And Fleet and Wave came, just then, to the top of the mountain on their journey across the world to find their sister Reap. And this is what they found: a very surprised Cower, and a very surprised group of humans, and a stone half-way across the entrance to a very strange cave.
And Fleet and Wave gave a great shout, and they woke their sister Reap who crept up and out of the cave entrance, into the world, blinking against the sudden brightness of the sun.
“What have you done to the humans, Cower?” asked Fleet and Wave and Reap, then. And Cower cowered away from them, but not before sneering and spitting at their feet and saying:
“You are powerful, and I am nothing, and I am tired of being nothing. I will be remembered,” she whispered.
“You have killed so many humans. So many humans,” said Reap sadly, sinking to the ground and soaking up the story through the soil beneath her fingers. “But you will not again. For the cave that I have slept in? It will be your resting place. Become what you truly are, Cower.”
And in the face of her brothers and sisters, Cower began to morph and change, and what she was within began to show on the outside. She grew larger, but more shadowed, she grew toothier and angrier. And she turned into a great and monstrous beast that—compelled by magic—crawled into the entrance of the cave. And the stone rolled over it, sealing her away forever.
For Reap and Fleet and Wave knew that Cower would no longer be content until all of the humans were gone. To protect them, always, they sealed Cower away.
But it is said by the few that still follow the Goddess Cower, those who wish for the destruction of the world, that she will rise again one day, and she will be more powerful than before. And she will finish what she started, now in her monstrous form.
And she will devour the world.
---
Virago sits with her elbows on her knees and her hands clasped before her, leaning forward and watching us both with flashing eyes. “There was a rumor in Arktos City when we began our trek up to the northern mountain range that the beast we went to fight was, in fact, Cower come back. We laughed at that idea. Surely it was just another of the wild beasts come up from the desert, come too far into civilization, easily corralled and returned to their wild home, possibly even vanquished. But easily. But now? I’m not so sure. I’ve been thinking…” she says softly, gazing past us, eyes unfocused, “that maybe the witch actually did open the correct portal to the correct in-between place. And maybe, perhaps, the beast changed the portal from leading to the in-between place to come, instead, to this world. If it is Cower come back, then things are much, much worse than I originally thought. Than anyone thought.” She comes back to herself, gazes at the both of us, her hands spread. “So you see…I need your help, so much. I am only a lowly knight. I will do my best in the face of this, but if she rises up and vanquishes me, then you must carry on, try to trap her. Try to stop her.”
My breath comes shallowly, and my sweaty palms are pressed to my jeans. I clear my throat. “The beast isn’t going to vanquish you,” I laugh, but it comes out shaky. “You’re Virago…I mean, you just sawed into your hand with that sword, and it healed immediately…” I watch her as she gazes at me, face calm and sad.
“Everyone is eventually vanquished, Holly,” she says then quietly. “What matters is if I did what I was meant to before I am gone.”
Aidan is looking at the painting of his matron Goddess on the wall, his gaze distant, his thoughts somewhere else, obviously. I stand quickly, clear my throat as they both turn to me.
“All right, Aidan. We’ll be back in three days. Hopefully with the…the beast. Ready to be sealed into a portal,” I tell my brother, crossing my arms.
“No…no…” he blanches, shakes his head. “Why don’t the two of you come back tomorrow night? For the meditation?” asks Aidan, rising. “Virago can meet the rest of the coven, we can discuss strategies, maybe try to open the portal, do a test run?”
“Okay,” I tell him quietly. His brows are up, and his gaze is questioning, but I’m suddenly so tired and worried and nervous that I just want to sit down and curl up with my favorite book. “Come on, Virago…” I start to walk toward the front room.
“It was a pleasure meeting you, Aidan,” she says, bowing to him, and then I’m through the beaded curtain and into the shop proper. I flip the sign on my way out, banging against the door as the tears come into my eyes, making everything blurry. “The witch is in” keeps turning in the breeze behind me as I practically run to the car.
