EXCERPT When the girls of the waters, the Iara, seek to attract young boys using amorous magic so as to lead them into the forest and under the surface of a dark lake to their father, Tëpërësiki, so that he can teach them the songs which, by naming them, enable them to cough up the evil beings, the Whites powerfully clasp the child in their arms and accelerate the fatal course of their steed through the night and wind. When a young boy is visited in his sleep by the xapiri, his arms adorned with scarlet macaw tails and a profusion of brightly coloured feather bouquets, coated with vermilion annatto dye, and he awakes screaming, terrified by the beauty of this invitation to share the secret of the spirits, they stuff him full of Chamonix Orange and, so that he doesn’t go mad, any more than he already has, they take him once or twice a week to Meudon, to Colette, a good friend of Philonenczewsko’s, a philosopher who makes it her business to desensitise male children by teaching them to be more interested in the vulva than in what they see at night…