The Valkyries

conspiracies.”
    “That’s
your
word for it.”
    “But I know it’s true. And you confirmed it.”
    “I said that the gates of paradise are open, for a certain time, to all who desire to enter. But I alsosaid that each person has his or her own path—and only one’s angel can say which is the correct one.”
    Why am I acting this way? What’s going on with me?
she thought. She remembered the engravings she had seen as a child, of angels leading children to the edge of an abyss. She was surprised at what she had been saying here. She had fought many times with him, but she had never spoken about magic in the way that she was now.
    Yet her soul had grown during these forty days in the desert, she had learned about her second mind, she had crossed swords with a powerful woman. She had died many times, and was stronger each time she was reborn.
    The hunt actually gave me great pleasure,
she thought.
    Yes. That’s what was driving her crazy. Because, since the day she had challenged Valhalla to the duel, she had had the feeling that she had wasted her entire previous life.
    No,
she thought.
I
can’t accept that. I know J. He is a farmer-type, and an enlightened person. I spoke with my angel before Paulo did. I know how to speak to my angel as well as Valhalla does—even though the language is still a bit strange.
    But she was apprehensive. Perhaps she had been wrong in choosing how she wanted to live her life.
I’ve got to keep talking,
she thought.
I
have to convince myself that I didn’t make the wrong choice.
    “You need yet another miracle,” she said. “And you will always need yet another. You will never be satisfied, and you will never understand that the kingdom of heaven cannot be conquered by force.”
    God, make his angel appear, because it’s so important to him! Make me be wrong, Lord.
    “You’re not even giving me a chance to talk,” he said.
    But at that moment, the first star appeared on the horizon.
    It was time for channeling.

Chapter 50
     
    T HEY SAT DOWN, AND, AFTER A BRIEF period of relaxing, began to concentrate on the second mind. Chris couldn’t stop thinking about Paulo’s last comment—she really hadn’t permitted him to talk.
    Now it was too late. She had to allow her second mind to recite its boring problems. To voice the same concerns, over and over. Her second mind that night wanted to get at her heart. It was saying she had chosen the wrong path, and had found her true destiny only when she had experimented with the Valhalla character.
    It was telling her that it was too late to change, that her life had been a failure, that she would spend the rest of her life following her husband—without experiencing the pleasures of the dark forest and the taking of prisoners.
    It was telling her she had chosen the wrong husband—that she would have been better off marrying a farmer-type. It was telling her that Paulo had other women, and that those women were hunter-types that he met on the night of the full moon, and at secret magic rituals. It was telling her that she should leave him, so that he could be happy with a woman who was his equal.
    She argued several times—saying that it wasn’t important that she knew there were other women, that she wouldn’t leave him on that account. Because love isn’t logical or rational. But her second mind came back at her—so she decided not to argue. She would just listen quietly until the conversation went silent and died out.
    Then a kind of fog began to envelop her thinking. The channeling had begun. An indescribable sensation of peace took hold of her, as if the wings of her angel were covering the entire desert, preventing anything bad from happening. Whenever she did her channeling, she felt a great love for herself and for the universe.
    She kept her eyes open, so as not to lose her awareness, but the cathedrals began to appear. They emerged, enveloped in mist, immense churches she had never visited, but that existed somewhere in the world. During her early days of channeling, she’d had only confused impressions, indigenous songs blending with meaningless words; but now her angel was showing her cathedrals. That seemed to make some sort of sense, although she couldn’t quite understand it.
    In the beginning, they had only been trying to begin a conversation. With each day that passed,she was able to understand her angel better. Soon, there would be a level of communication as clear as the one she enjoyed with anyone