NINETEEN
Hello, Epona Gray of the little house in the big woods,” I had replied, mimicking her tone. “Come in,” she said, and stepped aside, “before you catch your death of moonlight.” Her movement was languid and yet somehow entrancing. I didn’t move, but not from fear; I just couldn’t take my eyes off her.
“Don’t tell me the old village conjurer has bewitched the cynical young soldier,” she said. Her voice was throaty, her tone gentle, so the mocking didn’t grate. I saw that she was barefoot and held a wine bottle loose in one hand. “If it’ll make you feel better, call me Eppie. Eddie and Eppie; has a nice lilt, don’t you think?”
“That seems a little disrespectful,” I said. I still didn’t move. “I thought you were a goddess.”
She laughed, and I got a look at her exquisite profile against the fire. “All women are goddesses, didn’t you know that? Look into one’s eyes sometime. Really look.” Then she faced me again. “Or, since that’s beyond you right now, remember what you saw in Janet’s eyes. Not in that portrait in the palace; in the real eyes that looked up at you that night after the harvest festival.”
I went battle-cold at that comment. The fumbling of two awkward teenagers in an unused guest room-the first time for us both-was a memory I’d never shared with anyone. I couldn’t imagine Janet gossiping about it, either. I strode forward, grabbed the woman by the wrist and jerked her out of the doorway. “You goddam bitch, who do you think you are?” I snarled.
I got my first look at her gleaming, sweaty face then. It was an exquisite set of features, not so perfect as to be intimidating, yet somehow enough to make you momentarily forget all other faces. Age-wise, she seemed both a grown woman in her thirties and simultaneously a teenage girl. She had big dark eyes and brown hair that fell over her forehead. Her smile was at once rapacious and tender. “Easy, Eddie,” she said softly.
From the treetops, the mysterious night birds cried out in alarm, and big shapes rustled ominously in the nearby woods. “It’s all right,” she murmured, and they instantly fell silent.
“Who the hell are you?” I demanded. I smelled wine on her breath, and another vague odor I couldn’t identify. “Why did you want to see me?”
She rubbed her eyes with her free hand, as if struck by a sudden headache. “Wow,” she whispered. “Can we continue the melodrama indoors? I need to sit down.” She didn’t wait for an answer, but pulled her arm from my grip and went inside.
I stopped in the doorway and surveyed the room. The place looked like a tavern after a long weekend. Bottles lay scattered on the floor, the chairs were in disarray and dirty clothes had been tossed haphazardly aside. The fire blazed so brightly it was like a sauna, which explained the almost sheer gown Epona Gray wore. She picked up an overturned rocking chair, placed it by the hearth and sat heavily. She took a long drink then offered the bottle to me.
“No, thanks,” I said as I undid my jacket against the heat. “I’m not worthy to drink a goddess’ backwash.”
She looked at the bottle. “Your loss. About the wine, I mean. I save this for special occasions. It’s great stuff.”
Behind a privacy curtain I saw a large bed, the covers and pillows rumpled. The kitchen cabinets were in disarray, and dishes filled the washbasin. For a goddess, she was a slob. “Are you going to tell me what I’m here for, or is there a reason?”
She ran a hand through her hair. “Reason, reason, reason. That’s a big thing for you, isn’t it? Everything has to have a reason, everyone has to be reasonable.” She turned to me. With the chair and the fire, she now looked the part of a village hedge witch. “Cathy spoke highly of you. She loves you, you know.”
I blinked in surprise. If she meant something about the previous night at the river, I didn’t believe for a minute that Cathy would tell this woman anything so personal. “I think that’s the wine talking, Eppie.”
“You people,” she laughed. “Eddie, I didn’t say she was good at it. She doesn’t have a clue how to express it. She was raped as a child, again as a teenager and swore she would never feel love of any sort again. She took back power over herself, and in the process cut herself off from every tender feeling in her heart.” She pointed at me with the bottle. “Until she met you, bright boy. But you turned her down at her most vulnerable.”
