Version 2007.03.16

## “Being in Dreaming: An Initiation into the Sorcerers' World” - ©1991 by Florinda Donner

### Chapter 19

A loud, shattering noise woke me.

I sat up in my hammock, peering into the darkness, and saw that the wooden panels covering the windows were down.

A cold, sucking wind swirled up around me. Leaves rustled across the patio outside my room.

The rustling grew, then abruptly faded to a gentle swishing sound.

A dim brightness seeped into the room. Like mist, it clung to the bare walls.

For a moment, as if I were conjuring him up, Isidore Baltazar stood at the foot of my hammock.

"Nagual!" I cried out.

He looked real, yet there was something undefined about him like an image seen in water.

I cleared my throat to speak, but only a faint croak escaped my lips as the image dissolved in the mist.

Then the mist moved, restless and abrupt like the wind outside.

Too tense to sleep, I sat wrapped in my blanket, pondering whether I had done the right thing to come to the witches' house looking for the nagual Isidore Baltazar: I had not known anywhere else to go.

I had patiently waited for three months, then my anxiety had become so acute that it finally prompted me to act.

One morning- seven days ago- I had driven nonstop to the witches' house.

And there had been no question in my mind then about whether I had proceeded correctly- not even after I had to climb over the wall at the back of the house and let myself in through an unlocked window.

However, after seven days of waiting, my certainty had begun to falter.

I jumped out of my hammock onto the tiled floor, landing hard on the heels of my bare feet. Shaking myself that way had always helped me dispel my uncertainties.

It didn't work this time, and I lay down again in my hammock.

If there is one thing I should have learned in the three years I had spent in the sorcerers' world, it is that sorcerers' decisions are final; and my decision had been to live and die in the sorcerers' world.

Now it was time for me to prove it.

An unearthly sounding laughter startled me out of my reveries.

Eerily it reverberated throughout the house, then all was silent again.

I waited tensely, but there was no other sound except that of dry leaves being pushed by the wind on the patio. The leaves sounded like a faint, raspy whisper.

Listening to that sound not only lulled me to sleep but pulled me into the same dream I had been dreaming for the past seven nights.

I am standing in the Sonoran desert. It is noon.

The sun, a silvery disk so brilliant as to be almost invisible, has come to a halt in the middle of the sky.

There is not a single sound, not a movement around.

The tall saguaros, with their prickly arms reaching toward that immobile sun, stand like sentries guarding the silence and the stillness.

The wind, as if it has followed me through the dream, begins to blow with tremendous force.

It whistles between the branches of the mesquite trees and shakes them with systematic fury.

Red dust devils well up in powdery swirls all around me.

A flock of crows scatter like dots through the air then fall to the ground a bit farther away, softly, like bits of black veil.

As abruptly as it has begun, the wind dies down.

I head toward the hills in the distance.

It seems I walk for hours before I see a huge, dark shadow on the ground.

I look up. A gigantic bird hangs in the air with outstretched wings, motionless, as though it were nailed to the sky.

It is only when I gaze again at its dark shadow on the ground that I know that the bird is moving. Slowly, imperceptibly, its shadow glides ahead of me.

Driven by some inexplicable urge, I try to catch up with the shadow; but regardless of how fast I run, the shadow moves farther and farther away from me.

Dizzy with exhaustion, I stumble over my own feet and fall flat on the ground.

As I rise to dust off my clothes, I discover the bird perched on a nearby boulder.

Its head is slightly turned toward me, as though beckoning me.

Cautiously, I approach it.

It is enormous and tawny, with feathers that glisten like burnished copper. Its amber-colored eyes are hard and implacable and as final as death itself.

I step back as the bird opens its wide wings and takes off.

It flies high up until it is only a dot in the sky.

Yet its shadow on the ground is a straight dark line that stretches into infinity and holds together the desert and the sky.

Confident that if I summon the wind I will catch up with the bird, I invoke an incantation.

But there is no force; no power in my chant. My voice breaks into a thousand whispers that are quickly absorbed by the silence.

The desert regains its eerie calm.

It begins to crumble at the edges, then slowly fades all around me...

Gradually I became conscious of my body lying in the hammock.

I discerned, through a shifting haze, the book-lined walls of the room.

