The Tangleroot Palace E-Book

Liu Marjorie

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 414

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

From New York Times bestseller Marjorie Liu comes six dark, lush, and spellbinding short stories and one novella, full of unexpected detours, dangerous magic, and even more dangerous women . New York Times bestseller and Hugo, British Fantasy, Romantic Times, and Eisner award-winning author of the graphic novel Monstress, Marjorie Liu leads you deep into the heart of the tangled woods. In her long-awaited debut collection of dark, lush, and spellbinding short fiction, you will find unexpected detours, dangerous magic, and even more dangerous women. Briar, bodyguard for a body-stealing sorceress, discovers her love for Rose, whose true soul emerges only once a week. An apprentice witch seeks her freedom through betrayal, the bones of the innocent, and a meticulously plotted spell. In a world powered by crystal skulls, a warrior returns to save China from invasion by her jealous ex. A princess runs away from an arranged marriage, finding family in a strange troupe of traveling actors at the border of the kingdom's deep, dark woods. Concluding with a gorgeous full-length novella, Marjorie Liu's first short fiction collection is an unflinching sojourn into her thorny tales of love, revenge, and new beginnings.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

COVER

TITLE PAGE

LEAVE US A REVIEW

COPYRIGHT

INTRODUCTION

SYMPATHY FOR THE BONES

THE BRIAR AND THE ROSE

THE LIGHT AND THE FURY

THE LAST DIGNITY OF MAN

WHERE THE HEART LIVES

AFTER THE BLOOD

TANGLEROOT PALACE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

“Liu’s mastery of so many different subgenres astounds, and her ear for language carries each story forward on gorgeously crafted sentences. This is a must-read.”

Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

“Readers find that Liu’s writing is all ‘soul and teeth.’ Neither will release them quickly. The only drawback to these seven stories is that readers will want far more time in each world.”

Kirkus, Starred Review

“The Tangleroot Palace is charming and ruthless. Tales that feel new yet grounded in the infinitely ancient, a mythology for the coming age.”

Angela Slatter

“A glittering, twisty, take on tales that seem familiar until Liu hands you her version. You won’t be able to put it down.”

Charlaine Harris

“This is a superb collection from start to finish. Mysterious, beautiful and strange, harsh and charming, it fires the emotional palate.”

Charles de Lint

“Rich and evocative tales with just the right amount of bite.”

Kelley Armstrong

“With a range of themes and settings, the stories in The Tangleroot Palace showcase immersive world building and emotionally evocative prose.”

Shelf Awareness, Starred Review

“An astonishing foray into fantastical escapism… Readers who want to be immersed in otherworldly adventures with feminist themes will find a gifted and enchanting guide in Liu.”

Bookpage

“Some authors excel at one thing; others can do it all. Whether it’s fairy tales or superheroes or the post-apocalypse, Liu always delivers, and with her own unique spin.”

Marie Brennan

“Liu’s astonishing range reaches stunning heights of savagery and tenderness, with groundbreaking visions of fairy tales, alternate history, and high fantasy, even challenging the conventions of feminism itself. Longtime fans and new readers alike will be swept away by the tragic romance, nail-biting adventure, and dread-inducing terror.”

Cemetery Dance

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The Tangleroot Palace

Print edition ISBN: 9781789099621

E-book edition ISBN: 9781789099638

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd.

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First Titan edition April 2022

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Copyright © Marjorie Liu 2021, 2022. All rights reserved.

Introduction copyright © Marjorie Liu 2021, 2022

“Sympathy for the Bones” copyright © 2012. Originally published in An Apple for the Creature, edited by Charlaine Harris and Toni L. P. Kelner (Ace). | “Briar and Rose” copyright © 2016. Originally published in The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales, edited by Dominik Parisien and Navah Wolfe (Saga Press). | “The Light and The Fury” copyright © 2010. Originally published as “Call Her Savage” in Masked, edited by Lou Anders. (Gallery Books). | “The Last Dignity of Man” copyright © 2013. Originally published in The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination: Original Short Fiction for the Modern Evil Genius, edited by John Joseph Adams (Tor Books). | “Where the Heart Lives” copyright © 2012. Originally published on Smashwords. | “After the Blood” copyright © 2010. Originally published in Songs of Love and Death: All-Original Tales of Star-Crossed Love, edited by Gardner Dozois and George R. R. Martin (Gallery Books). | “Tangleroot Palace” copyright © 2009. Originally published in Never After (Jove).

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

INTRODUCTION

GREETINGS, FRIENDS.

I started writing this introduction when the COVID-19 pandemic was just beginning to unfold. An early adopter of its seriousness, I was living in Japan, close to the epicenter—and it was strange and surreal watching the societal threads, what we take for granted, pull apart bit by bit. Now, months later, I’ve returned to finish this introduction—and while I’d like to say the intervening time has given me a new perspective around my work, the only shift for me has been a deeper understanding of the limits of human imagination—including mine.

