Genre: YA
Shuffled from place to place in the foster system, Morrigan doesn’t know
the meaning of home. Plus, she is different. She has power over fire,
the ability to move objects with her mind, and glimpse into the future.
Just when she believes her life can’t get any stranger, she discovers
her true identity.
Filtiarn, a knight with a dark past and a surprising secret, has been
tasked with guiding the heir of Tír Na NÓg through countless perils to
be returned to her family. Once Morrigan has been reunited with her
mother and grandmother, their triad can save the forgotten land of magic
from being devoured by an ancient evil.
Morrigan took out a white candle and a stick of dragon blood incense,
and set them up in the corner of the room. She sat cross-legged, and
leaned forward to light them. No matches were necessary. No lighter
either. She simply touched her finger to the end of the wick, and with
an iridescent spark, the candle flickered to life. It shone at first
with a bright blue flame that gradually settled into a more normal
orange. It was the same with the incense—another reason why she
preferred not to have an audience.
She stared into the candle for a moment, and took a few deep breaths
to clear her mind of all thoughts but those of the magic she intended to
perform. Danu and Dagda sat on either side of her, instantly falling
into silence, as though they knew she needed her complete concentration.
Their energy beside her only seemed to add to the growing sense of
power that charged the room.
Morrigan closed her eyes and began to shuffle the cards. As she did,
she allowed her breathing to become more even. A silence filled the room
as the rest of the mortal world fell away. Soon the only sound she
heard was the light thump of her own heartbeat, echoed by the quicker,
fast paced beat of the cats’ hearts. She wasn’t sure how much time
passed as the cards slipped through her fingers. It might have been
minutes. It might have been hours. When she allowed herself to fall into
a trance, time became insubstantial, irrelevant.
The tarot cards were so old; the designs on the back were almost
completely worn away. She had to shuffle gently to keep them from
crumbling to pieces in her hands. Yet they held a power that she knew no
newer cards could offer her. As she shuffled them, she focused her
energy into them, silently requesting to be given the answers she was
seeking. She allowed the image of her mother to fill her mind. When she
finally felt the cards had fallen into the order they were meant to be
in, she placed the deck face down on the floor, and cut them with her
right hand. Then, taking one last, calming breath, she lifted the top
card from the pile. With a trembling hand, she laid it down and read it.
“Wheel of Fortune,” she said aloud.
In the center of card was a wheel. As she stared at the picture, that
wheel seemed to turn clockwise. The movements made her feel slightly
dizzy. The bedroom around her became more and more surreal. The scene on
the card became her reality. The figure of the sphinx that sat on top
of the turning wheel looked so very real. It might have turned its head
to look at her. Its lips may or may not have moved. Morrigan swore she
heard a deep, resonating voice whispering the meaning of the card into
her ear. Destiny approaching. An unexpected and sudden change was
coming—change that could lead to good fortune.
It was the card of fate and karma returned. It meant that she needed
to be prepared—to expect the unexpected. Morrigan knew the cards were
telling her something was going to happen—and soon. Her destiny,
whatever it was, was about to be realized. Even if it did bring fortune,
it still scared her to death. She considered packing up the cards right
then and there. Her rational mind had every intention of doing just
that. Her hands didn’t get the message her brain was sending. Before she
knew what she was doing, she had already flipped over the second card.
“The Empress,” she whispered. She exhaled deeply. “My mother.”
It was the only interpretation imaginable. Even as she said it, the
pregnant woman, crowned with stars and adorned in a gown decorated with
pomegranates, turned to her and smiled. She was no longer a vague
featureless stranger, but the same woman Morrigan had sketched earlier
that day—a face that mirrored her own. It was an older version of
herself, which she saw in the reflection in the nearby full length
mirror, had turned chalk white.
The Empress was a symbol of maternal power—of strong feminine
influence. But could it mean that her mother was returning? She had
never allowed herself to consider such a possibility. To dwell on
something so unlikely would have been too painful. But now, with just
the flip of a card, she found herself daring to dream. There was only
one way to find out for sure. She had to keep going with the reading.
“Six of Cups.”
