Bless me Ultima Chapter 16
Antonio hopes that his first Communion will bring him an understanding of why Tenorio’s evil goes unpunished. Tenorio confronts Antonio on his way home from school one day. He shouts that another of his daughters is dying and vows to kill Ultima, but he hurries away without harming Antonio. When Antonio reports Tenorio’s threats, Ultima assures him that Tenorio won’t ambush her as easily as he did Narciso.

Bless me Ultima Chapter 15

Antonio is sick with pneumonia for several days. Narciso’s death is declared an accident by the coroner. When Andrew enters Antonio’s sickroom, he seems uncomfortable. After he leaves, Ultima assures Antonio that he didn’t reveal Andrew’s secret in his delirium.

María likes to hear Antonio read prayers in both English and Spanish. Unlike many of their people, she wants her children to know both languages. León and Eugene come to visit for Christmas. They bought a car in Las Vegas but have totaled it during the drive to Guadalupe. The tension between Gabriel and his sons grows. When León and Eugene leave for Sante Fe, Andrew goes with them.

Bless me Ultima Chapter 14

Antonio returns to school in the fall. Samuel is pleased that Antonio saw the golden carp. He warns Antonio that their classmates will not understand his family’s defense of Ultima. When Antonio arrives at the schoolyard, Ernie tries to pick a fight by saying Antonio has a witch in his house. He also shouts that Andrew visits Rosie’s house regularly. Antonio ignores the charge against Andrew, but he stands up for Ultima. He and Ernie get into a fight, everybody is fighting in a pile. The teachers separate the boys, but no one is punished. No one teases Antonio about Ultima afterward.

On the day that Antonio’s class is scheduled to give a Christmas play at school, a fierce blizzard covers the ground with snow. Antonio and his rambunctious friends are the only students in their class who show up to school. Their teacher, Miss Violet, decides to have them perform the play in front of the rest of the school anyway. The boys practice all morning, but some of them are not happy at playing the girls’ parts. The play becomes a hilarious farce.

Walking home, Antonio sees Tenorio, the saloon-keeper, and Narciso, the town drunk, fighting in the street. Another of Tenorio’s daughters is sick. Before stumbling away, Tenorio vows to kill Ultima. Narciso rushes off to find Andrew, one of Antonio’s older brothers. Antonio follows Narciso to Rosie’s house. To Antonio’s horror, Narciso knocks on the door and asks for Andrew. Antonio wonders if the fact that Narciso is looking for Andrew at the brothel means that Andrew has already lost his innocence. When Andrew refuses to take Narciso seriously and warn his parents of Tenorio’s threat, Narciso trudges into the blizzard to do it himself. Antonio stays out of sight and follows him.

Antonio hears a pistol shot ring out. He finds Tenorio and Narciso fighting under a juniper tree. When Antonio screams, Tenorio aims at him, but his pistol refuses to fire. After Tenorio flees, Antonio hears Narciso’s last confession. He stumbles home to report what he has seen. Antonio falls into a deep fever and dreams that he begs God and the Virgin to forgive Andrew and Narciso. The Virgin replies that she will not forgive Narciso if Antonio does not ask her to forgive Tenorio as well. Antonio cries out for Tenorio to be punished, but God declares that he cannot be a god who is all-giving while taking vengeance on Tenorio at the same time. Antonio cries for God to forgive his own sins.

In his dream, Antonio sees the blood of Lupito and Narciso mix in the river. A mob gathers, calling for Ultima’s blood. Antonio’s brothers beg him to bless and forgive them. However, they turn into the Trementina sisters when Antonio approaches them. They cut Antonio’s hair and mix it with a toad’s entrails and a bat’s blood. Afterward, they drink it, and Antonio dies despite his mother’s prayers and Ultima’s magic. Antonio is sentenced to purgatory because he died without taking the Eucharist. Lead by the sisters, a mob kills Ultima, Antonio’s family, and Antonio’s friends. Afterward, the mob catches and eats carp. A great hole opens in the ground, and water rises out of it, but the sinners take no heed. The sun turns red, and the sinners’ skin falls off. When there is no one left alive in Guadalupe, the farmers from El Puerto come to gather the ashes of Antonio and his family. They bury the remains in the holy ground of their fields. The skies clear, and the golden carp swallows everything, good and evil. He ascends to the heavens to become a new sun, shining over a new world.

Bless me Ultima Chapter 13
Gabriel accompanies his family to El Puerto and stays to take part in the Lunas’ harvest for the first time. Antonio has thoughts about the conflicting belief systems of the Catholic Church and the golden carp. He wishes there were a god that always forgave and never punished. Antonio asks Pedro why he and Antonio’s other uncles did not come to warn Ultima like Narciso did. Pedro admits that he was a coward, but he vows to stand by Ultima from now on. Antonio’s uncle, Mateo, reports that the surviving Trementina sisters have woven a cottonwood coffin for their dead sister because a witch cannot be buried in a pine, cedar, or piñon coffin. He describes the frightful ceremony for a Black Mass funeral. Antonio has a dream in which Mateo’s description of the ceremony is enacted, but when he looks inside the coffin, he finds Ultima. He awakes just in time to see the El Puerto priest refuse to give the dead woman the funeral mass and, therefore, burial in hallowed ground. The whole town witnesses their public shame. Tenorio will never again be able to sway the townspeople to join his vendetta for revenge.

