by P. C. Cast
“Ohmygod! There you are!” Gena blurted as Morrigan and Kyle approached the trolleylike wagon where everyone was waiting.
“She’s safe and sound,” Kyle assured the group. He grinned at Morrigan. “She’s just a natural spelunker, which means she has to be pried from a cave.”
“Well, you and she can have it! Too dark and claustrophobic for me,” called the middle-aged man. His wife nodded in such vigorous agreement that several of the group members chuckled.
Relieved that he had turned the group’s attention from her, Morrigan gave Kyle a quick, grateful smile and then climbed into the trolley. Her friends made room for her and Kyle went to the cab, put it into gear and pulled them smoothly away from the cave. Morrigan wanted to scream at him to take her back. She had to grip the seat hard to make herself stay in the car. What was wrong with her? Why was she feeling like this?
Embrace your heritage…floated around her in the hot wind.
“So—” Lori leaned toward Morrigan with a knowing smile “—tell the truth. You did all of that so that hottie would be alone with you. Right?”
“Yeah, right,” Morrigan said automatically.
“I’ll bet he took your hand to help you out of that creepy tunnel, didn’t he?” Gena said.
“Yeah.”
“I think he likes you,” Jaime whispered. “He kept looking at you. God, he’s so damn hot. You’re crazy if you don’t get his number.”
“I don’t know if he’s old enough. You know I’ve had it with young guys,” Morrigan said.
Lori snorted. “You’re old. You’ve always been old.”
Morrigan met Lori’s eyes. Suddenly she hated her friends with an intensity that left her breathless. She hated being surrounded by silly, stupid girls who had no damn real worries and no damn idea about what it was to feel like you never belong.
“You’re right. I have always been old,” she said shortly. Then she turned her head and stared back at the cave while Lori, Gena and Jaime talked endlessly about Kyle’s tall blond hotness.
Morrigan needed to get home so that she could talk to the only two people on this earth who understood her. Maybe they could help her make sense out of today.
And maybe there were things about your mother they hadn’t told you…whispered the wind.
This time Morrigan listened.
CHAPTER 5
“We need to talk.”
Her grandparents looked up at her from under their reading glasses. They were in their usual evening places—sitting side by side in their matching recliners reading and ignoring the TV. Grandma had poured herself a glass of red wine. Grandpa was drinking a cup of coffee (decaf, of course) and there was the crumby evidence of what had been a piece of homemade cherry pie on the whatnot table between them. Grandma glanced behind her at the empty door.
“Hon, did the girls want to come in? I have cherry pie.”
“No, I sent them home. I need to talk to you guys.”
Grandpa took his reading glasses off. “What is it, Morgie old girl?”
“Something happened today while I was in the cave. Something really weird.” Instead of taking her usual place on the love seat, Morrigan paced. She was filled with nervous energy, and she wasn’t sure why. All the way home she had been simmering. She barely spoke to her friends, and pretty soon the three of them ignored her. Shrugging off her bad mood as PMS they chattered amongst themselves about such utter nonsense that she couldn’t get home and get rid of them fast enough.
“Tell us, hon,” Grandma said.
“Okay. It started with the reaction I had to the cave. It was like coming home. No, no, it was more than that. It felt like I’d been there before. Only not.” Morrigan puffed out a breath in frustration. “I’m not describing it right. When I entered the cave it seemed like I belonged there. You guys know how out of place I feel sometimes.” Her grandparents nodded. They did understand—they’d helped her through it her whole life. “I didn’t feel like that in the cave.”
“Well, hon, you’ve always loved the outdoors. I suppose it makes sense that you would have a positive reaction to what you might think of as being embraced by the earth,” Grandma said.
“That’s kinda what I told myself at first. But then the other stuff happened and I knew there was more to it than just that I like the earth.”
