While the men were stitching the mourning-flags, the leading women of the village gathered on the hillside, the same hillside where Arrani had always sworn that in summer nip-berries could be found growing in the shade of the sliver-barked whistling trees. None of the other women had ever discovered any nip-berries there, but each summer […]
The diving suit weighs against his body like a wall. He pushes through the water. The pressure in his eardrums is constant and piercing, as if a nail is being driven through his head. The glass of his diving helmet fogs up; the view becomes obscure, the kingdom around him threatening, mystical. Dark forms swim […]
They all think that she is a cat lady: harmlessly crazy, smelly, alone. They have no idea that her house is full of cages, that she is a modern-day saint. They have no idea that she has sold her names for them, for the power to help them. Her names: her Christian name, her maiden […]
