An Introduction to Magic

Ah—buenas tardes, Señorita," Muñoz began as he came to stand before the girl, looking down with an amused smile on his face.  "And how are you and your friend today?"

Diego tried to relax against the trunk of the cottonwood, hoping they would think he was still groggy.  "Oh, I am well, gracias," she said brightly, "though he is . . . as you see."

"That is too bad," said Muñoz, though he hardly seemed saddened.

"Sí," she nodded, then shrugged, eyes narrowing.  "Was there something you wanted, Señor?"

"Oh, sí . . . ." The man laughed sheepishly and offered her the plate of food and the canteen.  As she too laughed lightly, Diego realized she was looking up directly at them, no longer worried, apparently, about frightening them.  In fact, as she tossed her head and swept her hair back off her shoulders, she seemed almost to be flirting with them.

Zavala set the other plate of food near Diego, then backed away looking a little uneasy.  "Maybe we should just leave them alone," he said.  Muñoz smiled, shaking his head.

"Oh, come, now, Ramón.  She’s not going to hurt you."  Then he turned back to Oreana with a conspiratorial aside.  "He thinks you’re going to turn him into a toad.  You wouldn’t do that now, would you?"

Pursing her lips, Oreana scrutinized Zavala.  "No, she said finally.  I don’t even like toads.  Besides, I usually have much better luck turning men into pigs."

Diego pursed his lips and tried not to smile in spite of himself.  He would have had a harder time, he thought, if he hadn’t half expected the man to strike her.  But Muñoz’ grin faded only slightly.  He shrugged.  "There, you see?" he said to Zavala.  "I told you she would like to get to know you better.  You wouldn’t mind that, now, would you, Señorita?"

"Luis, por favor— "

Oreana shrugged.  "I already feel as if I know you both so well."

"Look at her," said Zavala.  "Can’t you see she really is a witch?  She is not afraid of you."

"Perhaps not," replied Muñoz with a look of cold amusement, "but then I, at least, am not so terrified of her either.  Now get over here and help me.  Get on your feet, please, Señorita."

As Zavala moved toward her, Oreana shot Diego a warning glance, but he couldn’t keep from reacting, and, as he started to get to his feet, Muñoz drew his sword and placed the tip of it neatly under his chin.  If Oreana hadn’t continued to hold his gaze, he would have batted the blade aside with his chains and had them around the soldier’s neck within seconds.  But soon it was too late.

Adjusting the angle of his blade, Muñoz pushed his prisoner back against the tree trunk, then unfastened the rawhide whip at his belt and tossed it to Zavala, saying, "Here.  Tie him.  Put your hands behind your head, Señor," he said, keeping the edge of his blade at Diego’s throat.

Diego felt Zavala thread the leather whip through the links that bound his wrists, then tighten it hard around his neck and the tree until he thought he would pass out.  And he quickly learned that struggling would only make the passing out more likely.

Oreana watched, still holding his gaze, and he cursed himself for ever having listened to her—all this nonsense of signs and charms.  She might have been able to scare the wits out of Zavala, but had she really thought Muñoz wouldn’t call her bluff?  Finally, he shut his eyes, knowing he could do nothing now to help her.  But he opened them again when, to his surprise, it was Zavala, not the girl, who gave a sharp little yelp.

"How did you get out of those?" said Muñoz, a hint of apprehension creeping into his voice as well.  Oreana trained a quiet yet utterly predatory smile on them both as she casually stepped out of the leg irons, then let the manacles fall from her wrists.

"Señores," she said, "do you think I have ever really been your prisoner?"

"Luis . . . ." Zavala looked nervously from her to his companion.

"It is a trick," said Muñoz.  "Anyone can learn to pick a lock."

"That is true," said Oreana, taking a careful step toward Zavala.  "Anyone can learn such an easy thing.  Do not be frightened; I mean you no harm."  But Diego could see something perfectly chilling in her eyes, and he remembered the night she had appeared out of nowhere in his room.