That said, here we are, together—and here, before you, are fragments of my imagination, sometimes limited, sometimes not. I’ve never been someone who lingers over my past work. I am very much a creature of the present. When I write, I live for the moment, passing through a story, inhabiting the skin of the characters—and when that story is done, so am I.

But I mean, done. With some rare exceptions, I have almost no recall over the content of my previous work, whether it’s a novel, short story, or comic. Broad strokes, yes. I can say, “There’s a merman! A gargoyle! A tiger shape-shifter!” But after that, my memory skids right off the road. Even now, as I write this, I keep trying to test myself by looking at the titles of my novels, and it’s dire, folks. I honestly don’t know what the hell I’ve done these past seventeen years, except that apparently, I wrote a lot of words.

This amnesia was not some surprise. For years I’ve thought about why this happens, why the wall goes up after I write “the end.” I asked a friend once, and she commented offhand that perhaps writing is like channeling a spirit in a prolonged séance—the spirit moves through me—but it’s not as if I want it hanging around when I’m done talking. I send away that which no longer serves me—and move on to the next conversation.

Which is a nice and tidy way of thinking about it, but one could just as easily argue that I’m phobic when it comes to introspection. Remembering my work would require remembering me—and unfortunately, that’s its own challenge.

But, anyway, that’s a long way of saying that when I was approached regarding this collection, I had a hard time remembering what short fiction I had written that could actually fill a book. The answer, I realized in short order, was quite a lot. Nor is this collection entirely complete—there are a small handful of stories still floating around in other anthologies—but this an excellent overview of what happens when one never says no to offers of work.

With one exception, all the stories contained herein were written over an eight-year period or so, while I was pounding out paranormal romance novels and urban fantasies—andworking for Marvel Comics, as perhaps the first woman of color writing for them. These are the stories of my twenties and very early thirties, slices of prose from a formative decade when I was still figuring things out (an ongoing process, I assure you), produced between crushing deadlines, driven less by ideas and more by emotions. They’re time capsules, each one capturing a different stage of me, who I was, who I was becoming. Those are also the years when I was living in the Midwest, in the center of a forest—an impenetrable, tangled forest where every night the coyotes would howl, a forest where I never set foot because I never felt invited. But I had forgotten that, too—and I’m somewhat amused that it took me reading these stories to remember what it felt like to live in the middle of that forest—and to see how persistently those trees entered (and still enter) my work.

These seven stories are not presented in the order they were written, and some of them have been lightly (and not so lightly) edited. I know, I know . . . but I couldn’t help myself! Don’t ever let a writer, after more than a decade away from a story, have access to it again—they’ll compulsively bring their new selves to the page and start renovating. Still, these are more or less the same as they were, tales about warrior women and runaway princesses; ordinary girls battling faery queens; a post-pandemic apocalyptic tale of an Amish vampire and the young woman who loves him; a teen who uses dolls to kill; even a depressed tech billionaire with some superhero identity issues. I look over them now and see the common threads—a longing for home, friendship, love—characters often driven by a weary hope in the possibility of something good.

Hope in the possibility of something good—even the tiniest, most wee little good—is sometimes all we’ve got. And that hope is never unavailable to us, even if seems far away or lost entirely. Hope is the driving force of these stories before you.

By the time you read this, who knows where we’ll be—hopefully healthy, hopefully safe with our loved ones, hopefully figuring out our lives and making what we can of them, as always. Under the best and worst of circumstances, that’s the aspirational baseline—to hope for a better tomorrow, to wake up each day with a little resolve, a little resilience, and simply try for something.

Easier said than done, right?

But I have this simple philosophy that’s always served me well: “If you don’t ask, the answer is always no.”

It applies to everything in life, really—whether it’s a job opportunity or something as nebulous as a dream. If you don’t ask life for a possibility, if you don’t dwell in possibilities, if you don’t hope, the answer is always no.

And so I say, if you’re reading this and going through hard times, try to dwell in the possibility of a better tomorrow, no matter how impossible it seems.

Ask the universe a question, see what happens. I hope—see, there it is again—I hope your adventure is beautiful.

—Marjorie LiuAugust 2020

SYMPATHY FOR THE BONES

THE FUNERAL WAS IN A BAD PLACE, but Martha Bromes never did much care about such things, and so she put her husband into a hole at Cutter’s, and we as her family had to march up the long stone track into the hills to find the damn spot, because the only decent bits of earth in all that place were far deep in the forest, high into the darkness. Rock, everywhere else, and cairns were no good for the dead. The animals were too smart. Might find a piece of human flesh in the yard by the pump with sloppiness like that. I’d seen it myself, years past. No good at all.

The leaves had gone yellow and the air bit cold, whining shrill like the brats left behind the dead, trudging slow beside their weeping mother. Little turds, little nothings. Just blood and bone, passed on from a father who was a cutter, a stone lover, mixing his juice inside a womb that was cold and sly. I did not like Martha. I did not like her husband, either. Edward Bromes was a hard man to enjoy, in any fashion. I cried no tears that he died.

