The Horse Goddess (Celtic World of Morgan Llywelyn) (42 page)

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Authors: Morgan Llywelyn

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Epona was amused. “Why should you care if Epona is not beautiful? The uglier Epona is, the better for the other women, is it so?”
Ro-An hid her face. “Ro-An cares,” she admitted, very low. “Is such white skin, so soft, so nice. You should take good care of it. Ro-An would be sad to see you get ugly.” It was the closest admission the other woman could ever make to friendship.
Epona’s days were spent beneath open sky, but her nights were not. Rather than effect the more permanent arrangement of setting the tents up on the earth, Kazhak had ordered that all women live within their wagons, while he and the men stood guard nearby, or took turns watching over the herd. Kazhak kept one eye on Epona and one eye on Dasadas; he usually slept beside the front wheel of the Kelti woman’s wagon. But he did not try to enter; Epona was adamant about refusing him admittance. When he slept by her wagon, and her fire, he slept deep and without dreams; when he slept with the herd he sometimes saw the huge wolf in his dreams, and once it came so close to him he got a clear look at the terrible mutilation on the side of its head, where the ear had been torn away by the knife Basl brought with him from the village of the Kelti. Massive scar tissue had pulled the wolf’s face into a permanent grimace.
The wolf prowled, but it did not attack. It seemed to be watching and waiting, just like the men. It seemed to grow more gaunt as time passed. Kazhak wondered how it fed.
To avoid spending all her evenings alone, Epona sometimes went to one of the other wagons, either one belonging to Kazhak or Aksinya. Epona and the two wives of Dasadas did not care for each other’s company. Dasadas’ senior wife, Onyot, an angular woman given to angular gestures, had occasionally thrown her slops from the wagon just as Epona was passing by.
It was safe to approach another woman’s wagon so long as her man’s saddle was not placed in front of the entrance. The first time Epona had seen Kazhak’s saddle in front of a wagon other than her own she had felt a sharp pain in her chest, surprising her, but it was not a pain she encountered often. Kazhak’s loneliness did not drive him to the wagons of the other women; it drove him instead to the back of the
gray stallion, to sit silent for long stretches of time, gazing toward the horizon.
Women’s talk, at night, in the wagons, bored Epona, it was so limited in experience or understanding. But it was easier to endure than being alone in her own wagon, looking through the flap at Kazhak’s lonely, proud figure in the distance, knowing she would not signal to him, thinking she could never forgive him.
Bit by bit, like patching little scraps of leather together to make a cloak, Epona began introducing topics that interested her into the conversation of the Scythian women. At first she only spoke of medicaments and herbals used by her own people, and then she expanded that subject to include the stains and dyes women of the Kelti used to enhance their beauty. From that point, the talk drifted naturally, easily, to other styles and customs, and soon she found herself teaching an audience that was, if not eager, at least responsive. Some of what she told them they accepted; much of it they questioned, or derided. But at least they listened, and talking about her own people and her Blue Mountains lifted a little of the soreness from Epona’s spirit.
She talked, long into the night, of the multiplicity of spirits with whom her people shared the earth mother, and of the beneficence that could be extracted from these spirits with the proper rituals. She regretted that she could not explain all the rituals in detail, for she noticed Gala and Nedja particularly paying close attention and asking questions. Talia remained aloof, resistant to new thoughts, already crusted with the callus of passing time, and Ro-An would never think beyond the wagons and her hoped-for babies.
But some of the other women might. And they might teach their children, as Epona endeavored to teach
them
. The customs of the earth mother might yet come alive in this strange, ignorant place.
One evening, just as Epona was preparing to leave the wagon of Ari-Ki, Aksinya’s wife, the women heard a commotion
outside. The men were shouting to one another with urgency in their voices, and the quick anger of men faced with a situation they are temporarily unable to handle.
