Telling Stories

by Xander M. Odell

Sam knew there would be trouble the night the saguaro came to call. “Evening,” she said, and stepped aside for her unexpected guest.

The cactus scrunched down as far as it could and skittered through the door on its roots, bringing with it the breath of rocks, sage brush, and the cold Sonoran desert night. It stopped in the middle of the cabin’s sparsely furnished main room and straightened until its spines brushed the roof. “I hope I didn’t come at a bad time.”

“Not at all. I don’t get many saguaros stopping by.” She didn’t have many anybodies stopping by anymore, but saying so would have been rude. She settled into the rocker by a bookcase crammed with dog-earred issues of Popular Mechanics and National Geograhic. “What can I do for you?”

The cactus tried to straighten to its full height, but the roof got in the way. “I wish to marry a gila monster.”

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La Héron

by Charlotte Ashley

In the grayest hour of the evening of April 16th, 1699, when the sun had just vanished behind the great château that embraced the city of Caen but before her lantern-bearers had taken up the hooks of their trade, a gargantuan woman stooped to fit through the door of the Trois Tours Inn. Her inconvenience did not end at the door. Her steeple-crown hat, two centuries out of fashion, bumped the inn’s rafters and fell askew, causing her to swear and slouch as she made her way toward the crowd clustered at the foot of the stairs. Like the other travelers there, she was road-worn and unkempt, blonde hair so filthy that it looked green in the moonlight, spilling like seaweed out of her pointed cap. But so great was the force of her presence that the lesser persons ahead of her moved aside at her approach, clearing the path to the front of the queue where a registrar sat at a table, poised over a long ledger. His pen shook as it hovered over the lists.

“Name?”

“La Héron.”

“Weapon?”

“Rapier.”

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