I fell in love with a woman made of stars. It started when I first camped in the mountains with my dad. He pointed to each of the constellations and told me their stories. My favorite were the water signs. The mother-and-son tragedy of Pisces broke me, the carelessness with which Cancer had been elevated…
The fly rolls back off the tip of the rod, wisping overhead. I pull the cast forward, and the line shoots above the water. My technique is unpracticed, my hand heavy, and the recoil tangles the line. I glance toward my father standing on the bank, hoping he hasn’t noticed my building frustration. I strip…
When my second grade class participated in a tree planting project in the woods north of town, I placed a wish in my tree just like my grandmother had taught me. It was a pine tree, so I made sure my wish was as specific as it could be. Pine trees, she told me, are…
Marta endures body scanner and pat-down, secures her possessions in a locker, and proceeds to the room where advisors explain how to speak to Monkey. “You must know the intricacies, for Monkey’s offense with visitors is easily roused.” Guidelines come like bullets from a mini-gun. “Never make eye contact. To do so is to challenge…
The house sat a little back from the road, its leaning porch and sagging roof giving it a slump-shouldered look. In the front yard, the rusted shell of a pickup perched on blocks amid an ocean of weeds. Connor pulled his rented Acura off the road and studied the house for a while. Aside from…
Tyran had nearly reached the top of the jagged mountain when the ground beneath him crumbled away. Of course, so near the summit of the Mountain of Death, after facing monsters and hoards of the Shadow Lord’s minions, the last few feet had to yield one last challenge. Even so, Tyran did what he did…
When I die, my mother always said, bury me in the forest. She probably didn’t figure on me being the one to kill her, but life’s funny that way. I came over trying to be a good son, for starters. Trekked all the way out to her half-collapsed shack in the middle of a storm,…
It started off as little more than headphone static, a drone that had been within him for some time, without any recollection of it ever starting. Finding himself focused, it resolved into music: bells and horns and something almost but not quite a melody. Was this what they had warned him of: the stresses of…
Dog is Berty’s first choice, cat a poor second, and anything’s better than rat. Anything. Three years ago, at Berty’s eleventh birthday party, aunty Terrine said God was punishing the world for our many sins, and it wasn’t the Moreau virus like the leaflets said. But even though aunty Terrine went to church, the very…
“I have a gift for you,” Tokelark says. He glides across the dark matter of space and gives the star to Arem. Arem cradles the star in her hands. The cool fire of the dead star bites at her fingers. She turns it over and feels the sunspot stains and the cracks, a web of…