Zavala crossed himself.  "It is the work of the devil," he whispered.  But then, Muñoz raised the stakes.  Stepping forward, he grabbed her roughly by the arm.  Diego shut his eyes once more and said a prayer to whatever deity might be listening.  Even if these men hadn’t thought of it yet, he knew all too well that if they did what it looked like they were going to do, they would have to kill both their prisoners or face a possible court martial.  But Oreana only bared her teeth and gazed deeply into Muñoz’ eyes as he pulled her closer.

"The devil isn’t so bad once you get to know him," she smiled, searching his face, her whole body trembling.  "You do believe—do you not—that he can give you whatever you desire?"

Zavala, also trembling, drew his own sword.  "Leave him alone, Señorita," he said in a tone that was almost more a plea than a threat.  "Luis, can you not see what she is doing?  She has been tempting us all along; she has you under her spell.  She wants your soul."

Muñoz did not relax his grip on her, but neither did he tighten it.

"I had thought your corporal might be the one to come to me," she went on.  "But you will do."

"I said let him go, Señorita," said Zavala, raising his voice as if he were trying to strangle the fear out of it.  Then he raised the sword.  Diego winced, but her gaze never wavered from Muñoz.

"Would you not like to meet the dark one?" she said.  "He waits for us even now, out there," she added, motioning with her head to the line of trees behind her.  "Look closely in the shadows," she whispered.  "There, by the rock, do you see?  He is not so frightening, is he?  And all you have to do is lay with me. . . .  This is what you really wanted, no?"

As she reached up to caress the side of Muñoz’ face, Zavala closed his eyes and drew back his blade for a stroke Diego knew would take her head off.  Time seemed to have slowed down so much that he could see the little circle the sword’s tip made in the air as it began moving forward.  But it had only traveled a hand’s breadth before Muñoz suddenly shrieked in terror and let her go, pushing her away as he jumped back, looking as pale as if he really had seen the devil.

"All right—I will release him," said Oreana to Zavala.  "Provided you say nothing of this to your corporal.  This one"—she nodded disdainfully at Muñoz, who, by now, had stumbled and was backing away from her on all fours—"Este buey no vale madre. (1)  I have no use for him.  But if you say a word to anyone—either of you—I will know.  And you will die."

As he looked up past her, Zavala’s eyes widened a bit, and Diego thought the man would drop his sword as he and Muñoz both continued to back away until they came to a spot just past the campfire where their horses were tied.  They seemed almost ready to ride away, but this time Zavala was the calmer of the two, grabbing Muñoz by the shoulder, talking to him.  Finally, they just returned to the fire and stood there glancing at the prisoners from time to time as they went on talking in hushed tones.

Oreana watched them as she circled the tree and began to untie the hard leather knots.  Then, as Diego brought the chains over his head and bent forward trying to catch his breath, she coiled the whip into a circle and flung it after the soldiers.  Finally, she returned to where he sat, still clutching his throat, and sank down easily between him and the heap of chains she had been wearing.  He looked up and swallowed hard, as if to ask the most obvious question.

She ran her fingers through her hair, brushing it back over her shoulder.  Then she showed him her open palm and, with a quick flick of her fingers, produced a long gold hairpin.  "Muñoz was right," she said.  "Anyone can learn to pick a lock."  Then she put the hairpin back in her hair, securing it to a strand just above her ear.

Diego coughed, trying to clear his throat, but his voice was still hoarse when he said, "But that—was not really what frightened them—was it."

"No."  She handed him the canteen the soldiers had left nearby.  The water helped a little.

"Then what— "

"Their own devil."  She gazed off toward the line of trees just behind him.  As he followed her eyes, he suddenly felt an icy chill creep up his spine as he noticed the dark shadow he hadn’t been able to see before, hugging the edge of a large rock.  And it wasn’t just a trick of the light.  He saw it move like a living thing, and he felt it watching him.

He was about to ask her how she was doing this when suddenly he knew.  His brows rose into an incredulous frown. "Tornado?"

She nodded.  He took a deep breath, then let it go, still coughing a bit.  "How long—had you known he was there?"

