 | The River Has Roots offers much to enjoy: poetic prose, interesting characters, a journey to Fairyland, and a fresh take on “The Two Sisters” murder ballad. The classic Two Sisters ballad tells the tale of a jealous woman drowning her sister and stealing her beau. In this story, the author twists the tale to explore the bonds of love and family loyalty. The story unfolds like a classic fairy tale, providing an overview of the setting, beginning with a river: “The River Liss runs north to south, and its waters brim with grammar.” Grammar, in this context, is a type of magic where transformation occurs through conjugation! |
Two giant willows catch this “grammar” as it flows out of the border zone between Fairyland and our mortal world. In keeping with family tradition, two sisters sing to these willows and in return fashion baskets from their magical branches.
Esther, eldest of the two sisters, is the main point-of-view character. She is being courted by a neighbor man she detests. When Esther rebuffs the neighbor and he suggests he’ll court her younger sister instead, she unleashes her fury: “Speak my sister’s name again,” she hissed, “and I’ll feed you your tongue.”
Esther, eldest of the two sisters, is the main point-of-view character. She is being courted by a neighbor man she detests. When Esther rebuffs the neighbor and he suggests he’ll court her younger sister instead, she unleashes her fury: “Speak my sister’s name again,” she hissed, “and I’ll feed you your tongue.”
 | We soon discover that Esther is in love with a Fairy named Rin, who can take the form of a storm, a snowy owl, or an androgynous human with flowing white hair. “Their voice made Esther think of weather, of winter, of woodsmoke: something cold but bright, burning and fragrant, curling into the air before vanishing. They were utterly strange and utterly beautiful, in a way Esther yearned towards because she couldn’t understand it, the way she yearned towards horizons and untrodden secret paths in unfamiliar woods.” The love story between these two is the heart of the story. After Esther sings, Rin offers her their most prized possession: a harp. “I shaped it from the space between seven stars and strung it with silk spun from their light.” |
I loved the Nature imagery used to describe Rin, especially when Rin was furious (not at Esther):
“. . . their whole aspect was of a vicious blown snow, the kind of dry, cutting powder that billows in the wind like sand and cuts cold and hard . . .”
“. . . their whole aspect was of a vicious blown snow, the kind of dry, cutting powder that billows in the wind like sand and cuts cold and hard . . .”
 | Here's a description of an anguished Rin: “If you’ve ever looked into running water at midday and been mesmerized by the play of shadow over stones, and how even the sound of water seems, somehow, to have absorbed sunshine scattered through lines of leaves and grasses—if you’ve ever stood on a moor in the west country and watched daylight flash and vanish over the green and granite of the land—you might have a sense of how Rin looked as they listened to Esther, hope and anguish rippling through and around each other on the high pale planes of their face.” |
The story also references the Tam Lin ballad, but instead of a maiden rescuing Tam Lin from the Queen of the Fairies by holding him through various transformations, it is a Fairy rescuing their true love:
“Rin tightened their grip, and braced. The swan became fire, then snow; the snow became lightning, then thorns. Rin held the burning, scorching, stabbing shapes of her closer and closer . . . coaxing the truth of the woman back into memory and flesh.”
“Rin tightened their grip, and braced. The swan became fire, then snow; the snow became lightning, then thorns. Rin held the burning, scorching, stabbing shapes of her closer and closer . . . coaxing the truth of the woman back into memory and flesh.”
 | My only disappointment is that the book was so short: 99 pages, including many full-page woodcut illustrations. The images added to the fairy-tale feel of the story, but ultimately, it was a longish short story, rather than a work worthy of book-length treatment. The edition I borrowed from the library does have an intriguing short story in the back, “John Hollowback and the Witch (a teaser for a soon-to-be-published short-story collection).” It’s an interesting exploration of the nature of memory and the stories we tell ourselves. |
For a novel-length retelling of the Two Sisters Ballad, read Sistersong.
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