Goddess Girl Prophecy

by C C Daniels

  My first instinct was to run. That didn’t do me much good the night before, so I squelched that first reaction and stayed in my seat—the implications of that information pinging wildly around in my mind.

  Toci sipped her tea, carefully watching my reaction as well, but she didn’t barge into my thoughts.

  “Then, you know my birth parents.” It was a statement, not a question.

  A flash of pain crossed her face. She gently set the cup in its saucer. “Yes.” Her nod was übergraceful, übersad.

  There was quick knock on the back door. “Anybody home?” Kanaan called out.

  “Come in, Kanaan,” MawMaw said.

  Toci stood as a cleaned-up Kanaan entered the living room. His eyes said that he recognized her as the image in the light. His speechlessness made Toci smile.

  “I’m Toci.” She offered an outstretch hand to shake.

  He swallowed and shook her hand. “Kanaan.”

  Toci nodded. “I recognize you from the call.”

  “Uh-huh,” was all he could get out as he continued to shake her hand, staring into her blue eyes.

  “That’s what you call that…that”—I searched for a word to describe the beams—“odd light.”

  “Yes.” Toci broke the handshake and retook her seat. “We call it a light call.”

  Kanaan took in my wet hair and towel wardrobe with a creased brow. He didn’t ask, but just sat on the arm of the couch next to me and stared at Toci, who smiled back politely.

  “It’s a very unusual form of communication,” Kanaan said.

  Toci laughed. “Not for us. It’s—ah,” she said, searching for a word “—old-fashion for us. You haven’t reached that level of technology.”

  “Yet,” I said defiantly.

  Toci lost her smile. She actually grimaced, her eyes darting back and forth between mine before picking up her teacup, again.

  “Our visitor knows who my birth parents are,” I filled Kanaan in.

  He nodded like it was perfectly normal. “Oh, that’s interesting. You two definitely look related.” He pointed at Toci and me.

  He just put words to my inner panic. No longer able to sit still and calm, I stood, and began to pace with my arms across my stomach. Unable to catch my breath and feeling nauseated, I put my head between my knees.

  “Wray?” Kanaan touched my arm.

  “Allow me,” Toci said.

  Kanaan dropped his hand. Toci placed her hand on the indentation at the small of my back.

  “Breathe extremely deep,” Toci said.

  Her hand was unusually warm. I felt the heat from it even through the towel. I inhaled and exhaled.

  “You can go deeper than that,” she demanded like a personal trainer. “Fill up your lungs. Then add another breath.”

  I did as she said, surprised at how much oxygen my lungs could actually hold. Where her hand was on my back, I felt the same tingling sensation that the sparkly dust had caused on my arm when it healed the scrape.

  “Exhale as slow as you can,” she instructed, now rubbing my back in a circular motion. “And inhale again.”

  When I finished two deep breaths, my body felt much calmer. Toci took her hand off my back. I stood to be face to face with her. Looking into her eyes, I knew. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that we really were related.

  She smiled at me. In Toci’s eyes, I saw the lullaby singing woman from my recurring dream. Then the vision morphed into me. It was as though I was staring, through Toci and the woman, into my own eyes. I gasped and darted upstairs.

  “Wray!” MawMaw shouted as I raced to my bedroom.

  “It’s fine, Osyka.” Toci’s sugary voice followed me. “She needs time to—”

  And I slammed the door shut.

  The breathing technique helped to calm me as long as I wasn’t panicked. Breathing did nothing for the mind-blowing thought racing through my brain—I was an alien. Was I all alien? Or only part alien? Oh my God, did I just ask myself if I was a half-breed alien?

  There was a slight knock on my door, and I knew it was Kanaan. He opened the door just enough to peek in.

  “Can I come in?”

  I nodded yes, unable to speak. He came in and shut the door behind him. He sat on the edge of my bed.

  “So.” He looked at me with a hopeful smile. “No wonder you’re so special.”

  I looked at him like he’d gone crazy. “You’re not freaked out by the illogical, crazy news that I’m perhaps related to an alien?”

