I began to walk, scanning the ground with my half-closed eyes. Don Juan
walked a few feet to my right and a couple of steps behind me.
     I covered the  periphery of the hilltop first. My intention was to work
my way in a  spiral to the center. But once I  had covered the circumference
of the hilltop, don  Juan made me stop. He said I was letting  my preference
for routines take over.
     In  a sarcastic tone he  added that I was certainly covering  the whole
area systematically, but in such a stagnant  way that I would not be able to
perceive the suitable place. He added that he himself knew where it  was, so
there was no chance for improvisations on my part.
     "What should I be doing instead?" I asked.
     Don Juan made me sit down. He then plucked  a single leaf from a number
of bushes  and  gave them to  me. He ordered  me to lie down on  my back and
loosen my belt and place the leaves against the skin of my umbilical region.
He supervised my movements and instructed me to  press the leaves against my
body with both hands. He then ordered me to close my eyes and warned me that
if I wanted perfect results I should not lose hold of the leaves, or open my
eyes, or try to sit up when he shifted my body to a position of power.
     He  grabbed me  by the right  armpit  and  swirled me around. I  had an
invincible desire to  peek through my half-closed  eyelids, but don Juan put
his  hand over  my  eyes.  He commanded  me  to concern myself only with the
feeling of warmth that was going to come from the leaves.
     I lay motionless for a moment and then I began  to  feel a strange heat
emanating  from the leaves. I first sensed it with  the palms  of  my hands,
then the warmth extended  to my abdomen, and finally it literally invaded my
entire body. In a matter of minutes my feet were burning up with a heat that
reminded me of times when I had had a high temperature.
     I  told  don Juan about the unpleasant sensation and  my desire to take
off my shoes. He said  that he was  going to help me stand up, that I should
not  open my eyes until he told me  to, and that I  should keep pressing the
leaves to my stomach until I had found the suitable spot to rest.
     When I was  on  my feet  he whispered in my  ear that I  should open my
eyes, and that I should walk without a plan, letting the power of the leaves
pull me and guide me.
     I  began  to walk aimlessly. The heat of my  body was  uncomfortable. I
believed I was  running a high temperature, and I became absorbed  in trying
to conceive by what  means don Juan had  produced it. Don Juan walked behind
me.  He  suddenly let out a  scream that nearly paralyzed me. He  explained,
laughing, that abrupt noises scare away unpleasant  spirits.  I squinted  my
eyes  and walked back  and forth  for about half an  hour. In that time  the
uncomfortable  heat  of  my  body  turned  into  a   pleasurable  warmth.  I
experienced a sensation of lightness as  I paced up and  down the hilltop. I
felt  disappointed,  however; I had somehow expected to detect  some kind of
visual phenomenon,  but there were no changes whatsoever in the periphery of
my field of vision, no unusual colors, or glare, or dark masses.
     I  finally became  tired of squinting my  eyes and opened  them.  I was
standing in front of  a  small ledge of sandstone, which was one  of the few
barren rocky places on the hilltop;  the  rest was  dirt with widely  spaced
small  bushes. It  seemed that the vegetation had burned sometime before and
the new growth was not fully mature yet.  For some  unknown reason I thought
that  the sandstone ledge was beautiful. I stood in front  of it  for a long
time.  And then I simply sat  down  on it.  "Good! Good!" don Juan  said and
patted me on the back.
     He then told me  to carefully pull the leaves from under my clothes and
place them on the rock.
     As soon as  I had taken the leaves away from  my skin  I  began to cool
off. I took my pulse. It seemed to be normal.
     Don Juan laughed and  called me "doctor Carlos" and asked me if I could
also take his  pulse.  He said  that  what I had felt was the  power  of the
leaves, and that that  power had cleared me and had enabled me to fulfill my
task.
     I asserted in all sincerity that I had done nothing in particular,  and
that I  sat down on that place because  I  was tired and because I found the
color of the sandstone very appealing.
     Don Juan did not say anything. He was standing a few feet away from me.
Suddenly he jumped back and with incredible agility ran and leaped over some
bushes to a high crest of rocks some distance away.
     "What's the matter?" I asked, alarmed.
     "Watch the  direction in  which the wind will blow  your leaves,  "  he
said.  "Count them quickly. The  wind is coming. Keep half  of them and  put
them back against your belly."
