Issue 131 August 2024

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Editorial: Breaking Character

by Rebecca Halsey

August 1, 2024

In the 2022 novel, Fairy Tale, Stephen King builds a fantasy world using familiar fairy tale motifs such as “Jack and the Beanstalk.” As the hero Charlie Reade encounters and interacts with fantastical creatures and events, his internal dialogue includes meta-analysis of the role of fairy tales in his home world, even specifically calling out previous titles such as Frank L. Baum’s The Wizard of Oz and Michael Ende’s The Neverending Story which tackle the same subject.

The fairy tale characters in King’s book are both recognizable and changed. Like the Shrek movies, this novel isn’t a strict retelling of any given tale but an amalgamation of many. In one case, different versions of the same character appear. To demonstrate how the fairy tale world is mirrored by the “real” world, King includes two different Rumpelstiltskin characters – a small-time crook named Christopher Polley in the real world, and the mischievous dwarf Peterkin in the fantasy world. The narration specifically compares the two on a number of occasions, as Charlie grapples with his archetypal role in the unfolding tale.

What King proposes is that the characters Christopher Polley and Peterkin are separated mostly by setting. Their motivation and goals are nearly identical, thus they are similar enough to be considered variations on Rumpelstiltskin. That said, they’re also physically similar characters; both are described as small with creepy, leprechaun-like voices.

This has me wondering how many clues do we need in order to identify an archetypal character? Let’s consider another example…

I think we all know a Batman when we see one. Gothic or campy, animated or LEGO, we know what makes up a Batman. The mask, the gadgets, the cave. But it can’t just be the paraphernalia, can it? If you have a double life and a butler, does that make you Batman? With just this criteria, you could also be degenerate and lazy Sterling Archer.

Maybe some of that backstory is important.

The beauty of so many Batman movies is the reminder that without his usual trappings Batman is just Bruce Wayne, a rich man with unprocessed trauma. He could be a Brontë antihero. But despite essays written about how Batman is a Byronic hero, no one mistakes Bruce Wayne for Heathcliff.

So we probably still need the mask.

But not the mask worn by the Phantom of the Opera or Darth Vader, which conceal a deformity. We need one that emboldens the character and changes his identity. Like the Loki mask worn by Stanley Ipkiss in The Mask. Or the one worn by Westley in The Princess Bride to become the Dread Pirate Roberts. But not exactly those either…

And thus, we could continue, changing details until a character disintegrates and is reformed into something entirely new.

For our August 2024 issue, we have a dragon, a Dr. Frankenstein, a giant, an oracle, and Lady Godiva. But also, not quite these characters exactly. The authors have all made changes to costumes, settings, and/or goals.

First up is returning FFO author Carol Scheina’s dragon tale, “Give a Smile at Ye Old Photograpphie Shoppe.”

Then, Faith Allington’s “This Rapturous Blooming” takes us to a futuristic lab in the remnants of an old shopping mall.

Maya Dworsky-Rocha completely reimagines the story of Lady Godiva for the social media age in “Godiva of the Broken Shell.”

Sarah Jackson’s “In the Path of the Giantess” is our own re-imagined “Beanstalk” story, and describes the moment when the hero’s world view is completely changed.

Closing out this issue is “The Sibyl” by Anna Dallara in which an oracle’s returning customer reveals what he’s learned about her prophecies.

If you are an author, what characters have you tried to rewrite?

As always, it’s an honor and privilege to be platforming these authors and bringing you these stories. If you like what we do, please consider becoming a Patreon supporter. You can also support us by following FFO on Facebook, Threads, Instagram, or Bluesky.

* * *

Ⓒ Rebecca Halsey

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Give a Smile at Ye Old Photographie Shoppe

by Carol Scheina

August 2, 2024

Mal keeps his scaly dragon lips tight when customers walk in, ensuring his generous spread of teeth remains hidden. Don’t smile.

