Poetry

"Fairy Tales" - Emily Nation (1st place)
"To Not Be Blue" - Mya Pyke (2nd place)
"To An Unsuccessful Sinner" - Haley Pate (3rd place)
"Lonely Together" - Caitryn Tronoski (3rd place)
"Rotten Aubade" - Dana Blatte (Honorable Mention)
"Something You Should Know" - Zoe Burgard (Honorable Mention)
"Where I’m From" - Maya Campbell (Honorable Mention)
"Bleeding Bone" - Matt Hsu (Honorable Mention)
"Honey" - Rhianna Lewis (Honorable Mention)
"Here, Political Engine" - Jaleigh Lindsey (Honorable Mention)
"Insomniac: a Villanelle" - Julia Simmons (Honorable Mention)
"Birds: in response to March 16, 2021" - Jessica Wang (Honorable Mention)
"feux d’artifice" - Natalie Zhang (Honorable Mention)

Fiction

"The Parable of Gold Luck Bakery" - Matt Hsu (1st place)
"Dragon Son" - Jessica Wang (2nd place)
"The Life Cycle of a Dandelion" - Maira Faisal (3rd place)
"Pirates of Oblivion" - Ruthie Nutt (3rd place)
"The Minotaur" - Crow Lowry (Honorable Mention)

Emily Nation

1.

the fairies
 
in the moss of my yard
next to the stepping stones,
across from the beechwood—
there, my sister and i
construct fairy homes
and kick over mushrooms
not in circles
 
***
 
of course i believe in fairies—
in small bodies
and the night and the hunt and the
beckoning scream of magic
i believe:
mother nature will take back what’s hers
and so will her spirit so that
each winged-beast
becomes wild again
 
i believe they’ll come and settle
into our abandoned moments
i think:
fairies exist everywhere
in the memory of your ancestors
in the cracks of the cement
in the miracle of water meeting land
 
there’s been an extinction—
sediment fills cracks in
stone just as lore is paved-over:
it disappears from the truth of history
 
what if fairies existed only
for ancient little girls,
and i get the ghosts—?
 
i guide my sister’s hands—
teaching the tradition to knit
clover into crowns.
we leave flowers for
long-dead girls and
the doors unlocked—
should fairies come knocking.
 
2.
 
the witch
 
bread has filled bellies since
we learned how to feed yeast with ale—
since dagda taught his children:
how to feast from a cauldron.
 
                        ***
 
so you ask, young maiden:
how terrifying is it to grow old?
to let your teeth get snaggled—
to let your hands wrinkle?
to get fat and soft?
to be covered in warts,
for every hand you hold to get
bone-deep chills?
 
perhaps it scares you,
young and fair, sought after girl:
to not be wanted.
 
but i am an old wine—
full-bodied, finer with age.
fermented grape, skins and seeds
that bite noses.
with lots of round flavor.
 
it takes a lifetime to master medicine,
to draw magic from a flower,
to stir a pot of buttercup and ivy,
of lizard’s leg and toe of frogs.
 
people fear what they can’t control.
like a woman with enough sense
to grow old and unloveable,
who shivers in the sun and overheats in winter.
 
but old women are matriarchs, and matriarchs produce proverbs.
so here are mine:
always take up space.
if they want you on the ground, learn to fly.
men will call you a witch
if you curse them or not—
so toast with a glass of moonwater
and drink it one gulp.
 
and finally,
 
men want their women small.
they want your whole neck
to fit in their hand. they want you to
never get in their way. they want you when
you are young and small and weak. they want
you always in their control.
 
men want their women small,
so eat a city of gingerbread,
and grow as large as a house.
 
3.
 
the fox
 
i am a fox in wolf’s clothing—
all that matters is mischief
all that i show is strength
 
so the legend goes:
girls get dragged like chickens
into pine needles and thistle—
caught in the maw of the wild.
 
now watch the hunter go after it—
what stole the girls he wanted
in his own silver claws—
the witch’s beast, the red devil,
the fox.
 
                        ***
 
i am baring teeth at you—
i am hungry.
and for once,
you, the hunter,
are the helpless one.
 
don’t you know?
i am the larger half of the wishbone.
they call me bringer of good fortune
and master of cunning
but most importantly they call me spirit
 
and they call you wolf.
you’ve been taking what you want
for far too long
begging prey to show pretty teeth
then calling it an invitation for you
to go in for the kill.
your pack will believe you,
of course.
they always will.
 
but don’t you know?
that girls who cry wolf
get saved by foxes?
 
girls belong in the wild.
free from your wandering hands.
 
for centuries men have fallen prey
to me—my strength, my wit.
watch now as the wolf tries to take
what belongs to no one but mother nature:
 
wolf bleeds on fox tongue.
my teeth look so pretty painted red.
these are my woods.
i am not a fox. i am a vixen.
and i am going to wear you like a cape.

Mya Pyke

My favorite color of the sky is not blue, 
It’s cloudy gray, because it shows a sense of longing,
The misty air softly pierces your skin like opening a clementine,
It makes a day change as a whole,
Every now and then, you feel the sun glisten,
And a breeze that won’t tempt you, it’s too soft
 
The whole atmosphere has a touch of softness,
It can turn someone's mood blue,
But for some people you can see eyes glisten,
It could be for a slim second, yet feel so long,
And that feeling, that I can’t explain, can swallow a person whole,
Like the overwhelming hue of a clementine
 
Remembering the feeling, I go inside for that clementine,
It had been too long, the forgotten fruit had become too soft,
I threw it away promptly, in all its wholeness,
I go outside and sit on the porch swing, it was blue,
Barely blue anymore, but I know it, craved it, had a longing,
It used to shine bright navy, maybe even glistened
 
Yes, in its glory, it glistened
Like putting that orange fruit against the sun, that clementine,
Similar to the porch swing, I had my own longing,
A need for warmth, for soft
A need that turns me blue,
A need, quite like that cloudy gray sky, that swallows you whole
 
But without it would I feel whole,
Standing there in the glistening,
Feeling part blue,
A combination like each half of a clementine,
Where in the middle might feel soft,
With or without the longing,
 
But with the longing,
Do I ignore it as a whole?
Do I embrace it softly,
Do I put it against the sun and let it glisten,
Should I have kept that clementine, 
Would that’ve made me less blue
 
If I embrace it softly, will I still have this longing?
The longing that keeps me blue, that restrains me from feeling whole,
Will I finally glisten? Will I finally embody that clementine?

Haley Pate

it's a good day to
spit up serpents
and skip Sunday dinner.
 
it's a good day to lie (in bed)
and make mother wonder if i’ll
ever come home
 
with her machete tongue
i will end up at the door again
            as i always do.
a crown of divine light made by
the orange streetlamp on the corner
illuminating
my frizzy hair on
a humid southern night
 
It’s a good day to draw up a new testament;
My fall is only temporary
and i rest easy on this Earth
 
                        &
 
My father grew like a redwood.
twisting roots around the
wrong side of the train tracks
standing eternal in his time and his time alone.
            And in his hand he holds the truth of faith‒‒
“Stand on your roof during a lightning storm     
and show God your new umbrella.”

Caitryn Tronoski

No one cared when the drive-in movies came back.
When the inner-city jungle became a wasteland,
peppered with the scars of time.
 
No one cared when time began to run backwards.
The subtle nuances started to reappear
and the world became monochrome.
 
No one cared when society started regressing,
like moving pictures in a black-and-white prison
desperate for approval,
 
and not validation.
 
The kids don’t smoke anymore.
Instead, they do something worse.
 
When the midnight headache comes around again,
we analyze our mind,
and realize that the hurt has been there
for centuries.
 
Incapable of love,
we lay back down in this world of six feet away.
Of being too much and never enough,
of feeling silence and abandon from the people we call home.
 
I am lonely, but I am not alone.
 
No one cared when the kids stopped laughing,
and started to think.

Dana Blatte

Girls pluck their bodies
clean like summer fruit. The heat lays waste
 
to comfort, long hair and longer sleeves.
Buttercups tease. From sloped backyards, tickling
 
chins with gold, sun freckles the latest contagion,
warm and temporary. Afternoon, and girls wear smiles
 
backward and girls carry wind
through leveled fields and girls mingle
 
blood with gravel. Meanwhile, stores sell
out of fruit: papayas, apples, plums. Girls
 
comb the aisles with their teeth, skin tanned,
voices bruised. Days end with
 
girls diced by shadows, bicycle tires
strewn beside metal rooftops
 
where girls eat laughter and feed it to the sky.
Though summer isn’t safe, or kind.
 
At sunset, a camera flash: washed-out stars
and night as permanent as girls
 
only half-there, soon-eaten.

Zoe Burgard

Is that to sixth-grade me
School was vital.
It still is.
I worshiped it as if it were my church.
It provided guidance, belief, and even social gatherings.
School was my temple
And I was devout.
I never dawdled.
Never skipped and
I never daydreamed.
Perhaps that is why
On a hazy day in June
Sitting in the back of the class
With the window open just enough for the occasional caress of the breeze
And my mind feeling as though it could melt through my skull,
It was so easy to break my rigid standards.
So nice to have a respite from self-inflicted demands
And simply ignore whatever lesson Mr. Kerr tried to squeeze in before summer.
Why my thoughts
Simply drifting to the hills
Were as indulgent as dessert.
Because no matter how much you love something,
You must leave room for the love to grow.

