Protect her. "How old are you, my dear?"

"Fourteen."

She's old enough. In the fourth century the pope decreed that girls could be permitted to become nuns at the age of twelve.

"I'm afraid," Graciela said to the Reverend Mother Betina.

I'm afraid. The words rang in Betina's mind: I'm afraid…

That had been so many long years ago. She was speaking to her priest. "I don't know if I have a calling for this,

Father. I'm afraid."

"Betina, the first contact with God can be very disturbing, and the decision to dedicate your life to Him is a difficult one."

How did I find my calling! Betina wondered.

She had never been even faintly interested in religion. As a young girl she had avoided church and Sunday School. In her teens she was more interested in parties and clothes and boys. If her friends in Madrid had been asked to select possible candidates to become a nun, Betina would have been at the bottom of the list. More accurately, she would not even have been on their list. But when she was nineteen,

events started to happen that changed her life.

She was in her bed, asleep, when a voice said, "Betina,

get up and go outside."

She opened her eyes and sat up, frightened. She turned on the bedside lamp and realized she was alone. What a strange dream.

But the voice had been so real. She lay down again, but it was impossible to go back to sleep.

"Betina, get up and go outside."

It's my subconscious, she thought. Why would I want to go outside in the middle of the night?

She turned out the light and a moment later turned it on again. This is crazy.

But she put on a robe and slippers and went downstairs.

The household was asleep.

She opened the kitchen door, and as she did a wave of fear swept over her, because somehow she knew that she was supposed to go out the back into the yard. She looked around in the darkness, and her eye caught a glint of moonlight shining on an old refrigerator that had been abandoned and was used to store tools.

Betina suddenly knew why she was there. She walked over to the refrigerator as though hypnotized, and opened it. Her three-year-old brother was inside, unconscious.

That was the first incident. In time, Betina rationalized it as a perfectly normal experience. I must have heard my brother get up and go out into the yard, and I knew the refrigerator was there, and I was worried about him, so I went outside to check.

The next experience was not so easy to explain. It happened a month later.

In her sleep, Betina heard a voice say, "You must put out the fire."

She sat up, wide awake, her pulse racing. Again, it was impossible to go back to sleep. She put on a robe and slippers and went into the hallway. No smoke. No fire. She opened her parents' bedroom door. Everything was normal there. There was no fire in her brother's bedroom. She went downstairs and looked through every room. There was no sign of a fire.

I'm an idiot, Betina thought. It was only a dream.

She went back to bed just as the house was rocked by an explosion. She and her family escaped, and the firemen managed to put out the fire.

"It started in the basement," a fireman explained, "and a boiler exploded."

The next incident happened three weeks later. This time it was no dream.

Betina was on the patio reading when she saw a stranger walking across the yard. He looked at her and in that instant she felt a malevolence coming from him that was almost palpable. He turned away and was gone.

Betina was unable to get him out of her mind.

Three days later, she was in an office building, waiting for the elevator. The elevator door opened, and she was about to step into it when she looked at the elevator operator. It was the man she had seen in her garden. Betina backed away,

frightened. The elevator door closed and the elevator went up. Moments later, it crashed, killing everyone in it.

The following Sunday, Betina went to church.

Dear Lord, I don't know what's going on here, and I'm scared. Please guide me and tell me what you want me to do.

The answer came that night as Betina slept. The voice said one word. Devotion.

She thought about it all night, and in the morning she went to talk to the priest.

He listened intently to what she had to say.

"Ah. You are one of the fortunate ones. You have been chosen."

"Chosen for what?"

"Are you willing to devote your life to God, my child?"

"I—I don't know. I'm afraid."

But in the end, she joined the convent.

I chose the right path, the Reverend Mother Betina thought, because I have never known so much happiness…

And now here was this battered child saying, "I'm afraid."

The Reverend Mother took Graciela's hand. "Take your time,

Graciela. God won't go away. Think about it and come back and we can discuss it."

But what was there to think about? I've nowhere else in the world to go, Graciela thought. And the silence would be welcome. I have heard too many terrible sounds. She looked at the Reverend Mother and said, "I will welcome the silence."

That had been seventeen years earlier, and since then

Graciela had found peace for the first time. Her life was dedicated to God. The past no longer belonged to her. She was forgiven the horrors she had grown up with. She was Christ's bride, and at the end of her life, she would join Him.

As the years passed in deep silence, despite the occasional nightmares, the terrible sounds in her mind gradually faded away.

Sister Graciela was assigned to work in the garden,

tending the tiny rainbows of God's miracle, never tiring of their splendor. The walls of the convent rose high above her on all sides like a stone mountain, but Graciela never felt that they were shutting her in; they were shutting the terrible world out, a world she never wanted to see again.

Life in the convent was serene and peaceful. But now,

suddenly, her terrible nightmares had turned into a reality.

Her world had been invaded by barbarians. They had forced her out of her sanctuary, into the world she had renounced forever. And her sins came flooding back, filling her with horror. The Moor had returned. She could feel his hot breath on her face. As she fought him, Graciela opened her eyes, and it was the friar on top of her trying to penetrate her. He was saying, "Stop fighting me, Sister. You're going to enjoy this!"

"Mama," Graciela cried aloud. "Mama! Help me!"

CHAPTER SEVEN

Lucia Carmine felt wonderful as she walked down the street with Megan and Teresa. It was marvelous to wear feminine clothes again and hear the whisper of silk against her skin.

She glanced at the others. They were walking nervously,

unaccustomed to their new clothes, looking self-conscious and embarrassed in their skirts and stockings. They look as though they've been dropped from another planet. They sure as hell don't belong on this one, Lucia thought. They might as well be wearing signs that say CATCH ME.

Sister Teresa was the most uncomfortable of the three women. Thirty years in the convent had deeply ingrained a sense of modesty in her, and it was being violated by the events that had been thrust upon her. This world to which she had once belonged now seemed unreal. It was the convent that was real, and she longed to hurry back to the sanctuary of its protective walls.

Megan was aware that men were eyeing her as she walked down the street, and she blushed. She had lived in a world of women for so long that she had forgotten what it was like to see a man, let alone have one smile at her. It was embarrassing, indecent… exciting. The men aroused feelings in

Megan that had been long since buried. For the first time in years, she was conscious of her femininity.