by P. C. Cast
I smiled grimly at ClanFintan. “Dad’s not about to let someone he loves give in to the Dark Side.” He, of course, hadn’t seen the Star Wars movies (not even the old ones), but he totally got the gist of what I was saying.
“But can he stop her? The MacCallan wasn’t able to stop Rhiannon from being seduced by darkness.”
I felt cold, and shivered. “I don’t know. I think all we can do is wait and see.”
“And pray for Epona’s aid,” he said.
“And pray for Epona’s aid,” I echoed. Silently I added, Please, Epona, somehow, even though that’s not your world, help Dad and Mama Parker and little Morrigan.
Then my own daughter began to stir and my attention shifted from Oklahoma and darkness to Partholon and the light of new beginnings.
PART II
CHAPTER 1
Oklahoma
From her earliest thoughts Morrigan knew she was different. It wasn’t just because she was being raised by her grandparents. She knew other kids whose parents were losers and their grandparents had to raise them. It wasn’t just because her mom and dad were dead, even though she didn’t know anyone else whose parents were both dead. And it wasn’t because G-ma and G-pa taught her kinda weird stuff when it came to religion. Oklahoma was the Bible Belt, but even in Broken Arrow there were kids in school who believed in different stuff. Okay, not many. But still.
She was different because she heard things other people didn’t hear, and because she felt things other people didn’t feel.
Morrigan sighed and continued to pull the journals out of her closet and stack them neatly in storage boxes.
“And here it is. All my weirdness. Chronicled for the enjoyment of the masses.” She bowed her head and waved her hands, as if accepting grateful accolades from a crowd. “No…no…your applause is too much. Really.”
“Morgie! Hon! Do you need some help in there?”
“Grandma, no! I’m fine.”
“Want a glass of sweet tea?”
Morrigan sighed again, but she smiled and made sure the smile touched her voice. “No, Grandma. Don’t worry. I’ll be done in here in a little while.”
“Okay, well, your friends will be here pretty soon. So if you need me to help you—”
“Mama Parker, leave the girl alone. If she said she’s fine, she’s fine…”
Morrigan giggled at her grandpa’s gruff voice and at her grandma’s soft reply. G-pa always seemed to know when she needed some time to herself. Not that she didn’t love her grandma and appreciate her. But G-ma tended to…well…hover. And an eighteen-year-old girl who was packing to go away to college didn’t need hovering. Or at least not all the time.
She picked up another journal and thumbed through it restlessly. It was hard to think about going away, though. Sure, Oklahoma State University wasn’t that far away. Only about an hour and a half. But it wasn’t here. It wasn’t home. And she’d have to meet new people. Make new friends. Morrigan frowned. She just wasn’t good at that. New people didn’t get her. She tended to be shy and quiet. People misunderstood that and assumed she was stuck up. So she felt like she always had to force herself to act against her personality—to smile and say hi when she just wanted to sit in the background and watch what was going on until she felt comfortable joining in. That’s why she’d gotten into drama. She’d even been in several of the school plays. She and Grandpa had come up with the plan in middle school that she should take Intro to Drama so that she could learn to “act” in her daily life.
Okay, it sounded wrong and kinda even deceptive. But it wasn’t. Morrigan had needed a way to fit in. And not just for herself. It was important to her grandparents that she had friends. That she acted normal. Even though she wasn’t. They understood her. But no one else really did.
So she’d learned to act. And she got into dance and made the Tigette Dance Squad for all four of her high-school years. And she dated (mostly football players or wrestlers—they were the guys G-pa approved of). She gave the appearance of normal.
But inside, where it really counted, Morrigan was far from normal.
She tossed another journal in the storage box. It flipped open, and the childish handwriting caught her eye. She picked it up and read from the open page.
April 2 (28 more days till my 9th birthday!)
