| On the Edge of Dream |
An Excerpt: "Piffle! I am not a mother at all! I'm a virgin. Whether I've had relations with a man has nothing to do with it and is nobody's business but my own. You've been around Uncle Math too long. I am a virgin because my body belongs entirely to me. And I have chosen not to have children, thank you. You can't even prove this thing is mine. I certainly will not give it a name. Now get out!" Aranrhod pushed Gwydyon through the door. He descended the steep steps of her sea castle clutching the infant. The women he passed noted a strange clicking that issued from his forehead just above his bush eyebrows. This was the sound of Gwydyon's big brain at work. When his mind churned, it did so noisily, because Gwydyon was a god of science. Had there been such gadgets in those long-ago days, the linear efforts of Gwydyon's gray matter would have resembled a clock's. |
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Gwydyon clicked and mused, mused and clicked and rocked the cradle with his foot. The lad had to have a name. Tick-tocking toward an idea, Gwydyon made a note to himself to remember that when he had the power, he would dispense with all matriarchal laws. There would be a New Order. Uncle Math had started the process of social change, and Gwydyon would finish it. The child, meanwhile, was growing at a startling rate. Within weeks he had outgrown his cradle. In the few brief months it took Gwydyon to hatch a sceme to trick Aranrhod, her nameless son had already celebrated his seventh birthday. Gwydyon glamoured a sturdy little ship from bracken and seaweed and set sail to his sister's castle by the sea, boy in tow. Disguised as a maker of marvelous shoes and gambling on the cold drafts and chilly stone floors of seaside castles, he contrived to bring his sister aboard the boat. It took some persuading, but at last she arrived to try on a pair of toasty sheepskin slippers. And looking up from her lacings, Aranrhod saw the shoemaker's child shoot a golden wren from the sky. As he raised his little arms and aimed his miniature bow and arrow at the bird, light seemed to shimmer all around him like a halo. He so resembled the sun that Aranrhod exclaimed in amazement and called him Llew of the Skillful Hand. Thus Gwydyon's boy was named. And Aranrhod's anger was indescribable. It was merely a matter of a few more months before Llew Skillful Hand had reached the age of fourteen, when boys are ready for their rites of manhood. But according to that old bugaboo, matriarchal law, manhood could only be conferred when a mother armed her son. In other words, a boy became a man when his mother said so. Perhaps if the mother were dead, a grandmother, aunt or older sister could stand in, but Aranrhod was quite alive. Too much so for Gwyndyon's taste. He retreated to his clicking and musing. It didn't take long for him to conjure an illusion of warships ready to assault Aranrhod's castle. Terror overcame the women in the household as the ships approached, for they had no defense. Again disguised, Gwydyon and Llew arrived by land just in the nick of time and pretended to offer assistance. Aranhrod could not have been more grateful and gracious. She brought arms and with her own hand dressed the boy in sword and armor, helmet and shield. The illusion of warships evaporated from the horizon. Aranrhod was fooled again. And fit to be tied. "You continue to try to force me into a motherhood I don't want! You persist in violating my autonomy!" Aranrhod raged on and on while Gwydyon laughed at her. She tossed copper chamber posts and hurled brass plates and bronze vases at Gwydyon's head. He ducked and laughed. She shrieked and yelled. Yet she could not help but notice, through the black blaze of her anger, that Llew was a fine boy. Quiet, handsome, virile and agile. Not too clever yet, and a bit too dominated by Gwydyon - but who wasn't? Had she not been in such a righteous stew about the question of self-determination, Aranrhod might have considered Llew a young man any mother would be proud of. But the point remained: Aranrhod did not wish to be a mother. Llew stood innocently by, observing the scene: his mother's tantrum and Gwydyon's mocking. For all he'd been told that Aranrhod was a monster, an abnormal woman and an obstacle to his happiness, Llew felt some sympathy and admiration for her. She was large and glorious. Stubborn, forthright and independent. She positively glowed. If she showed a bad temper, well, hadn't she been tricked twice? Llew noted how strong and proud his mother was compared to the mincing maids Gwydyon occasionally brought home for pleasure or the miserable, insipid virgins Math used for furniture. Suddenly, Aranrhod stopped her stamping and throwing and shrieking and yelping. She took a deep breath and spoke in a voice of such cold, hard menace, even Gwydyon gulped in mid-guffaw and shuddered. "Since you are so determined to steal women's sovereignty, I now swear a fate upon the boy," Aranrhod growled. "Llew Skillful Hand will never have a wife of the race that is on Earth today." And here the story of Blodeuwedd begins. |
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On the Edge of Dream has been translated into Spanish ( Diosas y Hadas: La magia de las mujeres celtas) and into German (Am Rande des Traums: Legenden von den machtigen und weisen Frauen der keltischen Mythologie). Both are available through Amazon.com |
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