Maya Campbell

I am from old country homes,
surrounded by soybean and hay fields
I am from a weeping willow tree in my backyard
whose leaves spoke to me louder than anyone else has before
I am from dirt covered hands and scraped up feet
from a tree house built from old, broken garage doors
I am from noisy and filterless

and from fidgety

from argumentative

from lefse and Christmas cookies
and from Jeg er stolt over å være norsk
Sitting on the porch at night, watching the bats and bugs circle around a rusty light

Matt Hsu

She has a bleeding bone that
            twirls around the village in blue
      rhapsody. She has a bleeding
 
bone, dripping pomegranate
            beads onto the vanilla sponge in
      HuiLing’s cupcake shop. She
 
has a bleeding bone that rolls
            down the morning road, chased by
      golden-eared terriers, churning
 
a chuk-chuk-chuk as it skips
            over divots, awakening the boys and
      girls before misty dawn. She
 
has a bleeding bone, scented
            like sun-licked charcoal, coating the
      oldest cheeks and noses in soft
 
white powder. She has a
            bleeding bone that may or may not 
      have been fortified with Tiger 
 
Balm from Bohai’s medicine
shop (but don’t tell anyone). She has a
      bleeding bone that burrows into
 
the soil, that nurtures the seeds
            with love and marrow, that pushes the
      necks of bright red flowers above
 
the surface. She has a bleeding
            bone with caramel healing properties,
      available on lend to anyone with
 
broken knuckles. She has a
            bleeding bone, painstakingly plucked 
      from her own ribcage. She bleeds.

Rhianna Lewis

In the distance, I see two people wrapped in gingham,
a sunny halo over their heads.
I move closer to hear the girl in pink laugh,  
the kind of laugh that shakes your whole body.
The ugliest laughs are the most beautiful, no?
 
The hill takes a deep breath in and comes alive at the sound of joy.
I can barely hear their conversation over the sound of buzzing...
the bees come out to see what the fuss is all about.
They swarm around the sweet girl, mistaking her for a flower.
It’s ironic, then, when she pulls out a stick of honey.
 
I sit on a bench and sneeze; I wasn’t designed for picnics in fresh-cut grass.
Murmurs float to where I sit and I can feel the love in every syllable.
There is music. They move like it is their first day with feet, and there is so much laughter.
So much love.
 
Walking home I cannot help but daydream.
Perhaps, the bees think of us, too, as the sweetest thing they know.
Maybe in another world, we are sitting on a blanket, engulfed in the sunshine, mistaken for flowers.

Julia Simmons

     As I lie awake, looking at the stars
I cannot even dream
When did sleeping become so hard?

All emotions seem to be barred
Underneath a blinding moonbeam
As I lie awake, looking at the stars

I watch the mirage of passing cars
As I contemplate my self-esteem
When did sleeping become so hard?

My mind has truly wandered too far
This maddening silence almost serene
As I lie awake, looking at the stars

I want to erase all of my scars
But over the present, the past is supreme
When did sleeping become so hard?

I listen as no one strums his guitar
And question why I bother to keep this routine
As I lie awake, looking at the stars
When did sleeping become so hard?

Jessica Wang

After Richard Blanco

The first bird my mother ate was a magpie 
served on a blue and red platter. Feathered flesh cutting her throat,
 
tail wings peeling back a body of a body. Sacrificial act. Voluntary amputation.
To speak is to mutilate, to lay yourself bare to this country
 
and self-harm with broken English, mother language, native tradition.
To acknowledge your lineage is to live with uncertainty.
 
Are you an immigrant or a human? Are you with us or against us?
Where are you really from? An ethnicity,
 
only a title to be renounced, the sacrifice made to be seen as something
more. Sometimes I think losing things is the only way we are taught to live.
 
Swallow a syllable to make a name consumable.
Cut off a tongue to birth another. Assimilation never a choice,
 
but a need. My mother says we have to die twice to move one step forward.
 
Gam saan. Mountains rising from gold. Paper pamphlets touting one hundred
ways to make a million dollars. American dreams tangling our throats as
 
we fly deeper and deeper into this land of the free. The stranger across the street
calls me chink because I won’t smile for him.
 
A classmate claims I should die for the transgressions
of the Communist party. My grandmother, aging and crippled,
 
carries a pocketknife when she sleeps, her neighbor
buried for the crime of existing. How nobody ever acknowledges
 
the bullet until it strikes. How the body bleeds but the pain lingers.
The living still remember. How we forget gold can burn, too. 
 
In Chinese mythology, a magpie is also the bird of change. It
flies just as the sun kisses the horizon, just as the sky morphs into
 
something greater. To love a country
is to understand that we need to do better. To love a country
 
is to live with intersection, to know that growth is not a choice but
human responsibility. To love a country is to heal.
 
Only then can the magpies start singing. 

Mandarin Footnotes:
Gam Saan - Gold Mountain: A term used to describe America in the late 1800s.

Natalie Zhang

(Inspired by Claude Debussy’s Prélude “Fireworks”)

i am a magician tonight:
with the tips of my fingers
caressing black and white keys,
magical sparks dart about,
 
dazzling the eager crowd.
i ascend into the sky
with brilliant glissandos;
streams of vibrant colors
 
paint a dark violet canvas.
crimson, azure, emerald, gold,
explode into extravagant bouquets.
swift and dynamic scales
 
imitate falling stars.
i glide into the rippling water of Seine
with rising and falling arpeggios;
the serene and gentle river
 
reflecting the city line of Paris.
Eiffel Tower, Louvre, Grand Palais, Notre Dame
mirrored into a watery illusion;
together celebrating the night of independence.
 
explosions! explosions of fortissimos!
the final climax of the dazzling show!
roaring bravos from the crowd:
fireworks here, there, everywhere.
 
nothing shall avert their gazes,
for i am the magician tonight

Matt Hsu

Gold Luck Bakery took little effort to open in the mornings. Liu would circle her keys around the old brass ring until she found the correct one, copper and shaped like a honeycomb cell. She’d tie a cloth apron around her waist and begin scooping ingredients into a bowl, flour and cornstarch and ground ginger. Her spoons were marked with scotch tape to create a substitute for steel measuring cups. There she’d work, whipping dough against the counter and laying buns in the cracked steamer, until the first customer entered. Then she’d switch to the front of the store, passing out pastries and slipping bills into an old black shoebox beneath the counter.

Liu did all the calculations in her head. She’d always been good at math.

She had opened the bakery twenty-three years ago, in 1950, shortly after stepping off the immigrant ship and onto the moss-stained port in the Embarcadero. The city was so daunting, with its spiked skyscrapers and city streets clogged by white-capped automobiles, but she’d found solace in Chinatown, a crowded neighborhood flagged with neon signs she could understand. She hadn’t wanted to come to the U.S., but her husband Huizhong had found work in the country as a civil engineer. So they’d left their small town in Nanjing and traveled, with two small kids, to the California coast.

Huizhong had been the one with the American Dream. Throughout their marriage, he ordered Big Macs from McDonald’s, ate buttered popcorn and watched I Love Lucy on Monday nights, drove the family to the slick roller rink, and skated in long loops beneath Elvis Presley’s crackling vocals. The children took after Huizhong, snacking on M&Ms and practicing their English in front of the bathroom mirror, desperately trying to shed their Chinese accents. Often Liu had wished to forget about America, to take the money from her shoebox and board an airplane back to Nanjing. But she stayed in Chinatown, for she did not want her family to splinter.

Sadly, she’d still failed to keep the family whole. Huizhong had filed for divorce in 1970, laying claim to half of what they owned, (including Liu’s jade wedding band, which he’d decided to wear on his own finger). Liu saw him shambling around Chinatown some nights, surely on his way to pick up lipstick or concealer for his current lover. Liu never knew who he was with at any given time, and she never really cared enough to find out.

Both children had migrated elsewhere in the U.S., to Miami or New Haven or another city Liu couldn’t remember the name of. They rarely called, rarely answered the phone, rarely stopped by San Francisco to eat pork and cabbage dumplings on Thanksgiving. So Liu worked alone in the bakery, sculpting snacks and stirring fillings for twelve hours a day. It was a peaceful life.

Today, though, was different. Gold Luck Bakery did not open at seven a.m. as it usually did; in fact, it did not open at all. Liu spent the day sweeping up glass with a bamboo broom, installing a makeshift window at the mouth of the store, concealing the remains of a brutal midnight break-in.

* * *

Liu took a fistful of spring onions from the mason jar by the window and began chopping. She diced them into discs, green eyes with sharp spindles in the center, and kneaded them into a ball of dough. The broken glass lay in shards at the bottom of the rubbish bin, concealed beneath a stack of Chinese newspapers Liu used as kindling.

A cluster of bells whistled from the entrance, and a woman walked in. Hair knotted into a baby globe, wrinkles smoothed by pads of peach concealer, bluebird-shaped earrings, white dress, pronged heels. Evening mist swaddled her shoulders like an intangible shawl.

“Yanmei,” Liu said, smacking her flour-covered hands on her apron.

Yanmei sat at one of the rosewood tables propped against the wall. “Someone broke in?”

Liu nodded.

“What the hell?” Yanmei said, slamming a fist against the table. “That’s the fourth store this week! What’s going on?”

Liu poured two cups of steaming green tea. She carried them to the table where Yanmei was sitting and passed the fuller one to her. “I don’t know.”

