An Inheritance of Ashes by Leah Bobet

secret in Windstown: the only sure way to do it was to promptly drop dead. In the back aisle, a company of Chandlers lowered their voices, hands on their rucksacks of precious old-cities salvage. One of the older ones—Rami, his black beard half gray—shot me a look of profound sympathy.
    â€œWe were,” I grudged. I tangled my fingers in Mami’s shawl and wished I were in my barley fields, brown-gray and endless, silent, safe. Empty of everyone’s gossipy, grasping
opinions.
    â€œWe saw a Twisted Thing on the property,” I said reluctantly, and Mackenzie quirked one black-silver brow at the Chandlers, who took the hint and dutifully filed out. Mackenzie knew everything that happened in Windstown. Telling her—confiding in her—was worth the chance she’d confide back. “We came to find out if they’ve been back here in town, too. And in one breath Pitts was sending us off the farm, bringing in generals to rip up our winter plantings, and—I have to get home.”
    â€œPitts,” Mackenzie said, and sighed. “Well, he won’t be mayor forever. I’ll keep an eye out for your Twisted Things, child, and speak with Darnell Prickett. All the news comes through his doors that doesn’t come through mine.”
    â€œThank you,” I said, overwhelmed. Not everyone in Windstown was Alonso Pitts. There were still people who cared for us, and who we cared for in return. “I don’t know how we can repay you—”
    Mackenzie’s lips pursed. “Down to the docks, now. Don’t lose the light.”
    I flushed. I’d offended her, and I didn’t even know how. “Thank you,” I stammered again, and we crept out into the afternoon.
    The air on the riverfront was cooling fast. Crates and dry sacks scattered over the pier, stowed inexpertly about our riverboat—which had been packed with a total unfamiliarity with how the boat took weight. “Oh, Heron,” I sighed, and looked around for him.
    He stood on the garden walk beneath a leafless peach tree, in quiet conversation with Rami Chandler while the Chandler cousins loaded their boat. I glanced over my shoulder at Tyler—already shifting packages from bow to stern to bulwarks—and drifted to join them.
    â€œHalfrida,” Rami said, with a tip of his broad chin.
    â€œRami.” I nodded back.
    Heron glanced at me, surprised.
    â€œMy given name’s perfectly all right. We’re neighbors here,” Rami explained, and reached into a pocket for an awkward, cloth-wrapped bundle. “I heard mention of the Twisted Thing on your property up at Green’s. We thought you should know: we’ve had a sighting too.”
    He unwrapped the cloth—his spare keffiyeh, creased and clean—and produced a thick glass jar with
something
floating inside. I shaded the jar with one hand. Inside was the corpse of a lizard, no larger than my palm, curled in some viscous fluid.
    I swallowed past a throat gone dry. The lizard’s limbs bent in a way I couldn’t understand: backwards, like a horse’s hocks, but three times, a zigzag of joints. Its ruff was green and scaly, touched with purpling dots. And its ears, floating limp and free, were the red-tufted points of a fox.
    It wasn’t a fluke. There were still Twisted Things in the lakelands. I couldn’t even begin to figure out what that meant.
    â€œBe careful,” Rami warned as I took the jar. “It’s still throwing heat.” The glass warmed my hands like a fresh mug of soup, even through Nat’s fine blue gloves.
    â€œWhen did you find this?” I asked.
    â€œTwo days ago. Ada found the nest,” Rami said, and waved her over from the knot of busy Chandlers. I startled. I hadn’t seen Ada Chandler in years, since the days when we still paid calls in Windstown and our neighbors’ hospitality was good. She’d grown from a narrow, quiet kid into a woman