A Novel Idea

by Melissa Bowersock

  Chapter 1

  THE eastern horizon glowed with a muted light. What few small clouds there were hovered nearby as if drawn to the arc of brightening color. The force of the dawn seemed to draw in on itself, gathering itself expectantly. A soundless vibration of the quickening day hummed inaudibly, its pitch increasing as the arc of light brightened and spread. When the horizon was finally capped by the first sliver of pure, white light, the silent explosion sent out shards of color in an immediate, brilliant display. The new day exploded upon the senses like lightning from a dark cloud: sudden, blinding and beautiful in its power.

  The girl at the crumbled parapet gave a silent prayer of thanks for this new day, watching as the dawn blazed and faded, acknowledging this manifestation of the Goddess with wide, thoughtful eyes. Converted to faith by the quiet beauty around her, she should still have given proper thanks even without faith. Only fools ignored the Goddess, and they only for a short time. The glory and power of the universe, the Goddess was at once all Love and all Truth, but at the same time She was exacting and uncompromising. She was as constant as the sun and as changeable as the moon, therefore one did well to appreciate Her and give thanks.

  The girl Grace surveyed the new day from her high outpost. The Ruins had been much taller once—or so her mother said—but to Grace they seemed majestic just as they were. Five stories above ground, the Ruins were topped with the twisted, crumpled wreckage of its upper structure, the rooftop littered with concrete and steel, pipe and block. The walls of the sixth story lay in jumbled piles around the roof edge, reminding Grace of the castles she’d seen in rare, old books. She walked the wall and let her hand follow its contours, up and down, over broken block and masses of concrete. The jagged parapet could not have been any more perfect to her had it been designed this way. She thought the Ruins the most wonderful place in the world.

  Of course she had seen little of the world, but what she had seen seemed wonderful. The jumbled piles of concrete and wood that littered the valley were furred with luxuriant grass, and everywhere green things made their steady, inexorable way into and around the dead monuments to civilization. Grace’s world was a wonder-filled mixture of exciting mysteries, lost knowledge and ever-present natural beauty.

  But she really shouldn’t be lingering. The sun was well up now, and there were chores to do. Sending one last appreciative glance up to the Goddess, she spun away from the parapet and raced downstairs.

  At fifteen, Grace was growing toward adulthood, yet her chores were still simple ones, the easiest of all the women. For years after the Shift and the end of the Bad Time, no women bore children, or the babies came dead when they did come, so that Grace was the youngest member of the small colony until just a year ago. The fact that she preferred the simplest duties only seemed logical to the women, even though she had become capable of as much as they. The birth of Nidia’s son, Zak, and then Corrine’s little daughter, Kaia, had not changed that. It would be years before the new babies could contribute to the colony in any way except as symbols of renewal and promise. Until then, Grace had the simple chores. The first order of the day was fresh water. Grace took the last flight of steps quickly, afraid she might have dawdled too long on the roof and her mother would already be in the kitchen ahead of her. The older woman had a penchant for punctuality and conscientiousness that Grace liked not to cross. Pat was a strong woman, stern and serious. No one in the colony would rouse her temper if it could be avoided. The few times Grace had done that had been accidental, but she’d still felt the sting of Pat’s reprimand. Pat gave no quarter, even to her only daughter; if anything, she was harder on Grace than on anyone else.

  Reaching the last corner, Grace rounded on the tableau of Pat standing, hands on hips, over the empty water buckets and knew she was too late. She was in for it now. Hoping to avoid an immediate scolding, she swooped down and grabbed the buckets from under Pat’s irritated stare.

  “I’m here,” she said, meeting her mother’s eyes quickly. Yes, I know you’re angry, her eyes said, but I’ll hurry. “I’ll hurry,” she said out loud. “And I won’t daydream. I promise.”

  Taking the absence of a reply as a momentary reprieve, Grace wrestled the door open and clattered outside with her buckets.

  “That child,” Erin said cheerfully from the long counter at the back of the kitchen. “She’s got more energy and more dreams than I ever did at fifteen.”

