It had taken him five years, but it was worth it. The insurance money from the crashed Space Needle had just barely covered the down payment on the new ship, and it had taken five years to pay for the rest of it. But now—the ship was his. And he was celebrating. The only trouble was the final payment had nearly left him penniless, and the only place he could afford to bend an elbow was a dive like the Vestend.
Your mama stared at the moon through the viewport of the space station. The goddamn airlock was jammed. How the hell was she supposed to get outside before the change hit without the key? And who thought that a chain was a good idea for an airlock? Her bones ached. The inside of her spacesuit was starting to chafe.
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.
She would not have reasoned that all of this would have made more sense than assaulting her with pig barbarians in plate armor and driving her to the exact place where any dark lord fearful of prophecy would not want her to go…
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.
The one exception to this general malaise were the children.
Rina imagined her ice cube in the dark, cold cocoon of the freezer. Stay calm, she thought. Block it out. This is your life. This bit of almost-death.
“You think it’s easy living in the garden? The never-ending picnic — that’s what your Bible says, doesn’t it?”
Faithful sister, you’ve been staring at the horizon for all these long years, standing to your shoulders in the restless sea.
This part of Mexico was famous for its masks, grotesque and terrifying ones portraying devils and monsters and fiends.
The wedding reception could have been mistaken for a wake.
Like the cat. Pleasure lived that way all the time. The cat didn’t know about Jesus’ sacrifice, about angels and devils. That cat looked at him and saw what was there.
He woke up thinking of the difference between the smiling girl in his dreams and the dead woman on the walkway, her skin cold against his fingertips.
Ever since Tian was a little boy, he had been obsessed with the exploits of the Monkey King, the trickster demon who had seventy-two transformations and defeated hundreds of monsters, who had shaken the throne of the Jade Emperor with a troop of monkeys.
She held up her finger against my lips. So close to her, I finally noticed her scent. It was like her mother’s, floral and sweet, but also bright, like blankets dried in the sun. I felt my face grow warm.