Ell cried as her pathetic whisper gave out. No, no, no. Jac’s brother Raif clacked his strong beak against her flushed cheek. Pushed. Cawed. Shhhh, gal, shhhh. Yellow-orange light flickered through the trailer’s one window, parking lot bonfires gilding the crow boy’s near-sharpest edge. His face-blade pressed close, closer. Black feathers glinted on head and […]
Gillian notices that no one ever closed Mr. Elling’s attic window. A week has passed since the brief swirl of ambulance lights near dawn. Already his house seems decades older. She’s staring across at it when she hears his voice say, “Lord, child, you about run as far as you can get.” He has a […]
Once upon a time, there was a little boy who thought he was cleverer than everyone else. To prove it, he crept away from his mother and father to the darkest part of the woods. He felt cold claws grip his shoulder. “What boy dares to trespass on my land?” hissed the witch in a […]
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 […]
Accordions unpleated welcoming songs the day the mermaids returned. The first notes droned joyful at dawn, played by young men with wool collars unrolled against the wind. Mattress-clouds bulged above land and water, miles of damp cotton dulling the fishermen’s music. As the sky blanched, fiddlers sawed harmonies, horsehairs screeching on weather-warped bows. Bodhráns were […]
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 […]
