are you trying to distract me? (from Theodred, eohere) :)
â â â a rohir does not lie, she hears her father say, when you lie you dishonour yourself. he had said the words to her brother but she remembers them as though they were meant for her, teaching her to guard the inner-gift of her own honour as her brother had been taught. ĂŠowyn screws up her face and then exhales hard, mouth pinched. this time she tells the truth though she knows it will only bring her trouble.
â â â her cousin is sitting on the lowest step of the hilltop hall, watching her spin her spear. ĂŠowyn kicks up dust as she steps forward, and back, and forward, imitating the long, dancing gait that she uses when she prepares to throw. the dust obscures the pages. her brother is good at his lettersâthĂŠodred lets ĂŠowyn sit with her spear and carve as they read together. full hands seem to help her remember, and he seems to think it is very important that she remember the long, dry southron-styled histories he is recounting to her. he wants her to read them on her ownâbut today the lesson has fallen apart enough that ĂŠowyn is trotting restlessly like a foal and the spear is like a wandering limb.
â â â âone throwâi will aim for the old stump the soldiers use to test their arms. here, we are further back than where they stand. further back by at least a hundred hands! if my aim is true, if i make the throw, we will go riding instead.â
â â â the prince looks unamused by herâbut ĂŠowyn can see the secret fondness behind his eyes. he refuses her often but never wants to. not truly. he will not refuse her today. folk may talk whatever way they like but ĂŠowyn knows that thĂŠodred is just like her. no matter how they may be different, no matter how he may love his southron songs and stories, he is happiest on horseback. he is happiest when he is free. when thĂŠodred sets the heavy book aside, propped carefully open to the correct page like a challenge, ĂŠowyn knows that she has won. all she needs is a chance, after all. she will not fail.
â â â she turns her back to the stairs and puts her eyes on the stump at the edge of bowled hill, at just the place where the rim of the open hilltop cleared by the wind and the axes of their ancestors drops away to the timber wall and then the hard north cliff beyond that. it was a cedar, once, and the stump is soft, broken and gnarled like an old tooth from the damage of a thousand thousand spearheads thrown by a thousand thousand bored guardsmen over all the years the watchmen have stood on the steps of the hallânearly five hundred years, ĂŠowyn knows from all these histories, perhaps longer yet. as long as there was a hill to be seen, and their people to climb it, and a chance at even a stupid passing glory.
â â â the soldiers throw their spears from a spot almost thirty feet ahead, marked by the way the dirt is worn in a short spear-track from their feet. if ĂŠowyn wants to make the same throw from further still, she will need all of her strength. she steps back without turningâeight paces walking, equal to the three long trotting strides she will take before she throws from the agreed-upon place.
â â â ĂŠowyn does not linger for breath or to build herself up, nor does she look over her shoulder to see that her cousin is watching. she is not a person who waits. waiting will not make her strongerâit might only give the wind the moment it needs to change. she takes the spear in the comfortable place in her hand, strikes the ground with the butt, bends with it, lets the haft slide in her hand until her grip goes hard by instinct, and runs. she is long-legged and long-armed, tall as a horse herself even at twelve years old, and she moves with a surprising limber grace, full of power, storing all the energy she can find in her body. the cock of her arm is as long as her body. the butt of the spear nearly hits the ground again. her front foot strikes the ground flat, firm as earth, and then all the muscle and fiber of her is a forward swiftness, a bow at the eye of her target.
â â â she throws too hardâwith every limb and muscle, running, arching, and following through the spear's release with so much force that her entire body bends forward nearly in two and she stumbles, catching and walking herself two, three steps on her palms to keep from going over her feet before she manages to right herself. the spear sails through the air like a bird, higher than a bird, straighter, and truer. in a perfect arc. ĂŠowyn watches it wide-eyed, trying to catch and hold her breath at once, untilâwith a sweet, singing shiiiinkâthe spear sinks into the perfect center of the tattered old stump.
â â â ĂŠowyn feels a whoop of triumph swell inside of herâbut that is what a child does. so, instead, she swallows the shout, shoulders rising and falling, chest puffed, unable to school the grin from her face when she turns backâexpecting to see the proof of her skill written on her cousinâs face. that will be better than cheering. spears were not the lesson but thĂŠodred will not begrudge her fairly earned praised. ĂŠowyn believes that. she hefts a spear better than a warrior twice her age and twice her size. thĂŠodred will be proud.
â â â yet when she turns she finds her cousinâs seat empty. instead, he is at the crest of the steps speaking to a rider who was not there before. the soldierâs armour is filthy and his face blackened with soot. even from afar, ĂŠowyn can tell that his eyes are frantic and full of fear. he wears a helm with a plume of black horsehairâthis marks him as a messenger from the far folde, she thinks, a messenger with ill tidings. thĂŠodred has been speaking to him all this time. he has not seen something so insignificant as a girlchild tossing her spear at stumps.
â â â all the victory leaks out of her like wine from a sun-cracked skin, replaced with a spite so strong that she could spit. ĂŠowyn goes to the stump and pulls out her spear and when she turns back her cousin and the messenger are goneâtwo smears on the rise as they rush towards the stables. they are going to war now, she thinks, that is where the men go when i wake to find the hall is empty. they think i do not notice it because of what i am, but they are wrong. little good it does her to see and understand. as soon as urgent duty comes, she is forgotten. thĂŠodred will take her brother with him. ĂŠomer is sixteen, a stout fighter and old enough to swear his oathâ
â â â and he is a boy.
â â â ĂŠowynâs mouth twists. another feeling swells inside her, but this one is mean and very large, larger than her victory and heavier, too. too big to fit inside her properly because her skin will not stretch with its sizeâunfair and insurmountable. she wants to break her spear over knee though she knows that it would bruise her. she has spent months carving its handle, calming herself by honing its edge. she wants to thrust its sharpened point into the space where her cousin is no longer sitting and imagine it would hurt him just the same. you dishonour yourself, her father says again, and ĂŠowyn wishes she could cover her ears to silence him. but she cannotâlike the terrible feeling, like what she is and what she will never be seen to be, the voice dwells deep inside her.
â â â she would scream for frustration if she couldâbut hĂĄma, her uncleâs door guard, is watching her from the high porch. if she goes up now, he will pat her shoulder and tell her it was a good throw. he will call her biornel, little warrior, even though she is already near as tall as him. it is not his praise that ĂŠowyn wants so she goes back to the letters where thĂŠodred has left the lessons sitting upon the great stone steps. she hates the sight of the ink as much as she hates the sight of her long legs beneath her when she sits, muscles trembling and tight still from the exertion, useless and out of the saddle. ĂŠowyn sets her spear aside.
â â â she will learn the letters, too, if that is what it takes. she will learn them better than her brother and better than her cousinâshe will learn them, even though she doesnât like them, and then no one will be able to find any fault in her at all.
â â â she picks up the book and puts it in her lap only to discover that the wind must have disturbed it. the pages are tossed askance, barely decipherable to her in their elaborate loping script, and the passage they had been studying is lost. ĂŠowyn, alone and having paid too little mind to the lessons her cousin has been trying to teach her all this time, has no way of finding it again.
priory of the orange tree pt. 1
