Gwenhwyfar_ The White Spirit - Mercedes Lackey [30]
All four of the girls were fair, like their mother. This alone set them apart among most of the darker-haired people her father ruled. And now that she came to think about it . . . it was very possible that Eleri’s blood was all, or part, Saxon. But if that was true, no one even whispered it; she was the queen and their Wise One, and those two facts eclipsed any mere question of blood.
Or . . . just maybe . . . there was other blood entirely in her. But if that was the case, no one would even whisper about it.
Gwen and Little Gwen were the fairest of the lot, with Gwen’s hair now mostly shorn off, and Little Gwen’s waist-length locks being tightly braided every morning by old Bronwyn. Cataruna had more than a flavoring of their father’s red hair, but she did not have the high temper to go with it. She also had his square face, where Gwen and Little Gwen had inherited their mother’s pointed chin and tiny nose, and Gynath had something in between. Cataruna was usually grave and quiet; Gynath was usually merry, and while not a flirt exactly, had discovered that young men were very interesting a year before her older sister did so.
And both of the older girls fitted into the domestic and busy life of the household as Gwen, increasingly, did not.
She found she did not miss it; she did not wish herself back in skirts nor regret trading the chores she used to do for the harder—in the physical sense—labor of the training and the sort of work the boys were expected to do. Even in the worst weather, cleaning the stable, cleaning out her horse’s hooves with bare, freezing hands, chopping wood as she practiced her ax swings, she would not have traded this for sitting and learning the making of clothing, how to weave, spin, and embroider, the lore of herbs (other than those needed for battlefield medicine and horse doctoring), the management of a household. No, not even for learning magic.
She found that last growing less and less attractive with every day that her body strengthened, her skills with weapons sharpened, and her ability to understand her horses deepened. Not that magic revolted her, far from it—but where once she had longed to see herself in the rites, taking the part of the Maiden in the Circle beside her mother, learning to control and use the Power . . . now that grew distant. Just as she could look at Little Gwen playing with a lapful of poppets and feel not even a twinge of envy, now she would watch her mother beckon Cataruna off into a conversation with the other Wise Women and no longer even wonder for very long what they were talking about.
Perhaps her mother was right. Perhaps it was being around so much Cold Iron in the form of the swords and axes had blunted her need for magic. Perhaps it had even driven the magic from her.
Or perhaps Braith was right, and she never really was suited for that sort of magic in the first place.
And on the Midwinter Solstice, that change in her position was solidified, when she celebrated the night with the other young would-be warriors and not among the women. She thought her mother looked obscurely disappointed, but the queen had two other daughters both of an age to go to the Ladies. Three, if you counted Little Gwen.
And after Midwinter Solstice, Cataruna’s demeanor toward Gwen changed.
Mostly, the eldest of the siblings had ignored Gwen, which was fine. They weren’t even close in age, after all. Even before Gwen had gone to the squires, they hadn’t had much in common. But now, as if the Solstice had signaled some change in Cataruna’s mind, she began to do small kindnesses for her sister. When Gwen came in with half-frozen hands, Cataruna would beckon her over to a pot of warmed water to thaw them. When she went to bed, far earlier than anyone else, all worn out with the work, she found that Cataruna had put a fire-warmed stone in her place. When it was her turn to serve at table, Cataruna saw to it that her portion was kept warm at the fire and kept Little Gwen’s greedy fingers off it. Some might have been by Eleri’s orders,