From Sand and Ash

by Amy Harmon

A rejected infant will often die, even if its basic needs are met. A rejected child will spend his whole life trying to please everyone else, and never please himself. A rejected woman will often cheat, just to feel desirable. A rejected man will rarely try again, no matter how lonely he is. A rejected people will convince themselves they deserve it, if only to make sense of a senseless world.

“You will slay dragons, but not before they slay you,” she hissed. And Angelo bolted from his chair, dragging me from the tent.

If being with Eva meant his life was measured in minutes and hours instead of months and years, so be it.

She was the only thing in the world he really wanted. And not in the way most men want women. He didn’t want to assuage a need. He didn’t want to lose himself temporarily in her body. He wanted to live for her. Beyond the moment, beyond the war. Always.

“When this war is over, I will be yours, first, last, and always. And you will be mine.” “Eva Bianco?” She smiled with trembling lips. “Eva Bianco. In truth.”

“Please tell Father Bianco that his sister has been detained and is being questioned at Gestapo Headquarters.”

Fear is strange. It settles on chests and seeps through skin, through layers of tissue, muscle, and bone, and collects in a soul-size black hole, sucking the joy out of life, the pleasure, the beauty. But not the hope. Somehow, the hope is the only thing resistant to the fear, and it is that hope that makes the next breath possible, the next step, the next tiny act of rebellion, even if that rebellion is simply staying alive.

Eva was distantly alarmed by her readiness to die. But only distantly.

Our immortality comes through our children and their children. Through our roots and our branches. The family is immortality.