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

once more preoccupied with her loom. Perhaps this ornament had been too small to go around the wrist of the chief’s wife.
    She slipped it on and started for the door.
    Brydda called, “Wouldn’t you like something to eat? The little children left broth in the pot and here is some of the cheese you like.”
    “No, your spirit is generous, but I’m not hungry yet. I just want to go outside for a little while before I go to the bakehouse.”
    Brydda nodded. Epona was an adult now. She was responsible for caring for herself and getting her own work done; the others would supervise her no longer. From now on it would be a point of honor with her to see that she completed her share of the labor.
    The outside air was so sharp it knifed into Epona’s throat and left the brittle taste of ice on her tongue. She drew breath all the way to the bottom of her lungs and held it, letting it burn, because it would feel so good when she finally exhaled.
    Aaahhh.
    After the atmosphere of the lodge, thick with the smells of people and food and sleep, a breath of the pine-scented wind was like a drink of honeyed water.
    Epona stretched, reaching her arms high and twisting with animal sensuality. The long gown she wore felt strange, bulky. It would seem odd to have her legs covered all the time by skirts.
    A pale candescence of light shouldered the mountains as the morning sun finally cleared them. Forested peaks soared skyward, beautiful and free as birdsong, patterned with constantly changing light and shadow and fragrant with conifers. The lake sparkled below, brilliant points of white light rippling on its surface as a breeze moved across it.
    I wonder if I look different? Epona asked herself again. She could have gone back to the lodge and borrowed Rigantona’s polished bronze mirror, but that might start an argument. Fortunately there was a substitute close at hand—the clear dark lake, an intense blue-green in the morning light.
    She started across the commonground, headed toward the water.
    Drifting smoke carried cooking smells from the lodges,
from meat boiling in bronze cauldrons and barley simmering in water heated by stones from the firepit. Children ran through the village, yelling with the ceaseless energy that characterized all the people. Dogs barked, birds sang overhead, half-wild pigs rooted between the lodges.
    Most of the miners had already left for the Salt Mountain, dividing themselves into crews for cutting the rock salt and for felling and placing the timbers to support the galleries within the mine. Few worked in the old copper mine anymore; the salt was more profitable. The last contingent of stragglers was just setting out, the unmarried men who had no wives to urge them off their bedshelves or handclasp them at the doorway. Six or seven of them came across the commonground on a line destined to intersect with Epona’s, their casual banter changing to something else as they approached the girl.
    The men of the Kelti were much taller and more powerfully built than the Etruscan and Hellene traders who came to barter for their salt. Fair of skin, they bleached the hair on their heads with lime paste and combed it stiffly back from their foreheads. Their eyes were the color of sky and water, and each man sported a beard of yellow or reddish gold and a heavy, drooping mustache, proud symbol of virility.
    The miners were dressed in thick wool tunics, their legs wrapped in fur leggings bound by leather thongs. Mittens of leather and sheepskin caps protected them from the numbing chill within the Salt Mountain. On their backs were leather knapsacks fastened to wooden frames, containing bundles of pine twigs to be burned for illumination within the mine. The chunks of salt from the day’s labor would be carried home through the twilight in those same backpacks.
    Each man had a tally stick thrust through his belt, notched to show the number of loads of salt he had brought out of the mine during that moon period. A man of