Xaw was afraid. He buried his face in his hands to protect himself from the ceremony he could not interrupt and stayed still. When he opened his eyes, Catalina and her companions had already left. A few minutes later the cave was empty.

Out of curiosity and a fear of being conspicuous, Xaw followed the crowd. All of them went along the path to the village, singing, wailing, shouting out prayers. When they got there they dispersed, seeking out the shade of the few trees to mix their posol with water and eat the tough tortillas they had brought with them on the journey. They did not speak. Or they spoke very little and of unimportant matters. In vain Xaw tried to discuss what he had witnessed. They avoided the subject as if it were necessary to be in a special state of grace in order to speak of it.

The hut Catalina went into was set apart from the others by the adornments hanging from its walls and doors and by the number of people trying to enter it.

The ilol did not have any fixed rules for receiving visitors. She acted on impulses no one succeeded in predicting. Yesterday she was ill-humored, withdrawn, unsociable, and refused to see anyone. But today she is wearing herself out listening to one person’s complaints, another one’s request for advice, the petition of yet another. To choose her next visitor she watches them from a distance and decides: that one. That one has just arrived and the others have been waiting for days on end, but no matter. That one is the one who goes in and the others submit to Catalina’s arbitrary selection.

Not all of them can resign themselves to approaching her for a minute, listening to her for a short while. There are those who insist on remaining here, all of them women. They help with the tasks of the household, which is now without anyone in charge of it. For Marcela Gómez Oso is in a daze, she does not understand what is happening around her and cannot arrange or command. No one has ever relied on Lorenzo, “the innocent,” and Domingo is still a little boy.

Pedro Gonzalez Winiktón attends to the men. He takes them aside and discusses things with them. His face lights up when he sees Xaw’s face among the crowd of strangers. But Xaw eludes him, mingles with the others, disappears.

Inside the hut, women busy themselves. They are grinding corn on the metate, throwing tortillas on the comal, checking the seasoning of the meats.