THE BRUJO'S WAY
First in the Buenaventura Series

The Brujo’s Way. First in the Buenaventura Series
      Based on a novel by Gerald W. McFarland
      Copyright 2013 Gerald W. McFarland
     
      Contact: James Clois Smith Jr., Sunstone Press / (505) 988-4418
     
      LOGLINE: As a boy in Mexico City Carlos Buenaventura discovers that he has extraordinary abilities which must be kept secret lest he be accused of sorcery and executed, so he is left with the lifelong challenge of appearing to live as an ordinary man while also developing his paranormal powers.
     
      ACT 1
     
      Mexico City, July 1683. Dońa Carlotta confesses to her faithful personal maid, Rosita, that she’s afraid of her husband, the Marquis, who has threatened her with dire consequences if she does not provide him with a male heir to his fortune and title. Rosita, a Native woman, offers to obtain a powerful Native potion for her mistress that never fails to provide mothers with the male child they desire. Carlotta protests. “I cannot. I don’t dare use witchcraft because if my husband found out he would turn me over to the Inquisition and they would burn me at the stake.”
     
      Time passes and Dońa Carlotta, increasingly desperate, drinks the potion. Nine months later she gives birth to a beautiful male child who laughs and smiles up at her. “How extraordinary,” she says. Rosita observes that it is June 21, 1684, the Summer Solstice. “Your Carlos is a child of the sun.”
     
      As a little boy Carlos displays none of the paranormal powers that sometimes show up in boys whose mothers have resorted to this method. But one day, when he’s six, Rosita finds him in his bedroom with a far-away look on his face. She asks what he’s doing. “I’m in a field watching a rabbit through the eyes of a cougar as he prepares to leap on the rabbit.” Alarmed because she knows this would be impossible except through sorcery, Rosita forcefully impresses on Carlos that he must never let anyone know what he’s able to do and, better yet, to forget he ever did it.
     
      Deeply impressed by Rosita’s warning that he would endanger himself and a mother he loves if he ever pursues these talents, he takes on the persona of an ordinary aristocratic boy. In time he learns to accept his father, who, for all his rigid religious beliefs, is generous with his only son, providing him with the best Jesuit tutors, the redoubtable Don Ignacio de Tortuga as his fencing master, and ample funds for his favorite pursuit: flirting with young women whose upper-class mothers see him as the perfect match for their daughters.
     
      Carlos’s carefree life comes to an abrupt end when his father dies and his mother remarries. His stepfather, General Rodrigo Alvarez, is a military hero of the Reconquista of New Mexico, which returned the province to Spanish control after the Pueblo Revolt of 1680.
     
      It’s soon clear to Carlos that his stepfather is devoted to the interests of his three sons at Carlos’s expense. The general intends to cut Carlos’s allowance and send him off, still a minor, to Santa Fe, a remote frontier town.
      ACT II
     
      Before leaving Mexico City Carlos is spectacularly successful in a match with a highly touted Neapolitan fencer, Giovanni Gemelli. Until this point Carlos’s latent brujo abilities have not been apparent, but his fencing master, Don Ignacio, in observing that Carlos has an uncanny ability to anticipate his opponent’s every move while they’re only intentions, comes close to realizing that Carlos is drawing on secret brujo powers.
     
      On the trip of many months northward from Mexico City through the high-mountain regions of New Spain, Carlos discovers other exceptional abilities. He finds he’s able to see the landscape around him through the eyes of hawks flying overhead, much as when he was a little boy he saw a rabbit through the eyes of a cougar that was about to pounce.
     
      Carlos’s newly acquired manservant, Pedro Gallegos, is a veteran of several colonial wars and a man of solid intelligence and complete reliability. Carlos, a bit shaken, even alarmed, by the perception he is having of seeing the landscape through the eyes of hawks and owls, tells Pedro what’s going on. Pedro simply says, “You’re a brujo and a powerful one. My mother’s father was a brujo, but he couldn’t do what you just did.”
     
      Always in pursuit of romantic adventures, Carlos finds Camila Lobo, a ladies’ maid in the Santa Fe-bound party, particularly attractive. She makes few concessions to his high social status, which makes their conversations into sparing sessions that enhance his enjoyment of her company.
     
