Short Fiction
Two witches and their relationship with the local faerie folk.
Mischief Makers
“Ruthie, dear, hand me the trowel,” said Mavis, kneeling at the edge of the soon-to-be garden. Her tattered apron and the worn hem of her blue dress were smeared with dirt. She reached out a hand, still fidgeting with the thick roots of a persistent weed.
Ruth gave her what was decidedly not a proper trowel. Mavis peered at the silver table spoon. “Sorry, Maeve,” said Ruth, holding back a chuckle behind her glossy brown eyes.
“It’s just like them,” Mavis said, shaking her head. “And I expect the trowel’s in the kitchen drawer.” Mavis stood and brushed fringes of grass from her shins. She straightened her apron with an air of purpose.
“Oh, use it,” Ruth said, grinning. “Let them have their fun.”
“Nonsense,” said Mavis. “They’ll run entirely amok if we don’t set down some rules.” She stalked off in her red-headed, matter-of-fact way.
Mavis strode to a patch in the lawn, decorated with small, palm-sized rocks. The stones varied in age. Some were weathered and splotched with moss, others smooth and clean. Most were carved with twisting runic symbols. Nestled in the ground at ankle height, they formed a pattern: a maze. A labyrinth, with one entrance and one winding path to the center. As Mavis followed the path, the world around her began to shift. Colors bled together, light blurred. The trunks of the tall deciduous trees nearby bent and wobbled. It was like looking through the thick glass window panes of their cottage during a downpour.
She stood in the center, breathing deeply, and the scene began to clear. Although the other realm looked much darker, crowded with heavy shades of blue and green, Mavis remained in a place that appeared to be her own home. There was the garden by the hovel, and a thick hedgerow separating lawn from forest. Only Ruth was missing, having lingered in her world.
“Now then,” Mavis said, knuckles on her hips.
A chorus of tiny whispering voices chattered around her, like a breeze rustling the leaves.
The hedgerow parted, and a small blue light drifted toward her from the gap. It grew as it approached, morphing into a shape not-quite-human. It’s large white eyes squinted mischievously at Mavis. Its thin mouth grew into a wide grin filled with tiny pointed teeth.
Mavis looked down at it disapprovingly. “I’ve had quite enough of you moving my tools about,” she scolded.
. . .
When Mavis returned, Ruth was digging a hole with her silver spoon. She dropped a young rosemary plant into the hole and patted the earth around it. “Did you tell them who’s boss?” Ruth asked.
“Of course not,” said Mavis, rolling her eyes. She swiped a plume of curly copper hair over her shoulder. “You know how fairies are.”
The next morning, Mavis found her left shoe in the pantry, a can of beans nestled inside.
When her father takes ill, a young girl goes to Baba [Yaga] for help.
Vera and the Witch
The moon was waning on the eve preceding Vera’s birthday. She watched the last crescent smear of it glow against the black silk sky, the round shadow of the great dark lid slowly closing over its silver eye. “It’s nearly time that I go back,” she said. Vera did not say ‘home.’ It was not entirely right.
Baba coughed dismissively. She hobbled over on skinny ankles bundled up in wool socks and handed Vera a steaming cup of tea. The cup was little more than a small, lopsided clay bowl, but under the curve of her grateful fingers was painted an intricate pattern of flowers and herbs. Vera had first learned to identify which of Baba’s forest plants were edible by what had been painstakingly portrayed on the rims of her old plates.
For Vera, the seven years since her arrival seemed like lifetimes. For Baba, they were only minutes.
Vera held the cup close to her face and inhaled the damp, earthy steam. It was sweet with honey. She supposed that one of the things she had missed all these years was lemon. When Vera was a child, drinking tea with her father, there had always been lemon. There were no lemon trees in Baba’s forest, and no markets.
Baba sat down at the soft-cornered kitchen table, across from Vera. Her wooden chair creaked, and she sipped lightly at her own steaming drink. Vera watched her. Baba’s back was hunched and her knuckles knobby. Her nose was hooked and her skin weathered. Despite this, Vera had never thought the witch seemed particularly old. Baba’s eyes had a fire in them that defied her age.
“You had better visit. Understand?” Baba did not look up from her drink as she said this. She bent one finger, rubbed the nail across the rim of her cup, put it back.
“Yes, Baba,” Vera said. She smiled smally and peered down at her own drink again. They had grown close, Vera and the witch. She hadn’t always thought they would.
. . .
It had been a harsh midwinter, when Vera’s father had fallen ill. That was the short of it.
“There is always a problem,” Baba had said. “No one comes just to visit. Either they have a need or they object to my being here.”
“Please,” Vera said, falling on her knees in the snow. The hem of her red gown trailed behind her. “I can give you anything.”
Baba scoffed. “I don’t want your money or your trinkets.” The witch shut the door on her, and with a protesting crack, the house wobbled. It creaked and groaned, and slowly the foundation began to peek above the shimmering drifts. In the gap below the house, Vera saw two large wrinkled legs, like that of a taloned bird. They shuffled and stamped, and the house began to turn. It did so haughtily, and plopped back down with its back to Vera.
What was meant to deter her only made her curious. Vera stood and brushed the snow from her shins. She circled the house, eyeing the ground where it sat, and knocked again at Baba’s door. She stood on the short stoop, on the tips of her toes, and tried to peer in through the stained glass window.
The witch did not answer. Instead, the house began to move again. It rose steadily this time, stretching up on its strange legs. Vera shrieked and held fast to the door handle. The house rocked as it raised one of its feet and began to walk. It bumbled through the trees, twisting and sucking in its square gut to avoid crashing through every branch. The thin fingers of leafless twigs swiped at the girl attempting to plaster herself to the narrow door. They pulled at the tangles in her hair and snagged the fibers of her clothes. The house traveled deeper into the forest, thoroughly distracting Vera’s sense of direction. How would she get home?
Baba’s house finally found a new clearing. It sighed with a long wooden creak, and nestled into the fresh snow. One corner of the house dipped lower than the rest. The tattered shingles ruffled like feathers on the roof. The door opened and Vera, still clinging to the handle, tumbled over the threshold.
“You’re still here!” Baba said, outraged. She nudged Vera’s ribs with her soft leather shoe.
Vera held Baba’s foot. “Please,” she said again. “Help my father.”
Baba gave her a hard stare. She rolled her eyes. “Fine,” Baba said, hands swatting the air. “I’ll go.”
Vera’s face lit up. She sat up taller and threw her arms around Baba’s knees, crumpling the old woman’s tattered skirts. “Thank you!” she gasped.
“But you stay here,” Baba ordered.
Vera reared back. “What?”
“Stay here.” Baba stepped back and began to putter around in the pantry. She emerged with a roughly woven cloth satchel, and plucked herbs from bundles tied to overhead beams for drying. A cloak hung from a sturdy hook near the door. Baba nudged Vera away from it.
“I need to make sure he is well,” Vera said.
“He will be,” said Baba. “Your trust and your time will be your repayment to me.”
. . .
They had gotten off to a rocky start that way. Vera hadn’t seen her father since, although she longed to, and Baba had become her new guardian. In hindsight, even if her father had died then—for reassurance that this was not the case, she only had the witch’s word as proof—Baba had given her a place to live. Baba had taught her things about survival. About healing, and magic. Things she would have never known otherwise.
Now, Vera thought, I have the ability to help myself.
Vera reached across the kitchen table and touched Baba’s hand. “Thank you,” she said.
“Bah!” Baba rasped, but squeezed the girl’s fingers gently.
. . .
When the moon had closed its silver eye and relinquished its place in the sky to the bright winter sun, there came a knock on Baba’s door. The house had not turned. It had not made a single creak in response to the forest intruder. The knock was deep and soft and somewhat timid. The latch clicked, and the door drifted open. White-gold sunlight reached its arm across the weathered floor.
