The River Has Roots

by Amal El-Mohtar

She couldn’t put words to the look on Rin’s face. She only knew, very sharply and deeply, that she wanted to go on being the cause of it.

“Bel, he’s like a bit of bread that’s been dropped in a pond! If the bread could also beg a duck to eat him!”

“Ysabel Hawthorn,” she said, and she could not keep the heat from her voice, “demand better than to be worshipped by a crumb.”

Esther laughed like a whip striking.

the River Liss is always changing, and take it to mean it is changing itself, its length and breadth, its depth and its bends—or you can hear those very same words and ask, Changing what?

Don’t follow the river. Follow the water.”