Weyward

by Emilia Hart

A great many things look different from a distance. Truth is like ugliness: you need to be close to see it.

She’s not sure if it’s a new feeling, or if it was always there, smothered by fear. But now it burns bright in her blood. Fury. For herself. And for the women that came before.

And that means she has to be brave.

Despite everything that happened to her, her great-aunt had built an independent life for herself. She may have never married and had a family of her own, but she had her cottage, her garden. Her career. Now Kate, too, has built her own life. And she won’t let anyone take it away from her.

All we needed was to be returned to the wild.

Perhaps one day, she said, there would be a safer time. When women could walk the earth, shining bright with power, and yet live.

I am proud, too. Much as I shy away from it, the hard truth in my heart is that I am proud of what I have done.

They do not frighten me. After all, I am a Weyward, and wild inside.

Speeding up and slowing down at the strangest of moments. Sometimes, she had the odd sensation that her whole life was happening at once.

The connections between and among women are the most feared, the most problematic, and the most potentially transforming force on the planet. —Adrienne Rich