Excerpt from Bog Queen by Anna North, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Time of ending and beginning

A colony of moss does not speak or think in language. But if such a colony could tell the story of its life, it might say this: Once, we flourished. Our capsules popped and our spores spread far and wide. We drank what we needed from the rain and stored the rest in our spongy depths. We made a rich home for ourselves, of ourselves. This time lasted many thousands of daylights and nighttimes, and it was good.

We knew, however, that our flourishing would end, and so it did. One day large wheels came rumbling across our body; iron claws reached down and yanked us up by our roots. In number we were much reduced; our home became dry and barren. This time also lasted many daylights and it, obviously, was not as good.

But our memory and foresight are long—so long, in fact, they are nearly infinite. We knew our time of struggle would end too, and indeed, one day the large wheels rolled to a stop.

A fine day. Wind out of the west. Above our surface, a great panicked scurrying-about. The people come and press their faces so close to us that we might, if we had hands, reach out and touch them.

We have had ample time to observe human behavior, and we can tell they have found something in our flesh, something they did not expect and do not understand. But, of course, we know whose head they draw so slowly from the mud, brushing our remaining tendrils from the temples. Whose shoulders, whose fine, well-protected hands.

A colony of moss does not experience emotions like fondness or intimacy, but if it did, it might say this: We held her. We kept her safe under the surface, in our bath of earth, for many times her lifespan. That we give her up now may seem to be purely random, an accident of excavation. In fact, the hour of her service is at hand.

April 2018

Agnes comes into the coroner's office streaming with rainwater. Eight months in this country and you would think she would have learned to carry an umbrella, but no, she has not.

How must she look now, six feet tall and dripping on the carpet? She is still trying to understand it, the way she is perceived, the imprint her body makes on the world.

"I'm here," she says.

Agnes is very late. She came in on the train, and her phone said you could walk to the office from the station, but somehow instead of shortening as she continued along the road, the distance between her and her destination seemed to dilate, as though the town was growing, new low brown-brick houses appearing in between the houses, new dark-green unfriendly shrubbery. Agnes remembered a story from her childhood: a fairy circle, a hex on the land to trap the unsuspecting. The brownies giggling in the brush as humans stumbled hopelessly, their paths curving ever backward on themselves, bringing them again and again to the beginning.

"Wonderful to meet you, can we get you anything," they are saying, the people in the office, in a way that makes it clear they are annoyed with her. They introduce themselves: Kieran, the coroner, and the secretary, Melinda. Kieran is not much older than Agnes, maybe thirty, but he has all the solidity of adulthood about him—not just a wedding ring on his finger and a picture of a white-haired toddler on his desk, though he has those things, but also a settled calm, a stillness in his body.

Melinda is in her midforties, but with the weariness of someone older: a childhood illness, Agnes thinks, or she has lost someone. She has lived more than her share of life already. Agnes can always sense that quality, and it makes her feel a sympathy she cannot quite express. She apologizes as Melinda takes her sopping coat and her umbrella and hands her a folder.

"I know we sent you the report already," she says, "but I always like to give a hard copy."

Agnes read the report last night in her bad flat with the yellowy walls; she knows the husband's story.

Excerpted from Bog Queen by Anna North. Copyright © 2025 by Anna North. Excerpted by permission of Bloomsbury Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.