Читать книгу A.k.a. Goddess - Evelyn Vaughn, Linda Winstead Jones - Страница 9

L ong ago, before accepted history began, there lived a Great Queen with nine powerful daughters. Their powers lay in their beauty, in their truth, in their abilities to heal and create and protect. Their powers lay in their skill at dance and art and sports and poetry.

But their greatest power lay in being women.

Because the world needed them, the Great Queen sent her daughters in nine different directions to be queens in their own right. And she gave them each a finely crafted cup.

“Pour your powers into these cups,” she instructed, “and share them as you will. But if ever you find yourselves in danger, a victim of fear or envy, hide the cups so that your powers can live on, even though you be forgotten.”

Her daughters agreed, and off they went. For a long, long time they ruled as beloved queens—queens of the North and the South, of the East and the West, of the Heaven and the Earth and the Underworld. They married and loved and bore children. But all things change, wheels turn, and eventually, as the Great Queen had predicted, men began to fear and envy their powers.

One queen was imprisoned by soldiers.

One queen was denounced by priests.

One queen was outlawed by a senate.

One queen was erased by scholars.

One queen was exiled by her father-in-law.

One queen was overthrown by her stepson.

One queen was betrayed by her lover.

One queen was forgotten by her son.

One queen was deserted by her husband.

As each queen found herself in danger from fear and envy, she asked her own daughters to do as her mother, the Great Queen, had instructed. She had them hide her cup, so that the powers she had poured into it could survive, waiting to be found and shared if ever the world again became ready for them.

The cups wait to be discovered.

The cups wait to be united.

The cups wait to change the world.

They are waiting still…perhaps, my daughter, for you.