An Unkindness of Ghosts

by Rivers Solomon

a long time ago there was the Great Lifehouse. It twirled and twirled like a ballerina, trying to impress the Great Star. One twirl was equal to a day. One dance, which was lots of twirls added together, was equal to a year. The year had four quarters, and when the Great Star shined greatest and longest (its way of telling the Great Lifehouse she favored it), that was known as the summer quarter.

Aw, this is so cute

“Quarry is not my home. I am homeless. We are all homeless. We are the very definition of homeless. We are vagrants in Lieutenant’s kingdom.”

You keep thinking there’s a reason for everything, ’cause you can figure some out. There ain’t. All the bad that’s happened to you, it was never about you. It was about them. You can’t blame yourself.

Twit, now dog, and she’d heard much worse so many times that she did not care, could not care. She didn’t need much. Didn’t need to be adored and loved and called nice things. All she wished for was perfunctory respect paid to the fact that she was, indeed, alive. Real, breathing, thinking, movable parts and all.

It was a grim sort of tale but one that used to give Aster much comfort. A poison so strong that the mere scent of it leveled an entire castle? Perfection. That the king escaped its power was a fluke of the narrative. She used to think that. But Aster understood now that kings don’t die. Even when they do, they have sons, and those sons have sons, and so on. Was that what Lieutenant meant? The Sovereignty is forever.

Do you think my body couldn’t decide what it wanted to be?” “I think it doesn’t matter because we get to decide what our bodies are or are not,” he answered. Aster sat up, and Theo helped her prop two pillows beneath her head. “Is that so? Then I am magic. I say it, therefore it is true,” she said. “It is true. You are a very rare magic, Aster. Don’t you know that?”