Uprooted

by Naomi Novik

she’s ruined,

Already: no to that

thick wheat-golden hair

super special girl is white and blonde i said oh im sure

I don’t think anyone had laughed at him in a hundred years, by then.

Girl you are not that special

But he pressed closer against my back, put his mouth against my ear, and whispered, terrible,

Mom i want to go home

He hadn’t done any of this to the other women at all.

Again: you are not super special (to me)

“I’ve fallen out of time,” before vanishing in a great cloud of smoke.

So real queen

“It comes, I suppose,” I said thoughtfully, speaking to the air, “of spending too much time alone indoors, and forgetting that living things don’t always stay where you put them.”

There was no trace of Kasia left at all.

I thought of Jerzy laughing dreadfully at me out of his sickbed, of Kasia below with the terrible brightness in her eyes,

Addiction

I could think was Kasia, Kasia,

The Wood will reach the southern pass to Kyeva Province in the next, and then—”

Ok southern reaches

in a house that hadn’t meant to welcome her back.

rape them, you

Thank you for finally saying it

suppose it might seem strange that I should thank him by shouting at

He’d been expecting the Wood to attack not simply for revenge, but to defend itself.

then he caught my face between his hands and kissed me.

WHAT??????????????

Sarkan

WHO?????

the Wood,

I didn’t know how to comfort her.

Probably by not bringing her in you dumb fuck

heart-tree.

won’t swear to you now I’ll bring you out alive;

Death????

skeleton, almost swallowed by moss and rotting leaves. A smaller root twisted out through one open eye socket, and grass poked through ribs and scraps of rusted mail. The remains of a shield lay across the body, barely marked with a black double-headed eagle: the royal crest of Rosya.

mosquitoes

Why are there mosquitoes

My head ached worst of all, some part of me tethered back to the valley,

Jet lag?

“Do you mean our gentle Owl?”

I just want you to stop saying odd shit

Heaven, painted clouds spilling over a blue sky and angels and saints stretched across it.

Why are we christian right now

ebony-dark skin

Oh so we do have skin tones

“His beautiful wife, who ran away from him with a Rosyan boy

But a tree isn’t a woman;

We're always saying this

Their skin has a little tea mixed in with the milk, but it only keeps them from burning in the sun, and my husband is a hundred and forty years dead.”

Ahhh ah dont say that

“I’ve had lovers now and then, mostly soldiers. But once you’re old enough, they’re like flowers: you know the bloom will fade even as you put them in the glass.”

being king and prince had made them something other than father and son to one another,

I’ll be announcing our betrothal once they’re gathered.”

EW

use. I didn’t want her to need to do things like that.

“you’ve certainly brought more men.”

Alright he ate with that one litle thing

I felt the soldiers understood perfectly well that we were making sums out of them—this many safe to spend, this number too high, as if each one wasn’t a whole man.

Maybe he would let me come in, but he’d want to close the doors up again behind me.

There was an arrow-shaft jutting out of me, just below my breast. I stared at it, puzzled. I couldn’t feel it at all.

it was the only thing there.

Remain Eternal, Rest Eternal, Never Moving, Never Leaving,

“I’m not your dear girl,”

Kasia i love you so much

would reclaim all those wells, those streams, go roaring up to the mountainside.

Someone hasn't taken storytelling 101

I kissed her;

Siri play what do you mean by justin bieber

took her face in my hands a moment; we leaned our foreheads together, and then she turned away.

Gay

Marisha’s small voice, saying, “Mama,” over her mother’s stabbed corpse.

She hadn’t known how to die at all.

She’d remembered how to kill and how to hate, and she’d forgotten how to grow. All she’d been able to do in the end was lie down beside her sister: not quite dreaming, not quite dead.

Can you imagine? I told him I thought he was a lunatic, and he said he would live in hope.