Hild (The Hild Sequence, #1)

by Nicola Griffith

Quiet mouth, bright mind.

“Your uncle is the one king. He travels with five hundred people. The king can’t just pack a loaf and a sack of salt and head for the horizon. He must first send a message to his reeves: How was the harvest? How are the roads—and the wood supply? Where is the honey flowing, where are the royal women needed for the weaving, where do bandits need to be warned away, and where is the hunting good? Then he must gather food and other supplies for the journey. And then his galloper rides ahead—tells the vill steward to begin brewing beer, slaughtering cattle, strewing rushes. Only then may we travel.”

“Now, see, this is one reason they think you strange. Your eyes flash, but you never speak.”

People know you’re thinking, but they don’t know what. It frightens them.”

She tried to remember to talk to people sometimes, but she recalled that Eadfrith thought her a hægtes and could not think of anything to say.

He was old, near forty;

She stepped to one side of her feelings, like stepping out of her clothes.

“You must learn to speak those thoughts of yours sometimes, child, or those who watch—like those gesith hounds of yours—will decide for themselves what you think, who you are, whose side you’re on. For there are sides.

“God made our bodies. And God is love. Love is never wrong. And so love of bodily joy, I think the Christ would agree, is never wrong.”

On and on, like a cat licking her mind.