Then I was fully awake as the realization hit me, as it had hit me every time during the past week, that this had not been an ordinary dream; and that I knew what it meant.

The nagual Mariano Aureliano had once told me that sorcerers, when they talk among themselves, speak of sorcery as a bird: They call it the bird of freedom.

They say that the bird of freedom only flies in a straight line and never comes around twice.

They also say that it is the nagual who lures the bird of freedom. It is he who entices the bird to shed its shadow on the warrior's path. Without that shadow, there is no direction.

The meaning of my dream was that I had lost the bird of freedom. I had lost the nagual and, without him, all hope and purpose.

What weighed the most on my heart was that the bird of free-flew away so fast it didn't give me time to thank them properly, didn't give me time to express my endless admiration.

I had assured the sorcerers all along that I never took their world or their persons for granted, but I did; in particular Isidore Baltazar's.

He surely was going to be with me forever, I thought.

Suddenly, they were gone, all of them, like puffs of air, like shooting stars; and they took Isidore Baltazar with them.

I had sat for weeks on end in my room, asking myself the same question: How can it be possible that they vanished like that?

A meaningless, superfluous question, considering what I had experienced and witnessed in their world.

All it revealed was my true nature: meek and doubting.

For the sorcerers had told me for years that their ultimate purpose was to burn; to disappear, swallowed by the force of awareness.

The old nagual and his party of sorcerers were ready, but I didn't know it.

They had been preparing themselves nearly all their lives for the ultimate audacity: to dream-awake that they sneak past death- as we ordinarily know death to be- and cross over into the unknown; enhancing and without breaking the unity of their total energy.

My regret was most intense upon recalling how my usual doubting self would emerge when I least expected it.

It was not that I didn't believe their stupendous, otherworldly, yet so practical aim and purpose.

Rather, I would explain them away; integrate them; make them fit into the everyday world of common sense- not quite, perhaps, but certainly coexisting with what was normal and familiar to me.

The sorcerers certainly tried to prepare me to witness their definitive journey; that they would one day vanish was something I was almost aware of.

But nothing could have prepared me for the anguish and despair that followed.

I sank into a well of sadness from which I knew I would never come out.

That part was for me alone to deal with.

Afraid I would only give in to more despair if I stayed a moment longer in my hammock, I got up and made breakfast.

Or rather, I warmed up last night's leftovers: tortillas, rice, and beans- my standard meal of the last seven days, except that for lunch I would add a can of Norwegian sardines.

I had found the sardines at a grocery store in the nearest town. I had bought all the cans they had.

The beans were also canned.

I washed the dishes and mopped the floor.

Then, with broom in hand, I went from room to room looking for some new dirt, a spider web in some forgotten corner.

From the day I had arrived, I had done nothing else but scrub floors, wash windows and walls, sweep patios and corridors.

Cleaning tasks had always distracted me from my problems; had always given me solace. Not this time.

Regardless of how eagerly I went about my chores, I couldn't still the anguish; the aching void within me.

A quick rustling of leaves interrupted my cleaning chores.

I went outside to look.

There was a strong wind blowing through the trees. Its force startled me.

I was ready to close the windows when the wind abruptly died out.

A profound melancholy settled over the yard, over the bushes and trees, over the flower and vegetable patches. Even the bright purple bougainvillea hanging over the wall added to the sadness.

I walked over to the Spanish colonial-motif fountain, built in the middle of the yard, and knelt on the wide stone ledge.

Absent-mindedly, I picked out the leaves and the blossoms that had fallen in the water.

Then, bending over, I searched for my image on the smooth surface.

Next to my face appeared the very beautiful, stark, and angular face of Florinda.

Dumbfounded, I watched her reflection, mesmerized by her large, dark, luminous eyes, which contrasted dazzlingly with her braided white hair.

Slowly, she smiled. I smiled back.

"I didn't hear you come," I whispered, afraid that her image might vanish; afraid that she might be only a dream.

She let her hand rest on my shoulder, then sat beside me on the stone ledge.

"I'm going to be with you only for a moment," she said. "I'll come back later, though."

I turned around and poured out all the anguish and despair that had accumulated in me.

Florinda stared at me.

Her face reflected an immeasurable sadness.

There were sudden tears in her eyes; tears that were gone as fast as they had come.

Where is Isidoro Baltazar?" I asked her.

