Peach Tree Grove

    She had hair like fire and stars, and he was afraid of her.         She had hair like fire and stars, and her eyes were narrow as winter.     She was no regent, this girl with hair like fire and stars, no powerful queen. She didn't sit in a heavenly throne high above no matter how much his wishes wished she did. She was no regent, no queen encompassed by court and law; she was only alone and her hair like fire and stars, and as he went he would hear the restless sound of her footsteps behind him. Her mouth sat cold and still as steel in his eyes and fire and stars raged for her in the sky.      Her footsteps were relentless and never danced. Nothing about her danced, only her hair, and her hair was not her. Her hair flickered under streetlights and in the rim of bright between window shade and window frame seen in the middle of the night. It flashed in the black light of car windshields and neon signs from far away. It...

Our world is is full of pockets. It’s riddled with hidden spaces, secret places, and caverns where time stands still. Things are strange inside of these hollows. Things are frozen and changed and morphed in them. Old things live there and new things are created. Some things fester, some bloom, and some twist and unfurl into things stranger than anything you’ve ever seen before.  Sometimes they grow so much their pockets are no longer pockets. Sometimes the pockets are grown into something more, something not a pocket. Sometimes they twist into tunnels and get pulled into passages; sometimes that finite little pocket fades away until it’s not a piece stolen from this world, but a hole into another.  Sometimes people finds these pockets-now-passages. And sometimes, they fall in.

            We use salt for snow and we use salt for spirits, for ghosts and gheists, for the haunted and the haloless. “Be like salt,” they say and I think, “What am I to melt today?” Do I melt the dead, the clinging rage, the fear and failure gripping tight, the howling remnants of the consequences of numbering yourself among dead men walking? Do I meet that fear, that failure, those emotions running higher and higher til they whirlwind out into terrible personification? Or do I fight the fingerless, groping cold that comes gentle and soft and creeping on little frost feet, ready to numb and make naked, to make nobody of delicate, hot-blooded man, to stop his heart’s pumping and the pressure of life holding cells and senses tightly bounded into being.      Spirits melt and snow gains savor. The cold and the calloused, the hungry and the groping desperately for life, for fire, for flavor, for crystals of Christ given in bounty, are fed...

       A yelp and crash sounded behind him, and he flinched before whirling around in irritation. Lalia was standing with scrunched shoulders and an apologetic wincing face next to an overturned pot.  “Sorry,” she whisper-shouted. Josef practically growled. He strode forward and grabbed her by the shoulder, dragging her away from the pot-rack.  “We are standing in the kitchen of a bloodthirsty elf king out for my head and your womanhood,” he hissed in her face. “If you don’t start taking this seriously then there will be terrible consequences, and I don’t want to feel those consequences because you aren’t paying attention to what you’re doing and where you’re going!” She shrank in on herself for real at his outburst and he could see the edges of her lacy blue head-covering droop with shame. She looked away. “I’m sorry. I will be more careful.” She stuck closer this time as they moved on, head down, eyes up and watchful behind him.  There wa...

       Iron clamped down on Alistair’s shoulder and he flinched. Blue eyes sharper than the edge of a knife stared at him over his shoulder, supported by a skinny, trembling arm on the back of the chair.  “Uh-why don’t you sit down mister?” He helped the old man into the chair, but those eyes never left him, and the hoary eyebrows above furrowed.  “How are you going to defeat the Queen?” the old croaking voice surprised Alistair with its strength, but he felt his heart do that quavering thing it had done before. He turned back to the porch rail. “I don’t know.”  Hands clasped at his shirt again and dragged him around to face the furrowed old face. “Know. She must die.”  “I-okay.” He gently undid the hands on his shirt and led the old man back to his chair. The intensity in his voice frightened him; it ran even deeper and clearer than Leo’s. He turned again to the railing and looked out over the Señorita’s field. There was silence, but he could f...

     Do not trust the old woman dressed in black.      The woman who waits in the station and appears in the alley just when you are at your most vulnerable. The woman who walks down the streets in heavy black clothes with only her face and her hands uncovered. That face is lined and wrinkled, but it does not sag. It is full of wicked sharpness: her nose the nose of the old nobility, her eyebrows arched with unfaded fierceness. A round black hat with a narrow brim sits immovable on her gray head, untouched by the wind that billows her skirts and her shawl as she strides up the street.      If you ever see this woman do not look at her, they said. Do not look at her, hurry away in the opposite direction as quickly as you can. She is shameful and she will show you no mercy if you fall into her clutches; all she knows is an old, old hate. That was what they told her.      Bread was extended to her by a strong, wrinkled hand. She s...

       Glittering halos ring round their heads. Some are diamond and some are stone, harder and heavier even than hands weighed with blood and boldness to wreck man’s image.      Diamonds know no death; they know nothing but dust and coal and cold, then pain and pressure and light and laughter. Diamonds know no death, and they may sit on heads of stone pure and purifying. Diamonds know no death, and it is they who pierce the stone.  Rock cracks and crumbles and the christened fall, but the christened know this heat well, this rolling fire full-folded in liquid gold grace. They do not fear it, they love it, and it receives them rippling like soft silk. Stone crumbles to steam and nothing is left but the ever-rolling fire, glittering with a thousand rings of calm, cool relief, the christened thrown safe into the furnace.

