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through a ritual death and is adopted into another estate after rebirth.’
    ‘What reliable proofs of this lasting sympathy have you?’ I asked incredulously.
    ‘The simplest are best,’ said Sapphire eagerly, before Sally had time to answer. ‘When my mother was my age she went to the strangers’ swimming-pool one day, feeling drawn that way, and sat down on the grass. She knew that someone was about whom she could love; but she felt the need of a love-token. So she said “Bearskin” in an unemphatic voice to no one in particular, not knowing why she said the word, and a young man on the other side of the pool swam across, and said: “You called me: I answer to that name.” Then she recognized him as a magician who lived a long way across the mountains and hadn’t visited our village since he had been a child. So she told him: “Think of a number, Bearskin.” And he answered at once: “Thirty-two,” which was the number she had in her mind. Then she asked quickly: “Thirty-two what?” And he answered: “Thirty-two white rabbits.” “Where?” she asked. “Under an apricot-tree,” he said. “What doing?” she asked. “Nibbling lettuces,” he said. “Little lettuces?” “Lettuces with hearts,” he said. “When?” she asked. “Tonight, tomorrow night and until the tree flowers again.” So that night, you see, Bearskin came to stay with her and she conjured up an apricot-tree to grow over their bed. On the very first night they floated together among its boughs. He stayed for a month, then for two more; and at the end of the third month of quiet life together she put a bowl of primroses on a table in the room where they had breakfast, and of the whole large bunch only one had four petals. This flower was half-hidden by a leaf; but he noticed it. Not saying a word, he removed it while she was out of the room, and replaced it with a primrose of five petals. Do you follow?’
    ‘I think so,’ I said. ‘Five is woman; four is less than woman; six is woman-monster. I learned that from a poet named Donne.’
    ‘That’s well put. When my mother saw what he’d done, she didn’t say anything either, but replaced the flower with another five-petalled one, but red; and that night he composed a melody called “The Five Red Petals”, which proved that he knew how deeply she loved him. (When he died, two days after my mother, the melody was recorded on gold, which happens very rarely indeed.) Then they parted for as long as they had been together, which is the custom: meanwhile they wrote to each other. The magicians’ letter test is very severe. Each lover writes a message above a tablet, not touching it with the pen, so that it seems a mere blank: but the other can read it by pressing it against his or her breastbone.’
    ‘If the letter were intercepted, could another magician read it?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘How very odd! But you haven’t explained the white rabbits.’
    ‘He meant that she had apricot-yellow hair and very white teeth – thirty-two is a full set of teeth, you know – and that he would love her until her hair turned white like apricot blossom.’
    ‘I see. Well, what happened then?’
    ‘Bearskin came to live with my mother for a year, and they began to share their dreams and go for long journeys together in them. And finally they dreamed of a daughter. So after the usual proclamation, she gave Bearskin the right of fatherhood, and I was born the next year.’
    ‘A very pretty story,’ I said; adding under my breath, ‘but a little too pretty to be true.’ And indeed, I found out later that the New Cretans told many stories that, though not exactly lies, were true only in a manner of speaking. As for the ‘floating’, they certainly believed in it as a common sexual phenomenon, and pairs of lovers may well have created the joint illusion by the literalness of their belief; but I never had any subjective experience of it myself during my stay. They also seriously believed