Hello, all! I’m happy to report that after three years, our collaborative anthology, The Ceaseless Way, is now on sale in ebook and paperback formats. A lot of work has gone into this project, and though there have been bumps in the road, we’re really proud of the project we came out with.
This is a speculative fiction anthology (mostly science fiction and fantasy, with a little bit of horror), and each of the participating writers contributed two stories. Besides myself, the writers involved are Fraser Sherman, Ada Milenkovic Brown, Secily Luker, Allegra Gulino, Arden Brooks, and Rich Matrunick. “Wandering Grove Press” is the name we’ve given to what’s essentially an online writing co-op. The book is self-published, but a lot of time and work went into it.
The paperback version will be on sale for $9.99 until the new year, at which point it will go up to $12.99, so if you’re interested in purchasing a hard copy this is the best time to do it. The ebook version will remain at $5.99. If you’d like to follow our group for updates, you can find us on Facebook here or on Bluesky here.
I’m a little behind on my publicity posts, but check this space for the next couple of weeks for interviews with some fellow authors and a couple of insights into my own stories in the antho, “We Go Hiking” and “Jenny and the Fairy Queen.”
Cover image by GetCovers; original cover concept by Arden Brooks.
Hello! I’m happy to announce that my new flash piece “Sea People” has been accepted for publication in Fish Gather to Listen, an upcoming horror anthology by Horns & Rattles Press.
The book will be out quite soon (maybe as soon as August), but there’s a Kickstarter in progress with stretch goals to make it extra fancy. Check it out, and I hope you’ll check out the anthology when it’s published. : )
I wrote this for a flash fiction contest in 2021. It didn’t win, but it made the final round. : )
Please inform the Headmaster that he is not welcome at my son’s farewell.
The event will celebrate the life of a young man leaving Earth both bravely and too early. Tomorrow, when Hell’s emissaries return, those waiting should be Jeremy’s friends, mentors, and family. No one wishes to see the man who doomed him.
It is a deep shame to this Academy that the man entrusted with guarding the Stone Gate ‘yea unto his very death’ abandoned his post just when the Gate’s opening was imminent, leaving only a half-trained student in his place. Jeremy’s compact with Hell has saved the world, and history will look upon him as a hero. Though he is lost to us, we can still support him as he prepares to go where no living soul has gone.
We always knew our Jeremy was born to be a legend. He is young for this journey, but there are young explorers on every new frontier. We know his letters will be a wonder to the world, whenever the world is able to receive them.
As for the Headmaster, he may wish to consider who will guard the other portals now that his best new champion is leaving on Hell’s compact. The Stone Gate may close, but other emissaries are coming, and our family has already given all it can.
Thus, perhaps it is for the best that the Headmaster will not attend Jeremy’s send-off.
*I wrote this piece last month, and started submitting it right away. It got rejected three times, very quickly, and I realized there was probably something fundamental that wasn’t working. I think, in retrospect, that 1) it’s too on-the-nose, and 2) it probably should have had a slightly longer ending, and a bit more introduction of the main conflict in the opening lines. Rather than rewrite it, I’m going to put it here as it is, and I hope someone enjoys it. : )
I’ve been eating for hours, but the table is still covered with bright porcelain teapots, serving plates, baskets of muffins and scones, and anything else a child could want. I’ve drunk four cups of tea (Lady Grey, hibiscus, chamomile, and mint) and sampled all the snacks within reach. I’m getting full. I study the cream puff in my hand, wondering if it’s all right to put it back. I feel guilty thinking about it, as if I’ve betrayed someone’s expectation of me. In the end, I eat it.
There’s no one else here. I’ve been alone for a while. I keep eating and waiting as others get up (tall, stately, ladylike in their long tea dresses and broad-brimmed hats) and leave the picnic, walking from the party to the garden trails, going to places I can’t see. Nothing keeps me here. I could go, too. But I’m afraid to take those unknown trails, to leave this beautiful table for whoever may come next. The women who’ve left have not come back. I think it might be better to stay here in this soft garden chair, helping myself to tea and sweets while the wind plays with the brim of my yellow straw hat. It’s better to enjoy good things when you find them. If I leave, I might not find such good things again.
The sun has been bright all day. When I first sat down (ages and ages ago), I felt a little hot. I took a seat in the shade of a lush, leafy oak branch that reached its armful of acorns across the table. But now that time has passed, the light doesn’t hurt so much. The breeze that blows the branches of the trees has kept the tables beneath them cool and fresh. I feel a little foolish now to be hiding under an oak bough, when all the other girls who’ve sat at this table have faced the sun bravely with smiles on their faces. One by one, they’ve stood and walked away, tall and graceful and grown. I still wait in my oak-shaded seat for the moment when it will feel right to leave the party.
