Creation Dreamer: A Heroine Fantasy Adventure (Calpso Goddess Series: Book One 1) Page 15

  “I don’t think he cares, honey.”

  Fire erupted in the forest. The sounds of animals screaming. A darkness I had felt before soaked the air. Only this time we would fight.

  “I will go back to the woods. Don’t you worry; we will hold them off.” Clarimonde called back something about “good luck.”

  A tremor hit deep below our feet as we both dropped onto our four paws and bolted. Up. His wolf and my tiger. A most unexpected joy. A most unexpected wildness.

  “This path will take you the rest of the way.” River was back to his detached nature, barely looking at me.

  The hajone of our climb ruminated. Something so beautiful against the backdrop of so much impending destruction.

  River Wolf gripped my shoulder. “You can do this, Magpie. You wouldn’t be here if you couldn’t.” A lightning strike below made us both jump. “Hey,” he continued, “look at me.” I looked into his steady green eyes. “Remember, I’ll be here for you when you get back.”

  “I just have one important question for you before I go.”

  “Ask.”

  “Can you read all of my thoughts all the time?”

  His laugh was bold and warm. “Have you worried, do I?” His eyes crinkled into a smile. “I have more discipline than that. If it was in your highest option, I would do it. Or, if you called out to me, then I can open the doorway between us.”

  River looked at the bird skull on my neck and then up to my eyes.

  “It served me well.” I wanted him to know.

  “The next step is yours to take. I can’t cross that line.” There was a pair of hip-tall boulders beside us on the landing. “You go through there and on your way.”

  An army of footsteps added to the Earth’s roar. “I have to go, Maggie.”

  “It’s happening again.”

  “What do you mean, Maggie? Maggie?” He shook me.

  I pushed back the numbness. “Nothing. You go.”

  Lola and her band of birds were in an active fight. Frenzied wings were all I could make out as they dove down and back up. One had a snake in its beak, but it wasn’t Blue Eagle. Clarimonde made the calls to the others like a General wielding her great power. But it was the loud cry of cats in pain that shattered the air and my heart.

  “Do this thing, Maggie.” River was off on all fours as a pack of wolves joined him from behind the hill where we slept.

  The rain spit on my face as I looked up the cliff. There is only one way to win. With one big breath, I stepped beyond the boulder.

  Rain turned to snow as the battle vanished from my view. The whole world closed behind me. Unable to fight my adversaries and unable to fight my tears, I stood and sobbed.

  “What the fuck am I doing?” I remember looking up at the gods. If they knew me, why weren’t they helping me?

  The snow was deep and my boots were anything but warm enough. Each step dropped me farther down in the cold as the snow slushed through the top of my lacings. I looked for any obvious paths up the mountain, but the face of the cliff was hidden behind snowfall, if it was even there at all anymore. I took one step and rested and took another and rested, lifting each leg up from my waist to get it high enough to pull me forward.

  “For fuck’s sake!” I yelled into the void. There was not even an echo. “Did it really have to be snow? Couldn’t it just have been warm winds?” I hated the cold.

  There was a sound ahead. A breath joined mine just as I fell up to my waist and struggled to stand. A soft nose nuzzled my neck and shoved me into attention. My hand laid flat as her lips touched my palm and I rubbed up beyond her nose and between her walnut-sized brown eyes. Mane of silver and white, she almost faded into the backdrop.

  “Oh, thank the gods.” I wrapped my arms around the horse’s neck. She pulled me up as I swung one leg over her back with the last bit of grit I had left. She climbed as I collapsed over her withers, warming my hands in her mane.

  Someone had saved me.

  13

  Flip It, Flip It Good

  The fire reached into the sky like arms stretching up from the Earth to the Celestial worlds. It was more tremendous than I imagined from the window in Elder Village. My horse, silent and steady, stooped down and eased me to the ground.

  “Thank you for rescuing me. I don’t know what I would’ve done if you hadn’t come for me.”

  Without so much as a sigh, she turned and left. Eerie, like I had been taken across the river Styx by Charon and left on a new shore, I half expected to be engulfed by dragonflies.