“What else happened?” She noticed G-pa’s voice was guarded. He was probably worried that she’d had a fight with her girlfriends. For as long as Morrigan could remember, her grandpa had been emphasizing the importance of friends…of getting along with others…of ways that she could be a good person. Today the reminder of her G-pa’s insistence that she fit in and make friends caused her to feel an unusual flash of irritation, which was reflected in the shortness of her next words.
“The crystals in the cave welcomed me as Light Bringer, and I made them glow.”
No one spoke for several beats and Morrigan wanted to fidget. Instead she clasped her hands together and waited. Grandma spoke first.
“Hon, do you mean you transferred the little fire your hands make into the crystals?”
Morrigan shook her head. “No, it wasn’t like that. It was like the fire was already inside the crystals, and when I touched them I made it light.”
“Did your friends see this?” Grandma asked hesitantly, as if she really didn’t want to hear the answer.
“No. No one knew.”
“Morrigan, when you said that the crystals welcomed you and called you Light Bringer, did you mean that you heard that in the voices of the wind?” Grandpa asked.
“No. It was way different than the voices I hear all the time. Grandpa, it was amazing!” Her temporary irritation with him forgotten, she crouched next to his chair, grabbing his big, work-roughened hand. “I touched the crystals, just like I’m touching your hand right now. And they came alive. I felt them shiver. It was like I was touching the skin of an animal. And then through my hand I felt them welcome me. It wasn’t a voice in the wind. It was a voice in my soul. If I kept my hand on the crystals they started to get warm. That’s when they glowed.”
She was surprised by the sudden sadness in her grandpa’s eyes. He patted her hand and turned his head to meet his wife’s steady gaze.
“It’s time we told her all of it,” he said.
“I know,” Grandma said.
Morrigan’s heart squeezed and she suddenly wanted to take back everything she’d said. Grandpa’s words all of it sounded final and scary, and she knew deep within her that after she heard what he had to say she would never be the same.
“Sit down, Morgie old girl. I have a story to tell you.” Grandpa motioned to the little footstool he’d carved out of the trunk of an old oak. Morrigan sat on the stool, facing her grandparents, exactly as she had done countless times during her childhood while the three of them talked and laughed and shared their lives together. The remembrance comforted her. These were her grandparents—the people who had loved her for her entire life. She didn’t need to be scared of whatever they were going to tell her.
“What is it, Grandpa?”
“Your mother wasn’t Shannon.”
The words were so simple. The sentence so short. But Morrigan felt as if her grandpa’s voice had become a weapon, and what he had just said struck her, causing her such real physical pain that she flinched.
“Hon, it’s okay. Everything is going to be okay.” Grandma reacted to her hurt, as she always did, but Morrigan didn’t take her eyes from her grandpa’s face.
“I don’t understand what you’re saying. How could Shannon not be my mom?”
“Almost nineteen years ago Shannon went to an estate auction. At the auction she bought what she believed to be a reproduction of an ancient Celtic vase. It actually was a talisman from Partholon, another world—a world much like ours, where there are even people who look exactly like people from this world. Except in Partholon, magic was real and the Goddess Epona was, or rather is, that world’s main deity.”
/> “Epona…” Morrigan whispered the Goddess’s name.
Her grandpa nodded. “It was Epona’s High Priestess, her Chosen Incarnate, who sent the talisman here to Oklahoma like a baited fishing line to find and catch Shannon, who was her mirror image—so similar to each other that there was virtually no physical difference to tell them apart—and to change places with her. Through the vase Shannon was transported to Partholon, and Rhiannon, Epona’s Chosen, came here to Oklahoma.”
“But why? It doesn’t make any sense. Why would the High Priestess of a goddess want to leave her world and come here?”
“Rhiannon knew an army of demons was getting ready to attack Partholon, so leaving seemed like a pretty good idea.”
“That’s not right. If she was a High Priestess shouldn’t she have stayed to help her people?”
“Yes, she should have. But Rhiannon MacCallan was selfish and spoiled. She chose the easiest thing to do, not the right thing to do.”
