CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Slowly, the surface of the pool transformed and images started to replace my frowning reflection.
The first scene that appeared featured a little girl. She was wearing a tutu and following after a woman who was dressed in a skintight, metallic silver dress that looked like a shrink-wrapped burrito. It took me a second or so to realize the shrink-wrapped burrito was actually my mother and the little girl who was following her, desperately trying to get her attention, was me.
Great. I didn’t need some random chick telling me I had mother issues. No, I was pretty sure I’d been born with that knowledge.
The water then shifted, and suddenly I saw my teenage self, complete with permed hair, braces and the worst fashion known to man. In the vision, I was sitting under a large oak tree, a book in one hand, and the popular kids were pointing me out to one another and saying all kinds of really unfriendly things, like popular high schoolers like to do.
“Um,” I started as I looked over at the maiden, who was busily pouring the shit out of both of her jugs and didn’t seem the least bit interested in the emotional whiplash she was giving me.
The images in the pond shifted again and then I saw myself at a funeral, standing beside someone’s grave. The tombstone read ‘Aunt Artemis’ and that was weird, because I hadn’t actually ever gone to Artemis’s funeral. As far as I knew, she hadn’t even had one .
“Hi, yeah, I think this one might be a mistake,” I started to say, wanting to point out to the maiden that she’d gotten her film reels mixed up or something. “I never went to Artemis’s funeral.”
“Well, you should have been there,” Artemis’s voice suddenly announced from nowhere, sounding like a goddess of the clouds who had a score to settle. But before I could respond, the image of me crying at her funeral was gone, replaced with… well, with nothing. Right, I was now staring intently at nothing but the surface of the water.
“Your past does not define your future, Kate,” the maiden said totally unhelpfully.
“Okay, that’s good, I guess.” Then I took a deep breath and decided to get down to brass tacks. “I’m not really sure what I’m doing here…”
The maiden interrupted by giving me a big smile. “Hope is always present, guiding you forward.”
“Right.” I sighed, because I wasn’t sure how much more of this abstract, useless verbal diarrhea I could handle.
Then she motioned to the pool once more and the waters shifted again, revealing glimpses of more images and life videos I really didn’t want to watch. I mean, I was sort of in a hurry and I had no idea what had become of Magnus and Luke and Valerian. I really didn’t have time to take a stroll down memory lane a la Clark Griswold when he got stuck in the attic in Christmas Vacation .
“Your future is whatever you wish to make of it,” the maiden continued, and I decided she sounded a lot like the little girl who played The Empress in The NeverEnding Story .
There is no Bastian, only Zuul!
Son of a bitch!
“Is this your future?” the maiden asked as she pointed to the pool of water, which was in the process of revealing me. Only I wasn’t the me of today. Instead, I looked a hell of a lot like I did in the past, before the moon had gotten its proverbial hands on me. In this version of myself, I had the same boyish figure I’d always had, and I was sitting in a fancy coffee house somewhere. As to where the café was located—based on the appearance of the road outside, I was pretty sure I was in West Los Angeles. In this version of me, I was laughing with a handsome man who was sitting across from me and seemed pretty enraptured by my conversation, as far as I could tell. I’d never seen the man before, so I had no clue who he was. As I watched myself sipping my latté, I was overcome with the awareness that this was the future Kate. This glimpse of the future Kate portrayed me as a successful author, and her books were neatly stacked on the café’s shelves right behind her.
“Wow,” I murmured, captivated by the scene as I wondered if this would have been my life if I’d never become a Daughter of the Moon.
“Your past does not define your future, Kate. There are many paths you can choose to follow.”
Just as quickly as the first image appeared, it vanished. But rather than getting replaced with some other pleasant potential future, the water slowly darkened, becoming murky and blurred, making it impossible to discern any specific details of whatever images were attempting to come through.
“I think something is wrong with the projector,” I said, frowning at the obscured vision. “Everything just went dark.”
“The water is showing you the path you are currently on,” the maiden explained.
“The dark and murky one,” I said as I shook my head. “Great.”
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the dark and murky one, and that is why I’m now in the movie The Cabin in the Woods …
“This path you walk is constantly evolving and changing so rapidly that there is no true delineation of what that future will be.”
Now I was more confused than ever. And I’d had enough of depressing home movies, Robert Frost poems, crappy potential futures, Zuul, and this chick. All I wanted to do was find Luke. At this point, I didn’t even care if Magnus was still with us or not. And if Valerian had gotten himself lost, that was solely on him.
