I DIVE DEEP, DESPERATE to feel clean again. But the sinuous plants dancing beneath the dreaming waves are too like those wriggling strands, revoltingly lifelike in that wretched, brutal moment before they turned to ash. I scale the cliffs to the forest and keep right on climbing, revelling in the rough solidity of cinnamon- and ginger-scented branches until I reach too high in one towering oak and the frail slenderness of a handful of twigs turns my stomach.
So small. Alive, and yet not. Joined, and then . . . not.
I let my weight drag me to the ground as if gravity is a rule and not one option out of countless opportunities. The thud of impact pushes air into my lungs. I crawl from the cool shadows under the trees to the lush grass of a clearing, curl up in the sunlight and shudder unti
