Bernardo taught Diego the Indians’ sign language, which they then enriched with their own additions and used for communicating when telepathy and the flute failed. Sometimes, when dealing with more complicated matters, they took recourse to slate and chalk, but they did it secretly because they did not want to be thought conceited. With the help of his whip, the schoolmaster had drilled the alphabet into the heads of a few privileged boys, but between there and reading freely lay an abyss, and in any case, no Indian went to school. Diego, despite himself, ended up becoming a good student, at which point he understood for the first time his father’s mania for education. He began to read everything he could get his hands on. Maestro Manuel Escalante’s Treatise on Fencing and Dueling was revealed to him as a collection of ideas very similar to the Indians’ okahue‘; it, too, spoke of honor, justice, respect, dignity, and courage. Before, he had limited himself to absorbing his father’s fencing lessons and imitating the movements illustrated in the pages of the manual, but after he started reading it, he learned that fencing was not only skill in handling the epee and the sword, but also a spiritual art. About that same time, Captain Jose Diaz sent Alejandro de la Vega a crate of books a passenger had left on his ship somewhere near Ecuador. The crate was sealed tight as a drum when it arrived, but when opened, it revealed a fabulous cargo of epic poems and novels, yellowed, dog-eared volumes that smelled of honey and wax. Diego devoured them, even though his father scorned novels as a minor genre plagued with inconsistencies, basic errors, and personal dramas that were none of his business. The books became an addiction for Diego and Bernardo; they read them so often that they could recite them by heart. The world they lived in grew very small, and they began to dream of countries and adventures beyond the horizon.
When Diego was thirteen, he still looked like a child, while Bernardo, like most boys of his race, had reached his full growth. The passivity of his coppery face softened during times that he and Diego were spinning a plot, or when he was gentling the horses, or in the many times he rode off to visit Light-in-the-Night. The girl grew very little during that period; she was short and slim, with an unforgettable face. Her happiness and beauty had attracted wide attention, and on her fifteenth birthday the fiercest warriors of several tribes were competing for her. Bernardo lived with the terrible fear that one day he would go to visit her and find her gone.
His appearance was deceptive; he was not overly tall or muscular, but he had surprising strength and the physical endurance of an ox. His muteness also gave a false impression, not just because people thought he was stupid, but also because it made him seem sad. In fact he wasn’t, but the people close to him, who knew the real Bernardo, could be counted on the fingers of one hand. He always wore the linen pants and shirt of the neophytes, with a sash about the waist and, in winter, a striped serape. The band across his forehead and long braid that fell halfway down his back proclaimed his pride in being Indian.
Diego, in contrast, had the rather deceptive air of a young gentleman, despite his athleticism and sun-warmed skin. From his mother he had inherited his eyes and rebelliousness; from his father, long bones, chiseled features, natural elegance, and the love of learning. Both had bequeathed him an impetuous bravery that on occasion verged on dementia, and no one knew where his playful charm came from, something none of his ancestors, a rather tight-lipped people, had ever shown.
Just the opposite of Bernardo, who was amazingly serene, Diego could not be still for more than a minute; so many ideas poured from his brain that a lifetime would not be enough to put them into practice. He now bested his father in swordplay and no one surpassed him with the bullwhip. Bernardo had made him one of braided cowhide, which Diego wore coiled at his waist. He never missed an opportunity to practice.
With its tip he could flick out a candle or cut off a flower without damaging a petal. He could also have plucked the cigar from his father’s mouth, but such insolence never entered his mind. His relationship with Alejandro de la Vega was one of timid respect. He addressed him as “senor” and never questioned his authority to his face, although behind his back he nearly always got away with doing whatever he wanted. He was, however, more mischievous than rebellious and had assimilated his father’s severe lectures about honor. Diego was proud of being a descendent of the legendary Cid, an hidalgo whose lineage was without a blot, but he never denied his Indian blood because he was also proud of his mother’s warrior past. While Alejandro de la Vega, always conscious of his social class and his faultless ancestors, tried to hide his son’s mixed blood, Diego acknowledged it with his head held high. Diego’s bond with his mother was intimate and affectionate, but he was never able to deceive her, as occasionally he did his father. Regina had a third eye in the back of her head that saw what no one else could see, and was as unyielding as a rock when it came to being obeyed.
