Version 2007.03.03

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

### Chapter 23

Mercedes Peralta came rushing into my room, sat on my bed, and shifted about until she was comfortably settled.

"Unpack your gear," she said. "You can't go to see Agustin anymore. He's left for his yearly trip to remote areas in the country."

She spoke with such certainty that I had the feeling she had just finished talking to him over the telephone; but I knew there wasn't one in the neighborhood.

Candelaria came at that moment into the room holding a tray with my favorite dessert: guava jelly and a few slices of white cheese.

"I know it's not the same as sitting spiritually with Agustin in front of a TV set," she remarked, "but I'm all you have for the moment." She placed the tray on the night table and sat down on the bed opposite from dona Mercedes.

Dona Mercedes laughed and urged me to eat my treat. She said that Agustin was known in distant, godforsaken towns and visited them yearly. At great length she talked about his gift for healing children.

"When will he be back?" I asked. The thought that I might not see him again filled me with indescribable sadness.

"There's no way to know," dona Mercedes said. "Six months, perhaps even longer. He does this because he feels he has a great debt to pay."

"Whom does he owe?"

She looked at Candelaria, then both of them looked at me as though I ought to have known.

"Witches understand debts of this kind in a most peculiar manner," dona Mercedes finally said. "Healers pray to the saints, and to the Virgin, and to our Lord Jesus Christ.

"Witches pray to power: They entice it with their incantations." She rose from the bed and paced about the room.

Softly, as though she were talking to herself, she continued to say that although Agustin prayed to the saints, he owed something to a higher order; an order that was not human.

Dona Mercedes was silent for a few moments, looking at me but allowing no expression to be read on her face.

"Agustin has known about that higher order all his life, even as a child," she continued. "Did he ever tell you that the same man who was going to take his mother away found Agustin on a pitch-black night, in the rain, already half-dead, and brought him to me?"

Dona Mercedes did not wait for my response but quickly added, "To be in harmony with that higher order has always been the secret of Agustin's success. He does it through his healing and bewitching."

Again she paused for a moment, looking up at the ceiling. "That higher order made Agustin and Candelaria a gift," she continued, lowering her gaze toward me. "It helped them from the moment they were born.

"Candelaria pays part of her debt by being my servant. She is the best servant there is."

Dona Mercedes moved toward the door, and before stepping outside, she turned to face Candelaria and me, a dazzling smile on her face. "I think that in some measure you, too, owe a great deal to that higher order," she said. "So try by all means to pay back the debt you have."

Not a word was said for a long time. The two women looked at me with a sense of expectancy. It occurred to me that they were waiting for me to make the obvious connection- obvious to them: Just as Candelaria was a born witch, Agustin was a born sorcerer.

Dona Mercedes and Candelaria listened to me with beaming smiles.

"Agustin is capable of making his own links," dona Mercedes explained. "He has a direct connection to that higher order which is the wheel of chance itself; and the witch's shadow as well, or whatever it is that makes that wheel move."