
PodCastle 887: “The Cuckoo of Vrežna Mountain
Show Notes
Rated PG-13
The Cuckoo of Vrežna Mountain
by Filip Hajdar Drnovšek Zorko
I realised I was in love with Ivor the day he went up the mountain to speak with the goddess.
We were at that age when the affectionate ease of childhood tips over into something different, when every touch could be the casual brush of friendship or something more and I would never know in advance which was which. There were many times, in those days, when Ivor would take my hands in his, larger and warmer and smooth with the orange-blossom oil he rubbed into them; and I would jerk away with some hasty apology and adjust my trousers while he was not looking. To this day, I find the smell of oranges arousing at the most inopportune times, of which, in a town known for its citrus trees, there are uncomfortably many.
Which is to say that it was not entirely unexpected, this matter of my being in love with him, except insofar as I had never considered the option until it was upon me; and if we had been boys further up the coast, away from the Oracle and her mountain, perhaps this would have been a cause for celebration: the sort of slow exploration of love and youth that ends, mutually, in a friendship deeper than it was before. (Continue Reading…)