Even so, this customer’s discomfort steams off her, wisps of a bitter scent rising with each shuffle of her feet. She’s maybe twenty, with hair that curves around her face like flaming tendrils. Her sideways glances toward the door make Mal wonder if her friends goaded her to enter.

We dare you! Get your picture with the dragon!

Still, she’s standing in Ye Old Photographie Shoppe. A paying customer, and by brimstone, he needs one. Mal lowers his barrel-shaped body to the ground and pulls in his neck to compact his immense size. He still towers over her.

His voice is soft when describing the array of historical and regional armor she can choose from. He keeps his claws hidden when pointing.

She picks the Saint George replica—they always choose Saint George—and emerges from the dressing room with a lopsided grin beneath her silver visor. From the weapons rack, she chooses the long-spear—also a common choice, as it lets people keep their distance. She’s giving off a relaxed, tea-leaf-like scent now. Most customers are calmer once they’ve donned the armor, weapon in hand, even though the spear’s tipped with plastic and the cheap armor would shred into slivers beneath his claws.

The studio has scattered fake rocks, a mountainscape backdrop. Mal helps the woman point the spear at his heart. She smiles for the camera. Mal bares teeth too, his snaking tongue draping out. He bends his neck in an uncomfortable fake-death pose and thumbs a button hidden in his claws.

Click! Pop! The bulb’s flash fades, and he hides his teeth. 

While she removes the armor, he uploads the photo and adds filters: lightening colors, adding scratches, and giving it a slight painting-like overlay. The filters are rather silly, as no one’s ever photographed a real dragon battle. Those happened a thousand years ago, or more, before cameras. Now, dragons live in peace as farmers and construction workers; they haven’t battled humans in ages.

But with one click of the print icon, there’s an old-timey photo of “Saint George” with a lopsided grin as she slays the dragon. Mal slips the print into a folder, obscuring it from his narrowed yellow eyes, and remembers to hide the curl of distaste on his lips before heading back to the customer.

This is Mal’s favorite part. He hands the folder to the woman, and her feet are bouncing; she’s smelling of excitement and sweet toast. She did it! She had an encounter with a dragon. Despite them living side by side for centuries, there’s still the novelty of it all. Still, she’s not thinking, EEEK! DRAGON! She’s not holding a spear. She’s happy standing by him, and he’s just being himself.

He wants to Click! Pop! the moment in his mind. 

What if he actually clicked?

He inhales his nervous nose-smoke, asking, Want a free portrait? When she nods, his claws maneuver his portable camera. Click! and he’s captured her smile, no filters. He prints her a copy using the finer paper.

He hides his teeth when handing her the portrait, but joy bubbles off his scales, smelling like warm caverns and melted gold.

* * *

The woman returns the next day with a friend, as though to say, See what it’s like! The man smells of acrid earth and repeatedly brushes hair from his eyes. Although the studio’s tall ceilings let Mal stroll comfortably, the dragon walks pressed close to the ground.

The customer chooses Saint George’s armor and a sword. He points the weapon with a shaking hand, plastic digging in a little too hard. Mal doesn’t mention that dragons bruise, too, forming dark spots beneath their brownish scales.

The woman frowns, “Not so hard, Sam. Don’t piss off the dragon.”

Like Mal would do anything. He only attacks pepperoni pizzas and root beers—his favorite foods, but no one ever asks about that.

He bares his teeth.

Click! Pop! 

After some filtering, Mal slips the photo into a folder. The man is grinning, holding the woman’s hand. “Sorry if I jabbed too hard.”

Mal wants to smile a real smile, but he keeps his lips tight and shrugs. No problem. Want a free portrait?

The man agrees, and one Click! later, there’s another image of joy for the dragon’s memory. But Mal gives off doubt with a burnt-oven odor. He stares at silver armor, plastic-tipped weapons. Does he always have to play-act for these moments? Mal imagines skipping the whole Saint George experience.

Well, why not?

* * *

Ye Old Photographie Shoppe has brown boxes where armor once lined the walls. A customer shuffles feet as Mal explains he doesn’t do reenactments anymore. No more Saint George; just portraits. The customer stomps away with a disappointed pungent scent.

