Page 16 of The Discovered
Chapter4
“I’m sorry, Momma,” I cried. “I’m sorry.” I begged them to meet my eyes, clenching my small fists so I wouldn’t unleash any more magick. I’d seen the lamb limp onto our property, covered in blood, and I just couldn’t let her die. I had to heal her.
“You can’t save every animal, Áine,” Momma Jane whispered. Her long dark brown hair reached her chest, wavy and scented lavender like her shampoo. She wore a smoky quartz amulet that hung low against her deep purple blouse. “You have to let nature take its course.”
“But aren’t I nature, too?” I asked. That was what they always told me.I was nature and nature was me.
Momma Jane pursed her lips, shooting a look at Momma Celeste, who was staring out the window, tears streaming down her sun-kissed skin, chanting in a language I couldn’t understand but still felt in my soul. She wore a delicate white summer dress, nearly the color of her cool blond hair. The two of them often reminded me of night and day personified, yin and yang, the dark and the light.
“You are also from the Divine. From the Goddess Herself,” Momma Jane sighed. “And you need to accept that all living beings get sick, all living beings grow old, all living beings die.”
“She wasn’t sick, Momma,” I said earnestly. “Something hurt her.”
Momma Celeste stopped chanting and turned to face us, pressing her palms down on the kitchen counter. Her many silver rings clanked together as she tapped her long, pastel pink fingernails on the granite. I saw magick move beyond the window above the sink, like a forcefield expanding out into the horizon.
She stared at me with enough intensity to make me stop crying. “There is evil in the world. There are people who want to hurt others—to hurt us. Using your magick will attract that evil.”
Momma Jane shot her a look. “Áine, baby,” she cooed, pulling me in for a hug. “You will banish this evil when the time is right. Never lose your heart.” She pressed her palm on the left side of my chest, and a comforting warmth spread throughout my whole body. “You will be able to use your magick again someday. All of it. And with it you will make the world whole and lovely again. Just not today.”
The memory faded, and I became lucid of my dream state. My mothers and the inside of our cottage vanished, leaving me in an open field of tall grass. I was back in my adult body—no longer a frightened eight-year-old—and the scenery became just as clear and real as if I were awake.
A gust of wind danced across my skin, then continued to ripple out among the foliage, the grass bending and swaying. I wasn’t alone. There was something here with me, a familiar being with magick of a magnitude that matched my own.
Who are you?
A dark figure shrouded in a blackened cloud of smoke appeared in the distance. I couldn’t make out any features.
Hello, Áine.It was a deep, distorted male voice that rang in my mind.
Smoke swirled around him like a cyclone before slithering out like snakes among the grass, inching closer and closer. It picked up its pace, but I stood my ground. This wasn’t real. This was just a dream. I choked back my fear as I glared into the distance. I would not be intimidated.
The sky turned obsidian black, and the tall grass withered and died upon contact with the dark cloud, which smelled of fire, decay, and death. It turned my stomach sour with nausea. I couldn’t see the being anymore as the smoke surrounded me and entered my lungs. It descended upon me, making my eyes burn as I coughed and grew dizzy.
No. This wasn’t real.
Then I felt it in my mind, polluting and corrupting everything good about me and everything beautiful about my magick.
You killed your mothers,the figure taunted, his distorted voice as grating to my ears as the metal-on-metal impact of a car crash.For power that is weak and dying. You are nothing. No one. Daelon will betray you. He sees how pathetic you really are.
The darkness coiled around me like a great serpent, and I felt my body levitate off the ground as it tightened its grip. Flashes of suffering, torture, and death played in a loop in my mind. Witches in tattered clothing, crawling all over each other in a pit beneath the earth, reached for me, their mouths contorted into silent screams. I felt their suffering as if it were my own, and thus it became my own. I lost all sense of time, all sense of self. I was trapped in endless pain and destruction.
But within the darkened pit arose a sliver of light, gleaming from the end of a long tunnel. I fought my way toward it, scraping and digging and pulling myself through the cacophony of screams and packed dirt and sinister laughter.
This was an intruder.I could fight this.
In a burst of resistance, calling on every time I’d ever felt strong, every time anyone had ever felt strong, I bellowed,
Get out of my mind.
The crack of light opened up, and soon everything was illuminated. The smoke lifted, and I dropped from the sky into my ocean of energy, treading water and desperately breathing in salty, fresh air. I looked up at the deep blue sky, full of stars and constellations. I was safe. The dark force was gone.
Hewas gone.
I was pulled back into reality by Daelon’s voice yet again, coaxing me out of my subconscious. My bed was soft and comforting in the wake of such a horrific nightmare.
“You’re okay,” he said, stroking my cheek.
He jerked his hand back when I opened my eyes. I took a moment to adjust to this new change of scenery, as grateful for it as I was.
