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.
‘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 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, 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 centre 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 grey 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 lift. 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 and sculptures and vases on the tables. The light from outside was filtered through white curtains. The room was cleverly divided into different areas to accommodate sofas, dining table and a well-stocked library. Everything was in the very best taste and reminded Brida of the architecture and design magazines she used to look at on the newstands.
‘It must have cost a fortune,’ she thought.
Wicca led Brida into the vast living room, into an area furnished by two Italian armchairs in leather and steel. Between the two chairs was a low glass table with steel legs.
‘You’re very young,’ said Wicca at last.
There was little point in making her usual comment about ballerinas, and so Brida said nothing, waiting to hear what the woman would say next and meanwhile wondering what such a modern design was doing inside an old building like that. Her romantic idea of the search for knowledge had once again been shaken.
‘He phoned me,’ Wicca said, and Brida understood that she was referring to the bookseller.
‘I came in search of a Teacher. I want to follow the road of magic.’
Wicca looked at Brida. She clearly possessed a Gift, but she needed to know why the Magus of Folk had been so interested in her. The Gift on its own was not enough. If the Magus had been new to magic, he might have been impressed by the clarity with which the Gift manifested itself in the young woman, but he had lived long enough to know that everyone possesses a Gift. He was wise to such traps.
She got up, went over to one of the bookshelves and picked up her favourite deck of cards.
‘Do you know how to lay the cards?’ she asked.
Brida nodded. She had done a few courses and knew that the deck in the woman’s hand was a tarot deck, with seventy-eight cards. She had learned various ways of laying out the tarot and was glad to have a chance to show off her knowledge.
However, the woman kept hold of the deck. She shuffled the cards, then placed them face down, in no particular order, on the glass table. This was a method quite unlike any Brida had learned on her courses. The woman sat looking at them for a moment, said a few words in a strange language, then turned over just one of the cards.
It was card number 23. A king of clubs.
‘Good protection,’ she said. ‘From a strong, powerful man with dark hair.’
Her boyfriend was neither strong nor powerful, and the Magus’s hair was grey.
‘Don’t think about his physical appearance,’ said Wicca, as if she had read her thoughts. ‘Think of your Soulmate.’
‘What do you mean “Soulmate”?’ Brida was surprised. The woman inspired a strange respect, different from the respect she had felt for the Magus or for the bookseller.
Wicca did not answer the question. She again shuffled the cards, and again spread them in that same disorderly manner on the table, except that this time the cards were face up. The card in the middle of that apparent confusion was card number 11. A woman forcing open the mouth of a lion.
Wicca picked up the card and asked Brida to hold it. Brida did so, although without knowing quite what was required of her.
‘In previous incarnations, your stronger side was always a woman,’ Wicca said.
‘What do you mean by “Soulmate”?’ Brida asked again. It was the first time she had challenged the woman, but it was, nonetheless, a very timid challenge.
Wicca remained silent for a moment. A suspicion crossed her mind – for some reason the Magus had not taught the girl about Soulmates. ‘Nonsense,’ she said to herself and brushed the thought aside.
‘The Soulmate is the first thing people learn about when they want to follow the Tradition of the Moon,’ she said. ‘Only by understanding the Soulmate can we understand how knowledge can be transmitted over time.’
As Wicca continued her explanation, Brida remained silent, feeling anxious.
‘We are eternal because we are all manifestations of God,’ Wicca said. ‘That is why we go through many lives and many deaths, emerging out of some unknown place and going towards another equally unknown place. You must get used to the fact that there are many things in magic which are not and never will be explained. God decided to do certain things in a certain way and why He did this is a secret known only to Him.’
‘The Dark Night of Faith,’ thought Brida. So it existed in the Tradition of the Moon as well.
‘The fact is that this happens,’ Wicca went on. ‘And when people think of reincarnation,