Working Magic

The ride back to the hacienda was quiet and uneventful, and Alejandro de la Vega, busy with his bookkeeping and his usual morning rounds, had not even noticed that his son and the girl had been away until Diego mentioned, over the midday meal, that they had gone to mass.  Then the old man had looked only a little surprised, but pleasantly so.  Diego also noticed, with some degree of satisfaction, that he had been right about Silvio.  Chasing around all day after a herd of cattle probably was harder, and far less glamorous, than the manservant could ever have imagined.

Alejandro suggested that perhaps he could spend the rest of the afternoon helping out in the vineyards, but he looked as though he would already sleep well tonight, provided his nerves didn’t keep him awake.  He watched Oreana almost constantly when she was in the same room, though he tried to be unobtrusive about it.  If his master had been frightened of her, there was no telling what he thought her capable of.  Clearly he wouldn’t wait much longer before getting word to Marigál, even if he hadn’t seen anything between her and Diego.

Later that afternoon, over the sound of the melody he was practicing on the guitar, Diego heard her knock lightly on his door.  When Bernardo opened it, she slipped quietly inside.  Diego had considered showing her the passageways that connected the sala and his father’s library to his own room and the tunnels under the house.  But he hadn’t.  And it wasn’t because he didn’t trust her, or even because—as she had said—she didn’t seem to have trouble getting past servants, but simply because he had the distinct impression that she really didn’t want to know.

She had never asked him even one question about Zorro—how he managed to come and go, who looked after Tornado, or even if anyone besides Bernardo knew who he was.  Maybe she had already surmised many of these things.  But she had revealed her own secrets very cautiously, too.  Even now, he wasn’t sure he had reached the end of them.  And given how much she valued her own privacy, it was probably no wonder she had a healthy respect for his.

Perhaps from her perspective, minding your own business was also a way of protecting your allies, he now realized.  You couldn’t reveal what you didn’t know—even under intense questioning.  And despite what she had said, he didn’t think she could just ignore physical pain as easily as all that.  If she really had even half the power Silvio probably thought she had, she would hardly need to be so cautious.

Diego had been playing a rather intricate series of changes in D minor, but as he shifted to the relative major, he nearly missed the A string when he thought of the cut on her finger.  He could tell it still hurt, just from the way she held her hand.  Yet he was the one who felt a little self-conscious as he set the instrument aside, nodding resignedly and getting to his feet as she said, "That B string simply does not want to hold the tune, does it; you may need to replace the peg."

"Did you bring the documents?" he asked, pulling the chair from his desk and motioning her to sit down.  She nodded and slipped the gold signet ring from her pocket as well, laying it on the desktop as he slid the chair under her.

"I hope you have enough paper that I can practice," she said.  "And some sealing wax."

"Bernardo has found some," he said, taking the dozen or so sheets of heavy cotton stock from the servant and laying them on the desk in front of her.  Meanwhile, she began to untie the small blue ribbon from a stack of carefully folded papers that he realized were personal letters she had received from Urbino.  Not wanting to read them, he picked up the ring instead and studied it closely.

With a goose quill she traced over a word or two, then dipped the tip lightly into the inkwell and began to write.  After crumpling only a few pages, she had one that Diego thought would certainly have fooled him—at least when viewed from upside down.  The signature looked authentic as well, he thought, as he came around the desk to read the sentences that would soon send Silvio on a very long journey indeed.  Bernardo smiled and nodded.  Then he went to light a candle from the fireplace to melt the stiff resins in the sealing wax.

"An interesting design," said Diego, tilting the ring in his fingers.

"Sí, it is a magic symbol," she said.

"Oh?"  He nodded thoughtfully and shrugged at Bernardo, who looked over his shoulder.

"It is a charm made from the letter of an ancient alphabet, the letter sowulo."  As she spoke, she smoothed out one of the pieces of paper she had crumbled and drew a small jagged character that looked like a letter Z which had been stretched out until the center slash stood vertical.  "This is sowulo," she said, showing it to them, "The lightning bolt.  Some people also call it ‘sigil.’"  Then, on top of that figure, she drew another one identical to the first, but whose center slash crossed it at right angles.  "This," she added, "is a symbol of the positive, creative power of the sun.  See how it seems to spin to the right, clockwise, the way the sun moves."

Diego looked from the simple drawing to the slightly more ornate shape carved onto the ring.  "I know this symbol," he said.  "It is called a swastika, if I am not mistaken."

"Sí.  People also call it a fylfot.  It is a very powerful charm."

