It had been over ten years since Gort last heard that, chanted by children. Scare-song. Shiver at night: Stey who stripped a whole island of its flesh, Stey who wore it all and danced and finally tore off her own skin, Stey who was ripped to shreds, Stey who still stalked the islands. Teeth in the wind!

I was born a slave, like all of you. My master was a hoary old bull known as Ascaro, one of the Bull-King’s champions. Twenty feet high at the shoulders, and even past his prime he was a quick devil, though old trunk muscles were turning into fat.

I am an ugly thing of flesh and stone. My eyes, like glittering points of quartz, peer out from beneath the ridges, dark as coal, that protrude from my cheeks and forehead. I am my father’s son, poisoned by the same rituals that have turned his flesh to rock and that have already begun to do the same to me.

“Of course I will come,” said the Dragon Queen. Her voice was muted beneath the layers of dark cloth that covered her, but a ripple of amusement sounded as she added, “I should hope my old friend has not forgotten my favorite blend, after all these decades. I shall be disappointed if there isn’t a fresh pot awaiting me.”

His grip tightens. He looks up at me with an honesty reserved for saints and the soon to be executed. "If you do this, it'll ruin you. Please, come back with me to the school, give up this alliance with the Empress, and together we can find a way to save the boy. Armila, please, this kind of murder, to one so young? You can't come back from that kind of corruption."

Perdita gripped Grandfather Mandrake’s shotgun and closed in on the slew with a cautious but unfaltering step. Whoever had been caught by it was still struggling, much to Perdita’s admiring surprise. She could see the dark red striae pulsing in its almost-body where it clung to the victim, leeching the lifeblood away in what she knew to be painful sips.

But the lock had finally crumbled, and the door had fallen open, and the nothing-garden beyond was revealed to her sacred eyes. Doors are only left open for her when they lead to every-day gardens that she can freely enter and exit, so she, poor innocent lamb, saw the newly open door and naively entered.

The crow kept watching me. Wherever I went, I could look up and see its eyes upon me. I didn’t realize that until I saw it out in the moon garden. It hopped up on the edge of the center urn and reached out, not with its beak, but with a foot. It took a purple berry in its talons and squeezed until juice oozed out over its claws.

A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z A Acks, Alex “The Book of Autumn” — in Issue #49, August 12, 2010 Ahmed, Saladin “Mister Hadj’s Sunset Ride” — in Issue #43, May 20, 2010 “Where Virtue Lives” — in Issue #15, April 23, 2009 P...