Thistlefoot - A Novel

Informationen zum Autor GennaRose Nethercott Klappentext "The Yaga siblings--Bellatine, a young woodworker, and Isaac, a wayfaring street performer and con artist--have been estranged since childhood, separated both by resentment and by wide miles of American highway. But when they learn that they are to receive an inheritance, the siblings agree to meet--only to discover that their bequest isn't land or money, but something far stranger: a sentient house on chicken legs. Thistlefoot, as the house is called, has arrived from the Yagas' ancestral home outside Kyiv--but not alone. A sinister figure known only as the Longshadow Man has tracked it to American shores, bearing with him violent secrets from the past: fiery memories that have hidden in Isaac and Bellatine's blood for generations. As the Yaga siblings embark with Thistlefoot on a final cross-country tour of their family's traveling theater show, the Longshadow Man follows in relentless pursuit, seeding destruction in his wake. Ultimately, time, magic, and legacy must collide--erupting in a powerful conflagration to determine who gets to remember the past and craft a new future"-- Leseprobe CHAPTER TWO If anything ever happened to Bellatine’s hands, this story would be over before it began. Without her hands—their delicate motions, their deft strength—none of this would be possible. They were woodworkers’ hands, able to whittle an ornate little owl into the neck of a spoon or heft a chainsaw through a Douglas fir. These hands were gentle as lace when they needed to be, or strong as iron. They were small, in fitting with Bellatine’s general stature, but could muster a vise-strong grip on a jam lid or a torque wrench. The fingernails were often slicked with a gold glitter polish, gnawed and chipping at the edges. The knuckles, slightly over-plumped from cracking and the fingertips calloused from labor. To guess her age by looking at her hands would be futile, as they suggested far more than Bellatine’s twenty years. These were her mother’s hands, too, and her mother’s before that, and hers. Heirloom hands, passed down through generations. Hands like these are versatile enough to carry an entire story in their cupped palms. Luckily, no harm will befall them. Not in this story, at least. There will be many other sufferings—I can’t protect you from that. But I can promise that of all the pains this story holds, none of them belong to Bellatine’s hands. Her hands will remain unsullied. *** On the third day in September, Bellatine’s hands were busy wringing one suspender of her denim overalls like a goose’s neck. Her knuckles were white, fidgeting. She was nervous. She could admit that much to herself. Maybe she had no reason to be, but she could feel a long eel of dread swimming laps in her stomach, nonetheless. The Greyhound toward the Red Hook Marine Terminal was only halfway to its destination. It had paused at a gas station, and Bellatine jostled past rows of carpeted seats and down the steep stairs to the parking lot. She untangled her matted bus hair with her fingers, a jaw-length shingle bob with bangs; she knew the flapper flair of the cut looked incongruous with her slouchy uniform of overalls and striped T-shirt, but she didn’t care. Long hair can get caught in power tools, so she kept hers short and sweet. It was a cool afternoon, the promise of autumn just beginning to puncture the air. She bent over to touch her feet, stretching the tight muscles in her back, sore from hours on the half-empty bus. Was Isaac already there, at the shipping yard? She hadn’t heard from him in four days, when they’d first agreed on a time to meet. Maybe he wasn’t even coming. It wouldn’t be unlike her brother to vanish without a word and leave her to deal with the shipment on her own. She imagined herself sitting in some estate office, filling out acquisitions paperwork, cursing her brother’s absenc...

Product details

• Authors: Gennarose Nethercott
• Publisher: Anchor Books USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 13.09.2022
• EAN: 9780593468838
• ISBN: 978-0-593-46883-8
• No. of pages: 448
• Dimensions: 162 mm x 242 mm x 38 mm
• Subject: Fiction > Science fiction, fantasy