Her precious Isabella was gone from the World of Man.
“Show yourself, I demand it! How could you allow this to happen?” she accused, ignoring the hysterical echo of her own words in the cavernous, rounded room. “You promised. She was to be cared for if I would but leave her with the Mortals and return to your service. You promised!”
She screamed the final words, her voice cracking as she sank to her knees. The tears, until now strangely absent, at last found their release, rolling down her cheeks to splatter on the white stone floor at her knees. “You promised,” she accused one final time, her words no more than a whisper against the canvas of her grief.
“You would demand my presence in your world, Daughter of Danu?”
The words echoed off the arc of the room’s high ceiling, bouncing, tumbling in a harmonious melody of sound.
“I would,” Elesyria answered without hesitation. She had no care for the ancient protocols. No time to travel to the trance world. No desire to honor the bitch Goddess who had betrayed her.
In front of her a pale green mist coalesced, writhing and bubbling, shifting from one form to another until at last a tall, beautiful woman emerged. The Goddess, the Earth Mother, had arrived.
“Then I can only assume these are the direst of times. What troubles you, my child?”
“The loss ofmychild.” Elesyria rose to her feet, well aware she breached all acceptable behavior in doing so. Eye contact with the Goddess was too painful, so she fixed her gaze on the other woman’s chin. “Isabella is dead. You’ve broken your promise to me.”
The Goddess lifted her hand as if to catch a handful of air in the room before rubbing her thumb against her fingers, much in the way a merchant might sample the feel of a fine silk.
“Isabella lives.”
“Impossible!” Elesyria had been to the curtain between the worlds that very morning. She’d stood there as so often she did, stretching out her magic to caress the essence of the daughter she’d left behind. Only this time, there had been nothing. “She’s not in the World of Man. I felt for her myself. That which had been her is gone.”
“Nevertheless, Isabella’s soul has not returned to the Fountain. She lives.”
“How can that be?” Elesyria’s legs buckled, too weak to hold her weight, and she dropped to her knees. “The place where I felt for her is as empty as my heart.”
The Goddess lifted both arms and the mist returned, swirling in a sphere between her hands. It moved as if alive, frantic with a billion life-forms, its color shifting from the palest green to a brilliant emerald and back again. Then the Goddess clapped her hands together and the mist disappeared as quickly as it had formed.
“Not only does she live, she has joined with her SoulMate. Though, as you say, she is not in the time and place where you left her.”
“What does that mean?”
The Goddess shrugged, palms held upward. “I cannot yet say. I know only what I feel when I search the Myst.”
Elesyria’s mind reeled in confusion. Isabella’s space on the Mortal Plain was empty. She’d felt that for herself. And yet, the Goddess claimed her daughter lived. Lived and had found the one happiness every Fae sought: her own SoulMate!
“I need answers,” she whispered, as much to herself as to the Goddess standing nearby.
“Indeed you do. Go with my blessings.”
Herblessings? Not enough. Not by half.
Elesyria raised her head, coming as close to meeting the Earth Mother’s eyes as she dared. “After all the years I’ve dedicated to your service, Goddess, I want more than your blessings. I want to travel through the curtain with the power to punish any who harmed my child.”
“Crossing over with your Magic intact is forbidden by your High Council.”
If the Goddess thought to dissuade her with something so trivial, she was seriously mistaken.
“I’ve no more care for the politics of Fae than I have for those of Man. I care only for the child grown to woman whom I left behind when I returned to my service in your temple. I must know the truth of her fate. I want to travel through the curtain. With my Magic.”
“And if you find your daughter has not been harmed? If you find it is as I have indicated?”
If, pray the Goddess, Isabella lived happily joined to her SoulMate, as the Goddess insisted? “Then I want the power to reward those who aided her.”
The visage in front of her shimmered from green to gold and back again.
“In offering reward as freely as you threaten punishment, Elesyria, you demonstrate your wisdom. So be it. You may retain your powers to use for this purpose and this purpose only. Your years of faithful service watching over my followers have earned at least this much from me. As you go forth, I will set in motion what I can to assist. Travel to the place where your daughter should be. Seek out the Tinklers when you arrive. They are my eyes and ears in the World of Man. If any can guide you to the truth, surely it will be they.”
