Goddess of the Sea (44 page)

Lir spoke to the women next. “Wise women, because I am grateful for the friendship you have shown my daughter, I gift you with this monastery.” Lir swept his arm in a grand gesture that encompassed the rocky walls above them, and suddenly the bland, gray color was washed away, replaced by stones that seemed to shine with the color of pearls. The four women on the beach gasped in pleasure.

“You will find I have made some
changes
within, too, as is befitting your new home.” Lir smiled fondly at the women. Then he raised his head and his voice carried to the few monks who were still kneeling on the cliff. “You males may stay, but know that these women are no longer your servants. Live and worship peacefully with them, as equals, or flee their island and the wrath of the God of the Seas.”

Then Lir's sharp gaze searched the beach until he found a quivering mound of flesh hiding behind a fallen log.

“Abbot! You cannot hide from the gods. Stand and receive your judgment.”

Trembling, Abbot William raised his head and struggled to his feet. His face was streaked with tears and vomit soaked the front of his blood-colored robe.

Gaea touched Lir's arm again. Her voice was gentle. “Perhaps we should judge him together. He is, after all, our child.”

The abbot's eyes widened in horror, and he shook his head from side to side in jerky, panic-filled denial.

Lir scowled. “Stop sniveling, William.
Remember!
” he commanded as he flicked his wrist, raining a spray of seawater across the beach and onto the abbot.

Instantly, a change came over William's face, and he blinked several times, rubbing his eyes as if he was just awakening from a bad dream.

“I told you we should have left him with his memories,” Gaea said.

Lir sighed. “He always was our most difficult child. He could not abide the seas, yet he did not belong on the land. What do you propose we do with him now?”

Gaea tapped her chin thoughtfully with one slim finger. Then her eyes widened, and her smile was glorious. “I propose he spend the next century with Cernunnos helping him guard the Gateway to the Underworld. Perhaps one hundred years with the dead will teach our son to appreciate the beauty of life, and to be more accepting of himself and of others.”

“Excellent!” Lir said, and he struck his trident three times against the water. At the third strike the beach at William's feet split open and swallowed him, closing quickly on his high-pitched cry for help.

“Now it is your turn, Earth Mother,” Lir said.

“I will try to be as wise and just as the Lord of the Seas,” the goddess said with a magnanimous smile.

Gaea and Lir faced the mer-beings. Gaea turned first to the two lovers. When she spoke, the goddess's words were filled with the warmth of a mother.

“Undine and Dylan—your love is strong and true. Though it causes me sadness to have my favorite daughter live apart from the land, your union brings me great joy. I bless your lives and smile upon your joining. May an eternity not diminish your love.”

CC felt the goddess's blessing settle over her, and her soul swelled with happiness as Dylan took her gently into his battered arms.

Then she faced Sarpedon, whose face had already darkened in a rage of disbelief, and her expression hardened. His eyes flicked nervously from Lir to Gaea, as if he expected his father to step in and prevent the goddess from continuing.

“Sarpedon, you have been an overindulged child, and your punishment is long overdue. Since you misused the well that nourished the monastery, and you thought that through violence and entrapment you could cage love, your punishment shall reflect your misdeeds. I sentence you to be trapped within a well for the next century. And your jail will not be near the seas so that you can draw power from them to cause evil among those who would use your well. You will be caged far inland, deep in the center of a castle known for its well-ordered discipline. In the land of Caer Llion, the people banished magic decades ago. There you will neither be acknowledged nor feared. My wish for you is that this punishment teaches you to appreciate your freedom enough to allow others their own.”

Gaea raised her hand to call forth her judgment, but with a snakelike movement Sarpedon's arm struck out, and he used his supernatural strength to shatter the bridge of land on which the goddess stood. The sand dissolved under her feet and, with a cry of shocked surprise, Gaea fell into the water. Whipping his thick tail, Sarpedon caused the water to whirlpool and boil as it closed over the goddess's head.

