A Whisper in the Weld

By Alix E. Harrow

Isa died in a sudden suffocation of boiling blood and iron cinder in her mouth; she returned to herself wearing a blue cotton dress stained with fresh tobacco. She was younger and leaner, as she’d been when she first met Leslie Bell. Her skin shone dark and warm without the black dust of the mill ground into it.

After death, ghosts are sculpted like cold clay into the shapes they wore when they were most alive. Some people are taken awfully by surprise. Women whose whole lives were about their husbands and homes are, without warning, precisely as they were when they met a stranger’s eyes on a crowded streetcar. Men who had the kinds of careers that involved velvet-lined train cars and cigar smoke are suddenly nine years old, running their spectral fingers through the tall grasses and thinking of nothing at all.

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Hyddwen

by Heather Rose Jones

Morvyth verch Rys na vynnei wr, o achaws y serch, a’r caryat a dodassei hi ar Elin, Arglwyddes Madrunion. A guedy daruot a dywedyssam ni uchot—anvon y gwylan yn llatai attei, a’r chwarae a’r got yn y wled, a gyrru’r Gwyddel i ymdeith yn waclaw—dyvod a wnaeth Morvyth hyt yn Llyswen. Ac yno y trulyssant teir blyned trwy digrivwch a llywenyd.

Morvyth, the daughter of Rys, had no desire for a husband because of the passion and the love she had for Elin, the Lady of Madrunion. And after what we spoke of above—sending the gull as love-messenger to her, and the trick with the sack at the wedding feast, and sending the Irishman away empty-handed—Morvyth came to live at Llyswen. And there they spent three years in happiness and joy.

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Cassandra Writes Out of Order

By Andrea Tang

NOTE: The story “Cassandra Writes out of Order” has been taken down at the author’s request. Sorry for any inconvenience.

In Spring, the Dawn. In Summer, the Night.

By Aidan Doyle