"Like a talisman."

She nodded.

"But why would Marigál—a self proclaimed witch hunter—have his associates wear a magic symbol?"

She looked at him as though he had asked her why anybody would drink water or breathe air and said, "To focus power."  Diego let his gaze drift to Bernardo, who shrugged back at him.  Seeing their doubtful response, Oreana rolled her eyes.  "Over the years, there have been many men who have learned about magic from us, including the Catholic priests," she said.  "Discipline often makes them good magicians, though they sometimes lack the integrity, since they think they can be forgiven for their sins.  Señor Marigál may be such a man."

Diego glanced sideways at her and raised a quizzical brow, then stifled a laugh.  He had to admit that from a certain angle, a belief in the possibility of forgiveness might look like a license to sin.  Clearly, the 16^th century priests who sold indulgences had seen it that way.  But he found it hard to take this talk of magic charms very seriously.  He could see some empirical basis for what she did with plants, and he even thought there might be some rational explanation for her ability to deaden pain, since he had once read about an Austrian doctor named Mesmer, who claimed to be able to heal the sick by putting them into a kind of trance.  But talismans?  "So you think this man would really believe that such a sign has magical powers?"

Oreana smiled faintly, looking up at him with narrowed eyes.  "Why not?" she said; "you yourself cannot deny that this sign has much power."  He watched as she drew a short horizontal line, then a longer vertical line that intersected the first at a right angle.  "That sign," she added, "the sign of your Christos, has focused the power of the Spanish empire for hundreds of years now, has it not?  And this one," she added, scrawling the letter Z—"this one has come to have much power lately, right here in California."

His eyes widened.  "Well, if that is the kind of power you mean."

"What other kind is there?"

"Very well."  He raised his hands in a gesture of surrender.  "You are the expert on this topic.  I only hope it will help us get rid of Silvio."

"Oh, it will do that," she nodded.  "Actually it will help us get rid of them all, if we are careful with it.  Do not put that ring on your finger," she cautioned him abruptly, holding up her hand.

Startled, Diego handed it back to her at once.  Then he smiled, still feeling a little silly for taking any of this seriously.  "I thought you said its power was positive."

"It is," she said, setting the ring on the desk.  As she folded the letter to Silvio and addressed it to him at the de la Vega hacienda, she added, "You see, there are two possibilities.  Either Señor Marigál knows just enough about such symbols to be a danger to himself and others, or he knows a great deal, but he doesn’t want any of his accomplices to become a threat to him.  He may mean for them all to meet Urbino’s fate, sooner or later."  She nodded for Bernardo to pour a circle of sealing wax on the appropriate fold.  Then, taking the ring, she said, "Watch."

The wax spread out and rimmed up around the edges of the ring, then began to harden.  In a moment, she pulled the signet carefully away to reveal an exact impression of the symbol.  "You see," she said, as if she thought the problem should now be obvious.

Diego squinted thoughtfully at the wax impression.  Finally he said, "It is backwards."

"Precisely," she said, looking quite pleased.  "In this position, rotating against the direction of the sun, it becomes a powerful vortex to focus the forces of death and destruction.  When the seal is broken, this power will not be destroyed.  It will be released."

"And you think it will bring some serious harm to Silvio?"

"Well, of course it will.  We’re sending him off into the wilderness, are we not?"  She raised her hands as if she were evoking the very scene on the desktop in front of her.  "Is that not harmful enough?  We just have to try to soften its effects so that he does not get eaten by wolves, or something.  That would be very bad for all of us."

Bernardo nodded gravely.  He clearly didn’t like the idea of anyone, even Silvio, getting eaten by wolves.  Nor did Diego, but he still wasn’t convinced that this wax character would have any effect at all, let alone on them.  "How could it be bad for all of us?" he said.

Oreana looked up at him sharply.  "Because, as I told you before, whatever you send out comes back to you," she said.  "Whatever harm we do will work against us."

Diego nodded, arching his brows.  "That’s right.  I had forgotten your aunts’ rule," he said.  Though it wasn’t exactly the answer to the question he had asked, he had to smile, appreciating even more the irony of how ethical this pagan doctrine really required its followers to be.  It was not unlike the golden rule, except that she seemed to think her transgressions would have consequences far more impersonal and immediate.  "So how does one protect another person from the evil influence of this charm?"

"Do you wish to learn magic?" she asked, casting him a mischievous yet defiant glance that said she saw all too clearly his lack of faith.  He held up his hands again and shook his head.