Ignoring formalities, Kazhak thrust his face through the entrance flap of Ari-Ki’s wagon. “Epona? You here? Is good; come with Kazhak. Quick!”
His peremptory command left no room for argument. Murmuring a hasty farewell to Ari-Ki, Epona wrapped her cloak around her body to protect her from the lingering chill of spring evenings, and stepped from the wagon.
All three men were waiting for her. “Is the big bay mare,” Dasadas explained. “Best mare of all horses in my care; has had a healthy foal every year, no trouble.” His words tripped over one another in their eagerness to reach Epona’s ears. “She was bred to gray stallion last year; now she tries to give birth to first horse of this new season. But something is wrong, Epona. Mare has been laboring long time, but colt will not come. She grows very weak now. She may die. It would be very bad omen to lose first foal of year. Kolaxais would never entrust another mare so fine to Dasadas.”
Epona involuntarily looked westward. The rays of the setting sun reached out toward her: imploring hands, made of golden light.
“You will help,” Kazhak said. “Come.”
He led the way to the edge of the herd, where the pregnant mare lay on the earth. The other horses had drawn back to give her space, though the gray stallion paced back and forth where he could keep an eye on her, establishing that this was his place and his mare. A mare due to foal often tried to leave the herd and give birth in some hidden spot, but the herders had been careful to avoid having that happen with this mare, whose deliverance of the first healthy, living foal of the season was considered a very necessary example for the other pregnant mares.
The mare made no effort to resist as they knelt beside her and examined her. It was evident from her sunken eyes and heaving flanks that she had been in labor a long time, and now her strength was gone but the foal was still unborn.
The men looked at Epona expectantly. She put her arms around the mare’s neck and waited to feel something, but nothing happened. Nothing at all. In constant pain, the mare sweated within the woman’s embrace but got no closer to giving birth. Epona closed her eyes and concentrated, reaching out, and still nothing happened.
The mare groaned softly. Dasadas swore under his breath.
Epona looked up at Kazhak. “I don’t know what to do to help her,” she said.
“Help her like you helped Thracian mare.”
“That was different. I can’t explain how, but I can feel; it is very different now. What I did then will not work for this horse. I cannot draw the foal out of her body with my body, or my magic.”
Her own eyes were filled with pain at having to say those words. In addition to feeling the mare’s suffering, she was suffering from her inability to help. It wrung her heart to crouch there in the twilight, feeling two lives slip away.
She tried again, with all the strength she possessed, her lips shaping the prayers, her whole spirit reaching out with desperate urgency.
The mare grunted and found a little additional strength, somewhere.
“Aksinya, put cloths over her to keep her warm,” Epona ordered, and Aksinya hurried to do her bidding. Meanwhile, Kazhak and Dasadas squatted on their heels behind the mare, holding her tail out of the way and trying to reach the foal.
“Is turned around,” Kazhak said at last. “Is very bad; rump is large; is stuck. Horses should not be born this way. It tears the mares; foals often come dead. If we cannot get it free …” He grunted and struggled, trying to insert an arm beside the breech-positioned foal in order to turn it. The mare heaved again.
Fight
, Epona told her in silence.
Fight for life. I will help you.
We will help you
, said the spirit within.
Time passed. Aksinya brought torches for light, and still the mare clung to life as the foal remained jammed in the
birth canal. Both Kazhak and Dasadas were bloody to their elbows, but neither would give up.
“Foal must be dead by now,” Dasadas said, but Kazhak merely changed his own position anti made another effort, biting his lip as he did so. Suddenly he sat up. “Epona! Your arm is smaller than any man’s. You are strong. Come here.”
She joined him quickly, and he explained what she must do; how she must reach inside the mare and feel for a little hind leg; how to position and guide the body of the unborn horse so that it could move down the birth canal and be delivered at last.
She had never done it, but Kazhak’s strong voice told her he believed she could. He patiently instructed her and she did as he said, groping in darkness, reaching for life.
