Beneath Ceaseless Skies, February 2026
“Like Thorns on Her Tongue” by R.Z. Held — Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Issue #450
Trist is a blood mage traveling the settlements along the great Mother River, offering a remarkable spell to those who suffer from anxiety and self-doubt — a spell she carries literally on her skin, etched as a winged snake coiled around her neck. The snake voices the cruel, undermining thoughts that once paralyzed her, but by externalizing them, Trist can recognize them as lies and act despite them. Her mission is personal and heartfelt: a ghost from the wild hunt helped her learn the spell and asked her to share it widely, and she intends to honor that gift.
While visiting a prosperous riverside village, Trist consults with an elder named Evon, who points her toward a troubled grand-nibling upriver. Before she can set off, a striking woman named Maya arrives at a near-sprint, looking for a blood mage to help her retrieve something from a haunted ruin. Maya is a seed hunter — she travels remote trails locating ancient crop varieties for a city nursery in Rivermouth, racing to find a blight-resistant apple before the region’s orchards fail entirely. She’s blunt to the point of tactlessness, intensely focused, and utterly magnetic to Trist, whose snake immediately begins whispering that someone like Maya could never be interested in her.
Trist agrees to accompany Maya to the ruins, where they find an orchard of ancient Liberty apple trees protected by the ghost of the man who planted them. Trist negotiates diplomatically with the ghost, but when Maya takes a cutting, it withers instantly — the ghost’s presence is the only thing keeping the centuries-old trees alive. The ghost attacks Maya with thrown rocks, and the two women barely escape. Trist, rattled, vows to find a solution, but Maya — exhausted, desperate, and frightened of being rendered obsolete by a rival blood mage — erupts at Trist, calling her incompetent and useless. Trist, undone, bursts into tears and flees.
After composing herself, Trist returns to help one final time before leaving. She offers Maya a spell to see and communicate with the ghost in daylight — but the spell requires a kiss to transmit. What begins as a chaste, clinical act becomes something more, and in the charged emotion of the moment, Trist’s magic bypasses her intentions. Instead of a simple seeing spell, she accidentally casts her own mind spell onto Maya: a thorned blackberry vine tattooed across Maya’s throat, which makes hurtful words physically painful to speak.
The spell, however imposes a profound change. Maya — forced to slow down and choose her words — negotiates successfully with the ghost, who ultimately disperses himself entirely to ensure the cuttings survive. With the apples saved, Trist confesses what she’s done and offers to remove the spell. But Maya, recognizing what the spell reveals about her own patterns of harm, asks to keep it for a while. She invites Trist to travel with her — acknowledging that Trist’s ongoing mission to share the mind spell needn’t be separate from a life fully lived.
Trist accepts. The snake protests, as it always will. She acts anyway.
R.Z. Held writes speculative fiction, including the Amsterdam Institute series of space opera novellas and award-nominated short fiction. Her Silver series of urban fantasy novels was published as Rhiannon Held. She lives near Portland, Oregon, where she works as an archaeologist for an environmental compliance firm. At work, she uses her degree mostly for copy-editing technical reports; in writing, she uses it for world-building; in public, she’ll probably use it to check the mold seams on the wine bottle at dinner.