Page 7 of Up from the Earth (Equinox Seasons Duet #1)

Six

A Season Comes Only Once A Year & There Can Be No Spring Without Winter.

“Y ou can’t have her! Let my daughter go!”

My mother’s voice rang out through the forest with the thunderous boom of her magic. She thrust her hands out in front of her, calling the vines of the wood to her aid in pulling me away from The King.

They did not respond as she demanded, and any that did could not reach me, stopping short several feet away. I looked back at her, and the urges that warred within me threatened to tear me apart. I wanted to be with my mother, the sweet soul who’d raised me to be kind and gentle.

And yet, I could not deny that part of me wanted to go into the woods, needed to. I was called there like no magic I’d known before, and fighting against it proved more and more fruitless.

“Go back to your home, witch. This is not the time for you.”

The King’s voice was everywhere and nowhere. I could hear it in my mind and ears alike, the power of it making my bones rattle, my equilibrium sent spinning.

“Cerridwen Adaire Locke,” he called, “You are the wife of The Beast King and nullifier of the great threat against the balance. You will come with me.”

My mother fell to her knees, her sobbing racking through her like a torrential rain. I could sense her anguish from her, and I longed desperately to go to her, to wrap my arms around her and take away the hurt.

A single step forward was all I could muster, and the undergrowth beneath my feet sent up sticks and pebbles to jab into my soles.

“You cannot do this! She belongs with me! I am her mother!” My mother shook her head, pounding on the earth as her tears streamed down her cheeks. “Give her back to me.”

The all-consuming essence of The Beast King rose up only to slink back down again, sliding over the ground like fog. Its icy touch created a drape between me and my mother, making my nerves flare into circling bouts of pain and pleasure.

“Margaret,” he spoke, the hard edge of his voice I blade held to our throats, “you were told. You were told of Cerridwen’s fate. You were meant to prepare.”

“How?” My mother looked up, desperate and pleading. “How am I supposed to be made ready for her departure? It will never be right. I will never be whole without her.”

Tears coated my lashes before breaking free. My head tilting, I reached out for her, the halves of my chest cracking in half at the sight of my mother so heartbroken. I loved her with all my heart. We were kindred spirits, versions of the same coin in a fountain of mismatched others.

I knew it was no use to argue with The Beast King. I could sense his indifference. He saw so much of the big picture, his gaze falling over the whole of the universe to those here and those lost. A single mother and child were nothing in the ocean of souls that existed across time.

And then he looked to me.

Looking up into a face of moonless black, masculine but so clouded in shadow that I could not make out features, I opened what I could of my mind to him, hoping he might see the truth of my own heart.

I love her.… I know it has been decided, but please, please , I cannot be gone from her side forever.

Casting his shaded glance back on my mother, The Beast King growled low, a soft sound like a fading storm.

“A day.” The words were both daggers in my mind and a balm to my heart. “I will grant Cerridwen a single day to return to the realm above. Each Equinox, each anniversary of her birth, you will see her. But Cerridwen will come with me.”

My mother’s sob broke down all the further, and she crumbled to her knees. I ran to her, circling my arms around her shoulders. This time—out of the numerous that I had done on her—it was my turn to be the steady earth beneath her feet, to be a shoulder for her to cry on. It was so odd to be flipped into opposite roles, the daughter soothing the mother.

And I knew intimately that something had changed this day.

I was, as far as I could tell, still Cerridwen, still just a young maiden. But it was…shifting. Sands through the hourglass of time made me older as surely as they made me someone new, someone I had never met.

“My Cerri,” my mother’s voice pulled me from my thoughts, forcing me to look down at her, “how will I go on nearly every day without you?”

I smiled—soft, sweet, lying . “You will do it as you have done all things—with grace and fortitude. I will see you again, but…we both knew this day was coming. We knew. I…I cannot fight it, Mother, even as I love you with all my heart.”

She met my stare, lifting her hands to take my face. Her flesh was warm, comfortable, and so very familiar. My mother had been my anchor for my entire life, and I was embarking on a journey that would find me rudderless and adrift.

“I love you, my sweet girl. Always. Forever. No matter what. You—” her voice cracked, the sorrow muddling her words. “You have to heed the call, as did Summer before you. I have not cried so hard as the day she told me, Cerridwen. But I cry for you now, so much harder.”

My mother squeezed me to her chest, and I breathed in the scent of lavender and copal. It was so achingly familiar, a constant companion through the years. Pain lanced through my ribs, my heart breaking. A tug at the back of my dress stole my attention.

“It’s time.”

The Beast King’s voice was only there for me. I could not say how I knew it, but I did. Reluctantly, renewed tears spilling, I slipped back from my mother, standing before her.

“I’ll be back.” I smiled as brightly as I could. “Just as spring always comes back.”

My mother—Margaret of the coven and leader among her sisters—smiled back at me, refusing to wipe the tears from her face.

“And I will remain here waiting for you. Until…it is my time to meet you there.”

I’d thought nothing more could be said that would wound me, but I was wrong. I did not wish for that day to come, but I knew it to be inevitable. And though I couldn’t understand why, some part of me knew that when it did, it would be me to collect her.

I couldn’t bring myself to say anything more, however. As I stepped backward, I felt the creeping darkness slide over the back of my legs, along my spine. It appeared that I would not be needing the archway this time. The Beast King had come to collect me himself, and this would be the last time in a whole year that I saw this realm.

Casting my glance over the trees and brush and moss, I mourned for the lack of green I would experience in that dark stone castle. The small red and white colored mushroom, the yellow-back spiders who built webs in the sunshine, the fresh shoots of grass and delicate pink flowers that pushed up through the snow as the first sign of life’s return, I would miss them all—terribly.

The last thing I saw before the black consumed my vision and body from head to foot was the smile of my mother, unfailing and meant for no one but me.