Page 36 of Hekate: The Witch (Goddesses of the Underworld #1)

My Mother’s Choice

‘Your mother is unlike any Goddess I know. It’s why her gifts are so strange, they were crafted for a strange deity.

We were girls together, her and I. Cousins, but more like sisters.

And even then, when we were young – back when it was not dangerous for our family to be close – she was able to make the strangest things happen out of thin air.

One day, she invented a fox made out of fire.

None of us knew how she did it, only one night, she disappeared into the woods and came out with a creature bright as starfire, its swishing tail sparking embers across my father’s river-flooded palace.

We loved that fox. My sisters still love its descendants.

Each of them has a cub and they cherish it like a child.

She knew how to do this. Reach into us, find what was lacking and give us a sky full of something we did not realize we needed.

So what Zeus and Poseidon wanted from her was not just herself, but all of her gifts.

They did not understand that a Goddess like Asteria would find a way out of their quagmire, because Asteria was not a Goddess who could be possessed or owned through a trap.

She was bright and shrewd, even when we were young.

So when faced with this impossible choice, after she left you with us, she first became a hare, one of the fastest creatures in the world.

But they became leopards and cornered her.

Then, she became a bird. But they became eagles and nearly caught her.

Which left her with her last and only choice.

She flung herself into the sea. And she transformed herself into an island, full of birds and trees and a place where no God can go without her permission. ’