“I’m at a ritual for witches,” Brida said, “a Sabbath.”

The Teacher laughed.

“You have found your path. Few people have the courage to do so. They prefer to follow a path that is not their own.

Everyone has a Gift, but they choose not to see it. You accepted yours, and your encounter with your Gift is your encounter with the world.”

“But why?”

“So that you can plant God’s garden.”

“I have a life ahead of me,” said Brida. “I want to live that life just like anyone else. I want to be able to make mistakes, to be selfish, to have faults.”

The Teacher smiled. In his right hand a blue cloak suddenly appeared.

“You can only be close to people if you are one of them.”

The scene around her changed. She was no longer in a desert but immersed in a kind of liquid, in which various strange creatures were swimming.

“Life is about making mistakes,” said the Teacher. “Cells went on reproducing themselves in exactly the same way for millions of years until one of them made a mistake, and introduced change into that endless cycle of repetition.”

Brida was gazing in amazement at the sea. She didn’t ask how it was possible for them to breathe in there; all she could hear was

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the Teacher’s voice, all she could think of was a very similar journey she had made and which had begun in a field of wheat.

“It was a mistake that set the world in motion,” said the Teacher. “Never be afraid of making a mistake.”

“But Adam and Eve were driven out of Paradise.”

“And they will return one day, knowing the miracle of the heavens and of all the world. God knew what He was doing when He drew their attention to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. If He hadn’t wanted them to eat it, He would never have mentioned it.”

“So why did He, then?”

“In order to set the Universe in motion.”

The scene changed back to the desert and the stone. It was morning, and the horizon was becoming suffused with pink light.

The Teacher came toward her with the cloak.

“I consecrate you now, in this moment. Your Gift is God’s instrument. May you prove to be a useful tool.”

Wicca picked up the dress belonging to the youngest of the three women and held it up in her two hands. She made a symbolic offering to the Celtic priests who, in astral form, were watching everything from above the trees. Then she turned to the young woman.

“Stand up,” she said.

Brida stood up. The shadows from the fire flickered over her naked body. Once, another body had been consumed by those same flames, but that time was over.

“Raise your arms.”

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Brida raised her arms. Wicca put the dress on her.

“I was naked,” she said to the Teacher when he had wrapped the cloak about her. “And I was not ashamed.”

“If it wasn’t for shame, God would never have discovered that Adam and Eve had eaten the apple.”

The Teacher was watching the sunrise. He seemed distracted, but he wasn’t. Brida knew this.

“Never be ashamed,” he said. “Accept what life offers you and try to drink from every cup. All wines should be tasted; some should only be sipped, but with others, drink the whole bottle.”

“How will I know which is which?”

“By the taste. You can only know a good wine if you have first tasted a bad one.”

Wicca turned Brida around to face the fire, then moved on to the next Initiate. The fire picked up the energy of her Gift so that it could be made manifest in her. At that moment, Brida was watching a sunrise, a sun that would, from then on, light the rest of her life.

“Now you must go,” said the Teacher as soon as the sun had risen.

“I’m not afraid of my Gift,” Brida told him. “I know where I’m going and what I’m going to do. I know that someone helped me to arrive here.

“I’ve been here before. There were people dancing and a secret temple built to celebrate the Tradition of the Moon.”

The Teacher said nothing. He turned to her and made a sign with his right hand.

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“You have been accepted. May your path be one of peace in times of peace, and of combat in times of combat. Never confuse one with the other.”

The figure of the Teacher began to dissolve, along with the desert and the stone. Only the sun remained, but the sun began to become one with the sky. Then the sky grew dark, and the sun became more like the flames of a fire.

She was back. She remembered everything now: the noise, the clapping, the dancing, the trance. She remembered having taken off her clothes in front of all these people, and now she felt rather awkward. But she also remembered her meeting with the Teacher.

She tried to master her feelings of shame and fear and anxiety—

they would always be with her, and she must get used to them.

Wicca asked the three Initiates to stand in the very middle of the semicircle formed by the women. The witches joined hands and made a ring.

They sang songs that no one now dared to accompany; the sounds flowed from their barely open lips, creating a strange vibration, which grew ever shriller until it resembled the cry of some crazed bird. At some point in the future, she would learn how to make those sounds. She would learn many more things, until she became a Teacher, too. Then other men and women would be initiated by her into the Tradition of the Moon.