Chapter 22: Goddess Accepted

Thursday, 18 August 1955, City of the Gods

Rebecca!

The voice echoed around her from every direction, but the darkness would not release her as she followed. This was insane. The camp should be right here. It wasn’t here. She was lost. She should sit down right where she was and wait for rescue. Every child knew that. But someone kept calling her name just over there. If she could only call out in answer, help would come. But her throat was too dry, her lungs ached, and her heart pounded. She could not answer. So she kept climbing.

The light ahead grew stronger as she came out of the fog at last onto a long flat plateau. The light—starlight. She had never seen so many stars. They seemed so close that she could reach out and touch them. They lit the darkness and scattered it to the winds. On this wide open plain, the stars shone and danced above her, flooding her vision with gentle, pure light. She thanked God that she was safe; the Goddess that she was alive.

A euphoric pleasure in life began to fill her. Suddenly, the fog, the mountain, the danger was very far away. A voice inside told her she had reached a place of safety where she was welcome. She began gently to hum, then to sing, eyes intent on the sky. She dropped her clothes as so much extra baggage and took up her staff and cup in her hands. Her athame, she thrust through the elastic band of her underwear. She rapped time with her staff on the ground, body swaying, head tilting, eyes following the dance of the stars. Her feet left the ground, one after the other, as her body sensed the rhythm of the crystalline ballroom above her. Rebecca had not danced since she was a child, clapping hands to music made up in her head. A feeling of elation welled up inside her and she began to spin—to circle—to spin—to jump—to spin round and round on the wide open plateau, never taking her eyes off the stars dancing above her. She became dizzy and her stomach rose to her throat, but she danced through the dizziness and her heart regained the tempo of the stars.

She sang and pranced and praised and danced. She was filled with a rising sense of power as she had been in her rituals, but it was fueled by pure joy. She created new words and new melodies. She was alive. Her younger self had come out to play. She had survived. She was free. She sang and danced—danced for the goddess of the new moon that watched over her. She sang until she could no longer hold inside her the rushing bursts of pleasure the power sent through her. And she whirled and spun and sang and laughed. Her voice rose and rang out, echoing from unseen surfaces in multiple tones and harmonies. There was an ecstasy in the air that she could not comprehend, but it made her want all the more to dance and sing and laugh.

The plain was flat as far as the eye could see with the single exception of a dome on the horizon. She danced and sang and spun and moved ever closer toward it. This was a sign of habitation. People made domes. She was at home among domes. All the important buildings she knew had domes. Capitol buildings, libraries, museums. All ancient buildings.

But this dome had no building beneath it.

Before her, it rose abruptly from the plain, dark and solid—a voluptuous monument to all that was feminine. It shined darkly beneath the night sky.

She touched it with her foot and found herself upon it. The ground jutted out from its base vertically beside her. She touched the ground and found the dome beside her once again. She laughed. All her childhood laughter, all the booming belly laughs, all the romantic giggles burst out of her in sheets of laughter, cascading through the darkness into the pool of night around her. She danced around the base of the dome, leaping up to its side and then back to the earth—laughing—dancing farther and farther up the sides of the smooth round surface, always flat beneath her feet.

An amazing feat of architectural engineering, she thought to herself with mock sophistication. Her own joke generated new laughter. This was no feat of mere architects. It was magic. No human had engineered this incredible structure with its own gravity field. All around her the world rose like a wall except at the horizon of the dome where all disappeared into the night sky.

She rushed the horizon with a leap and a pirouette and tumbled headlong over the prone body of a man lying across the highest point of the dome. She caught only a glimpse of him as she rolled away, but it was enough to call her instantly back to reality. Ryan McGuire! He had beaten her!

She leapt to her feet and rushed back to the summit, fists clenched in her fury. How dare he violate this treasured sanctuary? How dare he presume to lie across their surface. She would not allow it. The dome was herself, her own full bosom thrust into the air. She would not permit this violation of all that was holy. It must stop.

In an instant, her Athamé was in her hand calling out a new pain from her burned hand. She grasped it two-fisted above her head for the sacrificial rite and rushed the man again. But it was the pain blazing in her hand and up her arm that caused her to stumble before she reached her target. The flaming passion was fanned again as she felt the dagger come to rest against her own breast where she had known the bite of his. Even unconscious, he was defended against her blade by the bond she had forged. In rage, she let the sacred tool fall and struggled on toward the man.

