Amal El-Mohtar’s riverine novella flows gently and gracefully, its banks brimming with lyrical wordplay and odes to sisterhood, until its charming fairy tale curves into a chilling murder ballad. To use Saussurean terms, The River Has Roots invokes the langue and parole of language to cast its magic spell. It is composed carefully of sentences that are alliterative, evocative, hypnotic. The result? It sings, dear reader, it sings.

This lovely story, bound in linguistic trickery, unfolds in the liminal land where Faerie and mortal realms meet—in the quaint town of Thistleford through which the river Liss flows, bordered by enchanted willow trees, their roots and branches entwined with each other. These ancient trees are in the custody of the Hawthorn family—their continued singing grants the steady stream of magic. Among the many literary and musical inspirations El-Mohtar cites in the acknowledgments section for her book, she mentions Lud-in-the-Mist (1926) by Hope Mirrlees, a Modernist author near-forgotten to the mainstream, whose works were marked by linguistic experimentation and social commentary. Perhaps one of the earliest examples of a “high fantasy” novel, Lud-in-the-Mist is also set in an enchanted space at the confluence of the fey and human worlds; the rational law-abiding inhabitants of which have to contend with the whimsy and otherworldly influences in their day-to-day lives. Most of the citizens of Thistleford, too, seem to prefer a humdrum existence—farming, merry-making, marriage, business, and the like—to the marvels of Arcadia, where the shape-shifting fey dwell.

Patriarchal mundanity isn’t exactly what Esther Hawthorn wants to settle for, however. At the same time, she is very close to her sister Ysabel, and is unwilling to abandon her to elope to Arcadia, where time flows differently, with her secret fey lover, Rin. Of course, it doesn’t help matters that she’s also stalked by Samuel, a forceful business-minded suitor who cannot seem to take no for an answer.

It’s a thin, bare-bones story, but the author’s vividly lyrical prose brings it to life, not unlike a musician turning the notes on a page into heartbreaking music. El-Mohtar consistently plays to her strengths—combining her skill with crafting layered, poetic prose (as seen in the sci-fi timey-wimey novella, This Is How You Lose the Time War, co-written with Max Gladstone [2019]) with her penchant for fairy-tale-infused short fiction (such as “John Hollowback and the Witch,” first published in the anthology The Book of Witches [2023] and also included at the end of this novella, perhaps as a surprise treat for the reader still longing for more magic). Thus, with a few painterly strokes, Thistleford becomes as lively, idyllic, and cozy as any other fantasy village vaguely invoking the pastoral mode, even as Arcadia remains mysterious, filled with untold wonders only hinted at.

In other words, it’s not just the delicate and dreamlike story about two devoted sisters but the manner in which it is narrated that makes The River Has Roots so exciting and memorable. The fluid tenor underpinning the languorous prose elevates the novella from a more typical fairy-tale-retelling that is primarily concerned with putting a new spin on familiar plot threads or character archetypes. The title itself alerts us to the book’s etymological concerns. The rules of the novella’s soft magic system are firmly rooted in the logic and syntax of English grammar. On the very first page, El-Mohtar draws our attention to the links between “grammar,” “gramarye,” and “grimoire”; later on, we are presented with a poignant scene in which the main players debate the significance of riddles—particularly how careful wordplay can conceal secrets or hold apparent contradictions together. El-Mohtar emphasizes that the key to solving a riddle often lies in playing around with perspective—in reimagining states of matter or timescales or both.

Just as we would follow the rules of English tenses to conjugate a verb correctly from the past to the present, so too is language in its various forms capable of more profound and political kinds of transformation. Thus, beneath this straightforward story about sisterhood and a faerie adventure flows a subterranean meta-narrative abounding in puns and doublespeak—one which celebrates the power of storytelling and song-making to facilitate real and permanent change in the world. Though magic manifests in the novella in its familiar otherworldly form, the story also reminds us that charms and incantations are intrinsically tied to language, and that to wield words well is nothing short of spell-craft. The River Has Roots is in this way a book that candidly embraces the possibilities of magic in rhetorical and semantic experimentation—albeit on a smaller scale, carefully restrained within the limits of a liminal form, the novella.

