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The stars were diamond-hard. I reached up and plucked one from the sky. It spat white-hot sparks against my fingertips. I placed it in my mouth and scraped my tongue against its burning edges—it rattled against my teeth. I tasted ozone, iron, blood. I bit down. As it broke, it thrummed both its agony and […]
For Anna-Marie McLemore, a true lantern heart June in Buffalo was Komal’s favorite time, particularly early June after twilight. The gloaming, she’d read once, a fancy word for the mysterious time when day merged with night. That was when the fireflies came out. Late one such evening when she was thirteen, she sneaked downstairs, […]
Content Note: Violence Against Women and Misogynistic Slurs The Shadow-moon was full and dark and eating a black crescent into the face of the Sun on the day Aey sought the Hungry Ones. It was mid-afternoon when he left his faithless wife tending her hives and stole away towards town, a basket of Elle’s […]
Night All night long, the weary sound of water dripped from the roof into the bucket below, eroding her dreams. Ava woke from a sleep which bore her like an ocean, her mind still filled with the raindrop drum. The moon had veiled its face so that the stars could not see her cry. She […]
Otter When Amalia’s father shows her the shoes this morning she wants to cry. She wants to laugh. Call him a fool. But she doesn’t. She is too tired for that. The shoes are leather with delicate lines and pointy toes. Elegant shoes for elegant feet. They might have suited her too if she had […]
Paulie rushes out the elevator doors the moment they part, only to skid to a halt at the sight of his father’s wife. She shakes her head, but he doesn’t need the confirmation. If Tricia is out here and not in the hospital room with his father, it can only mean he has passed. He […]
One: My lipstick. The shade is Heart’s Blood. Morbid, if you ask me. I wanted to know if it was really the color of heart’s blood so I bought beef heart and tried dabbing my lips. Close enough. I emailed to congratulate the lipstick company on their realism. They did not respond. Two: My wallet. […]
The Contract A week before the Season began, as Mrs. Vanessa Saunders held brunch court at the Empire Hotel, a photo appeared on her phone: a large oak door beneath a pale green sign with silver lettering. Impossible, she thought, flipping the infernal device over before Mrs. Lillian Talbott and Mrs. Caroline Rankenfall, her Fête […]
About “Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather” (5 contributors, 5 notes, 7 comments) →“Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather” (Roud 423, Child 313) is a traditional English folk ballad. Like many traditional songs, the lyrics are unattributed. Child transcribed twenty verses, and a twenty-first got added later (and is included here for some unknown reason—I keep […]
Chapter the Eighth, in which the crew of the HMS Selene has an encounter of startling proportions. Halfway up the shrouds on the mainmast, where he’d been climbing to take the look-out, Matthew Vale spotted the approaching craft first. Fifty miles out from America’s mid-Atlantic coast, enemy ships and merchant vessels came in view […]
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