The Horse Goddess (Celtic World of Morgan Llywelyn) (9 page)

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Authors: Morgan Llywelyn

BOOK: The Horse Goddess (Celtic World of Morgan Llywelyn)
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When she saw the wicker basket she closed her eyes and swayed on her feet.
They put her in the cage and lashed it closed. The head of each family of the Kelti came forward in turn, to lay one piece of wood at the base of the wicker as that family’s offering to the fire spirit.
Brydda crouched in the cage, though it had been built high enough to allow her to stand proudly upright. Her arms were wrapped protectively around her body.
Kernunnos began playing the priest drum. One single beat, repeated again and again in a gradually increasing tempo.
Tena bent over and laid her hands on the wood, open palms downward. She moved slowly around the cage, touching every log or branch she could reach. Then she stepped back and waited, eyes closed, arms outstretched, calling on the spirit of the fire.
Tiny red eyes began to wink deep within the pyre. A spiral of smoke twisted upward. Something crackled, like ice breaking up at the edge of the lake, but no flames showed yet.
Brydda moaned.
The
druii,
chanting, commanded her to speak to the spirits in the otherworlds on behalf of all the tribe, to beg forgiveness and ask that no harm come to the Kelti, no fire consume their lodges, no fever burn their flesh. The people joined in the chant, leaning toward the fire and the cage in its center, willing the woman to be strong for her journey.
The fire came alive and leaped upward. It twined like ivy around the wicker bars, outlining them in red and gold. Brydda drew back with a gasp but there was no place to go beyond their reach, not in thisworld. The
gutuiters
had instructed her to swallow the smoke, that she might be freed more quickly, but she was now too panicked to remember. She threw herself back and forth in the cage, thrusting out her white arms, the heat crisping the gold hairs on them.
“Okelos, where are you? Help me; I’m afraid!”
Okelos turned his head away. He met the eyes of the lord of the tribe; commanding eyes. He made himself turn back and watch.
Brydda screamed. The smoke billowed and the air stank of burning flesh.
The people of the Kelti waited.
When at last the wicker burned through and collapsed, a great shower of sparks shot into the sky and the massed spectators sighed, one deep groan of relief.
It was time to get on with the tasks of the living.
A
guard with a torch was posted at the smoldering pyre that night to keep the dogs and pigs away until the ashes were thoroughly cooled and the
gutuiters
could collect them.
Brydda had not undergone the ritual of the house of the dead before her burning, and therefore her ashes would not be stored in an urn and buried with the ancestors. She had gone directly to the spirits; her ashes had much power. They would be saved until next sunseason and then worked into the earth, to whisper to new growing things of the warm sun waiting for them.
It was the first such sacrifice Epona had witnessed—a member of her own lodge, burning. Esus of the Marcomanni, the Silver Bull, believed that sacrifices should be hung in trees, having been taught this ritual by his tribe’s
druii,
but Toutorix was known for his use of the wicker basket.
“Fire liberates the spirit sooner,” he explained, “and the shape of the basket helps keep it mindful of its purpose in being sent to the otherworlds. If we were not blessed with a
shapechanger, we would attempt to communicate directly with the spirits of the game by building baskets to resemble the bear and the stag.”
After the burning, Epona returned to the lodge in a pensive mood. She knew Brydda was gone, body and spirit, and yet she could not quite believe it. Was it possible that laughing face would not toss her a wink across the cooking pots anymore? How could it be that no Brydda would share little jokes or giggle over gossip with her? Who would be Epona’s ally in the silent tugging of the personalities within the family of the chief?
The atmosphere in the lodge was tense. Okelos was sullen; Toutorix was quiet and withdrawn. He was rubbing his chest again and he had no appetite. Rigantona had already appropriated Brydda’s possessions and was railing at Okelos for having married a girl who was not only irresponsible, but possessed little property.
“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.”

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