Later that night, I burned the doll that killed him.

*   *   *

Next morning, frost: first kiss of winter. I added layers of wool, and laced my feet and legs into boots lined with rabbit, gathered my satchels, took up a tin can I hung from the hook at my belt, and marched from the rotten timber shack into a silver forest, glittering, spiked with light and a chill.

Persimmons had fallen overnight and the deer had not got to them. Quick business, but careful; those thin orange skins split open at the hint of a tense finger, and I ruined more than I cared to admit. Popped them in my mouth to hide the evidence. Spit out the seeds into my palm and tucked them into the satchel where I kept the needle and thread. The rest, what was perfect and frostbit, I carried in the can for old Ruth.

She was knitting when I came upon her, sitting on her slanting porch as though the cold was nothing to withered flesh. Crooked broken teeth, crooked smile that might have been pretty but for the long scar pulling her bottom lip.

“Clora, you brought me sweets,” she cooed, setting aside her yarn. “Enough for pudding?”

I placed the tin can into her hands, which were scarred with needle pricks. “Not yet. Maybe tomorrow.”

She caught my wrist before I could pull away. “And the ashes?”

I knew better than to hesitate. No good to pretend I was happy, either. Obedience was enough. Obedience was the same as falling on knees, like the Sunday regulars the preacher took down to the river to pray at the cross and handle the Lucifer snake he kept in a pine box.

I dug into the satchel and pulled out a small packet of folded calico, sewn shut with my finest black thread stitches. Ruth’s smile widened, and she snatched it from my hand—holding it up to her nose and closing her eyes with pleasure.

“Good,” she said, finally. “Edward had it coming for what he did to you.”

I grunted, walking past Ruth into the cabin, unable to look into her eyes.

“Clean your needles,” Ruth called after me. “Time for lessons, Clora.”

I lit the fire, and while the flames leapt and scrambled within the stove, I relieved the burden of needle and thread: slender bone daggers punched with holes; and rough spools, collapsed with lichen-dyed browns and a rich burgundy soaked from sumac bobs, thin as a strangler’s wire and finely made—by my own hands—hours spent at the fixing of such binding threads.

The needles still had blood on them. I sat down at the table, wet the bone with a dash of apple vinegar poured from a flask in my satchel, and scrubbed hard with the pad of my thumb. Skin to bone, trying to summon the proper devotion. I was still scrubbing, whispering, when Ruth limped into her home.

Her own needles gleamed white as snow, hung around her neck like a fan of quick fingers.

“Not saying their names right,” she said, leaning so close the great bulk of her breasts touched my back. “Need to show your kin the proper respect, Clora. All my teachings to no account, otherwise.”

And then her hand fell upon my hair, warm as the fire burning, sinking into my skull behind my eyes, and she said, “Try again tomorrow. Right now we got a poppet to make. Some Buck Creek girl set her eye on a cutter man from the quarry, and her mother wants him gone.”

I spread the needles over the table. “Maybe he loves her.”

Ruth snorted, and drew away. “Her mother brought a cutting of his hair.”

Nothing more needed saying.

*   *   *

The ground was still soft over Edward’s grave.

His brothers were too lazy to pack him down hard, or even lay stone on top, which was what he would have wanted, being a cutter at the quarry for most of his adult life. I took a stroll past Martha’s cabin on the way to the hill, making sure she was home.

Wives were odd sometimes. Over the years, I’d seen a few who couldn’t pull themselves from the graves of lost men, sitting up all through the day and night with Bibles, crosses, or nothing to hold but their skirts and faces, weeping and praying like God would give them a resurrection, like maybe their men were as good as Jesus and would be risen. Seemed to me that was arrogance bordering on sin, but not one that was any worse than murder.

Martha was home. I stood at the edge of the forest, staring at her lit windows, watching her make circles all around her kitchen. I could have gone closer, but the old coonhound was tied to the porch, and even though he knew me, there was no sense in sparking the possibility of him making an unattractive sound.

The forest sang at night, trills and clicks, and whispers of the wind in the naked rubbing branches. Coyotes yipped and somewhere close a fox screamed like a woman, making my skin crawl cold even though it was nothing to fear.

The shovel was heavy on my shoulder. So was the ax.

I found the grave before moonrise and started digging. Took hours. I didn’t focus as I should. Kept thinking about Edward Bromes, and my last view of his body before his brothers slid him into the pine box: pale, stiff, eyes sewn shut.

I thought about other men, too.

I had to jump down into the hole, standing waist-high in loose dirt as I used the ax to pry apart the soft, cheap wood. Martha had insisted on something finer than a muslin shroud, but each groan of those splitting planks made my heart beat harder until I was breathless, expecting to hear shouts, dogs barking. The night was all as it should be, though: empty, quiet, crisp with frost.