     I counted  twenty leaves. I stuck ten under my shirt  and then a strong
gust  of wind scattered the other  ten in a  westerly direction.  I  had the
eerie feeling as I  saw the leaves being blown  off that  a real  entity was
deliberately sweeping them into the amorphous mass of green shrubbery.
     Don  Juan  walked back to where I was  and sat down next  to me,  to my
left, facing the south.
     We did not speak  a word for a long time. I did not know what to say. I
was exhausted.  I wanted to close my eyes, but I did not dare. Don Juan must
have noticed my state and said that it was all right to fall asleep. He told
me to place my hands on my abdomen, over the leaves, and try to feel that  I
was lying suspended on the  bed  of "strings" that he had made for me on the
"place of my  predilection. "I  closed my eyes and a memory of the peace and
plenitude I had experienced while sleeping on that other hilltop invaded me.
I wanted to find out  if I could actually feel I  was suspended  but  I fell
asleep. I  woke up  just  before  the sunset.  Sleeping  had  refreshed  and
invigorated me.  Don Juan had also fallen asleep. He opened his  eyes at the
same  time I did. It was  windy but I did  not  feel cold. The  leaves on my
stomach seemed to have acted as a furnace, a heater of some sort.
     I examined the surroundings.  The place I had selected to rest was like
a small basin. One could actually sit on it as on  a  long couch;  there was
enough of a rock wall to serve as a backrest. I also found out that don Juan
had  brought my writing pads and placed them underneath my head. "You  found
the right place, " he said, smiling. "And the whole operation took  place as
I had  told you it would. Power guided you here without  any  plan  on  your
part."
     "What kind of leaves did you give me?" I asked.
     The warmth that had radiated from the leaves and had  kept me in such a
comfortable  state, without any blankets or extra thick clothing, was indeed
an absorbing phenomenon for me.
     "They were just leaves, " don Juan said.
     "Do  you mean  that  I  could grab leaves from  any bush and they would
produce the same effect on me?"
     "No. I don't mean that you  yourself can do that. You  have no personal
power. I mean  that any kind of leaves would  help  you,  providing that the
person who  gives them to you has power.  What helped you today was  not the
leaves but power."
     "Your power, don Juan?"
     "I  suppose  you could say that it was my  power, although that  is not
really accurate. Power does not belong to anyone.
     Some of us may gather it and then it could be given directly to someone
else. You see, the key to stored power is that  it can be used only to  help
someone else store power."
     I asked him if that  meant that his power was limited  only  to helping
others. Don Juan patiently explained that he could  use  his personal  power
however  he  pleased, in anything  he  himself wanted,  but  when it came to
giving  it directly  to  another person,  it was useless unless  that person
utilized it for his own search of personal power.
     "Everything a man does hinges on his personal power," don Juan went on.
"Therefore,  for one who doesn't have any, the  deeds of a powerful man  are
incredible. It  takes power to even conceive what power is. This  is  what I
have been trying to tell you all along. But I know you don't understand, not
because you don't want to but because you have very little personal power."
     "What should I do, don Juan?"
     "Nothing. Just proceed as you are now. Power will find a way."
     He  stood  up and  turned  around  in  a  complete  circle,  staring at
everything in  the surroundings. His body  moved at the  same  time his eyes
moved; the total effect was that of a hieratic mechanical toy that turned in
a complete circle in a precise and unaltered movement.
     I looked at  him  with  my mouth open. He hid a smile, cognizant of  my
surprise.
     "Today you are going to hunt power in the darkness of the day," he said
and sat down.
     "I beg your pardon?"
     "Tonight you'll venture into those unknown hills.  In the darkness they
are not hills."
     "What are they?"
     "They are something else. Something unthinkable for you, since you have
never witnessed their existence."
     "What  do  you  mean,  don Juan?  You always scare me with  that spooky
talk."
     He laughed and kicked my calf softly.
     "The world  is  a  mystery, "  he  said. "And it  is not at all  as you
picture it."
     He seemed to  reflect for a moment. His  head bobbed up and down with a
rhythmical shake, then he smiled and added, "Well, it is also as you picture
it, but that's not all there is to the world; there is  much more to it. You
have been  finding that out all along,  and perhaps tonight you will add one
more piece."
     His tone sent a chill through my body. "What are you planning to do?" I
asked.
     "I don't  plan anything. All  is decided by the same power that allowed
you to find this spot."