  He shook his head slowly, a smirk forming on his lips. “No, I figured if you wanted to eat me or for me to impregnate you, you would have said so by now.”

  “Kanaan. This isn’t funny. This is surreal. Skulls and lights and healing and—”

  Losing the smirk, his expression got serious. “But it is real. We’ve seen it, experienced it together. There’s no denying it. I think that’s where you’re making it harder on yourself. Everything doesn’t have to be tied up neatly with an explanation.”

  But it did for me. I sat next to Kanaan and held my hand over my mouth in panic.

  I felt Toci at the other end of the house. She let me into her mind—purposely I think—to watch her set the tray of teacups onto the kitchen counter and leave out the back door.

  “Here’s another thing,” Kanaan said picking up and holding my hand. “You’re Wray. I’m getting to know you better every day and you’re a good person. Where you come from makes no difference to me.” He nodded assuredly. “I’m a Ute, and Utes accept good people no matter who they are.”

  MawMaw knocked on my door and came in before I could answer.

  “Hey,” she scolded Kanaan. “Off the bed.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He kissed my forehead and went to sit in my vintage purple beanbag chair, which he was much too big for.

  MawMaw took the place Kanaan vacated on my bed.

  I didn’t wait for her to speak. “You knew all along.” There was a resentful edge to my tone.

  She nodded once.

  “Why didn’t you tell me? Why weren’t you honest with me?!” My anger kicked back in. I knew my eyes were glowing, but I didn’t care at that point.

  They freaked MawMaw out. She stood back up and stepped a little away from me.

  Take it easy, Wray, Kanaan warned me.

  PhD MawMaw had tears of frustration in her eyes. I felt her tension.

  “Okay, let’s say I did sit you down and tell you that you weren’t of this planet.” She challenged me with a raised eyebrow and a touch of her own anger. “How quickly would you have called a psychiatrist? And what age should I have told you? Two? Six? Ten? When would you have believed me?”

  “Never,” Kanaan piped in from the beanbag. “Wray wouldn’t have ever believed you. She can barely wrap her head around it now.”

  I glared at him. “Whose side are you on?”

  He leaned forward. “Yours. I’m always on your side. So is she.” He pointed at MawMaw. “MawMaw loves you, has always loved you. Beating her up isn’t going to change anything about this situation. Admit it. You wouldn’t have believed her, would you?”

  I hung my head in answer.

  MawMaw sat down beside me, again and gently took my hand. “I may not have told you where you were from, but I’ve always tried to impress upon you how special you are. Haven’t I?” She ducked her head to peer up into my eyes.

  “That was just grandmotherly talk.” Apparently, the two sides of MawMaw did know of each other.

  “Well, now you know it was much more than that.” She melted the rest of my anger with a kiss on my cheek. “So, now, tell me how you came to dig up a god’s skull in Garden of the Gods?”

  I looked at her and then Kanaan. “Honaw told her and Junius about it last night.”

  I turned to MawMaw. “I didn’t have to dig.” I shook my head. “Not really. It was lying on the surface.”

  MawMaw’s expression was clear—that wasn’t what she wanted to hear. “As though someone wanted you to find i
t?”

  I nodded, thinking that Amaya had said much the same. Once I got going, I told MawMaw everything about the skull—how I found it, how Ms. Savage told me it was Nuutsiu, and how it healed my arm and Kai.

  MawMaw clucked her tongue. “Toci must be told about the healing portion. Where is it now?”

  I looked down uncomfortably. “Amaya had it in her hands when I left the powwow last night.”

  Alarm sprang into MawMaw’s eyes. “You must get it back from her. Toci will instruct you from here.” Though she acted nonchalant, MawMaw nervously patted my hand and quickly rose to go.

  “What about Toci?” I said half jokingly. “Can’t she just wiggle her nose and get the skull back?”

  Kanaan laughed. “Or blink like a genie?”

  “Perhaps,” MawMaw replied in all seriousness, “you should ask her.”

  MawMaw motioned to Kanaan. “Out. Wray needs to get dressed.”

  Kanaan didn’t move. “What about the men in black? That situation and Smith hasn’t been solved with Toci’s arrival.”

