Page 17 of Up from the Earth (Equinox Seasons Duet #1)

Sixteen

As The Wheel Of The Year Turns, Spring Always Follows Winter.

M y skin itched as it formed new layers, healing the damage from the fire. I followed The Crone behind her hut, past the chicken legs, to a darker part of the swamp, quietly hidden in the shadowy trees.

The thick mosses and grasses matted down in a path muffled our steps. She’d walked this way before enough times to wear down the flora, convincing them not to grow here. I’d seen enough paths like this, so many, it seemed, in the short whirlwind that was my life. Paths and darkness and pain. Was that the end of things?

“Look down into the still waters, Cerridwen Adaire Locke. You have a decision to make.”

Shaking myself from my thoughts, I looked up at the baba ?ga, that gnawing pit still present in my belly.

“Is that what you ask of me?” I tried to keep the bitter tone from my voice, but it was no use. “This is your third task? Look and make a decision?”

She chuckled, and the sound was not better for having left the hut. It still scratched against the walls of my mind, coiling a snake of unease in and around my guts.

“Come now, Queen . You must know now that a decision can be the hardest thing you do in your life.”

I wanted to deny her, spite churning through me like none I’d felt before. The easy joy of my youth felt absent, my youth itself long gone and too buried beneath layers of agony and proving myself for me to hear it any longer.

Still, I knew she was right.

“Fine.”

Stepping to the edge, my toes precariously hanging over the bank of the pond—or perhaps a lake, considering its size—I gazed down into the reflection that waited for me.

I had changed.

It was challenging to put into words what was different. I could see it more in the haunting beneath my irises—still one green and one blue—in the way I met my own reflection’s eyes, a new sort of expression. There were lines there that hadn’t been before all this, subtle and only noticeable to me. There was also a lack of that sunny glow beneath my skin. It wasn’t gone entirely, but damn, it was hard to spot now.

I’d heard my mother once speaking to herself in the bathroom, and her words then rushed to me in the present.

I don’t even recognize myself. Who is this woman looking back at me from the glass? What happened to the exuberant girl of all those years ago?

This had been shortly after I finally understood what had happened to my father. I had been a baby when he was killed. I thought it was some simple accident—a nasty twist of luck. And in a way, I supposed it was. Though now, it was impossible not to harbor a deep scowl for the way his journey had ended.

Hunters. They’d shot him when he was out in the woods. Their irresponsible behavior stole my father from me. They’d been hunting on land they shouldn’t, but it was a cold comfort to know that the King of Summer’s End had found them and snatched them up.

“And what do you see, child?”

The Crone’s voice was dim in the background, coming from miles away or beneath the water. I shook my head, sighing as a vehement edge sliced through my chest.

“I am not a child. That is what I see.”

Again with that chuckle, she spoke up, still sounding lightyears away. “I suppose not. Not after everything that has happened in the World of Below, nor what has transpired in my hut. So then, Mother of Cerberus, what do you see past yourself?”

As I peered into the water, hazy images floated up from the depths. They formed shapes, coalescing into figures that I could recognize as readily as my own face.

“My mother. My sisters. The coven.”

“Hmm, indeed.” The sound of her craggy voice pricked closer, echoing off some unseen walls. “They will die. They will all die, and they will do it before you.”

A heavy thump beat through my chest, my stomach clenching. I looked down at the images only to see them fade away into nothing. I squeezed my fists at my sides, the ache of losing them as real as if they’d truly vanished just now.

“That is the way of life, of the natural cycle. You cannot change it. You cannot step in. You cannot rescue them or change fate.”

“I don’t aim to, Crone,” I snapped, growing sorrow and fury swelling in my chest.

“And so what of Cerridwen, eh?” I saw her face then, in the reflection of the water that rippled as she appeared. “You will go on. You are no longer mortal. No longer are you bound to that path. Like me, you are set somewhere else in time, and the work will never end for you.”

A tear dripped down my cheek, landing in the still picture of my face created by water and light. I swallowed hard, having to steady myself as I felt my body rock, careening ever so slightly toward the pond.