     Don  Juan  got up  and  pointed to something in the distance. I assumed
that he  wanted  me to  stand  up and look. I  tried to jump to my feet, but
before I had fully stood up, don Juan pushed me down with great force.
     "I didn't  ask you to follow  me,  " he said in a severe voice. Then he
softened his tone and added, "You're going to have a difficult time tonight,
and you will need all the personal power you can muster. Stay where you  are
and save yourself for later."
     He explained that he was not pointing at anything  but just making sure
that  certain things were out there. He  assured me that  everything was all
right and said that I should sit quietly and  get busy, because I had  a lot
of time to write before total darkness  had set in  the land. His smile  was
contagious and very comforting.
     "But what are we going to do, don Juan?"
     He  shook his  head  from side to side  in  an  exaggerated gesture  of
disbelief.
     "Write!" he commanded me and turned his back to me.
     There was nothing else for me to  do. I worked on my notes until it was
too dark to write.
     Don  Juan maintained the  same position all the time I  was working. He
seemed to  be absorbed in staring into the distance towards the west. But as
soon  as  I  stopped he turned to me and said in a joking tone that the only
ways to shut  me up were to give me  something to eat,  or make me write, or
put me to sleep.
     He took a small bundle from his knapsack and ceremoniously  opened  it.
It contained pieces of dry meat.  He handed me a piece and took  another for
himself  and began to chew on it. He casually informed me that  it was power
food, which  both of us needed on that occasion. I  was too hungry to  think
about the possibility that  the dry meat may have  contained  a psychotropic
substance. We  ate  in complete silence until there was no more meat, and by
that time it was quite dark.
     Don  Juan stood up  and  stretched his  arms and  back. He  suggested I
should do  the same. He said it  was  a  good practice to stretch the entire
body after sleeping, sitting, or walking.  I followed his advice and some of
the  leaves I  had kept under my shirt slid through the legs of  my pants. I
wondered  if  I should try to pick them up, but he  said to forget about it,
that  there was no longer  any need for them and that I should let them fall
as they might.
     Then don Juan came very close to me and whispered in my right  ear that
I was supposed to follow him at  very close range and  imitate everything he
did. He said  that we were safe on the spot where we stood, because we were,
so to speak, at the edge of the night.
     "This  is not the night,  " he whispered, stomping on the rock where we
were standing. "The night is out there."
     He pointed to the darkness all around us.
     He then  checked my carrying  net to  see  if  the food gourds  and  my
writing pads were  secured and in a soft  voice said that a  warrior  always
made sure  that everything was in proper order, not because he believed that
he  was going to survive the ordeal he  was  about to undertake, but because
that was part of his impeccable behavior.
     Instead  of  making  me  feel  relieved,  his admonitions  created  the
complete certainty that my doom was approaching. I  wanted to weep. Don Juan
was, I was sure, completely aware of the effect of his words.
     "Trust your personal power, " he said in my ear. "That's all one has in
this whole mysterious world."
     He  pulled me  gently and we started to walk. He took the lead a couple
of steps  ahead  of me. I  followed  him with my eyes  fixed on  the ground.
Somehow I did not dare to look around,  and focusing my sight on the  ground
made me feel strangely calm; it almost mesmerized me. After a short walk don
Juan  stopped. He  whispered  that  total darkness was near  and that he was
going to get ahead of me, but was going to give me his position by imitating
the cry of a specific small owl. He reminded me that I already knew that his
particular imitation was raspy at the beginning and then it became as mellow
as the cry of a real owl. He warned me to be deadly aware of other owl cries
which did not bear that mark.
     By the  time don Juan finished  giving me all those  instructions I was
practically panic stricken. I grabbed him by  the arm and would not  let go.
It  took  two  or  three minutes for  me to calm myself  enough  so  I could
articulate  my words. A nervous ripple ran along  my stomach and abdomen and
kept me from talking coherently.
     In a calm  soft voice he urged me  to  get  hold of myself, because the
darkness was like the  wind, an unknown  entity at large that could trick me
if  I was not careful. And I had to  be perfectly calm in order to deal with
it.
     "You must  let yourself  go so your personal  power will merge with the
power of the night, " he said in my ear.
     He said he was  going to move ahead  of me and I  had another attack of
irrational fear.
     "This  is  insane,  "  I  protested. Don  Juan  did  not get  angry  or
impatient. He laughed quietly and said something  in my ear  which I did not
quite understand.
     "What did you say?" I said loudly through chattering teeth.
