The River Has Roots

by Amal El-Mohtar

You’ll want to know, of course, what Rin said to Ysabel. It’s only natural, and I am sympathetic. But if I told you, you’d be in possession of a terrible secret, wouldn’t you? One that kings and grammarians alike would kill to possess. And who are you, ultimately, to be trusted with a way into Arcadia? Who’s to say you aren’t yourself a grammarian, or a king? Rin might have said, The way is a riddle. How would Esther solve it? They might have said, You sang your way out of Arcadia once; sing your way back in. Or Rin might have said, If the river has roots, it has branches, too; learn to climb them, and find your sister. It all returns to grammar. There is the grammar of a sentence, which can mean an arrangement of subjects and verbs, or can mean transformation into a tree that bleeds red where it’s cut. There is the grammar of grammarians, refined and removed from its source, and the grammar of witches, daily conjugating water into bread. There is grammar that is ruled like a kingdom, and grammar that is ruled like a composition book, and there is always, always the wild, unruly grammar of ballads and riddles, and this is the grammar of Arcadia, which breaks the real into the true.