Chapter 8 · free to read
The famine year. She stood in it the way you stand in a photograph — able to see everything, able to touch nothing.
They drew lots. That was the part the ledger never wrote down — that it was fair, and that being fair made it worse.
Her own mother lost. And then, because losing had to be survivable, they dressed it as a festival so the child would walk to it smiling.
Eight women on the rope. Not one of them holding it to pull anything up.
Artwork and narration generated with AI.