A man’s low voice tiptoed in behind it. “Hello?”
“Come in, come in,” Baba rasped. She shuffled toward him, sharply waving her arm. “You’ll let the heat out.”
. . .
Vera had woken early with anticipation. She pulled on her cloak, which was shorter since she had grown and stained at the hem, and ventured out of the house with a basket on her arm. She inhaled the crisp, cold air, and wandered in search of witch hazel. The small bushes grew up through the snow in long arms, which held small clusters of purple bodies circled with bedraggled yellow petals like the legs of spiders. It was the pale green leaves and small cuts of the thin bark that she sought. Although the plant sprang up during the winter, it was useful for a myriad of summer ailments, like bug bites and ivy rashes. It soothed the red burn of the high sun.
Gathering it soothed her nerves.
. . .
There had been a garden behind her father’s house. It had been surrounded by shoulder-high shrubs bearing small, five-petaled suns. A mass of berry bushes huddled together beside the dense greenery. Gooseberries abounded in the spring. Vera and her father entered the garden through an archway long overtaken by climbing roses. Together, the two of them knelt in the dirt to pick vegetables and herbs before the first frost. They worked quietly, digging up potatoes and carrots, and snipping fresh sprigs of dill. Her father hummed while he worked. His voice was low and sweet and rumbling.
It came on gradually, the sickness. He coughed and cleared his throat. Pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket, and his chest rattled. He had tried to hide it from Vera, so she wouldn’t worry. While he coughed, Vera hummed, picking up the tune where he had left off, until he was well enough to join in again.
. . .
By the time she was finished peeling spindly branches with the edge of her knife, Vera had once again made peace with the possibility that her father was not going to come for her at all. She might return to the wandering house, and only Baba would be there, as she always was, bustling about and grumbling to herself about this and that.
They would fall into a familiar pattern, one they had developed over years of living together. Baba would show her another page in one of the old, fat tomes with the yellowing pages. They would assemble the ingredients, draw symbols on the floor, and Vera would cause the spell to do something it was not meant to. A spell for cleaning would rearrange the interior walls of the house, or turn Baba’s socks purple. She would write it all down in her own leather-wrapped journal while Baba muttered eccentricities and rubbed charcoal lines from the floor with the sole of her shoe.
. . .
Looking at the crumbling façade of the old house, its odd ochre legs tucked snugly away beneath the foundation, Vera took a deep breath. It came out of her as a cloud in the chilled air, like smoke from a dragon’s nostrils.
The door swung quietly open–the house was never so silent as it was that morning–and there, at the kitchen table, sat two people with cups of warm tea cozied in the palms of their hands: An old woman with long grey hair that fell over her shoulders like a layered shawl. A man with more lines below his eyes than she remembered, but a posture and a smile she could never have forgotten.
Vera and the man were still, speechless, gazing at each other. Their happiness beamed like the sun at Vera’s back. Tears welled in their eyes, streaked from their cheeks to their chins.
“Hi, Papa,” Vera squeaked.
“Hello, sweetheart.”
Two stories about a woman named Hannedy, who spends her life in service of flora.
Age 62
I’m definitely not dead, she decided, feeling her lungs expand and contract as she breathed deeply—in through the nose, out through the mouth. Functioning normally.
Hannedy’s bedroom was covered in flowers. Bright pinks, yellows, reds and whites, purples and oranges; lilies, tulips, carnations, asters, roses, and daisies. The flowers seemed to grow right out of the floor, bunched closely together like a rapt audience. Hannedy sat up, and more flowers tumbled off her chest, landing in a soft cushion of chrysanthemums. She straightened the collar of her heather gray nightgown—the one with the worn cuffs and a little pink bow sewn onto the yoke—which had gotten twisted in the night, and combed bony fingers through the gray streaks in her thick, mousy brown hair.
No, she was certainly not dead, but there was another matter at hand: She was terribly inconvenienced. “How am I to get all the way over there,” she asked the flowers, gesturing to the far side of the room and her bedroom door, “if I don’t want to step on you?”
The flowers, of course, did not respond.
Hannedy was nonetheless determined to get on with her day. She had a rain garden to plant and buckthorn to cut, and she wasn’t about to fuss with the nature center’s plans on account of some rogue florist. Hannedy rather disliked florists. Flowers were meant to stay in the ground, happy, alive, and in their proper region of the world.
She eased out of her blankets, gently tossing about another assortment of blooms, and dipped her toes into the sea of vibrant colors. As her slender feet sank to the floor, she realized the flowers were indeed rooted there. Hannedy glanced around, wondering if she and her bed had somehow gotten moved outside. The window was open, but she was on the appropriate side of it. The cheerful call of a chickadee accompanied airy morning sunlight. A gentle breeze rustled the curtains.
“Nonsense,” she muttered to herself, grasping bundles of nightgown and hoisting the hemline up to her knees.
Hannedy waded through the flowers, careful to damage as little as possible. She might have to speak with some of her colleagues about this. Might be best to keep to hypotheticals, she thought, scrunching up her nose. The pungent scent of the strongest florals grew stronger when she jostled them. Thank heaven I’m not allergic. She could almost see the pollen clinging to her legs. She felt quite like a bee.
Out on the ordinary hardwood of the hallway, Hannedy breathed a sigh of relief. Then, she giggled. Looking back at the small forest of stems and leaves and petals in her bedroom, she began to laugh with delight. The skin around her overcast-blue eyes crinkled, long
deep lines branching out across her face as she smiled.
They really were lovely, if a bit unorthodox. It was like something from a dream.
“No one will ever believe me,” she chuckled.
But it was certainly a lot better than being dead.
Age 7
When Hannedy was seven, she stole a bouquet of flowers from the corner store. They had been there a while. The pale purple petals were beginning to wilt and turn yellow around the edges. Not bright yellow, like dandelions. Sad yellow, like the oxidized enzymes in bruised apples, or top secret correspondences written in lemon juice and warmed with an iron. The edges of the leaves were browning in the same way. They were crisp from dehydration and starting to fall away from the stems.
Hannedy knew what to do.
She carried the armful of withering plants home, down the street and around the corner, nearly tripping in her little rubber rain boots. They were bright red, like Mama’s roses and the bow in her soft, rabbit-brown hair—and fairly unnecessary. The sun was high, with barely a wisp of cloud in sight. The road was dry and warm.
Hannedy snuck into the garage. She tipped a five-gallon bucket upside-down and stood on it to gather the necessary tools from Daddy’s workbench, where, on one end, Mama kept her gardening things. People told Hannedy’s mama all the time that she had a green thumb. Mama’s secret was that all of her fingers were green. Her rubbery green gloves engulfed Hannedy’s tiny hands like balloons. She snatched the spade from where it hung on the pegboard, and charged to the backyard with her bouquet.
Nothing ever died in Mama’s gardens.
Hannedy plopped down on the lawn near the patterned brick edge that separated soft brown mulch from prickly green grass. She scooped some of the mulch aside and cleared a spot of dark, moist dirt. The spade sank into it with a dull chiff, making room for the new arrivals.
One by one, unwrapped from their frilly plastic cone, the ends of somber floral stems sank into the earth. Hannedy piled the dirt around each one, humming cheerfully and tunelessly to herself. She patted it gently, and poked her little finger around the base of the stem to create a shallow well. It would be easier for the flowers to get water that way, at least until they got established in their new home. She sprinkled mulch around and in-between the piles to insulate them.
Hannedy did a good job. She hopped to her feet and scurried away to find the watering can. When she was finished delivering water to the thirsty flowers, Hannedy propped her gloved hands on her narrow hips heroically, the large aluminum garden-teapot hanging by her side. She beamed at the corner store flowers, envisioning a long and happy life for them alongside new friends.
. . .
