Free Matchbox Girls by Chrysoula Tzavelas Page A

purse. No. They couldn’t. Who would...?
    Kari started to run. There was a cracking sound, and another, and another.
    Everything seemed to happen at once, but Marley could order a few things: the sting of pain in her arm before she saw the gun in the blank-faced woman’s hand, pointed directly at her. The yawning feeling in her mind, like her ears popping after a long flight, before Kari tripped and rolled and came to her feet again, still fleeing. More cracking, but the guns were obscured by the dogs. Blackness sprayed through the air.
    Then the women were down and the dogs, previously silent, were snarling on top of them. AT dashed past her to kick at a woman’s hand.
    Kari cannoned into Marley, and she realized she was on her knees. Hesitantly, still aware of the yawning, open sensation in her mind, she felt her head. Was she dead? What had just happened? Where had the guns come from?
    Her skull seemed whole, but the rest of the world seemed... different. It was as if she'd discovered distance, as if a television image had suddenly become the view from a window. Marley shook her head, and the feeling faded as she focused on Kari. The little girl seemed uninjured, although there was a smudge of dirt on her face.
    Marley raised her hand to wipe at the smudge, and realized there was blood running over her fingers. She stared at it.
    “Marley, you’re hurt,” said Kari, wonderingly. “You’re bleeding.” She pointed at Marley’s upper arm. Marley felt at it with her other hand. The stinging she’d barely noticed became a searing ache as she touched the edges of a long cut.
    “Bang, bang,” said Kari. Her eyes widened. “They shot you.”
    Lissa, standing only a few yards away, said, “Bad guys.” Her voice was clear and cold. It rang in the empty vastness in Marley's head and her vision rippled and distorted. The world broke into a riot of kaleidoscopic images. After a moment of utter disorientation, Marley realized every person she saw was refracted and layered upon themselves, filling up the new distance.
    But there were only two images of Lissa. One image wavered and glistened, with small shadows crawling over it; just looking at it made Marley's stomach churn. The other one seemed normal: Lissa the little girl. Beyond the child, the two women lying passively on the ground had their own pair of refractions, one muddled with the long grey-blue shadows of grief, and one swirled with silver-limned night. Faint lines of light linked the images of grief to Lissa's nauseating refraction.
    Lissa walked toward the women. The dogs holding them down tumbled off them as if blown by a gale-force wind. Their claws scrabbled at the ground, but they couldn’t regain their positions. AT, crouched down near the women, stared at the child. Her eyes widened with shock as she struggled to keep her own balance.
    The women on the ground lay still. The one who had been frightened of Kari was terrified now, and her handbag had a hole blown through its bottom. There were lines around her eyes and a dog bite on her hand. Her mouth was moving but no sound emerged.
    “You bad guys should just go away,” said Lissa. She tossed her stones.
    The golden light that burst around them was like the sun had come out from behind the clouds. It cast no shadows; it suffused everything until there was nothing to see. It was blindness without end.
    But the kaleidoscope vision remained.
    Marley saw the two images of Lissa waver. The nauseating one strengthened, and the line that connected her to the fallen women thickened. Static began to devour the images of the women. They cracked and fragmented, until they were pitted and worn like a rock face under a sand wind.
    Then great golden wings folded around each woman, a shield against the devouring. The static faded away.
    The light spoke.
    Foolish. But you were loyal and true.
    My loyal servants shall not be lost while I yet endure.
    What was will be again.
    The light faded slowly. There was only one