In the valley of Nis the accursed waning moon shines thinly, tearing a path for its light with feeble horns through the lethal foliage of a great upas-tree. And within the depths of the valley, where the light reaches not, move forms not meant to be beheld. Rank is the herbage on each slope, where […]
This month’s stories are all sort of past-perfect, for you grammar wonks; all of them involve things the main characters once had. Polenth Blake’s main character in “Through Amber Eyes” seems to be looking for her past, but, knowing she can’t find it, takes a different route to knowing who she is. I enjoyed this […]
I paint whiskers on my face with bath water. The water doesn’t stay, but the whiskers remain. I prowl around the house in my bathrobe. The cat is washing herself on the rug. I kneel down to show her my fresh whiskers. “Meow,” I say. She flicks her tail in disdain, as though I’m any […]
I remember the time my mother took me to see the city where I was born. She was a young woman then. There were sea-birds rippling through the warm white sky high above her head, drifting like ashes on the summer breeze. I was in her lap, slightly nauseous from the motion of our vessel […]
“I’m Radok,” he said to her when everyone was gone, and steam hissed gently from his vents. Sandra hadn’t noticed him in the audience. How could she have? They came every night and sat at their tables with rattles and creaks. Gray-blue visages bathed in the golden light from Outside. Here a steel leg crossed […]
I sat one April in Provence on a small hill above an ancient town that Goth and Vandal as yet have forborne to “bring up to date.” On the hill was an old worn castle with a watch-tower, and a well with narrow steps and water in it still. The watch-tower, staring South with neglected […]
Have you writers ever been critiqued in such a scathing, vicious fashion that you don’t know whether you want to crawl into a hole or beat the critquer with a bat? Can you imagine getting that kind of critique from Mark Twain? I don’t know what James Fenimore Cooper did on reading Twain’s critique of […]