Edward smelled a little, but no worse than other corpses. I looked down at him with nothing but a small tallow candle to enhance my sight, but that was more than enough. I had sewn the stitches myself to close his eyes, prepared the body for burial under the watchful, too watchful, gaze of his wife, and now we were met again and he was still dead, but with a purpose.

I cut off his right hand, wrapped it in oilskin, and reburied him.

By sunrise I was home, and had just enough time to wash up before I went for another day of lessons with old Ruth.

*   *   *

Think what you will, but I had no real family. Mother dead from the influenza, father run off with a woman who clerked for the big boss at the quarry. Gone ten years, and maybe he’d thought a six-year-old daughter would be cared for by relations, but a good hunting dog would have been more welcome, and was: old Tick, a bloodhound come down from Kentucky as a puppy, brought to heel by an uncle after my father run off, and I still recall Martha and Edward and another aunt being angry about the inconvenient burden of me.

I was another mouth to feed. By the time Ruth found me, I had no shoes, no coat, and my hair had to be shorn to the scalp because of lice and fleas. I still remember the sores on my legs and arms: insect bites scratched to infection, and the vinegar baths and salt scrubs, and willow bark tea forced down my throat for weeks, weeks, after Ruth took me in and clothed me like a doll in soft dresses.

“Clora, my sweet,” she’d say, and I loved her for it. Decided, in that pure childlike naivety kin to wishing on a star that I would do anything for her, I’d care for her, I’d be hers in body and soul.

It was the soul part I hadn’t realized would be a problem.

*   *   *

The poppet for the mother of the Buck Creek girl took three days to make.

I cut cloth from one of the old burlap bags folded by the fireplace, and took up a smaller, sharper finger-blade to shear out the shape of a man. Twice I did this, using the first as a pattern that I traced with a stick of coal. Ruth had taught me to do the same with twisted roots and vines, formed to take a human shape; or dried corncobs, or clay; but cloth had advantages that Ruth had spelled into me, such as it could be sewn into a vessel filled with all the sundry items a good hoodoo needed: blood and bones, and cuttings of hair, dried fluids from a man’s loving, trapped on cloth, mushrooms, feathers, shell and stone. Little bits of power in the right hands with the right intent and desire, making a sympathetic echo that might correspond to a living human body.

“Need to fix that red stitch,” Ruth told me, as I sewed. “Fix it or start over.”

I pulled the bone needle back through the hole as Ruth turned away to her own sewing: a doll as long as my forearm, with a real face embroidered in her finest threads—black hair, blue thread dyed from woad for his eyes, a strong nose identified by a crooked line.

“Haven’t told me who that’s for,” I said, quiet.

“Hush.” Ruth put a fat persimmon in her mouth and began sucking on it. “You’ll make another mistake. All my teaching will be for naught if you keep up this way.”

I gave her a small smile, but with my eyes averted. I only made mistakes when I had a mind to do so. Ruth might say she wanted me strong and I’d tried to please her in that way before I realized better—before I seen a look she couldn’t hide on the day I sewed a hoodoo that made a man burst his brain with apoplexy before I finished the last stitch. Us at the spring market in the valley, sitting under a tree, and all it was supposed to be was a lesson in seeing the hoodoo make a man itch. Not die.

So, I made mistakes after that. Small ones. Enough to make me look weak.

Not from guilt.

I wanted to survive.

*   *   *

I walked the poppet down to Buck Creek on the fourth day. It was cold and bright, and the closer I got to the bottom of the valley, the more houses I saw deep in the woods—and in the distance, the winding track of the dirt road that somewhere bled north into a larger road, and larger, beyond which I’d never seen.

I didn’t need Ruth’s directions to find the right home, built into the side of a rocky hill cleared of trees. I could hear the creek, but the chickens were louder, scratching in a large pen guarded by a hound gone gray at the muzzle. The mother was out in the yard splitting firewood, cheeks red from exertion and the chill, her bare hands the same color. Her smile was tight-lipped when she saw me, but I didn’t take it hard. Asking for a bad act was the same as committing it, and didn’t matter how it was done: God would be all for the remembering, when the final day was come.

“Didn’t expect you so soon,” she said.

“Soon as done,” I replied, looking around. “Is your daughter here?”

Her gaze hardened. “Off to the quarry. She brings that man his lunch. Won’t be reasoned with, no matter how hard I come at her.”

“Shame,” I said, wondering at how much I sounded like Ruth. “Terrible she won’t believe you. About his way with women, I mean.”

“I only want what’s best for her. Plenty of fine men, without Betty making eyes at a no-good. If he gets her with child. . . .” The mother made a disgusted sound and leaned the ax against the cutting block. “God’s work that Margaret down at the Bend heard of his wandering eye before I let it go too far.”

God’s work, maybe. My work, certainly. Rumors could cast a spell just as powerful as needle and thread.

I began to pull the poppet from my satchel, but the mother stiffened and took a step back.

“Not out here,” she said, looking around as if a crowd from church had gathered in the trees. “Not here.”

