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

carved not only on the downward face of the rooftree, but all the way around, even where they were hidden by the thatch, for they were meant for other than human eyes.
    The family’s bedshelves, constructed of tamped and hardened clay, extended down both sides of the lodge, providing sleeping space for more than a dozen people. The shelves were covered with piles of furs and served as seats during the day. Beside them were wooden chests, carved and painted by the craftsmen of the tribe, designed to hold clothing and household articles. Tools, weapons, and the two-horned staff of chiefdom that Toutorix used for refereeing games took up space in the corners. As in all lodges, a firepit occupied the center of the room, with cooking utensils on its stone hearth and a bronze cauldron suspended by iron chains above it.
    In a choice location close to the fire stood Rigantona’s wooden loom, towering up into the shadows. Weights hung from each of the vertical warp threads, and the frame was painted with ocher to show the honor in which the premier activity of the household was held. Rigantona herself sat behind the loom, her strong arms moving as energetically as if she had enjoyed a night’s sleep. She did not look up as her daughter got off the bed, but she spoke to her.
    “Now that you’re a woman, Epona, you can take my turn in the bakehouse today. I want to get my weaving finished before the traders start coming; it would never do for them to see my family in the same clothes we were wearing last sunseason.”
    At the far end of the room Brydda, the young wife of Okelos, was sitting on her bedshelf, playing with her new baby by swinging a string of blue beads in the air above it and laughing when the infant gurgled and cooed. The action distracted Rigantona from her daughter. “Where did you get those beads, Brydda?” she demanded to know.
    The girl hesitated. “Okelos gave them to me.”
    Rigantona pushed herself away from the loom and stood up. “They look like mine,” she said.
    Brydda shifted on her seatbones. “Okelos gave them to me,” she repeated. “I give you my word.” She met Rigantona’s eyes with her own.
    Rigantona stopped her advance on the young woman. No one of the people would question the sworn word of another; as everyone knew, words had more magic than weapons. “Very well,” she said, with obvious disappointment. She sighed and turned back to her loom.
    During the exchange between the two women. Epona sat on her heels beside her bedshelf and opened her clothing chest. When she raised the lid she stared in astonishment. The brief, coarsely woven tunics of childhood were gone, and in their place, carefully folded, were ankle-length robes she had never seen before. Even in the shadows of the lodge they glowed with bright colors. New clothes. Women’s clothes, of dyed wool and linen instead of the plain undyed fabrics used for children. Rigantona must have put them there while her daughter was in the priest’s lodge.
    Epona lifted out a soft red gown and held it up, recalling when that lot of wool had been dyed. “I like a warmer red than this,” Rigantona had remarked, rejecting the material for her own wardrobe. Now Epona gladly slipped the gown over her head and buckled her leather girdle around her waist. Beside her bedshelf were shoes of chewed leather, shoes that remembered the shape of her feet. Shoes she had worn the day before, when she was a child. Would they still know her feet, now those toes belonged to a woman? She slipped into them and smiled to herself; they were the same friends they had always been. Good. She bound them snugly around her ankles with leather thongs so the mud left by melting snow would not suck them off.
    Epona possessed only the jewelry appropriate for children, bracelets and anklets of bronze and wood, but she found a new circlet of beautifully engraved copper waiting in the chest, beneath the colored wool. She glanced toward Rigantona, but her mother was