“And I already agreed to help you ransom the other humans in the goblin market.”
“You did.”
“So. Maybe you and I could … not go home together?”
The words hung in the air between them, as fine as spun glass and just as fragile. Marra waited for him to say something, to catch the words or shatter them, whichever he chose.
“I think I’d like that,” said Fenris.
Marra sagged with relief.
She had been so focused on what he might say that she hadn’t quite expected what he might do. So it came as a surprise when he wrapped both arms around her and put his lips against her hair. “I think I would like that very much,” he murmured.
“Oh good,” said Marra against his neck. And then she would have kissed him or he would have kissed her, but Bonedog decided that they were wrestling and jumped up and barked soundlessly at them both.
Black dog, white dog,
Live dog, dead dog,
Yellow dog, run!
Author’s Note
This book started in a grocery store parking lot, with the line “with the dog made of bone at your side.” I don’t know why, but that line showed up in my head and started hammering away like a tuneless earworm.
It’s always neat when something drops in your lap like that, but you generally spend the first hour trying to figure out if you thought of it or if it’s a fragment of something you read once. Authors have minds like packrats and a lot of stuff gets squirreled away, some of which belongs to other people. Nevertheless, the line was insistent and didn’t seem familiar.
By the time I reached the grocery store, it had grown to “You came to me in your cloak of nettles with the dog made of bone at your side.” At the checkout line, I had most of a very short story called “Godmother.” It had a lot of imagery in common with the book you just read, though the plot, such as it was, was very different. I put it on the internet and then in an anthology and then went on about my life.
Still, the images nagged at me. Why did she build her own dog out of bones? Why were her hands stained with a prince’s blood? What does building your own dog feel like? Who was the godmother narrating the story? Judging by some of my reader mail, it nagged at them too. People wanted to know about the woman with the bone dog.
At the same time and unrelated, in my other life as a children’s book author, an editor asked me if I could do a fairy tale retelling of “The Princess and the Pea,” and I couldn’t do it. I have always found that story … well … squicky. Why does a prince want a bride with skin that sensitive? If a pea under a dozen mattresses is enough to leave bruises, what would a human touch do? Why would you want that? What does it say about the prince? None of my thoughts were the sort of thing you want in an upbeat romp aimed at seven-year-olds. We compromised on “Little Red Riding Hood” and I took my squick elsewhere.
Somewhere between the bone dog and the prince obsessed with tender skin, I wound up with the opening chapters. It included someone called a “dust-wife” about which I knew nothing, and the blistered land and Kania and Damia being married off. And then, as often happens, the story sat fallow for a half dozen years, occasionally getting dusted off and poked and prodded, and then one day I sent about ten thousand words off to my editor with my usual note: “Hey, I got this thing, you want it?” （I have heard some authors write cover letters and synopses and so forth. Someday I will have to try that.）
Well, she did want the thing, as it turned out, and that meant that I had to come up with a lot more book, in relatively short order. What’s a dust-wife? What do they do? Where’s the godmother? Why are godmothers involved at all? Why is my deadline only two months away? What am I doing? Why did I not become a medical test subject, like Mom always wanted? Do I really need both these kidneys, when the black market for organs is so lucrative?
This is a standard part of the authorial process, and of course the questions got answered and the book got written eventually. I suspect that I would probably still be stuck in the grocery store parking lot if not for the aid of a couple of people, though. First, my fabulous editor, Lindsey Hall, who would get excited about certain bits and thus make me realize I had to actually do something with those bits instead of just leaving them dangling in the wind; my agent, Helen, who has made peace with my “you want this thing?” style of cover letter and makes sure that I actually remember to sign forms and get money for the thing; my beta reader, Shepherd, who explained patiently about spinning and drop spindles and weft locks and tapestries, and even demonstrated how a drop spindle worked, despite my refusal to add more sheep to the book; and my beloved husband, Kevin, who is endlessly supportive and also keeps chickens, several of which found their way into the story in one form or another.