Her grandma leaned forward and added earnestly, “But one of the reasons Rhiannon did the things she did was because a dark god had been whispering to her and poisoning her spirit.”
At the mention of the whispering, Morrigan felt a shock of understanding. That’s why her grandparents had warned her so consistently not to listen to the voices she heard, even though one of them might be her mother. Her mother…
“No one warned Rhiannon about the dark god, Pryderi. She didn’t realize that her unhappiness and the bad thoughts that kept going through her mind were manipulated by evil.”
“No one warned her, and she became so tainted by evil that she embraced it, and was, eventually, consumed by it,” Grandpa continued.
“How did you find out about all of this?” Morrigan felt cold, and wrapped her arms around herself.
Grandpa drew a deep breath and let it out with a slow sigh. “Rhiannon took over Shannon’s life.”
“No, she did not. Rhiannon was nothing like Shannon, and she definitely didn’t take over her life,” his wife said with uncharacteristic shortness.
“Your grandma’s right. Rhiannon didn’t step into Shannon’s life, like Shannon did hers in Partholon. Rhiannon changed and twisted things, always seeking more. More power. More money. More at any cost.”
“That’s how she met your father.”
Morrigan turned to her grandma. “So Clint Freeman really was my dad?”
“Of course, hon.”
“He was a good man. He had a connection to the land.” Grandpa paused and smiled at her. “That’s where I thought you got your love of the land. He was actually physically strengthened by it. Shannon told us that Clint was the mirror image of the High Shaman in Partholon she had been married to in Rhiannon’s stead.”
“Wait. I don’t get it. You said Rhiannon was over here and Shannon was over there. Now you’re saying that Shannon told you things. So she talks to you from Partholon?”
“Well, she has, but not often. Mostly I dream of her, and know that what I see is real. But that’s not how I learned about Partholon. Shannon came back to Oklahoma once, drawn here when Clint tried to re-exchange Rhiannon for Shannon. For a while all three of them were in Oklahoma, as was a great evil Rhiannon had resurrected for its power and let loose in this world.”
“Is that what killed my dad?” Morrigan was amazed that her voice sounded so normal when everything inside her was churning around and she really wanted to jump up and cover her ears and run from the room.
“No,” Grandpa said slowly. “Your father sacrificed himself so that he could stop Rhiannon. With his life’s blood he magically imprisoned her, and at the same time sent Shannon back to Partholon, so that she could be with his mirror image, the father of her unborn child.”
“And Rhiannon was pregnant with me?”
“Yes.”
“Rhiannon is my mother, not Shannon.”
She didn’t speak it like a question, but her grandpa answered her anyway. “Yes, Rhiannon is your mother.”
“And you’re Shannon’s parents. Not Rhiannon’s parents.”
Instead of answering, Grandpa said, “You should know that there was a shaman present at your birth. He brought you to us and told us that before she died Rhiannon rejected the dark god and was reconciled with Epona.”
Through the buzzing in Morrigan’s head she could barely hear what he was saying. “That’s why I’ve always felt like I don’t belong. It’s because I don’t belong.” She enunciated the words carefully, biting back the sickness that rose in the back of her throat. “I don’t belong to this world. And I don’t belong to the two of you.”
“But, hon, you do belong to us! You’re our child.”
Morrigan felt her head shaking back and forth. “No. I’m Rhiannon MacCallan’s child. And she’s not your daughter. My mother wasn’t Shannon, the woman whose pictures you’ve been showing me and who you’ve been telling me stories about my whole life. I’m Rhiannon’s daughter.” Her voice sounded weird—angry, loud, accusatory. She saw the hurt that darkened her grandma’s eyes and filled them with tears, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself. “I’m the kid of the woman who was so damn evil that the father of her child killed himself to keep the world safe from her.” She paused, panting. Then her eyes widened as she had another, more terrible thought. “And from me. He killed himself to keep the world safe from me, too, because I’m her child. Since I came from her, I might be like her.”
