Languedoc, 1249 From Moshe ben Nachman to his eldest son Nachman in Toulouse, on the twenty-first day of Adar in the year five thousand and nine, may the blessings of Ribono Shel Olam be with you. My dearest son, I pray that you hear the words of your father and do not forsake […]
Devoured Stars Over Dublin
Over the black sprawl of Dublin, the demons flapped their sore-puckered wings and screamed. Too high to lob a brick at, with nasty talons that’d take a chunk off your face if you tried. Best leave them shriek and gibber across the boiling clouds, swooping and weaving between the pulsating slices in the sky. For […]
A Wild Divinity
My God Falls in Love with Me As with other unwanted attentions, it happens when I’m thinking of something else entirely. I am in the western chapel, reciting the evening prayers. I kneel on a prayer cushion, hands clasped against my forehead in worship. As I repeat the holy syllogisms, my thoughts wander. I consider […]
Miss Bulletproof Comes Out of Retirement
Miss Bulletproof comes home and there’s a god sitting at her kitchen table talking to her kids. “Did you like my presents, children?” says the god. “It was I who got you those gifts, those funny little things, including that long and slithery one, which you both found so amusing.” The children had not found […]
The Pandora
Content warning: “The Pandora” deals with child endangerment and mental abuse. It was a year to the day of our arrival that Mary — Cordelia as we’d come to call her — left us. Left us with a fat purse of pound notes, a letter of recommendation, and not a stitch more than the clothes […]
A Long Tango across a Canopy of Whispering Leaves
The return of the last Festival King was not mere rumour. Half a dozen heralds from Marip preceded his return, with a new summons from the Steward. Dusk-skinned youth dressed in flowers and skin-tight fluorescent blue breeches had read the proclamations from east to west. The Steward was returning the last Festival King. A new […]
Desert Locks
Through the fine mesh of my mask, I studied the woman strolling through the marketplace and wondered if she knew where I could find one of my people. Her bald head reminded me of a brown hen’s egg. Her face resembled those of the gleaners all around us, eyes lost in an expanse of forehead […]
A Wild Patience
We first noticed something was off one April afternoon when Jessica and I came home from school and Mom had lopped her hair off. Though we probably should’ve known something was going on a week or two before that when Cecilia Ivers’ mom started baking cakes full of Tabasco sauce and pickles (bizarre but good). […]
The Air in My House Tastes Like Sugar
“The air in my house tastes like sugar and the floors are sticky,” said Amnandi Khumalo. “Amnandi…” “Unina, you say I should be honest!” She wanted to cry, for she was lonely, yet she refused to allow a single tear to form, no matter how painful a witch’s sharp recollection made things. “What did they […]
Thin Red Jellies
When Jess died, Amy gave over her body without a second thought.
They were lucky, the doctor said. He showed Amy how close the steering wheel had come to denting Jess’s cranium, shattering the bridge of her nose, pushing bone fragments into her fragile frontal lobe, bruising the precious neural tissue that let Jess talk and think and be saved.