Catalina held out her hands in a gesture that sought to promise. But she herself had a dark future, an unresponding horizon before her. She pulled her hands back before her fingers touched the pilgrims’ submissive foreheads.

When Catalina felt strong enough she went back to herding the flock. She went with the sheep to distant meadows where no human intrusion could disturb the moment when she peered down into the deepest depths of herself in desperate eagerness to find the echo of a voice, the reflection of a face, the memory of a name.

At times she caught herself directing her steps toward the cave. She stopped, as if on the brink of some danger, and abandoned the footpaths that her people’s faith had made and that were now being overgrown little by little with brush.

Once she kept going all the way there. She hesitated an instant at the entrance, but the smell (a smell of burning wax, cut flowers, pine needles) drew her in irresistibly.

Where the altar had once been, some women were now kneeling. A low murmuring emanated from their mouths. And suddenly they burst out in a continuous, monotonous lament which then broke into words: the word helpless, the word suffering, the word misery. They were praying to absent gods, illuminating with dying candles that never quite finished going out the hollow the gods had left behind.

Catalina moved forward until she was part of the group; she wanted to mingle her plea with the others but as soon as she was recognized she was left alone. The women fell back with the mixture of reverence and fear that the sacred inspires. Catalina tried to go after them as they left, to confess to them that she had been dispossessed of her gifts, that she would never again be able to do anything for anyone, but the women were already scattering to their villages without listening to the voice they left behind them, hurrying to share with everyone the news that would set their souls on fire.

Catalina stayed in the cave. A sudden agitation replaced her former inertia. Why cross her arms? Why remain silent? Why not confront the inevitable? Suddenly all obstacles were insubstantial and everything was within her reach. But the excitement was vanishing without finding a way of expressing itself, an act into which it could flow, and Catalina spent hours and hours in the cave without managing to leave, without finding a reason to stay. A great stupor paralyzed her. And in the semidarkness she lost all notion of the passage of time. Pedro and Marcela had to come find her the following day.