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.

“Go back home,” he calls as she hoists herself up into a cart and then onto the slanted tiles of the roof. “It’s not safe.” Only three years between them, his thirteen to her ten, but he’s taken to acting like it’s an uncrossable distance, as if he’s full grown and she is still a child, even though he still cries when he gets sad or hurt, and she has not cried since before their father died.

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

“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.

(“You’re staring,” snapped the first girl Alice ever had a crush on, the words sharp enough to sear her cheeks, to make her duck her head even though she hadn’t been, not then, was just daydreaming in the wrong direction.)