“You know who it is?” Yanmei said into her teacup, extending an accusatory index finger. “That group of white boys with the onion rings and cigarettes that walk through every other day. Meihua caught one of them trying to steal beer. Said they called her a chink because they thought she wasn’t listening. Or because they knew she was listening.”

“Aiya.” Liu took a sip of tea. A bitter prickle settled in the back of her throat.

“They better not come for my place,” Yanmei said, folding her arms. “I saw them tapping against the front window yesterday. Almost threw an apple at them.”

Yanmei owned the other bakery in Chinatown, Delicious Sweet. She’d opened it just a few years after Liu opened hers, and they’d been companions ever since. They had much in common; both were mothers, both were from the same province in China, both eventually became divorcees—though Yanmei had recently rebounded with some other man. After Huizhong left, Liu mostly kept to herself. She spent time with Yanmei on occasion, but their conversations were often tense. Both were aware of the fact that Liu’s bakery was much more successful, the prosperity discrepancy hanging between them like the sweet-skinned ducks in Ah Lam’s butcher shop.

“I’m sleeping here tonight,” Liu announced. She took their empty cups and carried them to the sink. “Just in case.”

“Did they steal your money?” Yanmei asked. “Yifan lost six hundred dollars to a break-in last Tuesday.”

“No, thank goodness,” Liu said. She squeezed a kiss of lemon dish soap onto a sponge and began washing the cups. “I keep it hidden in a shoebox.”

“Oh, smart,” Yanmei said. “I should do that, too.”

“Here.” Liu wrapped a pair of sesame seed balls in a napkin and pressed it into Yanmei’s hands. “For the road.”

“No, no, I don’t need it.”

“Take it. Share it with your boyfriend. Who I still haven’t met, by the way.”

Yanmei smiled and accepted the food. “Alright. I’ll bring him over someday. But not tomorrow—tomorrow night I’m helping you set up a security system.”

“Oh, you don’t have to—”

“Too bad,” Yanmei said. “I’m doing it. My gift to you.”

And with that, she left, shoes clicking against the stone floor, leaving Liu all alone once more, scrubbing dishes in a store she’d never loved.

* * *

Three cups of flour. Two blocks of butter. A scoop of sugar, enough to fill the crater created by her cupped hands. Five eggs. Baking powder. Salt. A splash of vanilla extract. Liu placed the batter in the oven and got to work on the frosting, made of whipping cream and confectioner’s sugar. When the cake was finished she bejeweled it with sliced strawberries, brushed with a lemon glaze. She preferred it with persimmons, but the Americans would not buy fruits they did not know.

At 6:45 she wiped down the tables with a frayed cloth. She spritzed the wood with her homemade cleaner, made from orange peels and pear cores steeped in water. Business was better than expected today, as a group of young men working in the financial district had stumbled upon the bakery for lunch. Liu’s customer demographic had shifted over the years. In its early days, Gold Luck Bakery primarily sought business from other Chinatown residents. But after Chinatown was squished and scattered and abandoned by those who could afford to leave, shopkeepers like Liu were forced to reel in white customers from the surrounding neighborhoods.

The bells at the door rang once more. Liu saw who it was and ducked her head behind a sheet of almond cookies.

They wore shirts without sleeves and ripped jeans. The belts around their waists reflected the moonlight in sharp prisms. They walked from side to side, hands in pockets, checkered shoes leaving grubby tracks on Liu’s newly polished floor. Their hair was long, probably fluffed with a pair of warm hands. Liu’s heart began to race as she parsed the food in the display case. The boys were not old—sixteen, seventeen maybe?—but she knew it was the group Yanmei had mentioned earlier.

One of the boys made eye contact with Liu. He elbowed his friends and started to laugh.

They began to chatter, speaking over one another until their voices became a dissonant symphony. Liu could only pick up stray words. Chocolate. Lady. Cash register. She shuffled to the front of the store and set her forearms on the counter, feeling the cool nip of cleaner on her skin.

“Food?” she asked in English.

One of the boys broke away from the group and approached her at the counter. He said something—Liu heard the word sugar—but he spoke too fast for her to understand.

“Sorry?” Liu said, heart racing.

The boy leaned in until his face was inches from hers. His breath smelled like cherries and tobacco. “Get. Me. Food. Please.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Liu saw the remaining boys reach over the counter, scrounging for food and change they could steal.

“Okay.” 

Liu bent down and drew a flour-dusted rolling pin from beneath the counter. She charged to where the boys were trying to steal her goods and whacked it against one of their heads. “Police!” she cried, even though she knew they would never come if she called. “Police!” What a thrill it was, to feel the vibrations of a spanked skull coursing through the rolling pin and into her arms. She beat them again and again, sending puffs of white into the air as they lifted their arms over their heads. She didn’t stop striking until they bolted out the front door, cursing at Liu, growling like lions caught in tangle-wire.

* * *

“You clever girl,” Yanmei said. “I knew you’d be okay.”

It was a couple hours after Liu had driven the boys away. They were in Gold Luck Bakery, sipping rice wine from paper cups. A bun, filled with a purple paste made from yams and coconut milk, lay in front of them, ripped in half. Typically Liu only ate the bakery items that were about to go stale, but today a guest was in attendance.

“I was so scared,” Liu said. The rice wine slipped down her throat and settled at the base of her stomach, a bonfire with boundless flames. “But I couldn’t let them rob me again.”

“You’re a warrior,” Yanmei assured her, saying the word warrior in English. Her mouth puckered to create the curled sound.

“Stop.” Liu smiled and looked at her feet. “You brought the supplies?”

Yanmei took a drawstring bag and placed it on the table. She reached her hand inside and withdrew a segment of hairy rope, a steel cylinder, and a metal device in the shape of a circle. It glowed with a scarlet LED light.

“Shuping sells these at his hardware shop. You attach them to your windows. If someone tries to break in, they make an extremely loud noise. To remove them from the window, you need a specifically-sized steel rod.”

Liu frowned. Yanmei had a proclivity for overpreparation, though Liu did admire her work ethic. Liu felt guilty whenever she heard patrons gossip about Yanmei staying up until three in the morning every night to bake tarts—it seemed like she worked twice as hard as Liu but received half the reward.

“I know it’s a lot,” Yanmei said. “But you can’t be too careful. If this doesn’t work, you might as well pack up your bags and move back to Nanjing.”

“I guess so.”

Yanmei stuffed a piece of coconut-yam bun in her mouth and swallowed it without chewing. “Now, where’s the shoebox with the money?”

“Beneath the counter,” Liu said. “That’s why they couldn’t find it before.”

Yanmei raised her eyes as she walked towards the front of the store. “That’s good, that’s good… make sure to keep it there.”

Liu nodded obediently.

“Pass me the supplies,” Yanmei said, and Liu did. Yanmei did most of the work, tying the rope to a post with a clove hitch knot, dropping a series of batteries into the metal box, affixing the device to the windows with her burn-scarred hands. Liu offered to help, but Yanmei insisted on doing everything herself. When Yanmei finished she stepped back, admiring the spiderweb contraption she had created.

“You’re all done, Liu. Let’s see them try to break in now.”

“Thank you.” Liu nodded in gratitude. “I really hope they don’t go for you next.”

“That would suck,” Yanmei said, wrinkling her nose. “It’s been tough recently.”

“Customers drying up?”

Yanmei averted her eyes. “Yeah.”

“I’m sorry,” Liu said. “Are you sure you don’t want me to come help out sometime? I would be happy to.”

“No, no, it’s fine.” Yanmei looked up. “Things will get better soon.”

She laid her palm on Liu’s shoulder, and before Liu could say goodbye, before Liu could press a parcel of steamed egg tarts into her arms, she was gone, her rosy perfume leaving a slightly sickening scent in the bakery behind her.

* * *

When Liu arrived at Gold Luck Bakery the next morning the devices on the windows had been removed. She unlocked the door and walked inside.

The glass display cases were smashed, shards spread across the floor in a sharp carpet. Food was everywhere: pastry cream dripped from the walls, bowls of fruit had been upturned and rolled off their perches, sugar and cornstarch crunched beneath her flimsy footsteps. Liu peeked behind the counter. The shoebox of money was gone.

Liu was in the middle of cleaning up when she found the two pieces of jewelry that had fallen to the floor during the robbery. Beneath a mound of flour: a bluebird-shaped earring. Covered with broken porcelain: a jade wedding band.

Jessica Wang

When the sky merged with our sea and the stars formed swathes of glimmers on our salty horizon, Gege left. He was silent, creeping out of his mattress without a word, eyes slippery and cold like lychee pits. I watched from the crack between his bedroom door as he folded away his robes and stripped to a clean tunic before stashing his slippers under a wooden floorboard. He then opened the door that led to our balcony and slipped into the darkness, body blending with the night air. Every movement he made was rhythmic, melodic, almost to the point of elegance. He had always been this way, beautiful without even trying.  

In our village the children named him Dragon Son because his hair was silk smooth and grew all the way to his feet. Whenever he walked his hair would coil and ripple, gleaming and shimmering under the light as if alive with ancestral magic. Come play with us, Dragon Son. The children would always yell and tug at his legs, begging for him to see the sandcastles they created or the blue cranes they caught with straw fishnets. He never followed, of course, only smiled mysteriously before continuing down to either the temple near the river or the village barracks, his hair flowing in silver and white streams behind him. This was his duty: to protect, pray, and connect us with our past. He was a leader first and friend second.

