“Okay!”
Aidan cracks his knuckles.
He’s grinning hugely.
I think this might be the greatest thing that’s ever happened to him.
I haven’t seen him this excited in
years
.
“So I’ll call up all the coven members, and we can…I mean.
I have no idea what I’m doing.
We
have no idea what we’re doing,” he tells Virago truthfully, and she nods to him, arms folded.
“To be honest, I don’t know how to open a portal myself.
I can do only small magics, and I had to train very hard to be able to do those,” she tells us, mouth in a thin line, sighing out.
“But I do know that to open a portal, the witch simply went to the space where she said the portal was, drew up energy from the ground—as I just did—and asked the portal to open.
And it did.
She was unable to control where the portal pointed as well as she’d hoped, but still.
That was all there was to it.”
“It can’t possibly be so simple,” says Aidan, shaking his head.
“And Wiccans…I mean, we draw ‘energy’ up from the earth, but it doesn’t glow like what just happened to you.
It’s very much more…metaphysical than that…”
He trails off.
“Um.”
He bites his lip.
“So refresh me, here…what happens if we
can’t
open this portal?”
“Oh, you know.
Apparently the extinction of the human race or something,” I tell him, voice small.
He glances at me with a grin, thinking I’m joking, but the smile melts off his face instantly when he sees my expression, when he glances to Virago and she frowns, bites her lip.
“Not exactly
extinction
, per se,” she says, trailing off.
And then she sheaths her sword after wiping the remaining stain of her blood on the blade on her pants leg.
“Shall I tell you both the story of this beast?” she asks then, sitting down on the edge of a plush chair.
“I think it’s important that you know it.
You see, us knights had never faced a beast like it before.
But we knew its story, and in every story there are crumbs of truth.”
“Yes, please, we’d love to hear,” says Aidan eagerly, sitting on the chair opposite from Virago.
I fold into a loveseat, watching the strange, graceful woman across the way lean forward, her elbows on her knees, her face shadowed, her strong jaw lit by the twinkling Christmas lights wreathed around the room, casting the painted goddesses on the wall with golden light.
“My mother was a storyteller,” says Virago with a soft smile.
“And she told me the story this way.
Once, long ago,” she tell us, voice going lower, stronger, “there was a great famine.
The ground would not yield crops, the beasts in the field fell ill and died, and they could not be eaten for they bloated with disease.
And creeping over the mountains and valleys of the world came a great darkness and a great fear.
And with it came the Goddess Cower…”
In those days, the world was just beginning, and humans had only recently been molded and made by the gods and goddesses, and the humans were only now just learning how to build a life out of the land and with each other.
It was the beginning times, and it was very hard, but before the famine, it had not been impossible.
But now the people were dying each day, more falling, and they did not know what to do.
The Goddess Cower crept across the land, dragging her clicking wand of bones behind her.
She was sister to the trickster Goddess Fox, but unlike her sister, she had no bit of balance in her, not a scrap of light to combat the darkness.
Fox was a trickster, yes, but she was neither good nor evil, instead a marvelous blending of the two, as are we all.
But Cower?
Cower was all darkness.
“The people fear,” she hissed into the hollows and valleys so that the desperate words echoed back to her; she whispered again and again beneath the rocks and into dripping streams.
“They fear, and they are weak because of it.
Now I will come to them, and I will make them believe in me and worship me.”
And she rose up, with her small powers, and she came to the people as a drifting thing, made of tattered cloth and small animal bones she’d gleaned from the forest that hung in the air like a puppet.
But the people were afraid, and they bowed down before her and worshipped her, because she made them fear.
They built small shrines to her, and they gave her their last bread and honey and milk and meat, and they adored her because she said that she could save them.
And she had not a single intention or a shred of power to do so.
And the goddess of wooded places, Fleet, heard the people whisper in the forest, heard their fear and their hope concerning their new Goddess, Cower.
Fleet had been sleeping, had not heard about the famine or the fear, and when she saw how the people suffered, she rose up, went to the animals of the wood, and asked them to choose some of their kind to go and offer themselves to the humans so that the humans would survive.
And the animals said, “Fleet, you are our mother, and we adore you—we would do anything for you.
We will do what you ask.”
But when the animals of the wood came to the humans in their villages and offered themselves to be eaten, the humans slayed the animals, and Cower said:
“look what I have done for you!” claiming the animal’s sacrifice as a boon
she
had granted the people.
And the humans gave her the best of the animals as a sacrifice, and she lay back on her bed of furs, and she laughed, for she still held the dying humans fooled.
The animals did not last long, as there was not much else to eat, and the land was not yielding grain or fruit.
And the goddess of sea places, Wave, heard the people whisper along the water’s edges, heard their fear and their hope concerning their new Goddess, Cower.
Wave had been sleeping, too, had not heard about the famine or the fear, and when she saw how the people suffered, she rose up, went to the fish of the sea, and asked them to choose some of their kind to go and offer themselves to the humans so that the humans would survive.
And the fish said, “Wave, you are our mother, and we adore you—we would do anything for you.
We will do what you ask.”