Oreana looked away and bit her lip.  She was still trembling, and suddenly he noticed there were tears in her eyes.  As he reached for her, she let him gather her into his arms and buried her face in his chest.  Stroking her hair, he glanced back to the spot near the rock where the stallion stood.  Then he also saw Bernardo and the palomino colt.

It was a miracle they hadn’t all been spotted, he thought, though Bernardo, as usual, must have sized up the situation quickly.  Now the servant pointed up the creek bank to indicate where he intended to make camp.  Diego nodded to acknowledge this plan, then watched as his friend tried to maneuver the two large animals quietly through the underbrush.  Finally, once they were gone, he gathered the girl a little tighter in his arms and rested the side of his face gently against her hair.

"You did not know, did you."

She caught a deep shaky breath and whispered, "To cast such a spell takes much concentration.  Much discipline."

"I—hope this is not a game you play often," he said.

"It is not a game I enjoy," she replied.  "The stakes are often high.  One day those men may kill someone out of the fear I instilled in them."

"They deserved far worse than to be frightened," he said thickly.

"Perhaps."  She sniffled, then caressed his arm and looked up at him.  "Still, I will ask you now to take back what you said about killing them."

He shook his head and felt a quizzical smile angle his lips as he brushed the tears from her cheeks.  "But you yourself threatened them with death if they spoke to anyone, did you not?"

"It was not a threat," she shrugged.  "It was an observation.  I said that if they told, I would know.  This seems likely.  Then I said they would die—which, of course, they will.  I did not say I would kill them."

"You choose your words carefully, Señorita."

"That, too, is in the nature of a spell, Señor."

As she snuggled closer into his embrace, he let his arms do what they wanted, but he kept his eyes on the soldiers.  Looking up, she followed his gaze, then said, "It is all right.  Right now they see only their own fears.  If we got up and walked toward them, they would notice.  But otherwise, they are trying very hard not to see us.  One might say we are invisible to them, just as I was to Silvio that night I left your room."

"Then perhaps you might consider letting me out of these chains," he smiled, holding up one wrist as far as he could.  "Just for a while.  Or would that draw their attention as well?"

"Probably not."  She slipped out from under his embrace and ran her fingers through her hair again to find the long gold hairpin.  Then, carefully, she probed the iron cuff that bound his right wrist.  "I suspect they are probably wishing we would just disappear," she added, her voice still a little shaky.  When the catch popped open, she frowned at the sight of the raw, irritated flesh and said, "I am so sorry I got you into this."

"We are in it together," he said as she retrieved the canteen and poured some water over the wound.  "Besides, I am as much to blame for not believing you. Though I guess we will have to wear these a while longer."

"Sí, and the stripes that go with them," she said as she pressed a clean portion of the hem of her skirt against his wrist to dry it. "If we bore no injuries, they would think that was magic."

Diego sighed. "You know, their sense of magic sounds almost as quaint as yours is starting to sound, well—peculiar.  You say you do not believe in the supernatural, yet it was clearly a miracle you were not killed.  You did do something to those men— "

"All I did was bend their expectations a little.  They did the rest."

"Then how do you know what they are thinking, or what they will do?"

"It is not difficult to guess."

"But you are not just guessing.  And if Bernardo hadn’t been there—"

"I intended him to be there."

Diego pondered this answer for a moment, trying to piece together all its implications in a way that made common sense, but he could not.  "To make someone appear . . . merely by an act of will?  And you think that this does not defy the laws of nature?"

"How else does anyone make anything appear?" she shrugged.  "The soldiers willed this meal to appear, and we ought to eat it while we still can."  As she unlocked his other wrist, Diego cast a cold glance at the food he knew was equally cold and rolled his eyes, knowing she was right.  But he was far from ready to let this matter drop.

"It is not the same thing," he said.  "For Muñoz to make food appear is one thing, but for you to make Muñoz appear—that is something else."

"Pato, ganso y anzarón," she shrugged. "Tres cosas suenan— "

"Mas una son."(2)  With a flat smile, he finished the old proverb as she handed him the plate, then added, "But it is not the same thing."

"It is," she said.  "You only say this because you know how to make food appear, but you do not think you know how to do what I did."

