Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil

by V.E. Schwab

To the ones who hunger— for love, for time, or simply to be free

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.

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

Nothing fits, even if it’s fitted, because it’s not really about the size of the body or how it fills the clothes, but how much space it takes up in the world.

Alice shrinks, is swallowed, disappears. No—disappearing would be better, because maybe in the absence of Alice she could become someone else. One of the feral girls, who have been planted and watered in their bodies, who have pruned their looks, or let them grow wild, the same girls who turn their full brows into a wolfish power, their painted lips into a weapon.

But that’s not why she stands out in the rain. It’s because there’s a moment, pressed beneath the weighted blanket of the storm, when her body stops fighting, when all the voices inside her finally go quiet, and her shoulders loosen and her lungs unclench and her skin goes numb and the line between girl and world gets smudged, and she is washed away. Made new.

(Like the time Catty’s boyfriend, Derrick, gave Alice a ride on the back of his motorbike and when he tipped to make a turn, she could have reached down and skimmed her fingers on the asphalt—the world was suddenly so close—and then the bike righted and the world balanced and Alice’s heart kept pounding, but it wasn’t fear, at least not fear alone. It was the thrill. And afterward, every time she was in her dad’s car, with its walls and its roof, she rolled the window down and held her arm out and felt the wind whip against her skin, and relived that tip, that turn.) And here she is, no car, no walls, just open air, and all Alice has to do is lean in, lean in, lean in. So she does.