“I saw Duncadda earlier,” said Ethel, as she lunged forward with the loaned practice sword. “He is making some large holes in the Hall's roof!”
I twirled my ashen staff defensively in front of me, focusing on my footing and knowing well there was more fight in my legs than in the weapon.
“So I have heard,” I chuckled in return. “One of the women servants there told me of the curse he put upon her in elvish. Not that it was likely any true curse.”
There was the expected clash of blunted metal against wood. I had defended myself from her move, but not disarmed her. It was a stalemate.
“I must go to the house later, and pay him my regards again for rescuing Wynn.”
Ethel smiled. “Again?” she said expectantly.
I nodded, this time making the first move, an open diagonal strike. Ethel neatly deflected it and made her own response even as I swept the staff low to catch her off balance. We both fell to the ground, laughing.
“I am glad I braided your hair this morning, dear.” I gasped out between giggles. “It would be in a similar state to last night by now, otherwise.”
Children…
One of the women asked me if I was thinking of giving Waelden a child. She asked innocently, as most women of the Mark would have done. She did not know her gentle words caused me pain. I gave the easiest, and most truthful answer I could, hoping that would be an end to the matter, and that no other would ask why I had no babe in arms.
“I cannot, my moons have stopped.”
I did not want to talk more about having children. I did not want to talk with any other of what passed in private between Waelden and I. I had Ethel now, and she was enough to meet my maternal instinct. I did not want to talk about those years of questions and prodding and attempted pushing into accepting a role not of my choosing by some of the women of Harwick. Oh they may have been wary of me, the men almost all seeking to avoid any possible move to be paired with me in any way, but for some the answer to my strangeness was to see me wed and the mother of many children.
“But you are still young enough to carry a child,” the woman continued, “Have you spoken to a midwife about this?” She took my hand reassuringly.
Such kindness, such genuine concern only drove the knife deeper into the wound. She could not possibly have known.
We had spoken of children, Waelden and I, when we had first realised the path that lay before us. I had told him there would likely be no child from me, wondering as I spoke how that would affect him. He had a daughter, dearer than life, and with a willing and able woman he could still have a son. If he chose me, that future was all but closed to him. But he had sat beside me in that wreck of a farmhouse and told me a tale of his own. He wanted no other children. He wanted no more pain from losing a child, or a woman. “I don’t think I could bear it,” he had said.
I had rested my forehead against his. It would just be us then. That was more than good enough for me.
Unnatural woman, some had called me in Harwick. Their words had stung. But I had plans, even then, to bring help to others..aye even to my accusers if they would let me. I would not be caged.
Ethel lay on her back on the grass, her sword close at hand, her braid already entwined with grass and daisies. She was thinking.
“We are not very good at this, are we Yllfa?”
I had to agree. There was some improvement in both of us, but there was a long way to go before I would be content.
“My grandpapa used to say, he did not fear a man of a thousand moves, rather the man who had one move he had practiced a thousand times.”
Turning to look at me, and shielding her eyes with a hand from the afternoon sun, Ethel said, “Well that’s only about eight hundred more repetitions apiece?”
I lay back on the grass, not too far from her and watched the clouds scuttling across the sky.
“Only eight hundred? We can do this, daughter mine.”
Her merry laughter rang out across Aldburg.
