First 500: Girl of Light by Elana Gomel
WELCOME TO THE FIRST 500: Girl of Light EDITION, WHERE WE AT VRAEYDA LITERARY SHARE THE FIRST 500 WORDS OF OUR PUBLISHED WORKS.
BELOW IS THE FIRST 500 WORDS OF Elana Gomel’S sovietpunk sci-fi NOVEL Girl of Light, CURRENTLY ON SALE AT THE VRAEYDA STORE AND WHEREVER NOVELS ARE SOLD.
the Voice in the Mirror
The sky was coiling in red and black. He breathed the smoke in and coughed when the rough edge of makhorka hit his sinuses.
The two women in the cutting were shovelling dirt, bending over and straightening up in strangely choreographic motions, dipping headscarves telegraphing their intensity. One of them slid off the woman’s head, disclosing sparse grey hair. He wanted to jump down and help her, but Trofim told him to stay put and he slouched against the tank, feeling the purring warmth of the mechanical beast against his back. The women were laying tracks, building a new supply branch toward the Pohorovka field.
A black cruciform silhouette flew against the inflamed sky, and he tensed, ready for the explosion, the metal egg blossoming in a plume of fire and smoke. The women did not even break their rhythm.
Yesterday he had seen a woman and a child lying among the blue anemones. The woman has been shot in the head but the child – about a year old – had been blown apart by a stray bomb. He wondered how long the child had crawled by its mother’s dead body before a Messerschmitt accidentally dropped its load in the open field.
“Fritzes are coming,” Trofim said unnecessarily. “Tomorrow it all starts.”
He shrugged. The tank behind him bore a white hand-painted inscription: “For Stalin.”
“Tomorrow it all ends,” he said.
I
Kneeling on the cold floorboards, she lit a candle. Shielded with her palm from the draught through the rattling sash window.
Guilt washed over her like a tidal wave. But, Svetlana told herself, I am not doing anything wrong.
Maybe it’s not wrong but it’s not bright.
She had to go through with it. She could visualize Tattie’s malicious smirk if she did not. They had known each other for too long. Echoes of playground taunts still rang in her ears. Scaredy-cat, scaredy-cat…
Recently Tattie hung out with a tight clutch of girls at the back of the classroom: girls whose fathers were POP commanders, or LightHouse officials, or factory managers; girls with traces of lipstick on their full mouths which they hastily wiped off at the school door. They only talked to Svetlana when they needed to copy her homework. Tattie, a Ranger’s daughter and Svetlana’s childhood friend, was her entry ticket into their privileged company. But did she want to join them? How soon before their vanity and selfishness tipped them over? Their pretty faces sliding off, disclosing the snarling beast beneath…
No, she should not think this way. Fear is the Enemy’s gateway.
And so is superstition.
It was a bit of harmless fun. Not that she believed you could see your Intended in the midnight mirror.
LIKE WHAT YOU SEE? WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS WITH the mirror?
Read the Ebook
Read the Paperback or Hardcover
