Young Rhiannon in the Temple of Isis -- Maggie Shayne

<p>I am Rhiannon.</p><p>This is my origin story.</p><p><br></p><p>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.</p><p><br></p><p>I was special and not just by virtue of my inherent divinity.</p><p><br></p><p>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.</p><p><br></p><p>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.</p><p><br></p><p>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.</p><p><br></p><p>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.</p><p><br></p><p>I communed with Isis nightly and became convinced she lived within me, that my soul was divine.</p><p><br></p><p>That assumption has never left me.</p><br><br><b>Author:</