  Pat, still standing with hands on hips, watched Grace trundle through the tall grass with the buckets banging at her knees. Her mouth set in a familiar grim line, she noted how tall Grace was becoming. She was growing too fast; there was too much she still had to learn. Pat said as much to Erin.

  “Oh, pooh,” Erin pouted good-naturedly. “Grace is a wonderful child. I don’t know why you have to be so hard on her. She’s an asset to the colony. Why, with no other girls her age, she’ll have her pick of young men, and we can choose a good, strong husband for her, someone who will strengthen the colony. The Goddess shines in her, you know. You can see it in her eyes, in the way she enjoys life. Let her be, Pat. She’ll grow up just exactly as she’s supposed to.”

  “Yes,” Pat said, turning slowly from the window, “I suppose she will.”

  Grace clattered along the narrow trail knowing she would have to be extra dutiful for the rest of the day. It was no great hardship; she enjoyed her day’s work. That was the problem, really. She found small joys in everything she did and that, for some reason, irritated her mother. And it seemed to irritate her more lately. Grace didn’t wonder about it—Pat was just Pat—but she was aware. And she didn’t want to cause her mother unhappiness. She would just have to be better about her chores from now on.

  The day was going to be another brilliant one. The sun, well up now, was incandescent in its light, and the grass was so emerald green it hurt the eyes. In contrast, the dark escarpment of the fault was inky, the wall of lava rock featureless in its blackness. Above the emerald and black, the sky was a brilliant turquoise and a pale, waning moon preceded the sun in its arc. The beauty of the Goddess was everywhere.

  The fault was one of Grace’s favorite places. The long escarpment of cooled lava was a maze of air pockets and tunnels, all frozen in time as the lava had congealed to rock. Where the fault itself cut a gash through the old flow, the twelve-foot edge of rock sheared down into a harmless-looking seam, and here the far-wandering stream tumbled down over the lava into a peaceful pool. The place spoke of violence and cataclysm—the essence of the Bad Time—yet now it was serene and peaceful. Grace set the first bucket under the waterfall and watched it fill with clear, fresh water.

  She had tried to imagine the rock moving, as Pat said it had during the Bad Time. Pat said the lava was flaming red instead of black then, and it flowed with the slow heaviness of half-cooled grease. Grace put one hand to the dark rock and felt its solidity, its unyielding density. Try as she might, she just could not imagine how rock could turn soft and flow. She supposed there were a lot of things about the Bad Time—and the Goddess—she would never understand. She could only listen to the old stories and wonder.

  Thinking of the old stories reminded her of the Prophecy, and of the Sibling. The Prophecy was a wonderful thing, a gift of the Goddess. It began as a dream, given to only a chosen few at first. Pat said those chosen were afraid to speak of it, afraid they were insane or at least would be thought so. But the dream was so strong and so clear they could not dismiss it. Then the Goddess sent the dream to more and more people, dozens and dozens, until they began to speak of it out loud. It was a dramatic, compelling prophecy; no one could refute it. It became the controlling truth of the peoples’ lives and soon there was no one who did not know the Prophecy, who had not dreamed it or heard it or was schooled in it. Now the people lived their lives by the Prophecy, and waited for the arrival of the Sibling at the Ruins.

  Grace thought of the Sibling and felt a familiar chill pattern up her spine. Greer, the Sibling, was a woman of Grace’s
own blood, her mother’s sister. She would be Grace’s aunt. Grace knew the lineage by heart, how the Sibling was born to the daughter of the last God-believer, how that daughter was her grandmother, her mother’s mother. The Goddess had been strong in that line back then; the great mother had borne twelve daughters, dying only minutes after delivering the last at the end of the Bad Time. No one knew how many of the twelve survived—the Bad Time nearly decimated the planet—but all knew Greer lived and walked the planet and waited. When the time was right, she would come to the Ruins and bring the force of the Goddess to power. The Prophecy said she would lead the people out of the darkness they were in; she would restore order and bring prosperity, and the people would regain all that they had lost in the Shift. The cities that Grace had never known as anything but ruins would be rebuilt and the Goddess would rule in love and wisdom. A greatness Grace could only imagine would be discovered.