Alejandro de la Vega’s role as alcalde obliged him to visit the seat of government in Monterey regularly. Regina took advantage of one of those absences to take Diego and Bernardo to White Owl’s village. She believed that the boys were at an age to become men. However, to avoid problems, she did not tell her husband. As the years went by, their differences had grown; the nighttime embraces were no longer enough to reconcile them. Only their nostalgia for a lost love helped them stay together, though now they lived in worlds very far apart and had nothing to say to one another. Early in their marriage, Alejandro’s passion had been so strong that more than once he turned around halfway into one of his trips and galloped several leagues just to be a couple of hours longer with his wife. He never grew tired of admiring her regal beauty, which always lifted his spirits and inflamed his desire, though it was also true that he was ashamed that she was a mestiza.
Because he was proud, he pretended not to notice that a narrow-minded colonial society ostracized her, but with time he began to blame her: she did nothing to apologize for her mixed blood, she was thorny and defiant. Regina had at first tried very hard to adjust to her husband’s customs, to his language of harsh consonants, to his chiseled-in-stone ideas, to his dark religion, to the thick walls of his house, to too-tight clothing and kid boots, but the effort cost her too much and eventually she admitted defeat. For love’s sake, she had tried to renounce her origins and become a Spanish lady, but she could not; she never stopped dreaming in her own language.
Regina did not tell the boys the reasons for their trip to the Indian village because she did not want to alarm them in advance, but they sensed that it was something special and secret. White Owl was waiting for them halfway there. The tribe had had to move farther away, pushed toward the mountains by the whites who kept taking over their land. The colonists were more and more numerous, and they were insatiable. The immense virgin territory of Alta California began to seem too small for so much cattle and so much greed. Once the hills had been covered with grass, always green and tall as a man; there had been waterfalls and streams everywhere, and in spring the fields were covered with flowers, but the colonists’ herds trampled the ground and the hills dried up.
White Owl saw the future in her shamanic journeys; she knew that there was no way to hold back the invaders; soon her people would disappear.
She counseled the tribe to seek new pasture lands farther away from the whites, and she herself supervised moving the village. The grandmother had prepared a broader program for Diego and Bernardo than the tests of bravery for warriors. She did not think it necessary to suspend them from a tree with hooks through their chest muscles; they were too young for that, and besides, they did not have to prove their courage.
Instead, she proposed to put them in contact with the Great Spirit so their destinies would be revealed to them. Regina told the boys good-bye with no show of emotion, telling them that she would come for them in sixteen days, when they had completed the four stages of their initiation.
White Owl threw the pouch containing the tools of her office musical instruments, pipes, medicinal plants, magical relics over her shoulder and started off toward the virgin hills with the long strides of the practiced walker. Diego and Bernardo, who followed without a single question, carried nothing but woolen blankets. In the first stage of the journey they walked four days through thick woods, sustained only by sips of water, until hunger and fatigue produced an abnormal state of lucidity. Nature revealed herself in all her mysterious glory. For the first time they really noticed the boundless variety of the forest, the concert of the breeze, the close proximity of the wild animals that sometimes followed them for long stretches. At the beginning they suffered from scrapes and scratches, from the unnatural weariness of their bones, from the bottomless void in their stomachs, but by the fourth day they were walking as if floating in a mist. The grandmother decided that the boys were ready for the second phase of the rite, and she ordered them to dig a waist-deep hole that was half again as big around. She built a fire to warm some stones and had the boys cut and peel supple tree branches to construct a dome over the hole, which they then covered with their blankets. In that round shelter, symbolic of Mother Earth, they were to purify themselves and undertake a voyage in search of a vision, guided by the spirits. White Owl lit a sacred fire ringed with rocks, which represented the creative force of life. All three drank water and ate a handful of nuts and dried fruit, and then the grandmother ordered them to take off their clothing. Accompanied by the sound of her drum and rattle, they danced frenetically for hours and hours, until they dropped with exhaustion. She led them to the refuge that now held the burning-hot stones, and gave them toloache to drink. The boys submersed themselves in the vapor of the steaming rocks, the smoke of their pipes, the aroma of the magical herbs, and the images invoked by the drug. In the following four days they came out from time to time to breathe fresh air, to renew the sacred fire, to heat up the stones, and eat a few seeds. At times, sweating, they slept. Diego dreamed that he was swimming in ice-cold water with dolphins, and Bernardo dreamed of the contagious laughter of Light-in-the-Night. White Owl guided them with prayers and chants, while outside spirits from all times circled the blanket-covered dome.
