Robert Jordan - The Eye of the World

“What are you talking about, Adora?”

“Perrin, of course. Why were you staring at him? Everybody says you’ll marry Rand al’Thor. When you’re older, I mean, and have your hair in a braid.”

“What do you mean, everybody says?” Egwene said dangerously, but Adora just giggled. It was exasperating. Nothing was working the way it should today.

“Perrin is pretty, of course. At least, I’ve heard lots of girls say so. And lots of girls look at him, just like you and Cilia.”

Egwene blinked and managed to put that last out of her head. She had not been looking at him anything at all the way Cilia had! But, Perrin, pretty? Perrin? She looked over her shoulder to see whether she could find pretty in him. He was gone! His father was still there, and his mother, with Paetram and Deselle, but Perrin was nowhere to be seen. Drat! She had meant to follow him.

“Aren’t you lonely without your dolls, Adora?” she said sweetly. “I didn’t think you ever left your house without at least two.”

Adora’s open-mouth stare of outrage was quite satisfying.

“Excuse me,” Egwene said, brushing past her. “Some of us are old enough to have work to do.” She managed not to limp as she made her way back to the river.

This time she did not pause to look at the men washing sheep, and she very carefully did not look for a raven. She did examine her knee, but it was not even bruised. Carrying her filled bucket back out to the meadow, she refused to limp. It had just been a little bump.

She kept watching cautiously for her sisters as she carried water, pausing only to let someone take the dipper. And for Perrin. Mat would be as good as Perrin, but she did not see him, either. Drat Adora!She had no right to say things like that!

Walking in among the tables where women were sorting the wool, Egwene came to a dead stop, staring at her youngest sister.

She froze, hoping Loise would look the other way, just for an instant. That was what she got for trying to watch for Perrin and Mat as well as her sisters. Loise was only fifteen, but she had a sour expression on her face and her hands on her hips as she confronted Dag Coplin. Egwene could never make herself call him Master Coplin except aloud, to be polite; her mother said you had to be polite, even to someone like Dag Coplin.

Dag was a wrinkled old man with gray hair that he did not wash very often. Or maybe not at all. The tag hanging from the table by a string was inked to match the ear-notches on his sheep. “That’s good wool you’re setting aside,” he growled at Loise. “I won’t be cheated on my clip, girl. Step aside and I’ll show you what goes where my own self.”

Loise did not move an inch. “Wool from bellies, hindquarters and tails has to be washed again, Master Coplin.” She put just a bit of emphasis on ‘Master.’ She was feeling snippish. “You know as well as I, if the merchants find twice-washed wool in just one bale, everyone will get less for their clip. Maybe my father can explain it to you better than I can.”

Dag drew in his chin and grumbled something under his breath. He knew better than to try this with Egwene’s father.

“I’m sure my mother could explain it so you’d understand,” Loise said relentlessly.

Dag’s cheek twitched, and he put on a sickly grin. Muttering that he trusted Loise to do what was right, he backed away, then hurried off little short of running. He was not foolish enough to bring himself to the attention of the Women’s Circle if he could help it. Loise watched him go with a definite look of satisfaction.

Egwene took the opportunity to dart away, breathing a sigh of relief when Loise did not shout after her. Loise might prefer sorting wool to helping with the cooking, but she would much rather be climbing trees or swimming in the Waterwood, even if most girls had abandoned that sort of thing by her age. And she would take her chore out on Egwene, given half a chance. Egwene would have liked to go swimming with her, but Loise plainly considered her company a nuisance, and Egwene was too proud to ask. She scowled. All of her sisters treated her like a baby. Even Alene, when Alene noticed her at all. Most of the time, Alene had her nose in a book, reading and re-reading their father’s library. He had almost forty books! Egwene’s favorite was The Travels of Jain Farstrider . She dreamed of seeing all those strange lands he wrote about. But if she was reading a book and Alene wanted it, she always said it was much too ‘complex’ for Egwene and just took it! Drat all four of them!

She saw some of the water-carriers taking breaks to sit in the shade or trade jokes, but she kept moving, although her arms did ache. Egwene al’Vere was not going to slack off. She kept watching for her sisters, too. And for Perrin. And Mat. Drat Adora, anyway! Drat all of them!

She did pause when she neared the Wisdom. Doral Barran was the oldest woman in Emond’s Field, maybe in the whole Two Rivers, white-haired and frail, but still clear-eyed and not stooped at all. The Wisdom’s apprentice, Nynaeve, was on her knees with her back to Egwene, tending Bili Congar, wrapping a bandage around his leg. His breeches had been cut away short. Bili, sitting on a log, was another grownup who Egwene found it hard to show the proper respect. He was always doing silly things and getting himself hurt. He was the same age as Master Luhhan, but he looked at least ten years older, his face hollow-cheeked and his eyes sunken.

“You’ve played the fool often enough in the past, Bili Congar,” Mistress Barran said sternly, “but drinking while handling wool shears is worse than playing the fool.” Oddly, she was not looking down at him, but at Nynaeve.

“I only had a little ale, Wisdom,” he whined. “Because of the heat. Just a swallow.”

The Wisdom sniffed in disbelief, but she continued to watch Nynaeve like a hawk. That was surprising. Mistress Barran often praised Nynaeve publicly for being such a quick learner. She had apprenticed Nynaeve three years earlier, after her then-apprentice died of some sickness even Mistress Barran could not cure. Nynaeve had been a recent orphan, and a lot of people said the Wisdom should have sent her to her relatives in the country after her mother died, and taken on someone years older. Egwene’s mother did not say so, but Egwene knew she thought it.

Nynaeve straightened on her knees, done with fastening the bandage, and gave a satisfied nod. And to Egwene’s surprise, Mistress Barran knelt down and undid it again, even lifting the bread-poultice to peer at the gash in Bili’s thigh before beginning to wrap the cloth back around his leg. She actually looked … disappointed. But why? Nynaeve began fiddling with her braid, tugging at it the way she did when she was nervous, or trying to bring attention to the fact that she was a grown woman, now.

When is she going to outgrow that? Egwene thought. It was nearly a year since the Women’s Circle had let Nynaeve braid her hair.

A flutter of motion in the air caught Egwene’s eye, and she stared. More ravens dotted the trees around the meadow now. Dozens and dozens of them, and all watching. She knew they were. Not one made a try to steal anything from the tables of food. That was just unnatural. Come to think of it, the birds were not looking at the trestle tables at all. Or at the tables where women were working with the wool. They were watching the boys herding sheep. And the men shearing sheep and carrying wool. And the boys carrying water, too. Not the girls, or the women, just the men and boys. She would have bet on it, even if her mother did say she should not bet. She opened her mouth to ask the Wisdom what it meant.

“Don’t you have work to do, Egwene?” Nynaeve said without turning around.

Egwene jumped in spite of herself. Nynaeve had been doing that ever since last fall, knowing that Egwene was there without looking, and Egwene wished she would stop.