Virago is slower—maybe Aidan’s showing her something in the shop—so I unlock the car door sit inside and put my head against the steering wheel.
I swallow down most of my tears but two squeeze out, splashing against my jeans.
Everyone is eventually vanquished.
It’s all rising in me, all of these stupid thoughts that I always try to ignore. That I fail at ignoring. I think about Mom, about how happy she was when she finally left, how the cancer never actually changed her. She was just Mom, and she was this really fucking happy person, and that never changed. Not ever. Because she believed that she’d done what she was supposed to do. I remember her telling me that, over and over, as I raged and grew angrier and angrier as the cancer claimed her for its own.
And after Mom was gone, I stayed with Nicole, because I was afraid to be alone. And I was afraid to end it. And it was easy, staying with her. It was so much easier to live my puppet life, to go home from work, to dream of other things and places and tell myself that I was perfectly content with not going out or doing things because it was safer, wasn’t it?
Everything was safer than what my mother did, which was live like crazy.
A knock on the car window. Virago peers in, her brows furrowed, a frown deepening her features as she leans down, looks into the car. I unlock the doors, and she gets in, setting her scabbard in the back seat and folding her hands in her lap as she shuts the door quietly behind her.
“Sorry…” I mutter, rubbing at my eyes, wiping my wet fingers on my jeans again. “Sorry…something you said. I was just thinking about my mom,” I tell her, then, staring down at my lap. I can already feel myself redden. I don’t talk about my mother. Not ever. And then, somehow…
“She was this really amazing woman,” I tell her, can feel the tears start to plink on my jeans again. I ignore them, stare down at my hands that are clasped so tightly together that my knuckles are white, my fingers red. “You would have really liked her,” I manage, swallowing down a hiccup of a sob. I keep going. “She was so strong and so brave…she loved life so much, and she did all of this amazing shit. She was a painter, an artist…” I say, closing my eyes tightly. “And she painted things as they really are. That’s how she always said she did it. She loved experimenting with colors, getting the exact right shade to capture something. She loved…everything, everyone. She loved life. She rode horses, and she did rock climbing, and she did it all while raising Aidan and me, and she loved us both so much, and she taught us so much…and then she got cancer anyway. Even though she lived the best life in the world, cancer still got her. And she died. And she was perfectly at peace with it all,” I whisper. “And I was so angry at her for being at peace with it, because it was taking her away from us…” I trail off, swallow. “So I’ve kind of not really been living since she died. I mean. I live.” I wipe away my tears, stare holes into the steering wheel. “I go to work, and I love my work. At the library. So much. I love my patrons. But then I come home. And I’ve stayed with Nicole because she never really has time, so it’s this great, casual thing, and it’s easy.” God, I just came out to her. But I keep going, steel myself, keep talking. “Everything I do is just…easy…” I turn and look at her, and she’s not staring into space, not watching out the window. She’s looking at me, and looking at me intently, brow creased, eyes bright and unwavering as she gazes into the very heart of me, and so much wells up within me in that moment that I just start to cry. There are so many tears
, so much grief wracking my middle, and Virago reaches out and wraps her arms around me, and she holds me. I sob against her shoulder and her tie.
“I miss her so much,” I whisper, after a long moment. “Like…my gut’s all empty. Like she filled it with this great joy and possibility. I don’t know how Aidan believes in magic anymore. Mom took it all with her when she went.”
Virago rests her chin gently on my head, squeezing her arms about me in a comforting hold. After a long moment, she whispers into my hair: “I went into training to become a knight because I lived with my mother and father in the poorest section of Arktos City. It’s called the Ratter Prison. It’s very poor,” says Virago, voice clipped short and sad. “My mother and father died in the winter from a sickness when I was seven. My father had wanted to be a knight, but hadn’t started young enough. So I went into the training because he’d wanted to as soon as I was able. I understand you, Holly. I understand that grief.”
