Brida

"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 had 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 center 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 gray 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 elevator. 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, a 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 sea

rch 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 favorite 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 facedown, in no particular order, in the glass table. This was a method quite unlike any Brida had learned in 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.