"Musiua, are you there?" Mercedes Peralta whispered, opening the door to my room noiselessly. Outlined by the weak beam of my reading light, she was the picture of a witch with her long black dress and her wide-brimmed felt hat that hid half of her face.
"Don't turn on the light," she said as I reached for the switch. "I can't bear the brightness of a bulb."
She sat on my bed. Her brow was set tightly in concentration as she smoothed out the wrinkles in my blanket.
She looked up and fixed her unblinking eyes on my face.
Self-consciously I ran my fingers over my cheeks and chin, wondering whether there was something wrong.
Giggling, she turned toward the night table and began neatly stacking my small, thin notepads.
"I must go to Chuao right now," she finally said, her voice low and grave.
"Chuao?" I repeated. "At this hour?"
Seeing her emphatic nod, I added, "We'll get stuck in the mud if it rains."
Chuao was a village near the coast, at least an hour's drive from Curmina.
"It will rain," she casually admitted. "But with your jeep we won't get stuck."
She sat hunched over the night table, biting her lower lip, deliberating whether to say more. "I have to be there tonight by midnight," she murmured in a tone that betrayed urgency rather than desire. "I have to get some plants that will be available only tonight."
"It's past eleven," I pointed out, checking the illuminated dial of my wristwatch. "We'll never make it by midnight."
Grinning, dona Mercedes reached for my jeans and shirt hanging at the front of the iron bedstead. "We'll make your watch stop counting the hours."
A faint smile lit up her face; her eyes, trusting and expectant, held mine. "You'll take me, won't you?"
Heavy raindrops drummed on the jeep the moment we left town. Within seconds the rain came in a solid sheet, dense and dark.
I slowed down, unable to see, irritated by the squeaking of the wipers clearing an arc of glass that was instantly blurred again.
The trees fringing the road waved indistinctly beside and above us, giving the impression that we were driving through a tunnel.
Only the intermittent solitary bark of a dog indicated that we had passed another shack.
The rainstorm ended with the same abruptness with which it had begun, yet the sky remained overcast. The clouds hung oppressively low.
I kept my eyes glued to the windshield, intent on avoiding the frogs, which, momentarily blinded by the headlights, jumped across the road.
All at once, as if they had been erased from the sky, the clouds vanished the moment we turned onto the road that led to the coast.
The moon shone brightly upon a flat landscape where an occasional tree swayed gently in the breeze, its leaves shining silvery in the unreal light.
I stopped in the middle of a crossroad and got out of the jeep. The air, warm and humid, smelled of the mountains and the sea.
"What made you stop here, Musiua?" Mercedes Peralta asked, her voice full of bewilderment as she got out and stood beside me.
"I'm a witch," I explained, looking into her eyes.
I knew that if I'd told her that I just wanted to stretch my legs, she wouldn't believe me.
"I was born in a place like this," I went on, "somewhere between the mountains and the sea."
Mercedes Peralta frowned at me, then a humorous, delighted twinkle shone in her eyes.
Giggling uncontrollably, she sat on the wet ground and pulled me down with her. "Perhaps you weren't born like a normal human being; maybe a curiosa lost you on her way across the sky," she said.
"What is a curiosa?" I asked.
She regarded me cheerfully and explained that curiosas were witches who were no longer concerned with the obvious aspects of sorcery: symbolic paraphernalia, rituals, and incantations.
"Curiosas," she whispered, "are beings preoccupied with things of the eternal. They are like spiders, spinning fine, invisible threads between the known and the unknown."
She took off her hat, then lay on her back, flat on the ground, with her head precisely in the middle of the crossroad, pointing north.
"Lie down, Musiua," she urged me, stretching her arms toward the east and the west. "Make sure the top of your head touches mine and that your arms and legs are in the same position as mine."
It was comfortable lying head to head on the crossroad. Although separated by our hair, I had the feeling our scalps were fused together. I turned my head sideways and to my great amusement noticed how much longer her arms were than mine.
Seemingly aware of my discovery, dona Mercedes moved her arms closer to mine.
"If someone sees us, they'll think we're crazy," I said.
"Perhaps," she conceded. "However, if it's people who usually walk by this crossroad at this time of the night, they will run away in fright, thinking they have seen two curiosas ready for flight."
We were silent for a moment, but before I asked her about the curiosas' flight, she spoke again.
"The reason I was so interested to know why you stopped at the crossroad," she said, "was that there are people who swear they have seen a curiosa lying naked on this very spot.
"They say that she had wings growing out of her back and that they saw her body become translucent white as she took off into the sky."
"I saw your body turn transparent at the seance for Efrain Sandoval," I said.
"Of course you did," she retorted with an amused casualness. "I did that just for you because I know that you'll never be a healer. You're a medium and, perhaps, even a witch but not a healer. I should know it, I'm a witch myself."
"What makes one a witch?" I asked in between fits of giggles. I did not want to take her seriously.
