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.

9 July, 1960 CE

Tree, on the Red Sea

Once a year she startled awake, gasping for breath. Reached for him as he slipped away. Wait! Wait.

When she was younger, Asmeret could still see his blue-black-blue face, the color of the ancient kings and queens of their tribe. Smell the blood of their mother on him. Hear his breath. Feel his heartbeat next to hers as it had been for the time in their mother’s womb and the no-time in the no-place before that.

June, 1949 CE

The Village of Ash

“Don’t encourage her,” Arsema snapped.

Bilen and the other Parrot Girls clung to each other under the thorn tree where they preened in the shade. They screeched in mock terror whenever Asmeret stopped running in circles to bare her teeth and snap at them with that weird grin on her face.

NEXT

What came next is this.

Asmeret stared at the card in her hand; curls of blonde hair escaping the helmet, intelligent blue-gray eyes full of questions. Eyes, she realized, that couldn’t see her, though they seemed to try. Asmeret looked from Athena to Hestia. Then to the wisp she understood was her grandmother, now an ancestor.

1949-1953 CE

Somewhere on the Coast of Eritrea

The little dog growled softly, backing away from the tracks. “Stick close to me,” Asmeret cautioned her, “I won’t let it get you.”

Asmeret squatted, laying her palm flat and spreading her fingers wide, trying to fill the print. The girl glanced around and sniffed at the air. The stink of the animal lingered. It was nearby.

TURN

And so we find our story at the turn of the wheel. A gate. A passing through place. Spinning toward the next way of being.

On this morning, Asmeret awoke to blood between her legs. More curious than frightened (she was no stranger to blood) she immediately remembered the initiation ceremonies.

1953 CE

The Road to Asmara

Asmeret walked out of the woods as the sun came up to her right. North. How far, how long a walk, how many hours or days before she should turn west, into the mountains? She opened her mouth to ask the question aloud; closed it again. No bird or dog to hear.

RETURN

There was still breath in the little black dog when the hyena showed up. The snake that had taken the cur to the edge of its life had slipped into the grass, leaving no trace.

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.

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.