The Language of Thorns

by Leigh Bardugo

  All the townspeople and the eager suitors concurred—especially the prince, whose pride was still smarting. Semyon did not want anyone to think he priced Yeva so low. He swallowed his protest and nodded.

  “Very good! Then listen closely. A girl like Yeva must be able to behold her own lovely face. High in the Petrazoi lives Baba Anezka, the maker of mirrors. Whoever returns with a piece of her handiwork will have my daughter as his bride.”

  The suitors scattered in all directions while the prince called orders to his men.

  When her father had returned to the palace and Yeva heard what he had done, she said, “Papa, forgive me, but what way is this to find a husband? Soon I will have a fine mirror, but will I have a good man?”

  “Darling Yeva,” said the duke. “When will you learn to trust in your father’s wisdom? The prince has Ravka’s fastest horses, and only he can afford such a mirror. He will win this contest easily, and then you will wear a jeweled crown and eat cherries in winter. What do you think of that?”

  Yeva wondered if her father had simply misheard her question, but she kissed his cheek and told him she was very fond of cherries indeed.

  Semyon went down to the river and put his head in his hands. “What am I to do?” he said miserably. “I have no horse, nor have I money to trade with the mountain witch. You helped me before, but what good are you now, river?”

  Then Semyon gasped as the river once more breached its banks and grabbed hold of his ankle. It dragged him into its depths as he sputtered and gasped.

  “River,” cried Semyon, “what do you do?”

  The river burbled its reply, dunking him deep, then buoying him to the surface and carrying him safely along. It bore him south through lakes and creeks and rapids, west through tributaries and streams, mile after mile, until finally they came to the north-facing slopes of the Petrazoi, and Semyon understood the river’s intent.

  “Faster, river, faster!” he commanded as it carried him up the mountainside, and soon enough, he arrived soaked but triumphant at the entrance to the witch’s cave.

  “You have been a loyal friend, and so I think I must name you,” Semyon said to the river as he tried to wring the water from his ragged coat. “I will call you Little Knife because of the way you flash silver in the sunlight and because you are my fierce defender.”

  Then he knocked on the witch’s door. “I have come for a mirror!” he shouted. Baba Anezka opened the door, her teeth straight and sharp, her eyes golden and unblinking. Only then did Semyon remember he had no coin with which to pay. But before the ancient Fabrikator could shut the door in his face, the river splashed its way through, eddying around Baba Anezka’s feet and then back out again.

  Baba Anezka greeted the river with a bow, and with Semyon on her heels, followed the river over a high ridge and through a path hidden between two flat rocks. As they squeezed through, they found themselves at the edge of a shallow valley, its floor all gray gravel, barren and unwelcoming as the rest of the Petrazoi. But at its center lay a pool, nearly perfect in its roundness, its surface smooth as highly polished glass, reflecting the sky so purely that it looked as if one could step into it and fall straight through the clouds.

  The witch smiled, showing all her sharp teeth. “Now this is a mirror,” she said, “and seems a fair trade.”

  They returned to the cave, and when Baba Anezka handed Semyon one of her finest mirrors, he laughed in his joy.

  “That gift is for the river,” she said.

  “It belongs to Little Knife, and Little Knife does as I ask. Besides, what could a river want with a mirror?”

  “That is a question for the river,” replied Baba Anezka.

  But Semyon ignored her. He called out for Little Knife, and once more the river grabbed his ankle and they went rushing down the mountainside together. When they roared past the prince’s caravan trudging along the path, the soldiers turned to look but only saw a great wave and a white curl of foam.

  Once they arrived in Velisyana, Semyon put on his least threadbare tunic, combed his hair, and did his best to polish his boots. When he checked his reflection in the mirror, he was surprised at the sullen face and inky eyes that stared back at him. He’d always thought himself quite handsome, and the river had never told him differently.

  “There is something wrong with this mirror, Little Knife,” he said. “But this is what the duke demanded, and so Yeva shall have it for her wall.”

  When the duke looked out his window and saw Semyon striding across Suitors’ Square with a mirror in his hands, he reeled back in shock.

