The Horse Goddess (Celtic World of Morgan Llywelyn)

by Llywelyn, Morgan

  “You went to the Vindelici with plenty of gifts,” she reminded her son. “You should have brought back one of the women from the lodge of Mobiorix.”

  Okelos thrust out his lower lip. “I told you before, I did the best I could.”

  “I hope you do better next time,” Rigantona said with a sniff.

  Thinking of next time—and his cold bedshelf—Okelos approached Toutorix. “I should go for a new wife before first frost,” he said, “or I’ll have to wait all through snowseason.”

  Toutorix lay on his bed with his arms folded across his chest. He stared up at the carved rooftree. “We can’t spare you now,” he replied. “Traders are coming constantly, every man is needed in the mines—though you do little enough. But even your small contribution would make a difference.”

  “But that means I won’t have a wife for a whole year, until the next feast of the great fire!” Okelos protested. “What am I to do?”

  “There are plenty of women in the village who smile at you or put their hands on you,” Toutorix remarked. “Share bedsports with them.”

  “They are other men’s wives. I want my own; I want to possess the woman I sleep with.”

  “A wife isn’t a possession,” Toutorix reminded him. With a weary sigh, he sat up. His hair was matted and his face was ashen in the light of the lodgefire. “A wife is a free woman of the people, belonging only to herself. Only her children are yours until they marry. Why do you think you have to own everything?”

  Okelos would not answer. He turned away from the lord of the tribe and went to his stacked weapons, his sword and his spear, his little collection of knives. He squatted beside them, for a warrior must always sit so he could rise quickly—only women sat crosslegged. He ran his thumb along the edge of the sword, testing it, and there was a faraway look in his eyes. “This place is too small for me,” he said to no one in particular.

  Rigantona went to him. “Be patient,” she advised. “If you will only make an effort, you may be chief some day.”

  “Can you promise me that? What about Taranis? What about the council?” A sly look crept into his face. “If I were chief, things would be different. Better. For you, too; I would see to it. Sirona would get no more ornaments to flaunt in your face.

  “You could help me, Mother. You could go to the chief priest and ask him to use his influence …”

  “No,” Rigantona said sharply.

  “Why not? He might do it for you. His eyes still follow you; I’ve watched.”

  “I don’t want to ask Kernunnos for anything,” Rigantona said firmly.

  “Not even for me?” Okelos presented his most charming face to his mother, stroking her arm, winding her hair around his fingers. A sweet, calculating smile shone through his sandy beard. “As lord of the tribe, I would be very generous to you.”

  On his bedshelf, Toutorix began to snore.

  Epona was not paying much attention to the rest of her family. Alator, Banba, and the younger children, overexcited by the events of the day, soon fell asleep, and the bickering of the adults made Epona uncomfortable. Only Brydda had never argued. She had shrugged off the bad moods of the others and taken nothing very seriously.

  Yet this was a serious world, and she had misjudged it. Poor Brydda …

  Had she found her way into the nextlife by now? Had her spirit gotten over its dying and made a comfortable transition? Was Brydda happy in the otherworld?

  Epona longed to know. It was painful to think of Brydda as being unhappy, or lost, or grieving for the world she had left behind.

  The spirit within was speaking, making a suggestion.

  Epona went to her bedshelf and stretched out with her head to the north, the direction the druii believed was most sensitive to the otherworlds. She closed her eyes and pictured Brydda’s face.

  Traveling into and out of the otherworlds was an ability the druii alone claimed. They knew the way; they knew how to lower the barriers between. Epona had always taken it for granted that only the priesthood could do this, but now she had a new thought: If the druii can do it, then it can be done. It is not impossible. Maybe I can do it, just for a heartbeat, just long enough to see Brydda and assure myself she is all right.

