An Inheritance of Ashes

by Leah Bobet

  I laughed. Thom’s father grew apples. He sent a bushel basket across the river every year as his anniversary gift to the family that had made a barley farmer of his son.

  “You think you’re doing something small,” she said meditatively. “You never see how large the things you’ve planted grow until it’s too late.”

  The baby started to fuss somewhere upstairs. Marthe froze, her head tilted up toward those thin cries. A shuffle sounded across the floorboards—Thom moving toward the cradle, murmuring in his deep rumble voice—and she breathed again.

  “I have to go with him,” I told her, and added hesitantly, “Uncle Matthias went south.”

  A spark lit in Marthe’s eyes: old pain, older than I was. And something else, bright and smoldering.

  Hope.

  “You tell him to come home,” she said roughly, and then surer. “Tell him there’s to be no more fighting between blood and blood on Roadstead Farm.”

  “I will, Marthe,” I whispered, and broke into a grin.

  It was spring, and my sister and I understood each other, finally, again.

  We woke early. The morning was brilliant blue and shining, and it was a long way south to Monticello, past John’s Creek.

  I washed my face in my basin, and made my bed, and shouldered my brimful pack. There was singing in the kitchen, bright and sleepy through the vents, and Hazel’s babbles struck between the notes like rocks in a clear stream.

  I planted this, I realized. I put the seeds of my own leaving into the ground. The good ones and the bad ones both.

  I shut the door and stepped downstairs.

  Tyler was waiting at the porch rail. I stopped beside him, and Thom and Heron came in from the fields, moving matched against the sunrise. Heron was taller. It was unarguable when he held his head up high.

  Heron shook Thom’s hand one last time. “Are you ready?” he said, and I swallowed.

  No land beneath my feet. A bag on my back, and another in my hand. The dubious charity of strangers, who might be neighbors or friends after all. I took a deep, long breath.

  It didn’t matter how much had withered, how close we’d come to the world’s end. The goats were kid-heavy in the pen. The trees fuzzed light and green, spring coming in on every vine and bud and branch. Hazel Mae fussed over her breakfast through the open kitchen window, and we had the business of living to get on with.

  There were chores.

  I hefted the pack and took Tyler Blakely’s outstretched hand. “I’m ready,” I said.

  You could see every bit of Roadstead Farm from my ancient family house on the hill. You could see all the way to the fallen stars. I stepped down from that house and started walking along the grass, through the sweeps and curves that led us out of my little world.

  To take a dead man’s ashes home.

  We walked the gravel path to our open gate and set out, together, a constellation, onto the road.

  Acknowledgments

  AN INHERITANCE OF ASHES WAS A BOOK THAT ASKED A LOT of me. I wrote my first book as a writer, but I wrote this one as a person, and bringing your whole self to a book when you are a person, with so much more than books to love, is a harder set of compromises. A lot of people supported and carried me during writing Above; for An Inheritance of Ashes, a great many people offered, in the face of those more complicated compromises, so much that made such a difference: kindness, experience, and patience.

  For all the work, thought, and encouragement that went into fostering this idea, even though the external things didn’t work out: Cheryl Klein.

  For their patience with a very drafty first draft, and their comments on it: Michael Matheson and Ian Keeling.

  Lindsey Shorser and Jeff Yagar, who put up with my occasionally collaring them to go: “Is this cool or stupid?” and reciting random plot points at high speed.

  Kelly Jones, Pam McNew, and Jennifer Adam, for taking the time to not only talk about the writing, but to point out some of the things this particular city girl assumed or misunderstood about running a small farm.

  Emma Bull, whose wisdom on other projects came forward to vastly improve this one; Merrie Haskell, who generously shared both her insights and experience, and made the way there much, much clearer; and Michelle Sagara West, for her invaluable knowledge and invaluable practicality, and willingness to share both.

  Chandra Rooney, for probably a million hours’ worth of work dates all over the west end, talking out plot points, talking about positioning, beta-reading chapters that just changed completely anyway, double-checking my instincts on cover copy when it was midnight and my brain stopped working, making me write words instead of bailing to see Batman even though I really wanted to bail and see Batman, and finally, telling me it was going to be okay in a way she knew I’d believe. Which is what the best writing partners do—and the best friends.

  The Ontario Arts Council, whose Writers’ Works in Progress grant program let me jump face-first into the scary, wonderful life of a full-time writer. Thanks for believing in this book at its very beginnings, and for the chance to, well, take a chance.

  My literary agent, Caitlin Blasdell, for knowing exactly where to take a weird little book; Diane Kerner at Scholastic Canada for the immediate and ongoing faith throughout the life of this project; and Anne Hoppe at Clarion, whose patience and enthusiasm were the bedrock that made this manuscript happen—a bedrock that was not excessively dented by teaching one anxious and occasionally very opinionated author the ins and outs of writing on proposal (and a few things about prose clarity and structural tics, besides). Thank you for the immense effort and care put into this book. It has meant everything.

  And finally, Philippe McNally, who understands. In the acknowledgments for Above, I said that now I understood all those acknowledgment-page stereotypes; what Ashes taught me is how a partner who wants you to make good art makes everything suddenly possible.

  Thank you, love, for doing more than your equal share of a lot of things while I rewrote whole chapters; for the infinite supply of gross deadline snacks; for drawing both the Nopetopus and the capybaras with machine guns, which clearly contributed to my process; for making it clear that time I take away from Us Things for Book Things is not, in your eyes, a favor you do me or a debt to collect; and for, knowing full well that this is going to happen every book, marrying me anyway. I love you like a whole forest of adorable kittens where there is also an astronaut convention taking place. I love you like the sky. Thank you.

  About the Author

  LEAH BOBET’s debut novel, Above, was a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year and was also shortlisted for both the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy and the Aurora Award for Best YA Novel. She collects autumn leaves and songs with violin strings, and will have seeds in the ground come springtime. She lives in Toronto. An Inheritance of Ashes is her second novel.

  www.leahbobet.com