  “See what you have done with your foolish tasks?” said the retired colonel, who was awaiting the contest’s outcome with the duke. “You should have given me Yeva’s hand when you had the chance. Now she will be married to that outcast, and no one will want to sit at your table. You must find a way to be rid of him.”

  But the duke was not so sure. A prince would make a fine son-in-law, but Semyon must have great power to accomplish such extraordinary tasks, and the duke wondered if he might make use of such magic.

  He sent the colonel away, and when Semyon knocked on the palace door, the duke welcomed him with much ceremony. He sat Semyon in a place of honor and had the servants wash his hands with perfumed water, then gave him sugared almonds, plum brandy, bowls of lamb dumplings resting in nests of musk mallow. Semyon had never eaten so well, and he’d certainly never been treated as a beloved guest. When at last he sat back, his belly ached and his eyes were bleary with wine and flattery.

  The duke said, “Semyon, we are both honest men and so can speak freely with each other. You are a clever fellow, but how can you hope to care for one such as Yeva? You have no work, no home, no prospects.”

  “I have love,” said Semyon, nearly toppling his glass, “and Little Knife.”

  The duke didn’t know what knives had to do with anything, but he said, “One cannot live on love or cutlery, and Yeva has had an easy life. She knows nothing of struggle or hardship. Would you be the one to teach her suffering?”

  “No!” cried Semyon. “Never!”

  “Then we must make a plan, you and I. Tomorrow I will set a final task, and if you accomplish it, then you will have Yeva’s hand and all the riches you could ever want.”

  Semyon thought the duke might try to cheat him once more, but he liked the sound of this bargain and resolved to be on his guard.

  “Very well,” he said, and offered the duke his hand.

  The duke shook it, hiding his distaste, then said, “Come to the square tomorrow morning and listen closely.”

  Word of the new task spread, and the next day the square was packed with even more suitors, including the prince, who stood with his tired horses, his boots glittering with tiny shards of the mirror he had smashed in his frustration.

  “There is an ancient coin forged by a great sorcerer and buried somewhere beneath Ravka,” the duke declared. “Each time you spend it, it returns to you twofold, so your pockets will always be full. Bring back this coin so that Yeva will never want for anything, and you will have her as your bride.”

  The crowd raced off in all directions to gather shovels and pickaxes.

  When the duke stepped back from the balcony, Yeva said, “Papa, forgive me, but what way is this to find a husband? Soon I will be very rich, but will I have a good man?”

  This time, the duke looked on his daughter with pity. “When the coffers are empty and their bellies growl, even good men turn bad. Whoever may win this contest, the magic coin will be ours. We will dance in marble halls and drink from cups of frozen amber, and if you do not like your husband, we will drown him in a sea of gold, then send a silver ship to find you a new one. What do you think of that?”

  Yeva sighed, weary of asking questions that went unanswered. She kissed her father’s cheek and went to say her prayers.

  The prince called all his advisers together. The royal engineer brought him a machine that required fifty men to turn the crank. Once it
was spinning, it could drill for miles beneath the earth. But the engineer did not know how to stop it, and the machine and the fifty men were never heard from again. The minister of the interior claimed he could train an army of moles if he only had more time, and the king’s spymaster swore that he had heard stories of a magic spoon that could dig through solid rock.

  Meanwhile, Semyon returned to the river. “Little Knife,” he called. “I need you. If I do not find the coin, then another man will have Yeva and I will have nothing.”

  The river splashed, its surface rippling in consternation. It sloshed against its banks, returning again and again to break upon the dam that bound the millpond. It took many minutes, but soon Semyon understood: the river was divided, too weak to dig beneath the ground.

  He snatched up the ivory-handled axe he had taken from the woods when the prince had cast it away, and hacked at the dam with all his might. The clang of Grisha steel against stone echoed through the forest, until finally, with a creaking sigh, the dam burst. The river roiled and frothed in its newfound strength, whole once more.

  “Now slice through the ground and fetch me the coin, Little Knife, or what good are you to me?”

