Weyward

by Emilia Hart

“It comes from the Bible,” she told me. “So the rector isn’t the first to tell that lie. As for the reason: it is my belief that people lie when they are afraid.” I was confused. “But what could Reverend Goode be afraid of?” My mother smiled. “Us,” she said. “Women.”

She looked happy, hand in hand with her husband. Perhaps she was, then. Or perhaps I was standing too far away. A great many things look different from a distance. Truth is like ugliness: you need to be close to see it.

But Graham was—or would soon become—a man. A good man, but a man all the same. It wouldn’t be right, she knew.

Altha is there, in the spiders that dance across the floor. Violet is there, in the mayflies that glisten and undulate like some great silver snake. And all the other Weyward women, from the first of the line, are there, too. They have always been with her, and always will be.

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

The war—horrible though it was—had brought with it a new era. An era where women could do (almost) anything a man could. Violet had read that some of them even flew planes.