The bone roots, p.1
The Bone Roots, page 1
PRAISE FOR GABRIELA HOUSTON
“Gabriela Houston’s writing is both economical and evocative – a rare skill.”
SFX Magazine
“[Gabriela Houston] truly is a writer to look out for, and one that I think will go far.”
Libri Draconis
“As twisted and intricate as the bone roots themselves, an intimate portrait of what it means to become a mother and the fight to protect – at any cost. Be prepared to be gripped, chilled, and lulled deep into this mythic world with Houston’s lyrical prose.”
Caroline Hardaker, author of Composite Creatures
“Gabriela Houston’s The Bone Roots is an exuberantly told story that weaves together the lives of two mothers and their daughters. This enthralling tale is filled with dark magic, intriguing monsters, and a tension that holds until the very end.”
Chris Panatier, author of The Phlebotomist
“A powerful tale of two mothers and the lengths they’ll go to protect their children, set against a richly detailed backdrop of Slavic folklore. Wonderful!”
Shona Kinsella, author of The Vessel of KalaDene series
“[Houston] creates a realistic, enchanting fairy tale with real-world themes.”
Ginger Smith, author of The Rush’s Edge
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
The Second Bell
The Wind Child
The Storm Child
ANGRY ROBOT
An imprint of Watkins Media Ltd
Unit 11, Shepperton House
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From whence it came
An Angry Robot paperback original, 2023
Copyright © Gabriela Houston 2023
Cover by Alice Coleman, illustrations by Gabriela Houston
Edited by Gemma Creffield and Alice Abrams
Recipes cited from Salvic Kitchen Alchemy by Zuza Zak, Watkins 2023
Set in Meridien
All rights reserved. Gabriela Houston asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Sales of this book without a front cover may be unauthorized. If this book is coverless, it may have been reported to the publisher as “unsold and destroyed” and neither the author nor the publisher may have received payment for it.
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ISBN 978 1 91520 258 1
Ebook ISBN 978 1 91520 263 5
Printed and bound in the United Kingdom by TJ Books Limited
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To Cameron
TABLE OF CONTENTS
AUTHOR NOTE
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
CHAPTER 48
CHAPTER 49
CHAPTER 50
CHAPTER 51
CHAPTER 52
CHAPTER 53
CHAPTER 54
CHAPTER 55
CHAPTER 56
CHAPTER 57
CHAPTER 58
CHAPTER 59
CHAPTER 60
CHAPTER 61
CHAPTER 62
CHAPTER 63
CHAPTER 64
EPILOGUE
GLOSSARY
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
AUTHOR NOTE
The Bone Roots is influenced by the folktales and folk traditions from across the many Slavic nations. Since I’m from Poland, the majority of the “Slavic” words used throughout the book are actually Polish, anglicised for the ease of reading. For those readers who might be curious about the cultural and linguistic context, I have prepared a glossary of some of the phrases used in the book as well as notes on the creature names. While the creatures often have slightly different names depending on which Slavic language you use, I tend to go with the Polish versions. So, if you come across a differently named, yet a very similar creature in Croatian, Bulgarian or Czech folktales, chances are the difference is merely linguistic.
PROLOGUE
They’d walked for days.
The noblewoman’s fine clothes snagged on the brambles and twigs, their silver thread pulled and unpicked. Her black hair came undone from the four braids she wore down her back, and she smelled like sweat and dead leaves. None of it mattered. It was a long way to go on a promise, but the hope which sustained her lent her strength.
“How much farther?” she asked her companion. The vedma turned to look at her, her green eyes flashing in the evening light filtering through the thick canopy. Her curling red hair stuck with sweat to her forehead. The vedma didn’t reply with words. Instead, she gave a little smile, giving a glimpse of her white teeth, as sharp as razors. The bone roots curled around her feet, and she pointed ahead.
There, in front of them, rose a tree, more magnificent than anyone could have imagined. Taller and more awe-inspiring than Tsarica’s Summer Palace.
Goddess Zemya’s tree was white like ivory, the bone of its trunk and branches reflecting the reds of the evening light. No worm worried its smooth surface. No decay touched its leaves. The tree was not content with keeping to a single season, its colours shifting and changing, the little buds unfurling into a pale white-green of spring, and filling with the lushness of summer right in front of the women’s eyes, before turning blood red and falling to form a thick carpet under their feet.
The forest was filled with life here. A multitude of birds flitted about, nesting within the embrace of her branches, and filled the air with their chatter.
But for all the wonders before them, the two women’s eyes were fixed on the twin fruit, hanging low and ripe from a lower branch, just low enough for their trembling hands to touch. And within the fruits, visible through the finely veined, translucent skin, were the two babies, as pink and perfect as any newborn, though much quieter. The twins’ eyes were watchful, their gaze unnervingly fixed.