"Witches are creatures not only capable of moving the wheel of chance," she replied, "but also capable of making their own link.
"What would you say if at this moment we took off flying, joined at our heads?"
For a second or two, I had the most terrifying apprehension.
Then, a feeling of utter indifference invaded me.
"Repeat any of the incantations the spirit of my ancestor taught you," she commanded. "I'll say it with you."
Our voices merged into a single harmonious sound, filling the space around us, enveloping us into a giant cocoon.
The words rose into a deep continuous line, carrying us up and up. I saw the clouds advancing at me.
We began to turn like a wheel until everything was black.
Someone was shaking me vigorously. I woke up with an unexpected jolt.
I was sitting behind the steering wheel of my jeep. And I was driving!
I had no recollection of walking back to the car.
"Don't fall asleep," dona Mercedes said. "We'll crash and die like two fools."
I stepped on the brakes and turned off the ignition.
The thought that I had been driving asleep made me tremble with fear.
"Where are we going?" I asked. My voice sounded an octave lower.
She smiled and made a gesture of exasperation, raising her eyebrows.
"You get tired too easily, Musiua," she said. "You're too little. But, I think that's your best feature. If you were bigger, you would be unbearable."
I insisted on knowing our destination: I meant it in terms of physical locale, so that I could drive with a sense of direction.
"We are going to meet Leon Chirino and another friend," she informed me. "Let's go. I'll give you directions as you drive."
I started the jeep and drove in silence. I was still drowsy.
"Is Leon Chirino a medium and a healer?" I asked shortly.
She laughed softly but did not answer.
After a long moment she asked, "What makes you think that?" .
"There's something quite inexplicable about him," I said. "He reminds me of you."
"Does he now?" she asked mockingly: Then in a sudden serious tone she admitted that Leon Chirino was a medium and a clairvoyant.
Lost in thought, I did not hear her directions and was jolted when she yelled. "You passed it! You've got to back up now," she admonished, pointing to a tall bucare tree.
"Pull up there!" She smiled, then added, "We have to walk from here on."
The tree marked the entrance to a narrow path. The ground was covered with small flowers. I knew them to be red, but they appeared black in the moonlight. Bucares hardly ever grow by themselves: Usually, they are found in groves, shading coffee and cacao trees.
Following a narrow, overgrown trail bordered by other bucare trees, we headed toward a cluster of hills looming darkly before us.
There were no other sounds than Mercedes Peralta's uneven breathing and the crackling of twigs being crushed under our feet.
The path ended in front of a low house bordered by a wide clearing of hard-packed earth.
Its mud walls, plastered over a cane frame, were badly weathered. The roof was partially covered with zinc sheets and dried palm fronds. Deep eaves extended to make a wide porch. The front had no windows, only a narrow door through which a faint light escaped.
Dona Mercedes pushed the door open. Flickering candles cast more shadows than light in a sparsely furnished room.
Leon Chirino, sitting on a straight-backed chair, stared at us with an expression of surprise and delight.
Haltingly, he stood up, embraced the healer warmly, and guided her to the chair he had just vacated.
He greeted me and jokingly shook my hand. "Let me introduce you to one of the greatest healers around," he said. "Second only to dona Mercedes herself."
But before he could continue, someone cried out, "I'm Agustin."
Only then did I notice the low-hanging hammock in the corner.
A small man lay in it. His body was half-twisted, one foot touching the ground, so that he could rock the hammock back and forth.
He didn't seem particularly young, nor was he old. He was perhaps in his thirties, yet his hollowed cheeks and sharp bones made him look like a starved child.
The most remarkable thing about him was his eyes. They were light blue, and in his black face they shone with a dazzling intensity.
Awkwardly, I stood in the middle of the room. There was something eerie about the uncertain light of the candles playing with our shadows on the walls, gauzy with cobwebs.
The Spartan furniture- a table, three chairs, two stools, and a cot, all meticulously arranged against the wall- imparted an unlived-in atmosphere to the room.
"Do you live here?" I asked Agustin.
"No. I don't," he said, approaching me. "This is my summer palace." Pleased with his joke, he threw his head back and laughed.
Embarrassed, I moved toward the nearest stool and screamed as something sharp scratched my ankle. A hideous, dirty-looking cat stared up at me.
"There is no need to yell the place down," Agustfn said and gathered the scrawny feline in his arms.
It began to purr the instant he rubbed its head. "She likes you. Do you want to touch her?"
I shook my head emphatically. It wasn't so much the fleas and the mangy bare spots scattered over its yellowish fur that I minded, but its piercing yellow-green slitted eyes that never left my face.
"We better go if we want to get the plants in time," Leon Chirino said, helping dona Mercedes to her feet.
He unhooked the oil lamp hanging from a nail behind the door, lit it, and then signaled us to follow him.
A low-arched doorway covered by a plastic curtain led into a back room that served as a kitchen and storage area.
