Cat in Glass by Nancy Etchemendy

answered.
    “Then none of you has the right to stop her,” he said, standing squarely, like a battle-scarred hound who is wellaware of his own strength. After a moment, he squinted at Jacinth and smiled through his wrinkles. She nodded her thanks.
    Without another word, the young men made way for her, and she took her place among them. She stood as straight and tall as she could, resisting the urge to paw the ground like a nervous horse as she waited for the procession to begin. Neither did she turn her head, searching for particular faces in the growing crowd of spectators, as some did. Her cheeks burned, for she knew how she must stand out among the sturdy hunters. She imagined the citizens of Aranho whispering about her, snickering behind their hands, as they had done so many times before.
    Though it seemed to her that hours passed, the sun was still low in the sky when the march began at last. They headed east, toward the sea and the deep forests.
    As they approached the last stone cottage before the village gates, she heard someone call her name. From the grassy verge beside the road, her sister Wynna waved, children clinging to her skirts as Jacinth had clung to her own mother’s skirts long years before. Beside her stood Joth, looking tall and strong in spite of the crutches tucked under his arms. Jacinth slowed her vigorous pace and blinked, for in all the years she had known him, Joth had never gone to watch a lily hunt begin.
    “Good luck!” called Wynna.
    Jacinth raised her hand to return Wynna’s greeting, but her gaze never left Joth’s face. He was smiling, and the smile illuminated him as if the day’s soft yellow sun hadrisen from the horizon of his own heart. Its light crept into every corner of her, no matter how deep the shadows, and courage came with it.
    “I’ll be back soon,” she cried. “I promise you!”
    Then the tide of marching hunters swept her up, and the journey began in earnest.
    They followed the road toward the east, traveling across grassy plains that ran unbroken for miles and miles. For two nights, Jacinth camped alone, ahead of the others. They would have nothing to do with her once the high elder had been safely left in the distance. On the first day’s march, some of them made a game of throwing pebbles at her so that she was forced to choose between endless small bruises and solitude. In her pride and pain, she took advantage of the fine boots Joth had made for her and strode ahead smiling grimly while the strong young men of Aranho trudged along on tired and blistered feet. A bitter satisfaction filled her, for she had been forced to accept solitude many times over in her life. It was nothing new to her. No matter, she thought, as she lay beside her small fire. She tried to dream only of Joth and the lilies, but the night songs of toads and owls pounded down on her like cold, lonely rain, and she cried in her sleep, her fingers clenched white around the handle of her dirk. For it did matter. It mattered as much as it always had.
    Jacinth knew nothing specific about where the lilies might be found. She suspected that some of the other hunters had received instructions from those who had gonebefore. But even if that was true, none of them would have shared such manly secrets with a woman—particularly one so proud and hideous. She knew only that lilies favored damp, shady places, loamy ground near bogs or the margins of deep forest ponds. She knew also that the forests lay in the low hills that separated the meadowlands from the eastern sea. When the hunters began their march from Aranho, the wooded coastal hills lay far off in the blue distance. But every day they grew closer, until on the third morning the faint smells of leaf mold and pitch and the vast, wet sea awakened Jacinth from her troubled sleep.
    She sat up at once, sniffing the air. The sun had just risen. Birds twittered sleepily, and somewhere in the shadowy grass a cricket still chirped. She looked into the