Auguries and sacrifice: crude tools of toothless practitioners. Or so her mother said, even as she’d rehearsed Hild in every variation. But she said, over and over, there was no power like a sharp and subtle mind weaving others’ hopes and fears and hungers into a dream they wanted to hear. Always know what they want to hear– not just what everyone knew they wanted to hear but what they didn’t even dare name to themselves. Show them the pattern. Give them permission to do what they wanted all along.
Hild is Nicola Griffith’s historical novel about the childhood of St. Hilda of Whitby, and it goes deep into how Hild(a) could have become what she was: an advisor to kings. In the 600s, advising a king mostly looked like fortunetelling and making wishes come true, so this is in a lot of ways a non-supernatural story about a very successful witch.
The book presents divination as a material skill. Rather than contacting the spirit world, Hild learns to read things that other people can’t. Why the birds are nesting low in the trees, what makes someone stand straighter, how wealth is going to shift, or, more literally, gossip in foreign languages, and what it all reveals about opportunities, motives, and risks. It reminded me of Dune or Sherlock Holmes, from the perspective of a girl. Obviously I love this– forest whispering and social intuition are the kind of witch skills I want to have.