A year went by without Rupert mentioning anything, but that didn’t mean he stopped thinking about it. You saw the references in his every move. In his hobby, his obsession, most especially. “That’s the last of them, I think,” he’d said, laying golden roses on the kitchen table. You’d looked out the window to the … Continue reading Letting a Wild Thing Grow
John Robert Brown was as average as possible. He drove a secondhand automobile, subscribed to the Evening Standard, and worked nights at the local clothing factory oiling machinery. He no longer owned a prosperous farm in the wheat belt--the world was changing, and cities were the new pastures.I can smell it coming, Old Isobel had … Continue reading Painting the Town
As a child, Lettie Nash loved letters. She loved the curve, the swoop, the long stroke, the quiet point. Then as she grew, letters became words, became sentences, became prose, and overflowing with things to say she wrote and wrote and wrote.Her mother made her hide her work, lest her father find and burn it … Continue reading Lettie’s Letters
Quinn places a sight stone to her eye and trains it down the slope. A mile from her hidden lookout rises a forest of towers and torchlight. The castle walls are opulent, decked in streamers of rosaberries and silver stars that flicker with shadows from below. Raucous laughter and jolly flutes dance from the arches. … Continue reading Glory
The old stories had been told over and over. The fire had burnt down to its embers. Carlin filled the murmuring pause between tales with a hand-rolled cigarette, off to the side so the tourists wouldn’t complain. His boots squeaked in the sand, and the dune sedges silenced in response. Above the camp, the hungry … Continue reading Night Tour
