The Witch of Portobello

"You asked me to turn the machine off."

"Well, turn it on again."

I did as she asked. Athena went on.

"It's difficult for me too. That's why I'm not going back home. I'm going into hiding. The police might protect me from madmen, but not from human justice. I had a mission to fulfill and it took me so far that I even risked the custody of my son. Not that I regret it. I fulfilled my destiny."

"What was your mission?"

"You know what it was. You were there from the start. Preparing the way for the Mother. Continuing a Tradition that has been suppressed for centuries, but which is now beginning to experience a resurgence."

"Perhaps..."

I stopped, but she didn't say a word until I'd finished my sentence.

"...perhaps you came too early, and people aren't yet ready."

Athena laughed.

"Of course they're not. That's why there were all those confrontations, all that aggression and obscurantism. Because the forces of darkness are dying, and they are thrown back on such things as a last resort. They seem very strong, as animals do before they die, but afterward, they're too exhausted to get to their feet. I sowed the seed in many hearts, and each one will reveal the Renaissance in its own way, but one of those hearts will follow the full Tradition--Andrea."

Andrea.

Who hated her, who blamed her for the collapse of our relationship, who said to anyone who would listen that Athena had been taken over by egotism and vanity, and had destroyed something that had been very hard to create.

Athena got to her feet and picked up her bag--Hagia Sofia was still with her.

"I can see your aura. It's being healed of some needless suffering."

"You know, of course, that Andrea doesn't like you."

"Naturally. But we've been speaking for nearly half an hour about love. Liking has nothing to do with it. Andrea is perfectly capable of fulfilling her mission. She has more experience and more charisma than I do. She learned from my mistakes; she knows that she must be prudent because in an age in which the wild beast of obscurantism is dying, there's bound to be conflict. Andrea may hate me as a person, and that may be why she's developed her gifts so quickly--to prove that she was more able than me. When hatred makes a person grow, it's transformed into one of the many ways of loving."

She picked up her tape recorder, put it in her bag, and left.

At the end of that week, the court gave its verdi

ct: various witnesses were heard, and Sherine Khalil, known as Athena, was given the right to keep custody of her child.

Moreover, the head teacher at the boy's school was officially warned that any kind of discrimination against the boy would be punishable by law.

I knew there was no point in ringing the apartment where she used to live. She'd left the key with Andrea, taken her sound system, some clothes, and said that she would be gone for some time.

I waited for the telephone call to invite me to celebrate that victory together. With each day that passed, my love for Athena ceased being a source of suffering and became a lake of joy and serenity. I no longer felt so alone. At some point in space, our souls--and the souls of all those returning exiles--were joyfully celebrating their reunion.

The first week passed, and I assumed she was trying to recover from the recent tensions. A month later, I assumed she must have gone back to Dubai and taken up her old job; I telephoned and was told that they'd heard nothing more from her, but if I knew where she was, could I please give her a message: the door was always open, and she was greatly missed.

I decided to write a series of articles on the reawakening of the Mother, which provoked a number of offensive letters accusing me of "promoting paganism," but which were otherwise a great success with our readership.

Two months later, when I was just about to have lunch, a colleague at work phoned me. The body of Sherine Khalil, the Witch of Portobello, had been found in Hampstead. She had been brutally murdered.

Now that I've finished transcribing all the taped interviews, I'm going to give her the transcript. She's probably gone for a walk in the Snowdonia National Park as she does every afternoon. It's her birthday--or, rather, the date that her parents chose for her birthday when they adopted her--and this is my present to her.

Viorel, who will be coming to the celebration with his grandparents, has also prepared a surprise for her. He's recorded his first composition in a friend's studio and he's going to play it during supper.

She'll ask me afterward: "Why did you do this?"

And I'll say: "Because I needed to understand you." During all the years we've been together, I've only heard what I thought were legends about her, but now I know that the legends are true.