Set the Stars Alight

by Amanda Dykes

She remembered how the stories made her feel. Full of longing, like she’d missed the times of yore and wonder and was born instead into a time of plastic and speed. Father’s magic was tucked, always, in the past. Her chest burned and she sniffled. It was ridiculous that she hadn’t cried at the funeral but was sniffling like a baby an hour later over lost fairy tales. Grief did that, apparently. Snuck out of hidden exits. Fear gripped her deeply. What if she never remembered? And worse, what if this wasn’t the only one of his stories she had lost in the muddle? She closed her eyes, a sickening darkness gripping her stomach at the realization: She could not remember the stories. A few of them, perhaps, but . . . there had been so many. They melded together, covered over in an iron blanket of grief that would not let her in. It was too much. To lose those, too. So she stood there. She and the river and a thousand stories and losses in between—and she wept. She wept for Father. For Mum. For the stories, the world they so longed to give her, and the way it was lost to reality. And for the boy who once sat beside her in that fragile place of hope . . . and who was long gone, too.