Dear Journal,
I really, really think G-pa and G-ma are getting me a horse for my birthday!! And not just because I’ve been asking and asking for one, and being sure I show them that I’m old enough to take care of one all by myself. The wind tells me. She whispers that my horse is coming and that I should always love and cherish my mare. The wind is almost always right.
I guess I should tell G-pa that the wind talks to me, but
Morrigan didn’t need to flip the page to remember the rest of the long-ago entry.
She could recall all too well the little girl she used to be. The girl who’d loved, more than anything, the trees and the earth and the beautiful dappled gray mare she did get for her ninth birthday. The girl who didn’t constantly look into shadows for bad things, but believed that all the voices in her imagination were good, her special friends, and that she wasn’t a total and complete freak for being able to sense spirits in the land.
Not today. She wouldn’t think about that today. She shook her head. Today she had enough to deal with as she packed to leave her home and then went on one last road trip with her friends before they scattered to different colleges. The battle between good and evil would have to wait till after she was settled in the dorm. She wasn’t Buffy. Morrigan snorted. She wasn’t even Eowyn, although she’d give just about anything to be a Shieldmaid of Rohan.
Was there really a battle between good and evil? Could it just be something her aging, eccentric grandparents had made up?
“No,” she said firmly, shoving aside the fact that she didn’t know if those last thoughts had been her own, or had been whispered to her on the wind. To distract herself she flipped the journal ahead to the April 30 listing, and let herself smile and relax as she read her childish excitement.
Dear Journal Dear Journal Dear Journal!
THEY DID GET ME A HORSE! I knew it! She’s the most beautiful, amazing, incredible thing in the world! She’s only a two-year-old. G-pa says that’ll give us time to grow up together. (G-pa is so funny.) She’s an awesome dappled gray that’s so light she’s almost silver. I think I’m going to call her Dove because she’s so pretty and sweet. AND SHE’S MINE!
G-pa and G-ma are the best! It doesn’t even matter that they’re old.
Tonight while I was brushing Dove G-pa told me all about a horse goddess named Epona. She’s also goddess of the earth and trees and rocks and everything. He said if I’m really happy about my new horse then maybe I should thank Epona, because she probably pays attention when someone gets her first horse of her very own. I thought that sounded like a cool idea, so after dark I snuck out to the big tree in the front yard (the one right outside my bedroom window) and I said THANK YOU to Epona. Because that’s a really big tree and I figured if she’s goddess of trees she probably liked that one a lot. Then I pulled one of the lawn chairs over and stood on my tip-toes on it so that I could reach to put my favorite shiny rock (the one I found when I was weeding the garden last summer) as far up as I could. I told Epona the rock was for her.
And do you know what? I swear I heard someone laughing up in the branches of the tree! A girl someone!
“And the next day the shiny rock was gone,” Morrigan whispered. And that’s when her relationship with Epona had started. The older she got, the more often her grandparents mentioned the Goddess. And the more often Morrigan thought about her.
Morrigan didn’t remember exactly when the woman’s voice in the wind had become that of the Goddess to her, she just knew that soon after the rock disappeared she’d started thinking of the voice in her mind, the one that sounded like music, as the whisper of a goddess.
Until the day she had finally admit
ted to G-pa that the wind spoke to her. She’d never forget the look on his face. He’d gone from laughing with her about something Dove had done, to being pale and serious within the space of just a few seconds. Then he’d sat her down and given her The Talk.
Had The Talk been a big, embarrassing lecture about sex and periods and that kind of stuff? Unfortunately, no. It’d been a talk about good and evil, and how both might touch her life.
Morrigan put away the journal she’d been reading, and sifted through the others until she found the one she wanted. She didn’t have to thumb through many pages to find the entry she’d made after The Talk.
September 13
Dear Journal,
I guess the whole thing about the 13th being unlucky is true. I told G-pa about the voices in the wind today and he really freaked. And the stuff he said kinda scared the s**t outta me.
Morrigan closed her eyes. She didn’t have to read the childish version of the conversation. She remembered it all too well—and without the cushion of childhood’s innocence to soften the impact of his words. The three of them had sat at the kitchen table.
