“You might think that something about the shape of those trunks, the sweep of their twisted crowns, reminds you of something, or someone, you’ve lost—something, or someone, you would break the world to have again. Something, you might think, happened here, long, long ago; something, you might think, is on the cusp of happening again.

But that is the nature of grammar—it is always tense, like an instrument, aching for release, longing to transform present into past into future, is into was into will.”

The narrator introduces the willow trees called the Professors in the first chapter, establishing willows as an important symbol of the boundary between the wildness of the Modal Lands and the controlled environment of the human world. As a whole, the passage embodies the metafictional approach of the novella, drawing attention to itself as a story that happened “long, long ago” but is also “on the cusp of happening,” as readers are about to encounter it. The novella associates this blurring of time with Arcadia, but here, it also links it to the power of language; punning on “tense” as “verb tense,” the narrator suggests stories’ ability to transport readers to other times or even alter the passage of time.

“Faerie being the source of so much grammar made folk apt to speak of it in a kind of translation. They called it Arcadia, the Beautiful Country, the Land Beyond, Antiquity. And if they sometimes meant things less pretty than those names suggested, well, there are always things lost in translation, and curious things gained.”

The narrator describes the mysterious and magical land of Arcadia, from which grammar flows in the River Liss. Arcadia’s many names hint at its nature as a place that exists outside of time and as a land that is transformative and dangerous, where things and people may become irrevocably changed or lost. This foreshadows Esther’s fate in Chapters 8 and 9.

“When people say that voices run in families, they mean it as inheritance—that something special has been passed down the generations, like the slope of a nose or the set of a jaw. But Esther and Ysabel Hawthorn had voices that ran together like raindrops on a windowpane. Their voices threaded through each other like the warp and weft of fine cloth, and when the sisters harmonized, the air shimmered with it.”

This passage highlights the special, even magical, nature of the Hawthorn sisters’ voices, their duty to sing to the willows, and the closeness of their relationship. The harmony of their voices mirrors the intertwining of their lives throughout the narrative, underscoring the theme of The Importance of Sisterhood and Familial Bonds. In keeping with the passage’s emphasis on speech, the motif of wordplay continues in the double meaning of the word “run” as both inherited and blending together.

“Rin came from Arcadia. Rin had a name that Esther could not hold wholly in her head, though they’d whispered it to her once, and when they did, what she grasped in images and feelings was glint of frost on the long grasses in a winter dawn. Rin was a feeling, a lightness in her step, a burr in her throat; some days she thought she’d made them up inside her head, so difficult was it to put words to them.”

Rin is Esther’s secret lover who comes from Arcadia. Rin’s character contrasts with Samuel Pollard’s in several ways, including their gender fluidity, their selfless expressions of love and desire, and the feelings they elicit in Esther. The idea that even Esther cannot grasp Rin’s true name underscores the novella’s depiction of the relationship between Arcadia and language; in its purest, wildest form, language exceeds human control or understanding.

“Everything was riddles with Rin, and as much as Esther loved riddles, her chief pleasure was in solving them. Pollard was a loose thread begging to be pulled; Rin was a knot that would not come undone.”

Esther’s love of riddles is an important element of her characterization and her interactions with other characters, contributing to the theme of the power of language. This passage also shows that Esther’s love of riddles is part of what draws her to Rin, who is like a riddle with no answer. This is echoed in their flirtations, which consist of riddle songs and wordplay.

“She thought about gifts, and Samuel Pollard, and how much she hated him giving her things she hadn’t asked for […] under the guise of being neighborly when they were clearly meant for courting. She thought about how the gift forced a bond on her that was awkward and difficult to refuse, and how payment could dispel that, could break the bond.”

Esther compares Rin’s reaction to the implied gift of her songs to the unwanted gifts she receives from Pollard. She understands that gifts can represent a kind of connection and obligation, tying people together against their will. She realizes that this is why Rin wants to repay her in some way for the songs she sang—to lessen this feeling of obligation—which underscores that Rin’s love for her is fundamentally selfless.

“There are a great many songs written about sisters, and a great many stories, too, and most often they turn on jealousy, on pettiness, on spite. Just as often as there are cruel stepmothers in ballads there are cruel older sisters jealous of the younger, coveting their looks, their lands, their lovers.

