Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 47

By Kelly Link

LCRW 47, the May, the June, the July, the August, the September of this year issue.

Made by
Gavin J. Grant
& Kelly Link.

As in my LCRW 46 note, I am chronically ill and limited compared to the previous times. I’m still planning (hoping? how zine-esque of me) on two issues of this zine this year. But we have two books coming, Anya’s (OKPsyche) and Kij’s (The Privilege of the Happy Ending) — two writers from the Twin Cities, how unexpected — which is enough to keep me busy and then Kathleen Jennings’s January collection, Kindling. Then next February Random House is publishing Kelly’s huge immersive, amazing novel, The Book of Love. Can’t wait to see it out in the world. — Gavin

ISSN 1544-7782. Ebook ISBN: 9781618732156. Text: Bodoni Book. Titles: Imprint MT Shadow. LCRW is (usually) published in June & November by Small Beer Press, 150 Pleasant St., #306, Easthampton, MA 01027 | [e-mail] |smallbeerpress.com/lcrw.

Printed by Paradise Copies. Subscriptions: $24/4 issues (see page 26 or our website for options) — the chocolate option is very popular but the marmite option is gaining ground. Please make checks to Small Beer Press. 

Library & institutional subscriptions: EBSCO. 

LCRW is available as a DRM-free ebook through the lovely weightlessbooks.com, &c. 

Contents © 2023 the authors. All rights reserved. 

Cover illustration “Leo Moon” © 2023 Holly Link. All rights reserved. 

Celebrating: a UK edition of Zen Cho’s collection, Spirits Abroad. A World Fantasy nomination for the press. Redemption in Indigo being bought by Random House so that Karen Lord can have all her books under one roof. Starred reviews for new books from Anya DeNiro (OKPsyche) and Kij Johnson (The Privilege of the Happy Ending). Reprinting Angélica Gorodischer’s Kalpa Imperial and Sarah Rees Brennan’s In Other Lands.

Please send fiction and poetry submissions (especially weird and interesting work from women writers and writers of color), guideline requests, &c. to the address above. Thanks again, authors, artists, readers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Small Beer Press
• Release date: Sep 19, 2023
• ISBN: 9781618732156

Book preview

LCRW47.jpg

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #47

Made by

Gavin J. Grant

& Kelly Link.

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet 47 September 2023. ISSN 1544-7782. Ebook ISBN: 9781618732156.

LCRW is (usually) published in June & November by Small Beer Press, 150 Pleasant St., #306, Easthampton, MA 01027 | [e-mail] | smallbeerpress.com/lcrw. Print version text: Bodoni Book; Titles: Imprint MT Shadow; printed by Paradise Copies.

Subscriptions: $24/4 print issues (see page 26 of the print edition or below for options)—the chocolate option is very popular but the marmite option is gaining ground. By mail: please make checks out to Small Beer Press.

Library & institutional subscriptions: EBSCO.

LCRW is available as a DRM-free ebook through the lovely weightlessbooks.com, &c.

Contents © 2023 the authors. All rights reserved.

Cover illustration Leo Moon © 2023 Holly Link. All rights reserved.

Celebrating: a UK edition of Zen Cho’s collection, Spirits Abroad. A World Fantasy nomination for the press. Redemption in Indigo being bought by Random House so that Karen Lord can have all her books under one roof. Starred reviews for new books from Anya DeNiro (OKPsyche) and Kij Johnson (The Privilege of the Happy Ending). Reprinting Angélica Gorodischer’s Kalpa Imperial and Sarah Rees Brennan’s In Other Lands.

As in my LCRW 46 note, I (Gavin) am chronically ill and limited compared to the previous times. I’m still planning (hoping? how zine-esque of me) on two issues of this zine this year. But we have two books coming, Anya’s and Kij’s—two writers from the Twin Cities, how unexpected—which is enough to keep me busy and then Kathleen Jennings’s January collection, Kindling. Then next February Random House is publishing Kelly’s huge immersive, amazing novel, The Book of Love. Can’t wait to see it out in the world.

Please send fiction and poetry submissions (especially weird and interesting work from women writers and writers of color), guideline requests, &c. to the address above. Thanks again, authors, artists, readers.

LCRW Subscriptions

It does rather look like prices will increase either with #48 or #49.

Ebook ~ $12.99 ~ 4 ebook issues ~ weightlessbooks.com/lcrw

Print ~ $24 ~ 4 issues (sometimes even within the expected 2 years).