We went inside. Her cabin was dark, but it smelled like warm bread and coffee. She offered me none of that, except a handful of crumpled bills that looked like the right amount, though it was hard to tell. I didn’t count them. Ruth knew how to handle a cheater well and good, which this woman surely knew.

I lay the poppet on the table. “You sure you want to do this yourself?”

The mother hesitated. “What does it take?”

“Burn it,” I said. “Or stab it. Twist its head to break his neck. Anything you do will kill him, slow or fast.”

She went pale. “That’s the Devil’s work.”

I offered back her money. “You said you wanted him gone.”

The mother stared at the doll and took a long, deep breath. I waited, already knowing the answer.

When I left her home, I carried the poppet in my satchel—and the money, too.

I walked toward the quarry.

*   *   *

The man was easy to find, as he was lunching with a girl no older than me, sixteen at best, pretty as morning with long blond hair and a face that might have been her mother’s, if her mother had ever been young and happy.

I watched them from the edge of the woods and ate my own lunch: a soft-boiled egg, a bit of bacon between some bread. Tapped my feet and rubbed my hands, trying to stay warm, watching the man and girl smile and laugh and make lovey-dovey with their eyes—and me, wondering all the while what that would feel like, wishing and afraid, but mostly wishing.

The girl left with a laugh and kiss. The man watched her go. His eyes, for her only. If he had ever wandered, I was certain he would never wander on her.

I started walking before he did, making my way through the woods so that I was waiting for him on the trail down to the quarry. He took his time, and was whistling when he saw me—though that stopped when he said, “Miss?”

Nothing hard in his face. Nothing bad, as was believed. The girl was right to love him. I had known it for weeks now, from the first time I seen them together.

I put my hand in the satchel, on the rough skin of the burlap doll. “I’ve come to warn you, mister.”

He frowned. “Who are you?”

“Someone who knows old Ruth,” I said, and something cold and small entered his eyes, natural as the ill, bone-chilling breeze passing around us on the trail. Ruth was like that breeze in these parts, known and accepted, and respected out of fear. Most granny-women were, like as in the blood, born from the old country that was still rich in the veins of those who had settled these hills and valleys. Fear of a hoodoo woman was natural. Fear was how it had to be.

“Ruth has her eye on you,” I said. “When it comes, it’ll be her doing.”

He paled. “Done nothing wrong. Don’t even know her.”

I stepped back into the woods. “Remember what I told you. It was Ruth who ordered it.”

“Wait,” he began, reaching for me. I slipped away, but he did not try to follow. Instead he ran up the trail, away from the quarry. Chasing the girl, I thought. She was something he wanted to live for.

I pulled out the poppet, and twisted its head clear ’round.

*   *   *

The man was buried two days later, and the night after I slithered into that proper cemetery and dug for him. If he was watching from on high, I didn’t mind. I sawed off his hand and wrapped it up tight.

*   *   *

I was good at digging for the dead. Ruth started me at the age of twelve, from necessity. It was time. I’d become a woman, my first bleed, and needles couldn’t be made from any old bone. So my own mother was first, and my grandmother after her—followedby her mother. Nothing less would do, Ruth said, and I believed her, though it made me cry. Took a long while, too, and lucky for me, my relatives were buried in the family plot, out in the hills where no one ever came.

All for sympathy, was something else Ruth taught me. Bones had to be sympathetic to make a hoodoo stitch work its wiles, and nothing was more in sympathy than a line of women, from mother to daughter and backward to beyond. Never mind any strife that might have pressed between generations. Who was left living mattered most to the dead. According to Ruth, that was me.

Though it seemed, as it had for some time, that it wasn’t just the bones of those come before that might matter in the stitching. Any bone, from a body with desire, might have a say in the power of a hoodoo.

Any bone at all.

*   *   *

Now, there were stories come down from the hills that I remembered being told even as a child, and the telling of them was still rich on the tongues of the people who settled in the valley and high country, away from the quarry. Tales of the banshee and hag-riders, and the little folk who Ruth thought she could consort with, though I’d never seen anything but a raccoon sip the milk she left out, nights. I don’t know if I believed in such tales, though I respected the possibility, given the power of the needle and stitch, which had to come from somewhere—and if not the world of the spirit, then maybe God, though I did not think He would approve the use for which His gift had been put.

It certainly was not for God that I was a conspirator to murder. And I had no confidence that He had a greater hold of my soul than Ruth.

Took me four years to realize something might be shifty, and by then I was ten. I got it in my head to go raiding some jar of sweets that Ruth kept just for herself, and it wasn’t a minute after my first bite of peppermint that the pain started in, right in my stomach. I doubled over thinking I’d been stabbed, sure to find blood, but nothing was there but the certainty that my insides were going to spill outsides.

Calling for Ruth did no good. She was standing right there, watching. Holding a doll made of pale cloth, large as a swaddled babe and cradled in her arms, with a fork jabbed into its belly.