     Don Juan put his hand over my mouth and whispered  that a warrior acted
as if he knew what he was doing, when in effect he knew nothing. He repeated
one  statement three  or  four times, as if he wanted me to memorize it.  He
said, "A warrior  is impeccable when he trusts his personal power regardless
of whether it is small or enormous."
     After a short wait he asked me if I was all right. I nodded and he went
swiftly out of sight with hardly a sound.
     I tried to  look around. I  seemed to be standing in an  area of  thick
vegetation.  All I could distinguish was the dark mass of shrubs, or perhaps
small  trees.  I  concentrated  my attention  on  sounds,  but  nothing  was
outstanding. The whizzing of the wind muffled every other  sound except  the
sporadic piercing cries of large owls and the whistling of other birds.
     I waited for a while  in a state of utmost attention. And then came the
raspy prolonged cry of a small owl.  I had no doubt it was don Juan. It came
from a place behind me. I turned around and began to walk in that direction.
I moved slowly because I felt inextricably encumbered by the darkness.
     I  walked for  perhaps ten  minutes. Suddenly some  dark mass jumped in
front of me. I screamed and fell backward on my seat. My ears began buzzing.
The fright  was  so great  that it  cut  my wind. I had to open my  mouth to
breathe.
     "Stand up, " don Juan said softly. "I  didn't mean to scare you. I just
came to  meet  you."  He said that he had been watching  my  crappy  way  of
walking and that when I moved in the darkness  I  looked like a crippled old
lady trying  to tiptoe  between  mud  puddles. He found this image funny and
laughed out loud.
     He  then  proceeded  to  demonstrate a  special way of walking  in  the
darkness,  a way which  he called "the  gait of power."  He  stooped over in
front of me and  made me run my hands  over his  back and knees, in order to
get an  idea of the position of his body. Don Juan's trunk was slightly bent
forward,  but his spine was straight. His knees were  also slightly bent. He
walked slowly in front of me so I could take notice that he raised his knees
almost to his chest every time he took a  step. And then he actually ran out
of sight and came back again. I could not conceive how he could run in total
darkness.
     "The gait of power is for running at night, " he whispered in my ear.
     He urged me to try it myself. I told him  that I was sure I would break
my legs falling into a crevice or against a rock.
     Don Juan very calmly said that the "gait of power" was completely safe.
     I pointed out  that the only way I  could  understand his acts  was  by
assuming  he  knew  those hills  to perfection  and  thus  could  avoid  the
pitfalls.
     Don Juan took my head in  his  hands and whispered forcefully, "This is
the night! And it is power!"
     He let go of my head and then added in a soft voice that  at night  the
world was different, and that his ability to run in the darkness had nothing
to do with his knowledge  of  those hills. He said that the key to it was to
let one's personal power flow out freely, so  it could merge with  the power
of the night, and that  once that  power took over there was no chance for a
slip-up. He added, in a tone of utmost seriousness,  that if I doubted it  I
should consider for a moment what was taking place. For  a man of his age to
run in those hills at  that hour would be suicidal if the power of the night
was not guiding him.
     "Look!"  he said and ran swiftly out  into  the darkness and  came back
again.
     The way his body moved  was so extraordinary  that  I could not believe
what I  was seeing.  He sort of jogged on the same spot  for a  moment.  The
manner  in  which he  lifted  his  legs reminded  me  of  a  sprinter  doing
preliminary warm-up exercises.
     He  then told me to  follow  him. I  did it with  utter constraint  and
uneasiness.  With extreme care I tried to look where I  was  stepping but it
was impossible to judge distance.
     Don Juan came back  and jogged by my  side. He whispered that I  had to
abandon  myself to  the  power of  the  night  and trust the  little  bit of
personal power that I  had, or I  would never be able to move with  freedom,
and that the darkness  was encumbering only because I relied on my sight for
everything I did, not knowing that another way to move was to let  power  be
the guide.
     I tried various times without any success. I simply  could not let  go.
The fear  of injuring my legs was overpowering. Don  Juan ordered me to keep
on moving in the same  spot and  to try  to feel as if I were actually using
the "gait of power."
     He then said that he was going to run ahead and  that I should wait for
his owl's cry. He disappeared in the darkness before I could say anything. I
closed my  eyes at times and jogged on the same spot with my knees and trunk
bent for perhaps an hour. Little by little my tension began to ease up until
I was fairly comfortable. Then I heard don Juan's cry.
