Page 4 of His in the Dark

“You are not like mortals,” she says so convincingly.

“Yet they pray to me to bring life,” I say, my frustration growing. “And I fail them.”

“They pray because you will bring it.” Beatrice puts a comforting hand on my arm. I wish I could take more comfort from it, but all the signs I have seen point to the forest and loneliness. There will be no other place for me. These rooms will not be mine. This place on Olympus will not be mine. “Magic takes time,” she says as if it is an answer.

“No.” I stare Beatrice in the eyes, and she looks back at me, her mouth set in a line. “They pray because the prophecy foretold my powers. We all know what is foretold does not always come true.”

“If that is so, then today is not set in stone, is it?”

It’s hard to accept her denial when I can feel it in my bones.

“You are able to bring life,” she says, her voice steady.

“Not the life they pray for.”

“Another kind, then. There are many kinds of life among the gods and mortals. Show me what you can do, my lady.”

My fingertips itch to show both her and myself that it is not all drained from me.

“Flowers,” I say, reaching for a pot at the windowsill. Even this does not come easily to me now. My fingers raise and I motion in short strokes to raise the seed up. I make a single sprout rise from the pot of earth. It does not seem to want to grow and the small flower that opens has thin petals. “Flowers like this. It is not what people get on their knees to ask for. This is not the life they want from me. Their loved ones no longer breathe, and these flowers cannot help them.”

“That is the cycle.” Beatrice folds her hands back in her lap and looks at the flower like it means something to the people who ask for my blessing. “And they are for Hekate.”

She reminds me of this of late. The cycles and that they are for the Keeper of the Keys, the other side of Hekate. She bares so many talents. The mother. The maiden. And the Crone.

“You love Hekate. She is your goddess, not me.”

“I love you.”

“Pray to someone who can bless you,” I tell her, my throat suddenly thick. Beatrice puts her arms around me in an embrace. Her strength is powerful in doing so. I have needed more of her embrace, and I do not know what I will do without Beatrice’s warmth and advice. I’m not prepared to be cast out and alone, but no one ever is.

“What is it, my lady? It is not only the prophecy. It cannot be. Did you dream again? If you did, you should have come to me. I would have lit candles for you and stayed with you in the night.”

I did dream. It was more than a dream, though. It was a night terror. I was terrified, it is true, but there is something else I do not want to admit to Beatrice. I do not want to admit that in the darkness of that dream I felt thrilling curiosity.

Chills run down my spine and legs all the way to my toes.

“Is that what it is?” She rubs soothing circles on my back, a sign of our closeness. Only the most favored servants may touch the Gods and Goddesses they serve. Or maybe it is not a sign of closeness, but of how far I have fallen. I will be less than a mortal soon. I will be wandering among the trees and no one will pray to me. If they do, their pleas will not find me. That is the most upsetting of all.

Beatrice tells me, “I will do a spell for clarity, and another for peace.”

It will not chase the dream away and...

I do not want her to remove the callings that come to me at night. There is something there.

Because I am not alone in the dream. There is a man in the shadows, with power beyond imagination, even for me. I wantto know more about him. I should not have wanted to know, because curiosity like that is dangerous. My mother taught me that long ago. And still I desire to go to him. To speak to him. To look into his eyes.

There is a calling I cannot deny.

I cannot say if it is because of his power that I feel so drawn to or because I cannot see all of him in the shadows. My mother spent a great deal of time in my early years warning me away from dark thoughts and dark places. Those kinds of places have power, even in Olympus. I listened to her words and took them to heart, but when the dreams began, I could not resist.

Maybe that is why she warned me. Maybe she knew how it would feel to see those shapes in the dark and crave knowing more about them. For a short time, it gives me something to think about other than the loss of my power. It gives me a strange kind of hope. It could be that I am grasping at straws, but I have little else to grasp.

“What is your terror concerning?” Beatrice asks me.

“I don’t remember anymore,” I answer, feigning disconcert.

It is a lie. I will never forget a second of what comes to me in the night. Certainly not him.

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