During the day, deer, rabbits, mountain lions, and bears nosed around the camp; and at night they heard the howls of wolves and coyotes. An eagle glided overhead, watching them, until they were ready for the third part of the ritual, then disappeared.
The grandmother handed each boy a knife, allowed them to take their blankets, and sent them off in opposite directions, one to the east and the other to the west, with instructions to feed themselves on what they could find or hunt except for mushrooms of any kind and to come back in four days. If the Great Spirit so pleased, she said, they would encounter their vision during that period, otherwise, it would not happen during this trial and they would have to wait four years before they tried again. When they returned, they would have the last four days to rest and to ready themselves for normal life before going back to the village. Diego and Bernardo had lost so much weight during the first stages of their initiation rites that when they saw each other in the splendid light of the dawn, they did not recognize one another. They were dehydrated, their eyes were sunk deep in their sockets, and they had the burning gaze of the mad; their ashen skin was stretched tight over their bones, and they had such an air of desolation that despite the gravity of their parting they burst out laughing. They hugged, deeply moved, and each went his way.
Separately, they wandered aimlessly, not knowing what they were looking for, hungry and frightened, living on tender roots and seeds, until hunger prodded them to hunt mice and birds with bows and arrows they fashioned from branches. When it grew too dark to continue, each built a fire and lay down to sleep, shivering with cold, surrounded by spirits and wild animals. And each awoke stiff from the frost and aching in every bone, with the startling clairvoyance that tends to come with extreme fatigue.
A few hours into his march, Bernardo realized that he was being followed, but when he turned and glanced over his shoulder, he saw nothing but trees watching over him like quiet giants. In this forest he was embraced by ferns with shining leaves, surrounded by twisted oaks and fragrant firs and quiet, green space lighted with splashes of light that filtered through the leaves. It was a sacred place. It would be most of the day before the shy creature accompanying him would show itself. It was an orphaned foal, still so young that its legs, black as night, were wobbly. Despite its newborn delicacy and its orphan’s sense of solitude, Bernardo could see what a magnificent horse it would grow into. Horses travel in herds, and always in open country; what was it doing alone in the woods? He called it with the finest sounds of his flute, but it would stop some distance away, eyes suspicious, nostrils flaring, legs trembling, too skittish to come closer. The boy plucked a handful of moist grass, sat down on a rock, put it in his mouth and chewed it, spit it into the palm of his hand, then offered it to the beautiful little creature. Time passed before the foal decided to take a few hesitant steps forward, observing Bernardo through clear chestnut eyes, weighing his intentions and reckoning its retreat in case of danger. It must have liked what it saw, because soon its velvety muzzle touched the extended hand to taste the strange food. “It isn’t the same as your mother’s milk, but it will do,” Bernardo murmured. Those were the first words he had spoken in three years. He felt each one take shape in the pit of his stomach, rise like a cottony ball up his throat, roll around a bit in his mouth, and then, well chewed, be spit out like the mash for the foal.