All that was woman in her revolted against this conquering beast. She was Bacchante at the Feast of Dionysus. In a frenzy of lust and hatred and love and anger—emotions so tied together she could not separate them—she struck out with her feet, feeling bones crush with the impact. She would purify this place. She would drain his lifeblood on the altar and dance a death dance on his body. She leapt and kicked and sang, deep in her throat a roar of fury. She fell on him and beat him with her fists. He would not move. He lay still. She raked him with her nails and screamed her hatred. He was silent. She bit him and pounded his head. She was all that was holy. He was all that was damned. She would purge herself of the profane. She would drive the curse of man from the world and live at peace.

Exhausted, she fell next to the body that still lay without a sound. The power drained from her in her frenzy. Remorse overwhelmed her. Laughter rose up in her throat but choked there. She was cold. She drew close to the body for warmth, but no warmth embraced her. She was lonely, but there was no companion. She wept, but there were no tears. She sang, but the music had fled.

Slowly, she called her senses home. The dizziness grabbed at her again and she heaved dry, wracking heaves. For an eternity, she lived in that world between waking and the ghastly nightmares of sleep. She could not tell what was real and what was still a bad dream clinging to her mind.

At last the body came into focus. He was familiar, but he was not Ryan McGuire. There was no blonde hair. No bloody Athamé held in his hand. She turned him to look at the face and tears flooded her eyes. Wesley! J. Wesley Allen. Her beloved. Her husband. What had she done?

She raised him and cradled him in her arms, whispering his name over and over, unable to believe that she had injured him. Wesley would not awaken. She raised her head to the heavens in accusation and wept. The sound of her voice died in the empty distance without an echo.

Wesley’s head fell back on her arm as she gathered him close. She looked into his glazed eyes and he looked back without comprehension. She moved her hand to brush his hair from his face and was arrested by the sparkle of a jewel embedded in his forehead between his eyes. She traced it with her finger and it fell into her hand, leaving a pentagram imprinted on Wesley’s forehead.

Her eyes were torn between the imprint on Wesley’s forehead and the jewel in her palm. At last, fascination had its way and she stared at the star. It was dark, but unlike the darkness of emptiness, this was a full darkness. Within the darkness of the star were all the colors and all the lights that she could imagine. They were reduced to essential elements and compacted into one darkly shining stone which she held in her hand. She could not believe that the stone could be so lightweight with the immense mass that it contained.

As she focused on the stone held in the palm of her burned hand, the red and blistered flesh began to slowly dry and fall away. Her palm turned pink with new skin. It, in turn, grew to the healthy rich tones of her flesh. It left no scar or imprint of any kind. Then her eyes jerked away from the stone with such a sudden separation that her head snapped back physically. She had not merely stopped looking at it, she had been thrust away.

She found tears in her eyes flowing as freely as the dancing had flowed through her feet, as powerfully as the rage had raced through her mind. The tears fell on the man held in her arms, mixed with the blood on his face, and fell to the surface below. Beneath the two, in the light of the stars, she could see her own reflection in the glassy surface of the dome and the reflection of the new moon and all the stars held steadfast in the sky. She looked from the bleeding surface of the dome to the sky it reflected, then back to the dome.

The moon gazed back at her from the reflected surface. Something was amiss in the way it looked. She checked the reality sky again and was drawn back to the reflection. A small void commanded her attention. She held the tiny star-shaped stone out over the void and it shrank to the shape and size of the jewel. When she withdrew the stone, the void opened like shutters on a camera lens.

Through her tears, she could see her own reflection in the void, centered in the star. It wept as well, the tears dropping up to meet her own. But the reflection, she realized, was not of herself—at least, not through her own eyes. She saw the image move, independent of herself. Then it moved toward her. Rebecca started back and held Wesley protectively. The image reached toward him. She held him tighter.

A gentle wind came to her from the void, carrying with it a faraway voice and the musical note of a flute. The wind picked up a lock of Rebecca’s hair, scattering it on her forehead. The one she saw in the void—who was so much like her, but so apart from her—she was the source of the enchantment that had led Rebecca through the night. Rebecca had found her. The image had not hurt Wesley; Rebecca had.

The Goddess. Serepte of the legends—the myths—was real. She could help Wesley. She must help.

“Serepte!” The image seemed so distant, so impenetrable. “Serepte, what must I do?”

She started at her own words, wondering what had inspired them. The image still reached out toward Rebecca through the void. It begged to be accepted. It had no other channel to life. But first they must heal the prophesied one.

Rebecca felt the voice move deep inside her, begging her. Because she loved. Because the goddess yearned for her love. Because through Rebecca, she could love. But there was still more. Rebecca loved her—would love her like no other could. Would love her like the mother she lost an eternity ago when the gods abandoned Olympus. Rebecca had no frame of reference for a love like this. It was overwhelming, filling every possible corner of her being. It was a love that demanded to be consulted before any decision—a love that influenced all of life. And love continued to be its only goal.