The Language of Thorns: Midnight Tales and Dangerous Magic (Grishaverse, #0.5 & 2.5 & 2.6)

by Leigh Bardugo

FOR GAMYNNE— THE BABE WITH THE POWER

Ayama’s brow still creased with worry, so her grandmother said, “Come now, Ayama. You know how the stories go. Interesting things only happen to pretty girls; you will be home by sunset.”

His family despaired, for they could not afford to feed him, and the boy was desperate for a cure, but no medik or zowa healer could help.

"Zowa" is, I guess, the magic of Zem.

You see, some people are born with a piece of night inside, and that hollow place can never be filled—not with all the good food or sunshine in the world. That emptiness cannot be banished, and so some days we wake with the feeling of the wind blowing through, and we must simply endure it as the boy did.”

This goes to show you that sometimes the unseen is not to be feared and that those meant to love us most are not always the ones who do.”

After a courtship of many stories, Ayama and the beast married beneath a blood moon, and pride of place was given to Ma Zil, who had sent Ayama again and again into the thorn wood. She had not been much to look at in her youth, and she knew well that only courage is required for an adventure.

So it was that the valley to the west came to be ruled by a monstrous king and his monstrous queen, who were loved by their people and feared by their enemies. Now in the valley, the people care less for pretty faces. Mothers pat their pregnant bellies and whisper prayers for the future. They pray for rain in the long summer. They pray that their children will be brave and clever and strong, that they will tell the true stories instead of the easy ones. They pray for sons with red eyes and daughters with horns.

The clocksmith was called Droessen, though there were rumors he was not Kerch, but Ravkan—an exiled nobleman’s son, or possibly a disgraced Fabrikator, banished from his homeland for reasons unknown. His shop was on Wijnstraat, where the canal crooked like a finger beckoning you closer, and he was known the world over for his fantastical timepieces, for the little bronze birds that sang different songs at every hour, and for the tiny wooden men and women who played out amusing scenes at midnight, then again at noon.

Every winter, the Zelverhauses, a wealthy family of tea merchants, hosted the clocksmith at their country home for the parties and entertainments given during the week of Nachtspel. The house itself was a model of merchant restraint, all dark wood, stolid brick, and hard lines. But it was perfectly situated by a lake that froze early for skating, and it was effusive in its comforts, with fireplaces alight in each room to keep the house always snug and merry, and every floor polished to the warm syrup shine of a glazed cake.

She rose, bathed, and came down to breakfast to find that her reputation was in ruins. Clara didn’t care. She could not imagine marrying some ordinary merchant’s son or choosing to live in one gray world for the rest of her life. She considered her options and decided there was nothing for it but to become a writer. She sold her pearl earrings and moved to Ketterdam, where she took a small apartment with a window facing the harbor so that she could watch the ships come and go. There, she wrote fantastical tales that charmed children, and under another name, she penned rather more lurid works that kept her in nougat and sweet cream, which she always took care to share with the mice.

This is the problem with making a thing forbidden. It does nothing but build an ache in the heart.

sildroher

Fjerdan name for merpeople.

Song was not just a frivolity then, something meant to entertain or lure sailors to their doom. The sildroher used it to summon storms and protect their homes, to keep warships and fishing boats from their seas. They used it to make their shelters and tell their histories. They had no word for witch. Magic flowed through all of them, a song no mortal could hear, that only the water folk could reproduce.

“You claimed you were hunting,” she said, a flimsy kind of protest. “They say the sea whip roams these waters. I want to see the ice dragon for myself. Knowledge. Magic.

Drüsje. Witch.

Signy ran a gentle hand over the silk of Ulla’s hair. “I wouldn’t care if you were part human or part frog. You would still be my fierce Ulla. You always will be.”

“I love you both,” he said easily. “But I would break her heart and yours to take my brother’s crown.”

The tempest that raged that night broke the land from the northernmost tip of Fjerda and formed the islands that the men of the land now call Kenst Hjerte, the broken heart.

The storm had brought Ulla to the cold shelter of the northern islands, to the darkened caves and flat black pools where she remains to this day, waiting for the lonely, the ambitious, the clever, the frail, for all those willing to strike a bargain.

Sara Kipin’s illustrations grace nearly every page of this collection, and I am grateful for each bold brushstroke and surprising detail.

David Peterson helped me name my mermaids and my knives.

Leigh was born in Jerusalem, grew up in Los Angeles, graduated from Yale University, and has worked in advertising, journalism, and even makeup and special effects. These days, she lives and writes in Hollywood, where she can occasionally be heard singing with her band. You can sign up for author updates here. AUTHOR’S

Back in 2012 during the lead-up to the release of my first novel, my publisher asked if I would write a prequel story for Shadow and Bone. I was game, but the idea that came to me had little to do with the characters of that book. Instead, it was a tale that the characters might have heard when they were young, my own take on a story that had troubled me as a child—“Hansel and Gretel.”

The horrible legends of Tarrare’s polyphagia found their way into Ayama’s first tale in far gentler form. The childhood trauma visited on me by The Velveteen Rabbit and the distressing idea that only love can make you real took a different shape in “The Soldier Prince.” As for my mermaids, while Hans Christian Andersen’s original tale served as a point of departure, it’s worth mentioning that Ulla is the Swedish diminutive of Ursula.