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Featuring two giveaways for copies of Marie Brennan’s new book Driftwood, set in the same world as her Driftwood stories in BCS.

The Many Lives of an Abiku

Sometimes the walls developed faces. One moment they were the uninspired blandness of old wood, coated with soot from the coal pot, and the next there was a face staring at me, bulging out of the wood. Sometimes the faces stared unblinking. Sometimes they tittered. Once or twice the faces morphed, twenty or so of them, fusing into one hideous gargantuan aberration of a face. Strangely, strangely I did not scream.

“You are an abiku, a spirt child,” he said. “You have come to your mother three times before and have died before your seventh year."
Satin and Velvet

Toward the end, Samara wasn't eating. Thin, with dark rings around her eyes, bony wrists, bruises and cuts everywhere, she would limp down from the tower to see me. "He won't teach me as long as it's around," she said, her voice weak. I looked up at the velvet gast. Its hollow form had taken to holding a platter draped in dark cloth with bright pieces of fruit on it. They made me hungry, and I wasn't even starving.

I know from Samara that it's useless wishing a gast away. You have to change yourself.
From the Archives:
Nneamaka’s Ghost
Of all the strong men that populate our village, why did Nneamaka's ghost choose me?