Bless Me, Ultima: Chapters 20-22

The bad blood of
spring filled us with strange yearnings and tumult, and the
boys from Los Jaros split off from the boys from town and
there were gang fights.

I had more time
to spend with Ultima, and in her company I found a great
deal of solace and peace.

But I had heard the grown-ups rumor that Tenorio's sec­
ond daughter was dying and that she would not last the sum­
mer, and I remembered his threat.

"Aye, Gabriel Marez," the gray, emaciated face smiled
weakly, "it does my heart good to see an old compadre, an
old vaquero--

Bless Me, Ultima 225
spilled the scalding coffee on me."

"Perhaps it is a bad joke, someone who has a grudge
against you," my father the skeptic questioned.

"What can I do?" my father asked, trying to console the
poor man.

The three tortured spirits
are not to blame, they are manipulated by brujas-"

The sun grew very white and warm in the clear, azure
sky.

From my mother I had learned that man
is of the earth, that his clay feet are part of the ground that
nourishes him, and that it is this inextricable mixture that
gives man his measure of safety and security.

She stood quietly, listening to
the devil's bombardment that held us with such terror that
we could not move.

"Aiiiiiiiie," Tellez groaned, "it is the devil dancing on my
roof-" His body twisted to the crescendo of the fearful
drum beat.

We had not brought food and so
the only thing we had was water from the well, which tasted
brackish.

"You picked a bad one to tangle with," my father shook
his head thoughtfully as he stared into the dying fire, "Te­
norio has already murdered one of our friends--"

Seeing him made questions and wor­
ries evaporate, and l remained transfixed, caught and
caressed by the essential elements of sky and earth and
water.

He held his hands to the gaping,
bloody wound at his chest.

"A religion different from the religion of the Lunas," I was
again talking to myself, intrigued by the easy flow of thoughts
and the openness with which I divulged them to my father.

"A religion different from the religion of the Lunas," I was
again talking to myself, intrigued by the easy flow of thoughts
and the openness with which I divulged them to my father.

When I heard that the hair on my back bristled.

Once I ran into a flat
piece of bottom land, and what seemed solid earth by the
light of the moon was a marshy quagmire.

It was a moment
of serenity, lasting only as long as my sigh of relief.

"Aiiiiiii-eeeee!" he cried like a fiend when he found the
object of his search.

But in the dim, flickering light I
saw the ashen pallor of death on her face.

Those who wallow
in evil and brujeria cannot understand this.

The witch is dead, my daughters are avenged!