Diana had sulked a little because she had been shooed back to camp after five minutes of running up and down the banks screaming with delight, making success unlikely and casting hazardous, but had forgotten about it when Sally recruited her to help build the fire.

The meal over, they sat around the fire as the light faded, sharing a litre of red wine Angie had bought the day before ('Sorry it isn't hock') and slipping into a half-serious debate on what they should agree to call their meals, to avoid confusion.

'English is a daft language that way,' Sally complained. 'Lunch at midday and dinner in the evening is middle-class; dinner at midday is working-class, and in the evening it may be tea or supper according to where you live. French is much more sensible – everyone knows what you mean by "dejeuner" and "diner". And German says what they are "Mittagessen" and "Abendessen".'

'Oh, but English is more complicated than that,' Dan said. 'It's not just a class thing. A London working man'll talk of "dinner" and "tea" at work and at home, but if he takes his wife to a restaurant he'll call it "lunch" and "dinner".'

'Period differences, too,' Angic pointed out. 'Dinner has shifted about, over the centuries… But it's always tended to be the main meal. So since it looks as though our main meal's going to be in the evening, when work's over and we've all settled down – I suggest we call that dinner and the midday one lunch. Sorry if it sounds middle-class but at least we'll understand each other.'

'I don't mind being thought bourgeois,' Greg conceded, 'as long as I get a solid working-class breakfast.'

'Who are you kidding?' Eileen asked. 'My father was a railway porter, so I reckon that makes me working-class. And my breakfast's a cup of coffee and a biscuit.'

'It wasn't this morning.'

'That was a special occasion.'

'Couple of months of this sort of life,' Dan said, 'and we'll all be wanting a real breakfast.'

With mock solemnity he put it to the vote, and Angie's suggested nomenclature was duly adopted. Moira found herself strangely pleased by the apparently trivial exchange, if only because everybody had so easily entered into the fun of it; the ability to share such nonsense cemented the tribe… Come on now, she told herself, don't get so analytical! But the feeling remained.

The time came to put Diana to bed, in her little inner 'room' of the tent. She put up a show of reluctance but in fact could hardly keep her eyes open, and Dan, who had a way with bedtime stories, managed to settle her down and she was fast asleep with the story half told. Dan and Moira rejoined the others round the fire; a contented silence had fallen on them all and a bright first-quarter moon was transforming mountain, forest and meadow.

After a while, Rosemary said quietly: 'What a night for a Circle.'

'We're not all witches, now,' Moira said. 'We'll have to hold our Circles when we're not putting Angie and Eileen out.'

'You do your own thing as and when you want to, my dears,' Angie told them. 'You want to dance round the fire, or something, you do it. I’ll go and baby-mind Diana -and Eileen can read a book or knit a sock or whatever.'

They protested politely but Angie firmly withdrew, taking Eileen with her. Eileen disappeared into the caravan and Angie settled down in a camp-chair by Moira and Dan's tent where she could hear if Diana woke. Ginger Lad (who had spent the day exploring and approving the camp site) climbed into her lap and purred.

She watched, with half-sleepy interest, while the two young couples and the old woman set up their Circle with the fire as its centre, some fifty paces from where she sat. Tightly packed as their vehicles had been, they obviously regarded their ritual equipment as essential baggage, for Dan fetched a hamper from the car and took from it various objects including a cloth which he used to transform the hamper into an altar, placing it to the north, which lay towards the tents and the forest of spruce. They stood three candle-lanterns around the Circle at the east, south, and west points and three more on the altar with other things which Angie could not distinguish at that distance, except for a chalice and an incense-burner and a couple of bowls. A light sword flashed firelight as Moira laid it at the foot of the altar. When everything was ready, the four younger ones took off all their clothes. Angie wondered if old Sally would too, and was amused to hear snatches of an exchange between her and Moira in which Sally wanted to strip – which, Angie inferred, she always did indoors -but Moira forbade it. Sally.appeared to grumble, briefly, but remained clothed. Youngster or not, Moira's authority as High Priestess was obviously accepted.

Moira picked up the sword and began to walk clockwise round the Circle.

'O thou Circle; be thou a meeting-place of love and joy and truth, a shield against all wickedness and evil……'

Moira's voice came clearly to her in the still air but after a while Angie stopped listening to the words themselves, finding herself caught up in the magical atmosphere of the scene and the dignified intimacy of the ritual. It was almost as though the mountains and the forest had moved imperceptibly inwards, watching and uniting with the focal fire and the young and old bodies that moved around it. The coven had linked hands now – not in a full ring, because the five of them could not quite reach each other round the fire, but in a circling chain with Moira at its head, chanting in quiet chorus:

'Eko, Eko, Azarak,

Eko, Eko, Zamilak,

Eko, Eko, Cermirmos,

Eko, Eko, Aradia…'

Then Angie saw two things, simultaneously; Eileen walking naked from the caravan towards the Circle, and Peter O'Malley watching, motionless, from the edge of the forest. Moira saw Eileen coming and smiled, breaking away from the circling group to pick up the sword and sweep it anticlockwise over a part of the perimeter as though opening an invisible door. Eileen ran through it, Moira closed the 'door' with a clockwise sweep, and Eileen was circling with the rest.

Angie looked across at Peter, wondering what he would do.

'By all the power of land and sea,

By all the might of moon and sun…'

Unhurriedly, Peter took off his clothes and laid them by the forest edge. Then he, too, walked across to the Circle like a young bearded Pan, and waited outside it. Moira was still smiling, and picked up her sword again to admit him as she had Eileen.

Seven of them were enough to encircle the fire and the ring closed.

Angie was spellbound; the circling bodies, moon- and fire-lit, seemed like nature-spirits, as much creatures of earth, air, fire and water as the wild landscape within which they moved. She wondered how long it would be before she, too, was irresistibly drawn in. The thought scared her a little and she drew back from it, but the magic still held her. The chanting became wordless, one with the distant rushing of the waterfall, the crackling of the fire and the secretive forest-sounds.

It was almost a shock when Moira spoke, her words unmistakably human again. She had halted before the altar with her arms raised, a tall fire-bronzed nymph about to call on the powers that created her, while the others ranged themselves behind her, suddenly still after their ring-dance.

Moira's voice was not loud but it seemed to flow through Angie and past her into the depths and heights of the forest and into nameless regions beyond.

'O Great Mother, thou who are called in this land Cerridwen of the rich earth and Arianrhod of the infinite sky, hear us I Let us be at peace in this place, at one with thy creatures and at one with thy mysteries. Nourish us at thy cauldron of abundance and immortality, O Cerridwen; teach us thy heavenly wisdom, O Arianrhod of the Silver Wheel. We invoke thee to aid us and we invoke thy consort, the Horned God of the Forest, to protect us and strengthen us; for we are all your creatures, we of the Craft and our friends also; and into your hands, our Mother and our Father, we place ourselves. Hear us, and grant that we may hear you. So mote it be!'