Refuge

Naamah stood atop the city wall, gazing out over the hills and the sea. She was twelve years old, the age of gifting. She waited for her mother to summon her.

The night before, she had a dream that a giant egg cracked open and the yolk spilled out, flooding the land and many cities. She saw people drown in rivers of gold, reaching for the sky as they cried out to God. Naamah was frightened when she awoke; she wrapped herself up in a blanket to find comfort in sunrise. Dreams are important, but Naamah could not bring herself to tell her mother or father, for she also saw them die in the dream.

“Naamah, the Ziz requests your presence. It’s time to go,” her mother said, hands resting on Naamah’s shoulders from behind.

“Mama, has Jubal returned from the Ziz?” Naamah asked. Her half-brother had ventured out to receive his gifting some weeks before.

“He returned last night, but he is overcome. Your father says that he has been consumed with crafting strange objects from string and bone. He has not revealed the nature of his gifting to your father or his mother.”

They held hands as they descended from the city wall and approached the small caravan of traders that would lead Naamah part of the way to the Ziz.

“My gift was given by the Leviathan, so I cannot tell you the nature of the Ziz, but she is known to be kind to those who come to her with an open heart,” her mother said.

Naamah’s other brother, Tubal Cain, helped her into a cart. Naamah noticed her father, Lamech, in the distance with his other wife, Adah. He looked away from Adah for a moment and locked eyes with Naamah, offering a smile and a nod before disappearing into their home. She tried not to be jealous of Adah, who possessed most of her father’s attention now that she was pregnant.

Naamah watched Tubal Cain and her mother embrace, then he climbed into the cart with her, taking the reigns.

                                                                                                   ***

It took three days to reach the trade town by the sea. Tubal Cain was an artisan; he created beautiful figures from copper and iron. People came from far and wide to purchase his animal renderings and statues of the Great Creatures. Their family lived well because of him.

The caravan came to a stop on the northwest side of town where they would pitch their trade tents. Naamah hopped down from the cart and gazed out over the sea, at the mountain on the other side of the harbor.

“Are you taking me to the Ziz, brother?” Naamah asked.

“No, you will go alone,” he said.

“But how will I know where she is?”

“You’re looking at her. She is the mountain, Naamah,” Tubal Cain said with a hushed voice of reverence.

Naamah looked back at the mountain.

“The Ziz knows you are here. She will come to you, but you must meet her halfway.”

Tubal Cain led her to a small boat with a single oar and held her hand as she stepped inside. She took the oar in her hands and watched the ripples form on the surface of the water, dread setting in.

“Mother’s blessing from the Leviathan extends to you. You will be safe.”

Tubal Cain gave the boat a shove and Naamah dipped the oar into the water and made her way toward the mountain.
                                                                                                   ***

The Ziz, the great bird of heaven, stood in the middle of the sea. What looked like a mountain was her body, and she extended ever upward past the clouds. She could not see the great bird’s head. For a moment, she felt dizzy and grasped the sides of the boat to keep from falling forward.

Then, the Ziz lowered her head from the canopy of clouds. It seemed to take hours for her to dip down toward the sea, the tip of her beak touching the surface of the water and rocking the boat with waves. Her eyes were the size of wagon wheels and the feathers of her orange crest blocked the sun. There was a voice that resonated in Naamah’s chest. The tears fell from her eyes and she smiled, her heart full.

“What is this sound, this beauty welling up inside my soul?” Naamah asked the Ziz.

“I give you the gift of song,” Naamah heard the Ziz say. “You will sing of creation and of heaven. You will sing of dreams and of what will come to pass. You have already seen, have you not?”

Naamah recalled her dream, the golden flood drowning cities.

“You must sing to one who is coming, to one whom you will love. He is not yet born, but you will hear his cry soon.”

Naamah thought of Adah’s swelling belly, and the jealousy dissipated. A feeling of love and responsibility took its place.

“When will I give him the song, holy one?” Naamah asked.

“When he is gifted, but he will not come to me nor will he receive his gift from the Leviathan or the Behemot. His gift will come from on high, but you must sing it over him.”

The sky began to shift from blue to orange to a deep, dark pink before violet spread a blanket of night and stars.

“I will lift you up to the throne of the Creator, and I will teach you to sing.”

The Ziz took Naamah into her beak with care and lifted her head from the sea up toward the sky. Naamah felt her soul tremble within her, felt songs begin to well up in her throat. She could feel her half brother’s song growing like a vine from her heart as images of the great flood played behind her eyes. Naamah closed her eyes, feeling heaven envelope her with a sacred chill, and the first note of that song left her lips. The first note would be his name.