Esther looked at her sister—her beautiful, brilliant sister, talented and generous and funny and kind—and felt her fingers curling into fists at the thought that all the summer sunshine of her could dim for want of being seen by the likes of Samuel Pollard.”

The narrative draws explicit attention to the traditional folkloric formula of casting the eldest sister in the role of jealous villain and murderer. Esther, however, consciously resists this role, choosing instead to love and support her sister and wishing nothing but the best for her. This is one example within the narrative of the Resistance to Patriarchal Oppression, as it is precisely the qualities that inspire envy in the songs that make Esther want to protect Esther from Pollard, who embodies patriarchal society.

“It is well known that folk journey into and out of Arcadia, just as it’s well known that people travel into and out of the Levant. But it’s not done regularly, reliably, or particularly safely; one understands that one’s life is about to irrevocably change by having embarked on the journey, by the rigours of the journey itself, and by all the mysteries attendant on arrival.”

This passage once again discusses the dangers inherent in traveling into Arcadia. The magic of grammar runs wild throughout the land, which has the power to transform those who wander into it. The passage also compares Arcadia to the Levant, an area of the Eastern Mediterranean that includes Lebanon, echoing El-Mohtar’s comment that some talk about Lebanon as though it were a fairyland—an instance of language’s real-world power to harm.

“Rin closed their eyes. ‘There is so much sorrow here, Esther. There is so much cruelty in all your beautiful songs. Every one of them is a kind of fishhook in the heart, cold and piercing. There is so much I don’t understand of your life in this world. It is an instrument I can’t play.’”

While humans view Arcadia as dangerous and mysterious, Rin views the human world as dangerous, filled with cruelty and sorrow even amid its beauty. They consequently fear living among humans but agree to do so anyway, proving that their love for Esther is genuine, unselfish, and brave.

“Somehow, through the thrashing of her limbs and the rushing of water around her, she heard Pollard say, clear as glass, ‘Don’t worry,’ in a whisper all the more grotesque for being sincere. ‘I’ll take good care of Ysabel.’

The ring on her finger burned. The water screamed for her. The world went dark.”

This moment brings the narrative’s external conflict to its crisis, as Pollard’s jealousy and desire to control Esther erupt into physical violence. Pollard represents the violence of patriarchal oppression, while Esther takes the role of murder victim usually given to the younger sister. His promise to take care of Ysabel motivates Esther to defy her own death, as she understands that even Pollard’s “care” is rooted in misogyny and violence.

“As it happens the River Liss is always changing, itself and all it touches. Here it touches our story, and makes a change.

In the moment that Esther’s limbs went slack, the River Liss reversed its course. Instead of running north to south, it hissed and foamed and ran south to north, away from Pollard and his fish-scale hands. The River Liss swallowed Esther like a cherry pit or a chicken bone, and poured her down its throat towards Arcadia.”

This moment marks both a literal reversal as the river changes course and a figurative reversal that undoes the tragedy of Esther’s murder by bringing her into Arcadia. The passage also echoes Esther’s earlier riddle flirtation with Rin, in which she sang about a cherry without a pit and a chicken without bones; here, similes position Esther as the objects she sang about, once again revealing language’s power to transform.

“It hurt Ysabel that Esther kept wanting to go back to that place that had so frightened them; it hurt Esther that Ysabel wanted nothing more to do with the most interesting thing that had ever happened to them.”

Though Esther and Ysabel share some similarities and love each other without reserve, they also have differences and disagreements. The greatest involves their responses to their childhood experience of becoming lost in Arcadia: While Esther viewed it as a great adventure, Ysabel became frightened and wished to avoid a similar experience in the future. These differences furnish additional characterization, bolstering Esther’s depiction as the more outgoing sister and Ysabel’s as the more reserved, while serving as a secondary source of conflict.

“They made up their song in secret. They made it the way children sometimes make up a language to hide from adults, all invented vocabulary tacked on to borrowed syntaxes, when they know, but cannot yet explain, what grammar is. They built a song together to have their own version of the songs they were learning, and they never shared it with anyone but the willows while they both lived.”

Motivated by Ysabel’s fear that Esther would one day leave her and never return, Esther promised to always come back. The sisters made their secret song as a kind of promise and password so that they will always find each other if they become separated. This becomes a key element of the novella’s climax and denouement, bringing Pollard to justice in a way that reaffirms both the strength of the sisters’ bond and the power of language.

