Brida

She drank a little more. She was getting closer to her objective; it would not be long now until the Spring Equinox, and she could afford to relax. It had been a long time since she had allowed herself to drink more than she should, but now, all she had to do was dream of a dress.

They continued talking and drinking. Brida wanted to return to the subject of Wicca, but she needed him to be more relaxed, too. She kept both their glasses filled, and they finished the first bottle while in the middle of a conversation about the difficulties of living in such a small village. The locals associated the Magus with the Devil.

Brida was pleased to feel important to him; he must be very lonely. Maybe no one in the village ever addressed more than a few polite words to him. They opened another

bottle, and she was surprised to see that a Magus, a man who spent all day in the forest seeking communion with God, was also capable of drinking and getting drunk.

By the time they had finished the second bottle, she had forgotten that she was there in order to thank the man sitting opposite her. Her relationship with him--she realized now--had always been a veiled challenge. She didn't want to see him as an ordinary person, but she was getting dangerously close to doing just that. She preferred the image of the wise man who had led her to a cabin high up in the trees and who often spent hours contemplating the sunset.

She began to talk about Wicca, to see how he reacted. She said what an excellent Teacher she was and how she had taught her everything she needed to know so far, but in such a subtle way that it was as if she'd always known the things she was learning.

"But you have," said the Magus. "That is the Tradition of the Sun."

"He's obviously not going to admit that Wicca is a good teacher," thought Brida. She drank another glass of wine and continued to talk about her Teacher, but the Magus made no further comment.

"Tell me about you and her," she said, to see if she could provoke him. She didn't want to know, she really didn't, but it was the best way to get a reaction.

"A case of young love. We were part of a generation that knew no limits, the generation of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones."

She was surprised to hear this. Far from relaxing her, the wine was making her tense. She still wanted to ask those questions, but now she realized that she wasn't happy with the answers.

"That was when we met," he went on, unaware of her feelings. "We were both seeking our respective paths, and they crossed when we happened to go to the same Teacher. Together we learned about the Tradition of the Sun and the Tradition of the Moon, and both, in our own fashion, became Teachers."

Brida decided to pursue the subject. Two bottles of wine can make complete strangers feel as if they have been friends from childhood; wine gives people courage.

"Why did you split up?"

It was the Magus's turn to order another bottle. She noticed this and grew even more tense. She would hate to find out that he was still in love with Wicca.

"We split up when we learned about Soul Mates."

"If you hadn't found out about those points of light or the special light in your Soul Mate's eyes, would you still be together?"

"I don't know. I only know that if we were, it wouldn't work for either of us. We only understand life and the Universe when we find our Soul Mate."

Brida paused for a moment, suddenly lost for words. It was the Magus who took up the conversation.

"Let's go," he said, after taking only a sip of the wine from that third bottle. "I need to feel the wind and the cold air on my face."

"He's getting drunk," she thought. "And he's afraid." She felt proud of herself; she could take her drink better than he could, and she wasn't in the least afraid of losing control. She had come out that night intending to enjoy herself.

"Just a little more. After all, I'm the King of the Night."

The Magus drank another glass, but he knew he had reached his limit.

"You haven't asked me anything about myself," she said challengingly. "Aren't you curious? Or can you use your powers to see right through me?"

For a fraction of a second, she felt she had gone too far, but then she dismissed the thought. She merely noticed a change in the Magus's eyes; there was a completely different light in them now. Something in Brida seemed to open, or, rather, she had the sense of a wall coming down, a feeling that, from then on, everything would be permitted. She remembered the last time they had been together, her desire to stay with him, and his coldness. Now she understood that she hadn't gone there that night in order to thank him, but to seek revenge: to tell him that she'd discovered the Force with another man, a man she loved.

"Why do I need revenge? Why am I angry with him?" she wondered, but the wine wouldn't allow her to answer those questions coherently.

The Magus was looking at the young woman opposite him, and the desire to demonstrate his Power kept coming and going in his mind. On a night very like this, many years ago, his whole life had changed. It might have been the age of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, but there were also people around at the time in search of unknown forces, forces they didn't even believe in. They made use of magical powers while still thinking that they were stronger than the powers themselves, convinced that they'd be able to leave the Tradition as soon as boredom set in. He had been one of those people. He had entered the sacred world through the Tradition of the Moon, learning rituals and crossing the bridge that connects the visible and the invisible.

At first, he dabbled in these powers on his own, learning from books, with no help from anyone. Then he met his Teacher. At their first meeting, his Teacher told him that he would be better off learning through the Tradition of the Sun, but the Magus didn't want that. The Tradition of the Moon was more interesting; it involved performing ancient rituals and learning the wisdom of time. And so his Teacher taught him the Tradition of the Moon, saying that perhaps this was the path that would eventually lead him to the Tradition of the Sun.

At the time, he was utterly sure of himself, of life, and of his conquests. A brilliant career lay ahead of him, and he intended using the Tradition of the Moon to achieve his goals. In order to do so, witchcraft demanded that he first become a Teacher, and that he never infringe the one limitation placed on all Teachers of the Tradition of the Moon: never to interfere with another person's free will. He could forge his own path in the world by using his magical knowledge, but he couldn't get rid of someone simply because they were in his way nor could he force them to follow him on his path. That was the one prohibition, the only tree of whose fruit he must not eat.

And everything went smoothly until he fell in love with one of his Teacher's other students, and she fell in love with him. Both knew the Traditions; he knew that he was not her man, and she knew that she was not his woman. Nevertheless, they surrendered to their love, leaving life in charge of separating them when the time came. Far from diminishing their passion, this only made them live each moment as if it were their last, and the love between them had all the intensity of things that take on an eternal quality precisely because they're going to die.