ten or twelve feet away from her. She put her hands under
her skirt, while she was still squatting. Suddenly, she stood
up. Her hands were loosely clasped into fists; she raised them
over her head and snapped her fingers open. I heard a quick,
bursting sound and I saw sparks flying from her fingers. She
again clasped her hands and then snapped them open and an-
other volley of much larger sparks flew out of them. She
squatted once more and reached under her skirt. She seemed
to be pulling something from her pubis. She repeated the snap-
ping movement of her fingers as she threw her hands over
her head, and I saw a spray of long, luminous fibers flying
away from her fingers. I had to tilt my head up to see them
against the already dark sky. They appeared to be long, fine
filaments of a reddish light. After a while they faded and dis-
appeared.
She squatted once again, and when she let her fingers open
a most astonishing display of lights emanated from them. The
sky was filled with thick rays of light. It was a spellbinding
sight. I became engrossed in it; my eyes were fixed. I was not
paying attention to la Gorda. I was looking at the lights. I
heard a sudden outcry that forced me to look at her, just in
time to see her grab one of the lines she was creating and spin
to the very top of the canyon. She hovered there for an in-
stant like a dark, huge shadow against the sky, and then de-
scended to the bottom of the gully in spurts or small leaps
or as if she were coming down a stairway on her belly.
I suddenly saw her standing over me. I had not realized that
I had fallen on my seat. I stood up. She was soaked in per-
spiration and was panting, trying to catch her breath. She
could not speak for a long time. She began to jog in place. I
did not dare to touch her. Finally she seemed to have calmed
down enough to crawl back into the cave. She rested for a
few minutes.
Her actions had been so fast that I had hardly had any time
to evaluate what had happened. At the moment of her display
I had felt an unbearable, ticklish pain in the area just below
my navel. I had not physically exerted myself and yet I was
also panting.
I think it’s time to go to our appointment, she said, out of
breath. My flying opened us both. You felt my flying in
your belly; that means you are open and ready to meet the
four forces.
What four forces are you talking about?
The Nagual’s and Genaro’s allies. You’ve seen them. They
are horrendous. Now they are free from the Nagual’s and
Genaro’s gourds. You heard one of them around Soledad’s
house the other night. They are waiting for you. The mo-
ment the darkness of the day sets in, they’ll be uncontainable.
One of them even came after you in the daytime at Soledad’s
place. Those allies now belong to you and me. We will take
two each. I don’t know which ones. And I don’t know how,
either. All the Nagual told me was that you and I would have
to tackle them by ourselves.
Wait, wait! I shouted.
She did not let me speak. She gently put her hand over my
mouth. I felt a pang of terror in the pit of my stomach. I had
been confronted in the past with some inexplicable phe-
nomena which don Juan and don Genaro had called their
allies. There were four of them and they were entities, as real
as anything in the world. Their presence was so outlandish
that it would create an unparalleled state of fear in me every
time I perceived them. The first one I had encountered was
don Juan’s; it was a dark, rectangular mass, eight or nine feet
high and four or five feet across. It moved with the crushing
weight of a giant boulder and breathed so heavily that it re-
minded me of the sound of bellows. I had always encountered
it at night, in the darkness. I had fancied it to be like a door
that walked by pivoting on one corner and then on the other.
The second ally I came across was don Genaro’s. It was a
long-faced, bald-headed, extraordinarily tall, glowing man,
with thick lips and enormous, droopy eyes. He always wore
pants that were too short for his long, skinny legs.
I had seen those two allies a great many times while in the
company of don Juan and don Genaro. The sight of them
would invariably cause an irreconcilable separation between
my reason and my perception. On the one hand, I had no
rational ground whatsoever to believe that what was happen-
ing to me was actually taking place, and on the other hand,
there was no possible way of discarding the truthfulness of
my perception.
Since they had always appeared while don Juan and don
Genaro were around, I had filed them away as products of the
powerful influence that those two men had had on my sug-
gestible personality. In my understanding it was either that, or
that don Juan and don Genaro had in their possession forces
they called their allies, forces which were capable of manifest-
ing themselves to me as those horrendous entities.
A feature of the allies was that they never allowed me to
scrutinize them thoroughly. I had tried various times to focus
my undivided attention on them, but every time I would get
dizzy and disassociated.
The other two allies were more elusive. I had seen them
only once, a gigantic black jaguar with yellow glowing eyes,
and a ravenous, enormous coyote. The two beasts were ulti-
mately aggressive and overpowering. The jaguar was don Ge-
naro’s and the coyote was don Juan’s.
La Gorda crawled out of the cave. I followed her. She led
the way. We walked out of the gully and reached a long,
rocky plain. She stopped and let me step ahead. I told her
that if she was going to let me lead us I was going to try to
get to the car. She shook her head affirmatively and clung to
me. I could feel her clammy skin. She seemed to be in a state
of great agitation. It was perhaps a mile to where we had left
the car, and to reach it we had to cross the deserted, rocky
plain. Don Juan had shown me a hidden trail among some big
boulders, almost on the side of the mountain that flanked the
plain toward the east. I headed for that trail. Some unknown
urge was guiding me; otherwise I would have taken the same
trail we had taken before when we had crossed the plain on
the level ground.
La Gorda seemed to be anticipating something awesome.
She grabbed onto me. Her eyes were wild.
Are we going the right way? I asked.
She did not answer. She pulled her shawl and twisted it
until it looked like a long, thick rope. She encircled my waist
with it, crossed over the ends and encircled herself. She tied
a knot and thus had us bound together in a band that looked
like a figure eight.
What did you do this for? I asked.
She shook her head. Her teeth chattered but she could not
say a word. Her fright seemed to be extreme. She pushed me
to keep on walking. I could not help wondering why I was
not scared out of my wits myself.
As we reached the high trail the physical exertion began to
take its toll on me. I was wheezing and had to breathe through
my mouth. I could see the shape of the big boulders. There
was no moon but the sky was so clear that there was enough
light to distinguish shapes. I could hear la Gorda also wheezing.
I tried to stop to catch my breath but she pushed me gently
as she shook her head negatively. I wanted to make a joke to
break the tension when I heard a strange thumping noise. My
head moved involuntarily to my right to allow my left ear to
scan the area. I stopped breathing for an instant and then I
clearly heard that someone else besides la Gorda and myself
was breathing heavily. I checked again to make sure before
I told her. There was no doubt that that massive shape was
there among the boulders. I put my hand on la Gorda’s mouth
as we kept on moving and signaled her to hold her breath. I
could tell that the massive shape was very close. It seemed
to be sliding as quietly as it could. It was wheezing softly.
La Gorda was startled. She squatted and pulled me down