Brida

Brida did as Wicca ordered. She went up the cathedral steps, conscious of her bare feet on the cold stone floor. At one point, she had a feeling that there was someone with her, and Wicca's voice seemed to emerge from a person walking behind her. "I'm imagining things," thought Brida, but suddenly she remembered what she'd been told about the bridge between the visible and the invisible. She mustn't feel afraid of disappointment or failure.

Brida was now standing in front of the cathedral door. It was an enormous wrought-iron affair, adorned with scenes from the lives of the saints, and totally different from the one she had seen on her journey through the tarot cards.

"Open the door and go in."

Brida felt the cold metal of the handle beneath her hand. Despite the door's great size, it opened easily. She entered and found herself inside a vast church.

"Notice everything around you," said Wicca. Although it was dark outside, light came streaming in through the cathedral's huge stained-glass windows. She could make out the pews, the side altars, the decorated columns, and a few lit candles. Yet everything seemed somehow empty and abandoned. The pews were covered in dust.

"Walk over to your left. Somewhere you will find anoth

er door, but this time, it will be a very small one."

Brida walked through the cathedral. She was aware of the unpleasant feeling of the dusty floor beneath her bare feet. Somewhere, a friendly voice was guiding her. She knew it was Wicca, but she knew, too, that she no longer had any control over her imagination. She was conscious, and yet she could not disobey what was being asked of her.

She found the door.

"Go in. There's a spiral staircase leading down."

Brida had to crouch to get through the door. The walls of the staircase were lined with torches fixed to the wall, illuminating the steps. The steps were very clean. Someone had clearly been there before in order to light the torches.

"You are setting off in search of your past lives. In the cellar of this cathedral is a library. That's where we're going now. I'll be waiting at the foot of the staircase."

Brida kept going down and down, for how long she didn't know. It made her slightly dizzy. When she did finally reach the bottom, Wicca was there in her cloak. It would be easier now; she felt more protected. She was still deep in her trance.

Wicca opened another door opposite the stairs.

"I'm going to leave you alone here. I'll be outside, waiting. Choose a book and it will show you what you need to know."

Brida didn't even notice that Wicca was no longer there. She was staring at the dusty tomes. "I really should come here more often and give everything a good clean." Her past was grubby and neglected, and she felt sad to think that she'd never read any of these books before. Perhaps they contained important, long-forgotten lessons that she could incorporate into her life.

She looked at the books on the shelf. "All those lives," she thought. If she was so very ancient, she really should be wiser. She wished she could read them all, but she didn't have much time, and she must trust her intuition. She could come back whenever she wanted, now that she knew the way.

She stood for a while, not knowing which book to choose. Then she chose one almost at random. It was a fairly slim volume, and Brida took it and sat down on the floor.

She placed the book on her lap, but felt afraid she might open it and find that nothing happened, afraid that she might not be able to read what was written there.

"I need to take risks. I need to feel the fear of failing," she thought as she opened the book. As soon as she glanced at the pages, she began to feel ill and dizzy again.

"I'm going to faint," she managed to think before everything went dark.

She woke with water dripping on her face. She'd had a strange, incomprehensible dream about cathedrals floating in the air and libraries crammed with books. And yet she had never been in a library.

"Loni, are you all right?"

No, she wasn't. She couldn't feel her right foot, and she knew this was a bad sign. She didn't feel like talking either, because she didn't want to forget the dream.

"Loni, wake up."

She must be feverish, delirious, and yet what she saw in her delirium seemed so intensely real. She wished the person who kept calling to her would stop, because the dream was now fast disappearing before she had managed to grasp its meaning.

The sky was cloudy, and the clouds were so low they almost touched the castle's tallest tower. She lay looking up at the clouds. It was just as well she couldn't see the stars; according to the priests, not even the stars were entirely good.

The rain had stopped shortly before she opened her eyes. Loni was pleased it had rained, for that meant the castle's water butts would be full. She slowly shifted her gaze from the clouds to the tower, to the bonfires in the courtyard and the bewildered crowds of people milling around.

"Talbo," she said softly.

He put his arms around her. She felt the cold of his armor and the smell of soot in his hair.