Choc ~ $42 ~ as print no. 2 & a good chocolate bar each time.

Littlely ~ $49 as Choc. & a random chapbook from our list.

Reckoning ~ $59–89 ~ as Littlely & your choice of any combo of Reckoning 1-6.

P.D. ~ $79+ ~ as Littlely & some Peter Dickinson books to while away an afternoon.

Signed ~ $81 ~ as Littlely & signed copies of Isabel Yap’s Never Have I Ever and Andy Duncan’s An Agent of Utopia.

Cartwheels! ~ $1,000 ~ as Littlely & a $1,000 donation to Franciscan Hospital for Children. Everyone (hearts) you.

Linkssss ~ $59+ ~ as Littlely & signed copies of Kelly Link’s collections.

Radoret

Serafina Bersonsage

The trouble was that I could not remember just what my great-great-grandfather had done.

He was not one of my more illustrious ancestors. I could not guess, and my captor did not seem at all inclined to say. It had taken me most of the morning to get him to divulge the name. I had managed it at last, phrasing the question in River, as my mother had taught me. ‘Excuse me, but would you tell me whose despicable crime has occasioned my not unreasonable abduction?’ It sounded less stilted in my kintongue—but, if I had been able to put the question in my kintongue, then I would not have needed it at all.

A ring, a rose, a turnip. The path was straight, and so I did not have to pay too much attention. As we walked north, I sifted through my ancestor’s memories, shivering. It was not my hand, his hand, that had cut off a dead man’s finger. The heirloom ring had come to us clean, and how it had ended up in our family’s possession was only a story we knew. In any event, we were not like the greedy and forgetful southerners, the Isendim, who went to war over such things.

I recalled the flash of the blameless ring on our hand, as we pointed out a rosebush to a woman with curly black hair. She leaned in, smelling of juniper, but that memory was even hazier than most, and most of mine were hazy, indeed. I was only nine, and I could hardly be expected to remember why someone had chosen that moment to lob a turnip at my great-great-grandfather’s head.

I doubted that the turnip had anything to do with my present situation. I could see little of my captor’s face, between his hood and his wild gray beard—but the little that I could see bore an expression of deep satisfaction; he had avenged an old and vexing slight. Not too expensive a slight, I hoped. Too high a ransom, and my family would have to appeal to our cousins upriver. It would be a long journey, and probably an even longer visit; the lavender would get depressed, and the mugwort would turn biteful.

For all its inconvenience, a winter abduction had one advantage— The day was short. When we stopped to make camp, the light was low and red through the birches, and I was shivering even harder, unaccustomed to the cold. My captor passed me a blanket, with a pattern of serpents stitched into the hem.

And I was staring at a blanket, its serpents undulating as it waved in the doorway. There was a howling outside, the wind through the pines and a man keening, perhaps the one whose belly I had slit. I tried to ignore him. There was another noise, faint. It was coming from behind the blanket.

It’s all right, I said, in River. The fighting’s done.

Slowly, a little boy emerged from the alcove. He braved a few steps, and then I met him on the far side of the hall, picking him up to save his bare feet from the broken glass.

Remembering, I realized that I had not needed to remember. It would have been enough, to recount the relevant genealogy. My great-great-grandfather had had sixteen children, and four of them were grafted.

I stared at the blanket, tracing the insignia of the stolen son’s garden, and knew that there would be no ransom.

South of the forest, they are separate words, but they are one in River: debt, and crime. My family owed a debt, and my captor’s family had decided to exact payment in kind, with interest. On the second day, we were joined by three of my cousins. They lived at the edge of our garden: easy pickings for the red-haired woman with a bow on her back.

Is our debt paid? I asked my captor, and she heard me.

Paid? She had a harsh laugh, like the creaking of a tree that no one dared cut down. Not until your grandchildren have children.

Behind me, the smallest and most congested of my cousins cleared his throat.

Excuse me, but would you tell me whose despicable—

Don’t bother, I said, falling back to tell them what I knew.

Our captors kept the winter faith, so stringently that their garden seemed even colder than the wood beyond. By the time we reached the hill, I was wrapped in no fewer than seven blankets. These accentuated my natural roundness, and, if the southerners’ tales of us were true, I would have been a considerable prize.

But the woman on the hill was regarding me with unmistakable disappointment.

You couldn’t have gotten a younger one? she snapped at her husband, before she turned to me. How old are you?