Gege was the best of us, the predecessor of Zhong Kui, the God with gnashing teeth who killed the wild spirits in the Eastern lands and founded our village. He carried the same birthmark that Lao ye and Lao ye’s father possessed, a crooked crescent moon on the ankle of his left leg claiming him as our strongest, as Zhong Kui’s next lineage. Ma told me that when Gege was born the village elders prophesied that he would be our greatest warrior, a product of every drop of blood and every tear our ancestors shed. As if the only ancestry we carried was suffering. As if the only thing that mattered to our village was how deep you could make a blade go. Ma’s brilliant firstborn. If I were a lily pad he would be a lotus flower swaying in the wind.  If I were a star, he would be the sun and the moon and all the things in between. If I were even a fraction of something, he would be better, greater.

I know Ma could have convinced Gege to stay. Swayed his mind with sweet rice with overripe mangoes and water boiled with chrysanthemum petals. Ma was light and gentle, her face always soft and welcoming as if she was on the verge of a smile. Her expression would have softened the look on Gege's face, made him laugh and sit down with us. He would grin again, might even joke about that one girl with a scar on her left eye that he could never manage to get over. Maybe even bring up the idea of taking me to the outskirts of our village to see the white sails of human-made boats. But Ma’s gone and he’s older, hardened by the demands of our village. Sometimes I think he’s the river’s water running through my fingers. I can hold him, feel him, see him, but he slips from me anyway, trickling away in splatters.

Gege used to keep a Guan Dao by his bedside, a large, curved knife with an edge so sharp it was rumored to gleam white underneath candlelight. This was his weapon, his other half. He brought it to war whenever the needle-mouth ghosts and hungry spirits strayed a little too close to our village, white sagging mouths desperately consuming anyone they saw in an effort to slake the aching emptiness within. Gege would cut off their heads with his sword, staining spirit blood on his robes as he sentenced the dead back to their realm. He never winced when he fought, only closed his eyes as he threw down his blade again and again, so fast it resembled a falling comet. I held the knife one night when he was called to attend a meeting with the village elders. It was surprisingly light in my hands, the blade thin and slicing through the air like smooth butter. Touching it felt strange, almost powerful, almost foreign. Ma once told me that all this village was good for was turning our men into soldier boys and our women into wives. She made me promise that when I was of age I would leave this village. Travel north to the emperor’s city or even further to the fields where gentle ghosts roamed the earth and Gods played bamboo flutes underneath cherry blossom trees. There is no use for a girl in a village defined by bloodshed, she told me. But if you run far enough you might be something greater.

Even now, I wish I had listened to her.

Gege, my brother with lychee pits for eyes, a stone for a heart. When Ma vanished he wouldn’t speak, wouldn’t shed a tear over her. When the village elders asked him for guidance, he didn’t respond. When we sent out our boats and search parties to look for her, he wouldn’t go. The nights were the worst. The walls and earth shuddered from his sorrow, china plates clawed into bits, portraits shredded, our futons torn into feathers and foam. I tolerated it for a while, sewed up the scars, wrapped her photos in silk cloth, and burnt her robes in our fireplace. I bottled every remnant of Ma up, hid them in closets and ash and on the bottom of riverbeds. I did out of necessity, because he was the only one I had left, and when you have nothing you cherish everything. I only spoke up when he broke his jade necklace, a gift from Ma for his eighth birthday.

“How long are you going to do this?” I whispered. Months had passed since she disappeared, and there were cheers and faint pops outside, pale blue embers lighting up the underside of the sky. It was the night goddess’s wedding anniversary, when the moon and the stars' reflection formed a perfect circle in the water.

Gege was crouched over his desk by the windowsill, gem shards still clutched loosely in his fingers. Even fractured, the pieces looked beautiful. They glittered under the moon, shrouded by the air’s thick incense and the smell of salted fish. I could see tiny engravings on the stone, each Mandarin character shining and glowing. Gege could never break anything even when he tried to.

“How long are you going to keep avoiding her memory?”

He didn’t speak, only squeezed the remains of his necklace harder.

“Brother?” The green fragments dug into his palm and stuck to his milk-white skin, slicing it open. Red dripped from his hands, staining his wrists and robes a deep crimson. He didn’t let go.

“Please, just stop,” I begged. I grabbed his arm. Outside, our village screamed and cheered, setting off a cascade of fireworks and sparklers. The scent of incense and smoke was overwhelming, swelling with grief. “Please stop. Talk to me. I’m your sister. I’m here.”

I waited for him to respond, for him to remember who I was. Instead he only sighed, dropping the jade pieces onto the floor and letting his hand go limp.

“Go away, Mei.” He whispered bitterly. He turned around and looked at me with emptiness in his lips, bitterness ingrained into his skin.

A boy who speaks through silence. More beast than animal. More God than human.

The night Gege left, he stood on the edge of our balcony, pale feet tiptoeing in a silent waltz on our sanded marble ledge. The river next to our house roared and churned, salt water sprinkling white in the air. Gege kept his head up, face towards the moon, seeing something that only he could see. Across the thin bedroom door I knelt on the wood floor and prayed for Ma’s strength. I prayed I knew what Gege was thinking. I prayed I could be more than the person I was meant to be. I prayed that he would stay, run away from the balcony and hold me in his arms and weep the way I wept.

Don’t leave me.

Gege jumped.

There was a brief moment of silence, a singular moment when his body was suspended in air. He looked unworldly, like an ink painting of a spirit or ancestor. The horizon seemed to lean to his image, the puffy clouds swaying to his body, the stars caressing his fingertips, the gray patches of sky brightened by his gaze. I almost didn’t recognize him anymore.

Then he fell.

My brother flew down the sky like a sun shot to earth, flesh turning into different flesh, hands sharpening into ivory, red mouth birthing one hundred fangs. He fell and the wind fell with him, curling tendrils of his hair into a writhing mane, morphing his pupils into the color of reddish gold. I screamed his name once, reaching out to him with my hand, before he stilled. He stayed there for a moment, dangling and rippling in the space between the sky and the sea. It looked like he was trying to say something.

Instead he flew away, tail striking a large trail of clouds through the sky and leaving nothing but silver scales behind.

Mandarin Footnotes:
Gege - Older Brother
Lao ye - Grandfather
Ma - Mother
Mei - Little Sister
Zhong Kui - A legendary ghost hunter in Chinese mythology

Maira Faisal

And yet, thou blasted yellow-coated gem,
Full many a heart has but a common boon
With thee, now freezing on thy slender stem.
- “A January Dandelion” by George Marion McClellan  

Second Bloom - Spring Flowering

There was a musicality to the air, to its spilling warmth and steady presence. Perhaps that was why, despite mid-March’s slosh of melting snow, Kenzo Aoyama sat on the well-loved bench near the entrance of Fern Park. A navy backpack rested to his left as his companion, drooping over itself like a wilting flower, like Kenzo himself, forehead pressed to his knees and arms shielding him from the wind’s proffered comfort.

For minutes, maybe hours, he waited on the bench, sucking in deep breath after deep breath, shut eyes eventually fluttering, flying open to the denim of his jeans. Slowly, cautiously, Kenzo shifted upright and studied the scene of shrieking children performing antics, caffeinated college students discussing midterms, rushing workers muttering into cell phones, old couples walking park routes around him. Of the soft breeze tousling his dark hair, cries of birdsong, spokes of yellow dotting the wet ground around his muddied black sneakers. Of the silence of chatter directed at him, the ever-apparent emptiness of the right side of the bench.

First Bloom - Fall Germination 

It had been a bad day, to say the least: Kenzo had forgotten the lights for his first project in art, spilled coffee on his shirtsleeve, and reached his go-to convenience store to see a “Closed Early” sign. Thus his trudging through, and consequent trampling of, the rimy grass underfoot was not his priority as he arrived at the park. It was essentially deserted, streetlamps bathing the handful of runners pacing the sidewalks in a garish light, nocturnal creatures wrestling in the foliage.

Kenzo pushed through his exhaustion and deposited himself at the open end of a bench, throwing his backpack to the ground. Having registered the soft, swimming indigo of evening, he began his escapist ritual of staring into the star-studded expanse for a precious few minutes.

“I wondering why lovely boy like you ruin pretty flowers with feet?” a voice inquired. Kenzo tensed at the abruptness of the interruption before glancing at the asker of the question: a willowy, pallid frame of a woman that occupied the other half of the bench, hugged by a mass of colorful shawls. With her voice so full and sincere, Kenzo was tempted to answer.

A silence stretched between them though, long enough to seem as if it were welcomed but broken by a soft reply: “They’re not flowers, they’re weeds.”

As if the silence had not existed, as if Kenzo's response warranted it, she chuckled. “You think so. I do not think so. Not same thinking. But you still not answer my question.”

He sighed. “Look, I...I haven’t had the best day. I wanted to sit here in silence and calm down. So if we could not talk, that would be amazing.”

“Okay. I understand. But thought you should know this bench see many unsatisfied person. What one more?” She paused before adding, “And I listen to many unsatisfied person before. If you want, what one more?”

Her words were once again greeted by silence as Kenzo sat on his side and the woman on hers, one contemplating the stars and the other her companion. When the sky surrendered to the charcoal of night, he slung his bag over a shoulder and left. His feet still surged through the sea of withering grass, but he sidestepped the dots of yellow vibrant enough to be visible by moonlight, and there was the echo of what sounded like thank you in the wind.

First Bloom - Fall Flowering

“I see you still not like the flowers.”