  The river dove through the earth, moving with strength and purpose, leaving caverns and caves and tunnels in its wake. It crossed the length of Ravka, from border to border and back, as the rock tore at its current and the soil drank from its sides. The deeper the river plunged, the weaker it became, but on it went, and when it was at its most frail, little more than a breath of fog in a clump of earth, it felt the coin, small and hard. Whatever face the metal bore had been long worn away by time.

  The river clutched the coin and hurtled to the surface, gathering its strength, growing dense with mud and rainwater, swelling as it reclaimed each rivulet and tiny stream. It erupted through the millpond, a gout of mist that glittered with rainbows, bouncing the coin this way and that.

  Semyon bounded into the water to seize it, but the river swirled around him, making worried murmurs. Semyon paused, and he wondered, What if I bring the coin to the duke and he sets yet another task? What if he takes it and murders me where I sit?

  “I am no fool,” said Semyon to the river. “Keep the coin in the shallows until I return.”

  Once more Semyon combed his hair and shined his boots and made the walk to the duke’s home. There he pounded on the door and announced that he had found the final prize. “Call the priest!” he demanded. “Let Yeva be dressed in her finery. We will say our vows by the river, and then I will give you your magic coin.”

  So Yeva was attired in a dress of gold and a thick veil to hide her miraculous face. The blind nursemaid cried softly as she hugged Yeva one last time, and helped to secure a jeweled kokoshnik in her hair. Then Yeva was led down to the river with her father and the priest, trailing all the townspeople and the grumbling prince behind them.

  They found Semyon by the shattered dam, the river spilling its banks.

  “What has happened here?” asked the duke.

  Semyon still wore his threadbare rags, but now he spoke with pride. “I have your coin,” he said. “Give me my bride.”

  The duke held out his hand in expectation.

  “Show them, Little Knife,” said Semyon to the seething waters.

  Yeva frowned. “What is little about the river?” she asked. But no one heard her question.

  The coin shot from the river’s depths to skip and dance on its surface.

  “It’s true!” exclaimed the duke. “By all the Saints, he’s found it!”

  The duke, Semyon, and the prince all reached for the coin—and the river roared. It seemed to hunch its back like a beast preparing to charge, a wild, pulsing swell that crested over the crowd.

  “Stop this!” demanded Semyon.

  But the river did not stop. It twisted and turned, forming a mighty column that churned with reeds and broken rocks, rising high above the forest floor as the onlookers cowered in fear. What did they see in its waters? Some would later say a demon, others the pale and bloated bodies of a hundred drowned men, but most said they saw a woman with arms like breaking waves, with hair like storm-cloud lightning, and breasts of white foam.

  “Little Knife!” cried Semyon. “What do you do?”

  A voice spoke, terrible in its power, rumbling with the sound of rain-choked waterfalls, of tempests and floods. “I am no blunt knife to cut your sorry bread,” it said. “I feed the fields and drown the harvest. I am bounty and destruction.”

  The people fell to their knees and wept. The duke clutched the priest’s hand.

  “Then who are you?” begged Semyon. “What are you?”

  “Your tongue is not fit for my true name,” the river boomed. “I was once a spirit of the Isenvee, the great North Sea, and I roamed these lands freely, tumbling down through Fjerda, to the rocky coast and back again. Then, by unhappy accident, my spirit was trapped here, bound by this dam, free to run but doomed to return, forced to keep that cursed wheel spinning, in endless service to this miserable hamlet. Now the dam is no more. Your greed and the prince’s axe have seen to that.”

  It was Yeva who found the courage to speak, for the question to ask seemed simple. “What do you want, river?”

  “It was I who built the tower of trees,” said the river. “And I who earned the mirror from Baba Anezka. It was I who found the magic coin. And now I say to you, Yeva Luchova: Will you remain here with the father who tried to sell you, or the prince who hoped to buy you, or the man too weak to solve his riddles for himself? Or will you come with me and be bride to nothing but the shore?”