“Noah.”


Written by: Natasha Akery
Photo by: Anthony Delanoix

The Man Who Made Bigfoot

A plane flew Barker McMullin just south of the Arctic, but it was tragedy that drove him mad.

This was, of course, after he’d discarded his possessions via a heroic garage sale where he sold pretty much everything but his pants.

On a Delta flight he jumped over the Canadian border. From there, it was Bearskin Airlines to Flin Flon, Manitoba, arriving at an airport with the culinary offerings of a vending machine. From a brochure he learned that the mining town had been named after a fictional character, Josiah Flintabbatey Flonatin, from a novel called The Sunless City.

Barker wanted to live in a sunless city. He figured if he got pale enough he’d turn into a ghost.

From Flin Flon he hitched deeper north into the forest with a trucker named Zach, who told him he would die come winter.

This was all years ago.

                                                                                                 ***

He did not die that winter, nor any of the ones after. He built a cabin on a lake that had no name, so he called it Susan and Beau Lake -- the names of his dead. He did not want to forget his grief, so much as live in it for so long that he and it fused together, and in their new shared existence there would be limits to his self-sentience; like one’s inability to smell his or her own tang.

That was the idea, anyway.

But he could never quite get there. In the end he had to settle for some good old fashioned transmogrification, the final result of which was nothing more than an empty vessel; his body just a container to store organs and eyes.

To say that he was ruptured with grief would be an understatement. He lost track of years like you and I lose pennies. His beard grew long. His eyes dimmed. His skin stretched tautly over his angular bones.

And then Bigfoot appeared, nonchalantly, like she’d been there all along.

She materialized in the last moments of dusk, when the light of the world colluded with the brainy tendrils of imagination to create images that might not exist, and doubt in the ones that did. It was just the right environment for mythmaking.

As a shadow, she at first blocked his path. Only when he got closer did he realize her authenticity: her heavy coat of hairs, and peering eyes. They looked at each other with the look you give a funhouse mirror. And why not? In the dark, they appeared simply as fantastic deviations of their own images.

Maybe they were too tired for violence. Maybe surprise paralyzed them. But for an unknown amount of time they stared at each other through the woods, through the dark, and though we can’t speak for Bigfoot, the results of this encounter -- which finally ended with Bigfoot shuffling silently, far too silently given her size, into the woods -- laid the foundation for the next phase in Barker McMullin’s life.

Because of Bigfoot, his empty vessel would be full again. He would discover that the will to live was really just inspiration; the revelation of creation manifested in whatever form you chose: in progeny or business, architecture, guitar, politics, painting, law, or even sculpture.

                                                                                                 ***

Not long after their encounter, Barker McMullin left the woods. He rejoined civilization. Heading south, he parlayed his few belongings into cash, bartered down highways, and cut through the Canadian winter.

He made it back to America through Minnesota, and from the land of the lakes through the empty shelf of the plains -- all halcyon days and billboards -- he thought of nothing other than his muse. He found Oklahoma and with it, a fine new place to start.

Using the last of his funds he purchased a large block of cement. In the parking lot of the Good Gravy! Diner, across the street from the Industry Turbo Car Wash, he began to chip away.

The going was slow. The Oklahoma winds dusted up his allergies and diners came and went with questions of why and comments of neat-o, knocking him out of his artistic groove. But inside his brain stood such a comprehensive image of what he wanted that each hammered corrugation and crease, each wrinkle and line, came from his hands through his tools and onto, into, the cement block with a level of serenity he had railed against for so long that he’d forgotten its existence.

So perfect was the final product that he was never to make changes. He worked like an assembly line after that first statue. His muscles no longer sovereign in their action, but rather automatic; never spiritless, but instead glowing with the electricity of their flawless instincts.

That is what it felt like for Barker McMullin to make Bigfoot. Or at least, some form of her.

He hoped that in his concrete creations there was no extraction of spirit from his muse -- our myth -- and that his art (he really preferred not to call it that) was selfish. Narcissistic, if he was being truthful. He did not want to comment on the lore of nature, the extension of mankind’s industry, lumber or fish farms, spilled oil in the gulf, climate change or pollution. He did not have thoughts on the obsession of the missing link, or the proto-religion of evolution.

