Spinning Silver

by Naomi Novik

being a witch was not the same thing as being wise.

work made one’s place in the world.

that I might be useful enough to earn respect, that priceless coin.

I suppose he’d come to rely so much on his magic that he’d never learned to think. The only thing that had ever done me any good in my father’s house was thinking:

She asked each one of them their name, and when they were gone she said it over to herself three times—a trick her father used also, whenever new men came to his army.

and we held tight, tight; we made a circle together, my brothers and me, around the food that we had been given, and there was no wolf in the room.

But I had not known that I was strong enough to do any of those things until they were over and I had done them. I had to do the work first, not knowing.

I did not know. I only knew the work had to come first.

This was a road that had to be walked in the dark.

But the world I wanted wasn’t the world I lived in, and if I would do nothing until I could repair every terrible thing at once, I would do nothing forever.

magic that came only when you made some larger version of yourself with words and promises, and then stepped inside and somehow grew to fill it.