Title: Morrigan
Author: Laura DeLuca
Release date: November 8, 2012
Publisher: Pagan Writers Press
Pages: 320 (paperback)
Event organized by: Young Adult Novel Reader Blog Tours
Buy Links: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Smashwords
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.
An Excerpt
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.
About The Author
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 sole author 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. Visit her on her websites:
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