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by
Amy Harmon
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July 23 - July 27, 2025
At five summers, she was the size of children two summers younger, and she was slight in a way that caused me concern.
Lark grasped the dancing doll and took its word away, the way I’d taught her, breathing the word into its chest, backward. “Ecnad,” she said, swallowing it back into herself. The hopping poppet was scampering around her feet, and she scooped it up and whispered “Pmuj.”
For one so disdainful of the king, my lord was quick to kiss the king’s boots. Fear made weaklings of us all.
“Swallow Daughter, pull them in, those words that sit upon your lips. Lock them deep inside your soul, hide them ‘til they’ve time to grow. Close your mouth upon the power, curse not, cure not, ‘til the hour. You won’t speak and you won’t tell, you won’t call on heav’n or hell. You will learn and you will thrive. Silence, daughter. Stay alive.”
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
The Spinner, The Changer, The Healer, and The Teller lived long and had many children of their own, but even with blessed words and magnificent abilities, life in the world was dangerous and difficult.
and eternal life was completely meaningless without love.
But the voices of fear and discontent are always loudest, and one by one, the Tellers, the Healers, the Changers, and the Spinners were destroyed.
convinced that equality could only be realized if no one was special, and the power of the words was eradicated.
Boojohni was a troll, more closely resembling a monkey than a grown man, with a flat, rubbery nose above an impressive beard that matched the wild hair that started low on his forehead and continued down his back.
“But . . . she is . . . a mute!” my father stammered, clearly as stunned as I. “Yes, she is.” The king smiled around the words, and his tone was wry and laced with humor. “A wonderful quality in a woman. She will keep all my secrets.”
found him in the library with Kjell, a room towering with books from every land, a room I had frequented often since becoming queen. It smelled of wisdom and words