“The swan became fire, then snow; the snow became lightning, then thorns. Rin held the burning, scorching, stabbing shapes of her closer and closer, winced and bled the bright, clear blood of Arcadians over her, while Agnes muttered grammar forwards and backwards, coaxing the truth of the woman into memory and flesh.”

Agnes uses grammar to transform Esther back into a woman, demonstrating again the power of language to alter lives. Rin’s steadfast hold on Esther’s transforming body, despite the danger and pain, proves again that their love is genuine and self-sacrificing. It also evokes several myths and folktales where a man tricks or overpowers a shape-shifting woman in order to marry her—most notably, the Greek story of Peleus, who holds on to the nymph Thetis after a series of transformations. As in other instances, the novella subverts the misogyny of the source material by transforming an expression of dominance into an act of love.

“‘She’s my sister,’ said the woman again, but more quietly. ‘I would die for her. If I’ve really died…I want to have died for her.’

‘And I,’ said Rin, softly, ‘only want you to live for me.’

‘Rin,’ she said, ‘I’m sorry. I want to be with you. But I was an elder sister before I was a wife, and for longer, and that’s a shape I can’t easily shake.’”

This conversation between Rin and Esther, in which Esther chooses to return to the human world as a harp, is the most crucial example of the love between sisters. Esther explicitly says that her role as a sister, including the promise she made to return to Ysabel, comes above all else, even her love for Rin, thus contributing to the theme of sisterhood and familial bonds. Her comparison of her status as a sister to a “shape” resonates with the novella’s many examples of shape-shifting, but it is notable that Esther here says that she can’t change form. The novella thus suggests that some things, like love, resist even language’s transformative powers; Esther may say that she is Rin’s wife, but she remains bound to Ysabel.

“Most music is the result of some intimacy with an instrument. One wraps one’s mouth around a whistle and pours one’s breath into it; one all but lays one’s cheek against a violin; and skin to skin is holy drummer’s kiss. But a harp is played most like a lover: you learn to lean its body against your breast, find those places of deepest, stiffest tension with your hands and finger them into quivering release.”

This passage exemplifies El-Mohtar’s use of figurative language and wordplay. First, there is a brief allusion to the line “And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss” from Romeo and Juliet (V.1.726), comparing the skin-to-skin contact of two hands to a hand’s contact with the “skin” of a drum. Second, there is a series of erotic double entendres in the last sentence that liken playing a harp to sexual contact. The allusions to sex and famous lovers segue into Rin’s transformation of their own lover, Esther, into a harp.

“‘I suppose it’s a comfort, really,’ said Pollard. ‘I might have felt a pricking of my pride if she’d chosen some other lad, but who among us could compete with an Arcadian?’

That silenced Ysabel, who knew that of course she could, that Esther, her Esther would never have left her—but she had, hadn’t she? And hadn’t Ysabel told her to go find her Arcadian? Had Esther thought herself absolved by her sister at last, released from a child’s demanding and unreasonable promise?”

The narrative plays with dramatic irony in this passage, as Pollard claims to believe that Esther ran away with her Arcadian lover. The readers know that Pollard murdered her, but Ysabel does not, heightening the tension by revealing Ysabel’s precarious position. This moment also contributes to the theme of sisterhood as Ysabel struggles between fearing that Esther has abandoned her and knowing deep down that Esther would not break her promise to return. In framing Ysabel as “competition” for Rin, the passage directly compares the strength of the sisters’ love for one another to that of romantic bonds, echoing its insistence that sisterly relationships can be just as meaningful.

“They say voices run in families. Esther and Ysabel’s voices ran together like raindrops on a windowpane, threaded through each other like the warp and weft of fine cloth, and as they harmonized, the air shimmered with grammar, and Ysabel could see her sister in the harp, whole and beautiful and unmarred, and no one who heard them could doubt that this was Esther Hawthorn, come herself to name her murderer.”

This passage repeats the description of Esther and Ysabel’s voices from Chapter 2, turning the lines into a refrain like that of a song (a nod to the source material). This moment proves that even in death, Esther is still indelibly connected to her sister; that it is this that allows her to bring her murderer to justice demonstrates the intersection of the themes of sisterhood and resistance to patriarchal oppression.