Nahual

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Nahual is singular. Nahuales is plural

“…and I never saw my friend again” the professor said, everyone perched at the edge of their seats listening to the end of the story intently, except for me. “That’s why you have to stay away from animals who seem to have a hidden intelligence behind their eyes, because they must be a nahual.”

Yeah right, like they really existed. Evil sorcerers that turned into animals just to hurt people was probably the most ridiculous thing I'd ever heard, but the professor was older and wiser so I didn’t argue with him about that.

Besides, it’s just a night story.

“Ok, time to go to bed” he said as he raised from the log he was sitting at, the fire making his wrinkles stand out more in the darkness and his face gained ten more years. Everyone began to protest. “We have to get up early tomorrow to continue our journey to the abandoned mine" he cut them off. "Now go, to your tents!”

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All the history class had come to the expedition. In our case that would mean twelve people in total, not including the professor, going for a four days camping trip through some mountains.

We were looking for a town near this zone that had been a very important mining camp in the early stages of the colony, but, like many other towns, was abandoned when the mine was drained of the last piece of gold that the Spanish could find in it. The roads that led there had been destroyed by the lack of maintenance and the only way to get to the place was by hiking.

The professor had discovered it, and organized a journey every year with his history students so they could look at the still intact homes, instruments, garments and way of living in the pre-independence times.

It had been very exiting. Just the idea of going into the wood sent a chill of excitement down my spine. It would be four days with my best friends and getting a chance to annoy the girls a little bit on the way. I believe I was the first one to sign in for the trip. The day's walk had been long, however, so I could only think of sleeping for a very long time after attending some other business outside. I bedded down and dozed off quickly, but my rest was cut short only minutes later by Luke.

“Wake up,” he whispered, moving my shoulder vigorously

“I’m up” I said, raising my head from the pillow and sitting on my sleeping bag. “What is it?” I asked the duo in front of me.

Alan was the sort of guy that couldn’t stand still for more than three seconds, and it usually took him less than that to get into trouble. Luke, on the other hand, could stand unnoticed in any crowd, moving silently through it, hearing everything and planning ahead what kind of pranks would be funnier to pull with Alan. Although it annoys me that I’m the one that always talks them out of everything, it’s really entertaining to hang out with them.

They showed me a video camera.

“Oh no” I muttered. An animal association had offered a reward to anyone that showed proof of the continued existence of a presumed extinct species of wolf that was last seen around this area. Luke and Alan had brought the camera only because they wanted to catch it on tape so they could claim the reward. But they didn’t know anything about the Mexican wolf, or what it looked like. That’s why they always showed me if what they caught on tape really looked like one.

“You know you’ll never find him. Everyone had been looking for one for more than thirty years.”

“This time is different,” Alan whispered. “Just take a look at it”

I reluctantly took the camera and turned it on. When it came to life it showed a black screen with some branches and leaves.

“You fell asleep in the middle of the woods and left the camera on?!” I scolded them. The image was upside down and it had been recording the same things for the last ten minutes of filming.

“Just keep looking” Luke said.

As I was about to tell them to go and leave me alone, a green object (actually, everything was green because the night vision was on) moved to the middle of the screen, turned around and two fluorescent green circles appeared on it. It moved a little bit closer to the camera and soon the silhouette of a wolf showed. It sniffed the air once and then stood only on its hind legs and disappeared behind a tree.

“Shit” I said, dropping the camera.

“Yeah,” Alan said. “It scared the shit out of me too when I first saw it just a few minutes ago.”

“We need to tell the professor that we have a nahual around,” Luke suggested. “He’ll know what to do.” He started heading towards the exit of the tent.

“No!” I half screamed. We waited for a moment to see if I woke anyone up, but the quiet remained. “That thing could still be out there. It should be better if we all sleep here tonight and tomorrow I’ll take the video to him.”

They both agreed with me and slept the rest of the night in my tent.

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“What did he said?” Alan asked when I was done talking to the professor.

“He thought it was a very elaborate prank, and said that he would flunk us if we talk about it again,” I said, walking between the two of them.

“But we have a video of it!” Luke objected, taking out the camera.

“Yeah, but you two have a reputation for doing this kind of stuff. I told you it was a bad idea to glue his pants to the chair.”

They both smiled at that memory. Luke then snapped out of his reverie and said “What are we going to do then? We can’t allow that thing to eat us while we sleep.”

