Welcome to Stories from Among the Stars.

You're listening to Nettelin Bone by T. Kingfisher, narrated by Amara Jasper.

Chapter 8

Mara's first indication was that the crickets fell silent.

In the distance, a bird sang,

Oh, die will, oh, die will.

And as the crickets stopped, it sang more loudly.

The river's hiss and royal seemed to slow,

and then, very distantly, Mara heard splashing as something approached.

There's something coming, she said. Bondog quivered with alertness.

Hush, said the dust wife. The drowned ones are tricky. Mara closed her mouth on whatever

she was about to say, but something else answered the dustwife, a burbling liquid sound that might

have been a laugh or a sob. A shape was coming upstream. The moon was just high enough to throw cold, glittery light over it.

At first, Mara thought of beavers, otters, swimming creatures.

But no otter had ever been so large, nor had a face like that.

The dead boy swam upstream, quick as a fish, and rose to his feet. Water streamed from his mouth

and his empty eye sockets. His skin had swollen and split his clothes, a pale, bloating thing with

flesh puffing out between strands of waterweed. I will not be sick, thought Mara. I will not. There is no blood. It is not as bad as that time the

farmhand broke his leg and the bones stuck out. It isn't. Whatever the dust wife said,

Mara missed it. She was only vaguely aware of the other woman speaking at all. Then the dead boy

replied, a hard gurgling

as if wires were piercing his drowned throat. And Mara stopped hoping not to be sick and

...