"Then perhaps you would be so kind as to explain it to me?"

"I asked you once before if you wished to learn magic.  Have you changed your mind?"

Diego thought about the question for a moment, wondering what were the implications of saying yes—for he knew there were implications.  "I wish only to understand," he said at last.

"You already do."

"You adore being cryptic, do you not?"

She held his gaze for a moment, then looked away, raising an eyebrow.  Finally, she sighed, sat up a little straighter and leveled her gaze at him.  "Magic begins with intent," she said.  "It starts here"—she raised her cupped fingers to a spot just in front of her forehead—"and here"—pulling an imaginary thread down to the level of her waist.  "Only then do we finally see it here," she added, extending her hands as if she were handing him something.  She gave him a moment to ponder those remarks, then leaned toward him and said, in a confidential tone, "When you fight with a sword, you intend to win."

Diego only nodded.  It felt like someone opening a door.

"And you do not make victory appear all at once," she continued. "But you bend and change and adjust the little things until it becomes inevitable.  Every lunge, each riposte, each thrust—it is an act of love, no?  Like all magic."

For a long time he said nothing, and when it finally occurred to him that he ought to say something, all he could think to say was, "You are a good teacher."  He knew the conversation itself had been quite literally an act of love, and that now he could no longer claim to be entirely innocent of the knowledge of sorcery.  But could it really be just that simple?

"Have something to eat," she said at last; "The food will ground you."

They ate in silence, and though he hadn’t thought he was hungry, he was surprised at how good the cold food tasted.  Then, watching her do the same, he re-fastened the heavy manacles around his wrists and sat back to wait for the corporal to return, his mind still busy making connections he had never made before.

Silvio watched the shadows of the nearby trees start to lengthen as the afternoon sun took up a position behind him.  Soon, its light would blind anyone who looked up from the roadway toward the cleft in this ancient outcropping of rock.  He could see the shadow of his felt hat stretching almost to the edge of the road.  No light would glint off the barrel of his pistol.  No slanting shadows would define his shape against the rocks.  But he would be able to see his target quite clearly, right down to the silver conchas on the saddle and the fancy needlework on the jacket.

He ran his fingers gently across the smooth, delicately engraved metal plate that joined the stock of his pistol to its steel barrel.  It was beyond a doubt the most beautiful object he had ever owned.  The dainty floral scroll work and the cross hatching on the front side of the hammer matched the patterns carved into the glossy hardwood stock capped with polished silver.  Even the slender trigger guard, cast to resemble a vine, looked more like a piece of jewelry than part of a deadly weapon.  But this was a deadly weapon.  It felt solid and well balanced in his hand, and at close range, like this, it was sighted dead on.

By now he had no idea how many men he had killed in his life, though he knew it must be quite a few.  Growing up in la tierra caliente between the central plateaus and the west coast, he had seen how fragile life was.  Few people chose to live in such rugged terrain, trying to raise crops in a climate so blistering that you could work the fields only in the early mornings, late evenings and on moonlit nights.  Often people went hungry.  Still, when he was sixteen, they had come—los gachupines (3)—demanding to "borrow" your money, they said, taking your land if you didn’t have anything to give them.

For years people had foretold the coming of a king who would deliver los pobres from oppression.  By the time Silvio was twenty, many had come to think it was Fernando Siete, the Spanish king held captive by Napoleon.  Some had even seen him in visions, telling them to kill los gachupines, to take their land and distribute it among los pobres. (4)   So when, in mid-September of that year, the criollo priest Hidalgo had tried to do that, no one was really surprised.  And when, ten months later, los gachupines had shot him dead, Silvio, having nothing to lose, had gone to fight with Padre Morelos’ troops.  They taught him how to kill.

And they had given him even more reason than he already had.  He had been with them on that day a few years later when they had marched into Valladolid against General Iturbide’s army.  The royalist general had not only decimated their ranks; he had displayed a distinct flair for cruelty the like of which Silvio had never seen, killing insurgents and innocent civilians alike, even women and children, without so much as a moment to pray.

