When Women Were Warriors: A Hero's Tale — Catherine M. Wilson
[ For the purposes of notes and page numbers, please note that I read an e-book version of this book, so the page numbers here may not line up with the page numbers in a physical edition of the book. ]
Page 29: “The next day was cold and dark, and we had work to do before bad weather kept us at home.” —> I like how they’re already calling this place home. It’s just a big hollow tree that they’ve sheltered in and built a fire in, next to the forest people, but they already view it as home.
Page 30: “In stormy weather and at night, they retreated into a cave in the rocky hillside behind their camp, but they preferred living in the open. As long as daylight lasted, they sat around the central fire in the enclosure or, if snow was falling, around Aamah’s fire in the covered shed.” —> I love this lifestyle. This sounds so wholesome and cozy.
Page 36: “On an impulse, without Maara knowing, I left something of myself behind. I slipped one of my arrowheads from my pouch and left it in the crevice where I had found the offering of the forest people.” —> Is this going to end up being a bad thing? Is that why she doesn’t want to tell Maara?
Page 37: “No,’ she whispered back. ‘Men.’ My fear of wolves yielded to a fear of something yet more dangerous.” —> Lol this is literally the man versus bear in the woods discourse right now, just with wolves instead.
Page 44: Is anyone else so nervous about Tamras being in this dark cave, naked, with a bunch of men around her? I don’t think Wilson would inflict anything on her in this situation, but, still, conditioning makes me nervous about it.
Page 50: “I began to think that when we returned home, the size of this boar would have grown by at least half a bow-length.” —> Lol classic.
Page 57: “I opened my mouth to protest that of course we would have tomorrow and many more tomorrows after that, but she kissed me lightly on the lips, then laid her cheek against my cheek and whispered, ‘Be careful what you say. The gods may hear you.’” —> Oh god. If Maara dies in this book I’m going to lose my shit.
Page 58: “Before I loved Maara, life seemed filled with endless possibility, yet I knew even then what I was waiting for. Love was only an idea to me then, something to hope for, a promise of happiness, insubstantial and immortal, until it found the one to settle on. Now love and Maara were one and the same, and love had become as mortal as she was.” —> Well fuck.
Page 59: “Here no great responsibility would fall upon my shoulders. I would be the heir to no great house. I would never have to face Vintel, to challenge her, to take by force the inheritance I didn’t want.” —> So she is still going to do all those things, then, right? I’ve been enjoying this idyllic forest life she’s been having, but yes, of course it’s inevitable that she has to go back and face reality.
Page 72-73: “More than losing me, she feared what might befall me, leaving her to bear, not just the grief, but the guilt of somehow having caused it.” —> Hmmm.
Page 79: “’This is not the way we should begin,’ said Maara. ‘Let’s camp somewhere for a day or two, until our hearts have had their fill of looking back.’” —> I like this.
Page 89: I’m so nervous about this whole boat situation. I feel like something bad is about to happen.
Page 9: “Her touch was a comfort, and I thought I understood it. I thought she meant to reassure me. I should have listened more closely. If I had, I might have heard the good-bye in it.” —> No! No, god, no!
Page 95: “Maara said she would follow me, but how could that be so? What did she have to offer the northerners? What thing of value could she deliver that was enough to buy both my freedom and her own?” —> But didn’t Maara live with the northerners once? Maybe not these exact people, but her knowledge of them and her past with them could serve as some sort of bargaining chip. So I would say she actually has a lot of value, we just don’t quite understand what it is yet.
Page 97: “Though they might change the world around me, they had no power to change my heart. It was a sanctuary whose threshold they could not cross, and within it, love was safe.” —> What a sentence, wow.
Page 110: I don’t remember enough details about the whole Elen situation with Maara, other than that I think Maara was essentially a sex slave there but then fell in love with her? Is that right?
Page 116: “I had been wondering how the hunter found me, but when I saw the trail I made as I blundered about, lost in the mist, that puzzle solved itself. A wounded boar running from his pain and terror could not have left a clearer sign of his passing. I knew better than to leave a trail like that, and though it seemed that all was now well, my encounter with the hunter might have ended in disaster.” —> Oooph yeah, Tamras, you were ready to die and were clumsy about it.
Page 135: “The yard was filthy, and there were neither benches nor tables where we could sit and eat like persons of dignity. With our plates balanced on our knees, we had to sit cross-legged on the ground, which was strewn with kitchen garbage and animal droppings.” —> Ugh. I mean, sitting on the ground is fine, but not if it’s all gross like this.
Page 136: “The tables stood so close together that it was difficult to thread one’s way between them, and the servants carrying tankards of ale were so jostled that as much ale ended on the floor as in the warriors’ cups.” —> Again, gross. Elen, clean up your household.
Page 137: “If I had been Elen, I would have sat in the king’s chair myself.” —> Hell yeah.