One side of the room opened to a large plot filled with short, stubby trees and tall shrubs. In the faint light of the lantern, it looked like an abandoned fruit orchard.
We squeezed through a gap in the seemingly impenetrable wall of bushes and found ourselves in a desolate landscape.
The hillside, with its recently burned underbrush and charred stumps, looked frighteningly grotesque in the moonlight.
Without a sound, Leon Chirino and Agustin vanished.
"Where did they go?" I whispered to dona Mercedes.
"They went ahead," she said vaguely, pointing into the darkness.
Shadows, animated by the oil lamp she carried, zigzagged beside and ahead of us on the narrow path leading into the thicket.
I saw a light in the distance, gleaming through the bushes. Like a glowworm, it appeared and disappeared in quick succession.
As we came closer to it, I felt sure I could hear a monotonous chant mingling with the distinct sound of buzzing insects and of leaves stirring in the breeze.
Mercedes Peralta turned off the oil lamp. But before the last glimmer died out, I saw her billowing skirt settle near a crumbling low wall, about twelve feet from where I stood.
A glowing cigar illuminated her features. A diaphanous, shimmering radiance escaped through the top of her head.
I called out her name, but there was no answer.
Fascinated, I watched a misty cloud of cigar smoke hover directly above me in a circle. It didn't disperse the way smoke would, but stayed fixed in midair for a long moment.
Something brushed my cheek. Automatically, I brought my hand to my face and then in utter astonishment gazed at my fingertips; they were phosphorescent.
Frightened, I ran toward the low wall where I had seen dona Mercedes sit down. I had barely moved a few steps, when I was intercepted by Leon Chirino and Agustin.
"Where are you going, Musiua?" Leon Chirino asked mockingly.
"I have to help dona Mercedes collect her plants."
My response seemed to amuse them. They chuckled.
Leon Chirino patted me on the head, and Agustin daringly grabbed my thumb and squeezed it as if it were a rubber pump.
"We have to wait here patiently," Agustin said. "I've just pumped patience inside you through your thumb."
"She brought me here to help her," I insisted.
"Sure," he said reassuringly. "You have to help her but not with her plants."
Taking my arm, he guided me toward a fallen tree trunk. "Let's wait for dona Mercedes here."
Leaves hung from Mercedes Peralta's forehead, silvery green and shining.
Quietly, she fastened the oil lamp on a branch, then squatted on the ground and proceeded to sort the plants she had collected into separate piles.
Verbena roots were prescribed for menstrual pains. Valerian roots soaked in rum were an ideal remedy for nervousness, irritability, anxiety, and nightmares. Torco roots, soaked in rum, cured anemia and yellow fever. Guaritoto roots, basically a male remedy, were prescribed for bladder difficulties. Rosemary and rue were used mainly as disinfectants. Malva leaves were applied on skin rashes, and Artemisia boiled in sugarcane juice eased menstrual pains, killed parasites, and reduced fevers. Zabila cured asthma.
"But you grow all these plants in your yard," I said puzzled. "Why did you come here to collect them?"
Agustin grinned gleefully. "Let me tell you something, Musiua," he whispered, bringing his head close to mine. "These plants have grown out of corpses."
He made a sweeping gesture with his hand. "We are in the middle of a cemetery."
Alarmed, I looked around. There were neither tombstones nor mounds to indicate that we were in a graveyard, but I hadn't seen any tombstones in the other cemetery either.
"Our ancestors are buried here," Agustm said and crossed himself. "On nights like this, when a full moon alters the distance of graves and paints white shadows at the foot of trees, one can hear a pitiful moaning and the rattling of chains.
"Men carrying their cutoff heads wander about. They are the ghosts of slaves who, after having dug a deep hole to bury their masters' treasures, were decapitated and interred with the gold.
"But there is no need to be frightened," Agustin hastened to add. "All they want is a bit of rum. If you give them some, they will tell you where the treasures are buried.
"There are also ghosts of friars who died blaspheming and now want to confess their sins, but there is no one to hear them.
"And there are the ghosts of pirates who came all the way to Chuao in search of the Spaniards' gold."
He chuckled, then added in a confidential tone, "There are also the lonely ghosts, who whistle at passersby. These are the simplest of them all. They don't ask for much. All these lonely ghosts want is for someone to say an Our Father for them."
Mercedes Peralta, a root poised in one hand, slowly lifted her head.
Her dark eyes held mine in their gaze. "Agustin has an inexhaustible supply of stories," she said. "Each tale he garnishes to the limit."
Agustin rose. The way he stretched his body and limbs gave the impression that he was boneless.
He plopped down in front of dona Mercedes and buried his head in her lap.
"We better get going," she said, stroking his head tenderly. "I'm sending the musiua to your place in a few days."
"But I treat only children," Agustin stammered, looking up at me with a sad, apologetic face.
"She doesn't need a healing." Dona Mercedes laughed. "All she wants is to watch you and to hear your stories."