“Morrigan, I want you to listen carefully to me,” G-pa had said. She’d known he was dead serious because he’d called her by her full name instead of Morgie or Morgie old girl. She remembered that the tone of his voice had made her stomach hurt.
“You think I’m crazy because I hear the wind,” she’d blurted.
“No, hon!” G-ma had patted her hand. “Grandpa, tell her we believe her and don’t think she’s crazy.”
“Nope, nope,” he’d grumbled. “You’re not crazy. We believe you can hear voices in the wind.” He sighed and rubbed his eyes under his glasses. “It’s like how you used to draw pictures of rocks and trees with hearts in them when you were a little girl. Remember what you told us about that?”
Of course she’d remembered. “I told you that I drew hearts in them because I knew they were all alive.”
“Right,” Grandpa had said. “The wind talking to you is like you knowing the trees and rocks have spirits.”
“The wind is just another spirit in the world?” Morrigan had brightened, thinking that if the voice was like the trees and rocks then it should be okay. Maybe one of the voices, that really pretty girl voice, was Epona!
“It’s not that simple, hon,” G-ma had said.
“The rocks and trees are good. But the voice you hear—”
“Voices,” she’d interrupted. “It’s not always the same voice, but I always think of it as wind.”
G-pa gave G-ma a long look before he continued. “You know that there’s good and evil in the world, right?”
“Yeah, we’re studying WWII in history. Hitler was evil.”
“That’s right.”
“And lots of kids believe in Satan. He’s evil.”
“Yes. But sometimes evil isn’t as easy to identify as Hitler or Satan, just like not all that’s good seems good at first.”
Morrigan had scrunched up her nose and said, “Like brussels sprouts tasting nasty but being good for me?”
That had made him chuckle. “Just like brussels sprouts.”
Morrigan remembered that she’d suddenly realized what he was trying to tell her. “You mean that the voices in the wind might be bad?”
“Not all of them, hon,” G-ma had said.
G-pa had taken a deep breath, and she remembered thinking that he looked really tired. Then he’d said, “Your mom heard voices. Whispered voices. Some of them were good. She could even hear the sound of Epona’s voice.”
She’d sat there, awestruck that her mom had actually listened to a goddess. And if her mom had heard Epona, then maybe she could hear her, too! Then the rest of what G-pa was saying was like he’d thrown ice water on her.
“But she could also hear a voice that was evil. She listened to it, too, until after a while it changed her, and it wasn’t until you were born that she realized she had made a mistake and let evil get a hold of her.”
“But you said my mom was a good person.” Morrigan had felt like crying.
“She was. There was a lot of good in her. For a while it just got smothered out by the whispers of evil.”
“Like the voices I hear?”
“Morrigan—” G-pa had leaned forward and put his big, rough hand over mine “—I think your mom might be one of the voices you hear. She would want to watch over you. I think another voice might be that of Epona herself. The Goddess was close to your mother. But I also think that the evil that whispered to your mother might also be trying to influence you.”
“We’re not telling you this to scare you, hon,” Grandma had said.
“Nope, nope. I wouldn’t have told you about this until you were older. But you already hear the voices, so it’s important you know that you have to be careful,” Grandpa had said.
“And be smart.” G-ma had smiled at me. “You’re a smart girl. Like Grandpa says, don’t be afraid, just be careful.”
“But how do I know if I’m listening to the wrong voice?” Morrigan remembered exactly how confused and afraid she’d felt, despite their hands on hers and their assurance that she didn’t need to be afraid.
“If it feels wrong, don’t listen to it,” G-pa had said firmly. “If it’s selfish or mean or a lie, don’t listen to it.”
“And always look to the light, hon. The trees and the rocks and the spirits you feel in the earth are not evil,” G-ma had added.
“And we’ll be here to help you, Morgie old girl,” Grandpa had said gruffly, patting my hand again.
“Always, hon. We’ll always be here for you.”
