Page 26 of Up from the Earth (Equinox Seasons Duet #1)
All Hail The Queen Of The Cauldron.
A still lake lay before me, its surface like speckled glass, with purples and pinks melting over it from the reflected sky. Looking up into the limitless atmosphere, the sun and moon hung together, granting this space its equilibrium. The air was soft, a gentle whisper of life across my skin, and this place encompassed me with no visible end.
From the hair-thin split between the light’s sky and night’s, stepped my King. They approached, streams of endless black strands speckled with stars trailing behind them. They smiled, their void black eyes and ethereal features neither human nor God, neither masculine nor feminine, but all, none.
“Cerridwen.”
The word was a balm, drifting over the lingering aches with perfect preciousness and care. I stepped up to them, and I was small. Their mountainous form dwarfed me, but I was still too tiny to be myself as I usually knew myself.
I looked down, finding a child’s hands, a young maiden only just entering the woods full of questions.
“I am not this girl.”
The King shook their head. “No. You are not.”
At once, I was in my rounded shape, life carried within me. “I am not this mother.”
Quiet surrounded us, The King moving closer still. And again, I changed. Crooked and bent, I stood before them now as a woman haggard with age, gnarled fingers stained with the evidence of work.
“I am not this crone.”
Time was nothing, experience everything. And before them, before my King, I stood as them all, threefold and united. That smile, that knowing grin, warmed their face. They were towering over me, a sight too big to process and yet they stood within me a truth too innate to refuse.
“And so, Cerridwen, who are you?”
It had been eons since the forest, since the night I was first called here. The world had changed in that time. I had.
“I am not who I was and never shall be again.”
They said nothing, still waiting for me, still an unwavering anchor to my soul. I was not just a maiden, I was not just a mother, and I was not just a crone. I was not only the spring child, the essence of life running through my veins as blood. I was not only the carrier of life, a giver of what must be born. I was not only a promise of its end.
“I am all these things and more. I am yours, and I am mine.” I stepped up to them, the three phases of myself solidifying into the woman who had claimed an errant soul. “I am life, death, and rebirth, a truth found in the ancient cauldron of existence.”
“What are you, my Cerridwen, my seed and sprout and beast?”
“I am Queen.”
My King held out their hand, and I took it, our bond threading invisibly through my beings like roots.
“And you will travel back as promised.” They held my stare, squeezing my hand. “But not now.”
It knew it would be a time before the mortal realm would be my residence for a time. I had understood that before, and I did even more so now. I had belonged there, and I belonged here. I was a child of two worlds, after all.
“Take me home.”
As I spoke, the stone archway of my dream appeared at the horizon, perfectly centered across the sky that shared both night and day. Ivy wove around the crumbling bricks, the darkness underneath the arch glittering with pale green universes.
“You don’t need me to call it anymore.” The Beast King of the World of Below lifted our joined hands. “But I will walk with you. Always.”
And so, we walked through.
A s we stepped to the other side, the gleaming black crystal of the castle’s walls appeared around us. Trees and flora of myriad forms and shapes coated their slick, shiny surface, dissolving into the Endless Forest.
We were home.
Ease coated my soul, the warmth of a sun in the grass or a bath beneath the stars. No lingering pain sat on the edges of the realm, making my nerves twitch. It was still and quiet, the vast sigh of a final breath graciously given.
“A time of rest. For all of us.”
I looked over at The King, their beauty so achingly profound and mesmerizing. They remained their androgynous self, neither male nor female and yet both. Gold flickered in their eyes, primal and wolven.
“Cerberus. Is he—”
“Well and waiting for you to regain your strength.”
Electricity hummed within me, and the core of me burned. I needed that connection, that raw bond I had formed with my King. I needed it like I had needed air and sunlight.
I walked up to them, draping my arms around their shoulders as I stood on my tiptoes. “I believe I shall require you for that.”
A deep, rumbling chuckle rose from their throat, and their arms encircled my waist, pulling me close.
“So then shall I give you life, little seed? Or shall I give you the little death?”
Smiling, I dragged my leg up the side of theirs, allowing the split in my skirts to fall away. I hungered, need roaring through me.
“Give me it all.”