  Dragon Flies.

  “Mountain Bear?” I questioned, walking in a full circle around the crackling fire. Nothing. No one. I walked around again as the drumming of my heartbeat dropped into my feet, and I stomped the Earth in a dance. The wild took over as I stalked like a tiger around the flames. The primal energy erupted, filling and nourishing me.

  The beginnings of blue light energy wove between my feet as they shifted in the snow. I actually giggled; I’d forgotten the magic we West Calys held with frozen water. We had such fun making snow angels as children, lighting up like little glowing stars. It had been so long since I let myself remember such happiness.

  I moved faster, with even greater intention to see the light threads thicken, weaving in and out as I made more loops around the fire. It was magic I felt in my bones like never before. Something was happening that couldn’t be explained. New magic washed through me, vibrating every cell.

  The clouds in the sky broke open with a gust of wind as I looked up to the Celestial and the double-waning moons peeked out. It was the night of the prophecy, and I was right on time. First time in my fucking life.

  The drum heartbeat exploded in me matched by each step I took. The flames cast light into the sky like the Goddess in the cave when her crystal awoke. Enchanted, my body was possessed in the dance as I floated into the black space of all possibility. I became the seed of all potential: the vessel worthy of the awakening and the mutation.

  Lightning slammed the ground near me, illuminating Blue Eagle’s march up the hill with his army. The snow seemed barely a deterrent for them. It was impossible to know how many there were, though one hundred-or-so armed with swords ready to take me down seemed close enough to accurate.

  I locked my feet firmly inside the hoop in the snow still weaving its energy. My energy. “Root to water,” I declared, announcing my birthright to the land and any beings there who could help me. Howls joined in the air followed by deep growls as wolves and bears launched passed me and into the oncoming line of executioners.

  “You will not do this!” The voice came from a bear in the lead. I knew it had to be Mountain Bear. One of the wolves turned toward me. It was River.

  “Magpie is the rightful Dreamer, and you have no place here,” the bear continued.

  Blue Eagle puffed up as the bear shifted onto two legs. “You may not be on this mountain.”

  “I have every right, Mountain Bear! It is you who have no right to interfere. Aya has every claim to the power.” Blue Eagle looked back over his shoulder as a woman approached. Her lips locked in a fake smile. Her face. Something about her face. Hair black and perfectly straight down to her waist. So like a statue, her eyes fixed on mine.

  “Magpie Turnley carries the birthmark. Aya does not.” Mountain Bear looked back at me as if to reassure me.

  “Aya is born of the same blood. They both carry the right.”

  “What?” I couldn’t help myself but I was ignored.

  “Aya was not awakened in the Calypso tribe.”

  “That does not matter,” Blue Eagle hissed.

  I looked back at Aya as the chill of her swept into me. No, no, no. Born of the same blood. The same blood? The world spun on an unfamiliar axis. Part of me wanted to lay down and let them kill me. The flooding emptiness that comes when everything solid is shredded. The scaffolding that once held me up—gone. I was ripped out into the blackness where no compass could guide me.

  The Four Pow
ers said reunification. The two together again. Think. What did they say? Shit. No.

  “Hello, Magpie. It’s been so long.” Her energy as cold and fake as any Coal could be.

  I couldn’t speak. There was just the loud beating in my chest and the dryness in my throat. I wanted River to tell me it was a lie. Mountain Bear to rip her down with one slice of his claws.

  “Maggie? Surely you knew I would come?” Aya spoke in flat tones.

  “Now that’s funny. I didn’t even know you existed.” I was not about to leave my hoop of power.

  “You don’t remember? Us playing in the nursery? We used to make our toys dance in air. Entertain us because we were so bored in our cribs. Honestly, you were really great at shooting lights everywhere. I used to be jealous of you. Can you imagine that?”

  “You were there.” It was not a question. The weaving energy of my hoop dimmed.

  “Of course, silly. I can’t believe you would have forgotten that. Good gods, how we used to laugh!”

