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Once upon a time, in an age long forgotten, the kingdoms of the earth were at peace. Kings built golden castles and grew fat from the surplus of wealth and boredom. Lords and ladies simpered beneath powdered wigs and yawned over the tedium of their lives. Workingmen and women put their hands to honest labor and flourished, and the twin suns of Peace and Prosperity beamed joyously upon all.

In the kingdom of Lavenlee, the king was the fattest, the lords and ladies’ wigs the tallest, and the people the most true-hearted, but not all were happy. The princess’ birth cost the queen her life, and the distressed king would have nothing to do with his only child. And if the king ignored her, all the courtiers ignored her, too. The princess’ sole companion was her nurse, a lace-capped old lady who smelled of cinnamon and was always short of breath. A nurse cannot be nanny, friend, and family all at once, so the princess grew up terribly lonely but too ignorant to understand why.

The little princess sat primly on the garden bench and held her lace parasol over her head to protect her complexion from the too-bright attentions of Peace and Prosperity. Their jolly rays skipped across the lawn, and the silvery leaves overhead rippled in a bashful breeze. Birds chirped jubilantly, and the peonies and tulips exulted in their own radiance. But the delights of the castle garden were nothing new to the princess.

Behind her, a lanky boy sat atop the ivy-clad wall and stared with wonder at a world lovelier than dreams. His tattered ball lay in the grass just behind the princess’ seat. After a moment’s hesitation, he jumped into the garden.

The princess turned, hearing footsteps behind her. And because she had learned court manners, she rose and dropped a graceful curtsey to the stranger.

“Welcome,” she said with precision. “Who do I have the honor of meeting today?” The boy froze, crimson-cheeked. He glanced at the ball, at the princess, and at the ball again. “I’m Winslow,” he said at last, and he stuck out a grimy hand.

The princess glanced at it but did not take it. “My name is Ettaline Emrandine Everly, Princess of Lavenlee,” she said with grave courtesy.

Winslow tucked the rejected hand behind him and gazed in awe at the fair, cold child before him. “It must be nice being a princess.”

The long lashes drooped. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Don’t you like living in a grand castle and eating anything you like and having people to do your chores?”

The princess shrugged. “What is there to like about that?”

The boy stared. Then, remembering his manners, he stammered an apology for his intrusion, picked up his ball, and scampered back over the ivy to the familiar world beyond. Thus concluded their first conversation.

Two days later, as Princess Etta strolled out into the garden, a tattered ball soared over the wall and rolled to a halt before her slippered feet. Wonderingly, she picked it up. It stained her dainty fingers brown, and she dropped it again.

A freckled face peered over the wall.

“Hello!” Winslow called.

Etta jumped.

“Can you toss it over?”

The princess shook her head.

“Oh, come on! Please?”

Again, the princess shook her head.

The boy sighed, and he swung a leg over the wall and jumped into the garden. “Now just try to toss it to me. Come on!”

Etta just stared at him.

Winslow sighed again. He scooped it up and turned toward the wall again before the quietest, softest, “I don’t know how,” stopped him cold in his tracks.

The boy blinked. “You don’t know how to play catch?”

Etta shook her head.

“Well, you’ll have to put your parasol down first, and then you’ll have to pick up the ball. Don’t mind the mud. Then you just… throw it. Right at me.”

The ball soared into the bushes.

“It’s a start!” he called as he dove into the greenery to recover it. “Try again!”

The next time, the ball hit Winslow squarely in the stomach. He made such a face that the princess burst into laughter.

And so, that day the princess learned to play catch. And, for the first time in many years, her sweet laugh floated freely and frequently throughout the palace garden.

Winslow Lachlan was a sage little boy, and a compassionate one, too. He knew that the princess was missing out on something children should have, but he did not yet know what or why. He puzzled his little brain about it every day as he walked whistling to the castle garden, his beloved ball tucked under an arm. The princess had everything she could ask for, but still, something was missing.

One afternoon, Winslow figured it out. It was Prosperity’s turn for a festival, and the king and his grand, bewigged entourage paraded from the palace into the city for the week-long feast. The princess rode dutifully on a little pony behind the king, but he never once looked at her, nor did any of the courtiers. And among all the splendid, noble persons who made up the royal procession, there wasn’t a single child for the princess to play with. And suddenly, Winslow understood. He scratched his little head and pondered what he should do.

His Excellency the Second Chancellor of the Kingdom of Lavenlee scurried into the throne room as fast as his heavy, emerald-encrusted robe would permit.

“Your Majesty,” he called, waving a letter aloft, “an urgent letter for you.”

The king, startled out of a nap, glowered at the chancellor. “From whom?”

The Second Chancellor studied the paper and the seal but found no decipherable clues; in the lethargy of Peace and Prosperity, he had forgotten how to read. “Er, it doesn’t say, Your Royalness.”

“Humph. Let me see it.” The king snatched the paper from the chancellor and cracked the seal with a little golden hammer. He had not forgotten how to read; he practiced daily as he perused his own biographies. In a scrawling script, the letter read:

Respected Sire,

It has come to my attention that the Royal Princess is in sad want of companionship.

Children need playfellows. The Royal Princess is a child; therefore she needs a playfellow. It would behoove your Royal Personage to get her one.

With your best interest at heart,

FienderDalle Fairy

The king’s face grew paler than the powder on his mountainous wig. “FienderDalle Fairy?” he gasped.

“FienderDalle Fairy?” His Excellency the Second Chancellor echoed, equally aghast. They all knew the old legends of the spindly, green man who was Peace and Prosperity’s special nemesis.

“Well this is dreadfully awkward,” the king said. “Why didn’t anyone do something long ago?”

“Sire, nobody noticed.”

“Somebody noticed!” the king roared. “Get the child a playfellow!”

The Second Chancellor turned and fled the cavernous throne room. On his way out, he bumped right into His Excellency the First Chancellor who tripped on his ruby-trimmed robe and sent the both of them sprawling.

“Insubordination!” the First Chancellor bellowed. “How dare you trip up our personage!”

“Your Excellency, I—” the Second Chancellor began, but the king interrupted him.

“Nincompoops, the both of you!” he thundered. “Cease your blubbering and attend to business!”

“I was attending to business,” the First Chancellor muttered as he picked himself up. He bowed low, but not low enough to unsettle his wig. “O Most Serene Countenance, I have brought the companion you requested for the Royal Princess.”

The Second Chancellor gave a startled cry. “That was my business! How—”

The king cut him off with a wave of his hand. “Send the whoever-it-is in.”

Winslow’s best shirt had a grass stain down its front, his best pants were two inches too short, and his dark head of tousled hair desperately needed comb and scissors. Unabashed, he sauntered into the courtroom and presented himself to the most powerful man in the kingdom.

“Your Majesty sent for me,” he said.

The king looked down from his lofty perch in consternation at the small human before him. “I, er, appreciate your prompt response. But how did you know I had sent for you?”

Winslow smiled to himself. With another low bow, he said, “Your Majesty, I was walking near the old willow grove when I met a strange man sitting on a grassy bank. He wore a dark mossy cloak and had autumn leaves in his hair and beard.”

“FienderDalle Fairy,” the king whispered.

The boy nodded. “This man told me that you had sent for me especially.”

“Yes, I did,” the king said, forgetting that it was untrue.

“Well, I am happy to be of service, but I expect four silver coins per week for my services.”

“Two,” the king said.

“Very well, I’ll accept three. Now, shall I find the princess in the garden?”

And so, Princess Etta had an official playfellow. Winslow, although young, was patient and kind. He spent his afternoons in the castle gardens teaching Etta how to play hide-and-seek or tag and telling her stories.

“Where did you learn such wonderful stories?” Etta asked him one afternoon as they walked through the rose maze.

“My parents. And I read lots of books.” He puffed out his chest. “I’m saving up for a whole library. And school. I’m going to be a learned man when I grow up.” “Oh,” Etta said, unimpressed. The only learned men she knew were her father’s courtiers, and they were sharp as syrup.

“Your library is full of books,” Winslow continued. “Papa says you have shelves upon shelves from floor to ceiling.”

“I don’t see what my being a princess has to do with anything,” Etta pouted. “I wish I wasn’t a princess at all.”

The boy stuck his hands in his pocket and whistled long and low. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I was just surprised. Of course no one has taught you. We will start tomorrow.”

And so, Etta learned to read. Then she learned to write. If she struggled with grammar, it must not be wondered at, for her tutor was still a pupil himself. And oh, how she loved to read! Her books became almost as dear to her as Winslow himself—almost.

And Etta learned to be a child. She played and laughed and skinned her knees and slew imaginary dragons with wooden sticks to her heart’s content.

But the simple joys of childhood do not last forever.

Winslow’s face was especially thoughtful as he let himself in through the garden gate one bright afternoon three years after he first met the princess. The wisteria over the gate was in full bloom, and it scattered soft purple petals in his hair as he passed, but he didn’t notice. Nor did he notice the bold young tulips beaming up at him, and he didn’t see the apple blossoms and predict, as he usually would have, that they would have an abundant crop that fall. His mind was consumed with the most difficult decision he had yet faced.

Etta was curled up on the garden bench with a book. Gone were the parasol, frills, and satin slippers, replaced instead with a simple dress, sturdy shoes, and plentiful freckles. She looked up when she heard his step, and at once she burst into a bright laugh. “Winslow! You’re covered in petals!”

“Am I?” he asked, but he didn’t bother to brush them off.

“Here—I’ll get them,” the princess said. But as she did so, she noticed something—a look in his eye—and stopped. “What’s the matter?”

He motioned for her to sit again on the bench. “Etta,” he said slowly, “I’m leaving.”

The laughter faded from her eyes. “Why?”

Winslow looked at his cracked leather shoes. He dug his hands into his pockets. “I’m going to school—to a good school far away where I’ll become a learned man.”

Etta turned away, hiding her tears. “It’s what you’ve always wanted,” she said quietly.

Winslow watched her wipe away a tear, and he wondered at his own cruelty. But he merely said, “I’ve saved 468 silver coins, and Father will loan me 32, so I have an even 500. It’ll get me through four years of school.”

“Four years?” Etta cried.

Winslow pulled his hands out of his pockets and clasped Etta’s. “I’ll come back. I promise.”

The princess’ lip still trembled.

“I’ll learn so much, Etta, and I’ll write and tell you all about it. I’ll read so many books. Perhaps I’ll even write a book. Some learned people do, you know.”

He pressed her hand reassuringly. “Don’t worry. We’ll always stay the best of friends.”

His Excellency the Second Chancellor of the Kingdom of Lavenlee tripped on the fur-lined hem of his second-best robe and tumbled head-over-heels into the throne room. The crisp note he carried flew out of his hand and soared into the king’s lap.

The king was absorbed in the latest edition of Royal magazine, so he didn’t call the chancellor a nincompoop, for which the chancellor was grateful. The king gave the note a perfunctory glance. Then his eyes nearly popped out of his head. His bejeweled hand shook, and he dropped the paper.

“FienderDalle Fairy?” he gasped.

His Excellency the First Chancellor had only just remembered how to read, so he cleared his throat and began:

Respected Sire,

It has come to my attention that the Royal Princess is in sad want of an education.

Princesses become queens and rule kingdoms. Your daughter is a princess; therefore she will become a queen and rule your kingdom after you. It would behoove your Royal Personage—and the entire kingdom—to send her to school so that she may learn the things you have forgotten.

With your best interest at heart,

FienderDalle Fairy

“Dear me,” the king said.

“Dreadful,” said the First Chancellor.

“Not nearly as dreadful as I expected,” the Second Chancellor said as he picked himself up off the floor. He dusted off his furs and straightened his wig.

“How old is the princess?” the king asked.

“Seven,” said the First Chancellor.

“Nonsense,” said the Second Chancellor. “Ten.”

“I’m thirteen this June,” said Princess Etta as she walked into the room. “You summoned me, Papa?”

The king was too surprised at the sight of his daughter to reply for some time. She looked different—more like her dear mother—and the change puzzled him. Then he recalled that children tend to grow up. “Oh, I didn’t—I mean, I did summon you,” he managed to say.

“Well, what did you want me for?”

“Have a chocolate?” he said at last, and he held out a box with little sweets in golden paper.

His daughter shook her head, and her golden curls bounced. “No, thank you.” “Er, would you like a pony? Or a puppy?”

The stress was making the king sweat. He mopped his brow with a silk handkerchief and said, “Well, I forget why I summoned you. What do you want?”

“I want an education,” the princess said.

The king scratched beneath his wig. “You want to learn to read?”

“I already know how.”

The king frowned. “What more is there to learn?”

The princess began counting on her fingers. “Geography, arithmetic, history, philosophy, languages, etiquette logic, rhetoric, and—” she was running out of fingers “—at least a dozen other things.”

The king mopped his brow again. “Gracious. Where does one learn such nonsense?”

“School,” Etta said. “I want to go to school.”

The king looked to his chancellors for help. They shrugged.

“Your Majesty attended school; Your Majesty would know best,” the First Chancellor said. He had not attended school, but he would not mention such a triviality to his employer.

“I concur,” the Second Chancellor said with such an emphatic nod that his wig nearly fell off. He could not remember what a school was.

“Wulfhen Academy,” came a hollow voice from the doorway. “A school for princesses just over the mountains.” It was the treasurer who spoke. He was a clever man, and he had long ago quit entering the throne room lest he stumble over the First Chancellor’s trailing robe.

“How do you know about it?” the First Chancellor demanded. The treasurer’s wig was of a sensible—but inferior—height.

“The princess’ mother went there,” the voice in the doorway said.

“I’ll go there,” Etta said. “I’ll go next week.”

“It’s expensive,” the treasurer added.

“But education is priceless,” the king said. He had no idea what that phrase meant, but it sounded like something he should say. “I’ll send my daughter wherever she likes, and if I have to raise the taxes, I shall.” He looked around the room fiercely as if daring anyone to say otherwise.

Etta bounded up to the throne and kissed her father’s round cheek. “Thank you, Papa.” The king’s face turned a tropical pink. “There, there, run along,” he said.

As the princess reached the door, she stopped. “One more thing. Please send a hundred silver coins to Winslow Lachlan at his school, along with paper, pen and ink so he can write to me. Thank you.”

And so, Princess Ettaline Emrandine Everly of Lavenlee received an education. For five years, she studied under the best instructors and grew in all the grace and knowledge and wisdom a princess could require.

Princess Etta sat on the garden bench. In the five years since she had last sat upon that garden bench, much had changed—but not too much, she hoped. She held a thick book, but she was not reading. Her eyes wore a vacant expression as if the mind behind them were miles—or years—away.

At last, a soft, “Hey!” spilled over the garden wall. The book snapped shut. The princess whirled around, already beaming.

“Winslow!”

Winslow’s dancing eyes peered down at her from the other side of the wall.

“May I come over?” he asked.

“Of course!”

Etta wanted to run and hug him, but she had not attended five years of deportment classes for nothing. When Winslow landed, she held out a welcoming hand. Winslow took it and kissed it.

“Welcome back,” he said.

“I’m glad to be back.”

They looked each other up and down, both noticing how the other had grown up.

“So. You went to school, too,” Winslow said at last.

“Thanks to you.”

Winslow smiled. “It was the least I could do. Tell me all about it.”

So, the friends sat down and talked for a good four hours.

But something was different. This time, Etta and Winslow were equals in intellect, if not in rank. If Winslow taught Etta something new, she would reciprocate with a lesson of her own. Now, both knew many stories to entertain the other. But alas, Etta was more a princess than ever, while Winslow remained a common—albeit learned—man.

The old king was fast realizing that his daughter had grown up and become clever. Because he had forgotten how to be clever, he relied more and more on his daughter for the wit and wisdom a ruler requires. Etta spent more and more time in the throne room, much to the chancellors’ dismay.

Etta missed her friend terribly. She rarely saw him now, and as the second year after her return to the kingdom approached, she decided it was time for a change.

“I miss seeing you, Winslow,” she told him. They were walking through the garden one golden afternoon when Etta had no royal duties and he was not teaching in the city’s only school. It was autumn, and rippling leaves fluttered to the ground all around them in a cascade of dying brilliance. “Papa says I haven’t any excuse to keep seeing you now that I’m educated and grown up, but I think differently. Winslow,” Etta stopped on the path and turned to face her oldest, dearest friend. “Winslow, I want to see you every day for the rest of my life. Will you marry me?”

Shock is not the right word to describe Winslow’s expression; it does not fully capture his astonishment, joy, horror, and hope. He was not expecting this.

“But—but you’re a princess. You have to marry for advantage,” he stammered, all red in the face.

“And have some unknown, pampered prince tell me how to rule my kingdom?” Etta wrinkled her nose. “Winslow, it’s you or nobody.”

At last Winslow smiled, and he took her hands in his. “Good. I’ll marry you.”

“I may need some help convincing Papa.”

“I’ll handle that.”

Etta smiled in turn. “Good,” she said, and that was that.

Their Excellencies the First and Second Chancellors were having a bad day. The First Chancellor’s powdered wig had a squirrel’s nest in it, and the creatures’ incessant chatter gave him a headache. The Second Chancellor’s jewel-encrusted slippers pinched his toes, but vanity always precedes comfort. He bore the pain with the petulance of a two-year-old. Moreover, the king had threatened to fire his chancellors seven times apiece that day because of their various incompetencies.

So, neither the First nor the Second Chancellor cared to approach the king with the daily mail. They sulked in their respective corners of the throne room, eating blue sherbet and glaring at everyone. It was Princess Etta who brought her father his mail.

“Papa, put your biography down before it gives you indigestion and take a look at your letters.”

Begrudgingly, the king handed his biography to his daughter and accepted the stack of envelopes from her hand. Several of them he ripped up immediately—bills and petitions and the like—but the last one in the stack caught his eye. It was a thick envelope, addressed in brilliant green ink. The king broke the seal, and as he scanned the page his hand began to tremble. “Read it aloud, Ettaline,” he said in a tremulous voice.