     I ran five  or  six yards  in the  direction where the cry  came  from;
trying to "abandon myself, " as don Juan had suggested. But stumbling into a
bush immediately brought back my feelings of insecurity.
     Don Juan was waiting  for me and  corrected  my posture. He  insisted I
should first  curl my fingers against my palms, stretching out the thumb and
index of each hand. Then he said that in his  opinion  I was just  indulging
myself in my feelings of inadequacy, since  I knew for a fact I could always
see fairly  well, no matter how dark the night was, if  I did not  focus  on
anything but kept scanning the ground right in front of me.
     The "gait of power" was similar to finding a place to rest.
     Both  entailed a sense of abandon, and a sense  of trust. The  "gait of
power"  required that one keep  the eyes  on  the ground  directly in front,
because even a glance to either side would produce an alteration in the flow
of  movement. He  explained that  bending the trunk forward was necessary in
order to  lower the eyes, and the reason for lifting the  knees  up  to  the
chest was because the steps had to be very short and safe. He warned me that
I was going to stumble a great deal  at  first but  he assured me that  with
practice I could run as swiftly and as safely as I could in the daytime.
     For hours I  tried to imitate his movements and  get into  the mood  he
recommended. He would very patiently jog on the same spot in front of me, or
he would take  off in a short run and return to where I was, so I could  see
how he moved. He would even push me and make me run a few yards.
     Then he took  off  and  called me with a  series of owl cries. In  some
inexplicable way I moved with an unexpected degree of self confidence. To my
knowledge I had done nothing to warrant that  feeling, but my body seemed to
be cognizant of things without thinking about them. For example, I could not
really see the jagged rocks in my way, but my body always managed to step on
the edges and never in the crevices, except for a few mishaps when I lost my
balance because I  became distracted. The degree  of concentration needed to
keep scanning the  area directly  in front had to be total. As don  Juan had
warned me, any slight glance to the side or too far ahead altered the flow.
     I  located don Juan after  a  long search. He was sitting  by some dark
shapes that seemed to be trees. He came towards me and said that I was doing
very  well, but  it was time to quit because  he had  been using his whistle
long enough and was sure that by then it could be imitated by others.
     I  agreed that  it  was time  to stop. I  was  nearly exhausted  by  my
attempts. I felt relieved and asked him who would imitate his cry.
     "Powers,  allies,  spirits,  who  knows?"  he  said in  a  whisper.  He
explained that  those  "entities  of the night" usually  made very melodious
sounds but were  at a  great disadvantage  in reproducing the  raspiness  of
human  cries or bird  whistlings. He cautioned me to always stop moving if I
ever heard such a sound and to keep in mind all he had said, because at some
other  time I might need to  make the proper identification. In a reassuring
tone he said that I had a very good idea what the "gait of  power" was like,
and that in order  to master it  I needed only a slight  push, which I could
get on another occasion when we  ventured again into the night. He patted me
on the shoulder and announced that he was ready to leave.
     "Let's get out of here, " he said and began running.
     "Wait! Wait!" I screamed frantically. "Let's walk."
     Don Juan stopped and took off his hat.
     "Golly!"  he said in a tone  of perplexity. "We're in a  fix. You  know
that I  cannot walk  in the  dark. I can only  run.  I'll break my legs if I
walk."
     I had the feeling he  was grinning when he said that, although  I could
not see his face.
     He added in a confidential tone  that he  was  too old to walk  and the
little  bit of the "gait  of power" that  I had learned that night had to be
stretched to meet the occasion.
     "If  we don't use the 'gait of power' we will be mowed down like grass,
" he whispered in my ear.
     "By whom?"
     "There are things in the night  that act on people, " he whispered in a
tone  that sent chills through my body. He  said  that it was not  important
that I keep up with him, because  he  was going to give  repeated signals of
four owl cries at a time so I could follow him.  I  suggested that we should
stay  in those  hills  until dawn and  then leave.  He  retorted in  a  very
dramatic tone that to stay there would  be suicidal; and even if we came out
alive, the  night would have drained our personal power to the point that we
could not avoid being the victims of the first hazard of the day.
     "Let's not waste any more time, " he said with a note of urgency in his
voice. "Let's get out of here."
