Those who happened to be walking by and heard her continued on their way with a vague unease. She had powers, the gods had not left the ilol helpless. The enormity of her revelations gnaws at their insides; look at her, with her scorched lips and her delirious gaze, her hair in a snarl. Look at her on the mountain, moving like a sleepwalker. It is because she is listening. The voice is multiplied in echoes: north and south, east and west. Here, here, no, further ahead. She advances, falls back. She trips, her clothing rips, the thistles bite. Where are you walking, Catalina Díaz Puiljá? On the surface of the earth or deep inside your soul? You arrived, at last. Where memory, rising up from your feet, coming in through your eyes, awaking in your touch, begins to recognize and says: it is here. Do not falter; go nearer. Go down this pathless slope; duck under that branch, peer down into the entrance. The smell—remember?—a gulp of damp, unhealthy air. Cross the threshold, go in. You see nothing yet. Wait to get used to the darkness. Now go on. You were already here once. Your heart resounds, as it did then, in the hollow space around you. The stones are there, in that corner. But there is nothing! They have disappeared! You dreamed of something that did not exist; your treasure has been robbed. Wait. You were not dreaming. There are the stones: three of them, as before. Three. The world is yours, Catalina Díaz Puiljá, destiny belongs to you now. Go out, shout it to the four winds. Let them come! Let them bow down before you, all of them! Pedro! Domingo! Everyone!

Catalina’s cries were lost in the vacant immensity of the countryside. She wanted to run but she did not want to leave her discovery; she embraced it, mortifying her skin against the mineral harshness. She could not move it.

They will come soon, the woman said to herself; they have to look for me. But the hours went by, night and day, all the same inside the cave.

They will come. They came. They found Catalina next to her stones, fainting from joy and hunger.

XVII

CHAPTER XVII

AT WHAT MOMENT does infidelity begin? Julia Acevedo couldn’t say exactly when she started listening to Cifuentes’ propositions as if they were acceptable. Her own conjugal disappointments did more to undermine her resistance than her seducer.

Fernando made Leonardo’s bed for him, she concluded malevolently. And perhaps her decision to yield herself to the rancher was no more than the despairing gesture of a gambler who bets the last she has on a single card.