I averted my face and gave free rein to my pent-up tears.

It wasn't self-pity or even sorrow that made me weep, but a deep sense of failure; of guilt and loss. It was drowning me.

Florinda had certainly warned me in the past about such feelings.

"Tears are meaningless for sorcerers," she said in her deep, husky voice:

"When you joined the sorcerers' world you were made to understand that the designs of fate, no matter what they are, are merely challenges that a sorcerer must face without resentment or self-pity."

She paused for a moment, then in her familiar, relentless manner she repeated what she had said to me on previous occasions.

"Isidoro Baltazar is no longer a man but a nagual.

"He may have accompanied the old nagual; in which case he'll never return. But then, he may not have."

But why did he..." My voice died away before I had asked the question.

"I really don't know at this time," Florinda said, raising her hand to forestall my protest:

"It is your challenge to rise above this; and as you know, challenges are not discussed or resented.

"Challenges are actively met.

"Sorcerers either succeed in meeting their challenges, or they fail at it.

"And it doesn't really matter which, as long as they are in command."

Irked by the prosaicness of her feelings and attitudes, I said resentfully, "How do you expect me to be in command when the sadness is killing me? Isidoro Baltazar is gone forever."

She retorted sternly, "Why don't you heed my suggestion; and behave impeccably regardless of your feelings,"

Her temper was as quick as her brilliant smile.

"How can I possibly do that? I know that if the nagual is gone the game is over."

"You don't need the nagual to be an impeccable sorceress," she remarked:

"Your impeccability should lead you to him even if he's no longer in the world.

"To live impeccably within your circumstances is your challenge.

"Whether you see Isidore Baltazar tomorrow, in a year, or at the end of your life should make no difference to you."

Florinda turned her back to me.

She was silent for a long time.

When she faced me again, her face was calm and oddly bland, like a mask, as though she were making a great effort to control her emotions. There was something so sad about her eyes it made me forget my own anguish.

Let me tell you a story, young woman," she said in an unusually harsh voice, as if her tone was meant to cancel the pain in her eyes:

"I didn't go with the nagual Mariano Aureliano and his party; and neither did Zuleica. Do you know why?"

Numb with anticipation and fear, I stared at her, openmouthed. "No, Florinda. I don't," I finally managed to say.

Her voice now low and soft, she said, "We are here because we don't belong to that party of sorcercers. We do, but then we don't really.

"Our feelings are with another nagual, the nagual Julian, our teacher.

"The nagual Mariano Aureliano is our cohort, and the nagual Isidore Baltazar, our pupil.

Like yourself, we've been left behind.

"You, because you were not ready to go with them.

"We, because we need more energy to take a greater jump; and join perhaps another band of warriors; a much older band. The nagual Julian's."

I could feel Florinda's aloneness and solitude like a fine mist settling all around me. I barely dared to breathe lest she stop talking.

At great length she told me about her teacher, the nagual Julian; famous by all accounts.

Her descriptions of him were compressed, yet so evocative I could see him before my very eyes: the most dashing being that ever lived.

Funny, sharp-witted, and fast-thinking; an incorrigible prankster. A storyteller.

A magician who handled perception as a master baker handles dough, kneading it into any shape or form without ever losing sight of it.

To be with the nagual Julian, Florinda assured me, was something unforgettable. She confessed that she loved him beyond words, beyond feelings. And so did Zuleica.

Florinda was silent for a long time, her gaze fixed on the distant mountains, as if drawing strength from those sharp-edged peaks.

When she spoke again her voice was a barely audible whisper. "The world of sorcerers is a world of solitariness, yet in it, love is forever.

"Like my love for the nagual Julian.

"We move in the world of sorcerers all by ourselves, accounting only for our acts, our feelings, and our impeccability." She nodded, as if to underline her words:

"I've no longer any feelings. Whatever I had went away with the nagual Julian.

"All I have left is my sense of will, of duty, and of purpose.

"Perhaps you and I are in the same boat." She said this so smoothly that it passed before I realized what she had said.

I stared at her, and as always, I was dazzled by her splendid beauty and youthfulness which the years had left bewitchingly intact.

"Not me, Florinda," I finally said:

"You had the nagual Isidore Baltazar and me and all the other disciples I've heard about. I have nothing. I don't even have my old world."

