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I turned the page and showed them the illustration. “Birth of Taliesin. The goddess Ceridwen had a son of incredible ugliness. She felt sorry for him and brewed a potion of wisdom in a huge cauldron to make him wise. A servant boy stirred the potion and accidentally tasted it, stealing the gift of wisdom.
Ceridwen chased him. He turned into a grain of wheat to hide but Ceridwen turned into a chicken, swallowed him, and gave birth to Taliesin, the greatest poet, bard, and druid of his time.”
Andrea frowned. “Yes, I see that the boy was reborn through the cauldron, but so what?”
“The name of the Goddess’s ugly son. Morfran: from the Welshmawr , ‘big,’ andbran , ‘crow.’ The Great Crow.”
“This is the guy?” Raphael asked. “The guy in charge of the Fomorians?”
“Looks that way. And more, he is a crow just like Morrigan. Very similar names plus very uneducated witches equals…”
“Disaster,” Raphael supplied.
The Sisters of the Crow. It was a terrible name for a coven.
Andrea shook her head. “Those idiot Sisters couldn’t actually be that ignorant. Fumbling spells—yes, but screwing up enough to accidentally pray to the wrong deity? Morfran and Morrigan aren’t even of the same gender.”
“Maybe they started out praying to Morrigan, and then fumbled just enough to give Morfran an opening.
Maybe Morfran managed to make a deal with Esmeralda. She wanted knowledge and he offered it to her. Taliesin, Morfran’s half brother, served as a druid for King Arthur after Merlin. It follows that Morfran was probably also a druid. Who else would’ve taught Esmeralda druidic rites?”
Andrea leaned forward. “Okay but to what purpose? Why go through all that trouble?”
“I don’t know. If you were a god, what would you want?”
I refilled Aunt B’s teacup and then my own.
“Life,” Raphael said.
“I’m sorry?”
“I would want life. All they do is look down on us from wherever they exist but they never get to take part. Never get to play.”
“It doesn’t work like that,” Andrea said. “Post-Shift theory says a true deity can’t manifest in our world.”
“You see reports of deities all the time,” Raphael said. He was kneading her shoulders again.
She shook her head. “Those aren’t actual true deities. They’re conjurer’s constructs, wicker men for their imagination. Basically magic molded into a certain shape. They have no sense of self.”