Morrigan smiled, remembering how G-ma had hugged her afterward and then thought that she’d totally distracted her granddaughter by asking Morrigan to help her cut a batch of fudge into squares. But she hadn’t been distracted, or at least not for long. Later that night she’d gone down to the end of the east pasture to the huge willow tree and the headstone that rested under it. There was one stone for both of them that simply said:
SHANNON AND CLINT
BELOVED DAUGHTER AND
THE MAN BORN TO LOVE HER
Morrigan hadn’t realized then, when she was just a little girl, how weird the headstone was. That most gravestones had full names and dates of death and birth carved on them. She’d eventually asked G-pa about it and all he’d ever say was that what the stone said was all that was important.
That day she’d stepped within the curtain of the weeping willow that framed the grave and brushed off some dead leaves from the top of the stone. Then Morrigan had traced her mother’s name with her finger.
“I wish you were here,” she’d whispered. “Or at least I wish I could tell for sure if one of the wind’s voices is yours.” Morrigan listened hard, hoping to hear her mom tell her that she really did talk to her daughter on the wind. But she’d heard nothing but the rustle of the willow’s hanging leaves.
It hadn’t been till she was turning away from the grave that it had happened. Morrigan remembered that the sun had gone behind a cloud and she’d shivered as the wind whipped around her cold and sharp. And on that wind she suddenly heard, Listen to your heart’s desires and you will know me…
Morrigan blinked, bringing herself back to the present. She closed the old journal with finality and shoved it in the box. She didn’t want to remember that day. Her grandparents’ words had followed her enough in the years since. She didn’t need to relive it again today. She grabbed another journal.
“Something happy…something light…that’s what I need,” she muttered, and then with a glad little cry, she caught sight of a bright pink leather journal and lifted it from the others. “It’s in this one. Yeah, here it is!” She smiled as she began reading the journal entry she had made when she was thirteen.
November 4
Dear Journal,
Oh my gosh! The coolest thing happened today! Well, okay, it was freezing out, but Dove needed to be exercised so I was riding her up Oak Grove
Road so that we could gallop through that big empty field. So in the middle of the field these stupid wild turkeys flew up and scared the crap outta Dove and me. She jumped forward and her hoof must have hit something because she tripped and I FELL RIGHT OFF OF HER. Can you believe it? I never fall off. Anyways, it didn’t hurt much and even if it had I was too worried about Dove’s leg to worry about me. She was kinda limping around and I thought she’d broken it. So I made her hold still and felt down her leg. I was scared and shaking and crying and all of a sudden I realized MY HANDS WERE GLOWING! Okay. Really. It was like I made a light come out of them, like a little candle or something. I cannot wait till G-ma and G-pa get home so I can tell them!
Oh, P.S., Dove’s leg is just fine.
Morrigan smiled at her thirteen-year-old self, remembering fondly her childhood with the sweet gray mare who was now retired to Grandpa’s greenest meadow to spend Morrigan’s college years lazing in clover, round and happy. Laughing softly, Morrigan lifted her hand. Holding it palm up she stared at it, concentrating hard. After what seemed like forever, a tiny flicker of light danced around her palm, but it was gone almost before she could be sure she saw it there. Morrigan sighed and rubbed her hands together—her right palm still felt warm and tingly. But nothing else. She could do it again, but only just a little. Her grandparents had no explanation for her weird ability. Like her, they were clueless about where it came from or what it meant.
The wind wasn’t clueless, though. Over the years it had whispered affinity for flame and you can bring light and other equally cryptic things to her. Morrigan didn’t understand what the voices were trying to tell her, and she was afraid to ask them to help her understand. What if that meant she was asking evil to help her? It was way too confusing.
“Morgie, hon, it’s getting late.”
Morrigan jumped away from her grandma’s soft touch like her hand was a live wire. “Oh, crap, Grandma! Don’t sneak up on me like that. You scared me so bad you almost made me pee my pants!”