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need books?” he said at last, and she knew that mentioning the Magus had not been a good idea.
“Because that isn’t the way I want to learn,” she said.
The owner looked more closely at the young woman standing before him. While she clearly had a Gift, it was nevertheless odd that the Magus of Folk should have devoted so much time to her.
There must be something else. She could be lying, but then again she had spoken of the Dark Night.
“You often come here,” he said. “You arrive, read a few books, but never buy anything.”
“They’re too expensive,” said Brida, sensing that he wanted to continue the conversation. “But I’ve read other books and I’ve attended courses.”
She told him the names of her teachers, hoping to impress him still more.
Again things did not go quite as she expected. The owner interrupted her and went to serve another customer, who wanted to know if the book he’d ordered had come in, an almanac containing the planetary positions for the next hundred years.
The owner examined various packages stored underneath the counter. Brida saw that the packages bore stamps from all corners of the world.
She was getting more and more nervous. Her initial courage had vanished completely, but she had no option but to wait for the other customer to check that it was the right book, pay for it, receive his change, and leave. Only then did the owner turn to her again.
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“I don’t know how to continue,” said Brida. Her eyes were beginning to fill with tears.
“What are you good at?” asked the owner.
“Going after what I believe in.” That was the only possible reply; she had spent her life in pursuit of what she believed in.
The only problem was that she believed in something different every day.
The owner wrote a name on the sheet of paper on which he was doing his accounts, tore off the piece he had written on, and held it for a moment in his hand.
“I’m going to give you an address,” he said. “There was a time when people accepted magical experiences as natural. There were no priests then, and no one went chasing after the secrets of the occult.”
Brida wasn’t sure whether he was referring to her or not.
“Do you know what magic is?” he asked.
“It’s a bridge between the visible world and the invisible world.”
The owner gave her the piece of paper. On it was a phone number and a name: Wicca.
Brida snatched the paper from him, thanked him, and left.
When she reached the door, she turned and said:
“I also know that magic speaks many languages, even the language of booksellers, who pretend to be unhelpful, but are, in fact, very generous and approachable.”
She blew him a kiss and disappeared. The bookseller paused over his accounts and stood looking at his shop. “The Magus of Folk taught her those things,” he thought. A Gift, however good,
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wasn’t reason enough for the Magus to take such an interest. There must be some other motive. Wicca would find it out.
It was time to close the shop. The bookseller had noticed lately that his clientele was starting to change. It was becoming younger.
As the old treatises crowding his shelves predicted, things were finally beginning to return to the place from whence they came.
The old building was in the center of town, in a place that is now only visited by tourists in search of a little nineteenth-century romanticism. Brida had had to wait a week before Wicca would agree to see her, and now she was standing outside a mysterious gray building, struggling to contain her excitement. That building was exactly as she’d imagined it would be; it was just the kind of place where the type of person who visited the bookshop should live.
There was no elevator. She went up the stairs slowly so as not to be out of breath when she reached the floor she wanted, and when she arrived, she rang the bell of the only door there.
Inside, a dog barked. Then, after a brief delay, a slim, elegant, serious-looking woman opened the door.
“I phoned earlier,” said Brida.
Wicca indicated that she should come in, and Brida found herself in a living room entirely painted in white and with examples of modern art everywhere—with paintings on the walls
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