{"id":4076,"date":"2023-11-26T09:49:14","date_gmt":"2023-11-26T16:49:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com\/?p=4076"},"modified":"2023-12-03T10:26:56","modified_gmt":"2023-12-03T17:26:56","slug":"the-witch-awakens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com\/?p=4076","title":{"rendered":"THE WITCH AWAKENS"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>THE WITCH AWAKENS, by Julie Shiel<\/p>\n<audio class=\"wp-audio-shortcode\" id=\"audio-4076-1\" preload=\"none\" style=\"width: 100%;\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"audio\/mpeg\" src=\"http:\/\/www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/TheWitchAwakensNarration.mp3?_=1\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/TheWitchAwakensNarration.mp3\">http:\/\/www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/TheWitchAwakensNarration.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Rain lost its sound that day<\/p>\n<p>and the churning Autumn skies<\/p>\n<p>fell silent<\/p>\n<p>as I stood gazing into the dark<\/p>\n<p>facing that sulfurous breeze.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The harvest feast was upon us<\/p>\n<p>and the first frost kissed the grass<\/p>\n<p>when I felt her eyes searching<\/p>\n<p>across that dread dreamscape,<\/p>\n<p>our death foretold in her<\/p>\n<p>ancient and numinous dreams.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Our rituals can&#8217;t save us.<\/p>\n<p>Mantras from dusty tomes<\/p>\n<p>won&#8217;t hold that vengeful crone.<\/p>\n<p>All our dark talismans<\/p>\n<p>won&#8217;t stay the call of an owl<\/p>\n<p>gliding from the witch&#8217;s house<\/p>\n<p>escaped from her gilded cage.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #993300;\">________________________________________<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #993300;\">Julie Shiel lives in Maryland with a ginger feline fluffball and a dilute tortie that keeps him in line. She has\u00a0 a pair of crows named Zoltan and Zelda that visit her daily just to tease the cats. Her work appears in issues of Strange Horizons, Space &amp; Time Magazine, Eye To The Telescope, Penumbric and others. When not writing she grows a moon garden and communes with her local murder.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #993300;\"><a style=\"color: #993300;\" href=\"http:\/\/karenbovenmyer.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Karen Menzel\u00a0<\/a>earned an MFA in Creative Writing: Popular Fiction from the University of Southern Maine. She teaches and mentors students at Iowa State University and Western Technical College. She serves as the Assistant Editor of the Pseuodopod Horror Podcast Magazine. She is the 2016 recipient of the Horror Writers Association Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Scholarship. Her poems, short stories and novellas appear in more than 40 publications and her first novel,\u00a0<a style=\"color: #993300;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Swift-Sun-Karen-Bovenmyer-ebook\/dp\/B06XGSNSCX\/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&amp;keywords=bovenmeyer+Swift+for+the+sun&amp;qid=1588545358&amp;sr=8-1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">SWIFT FOR THE SUN<\/a>, debuted from Dreamspinner Press in 2017.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>THE WITCH AWAKENS, by Julie Shiel &nbsp; Rain lost its sound that day and the churning Autumn skies fell silent as I stood gazing into the dark facing that sulfurous breeze. &nbsp; The harvest feast was upon us and the first frost kissed the grass when I felt her eyes searching across that dread dreamscape, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82,3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-issue-58-archive","category-main","category-poetry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4076"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4122,"href":"https:\/\/www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4076\/revisions\/4122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}