Hild

She liked time at the edges of things -- the edge of the crowd, the edge of the pool, the edge of the wood -- where all must pass but none quite belonged.

Always know what they want to hear - not just what everyone knew they wanted to hear but what they didn't even dare name to themselves. Show them the pattern. Give them permission to do what they wanted all along.

You're like a sharp bright piece broken from a star. Too sharp, too bright, sometimes, for your own good.

Men are afraid women will laugh at them. Women are afraid men will kill them.

She knew them by their thick woven cloaks, their hanging hair and beards, and their Anglisc voices: words drumming like apples spilt over wooden boards, round, rich, stirring. Like her father’s words, and her mother’s, and her sister’s. Utterly unlike Onnen’s otter-swift British or the dark liquid gleam of Irish. Hild spoke each to each. Apples to apples, otter to otter, gleam to gleam, though only when her mother wasn’t there.

No one but her uncle knew that under Fursey’s tutelage she could make her letters or that she understood Latin if it was spoken slowly—and even he seemed content to let her learn privately. Until she knew how these newcomers thought and what they wanted, she would keep it that way, keep her dice rattling in her cup. It was foolish to throw before all bets were on the table.

Hild fetched a lump of grey salt for Mildburh and mortar and pestle to crush it in. She loved the gritty crunch and thump under her hand. It sounded like a cat eating a bird.

She liked time at the edges of things—the edge of the crowd, the edge of the pool, the edge of the wood—where all must pass but none quite belonged.

Life, death, change, they happened most at the edge of things: where forest meets clearing, air meets water.

She mused on the words and beads for days but couldn’t see the pattern. There was a piece missing.

there was no power like a sharp and subtle mind weaving others’ hopes and fears and hungers into a dream they wanted to hear. Always know what they want to hear—not just what everyone knew they wanted to hear but what they didn’t even dare name to themselves. Show them the pattern. Give them permission to do what they wanted all along

There are no commandments against love," he said.

An Anglisc oath is like water. It pours into every part of you, every crevice. You can’t hold any piece apart from it.

The fact they could check becomes the prophecy they must believe.

As the days cooled the colours around her did, too. Bright red flowers were replaced by dark red berries. The sun set earlier. The berries now were tinged with blue. Perhaps it was warmth that made the colour. Red meant life. Blue meant the blue lips of harsh breathing and death. The end of things.

Even at three, she understood the danger of overhearing a hint that a king in his own hall was an oath-breaker: Never say the dangerous thing aloud.

When she thought at all, she thought in British, the language of the high places, of wild and wary and watchful things. A language of resistance and elliptical thoughts.

Your mother has built you a place where you can speak your word openly. Now she asks you to use that for her, and for yourself of course.

The childlike thing sitting on a cygnet-coloured gelding with a silvered saddle and wearing a brooch worth a son’s ransom must be the princess niece with a reputation as a seer and sorceress.

Behind her smile, her thoughts whirred like a pole lathe, back and forth, shaving the layers.

Beeches were rare north of the Humber, and she loved the way they whispered in the wind, like women before they fell asleep.

She walked the spiral corridor, running her hand along the painted horizon - sea, beach, dunes, woods, moors - the journey of her people from over the sea. The story of the Anglisc, woven with Woden back to the dawn of their songs. Ships. Fire. Bright swords. Kin and kine. Woods and wold. Hearth and home. Where was Christ in this? Christ didn't fight. Christ didn't farm.

Anglisc voices: words drumming like apples split over wooden boards, round, rich, stirring. Like her father's words, and her mother's, and her sister's. Utterly unlike Onnen's otter-swift British or the dark liquid gleam of Irish.

A battle, shield wall to shield wall. Linden wood to linden wood. She imagined meeting a man the size of Forthere, huge with battle rage, stinking with it; dogs dripping and snarling at her legs, her arms. Sharp swords cleaving down, splintering shields, crushing skulls, slicing off faces. Men sworn to follow their lord or die. Victory or death, no middle ground.

And Begu had spoken of her being on her knees to Christ all the time, terrified of the omens. Hild wondered how it must feel to have someone you didn’t quite trust make prophecies about what mattered most to you in the world.

She said her goodbyes in the warmth of the hall and received gifts one by one and handed them unseeing to Eadfrith’s man. She walked alone into the rain, half mad with trying not to remember the soft warmth of Onnen’s motherly breast and the smell of her clothes, trying not to think of the glint of firelight on Begu’s escaping hair because then she’d remember it always, one more memory to torment her. She tried not to take deep, deep breaths of the scent of wind-whipped sea blending with rained-on cowgrass blowing down from the cliff, tried not to think of Cian, Cian woven through everything. We are us. Trying to shut it all out, keep it all away—

She thrust her hands in her pockets and turned her snakestone over and over. She found it helped her think.

She said nothing, hoping her silence would goad him into explaining.

She wanted to ask what he meant but in the game they played she lost points if she had to ask.