She tossed the pipe casually into the fireplace, where it fell between two burning logs. She stood and walked to the door. “He stomped off, furious and embarrassed. He found a squirrel, who’d become his special companion over the time he’d spent with me, but he was in no mood for its compassion.”
She paused, looked outside, and when she turned back tears glittered in her eyes. “He grabbed it and tore its head off as easily as I’d hurt him, because in his drunken rage and humiliation, he had to hurt something. He threw its little corpse aside, discarded like some piece of garbage. This squirrel had been his friend, you understand, it had followed him and listened to him and kept him company so he wouldn’t be alone. It brought him nuts and placed them at his feet. And he killed it with no more thought than I just gave to that pipe.”
She took a drink, followed by a deep breath. “Whew. Sorry, it’s just all so fresh to me. That squirrel was part of me, just as you are, just as everything is. When I felt it die, I grew furious, and let my pain lash the island in a storm. I almost killed Andrew with it, in fact, but I was not about to let him off that easily. He fell asleep in the cottage I’d made for him, but he awoke the next morning back on the beach where he’d washed up. I’d wiped the island clean of everything, so that it was only a bare rock in the water.”
She walked back to me as she spoke. “I told him exactly who I was, exactly what I was, and that he was to leave. And do you believe it? He had the audacity to say, ‘And what happens if I don’t?’ ”
“What did you do?”
She smiled coldly, and for the first time since I arrived at the cottage, I felt a little hint of fear. “Oh, Eddie, I showed him just what a pissed-off goddess was capable of. I snapped every bone in his arms and legs, then pushed them up into his torso. I twisted him into human jetsam, Eddie, and cast him back to the sea.” She gestured with the bottle, sloshing wine across the room. “And I cursed him with the worst fate I could imagine; a long, long life.”
She nodded to indicate the end of her story, took another drink and fell heavily into the rocker. “He’s still alive, too. He wants to die, because the pain never dims for him, but I’m not ready to let him. Not yet.” She finished the bottle and flung it vaguely toward the kitchen, where it shattered against the wall. “But as you can probably understand, he’s still pretty mad at me.”
“Yeah,” I said.
She looked at me with narrowed eyes, as if she’d just noticed the effect she’d had on me. “Uh-oh,” she said, her voice slurred, “I got so wrapped up in my story I forgot about yours.” She jumped up, nearly fell backward and, giggling, extended her hand to me. “Come on, Eddie. Time for your reward.”
She pulled me to my feet and over to her bed. I put up no resistance. When she pulled the sheer gown over her head, I noticed for the first time that she was deathly pale and emaciated; as ill, in fact, as Nicole had said. Not that anything, at that point, was a turn-off. She was still the most sexually arousing woman I’d ever met.
I gently lifted one of her arms. Great scabbed welts ran along the inside, almost from her wrist to her elbow. Some were red and oozy from infection. “Damn, Eppie, what happened?”
“Hm? Oh. This.” She pulled her arm free, held it up and dug her fingernails into the soft flesh. She ripped down to the inside of her elbow, and gasped at the sensation. I grabbed her before she could repeat it on the other arm. She struggled weakly in my grasp.
“Don’t stop me, Eddie, I crave this. Ripping myself open reminds me, in any weird, twisted, perverted way you want to call it, that there is life and a world to embrace.”
The blood ran in thin trickles down her arm. There should’ve been more; her illness was serious. But she sighed with almost sexual satisfaction as the pain faded. “I have visions of poking a stiletto through my cheek,” she said breathlessly. “Imagine the tear. It’s tough, the cheek. But it can be broken.”
“You need help,” I said.
She shook her head. “I need to be fucked. I need to feel it the way you do, while I can. I’ve indulged every human impulse. I’ve opened this body to everything, to every one. And it’s killing me. I don’t have long, Eddie. Neither do you.”
I should’ve pursued that comment. It was right there, the bit of information I needed to understand the imminent danger. But when she blatantly grabbed me between my legs, my baser instincts took over, and I no longer cared about anything else.
She pulled me onto the bed. I disrobed as quickly as I could, and she spread herself for me without delay. She wrapped her legs around me and pulled me close, her hands in my hair. Her body was hot with fever, yet amazingly strong. I looked down at her face, drawn tight with something more like pain than desire, and felt emotions I could barely remember gush through me like a river. “Please, Epona,” I asked seriously. “Tell me how you know about Janet.”
She kissed me with a tenderness that, to this day, can bring tears to my eyes. It was a kiss of such compassion, such unconditional love, that it melted every wall I’d built around my heart and opened me to her. She held me while I cried and said, “I know about Janet, Eddie, because I welcomed her when she crossed through the veil. I felt her pain, the horror at what happened, her utter terror at both dying and leaving you.”
I rose and looked into her face again. I saw every woman I’d ever loved, in any sense, in those dark eyes. My mom, my grandmother, Phil’s mom, Janet of course, and even Cathy. “I really tried,” I sobbed. “I would’ve died, too. I wanted to. But I didn’t. And they made me watch… ”
She caressed my cheek. “Shhh, Eddie. Janet’s safe in the Summerlands now. She’ll wait there for you. But she also knows you have more time in this world, and wants you to be happy here.”
“With Cathy,” I said as I wiped my eyes.
Epona shook her head. Her voice grew harder, sadder. “It’s too late for Cathy. And it never would’ve worked, anyway. She’s close to what you need, closer than you can imagine. But she’s not the right one.” She kissed me lightly. “It’s not too late to learn from it, though. Don’t be a jackass next time, LaCrosse.” She arched her back. “And for now, don’t be anywhere but with me.”
Like I had a choice. I don’t know how long we made love, but I couldn’t get enough of her, and before we were done we’d explored every inch of each other with hands and mouths. I rolled her onto her stomach at one point, and as I took her from behind she hissed, “Lick my neck, Eddie. I love that.” I obliged.
During one intimate passage, I felt a rough patch of skin on the inside of her thigh. I touched the horseshoe-shaped, puckered design. “Is that a scar?”
She rose on her elbows and looked down between strands of tousled hair. “I do believe it is.”
I rose and met her eyes. “Now how would a goddess get a scar? ” I asked dubiously, and kissed it.
She laughed. “A goddess can get anything she wants, Eddie.” She ran her fingers through my hair as I continued to lick the crescent-shaped imperfection. “I wanted to mark this intoxicating flesh with something to remind me where I came from. It’s so easy to forget among all this… sensation.” Then she grabbed my hair and pulled my head up to look at her. “And I am, after all, the Queen of Horses.”
“Uh-huh,” I agreed with a doubtful smile. I was too intoxicated with her flesh myself to really pursue my skepticism, though. When we finished-or rather, when I finished-we lay together, her atop me, and I wondered if Cathy had actually occupied this same spot. It certainly explained her behavior when she returned to the village.
Finally Epona bent over the edge of the bed and retrieved a fresh bottle of wine. She pulled the cork with her teeth and said, “So did I finish telling you about Andrew Reese?”