Hannedy’s mother watched her through the kitchen window. She smiled wistfully at her daughter. The pale, barely-purple chrysanthemums bowed their heads in shameful contrast to their vibrant rooted neighbors, lined up like thin ghostly fence posts at the edge of the garden.
A young doctor ventures offland for the first time as a ship’s medic, to slake his curiosity about the creatures of the deep.
Fish Out of Water
“Storm’s coming.”
Dana glanced up from the book in his hands, a collection of brown-yellow pages littered with delicately inked diagrams and handwritten notes. “How can you tell?” he asked.
The captain looked at him over her shoulder, pale blue eyes and sharp chin craning around the midnight mass of her hair. Her face was lined with shadows. “I can feel it,” she said.
Dana paused, fingers half-tucked under the next page. He peered up at the sky, grey and thick on the horizon. The ship’s planks creaked with anticipation under his feet, although the water was calm.
Back on land, rain was different. There were trees and grasses and flowers there, and when the storm was coming, they became thick, energizing shades of green. They reached out with all limbs, wide open and ready to drink. Dana would join them sometimes, spreading his fingers and turning his face toward the sky, inhaling the musk of dark, fertile soil. On land, rain was intimate. Here, it reeked of salt and made his bones ache with cold.
The captain cast her eyes back to the sea.
“Will we be all right?” Dana asked.
“That’s up to you, Doctor.”
Dana swallowed, and considered his notes again. On land, maybe he could be called a doctor. He had studied the ways of the earth, and how it interacted with its inhabitants. He knew enough to grind herbal remedies, enough to treat, stitch, and bandage wounds. Here, Dana was out of his element. He had limited resources. His feet begged for solid ground. This was different from his studies of leaves and roots and mammals. In his book were drawings of squid and sharks, whales and mussels. It listed more than fifty inedible creatures, and provided a recipe for soothing jellyfish stings, but he had never seen a jellyfish up close.
“Land child,” the captain chided. “I can smell the worry on you. Don’t let it spread.”
Dana took a deep breath and regretted it. “Yes, Captain.”
He turned to the next page in his book. There, the lines of ink finally presented him with something familiar. From skull to pelvis, it appeared to be a human skeleton, but as Dana’s eyes slid down the page, the familiarity quickly vanished. Where there should have been femurs, he found fronds of cartilage protruding in narrow fans from the hip sockets. The spine extended as long as its missing legs should have been and longer. It curled sideways onto the facing page, where it ended in the broad, sweeping cartilage of tail fins. A creature half human, half fish. Part land, part sea.
A timid wave of awe washed over Dana. He traced again over the human part of the drawing with the tips of his fingers.
. . .
When the storm caught them, it was ravenous. The sky was low with monstrous dark clouds. The wind sent waves thrashing against the hull and spraying onto the rain-pummeled deck. Officers bellowed orders. Sailors heaved at ropes with the strength of whole bodies, shifting the sails and fighting the weather. Dana, with a satchel of medical supplies slung across his chest, watched for signs of strain or trouble among them.
Over the drone of the rain beating down on their heads, people began to yell to one another. Their duties were soon forgotten as they pointed to starboard. Dana followed their gestures, unable to make out their words through the rush of water in his ears.
Another crash from the waves and the lack of stability from the distracted crew sent him sprawling against the bulwarks. He clung to the rail, heart stammering, and peered across the ocean. There was another ship. Although hazy in the storm, Dana could make out a large beam, dipping at a sharp angle toward the water. The ship appeared to have no intention of struggling against the storm. He wondered if it was damaged, stranded.
The captain strode into the crowd, demanding to know what was stalling her crew. Black streaks of hair clung to her pale face like an oil spill, dripping down her neck. She seemed not to notice she was soaked. She stood tall, moving across the drenched deck like a shark glides through the ocean. The crew parted around her.
“What are they doing?” Dana shouted to her, jerking his head toward the spectacle.
The captain joined him at the side of the ship. She took one good look at the vessel and spat on the deck. “Hunting,” she barked.
Dana squinted at her through the din and downpour. “Hunting what?”
The captain turned and met his gaze. Her silvery eyes flashed as lightning ripped through the sky. Thunder crashed. Her lip curled in a sneer. Her teeth were sharp and white.
“Mermaids,” she snarled.
Lightning flashed again, throwing the other ship into silhouette. The beam raised a net into the air, and against the light, he saw it: a lean shape writhing against the ropes. The upper body of a human, and the tail of a fish, long and thick and thrashing.
The captain spun back to her crew, who scattered at her command. There was a flurry of movement. Muscles worked, sails snapped taut, and the ship groaned as it made a sharp and hard-won turn. They advanced on the hunters.
. . .
Dana stood near the side of the ship, watching as the crew jumped into action. There was a wound in the hunting vessel, where the sturdy bowsprit had torn across its hull. At the moment of contact, men and women descended on the hunters, swords drawn. They swept eagerly over the gangplanks, practiced and confident. Dana gazed anxiously at the ensuing combat.
“Doctor!” someone shouted. A dagger, sheathed, was thrust into his hand.
“What am I supposed to do with this?” Dana yelled back, gesturing with the knife.
A tall man with sandy hair and a handsome nose grinned at him. Stefan. “I didn’t think you knew how to use a sword,” Stefan said. He nudged one of the flat wooden planks bridging the two ships, testing its stability.
Dana inhaled sharply. “I don’t,” he admitted.
Stefan laughed. “Flower man,” he crowed, “how soft and pretty you are.” He grasped Dana’s hand, closing Dana’s fingers tight around the dagger’s hilt. He pulled the sheath away and tucked it into Dana’s satchel. “Suppose you need to defend yourself,” he said then, seriously.
His hand ghosted away from Dana’s as he stepped up onto the bulwark. His worn boots had slender, pointed toes. Without a glance backward, Stefan leaped across the gangplank to join his shipmates.
Dana climbed across the gangplank after him, ducking low on the other ship’s deck in an ungraceful heap. He scrambled across slick planks on hands and knees, pressing close against the bulwarks to avoid the clashing of swords and the shuffling of feet, hardly breathing. Dana searched for the captive mermaid. If it was injured, he was very likely the only one who could help.
He was expecting to find some kind of maiden: a tender, innocent fish-woman in need of rescuing. What he saw instead was a wolf. It bared its teeth, sharp like arrowheads. It lashed out with meat rending claws, arms reaching through the holes in the large net. Its eyes were wild, red-orange like a warning sun on the horizon. Although the creature before him was tangled in rope, Dana felt the urge to flee. This was no water nymph; this was a predator.
Neither was it female, Dana realized. A far cry from the soft, rounded fish-women of myth, the creature was flat-chested and square-shouldered. It had a torso built much like Dana’s own, laced with the sinewy muscles of swimmers and runners. Dark russet scales covered its tail and scattered like scraps of autumn leaves across the bare skin of its hips and stomach. The wide, tattered edged tailfins were a jaundiced, translucent ochre. Long blond hair clung in slick, wet strands to the merman’s neck and chest.
Dana heard a shout from behind him, and snapped out of his shocked stupor. He lurched forward to grasp at the net, dagger in hand. As the merman thrashed, the net jerked and swayed. The beam holding it in the air groaned. Clawed fingers raked across Dana’s face, and he crumpled. He dabbed at his brow, took stock of his eyesight. There was blood in his eye, and it stung.
The hand raked at him again, and he grabbed hold of the creature’s wrist. “Stop!” he cried. “I’m here to help!” Dana caught the creature’s inhuman gaze. Pygocentrus nattereri, he thought. Piranha eyes.
He shoved past his own racing heartbeat and looked at the captive merman. Dana placed his other hand as gently, kindly as he could over its webbed fingers. “Be still.”
