A Knot in the Grain: And Other Stories

Magical stories set in alternate universes . . . tales of curses and gifts of healing . . . a wizard who has lost his powers . . . and a princess, a troll, and a teenage girl are featured in this diverse collection from Newbery Medalist Robin McKinley

In €œThe Healer,€ Lily was born mute, but she has so great a natural gift for healing that the local midwife and healer takes her as an apprentice. One evening, riding home, she meets a stranger on the road who can speak to her silently, mind to mind. Overjoyed, she takes him home to Jolin€"but Jolin can read the mage-mark on him and fears for Lily€s safety, for mages are not to be trusted.
 
In €œThe Stagman,€ Ruen is a princess and will become queen on her name day€"if her uncle, the Regent, greedy for the power that should belong to his niece, cannot think of a way to prevent it. And so he invents portents and a purifying ritual that involves chaining Ruen to a rock in an old place of sacrifice, not used since her great-grandfather€s day, and leaving her there alone. Night falls on her despair and in the flickering torchlight she sees the shadow of a man€"or of a man with a stag€s antlers€"or perhaps of a great stag.
 
In €œTouk€s House,€ a witch adopts a woodcutter€s baby daughter and raises her along with her own son, whose father was a troll. Erana grows up knowing she is loved, and loving in return€"but on her seventeenth birthday she realizes she must leave her foster mother and her best friend and find where in the world she belongs.
 
In €œButtercups,€ an old man marries a young wife and takes her home, but he feels unworthy of her vivid youth and risks all for a tremendous prize, in an act of what in his heart he knows is a betrayal of the wild magic that lives on his farm.
 
In €œA Knot in the Grain,€ Annabelle has no choice when her parents decide they will move to a small town upstate, the summer before Annabelle€s junior year of high school. She spends the summer reclaiming the neglected garden of their new house and reading books from the local library. She also finds a mysterious wooden box in a tiny hidden study above her attic bedroom: a box containing smallish, roundish, nobbly things Annabelle can€t identify, but which are faintly warm to the touch€"and which seem to be curiously aware of Annabelle, her loneliness, and her longings.