I rest my cheek against her shoulder, breathe in the scent of brand new shirt, and the sweet mint that seems to be all that is Virago. “I’m sorry,” I whisper, sighing out.
She shrugs, and I can feel her warm muscles ripple beneath me as she squeezes me again. “All is well,” she tells me, her voice gentle. “I know that if my mother and father could see me now, I think that they would be at peace. I have done the best that I could do to become a knight. I have worked very hard, and I have poured my heart into my tasks. I think that if your mother could see you, Holly, she would feel the same. You’ve done what you could do, and you have done it well. She would be very proud of you.”
“But I haven’t…” I tell her, pushing away from her, gazing into her intense ice-blue eyes as I try to keep the tears from coming. She returns the gaze with a quiet strength as she reaches across the space between us. She takes a wisp of blonde hair and then softly, slowly, like she’s the lead in a romantic comedy, like theme music is playing somewhere to accompany her ridiculously romantic gesture, she tucks that wisp of hair behind my ear, her warm fingers curving against my skin.
We stay like that so long, my eyes wide, my heartbeat thundering, before Virago says, simply: “We all do what we are meant to do.”
“What?” I whisper.
“We all do,” she murmurs softly, and I suddenly realize how close her mouth is, the warmth of her stealing over me by degrees. If I lean forward, I could capture that mouth with my own. I breathe out with a gasp as she leans forward, crossing that small space, “what we are meant to do,” she says, the words hot against me, because suddenly I want to make the distance between us dissolve.
I want, more than anything in this whole wide world, to kiss her.
Neither of us moves for a heartbeat, two, and then she sighs out, breaking the intense gaze between us. I slump a little, and then her arm is around me, drawing me down to her chest again, rubbing my shoulder gently.
For the longest moment, I want to rewind time. I want to kiss her. But instead, I close my eyes, listen to her heartbeat, feel the softest sense of peace steal over me, by degrees.
I understand you, Holly.
For the first time in…well. Forever…
I feel seen.
Chapter 8: Fiction
Because soymilk and ketchup, the two regrettable items still deemed as edible in my refrigerator, don’t exactly blend together into the most appetizing dinner, we make a trip to the grocery store and get a few frozen meals, fresh fruit and snow peas. Virago’s cool visage melts at the doorway, and wonder abounds as she wanders the aisles in rapt fascination, lifting a mango to her nose and inhaling the heady aroma as she sighs in ecstasy. Looking at the grocery store through that sort of lens—that you can pretty much get any kind of food you want at whatever time you want—I have to agree with her. It is a kind of miracle. I never thought that the same aisles I grumble about rising prices and squeaky shopping cart wheels would also be where a beautiful woman shows me that there’s a hell of a lot to be grateful for.
I buy a pound of Columbian coffee along with the meals and produce, holding the bar of beans up to her for inspection. I tell her the best thing she’s ever experienced in her entire existence is yet to come. Which, you know, I realize totally does sound like a come on, as she inhales the rich aroma of the coffee, but she’s too excited when I tell her that coffee is related to espresso, so I don’t think she noticed.
Just like I don’t thinks he notices the way I watch her move, how she prowls through the aisles like she’s grace personified. A dancer and a warrior, all at once.
I haven’t let myself think about possibilities. I guess I do believe her now. I believe she’s from another world, as vastly impossible or improbable as that may be, I believe it. I believe that there’s a wounded beast out there somewhere, just biding his (or her) time before it heals and then comes out to wreak havoc on the human race.
I believe that I have to break up with Nicole. But even if I break up with her now, what I want is too impossible.
So I do my absolute best to not think about what I want. Which is something I’m really good at.
We drive back to my house in relative silence, Virago fiddling with the radio dial every so often to find a new station, a new song, a new experience for her to immerse herself in. I’m too overwhelmed by everything, so the relative silence is fine by me. I have too much to think about.
