Advertisement
He hates the birds. There are two, a breeding pair. Their eyes are red as devils’. On land they’re stupid, little feet pushed so far back on their bodies that they can’t escape by running. Yet they glide over the water, glossy mottled boats. Their chicks ride their backs. The adults protect them, tuck black wings up to shield them from wave and eagle. They are good parents.
There’s a wolf where my brother used to be, a beast absolutely hellbent on ruining my life. He plunges his broad snoot into the Wednesday night spaghetti, and neither Mom nor Dad cares when half the bite slides off his nose and onto the table, to later be jostled to the floor by his grabbing, grubby paws. But if I came to the table without washing up first . . .
Abuelita has been feeding me her memories. Yesterday, it was the time she trudged up the mountain carrying a basketful of offerings for Pachamama (flowers, incense, a llama sculpted out of animal fat and adorned with gold leaf) in hopes the Earth Mother would alleviate the drought ruining the harvest. Today, it’s the time she visited Tío Roberto’s farm in Sapecho, how the smell of the cows made her eyes water and how at her uncle’s urging she coaxed one over to her with a big yellow carrot and let it eat out of her hand while she stroked its ears.
There once lived a boy who paid for a fortune. Nassim wore carob hair and eyes severe like cardamom. He spent his days scouring the souk for unique trinkets he liked to collect or counting the uneven stones of Jerusalem’s cobbled streets as he passed Al-Aqsa Mosque or picking up groceries for his grandmother. He knew it was best to avoid attention and wise to steer clear of the soldiers clad in olive drab watching from the shadows of their field caps in Al-Quds, walled and on fire.
Look, it’s bad enough that my wife gets cat-called in the street and flashed on the train. There’s a lot of sickos out there who get their jollies by harassing women, and usually I try to shut them down without escalating it to a fight.
But we moved a few months ago to a new place. (I don’t want to say where, but it’s in Ishikawa Prefecture.) Last week my wife went to the toilet one night—we have the traditional kind, rather than a Western-style seat—and a moment later I heard this godawful shriek.
When you look out from the garage doors of the corrugated steel warehouse where the Fort Springwell Community College soccer team made their heroic stand against the forces of darkness, the view at first seems . . . idyllic. A rocky shoreline, uncommon for Florida. Periodically the beam of a lighthouse sweeps across our field of view. Everything looks normal, except on its course across the little cove, the beam lights up magical sigils that form a barrier from the lighthouse point to the other side of the cove.
She assures them, again and again, that she acted under the best—the very best—of intentions. Oh, yes, she can be a bit dramatic at times—she won’t deny that. And she was hurt—very hurt—by that mess with the invitations. She won’t deny that, either.
But surely—surely—no one can think that she would respond by hurting an innocent child?
On a wooded hillside outside Pittsburgh, where the rivers braid together and the bridges flash yellow in the sun, there stands an old private school no one ever remembers enrolling in. Ivy grips its cracked bricks. Moss blurs the leaded windows. To almost anyone looking, it appears abandoned. Unless they are the newly dead. If that is the case, it is more of an inevitability.
1. I’m sorry, my lord.
2. I miss the sound of your voice, deep enough to shake the mountain fortress’s stones. I miss feeling it rumble in the soles of my feet. I miss the glow of your eyes while you paced the Chamber of Mysteries, lava burning in the pools below and the pointed arc of your throne at your back.
The typewriter proved, at first glance, to be a poor investment for a daring aerial escape. Kallista had been drawn to the typewriter from the moment she viewed it languishing in a Museum of Curioddities, a pun that 3% of Pennon City’s citizens might appreciate, if one rounded to the nearest human. The jury was out as to whether the placard’s sententious overview of Strange Olde Anti-Fae Percussive Instruments was someone’s idea of trolling or, equally likely, an exercise in mellifluous snake oil.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement