Ashes

“‘You’ve killed it three times over,’ he said. I spat on the remains. ‘Snakes vex me.’”

Our introduction to Isabel (as she chops a rattlesnake to bits with a hatchet) and Curzon (as he stops her from chopping it into even smaller bits) gives us a sense both of their feelings and their dynamic. They’re both brave and toughened by long travel, but it seems that Isabel is holding in some feelings that she will need to work out. Curzon, meanwhile, plays a steadying role, trying to keep his friend calm and safe. Even in the aftermath of their arguments, the two balance each other.

“What manner of sister was I that I could not remember her face?”

Isabel’s experiences as an enslaved person lead her to reflect on questions of identity and family. In a system that denies the humanity of slaves, Isabel must keep a firm hold on her own sense of self to survive. However, the dehumanizing power of the system that separated her from her little sister works on her anyway. This forgetting of her sister’s face foreshadows the trouble she’s going to have reconnecting with Ruth.

“‘She was my sister when she was little’—Ruth lifted her chin and looked right through me with sorrowful eyes—‘but she’s not my sister now.’ She set the crate on her hip. ‘Go home, Isabel.’” 

Ruth’s rejection of Isabel is devastating not just because Isabel has suffered for so long to find her sister, but because Ruth tells her to do the one thing she can’t do.