“Hello.”
A girl in red sits down across from me, right in the full sun. She smiles at me as she stacks a plate with scones, sandwiches, éclairs, petits fours, and everything else in reach. Her hat is as red as her sundress. I think she’s around my age.
“You’re the only one here,” she says after a moment.
“The others left.” I am looking at her dark eyes under the scarlet sun hat. They seem a little older than I thought. “People come and go here. No one stays long.”
“Except you?” The girl eats a small bunch of grapes, looking at my plate. “You look as if you’ve been here a long time.”
“I don’t know where else to go.” The paths are easy to see, but I can’t guess which to take or where any of them will lead.
She looks at me, and then at the nearest trail. “Go where you like. Just get up and pick a direction.” Her voice sounds lower than it did a second ago. Her face is sharper, too. The cut of her red dress seems to change by the minute. Looking at her face again, I can see that she’s older than me.
I look at the garden paths again. There are seven or eight of them, maybe more. Trees grow close around their entrances, and the light doesn’t reach far inside. “I don’t know which direction to go,” I say slowly. I know somehow that once I’ve chosen a path, the others will be gone, at least for me. There is only one chance to make this choice. “What if I choose the wrong one?”
She shrugs. She has cleared a few plates of cherries, watermelon, tarts, and little sandwiches. Now she’s looking at her half-empty cup of tea as if deciding whether to put it down. “Just go and look. All you can do is try to make a good choice. Just do your best, and keep doing your best after that.”
I am starting to resent this girl’s coolness, her rose-red confidence. How can she know what’s going to happen to either of us? What gives her the right to advise me? “Is that what you plan to do?” My voice is snider than I meant it to be. I take a defiant bite of cherry cream cake, though the taste is starting to cloy.
The girl nods. Pushing away her plate, she drains her teacup and springs to her feet. She is fully grown now, with power in her broad shoulders, the tilt of her lovely head, the length of her muscular legs. Her dress is short, her hat jaunty, her face exquisitely painted. She glances at each path and makes her decision. Before I can ask her to wait, she runs down the nearest path and is gone in seconds under the trees.
So I’m alone again.
I look again at the teapots and serving bowls, the undiminished cakes and pies, the vast assemblage of butter, cream, and jam. Everything is as lovely as it ever was: the food as fresh and well plated, the flowers as bright and welcoming in their vases as when I sat down many hours ago. Steam still rises from the teapots, and I know that if I pour another cup, the tea will be perfect.
But I’ve lost my appetite. It’s time to go.
I stand up. Then I nearly fall down. I’ve grown much taller since I’ve been here. My dress fits awkwardly, as if it weren’t cut for me. I feel as if I’ve been given the wrong limbs.
I wobble and stagger before finding my new balance. The tables and chairs are far below me now, so obviously child-sized that I’m not sure how I ever felt comfortable here. This is clearly a children’s picnic. Shifting on my shaky fawn’s legs, I wonder where I should go.
I begin looking down the pathways, one after another. They all have a certain beauty, and something draws me towards each one: a branch twined with ivy, a wall of wisteria, a shiver of birds in a hedge. The trees that line the paths are tall and graceful, ancient in their grace. Slowly, I begin to move towards the nearest trail.
A burst of laughter, distant but clear, floats up the trail towards me. I remember that these paths aren’t empty. They’re peopled with people who know much more about the world than I do.
I turn towards another path, and again I hear women’s voices: talking, whispering, laughing. The girls who were my companions at these tables are now far ahead of me. The space I am about to enter is their space. In my awkward dress and awkward manners, I will only be a half-welcome newcomer at the end of any of these trails.
There is little I know about these paths, but I know all at once that I don’t want to take them.
So I begin to look not at the paths, but between them. There are places along the edges of this clearing where the trees grow so close, the vines twine so tightly, that no pathway could be formed. Examining these places, I see, in the darkest and richest intertwining of trees, that the green shades and rustling hollows are as lovely as any garden trail. Though the tangle is thick, there is sunlight to be found there. No human laughter echoes from the woods, but there is other laughter there, softer and more inviting than any I’ve heard before.
I take off my hat and put it on the table. Then I take off my shoes, which are so tight I don’t know how I ever got them on. I shiver gratefully as my toes uncurl, already feeling healthier and stronger. I peel off my lace-trimmed socks and drop them like dead petals beside the shoes. My bare toes burrow in the dirt like the roots of a plant starving for water.
The dress I’m wearing is too tight, so I unbutton it until I can breathe. Then I step back from the table into the shadow of the trees.
The picnic is still spread for company, its child-sized tables bright under the summer sun. I bid the place a nostalgic farewell, and then I walk into the forest. My bare feet find their way surely through the roots and undergrowth. My legs, long cramped, unfold into this new exercise. I wonder what I will be when I come to the end of this pathway, and what tables are waiting deep inside the wood.