“I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do with this information?” I said in a snooty voice as I turned around to face her.
“Reflect on your journey, Kate,” the maiden urged. “Understand that hope is always present and guiding you forward.”
I stood up to leave, feeling like I’d just completely wasted however long I’d been stuck in this place (with nothing to show for it), but the maiden stopped me.
“Before you go, you must know that you have an option, Kate.”
“An option?”
She nodded and wore that customer service smile that was really starting to bug me, because she hadn’t done a good job of helping me at all. In fact, now I was more confused than I ever remembered being .
“You can choose one of the paths shown to you,” she said gently.
“What?” Okay, wait. This was starting to become interesting.
She nodded. “Everything in your life is always based on free will.”
“Okay. What does that mean?”
“It means that if you enjoyed viewing the vision of yourself having never left Los Angeles, you can return to that path now.”
Hmm, the moon was giving me another chance to escape the fate of being a Daughter of the Moon? Maybe it felt bad for essentially tricking me into taking the role in the first place? Or maybe I was so shit at being a Daughter of the Moon that the moon was firing me under the mask of giving me a sabbatical and hoping I jumped at the opportunity? Well, excuse the shit out of me for being a crappy Daughter, but it wasn’t like my moon correspondence classes had in any way prepared me for any of the things I’d faced so far.
“I can choose to return to my life in LA?”
The maiden nodded. “The beauty of the universe is that all things are possible. All paths are available to you. And hope is something that gives life to them all. ”
“Wait, are you saying I can actually return to my old life?” I asked again, just wanting to make sure I understood the small print.
“No,” the maiden shook her head as that little flutter of hope in my stomach got squashed.
“Oh.”
“The past is over and therefore gone, Kate, but you can choose to start a new path in an old place… if you wish to.”
I thought about that for a second. “And if I chose that path, I wouldn’t be a Daughter of the Moon anymore?”
“Indeed, not,” she confirmed.
“But I would be a successful author?”
“It appears that way, yes.”
A small smile tugged at my lips, but then another thought struck me. “What about Luke and Magnus and... Valerian?”
“Ah,” the maiden said, directing me to look at the pool of water once more. Soon, more images covered the surface, and I was able to make out Luke, who was laughing as he worked in his bookstore. Okay, so nothing really would change for Luke or so it seemed. That was good, I guessed. Next came a visual of Magnus, who was running up a large hill that was bright yellow and he was surrounded by a kaleidoscope sky, so I figured he was back in Galaxy 9. He looked like he was attempting to lasso a comet, which made absolutely no sense at the same time that it made all the sense in the world, because of course, Magnus would be trying to wrangle a comet. Okay, so it didn’t seem like Magnus was any worse off either. But when an image of Valerian appeared, he was still strung up in the dungeon of the castle, an IV wrapped around his throat, and my heart clenched. If I chose the path of not being a Daughter of the Moon, then Valerian never would have been freed from the dungeon… and even though he was a supreme ball sack, that still didn’t seem right.
“Is this what will happen if I choose the path of returning to Los Angeles?” I asked quietly.
“It appears so,” the maiden replied gently.
“Why?”
She shrugged. “Valerian would never have been found, never would have escaped the castle with the key, and would never become Valerian instead of Gray.”
“And he’d be… trapped in that dungeon forever,” I murmured, my heart twisting at the thought.
“Potentially. ”
I breathed in deeply. “But maybe that’s what’s supposed to happen?” I pondered, shaking my head as the maiden gave me an expression that indicated she wasn’t following along. “Because ever since we freed him from that glass box thing, he just reverted back to being a major cockhead, you know?”
The maiden appeared confused.
“I mean—once he was freed, Valerian basically just became the old version of himself—the shitty version—even though Artemis and I… hoped he would be different, you know? Wasn’t the whole idea of spending all that alone time so he’d change for the better?” The maiden frowned at me. “Yeah, well, he didn’t. He’s the same dickhead he always was so… major fail for Artemis.”
“But did Valerian revert to the old version of himself?” the maiden asked, giving me a look that told me she wasn’t convinced he had.
“Um, yeah,” I answered, the sound of ‘duh’ echoing in the words.
I was about to further explain how Valerian was exactly the same douchebag he’d always been, but something in the maiden’s eyes stopped me. Something in her eyes told me to really think about the point, to contemplate it—and look at it from another perspective. And that was when I realized something interesting.
“I don’t actually have proof that Valerian is the same man he always was, do I?”