  It might be dangerous; strange tales were whispered of the otherworlds, and the druii were known to take elaborate precautions before venturing into them. But Epona did not think any area where gentle laughing Brydda was could be dangerous. And she would only try to gain entry for a moment, just to see …

  She waited on her bedshelf, concentrating on her nearsister’s face. For a while nothing happened. She strained, reaching, and then began the first soft sensation of blur and slide. She submitted to it willingly. The walls of the lodge seemed to recede. Concentrate. Reach out.

  In the distance she heard a beating like the priest drum and it was as if that sound were in some way connected to the heart thudding in her chest, the two merging into one as she moved … floated … drifted … spun …

  Down and through darkness. The stomach queasy; a sense of separation that violated the integrity of one’s being.

  Gray mist swirling. Light. Light far off, the gray mist close. Shadows moving in the mist. Her body on its bedshelf began to shake but she did not know it. She was already somewhere else, but not in the nebulous, fleeting dreamworld she had romped through in childhood. This was a different place and had a reality unlike any other.

  One of the shadowy forms drew closer to her and she tried to speak to it, but it was not her voice she used. Words came out of her head in thoughts and were answered in kind. The shape hovering near her was not Brydda, did not know Brydda, she must seek elsewhere. It reached out imploringly to her, wanting something indefinable from her, and she shrank away, frightened by the implicit hunger in its demands. She fled from it toward that lovely glimpsed light. There was warmth and brilliance; there was surely Brydda, who had gone to the spirit of the fire.

  Moving was different here; not walking. It was a matter of will, and she was aware in some subtle way of a kind of attachment trailing behind her like a weightless rope, linking her with herself on the bed in the lodge. She knew from the spirit within that the linkage must not be broken if she ever hoped to return; that was one of the laws of this place.

  She moved and sought. She felt without seeing; she saw without understanding. She became aware of something very familiar, close by; an infectious laughter, merry and childlike.

  “Brydda?” She tried to move closer and found she was passing through apparently solid objects as if they were water. And then she was under the stars—stars not arranged in any pattern she knew. Brydda was there; with but not part of that lovely, luring light … she wanted to touch Brydda, to offer at least a hug in parting, but the knowledge came into her that such communication was not needed here. It had already taken place … in another season … except there were no seasons … no now, no then, only directions, and one could go forward or back … or stay, or become lost among those strange stars …

  It would be so easy to surrender to the tempting bodiless freedom, but something hard and stubborn within Epona resisted. Brydda was all right … was content … was continuing, and that was all she had wanted to know. Epona was not ready to know more. She wanted to be home, on her solid bedshelf, housed in her familiar skin …

  She shuddered violently, feeling as if she had fallen through the bed, her stomach swooping sickeningly. Her eyes flew open and saw the glow of the lodgefire on the log walls. She heard Rigantona raising the bronze cauldron, the iron chain creaking.

  Reassured, she closed her eyes again and sank into dreamless sleep.

  Okelos was still in a dark mood in the morning. He made no effort to go to the mine. Instead he prowled about the lodge, snatching food from the pot and drinking wheat-beer and honey even before the sun cleared the mountains. He was plainly miserable but would talk to no one. His younger brothers and sisters fled the lodge.

  Epona felt sorry for him. He had cared
very much for Brydda, and he seemed to be suffering now. She remembered times when he had played with her, or done things for her; she thought of how proud she had often been of him after kamanaht.

  When Okelos growled inaudibly in response to some harmless remark of hers, Rigantona lost her temper with him. She was in a bad mood herself. Without Brydda she must stay close to the lodge and tend the fire and the smaller children, while beyond the door was a radiant mountain morning, with air as sweet as wine in the blood. Brydda should have been sacrificed by the Marcomanni, not the Kelti. She should have been hung in the trees to die slowly and suffer long. She deserved it.

  “Why don’t you get out of my way?” Rigantona asked her son angrily. “How can I do anything around here with a grown man lolling about? Toutorix, get him out of here; I’m sick of his face this morning.”