The third card in the spread represented her past, and even her
immediate present. The six of cups specifically symbolized childhood,
and she was, technically, still a child. But she had a feeling that her
childhood was about to end quite abruptly. The cups in the picture were
lined up across a high stone wall, each cup holding the memories of her
past.
Her past. It was nothing but a childhood filled with longing—longings
which were perhaps about to be fulfilled. She visualized herself taking
each cup down from the wall, and pouring the troubling memories away.
It was time to start fresh. A new world was about to open up for her.
She had known it as soon as she had seen the image of her mother’s face.
But what would that world be like? What was waiting for her in the
future?
Morrigan turned over the fourth card.
“The Knight of Wands.”
The man on the horse carrying the staff had her baffled. Not because
she didn’t know its normal meaning, but because as she stared at the
card, it began to take on the physical attributes of the knight in her
drawings. He had the same long dreadlocks, the same bewitching stare,
even the same cocky smile. The familiarity did not cancel out the
meaning of the card. The knight of wands was representative of a dark
man filled with a kind of honey-tongued charm. He was also fiery and
arrogant, a man with a definite possibility of a dark side. If the
knight of wands was coming into her life, she knew she needed to proceed
with caution.
She thought she was done with the fourth card, and was preparing to
move on to the next, when once again, she found she had lost control of
her body. This time, her hands refused to move, while her eyes forced
their way back to the knight in the card. She watched as the long haired
stranger began to move forward—wandering over various landscapes, some
high mountains, some meadows and fields ripe for the harvest. He kept
looking back over his shoulder, as though he were speaking to someone.
He was on a journey, and he wasn’t alone. Morrigan didn’t need to see
his companion to know who it must be.
So, her journey would soon begin, and she wouldn’t be traveling
alone. She would have a guide. Whether or not that would be a good thing
was another question best left to the cards to answer. The next card
told her nothing she didn’t already know.
“The Moon,” she said. “Caution.”
It was a scary card. It warned of tricks and illusions. The two
howling wolves that stood under the moon looked back at her menacingly,
growling, showing their pointed fangs in a snarl. For the first time
since she began the reading, Danu and Dagda made their presence known by
lifting their heads and hissing threateningly in the direction of the
beasts.
Even the cats sensed it. The journey she was about to embark on
wouldn’t be all fun and family reunions. There would be obstacles and
deceit, most likely from people she thought could be trusted. The moon
was a sign that danger was certainly awaiting her. In was an ominous
omen.
“Shhhh.”
She hushed the hissing cats, and gave them each a gentle stroke to
try to settle them down, though she was far from settled herself. Again
she felt the urge to stop the spread. Her instincts were telling her
that no good was going to come out of this reading. She was only going
to scare herself. She should never have done it in the first place. When
would she learn that sometimes it was best to let life play out without
interference or prophetic warnings? Then again, she knew that to be
forewarned might be her only advantage. So with more bravery than she
felt, Morrigan flipped over the final card.
“No . . . .” she gasped when she looked down at the terrible, skeletal face. “Oh no.”
She should have known. She thought a part of her did know even before
she glanced down at the gruesome scene—a skeleton with a scythe in a
field of body parts. With the divination going in the direction it was,
what else could be the final outcome?
“Death,” she whispered. “Death.”
She knew that in most cases, the death card was a symbol of personal
transformation rather than literal death. But a deeper sense of
understanding told her that this time the card was meant to be taken
literally. She saw only glimpses and shadows in her mind. Brief flashes
of faces, some familiar, like her mother and the knight—some still
strangers, like a beautiful, almost angelic blonde woman in a flowing
white gown. But around them all, including herself, she saw the shadows
of death.
Morrigan felt decidedly shaky as she gathered up her tarot cards. She
placed them securely in the bottom of her bag just as she heard the
door downstairs slam shut. The reading hadn’t made everything as crystal
clear as she had hoped, but one thing was certain. Her whole life was
about to change.
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Laura “Luna” DeLuca lives at the beautiful Jersey shore with her
husband and four children. She loves writing in the young adult genre
because it keeps her young at heart. In addition to writing fiction,
Laura is also the editor of a popular review blog called New Age Mama.
She is an active member of her local pagan community, and has been
studying Wicca for close to eight years. Her current works include
Destiny, Destiny Unveiled, Phantom, Morrigan, Player, and Demon.
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