Aebbe's Story
3. Birthdays

After my blood cycle started, my father would have a ball on my birthday. I would have an “appropriate” (his term) gown to wear and horrible shoes. I spent weeks learning the proper steps to the latest dances and how to hold a fork properly and which utensil to use with which course of a long meal. I was taught how to sit, how to stand, and how to walk. Could you imagine not walking properly? Well, turned out I didn’t.

It was all so tedious. It was much more interesting to learn to track game and the names of birds and animals. There were always new plants I needed to identify. But that’s not what ‘proper’ women were supposed to be interested in, I kept being told.

After my 12th birthday, I started being more aware of the boys running around the manor and our town. I started having kissing dates with some of the more interesting ones. When my brother Gyric found me kissing a boy once, he laughed and said I’d be having babies soon. That scared me a lot and so I asked Gavendor about it. He just had an air about him that made you feel he knew stuff because he’d seen a lot and traveled to many places before ending up in Thornhill. Anyway, he stammered and coughed, but eventually asked me if I’d seen the horses mated.

“Of course, I have. My mare, Lidly was mated to Gridiron last year,” I informed him.

“Did you watch it happen?” he pressed.

“Yes, she…” I thought about what I’d seen. “You mean a boy has a long thing like that and…” but Gavendor just nodded, confirming my worst fears.

“And the baby?” I pressed.

“The baby grows inside the mother,” he’d said, like it was obvious. “Remember how big Lidly got?” I had forgotten about that part, but she did get a big belly after a while.

“How does it get out?” I blubbered in shock.

“Didn’t you watch Lidly have her foal?” he asked gently.

“Well, of course…” I thought again about what I’d seen. “You mean the baby comes out of here?” I asked pointing to between my legs.

“Yes, it does,” he said soberly.

“But why did Lidly have to make a baby?” I wanted a full explanation. I knew I was missing something.

“Well, she was in heat. When Gridiron smelled her, well, they can’t help themselves, can they?” he explained.

“Oh, my Saints! So Osgar and I have to have a baby?!” I said, raising my voice.

“Oh, no. No, Lady Aebbe. People do not go in heat. They can always choose to have a baby or not,” he said, turning a bit red in the face. I heaved a sigh of relief over that. It was weird that he’d called me Lady Aebbe, though.

“Oh, thank the Deity and the Old Gods! Well, I choose never to have one. That’s a relief,” I said. For some reason Gavendor did not seem appeased when he got up and left rather quickly. Next time I saw Osgar, he looked like someone had given him a good thumping on the head. It wasn’t me that time. He refused to kiss me again after that. It was too bad since he was a nice kisser.

I still liked kissing boys. It felt nice. But if their hands strayed to other places or I had any indication that breeding was in their minds, I would end it right quick. I learned where to punch or kick a boy who needed help reminding that no meant no. A punch or knee to the groin was something I got pretty good at. I wished to get my brothers that way, but they were much older and faster.

Brid, another one of my brothers, started to tell everyone that I’d had kissing dates with all the boys in the manor and Thornhill. That was preposterous, of course. I didn’t do kissing dates with younger boys or dumb ones. That meant at least half of them were not interesting to me in the least. But I moved on from that eventually.

On my fifteenth birthday ball, I guess some of the neighbor noble boys had heard about my interest in kissing dates. They asked me if I wanted to kiss them. There was one older boy that caught my attention. He seemed smart and he was very good looking, but I’d heard he was a bad shot and not a good rider either. That was too bad. I mean, what would we have to talk about between kissing dates? So I turned them all down. Word got out about that, too.

<The Manor Ballroom>

As I got older, and I went on hunting trips, Gavendor was concerned about the boys with us getting “handsy” (his word). It was true that I’d had kissing dates with some of them, but I’d also punched a good many of them, too, so they kind of knew what was what. I was afraid I’d lose out on the overnight trips, then. When I’d been younger, Gavendor set up a tiny tent for me and he slept right outside it. But when he saw how I got along with the other boys as I got older, he let me sleep on a bed roll like everyone else. I was glad because I’d hated to have lost something else to womanhood.