Ruth’s eyes, satisfied and cold. “Been soft on you. And now you try to steal from me. After everything I done to keep you whole.”

Well, it took me a week to walk after that.

But it gave me time to think.

*   *   *

That new doll, with the blue eyes and crooked nose, remained a silent presence. Ruth worked on it with a steadiness I’d not seen in years, taking care with every stitch, mumbling devotionals over her needles before she’d even thread them. I watched her clean those bone daggers each morning, and when it came time to fill that doll with the hoodoo, she made me go outside in the cold and practice my embroidery, claiming a need to concentrate in peace. It was no consequence to me. I knew what she was doing. Capturing a soul was no secret, even though she’d never taught me the way of it.

“Power makes you greedy,” Ruth said, seven days after needling that first stitch. “I’m no innocent in that regard, as you well know.”

I was standing beside the fireplace, bent over a tin pail that held a mixture of cow urine, fermented these last three weeks, and the smashed hulls of black walnuts. Preparing dye for the thread, spun with my own hands from wool shorn from the sheep that Ruth kept in a pen on the hill.

“Look at me,” she said.

The doll was in front of her on the table, soft limbs stretched out, soft body embroidered with runes and blooms and glimpses of eyes peering from behind twisting vines. I looked for only a moment and then settled on Ruth, who was eyeing me all speculative. I kept still.

“You have never been greedy,” she said, finally. “Never saw a sign of it in your eyes, and I been looking for years, since I showed you that first stitch.”

“I don’t want what you have,” I said truthfully.

Ruth grunted, and pushed herself off the chair. “Good girl.”

I hesitated. “Never asked who taught you.”

Oh, the smile that flitted across her mouth. Made me cold.

“My teacher,” Ruth murmured, stroking the bone needles laid out on the table. “My own Granny, with her wiles. My mother had no gift for the stitch, but there was something in me, from the beginning.”

Her gaze met mine. “Same as I saw in you.”

My cheeks warmed. “No use for it, except killing. That’s no life, Ruth.”

“Better life than what you were headed for.” Her fat fingers flicked through the air above the blue-eyed poppet. “Would have been in a grave. Nothing to show for living. Nothing to show those sympathetic bones.”

I looked down at my needles, spread across the table. Each one born from a hand, hands whose names I knew: Lettie, Polly, Rebecca. Mother, grandmother, great-grandmother.

And now I knew the names of other bones from other hands.

All in sympathy.

*   *   *

It’d been years since Ruth had ventured off her land, but that afternoon she put on a woolen skirt and coat that moths and mice had been chewing on for a decade, pinned up her long gray hair, and buttoned her blouse until those needles hanging around her neck were hid. Not that showing them would have made folks any less uncomfortable. Ruth walking amongst the good Christians of the valley might be enough to thin the blood of that hollering preacher himself.

We were real silent until the end, just before she limped out the door, and she looked back and said, “There’s a man come to my attention. You go home now, come back tomorrow.”

“You need help?” I asked, but she raised her brow at me, made a clucking noise, and walked on out. The poppet was in a cloth bag that swung from her shoulder.

I followed her, soon after.

Ruth had a fast limp. I had to hustle to catch up. Not that I wanted to get too close, but there was some investment on my part, and so I took a different trail that was roundabout and uneven, steep—too difficult for Ruth to walk, though I myself was too fast, sliding and flirting with loose rocks underfoot, and low-lying branches that might have taken my eye or broken my nose if I hadn’t been quick to duck. All for good, though. I reached the bottom of the trail certain I was first and Ruth, somewhere above, still huffing and puffing.

I kept to the woods, lungs tight as I forced down deep breaths of cold air, and made my way to a small log cabin settled in a clearing where a man stood on the covered porch, rocking a baby. A stonecutter, still dusty from the quarry, staring at his child like she was sunshine and angels, and so much sweetness I had to look away.

I took another breath, and walked from the woods.

“Clora,” he said, with a tired smile, kind as could be. “Been some time.”

“I’m sorry for that, Paul.” I hoped he couldn’t hear the thickness of my voice. “How’s Delphia?”

Paul glanced over his shoulder at the cabin’s closed door. “Pain’s lessened, I think. That tea you brought seemed to help her sleep. But it’s this one,” and he paused, holding his babe a little tighter, “that’s gotten fussy.”

“Etta,” I murmured, peering into blue eyes that were just like her father’s.

“Oh, but it’s nothing,” said Paul, just as gently, and kissed her brow. “I’m just glad I’m fit to care for her. What with. . . .”

He stopped. I looked away again, toward the woods. His wife was dying, eaten up by scirrhous in her breasts. No stitch could cure her of those tumors. Maybe, if caught early. But not by the time I’d heard. Not for nothing did I think it fair the needle could kill or control, but when it came to healing a mother, all that power was to no account.

“It won’t be much longer,” I said quietly.

Paul’s jaw tightened. “Then just me and Etta. Been thinking of leaving the quarry when that happens, maybe to find work in one of the towns up north. Cutting stone is too dangerous. Can’t let nothing happen to me now.”

