Circle of Nine: Circle of Nine Trilogy 1 Read Online Free PDF Page B

fingers into tiny, flickering, ochre flames. Kundalini energy surging. Sacred serpent gift bringer!
    With gifts of power and knowledge came realisation of the truth that I had always suspected — that I was a mere pawn in the game that you and Mary played.
    Both of you offered friendship but you misled me, lied to me. I have thought about our time together in Eronth for months and I have decided upon the only logical course of action for myself. I do not wish to cross again! I no longer desire to be the acclaimed Bluite, straddler of worlds. I am convinced that being the Crossa will lead only to madness . . . or worse.
    I have realised what you both greedily seek from me. I refuse to give it!
    Throughout the last year in my mountain retreat I have painted you both constantly. Am I attempting to exorcise you? Or perhaps manifest you? At times I no longer know. I have achieved the moderate success with my book that you predicted, but at what cost to my soul?
    The question that haunts me (and that I know you will both refuse to answer) is this: when I bring the Azephim, the Solumbi, even yourself into paint and words, am I merely assisting you to cross?
    Was it never about me crossing and always to do with you crossing? I’m too old and tired, too afraid to ponder the answers, although there have been signs. Both of you believed, or said you believed, that I would return and join you in your battle against the Azephim. You fed my bloated ego with half-truths, half-lies. You willingly nourished my fantasy of being the one to recharge the Eom. You both told me how you longed for me to be the Chosen One. But after I viewed the Glomx texts certain truths have become obvious to me. I suspect you were always aware of this knowledge. I do not fit the Glomx riddle, being neither Mother, Maid nor Crone! But my mind is filled with the sting of the knowledge of who is the awakener.
    No, I will not travel to Eronth again. My mind is too filled with suspicion, my body too weary. The crossings have aged me. I am a young woman old before her time. My punishment, no doubt, for opening cracks between the worlds. Even here, back on Earth, I feel the Azephim have followed me.
    I am an artist and a Bluite, but I want to live as an artist and a mortal. I want to plant seeds in the earth without fearing Persephone’s hands pulling me toward her. I want to sit under an indifferent sun and live life in a sacred, meaningless way. I want to feel part of my race once more when I walk among men. I want to be able to look into a mirror without fearing the face that may or may not be there.
    I want to be free from the burden of having a foot in two worlds and a firm connection with neither. For when I wander through these mountains, my friend, I can feel the Earth’s sun on my face, I can hear the kookaburras and rosellas, but what I truly sense and smell is not the Australian bush but the scent of Solumbi. They are coming.
    There are days I fear for my own sanity.
    May the Dreamers protect me — I fear I have brought them here . . .
    *
    It wasn’t just the journal. When I had first read it, I had begun to harbour doubts about Johanna’s mental balance. Perhaps Jade’s caustic comments about her sister over the years had been right. But when I started to observe the mural that she had painted on the lounge room wall, it was my own sanity that I began to doubt.
    It appeared to be changing.
    Originally I had taken the work to be a landscape of English meadows, although Johanna, of course, couldn’t resist adding fantastical touches such as three silver moons and small zebra-like animals. There was a blurred figure in one corner, but no details were clear, as it had been rubbed out, as though the artist had changed her mind half-way.
    Although it was not completed, it was a whimsical piece of work, something in the visionary style of Remedios Varo. I had played with the idea of gessoing it out, but couldn’t bear the thought that I would be