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.

Perhaps, he thought, this was hell and that nameless other was waiting to devour him. But when the breaths faltered, he didn’t know which would be worse, to be devoured by a beast or left alone in the dark.

Armageddon was a fire in the harbor, a box delivered on a cold day. It wasn’t one great tragedy, but ten million tiny ones, and everyone faced theirs alone.

Don’t you understand? The world ends with high explosive, not trumpets, and even if an angel existed, it would be shot from the sky like an aeroplane.

But he was suddenly afraid that the memory of grief was part of the edifice that fixed his love for her in his mind. Could he not rid himself of sorrow without losing the rest?