Etta’s eyes danced as she took the note from her father and began to read:

Respected Sire,

It has come to my attention that the Royal Princess has grown up and become both beautiful and intelligent. No doubt foreign princes will soon pester Your Majesty for her hand in marriage. I warn you that if your daughter marries a foreign prince, you will lose your throne to the conniving wretch before the year is out.

How to avoid such trouble? If you refuse a prince’s offer of marriage on the grounds that he is a treacherous toad, he will declare war. However, if you refuse on the grounds that your daughter is already betrothed, the Laws of Chivalry will demand that the prince rescind his offer at once. So, if the Royal Princess is to wed at all, let it be to someone sensible and without power-hungry allies. Look to your own people.

It would behoove your Royal Personage—and the entire kingdom—to find such a young man before it is too late.

With your best interest at heart,

FienderDalle Fairy

“Dreadfully awkward,” the king said. He rubbed the back of his neck and nearly knocked his wig off. “My dear, why didn’t you address this sooner?”

Etta wanted to say that she had addressed it, but she held her tongue.

The king looked helplessly around the throne room. “Well, what are we going to do?”

“Your Majesty knows best,” the First Chancellor said from his corner.

“I don’t know why I keep you around,” the king snapped.

The First Chancellor receded even deeper into the shadows.

“Surely Your Majesty will not listen to the letter,” came the Second Chancellor’s hesitant voice from the other corner. “I mistrust it.”

Etta put a hand to her heart and gasped. “Would you dare mistrust FienderDalle Fairy?”

“How do we know the Fairy is sending these letters?” the Second Chancellor persisted. For all of his shortcomings, he could be a sharp fellow. Dangerously so.

“Ahem,” came a voice from the doorway.

All eyes turned toward the entrance. There stood Winslow in his best suit with a fresh bouquet of asters in his hand. He bowed low.

“I’ve come to court the princess,” he said, and he winked at Etta.

The king leaned forward in his golden throne and scrutinized the young intruder. “The Fairy sent you?” he asked.

“So it would seem,” Etta said.

“Bold young upstart,” the First Chancellor muttered from his corner.

“I like him,” Etta said, and she stepped off the dais and extended a hand to her suitor.

“I don’t,” said the Second Chancellor across the room.

“If the Fairy sent him, he must be acceptable,” the king mused.

“But is he sensible?” asked the Second Chancellor.

“If he had any sense he would’ve stayed away,” the treasurer called from the hallway.

“I agree,” the king said. “What honor befalls the royal consort? No sensible man would accept such a role.”

“Unless he was in love,” Winslow whispered to Etta.

“With me, or with my library?” she whispered back.

Winslow grinned.

The king scratched his head. “This is a most trying situation.”

“Perhaps your Eminence should summon the full court,” the Second Chancellor said.

“The full court?” the First Chancellor gasped. “Are we not sufficient?”

The Second Chancellor wrinkled his nose. “Such complexities were not included in my job description.”

“Incompetent nincompoops,” the king said. He struck his scepter against the throne.

“Summon the full court.”

Like a defendant before the judge and jury, Winslow faced them, his cap twisted in his hands. A beam of evening sunlight burst through the rose window behind the throne and illuminated the young man’s face like a spotlight. Thirty pairs of eyes were fastened upon him.

“I have found you out,” the king said with a triumphant gleam in his eye. “My advisors have informed me that FienderDalle Fairy does not exist. He is nothing but an old wives’ tale, and you are to blame for all my troubles.”

“Me? What have I done?” Winslow cried. He and Etta exchanged alarmed glances. The king frowned.

“What have you done? You have disturbed my royal personage with threatening letters. You finagled your way into my presence and had the impudence to attempt to marry my daughter.” He struck his scepter against the throne. “For your insolence and connivery, I banish you from my royal presence. Guards!”

“No!” Etta cried, but the doors had already swung open and the fateful sound of marching feet echoed down the hall. The princess stamped her foot. “No, Father! Let me explain!”

But no one heard her, for all attention was riveted upon the doorway, through which no guard in glistening armor entered. Instead, there stood a man, if man he was, for he was the most unnatural man anyone had ever seen. Muddy, green clothes garbed his gangly frame, and a cloak woven entirely from moss trailed behind him. Autumn leaves crowned his graying hair and beard.

A hush fell over the throne room. No one moved, no one spoke, no one dared breathe. The First Chancellor toppled in a swoon.

“F—F—FienderDalle Fairy,” the king stammered. His round cheeks were flushed and his eyes bulged in their sockets. Despite all his royal finery, he looked like a naughty boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

The Fairy surveyed those assembled with cool, impassive eyes. Then, as his gaze fell upon the king, his lips curved into a wry smile.

“So,” he said. “Nothing but an old wives’ tale, eh?”

Winslow stepped forward and cleared his throat. “Sir. Allow me to explain—” He fell silent as the strange green eyes fell upon him. FienderDalle Fairy raised one bushy eyebrow, then another, and he crossed his arms and wrinkled his long nose. “Humph,” he said.

Etta moved beside Winslow and took his hand and squeezed it hard.

“So you are the young upstart who stole my name and used it for your own ends,” the Fairy said. He squinted one eye and looked Winslow up and down.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Winslow said. “I didn’t think you would mind.”

“Oh, I don’t mind,” FienderDalle Fairy said. “It was for a good cause.”

Etta and Winslow smiled at each other.

“But,” he continued, “even misdeeds meant for good must not go unpunished.”

Etta and Winslow stopped smiling.

Then the Fairy cackled. “And what better punishment is there than to have him—” he pointed at the king— “for a father-in-law?” He slapped his knee and, still snickering, turned and sauntered back out the great golden doors.

Never again did FienderDalle Fairy disturb the peace of Lavenlee, so it is safe to say that all the inhabitants of that kingdom lived happily ever after.

Annelise St. Clair is a writer based in Cambridge, MA. Her creative endeavors include devotional poetry, short stories, two novels in various stages of development, and watercolor sketches of the world around her. Her poetry has appeared in The Harvard Ichthus, Amethyst Review, and Everyday Epiklesis, as well as on Substack.

Annelise St. Clair

I’m a writer based in Cambridge, MA. You might find me scribbling away at a couple novels or devotional poetry, reading and rereading good stories, and “keeping house” with my husband in an old apartment with a clawfoot bathtub.

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Once upon a time, there lived a King Lodor who had many wives, and each one was named after the mood she embodied. If the king was angry, he summoned Fury to mirror his rage. If he was thoughtful, he walked and sat with Pensive. When he was sad, he pursued Sorrow. After a victory or message of good news he wanted Triumphant.

Often, however, a wife with the attribute opposite to his mood was most helpful to him. If he was irritable, for instance, Patient could placate him, and if dreariness encumbered him, he hastened to Cheer to lighten his spirits. His choice of which effect he needed depended upon whether he sought sympathy or wished to dispel his emotions. He could always depend upon each wife to exhibit the same single quality for which she was named. No one could speak such fitting words as his wives, and they brought him much comfort and inspiration.

King Lodor acquired his various wives through a witch named Vivar, who lived in the eastern woods of his kingdom. When he was in a certain humor and did not have a wife to match it, he simply rode to the cottage of this witch and gave her a lock of his hair. She added it to a potion she had invented for him and used it to create a new wife to address his present state of mind. He brought this woman home to his castle, married her, and felt that he needed no more. But, inevitably, another mood would soon strike him, and back he went to the obliging Vivar for yet another wife.

King Lodor’s courtiers and subjects, though surprised when he married one wife after another, were tolerant of this habit until the number of his wives became ridiculous. Besides Fury, Pensive, Sorrow, Triumphant, Patient, and Cheer, the king had Frivolous, Tranquil, Timid, Content, Clever, Bold, Kind, Sensible, Joy, Chatty, Languid, Sullen, Whimsical, Restless, Quiet, Inspired, Fanciful, and many others.

The courtiers and subjects alike thought their king was indecent to have so many wives from goodness knew where, for he was always secretive about where he found them. He and his kingdom would be far better off, his people insisted, if he had one queen. Every proper king did, but theirs was always dashing off to a different wife when he felt that he needed her. When approached on the subject, King Lodor alternately laughed in dismissal with Whimsical at his side, shouted and pounded his fist with encouragement from Fury, expressed his dejection as Sorrow stood mournfully by, or, regardless of which wife was with him, claimed that no single woman could possibly supply the needs of all his emotions.

But the entreaties of King Lodor’s people grew so urgent and earnest that he realized his kingdom and rule would never be peaceful until he chose one wife.

King Lodor contemplated his wives. The decision of which should be his queen proved to be formidable. He settled upon Kind and retired to bed with relief only to awake several hours later imagining what would happen the next time he was obligated to enforce a law or punish a subject. Kind would urge him to be lenient and would prevent him from fulfilling his duty as king. Next he selected Whimsical but foresaw that her unending humorous remarks would become irksome. Cheer seemed a worthy choice until he anticipated that he would not always wish to see her bright smiles and hear her buoyant words. But, on the other side of it, Sullen’s gloomy countenance and observations were not always desirable either. Frivolous would be amusing but also a hindrance to his ambition, while Sensible would discourage him from enjoying himself. Content seemed, for a time, the best choice, as she would help him to be satisfied in every circumstance. Yet even her unbroken contentment would irritate him when he was in an ill temper, and when he was excited he would find her presence dull. And so the king tried for weeks to settle which wife he most wanted to share his throne. He told his subjects and courtiers that the task was impossible. They were adamant, however, that he must find a way.

Next King Lodor tried choosing one of his wives at random. He gathered them all together in a great chamber and instructed them to walk in a circle while he kept his eyes closed. Whichever wife he touched first would be his queen.

Each of his wives reacted to his plan according to her character. Fury swept about and fumed, Timid stood behind the others with folded hands and a bowed head, and Whimsical laughed at his predicament. Bold stood at the head of the procession with a determined face, while Sorrow wept and Languid yawned. As they all circled around him, King Lodor closed his eyes, stepped forward with an outstretched hand, and touched—Chatty.

He stood looking at her before shaking his head. “I am sorry, my dear,” he said, breaking across her stream of prattle. “I am seldom in a chatty mood, and you are among the wives whom I have sought the least. I must choose again.”

He next touched Bold and decided that she could not be his constant companion either, for she would always spur him to act upon impulse even when restraint was the wiser course. Languid, Quiet, and Restless would be just as unsuitable. Soon he had touched and ruled out every wife. Clever was last, and he declared that listening to her witticisms all the time would be too exhausting for him to bear.

“What will I do?” he cried. “I am no nearer to choosing one of you. I need you all but at different times.”

“How many agonizing decisions kings face,” said Sympathy as she patted his arm.

“They ought not to interfere with happiness,” said Joy.

“I know what you ought to do. Go to the source of your difficulty,” was Clever’s counsel.

This suggestion caught King Lodor’s attention. “Yes,” he murmured. “Of course. I must return to the source. I shall be off at once. I am grateful to you, Clever, for you have mitigated my consternation. I regret that I cannot choose you.”

King Lodor left the castle and galloped to Vivar’s cottage in the eastern woods, for he considered her, rather than himself, to be the source of his dilemma, as she with her magical arts had brought forth his legion of wives.

When King Lodor entered the cottage Vivar was leaning over her cauldron, but she straightened with a smile. She was far from a haggish witch, for she was not covered in warts and clad in tattered robes. Instead, her appearance was neat and appealing. A girdle of ivy leaves circled her simple lavender gown, and a small wreath of them held back her ginger hair. Her green eyes sparkled like sunlight falling upon a woodland pool. She looked no older than twenty. King Lodor had always been surprised that a woman so young could possess such knowledge and skill.

“Ah, you have come for another wife,” she said as she turned to take a filled flask from a shelf. “What shall she be—mysterious, blithe, companionable?”

“Yes, I have come for another wife,” King Lodor confirmed. “But she will not have only one temperament. She shall have all of the qualities of my wives joined together. Then I will need only one wife for consolation and counsel, and my subjects and courtiers will be appeased.”

Vivar replaced the flask upon the shelf slowly as she considered his words. She pitied King Lodor in his troubles, yet she had hoped that he would never think of combining all of his wives into one. Vivar had been in love with King Lodor since the first time he had come to her cottage with a desperate face, and she did not wish his visits to end. Most of those who asked her for potions considered them to be as unremarkable as a potato pulled from the ground. But King Lodor seemed awed by her abilities and convinced that she could accomplish anything with them. While Vivar thought that having more than one wife was unwise, she felt that King Lodor truly needed her, and she sensed that he longed for something that lay beyond the power of her magic.

She, too, pursued the same elusive yearning each time she wove her witchery into a potion, but she never reached the unnamed wish. She believed that she and the king could find it in each other, whatever it was, yet she knew very well that she could never hope to wed a king. And so she continued to provide new wives for him so that she could at least enjoy his presence when he came for them. Now, if she created one final wife for him, his excursions to her cottage would likely cease.

All of these conflicting thoughts passed through Vivar’s mind as she stood beside her potion shelves. A slight frown creased her brow. “I do not know if such a thing is possible,” she said at last.

King Lodor dashed forward and seized her hands. Urgency had returned to his face. “But you are a talented witch–you can achieve anything with your enchantments,” he cried. “Will you at least make the attempt? I will double the sum of gold I have given you previously.”

Vivar smiled in spite of her dread, and her heart thrilled at his touch. “Very well,” she replied. “I know of a potion to create the wife you seek, but I have never brewed it before and cannot be accountable if it causes more grief than good. You must bring me this time a strand of hair from each wife and also a piece of her gown. Then I shall create one wife to encompass all of them.” As she spoke the words she felt as if she shut and locked a door that could not be opened again. But if she could not put aside her own gain for the sake of the king, her love for him was worthless.

King Lodor kissed her hands in gratitude and rode jauntily away. Vivar watched him through her window and already felt the shadow of desolation creeping over her. At last she would satisfy him, but she would also destroy her own chances of happiness. Yet perhaps she would forget her longing for him in time and settle once more into her round of everyday magic. King Lodor’s frequent appearances had been exciting but rather disruptive to her quiet life. With a sigh she began to compound the potion he had requested. While most of her brews required five steps at most, this one required more than twenty and contained fifty ingredients in addition to those from the king’s wives.

King Lodor waited until the stroke of midnight to collect the hair and gown fragments, for he hoped that by then every one of his wives, even Restless, would be asleep. He did not wish to tell them of his new plan, for he doubted that even the most amiable among them would be agreeable to it. They slept in one long chamber, which was filled with row upon row of beds and wardrobes. Fortunately each wife slept soundly, and King Lodor crept to one after the other and cut a strand of her hair and a piece of the gown that hung beside her bed. None of his wives awoke, although Restless once stirred so much that he ducked behind Timid’s bed until Restless was still once more. The next morning he brought the materials to Vivar’s cottage.

King Lodor was too eager to notice that the witch looked fatigued. All night she had chopped, steeped, poured, and stirred the contents of the complicated potion. She added the king’s contribution to her cauldron, murmured a few words, and before King Lodor’s eyes, as on so many instances before, a woman emerged from it. Her face was inscrutable, and she wore a gown that was as startling as it was exquisite, as its hue seemed to change every other moment and was difficult to identify. King Lodor was so confident of Vivar’s success that he prepared to depart with his new bride at once.

“Wait a few days before you marry her,” Vivar cautioned. “Then you may ascertain whether she is what you wish her to be.”

“I have no doubt of it,” was King Lodor’s elated answer. “Your magic has never failed yet. And the wedding preparations will require a few days in any case, for the ceremony and celebrations are to be the most glorious of all.”

As King Lodor and his bride rode away from Vivar’s cottage, he tested his companion by remarking “I feel most exultant at present.”

He expected a response to affirm his jubilation. His bride turned to him with a face like Fury’s. “Do you delude yourself that I care in the least what you are feeling?” she cried.

The surprised king had no opportunity to reply, for the next moment his bride shrank low in the saddle and shivered as Timid would. “I am so frightened of the world,” his bride whispered. “I should dearly like to hide away from it!”

Again King Lodor had no time to answer, even if, in his astonishment, he had known what to say. Once more the woman before him changed, and she laughed at nothing in particular as was Whimsical’s custom. Then she conjectured, in a voice like Kind’s, that the king’s horse must be tired and should be permitted to rest. Next she reminded King Lodor of Restless by looking to either side and behind her in movements so swift he felt dizzy watching them. At last her face became dreamy like Fanciful’s, and she claimed that a cloud above them had the shape of a dragon. King Lodor perceived plainly that she would never do as his bride, as she moved from one manner to another with no relation to his own.

King Lodor pitied this erratic woman who existed because of his whim, and he thought the best course was to bring her back to Vivar. The woman exhibited at least a dozen dispositions before they reached the cottage in the woods again. By this time, King Lodor, quite exhausted by her shifting behavior, was irate. He recounted to Vivar what had occurred as he rode through the forest with her latest creation. “Why did you not inform me that forming a woman from all of my wives would have a disastrous result?” he demanded of Vivar at the end of his tale.

“I have never attempted anything of the sort before and was unsure, myself, what the outcome would be,” Vivar replied as her green eyes flashed. “I warned you that using the potion was a risk. I have given you every brew you have asked for and am hardly to blame if one of them has gone awry.” Her heartbeat quickened at her bold words to her sovereign, but anger overwhelmed her caution.

“What is to become of the poor woman?” King Lodor blustered as he gestured to the bride, who gazed out of the cottage window in Pensive’s reflective manner. He seemed unfazed by Vivar’s heated speech.

“She shall be my assistant, and I will try to temper her volatile nature,” said Vivar. “But how do you propose to appease your people’s insistence that you choose one wife?”

King Lodor deflated like a cloud releasing its rain. “I am defeated in the matter,” he sighed. “I cannot settle upon one bride, and my people will always be displeased with me. They will likely cast me from my throne.” He paced about and ignored the woman’s changing temperaments. One moment she was smashing potion bottles in a rage, and the next she apologized profusely as she swept up the fragments.

Vivar went on stirring her cauldron’s contents—a healing tonic for a goat. She was suddenly weary. Since she was to lose the company of King Lodor, she felt little concern for what happened next. “You might consume a draught with a measure of each potion I used for your wives,” she said softly. “I saved the remainder of every brew.”

