Brida

Brida got up. She was trying to hide her shaking hands, not that he appeared to notice.

"Let's pretend that this cork is an electron, one of the small particles that make up the atom. Do you understand?"

She nodded.

"Right, well listen carefully. If I had certain highly complicated bits of apparatus with me that would allow me to shoot an electron in the direction of that piece of paper, it would pass through the two holes at the same time, except that it would do so without splitting into two."

"I don't believe it," she said. "That's impossible."

Lorens took the piece of paper and threw it away. Then, being a tidy person, he put the cork back where it belonged.

"You may not believe it, but it's true. It's something that scientists know but can't explain. I don't believe a thing you've told me, but I know that it's true."

Brida's hands were still shaking, but she wasn't crying and she didn't lose control. All she noticed was that the effect of the alcohol had completely worn off. She was strangely lucid.

"And what do scientists do when confronted by these mysteries?"

"They enter the Dark Night, to use a term you taught me. We know that the mystery won't ever go away and so we learn to accept it, to live with it. I think the same thing happens in many situations in life. A mother bringing up a child must feel that she's plunging into the Dark Night, too. Or an immigrant who travels to a far-off country in search of work and money. They believe that their efforts will be rewarded and that one day they'll understand what happened along the way that, at the time, seemed so very frightening. It isn't explanations that carry us forward, it's our desire to go on."

Brida suddenly felt immensely tired. She needed to sleep. Sleep was the only magical kingdom into which she could freely enter.

That night, she had a beautiful dream full of seas and leafy islands. She woke in the early hours and was glad that Lorens was there beside her. She got up and went over to the bedroom window, where she looked out over the sleeping city of Dublin.

She thought of her father, who used to do just that with her whenever she woke feeling frightened. The memory brought with it another scene from her childhood.

She was on the beach with her father, and he asked her to go and see what the temperature of the water was like. She was five years old and glad to be able to help. She went to the water's edge and dipped in a toe.

"I put my feet in and it's cold," she told him.

Her father picked her up and carried her down to the water again and, without any warning, threw her in. She was shocked at first, but then laughed out loud at the trick he'd played.

"How's the water?" asked her father.

"It's lovely," she replied.

"Right, from now on, whenever you want to find out about something, plunge straight in."

She had quickly forgotten this lesson. She may only have been twenty-one, but she had already nurtured many enthusiasms, which she had abandoned as quickly as she had taken them up. She wasn't afraid of difficulties; what frightened her was being forced to choose one particular path.

Choosing a path meant having to miss out on others. She had a whole life to live, and she was always thinking that, in the future, she might regret the choices she made now.

"I'm afraid of committing myself," she thought to herself. She wanted to follow all possible paths and so ended up following none.

Even in that most important area of her life, love, she had failed to commit herself. After her first romantic disappointment, she had never again given herself entirely. She feared pain, loss, and separation. These things were inevitable on the path to love, and the only way of avoiding them was by deciding not to take that path at all. In order not to suffer, you had to renounce love. It was like putting out your own eyes in order not to see the bad things in life.

"Life is so complicated."

You had to take risks, follow some paths and abandon others. Sh

e remembered Wicca telling her about people who followed certain paths only to prove that they weren't the right ones, but that wasn't as bad as choosing a path and then spending the rest of your life wondering if you'd made the right choice. No one could make a choice without feeling afraid.

That was the law of life. That was the Dark Night, and no one could escape the Dark Night, even if they never made a decision, even if they lacked the courage to change anything, because that in itself was a decision, a change, except without the benefit of the treasures hidden in the Dark Night.

Lorens might be right. In the end, they would laugh at their initial fears, just as she had laughed at the snakes and scorpions she had imagined were there in the forest. In her despair, she had forgotten that Ireland's patron saint, St. Patrick, had long ago driven out all the snakes.

"I'm so glad you exist, Lorens," she said softly, afraid that he might hear.

She went back to bed and soon fell asleep. Before she did, though, she remembered another story about her father. It was Sunday, and they and all the family were having lunch at her grandmother's house. She must have been about fourteen, and she was complaining about not being able to do a homework assignment, because every time she started, it went wrong.