The creek starts calling to me as soon as we cross the county line. Gravel crunching under my tires is the sound of water tumbling over rocks; sunlight becomes silver fish glinting off my windshield. My daughter Lacey turns her head toward the open passenger-side window, like she smells something unexpected and delicious.By the time […]
Edited by Sabrina WestStorm clouds gathered, as they always did, when Nancy fought. Jaundiced thunder-carriers, chaotic with rain: lowering and brutish cumulonimbi spoiling for both combat and ceasefire.They stacked themselves now over Meadows Elementary as she lashed out at Fiona McCarthy.She called their leader ‘Crown,’ because that’s what he tried to be. Lord and Savior, […]
Keith drops from the monkey bars. He stumbles, because it’s high for a five-year-old, but the ground is that soft bouncy stuff that doesn’t hurt. He runs past the bins into the scrappy copse behind the playground. The big kids come here sometimes. It’s small, bordered by two roads, and even right in the middle […]
In Sesara, only the rich wear bright colours. My knight shines in the armour I buff for him nightly, glossy as a jewel. My clothes and skin are the colours of the earth. We stand together with two days of desert at our backs and a forest of black thorns before us. My heart is […]
As Sava approached the dais, her heart felt like a hummingbird caged behind her ribs. Her palms were slick with sweat, but she dared not wipe them on the sunshine-yellow robes she had hemmed so carefully this very morning. Her teacher’s last words of advice echoed and blended with those of her grandmother: You must […]
They walk a safe distance apart, the woman who will become a tiger and the lover she will devour, a distance that to outward eyes appears wholly lacking in suspicion. She often feels a strange unease when walking through a city park, those patches of manicured green set among the gallant, tiered facades of Georgian […]
The legend is only partially true. I did bathe in the river and the farmer did see me there in human-skin. I had hidden my fox-skin well. I am not the hu li jing of the western legend who they kidnapped, whose fox-skin they stole. One human poet called it devotion that she returned nightly […]
Remember that they are people. Most of them will be just as awed by what you can do as all your other audiences. If they’ve invited you, then they want you here. Don’t treat them differently. The patients deserve magic, too.The easiest opening trick of your life is Nothing Up My Sleeves. Show the audience […]
She’s back.Well, I think it’s her. She’s older, but she has the same sky-coloured eyes, overconfident manner, golden hair.I want to tell her, this woman I’ve named Golden-hair, to get out. Leave me to my solitude, to my dust and cobwebs and the gentle whistle of wind winding its way in and out of cracks. […]
TW: Assault It was a warm August evening on the rooftop bar, with the NYC skyline up close and punching all my senses: the steady thrum of Times Square, the churning garish colors of the billboards, scents of oil and grime and smoke. There were enough Fae in the crowd for the air to shimmer […]