King Lodor looked up mid-stride. “But with all of their characteristics in the potion, would I become as fitful as this poor woman, or would my own thoughts produce what I needed from my wives?”

“I do not know.” Vivar was terse in her despair. “We can only undergo the test.”

“If you had suggested this potion before, you might have spared yourself the labor of making my numerous wives, and the duration of my plight would have been shortened,” King Lodor observed.

Vivar ground an herb into powder with much more force than was necessary. “If you persist in placing upon me the fault for your own foolish choices, I will refuse to brew further potions for you.”

King Lodor looked startled and chagrined at her words. After a pause he bowed humbly. “I am sorry for my unjustness,” he said, “And I accept your proposition.”

Vivar’s anger faded, and again weariness engulfed her. Each word she spoke cost an inordinate effort. “I do not think this potion will cause your character to change without direction. I assume that your wives’ characters will dwell inside you, and you may call upon them for thoughts that suit your condition.”

“Then please do not delay in making this draught!” cried King Lodor. He was unperturbed by the scowl, akin to that of Sullen’s, that the woman by the window now cast at him.

Vivar had only to combine the potions that had given King Lodor his wives, heat the resulting mixture, and use her turquoise wand to stir it five times as she sprinkled silverdust into the dark blue liquid. When King Lodor held the potion to his lips he felt a quiver of fear at what it might bring, but he drank from the vial before his trepidation could stop him.

A pause followed. King Lodor was still. Vivar was still. The woman by the window was still. Even the forest seemed to hold its breath.

“I feel no different,” said King Lodor. A thought, reflecting the spirit of Clever, entered his mind: “The best outcomes are often the most subtle.” King Lodor’s heart bounded, and another fitting thought came: “Hope buoys the heart.” The statement sounded like one that Hopeful would utter. King Lodor laughed, and a voice like Joy’s spoke next in his thoughts: “Man is meant for joy. Every beat of his heart is for the pursuit of it. When truly found, it cannot be taken from him.”

“It worked!” King Lodor cried like an exuberant boy. “Each wife dwells inside my own head! Now I will rely no longer upon the words of another. I do not need a wife at all. My former ones can be court women or assistants to you, if you want them.”

“Such a large company of attendants would be excessive,” Vivar replied. “I will keep only the last woman. May I congratulate you upon the success of the potion and the fulfillment of your wishes. But will not your courtiers and subjects still wish you to have a queen?”

“I expect they would rather that I have none than many,” King Lodor replied. In his delight he seemed on the brink of dancing. “My wives may not be pleased at their dismissal, but I will give them the choice of remaining at court or departing elsewhere.”

Vivar turned away to finish the tonic for the ailing goat, for she did not want King Lodor to suspect her misery. He thanked her once more and left her cottage. At first his face was merry and his heart light as his horse trotted along. But he became more and more thoughtful the longer he rode, and he looked back toward the cottage several times. The image of Vivar filled his mind. He reflected that he had somehow never noticed, until today, the beauty that she possessed. Now he thought of her slender, strong fingers as they prepared herbs and stirred potions, the way tendrils of her ginger hair escaped from their ivy wreath when she bent over her cauldron, and the mysteries that seemed to dwell in her eyes when they looked into his. He was never sure what thoughts lay behind her expressions. As he rode away from Vivar, he found himself feeling lonely.

“The heart often changes just when its wish has been granted,” whispered a voice in King Lodor’s mind. The sentiment sounded like one of Pensive’s.

Halfway through the forest he turned his horse, rode back to the cottage, and opened the door. “Perhaps you are right, and I will still be urged to select a queen,” he said as the startled witch looked up from her chopping table and stared at him. “And if I were to choose one, I do not know of any woman more worthy than you, Vivar, for you have proven yourself to be wise, gifted, and loyal. You helped me whenever I sought your knowledge and skill, you devised potions to give me my desires, and you did not cast me away even when I insulted you. What we search for may already be before us, as Pensive would proclaim. I no longer wish for a bride to support all of my tempers. But I do wish for you to be my companion and queen. Will you?”

Vivar agreed to his proposal with disbelief that her own desire had come to fruition when she had at last ceased to seek it. She left her cottage and simple forest life to be queen. King Lodor’s former wives became her waiting maids, and the last one remained her assistant, for Vivar continued her magical operations. Due to relief that King Lodor at last had only one wife, no one cared that she was a witch of common birth. And so King Lodor’s people approved of him at last, and he and his queen reigned long and well. King Lodor was content with his wife, and he depended first upon his own thoughts to meet his many moods.

Four of Iva Levarre's fairy tale stories have been published in Rose Red Review: “The Dead Garden,” “The Cursed Princess,” “Maid Myrta’s Children,” and “Among the Phlox” (the first two under the pseudonym Laura Chitlon). In 2018 she earned a master’s degree in publishing from Pace University after completing a thesis on the wisdom to be found in classic fairy tales. She hopes to continue sharing her work on Substack and beyond.

Iva Levarre

I am passionate about reading and writing fairy tales. Four of my stories have been published in Rose Red Review. My goal is to continue to share my work on Substack and beyond.

The Three Feathers: A Fairy Tale Publication

A publication for readers seeking stories inspired by classic fairy tales.

By Iva Levarre

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Read more from this month here ↓

It was funny how I knew exactly what it needed to be in that very moment: a place of life-giving, thought-provoking, wonder-inspiring literature. A pushback against the current culture of hopeless vulnerability and darkness. Something that could heal readers and provide more opportunities to writers.

And so, Whim & Wander: The Journal began.

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From the beginning — even though this is a one-woman show — I have referred to us as, well, we. Because it’s not just me. It’s all of you who make up this beautiful community we’ve built, and each one of you has played an incredibly important part in getting us here.

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But this week, something happened: my husband broke his foot. We quickly came to the realization that he isn’t able to keep working and are now staring straight into the looming eyes of what might be a very stressful financial season.

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50 paid subscribers. That’s what I’m reaching for right now. And I think we can do it.

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Over the past few months, it’s become clear that our submissions will fill up rapidly every single time. So beginning this month, I’m adding something new to our exclusive newsletter: early submission access.

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                                   ♪♪♪

All the king’s horses and all the queen’s men
Are eating blue twoberry pie again.
Yea, marshmallow clouds dot a mulberry sky,
But all they will have is blue twoberry pie.

                                   ♪♪♪

Upon a time once, yea, our queen and our king
Were happy together, shared everything.

But arguments rose and turned into a feud,
And now both insist that a war be pursued.

The soldiers are summoned, the battle plans made—
But then in the morning, those plans are waylaid.

Not one of the soldiers can be made to fight.
They’re much too enthralled by a curious sight:

Lo, pies fill the palace—
                                         the hallways,
                           the stairs,
     the bookshelves
                               and doorways
             and bathtubs
                                   and chairs,
         the tables
                              and wagons
               and chaises
                                       and carts
Are bobbling and toppling and tumbling with tarts.

For someone snuck in, in the dark, ere sunrise,
And made hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pies!

The palace’s kitchen is clean, but it’s clear
The pies were made there; the cupboards are bare.

No pan was left empty, not even the Bundt,
But who is to blame for this most scrumptious stunt?

The royals, informed, are distracted from war.
Their questions come quickly; they want to know more!

“What mischief is this?” and “Who saw what? Who heard?”
Alas! But the answer is frankly absurd.

A blackberry fool in the silver moonshine
Saw ten ladyfingers, a trifle too fine.
A cobbler sat out on the counter with flan
As chiffon and chantilly swirled ‘round a pan.
A flurry of cream, butter, sugar galore
Whisked by the old cook, who continued to snore.
An intricate plait with ganache on its crown
Tucked under the window too quickly, fell down.
A lattice was thrown with an excess of zest—
The sly makings of a blue twoberry jest.

The royal advisors have no helpful news.
The lords and the ladies are likewise confused.

The staff, though relieved that the war seems forgot,
Deny, with respect, any place in this plot.

The princess herself, a mischievous sprite,
Just shrugs, yawns, and then helps herself to a bite.

Reports of the pies quickly spread past the gates.
Soon more people come—with their forks and their plates.

A great feast begins! Townsfolk, peasants arrive;
It turns out, there’s no one who doesn’t want pie.

The princess proposes: Perhaps a short break?
Brief quell of the quarrel—just time for a taste?

And both king and queen, glancing ruefully ‘round,
Agree that a taste of the pie might... good... sound.

There’s only one plate left; they’ll just have to share.
So each takes a fork, with a hmmmph and a glare.

The taste is—sublime, oh, the taste is sweet bliss!
The queen and the king had forgot about this,

The gooey deliciousness, rapture, delight,
The scrumptiousness of a blue twoberry bite.

It’s juicy and tangy, it’s sweetness galore,
It’s hardly a wonder they’re clamoring for more.

                              ♪♪♪

Tho’ marmalade sun may greet caramel sky
Still nothing can charm like blue twoberry pie.
Not bright lemon curd swirled with Chantilly cream,
nor apricot moons in a butterscotch dream.
No stars of meringue in a sugarplum sea
Can never compare with blue twoberry glee.
Yea, marshmallow clouds dot a mulberry sky,
But all they will have is blue twoberry pie.

                               ♪♪♪

Their taste buds delighted, their bellies at ease,
The royals’ ridiculousness comes to a cease.

Of culprit and prankster they’ve nary a thought,
And all talk of war (what war?) is forgot.

For all—the queen, horses, king, women, and men—
Are eating blue twoberry pie again.

And only the jester, the cobbler, cook, too,
Notice the princess’s fingers—stained blue.

                                ♪♪♪

Yea, marshmallow clouds dot a mulberry sky,
But all we will have is blue twoberry pie.

                                ♪♪♪

Nicole is, among other things, a creative writer, reader, and over-thinker in Texas. She is always up to something (else) (again). You can find her here on Substack.

Nicole Is Up To Something

I'm always having these random ideas, and I just want a place to put them. Most of them dissolve before too long, I know...but it's also fun to dive in for a short while.

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We are a reader-supported and ad-free literary journal that exists only here on Substack! Our mission is simple: to bring a little more imagination into a world that’s forgotten how to wonder.

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⁘ What to expect this month ⁘

Thank you to all who submitted this past month! Submissions filled up incredibly fast (we expect a similar turnaround this time, too, so be sure to have your pieces ready to go!).

This month, we have two stories and two poems. They will land in your inbox each Wednesday — on the 3rd, 10th, 17th, and 24th.

We hope you are just as excited to read them as we are!

Now, onto submissions…

⁘ Submissions ⁘

Submissions open June 1st, the link to be found on our Submissions page here.

• Writers may submit via a Google forms link, so be sure to have your story ready as a .pdf, .doc, or .docx format.

• Submissions will remain open for two weeks, or until we reach our cap. (We expect spots to fill quickly, so don’t dilly dally!)

• Adults from anywhere in the world may submit. (English only)

• We don’t take previously published work, though work shared on personal blogs/Substack/website is allowed.

• All writers will hear back from us by the end of the month!

For more details about what we are looking for, click the button below.

Submissions

⁘ Publication ⁘

Four pieces will be selected to be shared the following month, in July! We are looking for:

• Short stories (up to 5,000 words)

• Flash fiction (under 1,000 words)

• Poetry

We plan to expand the genres we offer in the future as our support grows!

⁘ Payment ⁘

We are currently paying $20 per short story and $10 per poem, via PayPal, within one week of publication.

This amount, as well, we hope to increase in the future.

A moment of honesty…

We promise that Whim & Wander will always be free to read and submissions will never cost a dime.

However, to keep our journal running, we rely upon readers like you. If you believe the Internet needs more light (like us!) consider becoming a paid subscriber to help us create it.

In return, you’ll get an exclusive newsletter each month, straight from the Editor, that will include several things:

• From the Editor’s Desk: Real-time insight based on the most recent round of submissions — common mistakes, pitfalls, and what made the strongest pieces stand out.

• Things to Try: A handful of writing prompts, challenges, or ideas to try in your own writing.

• Something Sweet: A little poem or brief piece, just to brighten your day.

• A Dash of Whimsy: Ideas for bringing more whimsy and wonder into everyday life. This might include seasonal crafts, book recommendations, mindfulness tips, and whatever feels right that month!

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So work your magic and get ready to send in your wonderful little tales and poetry!
And from the bottom of our hearts, thank you again for being at the start of something we hope will last for years.

We can’t wait to read your stories!

Don’t leave without checking out the stories we published this month!

May has been a wonderful month so far. Each of this month’s three incredible stories belonged to their own unique realm of imagination, which brought a beautiful variety to this issue. We also did something new: held a submission call for stories and poetry!

Looking forward to June, I’m already giddy about the pieces we’ll be sharing. It can’t come fast enough! Until then, let’s reminisce a little bit more about May…

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Repair calls don’t come out of the woods often, and Luke regretted taking the job as his van bounced down the gravel drive. He had driven over rock for more than half an hour and had yet to find a level patch. His tools in the back clattled and rattled and threatened to burst from their boxes. The house mercifully came into view as he thought about turning back, but his hopes didn’t rise with his destination in sight. Luke sighed.

“I don’t charge enough,” he grumbled to the steering wheel.

The house was old. Its main structure may as well have been built by the first settlers to the area, but it had many additions slapped on at odd angles and at different levels. An older woman with an avocado figure and tortilla complexion stood expectantly on the porch. She eyed him through lenses rimmed with horn and bushy brows while Luke thought of burritos.

Luke parked his van next to a rust-and-blue tractor and waved to the lady from inside the cab. The woman did not wave back.

“I definitely don’t charge enough,” Luke said through his false smile. He left the keys in the ignition as he got out.

“Ingrid?” he asked. The ancient lady creased at the neck to give the smallest of nods.

“I thought you’d be here an hour ago?” Ingrid said. Luke checked his watch. He was, in fact, five minutes earlier than he quoted over the phone that morning, but he knew better than to argue.

“My apologies. I’ll get right to work then.”

“Attic’s this way.” Ingrid waved him inside.

Thank heaven, Luke thought. He much preferred working in attics than in crawl spaces or basements.

“I’ll get my tools.”

Ingrid wordlessly led the way through her labyrinthine house. The floors creaked underfoot, and the walls groaned, but everything inside seemed to be well cared for and maintained. Not a speck of dust resided on any surface, and Luke could smell the faintest notes of lemon furniture polish.

I hope she didn’t tidy up on account of me, he thought. He followed Ingrid, left, then right, and arrived at a hall filled entirely by a pull-down attic ladder.

“And what exactly did you say the issue was?” Luke shifted the weight of his toolbox to the other hand.

“Varmint,” Ingrid said simply.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I said on the phone, I’m not an exterminator. I’m HVAC repair.” Luke gestured to the logo on his t-shirt. Luke’s Mechanical: HVAC/Plumbing, Licensed-Insured. A cartoon portrait of him winking with a giant wrench thrown over one shoulder filled the rest of the real estate on his chest.

“Yes, you were quite clear, but varmint have gotten into the air ducts. I can hear them scurrying around up there.”

“Okay. Have you called an exterminator, then? ‘Cause I can patch the ducts, but I don’t work with animals.”

“What kind of man won’t sweep out varmint?” Ingrid accused. “My husband, God rest his soul, would always take care of the critters when they got in the ducts. Makes no sense to patch the hole while they’re still inside.”

“Yes, but—” Luke started to object. He made a professional point of not repairing animal damage until after the animals were dealt with, for exactly the reason Ingrid stated. He also made it a goal never to be in an attic with small animals if he could help it, but never had a client call his masculinity into question. Again, he thought it better not to argue.

“I’ll see what I can do, ma’am.” Ingrid looked unconvinced.

“I’d appreciate it. Oh, and bring the varmint down if you get them. I don’t want my house to smell.”

With that, Luke headed up the attic ladder.

The attic space was just as convoluted a structure as the house below, and he found the air conditioner looming over cluttered curios and devices of bygone eras. To his surprise, it was a newer unit. Less than ten years old by his estimation, and the ductwork was modern, too. Polyester tubes covered in pink insulation and gift-wrapped with plastic.

Luke inspected for signs of animals among the knick-knacks and found none. He went further into the attic and had to crouch as the ceiling above narrowed. A few wayward roofing nails snagged his shirt, and one bit deep enough to break skin. Luke winced and reminded himself to check how recent his last tetanus shot was once he left Ingrid’s house.

Something that sounded like a whisper crept through the dark while he mulled over inoculations. He heard the words, “big ‘un” and “from behind”. Luke called down to Ingrid.

“Did you say something?” he asked, but the woman was gone, and the whispers stopped.

He was on his hands and knees by the time he found a hole. There were no droppings or nests, but it was unmistakably made by an intrepid squirrel.

The system kicked on, and the tattered plastic and insulation fluttered in the cold gust of air. Luke cursed. He forgot to turn off the unit. In a different house, he might have tried patching the hole while the system was running, but he didn’t want to take the chance of being called back out because of a shoddy repair, so he decided to fix it right.

Luke crawled backward out of the cranny he had worked himself into and turned off the air conditioner before fetching tape and mastic from his toolbox. He was mindful to avoid the roofing nails on the trip back to the hole.

He shook the duct before starting the repair. If anything were inside, it would certainly be agitated by now, but nothing emerged from the hole. Luke stopped to listen. Nothing rustled.

Something poked Luke in the back not two minutes later. Another roofing nail? He hunched lower over the duct, but the poking continued, and he heard short, squeaking, grunting noises.

A squirrel!

Luke swatted at his back and tried his best to swivel around in the cramped attic. The pokes increased in vigor, as did the little grunts.

“Get ‘em, Prank! Get the big ‘un,” a small voice shouted. Luke jerked his head around to the noise, and couldn’t believe what his eyes found. A woman no taller than ten inches swung from a rafter. She was wearing the remains of a lady’s gardening glove for a dress, the fingers split and spread like pleats, and a burl acorn cap for a bonnet. She started under Luke’s gaze and shouted more.

“He’s seen me, Prank! He’s seen me.”

