Version 2007.02.26

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

### Chapter 7

Octavio Cantu had had his last treatment of the season. He put on his hat and rose from the chair.

I noticed how the years had caved in his chest, and wasted the muscles of his arms. His faded coat and pants were several sizes too big. Bulging sharply on the right-side pocket was a large bottle of rum.

"It always happens when she finishes my treatments, I put her to sleep," he whispered to me, fixing his sunken and discolored eyes on Mercedes Peralta. "I've talked to you too much today. Anyway, I can't figure out why you're interested in me."

A wide smile creased his face as he held his walking stick between his thumb and wrist. He moved his arm back and forth so skillfully the cane appeared to be suspended in midair. Without saying another word he walked out of the room.

"Dona Mercedes," I called softly, turning to her. "Are you awake?"

Mercedes Peralta nodded. "I'm awake. I'm always awake even when I'm asleep," she said softly. "That's the way I try to stay a jump ahead of myself."

I told her that since I had begun talking to Octavio Cantu I had been plagued by deep, nagging questions. Could Octavio Cantu have avoided stepping into Victor Julio's shoes? And why did he repeat Victor Julio's life so completely?

"Those are unanswerable questions," dona Mercedes replied. "But let's go to the kitchen and ask Candelaria. She's got more sense than the two of us together. I'm too old to have sense, and you're too educated."

With a beaming smile on her face, she took my arm and we walked to the kitchen.

Candelaria, engrossed in scrubbing the copper-plated bottoms of her precious stainless-steel pots and pans, did not hear or see us approach. She let out a piercing, startled scream when dona Mercedes nudged her arm.

Candelaria was tall, with sloping shoulders and wide hips. I couldn't tell her age. She looked as much thirty as she looked fifty. Her brown face was covered with tiny freckles, so evenly spaced they seemed to have been painted on. She dyed her dark curly hair a carrot red and wore dresses made from bold-colored printed cottons.

"Well? What are you doing in my kitchen?" she asked with feigned annoyance.

"The musiua is obsessed with Octavio Cantu," dona Mercedes explained.

"My God!" Candelaria exclaimed. Her face expressed genuine shock as she looked up at me. "Why him?" she asked.

Baffled by her accusing tone, I voiced the questions I had just asked dona Mercedes.

Candelaria began to laugh. "For a minute I was worried," she said to dona Mercedes. "Musius are weird.

"I remember that musiu from Finland who used to drink a glass of urine after his dinner to keep his weight down.

"And the woman who came all the way from Norway to fish in the Caribbean sea. To my knowledge, she never caught anything. But she had the boat owners fighting among themselves to take her out to sea."

Laughing uproariously, the two women sat down.

Candelaria went on, saying, "One never knows what goes on in the minds of musius." They are capable of anything."

She laughed in spurts, each louder than the preceding one. Then she went back to scrubbing her pots.

"It looks like Candelaria thinks very little of your questions," dona Mercedes said.

"I personally think that Octavio Cantu couldn't avoid stepping into Victor Julio's shoes.

"He had very little strength: That's why he was caught by that mysterious something I talked to you about; that something more mysterious than fate. Witches call it a witch's shadow."

"Octavio Cantu was very young and strong," Candelaria said all of a sudden, "but he sat too long under Victor Julio's shadow."

"What is she talking about?" I asked dona Mercedes.

"When people are fading away, especially at the moment they die, they create with that mysterious something a link with other persons, a sort of continuity," dona Mercedes explained.

"That's why children turn out just like their parents. Or those who take care of old people follow into the steps of their wards."

Candelaria spoke again. "Octavio Cantu sat too long in Victor Julio's shadow. And the shadow sapped him. Victor Julio was weak, but upon dying the way he did, his shadow became very strong."

"Would you call the shadow the soul?" I asked Candelaria.

"No, the shadow is something all human beings have, something stronger than their soul," she replied seemingly annoyed.

"There you are, Musiua," dona Mercedes said. "Octavio Cantu sat too long on a link- a point where fate links lives together.

"He didn't have the strength to walk away from it. And, like Candelaria says, Victor Julio's shadow sapped him.

"Because all of us have a shadow, a strong or a weak one, we can give that shadow to someone we love, to someone we hate, or to someone who is simply available.

"If we don't give it to anyone, it floats around for a while after we die before it vanishes away."

I must have stared at her uncomprehendingly. She laughed and said, "I've told you that I like witches. I like the way they explain events, even though it's hard to understand them.

"Octavio needs me to ease his burden. I do that through my incantations. He feels that unless I intervene he will repeat Victor Julio's life detail by detail."

"It's advisable," Candelaria blurted out, "not to sit too long under anybody's shadow unless you want to follow in his or her footsteps."