  Toutorix, who was taking an uncommonly long time about washing and dressing himself, further disrupting household routine, cast a stem look at his oldest son. “Go to the salt mine,” he said peremptorily. It was an order, not a request. With Brydda’s death, everything had changed. Okelos had lost status. He was no longer a married man but a dependent on his mother’s cooking once more. If he angered Toutorix he could be sent out of the lodge to live in a hut with no wifefire, without any luxury other than that he earned himself, and the lodge of Toutorix would eventually belong to Alator instead.

  Okelos pulled on his mining clothes and left the lodge, but he did not go far. He stopped outside, staring across the common-ground at the blackened spot where the pyre had been. Epona, coming outside, saw him there and was pained by the misery in his eyes.

  She wanted to give him something.

  She came close to his side and said, in a low voice, “Brydda’s all right, Okelos. She’s happy again, and laughing.”

  He glanced down, startled. “What are you talking about?”

  “Brydda. I saw her lastnight. I went into the otherworlds and … and she was there. I was with her.”

  “You couldn’t have done that!”

  Epona’s spine stiffened and a hard line showed through the soft flesh of her jaw. “I did. I give you my word.” Otherwise, how was he to believe her and be comforted?

  Okelos caught her upper arm in his knife hand and squeezed. “You really saw her? You can go into the otherworlds?”

  The immensity of her claim was beginning to dawn on her. She was reluctant to say more, but his grip was demanding. “Yes,” she told him, lowering her eyes. “At least, I could lastnight. I don’t know if I will ever be able to do it again, and I have no reason to try. It was not … pleasant.”

  Okelos’ voice vibrated with excitement. “You must be drui and we never knew!”

  She pulled back. “But I’m not. The abilities of the druii make themselves known in childhood …”

  “You’re late, that’s all. But you have the gift, Epona! Think what you can do with that!”

  “I don’t want to do anything with it,” she told him. “I want to forget about it; I certainly don’t want to live my life in the priesthood. I have other plans.”

  “You are little more than a child, you don’t know what’s best for you. How can you have plans already?”

  She lifted her chin. “I know exactly what’s best for me. I want to stay right here in the Blue Mountains all my life.”

  “You see! As a drui you can do that; you will not be sent off as a wife, you will be too precious to the tribe.

  “Gutuiters don’t marry at all, so there will be no infants in their wombs to distract them from the voices of the spirits. You will stay right here, and help us, and …”

  She glared at him. “I’m sorry I ever told you anything. You don’t understand. I have no intention of giving up marriage to stay in a lodge with other women. I have plans I can’t talk about with you, and I beg you not to tell anyone else about the otherworlds. Forget I ever said it. It was a mistake, a dream, nothing more.”

  Okelos narrowed his eyes. “Ah, no, sister. You gave your word.”

  Okelos went on to the salt mine, but he returned early. He watched for an opportunity to speak to Rigantona when the lodge was temporarily empty of any who might overhear. Then he went to her with a present.

  “This is fine enough only for Rigantona,” he said, holding it out for her to admire.

  The woman’s face lit with pleasure. She seized the object and turned it over and over in her hands. It was a perfect model, in miniature, of the chieftain’s cart in which she had first seen Toutorix, tall and proud in all his finery. Even the wheels turned, and little leather traces waited for impossibly small ponies.

  “Who made this beautiful thing?”

  “Goibban.”

  “This is no child’s toy; it is a jewel made of bronze.”

  “And silver, see the designs on the sides? And the axles and wheels are iron.”

  “Magnificent,” she breathed. “But … why are you giving this to me? You must have paid the smith a high price for it. What do you want in return?”

  “What makes you think I want something in return?”

  Rigantona was sitting at her loom, a plaid of coppery red and bright green wool before her. Now she set the bronze cart down on her lap—carefully—and leaned back, bracing her arms on her bedshelf. She surveyed Okelos with amusement. “I carried you in my body,” she reminded him. “My blood knows your blood. You would never make such a sacrifice unless you expected to gain a great advantage.”

  Okelos was not embarrassed; he was flattered his mother recognized what he thought of as shrewdness. He would be a splendid trade-arranger, better even than Toutorix.

