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Filtiarn, a knight with a dark past and a surprising
secret, has been tasked with guiding the heir of Tír Na NÓg through countless
perils to be returned to her family. Once Morrigan has been reunited with her
mother and grandmother, their triad can save the forgotten land of magic from
being devoured by an ancient evil.
Excerpt:
Morrigan took out a white candle and a stick of
dragon blood incense, and set them up in the corner of the room. She sat
cross-legged, and leaned forward to light them. No matches were necessary. No
lighter either. She simply touched her finger to the end of the wick, and with
an iridescent spark, the candle flickered to life. It shone at first with a
bright blue flame that gradually settled into a more normal orange. It was the
same with the incense—another reason why she preferred not to have an audience.
She stared into the candle for a moment, and took a
few deep breaths to clear her mind of all thoughts but those of the magic she
intended to perform. Danu and Dagda sat on either side of her, instantly
falling into silence, as though they knew she needed her complete
concentration. Their energy beside her only seemed to add to the growing sense
of power that charged the room.
Morrigan closed her eyes and began to shuffle the
cards. As she did, she allowed her breathing to become more even. A silence
filled the room as the rest of the mortal world fell away. Soon the only sound
she heard was the light thump of her own heartbeat, echoed by the quicker, fast
paced beat of the cats’ hearts. She wasn’t sure how much time passed as the
cards slipped through her fingers. It might have been minutes. It might have
been hours. When she allowed herself to fall into a trance, time became
insubstantial, irrelevant.
The tarot cards were so old; the designs on the back
were almost completely worn away. She had to shuffle gently to keep them from
crumbling to pieces in her hands. Yet they held a power that she knew no newer
cards could offer her. As she shuffled them, she focused her energy into them,
silently requesting to be given the answers she was seeking. She allowed the image of her mother to fill
her mind. When she finally felt the cards had fallen into the order they were
meant to be in, she placed the deck face down on the floor, and cut them with
her right hand. Then, taking one last, calming breath, she lifted the top card
from the pile. With a trembling hand, she laid it down and read it.
“Wheel of
Fortune,” she said aloud.
In the center of card was a wheel. As she stared at
the picture, that wheel seemed to turn clockwise. The movements made her feel
slightly dizzy. The bedroom around her became more and more surreal. The scene on the card became her reality. The
figure of the sphinx that sat on top of the turning wheel looked so very real.
It might have turned its head to look at her. Its lips may or may not have
moved. Morrigan swore she heard a deep, resonating voice whispering the meaning
of the card into her ear. Destiny approaching. An unexpected and sudden change
was coming—change that could lead to good fortune.
It was the card of fate and karma returned. It meant
that she needed to be prepared—to expect the unexpected. Morrigan knew the
cards were telling her something was going to happen—and soon. Her destiny,
whatever it was, was about to be realized. Even if it did bring fortune, it
still scared her to death. She considered packing up the cards right then and
there. Her rational mind had every intention of doing just that. Her hands
didn’t get the message her brain was sending. Before she knew what she was
doing, she had already flipped over the second card.
“The Empress,” she whispered. She exhaled deeply.
“My mother.”
It was the only interpretation imaginable. Even as
she said it, the pregnant woman, crowned with stars and adorned in a gown
decorated with pomegranates, turned to her and smiled. She was no longer a
vague featureless stranger, but the same woman Morrigan had sketched earlier
that day—a face that mirrored her own. It was an older version of herself,
which she saw in the reflection in the nearby full length mirror, had turned
chalk white.
The Empress was a symbol of maternal power—of strong
feminine influence. But could it mean that her mother was returning? She had
never allowed herself to consider such a possibility. To dwell on something so
unlikely would have been too painful. But now, with just the flip of a card,
she found herself daring to dream. There was only one way to find out for sure.
She had to keep going with the reading.
“Six of
Cups.”
