Free The Rings of Poseidon by Mike Crowson Page A

this meant and was
filled with several conflicting emotions. I realised it was a great
honour that the Goddess required me for something so important but
I was also more than a little afraid. I said nothing.
    "You will be prepared by Nerfin for a
ceremony next new moon." Her tone did not allow for dissent, though
I would not have argued anyway. I had only eight days to prepare
myself. Of course, looked at another way, I had only eight days to
worry about the event and my part in it.
    We rode to the site just two days before the
ceremony. In the middle of the plain, in the hollow of a low hill,
was a solitary rock: flattish, about four feet wide by six feet
long by three feet high. This was to be the altar for the ceremony:
I think it was always intended that it remain in place and become
the altar of the temple itself. Certainly that's what happened
anyway.
    I had a tent nearby and on the eve of the
ceremony Nerfin first made me bathe in a stream and then rubbed my
skin with herb oils to make it smell pleasing, then I combed my
long hair but let it hang loose. Nerfin painted me with the symbols
of the Goddess and led me naked and shivering with fright to the
rock. The only concession made to my comfort was a sheepskin
covering it and I had to lie on this. The rock was circled by
priestesses and other officials, to see that the offering was made
as custom demanded. I lay there and waited.
    I gave myself to the Goddess and my
virgin-blood was the offering. Work could begin on the temple. I do
not know to this day who he was, but he was gentle in his taking of
me.
    After the blessing ritual, work began on the
ditch and the bank and I returned to the temple with Nerfin to find
myself a fully established priestess. Of course I was still
learning - predicting eclipses and so on, the medical effects of
herbs and how to find them - but I took up regular duties in the
temple.
    About six weeks after the ceremony I began
being ill: foods which I liked before now made me sick. Looking
back I cannot see how any woman could be so naive as not to see the
connection, but I was very young then and my monthly cycles had
hardly begun. So it was that I failed to recognise the life within
me and it was Nerfin that recognised my pregnancy before I did. I
think all those at the temple rejoiced with me when I did know, but
I was more glad than they when I stopped being ill!
    The temple grew and so did I. The soil from
the deeper of two circular ditches was thrown up into two banks:
the higher inside the ditch, the lower outside. A second ditch was
dug inside the bank and the soil used to raise the bank itself even
further. In a single summer most of the preliminary work was done.
If I have spoken much of the temple, which I visited only once
before my confinement, and little of my pregnancy, it's because
everyone has seen plenty of pregnant women! My only claim to fame
was that I was unusually young. Once I got over my morning sickness
I was very fit and was slowed down only by my own awkward shape in
later months.
    The temple was started just after the Spring
equinox, so my time came in mid-winter, just when the weather was
at its coldest. Even with fires burning in our houses, ice
sometimes formed on the washing and drinking water. We piled on
extra covers and snuggled down within the beds. I was not very big
but, fortunately, my daughter took after me and was small too. I
was young and fit, a little scared and very unknowing - I was more
scared when I knew what to expect. I spent a miserable night with
backache and stomach ache, but I did not realise that it was part
of labour. The bearing of my child was like ... well, what was it
like? Like shitting a lump of rock I suppose. I was wondering how
much longer I could put up with cold feet and legs rather than pain
and discomfort before it was done.
    When Beltane came around I was still nursing,
but that did not prevent me from taking part in the fertility
rites. Mind, I took part as much from