Clash of Star-Kings Read Free

usual tasks of the house, but in preparing for the feria or fiesta. Let no one be able to say that the Quinta de Matteos did not prepare itself properly for the passage of the procession of the Holy Hermit! Nimbly and skillfully those fingers had prepared chains and garlands of cunningly twisted colored “china” paper, had prepared and set up archways and banners and legends, had stripped the garden of both the front patio where she and her sister lived and the back patio where the Señores Clay lived, of almost all flowers and greenery. The petals had been plucked and dropped into baskets according to color and Señora Josefa had just finished sifting the last of them into a series of flower-petal pictures and patterns in the road in front of her house. She always did so. But none of them, she considered, as she regretfully turned her eyes away — equally ready to scowl if any passerby showed signs of walking in the road or to beam at any praise — none of them had ever done better than this. It was when she saw that the feet heedlessly trampling the floral designs belonged to her sister Josefa, that she realized something must be dreadfully wrong. She seized her arm and hurried her into the patio.
    “Sister, what passes?”
    “Oh, woe of me! Sister, what have I seen!”
    “My God, Sister, what
passes?
What
have
you seen?”
    Josefa dropped her basket, and fled into the tiny room which housed the family altar, pausing only to utter the single and scarifying word, “
Naguales!
” before falling on her knees before the huge framed picture of the two Virgins and the flickering votive lamps, and, crossing herself with her beads, began to pray aloud with sobs and tears and shuddering breaths. Mariana lifted her trembling hand to her gaping mouth, swayed, then, with heavy steps, followed her sister and knelt beside her. It was a while before she had recovered enough to think of anything beside prayers.
    Finally the two of them went in the kitchen and, at the table, Josefa sipped a drop of ancient Spanish brandy bought during Señor Gomez’s last illness, and then sipped a cup of very potent black coffee. Mariana asked the inevitable question: “How do you know that they were
Naguales
?”
    Josefa threw up her hands and rolled her eyes. “How do I know? First, I heard them. I said, ‘Coyotes here and in the daytime?’ Then I saw them, loping along, and I felt my heart grow weak, for whoever saw six coyotes one behind the other in a straight line? And then —
Cristo Milagroso!
— they rose to their feet and went upright and beneath the skins of the coyotes they had the arms and legs of men!”
    Mariana crossed herself.
“Jesus-Maria!
Jesus-Maria!”
    “So I knew that they were neither coyotes nor men, but Naguales. Sister — woe of me! Sorcerers and were-coyotes!
Brujas
and
brujos
, witches and warlocks! God alone knows what troubles and evils will come upon us now that they dare to show themselves again in the open!”
    The sisters each took hold of one of the other’s hands and, as with their free hands they crossed themselves repeatedly, they chanted:
    “May we not die of fright
,
    May we not die without confession
,
    May that fright fall into the ocean
,
    May those that cause that fright fall into the mountains
,
    May it seize only the wicked and the infidel and the malevolent!”
    They gazed at one another in silence a moment. Already they were beginning to feel somewhat better, and a righteous and determined anger was beginning to replace the fear in their faces. “So,” said Señora Mariana, grimly, “they are up to their old tricks once more, are they? Worshippers of evil demons! And to pick this day! Oh, the malevolent ones! Oh, how the Naguales hate the Holy Hermit and his blessed catafalque! Oh, how they hate the priests! Aren’t the witches always trying to destroy the good Hermit? — and who knows that they might not have harmed him more than once if he did not trick them by slipping away in