by Laura DeLuca
Morrigan nodded, but she wasn’t really listening to the teacher. She was too captivated by the picture. Too shocked by what she saw to even consider making any excuses or arguments.
It wasn’t a self-portrait at all, though she could understand why Mr. Waters might have thought it was. The woman in the picture bore a striking resemblance to Morrigan. She had the same long, flowing black hair—the same deep, dark eyes. Those eyes were the most remarkable feature on the drawing. They were so bright and clear, revealing all the sadness and regret the woman must have felt as she laid her infant daughter in a basket on the steps of an old church.
Morrigan knew the church, recognized the tall steeple. She had been there just a few years ago, looking for answers to her birth. She had found no answers then. But as she looked down at the image she had pulled from her own subconscious—an image of a woman who could only be her mother—she knew those answers would be coming soon.
Chapter Two
Morrigan was glad her foster parents and their three other charity cases hadn’t arrived home yet. The house was quiet and peaceful—an unusual occurrence when her home was normally filled with hyperactive teenagers. It was rare that she had the whole house to herself, and she was grateful for the opportunity. She needed time to herself. Time to think. Time to clear her head. Time to divine.
The picture she had drawn left her with many unanswered questions. Most of her life, she had tried not to think much about the biological mother who had deserted her. It was a painful thought to know even the woman who had given birth to her had cast her aside. Obviously her subconscious was trying to tell her something, and the best way she knew to reach those answers was with her cards.
Since the first time she picked them up at a garage sale, her tarot cards had never led her in the wrong direction. Maybe it was yet another one of her strange metaphysical gifts. Or maybe it was more of a curse. Sometimes when her talent forced her to see things in herself she’d rather not see, it didn’t seem like much of a gift. But, for better or worse, whenever she read the cards, she got at small glimpse of her future—small, but accurate.
Morrigan took the sketch of her mother and pinned it to the bulletin board above her headboard, right next to her favorite—an unlikely knight with a worn sword and long dreadlocks. He was a man who had haunted her dreams for as long as she could remember. There were also pictures and paintings of old castles, a circle of tree nymphs, unicorns and dragons, princesses and queens. The whimsical woman in the old-fashioned gown seemed to complete the collection.
“Meooowww?”
Danu’s greeting woke her from her reverie. It was quickly echoed by Dagda and then followed by a string of purring that could have easily been mistaken for the revving of a car engine. It was nice to know someone was always happy to see her, even if they did walk on four legs. Morrigan smiled as she bent down to scratch them each behind the ears before reaching into her book bag. She retrieved a smaller, tie-string bag, decorated with stars and moons. Inside the bag were a little mug wart, a little sage, and a stack of lovingly worn tarot cards.
Before Morrigan began, she peeked out the window to make sure no one was coming. Then she locked the bedroom door so she would have no interruptions. She hoped she would make it through the simple reading before anyone else got home. She knew not everyone was open to divination. Morrigan had the feeling her highly religious foster parents might take her cards away from her if they found out she had them. It wasn’t a risk she was willing to take. She had grown attached to them during the past five years. She almost felt like they were an extension of her own unconscious mind.
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 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 the 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 dreamlike. The scene on the card became her reality. The figure of the sphinx that sat on top of the turning wheel looked so alive. 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 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 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 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 lo
nging—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 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.
Chapter Three
“Morrigan, it’s time to get up!”
Morrigan groaned as she opened her eyes and came face-to-face with her smiling foster sister, Lauren. As if fate hadn’t cursed her with enough problems—it had to throw in a perpetually upbeat, optimistic morning person as her roommate. Lauren was the only foster kid she had ever met that was so incredibly cheerful all the time. In a way, it was kind of disturbing.
“It can’t be morning already,” Morrigan muttered into her pillow. Even as she spoke, the bright sun was beaming between the open curtains, temporarily blinding her.
“Sure it can,” Lauren insisted. “And if you don’t hurry up, you’re going to miss the bus and you’ll have to walk to school. Again.”
Morrigan didn’t see that as being nearly as much of a problem as Lauren did. She actually preferred walking alone in the fresh air to riding in a bus filled with a bunch of noisy, obnoxious adolescents. She didn’t bother telling Lauren that. Someone so desperate to be popular would never understand. Instead, she tried to pull the blankets back over her head. She knew it was pointless. Lauren was standing at the foot of her bed with her hands on her hips, and she wasn’t going to move until Morrigan got up. So with a groan of protest, she threw back the covers.
