Excerpt from Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by Victoria E. Schwab, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"What?" he hisses.

She points to the woman, asking why she looks so strange, and he replies under his breath that she looks to be a widow, and that it must be a kind of mourning dress. María frowns. She has seen widows on the road before. They have never looked like this.

But Felipe simply shrugs and says that maybe she is French.

María's frown deepens, unsatisfied. She wants a closer look.

The bells have stopped ringing, and now the town is moving through its motions.

The baker's son appears with loaves of bread, the innkeeper with salted fish and ale. María's mother arrives, offering to mend any holes from travel wear, which gives her an idea. María slips forward, weaving toward the widow's horse as a man holds out a hand and helps her down. There is no pack, only a small wooden crate that he frees for her.

When it shakes, the contents sound like bells. María wonders what it holds.

She is almost to the widow's side, about to ask if anything needs mending, when the widow turns her way. She can't make out the woman's face, reduced to smudges by the heavy veil, but she has felt the heat of Rafa's glare enough times to know the widow's gaze is leveled straight at her. And María, who thinks herself afraid of nothing—not the dark corners of the yard at night, or the height of the stable roof, or the spiders that hide in the wood stack—stops in her tracks, the words turned to rocks in her throat.

She stares back at the strange woman, perplexed by the feeling that rolls over her. No doubt, she would have flung it off, continued forward, but before she can, Rafa's hand lands on her shoulder, and then it is too late. The widow is turning away and the party is dispersing, the horses for the stable, the humans for the inn, and María finds herself herded roughly back home.

* * *

The next day is hot and bright and cloudless.

By late morning, the caravan has moved on, but the widow hasn't. Her pale horse stays stabled by the inn, where she remains inside her room, the curtains drawn. The hours pass, and as they do, the widow requests no water or wine, accepts no offered food, till some wonder if she means to become a saint. If it is piety, it is surely the strongest kind. If it is sickness, they want no part.

The hours pass, and as they do, the gossip spreads like shadow, and here is what it says:

Perhaps she is old.

Perhaps she is weak.

Perhaps she needs rest.

Perhaps she is sick.

Perhaps the journey is too much.

Perhaps the heat—

Perhaps the sun—

There is no consensus, save that the men do not like her. They treat her like a nuisance, a parcel dislodged off another pilgrim's horse.

"What kind of woman travels by herself?" they gripe.

"What kind of woman stays behind alone?"

The answer is, of course, a widow.

But there is another word that trails behind it, in a whisper.

(Witch.)

But then, a witch would never go on pilgrimage.

Whatever the reason, the men lean away, but the women—they have always had a taste for gossip. They arrive at the widow's door throughout the day, pass an hour in her room, perhaps for company, or charity, or simply talk, a chance to hear where she has been, where she is going.

María thinks of the wooden crate, and wonders if the widow is selling something. It happens often enough—pilgrims act like ants, carrying things along the road, tracking other places in like mud on the bottom of their feet.

Her mother clucks her tongue, and hands her a basket of freshly mended things.

She does not like the widow, and has been out of sorts since she arrived. But when María asks why, she will not say, only crosses herself, a gesture that piques María's interest as she takes the basket and sets off for the families Baltierra and Muñoz and Cordona.

Excerpted from Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by Victoria E. Schwab. Copyright © 2025 by Victoria E. Schwab. Excerpted by permission of Tor Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.