The clink of gold against diamonds woke Artrullaxi the Magnificent from her slumber, and she held statue-still, listening. Someone had intruded on her lair. Another knight with more ambition than sense? Or a thief with a death wish? A shame that her belly was still full from the last one, her limbs heavy with satiety….
A harp made of bones, they say, will only ever play a single song. Haunting, my listeners called my melody, and beautiful. My fingers glided over the sinuous strings and my voice, the harp’s voice, unveiled the story that made me a celebrated music-maker, that earned me my name: A brother betrayed, his life later…
You’re driving up the Pacific Coast for a family vacation. Your son asks about lunch and your daughter won’t stop fidgeting. Your partner needs to pee. You desperately want to stretch your legs. Your right leg aches, the way it always does on long drives like this. You see a sign for the town Seahaven,…
Yael is out to the coffee shop to pick up fixings for brunch, and Alma is puttering around the house, cleaning up last night’s dishes and listening to a podcast about a royal scandal from five hundred years ago. She normally doesn’t notice the ease inherent in this little Cape Cod, but this morning there…
Jenna did things in halves. She only ate half of a PB&J a time. She read either the beginning or ending half of books. She wore miss-matched socks, so she wore two halves of two pairs. Her dad called her Rabbit. Her mom thought that was offensive, because Jennifer is a family name, and called…
I’d always watched the whaling boats going out to sea in the morning; big, asbestos-lined vessels churning through the lava, leaving a black wake behind them. My parents’ house was close enough to the beach that the shingles warped and blistered in the heat, and if you stood at the kitchen window you could see…
Today we are adults, all of us in our cohort. For our second gift, we will be marched out of the Foundling Complex, where we have spent the entirety of our lives, and put on the spaceship we have been trained to crew. Our first gift—in my hand is a memory chit containing all that…
The staircase is weeping again. Not tiny flecks of moisture that could be mistaken for a fresh cleaning, but big shining beads swelling, straining, breaking. Damn. I usually notice before I’ve got pools on the hardwood floor, but I’d been sitting in the dark, watching the fog creep up the yard outside, waiting for the…
Lex on my doorstep, her arms wrapped around a potted monstera deliciosa, smiling. The plant’s fenestrated leaves sway in the breeze, viridescent and bigger than dinner plates. My eyes must be nearly as big. “Erika,” Lex breathes, almost like she’s surprised to see me answering my door. “Hi.” She hitches the plant up her hip…