The shop’s as quiet as a dragon’s hibernation. Maybe he made the wrong choice. Maybe he needs to unbox everything, bend into his death-pose again.

As he rubs claws over cardboard lids, a woman marches in, hair in a tight bun. She requests an upcoming photo session for her preschoolers. Mal blinks. He’s never photographed kids before—parents usually keep little ones far from his teeth—but nods acceptance.

At the appointment, little humans, and also little dragons, parade into the shop, the tight-bun woman calling, “Remember, kids, no silly poses.” She adds a pointed glace at Mal. He understands. He needs to photograph these dragons as children, not novelties.

The kids smell of spring rain, grass, and adventure as they scramble onto fake rocks. No one stares at how tall he is. The woman herds them straight and looks to Mal for instructions.

Mal directs a young dragon, scales soft and green, before the backdrop. 

“Smile!”

The youngster’s lips remain tight.

Mal eases his lips to show how it’s done. Tooth by tooth, the young dragon relaxes as well. Together, they smile for the camera. Click! Pop!

* * *

Ⓒ Carol Scheina

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This Rapturous Blooming

by Faith Allington

August 9, 2024

When I am done, the entire planet will sing the name Dr. Fiona Evanston. Biological warfare has nearly destroyed us, but my work shall carry us into a new age. Unlike my short-sighted colleagues at the Regenerative Center, I’m the one who has a cure for humanity’s infertility. They’re fixated on theories that have yet to produce a single result, but I’m the one who’s unstable?

I’m proving them wrong, though disgrace has had its challenges. The laboratory downtown is still closed to me, forcing me to hide in a crumbling shopping center at the heart of an abandoned suburb. The chemical fallout has left little uncontaminated.

But true science can never be denied.

I walk up the metal spines of the escalator, my fingers gripping the brittle rubber handrail for balance. Even after ten years, I wish the escalator would move. Troy is waiting for me, the only one who ever believed in my findings. I wrote paper after paper trying to convince the others, peer-reviewed by him. Now, he’s here to see me finally succeed.

Above me, copper-speckled vines tendril through the cracked windows and slither over the skylights. I dip a coupe glass into the makeshift pond in a display case. Irises lift their purple heads into the dusty air, roots thick as knucklebones, purifying the water into something drinkable. After so many long nights, I’d give almost anything for a cup of coffee, if only I could risk hunting for supplies outside the shopping center.

But there’s no time—I’m too close to saving the human race. In a porcelain serving bowl, the moonglow lichen is finally accepting the algae. It’s a delicate courtship. The contents glitter like a cosmos turned liquid, palest silver streaked with iridescent blue, thanks to their light-capturing molecules called chromophores.

I always knew the answer lay in saprophytes, microorganisms I selected for their ability to feed on decaying organic matter. The algae blooms and nourishes the fungi, while the fungi gather moisture to protect the algae.

Despite occasional power outages, I’ve kept him viable in a beverage fridge in the old food court . Moss and lichen are tucked into the cavities of his body. Filaments of hyphae fill his lungs and run through his veins. He is fallow, gathering strength, waiting to fulfill his purpose.

His skin is mottled gray and green, gleaming faintly blue in places. Tiny red stems of bonfire moss lift from his head, replacing the hair that has long since gone. I run a finger along the feathery surface, willing them to recognize me.

“You will be the salvation.” I study his green-hued cheek, swollen and spongy with life. Last night, I brushed his gums with algae, testing whether they would be able to survive.

As I part his lips, there is the final proof I’ve known would come. His gums are turning reddish, tessellating into beautiful patterns. My breath catches as the color shifts, brightening to pink in the newfound light.

He’s finally ready.

I reach for the bowl and hold it to his lips. The shimmering contents spill into his mouth and ooze down his esophagus. In his body are hundreds of reciprocal species of moss and lichen, an entire universe of fungi waiting for this alchemical substance.

“Wake up,” I whisper.

