Brida

Now and then, Wicca would ask if she was still listening and she’d give a mumbled ‘Yes’. But her mind was miles away, travelling, wandering about in places she’d never been to before. Every detail on the cards seemed to push her further on in that journey.

All of a sudden, like someone entering a dream, Brida realised that she could no longer hear what Wicca was saying. A voice, a voice that seemed to come from within – but which she knew came from outside – began to whisper something to her. ‘Do you understand?’ Brida said that she did. ‘Do you understand?’ asked the mysterious voice again.

This, however, was of no importance. The tarot cards before her began to show fantastic scenes: men with bronzed, oiled bodies, wearing only thongs, and some sporting masks like the giant heads of fish. Clouds raced across the sky, as if everything were moving much faster than normal, and the scene shifted abruptly to a square, surrounded by grand buildings, where a few old men were urgently telling secrets to a group of young boys, as if some form of very ancient knowledge were about to be lost for ever.

‘Add seven and eight and you’ll have my number. I’m the devil, and I signed the book,’ said a boy in medieval clothes at what appeared to be a celebration. Drunken men and women smiled out at her. The scene changed yet again to the sea, to reveal temples carved out of the rocks, and then the sky began to be covered by black clouds pierced by brilliant flashes of lightning.

A door appeared. It was a heavy door, like the door of an old castle. The door came closer to Brida, and she had a sense that soon she would be able to open it.

‘Come back,’ said the voice.

‘Come back,’ said the voice on the phone. It was Wicca. Brida was annoyed with her for interrupting such a remarkable experience merely to bore her with more talk about caretakers and plumbers.

‘Just a moment,’ she replied. She was struggling to find that door, but everything had vanished.

‘I know what happened,’ Wicca told her. Brida was stunned, in a state of shock. She couldn’t understand what was going on.

‘I know what happened,’ Wicca said again, in response to Brida’s silence. ‘I won’t say anything more about the plumber. He was here last week and fixed everything.’

Before hanging up, she said she would expect Brida at the agreed time.

Brida put down the phone without saying goodbye. She sat for a long time staring at the kitchen wall before subsiding into convulsive, soothing sobs.

‘It was a trick (#ulink_3564952c-5f9b-5a36-b60e-131c46e1b7e3),’ Wicca told a frightened Brida, when they sat down again in the Italian armchairs.

‘I know how you must be feeling,’ she went on. ‘Sometimes we set off down a path simply because we don’t believe in it. It’s easy enough. All we have to do then is prove that it isn’t the right path for us. However, when things start to happen, and the path does reveal itself to us, we become afraid of carrying on.’

Wicca said that she didn’t understand why so many people chose to spend their whole life destroying paths they didn’t even want to follow, instead of following the one path that would lead them somewhere.

‘I can’t believe it was a trick,’ protested Brida. She had lost her air of arrogance and defiance. Her respect for Wicca had grown considerably.

‘No, no, the vision wasn’t a trick. The trick I’m referring to is the phone. For millions of years, we only ever spoke to someone we could see, then, in less than a century, “seeing” and “speaking” were suddenly separated. We think it’s quite normal now and don’t realise the huge impact it has on our reflexes. Our body still hasn’t got used to it.

‘The practical result is that, when we speak on the phone, we often enter a state very similar to certain magical trances. Our mind tunes into another frequency and becomes more receptive to the invisible world. I know some witches who always keep a pen and paper by the phone and, while they’re talking to someone, they sit doodling apparently nonsensical things. When they hang up, though, they find that their “doodles” are often symbols from the Tradition of the Moon.’

‘But why did the tarot reveal itself to me?’

‘That’s the great problem with anyone wanting to study magic,’ replied Wicca. ‘When we set out on the path, we always have a fairly clear idea of what we hope to find. Women are generally seeking their Soulmate, and men are looking for Power. Neither party is really interested in learning. They simply want to reach the thing they have set as their goal.

‘But the path of magic – like the path of life – is and always will be the path of Mystery. Learning something means coming into contact with a world of which you know nothing. In order to learn, you must be humble.’

‘Like plunging into the Dark Night,’ said Brida.

‘Don’t interrupt.’ There was a note of barely contained irritation in Wicca’s voice, but Brida realised that it wasn’t because of what she’d said. ‘Maybe she’s angry with the Magus,’ she thought. ‘Perhaps she was once in love with him. They are more or less the same age.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

‘That’s all right.’ Wicca seemed equally surprised by her own reaction.

‘You were telling me about the tarot.’

‘When you were spreading the cards, you always had a preconceived idea of what would happen. You never let the cards tell their own story; you were trying to make them confirm what you imagined you knew.

‘I realised this when we started talking on the phone. I realised, too, that it was a sign and that the phone was my ally. So I launched into a very boring conversation and asked you to look at the cards. You went into the trance provoked by the phone, and the cards led you into their magical world.’

Wicca suggested that next time Brida was with someone who was talking on the phone, she should take a good look at their eyes. She would be surprised by what she saw.

‘I want to ask something else (#ulink_2537e5e0-c559-5bc5-ab90-ed5c1b5acba6),’ said Brida over tea in Wicca’s surprisingly modern and practical kitchen.

‘I want to know why you didn’t let me abandon the path.’

‘Because,’ thought Wicca, ‘I want to find out what the Magus saw in you, apart, I mean, from your Gift.’ What she said was: ‘Because you have a Gift.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Easy. By your ears.’

‘By my ears! How disappointing!’ Brida thought to herself. ‘And there was me thinking she could see my aura.’

‘Everyone has a Gift, but some are born with a more highly developed Gift than others – me, for example – who have to struggle really hard to develop their Gift. People who were born with a Gift have very small, attached earlobes.’

Instinctively, Brida touched her earlobes. It was true.

‘Do you have a car?’

No, Brida said, she didn’t.

‘Then prepare to spend a fortune on taxi fares,’ said Wicca, getting up. ‘It’s time to take our next step.’

‘Things are suddenly moving very fast,’ thought Brida, as she got to her feet. Life was beginning to resemble the clouds she had seen in her trance.

By around mid-afternoon (#ulink_c42465eb-4986-565e-ab1f-1dbe34313fb9) they had reached some mountains about fifteen miles south of Dublin. ‘We could have made the same trip by bus,’ Brida grumbled to herself while she paid the taxi. Wicca had brought with her a bag and some clothes.

‘If you like, I can wait,’ said the driver. ‘It’s going to be pretty difficult finding another taxi in these parts. This is the middle of nowhere.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Wicca, to Brida’s relief. ‘We always get what we want.’

The driver gave them a strange look and drove off. They were standing before a grove of trees, which extended as far as the foot of the nearest mountain.

‘Ask permission to enter,’ said Wicca. ‘The spirits of the forests always appreciate good manners.’

Brida asked permission. The wood, which had, up until then, been just an ordinary wood, seemed suddenly to come to life.

‘Stay on the bridge between the visible and the invisible,’ said Wicca, while they walked through the trees. ‘Everything in the Universe has life, and you must always try to stay in contact with that life. It understands your language. And the world will begin to take on a different meaning for you.’

Brida was surprised at Wicca’s agility. Her feet seemed to levitate above the ground, making almost no noise.

They reached a clearing, near a huge stone. While she tried to think how that stone could have got there, Brida noticed the ashes from a fire right in the middle of the open space.