Spinning Silver

by Naomi Novik

he said over his shoulder, as if I was the one being a fool. “A power claimed and challenged and thrice carried out is true; the proving makes it so.”

dare set you a price?”

But it was all the same choice, every time. The choice between the one death and all the little ones.

I would never be left alone with any man long enough to choose anything at all until my choices were gone,

crowd of women around me doing the ocean of women’s work that never subsided and never changed and always swallowed whatever time you gave it and wanted more, another hungry body of water.

Such a great description of "women's work" all the things women traditionally are in charge of that will always "swallow whatever time you" give them, and endlessly need more.

I submerged into it like a ritual bath and let it close over my head gladly. I wanted to stop my ears and my eyes and my mouth with it. I could worry about this, whether there was enough food, whether the bread was rising well, whether the beef had cooked long enough, whether there were enough chairs at the table; I could do something about these things.

this makes me feel seen :)

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.

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.

He would only shrug and look at me expectantly again, waiting for high magic: 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.