The merman sneered, baring its sharp teeth again, and ripped its hand out of Dana’s grasp—but then it obeyed, unmoving, shoulders tense. It watched Dana with suspicion, gaze sharp and unblinking.
Dana worked at the ropes with his dagger, blood and water dripping into his eyes. The ropes gave way, and the fish fell with a dull thump to the deck. It howled with the impact, lashing its tail. Its voice was jarring, piercing through bone and space and time. Too big a sound to come from one man.
The cry was echoed in a chorus of other wails and calls, minor keyed and ominous. The sound came from all sides of the hunting ship, crawling up from the ocean. Whale-song, if whales were night-hunters who moved in packs.
“That’s my fish!” a gruff man snarled at Dana’s back. “Off my ship, and get your own!”
He kicked Dana as he turned to look, still kneeling on the deck. A large boot clipped his jaw.
Dana sprawled back to avoid as much impact as he could. Still, something must have broke—his jaw or a tooth, cheek or tongue. He tasted the hot tang of iron, and spat out a mouthful of blood.
Steel clashed.
Dana hacked, and swiped the back of his wrist across his lip. He glanced up in time to see his captain thrust her sword through the gut of the man who had kicked him.
There was a sudden break in the rain.
The captain leaned in close and snarled something against the side of the man’s face, low and menacing and full of teeth. The cold horror of recognition glazed over his eyes. Then, fisting the lapels of his heavy coat, she heaved him over the side of the ship, into the ocean.
Dana scrambled to the rails, alarmed at the thought of someone anyone—drowning, hurt, dying. His feet slipped about awkwardly as he rushed to look down into the deep black water.
The man sprang to the surface, arms reaching, gasping for air, his beard a soggy mess. Pale clawed hands broke through the waves and grabbed hold of his hair, pulling him down again. The water began to churn and froth. Blood bloomed amid a growing mass of dark green and blue and black scales, and long, twisting tendrils of hair. A feeding frenzy.
Dana’s throat constricted, nauseated. Then he noticed the dark red stain trying to cling to the captain’s wet sleeve, and turned his back to the gruesome scene in the water. He swallowed the lump in his throat. “You’re hurt.”
The captain quirked her mouth as though she were about to argue, but simply held out her arm to him instead. Dana peeled away severed cloth to reveal a shallow cut on her forearm, and found something possibly more disconcerting: small iridescent things, scattered like freckles over otherwise unblemished skin. Scales. Dana’s face shifted. The tension in his brow gave way to open curiosity. Moving gently, as though he might scare it off, Dana smoothed over one of the scales with the soft pad of his fingertip.
The captain pulled her arm away. “That’s enough, Doctor.”
With the hunting ship’s crew outmatched, and its captain lost to the belly of the sea, shouts of outrage and despair rose up among an outcry of success. A low whine cut through the din of human voices. The merman struggled on the deck, clawing its way toward Dana on its stomach.
Dana took pity on the creature. He stepped closer and reached down to it. A webbed hand stretched toward him like a reflection in a mirror. Dana thought about how much he’d like to go home, to step foot on shore. He wondered how long it would be before he drowned here, in this much water and salt and blood. Maybe the merman felt the same. Behind those dangerous eyes, was there the same fear, the same homesickness that Dana felt in his chest?
Dana grabbed its hand. He cleared his throat.
“Time to go home,” he said.
The creature grabbed for him like a child, and through some maneuvering he hauled it up into his arms. The merman was heavy, so heavy out of the water, but Dana imagined it must feel weightless in the ocean, must cut through the sea like a knife. Dana struggled, fingers digging into the curve of the merman’s ribs to keep it in his arms. The merman hissed through his teeth at the scrape of Dana’s fingernails.
“Almost there,” Dana said, half soothing himself. He perched the merman on the rail, holding it steady. He must be young, Dana thought vaguely. Young like me. Loosening his hold on the creature brought huge relief to both of them.
The merman looked back at Dana over his shoulder, studying him for a moment. It gripped Dana’s wrist tightly. “Kai,” it rasped, like it wasn’t accustomed to speaking like humans, speaking from its throat.
“Is that…?”
“Doctor!” Stefan shouted behind him. The merman’s gills flared, just below its jaw, and it turned to the ocean, diving out of Dana’s arms.
“Wait!” he yelled, but it was too late. The merman disappeared into the water. It was gone.
A firm hand clapped wetly onto Dana’s shoulder. “You survived, Mud-flower!”
Dana glanced up at Stefan, and back to the waves. “We did,” he breathed. That exhale of breath took any adrenaline he’d had with it. Dana’s knees felt weak.
“Mermaids,” Stefan said cheekily. “Beautiful, aren’t they?”
Dana nodded. “And terrifying.”
Stefan squeezed his shoulder, gave him a shake. “Come on, Doctor. Let’s take you home.”
Dana didn’t object when Stefan threw an arm around his shoulders, or steered him away from the spot. He said nothing when urged to hold on, and Stefan carried him over the gap between the ships. Just leaned into him: this lean, confident man on the sea.
“Kai,” Dana mumbled to himself.
“What’s that?” Stefan urged.
Dana pulled away from him, began to examine the man’s cuts and bruises. The way Dana allowed himself to be carried across the ship, Stefan allowed Dana to touch and prod all of his weakest places, going through the motions of a doctor while his mind waded through the aftermath.
“Kai,” he repeated. “I think that was his name.”
Stefan regarded him fondly. “He tell you that?”
Dana knelt down and carefully tore at Stefan’s shirt to get a better look at a gash on his side. It wasn’t as deep as it looked. Dana was thankful.
“You know,” Stefan said, “No one’s ever heard a mermaid speak before—except the captain, I expect. The sea’s blessing, Mud flower. Good on you.”
On his way to the sickbay, before ducking below deck, Dana heard a sound. A minor chorus, rising up from the sea. The rain had died out after Kai returned to the water, and the moon shown through a break in the receding clouds. It wasn’t the wail of creatures in pain, nor the fear of loved ones, the battle cry of legions. This was a song. A song of thanks, of farewell. Maybe an apology—some hint of sadness that the war of species would no doubt continue despite them, despite the actions of one crew to save one fish.
Dana walked to the bulwarks, looking out across the ocean now that it had calmed. The voices of merfolk rose into the night. He saw them, the tops of their heads down to their shoulders, breaking through the surface of the water. He saw Kai among them, looking up at the humans who had saved him. Dana began to sing with them, a song with sharper notes and strings of human words. A folk song he had heard people on the docks singing when he boarded the ship for the first time. Other sailors above deck heard his response and one by two their voices joined him. Stefan’s voice rang at his side.
Beyond the chants of humans and the calls of merfolk, another sound crept through. One woman’s voice, neither human nor fish, swept through the air in a haunting melody.
The captain, with the moon in her eyes, sang for a woman in the water.
A teenage girl struggles to make sense of the dark place in which she’s trapped by drawing on past experiences.
Skull Cave
I have had dreams like this before. Ones that looked real, felt real.
The nice thing about those dreams was that, eventually, I found an awareness in them which allowed me to break free. I started to realize that when I ran, my legs were not moving. I became aware of the blankets around me. I remembered where I was before the dreaming happened, and came back to it.
This one was different.
I was in a cave. I figured that it had to be a cave, because I had never been in another place that was so dark. I went on a tour once. A stout woman in khakis and a dark green vest took a group of us—we, the tourist folk—down into the paved mouth of a cave. We carried electric lanterns. When we got to the deepest part of the tour, she told us all to turn them off, and when we did, there was no light. Not even a scrap.
That’s what happens when a space is surrounded by limestone, nestled hundreds of feet into the earth’s crust. It becomes a moderate forty-eight degrees year-round, and no light ever enters—except that which is forced into the crevices by humans. The shuffling of coats and sweaters could be heard through the palpable dark. It was the sound of twelve to fifteen people, all waving their hands in front of their faces, trying to see.
