Catalina stopped before the altar and bowed down in a posture of reverence. Then she raised her voice, a voice hoarse with suffering. She did not intone syllables, she did not construct words. It was a simple moan, an animal or superhuman death rattle.

Xaw felt a shiver of horror run down his back. Was someone going to respond to this invocation? He wished desperately to be far from there, far from that place in which nameless and barbaric forces were about to be unleashed.

Now Catalina’s voice was descending to a register so deep it was almost imperceptible, like the murmuring of a distant, subterranean spring.

The ilol’s limbs appeared to have been overcome with lassitude. She stretched out on the ground and lay there motionless. Then a trembling, at first slight, then slowly becoming more and more violent, made her shake with wild convulsions. The spectators trembled as well, infected by the suggestive power of the scene which ended with a painful cry.

She is going to speak! She is going to speak! The rumor swept over the crowd.

As if the cry had freed her from her bonds, Catalina Díaz Puiljá stood up, transfigured. If someone had called her by her name she would not have understood. She was another woman now and did not recognize any kinship or link with anyone. Everything was erased from her eyes but this vision of the future, a future that had to become present. And now. Right now.

But Catalina was still incapable of expressing her visions. Stammering, she gesticulated, she beat her head with clenched fists. Or she repeated disjointed words, the sounds of an invented language that filled those who heard her with wonder and stupefaction.

But not Xaw. By a miracle the sacristan had managed to remain safely at the margin of the collective frenzy, and his attitude was still wary. This woman is lying, he repeated to himself. Her gestures are faked and her words are false. Her words. . . . What is she saying? That they must come to adore these images which are those of their protectors, the only living saints. Lies! The true saints live in the church of Chamula. The saints there really can ward off the injuries the brujos would do us; they can help the cornfield grow tall and the flocks multiply. But here. . . . Here they will devour us and by the time we realize it we will already be dead.

Xaw shifted, clearing his throat. In some way he wanted to demonstrate his disagreement, his protest. He was restrained by the severe gaze of those around him. No one would allow Catalina’s ecstasy to be disturbed. If the sacristan had dared to shatter the atmosphere, if he had tried to distract the others with an irreverent word or gesture, they would have turned on him in rage to destroy him.