Story Excerpts
The Crystal Ladies' Ball
Published in Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, Issue 9 (November 2001).
The crystal ladies' ball convenes at summer solstice, and winter solstice, and all perfect evenings in between. The ladies arrive in crystal carriages, glass gondolas, or riding diamond dromedaries. They are, to the last one, dazzling, elegant, sophisticated, charming, enchanting, and beautiful.
Their escorts are drab things, liveried servants with saturnine expressions and too-small mouths. They help the ladies from the shining vehicles before fading into the night, grim in their resolve. Spare, harsh, devoid of the ethereal; functional mechanism wedded to engineered flesh; they are the population of my inherited caste. Measured against the crystal ladies, they are tedious and stark. The ladies themselves do not seem troubled by this incongruity, and their laughter floats like bubbles up to my concealed perch.
I sit in a digital tree and watch them arrive, streaming up shimmering stairs into the vaulted hall. There is a lovely balcony not far from my tree, and the shifting foliage is for me the perfect blind. The hall fills quickly, while I – the graceless half-sister, unseen, disregarded – observe their motions, entranced.
* * *
The crystal ladies need no partners when they dance, such is their grace and circumspection. They glide serenely, twirling out a ballet of consecration. Invariably they begin the night dancing, but more astonishing sights may be seen by the patient and discreet.
The ladies are unparalleled in visual display. Their heels are stiletto, arching elegantly down to delicate toes, soft nails trimmed straight and glistening. Their headpieces might be called singular: corrugated spirals, shell-like; illuminated lamellas, mushroom-like; enthusiastic extrusions, tropical flower-like. The distinction between flesh and cosmetic artifice is ambiguous at best.
Destroyer
Published in Trampoline (Small Beer Press, 2003), edited by Kelly Link.
"I have a black hole."
Ruth turned around. A girl who lived down the street, a skinny child of maybe twelve or thirteen, stood behind her with her hands cupped one over the other. Ruth wiped her forehead and balanced her garden clippers on the head of a large stone toad that Sally insisted on keeping by the front walk.
"Really," Ruth said. She hoped the girl – what was her name? Ashley – wouldn't hang around too long. "I thought black holes were only in outer space."
"It's a primordial black hole," Ashley said. Her tone suggested that this was the key piece of information that Ruth had been missing.
"Oh, a primordial black hole," Ruth answered. She glanced at her watch. Time for dinner and the evening news soon.
"I found it and tamed it."
"That's so interesting." Ruth fingered the azaleas. "What do black holes eat."
Ashley perked up. "Most people don't know to ask that. I mean, you'd think a black hole would have all it needs, right? But I do have to feed it sometimes, otherwise it might evaporate. It's not picky, really. Grass, pebbles, lima beans, whatever." She peeked between her fingers. "Although I think I need to put it on a diet. You have to be careful with black holes. It's bad news for the neighborhood if they get too big."
"Hmm. I didn't know that." The girl kept watching her, and apparently did not plan to leave soon. Ruth sighed. "Does it have a name?"
"Oh, I'd never give it a name," Ashley said. "Whatever you give a black hole never comes out. Whoa, think about it! What if I gave it the name 'Fred'? Then everyone in the world named 'Fred' wouldn't have a name anymore." She shook her head. "I just take care of it, and it lets me hold it." She held her hands out and parted them halfway. "Do you want to pet it?"
Ruth blinked and rubbed her eyes. There seemed to be a dark spot in her vision.
Ashley heaved a deep sigh and reached into her hip bag. "Everyone just blinks at me when I show it to them."
Epistolary
Unpublished
My echo, my ocean, my unfurled sail,
I write you this on a piece of seaweed with ink supplied by an obliging octopus. I am sitting in the belly of the Great Fish (not A great fish, but THE Great Fish, as evidenced by the ancient scrawl to my right: "Jonah was here"). I am happy to report, for the scripturally inclined, that the Great Fish is indeed a whale, what kind I'm not certain, and apparently not a strict vegetarian. Particularly in light of my presence in its spacious, if somewhat rank, digestive tract.
Make all effort to receive this letter, my sleep, my midnight, my constellation, because I have news: I am coming for you. I have your rescue planned, though I must confirm the details. Did you expect it? Did you doubt it? Am I not your surf, your mast, your unwalked plank? From the gut of this beast of doubt, I am coming for you.
Soon I will pass through the vast anus of the Great Fish and will find a trustworthy corvina or grouper to relay this to you.
The Fish Girl
Published in Fantasy Magazine (March 2007)
I don't know how long I've been here when I notice a man walking toward me along the beach. He looks old, even from here, and he's very dark. His clothes look old, too, but they also look like he takes a lot of care of them. His white shirt is tucked in neatly, his shoes are shined, and he's wearing a belt.