When I waved my hand in front of my face in this new place, it was the same. So absolute was the black before my eyes that I doubted my hand was even moving. I considered the possibility that it was no longer attached to my arm. That I was no longer attached to it. I listened for the shuffling of other arms, other bodies. I listened for other breaths escaping other lungs. I heard nothing. I heard so much nothing that I couldn’t hear myself.
Usually, when left in a quiet place, I could hear the faint rush of my blood, the throbbing of my heart, the contraction of my lungs. There were none of those things in the dark place.
It had to have been a cave . . . right?
“Oh, Ellie,” a tired voice sighed.
It whipped through me like a hurricane. There have been times when I was so entranced in a task that something as simple as a soft touch on the shoulder would be enough to send my heartbeat soaring. It happened when I was reading. It happened when I was trying to dab just enough super glue onto the broken arm of the small porcelain angel that had fallen off the tree last Christmas. In trying so hard to hear through the nothing around me, the whisper sounded like a whirlwind.
Hello? It was meant to be a shout. I tried to yell back to the voice, to use it as a point of orientation, but I felt nothing in my throat. There was no tension, no dryness. The scratch and pull of sound did not reach it.
Hello?
I tried to move toward the place where the whisper might have come from. I assumed that I had control of my feet, but I was entirely wrong. This was the point in most dreams when I realized that I was laying down. This was the point when I usually became aware that I was dreaming. When I could curl my toes and stretch my arms, and roll over in bed. When I could consider how bizarre dreams can be, and shrug off the momentary fright.
This one was different.
There is no good way to describe terror without the racing pulse of a heart that may or may not exist. It is not easy to picture the sensation without harsh, shallow breathing, or wild eyes looking this way and that. It may be difficult to comprehend when upside down and right-side up feel the same, or when the hairs on the nape of a neck cannot react to the space that may or may not be lurking behind them.
There was only a vacuum, and the bodiless frozen expanse of my own blind panic.
Hello?!
Who was out there, in the dark?
. . .
To read the rest of this story, support Wishbone Words, a magazine created by and for disabled artists. “Skull Cave” was published in Issue 12 in Nov. 2023. (I do not earn any royalties from the purchase of this issue. The small fee goes toward the cost of operation for this inclusive publication.)
This collection of exercises was based on a month-long challenge of daily one-word prompts. Aside from the list of words, no requirements for the challenge were given, so I set some goals for myself: I wanted to write about 500 words for each prompt, and I wanted to center the stories around two characters from I, Strahd: The Memoirs of a Vampire, Strahd von Zarovich and Alek Gwilym. I was mostly successful.
These are thus obviously Related Works, i.e. works of fanfiction. I have recieved some encouraging responses from fans of both that book and the Curse of Strahd module for 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons. The most enthusiastic of those has been in relation to the story “It’s all right”, an arguably canon-compliant 6k-word cycle of tragedy which I wrote in a feverous state on the third day. The generous host of the “Vampentine’s” challenge has said they now consider me an “official unofficial Ravenloft author” which continues to blow my mind. To put it bluntly: Goals.
The story titled “What have I done?” was written in response to a few notes shared in preparation for someone else’s Curse of Strahd campaign. The owner of those notes now shares the story I wrote for them at every relevant opportunity, and in this I am blessed.
While most of the stories contained within the collection are written as a third-person narrative, there are a few exceptions. Chapter 11 is a one-sided conversation, sort of like a script for an audio drama where the listener is a character within the setting. A couple chapters contain actual audio recordings. Chapter 25 is a first-person POV foil struggling to remember who they are. And, to save myself from a few other prompts, I went completely off-script and created illustrations instead.
I’ve never grown so much in one month, and while not every piece is perfect, I remain incredibly proud of this collection.
Archive of Our Own (Ao3) collectively won a Hugo Award for Related Works in 2019.
Nonfiction
The Circle
I.
We slept there once, under the stars. Breathing open air, instead of wrapped up tight in cabin bunks. There were five of us. We huddled together under cloaks, our socked feet freed from rubber soles, ankles released from the taut pull of laces. Our boots rested near the edge of the soft green glow that seeped up from between blades of grass, encompassing us in a comforting circle of light. The sky was clear. The weather was brisk. Our bodies were warm and smelled of running, of dirt, of ardor, of rest. We exhaled slowly, and woke alive with the sun on our faces.
II.
It was a ritual. We sat cross-legged inside the circle, our backs illuminated by its gentle light. Green is the color of life, of breath. Where I am most content, it is the color of the tiny plants beneath my feet, the ferns that brush against my knees, and the thick canopy of leaves overhead. Where I am most alive, it is the color of moss nestled between the roots of an old tree. It is the color that permeates the air before heavy rain. The vibrant meaning of green does not have to shine brightly to be felt in the pores of my spirit. It crawls into the cracks, fills them up, and it tells me: I will protect you.
A man with a pointed nose and skin like bark sat with a piece of parchment spread out before him. It was covered in foreign letters, the language of dragons and of magic. As he spoke, he lit a short candle. It slowly made its way around the circle, touched by each hand, fueled by every whisper. When the candle then returned to him, he held out to each of us, with wide embroidered sleeves, a twig. Each small sturdy branch was carved to a point at one end.
I gazed at the other people in the circle.
I will protect you.
III.
I approached the circle in little more than a sleeveless top and thin, billowing pants. It felt like nakedness, the rest of my physical possessions left behind at the place where I died. To my dismay and delight, my friends were there to greet me. They sat within the circle, stripped of their armor and trinkets. “Hey, hey!” they sang, raising their arms in welcome.
I stepped across the glowing barrier and sat down with them. “Got you, too, huh?”
We watched in limbo while more of our allies rushed past us, tailing or chased by monsters. We chatted. We laughed. We judged the way they ran. We recounted our flaws, in the tales of our personal defeats.
A man, dressed in black and wearing a white rope tied across his forehead, held out a bag. One by one, the people around me dipped their fingers into it. Inside the bag were a number of coins. Shiny, bare coins were our ticket back to the world of the living. Irreversible death was marked with a solemn black X.
I reached in and pulled out a copper coin. I turned it over. No black mark.
I heaved a sigh of relief and grinned wide, showing off my prize.
We made it.
All of us, but one.
IV.
The extension cord was pulled out of the socket, and the light ceased. A long string of green LEDs, fitted into a translucent rubber tube, were coiled around a forearm, wrist to elbow, elbow to wrist. The circle slithered away in short jerks.
It retreated, then, to the backs of our minds. The lights were put in a box, and that box was placed in a trailer, which was hooked up to the tail of a car, which drove to a house, many miles away, after stopping for lunch.
We ate our eggs and pancakes and hamburgers, dressed in questionably-clean t-shirts and dusty leather boots. There was grease in our hair and makeup in our pores. We tipped our waitress, and returned to the city.
There were lights there, but few were green, and the ground was impermeable.
ENGL 1022
18 February 2016
Humans in the Setting
Setting is a complex element of fiction and of our lives in the real world. When and where we exist, and the things that surround us, make up our setting. This element has the ability to affect how we feel and the way in which we interact with each other. In his story “Hunters in the Snow”, Tobias Wolff uses setting to describe the way in which the relationships between his characters develop. Using the tangible scope of the outside world during the winter and the contrasting warmth of indoor space, Wolff provides an interesting look into the atmosphere of society and how we come to form the relationships therein.
