{"id":4262,"date":"2024-08-04T16:59:46","date_gmt":"2024-08-04T23:59:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com\/?p=4262"},"modified":"2024-08-10T08:46:51","modified_gmt":"2024-08-10T15:46:51","slug":"the-latest-attempt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com\/?p=4262","title":{"rendered":"THE LATEST ATTEMPT"},"content":{"rendered":"

THE LATEST ATTEMPT, by Devan Barlow, artwork by Miguel Santos<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

One vial of tears gathered<\/p>\n

from the milliner in the town’s least-haunted shop<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I must have my memories back, please let this<\/p>\n

be the recipe that finally works<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Two hours of pestle-work<\/p>\n

with shed swan pinions and crystallized moon glow<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

So many failed attempts, filling my cottage<\/p>\n

with smokes and saps and scorches<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Three petals plucked from roses<\/p>\n

who’ve never known the taste of blood<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Deciphering old maps, tracing paths rendered<\/p>\n

useless by time and shifting earth<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Four nights of waiting for the so-brief interval<\/p>\n

when crystal flowers open, revealing their pollen<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Completing trials for the cauldron-keeper<\/p>\n

who demanded my worth proven<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Five shells discarded by crabs<\/p>\n

who moved on to bigger things<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sorting piles of grains, coaxing wandering felines home<\/p>\n

spelling decades of scaling off kettles<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Six riddling-debates with an orchard keeper<\/p>\n

before she granted me a sapphire plum<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A tattered, hard-won text, requiring<\/p>\n

translation, temper, toil<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Seven drops of blood from my fingertips<\/p>\n

already so scarred<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

My memories were stolen I can’t<\/p>\n

even recall the thief’s face<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

________________________________________<\/span><\/p>\n

Devan Barlow is the author of the Curses & Curtains<\/a> series of fairy tales-meet-musicals fantasy novels. Her short fiction and poetry have appeared in several anthologies and magazines. <\/em>She can be found at her website devanbarlow.com<\/a> or on Bluesky @devanbarlow.bsky.social. She reads voraciously, and can often be found hanging out with her dog, drinking tea, and thinking about sea monsters.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Miguel Santos is a freelance illustrator and maker of Comics living in Portugal.\u00a0 His artwork has appeared in numerous issues of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, as well as in the Heroic Fantasy Quarterly Best-of Volume 2.\u00a0 More of his work can be seen at his online\u00a0portfolio\u00a0<\/a>and his\u00a0instagram<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

THE LATEST ATTEMPT, by Devan Barlow, artwork by Miguel Santos   One vial of tears gathered from the milliner in the town’s least-haunted shop   I must have my memories back, please let this be the recipe that finally works   Two hours of pestle-work with shed swan pinions and crystallized moon glow   So […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86,3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-issue-61-archive","category-main","category-poetry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4262","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=4262"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4262\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4288,"href":"https:\/\/www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4262\/revisions\/4288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}