Urtif vaulted the snow-covered log and pressed himself hurriedly but soundlessly into a recess beneath the felled tree. He stifled his breath into the sleeve of his fur-lined tunic hoping desperately no condensation was visible from his laboring. That which chased him no longer had a name, at least not among those still living. His father […]
Long ago, in the city where we live, there was a heartbreaker.(By which we mean, a woman who broke hearts for a living—sliding scale, pay what you can.)None of us knew how she did it, but we had a hundred theories, told a thousand stories: she takes a hair from his head and burns it; […]
The snow crunches beneath the soles of my boots. My footsteps echo, as though I walk upon the skinned hide of a drum, and when I pluck the last persimmon from the tree, I feel the rumbling swell. I run.The avalanche is the thundering of a thousand horses, hooves dispatching the crushing blows of bruises, […]
As a child growing up in Colorado, I equated winter with gut-plunging snowbanks and crashing icicles, cold blue days and crystalline nights. Later, I moved to Arizona, and while winter in the Sonoran Desert wears its own brand of beauty, I missed skating on the rippled ice of a frozen mountain lake, the deep quiet […]