The River Has Roots

by Amal El-Mohtar

(What is a river but an open throat; what is water but a voice?)

What is magic but a change in the world? What is conjugation but a transformation, one thing into another? She runs; she ran; she will run again.

the sweep of their twisted crowns, reminds you of something, or someone, you’ve lost—something, or someone, you would break the world to have again. Something, you might think, happened here, long, long ago; something, you might think, is on the cusp of happening again.

But that is the nature of grammar—it is always tense, like an instrument, aching for release, longing to transform present into past into future, is into was into will.

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.

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

Most music is the result of some intimacy with an instrument. One wraps one’s mouth around a whistle and pours one’s breath into it; one all but lays one’s cheek against a violin; and skin to skin is holy drummer’s kiss. But a harp is played most like a lover: you learn to lean its body against your breast, find those places of deepest, stiffest tension with your hands and finger them into quivering release.

On her feet are willow-wood clogs; on her shoulders is a small child, sucking a thumb, gazing at Esther with Ysabel’s own bright eyes. “We’re here to remind you of the words to ‘Tam Lin,’” she says.