The Ash Girl
by A’Lis Bly
For my daughter Claire
Hun Vedverte
Chapter 4
31 May, 1942 CE
Oxford
Floats. Water. Wings. These words tumbled together in Charlotte’s head coming to rest at the gate to her memories on the bank of the Thames. The gates opened with a click and the words rearranged into a vision of the ghost plane drifting silently past the girl and the tree. More memories came spooling out, some Charlotte couldn’t understand, didn’t recognize as her own. She sat very still while her insides whirled like a crazed carousel.
Chapter XIV
Muck-North
They lay askew there in the muck—a stillness so complete you would think them dead. Silt billows up in dark, languid puffs. The body has settled on its back, not quite flat. Arms splayed, outstretched, palms to the sky; back arched, as are the feet, curling into the seabed as if grasping for purchase.
Chapter XV
Goddesses’ Basecamp
I turned toward the clackclackclack of something trotting across the ice and a haruff behind me. The smirk on the goat’s face caught my eye first. So familiar.