The sound of distant music reached them. It came from a barge crossing the river, and even from far away, Brida could make out the silhouette of a sailor framed in a lighted window. It was a tune that reminded her of her adolescence; it brought back memories of school dances, the smell of her bedroom, the color of the ribbon she would use to tie up her ponytail. Brida realized that Lorens had never before considered the question she had asked him and was, perhaps, at that moment, wondering if his own body contained the atoms of Viking warriors, of volcanic explosions, or of prehistoric animals that had mysteriously disappeared.

But her thoughts were elsewhere. All she wanted to know was this: had the man so tenderly embracing her once been part of herself ?

The barge came closer, and the music began to fill the air around them. Conversations at the other tables stopped, too, everyone eager to find out where the sound was coming from,

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because everyone had once been an adolescent, attended school dances, and had dreams full of stories about warriors and fairies.

“I love you, Lorens.”

And Brida hoped against hope that this young man who knew so much about the light from the stars contained a little of the person she had once been.

It’s no good, I can’t do it.”

Brida sat up in bed and felt for the packet of cigarettes on the bedside table. Going against all her normal habits, she decided to smoke a cigarette before breakfast.

It was another two days until she was due to meet Wicca again.

She knew that, during the last two weeks, she had tried her hard-est. She had channeled all her hopes into the method of spreading the cards taught to her by that attractive and mysterious woman, and she had struggled hard not to disappoint her, but the cards refused to reveal their secrets.

Each time the previous three nights when she had finished the exercise, she had felt like crying. She felt vulnerable and alone and had a sense that a great opportunity was slipping through her fingers. Once again, she felt that life was not treating her as it treated other people: it gave her every chance to achieve something, and just when she was close to her objective, the ground opened up and swallowed her. That’s how it had been with her studies, with

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certain boyfriends, with certain dreams she had never shared with anyone.

She thought of the Magus. Perhaps he could help her. But she had promised herself that she would only go back to Folk when she knew enough about magic to face him again.

And now it seemed that this would never happen.

She lay for a long time in bed before deciding to get up and make breakfast. Finally she screwed up the necessary resolve and courage to face another day, one more of her “daily Dark Nights”

as she had taken to calling them since her experience in the forest.

She prepared some coffee, looked at her watch, and saw that she still had enough time.

She went over to the shelf and searched among the books for the piece of paper the bookseller had given her. To console herself she thought: there are other paths. She had met the Magus, she had met Wicca, and she would, in the end, meet the person who could teach her in a way that she could understand.

But she knew this was merely an excuse.

“I’m always starting things and then giving up,” she thought rather sourly. Perhaps life would soon realize this and stop presenting her with the same opportunities over and over. Or perhaps, by always giving up when she had only just started, she had exhausted all possible paths without even taking a single step.

But that was how she was, and she felt herself grower gradually weaker and less and less able to change. A few years before, she would have felt depressed by her own behavior, but she would, at least, still have been capable of the occasional heroic gesture; now,

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though, she was starting to adapt to her own mistakes. She knew other people who did the same—they, too, got used to their mistakes, and it wasn’t long before they began to see them as virtues.

And by then it was too late.

She considered not phoning Wicca and simply disappearing. But what about the bookshop? She wouldn’t then have the courage to go there again. If she just disappeared, the bookseller would not be so kind next time. “It’s happened before. Because of some thought-less gesture toward one person, I’ve ended up losing touch with other people I really cared about.” She couldn’t do the same thing now. She was on a path where valuable contacts were very hard to find.

She steeled herself and dialed the number on the piece of paper. Wicca answered.

“I won’t be able to come tomorrow,” said Brida.

“No, the plumber can’t make it either,” replied Wicca. For a moment Brida had no idea what the woman was talking about.

Then Wicca started complaining about some problem with her kitchen sink and how she’d arranged several times for a man to come and fix it, but he never came. She launched into a long story about old buildings, which might look terribly imposing but which were, of course, beset by all kinds of problems. Then, in the middle of her story about the plumber, Wicca suddenly asked:

“Have you got your tarot cards handy?”

Surprised, Brida said that she did. Wicca asked her to spread the cards on the table, because she was going to teach her a method of finding out whether the plumber would or would not turn up the following day.

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Feeling even more surprised, Brida did as she was asked. She spread the cards and sat staring blankly at the table while she awaited instructions from the other end of the line. The courage to explain the reason for her phone call was gradually fading.

Wicca was still talking, and Brida decided to listen to her patiently. Perhaps she would become her friend. Perhaps then she would be more tolerant and show her easier ways of understanding the Tradition of the Moon.

Wicca, meanwhile, was weaving one topic of conversation seamlessly into another, and having finished her litany of com-plaints about plumbers, she started describing an argument she’d had with the building manager about the caretaker’s salary. She then moved on to a report that she’d read on old-age pensions.

Brida accompanied all this with a few affirmative grunts, agree-ing with everything Wicca was saying, but no longer listening. A terrible tedium took hold of her. This conversation with a woman she barely knew regarding plumbers, caretakers, and pensioners, at that hour in the morning, was one of the most boring things she’d ever experienced. She kept trying to distract herself with the cards on the table, finding little details that she’d never noticed before.

Now and then, Wicca would ask if she was still listening and she’d give a mumbled yes. But her mind was miles away, traveling, wandering about in places she’d never been to before. Every detail on the cards seemed to push her farther on in that journey.

All of a sudden, like someone entering a dream, Brida realized that she could no longer hear what Wicca was saying. A voice, a voice that seemed to come from within—but which she knew

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came from outside—began to whisper something to her. “Do you understand?” Brida said that she did. “Do you understand?” asked the mysterious voice again.

This, however, was of no importance. The tarot cards before her began to show fantastic scenes: men with bronzed, oiled bodies, wearing only thongs, and some sporting masks like the giant heads of fish. Clouds raced across the sky, as if everything were moving much faster than normal, and the scene shifted abruptly to a square, surrounded by grand buildings, where a few old men were urgently telling secrets to a group of young boys, as if some form of very ancient knowledge were about to be lost forever.

“Add seven and eight and you’ll have my number. I’m the Devil, and I signed the book,” said a boy in medieval clothes at what appeared to be a celebration. Drunken men and women smiled out at her. The scene changed yet again to the sea, to reveal temples carved out of the rocks, and then the sky began to be covered by black clouds pierced by brilliant flashes of lightning.

A door appeared. It was a heavy door, like the door of an old castle. The door came closer to Brida, and she had a sense that soon she would be able to open it.