The Horse Goddess (Celtic World of Morgan Llywelyn) Read Online Free Page A

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suffer the ridicule and punishment meted out to one who lost his shape and could not fasten his belt. Seen casually, he was the same powerful patriarch his family had always known, and Epona was warmed by the sight of him.
    Arrayed in her best linen gown, Rigantona stood beside her husband. She was seasons younger than the chieftain, but as women did not bleach their hair it was possible to see that frost was making inroads in her yellow braids. Yet her shoulders were broad and proudly carried, and the breasts that had suckled many children were still relatively firm. When she raised her arms the muscles rippled in them as they had done when she was a girl, so skilled in the use of sword and spear that no boy her age could stand against her. No longer did she train, stripped, to fight beside her husband if needed, however; by now she was content to enjoy a degree of leisure and wear all the jewelry she possessed wrapped around her neck and stacked on her arms and fingers. The autumn of her life was a pleasant season for Rigantona.
    Epona saluted the chief, then went directly to her mother to show she had returned the brooch. Rigantona examined it thoroughly before looking at her daughter’s face at all.
    “I am told I did well,” Epona remarked, knowing better than to expect warmth or praise from her mother. Rigantona was not like other mothers. “I might have done better if I had known what to expect,” the young woman added.
    “The rituals are mysteries,” Rigantona responded. “Tests, to see how well we face the unknown. Did you cry out?”
    “No.”
    “Good. Toutorix was worried about you, but I told him no daughter of mine would prove a weakling.” She turned away from Epona and lifted the brooch to the firelight so she could admire its design once more.
    Epona started to get a drink of water from the embossed bronze hydra on its tripod by the door, a luxury purchased from the Hellenes and now copied in every household in the village, but Alator was there ahead of her, anxious to fill her cup. His eyes glowed with pleasure at being the first to offer a drink to the new woman in the family. Epona smiled at her
younger brother, remembering how she had hurried in the same way to be the first to do a service for their older brother Okelos, when he returned, pale but swaggering, from his man-making.
    She longed to wash the sticky blood from her thighs and crawl onto her bedshelf, but there were still rituals to be observed, and her dry throat burned with thirst. She said the customary thanks to the spirit of the water and carefully scattered drops in the four directions before draining the cup. Then her family lined up to congratulate her, and there was a small feast.
    She was exhausted, but she would not show it. Stand tall! urged the spirit within. Your new life begins.

Chapter 2
    E pona spent the early morning in fitful slumber, never deep enough to be transported into the dreamworld. Instead she wandered through a shadowed place where the real and the unreal melted together and were wrenched apart by something cruel, with an animal’s face. At last she gave up the effort to sleep altogether and sat up on her bedshelf.
    It was the first day of her life as a woman.
    She ground her fists into her eyes to rub the mist from them. I wonder if I look different now? she thought. Will Goibban like me?
    Before leaving her bedshelf she gazed contentedly at the chief’s lodge in which she lived, appreciating it anew after spending the night in the magic house. Her home was a large rectangular hall, built of snugly fitted birch logs and topped with a steep thatched roof. An opening at either end, just below the ridgepole, allowed light and air. As was appropriate for the chosen leader of his people, the house of Toutorix possessed a carved rooftree, its surface covered with intertwining
patterns of life, with symbols for the more powerful spirits, with mystic signs to reinforce authority and fertility. These were