“You make it sound like a war.”
“I would rather call it a battle of wills. We have to attract Hilde’s attention
and get her over on our side before her father comes home to Lillesand.”
And then Sophie meets Alberto Knox disguised as a medieval monk in the
twelfth-century stone church.
Oh, no, the church! Hilde looked at the time. A quarter past one ... She had
forgotten all about the time.
Maybe it wouldn’t matter so much that she cut school on her birthday. But it did
mean that her classmates wouldn’t be celebrating with her. Oh well, she had always
had plenty of well-wishers.
Soon she found herself receiving a long sermon. Alberto had no problem
slipping into the role of a medieval priest.
When she read about how Sophia had appeared to Hildegard in visions, she
turned once again to her encyclopedia. But this time she found nothing about either of
them. Wasn’t that typical! As soon as it was a question of women or something to do
with women, the encyclopedia was about as informative as a moon crater. Was the
whole work censored by the Society for the Protection of Men?
Hildegard of Bingen was a preacher, a writer, a doctor, a botanist, and a
biologist. She was “perhaps an example of the fact that women were often more prac-
tical, more scientific even, in the Middle Ages.”
But there was not a single word about her in the encyclopedia. How scandalous!
Hilde had never heard that God had a “female side” or a “mother nature.” Her
name was Sophia, apparently—but she was apparently not worth printer’s ink, either.
The nearest she could find in the encyclopedia was an entry about the Santa
Sophia Church in Constantinople (now Istanbul), named Hagia Sophia, which means
Sacred Wisdom. But there was nothing about it being female. That was censorship,
wasn’t it?
Otherwise, it was true enough that Sophie had revealed herself to Hilde. She
was picturing the girl with the straight hair all the time ...
When Sophie gets home after spending most of the morning in St. Mary’s
Church, she stands in front of the brass mirror she took home from the cabin in the
woods.
She studied the sharp contours of her own pale face framed by that
impossible hair which defied any style but nature’s own. But beyond that face
was the apparition of another girl.
Suddenly the other girl began to wink frantically with both eyes, as if to
signal that she was really in there on the other side. The apparition lasted only
a few seconds. Then she was gone.
How many times had Hilde stood in front of the mirror like that as if she was
searching for someone else behind the glass? But how could her father have known
that?
Wasn’t it also a dark-haired woman she had been searching for? Great-
grandmother had bought it from a Gypsy woman, hadn’t she? Hilde felt her hands
shaking as they held the book. She had the feeling that Sophie really existed
somewhere “on the other side.”
Now Sophie is dreaming about Hilde and Bjerkely. Hilde can neither see nor
hear her, but then—Sophie finds Hilde’s gold crucifix on the dock. And the crucifix—
with Hilde’s initials and everything—is in Sophie’s bed when she wakes after her
dream!
Hilde forced herself to think hard. Surely she hadn’t lost her crucifix as well?