Nine, I said, and the furrow between her thin white brows deepened. Not only was I too old; I had come from a family that named odd numbers. Anxious to make a good impression, I corrected myself. Eight and one.

Could be worse, she muttered, staring as the red-haired woman kissed her wife. She got two and one?

This one’s a witch, the old man said.

For the first time, she looked at me properly. Her eyes were hazel, like my mother’s. She had a scratch under one of them, perhaps the work of a nettle, or a thorn.

Are you, really? What can you do?

All kinds, I said, and began to cry. I could not help it, now that I was thinking of my mother and my herbs. Rue and lavender and swan thistle and—and mugwort. I miss them.

Well, then, she said, more gently. We’ll see about finding you a plot.

And a name? my new father asked.

She pondered this for a moment, her gaze lingering on my blankets.

Radoret, she said, and their kintongue was just near enough to mine that I could tell what it meant.

Big pine cone.

Some twenty years later, I was still more or less the shape of a pine cone, albeit a considerably larger one. My skirts were usually streaked with dirt; my matted brown hair was full of burrs, and I had managed to grow a faint, yet unmistakable, mustache—a specter of my forefathers’ achievements, but thicker than the few wispy hairs that certain of my sisters plucked in secret. And none of this particularly bothered me, until I met Edeleth.

She had come for a wedding. Her sister’s, officially, although a predictable number of elopements transpired behind the willows. Young people who had failed to fall in love with their cousins were discovering—some, for the first time—that not everyone in the world was their cousin. Hiding my smirk, I ignored the rustling in the hedges, as the mother of the bride informed her daughter’s husband of his duties.

These were numerous, and I soon found myself watching the bride’s sisters. There were fewer of them than I had expected, though I supposed that the youngest ones had been left at home. Some, perhaps, were in the hedges—and yet half a dozen would not have sufficed, to make the two families look more balanced. My cousins far outnumbered the newcomers, one of whom was toying with an amulet.

It was a chestnut, painted with a sigil that I could not see. I would not have known what it was, if she had not ceased to fidget with it, the moment she noticed me watching. Her hand vanished into her wide green sleeve. It reappeared a moment later, empty, and only then did I perceive that it was a very graceful hand, with fingernails stained dark pink.

She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, and smiled at me. I looked away.

And do you accept this charge? her mother asked my cousin, in River.

Gladly, Hadoran said. His eyes were watering, though not with emotion. His allergies had only multiplied in the past twenty years.

Then take my daughter as your wife. She will live in your garden and share your days, for twelve years and no longer, unless you give her a child of her own.

He knelt, and, in the shadowed hedges, a twig snapped underfoot.

The wedding was far from done. The rites would last for two weeks, the oaths and vows and lightly veiled threats resuming each day at dusk, and, in the meantime, the women of both families would spend their days painting their faces and plaiting flowers into their hair.

I did not join them. I was not in the habit of painting my face, and it hardly seemed fair to let my cousins do it when the late summer heat would soon ruin their efforts. My shirt was sticking to my back as I knelt in the garden, weeding.

Is all this yours? Edeleth asked, as a clump of burdock came free.

I knew her name by then. I did not look at her as I stood, tossing the burdock aside. I wiped the sweat from my brow, and realized too late that I had painted my face, after all.

Yes, I said, feeling my cheeks grow hot as her gaze lingered on the smudge.

She turned away, to consider the proof of how I spent my days. Myrtle and roses and ivy, twined around apple trees as thick as oaks, and lemons that would not outlive the winter. For now, the fruit hung heavy on the boughs, heedless of clime or season, its fragrance mingling with the scent of lilies in the air.

You’re a witch, aren’t you? she asked, and I nodded. Show me.

I knelt, and picked up a fallen plum. Its juice seeped past my fingers as I squeezed, whispering a few words in a language that was neither River nor anyone’s kintongue. I dropped the pit in the hole where the burdock had been, and covered it with earth, and sang, thinking of nothing but the damp and the dark, and roots unfurling down.

Edeleth stared at the new tree as I stood.

What? I asked, when she had been a long time silent. Don’t you have witches in your garden?

She did not flinch at my tone, but only nodded.

We do, she said, but none who sing like that.

She hesitated, as if she were about to say something else. But then she shook her head, and left, and not until the next morning’s weeding did I find the single chestnut, flecked with the remains of bright red paint.

The chestnut tree had flowered twice by the time we were married. It had taken its time to grow without magic. Though