Part One
The Birth of the Fate-Kissed
1
Illana
Using my sisters as crutches, we rushed to the river. “We’re not going to make it,” I panted, a sheen of cool, urgent sweat erupting over my skin. “The baby is coming.”
“We will,” Isla encouraged, urging me forward when the last thing I wanted to do was take another step. Her sunkissed hair whipped in the wind, lashing at my face, tangling with my matching strands. There was so much pressure. A contraction squeezed my stomach, the muscles pushing my daughters toward the earth.
With a slow, agonized gait, I gritted my teeth and fought for every inch of ground we covered. I stopped only when I could not go on, breathing in time with my sisters until the contractions were over. They were becoming insistent, relentlessly crashing over me and causing me to flounder, weakening my resolve more with each one. My knees were watery, my legs quivering. We’d barely taken ten steps when another agonizing wave battered me. I cried out from the intensity, looking up at the darkening sky above us.
Twilight was being drowned by a storm’s dark wall cloud. The formation was smooth and stretched high into the sky – just like Jenna had dreamed. Jenna was the youngest of the three of us, with dreams both vivid and prophetic. Last night, she’d dreamt of the birth of my daughters. And she’d come to me at first light with news that today, I would give birth.
In her dream, my babes were born in the water. They had to be, or else…I refused to think about it. Not while we could still make it.
We were close. If I wasn’t in labor, I could reach the river’s edge in no time at all. I clung to the feeling of running freely over the grass and focused on the water, listening to it ripple and churn, whispering to the Goddess for her help, for her blessing.
Ahead of us, the water roared, a constant guide and encouragement, but it seemed with every step I took, the distance between us and the water’s edge lengthened.
The pain intensified until every second, every step threatened to cleave me in two.
Overhead, the wall cloud pushed through the sky, going out before us as if heralding our trek.
Jenna tightened her grip, holding on to my side and urging me to a faster pace. A wash of pain flooded over me and I dug my feet into the soil, my toes gripping blades of grass. Isla and Jenna stopped with me, rubbing my back while whispering soothing spells. The anguish waned, but only for a moment. There was only so much their incantations could do to help me now.
My daughters were eager to enter this world, and I was equally eager to meet each of them, to see the three I already knew so intimately. To speak the names I would choose for them. To bathe them in their destinies.
The child who’d settled in the center of my womb had the strongest gift among the trio. It was for her that we rushed to the river.
My muscles slowly relaxed and we began moving forward again. My feet plodded along, but my sisters had begun to heft more and more of my weight as the three of us trampled the lush grass underfoot. “Almost there,” Jenna announced with a strain to her voice. Her delicate features contorted under the burden.
Water leaked from my womb and my thighs became slick. My pelvic bones popped as they began to move and separate. It was time.
I tried to walk, to help them with their arduous task, but the pain…the pain was too great.
When we passed the ewe barn, Isla gave an encouraging smile. “It’s just there, beyond the tree line. Stay strong, Illana.”
I had no other choice. I had to deliver them in the water. The water was the only thing that could save my strongest daughter. The water, and Fate, had chosen her and demanded that she be born into it.
Another contraction tore through, stealing my breath greedily, though this pressure felt different. More urgent. More unforgiving. My sisters whispered powerful incantations, but this pain would not ebb.
The tops of my feet dragged and bumped along the ground strewn with rocks as my sisters carried me forward.
A cry tore from my throat. A swarm of black dots flew into my vision, distorting everything.
“Illana, stay with us!” Jenna rasped.
I heard my sisters’ hurried footsteps splashing into the water but lacked the strength to open my eyes until I felt cool wetness wash over my skin and rise to the hem of my dress. When the pain slowly loosened its grip, I looked down to find that we had made it. The swarm receded and my vision cleared.
Relief washed over me as vividly as the blood staining the hem of my dress. I nearly cried when I sank into the cool water. The river began to fade the stain out of the pale fabric as my sisters eased me into a calmer pool, away from the rapids upstream, one deep enough in which to relax.
Isla settled behind me, her back braced against the bank. I laid my head on her shoulder, taking deep breaths and blowing them out. Gripping her outstretched hands, I relied on her to keep us from sinking beneath the surface as I let my legs float upward. All these months I was terrified I wouldn’t know what to do when this moment came, but the Goddess guided me. She watched over me even now. I could feel her in the wind and hear her in the thunder. She lent me courage and fortitude.
The contractions came one right after the other, like eager waves lapping at a shore.
My teeth began to chatter.
Surviving a triple birth was difficult, and something our own mother hadn’t been able to withstand. But all would be well, I reminded myself. In her vision, Jenna saw me holding the babes.
Jenna knelt before me, fear and moonlight reflecting in her eyes. The wind tore her hair from her braid. Ever calm and kind, Jenna looked worried. There was a crease between her knitted brows, one that only appeared when she was afraid. I was terrified. Not of giving birth or surviving it, but for my first-born.
Thunder cracked overhead and lightning forked across the sky as a hard contraction made me want to push down. A cry tore from my throat. “It seeks her,” said Jenna, just before her eyes rolled back into her head until only the whites were visible.
“Jenna!” I screamed. Not now!
“Hold on, Illana. Do not push,” Isla warned, letting me squeeze her hand through another powerful contraction.
“I have to push,” I insisted, my voice evaporating.
“Not yet,” she replied sweetly.
Was Fate speaking to Jenna again?
Each of my sisters had some ability to divine. Jenna through cards and the occasional dream, Isla through scrying, and I could read the lines on a person’s palm; however, the power I felt radiating from my daughters was something else entirely. Fate had appeared in Jenna’s dream as a living, breathing being. He had chosen my daughters and called them his own. The Fate-Kissed.
And he told Jenna that my first-born must be born in water, and that she had an indelible gift.