My sister Nika and I never liked going to Grannie Luvan’s place. She kept an old man in her kitchen who was said to be some relation of sorts to her husband. The old man would sit in a spot near the stove, and though he had no use of his legs at all, he […]
The children’s fight punctured the cordial atmosphere of the old woman’s funeral. Two small boys, opposite sides of the family, had gotten into a full-blown quarrel. And because they had not yet learned to keep their mouths shut, that meant it became a spiderfight. The old woman had not been that old, but that was […]
In those years of sunshine that battered the streets, and deluges that wrinkled fingers and toes, the villagers never suspected Hafeez of anything more than putting holes in their teeth. He made bonbons and baked bread. The bread was his livelihood, the bonbons for the pleasure of the village children. When Hafeez lacked the gumption […]
That midsummer’s night, after we four collapsed in fairy sleep beneath boughs and moon, I roused to see a sprite looping through the flowers. Carrying a single seed in his ant-leg fingers, he ducked beneath Hermia’s skirts. She turned once, in dream. The past is nothing but the shapes and colors that now arise before […]
One “If I were the mayor, I’d have renamed this town long ago,” announces the man beside me, his chuckle wet with old hurts. I turn to read the scythe of his mouth, his milk-pale skin, his eyes like tatters of the noon sky. A foreigner, most definitely. Only outlanders court strangers in bus stands. […]
The Victorian House in Old Town The first house the real estate agent shows you will not work. It reminds you too much of the house you grew up in—old, dark, cluttered. A musty odor hangs in the air, the sort of smell that has become as much a part of the house as its […]
Opinions varied as to whether the village of Kille had been blessed by gods or cursed by demons. Every child born in the year of our prince’s ascension to the throne came into the world possessed of a supernatural and supremely useful limb. The blacksmith’s son had a pair of tongs for a left hand. […]
On land that was once peat and marsh, the Americans leave behind three asphalt highways into the sky. They leave behind snazzy call signs, late-night radio banter, and flight paths to Europe over the icy North Atlantic. They leave behind their wharfs and dry docks, hangars and fuel tanks. They leave behind the gymnasium, mess […]
Torben knows he has only one shot. The crossbow shakes in his grip. There is a single bolt and even if there were more he has not the strength to reload for the weapon belongs to Uther, the woodsman, who has left the boy to wait in the small, smelly blind set between the trunks […]
I. The Tale of Legs Love has many forms. Some forms inspire love, others hate. The witch was the first and only child of a well-to-do family of Boston Brahmins. The doctors told her mother that she would never bear children, and suggested her father content himself with political fundraisers and season tickets to the […]