  Looking around her, Grace wondered how the greatness of the Prophecy could be more beautiful than the valley was now. As far as she could see was the vividness of lush green, the shining black basalt, the wide blue sky. Pat had told her that before the Shift this place was an artificially cultivated desert and that without the manmade rivers and lakes, it was arid and bleak. When the Shift had begun, the planet had been torn open and remolded on a cosmic scale. Great land masses had crumbled into seas while volcanic forces had thrust up embryonic mountains elsewhere, and rivers of molten rock had gushed from the ground and decimated once-fertile areas. Here in the valley, the lava river had cooled into a long, snaking mound of rock that now trapped water that before had seeped away into the dry ground. And too, Pat said, the weather had changed; entire coastlines had been restructured and the valley now benefited from cool, moist breezes that before the Shift had dwindled to nothing on their journey across the continent. It seemed to Grace that, for their valley at least, the Shift had been more blessing than bane.

  But she had not known how things were before and she had not lived through the Bad Time. She had heard how people had died by the multitudes in the geological holocaust, how afterwards the survivors had turned upon each other in their struggle to remain alive. For untracked years, people existed as no more than scattered packs, foraging among the ruins, killing any unfamiliar humans who might threaten their thin hold on existence. It was only in the past few decades that people began to band together in groups and to try to live more cooperatively. This world of separate yet interacting colonies was all Grace had ever known. It seemed perfect enough to her.

  The water buckets filled quickly under the clear stream of water, and Grace hefted them in either hand, mindful not to slosh too much. Four more trips would be necessary to provide enough water for the morning, then in the afternoon she would do it all again. Almost fifty people lived in the Ruins and the elder women cooked for them all in the great kitchen that Pat said used to feed thousands. Pat had explained that the Ruins were, before the Shift, a place where people came to relax and enjoy themselves, where they paid with tokens of wealth for such services as food, care and entertainment. It all sounded very odd and very eccentric to Grace. Why would people want to pay others to do their work, the work that being a human being required? She wondered at the loss of integrity that implied and remembered how some of the old women said that was why the Shift was sent to destroy them, because they had fallen away from the Truth of the Goddess. Pat kept her own counsel on that issue—as she did on most issues—but Grace sensed her mother did not agree. Although Pat spoke sparingly and kept silent most of the time, it was not difficult to know her thoughts; at least not for Grace. Whatever way was honest and held with the Goddess, that was Pat’s way. It was no wonder Greer the Sibling was of the same line. There were times when Grace had wondered if her mother could not be the Sibling of Prophecy, as closely as she kept to the Goddess’ truth, but Pat refused to even discuss the idea and anyway, she was getting older—too old, she said, to lead anybody anywhere. That was for the young, she said; that was for Greer.

  Grace walked the trails back to the Ruins at a much slower, more careful pace than when she had gone. The full buckets were heavy and bruised her legs if she were careless enough to let them bang against her. The wire handles on the buckets dug into her palms and she had to stop periodically to shift her grip. It was good that the fault was not far from the Ruins.

  The Ruins rose up out of the verdant overgrowth like a sentinel. The clean rise of its five stories was almost startling in the open valley; all other structures had been razed during the Shift. No one knew why the Ruins had withstood the global convolutions. Perhaps, thought Grace, the Goddess had left it for them to live in. The great edifice was pocked with chips and smeared with dirt and sooty smoke. There was no glass in any windows; the women had long ago broken out what shards remained in the frames and sometimes used them for cutting. Grace thought the glass wonderful and felt sad that the art of creating it had been lost. Pat had said it was made from molten sand, but Grace wondered about that. Glass was clear, and sand was not; and anyway, who could melt sand? Only the Goddess, she was sure. That was another enigma she felt was better left alone. Someone wiser than she might understand; she was content not knowing.

  “Well, finally!” Pat said as Grace carried the buckets into the kitchen. The women had already measured out their ingredients for the day’s bread, and the fires were laid under the big oven chambers. Susie and Myr had their laundering buckets out, just waiting for fresh water to wash with. Grace gave over her buckets, one to Pat for the bakers and one to Susie, stood quietly while they transferred the water and then took back her empty buckets for her second trip to the stream. There was water needed for drinking, for bathing and for cleaning the kitchen, for watering the garden and for the small animals. There seemed no end to their need for water.