  MawMaw’s entire body tensed. I felt her mind do the same.

  “All in due time, Kanaan, all in due time.” That’s my problem to solve, she thought.

  Taking Kanaan by the collar, MawMaw ushered him out of the room.

  “Get dressed,” she ordered me. “Toci will be back soon for your first lesson.”

  “What lesson?”

  “You’ll see.” She closed the door.

  I pulled on a clean pair of jeans and T-shirt, and was about to go to the bathroom to do my hair when I felt Toci’s return. She wasn’t happy either. It was a very peculiar feeling, like the change in air pressure when a storm roars down through the canyon and pushes its way out to the prairie. Just as I set a foot on the last stair down, Amaya came in the back door.

  “Hey,” she said, with a hint of confusion, her hand still on the knob.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I don’t know.” She scratched her head.

  “I called her,” Toci’s lovely voice said from the living room.

  Amaya’s forehead creased. Who’s that?

  I crooked my finger for her to follow me to the living room.

  Toci, arms crossed, leaned on the entryway credenza.

  “Thanks for coming, Amaya.” Toci’s eyes glowed gold, just like mine started to do. I felt Toci’s anger at Amaya and stood in front of my friend to shield her.

  I’m not going to hurt her, Toci thought to me. Toci uncrossed her arms and leaned around me to smile at Amaya. “I’m Toci.”

  “Mother of all gods,” Amaya whispered. She pushed around me to gawk at Toci. “How’d you know my name?”

  “Why, I’m the mother of all gods, my dear.” Her voice was sickeningly sweet. “Please, sit.” She motioned to both of us to sit next to Kanaan on the sofa.

  “Now, my lovely children, please tell me about this skull you found.”

  I didn’t like being treated like a two-year-old. “Don’t you know? You’re a god after all,” I snapped.

  MawMaw shot me a look from her easy chair, where she knitted as though all of this were perfectly normal.

  “You have a lot to learn about us, Wray,” Toci said.

  “Well, the skull was responsible for the light call at last night’s powwow,” Kanaan said.

  From the corner of her eye, Toci glanced at MawMaw and I picked up the thought Toci sent her. It wasn’t the stone you brought?

  Without looking up from the stitches on her needles, MawMaw pursed her lips and shook her head no.

  If you mean the bone hidden in the bed, that one is missing, I thought to Toci.

  The look she gave me said all I needed to know about its importance. Toci covered her shock beautifully. She turned her peaceful, soft voice on the three of us.

  “Tell me more. Who would like to go first?”

  Between me, Kanaan, and Amaya, we shared all the details.

  “But there’s something else I did with it.” Amaya picked at her fingers. “I drank some tea made with the sparkly dust.”

  “Amaya!” I shouted angrily. “You didn’t tell me that!”

  She looked down, contrite. “I just wanted to see if it would make me, you know.” She indicated her chest. “Grow.”

  Kanaan let out a loud snort.

  “It’s not funny, Kanaan.” I turned my attention to Amaya. “We still don’t know the effects the sparkly dust will have on us.”

  Toci eyed all three of us. I felt her barely restrained anger, but her voice was as still and as calm as the water in a mountain lake. “Is that all?” She focused on each one of us separately. Each one of us nodded. She took a deep breath and looked like she was turning the information over in her mind, as though determining what and how much to tell us.

  “Okay.” She began with me. “The sparkly dust, as you call it, won’t affect you at all.”

  I knitted my brows together. “What about the telepathy?” I hesitated to use that word.

  Toci cocked her head sideways and smiled. “That’s all you. You were born with that talent and many more that will manifest as you mature. You’ll learn more in future training.”

  “Training?”

  “You’re not psychologically mature enough yet, Wray, perhaps in a few more years.”

  What an insulting remark.

  “The plants and the water,” she said. “Well, they just received mass quantities of matter that are already in the Earth’s soil.”

  Tilled in by aliens, I thought.

  Toci picked that up and returned an order to be quiet. “Both the flora and the fish will decompose as normal and the matter will dissipate back into the Earth.”

