Stories appearing in Fall 2016
Two Queens of the River
Now in the days before the cataclysm changed the face of Tannalez, there was only one way to pass by the riverwilds between Bellas-in-the-summit and Lirani-by-the-shore, and that was to entrust yourself to the care of the one who called herself the river queen.
Butter-Daughters
The milk of Lusini alpine goats yield a butter that is so soft and so smooth that one could eat it as though it were pudding. Salted only slightly, the most generic kind has a faint taste of burnt caramel that lingers on the tongue.
The Dust Gate
Of all the outcomes Yumiko had feared when the army drafted Ladonna and took her away, she had never imagined that Ladonna would return to her dead.
Tongueless
There was a white light in the dark where there shouldn't have been.
Wolfswood
It's my seventeenth birthday, and this will be my last trip to the Wolfswood. Dad's form is becoming indistinct as I lag behind and the distance between us lengthens.
The Three Lives of Truck the Red
Truck rolls out past the bolts of sun cutting through the open warehouse door. The Alphonse mangoes wriggle in its hold, tight little yellow eggs clad in ribbons of ice gel, destined for the silvery aisles of their final home some five hundred miles northward.
The Beachings
The whale beached at dawn, rolling in with the tide, its black bulk on the sand outlined by pink the colour of salmon bellies, pink the colour of blood on foam.
We're All Friends Here
I lean against the back wall of the doctor's office while the camera pans around me, getting good shots of the carefully placed symbols of death and ruin: