“Untie me.”
I curled my talons deeper into the chair back, the wood creaking; my wings gave a dry rustle against the slat ceiling above us. “No.” […]
“Papa promised me an eel of my own if I can propose a sufficiently interesting experiment,” Janika explained to the boy who delivered their milk. He didn’t speak English or German, but she was so excited that she needed to tell someone. […]
They were naked, now, on a dirty mattress.
“Neither of you have eaten or drunk anything for twenty-four hours?” Ryan asked, hauling equipment into the room: sloshing plastic buckets, packs of hypodermic needles, coils of tubing, straps. “And no drugs in your system?” […]
When the first snow falls, it burns. The other women dance in the flurry without me, beneath a moon clouded by giants’ breath. Snowflakes spin into their open mouths and dust their outstretched hands […]
In twenty years, Lynd had never really looked at the book. It had come into his possession as a parasite — an unwanted hanger-on that had happened to be grouped with the books he really wanted at an auction. […]
Judith of the lions looked beyond the fence, beyond the cave of skulls. Cottonwood and scrub brush blocked her view of the highway. The expanding silence had at last been broken. The cicadas had come again. […]
