Why not go back to Ciudad Real? This thought crossed Teresa’s mind like a flash of lightning. Enter the city at noon, when the doors of the houses are wide open. Go, with bare feet, silently, along the galleries. Reach Idolina’s room. Would she be there? Now that she could walk she had acquired the habit of taking long strolls just outside the city with Julia. No, Teresa would not find Idolina. She would not even reach her room, or her house, because the Chamulas no longer dared go down to Jobel now that the fury of the Ladinos was unleashed.

Drying her tears with the back of her hand, Teresa stood up. The load of wood was lighter now that she had ascertained that her misfortune was irrevocable.

Arriving at the hut, Teresa found that the former martoma Rosendo Gómez Oso had donned his best serape and Felipa was making preparations to leave.

“Where are you going?” she asked, puzzled.

“To Tzajal-hemel,” Rosendo answered with a triumphant air. “Our comadre, Catalina Díaz Puiljá, has returned.”

“Comadre!” Felipa interrupted disdainfully. “How much money did you get for handing Marcela over to her?”

“She is an ilol. The Ladinos themselves cannot control her. She was in jail and suddenly none of the guards could keep the doors closed. Our comadre Catalina and the other women who were imprisoned there came flying out to their village. And you want to make an enemy of her? She is a very powerful ilol.”

Felipa let out a defiant burst of laughter.

“Power! She couldn’t even bear a child!”

“And what are the saints who were born to her in the cave?”

Felipa bowed her head, momentarily quelled. She had heard about those saints. That they were miraculous, that they protected the weak, that they healed the sick, that they gave advice to those who had gone astray. But she wanted to see them with her own eyes, touch them. No, it was not so easy to fool Felipa.

“They say,” the former martoma continued, dizzied by his sudden victory over his wife, “they say that when the saints were born the ilol was dirty with clay and not blood, like other females. And that the saints were born full grown.”

“Ave María Purísima!”

This exclamation, so frequently used by the Ladina maids of Ciudad Real, came naturally to Teresa’s lips. Rosendo and his wife looked at her with a Rash of alarm. What had she said that they had not understood?

“You are going with us?” Felipa asked.

Teresa nodded. She was afraid of being left alone, afraid they would think she was different, afraid she would be accused of betrayal.

The group set off for Tzajal-hemel. When they reached the cave it was not easy to go in. As in the past, people were crowded together everywhere, excited and anxious. It was whispered that Catalina Díaz Puiljá was going to appear.