Genevieve Valentine | Blood, Ash, Braids

It didn’t take them long to find a name for us; almost as soon as they knew it was women inside the rickety biplanes they couldn’t catch, the Germans called us witches. It was because of the sounds our idling planes made from the ground, the story went, as if the German soldiers had spent a lot of time with brooms and knew what they sounded like, engineless and gliding fifty feet above them in the dark. (The wires holding the wings in place made the whistle.) | Copyright 2015 by Genevieve Valentine. Originally published in Operation Arcana, edited by John Joseph Adams. Reprinted by permission of the author. Narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices