The River Has Roots

by Amal El-Mohtar

They say voices run in families. Esther and Ysabel’s voices ran together like raindrops on a windowpane, threaded through each other like the warp and weft of fine cloth, and as they harmonized, the air shimmered with grammar, and Ysabel could see her sister in the harp, whole and beautiful and unmarred, and no one who heard them could doubt that this was Esther Hawthorn, come herself to name her murderer.

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?

If the river has roots, it has branches, too; learn to climb them, and find your sister.

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.

And their joy runs together like rivers, like voices, like families.

John felt suddenly unsure. “It will hurt?” “Most likely. Great changes often do.”

Wherever he came face-to-face with people they found him handsome: he was after all tall, with straight teeth and a small nose, high cheekbones and honeyed hair. But when he turned his back, he knew people shuddered at the shape of him, whispered about the odd way his shirt hung off his shoulders, a strange sag at his belt.

She was an odd one—she spoke plainly, but John felt there was much she didn’t say.

“Thank you, that’s kind.” “No, it’s just true.”

“Steal from a woman long enough, and a witch is what she’ll become.”

And Brigid put distance between them, and Lydia dimmed herself, until soon they couldn’t see each other at all. And so John made room for himself.

“I wasn’t going to let him become a secret I kept from you.”

I wrote and revised this book under the mental duress of seeing horrific war crimes against my people denied, excused, laundered, in the same language I use to tell stories.