It is how the characters move through settings that helps define how they interact with each other. When we first encounter Wolff’s three characters, Tub waits outside for his opportunity to join Kenny and Frank, who share the interior of a truck. Granted, the truck is not particularly inviting, with its windscreen smashed in and its heater broken, but Kenny brought blankets (167), and that’s at least better than nothing. The blankets that the characters use within the truck are a buffer against the cold coming into the cab from outside, and serve to provide at least some small measure of warmth in an otherwise frigid and unwelcoming environment. Despite the poor way these men treat each other throughout the length of the story, there must have been some similarity or circumstance, regardless how small, that was enough for the three of them to prefer each other over other people, or decide to go on a hunting trip together. As with the blankets, they may not be incredibly kind to each other, or provide much warmth, but they might feel that they have no viable alternatives. Moving through a world full of strangers is similar to trudging through a blustery wilderness. Sometimes, we have to take what we can get.
When people are outside, they might feel exposed or unsafe, not only in the sense of unpleasant or unpredictable weather, but also in the presence of potentially adverse reactions from other people in society. As Tub confides to Frank at the roadhouse, “That’s the worst of it . . . the lying. Having to lead a double life . . . Always feeling like people are watching you, trying to catch you at something. Never able to just be yourself” (175). Most of us have secrets, things that we hide from other people, because we are ashamed or afraid of what they might think. The vast world of unpredictable reactions from which we seek to take shelter is represented in Wolff’s story by the snowy wilderness. The cold exterior space in “Hunters in the Snow” serves as a metaphor for social distance.
In contrast, our inner selves and the knowledge we are able to share with each other are shown through which characters venture inside with each other. The warm interior spaces are a physical example of our close interpersonal relationships. Going inside relates to who the characters will trust with what they know or who they are. The more we are able to trust someone and disclose information about our inner selves, the more comfortable we come to be with that person. Frank first shares his secret, his personal story, with Tub when they are in the tavern, sheltered, with steaming mugs of coffee in their hands (173). Similarly, Tub only begins to share his secret with Frank once they reach the roadhouse, having arrived back into an interior space, and they thaw under the hot air of a bathroom hand dryer (175). The setting both influences and reflects the characters’ ability to feel comfortable enough to begin to trust each other.
Although Frank and Tub develop a closer friendship as the story progresses, Kenny becomes more and more of an outsider. Wolff’s use of setting reinforces this development by never allowing the reader to witness Kenny within a truly warm interior space. Kenny does go into the farmer’s house, but he does so alone, leaving the reader with Frank and Tub outside, so they still do not have an interior relationship with Kenny or the farmer at that point (169). Those two men are still just another factor in the exterior setting. After Kenny gets shot, he is left out in the cold for all subsequent encounters that Frank, Tub, and the reader venture inside for. Even in the in-between space of the truck, Kenny becomes separated. When Frank and Tub decide to take the blankets into the cab to warm themselves (176), the cab of the truck becomes an interior space, warmed with understanding, while Kenny is left alone in the back, fully open to the elements. By being left outside, Kenny does not experience the sort of relationship nor comfort that exists between the other two characters. He becomes reintegrated into the exterior environment, both physically and socially.
Whether it is the cold exile of a wintery wilderness, the close-quartered warmth of a bar, or the trying in-between space of a beat-up truck stocked with a couple of blankets, setting serves as both an influence on and reflection of the relationships between the people who inhabit and move through them. Wolff uses this element especially well in “Hunters in the Snow” as both a catalyst for the interactions between Tub, Frank, and Kenny, and a larger metaphor for how many people in the real world, our world, either develop or move away from the relationships they have with each other.
Works Cited (MLA)
Wolff, Tobias. “Hunters in the Snow.” Literature and the Writing Process. Ed. Elizabeth McMahan, et al. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education, 2014. 166-176. Print.
This tab exists in memoriam to the capstone piece for my bachelor’s degree (c. 2019), which was a story about how the live-action roleplay character I’d played for eight years finally met with Death, and the way I had to cope with such a loss of self.
Fitting, I suppose, that it would have gotten lost in the shuffle when I upgraded my device. An early draft remains, but I haven’t had the heart to rewrite that story again.
I promise, it was beautiful. Its presentation brought my classmates to tears.
I had created an audio recording of it, too. Both that and the transcript are now gone.
Rest in peace, my love.
Spectral (hosted on Substack) is the audio narration of several personal essays or bits of memoir, supplemented by a couple of interviews. The project sprouted from the realization that I might actually be autistic, and became an outlet for some of the research and internal processing that I did in response to that idea. The podcast petered out around the time that I finally recieved a clinical diagnosis.
SPED Substitute For a Day: This Is What I Noticed
(follow the link to read on my Substack)
Last year, in the midst of teaching myself about autism and other forms of neurodivergence and disability, I was hired on with an agency that provided schools with substitute teachers. Part of this system included Special Education Paraprofessionals, which is where I come in.
It was shortly after a reunion with my partner’s extended family that I applied. One of his cousins (my in-laws) has a child with special needs. He’s a cheerful kid. Likes to run. We were gathered at his grandparents’ house, so the terrain was at least familiar to him, but it quickly became apparent to me that he needed something and no one was paying him any mind.
I’ve never been great with strangers, I’ll admit, especially children. Perhaps it shouldn’t have been a bold maneuver, but it sure felt that way: I got up from my seat and walked over to where this little guy was, standing on a treadmill and groping blindly for the controls above his head. I reminded him to use the small red clip that would stop the machine if he fell down, and stood behind him on the runner boards while I dialed in the settings for him.
He ran and ran and was delighted. When he was ready for a break, and I let him off the track, he thoughtfully clipped the safety line to my pocket so I could have a turn. I accepted his gesture of reciprocation. How could I not? I think I might have been a hero that day, and it felt very… well… special.
It was this interaction that made me believe I could work in Special Education (SPED), or at least try it out.
My first assignment was at a charter school, which advertised a special focus in the arts and sciences. I figured I would feel right at home in such a place, since I had grown up in gradeschools with a similar claim. But my assumptions were… not perfect. (Such is the nature of assuming, I suppose.)
I did get to interact with a few fascinating young people, while I was there, and I have some notes about those experiences. However, that assignment was (and might well continue to be) both my first and last experience as a SPED substitute.
What is an SPED Para Sub?
A Special Education Paraprofessional Substitute is someone who enters a school to cover the absence of a staff member meant to assist children diagnosed with a disability of some kind. One issue I encountered was that children must be intentionally admitted into the Special Education program to recieve any benefit from it, so undiagnosed or otherwise disadvantaged children tend to go unaided. Another issue was that the “assistance” was largely quantified as keeping special needs children “on task” in class.
What are the qualifications?
To be a substitute in this area, all I needed was a four-year bachelor’s degree. The subject of the degree seemed to be of little concern. As you can guess, I was a writing major. All of my knowledge of disabilities was self-taught within the previous year-or-so.
I recieved no training prior to my first day on the job, neither from the agency who hired me nor from the school I was called to assist.
At the start of the day, early in the morning, I was given a schedule, which included class time blocks, room numbers, and the names of SPED students in those classes. The regular paraprofessionals (paras) were incredibly kind and sympathetic to me as a first-time substitute (sub). A couple of them went through the provided schedule with me and made quick notes about the students involved: what their struggles were and the usual ways they were likely to act in class. Unfortunately, there was more than one last-minute change to my schedule (for reasons unknown to me), so a lot of their wisdom was quickly thrown out the window, much to my dismay.
Having only numbers and names to work with, then, I was left to my own devices to figure out which unfamiliar faces applied to these names and what their situation might be. The classes were only about 40 minutes long, and it was hit-or-miss whether the teacher in the room was willing to give me enough information (and tolerate my being new to all this). I found some of the correct children, and interacted with at least one who I thought was in the program, but actually wasn’t.
Here are some moments which stuck out to me:
“I’ve always been this way. I don’t know why.”
