The Stone by the Stream (Part 26)

“Cynthia, look out!”

But it already had her. Cynthia’s lungs burst out an involuntary gasp as the Naiad seized her with one arm and dragged her to the forest. After another moment it lifted her from the earth, the moisture of its contact seeping into every pore of her body. Though she cried out for the Priestess’s help and struggled till her arms and legs burned from exertion, she could not free herself. In a matter of moments the creature had pulled her from the green field, and as she descended into the forest Cynthia saw the gape-mouthed Priestess staring back at her.

Then she was alone with the Naiad.

It moved with an efficient step, never expending more effort than it had to. With a light but unbreakable hand it enfolded her, and with its steps she rose and fell like the movement of a ship in the ocean.

“Where are you taking me?” Cynthia asked, panting and struggling to catch her breath for another attempt at escape.

The Naiad did not answer. Cynthia had no idea if it even so much as glanced at her, so empty were the uniform black pearls of its eyes.

But did it really need to answer? She already knew where it was taking her, the only place where it could be taking her, the one place where all this world’s currents appeared intent on taking her. The feared, yearned-for, avoided, awaited…

Yet things were different now. The Priestess had only barely succeeded in drawing her out of her dissolution before, and now…?

Alone before the Goddess, there would be no more Cynthia. Certainly, her body would go on, but only as an animated husk, a pure puppet of the Huntress.

She might have been a potential oracle, but she wasn’t ready for the encounter. It would destroy her, as surely as the paw of a she-bear destroys a beehive. She needed the Temple. She’d been a fool, she realized, thinking she could go without, going her own way and not accepting the discipline. The Priestess had been a true friend all along. She just hadn’t been willing to see it. She’d make it up to her, though, she swore it.

If she ever managed to get back to the Temple with her mind intact.

But how to escape? The Naiad had her in its fluid grasp. Once again she tried to strain and struggle to get free, but it was no use. Though she groaned and heaved and stretched every muscle in her frame, she couldn’t escape.

There had to be a way!

Streaming by at a steady pace they passed the trees of the forest, the Naiad taking a meandering course as it went, here and there doubling back in wide curves when that happened to be the path of least resistance. Could she grasp one of the tree limbs that reached out along the path?

Here was one, almost here, almost…

Cynthia reached out for it, held it for a moment, and the branch was jerked out of her hand. The Naiad continued in its course, quick as ever. She tried again… failed again.

It was no use! Even if she did manage to free herself, the enormous creature would only pick her up once again. Resistance only exhausted her and every moment brought them closer to the unbearable encounter of the clearing. What was there to do but give in?

She thought of her Mama and Papa, of her little brother and sister, of long walks in the forest trails with Ariadne. And what would become of all those memories? All the people she’d loved so much? All her hopes, her childlike hope to become an oracle? Gone, all gone. Dissolved into the indifferent infinity of the Goddess. Even if she saw them… she would never know them, just as she would never know herself again.

Cynthia shed tears that fell with the raindrops into the earth beneath.

She sighed. What was the use of resisting, anyway? The Huntress was right. Even the Temple itself was nothing more than sand in the hourglass, just another feeble human attempt to dam the flow of time. Whether today, tomorrow, or ten thousand years from now, the Temple would fall. And in the eternal eyes of the Huntress, time was nothing at all.

No! She had to fight, had to resist the loss of herself — for her own sake, for her family, for the Temple. For the sake of that sacred glow at the heart of every existing thing… that sacred glow that says “I AM.”

Just as she began searching for the next branch to cling to, they were out of the forest and into the clearing by the stream. With a flowing indifference, the Naiad deposited Cynthia on her feet, mere inches from the incandescent stone.

You are expected, Cynthia.