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Three Faces of a Beheading - Uncanny Magazine

uncannymagazine.com · 4,215 words · saved by 1 readers

Bloodsoaked and grinning, the Soldier climbs to the summit of the ruins. The wind is mountain-top fast. It grabs the strands of her hair that have escaped her ponytail and sticks them to her ecstatic mouth: the slick surface of teeth, the gloss-wet of lipstain. She stands up straight and the wind lights her up. Clouds shoved aside just for her. Left hand: a sword, bloody. Right hand: empty as your heart when you watch her. Her feet wide on the cracked marble. To her left, the fallen corpses of statues, dismembered by gravity. The curls of stone on their heads are perfect. They were gods. Their eyes are pitted rounds. The Soldier lifts her empty right hand. You lean forward, your elbows on your knees. You stop your breathing. She scrawls a message in the air, words falling out of her fingers the same grey-shot gold as the light she’s bathing in. THEY ONLY CALL US USURPERS BECAUSE THEY KILLED ENOUGH OF US HOW’S THIS FOR LOYALTY Then she grabs her ponytail, yanks her face up, and cuts off

Three Faces of a Beheading by Arkady Martine in Uncanny Magazine Issue Fifty-Eight | 4139 Words Bloodsoaked and grinning, the Soldier climbs to the summit of the ruins. The wind is mountain-top fast. It grabs the strands of her hair that have escaped her ponytail and sticks them to her ecstatic mouth: the slick surface of teeth, the gloss-wet of lipstain. She stands up straight and the wind lights her up. Clouds shoved aside just for her. Left hand: a sword, bloody. Right hand: empty as your heart when you watch her. Her feet wide on the cracked marble. To her left, the fallen corpses of statu

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