This was said by a boy with “double vision” whose eyes were sore from physical therapy the previous day, and blurry despite his glasses. In addition to his ailing sight, he tended toward self-regulating behaviors (stims) which were centered around balance: stacking books like Stonehenge on the table until they collapsed, or tucking his feet up onto his chair and rocking it forward on its front two legs. I let him do this, and merely spotted him so he wouldn’t fall over.
It took a good amount of quiet chatting with him (probably to the disgruntlement of his tablemates) to figure all this out, but I was happy that he was willing to tell me about it. Instead of prompting him to focus on the classwork (which involved analyzing an infographic, something he definitely wasn’t able to do, considering he couldn’t see it), I gave him a few verbal notes and pointed to where he ought to write them down as well as he could manage for the sake of scraping by.
“Does [name] have ADHD?” I asked.
“With a capital D,” said his fourth-grade teacher.
I met [name] in the utterly chaotic latter half of the day. (Maybe I should mention: it was Friday, which probably made all the hubub exponentially worse.) I didn’t know what his situation was until a while after I was instructed to sit with him out in the hall to make him calculate the volume of rectangular objects on a laptop computer.
First of all, I might be showing my own age and neurodivergence here, but if you’re going to calculate mathematical equations manually, you had better be using paper and pencil. It just makes more sense. Whatever happened to “showing your work”? What happened to learning, rather than performance?
That was how I discovered ADHD was what we were contending with, me and this fourth-grade boy. I only knew one way to explain the calculation of volume; my way: methodically, and broken up piecemeal into comprehensive steps. Steps which he would forget by the time I’d explained them, because they were tedious and uninteresting.
My genius of a partner was never great with math, either. (I was.) Even when he does carpentry projects around the house, I always measure and mark the pieces for him to cut. It’s not that he can’t do it, but that it takes him at least twice as long to force himself toward completion, and double that to check his work. Numbers are not everyone’s friend. You have to be able to hold those boring little digits in your head. Carry them around in your pocket like a set of tiny elbow wrenches to use in the appropriate moment.
I asked that fourth-grade teacher if he had any suggestions for how to make the assignment more engaging for his student. He acted as though his hands were utterly and completely tied. He sympathized with me for being new and at a loss, and prompted me to keep trying to redirect the boy’s attention. “It’s hard,” he said, “but you just have to be the bad guy.”
I would not. That fourth-grade student spent the rest of his classtime teaching me about soccer and the latest and greatest innovations in smart phone technology. That kid is going places, with or without a mastery of volume.
“Someone took my computer.”
This class was the worst of the lot. The teacher here was absolutely done, to the point that I wanted to take her aside and ask what she was dealing with. I didn’t. For one thing, it seemed bold, some random outsider coming into her domain to make embarrassing assumptions. There was little time, and she was in no mood. I was afraid to accidentally make it worse.
Ultimately, she was an adult, and I was there for a few specific kids… Children I had yet to identify.
I kept my eyes peeled for “unusual” behavior. Signs of struggle. The first I clocked was a girl who was adamant about the door clicking fully shut whenever someone came or left. She would get up to jog across the room and close it. She asked the teacher to repeat the password for a program (classroom laptops were pervasive in the latter half of the day) multiple times, and by the end of that back-and-forth I would have it memorized for days. I wanted to get up and write it on the whiteboard myself for both their sakes, but I was at the back of the room and had lost any bravery for public action I might once have had. I quietly commended the girl afterward for sticking with it and asking for what she needed. She looked at me like I was a rhinocerous beetle.
She was not in the Special Education program.
Aside: There were not many girls in SPED. I noted others who flew by under the radar, whether they might have been disabled or autistic like me and good at hiding it, or just… tired. The classrooms in this school were overcrowded and chaotic. Either way, those few with particularly downtrodden introvert demeanors did not escape my notice. I’ve been one of them. If I’d had time enough, I might have taken them aside, too, just to listen. I felt like some kind of triage nurse, watching people die. They were barely ten years old, and carried books.
The SPED student I finally identified was a thin boy staring at the back inside cover of a chunky thing I realized was a dictionary, although the endpapers were maps. He was wringing his hands in his shirt. I asked him if he knew what he was supposed to do. He said he didn’t, but it seemed that he had at least as much idea as I did. He hadn’t yet obtained a laptop from the cart.
I regained some courage on his behalf and asked his teacher for specifics. She called across the room for him to come get his computer, making me wither again. He said someone had taken it. They must have had assigned devices. I understood, then, that this boy was autistic, and someone had thoroughly derailed his expectations. “It doesn’t matter. Grab a different one,” the teacher replied.
Once he was set up with a laptop and had logged into his assignment, he did well with little coaxing. I sat next to him and confirmed that I was there to help if he needed anything. When a particularly stubborn question presented itself, he turned to me, and I helped him break down its purpose into more manageable bites.
And once he was more comfortable, this boy connected with me by using verbal stims. I shamelessly encouraged it, by echoing back the sounds when he asked me to, and he smiled when I’d got it right. A series of tongue clicks and something like the slushy Welsh sould “lla”. It was an absolute delight.
Then, to further baffle my upended schedule, his usual para relieved me of our little interaction before that class had even ended. My time was almost done, after that, and no one seemed to need me anymore, so I packed up and headed home.
Final Thoughts
I was exhausted for a week after all of that. There were many reasons I decided this kind of para work was not for me, but worst of all was what I often find apalling in the jobs I’ve held: An inability to solve deeper problems, not because I wouldn’t have known how, but because the undertaking was just too big, and I would have had to fight against a lot of obstacles to make it better.
I am one person, and one with limits. This isn’t a trait unique to me. The school was clearly understaffed, at least in the SPED department, if not on the whole. The class sizes were too big, cramming too many students into an array of desks which would probably have brought a fireman to tears. The teachers were tired. The students were distracted and depressed. It was 2023.
If this was a unique school, supposedly a champion of science and art in education, I don’t think I want to know what more traditional system schools are like. (I’ve never been in one, myself.) Children are not cattle who can be ushered forcefully from paddock to paddock all in the same blithe manner. They are human beings, and every one of them is different.
For what it’s worth, I think we all might be better off to let them tell us what they would like to learn, and how.
And watch them run, and become wild, powerful adults.
A series of articles available on my Ko-fi, created to demystify generic advice like “show don’t tell” and “write what you know”, and designed to give aspiring writers some grounded guidance on where to begin in their practice and how to improve their craft.
Articles include:
Character Descriptions: How Much to Reveal?
Practice Heralds Improvement: “Write More.” (coming soon)
Poetry
After a breif but harrowing era of my life, I was gifted a few chronic illnesses. The worst of them is a severe variety of atopic dermatitis (or eczema), where my skin does not properly retain mositure, so it is likely to break out in red, itchy patches which sometimes flake away. What do we do about this? Romanticize it, of course.
Dermatitis
Small flakes of skin sprinkle like snow
unique in size, shape, and composition—
tiny wends and wefts of my molecular existence
floating away in the breeze—
released from my body.
I am not reptilian, but constantly
my skin is shedding, sloughing off.
I wear it as a cloak,
draped like antique lace on my shoulders.
If it’s true that we are beings
composed wholly from the stuff of stars,
then my skin is shining even now—
dry as it is—a field of asteroids—
these flakes are like meteors—waiting to be born
and flung across the sky.
I scratch the dandruff,
watch it fall—and sometimes
I wonder how the world has changed,
now that my dust is dispersed
across the universe…
This poem is a fever dream. Every time I interact with it, I rearrange the lines. It’s always new, and old, and changing—much like folklore itself. I don’t always like it, but it lives.
Old tales
written on the flesh of trees—
pulped and pressed thin, into
soft, flat sheets—ivory white,
soaked with black ink, wrangled
into a fine tip, split in two—
a vein from which the color drips.
They saw it in the silver arc
glowing in the midnight sky—
an omen from the stars:
“Life, as you know it, ends now.”
