The people who rode phoenixes had had a very hard year. The people who rode dragons had come and breathed their lives to the ground. They had burned everything. They had burned the houses and the corn and the fruit trees. They had burned the people. Every person left in…
Pete stood outside their brother’s door a long time with their arms crossed. Bad energy pulsed out of the room like the heat from a campfire. Hector’s room had always felt that way to some extent. Anger was like cigarette smoke; it got in your lungs as soon as you…
On Tuesday when Imani got to work at 7:30 in the morning and found her chair missing, she was almost glad. What if she didn’t spend the whole day sitting? What if she used her feet for once? Her desk didn’t adjust. Maybe she would have to go home. “You’ve…
The car went off the road nine miles out from the cottage. After the wheels threatened to carve a rut in the ground, they got out and tried digging the wheels free, but the snow was falling nearly as fast as they could move it. Now, back in the car,…
You didn’t know you would have to leave that day. You made the promise weeks ahead, which you didn’t do very often. Promise things. Not because you were stingy, just because you were realistic. You promised you would go to the spelling bee, which was big because you worked nights.…
This must be what it was like inside a beehive, she thought. The dozens of sewing machines all pounding at once created a buzz that got inside her head, in her bones. The dust that was shucked from the threads zipping through the needles could have been pollen brought in…
The puzzle was done and there was one piece missing. It was a thousand-piece puzzle shattered from a painting of a castle at sunset. The castle was surrounded by a moat, and it had flags and turrets and battlements and all the other parts of a castle that Everett didn’t…
You are so beautiful, he said. He was leaning forward with his elbows on the table so he could look at her. You, he said, are proof that nature is cruel. So beautiful, and so untouchable. She was proof of something that had never occurred to him before, that in…
HELP WANTED: Personal assistant. Must be fluent in spoken and written English. Must be friendly, compassionate, encouraging, and a good decision-maker. Must bathe often as we will be in close proximity. Must be willing to be in close proximity with someone who bathes less frequently. Must also be willing to…
She sat in the grassy aisle long after everyone else had left. Not on the grass. She would sit on the grass if she could. Be close to the earth. But her vertebrae were arthritic, her hips stiff as rusted hinges, and her knees hadn’t bent in years. She sat…