I have no doubt the lichen will thread his neural pathways, find their kindred in his body and wake his brain from the dark. Forming colonies, they will become something new and wondrous, my belief made manifest. Restore our fertility and allow us to live in our shattered ecosystem. Most of my colleagues thought otherwise—that the algae and fungi would devour us until we no longer existed.

Troy’s eyes flutter open, utterly black, but turning green as he blinks. His expression is slack, no hint of intelligence. He rises unsteadily, sitting up, pulling his legs over the edge of the fridge like he’s remembering how to move.

He manages to stand but I can see he has so much to learn again. He lifts one hand, staring in wonder. Sinew and veins ripple blue under the surface of his skin. Whole cities coming to life inside.

I step closer, my pulse thudding in my ears and goosebumps prickling my arms. “Hello Troy.”

His eyebrows furrow and his mouth opens, revealing a gray mushroom unfurling its gills. He isn’t much of a talker, but I knew that was a possibility. The blow to the back of his head may have done more damage than I thought. I’ve suspected that they’d need a conscious host with intelligence enough to form the beating heart of our shared species.

They need me.

I hand him a coupe glass filled with water. He presses it to his mouth, slurping greedily as a child. When he’s done, he drops the glass and it shatters on the linoleum floor. His eyes open wide and then he leans down, reaching for the shards.

“Stop,” I say.

Whether he understands the word or my voice is a novelty, he does stop. He stares at me, head tilted, nostrils flared. Tiny glimmers of gold bloom in his eyes, coruscating like light refractured. The terrain of his skin is already soaking in the water, turning sea green.

His eyes search my face and he presses his fingers into my throat and jaw. He leaves an oil-slick residue on my skin, tightening my pores like a beauty mask. I wait, resting a hand against his chest. Is there enough of him left?

His breath smells sharp as ozone, moss-purified as it leaves his nostrils. Come on, you know how to do this. And then he reaches for me, pulls me close. His lips brush mine and the first kiss is bitter as iron. Bile rises in my throat, but I force myself to let whatever I’ve made begin its work. Let it remake me and the entire human race.

As we kiss, strands of light fill my chest and my body shudders in his arms, every nerve-ending screaming. As we kiss, the bonfire moss starts blooming, sending our spores out across the rusted landscape.

* * *

Ⓒ Faith Allington

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  1. Kim Svensson says:
    August 11, 2024 at 6:17 am
    I enjoyed it! 🙂

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Godiva of the Broken Shell

by Maya Dworsky-Rocha

August 16, 2024

Tommy noticed the flickering shell immediately. Everyone did.

It sputtered and drew the eye like mirror glass among river stones, like an open flame amid fluorescents, like a perfectly normal person about to be horribly humiliated on a public train platform. Shells did this sometimes, when an update didn’t download correctly or the hardware needed upgrading, but it rarely lasted more than a few milliseconds. Tommy still occasionally had that common adolescent nightmare: his shell malfunctioning in a public place, leaving his identity, unfiltered personal appearance, smell, voice, his everything exposed for all to perceive.

A nightmare that was about to become someone else’s reality.

Tommy wasn’t the only one watching—everyone on the platform was transfixed in horror, though no one chose to display it. The crowd was a colorful, gleaming field of smooth, well-functioning shells, curated information sliding across in pleasing patterns, reflected off the tiled station walls. There were a few blanks, which Tommy’s eyes glossed over naturally—if their respective algorithms blocked each other, it was likely for the best— but the broken shell was like a beacon of impending calamity.

It was always a possibility; the subject of racy jokes, resistance art, and ever-more-complex legislation—age-out standards for family plans, federal grants for low-income shells, special dispensations for “ideologically unshelled” wealthy weirdos—but it wasn’t supposed to happen to normal people in real life. Waiting for the 4. On a Wednesday.

But it didn’t stop. The flickering got worse, more frequent, to the point where you could almost make out the person inside—just under six feet, pudgy silhouette, a crown of frizzy curls—and unconsciously everyone around them shied away, like healthy creatures repelled by a diseased soon-to-be-pariah. Except for Tommy, who just as unconsciously moved forward. He couldn’t tell what the shell was supposed to display, not a remnant of this person’s chosen self-expression remained, not even an indication whether it would have blanked him.