  That was something else the old stories told—how water had come into every house through pipes before the Shift. That was almost incomprehensible to Grace. What a massive undertaking! She could not imagine the work involved in that sort of accomplishment but hoped, if the Sibling saw fit in the wisdom of the Goddess, that this strange feat could be done again. Some of the things the older people talked about seemed no loss to Grace; she could certainly live without them. But there were some aspects of the world before the Shift that sounded wondrous and exciting, and Grace hoped the Sibling would reinstate those things. That is, if Grace were still alive when Greer came. For years she had taken the Prophecy at face value, as she was told: the Sibling would come and deliver the people from chaos. She had always expected to see that day until two winters ago when old Nessa had died. The weathered old woman—oldest in the colony—had cried, knowing she would never see the glory of Greer’s coming. She, like Grace up until then, had assumed their deliverance would be within her lifetime. The disappointing realization shook Grace much as it had Nessa. After all, the coming of the Sibling was what everyone waited for, hoped for, prayed for. How awful not to be alive when it finally came!

  In a tearful panic, the then twelve-year-old Grace had voiced her fears to her mother and Pat, terse as always, had simply said, “You will see it.” The simple statement was not enough to override Grace’s fears, although eventually she understood that Pat knew and Pat spoke the Goddess’ truth. Pat had the dream of the Prophecy—something Grace had never had—and Pat knew things. If Pat said Grace would see the Prophecy fulfilled, then Grace would probably see it. But still that small doubt remained.

  A favorite game of Grace’s during her solitary times was to try to calculate when Greer would come. Pat, Grace knew, was the fifth-born daughter of the line, and by several oblique references had as much as said that the Sibling was one of the younger daughters. Pat wasn’t sure—and wasn’t inclined to discuss it—but seemed to be in her early forties. The younger sister could be anywhere from one to seven to twenty years younger. During the Bad Time, people lost track of years and dates, and no records were kept. It was a puzzle with no answer, but for Grace it see
med reasonable to expect Greer to be about thirty—young enough to be beautiful and old enough to be wise. She imagined Greer to be a shining woman of light, a pillar of strength and wisdom, a beautiful image of the Goddess Herself. She would come glowing with the light of the Goddess, robed in gold and silver, tall and graceful and queenly. She would strike awe into people just by her being; her eyes would burn with their intensity. The day of her coming was going to be a glorious, terrible day.

  And yet it all seemed too far away to Grace as she trudged to the stream and back with her water buckets. The Shift and the Bad Time were in the far distant past, living on only in the old stories; the time of the Sibling was in the far future, alive in the Prophecy but still beyond reach. For Grace the world was here and now: the Ruins, the fault, the stream, the colony. Even while she daydreamed of past and future, her feet trod the path of the present, and she lived in only one world. Some of the women commended her for that; some thought her simple because of it. None of it really seemed to matter. The Goddess’ truth would be, whether anyone worried about it or not. Grace was, most of the time, content to do her small duties and trust in the Goddess’ wisdom.

  Delivering her second load of water, Grace picked a ripe fruit from the larder in the kitchen and started back for her third. Going to the stream, she could carry both buckets with one hand and still have one hand free to hold the fruit. The sweet yellow pear was almost too ripe; it gushed juice when she bit into it. The women would have to dry the remaining fruit before it spoiled. Grace hadn’t realized fall was so close; the days slipped by, one like another, and the seasons passed almost unnoticed. Fall meant pumpkins and potatoes and all the things that could be dried or stored until next spring. It meant collecting firewood and sitting around the fire, drinking warm spiced ciders; it meant long nights for sewing and story telling and staring at the snow on the far off mountain peaks.