Luke shook his shoulders violently to dislodge Prank, his attacker. The pricks and pokes stopped, and he heard the gentle thud of a small body landing in fiber insulation nearby. He thrust a hand out to grab the little woman. She tried to dodge him, but Luke just managed to snatch her by both ankles. He pulled her off the rafter and dangled her upside down. She fought to keep her modesty as much as she fought against his grip as the fingers of her makeshift dress followed gravity’s downward pull.

“Big bully!” she cried in her shrill way.

“What’s going on?” Luke asked the universe. “What’s going on?”

“Let go of her,” Prank shouted. He was fighting his way out of the insulation, coughing and wheezing in the dust he stirred. Luke took advantage of Prank’s immobility and reached to grab him by the ankles, too. But Prank stabbed at his fingers with a small knife. Luke pulled back before he could be pricked.

“What are you?” Luke wondered aloud.

“Get ‘em, Prank. Don’t let ‘em eat me.”

“Eat you?” Luke brought the small woman between him and the violent Prank. “I’m not going to eat you?”

“That’s what the other big man did,” Prank announced. He’d come up here like you to catch little folk. He told the big lady the ones he got were squirrels, and she made ‘em into stew.”

“No, no. I’m not here to eat you,” Luke said. He carefully set his quarry down beside her kind. “I’m just here to fix the vent. I don’t catch critters.”

“Critters?” both little persons gasped. The term evidently offended them.

“Well— I mean, I just fix the holes.” Luke motioned towards the mangled ductwork.

“Oh, yeah. Squirrels did that,” Prank said. “Pesky things. They’ll probably do it again after you leave.”

“That’s exactly what I said.” Luke chuckled, and Prank smiled, too, in the way fellow tradesmen do when they find camaraderie through their craft.

“So you didn’t do this?”

“Of course not,” the woman chortled. “Do you make a habit of making a mess in your living room?”

“Living room? You two live up here?”

“Since the day we were born,” Prank replied.

Luke studied the little folk. Though they were small, they could hardly be described as spritely. Both looked to be approaching middle age, if they measured their lives on the same timeline as him. For all he knew, they could age in days or centuries.

“And how long has that been?”

The little woman bristled and blushed, but Prank answered, “Forty-two years. Forty-three in August.”

“My birthday is in August, too,” Luke said, happy to again find commonality with the small man.

“Who are you talking to?” hollered the old lady from below. Her voice was carried through the vents and emerged from the squirrel-chewed hole. It sounded as though Ingrid were in the attic beside them. Prank and his partner scuttled deep into the insulation and all but disappeared.

“I’ll be right back,” Luke whispered to his newfound companions. He shuffled his way back to the ladder and down to the hall. The attic was dark without Luke’s headlamp, and the dust settled.

“I like him,” Prank said.

“Can we trust him?” the woman whispered. “What if he’s just like the other? The old man was nice at first, too. That’s how he got ol’ Croad to go down the ladder with him, and you know what happened to him.”

“Aye, how could I forget?”

“Shh, I can hear him talking to the hag.”

Prank and Cleavers, for that was the woman’s name— named after the herb and not the butcher’s tool— fell silent as the man’s voice found its way into the attic.

“Squirrels are your problem, but I don’t see them anywhere,” he said to Ingrid.

“Who was that I heard you talkin’ to up there?”

“I got a call from another client.”

“There’s no cell service here.”

“I thought that, too, but the call came through loud and clear in the attic. I’ll have that hole buttoned up in no time. I gotta fetch something else out of my van, can you show me out? I’ve forgotten the way.

“He didn’t rat us out,” Cleavers exclaimed. “Perhaps we can trust him.”

“I knew I liked him.”

The house protested as Ingrid and Luke walked through it. Prank remembered that the house used to be silent, and that it didn’t start creaking until after the old couple moved in almost 30 years ago. He liked to think it was the house’s way of conspiring against its human residents. The squeaky floorboards and settling walls functioned like a bell on a cat’s collar, and kept the little folk aware of all the comings and goings of the big people.

Luke came back a few minutes later.

“Here’s a card for an exterminator I recommend,” he said to Ingrid before heading back up the ladder.

Long shadows grew in the attic as more and more of the headlamp’s light filled the space. It fell over the spot Prank and Cleavers lay, then went to the hole in need of patching. Luke crawled clumsily over the rafters, carrying a second toolbox along with him.

He didn’t say a word or look at the spot where the little folk hid, but busied himself about fixing the hole. He mumbled softly while he worked.

“This is one of the bigger attics I’ve gotten to work in. I often have to crawl into tighter spots, and sometimes go under houses where no man was ever intended to go. Sometimes I can’t reach wherever there’s a problem, and I have to tear out the walls or the floor. If I were just a few feet shorter, I could offer better repair services, but my creator chose to make me stand well over six feet.”

Prank sat up to watch Luke work, but Cleavers came out of her hiding, enticed by the opportunity Luke seemed to be offering. She noticed the toolbox beside the repairman was empty.

Luke closed the lid on the tub of mastic putty he used for patchwork. He wrapped the plastic spatula he used to spread the mastic in a cloth, but returned neither to the toolbox. Then he looked at his tiny audience.

“What do you say? I could use a pair or two of tiny hands and feet in my line of work. I got a workshop you can stay in, too. No need to hide there.”

Prank examined Luke intently. Cleavers took in the dimensions of the toolbox. She and Prank would fit, but it would be much too tight for the others.

“You’ll need a bigger box,” she said.

Luke crinkled his brow. “That’s the biggest I got, but there should be plenty of room for the two of you until I get to the van.

“The two of us will fit, but we can’t leave without the rest of the clan.”

“The clan?” Luke almost shouted.

“It’s okay,” Prank said, “the others know a way out, so they won’t be seen.”

Luke squared up with Ingrid on his way out. He was almost certain her check would bounce at the bank, but he would’ve left happy with just her promise to never call him again. He considered himself lucky she was certainly too old to figure out how to leave a review online. She did not show him the way out.

The back hatch of his van gaped ajar, but Luke walked to it as though he were the one who pulled it open. He put his tool boxes inside. Everything looked in its place.

“All here?” He asked. The tools rattled affirmatively, and he unlatched the lid of Prank and Cleavers vessel.

The tiny couple came out, as did the rest who hid in the van. Men, women, boys, and girls. At least two dozen of varying dimensions, but none of them larger than toy dolls. All were clad with various cuts of scrap fabric. A few wore little more than leaves, but others had small satchels stuffed with some precious belongings.

“This is the whole clan?” Luke asked. They looked to him with equal parts awe and trepidation.

“This place has been our home for many generations, and the land was ours long before that,” spoke the eldest little man. He had a beard that reached his navel, and his eyes were grayed by blindness. “We don’t take this journey lightly.

“I understand.” Luke nodded solemnly. “Your trust will not be squandered.”

“So what do we do now?” Prank asked. “Do you have a job for us to do?”

Luke looked over the clan. He didn’t notice their condition when he first met them in the dark. Dirty, sallow, and half-naked. The fittest of the bunch might barely hold up a wrench. It would take some time before even a handful might be useful to him, but tiny helpers were not why he suggested the troop take up with him. He just couldn’t stand the thought of them remaining in the attic whenever the old lady got around to calling an actual exterminator.

“I passed a toy store on my way here,” he finally said. “I’ll see to getting y’all some proper clothes, and then let’s get some food. Has anyone here ever had a burrito?”

Corey D. Evans is a groundskeeper living in the United States, and writing is one of his passions. He has previously edited theological works for Dispensational Publishing House and Trust House Publishers, and contributed short fiction to anthologies by Flame Tree Publishing. More of Corey’s work can also be found at his Substack: Corey’s Story Stack. When not working or writing, Corey enjoys adventures with his wife and seven children. You can find his website here.

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In the towns he passed, the man would stop at no water-wells and leave no letters at the post. Innkeepers would find his chambers empty before the rooster crowed. He spoke to no one, and none ever learned his name. He knew that staying too long in one place would leave stains. And some stains are not easily removed.

From place to place, he became the Eternal Traveler. His travels, as well as his person, became a mystery, but not one that inspired stories of bravery and honor. Instead, he was used by parents to instill fear into their children when they whined about bedtime. Sleep or the Eternal Traveler will come and snatch you from your bed. The Eternal Traveler was often whispered about, but never deciphered.

Only one soul came to know him, and one alone.

A red fox that the Eternal Traveler sometimes fed blueberries or bits of apple. The only proof that this man’s heart could still be moved.

The more curious of the children sought the red fox to learn more about the Eternal Traveler, their would-be bed-snatcher. Sneaking away from their parents and the village, they went to the creek at the crossroads of many paths, where the red fox sometimes lay about. But when asked what it knew of the Eternal Traveler and what his purpose in traveling was, the red fox looked down with tears in its eyes. Oh, this poor man, this poor man, it would wail.

This poor man, who had lost count of the years he had spent wandering.

This poor man, who would never return home.

This poor man, who often thought his wandering was like a long, winding, endless dream. All those years, traveling without rest. Without company.

Through mountain slides which were not kind to old, slippery feet; through canyons as red as bricks. Through groves, thick and twisted like the veins on his knuckles. His strides were as long as parting waves, his path as enigmatic and as lonely as his soul.

Once, the red fox told the children, the Eternal Traveler had not been a traveler at all, but a celebrated man, a hero. He had battled monsters as big and frightful as children’s nightmares. But the wars with these horrible beings eventually ended, and life again became mundane again. When he retired as a decorated soldier, he searched the world for more excitement, going after pirates and petty criminals to bring them to justice. But this, too, soon bored him. A friend counseled him to seek the great philosophers, the medical practitioners, or the great inventors as far as the boundaries of the Earth would let him. This satisfied the man for a while, but soon met the end of all the other endeavours. Boredom was an inescapable stain in his life.

He looked for the glimpse of light that would echo through the vast darkness of his inner world. For the answer that would make his life grand and meaningful.

It was as if he had seen and done too much—and yet seen and done very little.

Nothing held his attention. Nothing was marvelous to him, and because of this, nothing found him marvelous. He became just another traveler, someone passing through the pillars and archways of life without recognition. Not even the stones looked at him. He elicited no wonder from those who traveled either. At best, they acknowledged him; at worst, they scorned him. He was grateful that, if at any inn he stopped for the night, he was met with indifferent, empty eyes and left alone.

When scorn followed, the red fox said, traveling was harder. Sneers would linger on his back, rocks thrown at him from invisible, hiding hands. If he isn’t traveling for food or shelter, why is he here? These voices would say, irritated by the stranger as well as afraid. Is he a prophet? A fugitive?

A ghost?

But why? One of the curious children asked the red fox. Why can’t he return home?

The red fox looked at the little ones, still weeping. Because to return home, it told them, you have to believe there is a home to return to.

You have to believe that there is a light guiding the way, not from the outside, but one that stems like a sprouted seed from the soil of our chests.

You have to believe that there is an answer not out there in the world, but in the world that holds our hearts.

You have to believe that the roots of the trees are worth observing, and that people are worth knowing. You have to believe that there is an eternity in a seashell, not in a swordfight.

You have to believe that life, no matter how small, is the most extraordinary thing of all.

Until you believe all these things, the red fox told the children, you will never stop wandering. Never stop being an Eternal Traveler.

And the children, who did in fact yearn for dashing adventures and exciting thrills away from home, felt perplexed by what the red fox had told them. The confusion followed them all the way to their houses, sitting with them at their dinner tables, contemplating with them by the waxing candles, and slipping with them under their bedsheets. It would perhaps take them several nights and several dreams and several years to understand, if at all. Stains from such stories are not easily removed.

But that night, confused and still pondering the words of the red fox, none of the children forgot to kiss their parents on both their cheeks. They did not forget to press their ears to the heartbeats of the people who loved them the most and listen to what echoed there.

They did not forget to trace the smallness of their breaths in the gentle covering of the night.

Eugenia Pozas is a bilingual writer based in Monterrey, Mexico. She writes poetry and fiction. Her first poetry collection in Spanish – Náufragos (Castaways) – was published in 2022 with 42 Líneas. Her poetry has been published in Berlin Literary Review, Dust Poetry Magazine, Stone Circle Review, Sontag Mag, Twin Bird Review, among others. She is a Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize 2026 nominee. You can find her on Instagram and Substack.

teacups of wonder.

short fiction to fill your mornings with wonder and hope...although some will be darker than others.

By Eugenia P. Frankenberg 🥀

spilled glasses of wine.

raw, unfiltered poetry to enjoy with a glass of wine.

By Eugenia P. Frankenberg 🥀

coffee talks.

imagine you go out for coffee with your best friend. what would you talk about? essays on psychology, politics, literature, philosophy, and all things human.

By Eugenia P. Frankenberg 🥀

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“Ghost!”

“Glory, you’ve come to see me!” he responds with a warming smile.

I kick my legs over the edge of the roof, resting on the ledge. I know I can always find Ghost up here, on the roof or in the rafters. Ghost likes to hop on the rafters of my haunted house.

“What’s on your mind?” Ghost asks, his eyes turning up to the sky. I smile as I join his gaze, lying on the roof and watching stray leaves dance on breezes, bright and red as if they could be on fire.

“Everything and nothing, as usual,” I respond.

Ghost sighs. “Is everything and nothing…heavy?” he asks, his voice quivering slightly.

“I think so…” my voice trails off, blinking slowly to keep the tears inside. “But I’m not sure, because I’m not sure what it is.”

“That sounds scary,” Ghost replies.

I nod. “Sometimes it is.”

I adjust to fit the worn shingles underneath my back comfortably, sighing.

“Can I help?” Ghost asks, and his words make me squirm.

“I don’t think so. I’m not sure how I can help, so I’m not sure how you could help.” Ghost nods, and I smile, though tears threaten to fall.

“Thanks, Ghost.”

“Of course, Glory.”

~~~

“Hello, Ghost.”

Ghost turns over his shoulder to smile and hops over the rafters towards me. “Glory, you’re back,” he says happily. “I’m glad.” Ghost likes the rafters of the haunted house. He hops across them and he doesn’t worry about falling.

“I’ll always come back, Ghost.” I hope it’s not a lie.

“I hope so,” he chirps, before taking my small hand in his own translucent one. “Let’s hop across the rafters together.”

Fear instantly pricks my heart. “I can’t, I’ll fall,” I say. “I’m not like you.”

Ghost pauses for a moment, before his soft and childish voice echoes across the small attic. “But… Don’t you like hopping?”

I think carefully. “Yes, I believe I do.”

“Then why can’t you hop?”

“Because… my fear of falling is greater than my liking of hopping. Yes, that’s right.”

“Well, then, let’s sit here.” Ghost says, though somewhat deflated, perching himself on the rafter. I slowly settle myself beside him. “You didn’t used to not like hopping,” he says. “You used to hop the rafters with me.”

“I was lighter back then,” I tell him. “I was more like you. Now I am heavy.”

“What makes you heavy?”

“My thoughts, my memories, and my worry, I believe.”

Ghost sighs contemplatively. “That explains why I am so light.” We both chuckle. “Do you think hopping might make you feel lighter? It might remind you of being younger, when you were light. Maybe it would be nice to feel light again.”

I think about what he has said as we kick our legs slowly over the abyss of the haunted house below. “But then, when I stopped hopping, I might feel so heavy I couldn’t breathe. Because I may remember what being light feels like… I wish I were simply as light as you.”

“Being light is hard! Sometimes, I’m afraid I might float away!”

I laugh, but there is concern in Ghost’s voice and his eyes. His shapeless and translucent body next to mine brings me both comfort, longing, and sadness: a stew of melancholy.

Ghost turns to me slowly. “Please do not float away,” he says to me softly,

A shiver runs down my spine. “But… I might land on the moon,” I retort, slightly bitterly.

“Or you may be burned by the Sun.” He turns away from me. “Thank you for visiting me. It’s nice to have company in the rafters of your haunted house.”

“Thank you for being here to talk to,” I respond, standing. “Goodbye now.”

“Goodbye.”

I leave with a mind that thinks too quickly to truly process the thoughts, and thus I leave with a silent mind. But I can never stay gone long.

~~~

“Ghost!”

I call for my friend in the twilight, turning circles in the garden. “Ghost, where have you gone?”

“I’m here!” Ghost’s figure slides through the garden fence, and he hops next to me with a wide smile and a handful of dying flowers. “They’re the best I could find. It’s autumn, the season where even the most astonishing beauty fades. But I hope you find happiness in their drying petals.”

My eyes prick with tears. “Thank you, Ghost. They’re beautiful. I find them even more enchanting now that they have dried and cracked.”

“Do you see the pictures inside their petals?” He questions, using a finger to illustrate his meaning. “This one looks like a face, here is it’s eyes and nose and mustache. A flower with a mustache!” We laugh. “Does this make you happy?” He asks, his wide and wonder-filled eyes turned up to me.

“Yes, so very happy.”

His body settles as a warm smile melts across his mouth. “I am very glad.” A brisk breeze whisks bright orange leaves off of the twisted and gnarled oak beside us, and we both shiver in the flurry of leaves. “It gets colder every day,” I say.

“It does… I wonder how long this autumn will last.”

I look down at the flowers clutched in my cold-nipped knuckles. “I wonder.”

~~~

Ghost and I tip-toe our way through the haunted house.

“What are we even looking for, Ghost?” I ask, coming to a halt on the colorful woven carpet, next to the table holding a single candle. I’ve been following him around all morning as he searches for something he’s lost.

“My sheet!” Ghost replies finally, collapsing onto the couch with a puff of dust. “I can’t haunt without it. It’s very important that I find it.”

“Oh! I’m sorry, I don’t know where it could be.”

Ghost sighs long and deep, looking up at me with sparkling eyes. “That’s all I am, Glory: a ghost. Without my sheet, I can’t even be that.”

Tears prick my eyes. I didn’t know this meant so much to Ghost; my own troubles I came to talk to him about this morning seem petty and insignificant.

“Can we find you a new sheet?” I inquire, hoping not to sound inconsiderate and dismissive. “Off of one of the beds upstairs…?” But he’s already shaking his head.

“No, no. My sheet was special. It was made for haunting.” I fall down on the couch next to him, unsure what I should — or what I even could — do. “I guess we’ve both lost something now,” Ghost mutters. “Whatever made us real.”

Heat rises to my face. “I’ve lost what makes me real?”

He turns his eyes to me. “You talk of it all the time. You say you’ve lost your heart, your soul, your life.”

That can’t be… I’ve hardly truly lost anything compared to Ghost now. Shame burbles in my stomach like a cup of spoiled milk. I feel guilty for making it seem to Ghost as if I’ve lost everything that makes me whole. I realize he thinks I’m always sad, always lacking. The gulp I swallow is bitter.

How selfish I’ve been.

“I’m sorry you lost your sheet, Ghost.” I choke. He smiles bittersweetly.

“Thank you, Glory.”