And for the two women, there were no more questions, and no doubts either.
CHAPTER 1
It’s been fifteen years since Kada sharpened the bone dug up from her father’s grave. Fifteen years to the day since she used it to cut the stem connecting her baby daughter to Goddess Zemya’s great tree.
Today, like every year since, Kada stood on the crossroads, bleeding into the ground. The Great Tree’s bone roots reached far and wide, spreading all over Fiesna, and their tendrils were nowhere as close to the surface as where the human path above intersected. Kada stared into the horizon as dawn coloured the sky above the tree line. She chewed slowly on a piece of honey cake as she counted in her head. The blood trickled slowly like molasses from the shallow cut in her arm. It dripped onto the ground, where it stained the earth briefly, before seeping through the sand to where the white roots soaked it in. The pulsating marrow sap within them pulled Kada’s payment towards Zemya herself.
Kada didn’t begrudge it. It was a small price to pay for her child. Her beautiful daughter she once thought she’d never have. This, this small pain, was nothing.
As the sun rose, exposing the misty fields on either side of the road, Kada carefully put a piece of clean cloth on the cut to stem the bleeding. She recoiled at the tiny white tendrils twisting out of the soil, searching greedily for any drops that might have pooled on the ground.
A rooster sang in the morning light. The people of Torlow would be waking soon, emptying their night-pots behind their houses, the smell temporarily drifting into the road where Kada walked. She took care to avoid the gnarled roots poking here and there. The dust kicked up by her heels stained the hems of the wide trousers she wore under her knee-length skirt.
The earth rose and sank again. Kada felt the movement through the woven soles of her bast shoes. The thin ribbons of the bone roots brushed against her feet, as if to smell their woven bark. Kada tensed, even though she knew she was safe. She had made her shoes herself after all, from the bark of the linden tree, the least beloved of Zem
Zemya was disturbed that morning. It could be that the blood Kada fed her was deemed an inadequate offering, or perhaps the earth goddess mourned the end of summer, preparing the bones beneath the ground for the winter’s long slumber. Kada shivered. She always preferred the seemingly endless winter nights. The calm of the land soothed her. The fox never came in the snow, everybody knew that. Zemya only sent it when the trees greened, and the grasses sent their thirsty shoots towards the sky.
The milkman rolled his cart past her, casting Kada a judgemental look. The road belonged to him this early in the morning. What business could a vedma working for a fine house such as Gorcay’s have with the dawn’s world? As a vedma contracted to look after the town, Kada was simultaneously considered too high to share the early hours with the servants and too low to escape the judgement of the townsfolk entirely. Kada paid the man no mind. Her business was her own, and she owed nobody an explanation. Tongues would wag even if she spent her life sitting as still as a statue; there was no avoiding the evil minds of men.
The main street of Torlow was cobblestoned like in some of the finest cities in Fiesna. It was a small vanity of the townsfolk, who were all proud of their home, with its pretty new brick homes, built next to the older stone dwellings. The reds and the silvers of the walls were sometimes broken with blue paint, informing all who passed that there were unmarried women living within. Sometimes the paint was white, trailing in a vine around the door frames, a wordless message of grief and death. Sometimes the inhabitants painted sunflowers on their doors to welcome a new child into their home.
Kada passed many doors on the way that morning, reading the messages with the absentmindedness of one who usually was first to learn of all that happened within the homes and hearts of Torlow’s folk.
The street was still quiet when Kada entered the hall of Gorcay’s house. More of a palace, really, though only Tsarica’s own home could ever be called that. And yet names mattered little, where the beauty of the painted turret roofs towered above the rest of the town. It took years for Gorcay to have enough dead wood to build the ceiling supports for the multi-level house, as well as the front facade, the fallen trees carefully transported and stored before being planed and cut to shape, each piece carved with swirling patterns.
Stone and the fast-growing tail-reed would have been easier, and cheaper, but anybody could have a stone house. Gorcay would have nothing but the best. The wood was the heart of the land, after all, and Gorcay wanted to get at the heart of things, always.
Kada had little time that morning to check on Secha, who’d be getting dressed by now, so she went straight to the kitchens, where the disgruntled cook was just shouting at the baker’s boy.
“What’s the matter?” Kada said, taking her shawl off and hanging it on the hook close to the doorway.
“Ah, there you are! Finally!” the cook turned on her, like she knew he would. The baker’s boy sent her a grateful little smile. “The daybreak’s come and gone, Master Gorcay will be wanting his tonic with his eggs and bread, and you’re off, Zemya-only-knows where, so that neither voice nor bell can call you!”
“A vedma doesn’t respond to a bell.” Kada gave him a playful look. “And I have the tonic half prepared already, Motik. Don’t worry on my behalf. I’d be more concerned about that ham you’re cooking.”
