There are Ghosts Here, by Dominique Dickey
Read it here in about 15 minutes.
Thinking about why I love it…
I love the mysteriousness of this story – so much is not told to the reader, for example we are informed by the narrator that Leo ‘disappeared’, then ‘Across the city, Leo was dying’, then ‘Leo was dead’, but we don’t know how or why; Maisie’s mother appears to have supernatural powers (similar to Maisie’s, we later learn), but because not much of the parents is shown, we can only gather the briefest bits of information (‘a death had already been traded for a life’); Maisie can raise the dead with her hands, and she uses this power on roadkill.
I love how strange Maisie is: playing with spiderwebs, finding beauty in things ‘like bugs and bones’, understanding death and accepting it. And I love how she and Lucas form a sibling-like bond, how she knows what he’s thinking, how he accepts her powers, and how she gives him a gift at the end of the story.
I love how the story moves between different narrative viewpoints – we start with Louisa, then switch to Lucas, then back to Louisa, then back to Lucas. Louisa sees Lucas and Maisie as just kids, which is a nice contrast to what the reader already knows about Maisie’s powers, and our understanding of what’s about to happen following Bodhi’s death.
I love how the story ends. It’s beautiful and sad.
Mina Ma 