Son of the Shadows (Sevenwaters, #2)

by Juliet Marillier

“Don’t you long for something different to happen, something so exciting and new it carries you along with it like a great tide, something that lets your life blaze and burn so the whole world can see it? Something that touches you with joy or with terror, that lifts you out of your safe, little path and onto a great, wild road whose ending nobody knows?

“It’s too long,” he said. “How can a man wait so long?”

“It will be home when I see you waiting there in the doorway with my child in your arms. Not till then.”

What was I but one more powerless woman in a world of unthinking men? Nothing had changed. Nothing at all, save deep inside, where nobody could see.

exactly. It goes beyond that. He is mine as surely as sun follows moon across the sky. Mine before ever I knew he existed. Mine until death and beyond.

It is no wonder women have a reputation for patience that is not shared by men. We spend so much of our time waiting. Waiting for a child to be born. Waiting for a man to come home, from the fields, from the sea, from battle. Waiting endlessly for news. That can be the worst, as fear bites deep at the vitals and seizes the heart with chill fingers. The mind can make strange and terrible pictures while you are waiting.

It is frightening how one lie is just the first strand in an ever-increasing fabric of untruth. And once this fabric is woven, it is very hard to unravel.

The greatest tales, well told, awaken the fears and longings of the listeners. Each man hears a different story. Each is touched by it according to his inner self. The words go to the ear, but the true message travels straight to the spirit.”

But if you could not trust, you were indeed alone, for neither friendship nor partnership, neither family nor alliance could exist without it. Without trust, we were scattered far and wide, at the mercy of the four winds with nothing to cling to.

“The world is simple, I think, in its essence: Life, death, love, hate. Desire, fulfillment. Magic. That, perhaps, is the only complicated part.”

I cannot make his path grow broad and straight. It will always twist and turn and offer new difficulties. But I can take his hand and walk by his side.”