Highland Raven

Chapter 23

The Morrigu let go. I twirled like I was trapped in the middle of a windstorm. Around me was a whirlwind of black smoke. I felt dizzy as I twisted in the wind. My head throbbed like it was being squeezed, and my ears popped. Then I hit the ground hard. I was lying on the ground under a flower arbor. Enormous, long purple blossoms growing on vines twisted around the ancient stone column. Their smell was sweet, like mint, milkweed, and lilacs. I had only seen them once before. Madelaine had called the vine wisteria. The world around me was lit in hues of black, purple, and silver. I closed my eyes and inhaled the wisteria’s perfume. My ears were ringing; my head felt heavy. I was disoriented and very angry. Slowly, I sat up and looked around.

The arbor opened to a courtyard surrounded by crumbling stone columns. The flagstones glimmered silver. Wisteria grew all over everything. The sky was black; only scant beams of moonlight managed to slip though. Outside the circle of the cracked and tumbling columns, I could make out the shapes of half-tumbled buildings. Stones littered the ground. I was in a ruin. And at the center of the courtyard, in an ancient and decayed temple, was a cauldron. Beside that cauldron stood the Wyrd Sisters. The Morrigu was gone.

I rose and walked toward the women. My blood was thundering through my veins. My nostrils flared in fury. “Where am I? How do I get back?” I demanded.

The older woman, who stood bent and leaning against a staff, half-grunted, half-laughed. “You’re in the otherworld, girl. Where do you think?”

“Come, Cerridwen,” the younger woman beckoned. “Drink and be at ease,” she added, dipping a silver ladle into the cauldron and lifting it, offering it to me.

“I need to go back. Now. Tell me how to go back.”

“Why?” the old woman answered me in a voice that was too loud and too abrupt. Her voice echoed throughout the space. I realized then that wherever I was, it was very…empty.

I opened my mouth to answer, but she interrupted me.

“You cannot defy the Dark Lady, unless you wish for death. Or maybe she would just punish you by condemning your druid. You are here because the Morrigu wants you here. Would you disobey the Goddess of Death?”

I stared hard at the old woman, who stared equally hard back at me. Then, after a moment, she chuckled. “Stubborn girl. Still stubborn as ever. Drink, Cerridwen. Drink and learn. I am not your enemy. I’m just a bubble of the earth,” she said with a laugh then turned and sat down on a bench nearby. I stared at her. She was an ancient thing, her long gray hair nearly sweeping the ground. Her face was deeply wrinkled, and her fingers gripping the staff were gnarled and boney. Exasperated, she sighed and looked expectantly at me. When I didn’t move, she flourished her hand in irritation toward the younger woman who still held the ladle, waiting expectantly for me.

“Come, sister,” the red-haired woman said. “We will not harm you. Drink so you may know,” she said.

Hesitantly, I moved toward her, eyeing her carefully. This was the first time I’d ever seen either of them very clearly. Every time I’d encountered the Wyrds before they had always seemed so mysterious. Now, they both seemed common: an old woman and her middle-aged companion. The younger woman’s auburn locks curled down over her shoulders, and her eyes were hazel, a mixture of soft blue and green. She was, perhaps, the same age as Madelaine, and she was very pretty.

“Drink, daughter of Boite,” the ancient woman said, tapping her staff, “so we can get on with it!” she added.

The red-haired woman handed the ladle to me. I was surprised when the metal felt cold to the touch. A hot fire burned under the cauldron, that was certain, but the ladle and the liquid were cold. I lifted the ladle. The liquid within smelled strange; sweet and vile at once. I eyed the red-haired woman who smiled encouragingly at me. I drank. The liquid was as cold as water from a frozen stream. I felt its chill as the liquid slipped down to my belly. For a moment, I worried I had been poisoned. I swooned.

“Grab her,” I heard the old woman call before I dropped into unconsciousness.

Images flashed before my eyes like I was dreaming. I saw the cauldron courtyard and the wisteria arbor as it had been many, many years ago. I saw the ruins basked in sunlight. The place had been alive. The place where the cauldron sat was the courtyard of a temple. Like a ghost, I stood watching the world moving around me while everyone else was unaware of me. Everywhere I looked I saw priestesses dressed in dark purple robes with black capes. They moved through the wisteria-covered buildings chanting, swinging incense, and carrying offering bowls, many of which were filled with blood. They left their offerings before a massive, white-stone statue of the goddess that sat further within the temple.

Then I moved with the speed of thought beyond the walls of the temple, which sat on a hill far above the city, into the streets below. The city bustled. The citizens passed by, their bodies tattooed with symbols of death: ravens, skulls, weapons, even monsters. This was a city that reveled in death. Red-robed priests, carrying staves topped with skulls, passed in and out of a smaller shrine at the bottom of the temple stairs. Warriors carrying heavy swords dressed in glimmering armor hurried up and down the streets.

