The Second Ring of Power Read Online Free PDF Page B

useless to try. A wave of sadness
enveloped me. Somehow I knew my end was near. In a fit of sheer
desperation I told dona Soledad that I was going to get a knife
from the kitchen and kill the dog, or be killed by him, and I would have done
that had it not been that there was not a single metal object in
the entire house.
    "Didn't the Nagual teach you to accept your fate?" dona Soledad asked as she trailed behind me. "That one out there is no
ordinary dog. That dog has power. He is a warrior. He will do what he
has to do. Even kill you."
    I had a moment of uncontrollable frustration and grabbed her by the
shoulders and growled. She did not seem surprised or affected
by my sudden outburst. She turned her back to me and dropped her
shawl to the floor. Her back was very strong and beautiful. I had an
irrepressible urge to hit her, but I ran my hand across her shoulders
instead. Her skin was soft and smooth. Her arms and shoulders
were muscular without being big. She seemed to have a minimal layer of fat that rounded off her muscles and gave her upper body the appearance of
smoothness, and yet when I pushed on any part of it with the tips
of my fingers I could feel the hardness of unseen muscles below
the smooth surface. I did not want to look at her breasts.
    She walked to a roofed, open area in back of the house that served as a
kitchen. I followed her. She sat down on a bench and calmly
washed her feet in a pail. While she was putting on her sandals,
I went with great trepidation into a new outhouse that had been built in the
back. She was standing by the door when I came out.
    "You like to talk," she said casually, leading me into her
room. "There is no hurry. Now we can talk forever."
    She picked up my writing pad from the top of her chest of drawers, where
she must have placed it herself, and handed it to me with exaggerated
care. Then she pulled up her bedspread and folded it neatly and put it on top
of the same chest of drawers. I noticed then that the two chests were the color
of the walls, yellowish white, and the bed without the spread was pinkish red,
more or less the color of the floor. The bedspread, on the other hand, was dark
brown, like the wood of the ceiling and the wood panels of the windows.
    "Let's talk," she said, sitting comfortably on the bed after
taking off her sandals.
    She placed her knees against her naked breasts. She looked like a young
girl. Her aggressive and commandeering manner had subdued
and changed into charm. At that moment she was the antithesis of what she had
been earlier. I had to laugh at the way she was urging me to write. She reminded
me of don Juan.
    "Now we have time," she said. "The wind has changed.
Didn't you notice it?"
    I had. She said that the new direction of the wind was her own
beneficial direction and thus the wind had turned into her helper.
    "What do you know about the wind, dona Soledad?" I asked as I
calmly sat down on the foot of her bed.
    "Only what the Nagual taught me," she said. "Each one of
us, women that is, has a peculiar direction, a particular wind.
Men don't. I am the north wind; when it blows I am different. The Nagual
said that a warrior can use her particular wind for whatever she wants. I used
it to trim my body and remake it. Look at me! I am the north wind. Feel
me when I come through the window."
    There was a strong wind blowing through the window, which was
strategically placed to face the north.
    "Why do you think men don't have a wind?" I asked.
    She thought for a moment and then replied that the Nagual had never
mentioned why.
    "You wanted to know who made this floor," she said, wrapping
her blanket around her shoulders. "I made it myself. It
took me four years to put it down. Now this floor is like myself."
    As she spoke I noticed that the converging lines in the floor were
oriented to originate from the north. The room, however, was not
perfectly aligned with the cardinal points; thus her bed was
at odd angles with the walls and so were the lines