But when the fish of the sea came to the edge of the water and offered themselves to be eaten, the humans slayed the fish, and Cower said:
“look what I have done for you!” claiming the fish’s sacrifice as a boon she had granted the people.
And the humans gave her the best of the fish as a sacrifice, and she lay back on her bed of furs, and she laughed, for she still held the dying humans fooled.
The fish did not last long, as there was still not much else to eat, and the land was still not yielding grain or fruit.
Fleet and Wave came together, as they sometimes did, to discuss it.
“I fear that, as we slept, our sister Reap is sleeping, even now,” said Wave, holding her hands out to Fleet.
“We must wake her.”
So Fleet stepped dry into the ocean, and Wave took her in her strong arms, and carried her down into the sea.
But they could not find the Goddess Reap.
And Wave stepped dripping from the ocean, and Fleet took her in her strong arms and carried her across the land.
But they could not find the Goddess Reap.
They looked over the world and the water, but they did not look beneath it.
And that is where Reap slept, with her seeds, waiting to rise with the greening plants, up and through the dirt, into life again.
But Cower knew where the Goddess slept, and as time went by, she grew nervous that the Goddess would wake up of her own accord and set to rights the dire mischief that Cower had begun.
For Cower, of course, had released Famine out into that corner of the world, and if Reap knew what she was about, would end it quickly and severely.
So Cower took some of the women and men of the village, some of the strongest women and men, for they had survived the famine thus far, and she took them with her on a trek into the mountains.
And she bade them roll a stone across the entrance to a strange cave.
“Goddess, we love and adore you,” they told her, “but why do you ask us to do this?”
“Too many questions!” the Goddess hissed, waving her clicking wand of bones at them.
“Do as I say, or it will be bad on you!”
For in those days, no goddess or god could go against one another, and Cower herself could not trap Reap.
But she could order it done.
And the women and men put their shoulders against the great stone, and they heaved and they shoved and they pushed.
And Fleet and Wave came, just then, to the top of the mountain on their journey across the world to find their sister Reap.
And this is what they found:
a very surprised Cower, and a very surprised group of humans, and a stone half-way across the entrance to a very strange cave.
And Fleet and Wave gave a great shout, and they woke their sister Reap who crept up and out of the cave entrance, into the world, blinking against the sudden brightness of the sun.
“What have you done to the humans, Cower?” asked Fleet and Wave and Reap, then.
And Cower cowered away from them, but not before sneering and spitting at their feet and saying:
“You are powerful, and I am nothing, and I am tired of being nothing.
I will be remembered,” she whispered.
“You have killed so many humans.
So many humans,” said Reap sadly, sinking to the ground and soaking up the story through the soil beneath her fingers.
“But you will not again.
For the cave that I have slept in?
It will be your resting place.
Become what you truly are, Cower.”
And in the face of her brothers and sisters, Cower began to morph and change, and what she was within began to show on the outside.
She grew larger, but more shadowed, she grew toothier and angrier.
And she turned into a great and monstrous beast that—compelled by magic—crawled into the entrance of the cave.
And the stone rolled over it, sealing her away forever.
For Reap and Fleet and Wave knew that Cower would no longer be content until all of the humans were gone.
To protect them, always, they sealed Cower away.
But it is said by the few that still follow the Goddess Cower, those who wish for the destruction of the world, that she will rise again one day, and she will be more powerful than before.
And she will finish what she started, now in her monstrous form.
And she will devour the world.
---
Virago sits with her elbows on her knees and her hands clasped before her, leaning forward and watching us both with flashing eyes.
“There was a rumor in Arktos City when we began our trek up to the northern mountain range that the beast we went to fight was, in fact, Cower come back.
We laughed at that idea.
Surely it was just another of the wild beasts come up from the desert, come too far into civilization, easily corralled and returned to their wild home, possibly even vanquished.
But
easily
.
But now?
I’m not so sure.
I’ve been thinking…” she says softly, gazing past us, eyes unfocused, “that maybe the witch actually did open the correct portal to the correct in-between place.
And maybe, perhaps, the beast changed the portal from leading to the in-between place to come, instead, to
this
world.
If it is Cower come back, then things are much, much worse than I originally thought.
Than anyone thought.”
She comes back to herself, gazes at the both of us, her hands spread.
“So you see…I need your help, so much.
I am only a lowly knight.
I will do my best in the face of this, but if she rises up and vanquishes
me
, then you must carry on, try to trap her.
Try to stop her.”
My breath comes shallowly, and my sweaty palms are pressed to my jeans.
I clear my throat.
“The beast isn’t going to vanquish you,” I laugh, but it comes out shaky.
“You’re
Virago
…I mean, you just sawed into your hand with that sword, and it healed immediately…”
I watch her as she gazes at me, face calm and sad.
“Everyone is eventually vanquished, Holly,” she says then quietly.
“What matters is if I did what I was meant to before I am gone.”
Aidan is looking at the painting of his matron Goddess on the wall, his gaze distant, his thoughts somewhere else, obviously.
I stand quickly, clear my throat as they both turn to me.