  “There is a trade involved,” he admitted. “Something for everyone. I give you this, and you influence Kernunnos to support me as lord of the tribe when the time comes.”

  “I said I would not go to the shapechanger, even for you.”

  “You don’t have to. You will send Epona.”

  Rigantona stared at him. “Epona?”

  Okelos nodded. “She is drui. She is still unmarried; you can give her to the priesthood.”

  “She’s not drui, she’s just an ordinary girl. The priest would have no use for her; he must confine his lifemaking to married women of the tribe.”

  Okelos’ voice was urgent. “I tell you, she is drui. She can travel into the otherworlds; she did it after Brydda’s sacrifice. She told me about it and gave me her word it was true.”

  Rigantona was dazzled. Her own daughter. Could it be possible …? She quickly recognized the possibilities, the prestige and benefits that would accrue to her as the mother of a drui.

  Watching her eyes, Okelos smiled. “If you offer Epona to Kernunnos, he will have to give you a gift in kind. You can then ask him to support me as new lord of the tribe. Toutorix grows old; surely you see that.”

  Rigantona was running her fingers over the little bronze cart again. “The priest would give anything I asked in return for a new drui,” she said, bemused. “They are found so rarely. Anything I ask …”

  “Yes!” urged Okelos.

  Meanwhile, Epona was wandering through her day distracted. She regretted having mentioned the otherworlds to Okelos, but it was too late now. And nothing could be changed. She performed her chores without really being aware of them. The swirling mists of the otherworld she had seen were always in her mind, part of its landscape now, drawing and seducing her, frightening her with glimpses of things she was not prepared to encounter. It was too much; she was overcome by the experience and desperate to shake off its effects. Never again, she promised herself. Never again!

  She had spent most of the day with Sirona and some of the younger women, caring for the livestock in the animal pens. Four young bull calves had been castrated to supply new oxen for Kwelon’s wagons, and Nematona was on hand to spread their wounds with a healing paste and attend to the details of the sacrifice of the amputated testicles.

  The women, sweating and straining, had caught and thrown the little bulls and
held them down for the operation, cheering one another on with bawdy comparisons between the size of the severed testicles and the equipment of their own men.

  Epona’s injured arm kept her from the more physical efforts, and she had to be content with sitting beside each animal in turn, stroking it and keeping it calm while Nematona’s skillful hands repaired the insulted flesh.

  Rigantona found her there and beckoned to her. Sirona noticed her marriage-sister and could not resist a jibe: “Come and help us, Rigantona who was once so strong. Let’s see if you can hold this squirming beast—or has the snow in your hair quenched the fire in your bosom?”

  Rigantona scowled at her rival. Sirona was younger, more agile, and from the shape of her body she was quickening with new life. Taranis was virile; Sirona went to no other men. She had already bragged openly to other women that Taranis would someday be lord of the tribe.

  Without deigning to reply to Sirona, Rigantona led her daughter away from the animal pens. She looked closely at the girl’s arm. It seemed to her to be taking a long time to heal; she had every reason to believe it would be crooked, ugly. Such things happened. Then what man would offer gifts for Epona? The girl might remain on their hands always, unmarried, unwanted, eating good food, allotted a share of everything the family earned …

  “I have been thinking about your future,” Rigantona began. “And just this day I was told by your brother that you have the drui gift. I think that is a wonderful solution for our problem. I will offer you to the chief priest to be initiated; what do you think of that?”

  Epona stared unbelievingly at her mother. “But I don’t want to!”

  “Of course you do, what a foolish thing to say. It’s a very great honor, Epona; surely you realize that?”

  “I don’t want that kind of honor. I want the respect a married woman is entitled to receive from the tribe; I want the honor of bearing children, of creating a house for another spirit.”

  “You’re too young to make such choices for yourself. Not long ago you were rebelling against the pattern, which proves you are still too new to thislife to make your own decisions. Someday you will thank me for sending you to the magic house.”