I glanced down at the baby. “You have something to live for.”

Paul made a small sound. “Come inside, Clora.”

“Can’t.” I backed away, shaking my head. “Ruth is coming.”

He frowned, holding his daughter tighter. “You shouldn’t spend so much time with that witchy woman. You’ll get the taint on you.”

“Too late,” I said, making his frown deepen. “And didn’t you hear me?”

“Heard.” Paul gave me a disapproving look. “Got nothing to fear from an old woman. Why she visiting, anyhow?”

“Your wife sent a note. She got it in her head that Ruth could cure her.”

His brow raised. “Can she?”

“No.” I stepped off the porch, nearly falling, and suddenly it was hard to see past the tears blurring my eyes. “She’s going to hurt you, Paul. I want you to remember that. It was her doing.”

Her doing, not mine. Her doing, even though it was me that put the idea in Delphia’s head, even though I was the one who carried the note, that note which told a story of how much a woman would give to live just a while longer so she might not leave behind a little daughter and a good man. A good man who loved her with all his soul, she said.

I knew the interest Ruth would have in a man like Paul: so good, so true. Nothing rarer. Nothing more powerful.

I walked away, and as he called my name, the baby cried.

*   *   *

It got done, just as I knew it would, and the stain was on my hands sure as if I’d taken a knife and cut Paul’s heart.

I heard of his death from Martha, who stopped by my shack because she was terrible lonely—terrible, to come visiting a girl she’d never wanted—but even if the words hadn’t come from her mouth, I’d seen the doll on Ruth’s special shelf where she kept other poppets filled with death’s power, and I had to turn away, not wanting to look too deep into those embroidered blue eyes. Not because I was reminded of Paul, but because all I could think of was his daughter who would soon be alone. Delphia wouldn’t last the week, Martha said. Blamed the shock of losing her husband.

Sure, I’d known that, too, even if I hadn’t wanted to think on it. Wasn’t just power that made people greedy, but desperation. And I’d had plenty of that building inside me, years on end.

The night Paul was buried, I went and stole his hand.

*   *   *

Now, I was guessing that the dead might know the truth of things, that I was no innocent and that my soul was in the shadow, but I hoped these men might also recall those words I’d spoken at the end—to Edward, too—that it was Ruth, Ruth, Ruth who made the spell that killed them. They might be sympathetic, as such, to my plight. A gamble, but one worth taking.

I made the needles from their bones. One full week it took to extract and carve, and polish—and pray as I had never prayed—but when I had my little daggers I began sewing the doll.

The cloth I used was old. Old enough that I’d had to dig up my mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother for it. The oldest of them was a white wedding gown, turned brown with age; and then a black dress torn up with holes; and last, a gown made of muslin that tore so easily, I held my breath when I added it to the patchwork of poppet flesh.

Days I practiced stitches with Ruth, and nights I stitched to kill her, embroidering a fantasy of freedom upon the skin of the doll: an open road leading to its heart, and the blue sky, and birds with their wings outstretched. Black thread held the joints, but everywhere else, color sapped from forest dyes, from the walnut and woad, safflower and goldenrod, mixed double, double, to toil and trouble.

I poured my heart into the making of that poppet. I poured what was left of my soul. And when I was done, or near so, I cut open my arm to spill my blood upon its guts: strands of hair I’d gathered, sneak-like, over years in Ruth’s home; persimmon seeds she’d spit from her mouth into the yard; and chicken bones where her teeth left marks. Epsom salts for freedom, and blue salt for healing; gray talcum powder to protect from evil; and last, dirt from the graves of my mothers. Dirt from the graves of the men, along with a finger from each of their hands.

And when I was done I set a shroud upon the thing, because its eyes seemed to watch me, and I could not stand the judgment already waiting, on high and low, and inside my heart where there was no peace and never would be, even if I got what I wanted.

Even so.

*   *   *

“There’s something different about you,” Ruth said, setting down some knitting as I approached her cabin. The morning sun was on her: hair silver as frost, her skin pale, and those bone needles shining white around her throat.

“I’m tired,” I said. “Been thinking.”

“Dangerous.” Ruth heaved herself from the rocking chair and went inside. “I’ll make you tea.”

She said those words with kindness. I’d heard them a million times. Comforting, warm. Ruth, who had rescued me. Ruth, who had raised me as her own. Ruth, who had been my teacher and friend.

When she turned her back on me I reached inside my satchel, grabbed the poppet, and squeezed.

Her back arched so wild she went up on her toes, a rattling cry tearing from her throat. I squeezed harder and heard a cracking sound. Bone, breaking.

Ruth crumpled, slamming down with a thud that rattled the entire porch. For a moment she was completely still, and then her fingers twitched, and her hands and arms began to move, and she clawed at the planks, panting for air. Her legs remained still.

I took a long, deep breath, and climbed the steps. My heart pounded. Dark spots floated in my vision. Ruth tried to grab my foot, hissing curses at me, but I sidestepped and went into the cabin.