  She had never been outside of the valley—had never been to the edge of it, for that matter—but had heard old stories of how people used to ride in strange, powerful carts that sped along the ground or flew through the air. These carts, they said, could go so fast that one could reach the far mountains in a tiny fraction of a day’s time, instead of the many days it would take to walk. Grace wasn’t sure if she believed these stories or not; she had never heard anyone say they had ever seen one of the carts. It seemed a wonderful story, but almost too fabulous to believe.

  Reaching the stream for the third time that morning, she set her buckets under the waterfall and licked the last of the pear juice from her fingers. The pear core itself she set beside the stream for the birds or small animals that gleaned for food there. She knew tomorrow it would be gone. She whispered a silent prayer to the Goddess for the pear, the stream, and the animals. All things were part of the Goddess, and the Goddess was part of all things. The world was a giant puzzle in which all things fit in their proper place. That was the way and the wisdom of the Goddess.

  When she returned to the Ruins with her third load of water, Grace was surprised to see the women scurrying about like ants in the great kitchen. Only Pat, as usual, remained calm.

  “There are people coming,” Pat said to Grace’s unasked question. “They will be here by midday. Hurry with the last of the water. We must make extra bread today.”

  “Yes, Mother,” Grace said. People coming! She retrieved her empty buckets from the women and flew down to the stream, running for speed, hopping in the hope of seeing where the strangers came from. They didn’t often get visitors; once or twice a year at the most. And those that did come were all very strange, very different. They wore odd colors of clothes, or wrapped or sewed them differently; they spoke strangely, with what Pat called accents, or could not be understood at all. They came for news of the Sibling, beseeching Pat to tell them when and how her fabled sister Greer would come to deliver them from darkness. Pat always said the same thing: “The Sibling will come in the Goddess’ time, not yours or mine.”

  At first her inability—or unwillingness—to name the time would disappoint them, sadden them, even anger them. Grace had seen some cry or wail or pound fists upon the tables. There had been some who threatened Pat, who would hurl curses at her if their more rational companions had not restrained them. No one could ever be sure what strangers would do, but their appearance at the edge of the valley was always an exciting, apprehensive event. Grace set her buckets under the waterfall and bounced impatiently on her toes, hurrying the water so she could get back and be part of the preparations. She did not want to miss an instant of the strangers’ visit.

  When she returned to the kitchen for the last time, she gave her water over to Erin and went to stand near Pat as her mother said a small prayer over the unbaked bread. Pat took a pinch of coarsely ground flour and scattered it in the fire that burned beneath the oven chamber, murmuring thanks to the Goddess for Her many blessings. Grace kept a respectful silence as the last of the flour was sprinkled into the fire and was consumed. The fire flared up for an instant in acknowledgement, then burned down again. Pat gathered up rags with which to slide the heavy tray into the oven.

  “Mother,” Grace said on the long breath she’d been holding, “what may I do now? For the visitors?”

  Pat did not answer immediately, but seemed to find fault with the bread tray and moved it minutely.

  “The front room needs sweeping,” she said. “Do a thorough job, and get the corners especially. I don’t want to see any cobwebs anywhere when you’re done.” She straightened, finally satisfied with the tray, and closed the wide oven door. Turning to Grace, she gave more instructions with a tight look on her hard face. “Bring extra rugs into the room, first making sure they are not dusty, and cover the floor. It looks like a large group coming; I doubt we’ll have enough benches for all.”

  Grace nodded at each new instruction, pleased her mother would give her so much responsibility. Usually when strangers came, Pat insisted that Grace continue with her regular chores so as to be out of the way of the preparations, which also meant out of the way of most of the visiting. This time, it seemed, Grace would be an accepted part of it all.

  “When you’ve done all that,” Pat continued, “go out and kill five of the biggest birds we have. Make sure you thank the Goddess properly before each one. Do you know the words?”

  Shocked, Grace nodded. She’d never been allowed to slaughter an animal before, although she’d gone with women to help and knew the procedure. This was a special day. “Yes,” she answered a little hesitantly. “I know the words.”

  Pat looked hard at her daughter. “Can you do it? If not, say so and I’ll send another.”

  “No, I can do it,” Grace swallowed. “Five, you said?”

  “The five biggest. Except not that big red one. She’s too old. Kill them and pluck them, then give them to Nidia. When all that is done, come see what else there might be.”