  Yeva looked at Semyon, at the prince, at her father standing beside the priest. Then she tore the veil from her face—her eyes were bright, her cheeks were flushed and glowing. The people cried out and shielded their gazes, for in that moment she was too lovely to look at. She was terrifying in her beauty, bright like a devouring star.

  Yeva leapt from the banks and the river caught her up in its waters, keeping her afloat as her jeweled kokoshnik sank and her silken gown billowed around her. She hovered there on the surface, a flower caught in the current. Then, as the duke stood stunned and quaking in his wet boots, the river wrapped Yeva in its arms and carried her away. Through the woods the river thundered, leaving trees and fields drenched by her eddying skirts, smashing the mill to bits in her wake. The waterwheel snapped free of its moorings and rolled wildly down the banks, knocking the prince and all his retainers to the ground before disappearing into the underbrush.

  The townspeople trembled against one another and when the river was finally gone, they looked upon the empty riverbed, its damp rocks glittering in the sun. Where the millpond had been only minutes before, there was just a muddy basin. There was quiet, no sound but the croak of lost frogs and the slap of gasping fish flopping in the muck.

  The river was the heart of Velisyana, and when it went silent, all that was left was for the town to die.

  Without the river, there could be no mill, and without the mill, the duke lost his fortune. When he begged for relief from the king, the prince suggested that his father set three tasks and that the price for failure be the duke’s head. The duke left the capital in disgrace but with his head still on his shoulders.

  The shops and houses of Velisyana emptied. The grates lay cold and the clock on the bell tower chimed its hour for no one. The duke remained in his crumbling palace, gazing out from Yeva’s window onto the empty stones of Suitors’ Square, and cursing Semyon. If you keep very still, you may see him there, surrounded by stone lilies, awaiting the water’s return.

  But you will not glimpse lovely Yeva. The river carried her all the way to the seashore, and there she stayed. She said her prayers in a tiny chapel where the waves ran right up to the door, and each day she sat by the ocean’s edge and watched the tides come and go. She lived in happy solitude, and grew old, and never worried when her beauty faded, for in her reflection she always saw a free woman.

  As for po
or Semyon, he was driven out of town, blamed for the tragedy that had befallen it. His misery was short, however. Not long after he left Velisyana, he withered to a husk and died. He would not let any drop of water pass his lips, certain it would betray him.

  Now, if you have been foolish enough to wander from the path, it is up to you to make your way back to the road. Follow the voices of your worried companions and perhaps this time your feet will lead you past the rusting skeleton of a waterwheel resting in a meadow where it has no right to be. If you are lucky, you will find your friends again. They will pat you on the back and soothe you with their laughter. But as you leave that dark gap in the trees behind, remember that to use a thing is not to own it. And should you ever take a bride, listen closely to her questions. In them you may hear her true name like the thunder of a lost river, like the sighing of the sea.

  IN THE END, THE CLOCKSMITH WAS to blame. But Mr. and Mrs. Zelverhaus should not have let him into the house. This is the problem with even lesser demons. They come to your doorstep in velvet coats and polished shoes. They tip their hats and smile and demonstrate good table manners. They never show you their tails.

  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.

  He’d risen to fame when he’d built a clockwork fortune-teller that, when a certain lever was pulled, would move its polished wooden hand over your palm and predict your future. A merchant brought his daughter to the shop before her wedding. The fortune-teller had clicked and clanked, opened its wooden jaws, and said, “You will find great love and more gold than you could wish for.” He bought the clever automaton for his beloved child as a wedding gift, and everyone who attended the celebration agreed they’d never seen a bride and groom more in love. But the ship his daughter boarded to begin her honeymoon was so heavily weighted with goods and coin that it sank at the first breath of a storm and all were lost to the uncaring sea. When the news reached the merchant, he remembered the automaton’s clever words and, drunk on misery and brandy, smashed the thing to bits with his own fists. His servants found him lying amid the wreckage the next day, still weeping, shirt stained, knuckles bloody. But the sad tale drew new customers to the clocksmith’s door in search of the marvelous and uncanny.