Three women,
stretching up their arms,
watched the aspen fall.
A grown man strings
his bow, and watches,
hunched behind a tree—
wind rustling the leaves.
He takes a step—
sharp eyes snare a doe
and she goes.
A maiden fell in love
with a hunter. He clad her
feet in the skin of beasts,
and protected her
from where she’d grown—
the ground—soft, brown
dirt and dying things,
bearing fungus—she crushes
them
beneath his boots
and forgets.
Rock soup simmers
in the belly of a cast iron pot,
stirred with a smooth wooden spoon.
Old Woman’s skin
is like leather—armor of wrinkles—
but she laughs like the fairies,
and cackles with the crows.
She already knows:
“This, too, shall pass.”
Two sonnets based on a climactic moment in the novel I, Strahd: The Memoirs of a Vampire by P. N. Elrod (spoilers inbound). Both follow secondary character Alek Gwilym, the titular Lord Strahd von Zarovich’s captain of the guard, on one fateful night which changed the world as they knew it… for the worse.
Darkest Powers
The lips of every enamored lay
would sure be tempting on this stormy night.
To sate himself on loving flesh—but, nay,
a plot of gruesome treason lays in sight!
There is no room for error, now he knows
what young malignant traitor lurks within
the castle walls—and then the darkness grows
and bounds upstairs to head him off again.
To witness there his lord’s own deep unrest,
but glimpsed in candlelight through window yon,
has carved the heartbeat hollow in his chest;
replaced it with ensuing dread—No dawn
will light upon the face of either man
when darkest powers gain the upper hand.
Though Not A Wife
I vowed that I would heed thee for all time
A promise I would pride myself to keep
Protect and guard thee as if thou were mine
And I would sow, that thou might always reap
Alas, thy deepest hunger waits for her
whose quiet beauty piqued a jealous rage
One heart so tangled with another, turn’d
and trap’d thy soul within a misty cage
If only thou hadst spared my tender wound
so vicious made upon the waxing night
Had not then slaked on blood which there did bloom
and stolen all the years which were thy right
If only thou didst ask for my whole life
The whole I’d give—though not, myself, a wife
A sassy little thing from when I took an introductory course to creative writing in college. I don’t know the first two things about poems, really. The hardest part is reading them.
End Rhymes
I hope to read your many poems,
based on your life, others’, or on gnomes.
My friends, though you’ve some great ideas,
your end rhymes bring me near to tears.
When I read an end-rhyme story
the end result is often sorry.
You see, I only read the end-rhyme words,
something, something, rhymes with birds,
something else—it might be curds,
or galloping, scalloping, mish-mash herds.
Was there, then, some secret meaning
hiding there? (I couldn’t glean it.)
Thy rhythm sounds like Dr. Seuss,
more oft’ than not—Oh, what’s the use?
I’d really like to learn your stories—
If only end rhymes weren’t so boring!
Now, I don’t claim to be an expert
—it’s my opinion I insert—
but, based upon my recent classes
(I’m a smarty; I wear glasses)
I tend to think I know what’s up:
These end-rhyme poems aren’t up to snuff!
This is not exactly poetry, but it careens into something like prose poetry midway through, and it is one of my favorite pieces to date. The vignette was written as part of a prompt challenge for fans of I, Strahd by P. N. Elrod, to illustrate an intimate relationship between characters Alek Gwilym and Strahd von Zarovich.
The prompt was “Cloak”. I also narrated it.
Dismantled
At first glance, the cloak was black, and that was all. It hung over Strahd’s impeccably squared shoulders and draped long and straight past his ankles. It was made of fine wool from only the blackest of sheep and overdyed besides, to achieve an even richer, deeper shade.
What most did not see, at first glance—which was the most opportunity most people ever had to look—was the way the color faded brownish toward the hem. The protective woven trim along its bottom edge had twice been replaced, but even now it was beginning to fray again from frequent use, with bits of mud and dust crusted along the join of stitching, despite diligent efforts to brush it carefully out. The brownish hue was of the natural dark wool, scrubbed raw of its additional dyes by the combined menace of rain and sleet and sunlight, by kneeling and sitting and otherwise battering the fabric with his legs as Strahd walked. It was faded this way around the collar line as well, not only by precipitation from the sky but perspiration from his body also, where it clasped around Strahd’s neck at the front with intricate loops and buttons, although the effect there was somewhat hidden by the folds of its hood, whether drawn up to protect Strahd’s head or swooping back to rest upon his shoulder blades in comfortable disuse.
Most also did not notice the stains of iron blood in splatters on the parts which covered up Strahd’s chest and arms, but this was by design. Black would always be a practical choice for a noble man engaged in war. But, unlike the careful dyes, these evidences of the lives he’d claimed would never, it seemed, fade.
Hardly anyone had seen the inside of the cloak, except perhaps a passing glimpse, when a long leg kicked its front gores brusquely forward, and the center part flapped open to reveal a secret corner near Strahd’s feet. The lining from the shoulders down was sturdy linen, and this had been dyed red. A lord could afford his indulgences.
Deft hands slipped beneath the old wool cloak, prying deep into its scarlet depths. They found Strahd’s waist and settled there.
What the cloak would see, if it had sight, was a partner of its own, a well-worn and half shorter cape in marled gray and fawn. It draped about square shoulders and fell upon long arms, but sometimes only one of them, clinging by the collar to a rope which tied beneath the other. The shabby cape, of slightly newer stock but less well-kept, having been tossed about on chairs and bedposts, trampled in snow and singed by fire, and snagged by wind and steel on blood-slick fields and rugged roads, was worn by Strahd’s second in command. Its lining held no secrets, and neither did its shell.
The soft rustle of fabric underscored the tender smack of joining lips. A light breeze whispered ancient nothings to the spires of the pines.
Strahd stumbled on the frayed edge of his concealing garment. Awkwardly, it tugged him down, scattering its winged entrails wide upon the ground. Alek followed, laughing low, and unhooked the buttons at Strahd’s throat. He kissed him again ardently, and Strahd forgave himself the lapse in form. He allowed his face a surreptitious grin, gently grasping Alek’s jaw.
Through their kisses, Alek pulled the cord on his own cape, which slid softly off his shoulder. It landed as a heap upon the pool of red. Leaning on one arm for balance, Alek scooped up his small sacrifice and placed it behind Strahd’s head. He then sank down, himself, to slide one knee beneath Strahd’s thigh and guide it up onto his hip. Strahd’s heel snagged the fraying edge again, forming subtle ripples in its wake.
Their other garments hardly mattered, none of them so constant as a cloak, but each left one by one with reverence, until the only thing between the two men’s souls was their own skin and bones. Like a curtain in an open window, billowing gently with the breeze, they undulated against each other, breathing now in stuttered gasps.
Strahd’s arm replaced the rope that had been tied across his second’s chest, and Alek’s lips replaced the loops which often rested near the base of his lord’s throat. Strahd’s moan was deeply that of velvet; he tipped his head back on the wool, the fibers catching on his hair. Alek’s fingers clawed in crimson linen—he hardly spoke at all, which was very much unlike him. While trees around them swayed and groaned, their branches stroked each other.
The sky above was clear and crisp, unshrouded were the stars; they winked like faraway jewels, glass beads held high by silver thread. And then they vanished. Strahd’s eyelids, like a hood, pulled down on his dark gaze. The winding fabric of his loins further twisted and wound tight. The inside of his weathered cloak would find new secret stains, not least of which his sweat, which pooled cooly down along his spine, and soaked into the centerline, while Alek kissed his breast.
When all was done and quiet, Strahd reached out both his arms to draw the edges of the great cloak inward, wrapping them around the back of his beloved guard. Alek laid within it, his body draped on Strahd’s, a cloak within a cloak, the only one to have borne witness to this much of such a lovely scarlet lining.