Chapter 22 #2
“Really? Are you sure about that? Because I’m also worried that I’m going to get Laura killed while she’s here just trying to help me.
And she is my best friend, and honestly Kiersten—our other best friend—and Laura’s family would never forgive me, and with my parents gone, they’re basically all I have left. ”
Carys couldn’t seem to stop herself from baring her soul, and Joshua just nodded along as she did it.
“I don’t know how to stop the Morrígan. I have no ideas.
None. Jack said something about breaking an enchantment, and Angus said something about walking between worlds, but vague pronouncements are not a plan.
And I’m just a mythology professor. I know all this stuff from books, and let me tell you, the reality of all the different parallel mythological worlds is not captured in books! ”
“I understand,” Joshua murmured.
“And Duncan is… the best! But I might be completely messing up his life by loving him. I mean, I’m pretty sure his mother hates me already, and he may say that’s not important to him, but it is.
It just is. Added to that, we live in completely different countries and cultures, and we both have lives where we live. ”
Joshua nodded in understanding. “All these worries are valid.”
“But also! It feels super-selfish to even be talking about my love life right now because there is a literal war goddess loose in the world, and my romantic problems are like the least relevant thing right now.”
Joshua smiled. “Carys, love is never irrelevant.”
Carys cried. She wasn’t proud of it, and she wasn’t going to wallow in it, but the weeks of travel, the supernatural battles, frightening dreams, and the pressure of the unknown came crashing down on her.
So with her friends frozen around her and a kind god sitting across from her, listening to her bare her soul, she just let it out.
When her shoulders had stopped shaking and her nose was running, Joshua handed her a plain cotton handkerchief with the initials GM embroidered in the corner along with a red dragon.
Carys stopped crying. “This is my father’s handkerchief.”
“It is.” Joshua sat back on the sofa, Jibril still frozen beside him.
“I’m so sorry I just laid all that on you.” She sniffed and pressed the handkerchief to her nose. “I’m really sorry.”
Joshua shrugged. “I can take it.”
“Still.”
“You’re doubting yourself, Carys.” He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “That’s perfectly understandable. But you can accomplish everything the old gods expect from you. Otherwise, you would not have been chosen for this task. Do you believe me?”
“I guess” —Carys stared at her father’s handkerchief— “I have to believe you?”
“You don’t have to. All of this is a choice.”
“Is it?”
“Yes.” Joshua shrugged. “You have a passport. You have money. You could get on a plane today and fly away from here.”
She let out a slow breath. “I could run away.”
“Yes, you could. Take Laura with you. Cadell would follow. Duncan would too.”
“And leave all the consequences of letting the Morrígan into the Brightlands for someone else to clean up?” Carys felt a pit form in her stomach.
“It’s a choice,” Joshua said. “I’m not going to tell you what the right thing to do is because you have to decide that for yourself.”
Carys sat back on the sofa and thought hard.
She could run.
She would be safe. Maybe forever.
But Naida and Godrik wouldn’t be safe.
Her uncle wouldn’t be safe.
Cadell’s children, his whole horde, would be in danger.
Winnie and Elanor and Eamer. Lachlan and Angus and every human born into the Shadowlands.
They would all be caught in whatever chaos the Morrígan had planned.
“I have to defeat the Morrígan. I let her out of the Shadowlands—I have to figure out a way to get her back.”
“Then I will help you.” Joshua’s face was encouraging. “I have faith in you, Carys Morgan. Faith in Gareth’s daughter.”
Carys looked at Angus, slightly amazed that he was still frozen. “Are you more powerful than Angus?”
“I currently have more faithful in this place, so right now?” Joshua nodded. “Jibril and I are two of the most powerful gods in Briton even though we are not the oldest.”
“Right.” So what did that mean for the Morrígan? Did she have enough followers to be a major power yet? Was that her aim? How would she gather followers, and could Carys take them away?
Was that how she could defeat the goddess?
“You need to reframe what victory means,” Joshua said. “You have been told that you cannot kill a god.”
“Dru—Diarmuid. The fae king,” she said. “I’m not sure if you…”
Joshua nodded. “I know the fae of old.”
“He told me that if even one person believes in a god, they exist.”