      On two occasions during the northward trip Carlos utilizes his newfound brujo powers, once by hurling a spear with great force across a long distance to kill an attacking Native warrior, and again when he performs a magic trick for his companions that involves more than simple sleight of hand. Both times Camila challenges him by saying he did something not quite normal, which alerts him to his need to beware of using his brujo powers in public.
     
      Once in Santa Fe, Carlos assumes his duties as secretary to the provincial governor. There’s lots of paperwork to do, but he’s well-educated and energetic and wins Governor Villela’s approval. Pedro, ever protective of his employer, warns him that brujo behavior which he can safely practice in the high desert must be avoided altogether in a closely knit conservative Catholic community. Carlos observes that it’s time for the brujo to become a bureaucrat.
     
      Though Carlos is increasingly enamored of Camila, he limits his attentions to her to provocative flirting. But when the governor’s son Rafael proposes to Camila, Carlos is overcome with jealousy and asks her to marry him.
     
      Having proposed, Carlos is beset by conflict; he does not really want to marry, and besides, he knows she is too conventional to accept that he is a brujo. Camila also has reservations about herself. She tells her two suitors that she was a foundling who doesn’t know who her mother was and can’t see her way to considering marriage without knowing more of her parentage.
     
      Into this situation come two new settlers, Dr. Loreto Tiburcio and his daughter Inéz de Recalde. Dr. Tiburcio immediately strikes Carlos as being other than what he claims to be, as does his dark-haired and aggressively seductive daughter. Carlos is fascinated by Inéz, who turns out to be a highly skilled left-handed fencer, and they engage in intense, sexually charged bouts which cause him to completely forget about Camila.
     
      ACT III
     
      Carlos learns that his mother is very ill and leaves for Mexico City, but before he sets out Camila asks him if he will visit the orphanage where she was raised and try to find out who her mother was. In"é" z has told Carlos that she intends to haunt his dreams and he begins to have vividly erotic dreams featuring a half-naked Inéz as soon as he’s on the road.
     
      Carlos’s brujo skills come back strongly as he travels south through the high desert. Midway in his journey he visits an old friend whose neighbors are being held captive and abused by a brujo named Mateo Pizzaro. Carlos’s friend asks him to look into the situation.
     
      Carlos agrees only to look, but what he sees draws him into a violent battle to the death with Pizzaro, who is an apprentice of an evil brujo, Don Malvolvio.
     
      Upon arriving in Mexico City, Carlos eagerly pursues sexual adventures with several women. He also continues to be at odds with his stepfather.
     
      Through clever detective work, Carlos is able to fulfill Camila’s wish that he learn the identity of her mother. He also finds out that Inéz is not Loreto’s daughter, and that they have a disturbing sadomasochistic relationship.
     
      Sadly, Carlos’s mother dies soon after he reaches Mexico City. He reconciles with an older sister with whom he had been at odds as a boy, but a violent argument that breaks out with his stepfather results in a decisive break between the two men.
     
      After his mother’s funeral Mass, Carlos is preparing to leave for Santa Fe when he runs into a boyhood friend, Sebastian Reyes, and Sebastian’s fiancée, Belén. They invite Carlos to join them in going to Puebla, where they will marry. Belén’s sister Zoila is also in the party; the sisters tease Carlos about his reputation as a womanizer. Carlos’s retort that sexual relations have two ends, “pleasure and procreation,” leads Zoila to reply, “You have a lot to learn.”
     
      When the four friends stop for an overnight stay, Zoila tells Carlos that her grandfather is a renowned Hindu scholar and that she is a Tantric adept. She then undertakes to teach Carlos that sexual relations can be a powerful path to spiritual illumination. Over the course of the next three nights, she introduces him to Hindu teachings about the centers of spiritual energy called chakras, and gives him instruction in how to work with the chakras in mediation.
     
      Combining Zoila’s directions with his brujo training, Carlos achieves deep states of spiritual awareness. Zoila applauds his successes, but also points out that until now he has used his great powers in purely self-indulgent and superficial ways. He undergoes a serious conversion and resolves to change his life.
     
      On the long trip back to Santa Fe Carlos’s intention to seek deep wisdom is reinforced by a series of dreams. For many nights in a row he dreams about a great brujo, Don Serafino, who was his teacher in a previous life.
     