Kenzo’s head snapped up to meet the gaze of a familiar figure. “Oh, it’s you. Again, they’re weeds. But call ‘em flowers if you want. Whatever.” He threw an arm over his eyes, eliminating the watery sunlight that pulled the chilly morning into day, his head supported by the back of the bench, ignoring the trail of half-frozen and smothered weeds he had left in his wake. “What’re you even doing here, anyway? Don’t you have work or something?”

She laughed and wrapped a shawl tighter around her, other park-goers chatting with one another while bundled in fleece jackets. “I have job, yes. But job not need much as bench. Also, you are here. Not you have school?”

A wry smile tugged at his lips. “Yeah, I’m a student. But most of my classes are late in the afternoon.”

“I understand,” she said, then added, “My name is Yara. What is your name?”

He straightened, turning to look at her. “Kenzo. Kenzo Aoyama.”

“Pretty name. Kenzo. I want say...what I say yesterday, I still say same today.”

“Thank you,” he whispered, repeating with more conviction, “thank you. That means a lot.” Silence once more strung itself between them but was once more broken by Kenzo, who, this time, described his dilemmas from a few nights ago. He gradually talked of his aspirations to become both an astronomer and artist, his part-time job as an undergrad TA at the University of Colorado Boulder, his feelings on the substantial snowfall that the weather app assured would shower the city tomorrow, his worries that he was floating through his junior year without his usual drive, his desire to study abroad in perhaps Switzerland or Germany, his preferred libraries and cafés for last-minute cramming, his opinion on the pothole two streets over.

In turn, Yara nodded and smiled, filled the lulls in his ramblings with her own: she recounted summers spent poring over novels to pass an English program from a local community college, the day she graduated cosmetology school, the time she collected two dozen seashells with her nephew only for him to refuse to take them home after a crab traipsed over them, the routine she’d formed of coming to the park to decompress.

“I’m with you on that—I come to the park to relax, too. And a nephew, huh? How old is he? Do you have any kids of your own?” Kenzo asked.

“He big now. Seventeen. But no,” she told him. “My husband die before we have children. Two, almost three year ago. I old, anyway. Fifties not best for kids.”

His eyes widened and he muttered, “Oh, shit, I’m so sorry. If I had known, I wouldn’t have asked and…”

“It is fine. Now, tell me about you class before go,” she said easily. Other than the slight briskness of her tone and stiffer set to her mouth, Kenzo observed, Yara did look fine. As always, her vibrant shawls enveloped her entire frame and hair like a cocoon, and her grey eyes and sloping nose were open and unwrinkled, if a little less emotive than usual.

“Of course”—I guess she is okay, he mused—“I’ll tell you if you find it interesting.” Paired with gesturing hands and an animated tone, he explained, “Do you remember the class I forgot the lights for? Yeah? It’s that art class. ‘Cause we’re supposed to ‘manifest our muse’ is what I think the professor said.

“I’m doing stars, astronomy and all, so I brought lights to work with. Well, I remembered to put them in my backpack this time, so I’ll work with them today. I plan to make the lights stars for a diorama, which is like a physical model thingy, that represents the night sky. Do you like the idea?”

“It is great idea.” Yara offered an honest, slow smile. “Good luck.”

Beaming, Kenzo inquired, “Will you be here tomorrow? Or when will you be here next? If you don’t mind, that is.”

“I come often. But if you want, we meet this same Wednesday time every week.”

“That’s perfect. So, I guess I’ll see you then.”

“Yes. Bye, Kenzo. And thanks.”

First Bloom - Fall Reproduction

“I told you my muse—like, inspiration—was the stars. What’s yours?”

“I not have one,” Yara answered, causing Kenzo to rebut. After weeks of exchanged banter and life stories, he felt comfortable enough to expand on and clarify his ideas, felt almost content in the hour or so they would carve out together amid their shifting schedules. They’d never missed more than a week, explaining the reasons for their absences at their next meetings and noting the weather before they left. There were no unspoken rules that limited his or her curiosity of or confidence in the other, rules that would have forced Kenzo to gloss over subjects so as not to patronize, or Yara to sit without further questioning so as not to pry. There was only them: two worn, wayward souls somehow finding solace through discussions and their dissimilarities.

“No, everyone has something, at least one thing, that inspires them or makes them want to do and create, that makes them say, ‘Ah, that’s wonder itself.’”

Noting the furrow of her brows, Kenzo continued, “Like when I see the stars, I see they’re endless and get reminded that possibilities are endless. That both we and the stars are observing different types of brilliance, observing the other party as faraway specks comprising an infinite garden of light. And that makes me steel myself, y’know? Realize that there’s art left to be made, unknown facts to be uncovered. What strikes you like that?”

Yara examined her hands folded in her lap, her attention then flicking to the ground below them. Her eyes dancing with mirth, she murmured, “Flowers. The flowers you ruin with you feet.” As Kenzo spluttered, unsure whether to be offended or amused, Yara threw her head back and laughed, loud and unabashed, and he soon joined her, their hysterics melting into the breeze. He thought he could live with her quip being an insult if it meant they could laugh like that for a little longer.

As the hilarity of the moment dwindled, Yara cleared her throat. “We laugh, but I think muse is the flowers. They yellow as sunshine. They stand after you are steps.”

“They are resilient things, aren’t they?” Kenzo remarked. “They’re called ‘dandelions,’ if you were wondering. Dandelions.”

“Hard name. In English and Urdu. But pretty flower.”

He hummed in assent, examining the few dandelions that decorated the park grounds despite the constant blankets of late autumn snow and disregard the feet of passersby. There was something to be said, he thought, of how these weeds presented themselves with such strength—paint-bright petals and later, cloud-like puffs—while sandwiching the harshest season of the year. They thanklessly sprouted, bloomed, and facilitated roots for the next era that’d have them. They even allowed themselves to be—

“Hey, Yara?”

“Yes?”

“I know we don’t have rules for our conversations, but can I make one?” She tilted her head, a motion for him to elaborate to help her understand. “Do you know how to wish on a dandelion?”

She brightened. “Yes. My nephew show me. Do you want to wish?”

Kenzo hesitated. “Kind of. I was thinking that since my muse is stars and yours is dandelions, two things that can be wished on, we could wish on each others’ muses the next time we saw them. For example, if I saw a white dandelion while walking home, I would pluck it and make a wish. And if you saw a shooting star while drinking your nightly cup of tea, you would close your eyes and make a wish.”

As he said it aloud, he realized how ridiculous his suggestion sounded. Wishing on each others’ muses? What a strange favor he had asked of her.

But she grinned warmly and agreed.

Second Bloom - Spring Germination

Winter released its clutch on Boulder in an unhurried manner. Slush lined the streets and the air rang cold for the following weeks, but green poked out of barren, thawing soil and people shed their heavy parkas to don thin cardigans. With this flurry of change, Kenzo and Yara evolved past being random strangers, the former learning her last name (Subhan) and the latter his secret (he had a surprise for her next week).

A freedom was found in their interactions, in the entrusting of mundane and personal information alike without the fear of inducing stress or earning judgment. They were not lovers, nor mentors, nor acquaintances or tentative companions—they were deep-rooted friends, rare and symbiotic catharses. Their relationship equated to the type confided to someone over a cup of coffee, detailed with all the comfort and enjoyment of autumn-winter-spring days experienced on a particular park bench with the stars and dandelions. Battling their intangible demons was a shade easier armed with the knowledge that someone out there comprehended the depth of their discomfort and was willing to only listen or lengthily advise.

One week he voiced the harsh truth that his mother nearly disowned him for choosing astronomy over engineering, and that he did not know any of his three older sisters’ favorite colors. The next, she confessed she and her husband scarcely spoke for a year after their third miscarriage and her brother was her best friend throughout it all. They seesawed back and forth through their locked away contemplations, doubts, and memories, anchoring themselves to uplift the other. Through the shared pain, they became more open, more honest—one day, Kenzo even confessed he asked out a girl in his physics class. And at some indecipherable interval between winter and spring, Wednesday afternoons ceased being but the cursed middles of the week.

Second Bloom - Spring Reproduction

A prismatic butterfly glided through the entrance of Fern Park, shadowed by the eternally sleep-deprived Kenzo Aoyama, his white-knuckled hands gripping his backpack straps. As he had done since last autumn, he approached the cedar bench bordering the park’s main cobblestone path. And as he had done since he informed Yara that he had a present for her three weeks ago, he prayed his eyes would set upon a swirl of scarves.

Though his prayer was unfulfilled, the emptiness of the right side of the bench was (blessedly?) occupied. The foreign occupant was a lean, stoic boy who seemed a hair younger than Kenzo and was looking forward with a thousand-yard stare, the drawstrings of his grey hoodie wound around fidgeting, sun-kissed fingers. When Kenzo settled himself and his bag on the bench, the boy froze and faced him.

“I-uh, are you Kenzo?” he asked, voice raspy.

“Yes. Sorry, but do I know you?”

The boy swallowed. “I’m Atif Abbas. Yara’s nephew.”

“Oh. Nice to meet you, Atif,” he stated. “Yara talks about you a lot—all good things—but can I ask why you’re here? Instead of Yara?”

Atif nodded. “Yeah. It’s uh, it’s about me being here.” He exhaled. “So, I don’t know how to say this…” Rubbing his clammy palms on his black jeans, Atif started again. “Kenzo, I don’t know how best to tell you this, but my aunt died in a car crash two and a half weeks ago.”

