Free Human for a Day (9781101552391) by Jennifer (EDT) Martin Harry (EDT); Brozek Greenberg Page A

crushing in on her as the final word of the incantation set them to their final task—to destroy. A flurry of action rose up in front of the young couple, obscuring the risen woman who all but vanished as branch and root and twig tore into her. The pile fell in on itself as the wind calmed, and when the night was quiet once more, the only evidence left of her ever having been there was the hole Mongfhionn had crawled out of, covered in what looked like a bonfire piling.
    â€œIs she dead?” Joseph said, stepping to it and scattering the debris around with the toe of his boot.
    â€œNo,” Jeanine said, walking over to her backpack on the other side of the tree, “but I suspect she won’t be bothering anyone in the flesh for another hundred years.” Her mouth tightened and her forehead wrinkled. “Not that we’d have any ancestors for her to take revenge on.”
    Joseph moved to her as she broke down with a keening cry and she collapsed into his arms. He held her tight until the worst of it passed.
    â€œSo what now?” she asked, wiping at her tears, still shaken. “What do we do now, Joseph?”
    He shrugged, but gave her a warm smile as he lifted her chin and met her eyes. “We always have the first of May,” he said, taking his hands in hers, squeezing them. “Didn’t she suggest herself that the Beltaine spirits are a bit more receptive to proposals of our kind?”
    â€œAye,” Jeanine said, a glimmer of hope slowly filling her eye as she smiled back at him. “That she did.”
    The two walked back down the hillside to the lights of the village below, guided by the light of the harvest moon, leaving the burial mound, the pile of broken sticks, and death behind them.

THE SENTRY
    Fiona Patton
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    P hysical sensations came on slowly, so slowly that he hardly recognized them for what they were at first. A disturbance and a shifting far away brought feelings near to hand: the scratch of a pigeon’s claws against his shoulders and the whisper of the wind against his cheeks. He stood frozen, marveling at them and wondering how they’d come to be.
    He’d known the strength of stone and the serenity of silence. He’d known the call of duty and the slumber of the fallen. He’d stood, weapon clutched against his chest, guarding them from any who might disturb their rest. A candle in a distance burned for all of them, but not all of them could reach it; their time on earth had been too terrible and far too brief. For those, he took their memories of pain, loss, and sacrifice. Comforted, they took the path illuminated for them and passed away beyond the trees. A boy in face and form, and a man in duty, he knew death but he did not remember if he’d ever truly known a life that might have once been his.
    He heard voices speaking words and strained to hear them, a strange unnatural ripple of anticipation traveling through his limbs.
    â€œ I found something. ”
    â€œ A body? ”
    â€œ Maybe. Bones, anyway. See, those would be fingers, there and there. ”
    â€œ Be careful with them. ”
    Whisper soft, a brushing motion swept across his hands and the voices spoke again, more clearly now.
    â€œ It ’ s definitely a body. ”
    â€œ A soldier? ”
    â€œ Looks to be. There, that ’ s a brass button. See? And here ’ s another. ”
    Hundreds of the fallen had left their memories in his care and they flooded through him now; the screaming of the shelling in the distance and the corkscrew twist of fear as it came closer. He had sudden urge to freeze, to hide, or rise and run, to do anything but carry on slowly forward. A pain so sharp and bright it took his breath away, then falling.
    â€œ See here, the vestiges of a uniform tunic. ”
    The scratch of wool against his wrists and throat. The stiffness of it when it had been clean and new, the stiffness of it when it had been