When thoughts are painful, the pain peers out from the face. Everywhere, in the pasture, at the river, in the hut, at church, Catalina bore the mark of her suffering. The women drew back from her in fear and kept a watch on her intentions from a distance. They could not be good intentions. To do harm! What does the wounded beast want except to bite those around it, to rip them to pieces. The circle of isolation around Catalina was closed. And she remained at its center, with the cold fever that racked her temples, the delirium that filled her eyes with absurd images, the hunger that made her dig up memories long buried.

To go back in time, to erase this day of the absent husband, the abducted son. If she could go back to the beginning! When work was as joyful as play, and play. . . .

Running through the mountains, clambering among the boulders and suddenly the astonishment of that discovery. The cave hidden by the underbrush. Catalina fell, hurting herself on the sharp gravel, the thorns. She looked at the small opening without daring to go in. She left, frightened. But she would go back. She went back with Lorenzo. A man is a protection. Together, sister and brother pushed aside the brush. He went in first. She peered in from the edge, fearful. She wanted to scream, run away. But she followed him. Her heart was beating with such force that the whole cave resonated like a temple’s lugubrious drums. Then, how cool and dark it was! Bats flapped their wings. Finding them here was a good sign. The bat is an auspicious spirit, a nahual. But there is something else here besides the scurrying of small animals that have been startled. When the intruders’ eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness they could make out other shapes. Grotesque petrified ferns. And stones. Yes, stones. There is something about them that seems strange: their form is not fortuitous like that of other stones. All at once the two children break into a terrified run, Outside, at a great distance from the place of danger, they tell each other about their impressions. “What did you see?” “The face of a brujo, a demon. And you?” “I cannot say.” Lorenzo stammers; he is slow to express himself. And even more when he is startled. He cannot speak. He is mute. The words that remain to him are few, incoherent. After that he will be silent forever.

The experience of the cave remains a secret. Catalina does not talk. Night after night, for months, the memory stalks her. Time and again, curiosity will drive her towards the mysterious site. But fear does not allow her to go in. She stays there, in front of the cavern’s mouth. She knows obscurely that the day she crosses that threshold she will die.