“He is not wrong, but that is not the whole story.” Joshua spread his hands, and the world around Carys came alive.
Laura leaned toward Cadell. Jibril finished his sip of tea, shooting a side glance at Joshua, and Lachlan and Duncan leaned against the cottage wall like twin sentries with solemn expressions.
“We’re going to talk later, young man,” Angus muttered.
Joshua continued speaking as if he hadn’t literally frozen time while Carys had an emotional breakdown. “You cannot kill a god, nor should you want to.”
“I don’t know,” Duncan said. “Defeating a goddess of war and bloodshed doesn’t seem like the worst idea.”
“I am not saying you should not thwart her,” Joshua said, “but you should not equate victory over the Morrígan with her defeat. Those who follow me choose to do so. Those who follow the Morrígan have their own reasons for that as well.”
“She used to live in the Brightlands, right?” Laura asked. “All the worlds were once united.”
Jibril cocked his head. “I think it is more correct to say that worlds were once more fluid. The gods have always had their own realms, but magic once filled the world. The gates were created when humans began to doubt. When they looked to reason more than the gods.”
“Who created them?” Lachlan glared at Joshua. “It was the fae, wasn’t it?”
“The fae are creatures of the Shadowlands.” Angus piped up from the back of the room. “They can’t create gates—they can only manage them. And lately they haven’t been doing a good job of it.”
“This isn’t about the gates,” Joshua said. “Or not entirely about them. The gates protect the Shadowlands. The fae would not survive in the modern world.” Joshua turned his eyes toward Naida. “At least not for long. You are creatures of old magic and the earth. This place is not your home.”
Naida shook her head. “No.”
“So the Morrígan once lived in the Brightlands,” Duncan said. “Once upon a time and all that, all the gods did. And obviously there are gods in the Brightlands now.” He gestured at Jibril and Joshua. “So can you explain why it’s so damn important that the Morrígan goes back to the Shadowlands?”
“She is breaking down the gates that protect our world,” Cadell said. “And she is drawing in monsters and imps and creatures that humans have confined to folk tales.”
“Gates can be fortified,” Jibril said, “And creatures can be contained. But the Morrígan is voracious.”
“She can’t help it.” Joshua spread his hands. “Macha is a goddess of many things, but blood and battle combine with a thirst for conquest and sovereignty in her nature.”
“The Morrígan’s nature drives her toward war,” Jibril continued.
“She cannot stop herself, and all the gods across the world would end up rising to meet her should she continue in her quest beyond Briton.” Jibril took a long breath and looked around the room.
“If the Morrígan is not contained in Briton, chaos and magical war will spread across the world.”
“And I’m supposed to stop that?” Carys rose to her feet and pointed at Joshua, her heart racing. “You said my parents gave me gifts, but my parents are gone. And they never explained any of this before they died. So how… I mean, how am I supposed to—”
“Your mother’s not any more gone than your Shadowkin is,” Angus growled.
Silence filled the cottage, and Carys sank to the sofa again. “Not gone?”
“What did you think, girl? That Tegan—Epona’s most beloved daughter, the one the goddess gifted the power of life to—was just going to get stuck in a corner of the underworld for eternity?”
Carys gripped her father’s handkerchief in her palm. “So it’s not just my sister who’s in Annwn?” She looked at Joshua, then Jibril. “My mother is there too?”
“When she died, your mother asked to join her other daughter in Annwn,” Jibril said softly. “The goddess granted her petition. They are both there.”
“Ha!” Lachlan burst out with a harsh laugh. “Both there and both completely out of reach.”
“For you?” Angus barked. “Maybe. But not for her.” He pointed at Carys. “She’s of two worlds. Maybe the only child alive born to the Shadows and the Light. If there’s another, I don’t know one.”
Carys remembered what Angus had told her in the world beneath the silver pool. “How do I get to them?” She looked at Angus, then at Jibril, then at Joshua. “If I’m supposed to walk between worlds, how?”
“I can’t tell you,” Joshua said. “That is a mother’s wisdom.”
Jibril turned to Joshua, his eyebrows raised. “You want to take her to the Mothers?”
Joshua nodded. “The Mothers will know how to get her where she needs to go.”