Uprooted

by Naomi Novik

“What an unequaled gift for disaster you have.”

He warned me of all the dangers of higher workings: of the spell slipping out of your hands midway and thrashing around wild; of losing yourself in magic, and wandering through it like a dream you could touch, while your body died of thirst; of attempting a spell past your limits and having it drain away strength you didn’t have.

How long did it take, to hollow someone out from the inside?

But when harvest came, your neighbors came to help you gather and thresh, and when the shadow of the Wood stole over us, we knew better than to make it any darker.

“Linaya,” she said, a word that I somehow knew was and wasn’t magic, was and wasn’t a name; a word that meant sister, and friend, and fellow-traveler.