
sanity of hard work, Faljon, and anyone who would quote such a ridiculous proverb.
Faia laughed and scratched her behind the ears. "Indeed. I wonder myself whether Faljon ever chased
idiot sheep across the hills or fought off wolves and mountain lions or tromped for leagues with
prickleburrs under hiserda —or whether perhaps he just sat in his cottage and thought of ways to tell the
rest of us how to do it."
"Still," she added, mostly to herself, "he is right about the food."
She rose and stretched and went back into the stay-station. From the storeroom, she took a packet of
tea, a small box of soup powder, and two little potatoes. She put a single copper fourth-coin in the box
on the storeroom door in exchange. When she had the fire in the fireplace going, and water heating for
tea and soup, she sprawled across one of the station's narrow bedframes and stared at the ceiling.
It is good to be on my way again,she thought.Sore muscles and all. Away from Bright, out from
under Mama's roof and Mama's worries, maybe I'll have a chance to think.
She had a lot to think about. Much as she loved her mother, her brothers and her sister, she had never
been so glad to leave Bright as she was this spring. All winter long, her relatives had hinted to her mother
that perhaps Risse would like to send her flock with one of their older children, since surely Faia would
not be heading into the hills with the sheepagain . When they asked, Risse had looked hopeful, and Faia
sullenly defiant.
Risse alternated between moments of understanding her youngest child's yearning for freedom, and
bouts of fury at what she perceived as lightmindedness. In the bad times, mother accused daughter of
dithering with her life, of doing what amused her instead of planning for her future, for work that would be
to the long-term good of the village. "You can't be a shepherd forever, Faia," she had said. You're a
woman, full of woman's magic. You could become a healer, learn with me, and take over for me when I
am too old and weak to continue. You could be better than I'll ever hope to be—"
Faia thought that she was quick enough with the healing lays, but she hated the idea of spending her time
picking and drying herbs, mixing decoctions and elixirs, and running from house to house to deliver
babies or tend the sick, dead, and dying.
Then there was Kasara, her sister, who, with a shuttle in her hand and her babes playing on sheepskin
rugs on the packed dirt floor, had offered to apprentice her little sister, and give her a room out from
under their mother's roof. But while Risse was gentle and thoughtful, Kasara was shrill and shrewish and
wanted an apprentice, Faia suspected, to double her output without significantly increasing her costs.
While Kasara had remarked that she liked the workmanship of Faia's keurn cloths, Faia doubted that
once in her sister's employ she would ever be judged good enough to earn her own master's shuttles.
Kasara would see to that.
The girls in Bright who were Faia's age now had babies and bondmates with whom they worked their
dowry fields. And as for unbonded young men—well, there now remained only Rorin and Baward in her
own age group. Either would be happy enough to form a public bond with her, but...
Faia rolled over on to her stomach and sighed. Butwhat ?
Faia did not want to be a weaver, nor a healer, nor a bondwife with babies.
When she closed her eyes, she could hear her father's voice as sharp and clear and wistful as the last
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html