It took a moment for Kenzo to discern the meaning of Atif's hushed statement and a longer one to absorb its gravitas with a silence heavier than all those he had shared with Yara. His mind raced and his heart throbbed and he could not say if Atif was talking or if he himself was hyperventilating. How, why, had the sanctuary he and Yara built on this bench collapsed, flung open its doors to invite frigid reality, reality that seconds ago had been the vibrant rush of Boulder’s citizens wandering through a park and the year’s first true breath of spring? Died...in a car crash? Gone? So soon and suddenly and, oh, that’s why she hadn’t come for the past three weeks. He hadn’t upset or scared her with his openness, weird favor, or promise of a present as he had feared, but still, she was gone.

His tongue was an odd, heavy presence in his mouth as he breathed, “That’s terrible. Awful. I don’t know how much you know about me—”

“I don’t know much,” Atif admitted. “Just your name and that you were a ‘lovely boy.’ But the way she was each week after talking to you...thank you, for being there for her. To unburden everyone, she burdened herself. And couldn’t be helped no matter what we tried. But you, you were the first person in forever that unburdened her.”

He pulled out a scrap of paper from his hoodie pocket and handed it to Kenzo. “My family's been tying up loose ends since her funeral—if we’d remembered in time, we would’ve invited you—and we found that in her belongings. It’s a list of the presents she was thinking of getting for you since you had one for her.”

Glassy-eyed, Kenzo read the unfamiliar but fitting wide scrawl inked on the page. 

Kenzo Gift

- ticket to abservatory

- planner for new semester

- everyday coffee gift card

- star wish is his health    

“Thank you for telling me. And giving me this paper.” He fumbled with his backpack and soon held an object out to Atif. “This was going to be her present.”

Atif’s hazel eyes softened, mouth curling up with bittersweet emotion. The object was a white dandelion bulb suspended in a sphere of resin, splaying its seeds like a burst of stars. “She would have loved it,” he whispered.

Until Kenzo’s class began, Atif and Kenzo conversed as Yara and Kenzo once had. They did not exchange ramblings, nor banter, nor mundane or personal information, but stories of Yara and plans to meet occasionally, awkward but budding acquaintances.

Atif divulged more about Yara’s passing as they grabbed coffee from a nearby café (one Kenzo had dubbed his favorite for cramming) before Kenzo headed to college. Over that cup of coffee, Kenzo narrated the comfort and enjoyment of autumn-winter-spring days experienced on a particular park bench with the stars and dandelions, with companionship and catharsis, with a wish to have laughed a little longer.

Ruthie Nutt

By the age of five, Burgundy had decided that the letter O would be her best friend. O, Burgundy said, had purplish-indigo hair, the color, she said, of oblivion. O’s eyes were dusky brown, light and dark and strangely sad, though Burgundy couldn’t say why. O’s dress was the color of overgrown, opaque octagons, but as Burgundy’s family seemed incapable of grasping this fact, she simply called the color blue. Even though it wasn’t. These were things as they were, until the day O actually arrived.

Burgundy found O where she knew she would, standing on the beach looking out on the Oecean in wonder, as if O had never seen the great never-ending sea of clouds that surrounded the floating island. It was a calm day, the soft waves glowing in the rising morning light, pale pink and frothed with white fluff. Gray fog drifts danced about the air, swimming like grand feathered serpents through the early breeze. The girl stood on the gray sands amid the wreckage left from the storm, blasted heaps of stone and trash dragged up by the violent tides, the ashy breeze tugging at strands of her hair. The girl on the beach did not have purple-indigo hair or a dress the color of overgrown, opaque octagons, but Burgundy knew it was O nonetheless. After all, who else could it be, and Burgundy had so dearly wished for a friend.

Burgundy’s sour sister Prudence argued the whole summer about how O wasn’t a “proper” name, and how it was embarrassing enough for Burgundy to have an imaginary friend without having a spelling problem, too. Burgundy jumped to O’s defense, citing that the first letter had to be uppercase for a name to be proper, therefore O, only an uppercase letter, was the most proper of names. Prudence insisted O was this strange “Imaginary,” as letters could not be little girls. Burgundy declared Prudence “henceworth” banned from their games. Prudence sneered and said that it was “henceforth” not “henceworth,” and Burgundy declared that hers was better because it had more worth, and so the matter was won in her mind.

Together, O and Burgundy played the summer away, the Pirates of Oblivion, as her well-meaning sister Ilvi called them. She meant it as a joke, a memento to the destruction often left in their wake, but it became a rallying cry, a riddle, and a secret all in one. The Pirates of Oblivion, the little girl called Burgundy who loved the letter O, and the little girl called O who lived as a ghost.

The summer passed too quickly, and Burgundy all but vanished from the family studies. Ilvi often looked up to tell her little sister a story, but found the girl had escaped through the window. Prudence gave lots of declarations about having value in your life, and something Burgundy didn’t understand about “delinquent children.” Burgundy didn’t know what “delinquent” meant any more than “imaginary,” but O assured her whatever it was, it must be one of those strange adult things that you didn’t have to worry about if you didn’t understand it. As they ran from the front door out into the rising sun over the golden woods, they agreed to never learn what “delinquent” meant so they never had to worry about it.

On the night they made their great escape, Burgundy took O to the great Oyedaqa, the tree of the day. It was a decent hike away from the family observatory, and upon seeing O stumble and fall as the cold winds of autumn whisked along the cliffs, Burgundy gave her the long pink shawl to keep her warm. They sat and watched the sunset, curled up in nests of falling golden leaves between the great tree’s massive roots, its maroon trunk turning almost purple in the twilight. They said nothing as the sun sank below the horizon, lighting the wandering clouds on fire from beneath as its last summer rays danced along the rushing wind. They stayed until the sky had turned all purple and blue, a single star taking the place of the world’s light, the moon not yet stirring from its slumber. It was in this in-between realm of dusk and twilight that O broke the silence.

“I have to leave.”

Burgundy nodded contemplatively, resting her chin on her fist which sat balanced upon one raised knee, as she had also been considering becoming a tower when she grew up. She wasn’t surprised at the news exactly, after all, O had arrived at the beginning of summer, and summer was over now, and Mother was always muttering about how good things come to an end when summer’s warmth had gone. Still, she couldn’t help being a little sad and a little put out that O had to say it so bluntly, and so suddenly.

“Where are you going?”

“The Bright World.”

Again, Burgundy nodded and turned the words over in her mind for a minute. Had she heard of that before? She couldn’t recall it being any place on her side of the island, and she was sure Prudence had never mentioned it. It could have been in one of Ilvi’s books, but Burgundy never paid much mind to those.

O seemed to sense her confusion, moved from her root-nest a few steps above to sit next to Burgundy, and pulled out a folded piece of paper from her jacket. She unfolded it carefully, gently, face creased in concentration with every slow movement, until the paper had unfolded into three sections, front and back. Burgundy searched for the word, found “brochure,” and smiled. Brochure was a good word, curling in tones of twilight blue and purple and brown. It didn’t start with an O, but had tones of O, so it was a good word.

The brochure was brightly colored, and even in the dim light, the words were bold and easy to make out. “The Bright World” it said, underlined in curling sweeps of printed brushstrokes, and every inch of the paper led into another picture of oceans of vast swirling water, of mountains that towered into the stars, trees that held the sunlight in their arms, soft grasses cut close to the ground that didn’t bite your legs with every breeze, cats and dogs that sat happily by their owners and didn’t glare, and most of all the endless expanse of towers and towns and cities that gleamed in the day, bright lights that didn’t yield to the moon, and endless swerving streets of people in colorful clothes as they bustled about to doors that led into even more brightly colored rooms behind warm windows of frosted glass.

“The Bright World,” Burgundy whispered, tracing the words on the brochure. She looked up excitedly. “Where is it?”

“I don’t know,” whispered O, gazing lovingly down at the pictures. “There, everyone takes care of you, and you never have to be afraid, and you are always warm and safe and there is good food and…” O looked away. “It’s nice here, and I’m glad I found you, but no one sees me here. So I have to go.”

Burgundy never hesitated. “I’ll go with you!” she shouted excitedly, leaping up as O snatched back the brochure to keep it from being scattered away. Burgundy was still jumping and rambling excitedly as O once again slowly folded the brochure and tucked it back into her jacket.

“We’ll go together! It’ll be so fun. I can keep you company, they won’t miss me for a second, and it’ll be an adventure! Where should we start? Does direction matter? We could go to town, I bet someone in town will know the way!”

Now it was O’s turn to sit silent and nod, before turning her head up to the growing number of stars. With all the lights gone away, there were more stars than O had seen in a long time. “I’d like that.”

“Then it’s a deal, and we’ll have an awful grand time! But Prudence, she’d try to stop me. I know, we’ll go tonight! Before anybody wakes up. Yes, let’s go now!”

O didn’t move, only stared up at the stars. Burgundy gave a little huff and waited, the exhilaration of the adventure fizzing about her hair and her eyes like little green sparks, leaping and not very happy to be contained. Her nose scrunched up as she tilted her head to stare at O. Wasn’t she the one who wanted to leave in the first place? And yet she sat there, her dark hair tangling in the night winds, the pink shawl still around her shoulders. For the first time, Burgundy noticed that her friend was awfully skinny. She had been fed, hadn’t she? Prudence could claim that O was that strange “imaginary” and didn’t need food all she wanted, but Burgundy had been sneaking her scraps. Burgundy shook her head. Town, she thought, in town there would be plenty of food for the both of them.