And if I spoke to her just now, with all that emotion rushing through me, I might say something I’d regret.
Like: you’re beautiful. You’re exquisite, really. And I’m attracted to you more than I’ve ever been attracted to anyone in my entire life. And you’re from another world. And if this all works…then you’re going back home. And you’re probably not even gay. But watching you makes me think that everything I’ve seen that I thought was good or lovely in my lifetime was a pale shadow compared to you.
So I stay silent.
And I say nothing.
But when we pull into my driveway, I sigh for a very long time.
Because there, ahead of my car, is Carly’s. Parked.
She’s sitting on my porch on the old swing, practically vibrating with excitement as she pushes the swing back and forth with her sneakers, and the second that I turn off the engine, she’s dashing down the steps and is peering through the car window like a paparazzi.
“Hi, Holly!” she practically chirps, her big, goofy grin threatening to split her face in two. I open my door, and she squeezes me tightly before leaning down and peering into the car to have her first glimpse of my passenger.
“Oh, my God. Hello,” she says then, turning her voice down about an octave and a half and purring like a Bengal tiger.
“Carly,” I tell her warningly, but I’m rolling my eyes to the heavens and trying to suppress laughter. “This,” I say, gesturing inside the car, “is Virago. Virago, this is my best friend Carly.”
Virago exits the car smoothly, folding out of the seat like she’s making a theatrical entrance into my front yard. She comes around the side of the car in a sensual, swaggering prowl, with her brow barely raised, and does a sweeping bow in front of Carly, complete with a hand at the small of her back. She then takes Carly’s hand and brushes her soft lips gently over Carly’s knuckles. This then makes my day because Carly actually blushes.
Carly blushes.
“Oh, my God, hello,” she repeats breathlessly. She peers over Virago’s graceful, bent form, mouth in an “o” as she stares at me with wide eyes, her face a combination of glee, utter shock and amazement. “What the heck?” she mouths to me.
“Let’s all go on inside and get this over with,” I say then, getting out of the car and fishing the grocery bags from the back seat. “Virago, do you want to grab your sword and armor?”
“What the heck?” Carly breathes again as Virago picks up the bundle of her armor from the back seat and hefts her sword over her shoulder. And then, gently, takes the bags from my hand before striding toward the porch.
“She’s v
ery chivalrous,” I say, hands on my hips as I follow after her with a smile.
“Did you hook up with a knight from the Knights of Valor Festival? Wow. Holly, I like this new side to you…” says Carly wonderingly as she follows after us.
“Um. No, actually.” I grimance. “So, you’re not going to believe this…”
She actually does believe this. Easily. Carly’s the kind of person who, in high school, was starting a Cryptozoology club and a ghost hunters society long before ghost hunting got popular and long before they put shows about hunting Bigfoot on television. I’d known that if anyone was going to believe Virago’s story and quest, it was going to be Carly, but I didn’t depend entirely on how enthusiastic she was going to be about it.
I should have known.
“Oh, my God, tell me what your world is like?” she murmurs adoringly, propping her elbows on my kitchen counter and leaning her chin in her hands. Her eyes are practically sparkling and starry as she stares at Virago.
“Well,” says Virago slowly, carefully, as I spoon the coffee grounds into my coffee maker’s filter. “It’s very different from this world…” She trails off, considering how best to explain it.
“I mean…you have knights,” prompts Carly, cocking her head.
“And it’s very odd to me that you don’t,” says Virago with a grin. “How do you keep your cities safe from other kingdoms? How do you keep it safe from beasts?”
“Oh, my God, you have beasts?” Carly squeaks. “Are they bad monsters? And you have kingdoms? What about princesses? Do you have princesses? And queens?”
“Carly, we have princesses on our world…” I mutter, replacing the coffee pot after I rinse it out and switching the coffee maker on.
“Yeah, but not fairy princesses.”
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