     He reassured  me  that he would try  to go as slowly as  possible.  His
final instructions were  that I should try not to utter a  sound, not even a
gasp, no  matter what happened. He  gave me  the general direction  we  were
going to go in and  began running at a markedly slower pace. I followed him,
but no matter how slow he  moved  I could not keep up with him, and he  soon
disappeared in the darkness ahead of me.
     After I was alone I became aware that I  had adopted a fairly fast walk
without realizing it. And that came as  a shock  to me. I tried  to maintain
that pace for a long while and then I heard don  Juan's call a little bit to
my right. He whistled four times in succession.
     After a very short while I again heard his owl cry, this time to my far
right. In order to follow it I had to make a forty five degree turn. I began
to move in the  new direction, expecting that the  other three  cries of the
set would give me a better orientation.
     I heard a new whistle,  which placed don Juan almost  in the  direction
where we had started. I  stopped and listened. I heard  a very sharp noise a
short distance  away. Something like  the  sound  of two rocks  being struck
against each  other.  I strained  to listen  and detected a  series  of soft
noises,  as if two rocks were being  struck  gently. There was another owl's
cry  and then I  knew  what don Juan  had meant. There was  something  truly
melodious  about it. It was  definitely longer and even  more mellow than  a
real  owl's. I felt a strange sensation of fright.  My stomach contracted as
if  something were pulling me down from the middle part of my body. I turned
around and started to semi-jog in the opposite direction.
     I heard a faint owl cry  in the distance. There was  a rapid succession
of three more cries.  They were don Juan's. I ran in their direction. I felt
that he must have  then been a good quarter of a mile away and if he kept up
that pace  I  would soon be inextricably alone in those hills.  I  could not
understand why don Juan would run ahead, when  he could have run  around me,
if he needed to keep that pace.
     I noticed then that there  seemed to be something moving with me  to my
left. I could almost  see it  in the extreme periphery of my visual field. I
was about to panic,  but  a  sobering thought crossed  my mind. I could  not
possibly see anything in the dark. I wanted to stare in that direction but I
was afraid to lose my momentum.
     Another  owl cry  jolted me out  of my  deliberations. It  came from my
left. I did not follow it because it was without  a doubt the most sweet and
melodious cry I  had ever heard.  It did not frighten  me  though. There was
something very appealing, or perhaps haunting, or even sad about it.  Then a
very swift dark mass crossed from left to  right ahead of me. The suddenness
of its movements made me look ahead, I lost  my  balance and crashed noisily
against some shrubs. I fell down on my  side  and then I heard the melodious
cry  a few steps to my left.  I  stood up,  but before I could  start moving
forward again there was another cry, more demanding and  compelling than the
first. It was as if something there wanted  me to stop and listen. The sound
of  the owl cry was so prolonged and gentle that it eased my  fears. I would
have actually stopped had I not heard at that precise moment don Juan's four
raspy  cries. They seemed to  be nearer.  I  jumped  and took  off  in  that
direction.
     After a  moment  I  noticed  again  a certain flicker or a wave in  the
darkness  to my left. It was  not a sight proper, but rather a  feeling, and
yet I was almost sure I was perceiving it with my eyes. It moved faster than
I did, and again  it crossed from left to right, making  me lose my balance.
This time I did not fall down, and strangely enough not falling down annoyed
me. I suddenly became angry  and  the incongruency of  my feelings threw  me
into true  panic. I tried to accelerate my pace. I wanted to give out an owl
cry myself to let don Juan know where I was, but  I did not dare to  disobey
his instructions.
     At  that  moment some  gruesome thing came  to my attention. There  was
actually something like  an animal to my left, almost touching  me. I jumped
involuntarily and veered to my right. The fright almost suffocated me. I was
so intensely gripped  by  fear that there  were  no thoughts in my mind as I
moved  in the darkness  as fast as  I could. My fear seemed to be  a  bodily
sensation that had nothing to do with my thoughts.
     I found that condition very unusual. In the course of my life, my fears
had always been mounted on an intellectual matrix and had been engendered by
threatening social situations, or by people behaving towards me in dangerous
ways. This  time, however, my  fear  was  a  true novelty. It came  from  an
unknown part of the world and hit me in an unknown part of myself.
