Mother doesn’t trust us anymore. She won’t let us leave the house. You just stay there where I can keep an eye on you, she says. No, you can’t go play in the yard. Don’t you move. We’d noticed her starting to change a while ago. It worried us. When had she become different? Bicky […]

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The house stood back from the road in an orchard. In the orchard, monitor lizards the length of a man’s arm stalked the branches of rambutan trees like tigers on the hunt. Behind the house was an abandoned rubber tree plantation, so proliferant with monkeys and leeches and spirits that it might as well have […]

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“The sauerkraut is what makes us special,” Lizzie explained as she opened up the plastic door to show Themba the hydroponic units.  She scooped a pale green head of cabbage from the moist sand and placed it gently into Themba’s cupped hands. She held her breath as Themba cradled it in his palm, hoping: Please.  Please […]

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I don’t need a name, a past, a history, to draw a crowd. I’m nobody, and they watch to see me fail–but I don’t, and I laugh from the joy of it. I flash the bottles from hand to hand in the hot dawn, flash and catch, throw. Street jinks aren’t allowed to work the […]

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I While everyone else in the school van chatted or sang along to the radio, Mac stared out the window, thinking about a girl who’d said hello to him during the academic bowl. In the darkness, he studied his faint reflection in the glass. How did he look to girls? he wondered. He pressed his […]

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1 Georgina met Death when she was ten. The first time she saw him she was reading by her grandmother’s bedside. As Georgina tried to pronounce a difficult word, she heard her grandmother groan and looked up. There was a bearded man in a top hat standing by the bed. He wore an orange flower […]

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The inexorable pull to move south grows. The sun hums to me all day long that it’s time to go, go, go. The night sky is even more persistent–every constellation in the big Montana sky makes arrows pointing south. My appetite increases and I develop a layer of fat on my belly. My senses grow […]

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The Tsar abdicates in February. The Provisional Government gets around to letting Fyodor out of prison in March. In April, he meets his Uncle Grigor at a Petrograd cafe. They talk about magic, death and revolution. “I don’t care, Fyodka. Romans or Visagoths, Christians or Mohammedans, Tsars or…” The old man waves his hand, making […]

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I. GHADA AND ASAD “Oh, Ghada, Ghada, Ghada.” “If you say my name one more time, I swear to Jesus, I will kill you.” Asadullah Khan scowled. Ghada Nabulaale rolled her eyes. Was this going to be their new relationship? Had time dilation really turned her former lover into someone with gnarled joints and arthritis? […]

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The elders claim life is better now. Since the ascension of the young dukes, the landholders no longer carry swords, and we are no longer obliged to kneel in their presence. Taxes have been lowered; we can keep more of our grain, our olives, our limes. Obligatory civic work days have been decreased to five […]

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