She could not have said how much time had passed before she found herself back with that luminous being inside the circle she herself had drawn. She had known love before, but until that night love had also meant fear. That fear, however slight, was always a veil; you could see almost everything through it, but not the colors. And at that moment, with her Soul Mate there before her, she understood that love was a feeling completely bound up with color, like thousands of rainbows superimposed one on top of the other.

“How much I missed simply because I was afraid of missing it,” she thought, gazing at those rainbows.

She was lying down, and the luminous being was on top of her, with a point of light above his left shoulder and filaments of light pouring forth from his head and his navel.

“I wanted to speak to you, but I couldn’t,” she said.

“That was because of the wine,” he replied.

The pub, the wine, and the feeling of irritation were now but a distant memory to Brida.

“Thank you for the visions.”

“They weren’t visions,” said the luminous being. “What you saw was the wisdom of the Earth and of a distant planet.”

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Brida didn’t want to talk about that. She didn’t want any lessons. She wanted only what she had experienced.

“Am I full of light, too?”

“Yes, just as I am. The same color, the same light, and the same beams of energy.”

The color was golden now, and the waves of energy emerging from navel and head were a brilliant pale blue.

“I feel that we were lost and now are saved,” said Brida.

“I’m tired. We should go back. I had a lot to drink, too.”

Brida knew that somewhere there existed a world of pubs, wheat fields, and bus stations, but she didn’t want to go back there; all she wanted was to stay in that field forever. She heard a distant voice making invocations while the light around her gradually faded, then vanished completely. An enormous moon lit up the sky, illuminating the countryside. They were naked and in each other’s arms. And they felt neither cold nor shame.

The Magus asked Brida to close the ritual, since she had begun it. Brida pronounced the words she knew, and he helped where necessary. When the last formula had been spoken, he opened the magic circle. They got dressed and sat down on the ground.

“Let’s leave this place,” said Brida after a while. The Magus got up, and she followed. She didn’t know what to say; she felt awkward, and so did he. They had confessed their love to each other, and now, like any other couple in those circumstances, they were embarrassed to look each other in the eye.

Then the Magus broke the silence.

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“You must go back to Dublin. I know the number of a taxi firm.”

Brida didn’t know whether to feel disappointed or relieved.

The feeling of joy was giving way to nausea and a throbbing head.

She was sure that she would make very bad company.

“Fine,” she said.

They turned and walked back to the village. He phoned for a taxi from a telephone booth. Then they sat on the curb, waiting for the cab to arrive.

“I want to thank you for tonight,” she said.

He said nothing.

“I don’t know if the Equinox festival is just for witches, but it will be a very important day for me.”

“A party is a party.”

“Then I would like to invite you.”

He made a gesture as if wanting to change the subject. He must have been thinking the same thing she was: how hard it was to leave your Soul Mate once you’d found them. She imagined him going home alone, wondering when she would come back.

She would come back, because her heart was telling her to, but the solitude of forests is harder to bear than the solitude of towns.

“I don’t know if love appears suddenly,” Brida went on, “but I know that I’m open to love, ready for love.”

The taxi came. Brida looked again at the Magus and felt that he had grown many years younger.

“I’m ready for love, too,” he said.

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F

The sunlight poured into the spacious kitchen through the sparkling clean windows.

“Did you sleep well, love?”

Her mother put a mug of tea down on the table, along with some toast. Then she went back to the cooker, where she was fry-ing eggs and bacon.

“Yes, I did, thanks. By the way, is my dress ready? I need it for the party the day after tomorrow.”

Her mother brought her the eggs and bacon and sat down.

She knew that something odd was going on with her daughter, but she could do nothing about it. She would like to talk to her today as she never had before, but she would achieve little if she did. There was a new world out there, a world she didn’t know.

She was afraid for her daughter because she loved her and because Brida was alone in that new world.

“My dress will be ready, won’t it, Mum?”

“Yes, by lunchtime,” her mother replied. And that made her happy. At least some things in the world hadn’t changed. There were certain problems that mothers continued to solve for their daughters.