Catalina’s tone was conclusive. Felipa assented. To Marcela she said roughly, “Get up. From now on you are estranged from me. You are no longer in my power.”

Marcela wiped off her tears with the back of her hand and went to stand behind Catalina. That was how they walked. That was how they arrived in San Juan Chamula.

Catalina pushed aside the bolt that fastened shut the two doors of her hut and entered. Marcela did not cross the threshold, fearful of venturing into a place she had never been before in the dark.

Light quivered out from a thick tallow candle, transfiguring the things in the hut with its spooky, yellowish glow. Catalina took the candle and placed it on a small board that hung from the ceiling.

“You will sleep here.”

She unrolled the usual straw petate, frayed around the edges, and spread it out in a corner. Marcela curled up on it. She watched Catalina reviving the fire without daring to offer her help. She asked herself what motive the ilol could have had for placing herself between her, Marcela, and her mother’s punishment, and for what purpose Catalina had brought her to live with her. She could not give in to gratitude until her distrust had dissolved.

“Take your dinner.”

The girl had gone the whole day without eating. But it was nausea more than hunger that filled her mouth with saliva. She hesitated a moment. Until the tone of Catalina’s words—persuasive as someone asking for a favor, inflexible as someone issuing an order—decided her. She divided a tortilla in half and plunged it into a sauce of cold beans to soften it. She began to chew with the thoroughness of someone who can only swallow with great effort. She was preparing the second mouthful when a gust of air startled her. The door had opened again, this time for Pedro González Winiktón.

“Where are you, Catalina?” he said, and went to sit down next to the fire’s glowing embers. He seemed not to have noticed the presence of an outsider. But his wife was quick to inform him.

“This is Marcela Gómez Oso. Daughter of the martoma Rosendo Gómez Oso.”

Pedro accepted the news, indifferent. Catalina had to be more explicit.

“She is going to stay with us.”

Now this was something that demanded an explanation.

“Why? Is she an orphan?”

With a slight rustling, Marcela slid down until she was stretched out full length on the mat. She wanted to leave, to weep, to lose herself in the darkness, to go far away from this taciturn man who was examining her with such remote disdain. But she was subjugated to the ilol’s incomprehensible designs. Now the ilol was saying:

“She is estranged from her mother and belongs to me.”

“Why?”

“A Caxlán made ill use of her.”