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legs.”
    The strongest dike ever built could not have held back Jacinth’s tears then. The hot, salty stream of them poured down her cheek as she stumbled up from the doorstep. She didn’t know whether to hug Joth or run. She wanted to believe him. But no one had ever said such a thing to her before. What if he were lying? What if this were his way of making fun of her?
    “Don’t cry, Jacinth. Please don’t,” said Joth.
    But she couldn’t stop and, not knowing what else to do, she fled down the steps and into the street.
    “It’s true, Jacinth. You’re not ugly,” Joth called after her.
    “I don’t believe you!” she cried, without looking back.
    Barely a week had passed when the first of the young men returned to Aranho, scruffy and mud-smeared but triumphant, bearing orange and yellow lilies like torches in their hands. That very evening, there was a proud, firm knock at the miller’s door. Jacinth ran after Wynna as she hurried to answer it. There stood Sten, tall as clouds, the first stars strung like diamonds in the violet sky behind him. He smiled as he held out a flower on a leafy stem. Even the twilight could not rob the lily of its amber brilliance.
    “Yes. Oh yes,” whispered Wynna as she took it from him.
    Jacinth watched as they walked arm in arm down the stone path to the gate, their bodies swaying together likestalks of wheat in the wind, and their faces aglow with mysterious joy. She thought of the scene in her tapestry—her father at his mill, the streets and the white cottages, the tall men with their knives and bows. She thought of Joth, and of what he had said to her. And for the first time, the deep winter coldness that would someday become old and familiar settled over her heart. For the first time, it occurred to her that perhaps there was no place at all in the tapestry for a boy with one leg, no place for a girl with one eye.
    Soon enough, autumn came, and the citizens of Aranho prepared for the Great Wedding. The men stalked the fields in search of tender young deer, and the fattest pigs in the village were slaughtered. The women gossiped amiably among themselves as they sewed wedding costumes and cooked spicy dishes of squash, grain, and apples. Even the children ran errands and gathered branches laden with bright leaves for the marriage beds. Many of the men who had returned from the hunt with lilies that year were to be married. Sten and Wynna were among, the new couples who danced in the wedding circle and drank from the high elder’s cup of secret wine.
    After the wedding, Sten took Wynna away to the cottage he had built for them. The miller waved good-bye, his shoulders square and a smile of pride on his face. His wife wept, though she could not say why. And Noa ran at the newlyweds’ heels like a puppy, begging them to invite her often to the new house.
    But Jacinth went off by herself and climbed quietly to her loft in the rafters above the millstones. She cut theunfinished tapestry from her loom, rolled it up, tied it carefully with strong twine, and carried it to a dark corner, where it stood untouched for many years thereafter.
    Summer followed summer, and Jacinth watched the passage of many lily hunts, many triumphant returns, and many weddings. Three years after Wynna’s marriage, there was another knock at the door one midsummer’s dusk, and then Noa was gone, too, off into the world with a lily in her hand and a man beside her. With each year, Jacinth felt herself changing into a woman, cherishing a woman’s hopes and desires. But each year the chill in her heart grew a little deeper, and the anger and energy with which she faced the world grew a little stronger.
    At last, the time for her own lily went by, as she had feared it would, without event. After the Great Wedding that year, she trudged back toward her father’s mill alone, tearing the garlands from her long hair and wishing she could tear away the maiden’s gown she wore as well. As it happened, she