THE SHIP IN THE CLOUDS, by James Hutchings: I was walking alone on a wet stretch of stone that the guidebook had claimed was a beach and the sea was as gray as my spirits that day and I sighed as if robbed of my speech. And it seemed as I sighed that the world […]

THE REGION LINUIS, by Lorna Smithers: ‘Then it was that the magnanimous Arthur, with all the kings and military force of Britain, fought against the Saxons… The second, third, fourth and fifth (battles), were on another river, by the Britons called Duglas, in the region Linuis.’ – Nennius, History of the Britons.   In the […]

Ah, springtime in Oklahoma — continued: The flowers. The north-bound butterflies. The flowing creeks. The wildly overflowing creeks and huge hail and massive apocalyptic tornadoes! Then summer hits and flooding rains persist when we should be by drying out. Oy. Anyway, HFQ editors took way less on the chin than so many people in their […]

A WHISPER IN ASHES, by Charles Gramlich: Down from the death-lands of snow came a warrior with eyes like scars. No one knew his origins. None could foresee his end. He had no name. The barbarians called him Krieg.   I. The Black Tarn The northern wind was quiet for once. The polished surface of […]

THE NATURE OF DEMONS, by J. Kathleen Cheney: The town elders left the corpse untouched for us to view, now more than a day dead.  That the demon had fled the town already, I didn’t doubt.  Even so, the elders refused to enter that small house on the edge of the woods, retreating with murmurs […]