  She went to stand by Amaya and placed a hand on her shoulder. “You and your brother, on the other hand, have ingested quite a bit of a substance that your bodies should only have minute quantities of.”

  “Oh God, we’re going to die aren’t we?” Amaya cried into her hands.

  Toci laughed gently and shook her head. “No. At least not anytime soon,” she reassured Amaya. A great sigh came from Toci as she released Amaya’s shoulder.

  “However, should you have children”—she looked at the ceiling and back at Amaya, “they could be,” Toci shrugged, “special.”

  “Like deformed?” Amaya asked frightened.

  “No, no, no,” Toci said. “They’ll look and be completely normal, like you and whoever fathers your children, but they could be born with special talents.” Toci nodded at me. “Like Wray.”

  I was trying to put all the puzzle pieces together. “So, my parents ingested the sparkly dust? My biological parents, that is?” I asked.

  Toci shook her head.

  Amaya smiled from ear to ear. “My kids will be telepathic?”

  “Possibly,” Toci said. “Or they could develop other attributes. We just don’t really know. Uncontrolled, our DNA matches up as randomly as does yours.”

  “Like superheroes,” MawMaw, never looking up from her knitting, said it like a statement.

  I looked sideways at Toci. “Superheroes don’t exist.”

  Kanaan grunted. “Neither did magic skulls, aliens, and telepathy until just recently.”

  Excited, Amaya bounced on the edge of the couch. “I’m going to have superhero children!”

  “And so is Kai,” Kanaan said with concern. He looked at Toci. “What does this mean for the planet?”

  “I don’t understand your question,” she said.

  “You’re telepathic. Can’t you dig it out of me?” he joked.

  Toci sighed deeply. Again, she let me hear her debate with herself about how much to tell us, and then her mind snapped shut to me. “It isn’t automatically horrible for Earth. Beings here are developing talents and skills that can help make life on the planet easier and better for everyone.”

  “Or talents that can be used for evil and personal gain,” the cynic in me said out loud.

  Toci nodded sadly at what I had s
aid. “That’s the issue. We never intended for humans to develop so quickly. Not at this stage.”

  “Wait.” Kanaan scratched his head. “I still can’t wrap my head around the idea that you—as in you aliens—created Earth.”

  “Why not? Hasn’t your experience with the skull proven our ability to grow things? Just a tiny quantity of our sparkly dust, as Wray calls it, can grow a jungle from mere houseplants.” She nodded in Amaya’s direction. “Just imagine what a great quantity of it can grow.”

  “A planet.” Kanaan nodded in wonderment.

  “A universe,” said MawMaw.

  I looked at her with new eyes, and more than just a little residual anger. She should have told me, even if I would have rejected the information at the time.

  “Okay.” Toci used her calmest voice. “Let’s all step back and let our new knowledge sink in, shall we?”

  I was going to be sick to my stomach. “Excuse me.” I jumped up and went to the kitchen.

  I’m not finished, young lady, Toci said in my head.

  Well, I am! I said right back.

  My intention was to head to the barn, but my body wouldn’t do as I wanted. Instead, I found myself right back on the couch in the living room. I glared at Toci knowing my eyes glowed gold.

  “So, where were we?” Toci drummed her chin with her fingers in thought. “Ah, the skull. Where is it now?”

  I looked at Amaya. “It was in your arms last night when I left the powwow.”

  Amaya nodded. “And I dropped it when you screamed in everyone’s head.”

  Toci eyed me with a creased brow.

  “After you were gone and the screaming stopped, it was gone.” Amaya finished.

  That time, Toci outwardly showed her dismay. “So, you don’t know where it is then?” She glared at me with golden eyes.

  “Nope, I sure don’t.” I answered with a rebellious grin. “Why don’t you use your god powers and make it show itself?”

  Toci smirked at me. You asked for it.

  A faint beacon-like sound echoed in my mind. That sound will get stronger the closer you get to the skull.

  I glared at her.

  Toci eyed us all. “Finding that skull is your number one priority. Got it?”

  Kanaan and Amaya nodded.