~~~

I arrive at the haunted house once again, after a prolonged absence filled with uncertain thought and harrowing echoes of memory. In fact, real life had felt more haunted than this small off-kilter wooden house with barred up windows and a drooping oak tree, settled woefully in the midst of rolling yellow fields, nothing but waves of grasses as far as the eye could see: inhabited only by Ghost.

“Glory!” Ghost exclaims as he bursts from the house, his shapeless feet floating above the ground as he hurries towards me. “You’ve come back. It’s been days!”

“I missed you, Ghost. I’m sorry for leaving.”

“Oh, it’s alright. We can go inside and drink tea!”

Something inside me feels reluctant, but I say, “Alright, tea sounds very nice. It’s getting very chilly outside.”

We traverse the wilted garden, and Ghost leads me inside. This haunted house is more home than reality; is that something that should cause fear to stir inside me? I never questioned it before. Living in my mind was normal, and preferable. I built the haunted house inside my mind to hold my special dead things, like Ghost.

Is it possible that, in the process, I became haunted along with it?

“Glory, you seem unsure. What is on your mind?”

“Oh…” I feel too guilty to admit I was pondering the existence of this world. “Just… Did you ever find your sheet, Ghost?”

His face falls. “No, I didn’t. Maybe I will soon, though.” His face lights up again as he hands me a mug of tea. “In the meantime, here!”

We spend hours sipping tea and speaking of superfluous whatnot. I smile, which makes Ghost smile. I laugh, and he laughs. We end up laying on the roof, counting the stars. We’ve always loved to watch the stars sparkle on the blanket of night sky.

There was one night we were sitting on the roof, and I wanted to fly.

That night scared me.

Ghost explained it to me the best he could; how I couldn’t float like he could. And I knew that. But I was jealous and sick and tired. The house of memories which the roof beneath us harbored was a safe-haven, prison, and disease. That night I had felt so heavy and so very thick that I almost felt nothing at all. Part of me was sure I would float like Ghost. The other part was sure I would not, and wanted to do it anyway.

It was the idea of touching the moon which took my hand and walked me to the edge. It was the knowledge of Ghost’s hand beside mine, the emotions caught in the space between us, that brought me back. He couldn’t touch me. He was just a shadow of myself I created to make me feel safe.

When I laugh, he laughs.

“Ghost?” I ask, my words dissolving into the brisk autumn night.

“Yes, Glory?”

I turn to see his small glowing figure beside me. “I think it’s time that I leave.”

He frowns. “Will you be back tomorrow?”

“I don’t believe so.”

“The day after?”

Thick silence falls.

“Ghost… I think I need to leave the haunted house for good. I think… It’s haunting me.”

He turns to me, his eyes wide and confused. “What do you mean? I would never haunt you.”

“But… you do, Ghost. That’s what you were made for. I filled the haunted house with what I couldn’t let go of, and I can’t let go.” Tears sparkle in his eyes. “I’m sorry, Ghost. But letting go of the house means letting go of you.”

“I’m confused,” is all he replies.

“So am I,” I confess. “I’m living in the past, with what is dead. And that has kept me alive before…”

“But it’s killing you now.”

I pause. “Yes. Something like that.”

Ghost stands and faces the direction of the breeze, closing his eyes to it. He looks like his own moon, standing there so tranquilly, the stars his backdrop. “I guess the past has already killed me, huh. And you don’t want to become a ghost, like me.”

I nod.

“I want to ask you why, to say it might be nice to be ghosts together. But I know, given the chance, I would want to live. So I won’t make you feel bad. You’ve been living like a ghost for long enough with me, I suppose.”

“Yes.”

“And my haunting days in the house are over, I guess.”

“It seems so.”

He turns to me slowly. “Then thank you, Glory, for accompanying me and this house for so long. We are sad to see you go.” Looking into his face, I found I had never seen such simple features display such complex thought and emotion. “You will haunt this house forever, whether you like it or not,” he says, smiling.

I chuckle. “Very well.”

I spot something over his shoulder, at first thinking it’s a dove flying towards us, carried by the breeze. But as it grows closer, I see it isn’t a bird at all, but a blanket.

“Ghost, Look! Behind you, it’s your sheet!” Ghost turns, and jumps high to catch the sheet in mid-air. He exclaims as he fingers the fabric in his stubbed little hands. “You found it! That’s incredible!”

“No… this isn’t the same.” he searches it inquisitively, turning the fabric over in his hands. “My other sheet was cotton, this is linen. It’s nicer, see. Here is the tag. It’s a different brand.” He turns his eyes up to me, aglow.

“What does that mean?” I ask quickly.

“I’m changing houses. I’m going to haunt somewhere else now.”

A grin breaks across my face. “That’s incredible!”

His face falls. “So, even if we want to meet again, we won’t be able to. Because the haunted house will be empty. Truly empty.”

I glance down at the roofing beneath us. “Maybe that’s how it’s meant to be. The house can lie in peace.”

Ghost nods, and we stand there in silence for a moment.

“I’m going to miss you,” I say slowly, trying to keep my salty tears at bay. Ghost looks up at me with wide eyes before pulling his new sheet over his head, his eye-holes dark and shaded.

“And I you. It’s been an honor haunting your house,” he says.

I smile. “I’ll see you later, Ghost, safe travels to your new house.”

He smiles. I can still sense it beneath the sheet. “And I hope you learn to live again.”

He hops to the edge of the rooftop, about to jump and let the wind carry him off, and I slowly fumble my way to the trap door. I hear a rustling of sheets, and close my eyes with a sigh. He’s gone.

I ease myself down into the attic, turning towards the rafters I used to love. I’m scared silly by the white face blocking my vision. I jump back, laughing.

“How about we hop, Glory?” Ghost questions, wrapping my hand in his sheet. “How about we hop across the rafters one last time?”

But I’m too heavy —

But then I realize it: I feel light. I feel like the wind could carry me away, too.

I smile. “Alright, Ghost. Lets hop.”

G.K. Elliott is an author, artist, and poet living a quietly loud and whimsical life. She is almost always painting, playing music, or writing. Her work appears in Pure in Heart magazine and in anthologies by Skillful Pen Press. You can also find her on Substack.

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April was our first month sharing published stories, and boy, was it exciting! It spread across a wide range of genres (from slightly sci-fi to a sweet fairytale to something that felt like a story Aslan would tell), all capturing the essence of what we hope to share: wonder, hope, and whimsy in the face of hardship. If you haven’t read them all yet, be sure to save them for a moment with a cup of coffee and open window! (Psst, writers: they’re also great examples of the kind of story we’re looking for!)

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⁘ What to expect this month ⁘

Thank you to all who submitted earlier in April! We’re in love with all the talent that flooded our inbox. In the month of May, you can expect to see three of these incredible short stories land in your inbox.

They will drop each Wednesday — on the 6th, 13th, and 20th!

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[Part 1] [Part 2]

7. The Pot

Tezel had many questions. He thought carefully of which to ask first.

“Grandfather, what is the cave?”

Grandfather dipped a candle in the hot wax. “It is a dream.”

“Then what is a dream?”

“A mess of half-eaten stars and dim shadows.”

Tezel watched the candles go in, out, in, out, and he found his eyelids growing heavier. “I’m horribly tired.”

“No, you are not tired. One cannot be tired where there is no Time.”

Tezel felt a prick of frustration in his chest, and he sat up. “But Grandfather, I am tired.”

“You are deceived.”

There was a pause, and the room filled with the bitter and sweet smells of molten wax. Tezel asked the question that he had come to ask.

“Why do you make candles?”

Grandfather paused, looking to the wood floor. Then he looked out his window, and then he looked at Tezel.

“I am making stars.”

Tezel looked around the room at the stacks and stacks of candles that stood on the floor, the bookshelves, and in the window. He had seen stars on the mountains and in the cave, and he had heard the sweet music that was their tears. The candles sat dull and plain and had no song inside of them.

“So you must learn to make them sing, then?”

“What did you say, boy?” Grandfather said sharply.

“They can’t be stars if they don’t sing. I have heard stars, and mountains, and creeks. They all have a song, though not a happy one.”

Tezel suddenly became very, very sad. The smell of the wax became a thick, hot air that squeezed at his throat, and the boiling pot seemed to gurgle and snore as if a creature slept inside it. With a laboured breath, Tezel asked, “what is the wax made of?”

“Why?”

“If you make stars of candles, what are the candles made of?”

“Nothing worth your thought.”

Grandfather slowly moved away from the pot and lifted a candle to the sky, tugging and pushing again, but with no success. Tezel, while Grandfather did this, took a step toward the pot and looked in.

In the pot he saw worlds and creatures that slept in deep mountains. He saw a sun, and moon, and stars. He saw planets and things too beautiful to describe, but when he reached in his hand, nothing was there. He dipped his hand in again, and felt nothing in the pot. Tezel fought the fear that crept up inside him, and took a candle from the floor, trying to dip into molten wax. The candle went in, and fell in, and Tezel watched it fall a long, long way before hitting the bottom. He scrambled away in fear and bumped into Grandfather.

“Why are you so fearful?” He asked. “Look again, tell me what you see.”

But Tezel was too afraid to look. The pot was deep, and deeply empty. There was nothing inside and yet there were candles filling the study.

“Your eyes have Changed,” Grandfather said bitterly. “I knew He would try to take you back some day.”

With that, Grandfather thrust his hand deep into the Nothing, pulled out dripping stardust, and flung it out the window at the sky.

Tezel felt his tongue frozen to the roof of his mouth. Grandfather glanced his way.

“You want to know who He is, do you not?”

Tezel nodded, feeling choked by the heat, by the smell.

8. “I Pitied You”

“I must first tell you who you are,” Grandfather said. “I took you when you were an outcast child in the plains of a field, all bloody and newborn. That was a world that has long since fallen to dust and is in no memory but my own. What if, child, you were created to suffer that darkness beyond the mountains? What if, perchance, the blood of every murder, tyrant, and luster dripped in your young veins? What if yours was to be a race of dead men, shackled to Him, and shackled to Time? You shall never know, because I took you. I pitied you. He would like to see you bleed. You are the Son of Lilith, or something like her. You are not made for His cloistering Eye and blinding light.”

As Grandfather spoke, he began to stand straighter, his hair became whiter, and his eyes contained untold worlds deeper than the pot of Nothing. Tezel sat and watched him, too afraid to speak.

“What if, child, He was a Tyrant? A cruel master taking where He had not sowed His seed? You shall never know, because I took you. I pitied you.”

He flung his arms wide, and Yestermorrow shook. “Can’t you see, Tezel, that Time is a prison? In Time is movement and movement is pain. I took the stars, pulled them, made them bend and submit to my will, and created this dimension - this place in which true freedom lives and that all-seeing Eye is cloistered. Can’t you see? His look is one that kills.”

Grandfather walked to the window, stepped out, and seemed to walk on Nothing as he made his way to the stars. Still, Tezel watched him.

“I pulled this little Chaosmos into place, tampered with the fabric of Time and space until I had something that I call mine. He is an eye that cannot burn here. He is a Thought that cannot pierce the walls of this my Mind.”

Grandfather became level with the stars, and he shined like one himself. Tezel stood and walked toward the window, then felt a hand pull him back. He turned, but saw no one.

“Come to the cave,” a voice whispered.

Tezel looked behind him at the window. “I’m afraid Grandfather will fall –”

“You can see him better from the cave.”

Tezel believed the voice, though he was afraid, and walked back through the door into the pictures and pressing darkness as the cave surrounded him.

9. What Happened to Grandfather

Tezel watched nervously as Grandfather climbed higher and higher. He watched as the strings holding the stars and mountains quivered and groaned, and he watched as a small, quiet Voice rode a foreign wind and met Grandfather.

“Give glory to the LORD your God, before he cause darkness, and before your feet stumble upon the dark mountains, and, while ye look for light, he turn it into the shadow of death, and make it gross darkness.”

Tezel was gripped with fear. He tried to claw his way through the pictures and to his Grandfather, but he could not. “Please, please don’t hurt him!” He cried.

“But if ye will not hear it, my soul shall weep in secret places for your pride.”

Grandfather had a stormy brow and a powerful hand. The light of the stars seemed to seep into him and out of him as he spoke in a thundering voice that overcame the small and quiet one.

“I am not mocked. I am not bound to the chains and heartache of Time, or the peal of Heaven or Hell. I am my own. This pocket of Timelessness is mine.”

“It is not Timelessness, it is Time broken and twisted.”

“I am Power Eternal and Life Unending.”

“You make candles for stars and cling to your pot of Nothing.”

“My pot holds everything. The Universe, the seas, and Divinity itself.”

“And so it takes you.”

What Tezel watched next was a cosmic battle, or what he thought a battle of that sort must be. Grandfather was all lightning and fire, and the Voice was only a voice, with an Invisible Hand and nothing more. Grandfather roared and the skies and stars twisted in his anger. The Voice said nothing, and whispers of past wonders clung to the air. The strings quavered and sang, and the stars darkened. A rushing wind pounded against Grandfather, but he took it, not giving way, not falling. Tezel held his breath, and it was as if the cave receded and he was watching his home from very close and far away - watching it as heavy footsteps sounded across the plain. It was the cool of day.

The whole of Yestermorrow shook, and Tezel felt that the foundations were very, very thin.

“Hearken unto me, ye stouthearted, that are far from righteousness: I bring near my righteousness; it shall not be far off...”

“I am King in this world, and Lord of this land. I am Imagination Unhindered and Idea Untempered. I hold a place outside of War and Bloodshed and Sorrow, unlike You, who grovelled under the feet of men. I shan’t listen. I shan’t be marred.”

Grandfather said more, but Tezel did not hear what he said. He was watching as Grandfather became an old man again, and the wrinkles grew around his eyes, and his back bent over, and his beard grew very white.

The quiet Voice said one thing more.

“But I have borne them; War, and Bloodshed, and Sorrow.”

And the sky cracked, ripped open, and caved in. Grandfather was taken, and thrown into his pot, and thrown into a dark, dark abyss far below Yestermorrow. Tezel fell to his knees and screamed. “Please, please, have mercy on him!”

Grandfather only fell farther, holding up a bony fist the whole way.

In the darkness below were dark fires, and Grandfather was swallowed up, yet not gone. Tezel felt the hot, candle air grow and grow and soon he fell into a darkness of his own, called sleep.

10. What Happened to Yestermorrow

There was a bright light and a cool breeze, and Tezel woke up. He was in the cave, but he felt no walls and saw no shadows; only the view of Yestermorrow, plain and clear.

The Voice - not the cavish voice, but the one that damned Grandfather, spoke to him.

“Are you afraid, child?”

Tezel blinked. “Yes.”

“Good,” the Voice said. “A bit of fear is good, yet I fear you go too far. Watch, and you will see. There is deep love in my hand, child, a deep mass of oceans running from Eternity’s Temple that can fill Time and space, and even the blackness of your heart. But you see that love is knit to wonderful hate. Watch, and you will see.”

Tezel felt he had no choice but to watch, so he did. He watched as Yestermorrow stretched and yawned - as the strings fell back into place and the stars shifted. The fabric of space or Time unfurled and dusted itself out, joining itself to the rest of the Universe and Humanity. He saw the mountains rip apart and tear, he saw the ground stretch its back, and saw the castle fall off into space. Tezel cried for the breaking of Yestermorrow, and for the terrible fall of his Grandfather, and it was the first time he cried. He cried, and over the sound of his tears he heard the laughter of stars. It made him look up. He looked and saw the stars burning a little brighter, and the ground sighing with relief, and the mountains humming a satisfied sound. Tezel could catch words on the wind, starting as a faint whisper;

“When Zion’s bondage God turned back,

“As men that dream’d were we.

“Then fill’d with laughter was our mouth,

“Our tongue with melody.”

Tezel did not feel like laughing or singing. He felt only like weeping.

“Child,” the Voice said. “Your Grandfather did not suffer War, and Bloodshed, and Sorrow, and now he must, for the Sorrow he had caused my little ones.”

“Then what of me?” Tezel wept. “What of me, who was born into evil?”

“I have suffered War, and Bloodshed, and Sorrow, and should you take my hand, you will not join your Grandfather. Heavenly courts will take note, and not a drop of that Pit shall touch you.”

Tezel had a question, but he was afraid to ask. The Voice knew this and told him to speak.

“Sir,” Tezel began timidly. “I can’t see you. How can I know that your Voice is truly the Voice of your Hand? What if you’re only a Voice? What if the Hand belongs to some Other?”

There was a rumble in the Cosmos. “You cannot know until you have believed and come out on the other side. You have a choice, child. Will you believe?”

“There’s so much bitterness in your Hand, I do not know if I can swallow what it holds.”

11. Everything is Folded Up

Yestermorrow was no more. The grass melted away with a resolved shout and the mountains faded into the dust giants beyond them. Tezel vaguely wondered what happened to Professor Comedy. He couldn’t feel much beyond the numbness of his own mind.

The gentle wind blew and stirred him up from his stupor.

“I am good,” the Voice told him. “Your Grandfather’s fall is good and the breaking of Yestermorrow is good, though it pains you. My little ones sing again.”

Tezel could not deny that the stars and the strings that held them sang again. He did not know how or where, but he was certain he remembered a day when the stars sang freely - when there were no tears in clusters of sharp notes, and there was no Sorrow. Perhaps it was yesterday. Perhaps it was tomorrow.

“Is it true what Grandfather told me, that - well, that I’ll end like him if I trust you? That I’m the outbirth of War, and Bloodshed, and Sorrow?”

“You will become like him if you do not trust me.”

“Will I fall into that horrible pit?”

