He grabs Rose’s shoulders and pushes her back. The man who spoke detaches himself from the group. The words catch on the sharp edges of her anger and choke her.

She cannot stop this, and if she goes to the guard, they will not care. Concern that she might do something foolish. “This is none of your concern.” There is kindness in his voice.

Her eyes are huge and wet, and when they meet Rose’s, they both beg for help and scream for her to run. The girl’s skin and clothes color her an outsider. Rose is eighteen when she sees a girl being beaten in an alley. She’s amazed by how small and smooth it is. Sometimes it shows in your eyes.”īefore she leaves, Rose takes her old anger out of the shed. “You must hide it better if you are going to keep it,” she says, her voice still like a winter pond. Her mother gives her a shawl to wrap around her neck and chest. She will kill him if he touches her.īefore the appointed time, her mother sends her into the city to find work, even though there is plenty to do at home. Rose listens from the other room, and the anger in her chest grows jagged spikes. He likes her face and the shape of her, so he makes quiet arrangements with her father. Rose is sixteen when she catches the eye of the local lord. Rose’s new anger grows inside her, but she is careful not to let it show. Things are hard for her family that winter, since the blacksmith demands reparations. Instead, she hides it in the corner, under a bag of wrinkled potatoes. She does not swallow her anger, or smash it and scatter the pieces. Rose stares down at the rock in her hand, at the blood drying beneath her fingernails. Her mother locks her in the storage shed. “You must be a good girl,” her mother whispers. For an instant, Rose can see her mother’s anger, pressing out above the collar of her dress. After a long moment, her mother presses it into Rose’s hand. It is smooth and gray, like the river rocks. Later, her mother pulls the anger out of Rose’s chest and stares at it. She screams and rakes her nails across his face. The blacksmith’s son smirks at her, waiting for her to swallow it down like she knows a good girl should.

Her anger forms a hard lump in her throat. Her dress is cold and wet against her skin as she drags herself out of the water. She lands badly, rocks scraping her knees, tearing her palms. Rose is ten when the blacksmith’s son pushes her into the river.

Left-Hand Gods by Jamie Lackey