The maiden shrugged, as if to say she couldn’t answer that question for me. “Appearances are given meaning according to what the person experiencing them believes.”
Um, what? I frowned. “What does that mean?”
“One person can look at a sunny sky and find beauty in the brightness and warmth, while another may view that exact same sky and find it garish and hot, possibly even uncomfortable. It’s all a matter of perspective and the way each person views the situation.”
I nodded slowly, a sense of understanding slowly dawning on me—there was nothing to indicate that Valerian had returned to the man he was. All I had to go on was Luke’s perspective on the subject and my understanding that Valerian wasn’t Gray and vice versa. But hadn’t Valerian told me that Gray was still inside him? And hadn’t I even thought to myself that the Gray I’d met in the garden was very similar to Valerian? Hmm… Wa s this just a situation of viewing the man from another perspective?
Maybe so. All I did know was that I still had hope (even if it were only a narrow ribbon of hope) that Valerian wasn’t the man he’d been in the past. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that Valerian wasn’t as bad as Luke tried to paint him to be.
“Valerian could have hurt me,” I told the maiden, who was looking at me like she didn’t speak English. “Actually, he could have killed me if he’d wanted to—I mean, he strung me up against the dining room wall and rendered me completely harmless.” I wasn’t going to mention the fingering me over my pajamas part because… well, TMI. “But he didn’t hurt me, and he didn’t kill me.” At least, I was pretty sure he hadn’t killed me, although if he had, this room might start to make a little more sense. “Valerian just… well, he simply outsmarted me in order to get the key to find out what was behind the door of The Star.”
“And wasn’t that something a child might have done, if put in Valerian’s place?” the maiden asked.
“Maybe,” I answered, cocking my head to the side as I considered it.
“Maybe,” the maiden repeated, giving me a large smile .
I nodded, because the truth was finally dawning on me. I mean, what had Valerian done that was really so bad? He’d pretended to be restrained when he was actually free, sure, but he hadn’t hurt anyone or stolen any teapots from the kitchen or anything (and that was a shame). The point was: he could have done some real damage. He also could have escaped and yet… he hadn’t.
“Maybe... there’s still hope for Valerian,” I whispered, more to myself than to the maiden. Even as I said the words, I realized I’d never lost my hope that he could be something other than what I worried he was.
“Hope is always there, guiding you forward.”
I nodded. “I still have hope that Valerian is or can be a good man.” I thought about that statement and amended it slightly. “Or… I guess what I meant to say is that I still have enough trust in him that I can’t choose a path that would keep Valerian stuck in that dungeon for potentially an eternity.” My heart swelled with determination as I added, “what’s more, my life has changed so much that I could never go back to the life I once led. I wouldn’t be happy with that life now, not after everything I’ve learned here. And there’s still so much more I need to learn.” An d seriously, once you have boobs, it’s hard to go back to not having them.
“Then,” the maiden said, her voice lilting like a song, “you must choose the path you wish to follow.”
“All right,” I agreed with a quick nod. “I choose the path I’m on now, and you can tell the moon that it doesn’t have to feel bad for pulling that trick on me earlier.” I further thought about it. “Or if the moon is just trying to fire me in a nice way, please tell her that I’m going to do better.”
“None of this is about the moon, Kate,” the maiden answered, wearing a Mona Lisa smile. “It has only ever been about you.”
Right. “Okay, cool. Well, my answer is still the same.”
The maiden continued to smile vacantly at me, like she’d just enjoyed a nice cup of tea after receiving a lobotomy. “Very well, Kate. Choose the scene you desire from the water, and then step into it.”
“Like, you mean I should get into the water?” I asked with a frown.
She nodded. “Allow the waters to claim you as you embrace your chosen future.”
I looked down at the pond, where images of my possible futures swirled and danced on the surface. One by one, they flickered out, leaving only the ambiguous, ever-shifting scene of the path I’d chosen—the really murky one that seemed like the swamp creature was going to emerge before pulling me down with him.
“Here goes nothing,” I murmured, stepping forward until my toes touched the cool water. It sent a shiver up my spine, but I didn’t hesitate, I just kept walking. With each step, the water rose, first covering my ankles, then my knees, and finally my waist. As it lapped against my chest, I felt the world around me begin to ripple and shift, as if reality, itself, were bending and reshaping.
“You have learned the lesson of The Star, Kate,” the maiden called out, just before the waters closed over my head, and I plunged forward into the unknown.