Grady’s family had always gone Christmas tree hunting. The day after Thanksgiving he helped Mom pack sandwiches spilling leftover cranberry and stuffing, hot cider and slices of pumpkin pie, while Dad and his aunts Amy and Pat packed the real supplies. Most families went to one of those U-Cut places, where trees were raised up […]
It was always grey at this time of year. Greying mud stretched out at low tide. Bands of iron grey cloud drawn across the sky. The sea – in the distance, far across the flats – a dull, tarnished silver. The composer leaned on a broken, salt-cured piling, his hands as lined as the grainy […]
Gather now nestlings and feather-kin, settle your wings and listen, lest this tale should be forgotten in the cold dark days to come. Remember the Bone Man and the Bone Dog. Remember the gifts that come unexpected. And always remember that those good days may come again, when the beaks of jackdaw, chough and rook, […]
Do you understand? On your skin, do you feel the white sand the priests threw in fistfuls from the blessing-basin? Do you feel it crusting over your eyelids? It sticks between your cheek and the temple floor like a binding. It powders the sigils on the stone. Do you understand what’s happening to us? Songs, […]
Beneath the roots of the honeyglow tree, a small creature dreams. Not the cold, empty sleep of winter, only a nap on a warm autumn day. His bed, a nest of moss and grass, has been fortified with yellow leaves, and there he lies, curled like a vine, hugging his thick silvery tail. His nose […]
My mother taught me the language of the trees.She carried the language within her just as she once carried me: swollen, kicking, full of life. If words could blossom in blood, I would have been born singing the trees’ songs.But words are not blood. I know that now.When I was a girl, my mother would […]
Her father picks her up at her mother’s apartment and drives her out to the nearest national park to hike and forage mushrooms. His battered SUV pulls up right at six on Saturday and idles until her mother tucks spare pajamas pants into her backpack and sleepily kisses her forehead. His mother-in-law cabin is too […]
The forest where I lost my heart was full of autumn. Trees clung to leaves drenched in yellow. My chest pulsed with heartbeat echoes.Perhaps my heart was hidden under a mossy log or in the belly of a fox, perhaps in the cold twilight of a brook.Three roads diverged in the wood.I took the first […]
The parrot had already eaten twenty-seven pages of the wizard’s book, and the wizard still hadn’t noticed. The book was an overlong, bloated mess, stuffed with extra slips of paper and nearly bursting out of its binding, for the wizard believed his every thought important enough to immortalize with pen and ink. The page the […]