Page 141: “I had just come from the armorer’s house. I could say I had brought the knife from there. Surely no one would claim it. No person of honor would claim what wasn’t theirs. If there was no victim of the theft I was accused of, I must be innocent.” —> What if it’s Elen herself, though. Maara gave Tamras the knife—what if Elen gave it to Maara? I fear she’s about to have a terrible confrontation with the queen.
Page 142: Is no one going to question Tamras’s clearly female voice? She’s a grown woman, and I guess she’s trying to impersonate a prepubescent boy servant here, but I still feel like her voice would give her away.
Page 145: “’Now you must convince me that you haven’t come to do me harm.’” —> Lol then why did you invite her alone into your bedchamber, Elen.
Page 146: She should say that she is depending on others for survival and she has attached herself to Finn for right now, and she followed Finn here when he came to visit his friend. She needs to sound sad and pathetic for Elen to not suspect her.
Page 153: “The thought that I had forced from her an intimacy she didn’t want made me ashamed of the love that I had once been so proud to offer her.” —> Well fuck. Now everything’s all fucked up.
Page 154: Isn’t Maara still a prisoner of Elen though? So it’s not her free will to come back to Elen; she’s still being used as a sex and/or love slave.
Page 156: So there’s going to be a confrontation between Merin’s house and Elen’s house eventually, huh, a confrontation between Tamras and Maara, potentially as the heirs to both of those houses, even.
Page 168: “I felt grow strong within me a power that filled up the void where once my heart had been. If nothing matters, nothing is forbidden. All things are permitted to the dead.” —> Now this is an interesting perspective.
Page 173: “Like a forest tree that has grown up entwined with another may keep its shape long after its companion has been taken down, my spirit had bent to the shape of her and now could neither straighten itself nor accommodate to the shape of someone else.” ——> Ohhh no.
Page 173: “Once free of my prison, I fitted the stones back into place for no other reason than to baffle my jailers.” —> Lol good for her .
Page 197: I don’t really get how this plan is going to work but okay Tamras.
Page 204: “I knew I could count on Finn to insinuate and to suggest, to prepare them for what might happen in the morning, to put the plan into their minds in such a way that they would believe they had thought of it themselves.” —> But how is he going to do this. I want to hear this conversation.
Page 205: Lmao somehow I forgot about Maara in this whole thing. I don’t even like battle scenes, but reading about how Tamras is coming into herself and being cunning and strategic is actually really fascinating.
Page 208: “Before the sentry could object, Bru had a knife against his throat.” —> Okay I read this as Bru had a knife against Bru’s own throat suddenly, so the next chapter didn’t make any sense. But okay, I got it, Bru was the one who put a knife against the sentry’s throat. Whew. That got unnecessarily tense there for a second. Maybe it’s time for bed, hahah.
Page 210: “Using what I had told him, Bru crept out on a thin branch. ‘A curious tale made its way from your private chamber to his ear, that you would offer him your hand but refuse him compensation for his loss.’” —> I am so confused.
Page 213: “I saw what had happened as clearly as if I had been a witness. Who but his wife could come so close to him? And Maara had told me that she and Elen were both covered with his blood. Maara awakened with the knife in her hand. I knew who put it there.” —> Yes, that’s right, I remember now.
Page 214: Tamras, tie Elen up, you tie her up right now.
Page 216: “I dropped the knife and fled.” —> Tamras what the fuck!!!
Page 219: “I heard Maara’s voice call out my name. She came running down the hill to meet me. My first glimpse of her caught her in mid-air, an image I have kept vivid in my mind. When she reached me, she held me at arm’s length and looked at me. Then she pulled me into her embrace.” —> :’’’)
Page 244: “Finn’s eyes sparkled. ‘Not even the most cunning storyteller could conjure such a thing. The queen sent forth the knife with which she had committed murder, and it came back to her, bearing witness to her guilt and bringing retribution.’” —> Dang, yeah, the knife is such a force of fate in this story.
Page 262: “’If I were a ghost come back to haunt the wicked, you would have seen me long before today.’” —> Ooooh shit, what a line!
Page 287: “I turned back to the others. ‘As you know, it was half a year ago, not long before the first snowfall.’ Was it only half a year? It felt like another lifetime.” —> Yeah, wait, really? Only half a year for all this to happen?
Page 289: “I had already decided, and Maara had agreed with me, that we would tell no one about the forest people. Their survival depended on their invisibility.” —> Good!
Page 301-302: “I had taken for granted that I would always find a welcome here until my exile taught me otherwise. It made my homecoming all the sweeter, to have back again what I had lost. I wondered how I could have been so willing to remain with the the forest people or to join Bru’s household.” —> Well you might not have had much of a choice, depending on how everything went back there.
Page 324: “We had our old room back. Namet claimed her old room too, the one next door. She first asked us if we minded, then assured us that sh was growing a little deaf.” —> Loooool.
Page 328: “‘Dance with me,’ she said.” —> Omg this is so sweet.