“What?!” Motik rushed off to the other side of the room, where the big pot was bubbling over the fire.
“Go on there, shoo,” Kada whispered and winked at the boy still lingering at the entrance. He needed no further encouragement and bolted, just as Motik turned around.
“My ham is fine! What do you think you doing, putting the fear in me!” His eyes widened. “Oh, so you’re in cahoots with the boy, are you? Everyone’s against me!” He shook his head and returned to grinding the last of the dry parsley sprigs, turning his back on Kada.
She laughed and leaned forward, planting a kiss on the man’s cheek. “There now, Motik, it’s like you have a wasp buzzing between your ears this morning. Tell Kada what worries you.”
The cook tsked and made as if to push her away, though his cheeks reddened. “Oh, it’s all at once today, and then you add to it by saying my ham’s not cooking right. I swear, my heart nearly stopped!”
Kada stood next to him and pulled a small wooden chest on the long worktop towards her. Nobody but Kada ever touched it and even Motik, who saw it every day, shrank away as she opened it and took out the three trays from inside. The chest was made of some foreign wood, red like poppies, and fragrant from the herbs and salves stored inside. This wood did not look like the kinds allowed for harvest by Zemya, but it didn’t look like any wood that Kada had ever seen in Fiesna either. All in all, Kada felt it lent her a mystical air.
“So, when you say ‘all at once’…” she said, pulling out a small clay pot of goose fat. She opened the seal and wrinkled her nose at the smell.
Motik was glad to turn the attention back to his concerns. “First of all, Master Gorcay woke early today. His toe hurt something awful last night, and he was horrid cross when he got up this morning. Then the baker sent down the wrong bread, like I can’t tell the difference – as heavy as an anvil it was! The man grinds in acorns, you can bet your little finger he does and if he wasn’t the miller’s second son, I’d give him an earful! But who listens to old Motik? Nobody.” He jutted out his lower lip, like a wrinkled toddler. “Look, even you’re sniggering at me!”
Kada patted his shoulder. “I’m not! And the baker wouldn’t dare mix in the cheap flour for Gorcay, you know that very well. Probably sent you the pumpernickel meant for widow Zonia. She likes to chew on her bread like on a sap piece. Makes her bones and teeth harder, so she believes. Anyway–” she lifted a finger as Motik was about to begin another complaint, “–it wouldn’t do Gorcay any harm to forego his fluffy bread rolls for a day.”
“Master Gorcay, you meant to say, my girl.” Motik raised one owl-like eyebrow. “Don’t get too used to the disrespect. The fine men will bear it with a smile for a time, then strike you down for it, just when you get all comfortable!” The cook made as if to pounce, his hands like claws raised above his head. Kada just laughed, tucking her greying red hair behind her ear.
“I’m no girl, and haven’t been for many years now,” she said, winking at Motik. “And Gorcay is too clever a man to strike a vedma. Besides, to strike me, Gorcay would have to catch me first, and your pastries got him too fat and slow for that!” She laughed at Motik’s outraged expression. She transferred the ground herbs into a cup, and picked up the iron kettle from the fire, her hand carefully wrapped in a piece of cloth. When the hot water hit the herbs, a bitter smell came up from the cup.
Motik’s nose twitched, but he said nothing.
“And where is your daughter this morning?” he asked, as Kada placed the cup on the tray, next to Gorcay’s breakfast. “Is she joining the girls in town for the celebrations?”
“I haven’t decided. I’ll take the breakfast tray to Gorcay’s room myself. Let the maid breathe a bit,” she said, picking up the tray. It was pure silver, and cold to the touch. Her skin tingled as she carried it upstairs.
CHAPTER 2
Sladyana glanced at her tea, cooling on the tray by her bed. The sun was already high, but the house was quiet, eerily so. Her day usually started early. There were plans to be made, people to be visited, estate work to be overseen.
Her grand ancestral house was eerily quiet. Sladyana knew there was work going on where she could not see it, yet her servants, understanding their mistress’ wishes, kept out of sight on this day, communicating in whispers, as if a single word could shatter her peace.
At least beyond her gardens, the usual trade work continued uninterrupted. Carts rolling in, carts rolling out, their wheels’ creaking as they passed the cargo to the river rafters. They took the precious wares through the turbulent waters, faster than any road, and cheaper too, which Sladyana appreciated whenever her own estate’s produce was shipped to the far-off markets of Fiesna.
But none of that today. One day a year, she allowed herself a remembrance.
She sighed and reached for the fine porcelain cup, decorated with the painted blue flowers of Fiesna’s mountains. At the foot of the bed Tula still slept soundly. Sladyana smiled and nudged the child with her foot. Tula just turned on her back and snored.
