Young Rhiannon in the Temple of Isis — Maggie Shayne

I am Rhiannon.This is my origin story.My original name was Rhianikki, firstborn of Pharaoh. My bare feet sank into the sands of Egypt when the pyramids were new. My mother was a divine queen who died giving birth to me and they say the walls of the palace trembled when they took me, wailing, from her cold arms.I was special and not just by virtue of my inherent divinity.But rather than honor my gifts, my father feared them. And when I was five years old, he and his new queen sent me far away from their newborn twin sons, to live at the Temple of Isis, where I learned and grew and became the woman I still am, more than three thousand years later.That temple is where I was raised, by holy women who taught me the secrets of the gods and of the goddesses and all the ways of magic.There I met Luca, a father figure like my own had never been, who could only visit me by night and who said we were related in a way I would not understand until I was older.During those years, I rescued stolen children; I answered women's prayers; I helped artists find their calling; I caused a poor, small village to thrive, and I saw the face of my beloved in the glass-like crystal ball of a prophet.I communed with Isis nightly and became convinced she lived within me, that my soul was divine.That assumption has never left me.