And then the unthinkable happened. The shell stopped flickering.

It stopped, period.

The crowd moved like a ripple, like a shockwave, away from the sudden manifestation of collective nightmare—a person out of their shell, exposed, unedited, inflicting their private self on everyone. Tommy was struck by terrified brown eyes, a horrified grimace, acne patches, soft brown arms moving to cover a rounded body dressed in nondescript teeshirt and sweatpants. The smell of soap and shea butter, the faint tang of anxiety and citrus.

The rumble of the oncoming train filled the station, and Tommy’s heart was in his throat, his body moving forward without direction from his brain. There was no time to think — the police were likely already on their way to arrest this poor soul for indecent exposure—

Still halfway down the platform Tommy opened his shell. Two unthinkables in one day. It was just a sliver, but enough to gesture at the unshelled stranger and call out to them in his unfiltered, naked voice. “Over here!”

They looked at him with those dark, long-lashed eyes, wine-red mouth falling open, and with an electric shiver Tommy realized they could see him, too. They jerked like a thing come loose and crashed into him as the train screeched into the station.

Tommy wrapped his arms around plump shoulders, closing his shell over them both. Curls tickled his chin, warm smells mingled with his own suddenly very apparent woodsy aroma. He wished he’d shaved. Worn a cleaner shirt. “We should go,” his whisper was throaty and broken in a few places. He started gently guiding the stranger off the platform, “before the cops get here.”

This close, their smile was all glinting black eyes and auburn cheekbones. “Thank you, my place is only two stops away,” their voice was deeper than he expected, and it made his arms tingle.

Two people in a single shell moved awkwardly, but they made it on just before the doors closed, leaving behind a platform of shocked displays.

Tommy and the stranger slumped in relief as the train rattled out of the station, leaning on each other, skin touching, breath fragrant and warm. They could see each other. Smell each other. Feel their hearts still pounding. All around them commuters went about their day, completely unaware of two strangers pressed up close, perceiving one another raw; performing the day’s third unthinkable and intimately sharing a shell.

Safe inside a nightmare.

* * *

Author’s Note: Lady Godiva was naked in public for the sake of the public good. She was a real person, with a real jerk for a husband; the Earl of Mercia in the 11th century was really into exploiting the people of Coventry, and his wife Godiva agreed to ride through the streets naked in exchange for tax reform. The people were so grateful they all turned away for the sake of her modesty. All except this one guy named Tom, who peeped. In some versions of the legend Tom was struck blind, in others he straight up died. In mine, Godiva and Tom connect over the inherent intimacy of being perceived.

Ⓒ Maya Dworsky-Rocha

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In The Path of The Giantess

by Sarah Jackson

August 23, 2024

We heard her long before we saw her. Crashing trees and shuddering earth, sometimes a muffled crack as a chunk of mountain split and slid down the side of the valley. A goatherd left his charges squalling on the hillside and ran through the night to warn us. I pressed a flask into his hand as he babbled, how he had seen the shape of her, soft black against the stars and moving towards us.

I wouldn’t have believed him if I hadn’t heard the rumbling myself. It was many lifetimes since the giants walked; we thought them long dead, if they’d existed at all. Whatever we’d once known about their kind we’d forgotten. 

For the sake of my quick feet, I was chosen to travel upriver and face her, to discover any way that she might be halted, turned around, warded off. Meanwhile, the rest of the village packed our lives into carry sacks and carts.

I trampled my fear under my heels as I ran. As dawn lit the edges of the sky, I shinned up the tallest pine I could find, shielded on all sides by the thick blue needles. When I heaved myself above the canopy, I nearly lost my hold.

