The Stone by the Stream (Part 16)

Cynthia stepped into the clearing and the priestess grabbed her arm, pulling her back to the line of trees.

“Best not to venture too close, Cynthia. There’s no telling what we might awaken.”

“You had no problem letting Agatha meet me in the clearing last night — and I was touching the stone then!”

“And a man died because of our mistake,” the priestess said. “We had no idea how sensitive you were to the stone’s powers.”

“You thought I was just a silly girl with a lot of questions,” Cynthia said.

But despite her bitter tone, Cynthia felt an unnamable energy in the air around her, even standing at the border limning the clearing. Ecstasy was the word for it, probably, although of a subdued sort that nonetheless held the promise to get stronger if only she’d come closer…

And from her chest there swelled, from the pit of her stomach there rose, from the bottom of her feet there tingled a yearning to come closer. A call of something beyond space and time, a beckoning that could only come from…

Become One with me, my child…

Again she stepped into the clearing and again the priestess jerked her back to the edge.

“We must keep our distance, Cynthia,” the priestess said.

“I know that!” Cynthia said indignantly. “Wait a minute… I tried to walk to the stone again, didn’t I?”

“… you did.”

Cynthia shuddered. With anxiety approaching terror, she felt the longing to allow the energy radiating from the luminescent stone to consume her.

“She’s… calling to me,” Cynthia said with a quivering voice.

“Maybe now you can see why we want you to become an Initiate, Cynthia. It will take years of training before you’re able to answer that call.”

“What? No, that’s nonsense! She’s already calling to me, she wants me to go to her right now!”

“And do you know what it means to go to the Huntress?”

“… what?”

The priestess held Cynthia gently by the shoulders, affectionately, but firmly enough that the young woman wouldn’t be able to dart into the clearing easily. “Cynthia. We do not understand the gods, we can only worship them and… placate them.”

They turn against me, Sofia darling…

“Placate them? What on Earth are you talking about?”

“What I’m saying is that the work an oracle does is horribly dangerous. You do realize what it means to commune with the Goddess, don’t you, Cynthia?”

And against me in you…

Cynthia barely heard the priestess, straining as she was to escape her grasp. Nothing in all her life had ever appeared half as beautiful as that gleaming stone in its pale luminescence. At moments she had difficulty remembering who this Cynthia was that the priestess seemed so interested in communicating with.

“When an oracle communes with the Goddess, she gives up her full personality to the Huntress — dissolved in her, consumed by her, utterly annihilated in her. The ability to do that is the basic ingredient of an oracle. But can you imagine what that can do to a woman’s mind?”

The dam discloses my Gift…

Why was this woman holding onto her? Didn’t she know she was only standing in the way of the Process? It was endearing, in a way. These mortals with their illusions of control, trying to keep their fragile world intact against the background of Infinity.

Or at least it would be endearing if they wouldn’t keep trying to keep her separated from the Vessel…

“Cynthia? Cynthia, can you hear me?”

Sand in the glass is all they name Temple…

Cynthia blinked. Curious, she glanced all around her. Up into the silent trees and into the eyes of the priestess, narrowed with concern verging on panic. She almost smiled at the woman, so blind with her eyes wide open.

Then with a feeling like the breath being knocked out of her, Cynthia felt the energy inside her leave her body behind. Her legs buckled and she fell down onto the Earth, noticing as she did the wound on her left arm. She smiled to remember she had a body.

“Cynthia?”

“Yes, yes, I’m listening. You were talking about communing with the Huntress?”

“It can be a shattering experience. An oracle’s training isn’t a matter of learning how to do it — it’s about building the mental strength to return to yourself after the experience is over.”

“I think I just had a taste of it…”

The priestess’s eyes flashed. “Then you understand how important it is that you become an Initiate and accept Temple discipline?”

“I think I understand that even less than I did before.”

“When you let the Huntress in, Cynthia… there’s always the possibility that she might not leave willingly. Oracles have been… possessed by the gods before. An oracle with the ability to maintain her own identity can give incredible insight, but an oracle who loses herself…”

“Like Sofia did?”

“How did you…?” the priestess began, recoiling as if from a blow. She recovered herself, however, and finished by saying, “Yes. Like Sofia did. She lost herself in the end.”

“What did you do to her?”

“We tried to help her as much as we could.”

“She didn’t see it that way.”

The priestess straightened up. “She probably didn’t. Maybe we made some mistakes in the way we handled her. Anyway, I suggest you get up, Cynthia. And I realize this may be a bother to you, but I’m going to have to ask you to come back to the Temple with me tonight.”

“I’d rather go back home,” Cynthia said, rising to her feet.

“Unfortunately that’s out of the question, Cynthia. I really do apologize, but it’s in everyone’s best interests.”

“What, you think I’ll…” Cynthia said. “You’re trying to hold me prisoner!”

“We’d like for you to be our guest, and someday a highly valued member of our order. I do ask that you come willingly, but I should tell you there are Temple bodyguards in the area. Please don’t make me call on them.”

Downcast, Cynthia agreed.

They walked together down the path to the Temple. Here and there Cynthia had to dodge a root or a branch that lunged out into the darkened road — was one of them the root she’d tripped over in the morning? Again a wolf howled in the distance. The song of crickets gave a rhythm to the moonlit night.

And just ahead on the path, an unseen source whistled a clownish tune.