Dasadas could take no more. He stood up and walked away, his back turned to them, his head sunk low between his shoulders. If his best mare died, as well as the first foal of the year, it would be a sign to all that he and his herd were cursed. The silver wolf, perhaps. Demons. Kazhak would surely drive him away before the contagion could spread to the other pregnant mares.
Epona felt a tiny ankle within her grasp and uttered an exclamation of relief. Kazhak was leaning against her shoulder now, helping her brace herself, talking her through every step as she worked with the unborn horse, shifting it by imperceptible degrees inside its mother. And then both hind legs were free, and extended; a controlled pull and the mare’s long labor would be over. If the mare could survive any more.
Kazhak locked his arms around Epona’s waist and they pulled together. The mare moaned, and then the foal, wrapped like a present in its glistening sac, slipped into the world as if being born were the easiest of accomplishments.
Epona quickly tore the membrane from around the little creature’s muzzle. Whispering a prayer to the spirits of the air, she began forcing her own living breath into the small, unresponsive nostrils. Meanwhile, Kazhak went to the mare’s head to ascertain her condition. She was alive, though very weak. He turned back to Epona.
“How is foal?”
Hearing Kazhak’s words, Dasadas spun around. “Foal is bom?” he asked, hardly daring to hope.
Epona did not have time or breath to answer him. All her energies were going into the small wet creature lying half in her lap. She breathed into its nostrils, she pressed its fragile ribs, trying to feel the beat of a living heart; she prayed for it as she would have prayed for her own infant.
And then it drew a long, quavering breath, and she felt the hot tears of joy running down her own face. “It is alive,” she sobbed, looking at Kazhak.
Light came into the Scythian’s face. “Alive,” he repeated softly. In a moment he was kneeling beside her, helping her finish cleaning the birth sac from the foal—a lovely filly foal—and rub it dry.
Dasadas crowded close to see the newest member of his allotted herd, but they were oblivious to him. Epona and Kazhak looked first at the newborn horse, then at each other, then at the foal again.
Dasadas, feeling shut out, went to his mare, and was at least comforted to see that she, too, was alive, and gradually regaining some strength. As he watched, she raised her head and turned her neck so she could see her newborn. Her nostrils shaped a tender nicker.
“Mare will live,” Dasadas said, overjoyed. “And colt, too?”
“Filly,” Epona corrected him. “Yes, she will live.”
“Was your magic,” Dasadas said with certainty. “Very strong; too strong even for the silver wolf. That demon put a bad curse on horse, but you have saved. Epona has saved the horses of Dasadas!” His face was radiant with excitement, but Epona was embarrassed. She had performed no magic; she had not felt the power singing through her. She and Kazhak together, fighting, refusing to give up, had physically delivered the foal and kept the spark alive in it and its mother.
Yet Dasadas would never believe that. His belief in Epona’s abilities was stronger than ever; it filled his eyes with a fanatic light. The light made Epona uncomfortable and suddenly
she longed to be inside her wagon, hidden away behind the felt and leather.
Dasadas and Aksinya would stay with the mare for the rest of the night, and if the foal did not strengthen quickly they would bring it goats’ milk and honey and perform those tasks they had performed before, as servitors to the horse. But Epona was satisfied that all would go well, now; the atmosphere around mare and foal was benign.
She trudged back toward her wagon, so deep in thought she did not hear footsteps behind her until Kazhak’s voice said, right at her shoulder, “Kazhak does not want to sleep alone tonight. Is man with bloody hands welcome in wagon of Epona?”
She turned and looked at him. The stars were bright overhead and there was a sliver of a moon providing enough light to reveal his features. Not savage features, but kind, with eyes she knew. The Scythian, who had always subscribed to the philosophy of take and go, would not force himself on her. He was asking as one free person asks another.
She stood still, not knowing how to answer. And then the words came to her lips unbidden, as if the spirit within had said them of its own accord.

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