Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 87608 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 438(@200wpm)___ 350(@250wpm)___ 292(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87608 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 438(@200wpm)___ 350(@250wpm)___ 292(@300wpm)
As I flew, I thought about this ability I had to burst from my skin into a flock of ravens, it was the reason others always assumed our family line was blessed by the Morrighan. It was and wasn’t true, and was often easier to say it wasn’t than to try and explain.
It all hinged not on us, but on the incarnation of the goddess others interacted with. Because sometimes the goddess, the Morrighan, appeared as a singular deity, and at other times, much like Hekate, she was three. Unlike the maiden, mother, and crone, which were steps in an aging process and represented growth or the changing of the seasons, the Morrighan that appeared in our family history had distinctive names. One of her manifestations, recorded by Sadira—one of my ancestors—was when her great-grandmother, Branwenn, met Nemain, the wife of Neit.
No one could say for certain what was real or not—this was mythology to most people, not history, after all. But as our personal interaction with the goddess went, it was written that once, ages ago, a ban-nighe, or washerwoman, was cleaning clothes by the river, and warriors from a rival clan came upon her. They meant her harm, to assault her, then kill her, but Branwenn, who so happened to be a healer, was traveling through in her wagon and rushed to the washerwoman’s side to help defend her.
As with most myths and legends, the story had a horrible ending. The washerwoman, Nemain in disguise, unleashed her fury on the men, but in her haste, the healer who’d come to her aid, Branwenn, was killed as well, burned to a crisp in a wave of frenzied wrath. The only part of her that didn’t burn was the child in her womb. The baby was then taken by Nemain and returned to Branwenn’s people with the greatest blessing the goddess could conjure: that of flight. That way, in theory, those in her line could offer aid to others while still remaining safe from danger themselves. It didn’t make a lot of sense, but I’d found that few myths actually did.
After reading the account, I was fairly certain Sadira was probably trying to make sense of the fact that her magic allowed her to shift into a raven and fly.
“Why not just accept it’s magic from us, from the Corey line, instead of all this mythology stuff?” I asked my grandmother while we were making protection witch balls at the kitchen table.
“Because the magic had to start somewhere, don’t you think?” She raised one eyebrow, looking like she always did when she wanted me to use my brain.
“And we care, why?”
“Because to know who you are, you have to first know where you come from.”
“You were adopted,” I pointed out. “You don’t know anything about your real family.”
Her eyes narrowed. “My adoptive family are the people who wanted me and raised and loved me. Wouldn’t you say I know everything about them?”
I grunted. “You’re missing the point.”
“No, you are. It’s history, whatever that is.”
“Yeah, but that’s not history,” I insisted, smacking the journals on the table beside me. “That’s mythology.”
“In every story, there’s a grain of truth.”
“Myths are stories to try and make sense of something. Like Persephone being taken from Demeter, which explained the seasons to the Greeks.”
“Certainly, but isn’t it possible that there’s something that makes a good story last for thousands of years?”
I folded my arms on the table and put my head down. “You really think someone back in the day met a goddess and got turned into a bird?”
“I do. Yes.”
“Because Grandpa told you that story about his family.”
“Yes.”
“Isn’t it far more likely we’re mutants?”
“You’re trying to use science to explain what those in your hereditary line can do. Doesn’t that seem like a cop-out to you?”
I groaned. Loudly.
“Isn’t it far more likely that it’s a blessing of magic?”
“From a goddess?” I said, huffing out a frustrated sigh. “Really?”
“It makes far more sense than your mutant theory.”
At the time, all of ten, I wasn’t convinced she knew what she was talking about. Even when I was branded by a god, magic still wasn’t accessible to me as a belief.
Five years later, when my grandfather and I lost her to cancer, I understood that magic was stupid and useless if it couldn’t save the ones you loved. Blessings from a goddess were of no consequence when weighed against cells inside your body that wanted to kill you. I lost my love and interest in my craft and abandoned it that long, hard summer after we buried her.
Then high school started and I was thrown into a blender of emotions, being the weird kid without friends that everyone made fun of. I was sad and broken, an outcast with nothing. But then the following year, at sixteen, I got a reality check when my grandfather and I took in Amanda. Suddenly there was magic in making tea and having long talks on dark nights, and in knitting things that kept you warm when the wind came rolling off the ocean through the forest to our back door.