The third card in the spread represented her past,
and even her immediate present. The six of cups specifically symbolized
childhood, and she was, technically, still a child. But she had a feeling that
her childhood was about to end quite abruptly. The cups in the picture were
lined up across a high stone wall, each cup holding the memories of her past.
Her past. It was nothing but a childhood filled with
longing—longings which were perhaps about to be fulfilled. She visualized
herself taking each cup down from the wall, and pouring the troubling memories
away. It was time to start fresh. A new world was about to open up for her. She
had known it as soon as she had seen the image of her mother’s face. But what
would that world be like? What was waiting for her in the future?
Morrigan turned over the fourth card.
“The Knight of Wands.”
The man on the horse carrying the staff had her
baffled. Not because she didn’t know its normal meaning, but because as she
stared at the card, it began to take on the physical attributes of the knight
in her drawings. He had the same long dreadlocks, the same bewitching stare,
even the same cocky smile. The familiarity did not cancel out the meaning of
the card. The knight of wands was representative of a dark man filled with a
kind of honey-tongued charm. He was also fiery and arrogant, a man with a
definite possibility of a dark side. If the knight of wands was coming into her
life, she knew she needed to proceed with caution.
She thought she was done with the fourth card, and
was preparing to move on to the next, when once again, she found she had lost
control of her body. This time, her hands refused to move, while her eyes forced
their way back to the knight in the card. She watched as the long haired
stranger began to move forward—wandering over various landscapes, some high
mountains, some meadows and fields ripe for the harvest. He kept looking back
over his shoulder, as though he were speaking to someone. He was on a journey,
and he wasn’t alone. Morrigan didn’t need to see his companion to know who it
must be.
So, her journey would soon begin, and she wouldn’t
be traveling alone. She would have a guide. Whether or not that would be a good
thing was another question best left to the cards to answer. The next card told
her nothing she didn’t already know.
“The Moon,” she said. “Caution.”
It was a scary card. It warned of tricks and
illusions. The two howling wolves that stood under the moon looked back at her
menacingly, growling, showing their pointed fangs in a snarl. For the first
time since she began the reading, Danu and Dagda made their presence known by
lifting their heads and hissing threateningly in the direction of the beasts.
Even the cats sensed it. The journey she was about
to embark on wouldn’t be all fun and family reunions. There would be obstacles
and deceit, most likely from people she thought could be trusted. The moon was
a sign that danger was certainly awaiting her. In was an ominous omen.
“Shhhh.”
She hushed the hissing cats, and gave them each a
gentle stroke to try to settle them down, though she was far from settled
herself. Again she felt the urge to stop the spread. Her instincts were telling
her that no good was going to come out of this reading. She was only going to
scare herself. She should never have done it in the first place. When would she
learn that sometimes it was best to let life play out without interference or
prophetic warnings? Then again, she knew that to be forewarned might be her
only advantage. So with more bravery than she felt, Morrigan flipped over the
final card.
“No . . . .”
she gasped when she looked down at the terrible, skeletal face. “Oh no.”
She should have known. She thought a part of her did
know even before she glanced down at the gruesome scene—a skeleton with a
scythe in a field of body parts. With the divination going in the direction it
was, what else could be the final outcome?
“Death,” she whispered. “Death.”
She knew that in most cases, the death card was a
symbol of personal transformation rather than literal death. But a deeper sense
of understanding told her that this time the card was meant to be taken
literally. She saw only glimpses and shadows in her mind. Brief flashes of
faces, some familiar, like her mother and the knight—some still strangers, like
a beautiful, almost angelic blonde woman in a flowing white gown. But around
them all, including herself, she saw the shadows of death.
Morrigan felt decidedly shaky as she gathered up her
tarot cards. She placed them securely in the bottom of her bag just as she
heard the door downstairs slam shut. The reading hadn’t made everything as
crystal clear as she had hoped, but one thing was certain. Her whole life was
about to change.
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