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“This is not that kind of story”
The boy tried not to look as glad as he was, a rabbit who knows that he will be caught, but cannot help devouring the carrot He wished, fervently, that he could find her, and carry her off, like a proper Prince But she was like air streah silk, and he could not touch her at all They stood for a moment, separated by the low stone sill
“I will be very quiet,” she murmured, “so as not to wake your sister” She settled outside theonto the deep, dewy grass, and closed her eyes
“When the beast-h the waves like a lioness through the grass for three days with Grog at the wheel, since no one would move her tub frorid, sharing a er supper of seal fat and hard bread They did not see Snow creep in behind theer to hear their talks as a child who spies upon her parents…”
“WE’VE GOT A FARMER’S BUSHEL OF TIME, NOW, Sigrid,” Eyvind said, settling into a chair with a grunt and a sigh He sliced off the heels of a loaf for hirease “And it’s been near ten years you’ve been h to ten years that you’ve been looking like there were so you wanted to say toit” He leaned in, his sandy hair flopping over his brow like a tuft of fur “I’ past ti locked up tight behind those teeth”
She sighed, and stared at the grain of the table wood, unable to look the tavern-keeper in the eye
“Eyvind,” she began, her voice cracking like a frozen broom, “I’m not sure I should There was a tiht have told you, and itBut now—so s happened, I think perhaps it is best that this stay dead, closed into a chest between us, fastened with locks”
“What are you talking about, woht stop your shy-maid act—I know better than to think you’re just a net-irl like she’s your confessor, and you won’t tell row a tail and start howling at the moon?”
Sigrid’s face sagged, and she lifted her faded eyes to hi so one far astray and becoer to her
“Understand, please, understand that I never wanted to hurt you…”
WHEN I FIRST BECAME A WOMAN, THE LIMBS WERE as strange to me as the first taste of wine For all my days until that one, I had been a bear
I lovedbear with dark eyes, even after he left e, never different from my sisters
The bear I loved disappeared, and the snow fell, the snow froze, the glaciers broke and re-forone, and after a full turn of seasons without his tracking across our ice, ain, cubs were nursed And life went on
But one evening, when the blue lights of the heavens strea shadows of cobalt and aqua on the ice altar with all the weight and depth of flesh Laakea, the Harpoon-Star, stood beforeover one shoulder, his skin whiter than light itself His hair flowed over the altar like a frozen waterfall, and I trembled in his presence, terrified and exalted I was a huolden eyes of the Far-Flying Hunter were fixed on
He told me, Eyvind He told ht to avenge the Snake-Star and been changed to keep you froeance to take, he said But he also told ain—or that it would be so long and at such cost that if you ed it, it would be worth less than ash He told ain, that you would never return