Spinning Silver

When Irina asks how she could be repaid, Wanda does not know how to answer. In her mind, binding the Staryk was repaying Miryem, who had rescued her from her father, fed her, paid her, and shared her “magic” and her parents’ love. The Staryk’s decision to take Miryem for what she could do, without care for her own wants, reminds her of her father’s thinking—that she was only an object to be taken or sold and bent to his whims because he was strong. Wanda, however, has found her own strength. She learned about trade and monetary exchange, and she found the strength to oppose her father. She was even strong enough to stop the Staryk, though she did not realize she possessed such might. Wanda realizes, “I had not known that I was strong enough to do any of those things until they were over and I had done them. I had to do the work first, not knowing” (381).

When Stepon asks how she knew they would defeat the Staryk and not be killed by him, she answers that she did not know; she “only knew the work had to come first” (381).