“Will you, I wonder, be able to handle that? You have not been granted an easy fate, Wife of The Beast King—a hard lesson for any, but particularly a former mortal to learn. There are things you cannot change—ever. The King, too, might die, perishing in some great battle or a simple attempt to rend their rule from them. Cerberus to follow? Yes, quite likely. You will be alone at the end of all things, the weight of a crown perched on your head.”

I tried to spin around and face her, but I was locked in place. Instead, I glared at the reflection, swiping away the stream of tears that would not stop.

“Why do you say this?”

“The realm calls for a Queen, Cerridwen. I demand that it have a worthy one.” Death played out over the water as The Crone spoke, depicting the torturous ends of those I held closest. “A Queen’s path is never an easy one. To lead and go on, to respect the cycle, or to toy with the fates of mortals as you see fit. You have within you the power to be both terrible and great. And you have within you the call to fall into darkness and never return. So…”

Suddenly, I realized that I was on my knees, my hand outstretched over the water and reaching for it. I was grasping for my family, for the people I wouldn’t see harmed as long as I lived. Earth crumbled beneath my right leg, and I had to catch myself on my formerly grasping hand or fall in.

Breathing ached with each gulp of air, every heartbeat a horrible stab that ricocheted through my entire being. Loneliness and the never-ending expanse of the universe before me were a more terrifying notion than being torn limb from limb. The idea of existing alone until the end of time was a truer version of hell than any I’d seen so far.

And there they were in the reflection—my mother, my sisters, my coven. There they were, smiling at me from a dim, hollow rendition of who they really were. But there was something else as well.

Something…warm.

Mother’s smile was not merely a facsimile of all the ones she’d worn. I knew it. This was her grin that she saved only for me. The one she wore when we played, when we cast, when we explored. That smile, that one right there, was a gift meant only for me, and I could keep it.

Memories of our wild excursions, of our times, crafting brews and fumbling through the steps necessary to bake bread. I could see them, hold them in my mind’s eye, and they felt…real.

Sunlight shone on my skin, invisible, ethereal, but there. I could see my sisters, Agatha and Bridget. I could feel our laughter ringing through my bones, setting them alight like a tuning fork. They were all there within me, the imprints of their existence indelible on my soul.

And it was all so warm, warmer than I’d been since we left the forest at the edge of the castle.

“Stop!” I called out, yanking myself back from nearly pitching myself into the water and spinning around. “I will go on. I can. They will be carried with me for each step of my journey, no matter how long it may be. That connection is mine, and no one will take it from me.”

I stepped forward toward The Crone, who stood behind me, her red-pupiled eyes searing.

“Not even you.”

She cocked her head, staring at me. As she did, I pulled from that well of heat I’d contained for the iron, but instead of work, I only called it for light, for growth. Fresh ferns and thick, verdant moss crept up from the ground at my feet. White snowdrops, more delicate and persistent than any other early spring bloom, rushed into being. Bleeding hearts wove around my arms, snapdragons burst into life, shooting up through the ground in an array of colors.

“The return of spring after winter is assured. It is constant and endless. There is pain in this life, much of it. But there are roots that spread down into the warmth of an earthly embrace. There are cloudless skies and sunny days. There are lives. And the souls that exist are never truly gone. Only…changed.”

I smiled, the thrum of my heartbeat in my chest a welcome reminder of the cycle.

The Crone stepped up to me, a crooked grin splitting her face. She looked softer, the angles of her sharp, dark being rounded down, if only a hair.

“Rise out of the darkness, Queen of Earthly Balance. You have seen the three stages of life—maidenhood, motherhood, and the wisdom of the crone.” The baba ?ga’s expression darkened, her sneer returning. “That bastard is looking to challenge the throne, and I won’t have him as my neighbor.”

I couldn’t stop the smile that shook me into a brief cut of laughter. “Oh, but you will have The Beast King?”

“I will tolerate them…” She narrowed her eyes on me. “So long as our deal stands. They are to send you to me when needed—and any other souls that the magic demands.”

There was no denying that my fate would be forever woven into the skein of time alongside the baba ?ga. We existed in a similar plane of reality, a mirror of each other.

“I will inform my husband.” I could sense the scratchy edge of a heated steel blade—rusted from age—scraping against the edges of our realm. “But it’s time.”

The Crone nodded, and without having to use the front door of her hut, I traveled back to the gorge where my companions waited.

I had work to do.