The first shock was her size. I don’t know how to tell it. There is the landscape around us—the mountains, the river, the forest, the fields—and there is us, the creatures who live in it and upon it. When I saw her, I felt the foolishness of that distinction. She was the earth, and she was alive. It was as if a section of the sky suddenly unfolded its wings and flew away. A living being, vaster than our whole valley, larger than the little world I knew so well. In that moment, breaking out of the dark leaves into the pale morning light, I felt the world dilate like the pupil of an eye. The world was larger than I ever could’ve imagined. It was endless.

The second shock was that she was beautiful. Not like our village girls, but like the moon, like a waterfall, like harvest. Through a haze of cloud I could see her round milky face, surrounded by golden hair which waved like wheat in the field and mingled with the sunrise. She wore a pale cloak over a rust red dress, patterned with strange designs. Her feet were bare, crushing young birches like daisies beneath them.

I knew then that I couldn’t stop her. Even with an ingenious trap, or felled trees, or ropes, or any of the plans I’d been weaving as I scampered up the pass. Scrambling down the pine, I realized what I had to do.

I ran towards a rocky outcrop where a dead tree stood tall and alone; somewhere she might see me. By the time I reached it, my muscles burned and my breath raked at my throat. The ground was shaking under me as I climbed, as high as I could, and perched facing down the valley.

She stood in the new sunlight, wreathed in clouds from the chest up, magnificent and impossible. 

I wrenched one of the dead branches free and fumbled to pull my flint from its pouch. The spark caught and I held the flaming branch up over my head, waving it desperately and trying to draw her gaze. I shouted; a greeting, a warning, a wordless cry. But she kept moving, shins like sheer cliff faces swinging towards me. Her cloak—made of what? by whom?—swept through the air. Her face was shadowed by the sun, but I thought I saw it slowly turn.

I shouted until my throat was raw. As the flames nipped my fingers, I dropped the branch, and watched it disappear among the boulders tumbling down the hillside below me, shaken loose by the shivering earth.

Was she slowing? Had she heard? What were we to her? I thought of my people.

The branch I was sitting on broke with a sharp crack, and I fell into the roaring nothingness below, until I landed with a soft thud in the centre of the giantess’s open palm.

She lifted me up, into the clouds, until we were face to face. She filled my vision, ringed by a horizon of gold. I was far too close to read her face. Her eyes were dark, dark green, like the pine needles, and they shone like the lake under moonlight. The air was cool, and mist enfolded us suddenly. For a moment it was just she and I, wrapped in a cloud. Then the sky opened again like a curtain drawn back. My hair and clothes were damp. I laughed, and her cheeks rounded in a smile.

She lowered her hand below the clouds. Our valley stretched before me until it reached a fringe of trees and the yellow plains beyond. I saw other villages, towns, and in the far distance, gleaming white in the sun’s rays, a castle. She moved, and I felt the sway of her shoulders and her hips, the crash of her footsteps. Under her skin I felt the vibration of her blood, a pulse like rolling waves.

Soon the village was below us. She stopped, and I felt a rush in my ears as the hand I was standing on descended and came to rest on the ground. I climbed down onto the grass. Her hand disappeared into the sky above me, and after a moment first one of her feet then the other, each the size of a wheat field, lifted and fell.

On hands and knees on the thundering earth, I watched her walk down the valley and onto the plains, until she was small enough to be lost behind the trees and the ridge of the mountainside. I stood up on trembling legs and saw the crushed earth on either side of our village, which lay before me, empty, and safe.

* * *

Ⓒ Sarah Jackson

Comments

  1. Liza Lang says:
    August 23, 2024 at 3:17 pm
    I really like this story.

    I became one with it and it gave me the feeling of being part of something big and beautiful—life on earth.

  2. Cheryl Sonnier says:
    August 25, 2024 at 1:44 pm
    Lovely. I felt the size of her and the beauty.
  3. Robin Carstensen says:
    September 3, 2024 at 12:13 pm
    Mother Earth! Ohhh, wonderful, inventive story here. Makes me want to pay more attention to our earth–gorgeous descriptions.
  4. Ollie says:
    September 8, 2024 at 5:37 pm
    Such a beautiful, imaginative story.
  5. Jo Ann says:
    September 20, 2024 at 9:27 am
    Wow, you kept my interest. Very good!