O hugged her knees and stayed gazing up, and then out over the Oecean as Burgundy moved to sit down next to her again, wrapping an arm around the smaller girl’s shoulders, leaning her head on top of O’s and letting her maroon curls intertwine with O’s waving locks. O leaned against her in the cold, and smiled up at her.

“You promise you’ll stay with me? The whole way?”

“Of course!” Burgundy clamped her mouth shut in realization of how loud she was and how close to O’s ear she had been, but O just laughed and gave one last look up to the stars, then turned and glanced at the bright light of the moon that spilled over the fields that lay between them and the house. “How do we get to the town?”

Burgundy grabbed her hand, and together they took off running along the cliff edge, silhouetted against the great sea of clouds and flitting between the silver spun shadows of the moon. Burgundy’s laughter carried across the crashing waves of wind, and O closed her eyes to focus on feeling the soft grass beneath her bare feet. She held tight to Burgundy’s hand and ran, other hand clasping the shawl, and never minded the rocks underfoot. She let out no laugh, but smiled with her eyes shut tight, as their feet carried them across the fields and plains towards the Bright World.

When the morning sun found the two girls, they had fallen fast asleep against a boulder that stood on the edge of a twisted forest. Burgundy shook O awake and helped her to her feet. The two gazed up at the dark forest before them, the trees tall and bare, with gnarled branches and trunks coated with briars and a dense floor of tangled ivy. When O broke her nervous gaze at the strange woods, she found that Burgundy was already heading toward where the shadows seemed the most dense, where the claws of the woods stretched out the furthest, and where a rotting wooden cart sat decaying by the road.

O stopped and froze with fear as Burgundy put one foot under the dark of the forest, eyes toward the ramshackle cart. O shook her head, desperate to run back to the sunrise, to the cliffs of the night before, or even back to the beach of wreckage and gray sand, where the clouds echoed on forever.

“It’s okay,” she heard Burgundy say. “The cart can take us across.” O didn’t move. “I’ve heard that the wind walks through the forest, singing as it goes. I’ve heard it sings the loveliest of songs. Don’t you want to hear it?”

Burgundy stepped further into the forest and stood on the rough stones, still holding O’s hand and smiling as her eyes held the light of the gentle sun. O took a deep breath and followed, never looking away from those bright eyes that called back memories of blue skies and warm places, even as the air turned stale and pressed in around her.

The ivy clawed at their feet as they pushed through the few dry and wandering trees to reach the cart, which O now saw was being drawn by a cloaked figure, bent double as it held on to the hands of the cart. The figure made no motion to them as they approached, small and alone around the back of the cart, and Burgundy helped O climb up. Suddenly, a hand came from under the cloak and swiftly drew a tarp over the cart, and O felt a scream well up in her throat as she heard the rasping of ropes against the creaking wood. But Burgundy was still smiling, barely there in the darkness but still there.

“We have to be quiet through the forest, okay?” Burgundy whispered. “Or we won’t hear the wind songs, right?”

O smiled back and leaned closer to her friend. Whispers scampered around under the tarp, and she felt the shadows squeeze in on all sides, but Burgundy was bouncing in her seat. As the cart jolted forward and the last light faded, Burgundy squeezed her hand and whispered, “Listen!”

O stared into the darkness and listened, but only heard the scratching of branches against the tarp, the rattle of the wheels against sharp stones, the booms of distant thunder, the rat-a-tat of something horrible beating the trees, and the screeching sounds of creatures in the distance. She couldn’t stop breathing hard, couldn’t stop the tears welling in her eyes, couldn’t stop the need to scream, until she closed her eyes and felt Burgundy’s warm breath filling the air with summer memories, of sliding down the stars on broken sleds. Memories of stealing food fresh out of the oven from the counter, of laying on the roof and making up constellations, of making shadow puppets with the windows wide open because the breeze and lightning bugs were the only things that might come in. And then she heard the singing.

It started as a soft keening, a barely audible lullaby that timidly sang from beneath the leaves and behind abandoned shoes. Then it grew, though still soft and light upon the fragile air, sailing along a tune that changed with every bump and rut in the road, but never faltered. O couldn’t bring herself to open her eyes, but she relaxed a bit into the song, humming softly the lullaby that she couldn’t place or understand, but felt she knew like an old hymn. She stopped shaking, and though she couldn’t hear and didn’t dare to look, she knew Burgundy was softly mouthing the words to the song, or perhaps making up her own. There would be time enough to ask later.

The time in the cart was the longest night, longer than the twilight spent running through the stinging grasses of the endless hills, longer than all the days of summer combined. Still, for every moment of the rickety ride, filled with the screams of the unknown just outside, was another moment to listen to the sweet song that made Burgundy sway. With closed eyes O could imagine them dancing, and so they passed the time, forgetting all the rest of the world. O wondered if the huddled shadows around her could hear the song, and wondered if she could hum, too, and if perhaps it would be brighter if they could all share in the song. She slipped in and out of an uncertain sleep, only waking from her dancing dreams to wonder again if the song was real or only a magic Burgundy created, and if she ought to hum along.

Burgundy hadn’t wanted to wake up. She had long heard of the wind songs and would very much have liked to go on listening forever. She sensed O felt the same, but decided that if she didn’t stir O from slumber, neither of them would ever leave. She pulled O hurriedly off the cart and ran blindly out of the last of the forest. In her heart she knew that they simply needed to run, as they had no fare for the cart ride and the denizens of the forest were not kind to those who passed through. But the cart bearer gave no chase, only stood, hooded and silent, taking up the cart once more.

O stopped halfway down the hill as Burgundy pulled her toward the town, glancing back at the forest, the song still fluttering about her mind and sparkling in her eyes. She saw the cart vanish once more and the fleeing shadows, but this was not what drew her gaze. Here and there she thought she saw great silver lions flitting about in the trees, or else tigers, and wondered if it was their keening she heard. She decided they must have guarded the cart through the long journey, and as she pointed and smiled up at them, Burgundy nearly leaped over her shoulders trying to see. O didn’t feel quite so frightened anymore. She held the silver beasts close to her heart, wondered if they could follow, if only with their eyes.

Burgundy, too, marveled at the silver beasts, but once again wondered why O had been shaking so all along the ride, and why she had to be torn away from staring at the trees where the lions flickered in their kingdom of briars. The trip through the forest was perfectly safe, Burgundy figured, and there was the wind song and the silver winds guarding the light, so why then had O been so scared? Burgundy decided that she was simply glad to see her friend smile again. She finally dragged O away from her frozen watch at the bottom of the hill, and soon they found themselves in the bustle and hustle of the town.

O shrank back behind Burgundy, glancing up at all the people so much taller than them and marveling at Burgundy’s sure stride. The people walked straight past them, and barely bothered with a second glance at Burgundy, much less O, but still she tried to make herself smaller and smaller, though it seemed Burgundy had the opposite idea.

“Come on!” Burgundy grinned, taking her hands and spinning her around in the middle of the street. Autumn leaves crushed under their feet and dashed about the alleys as Burgundy took off, skipping along the road and dragging the timid O behind. Burgundy’s eyes dashed from person to store to cart to vendor stalls all along the way, never settling on one thing, and waving up at everyone they passed. None waved back, but Burgundy didn’t mind, and kept right on bouncing about, and finally she pulled O toward an open square where there were a number of vendor stalls and cooking fires set up, and the tall people milled about with good things to eat, though few words were exchanged. Burgundy took a small moment to stop, consider the square, and wonder where all the children were, but then she turned excitedly to O, barely able to stand still as she gestured to all the sweets around them. O slid back against the wall and only shook her head, thin hands showing off empty pockets. Burgundy rolled her eyes good-naturedly, as if dealing with a very young child, and ran up to the table with an array of fresh baked goods dripping with sugar and fresh fruit. Burgundy flashed a mischievous smile back at her worried friend, snatched two of the childhood delicacies, shoved one into O’s arms, and snatching her hand back up, took them running through the streets, whooping and hollering all the way. O couldn’t help but laugh along this time as the warm rising air streamed through her hair and cushioned her steps. There was noise somewhere behind but Burgundy took her only ahead, and they danced through the streets. It began a game, up and down with jumping and laughing, over this pile and down this alley, turn and scramble and giggle as they hid behind the waste bins and scarfed down the gooey food that caked their hands and dribbled all over their dresses.

The gray sky overhead was hanging lower and darker by the second, sagging under a great burden that Burgundy knew it couldn’t hold much longer. She nudged O, and helped her up, for the first time noticing the scraped knees that hid under the dress, and how rough O’s hands were compared to her own. Had they been that way before? But O’s eyes now lit up with a small daring joy, and she smiled as she licked the last of the sweet off her fingers. This time it was her who took Burgundy’s hand, running as they slipped through the crowds and wandered around the town, pushing each other and pointing at all the bright lights of the town. As they walked Burgundy wondered if this was the Bright World, after all there were lights and food and all, but O only shook her head sadly. Here, the people all ignored her still, and in the Bright World everyone was friendly. Burgundy nodded and began to ask others on the edges of the street if they knew where the Bright World was, though O always hung back, peered behind Burgundy’s shoulder, and never spoke a word. At last they got a single finger pointing out of town and down another hill, where the cloudy shores of the Oecean thrashed, cold and dark in the fast coming dusk.

