The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar

Back in the summer I gave The River Has Roots my top vote in the Best Novella category for this year’s Hugo Awards. Since then, I have kept meaning to write about it “properly” and kept failing to do so. In hope of putting down some thoughts before I forget entirely too much about what I liked, some brief notes here.

Like The Summer War, The River Has Roots is written in a fairy-tale register. Where Novik’s story concerns itself with the usual matters of kings and wars and kingdoms and ruling, El-Mohtar’s operates at the level of farms and families, life and love when the luminous, the numinous is a part of everyday life. The waters of the River Liss flow in from Arcadia, bringing magic with them, and some families that live close by know how to make use of it. Esther and Ysabel Hawthorn are devoted sisters, whose task it is to sing to a pair willows very close to the borders of Arcadia, and for which the Hawthorns are entitled to use parts from the willows, with its various magical properties.

As the two of them grow up, their interests diverge but the devotion remains. Complications ensue, however, when Esther finds a suitor across the borders in Arcadia, and when a local boy who is interested in Ysabel will not accept her refusals. The rules of these things are different in fairy lands; the rules that overly insistent young men play by are entirely too familiar. When the conflict became more serious, well, I would not say I liked what happened because by then I cared deeply about both sisters. But I did admire El-Mohtar’s unwillingness to prettify, or to blunt edges. And when justice was finally done — as it must be in a fairy tale of this type — I was satisfied, even though not everything could be put right.

In contrast to Doreen, I was here for the feels. I did not really think of the magic in this world as a system, though of course it must be systematic in some ways if the Hawthorn family has been cultivating it for generations, and the royal grammarians have been putting it to regular use. I followed more the dream-logic of Arcadia, the riddles and the ineffability of it all, the way a witch knows how to bring lost sisters home, the way that trees reach for each other, the way that debts must be paid. At novella length, it was evocative, and I was happy to swim along.