Freakshow

Chapter Thirty Five

"Where are we?" Cairo asked incredulously, running his hands up and down the front of his naked body.

"I don't know," I replied, searching the horizon for any defining feature at all. There were mountains in the distance, trees and rocks in another direction, but around us was flat and white.

"You are in my domain," that great buzzing voice hit my ears, consuming my head and vibrating the landscape. Brigid.

"Who are you?" Cairo asked, standing next to me to guard me.

"Brigid," I said quietly, "she's contacted me before."

"Why did you remove us?" Cairo asked. "Where are you?"

"I am everywhere here," she said, "I am everything in this world."

"Can you tell us why you brought us here?" I asked.

"I brought you to offer you more than any other acolyte has been offered before, because it is necessary this time," she said in that buzzing tone that almost overwhelmed my senses.

The air seemed to split in front of us and out of it stepped the same wizened old woman from my dreams. "Is this better?" she asked, adjusting a long white cloak around her shoulders. "I don't want to come as the maiden, you're fella here would lose his mind."

"I doubt that," Cairo glowered, staring down at her.

"I like him," Brigid said, looking up at him with a toothless grin. "It's too bad about the end of things."

"What's the choice? What end of things?" I asked.

"Eager to get back to that?" Brigid asked, her voice still multi layered and buzzing, but no longer coming from inside so it was tolerable.

"Not necessarily, but this is no place for us either," I replied, feeling in my bones how much this world wanted us gone. We weren't of this world, and didn't belong.

She smiled and looked at me with a look a mother might give a particularly bright child. "Bingo," she said. "Now on to the decision. Bear with me as I explain some things to you. Have a seat if you must." She motioned behind us and a little garden bench appeared, white and smooth like the rest of the world.

Cairo and I sat down, he took my hand in his and gripped it like he was never going to let me go.

"Get on with it," he said in a low voice, his eyes narrowed in suspicion.

"There is a prophecy, and I believe your girl here is all caught up in it," she said with a smile. "Three women will come into the world, three women who will command the beasts of earth, air and water. Three women who will aid in bringing the earth back to a state that is more compatible with her...well...let's say surviving the infestation of human beings she seems to be enduring."

"How will that happen?" I asked, "There are so many people, and we've been fighting against climate change but it seems impossible at times."

"Restoring the balance between magic and science," she said. "Technology is all fine and good, but it's killing us. We're slowly choking on everything that is produced, used, and thrown away to sit listlessly in a landfill somewhere. It has to stop, and you are one of the pivots that will bring about that change."

"What's the choice?" Cairo asked, squeezing my hand to comfort me. I smiled at him, loving him for being here with me, beside me.

"That choice is yours, my young wolf," Brigid said, turning to Cairo with deep, sorrowful eyes. "You must decide between you and your son."

"I don't have a son," he replied, knitting his brows together.

"Not yet, but he's already tucked away safely inside the body of his mother," Brigid replied, looking at me.