“It’s half of the whole, but perfect in itself, only enhanced by its other half,” Leonora said. Argan knew she was talking about more than the stone. “Come in soon. We’ll eat.” She squeezed his knee and stood up. As she stood there, her long hair whipped around wildly in a sudden burst of wind.
“Okay.” Argan put the stone in its bag and got up to head inside. The cypress trees in the backyard still stood as protectors of his childhood home in Kythira, but the landscape had changed so much since he was a boy. In two short decades, the sea had edged dangerously close to many of the homes that had once been well protected from the water. Now it was anyone’s guess how long it would be before they were in the ocean.
When he walked into the house, he found his seven older sisters all crying, holding a vigil; they assumed Argan was leaving to his death. He rolled his eyes at the drama. He hadn’t missed any of them while living in the States.
His father, Giannes, sat asleep in a well-worn recliner in the living room. The chair was the one thing he’d shipped back to Greece a dozen years earlier when they’d returned from America. He said he wanted to be buried in it. Argan wasn’t sure how soon that would be. His father spent most of his days asleep; if anything, death would be an improvement.
He was grateful for his father’s teachings. He was an old soul and had raised Argan in the traditions of their Greek heritage. He’d instilled in him the importance of being respectful, a gentleman, a good provider. He lived by tradition and resisted changing what worked. Argan appreciated his father but now that he was older, he saw Giannes’ limitations, especially with his mother. Giannes loved Leonora and gave her earthly security, but Argan could see there was something missing. A loneliness permeated his mother’s eyes that he hadn’t noticed until recently.
It was Leonora who’d given Argan his true schooling. From the moment she conceived him, she’d known she was carrying a boy. After seven girls, this one was different. From the time her belly started to grow, she talked to him about the Goddess, about Sophia, and about the daughter who would rise to challenge the beliefs of their time and usher in the Golden Age. Her daughters were beautiful, smart, even cunning, but she knew her son had a destiny to fulfill. Argan was to help the daughter—be her knight, fulfill his duty. And young Argan had loved the idea of being a knight. He’d easily become proficient with a sword. Another mother would have cringed, but Leonora had encouraged her son to excel in the art of war. She’d known what he would someday face.
She’d also taught him something more vital to his purpose—the art of love. She was determined that “Leonora’s boy,” as the neighbors called him, would teach his sisters about honor and integrity. She’d seen her girls and the way they conducted their lives. She’d loved each one, but she’d also seen their cattiness, watched as they threw each other under the bus for the attention of a man.
Leonora was a sybil. She’d seen the coming age of the Divine Feminine and the one who would start the chain reaction to bring balance back to the world. And she knew her boy was no ordinary boy, and would grow into no ordinary man. He had the kiss of destiny on his forehead. And she was honored to have been the one to bring him into this world.
Argan entered the kitchen. Leonora was looking out the window, lost in thought, her mind still sitting by the ocean’s edge.
“I remember that summer—September came and you returned to Greece with your father,” she said. “Until then, you had clung to your childhood. You’d resisted growing up the whole way. But then you came back and you were heartbroken and too young to understand why. But I knew. I was heartbroken, too, because it was my first taste of losing you. You just didn’t know what it meant. A mother’s love can only sustain for so long before a young man needs sustenance from another. The masculine needs the nourishment of a woman’s energy. At your tender age, this was a foreshadowing of the future. And it would appear the future is upon us.”
He looked at his mother with tears in his eyes. “No one can ever replace you,” he said.
“I am not worried about replacement, my love, nor am I in need of reassurance,” she said, cupping his face with her hand. “You are a strong man and you deserve the love of a strong woman. Skylar is worthy of you, and you will find her. It is destiny.”
He hugged his mother tight and wept openly on her shoulder. She knew his tears were for her as much as they were for Skylar. They were tears mourning the loss of his relationship with his mother.
“Our bond will always be right here.” She clasped his hand and held it to her chest.
He reciprocated and held her hand to his own heart. “I love you, Mama,” he said through his tears.
“You will always be my one true love,” she said. “Through you, I have learned my greatest joy and my greatest sorrow. Thank you for picking me as your mama.”
He bent over so she could kiss his forehead, as she’d done before he grew a foot taller than her. They heard the wailing coming from the living room. She waved her hand in the air, dismissing his sisters’ ridiculous behavior, and left the kitchen before he saw too many of her tears fall.
Devlin Grayer’s red book sat on Ocean’s bar cart next to her whiskey decanter. She looked at it and felt its charge of pure evil—or was it ignorance? She often confused the two. With a flip of her wrist, she tossed it across the porch without ever touching it. It landed on a table near the door. She lit a smudge pot and picked up a glass to pour a drink, but stopped. She didn’t feel like drinking. For the first time in a long while, she felt lonely. After all the help she had given the girl, she’d refused to acknowledge how much the girl had given her. And now they were in this mess. She sighed.
Magus had a way of screwing everything up at the end of things. She’d watched him do it at the end of the First Age. She was convinced he had turned the seas red. And here they were again. The red tides were returning, just like the last time. She could no longer prevent the heating in the earth’s core. She had delayed it as long as she could, waiting for humanity to wake up. A storm was coming on the horizon, just like last time—although this time, it would be without Beatrice. That was fine with Ocean; she was no help anyway.
It was Vivienne’s turn now, the only other Great Mother who cared about the future of earth. Beatrice certainly hadn’t. How insular she had become. Ocean wasn’t sorry she’d left the earth plane. Beatrice was of no use to their cause. If Ocean were honest, she would own some of that drama herself. But there was no more hiding for Vivienne.
Ocean had to admit that Skylar had surprised her, restoring the memory of the citrine wall as she had. That had happened ahead of schedule. But the United States still needed an overhaul, and the new president was not the one to do it.
“Your lack of faith in others is your biggest affliction,” Magda said from behind her.
Ocean resumed making her drink.
“You know that libation is not good for your physical or mental body,” Magda said.
Ocean turned to face her. “It hasn’t killed me yet.”
Magda turned her attention to the vast backyard and the black tree. “You should be pleased about the political progress in this country. So much has happened so quickly. No one has had time to adjust or even completely process the enormity of it all.”