"As I said, Señorita—you are the expert."

"If you change your mind," she added as she got to her feet, "then I will try to explain how it works.  But it would not work for you, anyway.  Not unless you were willing to admit that you already know a little bit about such things.  Don’t you."  Her eyes pierced him suddenly, and he couldn’t keep from smiling even as he tried to shrug off the question.

"You have some natural abilities," she added, taking a step toward him.  "You have sensed the shifting of energies.  You have felt power.  You have even seen it.  Haven’t you."

"Is this practice for Marigál’s inquisition?" he asked, trying not to sound as uneasy as he was at the realization that, yes, perhaps he did know what she was talking about.

"How do you think you happen to be so good with a sword?" she went on.  "You think you are just quick and smart.  But they taught you how to cast a circle, didn’t they, and to stay inside it.  Caranca?  Luis de Narvaez?  Those old fencing masters—they also learned a lot from us.  And you—you had an affinity for those kinds of teachings.  Didn’t you."

Diego swallowed hard but said nothing.  He felt as though she had touched some part of him that not even he himself had known about before.  And it did feel a little like the intense focus he usually felt in the midst of a duel.  Then she softened.

"I suppose I should be grateful for those who merely laugh at us," she said, shaking her head and letting her eyes drift back to the desk top.

Diego shrugged.  "Considering the alternative."  For a long moment, she thought about this reply.  Then, suddenly, she could no longer keep a straight face.  Watching her, he couldn’t help but laugh, too, though he also had to admit that he could feel the subtle shift in the level of energy when the rest of the room came back into focus around them, as if they had been inside a kind of circle, one that contained a fragile sort of energy that dissipated quickly in the ordinary light of the late afternoon.

When he looked at Bernardo, the servant only raised his brows as if he hadn’t been paying any attention to an exchange that should, by all rights, have seemed pretty compelling.  What had he seen?  "Perhaps you could teach me a little more about these things," Diego said.

She pressed the grin from her lips.  "Haven’t I?"

At that, he could only shake his head.  Bernardo now looked mildly puzzled.  "I will leave it to you, then," said Diego, "to do whatever you mean to do with this letter to keep it from harming Silvio.  But you had better do it now so that Bernardo will be able to take it into the pueblo in the morning and drop it in the mail bag that will probably arrive by coach.  With luck, the soldiers will come to deliver it tomorrow afternoon."

Oreana nodded, turning back to the letter on the desk.  Then suddenly she looked up at him again.  "Help me," she said.  Her tone sounded more like an invitation than either a command or an entreaty.  She glanced at the letter.  "Learn by doing."  It sounded almost like a dare.

He studied her for a moment, but by now he knew that her faint smile could only mean she was quite serious.  "What do I have to do?"

With a slight nod and a glance, she motioned him to come.  And as he came to stand near her, she held up her palm as if to touch him.  "The left hand receives," she said.  "The right one sends."  She positioned her right hand over the letter.

Cautiously, he raised his hand to mirror hers and, though her fingers barely touched his own, he had no trouble feeling the sudden sparks.  Then her fingers parted, and, as he lightly slipped his own between them, he felt a rush of desire so strong it made him tremble, rising up through his stomach, leaving him half embarrassed at how much he wanted to pull her into his arms.  As she winced, he wondered if she knew what he was feeling, or if she herself was even capable of feeling such things.

But even that question was soon swept away in the surge that seemed to intensify, even as it poured out of him.  He wasn’t sure how long he stood there, or how he knew, finally, that he had to let her go, except that somehow he knew her finger was throbbing painfully.  When his fingers lost touch with hers, he felt the same nearly painful sense of separation he had felt before, outside the mission.  Then, as everything returned to normal, he found himself wondering, again, if he hadn’t just imagined the whole thing.  Bernardo seemed quite unconcerned as Oreana gave him the letter.  "Well, that should do it," she said, a slight shudder in her voice.

"Are you all right?" said Diego, glancing at her hand.

"Sí," she nodded.  "And you?"

He didn’t quite know how to answer that question.  He thought so, but if he wasn’t sure, it was only because he still had too many questions of his own, the most obvious one being, "What was it that we did just now?"

Oreana thought for a moment, looking up as if she were searching for the answer in the back of her mind.  Finally, she gathered up the letters on the desk, stuck Urbino’s ring back into her pocket and gave Diego’s arm a gentle squeeze as she headed for the door.

"Some part of you already knows the answer to this," she said.  "Maybe you ought to ask Señor Zorro."