  “Yes, Mother.” Grace spun on a bare heel and almost ran to the broom closet. She picked out the big broom and toted it to the huge front room. She had never really understood what purpose this room had served before the Shift; Pat had said it was a waiting room of sorts, for people who were going to pay their tokens to the Ruins. Why people should have to wait to do that, Grace didn’t know. The room was large, though with a big fireplace at one end and great banks of now open windows all along the front. Most of the rough-hewn tables and benches were pushed against a side wall; the colony only used five tables normally to feed their number. Grace planned to sweep and dust, then pull out the extra tables as she had seen done before when strangers came. If Pat thought there would not be enough seats for all, it would be a big gathering. As Grace worked and planned, her excitement mounted. She felt lightheaded with her good fortune—being allowed to take part in so unusual a gathering—and said a quick, quiet prayer of thanks to the Goddess. Then she threw herself into the work at hand.

  The room was so large that Grace had trouble getting it clean. If she swept too vigorously, sh
e sent up clouds of dust that had to settle before she could sweep again. Quickly she learned that speed meant more work, and slowed her pace. When she’d finished sweeping, she dusted all the tables and benches, the fireplace, the windowsills, then swept again. She inspected the room with a mind to her mother and decided even Pat would have to admit it was clean. She put away her broom and rags and wrestled the heavy tables into a gathering pattern, arching them from the front table where Pat would sit. No one had to ask what the strangers came for; everyone knew they came to ask about the Sibling. Grace arranged the tables and benches so everyone would have some view of her mother’s place. Beyond that, she hauled down some of the heavy, rolled rugs, shook them free of dust outside, and placed them over the hardwood floor. When she was done, the room looked as presentable as she’d ever seen it.

  Now the birds. Grace’s throat tightened instinctively at the magnitude of this task. Never had she been allowed to kill anything before. Not that she’d wanted to, but the proper taking of the life of another of the Goddess’ creatures was a critical responsibility. Although a natural part of any being’s existence on the planet, ending another life had to be performed along strict rituals or the Goddess would be angered. It was not something to be taken simply or to perform lightly. Half proud, half nervous, Grace walked the path to the bird pen.

  Standing silently outside the pen, she watched the birds and calculated which ones would be best for her needs. Although their wings were clipped so they could not fly, the birds were still large, strong animals and could scratch with beak or claw, or buffet one painfully with their wings. She hoped to do this with a minimum of trouble, both for her sake and the birds’.

  Entering the pen, she let the birds scatter around her, then settle back into their quick, jerky strut about the edges of the pen. She decided on her first choice and walked carefully to it, moving smoothly and unerringly. The bird ducked away from her into a corner of the pen where she caught it easily with a quick hand about its neck. Once caught, it struggled briefly, then quieted when she held it firmly against her body. She carried it out of the pen and to a sorry-looking shed.

  The knife she sought was in its place, bracketed to the wall of the shed. She unsheathed it and took it and the bird back outside to a weathered table. Setting the knife down, she gazed deeply into the eye of the unmoving bird and began her prayer of thanks, of compassion, to the Goddess.

  “Oh, Goddess, whose light and creations are beautiful, I thank You for this animal who will die for me so I may live. I thank You for its blood, its breath, its life, its death. I know this animal is a unique being in the universe, never to live in the same way again, yet is a part of Your spirit and so will live always. I thank You for this gift of life, and promise to You that it shall not be meaningless.”

  Raising her eyes from the bird to the wide, blue sky, Grace closed a hand around the neck of the animal, gripped firmly and wrenched, breaking the neck of the bird cleanly. The animal went limp for a heartbeat, then twitched spasmodically. Grace breathed a small extra thanks that she had been able to do the job quickly and cleanly; she had seen women miscalculate and cripple a bird without killing it immediately, and she found that she had taken on the animal’s pain as her own. Luckily—or by favor of the Goddess—she had been able to learn the proper action without fumbling the first time. The bird had given up its soul without struggle, without pain. Taking the knife, Grace cut off the head and neck and left the carcass draped over the side of the table to bleed itself.

