Starling House

by Alix E. Harrow

For the first time I understand how anybody could actually like winter; it’s a delicious defiance to be warm when the world is cold.

Her hands are fisted in the collar of his shirt and she is so vital, so furiously alive that Arthur understands for the first time why Hades stole Persephone, why a man who has spent his life in winter might do anything at all for a taste of spring.

I cross the crisp white lines of the football field, sweating, fighting the dizzy time-warp sensation of visiting your old school: a glutinous sucking at the soles of your feet, as of quicksand, and the nagging suspicion that you never really left and never will.