“No, Morrigan. You are not like her,” Grandpa said firmly.
Morrigan’s heart was pounding so hard that her chest hurt. “How did she get free from the magic? How was I born?” She saw the answer cross her grandpa’s well-lined face and felt her stomach clench. Before he could make up something, she answered for him. “Pryderi freed her.”
“The dark god freed her, but Epona forgave her.”
“And that’s why you warned me that some of the voices I hear on the wind might be evil. It’s because my mother was evil and she listened to that awful god, so it’s only logical that I might turn out like that, too.”
“Hon, we wanted to be sure that you would be on your guard, that the same things that tempted and tricked Rhiannon wouldn’t get to you, too,” Grandma said.
“Morrigan, listen to us. You are not evil and that is not why we warned you. You’re like Shannon, not Rhiannon.”
“But I’m not Shannon’s daughter. You said she was pregnant at the same time Rhiannon was. She has her own daughter over in Partholon, doesn’t she?” When neither of her grandparents answered her, she stood up, knocking over the footstool and raising her voice. “Doesn’t she!”
“Yes. Shannon has a daughter in Partholon,” her grandpa finally said.
“So there are two of us, just like Shannon and Rhiannon. It’s ironic, isn’t it? I actually belong over there, and she should have been born here. Or no. She has a mom and they belong together. It’s me who doesn’t really belong anywhere.”
You have the cave and you have your heritage…drifted in the air around Morrigan.
“I’m not your granddaughter. I’m not who I thought I was for my whole life.” Morrigan started backing out of the room. If she stayed there much longer she was going to drown in the fear and sorrow pressing in on her.
“Of course you’re our granddaughter. This doesn’t change anything. The only reason we told you about all this is because you’re obviously showing the powers of a priestess. That means Epona’s hand must be on you, even here in Oklahoma,” Grandpa said, speaking to her softly, as if she were a skittish filly.
“It’s a good thing to be touched by Epona,” Grandma said, smiling through her tears. “I’m sure the Goddess has a plan for you.”
“What if it’s not Epona who has touched me?” Morrigan’s voice sounded as dead as her heart felt. “What if Pryderi has marked me as his and that’s why I hear the voices and can make fire and why the crystals talk to me and glow when I touch them?”
“Pryderi has not marked you. You are not evil, Morgie old
girl,” Grandpa said gently.
Morrigan’s eyes filled with tears. “You say that, but you don’t know it for sure. And I have to know it for sure. No matter what, it’s time I embrace my heritage.” She whirled around and ran out of the house.
Her grandparents hurried to the door in time to see her gunning Old Red down the lane.
“She’ll be all right.” Mama Parker wiped the tears from her cheeks. “She’ll cool off and come home and everything will be okay, won’t she, hon?”
Richard put his arm around her. “I hope so. Morgie’s a good girl. She’s just scared and probably more than a little mad at us right now.”
They returned to their chairs. Richard moved slowly, feeling his age more than usual. He tried to get back into his book, but he couldn’t concentrate. He glanced at Mama Parker. She was staring out the window.
“She’s a good girl,” he repeated.
His wife nodded. “I know. I just…It’s just a lot for her to take in, and she’s so young.”
Richard sighed and mumbled, “Yep…yep…yep…” And then he straightened in his chair. “Damn!”
“What is it, hon?”
“Morrigan said ‘embrace my heritage.’ Have you ever heard her say anything like that in the eighteen years and four months she’s been alive?”
Mama Parker shook her head silently.
“But it does sound like something Rhiannon might whisper in her ear,” he said.
“Or Pryderi.”
He stood up and started to pull on his shoes. “No matter what that old Indian said, I still doubt there’s much difference between the two.”
“We’re going after Morrigan?”
“Yep, we damn sure are.”
“Oh, good, hon. I’m so relieved.” Mama Parker hurried to grab the keys to the Dodge doolie truck. “Do you know where she went?”