my neck and held it until I fainted out of fear, he gave me a
new direction.
What direction did he give you?
Why do you ask that? she said with unnecessary force.
Do you think that perhaps the Nagual gave me a different
direction?
I can tell you the direction that he gave me, I said.
Never mind, she snapped. He told me that himself.
She seemed agitated. She changed position and lay on her
stomach. My back hurt from writing. I asked her if I could sit
on her floor and use the bed as a table. She stood up and
handed me the folded bedspread to use as a cushion.
What else did the Nagual do to you? I asked.
After changing my direction the Nagual really began to
talk to me about power, she said, lying down again. He
mentioned things in a casual way at first, because he didn’t
know exactly what to do with me. One day he took me for a
short walking trip in the sierras. Then another day he took me
on a bus to his homeland in the desert. Little by little I became
accustomed to going away with him.
Did he ever give you power plants?
He gave me Mescalito, once when we were in the desert.
But since I was an empty woman Mescalito refused me. I had
a horrid encounter with him. It was then that the Nagual
knew that he ought to acquaint me with the wind instead.
That was, of course, after he got an omen. He had said, over
and over that day, that although he was a sorcerer that had
learned to see, if he didn’t get an omen he had no way of
knowing which way to go. He had already waited for days
for a certain indication about me. But power didn’t want to
give it. In desperation, I suppose, he introduced me to his
guaje, and I saw Mescalito.
I interrupted her. Her use of the word guaje, gourd, was
confusing to me. Examined in the context of what she was
telling me, the word had no meaning. I thought that perhaps
she was speaking metaphorically, or that gourd was a
euphemism.
What is a guaje, dona Soledad?
There was a look of surprise in her eyes. She paused before
answering.
Mescalito is the Nagual’s guaje, she finally said.
Her answer was even more confusing. I felt mortified by
the fact that she really seemed concerned with making sense
to me. When I asked her to explain further, she insisted that I
knew everything myself. That was don Juan’s favorite strata-
gem to foil my probes. I said to her that don Juan had told me
that Mescalito was a deity, or force contained in the peyote
buttons. To say that Mescalito was his gourd made absolutely
no sense.
The Nagual can acquaint you with anything through his
gourd, she said after a pause. That is the key to his power.
Anyone can give you peyote, but only a sorcerer, through his
gourd, can acquaint you with Mescalito.
She stopped talking and fixed her eyes on me. Her look was
ferocious.
Why do you have to make me repeat what you already
know? she asked in an angry tone.
I was completely taken aback by her sudden shift. A
moment before she had been almost sweet.
Never mind my changes of mood, she said, smiling again.
I’m the north wind. I’m very impatient. All my life I never
dared to speak my mind. Now I fear no one. I say what I feel.
To meet with me you have to be strong.
She slid closer to me on her stomach.
Well, the Nagual acquainted me with the Mescalito that
came out of his gourd, she went on. But he couldn’t guess
what would happen to me. He expected something like your
own meeting or Eligio’s meeting with Mescalito. In both cases
he was at a loss and let his gourd decide what to do next. In
both cases his gourd helped him. With me it was different;
Mescalito told him never to bring me around. The Nagual and
I left that place in a great hurry. We went north instead of
coming home. We took a bus to go to Mexicali, but we got
out in the middle of the desert. It was very late. The sun was
setting behind the mountains. The Nagual wanted to cross the
road and go south on foot. We were waiting for some speed-
ing cars to go by, when suddenly he tapped my shoulder and
pointed toward the road ahead of us. I saw a spiral of dust. A
gust of wind was raising dust on the side of the road. We
watched it move toward us. The Nagual ran across the road
and the wind enveloped me. It actually made me spin very
gently and then it vanished. That was the omen the Nagual
was waiting for. From then on we went to the mountains or
the desert for the purpose of seeking the wind. The wind
didn’t like me at first, because I was my old self. So the Nagual
endeavored to change me. He first made me build this room
and this floor. Then he made me wear new clothes and sleep
on a mattress instead of a straw mat. He made me wear shoes,
and have drawers full of clothes. He forced me to walk hun-
dreds of miles and taught me to be quiet. I learned very fast.
He also made me do strange things for no reason at all.
One day, while we were in the mountains of his homeland,
I listened to the wind for the first time. It came directly to my
womb. I was lying on top of a flat rock and the wind twirled
around me. I had already seen it that day whirling around the
bushes, but this time it came over me and stopped. It felt like
a bird that had landed on my stomach. The Nagual had made
me take off all my clothes; I was stark naked but I was not
cold because the wind was warming me up.
Were you afraid, dona Soledad?
Afraid? I was petrified. The wind was alive; it licked me
from my head to my toes. And then it got inside my whole
body. I was like a balloon, and the wind came out of my ears
and my mouth and other parts I don’t want to mention. I
thought I was going to die, and I would’ve run away had it
not been that the Nagual held me to the rock. He spoke to me
in my ear and calmed me down. I lay quietly and let the wind
do whatever it wanted with me. It was then that it told me
what to do.
What to do with what?
With my life, my things, my room, my feelings. It was not
clear at first. I thought it was me thinking. The Nagual said
that all of us do that. When we are quiet, though, we realize
that it is something else telling us things.
Did you hear a voice?
No. The wind moves inside the body of a woman. The
Nagual says that that is so because women have wombs. Once
it’s inside the womb the wind simply picks you up and tells
you to do things. The more quiet and relaxed the woman is
the better the results. You may say that all of a sudden the
woman finds herself doing things that she had no idea how
to do.
From that day on the wind came to me all the time. It
spoke to me in my womb and told me everything I wanted to
know. The Nagual saw from the beginning that I was the
north wind. Other winds never spoke to me like that, although
I had learned to distinguish them.
How many kinds of winds are there?
There are four winds, like there are four directions. That’s,
of course, for sorcerers and for whatever sorcerers do. Four is
a power number for them. The first wind is the breeze, the
morning. It brings hope and brightness; it is the herald of the
day. It comes and goes and gets into everything. Sometimes it
is mild and unnoticeable; other times it is nagging and bother-
some.
Another wind is the hard wind, either hot or cold or both.
A midday wind. Blasting full of energy but also full of blind-
ness. It breaks through doors and brings down walls. A sor-
cerer must be terribly strong to tackle the hard wind.
Then there is the cold wind of the afternoon. Sad and try-
ing. A wind that would never leave you in peace. It will chill
you and make you cry. The Nagual said that there is such
depth to it, though, that it is more than worthwhile to seek it.