The Warm Hands of Ghosts

by Katherine Arden

People liked to point out that if mankind had learned to fly, and see bullets inside living skin, and sail underwater, then it stood to reason that they could talk to the dead.

Magic’s just science we don’t understand. What if a man a thousand years ago saw one of the flying contraptions that we have winking about everywhere? He’d think it was magic.

He just nodded, pulled a flask, drank, handed it to her. Brandy. She took a healthy swallow. “I’m buying cheaper liquor if you’re going to drink it like that,” he said.