      Each of these dreams vividly evokes how Don Serafino trained Carlos in elements of the brujo way: the ability to see auras, the energy fields that surround all beings; the development of alertness so heightened that he can hear the approach of an object thrown at him from behind his back; and the acquisition of techniques that make him a superior fencer—anticipating in opponent’s next move while it’s still only an intention, and seeing the bout in slow motion, moving swiftly without being hurried.
     
      After many adventures Carlos reaches Santa Fe. He has no sooner told Camila that he has discovered her mother’s identity than Camila announces that she intends to marry Governor Villela’s son Rafael. Somewhat relieved, Carlos makes several other visits and finally, late in the afternoon, is paid a visit by Inéz, who invites him to fence with her, but she is in low spirits and fences badly. She refers to some unspecified losses during the six months he was away, and he reminds her that she once told him that “underlying sadness is anger,” and he suggests that they fence again to express her anger.
     
      They fence with great energy, after which she hints that her anger has something to do with the strange and moody Dr. Tiburcio. A few weeks later Tiburcio accosts Carlos at a party and says that Carlos would do well to remember that Inéz’s first husband died “under highly suspicious circumstances.”
     
      Mystified, Carlos consults a local gossip for information about Tiburcio and learns that he treats patients suffering from melancholia with powdered cocaine mixed with milk, on which they become dependent. Wanting to ask Inéz if she knows about this he sets off for her house. He finds the front door ajar and enters without knocking, and at the end of a hallway he sees an appalling sadomasochistic scene taking place in a bedroom. As he turns to go Inéz catches his eye.
     
      Later Inéz seeks him out to explain Tiburcio’s hold over her. She tells him that her father, a gambler, essentially sold her to Tiburcio to cancel a gambling debt when she was fifteen. An itinerant herbalist, Tiburcio takes her to a distant city where he tells people she is his daughter.
     
      Tiburcio is so proud of Inéz’s fencing and riding skills that he pays for her lessons. But every night he rapes her and insists that she act like a whore to him. He maintains his hold on her by threatening to kill her—as an herbalist he knows all about poisons.
     
      When a naďve and sickly young man inherits the property next door, Dr. Tiburcio takes a fatherly interest in him and encourages him as a suitor to Inéz, now old enough to marry. The marriage takes place and Dr. Tiburcio takes over the management of the young husband’s money. Several months later the young man dies, according to Dr. Tiburcio of an epileptic fit. The inquest accepts his findings.
     
      Tiburcio’s sexual demands on Inéz become worse as he pimps her out to other men to whom he has sold powerful aphrodisiacs. Finally he oversteps so badly that he feels it would be safer to flee to New Spain, where they eventually arrive in Santa Fe. He keeps his hold on her, Inéz finally reveals to Carlos, by threatening to tell the authorities that she poisoned her husband for his inheritance, using a poison Tiburcio claims he found in her dresser drawer after the inquest.
     
      Carlos hatches a plan to charge Dr. Tiburcio with endangering his patients’ lives, and sensing that the game is up, Tiburcio hastily leaves town.
     
      Inéz is offered a place to live by a kind woman friend, but once relieved from the bonds of the false life she has been forced to live Inéz falls completely apart.
     
      During the weeks that Carlos is trying to support Inéz through her bout of melancholia, Carlos suffers several blows—some machinations of his stepfather’s lead to the loss of his job in the governor’s office, and he learns, in a dream, that his beloved mentor Zoila has been lost in a storm at sea, together with her sea-captain husband.
     
      It’s now Inéz’s turn to help Carlos to deal with his grief, and they both turn to the sacredness of nature and healing mineral springs. They ride together into the mountains north of Santa Fe to the healing spring, which Carlos’s brujo intuition tells him is a shamanistic spot. In keeping with the spirit of the place they ingest some peyote buds to enhance their vision.
     
      Soon Inéz is approached by a pregnant skunk who whispers in her ear. Carlos wants to know what the skunk said, but Inéz says it is a secret.
     
      Carlos, offering to trade secrets, confesses that he is a brujo, and that he has been a brujo in five past lives. He adds that he thinks Inéz may have been a bruja in several past lives—witness her extraordinary skill in fencing—but she has no memory of them. Inéz is delighted his revelations, and she tells Carlos the secret of what the skunk said to her: “You can marry him if you wish, but only if you give him freedom.”