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The Sibyl

by Anna Dallara

August 30, 2024

When you reach the city of Cumae…there you will see the prophetess in her frenzy, chanting deep in her rocky cavern, charting the Fates, committing her vision to words, to signs on leaves.

– The Aeneid, by Vergil. Translated by Robert Fagles

 

The king finds her in a hollow of trees. The sibyl sits with her laurels and ink. Her eyelids flicker, though she is wide awake, and she dreams onto the leaves.

“I want to know my future,” he says. “My kingdom’s—There’s war on our borders, famine and drought. Please—”

She sees him through a haze of myrrh and writes her vision on a laurel leaf. A breeze like a god’s breath blows through her shrine, inhaling the incense, then exhaling, scattering the leaves across the ground.

The king’s cries echo as he crouches among the leaves, searching for his prophecy. “Which one is it?” he asks the oracle. He strains to read riddles in the half-light, all the same to mortal eyes.

Her eyes open halfway. “What’s the difference between one dream and the next? Only the feeling upon waking.” She blinks. “I’ve already forgotten.”

“But you must help me. I’m a king—”

“They’re all kings,” she says. “Kings, generals, and priests. I’ve foretold great plagues and holy wars. Mere leaves blowing on the breeze.” Her voice is hoarse from eons of smoke. “It does not matter. Your Fate will be the same whether you know it or not.”

“Don’t you care?”

The oldest prophecies are dust, a whiff of decay, and fading memories written in her youthful hand. Back then, she’d been beautiful and beloved by a god, his chosen to weather the ages. And weather them she did, until even old age was a distant memory. She did not have a choice, her Fate long since crunched underfoot and rotted away.

“Not anymore,” she says. “Not now, when I have nothing left but dreams.”

The king leaves with a handful of prophecies, hoping his is among them. There’s nothing else he can do.

She dreams decades away, writing her riddles, peering through veils of prophecy, waking and sleeping one and the same. Questions and answers stream together. Incense fills her nostrils, and offerings of wine coat her tongue. Inquisitive, fearful, and angry faces peer at her, all in shadow. All the same. 

An old man approaches her, bent and gnarled as the sacred laurel tree, his skin like loose bark. He asks no questions and makes no move to snatch the leaves from her hand.

“I’m not here for a prophecy,” he says. “When you’re my age, only one question remains, and I’d rather not know the answer.”

Time sways in the wisps of scented smoke, and she sees again the face of the young king, beseeching her with a handful of leaves. “Why have you come back?” she asks.

“I don’t know if I took the right prophecy or which one it was, but I ruled for decades without knowing. I’ve seen the wars and survived the famines and droughts. Now my succession is sure, my grandchildren grown, and my borders secure.” The king smiles. “There is nothing left for me but dreams.”

So he sits beside her in the hollow, her self-appointed attendant, and he dreams with her.

He asks her to read her riddles, and they are more real spoken aloud. He holds her withered hand when she wanders lost in visions. He bids her pause and truly taste the fine wine she is offered. “Some things are better with age,” he says, and her crackling laugh echoes. And he makes sure supplicants leave with the right prophecy.

“It doesn’t matter,” she says. “They’ll realize too late to change anything.”

“It matters,” he says. “You don’t remember how it feels.”

Decades shrink to years, to months, to moments. Now the future isn’t a veil, but a dark shroud. What will she do without him? He doesn’t want to know when, though she knows.

“Does it matter less because you can’t change it?” he asks.

She sets down her stylus and blinks with clear eyes. They look out over the sea of dead leaves together. One day, when the last mortal goes down to Hades and the gods themselves are forgotten, she will finally dry up and blow away with them.

“I’ll remember you,” she says.

“But will you dream of me?”

“I hope so.”

He smiles and closes his eyes. “And I will dream and dream…”

* * *

Ⓒ Anna Dallara

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