I am the wild boar
and the salmon in the river;
I am a lake on the Plain;
I am the word of knowledge
and the point of a spear;
I am the lure beyond the ends of the earth
and I can shift my shape like a Goddess!
As she shouted the last line her body exploded in a shower of light and her wordless shriek of agony echoed off the walls of the cave.
Despite his oath, Brighid’s scream had Cuchulainn on his feet and rushing to her. But he stumbled to a stop when he saw the woman. She was kneeling in the exact place Brighid had been standing. Her head was bowed and damp hair covered her face. One of her hands rested on the ground and the other was still raised above her. She was breathing hard and her naked body was glistening with a slick film of sweat. With a moan, she raised her head and shook back her hair.
“I wish someone had warned me about how much that hurts.” Brighid’s voice sounded raspy.
“By the Goddess! Brighid!” Cuchulainn made a movement toward her, and then checked himself as if he was afraid to come too close to her.
She peered up at him through a curtain of silver hair. “If you tell me you’re afraid to touch me I can promise you that I’m going to be very upset.”
“Of course I’m not afraid to touch you. I just…” He breathed a curse and closed the space between them. He bent and carefully gripped her arms, helping her to stand. “I just didn’t want to hurt you,” he finally said.
“You’re not going to hurt me.” She glanced down at her body and her eyes widened. “I had no idea how strange this would be.”
He put his arm around her waist. “Maybe you should come over to the pallet and sit down.”
She nodded and stumbled a couple of steps forward. Then stopped and looked down at her legs again. “I’m so small!”
She thought his bark of laughter sounded a little hysterical. “You’re not small-look at you-you’re almost as tall as I am.”
“Wait, let go of me and let me…I mean I need to…” She sighed at his perplexed expression. “Cuchulainn, I want to stand on my own two feet for a moment and get used to this new me.”
“Oh! Of course,” he said, carefully disentangling one arm from around her waist and the other from under her elbow.
He stepped away from her. She straightened and then looked down at herself again. Her torso was unchanged, but from her waist down she was another being entirely. Her powerful equine body had been exchanged for two long, lean legs. She glanced behind her and had to blink hard to keep from feeling dizzy and disoriented.
“Goddess! There’s nothing back there,” she blurted.
This time the warrior’s laugh sounded more normal. “Of course there is! You have very shapely buttocks.”
She met his eyes. “My shape is attractive to you?”
“Very,” he said. “Not that I don’t think you’re beautiful as a Huntress, too,” he added hastily.
“I already know you find me attractive as a centaur. This body is new to me. Naturally, I would wonder if…”
“You don’t need to wonder, Brighid. You are an exquisite woman. In this light you look like a satin-skinned Goddess who somehow fell from the morning sky.” He reached out and let a strand of her silver hair fall through his fingers. “And I am the luckiest of men to have discovered you.”
She saw the desire in his eyes and the knowledge of it started a hot quiver low in her belly. She smiled and let her gaze move back to her body. Carefully she stretched one of her legs forward. Pointing her toes she swung the leg forward from her hip. “Legs…toes…it’s all so ordinary and yet extraordinary.”
“I think it’s completely extraordinary.” His voice raw with emotion. “You did it, Brighid! You mastered that which only a High Shaman can command-the power to shapeshift.”
“We did it,” she said. “If you hadn’t been with me I would never have reached Epona’s grove. And now I need you to help me with something else.”
“Anything, my beautiful Huntress.”
“Show me how to become one in the flesh with you.”
Wordlessly Cuchulainn took her hand and led her to their pallet, which they had not moved from the middle of the labyrinth. As she walked across the cave her steps became more sure, and though she missed the power of her natural form, she was able to appreciate the capacity for grace in her woman’s body. She lay beside her husband and, filled with curiosity and wonder, she let her hands caress her naked body, learning how it responded to touch and finding the small secret spots that were especially sensitive.
“My skin is so soft. It amazes me,” Brighid said. “I had no idea it would be like this.” She smiled up at Cuchulainn who had propped himself on his elbow beside her and was watching as she explored herself.
“You make me breathless,” he said huskily.
“Don’t lose your breath,” she murmured, taking his hand and guiding it to her thigh. “If you can’t breathe, how will you tell me about the pleasures of this new body?”
He moaned her name and whispered against her lips, “I’ll show you.”
But he didn’t just show her. As he touched her with his hands and mouth he spoke to her, asking what caress she most preferred and where and how his touch pleased her. His hands, roughened by years of swordplay, felt sensuous against the smoothness of her skin and Brighid found that she could not get enough of the feel of that roughness cupping the softness of her buttocks. When his mouth moved to her core and tasted fully of her, she did not look away, but watched him as he finally learned what she had known before him-the joy of a lover’s pleasure.
When she was slick and ready for him, he entered her gently, allowing her time to stretch and receive him. And then they linked hands as they began the ageless give and take of lovemaking. She arched to meet him, reveling in the knowledge that their bodies had finally been able to experience what their souls had already known-the joining of two. When he cried her name and spilled his seed into her she held him close and crested the wave of sensation with him.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
“Changing back is much easier,” Brighid said, twitching her tail and stomping her hooves as if she was worried that something might not have completely transformed back to equine shape.
“It’s amazing,” Cu said. “All these years and I have never once seen my father shapeshift.” He gave her a lopsided, boyish grin. “Although there were a couple of times when I burst into my mother’s chamber and he was there in man form.” He chuckled. “It never failed to surprise me. The last time I was about ten or eleven, and I couldn’t really see him very well. I remember thinking that some stranger had gone mad and was ravishing her, so I brandished my not particularly dangerous wooden practice sword and yelled for him to unhand the Goddess Incarnate.”
“What did he do?” Brighid asked, smiling.
“He looked up at me and said, ‘Later, boy, right now your mother and I are rather busy.’” Cuchulainn shook his head. “But that wasn’t the worst of it. My yelling brought my mother’s palace guards running-they don’t take the ravishing of the Chosen of Epona lightly. There followed an embarrassing several moments that my father didn’t find amusing. At all. When the ‘later’ came he sat me down and had a very long, very detailed talk with me about husbands and wives and lovemaking in general. He also explained to me in detail why he had to shapeshift, and why when he did it was a very private moment between my mother and him.”
Brighid tried unsuccessfully to smother her laughter. “That sounds like a very awkward conversation.”
“It wasn’t a conversation. He talked-I listened. Then he asked me if I had any questions.”