     I  heard  an  owl cry very close and slightly  to my left.  I could not
catch the  details of its pitch, but it seemed to be don Juan's.  It was not
melodious. I slowed down. Another cry  followed. The raspiness of don Juan's
whistles was  there, so I  moved faster. A  third  whistle  came from a very
short distance away. I  could distinguish a  dark  mass of rocks or  perhaps
trees. I heard another owl's cry and I thought that don Juan was waiting for
me  because we were out of the field of danger. I  was almost at the edge of
the  darker area when  a fifth cry  froze me on the spot. I  strained to see
ahead into  the  dark  area, but a sudden rustling sound to  my left made me
turn around in time to notice a black object, blacker than the surroundings,
rolling or sliding by  my side. I gasped and jumped away. I heard a clicking
sound, as if someone were smacking his lips, and then a very large dark mass
lurched out of the darker area. It was square, like a door, perhaps eight to
ten feet high.
     The suddenness of its appearance made me scream. For a moment my fright
was all out of proportion, but a second later I found myself awesomely calm,
staring at  the dark  shape. My reactions were, as far  as I  was concerned,
another total novelty. Some part  of myself seemed  to  pull  me towards the
dark area with an eerie insistence, while another  part  of me resisted.  It
was as if I wanted to find out for sure on the one hand, and on the  other I
wanted to run hysterically out of there.
     I barely heard don Juan's  owl  cries. They seemed to  be very close by
and they seemed to  be  frantic; they were longer and raspier,  as though he
was whistling while lie ran towards me. Suddenly I  seemed to regain control
of  myself  and was able  to turn around  and for a moment I ran just as don
Juan had been wanting me to.
     "Don Juan!" I shouted when I found him.
     He put  his hand on my mouth and  signaled  me  to  follow and  we both
jogged at a very comfortable pace until we came to the sandstone ledge where
we had been  before. We sat in  absolute  silence on the ledge  for about an
hour,  until  dawn. Then we ate food from the gourds.  Don Juan said that we
had to remain on the ledge until midday, and that we were not going to sleep
at all but were going to talk as if nothing was out of the ordinary.
     He asked me to relate in detail everything that had happened to me from
the moment he had left me. When I concluded my narration he stayed quiet for
a long time. He seemed to be immersed in deep thought.
     "It  doesn't look  too good, " he finally said.  "What happened to  you
last night was  very serious,  so serious  that  you cannot venture into the
night alone any more.  From now on the entities of the night won't leave you
alone."
     "What happened to me last night, don Juan?"
     "You stumbled on some entities which are in the world, and which act on
people. You know nothing about them because you have never encountered them.
Perhaps it would be more proper to call them entities of the mountains; they
don't really belong to the night. I call them entities of the  night because
one can  perceive  them  in the darkness  with greater ease.  They are here,
around us  at  all  times. In daylight, however, it  is  more  difficult  to
perceive them, simply because the world is familiar to us, and that which is
familiar takes precedence. In the darkness, on the other hand, everything is
equally  strange  and  very few  things  take  precedence,  so  we  are more
susceptible to those entities at night."
     "But are they real, don Juan?"
     "Of  course!  They  are  so  real  that  ordinarily  they kill  people,
especially those who stray into the wilderness and have no personal power."
     "If you knew they were so dangerous, why did you leave me alone there?"
     "There  is only  one way  to  learn, and that  way  is to  get  down to
business.  To only  talk about power is useless. If  you want  to know  what
power is, and if you want to store it, you must tackle everything yourself.
     "The road of knowledge and power  is very difficult and very  long. You
may have noticed  that I  have  not let  you  venture into the  darkness  by
yourself until last night. You did not have enough power to do that. Now you
do have enough  to wage a good battle, but not enough to stay in the dark by
yourself."
     "What would happen if I did?"
     "You'll die. The entities of the night will crush you like a bug."
     "Does that mean that I cannot spend a night by myself?"
     "You can  spend the  night  by  yourself  in  your  bed, but not in the
mountains."
     "What about the flatlands?"
     "It applies only to the wilderness, where  there are no  people around,
especially the wilderness in high mountains. Since the natural abodes of the
entities of the night are rocks and crevices, you cannot go to the mountains
from now on unless you have stored enough personal power."
     "But how can I store personal power?"
     "You are doing  it  by  living  the  way I have  recommended. Little by
little you are  plugging all  your points of drainage. You don't have  to be
deliberate about it,  because  power  always  finds  a way.  Take  me  as an
example. I didn't know I was storing  power when I  first began to learn the
ways of a
     warrior.  Just  like   you,  I  thought  I  wasn't  doing  anything  in
particular,  but  that was  not  so.  Power  has  the  peculiarity  of being
unnoticeable when  it is being stored." I asked  him to  explain how  he had
arrived at the conclusion that it was  dangerous for me to stay by myself in
the darkness.
