Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil

by V.E. Schwab

Bury my bones in the midnight soil, plant them shallow and water them deep, and in my place will grow a feral rose, soft red petals hiding sharp white teeth.

Born restless, her father used to say. Which was fine for a son, but bad for a daughter.

“I need no wings,” she says with a smirk. “I am a witch.”

“So much superstition, from a place that believes a roasted hen really sprang up off a dinner plate and began to sing.”

“And how is a miracle different from a spell? Who is to say the saint was not a witch?”

“Nature gives us what we need,”

“Careful. In nature, beauty is a warning. The pretty ones are often poisonous.”

But María has known, all her life, that she is not meant for common paths, for humble houses and modest men. If she must walk a woman’s road, then it will take her somewhere new.

When to be the predator, and when to play the part of prey.

“You will learn, it is better to bend than to break.” María stared into the hearth. “Why should I be the one who bends?”

On and on. Each encounter bound to a single line, a token, a snapshot, a memory.

“And it seems to bring you pleasure. Yes?” “Of course.” “Well then,” she says, sitting up. “What of mine?”

“Those grown in the midnight soil are never alone.”

“Bury my bones in the midnight soil,” he begins, infusing the words with the air of theater. “Plant them shallow and water them deep. And in my place will grow a feral rose.” He leans down to Renata and cups her face, running a thumb across her bottom lip. “Soft red petals hiding sharp white teeth.”

“We are the roses that grew in the midnight soil,” he says, eyes bright as candles now. “Our thorns are sharp enough to prick. We are watered by life, and with its bounty, our roots grow deep, our blooms unmarred by age. In fact, for us, time fortifies, renders us more noble. We are no monster, no mean thing. We are nature’s finest flower.”

“There are other names for us, of course,” continues Hector. “Night walker. Blood drinker. Abomination. Vampire. But those are words crafted by mortal tongues. They are imperfect, incomplete. They lack the poetry, the brutality, the grace. No,” he says. “We are roses.”

“Renata does not belong to me, Sabine. And even if she did, forever is a very long time.

“Perhaps one day you will understand what it means to truly matter to another. Until then, just remember, little thorn.” He smiles, with not so much as a candle’s worth of warmth. “You may be her plaything. But I am her god.”

Alice: 1, common lore: 0,

“If you wish to stay, then you may do so as my guest, and I will be your gracious host. But you will live as I do, by a certain set of rules. There will be no skulking about in shadows, no victims stolen from the street and cast in the canal. I will show you how to savor every soul you take. How to claim space, and bend minds, how to enthrall, enchant, and masquerade. How to be the last one they think of when the bodies go missing.”

“I will show you how to live, better than you ever have before.”

Love. As terrible and bottomless as hunger. She wonders what it’s like.

“If you are so fond of living, why reject the gift of life?” “Is it life,” he counters, “if there is never death to balance it? Or is its brevity what makes it beautiful?”

“some things we do for pleasure, and others for purpose.”

“Control is knowing yourself well enough to know your limits.” His eyes drift toward the stairs. “Better to avoid temptation.”

What is the point, she thinks, of loving something you are doomed to lose?

“One thing you learn when you live as long as we do, is that nothing’s permanent. Who you were isn’t who you have to be.”

“Then whose is it?” demands Alice, and Lottie whispers something, a single word, too soft for even her to hear. “What did you say?” Lottie clears her throat and says the word again. “Sabine.”

“In intellect, perhaps. In willfulness, surely. But the simple fact is that you are a woman, and I am a man. And yes, it does afford me certain freedoms. But even so, one day I will need to take a wife, just as you will need to take a husband.”

Charlotte didn’t pay it much mind as she popped the toast point in her mouth, read the final pages of Udolpho, and felt beset by the strange mix of pleasure and grief that came with finishing a book. She sighed and set the novel down.

“You go through them so fast,” observed her father as he broke the letter’s seal. “At this rate, we’ll run out.” “Good thing, then,” she said, reaching for another piece of toast, “that more are always being written.”

“My name,” she says, “is Sabine Olivares.” Sabine.

“I am a widow.” Charlotte’s heart sinks on her behalf. “Oh,” she says as they reach the bottom of the stairs. “How dreadful. I am sorry.” Sabine leans in, her voice barely a whisper as she says, “I’m not.”

“Never be sorry,” she said, “for who you are.”

“Because you are the kind of bloom that thrives in any soil. And who knows, perhaps you will meet a worthy gardener.”

Charlotte sits at the table the next morning, wishing for a book.

“I was just thinking of you.” The words come tripping out of her, heat rushing in their wake. Jocelyn would have blushed, or looked away, embarrassed for them both. But Sabine’s mouth only twitches in a catlike smirk. “What a coincidence, Miss Hastings. I was thinking of you, too.”

“A name is like food,” she says. “It has a flavor. Some are bland, and some are bold, some bitter and some sweet.”

“I have been at court long enough to know how dreadful it can be.” She drifts toward Charlotte once again. “And how pleasant,” she adds, “in the right company.”

“What am I?” Sabine leans in, kisses her cheek, and says, “You are free.”

It is a lie, Sabine told her, that you only get one story. And she’s right. This is how the first one ends, Charlotte tells herself as the letter disappears, taking young Miss Hastings with it. This is how the next one starts.

Some people keep their heart tucked so deep, they hardly know it’s there. But you have always worn it like a second skin. It will make your life harder. But it will also make it beautiful.

“I dream of you, you know,” says Jocelyn. And then, “I dream of us.”

How easy to forget the way time wears on other people when she is with Sabine, the two of them preserved like insects inside amber. How easy, and then how hard, to see the proof of it, that life races on, relentless in its pace.

“The world is so dark,” whispers Charlotte. “So full of death. There must be something we can do.” Sabine brings her fingertips to Charlotte’s chin, and lifts her face. “Yes,” she says, “we can live.”

a single sunflower, a silver comb, a first edition of Camilla, because she knows it was the book that swept Charlotte off her feet.

A hundred years, apart, alone, with no one but Sabine. A hundred years without another confidante, or friend. A hundred years of waiting, wanting, and then at last, they were right there.

“Why are you being so kind?” she asks, even as she begins to sink. Antonia’s voice follows her down. “We grow together in this garden.”

“The fact is, whether death takes you all at once, or steals pieces over time, in the end there is no such thing as immortality. Some of us just die slower than the rest.”

“Stories matter, Alice. When you live long enough, they’re all you have.”