  I wanted to give Aldon the benefit of an aged mind that forgets things and not the obvious, purposeful oversight of such a key fucking piece of information. I could hear her cough and say that I hadn’t asked, so she didn’t bring it up. But someone did hold her back from things she wanted to say. I just needed to figure out who.

  I grabbed the picture from my medicine pouch. The child in my mother’s arms. Bare neck. Never ordained into the Calypso tribe. No ancestral claim to power. And the eyes. I remembered the eyes.

  This isn’t me. Mom’s not holding me.

  I bit my lip to fight back the tears. I was betrayed. Stabbed in the heart. They looked so happy holding her. Embarrassed, I wanted to bolt off that stupid piece-of-shit mountain and back into my own world. Die with the people I loved and who loved me. Mountain Bear moved in front of me as River held the side of the hoop. I remember thinking that was so pointlessly sweet as everything inside me went numb.

  “This is not to be.” Mountain Bear commanded his space with ease. “Do you understand? You are about to create a Celestial war with this action.”

  “The Wixmunet guide my steps.” Blue Eagle rose higher.

  “The Wixmunet have no claim to this planet, sir. The Earth belongs to the Four and the Goddesses, as do you.”

  “The Wixmunet think otherwise, and Aya has agreed to be our champion.”

  Aya just stood there, chiseled somehow out of white marble, and seemingly void of any emotion.

  “This is not a bloody competition, and Aya is nothing but a traitor to the Earth and all who live here. The Celestial agreed—” Mountain Bear returned to four-legged form reared onto his hind legs.

  “The Wixmunet had no seat at the round table if you recall, my friend. They do not honor the vote. For all we know, your information is false.”

  “You know the truth. Don’t bastardize this for your own claim to power.”

  “This is not about me. This is about Aya—so she can have what is rightfully hers.” Blue Eagle wrapped an arm around her like a proud parent.

  I felt River’s gaze, but I was not about to let him into my hoop. The numbness ran through my veins from my heart out into every appendage. I was the cold in the snow. The drum beat ceased as I stood in my shattered reality. I imagined the Arae catching it inside a crystal and dancing their way to the Storage Facility, celebrating the further decay of my soul.

  “Maggie?” River was gentle. “We have to get you into the fire. You need to unlock the fire.”

  “What?”

  “The fire. It will take you to the Lodge. If you can get there first, then this battle is over before it starts.” He moved his body in front of me, blocking me from their view. “You can do this.”

  “I don’t know how.”

  “How is the gods’ business. You just have to set an intention to enter the Dream Lodge.”

  I was motionless. “Maggie. You can do this.”

  “But what if they are right. What if she—”

  “She isn’t. It’s you we want. You are the one. You have to trust me. Have some faith.”

  Unfazed, Mountain Bear stood his ground with Blue Eagle’s army of swords. My tiger moved each muscle, contracting and shifting in silence as we stalked the flame.

  “You know I’m going to really kick your ass later for not telling me about her.” I knew River heard me. He puckered his lips and bit down. I liked that.

  The moons seemed to intertwine with the weaving lines of energy and reawaken them. It was my energy, and I was not about to let Aya, or anyone else, have it. Aldon had told me to hold onto it. She must’ve known. There was no doubt of that.

  “Do it, Maggie.” River pulled me back into the present.

  “You want me to go into the fire?”

  “Just try. It’s a puzzle. Unlock it.”

  He made it sound so fucking easy. I wasn’t an East Caly; I didn’t like to play with fire. My feet were frozen standing in his shit boots with no insulation. I needed to get out of the snow before my head imploded.

  My snappish temper tantrum led to one solid stomp into the snow. Unmelted snow—even around the fire. A fire big enough to warm all of the Basin Village, and yet I was cold. I moved one finger toward the flames and there was nothing. Some warmth, but that was all. I moved up to the flames and then trickled my fingers in through their dance, and I did not burn. It was another illusion.

