughing with childlike abandon. "Sorcerers create illusions. Just look at Manfred."
At the mention of his name, Manfred stuck his head out from behind the tree and stared at us. I had the uncanny sensation that he knew we were talking about him and he didn't want to miss a single word.
"What about Manfred?" I asked, automatically lowering my voice.
"One would swear that he's a dog," Clara said in a whisper. "But that's his power to create an illusion." She nudged me and gave me a conspiratorial wink. "You see, you are absolutely right, Taisha. Manfred is not a dog at all."
I couldn't tell whether she was coaxing me to agree with her for Manfred's sake because now he was sitting up and definitely listening to every word we were saying; or whether she really meant what she said; that Manfred was not a dog.
Before I could find out which, a shrill noise from inside the house made both Clara and Manfred jump up and rush in that direction.
I began to follow, but Clara turned to me and said gruffly, "You stay where you are. I'll be back in a moment."
She ran into the house with Manfred close on her heels.