needed something to shock her into enjoyment again. If she could only figure out what it would be. But this, this natural Oklahoma beauty was working right now.
“So focus!” Isabel reminded herself, and was pleased to fall fairly easily back into the zone of framing the lovely land before her.
The next time she moved her tripod, she caught sight of the morning light glistening off the surface of what she realized was water winding through a gully to her right. Intrigued as always by varieties in landscape, she headed in that direction, loving the surprising glimpse of sandy bank and a clear, bubbling stream hidden within the section of cross timbers.
Getting closer to the water, Isabel noticed a single ray of young sunlight had penetrated the green shadows of the trees, so that a small section of the stream was being illuminated, as if by a silver spotlight. That spotlight drew her like a magnet.
She let her instincts guide her, and moved quietly and quickly down the bank, leaving the tripod temporarily behind. As she settled on the sandy ground, kneeling so that she was just above the water, Isabel focused and began clicking picture after picture, changing the angle and distance from the water as she worked. Mesmerized by the unique quality of the light, she let the magic of the lens wash away the sadness thinking of Afghanistan and the fallen soldier had caused. She’d changed position and was lying prone on her stomach, elbows planted in the sand, when the brush on the opposite side of the bank rustled, and accompanied by a massive snapping of twigs, a bison lumbered into view.
Hardly daring to breathe, Isabel kept snapping pictures as the huge beast went to the water. He snorted once at her, probably sensing the scent of an intruder, but then ignored her completely, lowered his black muzzle and drank noisily.
She wondered how she smelled to him. He’d swung his head around until he’d spotted her. She never felt fear, so she didn’t believe that’s what caught his attention. Did she just smell human? She wasn’t wearing perfume, she was lying so still, there was no way he heard her.
What had made him look directly toward her? And why had his eyes seem so ancient and wise? When he backed away from the lake, he shook his head up and down, gave her one more unfathomable look, and then turned and loped away with an agility she’d never have believed of such a huge, amazing beast.
A thrill went through Isabel. She clicked back to glance through the pictures she’d captured of him. The bison had stepped directly into the shaft of light. Morning dew speckled the big bull’s coat so that through Isabel’s lens he appeared to be swathed in diamonds and mist. And he’d nodded at her. As if he were approving the photo shoot. And as he turned and left, her first thought was that every single human male in existence would give anything for that package he was carrying.
Isabel sat up and laughed aloud with delight, relieved beyond measure that the beauty and peace of this ancient land had begun to do exactly what she’d hoped when she’d discussed this book idea with her agent—it had begun to sooth her soul and help reground her creativity in something more bearable than death and destruction.
Impulsively Isabel kicked off her hiking boots and pulled off her socks. She rolled up her jeans and, still holding her camera, stepped carefully into the crystalline water. Isabel sucked air and gasped at the initial chill, but after a few slow steps, her feet got used to the temperature of the stream, and she made her way to the shaft of sunlight that had so recently framed the bison. When she got to the light, Isabel turned her face up, bathing in the morning’s radiance while the cool water washed over her feet and ankles.
There was something about this place that touched her. Maybe it was just the drastic contrast between the calm freedom of the prairie—green, lush and clean—and the war-ravaged Middle East, where everything her eyes had focused on had been dry and burned and in a nightmare of conflict. She breathed deeply—inhaling and exhaling, imagining with every breath she was getting rid of all the negatives within herself and letting the water wash away the remnants of death and war that had clung to her for the past month. Without pausing to wonder why or second-guess whether she was making a fool of herself, Isabel spoke her inner most thoughts aloud to the listening stream and the shaft of light.
“This is just what I need. A new perspective, a new vision. To cleanse myself. That bull was telling me something. He was telling me to go for it. I just wish I knew what ‘it’ was. Tell me, Lady of the Lake,” she said, grinning. “Mrs. Tiger taught us all about you in eighth grade. What is my destiny?”
Isabel knew it was just her imagination, but it seemed the silver light intensified in response to her words, and she could swear she felt a thrill of
VIVIANE couldn’t stay away from her oracle. She knew it was too soon for the tendrils of her magic to have found anyone, but she was filled with frustrated energy. So while her naiads milled nervously around her, the goddess sat in front of her oracle, a crystal basin filled with hundreds of pearls, and fretted.
When a pearl began to glow, she practically pounced on it. Plucking it from the others in the dark, silent batch, she held it up and gazed into its milky depths. The vision cleared to show an old woman sitting beside a large lake, spitting what looked like sunflower seeds into the surf.
“Younger!” Viviane said in disgust, severing the thread and sending it away from the crone. She tossed the pearl back into the basin and began to pace.
The next pearl that lit up showed a child playing beside the ocean. Viviane almost screamed in exasperation. “Not that young!” she admonished her oracle.
The next two visions were utterly unsuitable. Neither were too young or too old, they were just too ordinary. At the end of her already thinly stretched patience, Viviane plucked one long silver strand of silk from the thick fall of hair that hung veil-like around her body. Holding it over the pearl-filled basin, she twirled it in a deceptively lazy circle.
The goddess released the strand of her hair, and as the gossamer length floated down into the pearl pool, she completed the spell:
There was a flash of silver and the strand of the goddess’s hair exploded, raining sparks of liquid light, which dissolved into the pearls. Invigorated anew, silver threads rushed out from the realm of the goddess and, following seaways and lakes, rivers and streams, they searched through time and realities until one small, glowing thread shot down a tiny waterway in a faraway place called Oklahoma, in the distant, modern mortal world where, in a flash of morning light, it captured the sound of a woman’s joyous laughter as she recommitted herself to the bright possibilities in life.
Viviane heard the enticing sound and plucked the glowing pearl. Holding her breath, the goddess peered within the milky depth that cleared to reveal a full-bodied blonde, oddly attired, who was dancing within a cascade of a splashing stream. Viviane’s heartbeat increased with excitement.
“Show me her face!” the goddess commanded.
Her oracle tightened on the woman’s face. Well, she was certainly attractive. Viviane squinted and focused on her. Not young, but not too old, or at least she didn’t appear to be. And there was a definite benefit to a little age and experience. The woman laughed again, and Viviane unexpectedly found her own lips tilting up in response. The sound was musical and it changed the woman from attractive to alluring.
“Yes,” Viviane murmured. “I believe she will do quite nicely.” The goddess lifted her arms, causing power to swirl around her.
