Page 13 of Up from the Earth

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 Cerridwenwillcome 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 forherto 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.

Seven

Eating Food From The Realm Of Souls Binds You To It.

Windcolderthanearthlypossible tore through me, howling wildly out into the expansive terrain around me. A dark castle loomed on the horizon—close or far, I could not tell. Strings of massive webbing dripped from the stone pillars and arches surrounding the enormous palace, and the echoing screech of some strange creature offered the building a tense backdrop.

I’d know the castle anywhere, even if I was not inside it.

I was back.

At the front steps, a gargantuan obsidian figure formed the central structure of a twin set of stairs leading to the manse. Arches—formed from the figure’s outstretched wings—curved over the steps as fog rolled down them from above.

There was hardly any light in the space either, only the sporadic stream of pale white light that cut through the ever-rolling clouds above. When I turned back toward where I’d landed, The Beast King stood at the edge of a lake. I hadn’t noticed it before, but the way it looked behind the shifting, black shape of The King sent an errant chill down my spine—though that could have been the cold…or the terror.

“The Bride Trials.”

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