“Well, now you’ll have to stay for the story,” I tell him, arching my brow. “Once Virág has started, she doesn’t take kindly to interruptions.” Gáspár looks like he might protest, so quickly I go on, “I’ve spent quite enough time in your world. You can linger for a bit longer in mine.”
His eye widens; for a moment I can see the early traces of a flush along his cheekbones and the tips of his ears. But he follows me across the clearing, toward the bright whorl of flame and Virág sitting before it. We pad down beside Katalin, who is seated shoulder to shoulder with Boróka. The fur of their wolf cloaks bristles, white stroking tawny. On the ground, their fingers are a whisker’s breadth apart.
“I will tell the story of Vilm?tten and his journey to the Under-World,” Virág says. “How he met ?rd?g and his half-mortal wife, and came back to the Middle-World with both a blessing and a curse.”
Katalin groans softly, but Virág quiets her with a glare. Gáspár’s face is hesitantly open, like the very first crocus to bloom. I unfurl one of Zsigmond’s long scrolls and dip my quill into the fresh ink. There are Yehuli letters stamped onto the side of the inkwell, and I can read them all. Long fingers of flame reach for the sickled moon. Sparks wink against the night sky. Virág starts to speak, weaving the story of Vilm?tten into the air like two dovetailing tree roots, or like a river carving through the land, and I put my quill to the page and write it down.
Acknowledgments
Thank you to my exceptional agent, Sarah Landis, for understanding this book from day one, for championing this book and my career, and of course for all the relentlessly kind sanity checks. I would be truly unmoored without you. Thank you to my equally brilliant editors, David Pomerico and Gillian Green, for their insightful notes that helped transform this book into something I’m incredibly proud of. Thank you to the entire team at Harper Voyager, and to Ben Brusey, Sam Bradbury, and everyone at Del Rey, for shepherding this book into the world. My deepest gratitude to all of you for taking a chance on an untested debut author and a manuscript with far too many pastoral metaphors.
A million thanks and endless appreciation to Isabel Iba?ez, the first person in the publishing world to believe in this book and in me as an author, for all of the suggestions that made the early manuscript infinitely better. I would not be here today without your patient, generous, and thoughtful mentorship.
To my fellow Subtle Jews, Rachel Morris and Allison Saft—where to begin? Even if I wrote the most indulgent, escapist, utopian fantasy, I would not be able to envision better friends.
To the Monsters, Maria Dong, Samantha Rajaram, Kola Heyward-Rotimi, and Steve Westenra: treasured confidants, genre aficionados, and some of the most brilliant writers I have ever had the privilege to befriend. Maria, thank you for a thousand rescues, big and small.
To my other wildly talented and invaluable writer friends: Courtney Gould, Emily Khilfeh, Jessica Olson, Sophie Cohen, and Amanda Helander. Thank you for every vent session, inside joke, and late-night DM. No one can survive publishing without a bit of levity.
To Manning Sparrow, polu philtatos hetairos—dearest companion by far. All that we’ve been through together could fill a book of its own.
To James Macksoud: Even as a writer, words sometimes fail me. What else is there to say except thank you? For everything.
To Dorit Margalit, for lighting a torch and leading me out of the woods.
To my parents, for reading to me since before I could talk, and for only cringing a little bit when I told you I wanted to be a writer.
To Henry Reid, for being such a good brother that I could never write you into a book.
Because I said I would—thank you to Hozier and Florence Welch, for creating the music that kept me company during the many hours that I revised and edited this book, and for all the songs that moved and inspired me so much that they thinned the fog of writer’s block.
And finally: Thank you to my grandparents, Thomas and Suellen Newman, for giving me the gift of an education. Pop Pop, I would never be able to write so lovingly about nature if not for you. Granny, you raised me to believe in the power of language. This couldn’t have been written without you.