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Reena McCarty Biography

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“The crown was a circle of woven branches, thick with color--- fragile huckleberry stalks, blooming twigs from chokecherry bushes, thimbleberry branches heavy with red fruit and star-shaped leaves. Tucked into the branches were flowers. Yellow glacier lilies, blue camas flowers and pink bitterroots. Everything was fresh and ripe, bursting with life and potential.”

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“Worse than the hunger, though, was the memory. I'd been here before. Elan brought me as a treat one day in early fall. I'd spent the six weeks previous up to my elbows in sticky, hot, miserable vats of huckleberries and apples, chokecherries and raspberries and peaches brought inn from the lake district by flying courier. The Wild King had ice caves under his palace, vast, magically controlled freezers that could have housed the fruit all winter with much less trouble, but he liked to have most of it processed. Human skill. Human labor, packing jam into blown-glass jars and sealing them with wax. Any othersider could keep fruit fresh. Only a human could see a pink and green apple and create a jar of golden jelly.”

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“Some folks might call it giving up, but that never felt quite right. It was more like knowing when to stop kneading and wait for the dough to rise. Maybe later I'd be able to choose a direction. I might make rolls, or loaves, or spread the dough with cinnamon and sugar, or dried fruits or herbs or a dozen other things. Maybe I made a mistake somewhere earlier and the dough wouldn't rise at all. No way to know, nothing to do but wait. It might even look like being brave.”

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“The dark fruity flavor was overwhelmed by the other sensations the wine brought— the feel of sunlight on my skin and the weight of the heavy braids that fell to my waist, the hair that was long enough for Elan to wrap around his wrist and up his arm until he wore it like a sleeve. The smell of summer rain hitting the dry prairie soil; and at the same time, the smell of pine and water and mountain flowers, all distinct, present but not clashing. The knowledge that I was loved. That I was among friends. The pleasant soreness in my legs that came from climbing a mountain, the taste of just-picked berries and fresh bread made from flour ground that morning.”

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“Your own history is full of humans deciding that one or another group of you is somehow less worthy. At least our belief in our superiority is rooted in our abilities, rather than our physical makeup." "How was the soup?" He pulled his hand back like I'd burned him, and I smiled. No matter how superior he thought himself, there was one thing I could do that he never could. "The soup was adequate," he said stiffly. "Without salt I suppose that's true.”

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“The weather in the Plaza was always perfect, and even compared to the rest of the Carter Lane campus, it was a beautiful space. A full acre of ground, lush with bright tufts of native grasses. Tall yucca, hidden patches of prickly pear, pink bitterroot and bright blue flax and a hundred other wildflowers all clumped together. Spring buttercups and balsamroot bloomed side by side with midsummer lupines and paintbrush, and the sunflowers and snow asters that didn't bloom until September out in the fully real world. It never changed. The Cross Worlds Plaza wasn't quite Otherside, but wasn't exactly the human world either. Like the name suggested, it stood in between. In the center of the Plaza stood a stone circle. The boulders were different colors and types of rock-- rough pink granite from the Eastern Court territory in Maine, smooth white marble from an Alabama quarry in Southern Court land, warm orange Texas sandstone from the Summer Court, and dusty Michigan limestone representing Winter. There was basalt from the Northern court in Washington, and even a chunk of onyx marble from California, from the site of the former Western court, which had been snuffed out before I was even born. At the heart of the circle stood a stack of three wide, flat stones-- shale and slate from Idaho and Montana, topped with a thin, shiny disk of Wyoming obsidian.”

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“What, it's my fault you can't broker a deal without omitting a major safety clause?" One of his perfect eyebrows lifted. "The Poppy I knew would never be so hasty with the blame." "The Poppy you knew hadn't spent three years in therapy picking through a lifetime of brainwashing." I was almost surprised to hear the words come out of my mouth, but I knew as I said them they were true. "You and Sloan both worked hard to fuck me up, Elan. I'm not about to act like that's just forgiven.”

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