“I know!” Alan said “The three of us could take shifts to guard the camp at night. That way, we’ll be able to wake everyone up if it shows up.”

“I don’t like that idea” I said.

“Do you have a better one?” he asked, and sadly, I didn’t.

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“Here we are!” The professor shouted to everyone when we got to the arch that marked the beginning of the town.

It was literally a ghost town. No one had lived here for over four hundred years, and the state of its decay showed it. All the buildings and roads have been slowly claimed by the vegetation of the wilderness. Tuffs of grass and moss were scattered on every rock of the pavement and of the main plaza.

All the wood roofs and structures, like warehouses, were missing and many of the buildings were even collapsed under trees that had grown up through them.

The only habitable building that had a roof, and would hold us for the night, was what used to be the mayor’s house.

It was a large complex of solid rock, one floor and many rooms to spare at the center of the town. Some of the external covering of the walls had been peeled by the pass of time, but there was no sign of any major structural damage as the vegetation have barely reached these parts of the town. It would be nice to not waste time mounting and dismounting the tent for tonight.

Luke picked one of the only rooms with a door so that we would be safe of any critter that would want to eat us, but was having a hard time opening it. It took the strength of the three of us to push the old waxed wood, probably the only reason it still stood, full of holes and gaps of the door so we could open it. Its rusty hinges didn’t help either in the task, but they finally gave in with a loud squeak and we managed to make a crack wide enough for our heads to squeeze inside and take a look. We were shocked by the contents of the room.

It held the carcasses, raw meat and blood of various deer and rabbits that had been torn apart and scattered everywhere. For a very long moment our gazes were fixed on the brown stains and corpses in front of us.

“What’s going on there?” the professor asked from the other side of the hallway. He must have heard the metal squeak and was on his way to see what we were up to.

“Professor” Alan started “we found…” but I cut him off with a little punch on his stomach from my elbow. “He can’t see this” I said softly to him “He will believe this is all part of the video prank and flunk us”

“And how do you plan to hide all this mess?” Luke asked. Not thinking, I grabbed the cold knob of the door, concentrated my energy and pulled with everything I had.

The door felt to its original place and sealed. “Easy for you to move it now that the three of us made it soft” Luke said. As the professor approached I twisted the knob until it broke from the wood. “What were you doing?” he asked.

“We were trying to see if we could use this place” I said panting a little and pointed where the handle used to be “but we accidentally broke it and jammed the door”.

“What a shame” he said “this was the dinning room and had some very beautiful silver decorations” and with that he went to attend some complaint of a girl.

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“Do you believe that mess could have been done by an animal?” Luke asked me while he prepared for the first turn on guard.

“I don’t think so. Animals wouldn’t just go around killing everything on their way and leaving it to rot” I said while unrolling my sleeping bag “Besides, there aren’t any predators around here that are big enough to carry something that heavy through a window, even if it’s only some inches from the ground”

“So it could be the nahual?” Alan asked

“Yeah, that would explain some of the stains in the room…” my thoughts wandered for a while from there, analyzing the strangeness of the situation until I fell asleep.

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“What am I going to do now with a crazy shaman on the loose?” I asked the air in front of me during my night shift. There was no doubt in my mind now that we were facing a nahual sorcerer, but I didn’t want to startle my friends too much, much less the professor and the others.

Then I caught a very faint sound, as if someone was pouring sand on top of a drum. Something was slowly crawling through the stairs. I turned the corner, and my flashlight revealed the silky body of a snake slowly approaching. It was brownish, so it got confused with the dirt walls, and there was a strange gleam in its eyes, a sparkle of intelligence.

“Back off,” I said. It coiled and began to ready itself to jump on me and use the deathly fangs. I took out my pocket knife, which always took on trips like this one, and swung it around in front of me so it could see what it was.

“I said, back off!” It stopped, preparing to attack. Knowing I had the advantage, as I would probably kill it even if it managed to bite me with my knife, and that there was no other way to go except for the stairs behind, it retreated to the dark beyond.

I sighed in relief when it was gone.

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“Here it is,” the professor said after two hours of walking north of the town. We reached a place where a huge hole had been dug on the floor very close to a natural rock wall about ten meters tall. Some very old-looking and rusty gear lay spread all over the place, most probably the machine used to take in and out the miners when the place was fully operational. “We will descend with the rappel and then continue on foot inside the caves. I want everybody to stay with their group at all times.” One by one we went down.

