byEven before the other wise-women told me, I knew this son would be a hero. He was a huge baby, bigger than any of my others. To distract myself from the pain of birthing, I bit down on a tree-limb and dug my fingers into the sweet earth to clench fistfuls of dirt and stone.
The youngest wise-woman tried to catch him, for bathing children in clean water was her work, but he was strong; he turned over and crawled alongside me. He was still smeared with blood and earth when he found my teats and began to suckle.
“I believe this one will do what Grendel could not,” she said. I believed it, too, but I wanted to hear more; though the youngest wise-woman was clever and quick, and supple as a sapling, she was ever as green as that sapling’s wood. She was a creature of potential, not experience
