Tag: short stories

“The voyage from Dorian had been speedy but less than smooth, the Ocean of Aptikos in its usual bad temper.”

AS SMALL AND MEAN and dirty as it was, Crowfoot was profoundly glad to see Pylos on the horizon. The voyage from Dorian had been speedy but less than smooth, the Ocean of Aptikos in its usual bad temper. When at last they made fast to the dock, Crowfoot had Blanca and Pedro first up…

Read more “The voyage from Dorian had been speedy but less than smooth, the Ocean of Aptikos in its usual bad temper.”

“Next to the dais the poet’s clerk was doing a brisk trade in autographed scrolls.”

IT WAS THE FIRST DAY of the Tattoo Fair, and the town square was bustling with vendors and performers from the Nine Provinces of Mnemosynea. Pthalean playwrights were rehearsing songs and skits with Pthersikorean dancers. From a dais two feet square a Kalliopean poet was declaiming in iambic pentameter what appeared to be an epic…

Read more “Next to the dais the poet’s clerk was doing a brisk trade in autographed scrolls.”

“If Jesus Himself had appeared before them, they would not have turned from the stove to greet Him, not even Isaiah Rowan.”

THEIR OVERCOATS STEAMED in the red-hot glow of the tiny stove, the steam rising to form ice on the ceiling of the cramped canvas tent. After a day’s slogging up and down the pass, they were each man and woman among them soaked to the skin, but it was so cold no one was willing…

Read more “If Jesus Himself had appeared before them, they would not have turned from the stove to greet Him, not even Isaiah Rowan.”

“Even then, if you did get lucky, three months later your luck went south again.”

When the phone rang he’d been curled up on his warm, wide couch, submitting happily to an enthusiastic and comprehensive ravishment by Alice Sampson, a pert young barista of nineteen, to whom Larry had given some thought to proposing. In this small town on stilts twenty-five miles north of the Arctic Circle the ratio of…

Read more “Even then, if you did get lucky, three months later your luck went south again.”