patterns over my skin. His warm caress was like a sleeping pill. I loved that his touch could lull me to sleep. My eyes were already closed when his voice interrupted my foggy thoughts.
“It surprised me that you did not use the Magic Sleep to visit me.” He paused, then added, “Or did you come to me, and I failed to feel your presence?”
“No…” His question brought me fully awake. “I have not had the dream-thing since your battle with Nuada.”
Except for a quick grunt of acknowledgement, he stayed silent. I knew we were both thinking back to that terrible last battle when Nuada, the leader of the Fomorians, almost killed ClanFintan. I had been knocked unconscious, and my Goddess had called my spirit free from my body so that I could distract Nuada. ClanFintan had killed the creature, causing the Fomorians to react in confused panic, and the tide of the battle to turn in our favor. Before then, Epona had used my dreams to call me out of my body and send me on what amounted to spiritual reconnaissance trips to spy on our enemies and taunt them into falling into our traps.
But since the Fomorians had been vanquished, I had not been called by Epona to go on any nighttime spirit trips, even when I had tried to will myself on one after ClanFintan left. Nor had I heard the whisper of her voice, which I had become strangely accustomed to hearing, until today when she had breathed into my mind the words You are not playing, Beloved. It took hearing her voice again for me to realize how much her silence had bothered me.
“I tried to send my spirit out of my body to visit you, but it didn’t happen. I asked Epona to let me visit you. It was such an easy thing before—I even traveled so much that I got really tired of it.”
“Yes, I remember.” I felt him nod his head.
“And she hasn’t been talking to me, either,” I said in a small voice.
“Rhea, your Goddess would not leave you. You must believe that.”
“I don’t know, ClanFintan. I don’t really know anything about this Goddess Incarnate stuff. Remember, I’m not Rhiannon.”
“Yes, and I thank your Goddess daily that you are not.” His voice was firm. The truth was, no one had liked Rhiannon. Okay, more accurately, most people who had known her had loathed her, which was—at first—an almost constant source of irritation to me. Plus, it was confusing to look like someone who had evolved into such a different kind of person.
“Sometimes I wonder if I just imagined that I was meant to be Epona’s Chosen.”
“Do you think so little of Epona?” He didn’t sound angry, just questioning.
“No.” My answer came easily. “I’ve felt her presence and experienced her power.”
“Then it must be yourself of whom you think so little.”
I couldn’t answer that. I had always believed I was a strong woman with a healthy ego and excellent self-esteem. But maybe my husband was right. Maybe I needed to look inside myself for doubt and weakness, and not Epona.
Could that be part of why Rhiannon and I were so different? I knew self-doubt could be destructive and life altering, but wasn’t some self-reflection healthy? Had Rhiannon become so spoiled and willful that she was immune to any kind of self-questioning? Mix that with the power that went along with being Epona’s Beloved and maybe, like Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, she had become “as a serpent’s egg which hatched, would as his kind grow mischievous.” Had Epona done what Brutus contemplated, and by switching me with Rhiannon, smashed her shell before her hatched evilness could destroy Partholon?
Or was I just letting the useless literature that tended to clutter my English teacher brain freak me out?
“Rest now.” Once again his hand began a hypnotic caress, and ClanFintan’s familiar touch helped to quiet my jabbering mind. “Your Goddess will answer your doubts.”
“I love you,” I murmured as a wave of weariness closed my eyelids and I fell softly into a deep sleep.
I was nibbling Godiva dark chocolates while I lounged on a down-filled, violet-colored divan, which was situated in the middle of a field of waving wheat. At the end of the divan sat Sean Connery (dressed in 007-era black tie). My feet were in his lap, and with one strong, firm hand he rubbed erotic swirls across my instep, and with the other he held open a book of poetry entitled Why I Love You. As he read to me in his sexy Scottish burr, he kept glancing at me with looks of undisguised adoration…
…And I was suddenly sucked out of my fabulous dream and through the ceiling of Epona’s Temple.
“Whoa! Feeling sick!” My spirit voice held a familiar ghostly resonance and I gulped the night air. The rush of exhilaration I felt as I realized my Goddess was once again directing my spirit warred with the revolution in my stomach. My spirit hung over the middle of Epona’s Temple, remaining very still while I got my bearings and reaccustomed myself to the Magic Sleep—which wasn’t actually sleep at all, but the traveling of my soul, and was therefore exceptionally magical.
As my vertigo receded, I was able to relax and enjoy the incredible view. The moon was almost full, and its clean silver light kissed the walls of the temple until they seemed to come alive, glowing with an inner blush of illuminated marble.
Below me I could see that the feast must be coming to a close. Sleepy shapes moved in groups of twos, threes and fours, and were stumbling a little amidst good-natured jesting and merriment as they emerged from the front entrance of the temple, heading back to their neat homes outside the temple walls. I smiled as several of the pairs seemed to have a hard time moving out of the shadows, and when they did continue on their way home, their arms remained entwined suggestively around one another.
I guess my people had been inspired to emulate my condition.
As I continued to play spiritual voyeur, I noticed a centaur couple standing apart from the departing crowd, some way from the path taken by the other people. My body drifted in their direction, until I was hovering above the female’s back—far enough above her that my presence was not noticed, but not so far that I could not easily see that the two centaurs below me were my friends,Victoria and Dougal.
I could not see Victoria’s face, and I could not hear what was being said, but I could see that Dougal was speaking, and that his words held rapt the Huntress’s attention. (I realize I should not be eaveswatching, but, well, my spirit body wasn’t moving away—which gave me a great excuse to pry.) As I watched,Victoria held up one of her hands and pressed a finger against Dougal’s lips, stopping his speech. Then she stepped forward, and in one graceful movement, she rested her head against his shoulder and nodded once, yes.
The radiance in Dougal’s face made the light of the moon appear sallow in comparison as he wrapped his lover within his arms.
I grinned, thinking that I couldn’t wait to tell Alanna that whatever had been keeping Dougal and Vic apart appeared to be totally fixed.
Slowly, my spirit form began moving forward, leaving my friends their privacy and me a happy knot in my throat. I traveled in the night’s sky toward the road, which led past the western ridge of the temple plateau. Once over the ridge, I picked up speed and began moving with purpose toward a tidy-looking home that was situated north of the road amidst a rolling field of well-tended grapevines. The main house was flanked