You have never seen beauty like the sunlight shining through shop windows into this proliferation of color. Red glass bowls cast crimson parabolas across a white tablecloth. A cluster of blue wine bottles share the light between them, commingling their cobalt splendor. So brightly do the points of sunlight blaze in a large family of crystal balls that you remember stories about house fires started by unwatched refractions.
A row of prisms dance across the top edge of the front windows. You squint into their scattered rainbows. They seem to scatter memories, too: you can’t remember how you got here.
The shop is uncomfortably warm, and has a stale smell, as if no one has visited in a long time. You wonder where the owner is. It feels wrong to leave the place unattended, but you don’t want to stay. Though the air is still, the glass ornaments and bells that hang from the ceiling shiver as if in a soft wind. You think of ghosts. In Victorian times they would cover the mirrors when someone died so they couldn’t trap the dead. What might be trapped in this chaos of reflections?
You wander through the shop, dusting your hands across forests of art-glass swizzle sticks and animal figurines. A heap of round glass fishing floats (witch balls, they call them) occupies one corner. Tiffany lamps sprout from a table like psychedelic mushrooms. Another table is green: bottles, vases, gazing-globes, liquor glasses, opera glasses, ashtrays. Antique Christmas ornaments cover most of one wall. Below them are big crystal bowls filled with smaller items: beads, marbles, stained-glass nuggets.
You dig your hands into this clicking hoard and pick up a lump of yellow glass. In the sunlight, it reminds you of urine. You put it back and pick up a soda-blue marble. As you roll it in your hand, your mind supplies the taste of it: how it would clatter on your teeth, slide cool and slick across your tongue; how tempted you would be to swallow.
Dropping temptation back in the bowl, you return to the center of the shop. Something has changed, but you can’t pinpoint it. Then you look again, and see what was there from the beginning.
Against the far wall stands a tall wooden case, rough-built like a wartime coffin, its front a plate-glass window. Inside, a man stands sleeping. He is of no particular age or obvious character, but you shudder to see him. Somehow he stands upright without support, and you wonder if he is a wax figure or some kind of mannequin. You don’t know why he could be here. He doesn’t belong.
From a hook beside the case hangs a long iron hammer. It is dull and crudely made. It looks like something used to stun animals for slaughter. Like the man in the box, there is no reason for it to be here. Like the man in the box, it makes you shudder.
You are standing in the center aisle. Tables to your left and right hold trays of little things one might pick up. Your eye falls on a silver tea tray loaded with glass paperweights. Your fingers close around one clear orb with a blood-red flower blooming in the center. It’s heavy as a stone, and fits perfectly into the curve of your hand. You want to throw it more than you’ve ever wanted to do anything in your life.
When you look up at the man, his eyes are open. They fix on you, muddy and cruel. He grins.
The paperweight flies from your hand. The crash of glass through glass is as loud as the death of the world.
When the echoes clear, the man steps out of the case. He inhales loudly, sucking at the meager air. He takes up more than physical space. He lifts the iron hammer from its hook. It seems to fit perfectly into the curve of his hand.
“No.” Your voice shivers. “Don’t do it. Please.”
For a second, he is still. Danger stands poised, not yet loosed on the world. You feel that there is something you could say to stop what’s going to happen. But no words come to mind.
The moment passes. Rolling his shoulders, he steps forward with brutish boots, swinging the hammer, loosening his muscles. A flick of his arm smashes a tableful of figurines. Animal heads and broken ballerinas glitter in the air for an instant before they fall. Another blow obliterates the glass table they stood on.
He clears the next table with a careless backswing. Another wave of glass crashes to the floor. The base of a round bud vase rolls to your feet, glimmering like Eris’ apple.
You start to back away. You think of running, but know you won’t reach the door in time. He is grinning, still grinning, anticipating the moment when there is no glass and only you remain.
“Stop,” you say. Your voice doesn’t make much noise now.
He swings high, smashing chandeliers, breaking bells and sweet glass chimes. Glittering shrapnel stings your brow and cheeks. You close your eyes, but the crashing of his hammer only magnifies when you don’t watch him. When you open your eyes, the shop is gone.
You stand in a waste of shards and powder. Glass dust hangs in the air. Fragments of it are trapped in the creases of your eyelids. Soon you’ll blink, and they will fall into your eyes.
The man rolls his shoulders, breathing heavily. Beneath his shaggy, glass-flecked hair, his eyes are unreadable. You open your mouth for one last plea, but your throat will not contract. Your muscles lock up one by one, leaving you frozen, unable to run, unable to fall.
As he lifts his hammer for the final blow, you look down and see that you are made of glass.
Katherine Traylor 