The wind was blowing harder as they left the town and made their way slowly down the hill, Burgundy sure and quick, sliding and climbing about but never falling, and O leaning on her for support. There, by the stormy shores, was a number of gray boats that tossed about on the angry waves, and Burgundy felt the first few drops of the storm on her head. O was beginning to shake again as they neared the shore, but Burgundy leapt up, clapping her hands and catching raindrops as they fell faster and faster, soaking her hair and her dress and making O shiver even more.

“The clouds look so angry.” O shook her head and backed away from the little rowboat that Burgundy had climbed into, and was currently occupied by jumping up and down to make it shake.

“No, no, not angry, maybe a little sad but not angry!” Burgundy stood on the prow of the boat, hands on her hips and defiantly staring out at the rising clouds, daring them to challenge her. “Come on, I’m never allowed out on the Oecean when it’s like this. I bet the boat will go all up and down and go spinning. It’ll be like flying I bet! Feel that wind? It wants to fly!”

O closed her eyes and tried to see it as Burgundy must, full of adventure and mischief and wonder. She stepped up on the boat and almost fell, the wind biting into her heart with cold icy drops of rain. She steadied herself by holding Burgundy’s hand, who was still looking out with excited anticipation at the dark horizon, where the light had all gone once again. She felt Burgundy’s warmth surge through the touch, and the sea seemed to still a bit, the sky getting a little thinner, and the wind no longer biting, but wrapping her in a blanket.

“Don’t let go of me, okay?”

Then the boat tugged itself free of the shore, and the two became so very tiny, huddled together against the towering storm ahead.

O couldn’t stop the screams from coming, but mostly she made no great sound, shouts stolen too quickly from her throat as the boat rose and fell as the storm sloshed over the sides. Her lungs and her mind filled with the ink of a new kind of dark, not the whispering dark of the cart or the calm, entrancing dark of the night, but the dark that breaks down your door, the dark that fills your mind with the sound of a breaking world and brings the safe roof crashing down on your head. She buried her face in Burgundy’s arm, each shaky breath snatched away before she could breathe it, the crashing thunder beating her thoughts until there was only the horror, the moment and the dark and the stolen summer sinking beneath the waves, and terror that slashes at your arms and pierces your heart and steals all the brightness away, until…

“Look!” Burgundy changed the world with a single word, that unending smile plastered to her face as she turned O’s face up towards the churning sky. The lightning flashed and filled the air, and O gave a shout, but a shout for joy. Swimming above their heads was a whale. O had never seen a whale, but this was surely what they looked like, and suddenly the thunder became the calls of this great whale, flying above their heads. O gave a little wave, and the whale flipped its tail and the lightning struck again, but this time the rain became falling stars. All through the night, new flashes brought on dragons that twisted about in the air with long tails trailing, monkeys that bounced around with the hidden moon in their hands, and creatures O had no name for but made her laugh anyway. Burgundy even got her to look down in the inky depths of the Oecean, if only for a second, because Burgundy insisted there were colored fish of light guiding them to the Bright World, just like the wind beasts guiding them to town. When the boat finally graced a misty shore, the two were still hand in hand, in awe of the lightning world of flying whales.

O couldn’t see anything beyond the beach through the mist, but stood up hurriedly anyway, and dashed off, not realizing she lost Burgundy’s hand as she vanished into the fog. Burgundy abandoned the boat to run after her, calling out in the cold morning.

O ran and ran and ran, but only passed stone after stone, all cloaked in the thick fog that weighed upon the world like a funeral shroud. Shadows milled about, moving past her and between the stones but not sparing her second glance. O ripped the brochure from her jacket, frantically unfolding it now, hoping for a map, a sign, anything. But there was nothing, nothing but the pictures staring blankly back at her as she ran through a cold gray world, and before long she was hopelessly lost, and then called desperately for Burgundy. There had to be some mistake, there had to be another road, another way to go. Burgundy called back, but O couldn’t hear her. She sank to the ground, tears finally coming freely as she clutched the brochure to her chest and hugged herself, trying to be warm. O sunk into a cold that clawed its way into her blood, freezing her like nothing else had, as she collapsed, people rushing past with no heed to the little girl, the little girl who had run all this way alone, had hidden and stolen and crossed seas all on her own looking for the promised Bright World. There was no Bright World here. A strong wind blew, and O let it take the brochure, spinning away into the cold.

Burgundy found O curled up, knuckles pale from gripping the shawl too tight. She tried to hold her friend, to comfort her and tell her they could keep looking, but O didn’t seem to hear. She didn’t even seem to see. She only stared blankly at the ground while the tears kept flowing. Burgundy took her hand and leaned her head against O’s. O didn’t move.

O had wanted to scream for a long time. She had wanted to scream when she climbed into the darkness, the rumbling of the pitch black and having to be perfectly quiet, pretending to listen to something other than the screams and shots that wouldn’t stop. She had wanted to scream when everyone avoided looking at her, when she broke the rules to eat. She had wanted to scream when the sea tried to take her, when there was nothing to stop it. Now she needed to scream, but couldn’t. She couldn’t do anything. She wondered if she could go back, back to the summer with Burgundy, back to a sky full of stars.

Burgundy ran onto a cold gray dock, where for once it was her no one could see. She had to find help, there had to be someone who could tell her the Bright World was only a block or two away. There were so many people, but they all looked right through her. Except one.

O shivered, wrapped the shawl tighter, and closed her eyes, searching for the feel of Burgundy’s hand in hers.

“You promised not to let go.”

O opened her eyes for only a second, to take one last glance at the false bright world, just to be sure. To her surprise, through the dull air was a bright spark of color, running along the faded road toward her. The girl stopped in front of her, dark curls whipping around her face as she stuck out a hand. The girl had warm eyes, sort of sad, but bright all the same. The girl had on a faded blue dress, patched but bright all the same, the color of overgrown opaque octagons. She held out a hand, warm brown skin piercing the mist, as she smiled brightly.

“Come on, you can come with me, it’s gonna be okay.”

O took the girl’s hand, and for just a moment, she saw a bright world.

Crow Lowry

When looking in a mirror, the Minotaur does not know anything. The Minotaur has no reflection, no recognition of its parents. It is killed, of course, but first shown a mirror as it gazes upon itself; who is that? Crushed and fermented into wine, when does the resemblance fall from the vine? Is the Minotaur no longer the fruit of its parents? Instead to be crushed? Its only use is to be drunk, smelling of blood and war, crimson coating its thick fur.

The Minotaur has hands to grip its axe, though when born, too weak to hold, too heavy to be held as a babe. Never once is it held up to the stars, never once is the name Asterion uttered to it, instead placed underground in a maze to chew on the weeds that peer at it between stones. Its human stomach craves what its face cannot eat; soft teeth line its mouth as it grinds the stems and blades to nothingness. Still, it hungers for something more.

Buried deep underground, it does not know the name of its stars. The warped words on the tongues of people and heroes alike mean nothing to it, and so the words are ignored in favor of taste and smell. It does not know what it is meant for, but its starvation leads to moirai, and the intoxicating smell of blood wine fills the stale air of the halls again and again.

Time passes unknown to and uncounted by the Minotaur.

Constellations align—not that the Minotaur would know—when the Labyrinth twists and a woman’s voice echoes, and leads it to a chamber filled with a small pool of water, a stream of pale moonlight breaking through the crumbling stone of the ceiling. The woman is nowhere to be seen.

Staring down at the bath, it sees the face of a stranger, what would be known as a calf. Strong, calloused hands grip the handle of its bloodied bauble of protection, before dropping it to the floor, clattering and slipping into the water. The Minotaur falls to its knees, scraping its bare skin on the stone, and its hands come up to touch the matted fur across its face. Its eyes are glassy and black, surrounded by the encrusted wine of its visitors. A wet, spotted nose and tongue protrudes from the end of its face. Its fingers dip into the water, breaking the surface and distorting the image of the yearling.

A small, broken sound of confusion rings in its ears as it shuffles back from the water, waiting until the ripples cease and the reflection is clear again. It is not long, as another one of its visitors shakes the floor and disrupts the quiet of the scene.

The figure behind him says something, but it does not understand. The Minotaur has thought about this before, how it doesn’t think the visitors understand, either, but now is not the time. It knows when things are sharp, and as the Minotaur turns, it sees the sharp blade and the cutting eye glaring down at it.

It grunts as it does with most visitors, warm air escaping its nostrils. It had always been hungry, but the look the visitor gives is not one of fear, it is one of wrath and pride. And like that, the intoxicating smell of wine fills the air as pain fills its chest, and it cries; a horrible sound cracks and echoes in the labyrinth and it looks down to see the blade piercing its lung.

The blade exits the Minotaur, and its stomach groans as it sees warm violet coating and dripping from the weapon. It falls to the ground with a whine and slides down. Its head dips into the water, wheezing as what little air was left in it is knocked out by the cold stone. It rolls to its side and watches as iron wine spills into the water, lacing it and running down the dip in the stone from where it rolls from its chest. It licks at the ground, tasting its intoxicating ambrosia, lapping its final meal and drinks the familiar taste. The Minotaur closes its eyes, and it’s over.

Its body cools in the pale moonlight, sweat and blood gleaming across its gaunt pallor, lain naked for Theseus to behead and take to Minos. Wine drips across the floor in a trail as it is taken above the Labyrinth for the first time, and its blank eyes shine in the moon.