Carenza’s mind is a looking glass. When Orla peers into it, she sees herself. She sees her years of neurological study and cognitive research and days and nights of sleepless toil. She sees her hopes and dreams for a better society, polished and perfected, dancing across the cranial folds in sparkling electrical charges. Orla has…
Weary-eyed soldiers drag the bodies from their wagons and pile them on the wharf beside my boat. They’ve traveled far from the frontlines, and though they’re too exhausted to speak, they’re careful not to let a lifeless arm or foot touch the sea’s foamy surface. “Careful, men!” the colonel calls needlessly. “Or your labor will…
The first time I watched a man die, I was sitting on my mother’s lap, eating the last of the season’s figs. “Swallow.” Even when condemning a man to death, Mother’s voice was like a lyre’s song, so that you considered yourself honored to be addressed, regardless of her demand. At the time, I did…
When I step off the bus it starts pouring, taking everyone by surprise—except me. Fellow travelers jostle for position under the bus stop’s overhang, kids shrieking and parents scolding them to stay out of puddles. A businessman grumbles about not having his umbrella: “The one day all week we were supposed to have blue skies!”…
The Space Between Octobers By Wendy Nikel We always meet in October, though it takes me years to ask why. By that time, he’s already come and left a dozen times, never aging more than a day, though I do, year by drawn-out year. “I don’t know how it works,” he says as our…
Do Not Go Gentle By Wendy Nikel The shadow was coming. When the settlers arrived in this valley, they calculated they’d have sixteen earth-years. Sixteen. Plenty of time, they’d thought, but years pass quickly in a place of continual sunlight, where the word “day” loses its meaning and there’s no night. “We knew the…