  Mountain Bear raised his voice again as River tapped his foot. The double waning moons were hajone beaming down onto the snow. I don’t know how, but their shadows cast a perfect circle just inside the energetic hoop I’d woven. They were two becoming one. Reunification. I was quite literally standing in a circle of water. Frozen, but water nonetheless.

  Of course!

  I blocked my mind to protect River. The laws of that Alphazian world were not completely transparent to me, and if reading minds was a norm, I didn’t want Sis to know more than she needed to, either.

  If I can stand inside the flames, then I just need to pass through the circle—like replicating crystals. The motion of passing through water.

  I had never tried it before. I had never heard of anyone from the West Calypsos trying it before. But it made sense it would work. I just needed the movement from one realm to the other. To replicate—myself.

  The fake soulless me stays behind while I go in. Okay. Focus. The woven blue light. It’s here. I am surrounded in the blue light. I am one in the red flames. I am one in the blue. I am one in the red.

  The drum beat returned. It was stronger than ever.

  I am one with the flame. I am one with the red light. I am one with the blue light.

  I reached my hand inside the fire and found nothing but space, as if the flames did not exist at all. I crawled with insane control into the center of the fire as the energy hoop outside created a boundary of protection for me. I sat inside the fire and dropped my cord. Down, seeking, searching for the connection with the Earth once again. Not to feed. My intention was to pull myself from this reality into the Dream Lodge reality. They had to be in the same place just in different planes of existence. And all I needed was the power of the Earth and the moons to pull me through.

  The tug slammed me. Something grabbed the cord and pulled all the loose line tight. I was grounded. It was an orgasm—a relief and a comfort. I envisioned myself being pulled through. Through molecules. Through space no one claimed. I needed to pass in-between and into the Lodge.

  As it is within, so it is without.

  I dropped. I shifted. I was nothing. I was everything. I saw the shell of my body crawl out of the fire and back behind River. Their fighting continued. I didn’t have much time.

  I re-formed into my body, standing in a green, luscious meadow, and ahead was a dominating structure of glass. As I approached it, the door swung open in an unexpected welcome. The entry, filled with a scarlet rug—a striking contrast to the sheer simplicity of the space beyond. One sofa, the good napping kind and one chair, armless, placed in fron
t of a raised fireplace of stone. Round stones held together with a soil-based cement. The chimney spiraled up and out of the top of the house. I noticed closed doors and stairs tucked in different nooks in need of exploration, no doubt, but all I wanted was to sit for a moment. I needed to sit before I fell down, convincing myself the complete energy drain was from shifting in-between, and not from the revelation that I had a sister. Not just a sister, but one who felt she deserved the Creation Dreamer power.

  The Lodge left me chilled from the inside out as if I was witnessing its death story. How a coldness threaded its way through its body until the breathing stopped and the heartbeat faded to silence. I imagined the Lodge once filled with light and warmth radiating out like sun tendrils filling all the crannies and cracks of the world with loving vibrations. A healing net birthed from the very fabric of the Earth, the Lodge must’ve been a gift bestowed to the Earth by some deep, loving wisdom.

  I stroked my fingers against the coolness of the walls. So smooth. Chip-less. I imagined its heartbeat—strong and generous—dreaming new realities filled with the promise of a better tomorrow as we—all the sentient beings—prayed to the gods and the goddesses, and they heard our prayers. Answering them as we slept and the pain of yesterday shifted each morning into unknown joy.

  Until that day. The day they left, and the veil ripped, leaving this living Lodge shredded. The cry so loud it deafened the Earth. Even she could not recover from so great a betrayal. Shame welled up in my eyes and ran down my cheeks. Not for the ignorance of the choice, but for the horror of the consequences.

  “I will bring you back.” I spoke to the sleeper. “I am here. And I know you know me. It was your light I played with as a child, wasn’t it? I knew you once. You came to me. We can find our way again.” I actually meant it. I felt a connection in that Lodge so deep, I knew if I died, it would die again, too, just to be with me.

  I sat in the chair staring at the barrenness of the hearth. No wood. There was nothing to burn.