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The trance pulled me deeper and I waved my hand again, letting instinct take over. Ritual magic fell where it would, and I just went along for the ride. The Moon Mother was leading the journey tonight. I was merely her vessel.
A whirl of light sparkled in the clearing, and a vague shape rose out of it, taking the form of a large serpent, crimson red with white diamonds patterned along its body. I stumbled back, out of the way. The snake had to be thirty feet long and as thick around as Menolly was. It swayed back and forth in front of him, as if he were a snake charmer. Hissing, its tongue forked out as it loomed over him.
“You. You came back.” He raised his hands. “It’s been a long time…”
The snake coiled to strike. As it launched toward him, he stood there, waiting for it. I wanted to shout Get out of the way, but my voice froze and all I could do was watch. It spiraled around him, buoying him up in its embrace. I winced, expecting to hear him cry out as it snapped his bones, but he just wrapped his arms around the snake and held on, pressing his face against the scaled body. The snake twisted, swinging him this way and that, but he held tight, and for a moment, it sounded like he was crying.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry I left you. I had to run, or we’d both die. I had no choice. But I went back. I promise you, I went back to the field for days on end, looking for you. But by then, you were gone.” His voice faded, regret and loss echoing through his words.
And then I understood this challenge. Some demons…some demons weren’t the ones who had tried to hurt us. Some demons were the people we’d fled from but could never leave behind, memories that would haunt us forever. I backed away. He needed to come to grips with whatever this snake represented—with whomever he’d lost.
Another moment, and the snake stilled its movements, and then, gently, it let go, and the man stumbled to his knees, gasping for breath. The snake reached down and gently touched the top of his head with a flicker of its tongue, then turned and vanished back into the shimmering light.
He raised a hand as it went, holding it out, as he whispered, “Good-bye.”
That one word was so filled with sorrow and loss and finality that it made me hang my head. I was an intruder on his memory, and it didn’t feel right. I turned away for what seemed like hours.
And then, “Two.”
I turned. He was looking at me, his face still cloaked in shadow, his form still a blur.
A prickling at the base of my neck told me that his last challenge would be the biggest. I looked up at the stars and then nodded. With another wave of the hand, I braced myself for whatever might come into the glade.
But nothing appeared.
And then a soft whisper called out my name. My skin prickling, I turned. There, in the moonlight, stood my mother.
Maria D’Artigo. My mother, my greatest loss.
She was wearing the gown she wore for her death ceremony. My father’s people were buried naked beneath the trees, but for the preceding ritual, when we were being consigned to the Land of the Silver Falls, our dead were dressed in ritual garb—gowns of silver, the color of the moon, for women. And for the men, golden trousers and shirts, the color of the sun.
I cocked my head. This was his challenge, so why was my mother here? And why would she be here at all?
But as I watched her, the questions vanished from my thoughts and all I could see was how beautiful my mother had been. Waxen and fair, her hair trailed down her shoulders, the same golden shade as Delilah’s. But her eyes were closed, and blood ran down her cheek from a large gash in her head.
The challenge forgotten, I ran toward her. “Mother? Mother!”
She opened her eyes. They were white, with no gleaming hazel, no pupils, no warmth or welcome in them. Lifting one hand, she pointed an accusatory finger at me. “You took my place. You stole my memory, and you replaced me.”
Stopped cold by the chill of her words, I hesitated. I had taken her place, because I was forced to. I’d filled her shoes as best as I could, even though I could never be the woman she was. As I opened my mouth to protest, a well of anger cropped up that I didn’t know was there.
“You left us. You wouldn’t drink the Nectar of Life. You abandoned us. You could have lived if you had let Father give you the potion. You could have stayed with us, but you chose to die.” The words startled me, even though—in my darkest nights—I knew I’d felt them. Thought them. But the guilt had driven them deep inside, and I had never once breathed them aloud.
She dropped her hand and crossed her arms. “I chose to stand by my beliefs. I loved your father, but I was human. I chose to remain human.”
“You chose to be a coward!” The words reverberated through the night, and I clasped my hand to my mouth, immediately ashamed of what I’d said. How could I call my own mother a coward? She’d given up everything she ever knew to follow Sephreh back to Otherworld. She’d chosen a life alien to her own and had raised us with love. How could I accuse her of being so weak?
“I chose…I chose…” And then, she paused, and the anger vanished even as she let out a long sigh and slumped her shoulders. “Camille…I was more afraid of living a thousand years than I was of dying. I understood what it meant to die. I didn’t know if I could live that long and stay sane. I wasn’t born to it, like you and your sisters, and your father.”
“But we needed you.” As if the dam had burst, I let it all out. “We needed you. I needed you. I had to grow up too fast. I had to take your place because somebody had to, and Delilah and Menolly were too young. I had to become their mother—when I just wanted to be a girl. And Father, he’s never recovered from your death. He loved you. He worshiped you. I could never do anything right—he never let me forget that you were perfect and I…I wasn’t.”
Tears streaming down my cheeks, I flung my fury at her, not caring if I hurt her, not caring if she hated me. “I needed you so many times, but you weren’t there. At least I did what I could for my sisters, but there was no one there for me when I needed a mother…when I needed someone to hold me and tell me it would all be okay! Father was too busy with the Guard and too busy mourning you to notice that his children needed him. How could you do that to me?”
My mother hung her head, and all the fight vanished. “I can’t make it right, Camille. I can’t go back and change what was. No one can. I’m sorry. I made the choice I had to. It was my life to keep or let go. But I’m so sorry that I hurt you. I watch over you and your sisters; I keep an eye out on you. I can’t intervene, but I never forget you. I’m with you whether or not you realize it.”
Weeping, I sank to the ground. “I needed you…I need my mother.”
She glided forward, her spirit so bright she almost blinded me. As she knelt by my side, her arms slid around my shoulders and she crooned softly.
