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.

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.

1953-1960 CE

The City of Clouds-The Village of Ash

Asmeret wandered between tents; her head hurt again, yet she could think. Remember. The cavern of gold, the river, the singing of the ghost animals falling, falling, arrrrraaaaaaaaa, the ravens pulling them from the river where they bumped up against her, the zebra, the rhino—bloody stump where they’d hacked off the tip of its horn—climbing the staircase behind the boar. Her.

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.

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.