We were assigned the same rehabilitation counselor, her appointments always during the twenty minutes before mine. We’d pass in the hallway. Me, leaning against the metal curve of the wall, a paper fortune teller hiding my fingers as I slowly brought the wrinkled paper in and out, back and forth, gaze skimming the faded pencil…
The Accuser would be here soon. Agatha’s powers didn’t answer her call. Lying in the dim light of her bedroom, listening to the soft weeping of one of her descendants, glimmers of light filtered through her consciousness, memories hazy in the sunlight falling on her bed from the window.In her mind, she looked down on…
There’s this thing about rocks. They sit. That’s it. In desserts beneath glaring suns they watch the world around them bake and boil. In the crashing waves and hidden riptides of oceans and seas they stay stubbornly, steadfastly, still. In forests, prairies, bogs, and fields they wait as one becomes the next or another. At…
The beginning is the end. Many species over the history of the universe have forged theories of the beginning and the end of the light. Because that’s what’s interesting about the universe. The light. The darkness is everywhere, the darkness is through, the darkness is surrounding. The light is what is special. Light means life….
Perdita was at the Third Street bus stop when she realized she was invisible. The bus had come lumbering and puffing to the curb, and she’d started to climb on when a man shoved past her, driving an elbow into her back. He didn’t turn, didn’t apologize, just scrambled for standing room by the window….
The season of the Wishing Fruit was upon them, the village Wise Woman said. A century had passed since the last one. She gathered the eligible daughters, and of them chose two to uphold the sacred quest. Whosoever ate of the Wishing Fruit would get their happy ending. Britta and Dur appeared most alike, so…
The white bear’s favorite color is green. I know this because the first thing it does every evening before dinner is thrust its warm, wet nose through the doors of the bureau and take my mother’s dress, my mother’s lucky green dress, in its teeth. Some nights, seams scream and tear, fabric fluttering from the…
“I want it gone.” The woman says as she lays down on the table. She has a split lip and a big, blue bruise marring half her face. “I don’t care what you have to do. I want it gone.” Ada pauses. “Do you need help?” she asks, “I know some—” “I don’t need help.”…
“It’s rusted!” The Head Clockworker taps the metal hand of the planet-sized clock and then turns to his brother, the Second Clockworker. “Have you not been keeping up on your upkeep duties?” The Second Clockworker shrugs, sending a heatwave to the planets on his mantel as they shift temporarily closer to…
Two vases fall. One containing life. The other, death. It is the easiest test of the god-realm. Reach out a hand. Choose. Sheel fails again, both vases smashing against the crystalline floor. As a child, Sheel could never master the art of sand painting. “Why are there only two colors?” he…
