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.”