  After her first success, she thought the rest of the chore would be easy. It was not. The second bird squawked and fluttered, fighting for its life in a panicky way that troubled Grace’s sensitivity. When she stared into the animal’s wild, unseeing eyes, she saw fear and confusion, a mental anguish that pierced her heart. She almost let the bird go and chose another, but a surprising resolve strengthened her. She said the killing prayer over the animal in a strong, clear voice; this bird was beloved of the Goddess in its fear, in its strength. She praised it for its grasp on life and entreated it to accept death as fervently. When she twisted its neck, it seemed the animal heard and obeyed; it died soundlessly.

  After that, Grace was aware enough of each animal’s distinct separateness not to expect anything but uniqueness from each one. She chose each bird, watched it, felt its being with her mind and heart, prayed over it as its spirit required, and took its life. When she was done, the five bedraggled carcasses brought a deep sadness to her and yet she knew the birds were no longer part of those battered, mutilated bodies, but were free of their physical restraints and were shining sparks of the Goddess’ light. The conflicting emotions disturbed her but she shrugged into them as a winter visitor shrugs into a heavy coat. The way of the Goddess was not without pain, without sacrifice or sadness. But it was Truth. And she could live with Truth.

  As the last bird bled, Grace began to pluck the first. Her sensitivity returned to the physical. Visitors were coming, and visitors deserved a good meal for their effort. There was work to be done. Silently, with a stronger purity of mind, Grace bent to it.

  By the time she’d plucked the last bird to a pale bareness, most of Grace’s normal even temperament had resurfaced. She carried the birds back to the kitchen and turned them over to Nidia.

  “They all look plump and nice,” Nidia observed as she took them.

  “They are all chosen of the Goddess,” Grace remarked. “All very different and all very special.”

  Nidia hesitated in mid-retrieval at Grace’s odd pronouncement. The child looked … different. The light in her gray eyes was darker, deeper.

  “Are you all right, Grace?” Nidia asked in a low voice.

  Grace nodded solemnly. “I’m fine, Aunt Nidia.” She used the title familiarly, as she always had, though Nidia was no relation. “Is there more that I can do to prepare for the visitors?”

  Nidia eyed Grace a moment longer, frowning, then turned away with the birds. “I think Pat needs some things from the garden. Pat?” she called across the kitchen. “Do you want Grace to pick some greens?”

  “Cabbage, onions, and tomatoes,” Pat called back to Grace from the ovens. “And peas. And do it quickly. We’re running out of time.”

  “Yes, Mother,” Grace was out the door before her words dissipated in the humming air of the kitchen.

  Nidia watched her go.

  “Pat,” she said as she began to prepare the birds, “have you ever thought that Grace might not be best suited to marry?”

  Pat was busy pulling baked loaves off a still-hot tray and couldn’t stop to worry about Nidia’s foolish questions. “She’ll do whatever the Goddess will have her do.”

  “Yes, but ...” Nidia paused, puzzled. “She’s not ...” The words wouldn’t form. Nidia shook her head, not even sure anymore what she’d been thinking, what idea she’d been pursuing. Maybe Grace could be a keeper of the Goddess, a priestess. Maybe even a servant of the Sibling. It seemed a disjointed, half-formed thought, like a dream barely remembered, more an emotion than an idea. Nidia shrugged it off. “Never mind.”

  Unconcerned, Pat continued her work at the ovens.

  ###

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  BOOKS BY MELISSA BOWERSOCK

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  The Appaloosa Connection (Western Adventure)

  The Blue Crystal (Fantasy)

  Burning Through (Paranormal)

  Fleischerhaus (Paranormal Suspense/Romance)

  Goddess Rising (Spiritual Fantasy)

  Lightning Strikes (Contemporary Romance)

  Marcia Gates: Angel of Bataan (Biography)

  The Pits of Passion by Amber Flame (Satire)
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  The Rare Breed (Historical Romance)

  Remember Me (Contemporary Romance)

  Queen’s Gold (Action/Adventure)

  Stone’s Ghost (Paranormal)

  Superstition Gold (Historical Romance)

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