Roaring in disbelief, Lir parted the seething blue liquid and grasped Gaea's hand, pulling her up into his arms.

Quickly, Sarpedon spread his hands out into the water, as if he was searching for a hidden treasure within the waves. His voice was the sound of madness.

“If I cannot have her, no one will have her!”

The crazed merman raised his mighty arm from the waves. In his fist he clutched the spear Gaea had fashioned to kill the sea monster. In a movement blurred with speed, Sarpedon hurled the spear at CC.

Dylan saw the spear coming and the world seemed to slow around him. He could not let Sarpedon kill her. She needed him; the cost did not matter.

An instant before the weapon would have penetrated CC's body, Dylan twisted, throwing himself in front of the mermaid. CC felt her lover spasm as the spear embedded itself in his back, and she watched in horror as its tip blossomed out of the merman's chest like a terrible crimson flower.

Her cry of despair joined with Lir's roar of rage. The sea god's reaction was swift. He hurled his trident at his son, striking him full in the chest. Sarpedon's eyes widened in shock an instant before his lifeless body began to liquefy and lose substance, until he no longer held the form of a merman, but became part of the waters from which he had been born.

In two enormous strides the sea god was at Dylan's side. He barked a word of command and the water hardened so that it held Gaea aloft, above its frothing wetness. Both deities knelt before the wounded merman.

Dylan focused his remaining power and sent one simple thought to Gaea.

Do not let her know. It is a cost I willingly paid
.

Gaea knew that his transformation into a human had weakened him too much. Now, not even the power of the Gods could save him. The goddess closed her eyes on tears and nodded.

My daughter shall not know
.

Dylan's body slumped in CC's arms. His eyes were closed and his breathing was shallow and rapid. Blood poured from the flesh that gaped around the spearhead. Lir grasped the handle of the spear protruding from the merman's back, as if to pull it from Dylan's body, but Gaea's restraining hand halted him.

“It will only cause him more pain.” The goddess's words were rich with sorrow.

“What do you mean?” CC's voice was tinged with growing hysteria. “Of course you have to pull it out! How else are you going to save him?”

In a gesture infinitely gentle, Gaea touched the mermaid's tear-drenched cheek.

“I cannot save him, Christine.”

“You have to!” CC sobbed. “You're a goddess. You have to be able to save him.”

The goddess's eyes filled with tears. As she spoke they spilled down her cheeks, leaving trails of glistening diamonds in their wake.

“He has been pierced with my own spear, a weapon fashioned by my hand as a device of destruction. I cannot heal a wound caused by my own hand.”

“But you didn't throw it!”

“I wrought it, and that is enough. I did not have to wield it, too,” Gaea said sadly.

CC looked desperately at Lir. “Then you save him. You're a god.”

The sea god exchanged a look with Gaea. When he spoke, his voice held the weight of centuries. “I cannot undo the destruction brought about by the Earth goddess. Even gods and goddesses are bound by the rules of the universe.”

“Then turn back time! Do something!” CC screamed.

“Christine,” Dylan's voice was a choked whisper. His body twitched as he struggled to turn his face up to hers. “They cannot help me.” He coughed and blood gushed in a new torrent from his wound.

“
Shhh
,” CC pressed her hand to his lips. “Don't talk. Save your strength. We'll figure out something.”

With an almost imperceptible movement, Dylan shook his head. “I knew the choice I was making when I moved within the path of the spear. I made it freely”—he paused to pant for breath—“and I would make it again.” The merman closed his eyes, struggling against a wave of pain.

“Dylan, no!” CC kissed him frantically. “You can't die. You can't leave me. Remember,” she sobbed, “you promised me an eternity.”

The merman's lips tilted briefly in a smile, and he opened his eyes. “I still await you. For an eternity, Christine.”

In one last heave, the merman's chest rose and his shaking hand brushed CC's tear-soaked cheek.

“For an eternity . . .”