“I suppose she told you all this?” It was hard to maintain my ironic distance with all the conflicting emotions suddenly churning inside me.
Epona nodded. “Right there in that bed. Where all secrets are revealed and all the walls come down.”
Now I knew this woman was nuts. Even if Cathy was interested in women, she wouldn’t just hop into bed with some drunken tart who lived in the woods. She also hadn’t had time, since she’d barely been gone the length of a dart game. “Right,” I said disdainfully.
Epona picked up a short, straight pipe from among the debris and pulled a stick from the fire to light it. She took a deep draw, leaned back and sent a stream of smoke toward the ceiling. She smiled, her eyes closed.
“Honestly, I don’t understand why you people don’t fuck all the time. What an experience-better than drinking, or smoking, or food, or anything. I thought I was prepared, I thought it couldn’t compare with what I knew, but damn. Your world is full of so many things you can touch, but that — touching each other-oh, man, is that the best.”
I rubbed my temples. The heat and smoke were giving me a headache, and I saw no reason to endure this crap any longer. “If you’ll excuse me, Eppie, I think I’ll head back to town.”
She looked up at me. Her gown fell off one shoulder, revealing perfect skin and the curve of her bosom. “You don’t believe I am what they say I am, do you?”
The sudden entrance of sexuality into the situation hit me with the force of a hammer to the stomach. I kept most of it out of my voice, though. “A goddess, Eppie? No. I don’t believe that.”
She tossed her head to get a stray lock of hair from her eyes. “But it’s true. I am a goddess. I chose to come here, to join you in this reality, to see what flesh felt like, because I love you all. I know all your thoughts, your dreams, your darkest secrets and brightest hopes. But I didn’t know what it really felt like to be clothed in flesh like you, until I decided to share it.” She nearly dropped the pipe as she brought the bottle back to her mouth. “You’re all so hungry, you have so many appetites.”
“Well, we like to keep busy.” I was annoyed, but there was an edge of sincerity to her I couldn’t explain. And I was thoroughly, almost embarrassingly aroused. To change the subject I asked, “So did you like your package?”
“Package? Oh, the trinket Cathy brought.” She looked around on the floor until she found it. “I knew it was coming. I wish it didn’t have to. But the world unfolds as it should.”
She handed it to me. It was a small, worn iron horseshoe, the kind you could find on any pony. Dirt and rust coated it. “Wow,” I said. “Lot of trouble for something so ordinary.”
“Yeah, Eddie,” she said distantly, sadly. “Andrew Reese has finally found me. Do you know who he is?”
I shook my head.
“Andrew Reese is broken to pieces,” she sang, and then repeated it over and over so that the rhyme, and the man’s name, were forever imprinted in my brain. Devils must sing it in hell.
Then she blinked, shook her head and looked up at me. “What were we talking about?”
I undid the top button of my sweat-soaked shirt. With the fire at my back and Epona before me, I felt like I might burn to a cinder. “Who’s Andrew Reese?”
She bent forward and rested her elbows on her knees. She held the bottle in one hand, the pipe in the other. “That’s why I wanted to see you. Let me tell you a little story, Eddie. Once before, I decided to walk among you. Not like this, not as one of you. But simply to let myself be seen and heard as a human being. I formed an island safely off the trade routes but near enough I might be visited. I made it a paradise, with plenty to eat and drink, but completely uninhabited. And then I waited. I had plenty of time, you understand.”
“I imagine you would,” I agreed.
“And so my first visitor arrived. Andrew Reese, a handsome young sailor who’d been washed overboard by a storm and managed to survive long enough to reach my island. I let him wander around for a while, get used to the place, until I finally decided to let him find me. I chose a form that he would like, that of a young woman beautiful by his standards.”
She grinned mischievously. “You should’ve seen me, Eddie. I was tall and willowy, delightfully fragile-looking, and yet I allowed my strength to shine through. I made my hair golden, because I knew he liked blondes. My birds
