Peach Tree Grove

            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...