Our group, Luke, Alan and I, had been the last one to climb down and I the first of the three of us to go through the humid darkness of the fissure.

“Luke, you are next!” I yelled before he would be out of earshot. “Luke!” I yelled again, but there was no answer. I began to get worried. “I’m coming back up!”

Some time later I managed to get out and into flat ground once again, but there was no sign of Luke or Alan anywhere. “Guys, this isn’t funny at all!” I yelled, but then I heard a scream from some distance away and recognized it as Luke. “Shit” I swore. I grabbed the rope I used to get back up and pulled it until I had it all next to my feet. There was no need to expose everyone to this.

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“What is it?!” I asked after locating them.

They were utterly paralyzed and didn’t answer. I got close to them from behind to try and see what was going on, and saw the same brown snake coiled and preparing to attack some meters away. It knew it had an advantage over my terrified friends, and was planning on using it.

Just when I turned to try to run out of its way and drag my friends along, a small wolf appeared out of nowhere in that direction. Its eyes gleamed with the wisdom and knowledge of a millennial lifetime. That was when I understood what I had to do.

The wolf ran at full speed towards me, faster than anything material could be capable of. I turned just in time to see the snake jumping, heading to Alan’s neck were his venom was most effective, when everything suddenly froze in its place and I felt something at my back.

I experienced the familiar warmness all over me as fur spread across my skin. I knew the pattern by heart; black at the tip of the tail, which fused to the brownish-red to make a gray effect at my back, head and neck; it then divided again when reaching the sides of my body, arms and legs; and the color continued to erase until it was completely white at my chest. My mouth and nose started to elongate, slowly merging into one and molding my teeth to small knifes in my mouth, until a large and solid muzzle formed, and I felt my ears begin to grow and move to the top of my head. My neck began to lengthen as well, so my head would be able to move better and a small mane began to grow from the sides of my cheeks until the base of the neck. My fingers became stiff and began to shorten and grow black claws from the tips of the nails at the moment they were void of motion. My hands and feet became big paws and my heels stood from the ground by a series of new and powerful muscles, making me drop to all fours. My tail had grown along the whole process and was reaching its final size by now. At the end, I passed from being a normal human to become one of the last Mexican wolves that had walked here.

When the transformation was over, time began to take its normal course. The snake was only a meter away from Alan. I didn’t have much time to react. So I took impulse, jumped and sank my fangs at the foul animal’s tail before it got to its target. I took advantage of my jumping momentum to swing the snake and hit it with the ground when I landed. The impact was enough to send sounds of broken bones to my very sensitive ears. I saw one last gleam of intelligence behind those split pupils before they became black as night as the body died.

It had to be done. He had spent too much time as an animal. His human intelligence had been abandoning him little by little, until he became a being that was ruled by mere instincts, grunting and growling instead of speaking, and wandered mountains in solitude, avoiding other humans at all costs. He probably had killed wild animals easily with the deathly venom of the snake and then dragged them to the town and ate their meat off of the bone while in his human form.

I knew that everyone is born accompanied by an animal spirit that serves as guidance and protection throughout life, which are called nahuales. Sometimes the bond between them is so strong that the person can take some traits of the animal the spirit represents, like the sight of a hawk or the ears of a jaguar, and even become the animal itself, like me. These persons are called nahuales in honor to the spirits from which they get their powers. These powers are very strong, and their main purpose is to serve as a means to aid people in finding answers through introspection, although many people believe we only use them for evil purposes. It is easy to get corrupted by them though, that’s why I rarely use them and kept them secret, even if it had meant to have lied to Luke and Alan about talking to the professor.

I turned and looked at both of them. As I was still fused with my nahual, I could clearly see Alan’s, a red bird that was holding strongly on his shoulder, an obvious symptom that both of them were scared. Luke’s was a different story, it was an ocelot and was slowly approaching me with a curiosity that only cats could bear, showing that both were more intrigued of me than scared, but cautious nevertheless.

I stood on my hind legs. My paws returning to hands and feet, my tail growing back into my spine, my fur sucked by my pink skin and my face returned to normality. I was myself again, as if nothing had ever happened, and a familiar spirit was standing beside me.

Now I wondered which should be the best way to explain all of this to them…

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