Firethorn

by Sarah Micklem

  Mai had played a trick on me, meaning well by it. Doubt was my affliction and she’d given me solace, a counterfeit assurance of what—all mine to know. Strange that certainty and doubt can live side by side, the heart’s conviction, the mind’s disbelief.

  But Mai had taught me better than she realized when she taught me the binding. I’d fed the womandrake my faith, and she’d taken from it an animal strength and heat to match her rooted endurance, her will to grow. She’d go on whether we lived or died this winter.

  In spring she’d rouse and burgeon. I’d planted her upright, and she’d send forth rootlets, she’d fatten, she’d grow welts of woody flesh around the cord that wrapped her, that plait of hair and lamb’s wool. And from her head would sprout the tender shoots of bryony, from those shoots tendrils would grow with an astonishing green speed, clambering over bracken and osier, up willow and ash, her long tresses twining everywhere, setting white flowers to bloom in the leaf shadow and berries to follow.

  For I’d never dig her up. I’d not be forbidden what was mine unless the Queen of the Dead herself forbade me: mine to sleep so close beside him that when one turns the other must turn, mine to wake with him, to rise and cover our shining limbs with clothes and eat porridge, mine to hear him banter with his men or curse when Spiller straps the armor too tight, to stir up the hearth fire at night to watch light dance over his face—for even in wartime, surely, there must be the commonplace deeds of which lives are made, and lives together made; mine to see what he’d see, a new kingdom with trees and herbs unknown to me, cities with towers and golden domes, inhabitants strange in their customs and speech, all such sights never seen before. Mine to trudge beside him, for both must walk now, though the way is stony and muddy and winter howls down on us; mine to know his bruises, his wounds, the hour of his death, if death should come to him first—the travails too are mine, if the rest is mine.

  A few flakes of snow drifted down. The water had turned gray under the clouds advancing swiftly from the eastern mountains. Where the Sun shone through, terns swooped and plunged into a dazzle on the water.

  The Auspices had promised the king a favorable wind and the wind had come, cold and steady and laden with snow, to blow his chosen men west. They were gone and the rest of the army would not wait on their messages before we followed, for if the city wouldn’t fall by treachery, it must fall by siege. The queenmother would have her war, a gift from her brother the king.

  But for all that kings and queens can command the flood of war and bid it ebb and flow, the gods will have their way with us. I would cast myself on that flood and maybe I would founder. Like so many foolish mortals, I fancied myself to have a sail, an oar, I dared ask mercy of the wind, I thought that by striving I might turn this way or that, when all the while I went where I was bound to go, carried on the great swell, scratching a little vanishing wake over the surface.

  Acknowledgments

  Some creative writing teachers are gatekeepers who believe their job is to keep out the riffraff. Abigail Thomas throws open the gates and says, “Come on in.” Without Abby and her class, the Tuesday Night Babes, I would not have started writing this book again after abandoning it for years, or seen it through. Thanks to Kathleen O’Donnell, comrade—in—arms, for brainstorming and commiserating.

  Thanks to Merrilee Heifetz and Nan Graham for their welcome. Thanks to my editor Alexis Gargagliano for helping me delve deeper.

  I was a reader first and always. My thanks to the writers of science fiction and fantasy who took me on journeys to imaginary worlds. To create Firethorn’s I drew on works by historians, anthropologists, sociologists, and journalists; I read army manuals, oral histories, herbals, and travelers’tales; I am indebted to the above all, for showing me our own beautiful, strange, and terrible world.

  My father Roland has always been my guide in the woods: for teaching me the names of trees and feeding me pigweed, roadkill, and grasshoppers, my thanks. Thanks to my mother Carolyn for being a beacon, not just for me, but for many. And thanks to Cornelius for having faith in me all these years.

  About the Author

  SARAH MICKLEM had jobs in a restaurant, printing plant, sign shop, and refugee resettlement agency before discovering that graphic design was an enjoyable way to make a living. She wrote Firethorn while working as an art director for children’s magazines in New York City. She lives with her poet and playwright Cornelius Eady, in Washington, D.C., where she is writing the second book of the Firethorn trilogy.