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sweat oozing from her armpits and the pulse in her neck begin to thump.
    And even though she didn’t want to, that was the way she reactedwhen Atu locked the door between her office and the atrium so he wasn’t disturbed with his latest conquest.
    Always the way. Several times she’d considered moving her office. She had even tried to encourage him to move his quarters to another part of the academy, but things remained as they always had been.
    It’s more practical this way, dear Pirjo, he’d say. Key decisions and actions, key supply lines, all in one building. A few steps from administration to you or to me. Everything just around the corner. Let’s not change that, he’d continue.
    She looked again at the door to the atrium, rubbing her arms, and ignored the telephone when it rang again. She ignored the disciples who waved to her through the window from the square in front. And finally she tried to ignore the image of the man who’d obsessed her for years and who right now was fondling another woman in the room next door.
    But Pirjo couldn’t ignore the clicking sound from the door because she detested it. It made her short-circuit. The warning that he’d shortly be lying beside another woman than her in full swing, or almost worse, that he was finished with her now and had unlocked the door. From an inner peace she exploded to wild revolt in one second and the discomfort was enormous.
    But why couldn’t she just accept it? Through the years the sound had always been there; Atu had never tried to conceal it from her. But did he know what it did to her, that ultimate sound of distance and exclusion and ridicule? The bitter sound of degradation. And if he did know, would he try to spare her it? She doubted it.
    That was why she always ended up covering her ears, chanting to find the balance in her body.
    “Horus, born of a virgin,” she began. “Guide for the twelve disciples, raised from the dead on the third day, free me from my despondency, let jealousy fade, let the rain of new temptations stop, and I will offer a crystal that refracts the sun in all colors in your honor.”
    After that, she stood for a while breathing deeply. And when the stomach cramps let up, she thrust her hand in her pocket and grabbed one of the small stones, went over to the window at the back of the room,opened it, looked out over the Baltic Sea toward the Swedish island of Gotland in the distance, and threw the glistening crystal as far out to sea as she possibly could.
    As the years went by, there must have been many crystals washed up on the white sand.
    *   *   *
    For almost four years, Atu Abanshamash Dumuzi’s school for the study of nature absorption had had its headquarters on Öland, the elongated island off the southeast coast of Sweden, and that suited Pirjo just fine. Here, in this peaceful landscape, most things were under control, and here nothing happened other than that which Providence and the universe desired. Here, Atu’s soul was undisturbed and that meant everything to Pirjo.
    It was different when he recruited new customers from the centers in Barcelona, Venice, and London, meeting all the women who found themselves out there in no-man’s-land. When they gaspingly accepted him as an oracle, a soul healer from the ocean of the northern lights and cosmic energy. When he penetrated their shattered dreams, frustrations, and lack of grounding influences in their lives, and like a cloud as light as a feather, lifted them up to the sun.
    In contrast to the island, out there in the world Pirjo couldn’t really do anything other than feel alone, trapped by a deep jealousy and isolated in the feeling of insignificance.
    Granted, Atu treated her in a way she’d rightly fought her way to as his extra hand and think tank, diary writer, organizer, and coordinator. But Atu didn’t look at her in the way she wanted him to.
    He didn’t look at her as he did the other women.
    As the years had passed, Pirjo became