THE SEA SINGS BACK, by Dawn Vogel   “Entertain us,” say the waves, With unspoken promises that If we do, they might spare us.   We chant our tales of valor, Of the things we have seen, Of the places we have conquered.   The roaring, rumbling reply, Surging squalls and swells, A dirge to […]

  OWAIN THE RED AT CASTELL DOLBADARN, by Nicole Rain Sellers, audio by Karen Bovenmyer, art by Simon Walpole North Wales, 1275 AD The infant moon swells full again, relentless, lonely wheel. Clouds asphyxiate this house swaddled in royal fields. Spent heather bleeds out honey and flocks surrender wool, betrayed as I, as powerless in […]

FORD, by Mary Soon Lee, artwork by Gary McCluskey  Rain, wind, water, mud– men and horses slowed so that the two-day journey took three days, though they set out before dawn and rode past sunset.  Wind, water, mud, rain– the last light lingering in the west when they climbed the ridge overlooking the ford, the wide river swollen, the plain across the river flooded. Diminished shapes […]

THE DEMON IN THE JAR, by Cullen Groves, artwork by Miguel Santos Under the watchful old eyes of the Carian wizard Hydáspes Onto the black ship of Draba a single amphora they loaded, Painted with sigils strange, stowed in the stern by the steering oars; Draba the captain, night-dark of skin, overtowered the wizard Standing […]

THE PRIESTESS’ DAUGHTER, by Jennifer Blackford I barely remember my father’s golden eyes, or his shouted laugh that made even my solemn priestess mother smile. She knew too much and not enough of wild things. Before my father died, all the village children envied me. He was the only man we knew with his own […]