There was no self-pity in me, only a devastating knowledge that my life, as I had known it until now, had ended.

I said, "The nagual Isidore Baltazar is mine, by right of my power. I'll wait, dutifully, a bit longer, but if he's not here in this world anymore, neither am I. I know what to do!"

My voice trailed off as I realized that Florinda was no longer listening to me.

She was absorbed in watching a small crow making its way toward us along the fountain ledge.

"That's Dionysus," I said, reaching into my pocket for his pieces of tortilla.

I had none with me.

I looked up at the marvelously clear sky.

I had been so engrossed in my sadness, I hadn't noticed that it was already past noon, the time this little crow usually came for its food.

Florinda said, "That fellow is quite upset."

She laughed at the bird's outraged caws, then looked me in the eye and said, "You and the crow are quite alike. You get easily upset; and you're both quite loud about it."

I could barely contain myself from blurting out that the same could be said about her.

Florinda chuckled, as though she knew the effort I was making not to weep.

The crow had perched on my empty hand and stared at me sidelong with its shiny, pebblelike eyes.

The bird opened its wings but didn't fly away. Its black feathers sparkled blue in the sun.

I calmly told Florinda that the pressures of the sorcerers' world were unbearable.

"Nonsense!" she chided, as if she were talking to a spoiled child:

"Look, we scared Dionysus away." Enraptured, Florinda watched the crow circle over our heads; then she fixed her attention back on me.

I averted my face.

I didn't know why, for there was nothing unkind in the gaze of those shiny, dark eyes.

Florinda's eyes were calm and utterly indifferent as she said, "If you can't catch up with Isidore Baltazar, then I and the rest of the sorcerers who taught you would have failed to impress you.

"We would have failed to challenge you.

"It's not a final loss for us, but it certainly will be a final loss for you."

Seeing that I was about to weep again, she challenged me, "Where is your impeccable purpose? What happened to all the things you've learned with us?"

"What if I never catch up with Isidore Baltazar?" I asked tearfully.

"Can you go on living in the sorcerers' world if you don't make an effort to find out?" she asked sharply.

"This is a time when I need kindness," I mumbled, closing my eyes to prevent my tears from spilling. "I need my mother. If I could only go to her."

I was surprised at my own words, yet I really meant them.

Unable to hold back my tears any longer I began to weep.

Florinda laughed: She wasn't mocking me.

There was a note of kindness, of sympathy in her laughter.

"You're so far away from your mother," she said softly, with a pensive, distant look in her eyes, "that you'll never find her again."

Her voice was but a soft whisper as she went on to say that the sorcerers' life builds impassable barriers around us.

Sorcerers, she reminded me, don't find solace in the sympathy of others or in self-pity.

"You think that all my torment is caused by self-pity, don't you, Florinda?"

"No. Not just self-pity but morbidity, too."

She put her arms around my shoulders and hugged me as if I were a small child.

"Most women are damn morbid, you know," she murmured. "You and I are among them."

I didn't agree with her, yet I had no desire to contradict her.

I was far too happy with her arms around me.

In spite of my somber mood, I had to smile. Florinda, like all the other women in the sorcerers' world, lacked the facility to express maternal feelings. And although I liked to kiss and hug the people I loved, I couldn't bear to be in someone's arms for more than an instant. Florinda's embrace was not as warm and soothing as my mother's, but it was all I could hope to get.

Then she went into the house.

I came suddenly awake.

For a moment I simply lay there- on the ground at the foot of the fountain- trying to remember something Florinda had said before I fell asleep in the leaf-spotted sunlight.

I had obviously slept for hours. Although the sky was still bright, the evening shadows had already stolen into the yard.

I was about to look for Florinda in the house when an unearthly sounding laughter echoed across the yard: It was the same laughter I had heard during the night.

I waited and listened.

The silence around me was unsettling. Nothing chirped; nothing hummed; nothing moved.

Yet, still as it was, I could sense noiseless footsteps, silent as shadows, behind me.

I wheeled around. At the far edge of the yard, almost concealed by the blooming bougainvillea, I saw somebody sitting on a wooden bench. Her back was turned to me, but I immediately recognized her.

"Zuleica?" I whispered uncertainly, afraid that the sound of my voice might scare her away.

"How happy I am to see you again," she said, beckoning me to sit beside her.

