Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil

by V.E. Schwab

And Lottie is a fraction shorter, with the curls now tamped against her skin, but there is something about her that makes Alice feel like she is looking up, and—

As if there was an unspoken agreement that when they buried Mum, the grave would follow them home, a six-foot hollow in the bed, a hole at the table, a plot of land left fallow for their entire lives, and then Dad broke his word by planting something there.

“No. I did have a husband. Once.” There it is again, that flash of teeth. A smile so slight and yet so dazzling that when María sees it, the ground seems to pitch downhill. She finds herself leaning forward, the urge to follow, or to fall. “How did he die?” she asks. The widow’s smile widens. “Slowly.”

“Is that blood?” asks the farmer’s wife as the lamplight catches on her dress. “Don’t worry,” says Sabine as she reaches back to close the door. “Most of it’s not mine.”

“The world will try to make you small. It will tell you to be modest, and meek. But the world is wrong. You should get to feel and love and live as boldly as you want.”

And here is the awful thing about belief. It is a current, like compulsion. Hard to forge when it goes against your will, but easy enough when it carries you the way you want to go.

Why does Charlotte stay? That is like asking—why stay inside a house on fire? Easy to say when you are standing on the street, a safe distance from the flames. Harder when you are still inside, convinced you can douse the blaze before it spreads, or rushing room to room, trying to save what you love before it burns.