Chapter 21 Dream of the Goddess
DREAM OF THE GODDESS
Iam in darkness, voices swirling around me—calling, whispering—yet I am not afraid. Their tones are soft, crooning, and they carry light with them, a vortex of gold and white spinning as I stand at its heart, the still point of the hurricane.
I look down and realize I am no longer standing at all. I’m weightless, lifted by the voices themselves. Euphoria hums through me as invisible hands bear me higher and higher, until I am soaring through the night on the wings of sound—protected, guided, urged forward.
Below, the world falls away. I see Glen Chalmadale, the upland valley where my mother's favorite song played when I first arrived on the island, and as I pass, mountains rise from shadow, and I descend toward one—slowly, deliberately—alighting on a narrow ledge just below its summit.
A brilliance bursts before me—sunlight made solid, a crystal flare that blinds.
From its heart a figure forms: a woman with flowing auburn hair, eyes the color of new leaves, robes of deep green that shimmer like moss in rain.
Her skin is pale as moonlight, her presence radiates power. Brigid in her human form.
And as she steps toward me, something in her face—and in the cadence of her voice—feels achingly familiar, looking into the mirror of my own soul.
“Mirren Garvie,” the goddess intones, using my full name, her voice a low thrum rising from under the mountain itself.
“You have denied your magic long enough. No more. The others who came before you were not enough—they could not wield the flame—but you—you are more than enough. More than I ever required.”
I try to answer her, to question what she means, but no sound comes.
My voice—the one that doubted, the one that reasoned—is gone.
When I open my mouth again, the sound that emerges isn't mine alone.
It is hers—our voices joined, echoing through the darkness, layered like a chord.
We speak together until I can no longer tell where her words end and mine begin—until belief replaces doubt, and I am her voice.
“You are the chosen one I have waited for—my spark reborn in mortal flesh. The one another spoke of, whose words were ignored, dismissed as mad ramblings. Make no mistake, maker of flame: you may flee from your calling, but you cannot escape it.”
I move toward her, drawn by a magnetic pull I can't resist—an invisible current urging me closer.
I want to touch her, to feel the heat of her radiance, to brush my fingers against the pulse of the universe itself.
Her power is infinite, mesmerizing in its brilliance—yet beneath it runs something soft, almost maternal, a tenderness that reaches for me as surely as I reach for her.
“You are mine now, as you have always been. Let the fire I placed within you burn freely; let it move through your veins as I willed it in the beginning. The world has need of your light again.”
Her hand caresses my face and joy floods my body, and then she is gone and I am alone.
I sat bolt upright in bed, heart pounding, breath coming in short bursts as if I'd just sprinted down the mountain to reach the cottage.
Baird, ever attuned—aware of everything and everyone around him—was already alert.
A one-man telemetry monitor, more accurate than any machine in the finest hospital, he'd registered every spike in my pulse, every shift in my breathing.
A silent alarm had gone off, one only he could hear.
It wasn't a warning alarm, not exactly. I wasn't afraid.
But my body's response didn't lie. The dream had been so vivid, so powerful, that for one dizzy moment I wasn't sure I'd woken at all.
If I hadn't been naked in our bed—with a slightly worried vampire watching me, wide-eyed and tense—I might've believed I was still there, standing before the goddess herself.
“Love—what was that?” he asked quietly, his voice edged with caution. He reached out, slow and deliberate, as though afraid I might vanish if he moved too fast. “Can ye tell me? Your heart is racing,” he murmured. “But it's no fear I'm feelin. It's…something else.”
I leaned into his palm like a cat, letting his touch anchor me.
“Give me a sec,” I whispered. “I just need to get my feet back under me.” The moment his skin met mine, the light stirred—flaring where he touched me, spilling through the cracks between his fingers.
It shimmered against his skin, my light refusing to be contained, refusing to dim.
“I was flying through the night,” I said slowly, still catching my breath, “and I ended up on the summit of Goat Fell.
The goddess Brigid was there—she met me on the mountain and told me I was chosen.
But I don't know,” I shook my head. “…chosen for what?” My head snapped up as the scrawling handwriting from the margins of the Mother's Book popped into my mind's eye.
We were not chosen. Some were spared. Some were not.
Baird frowned. “Ye were mumbling,” he said quietly. “But it didnae sound like just you. It was more…two voices speaking at once.”
“Yes!” I gasped, the image from the book slipping from my mind as the dream surged forward.
I could hear it again—the way my voice had merged with hers, our words threading together in perfect, chilling unison.
I was smiling before I realized it, beaming, the elation still coursing through my veins.
“I felt—“ I stopped, searching for the word.
“Right. Like something finally clicked into place.” I was sure of something—something vast and profound—only now uncertain what, exactly, I was so certain of.
I turned to Baird, expecting to see relief, maybe even shared wonder in his eyes.
But instead, I found only confusion—the faint crease between his brows deepening, that familiar look he wore when something unsettled him.
It was a look I hadn't seen often since I'd come back to him, and its return sent a ripple of unease through my joy.
“Don't look like that…” I said softly, trying to lace the words with humor, to pull us back from whatever edge we'd stumbled onto.
I hated seeing him worry—hated the tension he wore in his jaw when he looked at me like I might break.
I wanted the other look instead, the one he so often gave me—like I was something wondrous, something not quite of this world.
And now that I'd finally started to believe it too, I hoped it wouldn't change things between us.
His stubborn scowl held fast. With a small sigh, I slipped back beneath the blankets, pressing close until I was folded against him.
His arms came around me automatically, strong and sure, wrapping me in the familiar cocoon of his protection, a soft kiss pressed to the top of my head.
And after a moment, the goddess, the dream, the light—all of it—fell away, and there was only us.