Beautifully written fantasy
There’s a bench I like to sit on, with my legs tucked up, pretending I’m just another student on break from university. People always have a smile for me—a young woman in the sun—until they see the sores and the thin wrists and then their eyes slide up and away, up and away as if they have just remembered something important. I grin at them and pick at the scratches on my arms, mindlessly or …
The scribe met the knight on the old stone road. The castle was a couple of hours away. Three, at the speed his donkey was trotting. He’d meant to deliver his news of no news and stumble off to a bath and, if he were lucky, into a warm bed with a warm wench. Instead he found himself conversing with a knight who hunkered in a smear of blue-violet twilight. Cloaked in shadows, he looked …
The wheat died three days after Elin’s skin began to itch. The itching started as a rash on the backs of her hands, little round bumps standing out from her skin. She ignored it at first, went to work at the diner as always. But by the third day it had spread up her arms and started on her feet. She came downstairs early in the morning after a sleepless night, knowing her parents would …
It was Full Night, the climax of the two-week Festival of Threll, and the narrow streets of Thranrak heaved with the devout, the curious, and the avaricious. Freya Adinyan plunged past the torch-lit processions and the bustling market stalls, her heart pounding in time to the drums. Tonight she was determined to leave Thranrak and the world of man behind. She forced her way through the mass of festival-goers crowding Ascension Square, towards the tower …
He calls me the Motorcycle Man. One word? Possibly. I’ve never seen it in print. Certainly never needed to scratch it on paper. The Boy knew my proper name up until last week, when he forgot. I forgive him. Besides, I like Motorcycle Man just fine. It says all it needs to. I’m forever wearing a white jumpsuit crossed with Dixie stars. My helmet appears on my head whenever I ride, but it’s gone when …
When the girl moves almost next door – across the way in our apartment complex – I lose my breath. Literally. She’s – well, gorgeous doesn’t begin to cover it. Long, incredibly rich black hair that you know just from looking at will feel like silk, and extraordinary eyes that I’ve never seen before – large, green, tilted, kinda cat shaped, really. The eyes are the first thing you see in the face, which is …