In the coming months, he burned any village the insurgents passed through, and while Morelos would not allow his soldiers to loot, Iturbide himself would often steal anything he could carry.  His prisoners, it was said, were better off dead.  Now, having recently switched sides, and having somehow convinced the insurgent leaders of his good intentions, this man finally ruled all of New Spain.

But Silvio wasn’t fooled.  He had long suspected that the criollo leaders on both sides didn’t want to save the land from the French heretics, or to help their darker brothers, so much as they wanted to seize political power for themselves.  When Padre Eusepio told him that the real enemy wasn’t the French, or the rich gachupines, or even the hypocritical priests who seemed only to be using los pobres to further their own ends, Silvio had finally seen the truth.  Only the devil himself could be behind such a conspiracy.  No use going after those he had duped.  Better to target those who served him knowingly, willingly—the Jews, the heretics, the witches.  They had to be done away with, just as the Bible commanded, before the yoke of oppression could ever be lifted from the shoulders of the poor.

Silvio rested his forearm steadily in his left hand, which rested, in turn, on his right knee as he sighted down the pistol barrel, taking aim as his target came in sight, right on time.  In the pouch at his waist he carried a dozen or so extra rounds, but he didn’t think he would need more than one, maybe, just to finish the old man off if his first shot missed the heart.  He had heard men dying slowly on the battlefield, their cries lasting through the night, often well into the next day.  The ravens would start to eat them while they were still alive.  Even now, the flutter of their iridescent black wings beat against his memory until he could see them, swirling like leaves in the wind, giving ground only to remain at arm’s length.

You couldn’t shoot them, even if you had a pistol, since shot and powder were too costly.  Nor could you shoot the dying.  You were lucky if you got a chance to cut their throats.  But Don Alejandro didn’t deserve such a death.  He was worth an extra shot, if it came to that.

Silvio drew in a slow breath, then held it, tensing both his gaze and his grip on the trigger.  No, Don Alejandro was not really an evil man, as wealthy criollos went.  The men who worked for him were loyal.  They spoke very highly of him.  Could he help it if his heretic son, with all his fancy education, had fallen under the spell of la bruja?  Endicott was an idiot to think she was just another woman.  Those enlightened fools who didn’t believe in el diablo—they were often the ones who fell right into his hands, just as Padre Eusepio said.  Endicott was like Iturbide, not just cruel, but needlessly cruel, wastefully self-indulgent, with no respect even for decent women.  It would almost serve him right if la bruja finally got him . . . .

Silvio barely heard the voices of the ravens as they squawked and chattered to one another amid the branches of the nearby sycamore tree—not until, all at once, like a pile of dry leaves in a sudden gust of wind, they exploded from its branches, flying off in all directions.  Even then, he never took his eyes off his man as Don Alejandro pulled up his horse in the middle of the road and stood up in the stirrups, turning to look back toward the bridge, his richly decorated jacket falling open to frame the center of his white shirt.  He froze for a long moment, then turned his horse around and headed back the way he had come.  Only after Silvio noticed the other two horsemen emerging from the shadows of the trees beside the bridge did he realize what he had done—or, rather, what he had not done.

He recognized one of the padres, the old one from the mission, the one who had helped the Jew escape, but he didn’t know who the other one was.  For a moment, he considered taking the shot anyway.  The padres wouldn’t be armed.  The worst they could do was complicate things by taking the body to Capistrano and reporting the murder.  Of course, if the old man didn’t die quickly, who knew what he might say or who he might implicate?  In that case, Silvio would have to finish him—padres or no padres—and then he would have to kill them, too, if he could catch them, and that would almost certainly mean bad luck.

No, he thought as he carefully pulled the hammer back with his thumb, then released it to rest against the back of the chamber.  Better to wait.  They were still a good three days from el Descanso, maybe four.  Even if the old man had somehow figured out that this was where they were taking his son, there would still be plenty of time to catch him alone.  Maybe the two padres were only going as far as Capistrano anyway.  And maybe it might be better not to catch up with Endicott so soon.  Between him and la bruja, somebody was sure to wind up dead.