     "The entities of the night moved along your left, " he said. "They were
trying to merge with your death. Especially the door that you saw. It was an
opening, you know, and it would have pulled you until you had been forced to
cross it. And that would have been your end."
     I  mentioned,  in  the best way I  could, that I thought  it  was  very
strange that things always happened when he  was around, and that  it was as
if he had been concocting all the events himself. The times I had been alone
in the wilderness at night had always been perfectly normal  and uneventful.
I had never experienced shadows or strange noises. In fact, I had never been
frightened by anything.
     Don  Juan  chuckled  softly and said  that everything  was proof he had
enough personal power to call a myriad of things to his aid.
     I had the feeling he perhaps was hinting that he actually had called on
some  people as his confederates. Don Juan seemed to  have read my  thoughts
and laughed out loud.
     "Don't tax yourself with explanations, " he said. "What I said makes no
sense to you, simply because you still don't have enough personal power. Yet
you have more than when you  started, so things have begun to happen to you.
You already had a powerful encounter with the fog and lightning.
     It  is  not  important that  you understand what happened  to you  that
night. What's  important is that you  have acquired the  memory  of it.  The
bridge and everything else you saw that night will be repeated someday  when
you have enough personal power."
     "For what purpose would all that be repeated, don Juan?"
     "I don't know. I  am not you.  Only  you  can answer  that. We  are all
different. That's why I had to leave you by yourself last night, although  I
knew it  was  mortally dangerous; you  had  to  test yourself against  those
entities.  The  reason  I  chose  the  owl's cry  was  because owls  are the
entities'  messengers. To  imitate  the  cry of an owl brings them out. They
became  dangerous  to  you not  because  they are naturally  malevolent  but
because  you  were not impeccable. There  is something in you that  is  very
chintzy  and I know  what it is.  You  arc just humoring  me.  You have been
humoring  everybody all along and,  of course, that places you automatically
above everyone and everything. But you know yourself that that cannot be so.
You are only a man, and  your life is too brief to encompass all the wonders
and  all the horrors of this marvelous  world. Therefore,  your humoring  is
chintzy; it cuts you down to a crappy size."
     I wanted to protest. Don Juan  had nailed me,  as he had done dozens of
times before. For a  moment I became angry. But, as it had happened  before,
writing detached me enough so I could remain impassive.
     "I  think  I have  a cure  for it,  " don Juan  went on  after  a  long
interval. "Even you  would agree with me  if you could remember what you did
last night. You ran as fast  as any sorcerer only when  your opponent became
unbearable. We  both  know that and I believe I have already found a  worthy
opponent for you."
     "What are you going to do, don Juan?"
     He did  not  answer.  He stood up and stretched his body. He seemed  to
contract every muscle. He ordered me to do the same.
     "You must stretch your body many times during the day,"
     he said. "The  more times  the better, but only after a  long period of
work or a long period of rest."
     "What kind of opponent are you going to find for me?" I asked.
     "Unfortunately only our fellow men are our worthy opponents, " he said.
"Other entities have no volition of  their own  and one must go to meet them
and lure them out. Our fellow men, on the contrary, are relentless.
     "We have talked  long enough,  "  don Juan  said in  an abrupt tone and
turned  to  me.  "Before  we  leave  you must do  one more thing,  the  most
important of all. I am  going  to  tell  you something right now to set your
mind at ease about why you are here. The reason you keep on coming to see me
is very simple; every time you have seen  me your  body  has learned certain
things, even against  your desire.  And finally  your body now needs to come
back to me to learn more. Let's say that your body knows that it is going to
die, even  though you never think about it. So  I've been telling your  body
that I too am going to die and before I do  I  would like to show  your body
certain  things,  things which you cannot give to  your  body  yourself. For
example, your body needs  fright.  It likes it. Your body needs the darkness
and the wind. Your  body now knows the  gait of power and can't  wait to try
it. Your body needs personal power and  can't wait to  have it. So let's say
then that your body returns to see me because I am its friend."
     Don Juan remained  silent for a long while. He seemed to be  struggling
with his thoughts.
     "I've told you that  the secret of a  strong body is not in what you do
to it but in what you don't do, " he finally said.
     "Now it is time for you not to do what you always do. Sit here until we
leave and not-do."
     "I d