Moreover, the book’s exploration of the transformative potential of language is thematically linked to its portrayal of the Fae Folk, who typically deal in carefully worded bargains and hard-won promises. But here, too, (and now we tread lightly on spoiler territory) El-Mohtar subverts some of our expectations. Much of the traditional folklore as well as popular fantasy books that depict the Fae focus on their supernatural nature, their passion for scheming and intrigue, and how their gifts often come with a hidden cost: in Holly Black’s The Folk of the Air series aimed at a YA readership (2018-), a mortal girl manages to outwit fey royalty and stake her place in the magical realm; Premee Mohamed’s densely atmospheric novella, The Butcher of the Forest (2023) reads like a Brothers Grimm fable with a grimmer twist; Dan Frey’s found footage thriller, Dreambound (2024), sees a father struggle to set free his daughter, who has been kidnapped by the faeries; and even Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett (2023) records the antics of the fey as fellow mischief-makers in meticulous journal entries. El-Mohtar, however, isn’t that interested in the malicious powerplays that the idle fey might concoct, but rather in the malevolence and manipulations of which mortals are capable. While the faeries in El-Mohtar’s novella retain their magical advantage in wordplay and games of logic, they aren’t the villains who abduct or torment innocent souls as per their whims—and they definitely aren’t as bad as a certain human in this book, hinting that supernatural threats are no match for the avarice and cruelty of men.

While the narrative utilizes some popular tropes of fairy stories—such as abduction and shapeshifting—the impetus for them is human in origin. Indeed, the events of the novella can be interpreted as a meditation on the limits of a woman’s agency within a patriarchal society in which heterosexual marriage and the securing of the family lineage are prioritized over personal desires and romantic pursuits: Unable to escape the unwanted attentions of a mortal man, Esther is transformed with the aid of fey magic, and it is only this transformation that allows her to “tell” her truth. By contrast, Arcadia—and Rin, as one of its nonbinary residents—represents a healing space where queerness can flourish, a site of transformation where one can reinvent themself, should they choose to. Elements from the fairy tales of “Tam Lin” and “The Two Sisters” are infused throughout the text like leitmotifs, allowing these older folktales to be retold and transformed in this short, strange, sublime story.

Thus, while the book’s fairy tale seems rather timeless and mythic, its murder ballad in the latter half feels just as timely, highlighting the harms to which women and queer folk are subjected, which are often sanctioned by the very society that shelters them. This contemporary turn also hints at the settler-colonial and extractivist undercurrents present in many large-scale business and political endeavours, by which land, labor, and resources are ruthlessly exploited for profit. In fact, my only complaint with the book is that I felt its last act could have been slightly longer—not just because I wished to spend more time in this vibrantly realized world, but because it would have allowed these darker themes to be explicated in greater detail. The finale, though satisfying, feels a little rushed, sisterly solidarity and linguistic magic seemingly triumphing and the vile antagonist getting his just deserts (he is transformed into a tree—a punishment of passivity and immobility for all his transgressions).

Nevertheless, this is a novella that lulls you to read (and reread) it slowly and thoughtfully, luxuriating in each sentence, in the spaces between words, and in the exquisite linocut illustrations that evoke the nostalgia for picture-books perused as children. Indeed, this beautiful black-and-white art by Kathleen Neeley seems to evoke the moody vibes of a shadow-puppet show, further enhancing the reading experience. At just over a hundred pages, The River Has Roots is a short but not shallow read, its depths delighting in the transformative logic of language—through the guise of folktales and melodies, magic spells and riddles—even as its moving story of two sisters haunts you like a sweet, sad song.