The heart of the plant had already been cut out. Hollowed pieces of reed were stacked nearby. I broke off a piece to suck out the juice of the plant. I tried repeatedly until I was finally able to extract juice. I hated the sour, rancid flesh taste and smell of the unfermented juice of the maguey, but it would ward off starvation.

The punishing rain from the gods came down harder and harder. I was forced to leave the trail to find cover under broad-leafed vegetation. I arranged the wide leaves over me and curled up in a ball. ¡Ay de mi! Again, it came to me how little I knew about the indio side of life, that part of my ancestry that had been connected to this land since time immemorial. I felt like an intruder in the land, someone the indio gods, who had retreated into the jungles and mountains, looked down on with contempt.

No matter what I did, how I shifted, the rains found me. I shivered wet and cold and miserable until I finally slipped into a troubled sleep.

I dreamt of dark things, things without shape but that left me with deep fear and foreboding when I awoke. It was still dark, the middle of the night. The rain had stopped. The air had turned warmer and the black night filled with fog. As I lay silently, trying to shake off the fright I still felt from the dream, I heard something moving in the bushes and my fears became ablaze.

I listened intently, not moving a muscle, barely breathing. The sound came again. Something was moving in the brush, not far from me. The dread raised by my dreams was still with me and my first thought went to evil. The most evil thing of the night was Night Ax, the ferocious Aztec forest spirit that waylaid travelers who were foolish enough to journey after dark. Night Ax—a headless entity with a wound in its chest that opened and closed with the sound of an ax striking wood—stalked the night, seeking the unwary. People heard someone chopping wood in the dark. When they went to investigate, Night Ax chopped off their head and stuck the head inside his chest opening.

Night Ax was a fiend mothers used to scare children into behaving. Even I had had the threat that unless I minded, Night Ax would come and chop off my head. The threat came not from Fray Antonio, of course, but from the street people who spent the night at the House of the Poor.

The noise I heard was not the sound of chopping wood but of something moving through the bushes, something big. As I listened I was certain that it was the sound of the New World tiger, the jaguar. A hungry jaguar was faster and as deadly as Night Ax.

I lay frozen in fear until the sound of movement was long gone. Even the silence that followed in the wake of the sounds was eerie. I had heard stories of other creatures, snakes that could crush every bone in your body and deadly spiders as big as a man's head. Neither made a sound before it was atop of you.

I told myself that the sounds were noises one would normally hear in the dark; the night birds, beetles, and crickets were silent because it was too wet for them to stick their heads out of their shelter, but the fear nagged me that they were silent because something bigger and more deadly was looking for a victim.

I slept fitfully and this time my dream took form—I dreamt I had amputated the fray's head instead of the prostitute's leg.

THIRTY-EIGHT

At the first hint of dawn I left the bushes and got back on the trail. My clothes were wet, and I needed to hurry along to get my body warm. With the rising sun, the dampness of the vegetation turned to steam. For a while I could not see more than a couple dozen feet of trail ahead. As I walked the road climbed higher, and soon I broke out of the fog and into sunshine and blue sky.

I rubbed dirt on my face and hands to darken my skin and kept my head down when I passed people. Late in the afternoon, weak from hunger, I came to a clearing in which half a dozen different encampments were being set up for the night. They were all indio traders. Most carried their goods on their back and a few even had a donkey. There were no mules in sight. Few indios could afford a donkey, much less the larger animal that cost almost twice the price of a donkey.

I needed food but my fear was too great to even approach the indios. These men who traveled from village to town would be more sophisticated and in possession of much more information than simple farmers. I had determined that I was going to steal maize from the next unattended field I came to and eat it raw.

Shying away from the encampment, I started into the bushes to avoid contact with any of them when I saw a familiar figure. The Healer who used snakes to cure ills was unloading bedding and supplies from his donkey. The last time I had seen the man he had sold me a worthless piece of volcano excrement.

I hurried over to help him unload, greeting the old man in Náhuatl. He showed no surprise at my sudden appearance or my assistance.

"I'm happy to see you again," I said. "Do you remember me from the fair?"

"I remember, I remember. I have been expecting you."

"Expecting me? How did you know I would come?"

A flock of birds chattered overhead as they flew by. The old man pointed up at them. He made a throaty noise, akin to a raspy chuckle. He gestured at me to continue the unloading. As I unloaded the donkey, he knelt and began to make a dinner fire.

The sight of the fire brought a long, loud cry from my stomach. Any intention I had of coercing the Healer to return the money faded as I helped him prepare food. Guzman often traveled with an older person. The old indio sorcerer could no doubt use a young man to assist and serve him, both while traveling and in his act.

Soon I had my belly full from hot tortillas, beans, and chilies. My hunger cured, I squatted beside the dying fire while the Healer smoked a pipe. The pipe was elaborately carved in the shape of an Aztec god that was a common stone figure at many old ruins—Chac-Mool, laying on his back with his belly up. The hearts torn from the breasts of sacrificial victims were thrown into the bowl he held on his belly as food for the gods.

The bowl was now full of tobacco that the Healer lit.

I could see that the Healer was a sorcerer with many different types of magic in his sorcerer's bag. He was, of course, a Tetla-acuicilique, he-who-recovers-the-stone, a sorcerer who removed sickness-causing objects from the body. I had seen fakers retrieve small stones from the sick on the streets of Veracruz.

I had also heard of sorcerers who could understand the secret language of birds and could divine a person's fate from them. These sorcerers were considered preternaturally gifted and commanded high fees from indios. There was an Aztec word for those who divine by the flight and song of birds, but I did not know it.

"I ran away from my Spanish master," I told him. "He beat me much and worked me more than a pair of mules."

I elaborated upon the lie as only a lépero can. The old man listened silently, smoke curling from his pipe. It occurred to me that the smoke might tell him that I was lying, but the only sound that came from him was a low hum. Soon I felt the lies sticking in my throat.

Finally he got up and handed me a blanket from a pack removed from the donkey.

"We leave early tomorrow," he said. His face revealed nothing, but his voice was soothing. I felt both like crying and telling him the truth, but I was not sure how he would react to a tale of murder. I curled up under the blanket, relieved. More man just a full stomach, I had found a guide in the wilderness.

Again, I mourned Fray Antonio, my father in life if not in blood. It had not been a perfect life with the fray. Drinking and fornicating were numbered among his sins. But I never doubted the fray's love.