Summary of Words That Wither, Words That Bloom by Jules Arbeaux
Uncanny #68, January/February 2026
Vanis grows up as the daughter of Terese, the willow-touched leader of Foresse—a magic user who can speak the true names of plants and command them to grow. Despite inheriting her mother’s abilities, Vanis receives nothing but coldness from Terese, who treats her more like an assistant than a daughter. Their interactions are reduced to terse requests for herbs, and even when young Vanis successfully uses magic for the first time to heal a blight-stricken basil plant, her mother dismisses her achievement with indifference.
Starved for her mother’s attention and approval, Vanis sometimes deliberately brings the wrong herbs just to receive eye contact, even if accompanied by harsh lectures. Though she masters plant identification by age three and successfully speaks core names to make plants grow by age seven, Terese never acknowledges her daughter’s accomplishments. The defining moment comes when Vanis brings common hogstail instead of superb hogstail, and her mother simply fetches it herself without a word—the last time Vanis will intentionally err for attention.
Key Plot Points
- Unable to hear plants’ voices as whispers like her mother can, Vanis compensates through relentless study and observation, consuming the entire royal library and beyond
- At fifteen, she begins traveling to remote villages, using her skills to heal gardens and crops, discovering that strangers’ love and praise fill the void her mother left
- By nineteen, she becomes a serious contender for willow-touched Queen, finally earning a single word from her mother: “Good”—which affects Vanis like a drug
- She marries a kind man who showers her with praise, making her “bloom,” and has a daughter named Karis whom she struggles to love properly
- Vanis practices alone in her room, rehearsing kind words to say to Karis, trying to break the cycle of emotional neglect she experienced
During her second pregnancy, Vanis experiences an extraordinary surge in her magical abilities. For the first time, she doesn’t just hear faint whispers from plants—she experiences their communication as vivid sensations of color, light, noise, and emotion. When a deadly plague threatens the country’s border, she uses her unprecedented power to ask an entire field of crops for help. The crops wither and die in exchange for curing the sick, and Vanis returns home a celebrated hero.
But as her pregnancy progresses past the sixth month, Vanis notices her enhanced powers gradually diminishing. The vibrant sensations fade to whispers, then disappear entirely. When she can no longer make a simple yellowing fern respond to her voice, she seeks help from the colony of willow-touched wisewomen. They deliver devastating news: she carries a willow-touched son, the rarest and most cursed kind, who devours his mother’s magic while still in the womb. Once taken, the power can never be returned, even if the child dies.
Vanis gives birth to Sylvan—a gentle, quiet boy who loves his sister fiercely. Her husband names him for greenery and growth. But Vanis, stripped of the magical abilities that defined her identity and brought her the love and admiration she craved, finally understands the cruel joke told about her own birth: had she not been the guest of honor, she would never have attended. Looking at her newborn son, she wants only to see him wither.