But the streets were filled with common people too. Rugged, seafaring commoners hustled down the streets: fishermen on their way to sea, mothers chasing children, old men driving mule carts. The people looked…content. They did not fear the priests and priestesses of death who intermingled with them. They nodded in respect. This island belonged to the Dark Lady. This was the home of death. Here, the Dark Goddess had ruled.

The images around me began to spin and blur, and I felt that I had moved forward in time. When I stopped again, it was in a scene of cataclysm. The ground shook. Even in my vision, I could feel the earth trembling. My knees felt weak. The ground shook. The people fled past me, through me, around me. The ground shook, and the buildings collapsed. Fire ravaged the place, and in terror, the people of the island fled in red-sailed boats into the wine-dark sea. The buildings collapsed. Those who stayed…well, their bodies littered the streets.

And when it was done, just as she had done to me, the Goddess of Death wove a smoky cloak around her island and pulled it into the abyss. She snatched her land, shifting time and space, and moved it into the otherworld. Her city hidden, her acolytes dead or dispersed, she shuttered her world in darkness, leaving it inaccessible to common man.

The vision left me. Pain shot across my head. I felt like a bolt of lightning struck me. I could feel someone holding me.

“Welcome home,” the old woman said. Then, I slept.

* * *

It was a long time before I woke. I remember what Sid told me about how time moved in the otherworld; days in the otherworld could be weeks or months in the human realm. There was no way to know how much time had passed. I was lost to the world of man. Lost. Everything I loved had been taken from me. My friends. My husband. Everything. The Morrigu had snatched me up just as my life was beginning. She seemed angry that I’d dare to choose my own path, but she never bothered me even once before. All my life she had left me in peace: why would she demand ownership of me now? Why? I didn’t dare command answers from the Morrigu, but the Wyrds…surely they knew.

It was dark when I woke. I was lying on a bed covered in deep purple satin. The room was very small. The walls were made of the same crumbling gray stone I had seen outside. Wisteria snaked through the window, into the room, and across the wall. It filled the place with its sweet scent. A corridor led from my room to the open space outside. I danced my hands across my body. I had been re-dressed in a dark purple velvet gown. A black robe lay across the end of my bed. It was the same clothing the priestesses had worn in my vision.

Quietly, I padded out of my room. Outside I found the stone courtyard with the massive center cauldron. The women were not there. I crossed the courtyard and went under the flower arbor. It was dark, but there I found a path leading downward. As I traveled, I recalled the vision the cauldron’s potion had given me. I remembered that the courtyard was at the back of the temple of the Dark Goddess, which sat above the town. If I followed the path downward, around the side of the massive temple, I would emerge into the old city.

The temple rose high above me, its walls higher than any castle I had ever seen. The pathway was covered in rubble and wisteria grew wildly down the walls. Finally, I came to the end of the trail. There, I found a wide, stone-paved city street; it was the street I had seen in my vision. True to my vision, the city was in ruins and was completely abandoned. It felt so…hollow. I scanned around. The city street was lined on both sides with shops that had collapsed or been burned black. I also spotted the smaller temple I had seen in my vision, the one where I had spotted the red-robed priests. Everything was in ruin and charred. But when I closed my eyes, I still remembered the streets as they had been: bright, filled with people, children, and dogs. Dogs. Thora!

“Thora,” I called, suddenly afraid. She had been at my side when the Morrigu had snatched me from Epona’s coven. Where was she? Had she been left behind? “Thora!” My voice echoed through the dead city.

After a few minutes, a bark echoed through the hollow space.

The sound had come from further within the city. I rushed down the street, dodging fallen stones and massive fissures when the ground had cracked open, hoping that Thora was unhurt. “Thora!”

She emerged from a side street and ran toward me. I knelt and ran my hand across her black coat; her tail wagged with joy. “Are you all right?” I asked her, half expecting her to answer me. Instead, she only licked my hand.

“Cerridwen?” a voice called. The younger woman was walking down the street carrying a lantern in front of her. I noticed then that the light burning in the lantern was purple. She was dressed exactly like me: in a purple robe with a black cloak. “There you are. I heard you calling for your dog. Please don’t worry. We’ve taken good care of her,” the woman said. Thora trotted over to her. “I’ve missed the companionship of animals,” she said, rustling Thora’s ear playfully. “Please…I’m Nimue,” she introduced then smiled apologetically at me. “I know how she brought you here,” Nimue said then, linking her arm in mine. “I think the Morrigu forgets we are human. Andraste and I saw it all through the eyes of the cauldron. I’m sorry it was so jarring. Please, let me take you to Andraste. There is much to be said.”

Andraste. Andraste. Where had I heard that name before?

“It was the same for me when I first came. One moment I was walking along the coast back to the cave I shared with my master, the next moment I found myself here. From that moment on, I belonged to the coven of the Dark Goddess.” Nimue sighed then continued. “I was angry at first. I loved my master. But, in time, I came to understand my role.”

“Who was your master?”

Nimue smiled at me. “Merlin.”