Her deep, clear voice, vibrant with the briskness of the desert air, didn't seem to come from her body but from far away.

I wanted to embrace her, but I knew better. Zuleica never liked to be touched, so I just sat beside her and told her that I, too, was happy to see her again.

To my utter surprise, she clasped my hand in hers; a small, delicate hand.

Her pale, copperish-pink, beautiful face was oddly blank. All the life was concentrated in her incredible eyes: neither black nor brown but strangely in between; and oddly clear.

She fixed her eyes on me in a prolonged stare.

"When did you get here?" I asked.

"Just this moment," Zuleica replied, her lips curling into an angelic smile.

"How did you get here? Did Florinda come with you?"

"Oh, you know," Zuleica said vaguely, "women sorcerers come and go unnoticed:

"Nobody pays attention to a woman, especially if she's old.

"Now, a beautiful young woman, on the other hand, attracts everybody's attention.

"That's why women sorcerers should always be disguised if they are handsome.

"If they are averagely homely, they have nothing to worry about."

Zuleica's sudden light tap on my shoulder jolted me.

She clasped my hand again, as though to dispel my doubts, then gazed at me calmly and keenly and said, "To be in the sorcerers' world one has to dream superbly."

She looked away.

An almost full moon hung over the distant mountains.

"Most people don't have the wits nor the size of spirit to dream.

"They cannot help but see the world as ordinary and repetitious; and do you know why?" she asked, fixing me with her keen gaze:

"Because if you don't fight to avoid it, the world is indeed ordinary and repetitious.

"Most people are so involved with themselves that they have become idiotic.

"Idiots have no desire to fight to avoid ordinariness and repetitiousness."

Zuleica rose from the bench and put on her sandals.

She tied her shawl around her waist so her long skirt wouldn't drag, and walked to the middle of the patio.

I knew what she was going to do before she even started. She was going to spin. She was going to perform a dance in order to gather cosmic energy. Women sorcerers believe that by moving their bodies they can get the strength necessary to dream.

With a barely perceptible gesture of her chin, she motioned me to follow her and imitate her movements.

She glided on the dark brown Mexican tiles and brown bricks that had been laid out in an ancient Toltec pattern by Isidore Baltazar; a sorceric design binding generations of sorcerers and dreamers throughout the ages in webs of secrets and feats of power- a design into which he had put himself, around and inside it, with all his strength, all his intent, willing myth and dream into reality.

Zuleica moved with the certainty and agility of a young dancer.

Her movements were simple, yet they required so much speed, balance, and concentration that they left me exhausted.

With uncanny agility and swiftness, she spun around, away from me.

For an instant she vacillated amidst the shadows of the trees, as though to make sure I was following her.

Then she headed toward the recessed, arched doorway built into the wall encircling the grounds behind the house.

She paused momentarily by the two citrus trees growing outside the walls; the ones that stood like two sentries on either side of the path leading to the small house across the chaparral.

Afraid of losing sight of her, I dashed along the narrow, dark trail.

Then, curious and eager, I followed her inside the house, all the way to the back room.

Instead of turning on the light, she reached for an oil lamp hanging from one of the rafters.

She lit it. The lamp cast a flickering glow all around us but left the corners of the room in shadows.

Kneeling in front of the only piece of furniture in the room; a wooden chest sitting under the window, she pulled out a mat and a blanket.

"Lie down, on your stomach," she said softly, spreading the mat on the tiled floor.

I heaved a deep sigh and gave in to a pleasant sense of helplessness as I lay, face down, on the mat.

A feeling of peace and well-being spread through my body.

I felt her hands on my back: She wasn't massaging me but tapping my back lightly.

Although I had often been in the small house, I still didn't know how many rooms it had or how it was furnished.

Florinda had once told me that that house was the center of their adventure.

It was there, she said, where the old nagual and his sorcerers wove their magic web.

Like a spider's web, invisible and resilient, it held them when they plunged into the unknown, into the darkness and the light, as sorcerers do routinely.

She had also said that the house was a symbol.

The sorcerers of her group didn't have to be in the house or even in its vicinity when they plunged into the unknown through dreaming.

Everywhere they went, they carried the feeling; the mood of the house in their hearts.