I gathered the dolls on the shelf, including one with my name embroidered over the heart. My hands burned when I touched it, dizziness sweeping down, but I swallowed hard and held the doll close—burning, burning—and went back outside.

“I’ll kill you,” Ruth whispered, gaze burning with hate. “I should have killed you years ago.”

“You held the leash and thought that was enough.”

Foam touched her lips. “I cared for you.”

I held up the doll she had made to control me. “Not in the right way.”

“You would do the same!” Ruth tried to grab me again as I walked past her to the yard. I dumped the dolls on the hard frost, and then reached into the satchel for Ruth’s poppet. I went back and showed it to her, crouching a safe distance away. Her eyes narrowed, and even with her back broke I saw those wheels turning, how she examined every stitch, searching for a flaw. But of course there was none. If I’d done one thing wrong, I’d be dead and she would be kicking my corpse into the refuse pile for the pigs to eat.

“Impossible.” Ruth tore her gaze from the poppet. “I own you.”

“I found sympathy.” I pulled down my collar to reveal two necklaces of bone needles hanging from my neck. “Just enough.”

Her eyes widened. “Those men.”

I said nothing, and the silence was terrible and heavy, heavy on me because I saw myself in that moment: me, in Ruth’s place, sprawled on the porch with a broken back and some other girl standing over me, ready to take my place with a fury. Future or not, it chilled me.

“Oh, God kill you,” Ruth whispered. “God kill you, and the Devil, too.”

“In time,” I said, and twisted the poppet’s head.

*   *   *

Freedom should have a tingle, some flash of light, but I felt no different afterward. Maybe I wasn’t free. Maybe being free of Ruth wasn’t the same thing at all.

I burned all the dolls, except mine. I was too much a coward to tempt my own death, though I deserved it in a mighty way. Shadow of death over my heart, waiting, waiting, for the needle and thread. Wicked stitchery.

I wanted to learn a different kind.

Ruth, I burned with the dolls. I broke her needles.

But I kept her house.

*   *   *

A week later, I heard word that Delphia had passed. No relatives nearby to care for the baby, and no one stepped in to take claim. I waited, to be sure, and then went down into the valley to take the girl. I did not ask. I held out my arms, and there was something in the way those folk looked at me, something I’d never seen before except when they looked at Ruth, but I supposed I finally had her eyes.

I took the child in, but the only doll I made for her was stitched for play, with a needle from her father’s hand.

Things would be different, I promised.

All for sympathy for the bones.

*   *   *

“Sympathy for the Bones” is one of my favorite works of short fiction (if I’m allowed). I wrote it for the anthology An Apple for the Creature, which was supposed to be about “your worst school nightmare,” and indeed, I can’t imagine a nightmare more awful than someone else owning your soul. What does one do in that situation? What is the cost of freedom? What price do you pay for a power that has been bent to one dark purpose your whole life: hurting others?

THE BRIAR AND THE ROSE

THE DUELIST WAS AN ELEGANT WOMAN, but that was by her own design and had nothing to do with the fact that her mistress bade her act with certain manners when she was not, by law, killing her peers.

She was called Briar, but only on Sunday. Other days, she was simply the Duelist. No man had legs half as powerful or as long, and her reach with a sword was so terrifying that experienced fighters would surrender at her first lunge. A foreigner from across the sea, a brown woman in a city where she was as exotic for her skin as she was for her blade; where, after some seven years—four of which had been spent in her mistress’s employ—she had settled down comfortably in her reputation and only had to draw her sword against the very young, and very stupid.

Her mistress was the most favored courtesan of the Lord Marshal, and in the evenings she was called Carmela. The Lord Marshal thought himself a special man that he knew her name, but Carmela had a talent for making every man feel the same, and each knew her by a different identity.

Even the Duelist was not privy to all her secrets, though she spent most of her waking hours attending to the woman, and even longer nights sitting by that bedchamber door, listening to her loud, dramatic lovemaking. The Duelist knew that Carmela had more respect for her sword than her intelligence, that she took delight in having a quiet beast of a woman guarding her, a woman with the same brown skin, as if they were a mismatched set.

Carmela paid the Duelist well for her sword, silence, and skin—and trusted her not to, as she put it, get any ideas.

But the Duelist, in fact, had many ideas.

Saturday had come around again, and it was almost midnight. Nearly Sunday, in fact. Which was the only day worth living, in the Duelist’s estimation.

She stood at the edge of the ballroom, wearing her most imposing jacket—a stiff green silk that hugged her trim waist, held down her breasts, and enhanced the already massive width of her shoulders. No one had ever told her to dress in outfits that complemented her mistress’s voluminous ensembles, but the Duelist had made it a rule. She understood Carmela’s vanity, that a valued guard was also an accessory, and that it would please her mistress that nothing around her, nothing that reflected her taste, could ever be accused of anything so tacky as clashing.