With those last words, Dylan's life fled his body, and CC was left clutching the shell of her beloved until it, like Sarpedon's body, began to fade and liquefy, returning to the water of his creation.

As if sifting sand through a colander, CC's hands tried to recapture the scattered brilliance of the colors of flame that floated briefly atop the water.

“Come, child,” Gaea said, grasping CC's hands so that their frantic motion was stilled.

Gaea opened her arms to her daughter, but even the embrace of a goddess could not soothe the pain of loss within CC, and the mermaid sobbed so desperately that she felt as if her soul had dissolved around her like Dylan's body.

Then other arms joined the goddess. They were softer, more aged arms, arms that were weathered and worn and had born witness to a lifetime of hardship and sorrows.

“I know, child. I know.”

CC looked up into Isabel's tear-stained face. Then she felt more arms around her. Standing chest deep in water, Lynelle, Bronwyn and Gwenyth had joined Isabel. The four women completed the circle around CC, lending her their strength and filling her with their love. CC sobbed out her pain and loss, secure in the knowledge that the women who held her would not let her go.

In the midst of despair, Gaea reached her hand out to her daughter, motioning to the path that the arrow had carved through the mermaid's flesh.

“Let me heal you of this wound, Daughter,” Gaea said. But before the goddess touched the bloody furrow, she hesitated. Slowly she withdrew her hand. “I must wait. The judgment is not complete.” Gaea looked at Lir. “Events have changed, and so must my judgment.”

Wearily, the sea god nodded.

“This judgment will differ from those of the past, because today's events have forever changed me.” Gaea's audience was hushed, even Lir seemed to be holding his breath in anticipation of the goddess's next words. “For the bravery and loyalty you have shown, my beloved daughter, my judgment is that you may choose your future path.” CC's tear-ravaged face brightened, and Gaea was quick to continue. “I cannot change your lover's death, and for that I will be eternally sorry, but I can offer you two choices.”

“What are they?” CC asked in a voice that shook.

“You may choose to stay here, in this world and this time, either as a mermaid and Goddess of the Seas, or as Earth's beloved daughter and a goddess in my realm. You will reign beside either parent, and your days will be filled with the duties of a deity.”

“Forever?” CC asked.

“Forever,” Gaea assured her.

“What is my other choice?”

“I will return you to your old world and your old time—to the site of your accident, the moment before the wreckage pulled you under the waves. You will survive the accident and continue with your human life.”

“But what will happen to Undine if I choose to return to my world?” CC asked.

Lir's voice sounded ancient with grief. “My son exists no more. That is as unchanging as the death of Dylan. If Undine returns to me, she will be allowed her own choice. Whether she decides to remain in the seas with me, or joins her mother on land, she has my blessing. I shall no longer try to control the lives of my children.”

“There is one more thing you should know before you make your choice,” Gaea spoke into the silence that surrounded the god's words. “It is within our power”—here she glanced at Lir and he nodded slowly in agreement—“to wipe clean the slate of your memory.”

“You mean you can send me back to the instant that I was being pulled under by the wreckage, and you can make me forget everything that has happened here? It'd be like I was never gone, like Undine and I had never changed places?” CC asked.

“Yes,” the goddess said.

CC felt herself become very still. She closed her eyes and, against the background of her darkened lids, she replayed the days and nights she had spent on Caldei. And her eyes snapped open.

“I know what I want,” she said firmly.

“Tell me daughter; complete your own judgment.”

“I have loved being in this world; I thought that I had finally found a place where I could belong, a place I could call my true home. But I understand now that a sense of belonging is not physical. We can't find it by changing where we live or what we do. We have to carry it within us.” CC took a deep breath. “Forgive me, Mother.” Her gaze included both Gaea and Isabel. “I can't spend an eternity without him, even if it is as a goddess. And I've learned that I carry my true home within me. So I want to be sent back to my old world. And I want to remember—all of you and him.” Her words ended in a whisper.