the force that everyone knows and which they revere as if it were a mystery.”

The Magus understood why she had come that afternoon. It wasn’t just to walk among the trees and leave two sets of footprints in the snow, footprints that were getting closer every minute.

Brida turned up her jacket collar to protect her face, whether because the cold grew more intense when they stopped walking or because she was merely trying to conceal her nervousness, she wasn’t sure.

“I want to learn how to awaken the force of sex through the five senses,” she said at last. “Wicca won’t talk about it. She says that I’ll discover it just as I discovered the Voice.”

They sat for a few minutes in silence. She wondered if she should even be talking about such a thing in the ruins of a church.

But then she remembered that there are many ways of using the force. The monks who had lived there had worked through absti-nence, and they would understand what she meant.

“I’ve tried all kinds of things. I think there must be a trick, like the trick with the phone to get me to really see the tarot cards. I think it’s something Wicca doesn’t want to teach me. I think she must have found it very hard to learn and wants me to experience the same difficulties.”

“Was that why you came looking for me?”

Brida looked deep into his eyes.

“Yes.”

She hoped her answer would convince him, but she wasn’t sure

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of anything anymore. The walk through the snowy wood, the sunlight on the snow, the easy conversation about the ordinary things of the world, all of this had set her emotions galloping like wild horses. She had to persuade herself again that she was there for only one reason, and that she would attain her objective by whatever means possible. Because God had been a woman before he became a man.

The Magus got up from the pile of stones he was sitting on and walked over to the only wall that had not crumbled into rub-ble. In the middle of the wall was a door, and he stood leaning against it. The evening sun lit him from behind, and Brida could not see his face.

“There’s one thing that Wicca didn’t teach you,” he said. “She may have forgotten to do so, or she may have wanted you to discover it alone.”

“Well, here I am, alone.”

And she asked herself if perhaps this had been her Teacher’s plan all along, to bring her together with this man.

“I’m going to teach you,” he said at last. “Come with me.”

They walked to a place where the trees were taller and their trunks thicker. Brida noticed that some of them had rough-and-ready ladders attached to the trunks. At the top of each ladder was a kind of cabin.

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“This must be where the hermits of the Tradition of the Sun live,” she thought.

The Magus carefully examined each cabin, chose one, and asked Brida to join him.

She started to climb. Halfway up, she felt afraid, because a fall might prove fatal. Nevertheless, she resolved to go on; she was in a sacred place, protected by the spirits of the forest. The Magus had not asked if she wanted to do this, but perhaps this was considered unnecessary in the Tradition of the Sun.

When they reached the top, she gave a long sigh. She had conquered another of her fears.

“This is a good place to teach you the path,” he said. “A place of ambush.”

“Ambush?”

“These cabins are used by hunters. They have to be high up so that the animals don’t catch the hunters’ scent. During the year, the hunters leave food on the ground so that the animals get used to coming here, and then one day, they kill them.”

Brida noticed some empty cartridges on the floor. She was shocked.

“Look down,” he said.

There was barely enough space for two people, and his body was almost touching hers. She did as he asked. The tree must have been one of the tallest, because she could see the tops of the other trees, the valley, the snow-covered mountains on the horizon. It was beautiful there; he needn’t have said what he did about it being a place of ambush.

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The Magus pushed back the canvas roof, and suddenly the cabin was filled with sunlight. It was cold, and it seemed to Brida that they were in a magical place, on the top of the world. Her emotions wanted to set off again at a gallop, but she had to keep them in check.

“I didn’t need to bring you here in order to explain what you want to know,” said the Magus, “but I wanted you to understand a little more about this forest. In the winter, when both hunter and hunted are far away, I come and climb these trees and contemplate the Earth.”

He really did want to share his world with her. Brida’s blood began to flow more quickly. She felt at peace, immersed in one of those moments in life when the only possible alternative is to lose all control.

“Our relationships with the world come through our five senses. Plunging into the world of magic means discovering other unknown senses, and sex propels us toward one of those doors.”

He was speaking more loudly now. He sounded like a teacher giving a biology lesson. “Perhaps it’s better like this,” she thought, although she was not convinced.

“It doesn’t matter whether you’re seeking wisdom or pleasure through the force of sex, it will always be a total experience, because it’s the only experience that touches—or should touch—all five senses at once. All our channels with the other person are wide open.

“At the moment of orgasm, the five senses vanish, and you enter the world of magic; you can no longer see, hear, taste, touch,

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or smell. During those long seconds everything disappears, to be replaced by ecstasy. It is exactly the same ecstasy as that attained by mystics after years of renunciation and discipline.”

Brida felt like asking why the mystics hadn’t tried to attain it through orgasm, then she remembered that some were the descen-dants of angels.

“What propels a person toward this ecstasy are the five senses.

The more the senses are stimulated, the stronger will be the drive toward ecstasy and the more powerful the ecstasy. Do you understand?”

Of course she understood. She nodded. But that question left her feeling more distant. She wished he were still strolling by her side through the forest.

“That’s all there is to it.”

“I know all that, but I still can’t do it.” Brida didn’t dare mention Lorens. She sensed it would be dangerous. “You told me that there’s a way to achieve it.”