allies do anything that needed to be done. Things they them-
selves could not do. Such as, for instance, sending the wind to
chase me or sending that chicken to run inside Lidia’s blouse.
I heard a peculiar, prolonged hissing sound outside the door.
It was the exact sound I had heard in dona Soledad’s house
two days before. This time I knew it was the jaguar. The
sound did not scare me. In fact, I would have stepped out to
see the jaguar had la Gorda not stopped me.
You’re still incomplete, she said. The allies would feast
on you if you go out by yourself. Especially that daring one
that’s prowling out there now.
My body feels very safe, I protested.
She patted my back and held me down against the bench
on which I was writing.
You’re not a complete sorcerer yet, she said. You have
a huge patch in your middle and the force of those allies would
yank it out of place. They are no joke.
What are you supposed to do when an ally comes to you
in this fashion?
I don’t bother with them one way or another. The Nagual
taught me to be balanced and not to seek anything eagerly.
Tonight, for instance, I knew which allies would go to you,
if you can ever get a gourd and groom it. You may be eager
to get them. I’m not. Chances are I’ll never get them myself.
They are a pain in the neck.
Why?
Because they are forces and as such they can drain you to
nothing. The Nagual said that one is better off with nothing
except one’s purpose and freedom. Someday when you’re
complete, perhaps we’ll have to choose whether or not to
keep them.
I told her that I personally liked the jaguar even though
there was something overbearing about it.
She peered at me. There was a look of surprise and bewil-
derment in her eyes.
I really like that one, I said.
Tell me what you saw, she said.
I realized at that moment that I had automatically assumed
that she had seen the same things I had. I described in great
detail the four allies as I had seen them. She listened more than
attentively; she appeared to be spellbound by my description.
The allies have no form, she said when I had finished.
They are like a presence, like a wind, like a glow. The first
one we found tonight was a blackness that wanted to get in-
side my body. That’s why I screamed. I felt it reaching up
my legs. The others were just colors. Their glow was so
strong, though, that it made the trail look as if it were day-
time.
Her statements astounded me. I had finally accepted, after
years of struggle and purely on the basis of our encounter
with them that night, that the allies had a consensual form, a
substance which could be perceived equally by everyone’s
senses.
I jokingly told la Gorda that I had already written in my
notes that they were creatures with form.
What am I going to do now? I asked in a rhetorical sense.
It’s very simple, she said. Write that they are not.
I thought that she was absolutely right.
Why do I see them as monsters? I asked.
That’s no mystery, she said. You haven’t lost your hu-
man form yet. The same thing happened to me. I used to see
the allies as people; all of them were Indian men with horrible
faces and mean looks. They used to wait for me in deserted
places. I thought they were after me as a woman. The Nagual
used to laugh his head off at my fears. But still I was half dead
with fright. One of them used to come and sit on my bed and
shake it until I would wake up. The fright that that ally used
to give me was something that I don’t want repeated, even
now that I’m changed. Tonight I think I was as afraid of the
allies as I used to be.
You mean that you don’t see them as human beings any-
more?
No. Not anymore. The Nagual told you that an ally is
formless. He is right. An ally is only a presence, a helper that
is nothing and yet it is as real as you and me.
Have the little sisters seen the allies?
Everybody has seen them one time or another.
Are the allies just a force for them too?
No. They are like you; they haven’t lost their human
form yet. None of them has. For all of them, the little sisters,
the Genaros and Soledad, the allies are horrendous things;
with them the allies are malevolent, dreadful creatures of the
night. The sole mention of the allies sends Lidia and Josefina
and Pablito into a frenzy. Rosa and Nestor are not that afraid
of them, but they don’t want to have anything to do with
them, either. Benigno has his own designs so he’s not con-
cerned with them. They don’t bother him, or me, for that
matter. But the others are easy prey for the allies, especially
now that the allies are out of the Nagual’s and Genaro’s
gourds. They come all the time looking for you.
The Nagual told me that as long as one clings to the hu-
man form, one can only reflect that form, and since the allies
feed directly onto our life-force in the middle of the stomach,
they usually make us sick, and then we see them as heavy, ugly
creatures.
Is there something that we can do to protect ourselves, or
to change the shape of those creatures?
What all of you have to do is lose your human forms.
What do you mean?
My question did not seem to have any meaning for her. She
stared at me blankly as if waiting for me to clarify what I had
just said. She closed her eyes for a moment.
You don’t know about the human mold and the human
form, do you? she asked.
I stared at her.
I’ve just seen that you know nothing about them, she
said and smiled.
You are absolutely right, I said.
The Nagual told me that the human form is a force, she
said. And the human mold is. . . well. . . a mold. He said that
everything has a particular mold. Plants have molds, animals
have molds, worms have molds. Are you sure the Nagual
never showed you the human mold?
I told her that he had sketched the concept, but in a very
brief manner, once when he had tried to explain something
about a dream I had had. In the dream in question I had seen
a man who seemed to be concealing himself in the darkness
of a narrow gully. To find him there scared me. I looked at
him for a moment and then the man stepped forward and
made himself visible to me. He was naked and his body
glowed. He seemed to be delicate, almost frail. I liked his eyes.
They were friendly and profound. I thought that they were
very kind. But then he stepped back into the darkness of the
gully and his eyes became like two mirrors, like the eyes of a
ferocious animal.
Don Juan said that I had encountered the human mold in
dreaming. He explained that sorcerers have the avenue of
their dreaming to lead them to the mold, and that the mold
of men was definitely an entity, an entity which could be seen
by some of us at certain times when we are imbued with
power, and by all of us for sure at the moment of our death.
He described the mold as being the source, the origin of man,
since, without the mold to group together the force of life,
there was no way for that force to assemble itself into the
shape of man.
He interpreted my dream as a brief and extraordinarily
simplistic glance at the mold. He said that my dream had re-
stated the fact that I was a simpleminded and very earthy man.
La Gorda laughed and said that she would have said the
same thing herself. To see the mold as an average naked man
and then as an animal had been indeed a very simplistic view
view of the mold.
Perhaps it was just a stupid, ordinary dream, I said, trying
to defend myself.
No, she said with a large grin. You see, the human mold
glows and it is always found in water holes and narrow
gullies.
Why in gullies and water holes? I asked.
It feeds on water. Without water there is no mold, she
replied. I know that the Nagual took you to water holes
regularly in hopes of showing yon the mold. But your empti-
ness prevented you from seeing anything. The same thing