(Part 1, Chapter 21 of The Lamia)

Above is the original Kindle cover.

The book can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/Lamia-Book-Ten-Parts

This night her dreams have a different quality. She is not so much in them as outside them, witnessing all at once the long ages of her Lamia lineage, as if viewing as a whole all her memories of past existences, melding them into a complete picture of who she was, and is. In the strange timeless duality of this dream recall, she is aware as both the ancient Lamia and as her present self.

She is aware as the earliest lamia, a primitive midwife, whose deep sensitivity to the spiritual aspects of the natural world has led her to adopt this role, aiding in the transition of reborn spirits into the physical realm. As this sensitivity is further enhanced by practice, other members of the tribe, awed by her abilities, treat her with special respect. Her reputation grows and they turn to her in troubled times for aid in other aspects of the cycle of renewal—the handling of illness and injury, where to look when gathering food, where to hunt, where to find pasture for herds, when to plant crops. Her success in this, and her efforts to explain its patterns, leads to the seasonal practice of invoking the favor of the earth mother, and she is given a central role in that as their shaman. The habit of deferring to her in these things leads them to defer to her in other matters as well, and her role as tribal matriarch and leader develops.

She sees again a much later time in which this apparently exalted position attracts the attention of the false priest, and the tragedy at the shrine of the earth mother ensues, where she becomes the Lamia of legend. Living on, she bears daughters of her own and perpetuates her line. The line breeds true, mothers bearing daughters, all with the dusky skin and chestnut hair of her people. She sees the shaman skills pass from mother to daughter through long generations. She is aware of many lifetimes in which she is at once her own descendant and her own ancestor.

She sees how the legend of the Lamia and her vengeance survives and is embellished, how eventually her people begin to move away from the region as populations grow and the pressures of civilization encroach. The primitive role of the lamia is outgrown, the shrine in the grotto is abandoned, the legend becomes myth, twisted in its retelling by followers of other ways to whom it is foreign and therefore evil.

The Lamia's descendants take lovers and husbands, but bearing only daughters they are often abandoned by men who must have sons. Sometimes sought after for their skills, often reviled as witches, they never stay settled long, again and again moving to other regions.

Through many lives and many trials the line and the shaman way survives. Although at times they take the names of husbands, the secret of the Lamia, and the truth of the legend, is faithfully passed on to those daughters who have the strength to carry it forward. And always, during her own incarnations, the ultimate truth remains within her.

Until, at last, her dream vision fades and narrows, and she is only in Chicago, in her own bed, her snake-form eyes open to the morning light. She slides from the bed and shifts quickly to her human shape.