Stories in category Fantasy

Dear Lord in Heaven, O Merciful Father.

Always I have turned to You in prayer when frightened and my first instinct tonight was to kneel upon these old flagstones and beseech you for guidance.

Most in that country called Tzigana a witch, though never to her face. Now that she was dead, you would expect that the girls who had lived in her tumbledown house might say whatever they wished. But none dared speak against the old woman.

Lemuel carefully balanced the box he carried on his knees. He peeked inside, to assure himself for the hundreth time that the tiny cattle and sheep it held were all right. We were on our way to the country estate of the Earl of Kent, who had summoned Lemuel when the rumors of the miniature creatures he’d brought back from Lilliput spread throughout the county.

Long ago, when you were just a baby, we went to the Moon.

The barker said, “Come, then, let me show you this splendid wizardry! It attracts men to women, women to men, and makes virgins rush out of their homes to find lovers!” He reached behind him, snatched up a rolled parchment scroll, and waved it in front of Menandros’s nose. “Here, friend, here! You take a pure papyrus and write on it, with the blood of an ass, the magical words contained on this…”

Sometimes Amirah thinks she can sense the weight of the pyramid that entombs her house.  The huge limestone blocks seem to crush the air and squeeze light.  When she carries the table lamp onto the porch and holds it up to the blank stone, shadows ooze across the rough-cut inner face.