“You shall, if you do not trust me.”

“But your Voice – You are nothing but a voice! How am I to know that you are true?” Tezel fell to his knees and wept.

There was something like a deep sigh, and the Voice spoke again. “There is no form, no comeliness that you should desire me. When I bore War, and Bloodshed, and Sorrow, my visage was marred more than any man’s. I was dumb, mute. I thought the loftiest, highest, Thoughts while washing the most lowly part of fallen man - his feet. Your Grandfather was right; I did put myself under man. And I was not ashamed to. I was not ashamed because the fallen grime that marred my hands and those souls was soon to be plummeted into death, and the souls and bodies of the Washed Ones lifted into perfection and beauty. If you want a sign, you shall not receive one. You have my word. You have my suffering. You must believe.”

Tezel was drawn, pulled. He felt that he could easily break away if he chose, and he resisted for a moment. His tears continued to fall, and through the tears he saw something new. He saw the image of one that went before him and whose eyes dropped the same tears. Tezel saw, and turned, and let the cords pull him.

He heard the voice of the cave laugh, and whisper, “You are the last. The last one has come!”

The heavens broke out into singing. The foundations of the biggest things and the smallest things shook, and Tezel watched as the stars stretched out and changed shape. He saw, and wondered, because they were not stars at all, but something like holes in a big, black canvas, behind which was a massy expanse of blinding light. The canvas stretched, and the holes stretched, and the bright light behind the darkness grew brighter and brighter, until finally the canvas ripped and teared with a loud crack, and all that was left was a kingdom of blinding, shining light. All of the old things - the black canvas, the dust giants, the planets and Yestermorrow’s remains, were tossed aside into a far corner, folded and put into its place, and Time shrunk away as Eternity walked in and said, ‘I own this house’.

Then a song began, or rather, continued. It was the sound of a million voices, and a million hearts, with hundreds of harmonies interweaving and creating new notes and overtones that never before could be found in the Universe. They could only be named Praise, Laughter, Hallel, and Rejoicing. The mass of music swelled. It was a sound greater than any music of the stars and any cry of the mountains.

“The whole of the Washed,” began the Voice, “sing praise to me with the words of my Bleeding.”

The music was the Voice’s own words, but they were sung with the individuality of each of the million hearts, and every heart sang the song in a way that was new, and the newness came from the Voice, and yet was very distinct to each one of them.

“These are the words of my Bleeding, child. These Washed are my crown.”

Tezel found words in his heart, and he took a deep breath, lifted his voice, and sang. As he sang, he changed, and as he changed, the cave faded, and he walked across a new Universe to a door, and he walked through that door...

12. Waking up in Wellasia

I do not remember when I woke up. For a long time I stared at the sky above the mountains and imagined the stars were really pinpricks, small rips in a great, black canvas that hid an abundance of light beyond. Then I sat up. Around me were rolling hills and mountains; scraggly pines and a deep river. All was covered in a damp mist.

I knew a boy named Tezel once, and I knew his Grandfather. Who was I, and where had I been?

I remembered who I was – a man with a house in the mountains, a hog, and a pot of tea on the fire. A Professor, but I could not remember my name.

Yes, perhaps it was merely a dream, I told myself as I walked home. Remnants of the Song graced my mind as I tried to grasp the notes that no creature here can sing. A thrill filled my chest that I could not describe.

Or is it not a dream, but something coming, tomorrow?

Janelle Ekpo is a Christian, fiction writer, poet, essayist, and college student from up-country South Carolina. She seeks to write pieces that make her invisible, and make God the center. She runs a small literary journal called A Song to Silence the World, and a blog called Tongue, Pen, and Wit.

Tongue, Pen, and Wit

Little bits of fantasy. Seeking the Lord by writing Him into the big, and nooks and crannies. Imagine me dancing alone in my room:) Imagine me singing Psalms in a quiet storm:)) "Tongue and pen and wit cannot express my joy" ~ Samuel Rutherford

By J. Ekpo

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You’ll just have to read it.

[Part 1] [Part 2]

1. Yestermorrow

If, in ages past, you were to trace your finger along the path of Orion, turn left - then right - then left again at Jupiter’s moon, you may have found Yestermorrow. In Yestermorrow was a castle, and in the tall, dark castle lived a boy named Tezel. The boy was as old as distant stars, he was born very recently, and he was not yet born. He lived with his Grandfather, called Time, and a dry Professor called Comedy. They were older, younger, and sooner to be born than he was, and from them he learned that something in Yestermorrow was broken.

“I’m getting very old, Tezel,” Grandfather would say, grumpily.

“Then you’re all the younger, Grandfather,” Tezel would respond.

Comedy would jump in, and say, “Remember, Time, The very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream. Ho! Veni, vidi, vici said the beggar’s shadow. Veni, vidi, vici says the likes of you.”

“Enough, Professor. Ad astra per aspera.”

“To the stars, indeed! Go, Tezel, leave us be. To the arguments we go again, if we must.”

And then Tezel would leave.

Tezel thought it very odd that Grandfather called himself old. The always star-lit land of Yestermorrow did not know the meaning of the word “old”. Neither did Tezel; and that was because in Yestermorrow there was no old, and there was no new, and nothing changed while everything changed at once. Grandfather spoke as if that were a sad thing, a deeply sad thing. And Tezel learned that the very thing broken was Grandfather’s name: Time.

One day, after a lonely breakfast in the dim castle, and a conversation much like the one above, Tezel wandered away from the others and sat beside a window. He saw dark green hills rolling into smudges of mountains in the distance. On those hills were little white sheep that looked like the reflections of stars in a dark green pool, and beyond the hills were dark, blurry mountains like shadows of distant stars.

Never climb those mountains, Tezel, Grandfather would say. For when you reach the top and touch the stars glittering at its shadowy peak, you’ll slip and fall into the empty blackness beyond.

Tezel wondered if there really was empty blackness beyond. He wondered if the mountains, hills, and stars were as thin and fuzzy as they looked. He didn’t know, because he had never left the stone castle. He had never wanted to, and he had never found a door.

He sighed, closed his eyes, and opened them to see that an epoch had passed. He knew because one mountain had become a hill, the village below was entirely re-built, and the old walking paths had become rivers.

And then Tezel began to feel something.

You and I call it restlessness, but that did not exist in Yestermorrow.

2. The Candles

Grandfather Time made candles out of yellow wax. His study was filled with them; with short stubby ones that burned for eons, and ones as thick as the trunks of trees that burned very short. Tezel watched Grandfather for hours or ages (he didn’t know which) as the old man stooped above a black pot of wax, slowly dipping candle after candle.

The words of Grandfather came to Tezel’s mind: This will be the one, he’d always said. This will be the first piece in the grand puzzle. This will bring me up to the light of the stars.

Tezel did not know what this meant. What he did know was that a large shadow was looming over Grandfather, such that he never seemed happy.

“Are you tired, Grandfather?” Tezel asked one day.

He watched Grandfather dip a thin candle and pull it out, letting the wax drip down into the pot.

“One cannot be tired, boy. There is no Time, there are no hindrances. Therefore, I am not tired.”

Tezel paused for a moment. “Grandfather, I’m – I’m not myself. I’m not tired, but I am something else, and I am Something Else that I did not used to be. I’m Something Different.”

“There is no Something Different. Something Different is for mortals, not gods. You are not changed.”

“But what if I am?” Tezel asked nervously.

Grandfather’s eyes darkened and he looked at Tezel gently, rubbing the wax off his old fingers. “If you could be Something Different, boy, anything but what you Are, the primal Chaos would falter and give way to a horrible kind of Cosmos. And Cosmos wants your ill.”

Tezel watched Grandfather slowly dip another candle, murmuring words too soft to understand. For a while they were quiet. Then Tezel stood and left the study.

He wandered the dark halls feeling more and more gloomy. The feeling of restlessness would not leave him. Finally he sighed, sat down on his favorite windowsill (he always seemed to wander back to it), and took a waxy candle out of his pocket.

On the floor in front of him was a match. Tezel had never seen a match there, and didn’t know where it came from, but he slowly picked it up and struck it against the stone. The flame giggled and danced, and seemed like something altogether unfit for Yestermorrow, where every day was a day old, stale. Carefully, he lit the candle, set it on the windowsill.

Tezel may have blinked, or an epoch may have passed, but the glass of the window warped, sagged, and dripped onto the stone floor. A blast of not cold, but different, air rushed through the melted window, and Tezel jumped back. Then he leaned forward. Then, unable to resist, he took the candle, and climbed through into Yestermorrow.

3. The Cracks

Tezel had never before been outside, and it was strange to him. The air of Yestermorrow was neither cold nor hot. It felt stale, like the air of another place and of another world. The stars (there was never any sun in Yestermorrow) seemed to twinkle with cold stares.

A hot breeze raked its way through Yestermorrow and touched Tezel’s skin, smelling strangely of candles.

For a moment, he feared. Perhaps Grandfather had seen him. But when he turned, the window to the study was still alight, still full of Grandfather’s movement.

Tezel took a deep breath - perhaps he had taken many, perhaps this was his first ever breath - and took a step forward. And another, and another, following the smell of the candles until, abruptly, the smell changed to something odd. Not knowing what to do, he turned and looked at the castle. It loomed up, and up, and up, the tip being lost in the clouds. In the windows, on the brick, and on all four corners of the castle was the castle’s name, I, written in foundations of sapphires, onyx, amethyst, and beryl.

Tezel felt an odd sense of satisfaction at seeing the name of the castle, for he had never known what to call the place in which he lived.

“I live in I, in Yestermorrow,” he said proudly to himself.

But that only made him wonder where Yestermorrow was, and what was beyond those distant mountains. And so Tezel decided to walk further, and further. Perhaps he walked a very long distance, perhaps the mountains were only a step away. It was hard to tell, but Tezel soon reached the foot of the mountain and began to climb. And he climbed, and he climbed, and climbed, noticing that the smell of the candles was back, strong. Before Tezel reached the top of the mountain, he began to see strange things in the sky, like cracks on the skin of a radish, or jagged lines along a crushed window. In each crack was a candle, melting, so that the wax filled in the gaps. They were doing a poor job; some melted far too quickly, and the wax ran down in great streams like water. Others hardly melted at all, and some - some changed a strange shade, like the color of an over ripe apple or a drop of blood.

Tezel stared, blinked, and sucked in a long breath. He knew that he had to talk to Grandfather at once, for Yestermorrow was poorly made, and it was breaking.

4. Peaches

The three, Tezel, Time, and Comedy, were gathered around a table that sunk in the middle and were eating peaches. Tezel watched Grandfather’s worn hands as they held orangey-pink fruit. His fingers were laden in yellow wax, even as he ate.

“Grandfather, where did Yestermorrow come from?”

“That is a foolish question, boy. Yestermorrow did not come. It always was.”

Tezel opened his mouth, then closed it. “Yes.”

They lapsed into silence. The stars twinkled through the windows, and the peaches wilted.

Professor Comedy set down his rotted peach and sipped at a glass of something strong. “You ought to tell him, Time.”

“There’s nothing true to tell.”

“Aye, there’s the rub.”

“I have not the energy for you, now. And my candles are waiting.”

Comedy laughed bitterly. “Ah, the candles. Tezel, your Grandfather was a god once, you know.”

Tezel had not known this. “Is he?”

“I am.” Grandfather said, peeling wax from his fingers.

“Grandfather, what does it mean to be a god?”

“It means that I can make and destroy.”

“Have you made many things?”

“I have.”

“Have you destroyed many things?”

“Not as many as I’d like.”

“Can you coax things back together?”

“Perhaps.”

“Grandfather?”

“Yes?”

“Yestermorrow is breaking.”

Tezel held his breath for fear Grandfather would lash out. But he did not. He looked up from his fingers and blinked slowly.

“Say that again?”

Tezel repeated that Yestermorrow was breaking. Grandfather leaned back and considered this for a moment.

“Those stars are rather stubborn,” he said.

And with that, he stood and left.

Tezel blinked and turned to Professor Comedy.

“Don’t ask me,” he said. “I’ve work to do.”

Comedy left, and Tezel was left alone at the table as the stars blinked a thousand times and the peaches turned to dust.

He looked out the window and thought, over the smell of burning wax, that he could hear a cluster of notes coming from the stars that sounded like dropping tears.

“They ought to have believed me,” he said.

5. The Cave

The feeling Tezel could not describe (which we call restlessness) grew. He left the castle again and wandered along the breezy hills of Yestermorrow and grew more and more angry with himself. It was no secret now – he could clearly hear the weeping in the stars and see the sighing of the mountains and feel the groaning of the grass beneath his feet, only he didn’t know why they wept. He felt that his lack of understanding only made the stars weep harder, and the mountains creak and crack more. Every day, or hour, or minute, or epoch, he left the castle and looked for an answer.

One day, Tezel sat in the grass, watching the lazy sheep graze under the dark halo of the stars and purple sky. One of them looked up and blinked slowly at Tezel. He blinked back. The sheep seemed to make a decision and bimbled off from the rest, headed toward the mountains. Tezel stood up and followed it.

When the sheep stopped, they were at the foot of a mountain, and in the mountain was a gaping hole, and Tezel knew that the hole was what the Professor would call a cave. The sheep looked at Tezel, then walked into the darkness.

“Come back!” Tezel cried. He was gripped with a strange fear for the creature. “You don’t know what’s inside!”

There was a voice coming from inside the cave. A voice like a dark, heavy, beautiful song and a scratched record.

It said, “You must follow me.”

“I shan’t,” he said hurriedly, fearing for the sheep.

“You must.”

“I won’t follow a sheep into a black hole.”

“You must.”

Tezel said nothing more. A thought had struck him, and it wouldn’t let him go – the stars, and how they wept; the mountains, and how they groaned.

They know something I don’t. They… They feel something I don’t.

Why else would they cry? Tezel knew what it meant to cry, and he knew what it meant to be sorrowful, but he had never shed a tear. Tezel began to wonder if he had ever felt. He had felt a few things - anger, the strange unsettledness, and now, fear. But he had never felt whatever caused tears.

The cave seemed to pull him, and he took one step, then another, then another, and another, and he saw the name of the cave, which is forgotten. Five more, and he was inside the swallowing darkness. His fear grew, but he tried to shake it away as he walked in. Perhaps he would learn to feel in that cave. And perhaps if he could feel, he could understand. That was all he really wanted.

Tezel walked and walked, following the smudgy image of the sheep’s back. He didn’t much like to look around him, because when he did, the walls of the cave seemed to be grinning and blinking at him. Shadows danced across the dark even though there was no light to make them, and the ground beneath his feet twisted and grunted.

“You are doing it wrong,” the cavish voice said. “Look around you, and mind you take note.”

Tezel was too afraid to disobey the voice. He began to cast his eyes about, and the ground cried out against him and tossed him. He cried.

“You must keep sight of the sheep - or you’ll be lost in the cave. You’ve been given two eyes - use both.”

Tezel regained his balance and let his eyes see what was around him while trailing the sheep. He saw planets and stars, and Time itself wearing Wars and Bloodshed as regalia, Delightful Hope as jewels deeper red than blood, and Millenium as a crown. He saw that Time sagged under what it wore. He saw small men and women like himself, he saw Leviathan slumbering in deep waters, and he saw little creatures - little vibrating strings that tied together throughout the whole Universe: he saw, too, that the strings cried. In a pocket, away from the dirge of Time, he saw Yestermorrow. It was smudged and dim, like a painting hidden in a box, and the strings were bent cruelly around it about to snap.

“There,” the voice said. “Stay here and look a while.”

6. A View of Yestermorrow

“I don’t understand,” Tezel said. “This is a cave, and these are pictures on a wall.”

“One can learn much from pictures.”

“But why not look at the view from Yestermorrow, where the air is clear and the stars are sharp? It’s horribly dark in this cave.”

“You cannot see in Yestermorrow what you can see here.”

Still, Tezel did not understand. He continued to watch and soon found that his feet were moving, that he was walking again.

And indeed, Tezel saw things in the cave that he could not see in Yestermorrow. He saw the stars fighting the strings that held them in place, and he saw those same stars grow by bits and pieces, as if being stretched out by the tug-of-war. He saw Grandfather in his study dipping candles, and he saw the dim light of the flickering flames.

Tezel suddenly had a question. “Can this view perhaps show me why Grandfather makes candles?”

The cave rumbled, and from somewhere deep inside and in the walls was a scream.

“Perhaps you can ask him.”

The pictures that Tezel watched shifted and moved around him. In the distance, a door opened, and through that door he could see Grandfather. His face was very white and his eyes a very deep, dark color. Tezel walked closer and saw the candles burn, saw his Grandfather go to a window and pull at the sky. Grandfather pulled and pulled, and pushed and pushed the candle against it, but the candle only snuffed out and the wax dripped over his hands.

Tezel walked through the little door and found himself in front of the boiling pot of wax.

Grandfather looked up and noted Tezel with a bitter laugh.

“So, you’ve been in the cave, haven’t you?”

“Yes, I have.”

“And you have questions now, have you not?”

“I do.”

“Well,” Grandfather said, his eyes three shades darker, “ask.”

Read Part 2 here.

Janelle Ekpo is a Christian, fiction writer, poet, essayist, and college student from up-country South Carolina. She seeks to write pieces that make her invisible, and make God the center. She runs a small literary journal called A Song to Silence the World, and a blog called Tongue, Pen, and Wit.

Tongue, Pen, and Wit

Little bits of fantasy. Seeking the Lord by writing Him into the big, and nooks and crannies. Imagine me dancing alone in my room:) Imagine me singing Psalms in a quiet storm:)) "Tongue and pen and wit cannot express my joy" ~ Samuel Rutherford

By J. Ekpo

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Today we’re thrilled to finally introduce something we’ve been considering since we started…

We want to start accepting poetry!

Since beginning this journal in February, we’ve had a goal in mind: to expand.

The first step is to add poetry to the three stories we publish a month. The stories we’ve already shared have brought an incredible magic to the world. But we also know that poetry would provide a new, unique kind of wonder.

We’ve had so many writers show interest, and we want to be able to offer a poetry option when we open submissions next on May 1st. But here’s where we need to be honest with you.