“That’s not possible,” I blurted out. Even if Merlin had been real, he would have lived nearly five hundred years ago.

“Time does not move the same here. For me, it seems like yesterday. I will let Andraste explain. She has been here a very long time.”

I looked up the street at the temple, which had been so clear in my visions. The path around the side of the temple did not give justice to its glory. At its front, great steps led upward to the domed building that sat high above the town. What had been two exquisite statues of ravens now stood battered and crumbled at the base of the stairs. The temple’s main body was circular. Wisteria had nearly overtaken the walls. Rubble lay on the steps though a path had been cleared to the top.

Nimue and I walked up the long steps, Thora bounding ahead of us. I was awash in a hundred different emotions. But most of all, I was determined to go home. My heart ached for my love. I gazed down at my hand. I was surprised to see that the knife cut had healed, and a scar had sealed itself over the cut. I stopped and stared at it.

“What is it?” Nimue asked.

“I had…I had a cut here. It’s gone.”

Nimue took my hand and examined the scar. “Was it a bonding ceremony?”

Apparently the Wyrds didn’t know everything. I nodded.

She ran her hand over the scar. “Your druid?”

“Yes.”

“Time has passed in the real world. Now you know how much.”

“Banquo will be looking for me.”

“He is a druid. He will understand.”

“He will not abandon me here. And I will not be left here to rot!” I said, feeling indignant.

Nimue smiled softly and let go of my hand. “I remember what it feels like to love,” she said in something of a whisper then turned and led me up the stairs toward the shrine.

As I followed behind her, I felt sorry. The Wyrds had always seemed…menacing. But Nimue was nothing of the sort. She reminded me so much of Madelaine. And if her words were true, then five hundred years had passed since she had loved. My anger must have seemed trite to her. Five hundred years was a long time to nurse a broken heart.

“Nimue?” I called.

She stopped.

I rushed up the stairs to join her. I was surprised and saddened to see her cheeks wet with tears. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

She shook her head dismissively. “It’s all right. I understand you. Come,” she said, then led me into the temple.

We walked through the crumbling hall into the main shrine. Here, a massive statue of the Dark Goddess lay on the floor. Her nose and arm had been broken in the fall. I remembered the statue of the Goddess as it had been before the earthquake. It had been made from crystal dragged from the sea and polished to shimmer with sparkling white light. At its base, offering platters and vases were once heaped with flowers, blood, and bones.

“This is the eternal flame of the Morrigu,” Nimue said then, motioning to a large chalice nearly five feet in height that burned with flickering orange and blue flames. The room smelled strongly of lamp oil. Nimue then led me down a hallway in the back of the shrine.

“Here is your room,” Nimue said, extending her hand toward a hall on the left, and then we emerged onto the cauldron courtyard where the older woman, Andraste, as Nimue had called her, rested on a stone bench.

Thora wagged her tail and went over to her.

“Well, Graymalkin, up to no good?” the old woman said to Thora, gently setting her hand on Thora’s head.

I stood in silence.

The older woman rose, leaning heavily against her cane, then came to look at me. To my surprise, she pulled herself upright so she could look me in the eye. Her face was lined, and those lines had lines. But she smiled softly, and her eyes, which seemed very gray, crinkled. “I’m Andraste,” she said.

Where had I heard the name before?

“Oh, it rings in your memory, doesn’t it? Your face rung in my memory too. Always the queen, are you? Come, Cerridwen, sit,” she said, then led me back to the stone bench.

“Do you remember anything?” she asked.

I frowned, not sure I understood her question. “I remember this place through the images your cauldron gave me.”

Andraste grinned. “But do you remember this place?”

She was talking about soul magic. “I…I’m not sure.”

“Cerridwen, when you drank the potion of knowledge, what did you see?” Nimue asked.

“This place as it had been and its fall.”

“This place was once the most beautiful and magical of all places. Our people were strong. My father would go off to battle on the Morrigu’s red-sailed ships. I remember how my mother, dressed in black and purple, would stand by the ocean and let drops of blood fall into the water to protect him. We did not fear death. Death was a passage.

“We worshiped the Dark Goddess in each of her aspects: battle goddesses, death goddesses, and goddesses of magic. Yet our lady destroyed us much as she destroyed others. She shook the earth. The people fled. When it was over, the island was empty and cluttered with dead bodies. And I, a child, had hidden in a trunk. It was the goddess of this land, the same who plucked you from Epona’s grasp, who opened the trunk and bade me crawl out.

“She told me, ‘I have changed what had to be changed. Now you are the only one left. You will age and grow old as one grows old in the otherworld. I will give you the ability to look into the world of man, and I shall counsel you on what must be done. You will do my bidding.’

“And I, a child of ten, became mistress of this island. And while I was a child, the Morrigu taught me what I should know. And now, I will teach you.”

“But what is your…our…purpose?” I asked.

“We are the Wyrds. And now, finally, we are three. Now we will change the course of history.”