Version 2007.03.01

## “The Witch's Dream: A Healer's Way of Knowledge” - ©1985 by Florinda Donner-Grau

### Chapter 14

A faint noise startled me. I tried to move, but my left arm, flung behind my head, was stiff from lack of circulation. I had fallen asleep in Mercedes Peralta's room after becoming thoroughly exhausted from taking an inventory of her dried medicinal plants.

I turned my head upon hearing a voice call my name. "Dona Mercedes?" I whispered. Except for the sound of the knots of the healer's hammock, squeaking as they rubbed over the metal rings, there was no answer. I tiptoed over to the corner. No one was in the hammock. Yet, I had the distinct feeling that she had just been in the room and that somehow her presence still lingered about.

In the grips of inexplicable anxiety, I opened the door, then ran down the dark silent corridor.

I crossed the patio to the kitchen and out into the yard. There in the hammock that hung between two soursop trees lay dona Mercedes enveloped in tobacco smoke, like a shadow.

Slowly, her face emerged from the smoky dimness. It was more like an image in a dream. Her eyes glittered with a peculiar hollow depth.

"I was just thinking about you," she said. "About what you're doing here." She pulled up her legs to get out of the hammock.

I told her that I had fallen asleep in her room, and had been frightened by the sound of her empty hammock.

She listened in silence, a worried expression on her face. "Musiua," she said sternly, "how many times have I told you never to fall asleep in the room of a witch? We're very vulnerable while asleep."

Unexpectedly, she giggled and covered her mouth, as though she had said too much. She signaled me to come closer and to sit on the ground near the edge of her hammock.

She began to massage my head. Her fingers traveled with an undulating movement down to my face.

A soothing numbness spread across my features. My skin, muscles, and bones seemed to dissolve under her deft fingers.

Totally relaxed and at peace, I fell into a drowsiness that was not quite sleep. I was half-conscious of her gentle touch, as she continued to massage me. Finally, I lay faceup on the nearby cement slab.

Silently, dona Mercedes stood over me. "Watch, Musiua," she suddenly cried out, looking up at the full moon racing through the clouds. Hiding, rising, emerging, the moon seemed to tear the clouds in its rush. "Watch," she cried out again, throwing a clump of gold medals fastened to a long gold chain into the air high over her head. "When you see the chain again, you'll have to return to Caracas."

For an instant the dark clump seemed to be suspended against the full moon emerging from behind a cloud. I did not see it fall. I was too preoccupied wondering what had prompted her to mention that I had to go back to Caracas.

I asked her about it: She remarked that it was foolish of me to assume I was going to stay in Curmina forever.