We can’t do this without support.

We will always be a free-to-read, free-to-submit journal that still pays its writers. However, this isn’t sustainable for us long-term by ourselves — and we certainly can’t increase our honorarium rates or expand into new categories.

Right now, we can only pay $20 per short story, and poetry would likely be $10 per poem. We would love to offer more than that, but we can’t without your help.

So here’s what you can do.

If our journal has touched something in you, given you hope, or helped you see more wonder in the world, we’d appreciate if you’d consider becoming a paid subscriber.

And from now until May 1st, we’re running a small sale to make this easier!

Instead of $8/month, for the next ten days we’re offering a paid subscription at $5/month (the same price as a coffee or ebook!).

If you want to help us add a poetry category and believe (like us!) that writers deserve to be paid more, don’t miss on this opportunity.

Upgrade at a discount here!

But, we know this isn’t feasible for everyone, so here are some other ways you can support us for free!

• Recommend Whim & Wander, this suggests us to every new subscriber you get, too!

• Restack our notes and posts. So many of you are doing this already — not only does it support us, but also the writers of the stories!

• Talk about us! Spread the word with your friends and family.

Every little bit of support that we receive, free or paid, is immensely appreciated. Thank you to everyone who reads, sends in stories, and shares about us. You mean the world!

We can’t wait to see what’s next.

The girl was a warrior, and the boy a king.

She wore lilacs in her hair and he carried with him a staff of wood, scavenged from the ground.

Together, they defended their home from beasts and men alike, feet dancing over dirt and grass and cobblestones, stick-swords felling even the grandest of foes. The gardens were their palaces, the courtyards their kingdoms. Without fears or worries they sang to the sweet night air and laughed until their sides ached, staring up at the starry sky stretching overhead.

If you had asked either what they would have changed about their lives, they both would have had the same response.

Why would we change anything, when it is all so perfect?

But slowly, the children grew older. The swords they had once so fearlessly wielded were discarded as mere sticks. The flower crowns tumbled from their curls to be tread under cart wheels. It became harder to believe in dragons and heroes when life continued on, mundane.

Their free time grew sparser and their imaginary battles fewer. The girl became a seamstress and spent her spare time tucked away in novels in the sunlight from her window, adventures contained to daydreams and fancies, spirit reigned in by the sudden desire to be sensible and ordinary.

The boy became a sailor, traversing the high seas, venturing to faraway lands and seeing many things. He sent letters to the girl, penned in his fair hand, and received her responses in every port. But soon he tired of hearing about her plain and ordinary life, when his own adventures seemed so grand. He wondered where the vibrant girl of his youth had vanished away to.

The girl slowly stopped sending letters. Her shop work took so much time, and the boy’s answers had grown so far between. It was hard even to imagine the wonders he spoke of, hard to think of wanting pirates and sea serpents and danger and fear when her own world was so quiet and peaceful.

Time passed, as it so often does. The girl surpassed all in the city in skill and took over the shop, creating the most beautiful patterns, her hands quick and her eye for detail absolute.

The boy became captain of his own ship and commanded his own crew with a fair and just hand, laughing with his men just as easily as he gave them orders.

Slowly, the memories that had once been so precious to them faded. Their lives continued on, separately, revolving in entirely different planes that did not meet. They sometimes looked back on those carefree days of their childhoods, but with increasing rarity.

And then one day the girl fell deathly ill.

It was sudden, and absolute. One day she was perfectly healthy, bustling about the shop taking orders, and the next she could hardly leave her room, weak and burning with fever.

The girl penned a letter with shaky hand and prayed that it would reach her old friend, that he would remember her and return.

And then she began work on a new project, cutting fabric, making painstaking stitches. She toiled long into the night and the next morning, knowing that her time was dwindling.

The boy was off of a nearby coast when her letter found him. He untied the ribbon with shaking hands and read her words, feeling a deep sadness fill him. He set sail for his once homeland, hoping against hope that he would not be too late.

But by the time he reached her, the girl had slipped away from this life, leaving him only one final letter and a pile of finely stitched tapestries.

The tapestries were unlike anything the boy had ever seen. Vibrant and so full of life that they appeared to be on the verge of springing alive, so detailed that they appeared almost real.

Each one contained a new wonder. Sparkling waters and beautiful lands, fantastical creatures and people of all types, some smiling, some with tears in their eyes.

It was then that he knew, seeing snatches of his own words in the images spread before him.

The serpents he had told her about in the North Hydreas, the Lighthouse of Aman-Suil, the children he had seen playing in the streets of Aladrias. Everything he had so painstakingly described to her in hundreds of letters. It filled his broken heart with something like hope, stirring deep in his chest. He had shown her his world and now, even in death, she was showing him hers.

The last tapestry depicted the boy himself, as the girl had known him, young and free of worry, glowing with a smile, stick-sword in his hand, sun gilding his curls into a crown. Free and happy evermore.

The boy gathered up the tapestries and filled himself with their beauty, their light. As precious now as the girl who had wrought them. One more thing to do.

※ ※ ※

Three months later the closed sign was removed from the girl’s old shop, and the boy threw wide the doors. People entered, curious at what lay inside, and their breaths caught as they saw the tapestries, hit with the rosy glow of the evening light.

They were not for sale, the young man in the corner explained, in that soft voice of his. Nothing so beautiful could ever be sold. But anyone who wished could come to look upon them, whenever they desired to.

People came from miles and miles around to see them, from many kingdoms far across the great plains. Great kings and queens, philosophers, poets and playwrights. They came to gaze upon the work of the girl, not understanding quite why it filled them with such deep and poignant feeling. As though each piece had a soul all its own.

But the boy did not know this. He had left the place of his youth, once more setting out across the sea to explore foreign lands filled with things he had never before seen.

Only this time he carried with him a notebook of creamy white paper, and he wrote of everything he saw, recording the majesty and simple joys alike.

After all, he did not know who might someday need it.

Journey Bloomfield is a fantasy author and full time traveler who spends her time daydreaming about other worlds while exploring her own. She has long appreciated the power story holds and hopes that someday her own work will give readers that magical feeling that she so often seeks within the pages of a book. You can find her website here.

Journey Bloomfield

YA Fantasy Author

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Today’s story, “The Forgotten Hills”, was one of the first we read from all the submissions. However, by the time we finished reading them all, we found ourselves still thinking about this one. It’s the kind of story that sticks in one’s mind, tugging at curiosity in just the sort of way we like.

So sally forth, reader. We hope you enjoy it just as much as we did!

“Specter” was the code name she acquired upon being recruited by the agency that didn’t exist.

Specter.

She loved it.

She was put in the field right away, tasked with gathering intel on supernatural phenomena, the type of stuff that made sasquatch or the Bermuda Triangle seem like childish pranks. Specter actually enjoyed this line of work, despite its effects on her sleep, her relationship status, her overall health.

What she did not enjoy was the agency’s “need to know” policy. As in, her handlers always seemed to withhold important details about her missions.

Case in point: at present, she had no idea why she was in a charter plane, or where she was going. Through a smudged window, she watched a jungle pass below a heavy blue sky; she realized, with a sense of defeat, that she was trembling slightly. She told herself it was only the turbulence.

The pilot’s voice crackled over the comm, announcing their descent. Specter checked the contents of her backpack for the dozenth time. What was there to be nervous about? At this point, she’d seen it all, from ghosts to aliens and everything in between.

So she focused on the rumbling of the plane, resting her head against the window, absorbing the vibrations of the present. She was tired—of course, always—but she didn’t dare to fall sleep, being extremely selective about when she allowed herself to dream. Some aliens still visited her, after all. Some ghosts still haunted her.

The little plane finally touched down, rattling and thrashing along a dirt runway. The rough landing helped to keep Specter’s mind where it belonged: here, now, where her memories couldn’t consume her, couldn’t swallow her like these bright hot woods were about to.

▫ ▪ ▫

Her contact was waiting at the airstrip when she stepped off the boarding ramp: an old man with a suit as wrinkled as his face, which bore an expression that seemed aggressively blank, even for a spook. “Welcome to nowhere,” he told her with a smoker’s rasp, extending a sweaty hand. “The name’s Alan Kulcek, Special Agent. It’s my job to guide you through the process of moving on.”

Specter hesitantly shook his hand. “What do you mean, moving on?”

Agent Kulcek pointed to the distance. “See those hills? We’re going to drive over there. And we’re going to have a little chat during the drive. You can think of it like your exit interview.”

“Exit inter…” Suddenly she understood. “This isn’t a new mission, is it?”

“No, ma’am.”

“I’m getting fired, aren’t I?”

“The agency has decided to let you go, that is correct.” The old man beckoned her toward a Jeep with a camouflage paint job parked thirty feet away on the tarmac. “Don’t make this difficult. It’s not like we’re going to kill you. It’s just a little trip through the jungle. Then we’ll put you back on this plane and you’ll have the rest of your life to start over.”

Specter felt numb. She could only get one word out: “Why?”

Kulcek let out a long sigh—which turned into a smoker’s cough. “You’ve been an excellent agent. But it is the agency’s belief that this job has negatively impacted your health, and it’s no telling when you might burn out. Apparently the Director didn’t want to wait and see how long before you became unreliable. But hey, I’m not your handler. I don’t know your whole deal. That’s just what I’ve been told. I’m only the guy who talks to you in the car.”

“Okay, okay.” Specter reluctantly followed Kulcek over to the vehicle. “But why did I have to come all the way out here to get fired?”

The old man took the driver’s seat and waited for her to get in. “Those hills. They’re called the Forgotten Hills. A designated level-C cognitive impairment zone due to temporal rift manifesting in permanent memory loss. It’s a top secret location where the agency likes to lay off certain operatives, because certain memories about certain things are… erased.”

“Erased?”

“Put it this way. They’re called the Forgotten Hills because you’re not going to remember them.”

Specter got into the passenger seat. “Are you saying I’ll have no memory of working for the agency?” Of course that’s what he’s saying.

Kulcek stepped on the gas. Soon the airstrip vanished behind a wall of tangled jungle, and everything was too quiet except the crunch of tires on unpaved roads. Specter refrained from staring out the window at the thick vines, the giant leaves; she’d never been more off-grid, and she didn’t want to look like it.

“You should feel relieved,” Kulcek panted, filling the car with cigarette breath. “Your past has been creeping up on you, Specter. I can see it in your file, and in your eyes. Now you’ll be free. Unless it was your intention to burn too bright?” Spoken like opening a door.

Which Specter was quick to shut by not replying.

“Your brain will be left in fine working order,” Kulcek went on casually, as if they were merely discussing the humidity. “The spell, or hypnosis, or whatever it is, works very precisely. You’ll remember everything about yourself and your history, except for anything that has to do with the agency.”

She studied Agent Kulcek’s unreadable mask. She wondered how often he experimented with his face in front of a mirror, how often he changed his name. Finally she resigned to watching the forest as it crashed past. She caught flashes of birds, monkeys, and a vast, cloudless sky, its brightness hardly muffled through the tinted window. That wide openness above should have alleviated her creeping claustrophobia, but somehow it only made it worse, like the sky was a massive blue weight pinning her down, complicit with the countless trees towering in every direction, threatening to close ranks and suffocate her. It was the sensation of being trapped in a shrinking room… and she still didn’t see any hills.

She couldn’t chalk her trembling up to turbulence now; she had to face the fact that she was shaking, really shaking. She tucked her hands in her pockets and kept them there. Better to be afraid than to show it.

And what, she wondered, was Agent Kulcek refusing to show? Specter contemplated that lack of expression between his balding, sun-burned scalp and his gray-stubbled jaw. As the Jeep played hopscotch down rocky roads, the special agent made no further attempts at conversation. An uncommon exasperation rose up in Specter, made her clench her fists. A feeling like heartburn. It occurred to her that the endless mysteries of this job had, in fact, been crushing her. Suddenly she was tired of everything being hidden or unexplained. Exhausted by a life of secrets—simply exhausted.

Perhaps it was for the best if she got a new job, and a new life, instead of sacrificing herself for an agency that didn’t even technically exist…

“How much longer until we reach the hills?” she asked, looking around.

A slight grin cracked the old man’s expressionless mask. “We’re already on our way down, Specter. Back to the airstrip. We left the hills about an hour ago.”

She stared at him for a long moment as the jungle continued to rush by. “What did you just call me?”

“Specter. Isn’t that your code name?”

“My name is Sandra,” said the woman whose name was Sandra.

“Oh. Forgive me.” The old man lit a cigarette. “And the agency you used to work for? You remember their name by any chance?”

“What agency?” Sandra was debating diving out the door. She didn’t know how she’d gotten into this car, or who this man was. “Where am I?”

“You’re supposed to relax if I say ‘aliens.’ Did it work?”

Suddenly Sandra felt completely at ease. She was vaguely aware that she was being tricked, somehow, but she found that she didn’t care. And she continued not to care all the way to the airstrip, where the old man told her to have a nice flight, even though she wouldn’t remember it anyway. Obviously she asked what he meant by that, to which he responded: “Aliens.” And Sandra considered how that word seemed to make everything strangely better. Aliens. Aliens… She looked out the window of the charter plane and concentrated on the jungle, and the sound of the propellers, and the blue, blue sky…

Like the old man had promised, she remembered none of it.

She merely opened her eyes and discovered herself in bed—her bed—feeling perfectly fine, but having no idea what had taken place over the last twenty-four hours. She made herself some coffee and gazed out her kitchen window at the bustling city. She recognized this view. So what had she been expecting to see? She went back to bed and tried to calm down. It wasn’t that she remembered nothing; in fact, she remembered almost everything. That was the peculiar thing. She remembered almost everything.

But when she sat down with a pen and paper and made an effort to chart out her past, she discovered that there were days, weekends, even entire weeks, which she’d forgotten. She could produce no alibi for herself, no evidence of having ever lived during these holes in her history. Where had she gone? What had she done? Why couldn’t she remember?

From that point on, Sandra was constantly digging into her own life and taking notes. She tried dozens of exercises to unlock memories. She wrote down every dream, every thought. Any room where she spent a significant length of time transformed into a rat’s nest of papers and note cards. She uncovered in herself an inability to calm down. Life became an anxious haze, a mirage of unsatisfying developments and uncomfortable self-reflections. Always she felt empty—or rather, completely too full. Overloaded by all the time she couldn’t recover…

And time continued to pass, slipping away without answers, until one day she decided to just give up on the truth.

That is to say, she took up gardening.

She found some peace, perhaps even happiness, by working with the soil and seeds and things which could be seen, which were real. She listened to the trees and the wind, and tried to wring some small satisfaction out of each day. She wasn’t young anymore. She respected the stubbornness of the weeds which kept growing back every year. She caught herself smiling for extended periods, even when the sky was not blue. Indeed, she’d managed to transplant her obsession of what she’d lost with acceptance for what she had. She took great care in pruning and trimming her yard, which she kindly thought of as her “little jungle,” and finally she learned to tolerate her own missing pieces.

Then one bright hot evening, when the air was sticky and the orchids were coming in, she discovered an old man smoking a cigarette in her garden. An old man she recognized.

She said, without entirely meaning to, “Kulcek.” And somehow she knew it was a name—his name.

The old man turned, looked at her, and exhaled a dark cloud over the flowerbeds, followed by a harsh cough. “This will be the last time you see me. But the agency has allowed me to answer some of your questions. Simply because you were such a great asset. You should feel honored. They don’t give most people this kind of closure.”

Sandra was holding a shovel, gripping it so tightly that her knuckles hurt. “What agency?”

“Why, the one that doesn’t exist, of course.”

“How do I know you?”

“You don’t, really. Consider me more of… a ghost. Much like you used to be.”

A ghost. Sandra’s heart was thundering. Something inside her had snapped and broken free. “You don’t know me.”

“I know that you struggle to sleep, but not to dream. I know that you often find yourself standing in front of windows for no apparent reason. You’re always expecting to see hills, aren’t you? You’ll be waiting forever. Waiting to see what you missed.”

Sandra shifted her grip on her spade. She sensed a trap. “I’m asking you to leave.”

The man whose name might have been Kulcek gave her a smile full of yellow teeth. “Come now, this sort of meeting shouldn’t feel so alien to you.”

Sandra raised an eyebrow. Her pulse was absolutely sky-rocketing. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Kulcek looked suddenly uncomfortable. “I said, alien.”

But Sandra just stared at him, confused. The old man seemed to be expecting something to happen when he spoke that word. “You mentioned hills. What hills?”

Kulcek adjusted the collar of his wrinkled suit, looking obviously flustered now. “There are no hills, Specter. Don’t you get it by now? There’s nothing to be forgotten.”

“Specter?”

“Nevermind,” he said too quickly.

But it was too late. “Was that my name? Specter?”

“Do yourself a favor and forget everything I’ve ever said to you.” The ghost coughed again. Not just a smoker’s cough, but a heaving wet storm of the lungs. It occurred to Sandra that the old man was sick, very sick.

“Why are you really here?” she demanded.

“They sent me to give you closure.”

“I think you’re lying. Nobody sent you. You’re not supposed to be talking to me.”

The old man shrugged, took a long drag, coughed some more. “I’m not supposed to be alive.”

Sandra was sweating profusely, but she told herself it was only the heat. She wasn’t sure how she’d gotten the upperhand in this surprise visit, but she didn’t want the conversation to go on much longer. “Listen, is there somebody you need me to call?”

“Working for them takes its toll,” the ghost said. “You’re lucky to have gotten out while you did.” His laugh was sand-paper sliding over rocks. “It’ll kill you, this job.”

“Do you need a glass of water?”

“How long did it take you to get over the amnesia? Did you make up stories about yourself? Has it crossed your mind that you might have been tractor-beamed by little green men? Heck, maybe extraterrestrials did pick you up at some point. Lord knows you must have worked on some pretty top-secret stuff if the agency flew you to the Forgotten Hills just to wipe your brain. But no, Sandra, the reason you’re drawing a blank isn’t because of aliens.” And again he looks like he’s expecting something to happen.

Aliens…

Sandra asked, “What kind of top-secret stuff?”