She wasn’t the only one to grumble as she lost the toasty warmth of the blankets. Danu and Dagda both whined and slid closer together as Morrigan pulled her uncooperative body up from the bed. She shivered as her bare legs met the crisp autumn air. Like the ever-present shadows they were, both cats grudgingly followed her when she finally dragged herself up and headed toward the bathroom. They curled up on the rug, happily exchanging cat baths as she slipped out of her nightgown and into the shower.
The steaming hot water washed away some of Morrigan’s lingering anxiety. The tarot card reading was still fresh in her mind, and its warnings were carefully imbedded in her subconscious. Thinking about the reading again caused her to lose track of time, and she spent much longer washing her hair than was really necessary. She thought she might have even shampooed twice. On the bright side, she hoped she would be so late getting downstairs that she wouldn’t have to endure her household’s typical family breakfast. The last thing she wanted was to fake a lot of happiness first thing in the morning, especially for a bunch of people who were really no more than strangers.
When she finally shut off the taps and climbed out of the shower, she could already smell the sickening scent of greasy bacon drifting up the hallway, even with the door closed. She wrinkled her nose in distaste. She cared for meat even less than she cared for the phony smiles of her foster parents. Their strict Christian values didn’t allow them to voice their true feelings, but Morrigan knew they didn’t really like her. In fact, they were probably a little afraid of her. It didn’t bother her though. After seventeen years and fifteen different foster homes, she was used to people not liking her without any valid reason. Somehow, she had learned to live without parental love, and she believed she was stronger because of it.
“Hurry up, Morrigan!” Lauren rapped loudly on the bathroom door. Morrigan jumped and dropped the comb she had been trying to run through her tangled hair. “Your breakfast is getting cold.”
“I’ll be down in a minute!”
Morrigan rolled her eyes as she pulled her towel more tightly around her body. She bent forward to gather her still sopping hair up in a second towel, wrapping it toga-style. All the while she wondered why Lauren had made it her personal mission to make sure she always got to breakfast on time.
“Mooorrriiiiigaaaaaaan.”
Morrigan snapped her head up so fast she was sure she must have given herself whiplash. The voice that called her name definitely didn’t belong to Lauren. It was so strangely accented and wisplike. It hardly sounded human at all. And
if that wasn’t scary enough, Morrigan was certain the whisper had come from directly behind her. She could still feel the icy breath of its owner lingering on the back of her neck. She had the distinct feeling she was being watched, and she gave an involuntarily shiver. She might have thought she was insane, except for the fact that the cats had obviously heard it too. They both stood hissing, with teeth barred and their fur standing on end.
“Who’s there?” Morrigan demanded and hoped no one was waiting outside the bathroom door. If they didn’t think she was crazy already, they certainly would if they heard her carrying on a conversation with herself.
“Mooorrriiiiigaaaaaaan.”
Morrigan gasped in surprise. She hadn’t really expected any response. She took a few involuntary steps backward and nearly stumbled into the bathtub. The voice echoed through the room for the third time.
“Mooorrriiiiigaaaaaaan.”
This time the sound had moved. It was further away, coming from near the sink. The cats’ hisses had escalated into long, deep growls, and they inched closer to her protectively. Morrigan reached down and patted them absently, which did nothing to calm them down. Strangely enough, Morrigan realized she wasn’t really afraid. Maybe it was because strange and unusual things had been happening to her all her life. At this point, it was just second nature. Or maybe it was because she knew in her heart whoever was calling her name meant her no harm.
“Morrigan . . . come to me!”
There was urgency in the voice she hadn’t sensed before. That urgency seemed to transfer to Morrigan by osmosis. She looked frantically around the room, trying to find—to find what? A ghost? She wasn’t exactly sure what she was looking for. She just knew she needed to find it quickly, before it was gone.
“Hurry, Morrigan . . . Come . . . !”
She followed the sound, not with her ears, but with her spirit. She swallowed hard, untangled herself from the cats that had wound themselves around her ankles, and took a few tentative steps forward. Sensing where the voice was drawing her, she moved toward the mirror, which was still mist-covered from the steaming shower.
