It wasn’t the fairy queen who first caught my eye.
It was the glimpse of a laughing face, glowing in some dim reflection in the dark lush forest behind, its deep green shadows holding more magical mysteries, every wonder found in the natural world, and wonders beyond ordinary fantasies.
Read More The Transmuting TapestryThere was, in a time not too long past, a youth by the name of Nikola, who walked within a wood beside his town. The paths were well-trodden. Nikola met many whom he met often. He gave and received greeting. He strolled past green leaves and hanging fruit in spring and summer. He strolled past fire-gold leaves in fall and snow-laden branches in winter.
Then, one day, he almost strolled past the most captivating sight he had ever seen in the wood.
Read More Nikola and the Two CrowsThe back of the closet seemed to lead onto a dirt road with a very much open sky above, a sky that looked overcast. Simone felt a chill coming from that direction, but that could be explained by an air conditioning vent.
Simone put her sneakers back on—Evie had insisted she take her shoes off before entering the house. Then she stepped forward and kicked at road, sending out a spray of dirt and tiny pebbles. Some of the reddish dust stuck the front of her sneakers.
Evie stood behind her. “This is like that wardrobe in—”
“Don’t say it.”
Read More The Red Path to the Gray Cabin“I can pick it up?” Marcella asked, gazing down at the little statue standing directly on the clean bench top.
Leo smiled and straightened his back. “Go ahead.” As his sister gently picked up the stone-carved statue of a snake wrapped around and resting in the thick leaves of a succulent, he explained. “This is one of the flawed replicas, so Doctor Valdez talked someone into letting us have it—or at least borrow it. They probably won’t use it in the exhibit.”
Marcella held the statue up and peered into the snake’s glassy blue eyes. She slowly turned it one way and then the other, studying the shapes and details of the painted leaves. She no doubt was wondering what species of snake it was, and what variety of succulent. One of the leaves still had thorns and little bulb-like protrusions along the edge. But most of those delicate details had fallen off the original carvings.
Read More The Serpent and the Succulent“How does the rain affect your…thing that you do?”
The new potential client, Sadie, turned around, rubbing the knuckles of one hand as if she were applying lotion.
Veronica smiled. “Sometimes it amplifies things. Sometimes dampens. It depends on what I’m looking at and looking for.” Her answer, both vague and accurate at the same time, didn’t seem to register with the woman.
Sadie paced toward the chair she’d been offered, leaving behind the afterimage of jittering yellow waves in the space she moved through. Not a bright happy yellow. But the sickly yellow of anxiety.
Read More The Strange Radiant DeathKat stood at the edge of the pristine high-piled white rug in her sister’s corner office, gaping at the facedown body of a man in a steel-gray suit with a knife handle protruding from his back.
“What have you done, Trish?” Kat said, unable to pull her gaze away from bright puddle of blood under the man’s left armpit.
She pulled her phone from her pocket and started entering numbers.
“Whoa! He’s not dead,” Trish said.
Read More The Case of the Absent Triplet“Someone in this room is a murderer,” the grandmother declared, pointing her finger out and sweeping it across the room. “They’ve put a strong sedative in one mug, a fast-acting poison in another, and a slow-acting poison in a third. Now, I put it to the Hero to solve one murder, prevent another, and wake the sleeper. But as the Hero is herself the sleeper, it falls to the Sidekick to save.”
Read More Mystery of the Murderous MugContent copy disabled for this page
