Leslie Parry

She had a weird, fleeting thought that she wanted to eat her sister, like a sorceress in a storybook _ gobble her down into her belly, keep her safe.

It had to be the hardest thing, even if he__ never known it himself _ to accept that the ones you loved would find their own way home.

She had seen it done. Wherever they glittered in the afterlife _ flying among the high rafters of heaven, swimming with her mother in an undersea cave _ she hoped the tigers had known it, and roared.

But this dagger _ this was her first. Her favorite. The same one that had sliced off the boy__ toe on the beach and sent it rolling through the sand.