Mycelium

by Beth Goder

I only travel to the golden head when the dragonflies are in season. It’s Piack and me this year, rafting up the river past the lilies and arched trees. While I steer us through the river’s gentle snarls, he sings about lost keys to pass the time — he’s always had a thing about lost keys and the doors they’ll never open, the places we’ll never find.

“Are you going to eat what the head gives you?” asks Piack. He’s one year older than I am — nineteen. With the sun behind him, his form swims in light.

The dragonflies buzz around us, brush their wings against our faces.

Piack’s scent is like apples after harvest, and the soft smell of bark, and some deeper, stranger thing. The first time I saw him, he was running through flax fields for the joy of it. I dropped my basket to join him, feet smashing through fallen stems. We were two wild children, stomping across logs, burrowing into fleecy snow, cracking open walnuts like badgers and scuffling through the shells. That feels like so long ago, now.

He brushes dragonflies from my cheek, and as he cups his hand, it looks as if he’s catching the setting sun. (Continue Reading…)

Maintenance Phase

by A.D. Ellicott

Mary woke in an unfamiliar bed, gasping for breath.

She recalled the shots, the dancing, the giggling stumble into a stranger’s apartment while they pulled off each other’s dresses. Her internal organs felt cramped up together, as though they were rats fighting for scarce space in the sewers. Her plan was to sneak home later in the night and return to her own form, but instead she’d slept shifted. She groaned and smacked her hand over her eyes.

“She wakes!” someone yelled from outside the open bedroom door. Her bedmate from last night walked in, red hair in a messy bun and spatula held aloft. “Want pancakes?” (Continue Reading…)

The House, the Witch, and Sugarcane Stalks

by Amanda Helms

The house wakes from its somnolence as the witch trudges up the path made of tarts. Through its rock-candy windows, the house scans her figure for any signs of hurt. The witch’s errands in the city make her nervous. And the house, being made of her magic and therefore of the witch, worries along with her that the wrong person might recognize her, or simply think they do. “They say Creoles all look alike,” she’s said, bitter.

It astounds the house, that the witch could be mistaken for any other but herself. That someone could fail to identify her tightly coiling black hair, her agate eyes, her russet skin as the witch’s, and the witch’s alone. (Continue Reading…)

On the Shoulders of Giants

by Charles Chin

I was born a T12. Sure, it was the lowest of the thoracic vertebrae, but it was higher than any of the lumbars. I should be thankful to have been born high enough to see above the clouds. The L2s and L3s that climb beside me spent most of their youth in the haze below, unable to see the sun, not knowing how much more of the giant there was left to climb. But not me: fortunate me.

I grasp at rocky outcroppings and pull myself up the well worn stairs, carved into the ground by those who came before me. Moss hangs from the edges where feet avoid stepping, lest they slip down into the endless void of white below. The wall to my left rises as a sheer cliff of granite, or perhaps marble. It is difficult to know from the amount of lichen and foliage that hang down like curtains. But through the small holes cleaned out by the hands of travelers before, I can sometimes see the glint of the giant who breathes underneath. (Continue Reading…)