by Claire North
He dumped the dead needle, inside out, on the steps of Rampart Hold, like he was giving back to the Ramparts what was theirs. Lari come out to fetch it. She was rocking the dead beast like a baby in her arms, and crying like a baby herself, and cursing Molo for a lawless and a shunned man and Dandrake knows what else. But Catrin Vennastin, that was Rampart Fire, had the sense to see what was what. She dragged the bloody thing out of her daughter’s arms and flung it back down on the ground. “Should of drowned it when she brung it in,” she muttered. And to Molo Tanhide she said, “Bring your daughter inside, and I’ll sew her up.”
“Thank you, Dam Catrin,” Molo says, “but I’ll sew her my own self.” And he did, careful enough that you could barely see the scar. Only a little pucker where the missing finger used to be. The rest of Demar’s hand healed up well enough, though it had a kind of a stippled look to it, like sacking-cloth, where all them thin, sharp teeth had bit into her.
A year passed, without any apology or make-right to the Tanhides from Rampart Hold, nor no public check for Lari. Then one day when we was out playing we passed a little stoneberry bush that had rooted inside the fence and not been burned out yet. “Them berries is all but ripe,” Lari says. “Lightning would of et the lot of them.” Then she gives Demar a look, and says, “If your daddy hadn’t of killed him.”
Demar only shrugged her shoulders, but Haijon was red-faced. “Her daddy done what had got to be done,” he told his sister, looking as solemn-stern as their mother in that moment.
“He could of cut her hand off,” Lari said, “and left Lightning alive. A maimed hand’s not good for nothing anyway.”
Lari was knowed to be mean from time to time, but it was probably being checked by Haijon in front of all of us that made her so stupid mean that day. Haijon took a step towards her, like he was going to hit her, but Demar got in first. She drawed back her right hand, the one with just the three fingers on it, and she smacked Lari Vennastin in the head so hard that Lari spun round before she fell down.
“Well now,” she says. “It seems like a maimed hand is still good for one thing, Lari. It’s good for to play spinning top.”
After that, we called Demar Spinner. And she liked the name, and took it to herself, though her father’s name being Tanhide chimed kind of strange with it. “I won’t have that name for long,” she said, when Veso Shepherd tried to make a joke out of it. “I’ll be Spinner Waiting soon enough.”
For our fourteenth year was upon us. It was almost time for us to be who we was going to be. Which I’ll tell right soon, I promise, after only one more stepping sideways to talk about how we lived. It was a long time ago after all, and you might not have the sense of it.
BY CLAIRE NORTH
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August
Touch
The Sudden Appearance of Hope
The End of the Day
84K
The Gameshouse
The Pursuit of William Abbey
Notes from the Burning Age
MATTHEW SWIFT NOVELS
(writing as Kate Griffin)
A Madness of Angels
The Midnight Mayor
The Neon Court
The Minority Council
MAGICALS ANONYMOUS NOVELS
(writing as Kate Griffin)
Stray Souls
The Glass God
Praise for
THE NOVELS OF CLAIRE NORTH
The Pursuit of William Abbey
“There is no piece of The Pursuit that is forgettable.… It is beautiful. It has, buried deep inside, a hopeful heart.”
—NPR Books
“True love, life and death, what’s worth dying—or killing—for: It’s all here in this gripping, bloody, and haunting novel.”
—Kirkus
“In rich, compelling prose, North weaves together the threads of imperial control, ideological conviction, love and the thrill of power. Readers will remain eager to the end for answers.”
—Shelf Awareness
84K
“An eerily plausible dystopian masterpiece, as harrowing as it is brilliant.”
—Emily St. John Mandel
“An extraordinary novel that stands with the best of dystopian fiction, with dashes of The Handmaid’s Tale.”
—Cory Doctorow
“[A] captivating novel from one of the most intriguing and genre-bending novelists currently working in the intersection between thriller and science fiction.”
—Booklist (starred review)
The End of the Day
“A beautiful, if occasionally uncomfortable, read that resists being labeled with any particular genre.”
—Library Journal (starred review)
“Wholly original and hauntingly beautiful. North is a writer to watch.”
—Kirkus
“North is an exciting voice in contemporary fantasy, and The End of the Day should be a welcome calling card from her to many new readers.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
The Sudden Appearance of Hope
“North… has established a reputation for tense, dense, science fiction/fantasy–inflected thrillers that defy facile expectations.… Simultaneously a tense conspiracy caper, a haunting meditation on loneliness and a brutally cynical examination of modern media.… Well-paced, brilliant and balanced.”
—New York Times
“Beautifully written, with a protagonist who is both tragic and heroic, the novel is remarkably powerful and deeply memorable, the latest in a string of terrific books from this newly emerged star in the genre-blending universe.”
—Booklist (starred review)
“It’s intricate, but somehow, once again Claire North makes it all work.… A fantastic read featuring a unique protagonist with a unique problem.… Definitely worth remembering.”
—Kirkus
Touch
“Touch is a brilliantly balanced knife’s edge of a book—fast-paced and thrilling, it’s somehow also languorous, thoughtful, intelligently intimate.… Touch is touching, horrifying, magnificent; step into it, and it will step into you.”
—NPR Books
“The high stakes and breakneck pace of the plot will draw readers in, and the meditations on what it means to be human and to be loved will linger long after the last shot is fired.”
—Kirkus
“As masterful as her debut.… [A] fast-paced, imaginative novel.… There is plenty of conspiracy and intrigue in this deftly paced novel, but North also poses subtle questions about identity and love.”
—Washington Post
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August
“I don’t say this lightly, but The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August is one of the top ten books I’ve ever read.”
—James Dashner, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Maze Runner
“An astonishing reinvention of the time-travel narrative. Bold, magical, and masterful.”
—M.R. Carey
“Fantastic.”
—io9