And that feeling and mood, whatever they were for each of them, gave them the strength to face the everyday world with wonder and delight.

Zuleica's sharp tap on my shoulder startled me. "Turn on your back," she commanded.

I did so.

Her face, as she bent down, was radiant with energy and purpose.

"Myths are dreams of extraordinary dreamers," she said:

"You need a great deal of courage and concentration in order to maintain them.

"And above all, you need a great deal of imagination.

"You are living a myth, a myth that has been handed down to you for safekeeping."

She spoke in a tone that was almost reverent. "You cannot be the recipient of this myth unless you are irreproachable.

"If you are not, the myth will simply move away from you."

I opened my mouth to speak, to say that I understood all that, but I saw the hardness in her eyes.

She was not there to have a dialogue with me.

The repetitive sound of branches brushing against the wall outside died out and turned into a throb in the air; a pulsating sound that I felt rather than heard.

I was on the verge of falling asleep when Zuleica said that I should follow the commands of the repetitive dream I had had.

"How did you know I've been having that dream?" I asked, alarmed, trying to sit up.

"Don't you remember that we share one another's dreams?" she whispered, pushing me back onto the mat:

"I'm the one who brings you dreams."

"It was just a dream, Zuleica." My voice trembled because I was seized by a desperate desire to weep.

I knew it wasn't just a dream, but I wanted her to lie to me.

Shaking her head, she looked at me. "No. It wasn't just a dream," she said quietly. "It was a sorcerers' dream, a vision."

"What should I do?"

"Didn't the dream tell you what to do?" she asked in a challenging tone. "Didn't Florinda?"

She watched me with an inscrutable expression on her face.

Then she smiled, a shy, childlike smile.

"You have to understand that you cannot run after Isidore Baltazar. He's no longer in the world.

"There is nothing you can give him or do for him anymore.

"You cannot be attached to the nagual as a person, but only as a mythical being."

Her voice was soft yet commanding as she repeated that I was living a myth.

"The sorcerers' world is a mythical world separated from the everyday one by a mysterious barrier made out of dreams and commitments.

"Only if the nagual is supported and upheld by his fellow dreamers can he lead them into other viable worlds from which he can entice the bird of freedom."

Her words faded in the shadows of the room as she added that the support Isidore Baltazar needed was dreaming energy, not worldly feelings and actions.

After a long silence, she spoke again.

"You have witnessed how the old nagual, as well as Isidore Baltazar, by their mere presence, affect whoever is around them; be it their fellow sorcerers or just bystanders; making them aware that the world is a mystery where nothing can be taken for granted under any circumstances."

I nodded in agreement.

For a long time I had been at a loss to understand how naguals could, by their mere presence, make such a difference.

After careful observation, comparing opinions with others, and endless introspection, I concluded that their influence stemmed from their renunciation of worldly concerns.

In our daily world, we also have examples of men and women who have left worldly concerns behind. We call them mystics, saints, religious people.

But naguals are neither mystics nor saints and are certainly not religious men.

Naguals are worldly men without a shred of worldly concerns.

At a subliminal level, this contradiction has the most tremendous effect on whoever is around them.

The minds of those who are around a nagual can't grasp what is affecting them, yet they feel the impact in their bodies as a strange anxiety, an urge to break loose, or as a sense of inadequacy, as if something transcendental is taking place somewhere else, and they can't get to it.

But the naguals' built-in capacity to affect others doesn't only depend on their lack of worldly concerns or on the force of their personalities; but rather on the force of their unreproachful behavior.

Naguals are unreproachful [* unreproachful- not criticizing] in their actions and feelings; regardless of the ambushes- worldly or otherworldly- placed on their interminable path.

It isn't that naguals follow a prescribed pattern of rules and regulations in order to have unreproachful behavior, for there are no rules and regulations.

Rather, they use their imaginations for adopting or adapting to whatever it takes to make their actions fluid.

For their deeds, naguals, unlike average men, don't seek approval, respect, praise, or any kind of acknowledgment from anyone, including their fellow sorcerers.

All they seek is their own sense of flawlessness; of innocence, of integrity.

It is this that makes a nagual's company addictive.

Others becomes dependent on his freedom as one would to a drug.

To a nagual, the world is always brand new.

In his company, one begins to look at the world as if it had never happened before.