Bless me Ultima Chapter 12

Antonio notices three clay dolls on Ultima’s shelf. One seems to be bent over in pain. Ultima prohibits him to touch the dolls and warns him to stay away from Tenorio. She gives him an amulet containing dried herbs to protect him from danger. One evening, Narciso bursts into the Márez home to report that one of Tenorio’s daughters has died. Tenorio told everyone that he found Ultima’s little pouch of herbs under his daughter’s bed. Narciso warns Ultima that Tenorio is coming with a drunken  mob hungry for a witch’s death. At that moment, Tenorio arrives. With Antonio at his side, Gabriel demands that they identify themselves and state their business.

To guard against witches, one man has thrust through his lips needles that have been blessed by a priest. Narciso declares that they can pin the needles over Gabriel’s door in the sign of a cross. If Ultima is a witch, she cannot walk through the door. The mob agrees to the test. Ultima’s owl suddenly takes out one of Tenorio’s eyes. When everyone looks up, Ultima has passed through the door. The mob disperses, but Tenorio vows to kill Ultima. Antonio notices that the needles are no longer pinned above the door. He never finds out if they simply fell or if someone had broken the cross.

Bless me Ultima Chapter 11

Cico offers to take Antonio to see the golden carp. After confirming that Antonio has never fished for a carp, Cico asks Antonio if he believes the golden carp is a god. Crestfallen, Antonio replies that he cannot believe in any god except the god of his church because he is a Catholic. At Cico’s request, Antonio swears by the cross that he will never hunt or kill a carp. Afterward, Cico and Antonio visit Narciso’s garden, where they eat carrots. Cico explains that Narciso’s magic and an underground spring make the garden so lush. Narciso plants by the light of the moon. Antonio’s group of friends invites Antonio and Cico to play ball. Ernie claims that there is a witch living in Antonio’s house. Horse asks Antonio to do a magic trick for them. Angry at Ernie’s taunting, Antonio agrees. He vomits the carrot juice on the ground, frightening his friends. Cico and Antonio run to a hidden pond where the huge, beautiful golden carp makes its appearance. Cico explains that the carp lives in the Hidden Lakes, a place with a strange power like the presence of the river, but stronger and hungrier. A mermaid lives there, trying to lure men to their deaths. Cico warns Antonio never to go there alone.Cico explains that the golden carp prophesied that the weight of people’s sin would cause the land to sink and be swallowed by the underground lake beneath it. When Antonio replies that it is not fair to the men who don’t sin, Cico tells him that all men sin. The story saddens Antonio, and he feels burdened by the knowledge. When he returns home, he learns that Ultima already knows about the golden carp. She tells Antonio that he must find his own truths in adulthood. That night Antonio dreams about the conflicting beliefs he has encountered, as well as the conflict between his parents’ wishes for him. Ultima tells Antonio and his parents that the water of the moon and the sea are the same water and that each family member is part of the same cycle. 

Bless me Ultima Chapter 10
When María’s youngest brother, Lucas Luna, is near death that summer after having fallen ill the previous winter, neither a Las Vegas doctor nor the local priest can cure him. When Pedro, Lucas’s brother, asks for Ultima’s help, he explains that Lucas saw the daughters of Tenorio Trementina dancing the Black Mass, a satanic ritual. When Lucas challenged them with a cross made from two sticks, they fled the scene. Within the week, Lucas fell ill.Ultima says that she will need Antonio’s help to cure Lucas. Antonio states that he will be proud to assist a curandera. As they approach El Puerto, they see the horned day moon, the moon of the Lunas, between two dark mesas at the end of the valley. When Ultima arrives in El Puerto, she forbids the Lunas to kill the coyotes that will surround Prudencio’s home when she works her cure. When Ultima takes Antonio to confront Tenorio to warn him that his daughters must lift the curse or suffer the consequences, Tenorio makes the sign of the cross. Ultima declares that his daughters gathered Lucas’s hair for their curse after he came to Tenorio for a haircut. Tenorio denies her accusations and calls her a bruja, or witch. Ultima closes herself and Antonio in Lucas’s room. After she forces a mixture of kerosene, water, and herbs down Lucas’s throat, she asks Antonio if he is afraid, and Antonio says that he is not. She explains that the reason for his courage is that good is always stronger than evil. Antonio hears Ultima’s owl attacking the coyotes surrounding Prudencio’s home. Antonio enters a trance and finds that he cannot move or speak. When Lucas writhes in pain, Antonio feels pain as well. Ultima makes three clay dolls covered with wax and forces Lucas to take more medicine. Afterward, Antonio drifts to sleep. When he wakes, he vomits green bile. Ultima catches it in rags that she stores in a bag. Afterward, Antonio is able to keep down some atole, a gruel made of corn meal. Lucas screams in pain, vomiting a squirming mass of hair. When Lucas successfully eats a bowl of atole, Ultima declares the cure finished. The house fills with happy people, but some whisper the words bruja and hechicera. Ultima burns the mass of hair and dirty linen in the grove where Lucas challenged Tenorio’s Daughters.