May, 1945 CE

The Village of Ash

Once there was a story and no one to tell it.

As Grandmother spoke, the girl settled herself closer; the pair were excused from the work of women and girls in their village lest their strangeness spoil the bubbling disks of injera as they baked or taint the healing essence of the plants hanged to dry in the African sun.

“Tell about the tree and the bird and the girl by the sea,” Asmeret begged.

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.

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.