He walks along the beach, fishing rod in one hand and a bucket in the other, head down like he's keeping an eye on his feet.
Finally he stops in front of me and glances up. "Oh, it's you. So you've finally come."
Rapunzel Dreams of Knives
Published in Strange Horizons (17 October 2005)
The witch's skin gleams pale by starlight. She sheds her heavy robes beside the open window, slides the concealing layers back and aside so that they pool around her feet. A gauzy shift reveals wiry arms, gaunt legs, the sagging chest of a woman decades past child bearing. The wind presses light cloth against the body it barely covers.
Rapunzel watches because the witch expects her to.
The witch walks forward into the shadows, toward Rapunzel. After darkness enfolds the witch's body, the image of her translucent skin will stay in Rapunzel's eye for many hours. The witch sits down, her thin leg brushing Rapunzel's plump one, and takes Rapunzel's hand. She begins to speak and does not stop until dawn chases the starlight away. She speaks of secret desires and secret hate. She speaks of distant lands, distant times, of people high and low. Sometimes Rapunzel does not like what the witch says, but she always, always believes her.
Finally the witch stands, her body diminishing as the light rises; she draws her robes around herself.
"Let me down," the witch requires.
Rapunzel always wonders how such a gaunt person could be so very heavy.
Instructions on How to Raise Your Captor, Jailor and Negative Mother Figure Up Into a Tower by Your Hair
by Rapunzel
- First, braiding helps.
- In fact, braiding is imperative.
- Two braids may seem like a good idea, but don't try it. Trust me on this.
- Install a sturdy hook a little higher than the window sill on the inside of the window frame. Wrap your hair around the hook at least twice. No hauling the bitch up, it's bad enough as it is. Let her do the work if she wants up so bad.
- Split ends? Honey, don't talk to me about split ends.
- No matter how much you dread her arrival, no matter how relieved you are at her departure, you will always do and say what you think she wants. This is not a command. It is a fact.
The Rose Thief
Published in Electric Velocipede, Issue 4 (Fall 2003), edited by John Klima.
We've all seen the building, with dark vents hunched on its roof like sullen vultures, chemical-streaked walls dribbling to the sidewalk's pedestrian flow. We've seen it, without looking, a hundred times, a thousand, and every time we catch a scent of roses, spring sweet and tenuous. Every time, we dismiss the smell: it's a City woman's perfume, a scented magazine advertisement, a florist's wake.
But rose thieves, those pinstripe-suited men and women creeping like ersatz inspectors through the City corridors, do not mistake that light scent for pricey eau. They pass this building and lift their noses, sniff like starving hounds, glance sidelong at the others of their kind on this street, beside this building, smelling this rose tree. They check jeweled watches, pull out slim phones, delay unimportant meetings. They find their way upwards.
Rose thieves love beauty. They love to find it, take it, own it. They wear classy hats and elaborate underclothes. They believe in their right to possess. They move like water.
A Secret Lexicon for the Not-Beautiful
Published in Alchemy, Issue 3 (Spring 2006), edited by Steve Pasechnick.
A Secret Language
I am not beautiful. I share a language with the not-beautiful, a secret language that is all the more secret for its being completely obvious. It is a conflicted language, with tones of jealousy and of repudiation, of craving beauty and rejecting it. The secret language of the not-beautiful is painful to learn. It catches your tongue like barbed wire. Many try, instead, to speak the language of beauty with lisping tongues, covering their ignorance of its rhythms with cosmetics and dyes, diets and dresses.
I never wanted to speak, but the woman with the potter's wheel gave me no choice. I learned the language of the not-beautiful, and my tongue has the scars to prove it. I took the language of the not-beautiful in my mouth, despising it the way only a native speaker can despise, learning its inflections and vocabularies by heart. My heart also has the scars to prove it.
Many of the not-beautiful refuse to speak their own language. But all can understand it.
This is why you understand me now.
You Return a Changed Person
Published in Alchemy, Issue 3 (Spring 2006), edited by Steve Pasechnick.
You want to go there. Your friends want to go as well, but you doubt they'll even make a good start. You don't want to judge their motives, but their methods are obviously lacking. Lacking cleverness. Lacking humility. Lacking hunger.
You go to the market on Thursday. Not the tourist market; the real market. You feel conspicuous and out of place among the coarse plastic bags filled with spices and nuts and beans, the burlap sacks of tiny lemons and huge avocados, the toothless buyers and heedless cart pushers.
You stop to buy grapes. It is hard for you to communicate with your limited language skills, but you bargain anyway. You feel as if it's expected, as if you will not be respected – will not respect yourself – if you don't. You guess that you got cheated, but not as badly as if you hadn't made the effort. You spit the seeds out onto the dry ground as you walk.
You make no inquiries. You only listen. At noon you go back to your hotel.