Lullaby for a Lost World: A Tor.Com Original

Charlotte is dead, and she is not allowed to rest. A powerful man spoke the word that sent her to a sacrificial death, and the bargain bought safety for the community she belonged to. Her bones now form the foundation of his house.

They go on feeding his power, while Charlotte stays bound to the garden by the river where she was buried. The story is a short ghost story told in intimate second person, so the reader is placed inside her haunting.

Years pass. The people she loved grow old and die. The house stands untouched, and so does the man who profits from what was done to her.

At first Charlotte answers with a lullaby of grief, a quiet song for what she has lost. Slowly it hardens into something colder, a resolve to make him pay for what he took from her and from everyone else.

The story is dark and creepy, and it takes up the question raised in Ursula K. Le Guin's The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas: who pays for a comfortable society. Here the one who pays is a woman denied even the peace of her own grave.