Chapter One
“Applecheeks! Agnes! Please fetch my oracle bag, and be quick about it.” Beautimus Potamus had overslept again. Between hot flashes producing so much night sweat that twice already her household help had nearly drowned in it, and her hormone-induced insomnia, rarely did she enjoy a good night’s sleep.It’s late in the morning for my daily oracle reading, and I’ve yet to bathe in the river, or eat breakfast. As she rose from her pillows her bones and joints snapped and popped, and when she stretched her legs, she groaned.
The house squirrels scrambled atop the altar and pulled the gold brocade pouch onto the floor. Together, they tugged the draw-string bag to the hippo still reclining on her sleeping pillows. Agnes scampered to the cooking pot to make the morning tea, leaving Applecheeks to attend to Beautimus.
“Thank you.” The hippo closed her eyes and raised her head in prayer. “Oh, Great Goddess Genesis, thank you for blessing us with your presence.” She opened her eyes, and gave a quick nod to the squirrel.
Apple pulled a divining cloth from the bag, spread it on the floor of the abode, and straightened the corners. She put her paw into the bag and withdrew the first of three glyphs.
“Moonmagick,” Beautimus said. “Goddess energy strong at work today. Please pull the next.”
The squirrel withdrew the second of the stones, placing it to the right of the first.
“Dreamlizard. Ah, yes, my recurring visions. The Goddesses say I must pay attention to them.” Beautimus studied the glyphs. “It’s rare these two stones appear in that order in a reading. Something is up, Apple. We’re to be on the lookout for omens, signs, chance encounters, anything out of the ordinary. You and Agnes keep an eye peeled. Will you?”
Applecheeks nodded.
Beautimus took a cleansing breath. “Now. The outcome glyph.”
When the squirrel placed the last of the stones on the cloth, Beautimus leaned in to look, and gasped. “No. No. Please. Not again!” Her eyes rolled back into her head, and she sunk into her pillows.
***
Visions. Beautimus experienced them on and off since adolescence. But they were so infrequent, sometimes a decade would pass without one. Recently, they came at her in bunches, like fruit flies in a mating swarm. One right after another they came. For six days in a row, Beautimus’ mother, Sangrina, who’d long before passed into the arms of the Goddess, appeared to her. It was the same each time. Without warning or reason, Beautimus’ eyes rolled back, her lids closed, and she dropped to the ground aware of her impending unconsciousness, but as if in a state of paralysis, unable to do anything about it. First, a resonate buzzing originated from inside her head. Then the visions appeared and played out for her like the classic films she streamed from Earth. Only these movies were projected on the inside of her eyelids.
In them, Beautimus sat under a blooming yarron tree. She watched roan mares dancing with red dragonflies in a grassy meadow near the edge of an emerald cenote. A fog bank, the color of spun pink sugar, rose from the water and rolled onto the meadow. Sangrina stepped out of the fog. “Beautimus, it’s time.”
“Time for what, Mom? Tell me.”
“You’ll know soon enough.”
Without so much as a wink or a nod, Sangrina faded into the aether. The fog cleared, the horses and dragonflies vanished, and Beautimus came around to consciousness, confused and groggy as a drunken coati. The visions stuck to her like a coquillet midge to a sorghum blossom, but try as she might, Beautimus couldn’t ferret out their meaning, or why they recurred. Then today for the first time in decades—the reading, andthe glyph, the one that never failed to predict a life-changing event.
Beautimus activated her Crystal Interface and connected with her friend, Lizzy, a mastodon she’d known since she was a bubbit.
“Lizzy, during my reading this morning…White Light.”
“Did it land in the outcome position after Moonmagick and Dreamlizard?”
“Yes, exactly as it had when the janitor discovered Áine’s body.”
“No kidding. What do you think is going to happen?”
“I don’t have a bloody clue, but I’m nervous as a Phidippus spider. The last time I’d receivedthat glyph inthat order…who knows what may happen? The Anam Glyph, plus the repeated visions of my mother, it’s like….”
