Silver Woven In My Hair

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HE night wind blew down from the rocky hills and swept the cobbled streets clean. It brushed the dust of the high road as smooth as velvet, as if no dogcart or carriage had ever traveled it; but now in the gray dawn the velvet dust was freshly marked with hoofprints. Wandering, aimless hoofprints that began at the inn behind the village and ended at the edge of the cobbles.

Following the hoofprints came a barefoot girl, her eyes still heavy with sleep. She might have been sixteen, but her hair was down like a child's, and her childish dress far too small—as if someone did not allow her to put on the airs of a grown woman. Her wrists and ankles protruded, and were goose-pimply in the cold.

She had ragtaggle hair the color of new hay, and her eyes were the blue of batchelor buttons. (Her stepsister Druscilla said blue eyes were ugly as dung.) She had a tip-tilted nose (Delilah scoffed at such a nose) and the curves beneath her dress were supple and fine. (Though the two stepsisters called her a baby, scrawny as a new-hatched chicken.) Her skimpy dress was faded and mended; and her feet were streaked with cinders from the hearth, for she had been stirring up the fire when she glanced out the kitchen window, saw the gate open, and knew the mare was gone.

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