“The kind that puts Ogopogo or Atlantis to shame.” Kulcek stamped out his cigarette in her soil. “But you got out while you still had some life left to live. Now you’re afraid I’m going to hurt you.”

“I’m not scared of you, Kulcek.” And she tossed down her shovel, like that proved something. “Tell me how I know your name.”

The old man lit another cigarette and stared up at the blue, blue sky, as if Sandra’s answer might be up there.

“What did you mean when you said there’s nothing to be forgotten?” she pressed.

“The hills. The place where this happened to you. Does a place still exist if nobody remembers it?”

Sandra thought, Lunacy. She felt some disappointment, some pity. She said, quietly and mostly to herself, “Just a crazy old man.”

“I’m not dying, actually.” Kulcek shifted his weight, stepped on a flower, didn’t seem to realize it. “But I did get pulled for ‘one last assignment,’ and I know what that means. They’ll be taking me to the hills now, or somewhere similar. And I’ll have the short rest of my life to figure out what I’ve been doing all this time…”

But Sandra was no longer listening, because how could she trust anything this man said?

Why worry about a past which clearly didn’t want to catch up with her?

All that was important was to be in the present—where her memories, or lack thereof, couldn’t hurt her.

To be in her garden, her little jungle, where there were no hills. And where a row of tulips were just beginning to bloom…

Sandra picked up her shovel and got back to work. She wasn’t exactly sure when the ghost actually left, just like she wasn’t sure when exactly he’d shown up. But whether his name had been Kulcek or not, she never saw him again. She had an undeniable feeling that she had once been a part of something strange or magical, perhaps many such things. And there were times when the old man in the wrinkled suit would wander back into her thoughts, and she would wonder what he remembered, what he’d forgotten, and whether he had learned—as she had—to embrace the emptiness of those silent places her memories should fill.

But should was such a strong word.

In the end, she let go of her alienated past, instead of letting it loom over her like the specter of a life that never was. And she allowed herself to sleep—if only so that, one day, she might wake up.

The End

Jake Stein lives in Portland, Oregon, where he concocts strange tales on his laptop and spends too much time at Powell’s Books. His stories have appeared in Lightspeed Magazine, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, and lots of other awesome publications. You can occasionally find him fumbling around bluesky (jakeiswriting.bsky.social) or check out storiesbystein.wordpress.com.

Jake Stein

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We are a reader-supported and ad-free literary journal that exists only here on Substack! Our mission is simple: to bring a little more imagination into a world that’s forgotten how to wonder.

We’re thrilled you’re here! Keep reading to learn more about what to expect this month and how to submit your stories.

⁘ What to expect this month ⁘

Our first submission call in March was quite a success; your stories were astounding in their charm, intrigue, and hopefulness. Thank you to all who submitted, and while we wish we could have accepted every one, we’re so excited to share three incredible stories here through the month of April.

We plan to publish the pieces spread out through the month so each one can have its own well-deserved moment, and readers can savor them adequately. You can look forward to receiving them each Wednesday — on the 8th, 15th, and 22nd!

We hope you are just as excited to read them as we are!

Don’t forget to subscribe to hear about future submission calls, read incredible stories, and other exciting things that are brewing. Sharing our posts and recommending us are other great ways to help support us!

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Now, onto submissions…

⁘ Submissions ⁘

Submissions open April 1st, to be found on our Submissions page here.

• Writers may submit via a Google forms link, so be sure to have your story ready as a .pdf, .doc, or .docx format.

• Submissions will remain open for two weeks, or until we reach our cap (we expect spots to fill quickly, so don’t dilly dally!).

• Adults from anywhere in the world may submit (English only).

• We don’t take previously published work, though work shared on personal blogs/Substack/website is allowed.

• All writers will hear back from us by the end of the month!

For more details about what we are looking for, click the button below.

Submissions

⁘ Publication ⁘

Three stories will be selected to be shared the following month, in May! We are looking for:

• Short stories (up to 5,000 words)

• Flash fiction (under 1,000 words)

We plan to expand the genres we offer in the future as our support grows!

⁘ Payment ⁘

We are currently paying $20 per piece, via PayPal, within one week of publication.

This amount, as well, will increase along with our support.

A moment of honesty…

We promise that Whim & Wander will always be free to read and submissions will never cost a dime.

However, to keep our journal running, we rely upon readers like you. If you believe the Internet needs more light (like us!) consider becoming a paid subscriber to help us create it.

In return, you’ll get an exclusive newsletter each month, straight from the Editor, that will include several things:

• From the Editor’s Desk: Real-time insight based on the most recent round of submissions — common mistakes, pitfalls, and what made the strongest pieces stand out.

• Things to Try: A handful of writing prompts, challenges, or ideas to try in your own writing.

• Something Sweet: A little poem or brief piece, just to brighten your day.

• A Dash of Whimsy: Ideas for bringing more whimsy and wonder into everyday life. This might include seasonal crafts, book recommendations, mindfulness tips, and whatever feels right that month!

So work your magic and get ready to send in your wonderful little tales!
And from the bottom of our hearts, thank you again for being at the start of something we hope will last for years.

We can’t wait to read your stories!

In our very first submissions call, our folder filled up within only two days, which was a wonderful surprise. I hope we never lose sight of the honor it is that writers want their stories in our journal! We continue to be so excited about what is in store for the future of Whim & Wander.

And if you’re here reading this, you’re a part of our beginning. This little monthly letter is where we go a little deeper, connect a little further.

Here, you’ll find what’s happening behind the scenes: the patterns in submissions and what made stories work well (or not). Alongside that, you’ll find prompts to grow your writin

g and small, intentional tips to help you create and live with a little more whimsical wonder.

If that sounds like something you want more of, we’d love to have you here with us.

But upgrading your subscription isn’t just about gaining access to these letters; it directly goes toward funding our writers and building this little corner of light.

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Now, let’s wander a bit…

— From the Editor’s Desk —

real-time insight based on the most recent round of submissions

What we saw this month:
Out of thirty stories, I only had one that captured an immediate “yes” from me while I read. As the story began, I was intrigued, but it wasn’t until a twist came halfway through that I was truly sucked in. Suddenly, this tale meant so much more to me than it had in the beginning.

There’s something to be said for a story having a strong hook. If your reader can’t make it past the first paragraph, what’s the point? But if your hook works while the rest of the story is shallow, then that hook means nothing.

Your story must do something for the hook to have any power in the end.

As for themes, there were some expected threads… but one in particular surprised me.

Read more

We are nearly upon our first month of true, published stories. Today’s piece is the last of our three “examples” — stories that showcase just the kind of thing we are searching for. Today’s piece is from our editor and founder, .

We hope you enjoy!

It’s been years, now, of walking these circles in the forest.

Long ago I was set to travel this path, no matter how hard I tried to make it not so. It quickly grew frustrating, then wearisome, then begrudgingly normal.

It’s the same every day. Wake up, drink from the stream, grab a handful of the berries from the bushes nearby. Then, with red-stained fingers, tie the laces of my worn black boots, shoulder my pack with a sigh, and begin the hike.

I know that, no matter how far off the path I go, I will find my way back to the stream. I’ve traveled every possible way to no avail; it was months before I finally gave up.

The path starts out wide and flat, smoothly meandering between the towering pines with their mossy trunks. Then it gains confidence, climbing up a rough incline littered with jutting roots and stones. There’s a cliff on one side—a single step away from certain death—and the steep mountainside on the other.

Some days, the sun slants through the branches, whispering of a stone castle that lies just out of sight. Other times the rain sends the trolls back to their hollowed stump homes, and I hurry past for fear of disturbing them.

Today, somehow, feels different. The birds sing their typical morning chorus. A troll skitters across my path in pursuit of a chipmunk, the sun is climbing the blue expanse above the treetops. Its rays trickle down, but it takes me a moment before I notice it.

The whisper is louder this time.

I continue forward, and with each step, it grows in urgency. It swells, filling my chest, until it is almost dancing with intensity around me. I put a hand out, watching as the light hovers and swirls above my palm.

Looking up, my eyes follow the brightening rays as they form a path up the mountain. The whisper is an inaudible shout, now — my head throbs with it. I know going up the mountain will get me nowhere; I always end up back at the stream. But, unable to ignore the sun, I step off the path.

The light instantly grows nearly blinding, a sense of ecstasy swirling in the air around me. I take another step, shielding my eyes; the light brightens even further. Closing my eyes, I reach out my hands to feel for the warmth — and feel something almost tugging me forward.

My lungs expand as I take a breath, then I plunge blindly into it. I scramble up the hill, squeezing my eyelids tight from the glaring white against them. Branches snag my clothes. I stumble and fall to a knee; the feeling against my back pushes me back to my feet and urges me on.

I’m sweltering now, barely able to breathe. My legs pump, muscles screaming, gasping for rest, the heat intensifying, pressing, shoving.

And just as the air grows too thick to inhale, suddenly, it’s gone.

Trembling, I stand, afraid to open my eyes. The heat has dissipated — the thing against my back has left, too.

I slowly open one eye, then step back with a gasp.

A stone arch rises from the earth in front of me. Vines creep up the bricks, threading in and out of the crumbling walls that branch out to either side. Runes scrawl across the bricks above my head, little lines border their edges. Squinting, I try to read them, until I realize they are in a different language.

I suck in a breath; it smells of damp soil and green things, and something else I can’t name. I peer through the arch, looking for anything beyond, but all I see are more ancient trees climbing up the slope.

Abruptly, a little nudge pokes between my shoulder blades. I turn to look; there is nothing except, perhaps, a sun’s ray slightly brighter than the rest.

An old feeling is blooming in my chest. It’s vaguely familiar, like something I used to know long ago. I look around me and back to the arch. Then I realize it.

I’m afraid.

I can’t see what lies beyond the gate, up the mountain. I do not know who might be up there or what I will find waiting at the top. I look around again; what brought me here, even, is a complete mystery to me. To be free of the sameness I’d once hated was now filling me with fear.

Unable to shake the thought that I was brought here for a reason, I close my eyes and put a hand to my heart, whispering a prayer. Today, I am free of the path, unknowing as to where I am going now. And though fear may be with me, so is the light.

I open my eyes and step through the arch.

Sol is a writer, dreamer, and the founder/editor of this journal. Living somewhere in the pines, you can usually find her reading, writing, playing with her daughter, or finding other ways to be creative.

Whim and Wander

Capturing fleeting whimsies ☼ Wandering through the tangled beauty of being human

By Sol ☼

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Some stories stop you in your tracks, capturing you in an ocean of emotion until their very end. It’s then that you take a breath, realizing that you had held it all along. And somehow, you know you’re different now for having met with those words.

This is one of those pieces.

Enjoy.

My breath catches as I wade through another enduring night.

Stepping off a smooth ledge, I find myself plunging down to rocky ground. The bruised soles of my barren feet send shockwaves of pain through worn, long-journeyed legs. Squinting into the darkness, I see two shadowed forms, recognizing their shape from similar times past.

And so, intersection begins.

Emerging here, on the edge, I arrive at the pair of beams, anchoring a weathered bridge to this mountainside; familiar, and yet, new, different, with so much still unknown. Aged vines weave into the bridge’s wooden framework, fading from sight as the downward dip of the planks disappear into a weighted fog.

Icy air pricks across numb skin. The steady thumping in my chest, the pulsing warmth in my veins, pushing back against a surrounding coldness I cannot escape; reminding me I am still living, still breathing, still fighting.

I hear soft footsteps on the narrow path behind me, and I know what is coming.

I know who is coming.

For a moment, I wondered if I would turn to see the face of evil come to torment me again. But no. It is my faithful companion.

Ever-watchful.
Ever-near.

It is not her I fear, but rather, why she is here. It’s time, again.

Time to let go of what has been.
Time to receive what is to come.
Time to grow, again.

The pack I carry on my back feels lighter than when she last gave it to me. I’ve gotten stronger. I’ve learned all I can from what I now carry.

Before I’ve twisted to look, she has arrived at my side. Her gentle hand rests atop mine as I grip the bridge’s edge. She does not push. She does not shove.

I am grateful, for it is not always so.

I don’t always see her, hear her, feel her near, until the full shift is upon me.

It is in those unexpected, jolting, gut-wrenching times that I do not comprehend until later the gentle ways she was there, subtly preparing me. Out of plain view. A closeness surprisingly easy to miss. Flashes of light in the corner of my eye. Wondering if it was real. If she was real.

Tonight, together, we pause.

The soft amber glow radiating from her skin, the hot white light from her chest, now illuminates beyond the edges of this valley.

I recognize the gift she carries. This Light shining into the night. Leading her to me.

The last ember never dies. It cannot be snuffed out. Not even by the most violent of storms.

It is the same Light within me. Abiding beneath my scarred, mud-caked skin.

She is here to prepare me, train me, equip me, and watch over me. She was created, chosen, to answer this call of the Light.

Shrugging out of my old, familiar pack feels strange. A piece of me long carried, now like shedding skin which no longer fits. Even if I tried to hold on, eventually it would dissolve away.

Gently kneeling onto the uneven ground, I place the pack between us. Discerning the Light’s leading, we sort through what I am tasked to still hold, and what needs to be released—its purpose complete. I watch as she reaches behind into her own pack, and transfers unfamiliar items to me; I do not yet know or understand their purpose. I am grateful, for she knows what I will need, beyond what I can see.

As I stand, she lingers by the ground. Gingerly removing a canister from her side, she begins to pour a cleansing liquid over my feet, washing away the layers of grime. The glow from my own internal Light increases as my skin can breathe again, and the coming placement for my first steps onto the bridge flash into view.

Determined to follow the Light’s lead, I heave the pack onto my shoulders, feeling the push forwards. Navigating the balance of added weight, sensation settling in. It will take time, but I will learn to carry this well.

With resolve, I remember each test, each trial, is strengthening, refining, for a plan far beyond me. Slowly revealing what once only the Light could foresee.

Rejoining me at the edge, I watch her breath mist before my eyes in a whisper to my ear, breaking through the surrounding chill. She tells of more I must gather when I reach the depths of this valley. My mind whirls, but then slowly, each word transforms with a settling calm, thoughts drifting into focus, becoming as clear as the most crystalline flake of snow.

Taking it all in, I look up, distinguishing the canopy of trees silhouetted against a sapphire sky. Stars dance through this mysterious overhead sea. I hold dear such a wondrous reminder of truth; the Light treasures me far more than each radiant jewel sparkling above in the heavens.

Smiling, I realize fear has melted away.

My Hope is set.

This Love unbounds.

I feel her press a cool object into my hand. The metal tingles against my skin, and I feel a word of Truth etched across its center. Raising to view, I see a locket. Gently, I open it to find seven tiny seeds. The moment the Light within me touches each seed—igniting a tremble to ripple through each one—tiny sprouts begin to break through their shells, and reflexively I reclose its seal.

For deep within I know their roots are meant for the heart of this valley.

One day they will grow to heights of this bridge, lending support for other travelers set to come this way. I secure the chain, resting over my heart, tucked close, marveling at the honor of being entrusted with such a task.

Her hand now rests on my back, signaling what must come next.

It’s time.

With a grounding breath, I nod, and take my first step onto this uncharted bridge. Moving forwards, leaving the outcrop, parting from her. It is not goodbye. I know the time will come. I will see her soon.

How I long for the day when her coming is to take me to a mountaintop. Where the sun is free to stretch across lands of praising fields. Where a breeze unhindered can carry each melody. Where this journey wading through muck and mire has finally broken through, complete, to a life renewed.

Until then, every hope and prayer, I carry here with me.

Each new territory traversed, each twist and turn, all within the boundaries of these same shadowed lands. I do not know if my mountaintop will be within its borders, or if I must endure until the Light calls me through the veil.

Above the clouds, my true home awaits.

In this in between, still, the Light rests with me.

So I press on.

Stepping in faith.

Trusting each jagged outcrop, each valley, each pain ridden path, are all taking me to where I’m called to be.

Along the way, the Light brings sustaining life to me. A lone wild flower breaking through dry, cracked earth; declaring hope alive, unquenchable. A ray of sunlight chasing shadows; glimmering, swirling, like a sparkle of undissolvable joy. A momentary joining of eyes with a stranger; two souls encountering at the narrow divide. A refreshing meeting with a fellow traveler; pausing to break bread, share stories of hard-won knowledge from travels past, and bandage the wounds we could not reach on our own.

Lighter, we go on our way.

If I glance back, I catch a glimpse of each soul’s very own, ever-trailing companion, and I know that likewise, mine is not far off, following the Lights lead.

Ever-waiting, ready to intercede.

I never embark on this journey alone.

And watching over it all, the Light always will be.

Fully surrendered, my spark of life grows, roots grounding deep.

Strength to go on comes not from I, but the Light within.

Light that leads me.
Light that guides me.
Light that protects me.
Light that shelters me.
Light that restores me.
Light that refreshes me.
Light that goes with me.
Light that sees me.
Light that knows me.
Light that loves me.
Light that carries me.
Light that holds me.
Light that never leaves me.
Light that lifts what burdens me.

I trust the Light.

My constant source.

It is this Light that leads Change to me, and it is this Light that leads me to Change.

Ever-meeting.
Ever-sharpening.
Ever-refining.

Anchored to the Light.
My hope.
My strength.
My courage.
My very breath of life.
The Light, indeed.

From here we go.

The Light and me.

Onwards I press, though uncertain of all else, I have found my peace complete, here with the Light.

“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”

‭‭Psalm‬ ‭23‬:‭4‬ ‭ESV‬‬

✧

“And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. To him be the power for ever and ever. Amen.”

‭‭1 Peter‬ ‭5‬:‭10‬-‭11‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Hannah loves to share about homeopathy—with hope in God as our healer, and desires to help others feel equipped to confidently care for their families. She has a unique approach to health, thinking outside the box, and shares this holistic perspective with a heart to support others walking through the layers of their healing journeys. She lives in constant awe of the ways God works through her life, and gives all glory to Him!

Hannah Yarborough Homeopathy

We will always remain reader supported and ad-free.
However, paid subscriptions help keep us alive and pay our writers more!
Please consider upgrading to help support us and keep our journal alive.

Subscribe now