Free Hush (Dragon Apocalypse) by James Maxey

company on a night of drinking, since she knew more dirty jokes than a sailor. She was also Commonground’s only competent seamstress – she’d mended the pants I’d died in.
    If the mosquito had meant to distract me by tracing a path through places and faces familiar to me, I’m vexed to confess that it succeeded. It had put a hundred feet between us as I paused to reminisce. I caught one last glimpse of the tiny beast as it zipped into Big Blue’s Bug and Bun Barn at the end of the pier. I flew after it, but the second I entered the restaurant I lost focus. My mouth watered as I caught sight of plates full of yeasty fried dough stuffed with bananas and lemon spiders. Unfortunately, for a ghost, concentration equals movement. For the briefest second, the mosquito vanished from my mind and I found myself stalled in the middle of the bug barn, stirred to hunger.
    It took only an instant to shake off my reverie and zoom out the back wall, but it was too late. I couldn’t spot the mosquito amid the chaos of lights and bodies, nor hear its faint buzz beneath all the laughter and shouts. Outwitted by an insect!
    The creature had been heading due east when it first took flight. There wasn’t much left in that direction. Once, Bigsby’s fish house had been the central feature of that area, but the tidal wave had left nothing but slanted timbers thrusting up from the water. I wondered if Bigsby would rebuild, assuming he was even alive. Between the volcano erupting, the tidal wave, and the avatars of Greatshadow burning everything in sight, the population of Commonground wasn’t what it used to be.
    Flying over the barren water, I noticed a dim glow on the shore no more than a mile distant. This was no funeral pyre or bonfire; I guessed it to be the faint, flickering light of numerous candles.
    Which, indeed, it was. There were hundreds of slender tapers thrust into a circle of raked beach sand, forming a spiral pattern. I flew higher to better perceive the design and found myself mesmerized by the snail-shell shape, unable to turn away.
    Within the center of the whirl of light was a familiar figure. Sorrow Stern knelt on the beach, laying gnarled bits of driftwood together into a shape that bore a vague resemblance to a man. Its legs were splintery remnants of a mast split by lightning. Its arms were thick branches of dark teak, the fine grain looking almost like muscle beneath a thin coat of damp sand. For a head it possessed a large coconut still in its husk, given a jagged mouth by a machete chop and what could pass as eyes formed by two oval pecan shells. The twin iron nails that held the false eyes to the surface glinted like irises in the candlelight. To the sides of the head were curled tamarind seed pods that served as makeshift ears.
    For the first time I saw Sorrow free of her hood. She’d stripped off her cloak and wore a bright red dress that left her shoulders bare. It looked more appropriate for a ballroom than a beach. She was smaller without the cloak, with a figure best described as girlish, but I found her age a mystery. The left half of her body was withered, the limbs supported by iron braces, but her right half looked young and strong. Her head was shaved, adding years to her appearance. Her scalp was dotted with dark studs, some of which flashed as they caught the candlelight. I found myself drawn in along the spiral, fascinated by the bumps on her head. They looked, for all the world, like the blunt heads of nails. There were half a dozen, one gold, another silver, another rusted iron, one green copper, one that might have been glass, and the last with the appearance of polished wood.
    She stood, lifting her hand straight up as if she were reaching for me as I hovered overhead. I heard a buzz and the silver mosquito flashed toward her fingers, alighting gently on her outstretched palm. She knelt once more, opening the barrel chest of the driftwood man she’d built, revealing a small cage of golden