Spindle's End

by Robin McKinley

not a one of them had ever baby-sat or collected eggs or carried water from the town well for a season after something disgusting drowned in their own.

Rosie ran her hands through her hair once or twice (pulling out and glaring at a jewelled clasp the Claralinda had resourcefully managed to find enough hair to hold in place),

For a little while she was wholly absorbed in the experience of Fast’s running: the power, the terrifying power of it, the surge of the hindquarters, the stretch of the stride, the bunching together in preparation for the next surge, all compacted into a single motion and translated into the torrent of his speed.

his mind was full of spinning glittery fragments of running, wanting to run, waiting to run, being nothing but running with a bay coat stretched over it—

their friendship was going to be nothing like it had been for the last six years. Peony herself would become—was already becoming—someone else than she had been; she had to. Rosie supposed that even she herself would change.