"That's because naguals have broken the mirror of self-reflection," Zuleica said, as if she had followed my train of thoughts.

"Naguals are able to see themselves in the mirror of fog which reflects only the unknown.

"It is a mirror that no longer reflects our normal humanity expressed in repetition; but reveals the face of infinity.

"Sorcerers believe that when the face of self-reflection and the face of infinity merge, a nagual is totally ready to break the boundaries of reality and disappear as though he wasn't made of solid matter.

"Isidore Baltazar had been ready for a long time."

"He can't leave me behind!" I cried out. "That would be too unfair."

"It's downright foolish to think in terms of fairness and unfairness," Zuleica said:

"In the sorcerers' world, there is only power.

"Didn't every one of us teach you that?"

"There are many things I learned," I conceded gloomily.

After a few moments, I mumbled under my breath, "But they are not worth anything at the moment."

"They are worth the most now," she contradicted me:

"If you have learned one thing, it's that at the bleakest moments warriors rally their power to carry on. A warrior doesn't succumb to despair."

"Nothing of what I've learned and experienced can alleviate my sadness and despair," I said softly:

"I've even tried the spiritual chants I learned from my nanny, and Florinda laughed at me. She thinks am an idiot."

"Florinda is right," Zuleica pronounced:

"Our magical world has nothing to do with chants and incantations; with rituals and bizarre behavior.

"Our magical world, which is a dream, is willed into being by the concentrated desire of those who participate in it.

"It is held intact at every moment by the sorcerers' tenacious wills; the same way the everyday world is held together by everybody's tenacious will."

She stopped abruptly.

She seemed to have caught herself in the middle of a thought that she didn't wish to express.

Then she smiled. Making a humorous, helpless gesture, she added, "To dream our dream, you have to be dead."

"Does that mean I have to drop dead right here and now?" I asked in a voice that was getting hoarse. "You know that I am ready for that, at a drop of a hat."

Zuleica's face lit up, and she laughed as though I had told the best of jokes.

Seeing that I was as serious as I could be, she hastened to clarify, "No, no.

"To die means to cancel all your holdings; to drop everything you have, everything you are."

"That's nothing new," I said. "I did that the moment I joined your world."

"Obviously you didn't. Otherwise you wouldn't be in such a mess.

"If you had died the way sorcery demands, you would feel no anguish now."

"What would I feel, then?"

"Duty! Purpose!"

"My anguish has nothing to do with my sense of purpose," I shouted. "It's apart, independent. I am alive and feel sadness and love. How can I avoid that?"

Zuleica clarified, "You're not supposed to avoid it, but to overcome it.

"If warriors have nothing, they feel nothing."

"What kind of an empty world is that?" I asked defiantly.

"Empty is the world of indulging, because indulging cuts off everything else except indulging."

She gazed at me eagerly, as if expecting me to agree with her statement. "So it's a lopsided world; boring, repetitious.

"For sorcerers, the antidote of indulging is dying. And they don't just think about it, they do it."

A cold shiver went up my back.

I swallowed and remained silent, looking at the splendid sight of the moon shining through the window.

"I really don't understand what you're saying, Zuleica."

"You understand me perfectly well," she maintained. "Your dream began when you met me.

"Now it's time for another dream. But this time, dream dead. Your error was to dream alive."

"What does that mean?" I asked restlessly:

"Don't torment me with riddles. You, yourself, told me that only male sorcerers drive themselves nuts with riddles. You're doing the same to me now."

Zuleica's laughter echoed from wall to wall. It rustled like dry leaves pushed by the wind.

"To dream alive means to have hope. It means that you hold on to your dream for dear life.

"To dream dead means that you dream without hope. You dream without holding on to your dream."

Not trusting myself to speak, all I could do was to nod.

Florinda had told me that freedom is a total absence of concern about oneself; a lack of concern achieved when the imprisoned bulk of energy within ourselves is untied.

She had said that this energy is released only when we can arrest the exalted conception we have of ourselves; of our importance; an importance we feel must not be violated or mocked.

Zuleica's voice was clear but seemed to come from a great distance as she added, "The price of freedom is very high.

"Freedom can only be attained by dreaming without hope; by being willing to lose all, even the dream.

"For some of us, to dream without hope; to struggle with no goal in mind, is the only way to keep up with the bird of freedom."