Iylaine tries to escape

Iylaine ran, ran, as fast as she could run, her dress flying, her hair wild. She scarcely touched the earth with her feet, but when she did, she was certain that it trembled beneath her fury.

She realized almost too late that she was heading, as always, for the hollow tree beside the brook. She could not bear even that today. She could bear nothing that reminded her of anything. She could not bear the breath in her lungs that reminded her that she was alive. She could not bear the dull ache that lay low in her belly and seemed like the new core of her being.

She threw herself face-​​first onto the ground and began to kick and beat the earth, screeching and snarling through clenched teeth like an enraged animal. She rolled onto her back and stomped her feet and howled.

She wanted to abandon herself to the sort of fit she had known how to throw as a little girl, but she could not quite pull her mind away from the consciousness of the pad of cloth between her legs, from the awkwardness of keeping it in place while she flailed her limbs. And she was no longer a little girl.

She sat up and began to pound on her own belly with her fists, cursing and swearing at her body with every foul word she had ever heard her father utter. She would kill that part of herself, and if she could not, she thought she would kill herself. She would hang herself as her mother had done, or–

No, she could not do that. She pulled her knees up under her chin and sobbed. If she had to go on living, she could not see how she could hide this from everyone. She had stolen the cloths from Gunnilda, but she could not do so forever. She could always find rags, but how would she ever contrive to wash them? In the summer, perhaps, but in the winter…?

She fell forward onto her knees and pounded the earth again with her fists. It didn’t help. She screeched and sobbed until she gagged and spat the taste of bile, but none of it revealed an answer to her. What would she ever do if Wynna found out and told the girls? What if Alwy learned? Or Bertie? Or her father? Or anyone? They would all know. They would all look at her.

A sudden breeze touched her hot, wet face and cooled and dried it. She shuddered between sobs and lifted her head to its caress. That, at last, almost seemed to help.

She realized after a moment that the breeze did not ruffle her hair in the slightest. There was no breeze. Her tears were merely drying as soon as they touched her skin.

She clambered to her feet and screamed. “Go away! Go away! Leave me alone!”

Oh, the humiliation! Oh, suppose he had guessed! Oh, not he! Anyone else but he!

She stood hiccupping, her fists clenched in fury, ready to beat him if he showed himself. She could not see him. He made no other sign.

After a while, the tears rose to her eyes again and began to fall, and now they slipped down her hot cheeks as before. In frustration she beat her fists against her thighs, and stomped, and sobbed, and clawed at her grass-​​stained dress. She could not bear to see him, and yet her heart was breaking because she had sent him away.

She hated the world and everything in it. She hated her life and all that she endured. She hated her body and all that it could now do. It was all ugly and sordid and filthy and vile.

She turned her back to the brook and began plodding homeward, her head bowed, still sniffling at times, and swearing between clenched teeth at others. She could not escape the world, nor her life, nor her body. There was nothing to do but bear it all.