Starlings by Amanda Linsmeier

Author:Amanda Linsmeier [Linsmeier, Amanda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2023-06-27T00:00:00+00:00

Somehow it’s even stranger knowing she was my age when she wrote this. And it was right around the same time of year, I realize. Today is December 27. Or, I note, peering at the time, it’s after midnight. It’s the twenty-eighth now. I go on.

This morning I walked to where I know the beast waits. Where I have felt him before, in the river. I sank into the icy water, and I called for him, with my need. I yearned for answers, for an answer from him. The spark of him, grown stronger these last four months as blood spilled from throats, as children cried from hunger, as lives were stolen by fierce creatures I cannot lay a name to, and by neighbors whose faces I’ve known my whole life. On the banks of this river I have met the moon on moon-full nights, where I have pulled wild herbs from the ground, where I have sewn my wishes onto linen and written my fears into cotton and set them both afire.

I said words to call him, words that seemed to grow in my bones before I knew how to speak.

When he appeared, he came to me half-formed, barely corporeal. Not a shadow, not a man, not the beast I so expected.

“What manner of witch are you?” a voice came.

“A weak one, compared to how I so desire,” I told him. “Yet I could be stronger if you lend me your strength.”

When he asked me to what end, and why he should, I told him I would give him my own in turn, if he would end this torment. This hunger. This brutality. The attacks.

He told me I would trade one death for another, but I could see I had intrigued him.

I laughed, though it was a bitter sound. He seemed to shine before my eyes, to change a bit from that sound alone.

He told me he was hungry, and how he needed to feed.

“I will feed you,” I promised. “I will give you all of myself, willingly. I will bind my blood to yours. I will do this, if you in turn give me you. If you in turn grant us fortune. Not just my kin but my people.”

He asked how I knew he could do it. I think he smiled when he said it, if a form without form can smile. He is ancient. I’ve known him since I was a babe. Heard his whisper at night, felt the way the river called to me as I played in it as a child. Knew he was looking for something.

I answered that I knew he could, that I knew power when I saw it, and I knew I could increase it.

I asked of him ease, comfort, prosperity. That we have enough game and berries, enough food in every garden, enough crops no matter the drought, that our axes fall easily, that we avoid war, and famine, and always, ever, hunger. That our purses never empty, that our fortune never ceases.

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