     The ravens were coming, and they couldn't be here when they came.      The ravens were coming and Lishia was still struggling. The circles under her eyes were deep and black, and her breathing was coming in heavy, labored pants. He gently took her shoulder. Her eyes were half-closed and glazed over, not really registering anything. She wasn't doing well. But they couldn't stay here.      He looked to the sky and then back to his sister. The tendons in his hand were tightening. His fingers tugged harshly on his hair and he took a deep breath.      Lishia's eyes were almost fully closed now. He stood up again and cast his eyes across uniform gray above. He could feel them coming. Everything could. The very grass shrank and grew gray when the ravens passed over it. And those black specks before the mountains did not have anything good in them. He licked his lips once, then sank quickly to the ground at his sister's side. She ...

  In contrast to her long lean limbs and economically built body, the acrobat’s facial features were soft and full. Her eyes were round and bright and her mouth plump and well-shaped. Her face was not round, but it had some cheek to it, framed by soft strands of blonde hair.  “Are you ok? That could have been really bad.” She placed her hands on the hips of her unitard and tilted her head curiously.  “I’m fine, thank you.” Erraline smoothed her hair and shook out her skirt. She was a little embarrassed to have almost died because she had been thinking about her father and not where her feet were going, but at least she had found someone to talk to about the syringe. “Thank you for catching me.” “Oh you’re welcome.” The other girl smiled sweetly and waved a hand dismissively. “Lots of first-timers to the Carnival get tripped up by the machinery. You’re not the first one to almost fall in.”  “How long have you been at the Carnival?” Erraline asked.  “...

               The front windows came down in explosions of glass, and people screamed.  Shadowy figures leapt into th brightly-lit ballroom after the flying glass as men covered their wives and turned away from the glittering shards.  “Sorry about that,” a cheerful voice said. “I hope nobody was hurt?”       The speaker was a well-enough looking young man, slim and of average height, wearing aviator’s clothes, and with eyes that glittered sharp and unnerving. They were yellow. And his hair was blue.       Everyone in the room know who he was. He was the smuggler and pirate Judas Iscariot III, the man who had stolen Lord Jameston’s finest aircraft at age eleven and sailed at its helm as the captain of his rough crew of misfits ever since.       When nobody answered Judie’s polite query, and a few pulled out weapons instead, he held up his hands appeasingly. “Please, please...

               “Adam, stop your pacing,” Judie groaned from under his ridiculous captain’s hat.  Adam shot him a barely-contained glare. “No.” Judie sighed and sat up, plonking his elbows down on the table and the hat next to them. “We know where she is, we know who has her, we’re closer to getting her back than we have been in weeks,” Judie’s eyes tracked Adam’s down-turned brow as he paced. “So why are you drilling troughs in my floor with both your heels and your eyeballs?” “Lay off Judie, you’re no fool, you know exactly why I’m pacing,” Adam snapped. “We might be closer to getting her back but she’s still in just as much danger as before, maybe more.” His pace quickened. “Collsworth is dangerous; who knows what he’ll do to her if he’s provoked! Or what he’s already done to her.” He paused his step, then resumed. “She’s still in just as much danger as before,” he repeated. “Collsworth might decide to threaten her safety if he feels t...

      Johannes didn't like the little girl who lived in room 42 of Mr. Montebury's house.     He did not know what the actual title of the room was, or if it even had one at all. With as strange an occupant as it held, it must have. But within his own mind he called it Room 42, because it was the forty-secondth room he had counted when he had counted every single room in the great deep house that was Mr. Montebury's estate.      At first the closed door of Room 42 hadn't bothered him at all. It was just one more closed door with a bed and a wardrobe and a small chest of drawers behind it, just like every other door on that hallway.      But one day, on his way to the library and from there to the garden, he had passed by Room 42 at the worst possible moment fate could have decreed.      The door to Room 42 had been open, and four nursemaids were in the midst of escorting a little girl out of it.      He...

          Let me be Your Knight Lord. Let my armor shine a gleaming gold and silver and bronze burnished brighter than any dragon’s scale. Let my spear burn with the white-hot wraiths of Your rage and my sword shine double-edged with diamond love and steel truth. Give me a halo: a helmet and a wedding ring; a guard and a sign. Give me a crown and a steed and a standard snapping: a red cross on a white field. Make me faithful and frightful Lord, fearless and full-grown in love and laughter shining in sharp grace. I’ll face the dragon Lord, onward I’ll ride. I’ll meet that greedy yellow gaze and the Liar’s flaming tongues licking at the wind. Sharp are his fangs, sharper is Your Word. Bind my shield, O King, in the iron-clad knowledge of Your will and let the fool’s fire assail it in vain.  Wings unfurl, whips a tail, a roar shatters the ear. The earth shakes, the winds rage, and through scale slides a spear.