So when they asked him this and so much more; when they took pictures and wrote magazine articles; when they interviewed him and put him on camera; interrogated him on the psyche of the creator, the license of the artist, and the warrant of individuality in today’s changing landscape of taste and influence; he didn’t know what to say.

Flashbulbs, flashbulbs, what do you mean you don’t know? They threw genius at him and were appalled when he dropped it, and it shattered in the dirt.

Through it all, what he wanted to say was this:

A lifetime ago I saw curiosity in her eyes, and it made me want to marry her. I loved the idea that she found joy in the questions of things. And when those eyes were forever closed, I was gone. My body existed, but there was nothing else. And then I stumbled upon a myth in the forest. And in those eyes, fact or fiction they may have been, I saw that same curiosity. And it brought me back from the dead. And it inspired me to survive.

Written by: Logan Theissen

Photograph by: Kassie Ritman

An Apocalypse

There once was a boy named Álfar. He lived in small dark cave, in a small dark city, in a dark world with his mother and father. Álfar loved his home, he loved the earthy smell of market days when everyone met to trade goods in the city centre. He loved the echoing sounds the tunnels made when he was alone in a quiet corridor. He loved the warmth and wetness of the mushroom caverns. Álfar loved the fire festival most of all.

Once a year the whole city gathered near the reservoir. They sat along the rocks, waiting while the fire spinners marched to the centre of the shallow lake. Álfar listened as the water slapped under their feet. He waited as the smell of the fuel from the torches drifted across the cavern. Álfar strained his eyes -- blurry from long months of disuse -- to catch sight of the first sparks. The sparks would be quick and bright white, but once the flames caught they would glow a deep warm orange. The fire spinners started slowly, waving the flames back and forth waiting for the drums. Then they would gain momentum, the drums nudging the flames to whirl faster, and the flames exciting the drums into a percussive flurry. The show swelled to a crescendo when everyone jumped to their feet and stomped into the lake. The splashes of water, reflecting the flames - hung like jewels in the air. There was no other time of year when Álfar’s world contained so much colour, so much light.

Álfar was a clever and curious boy who loved nothing more than exploring the mysteries of his world. He would sneak out of his house and wander through the long abandoned corners of the city. One day when he had ventured far from home, something different caught his eye. There was a greyness, not obvious at first, but growing the longer he watched. Álfar crept closer to the greyness and the closer he crept the brighter it became. He could also hear a sound, a gentle and repetitive hush; and a smell -- a freshness, almost like the reservoir, but different, softer, and colder.

Álfar crept closer until at last he stood at the mouth of a tunnel. He could see that beyond, it opened up into a giant cavern. He knew it could be dangerous but he couldn’t contain his curiosity, so he crept out from the tunnel and into the cavern. The room was so bright that he had to close his eyes against the glare. The whole room was filled with the light of sparks, white and searing into his brain. He stood shielding his eyes, and little by little he grew accustomed to the light. He could see then that the cavern was wider and more vast than any other in his world. None of the outer walls were visible, and the ceiling - coated in soft pink stalactites - was so far away it seemed unreachable. The entire cavern was filled with water, and it moved, lapping at the lip of rock where Álfar now stood. The water was the source of the repetitive sound, but there was something else that seemed to bring the smell to Álfar. It brushed against his skin, soft like breath, but bigger and cooler.

Álfar rushed back through the tunnels to the city. He told his mother about what he had found, but she just smiled and told him he had a wonderful imagination. He told his father who laughed and asked, “How do you dream up such wild stories?” Álfar told his teacher and she told him he shouldn’t tell lies. No one believed about the beautiful unending lake in the pink ceilinged cavern.

Many days passed and though Álfar hadn’t returned to the cavern, he thought of it often. One morning he woke to the rumblings of the earth. He and his family hurried with all the rest of the town to the reservoir. Rumblings happened from time to time, and sometimes parts of the city would cave in when they occurred. The reservoir was the safest place to be. They hurried through the tunnels until they found the passage blocked. The cries from those in front told them that the ceiling of the reservoir had fallen in. The people were trapped and panicked, and the rumbling became stronger. Dust and pebbles rained down on them and they screamed in the darkness. They were trapped, and their world was crumbling.

“We must go to the cavern,” Álfar cried out. “The one with the endless lake and the soft pink ceiling.”

The people were lost and afraid, and with nowhere else to turn, they followed Álfar. He led them through the tunnels while the world shook around them. They hurried through long-forgotten passages and passes until they too saw a greyness ahead of them. They climbed into the cavern and there was the endless lake, just as Álfar had said, but the world around was dark. The ceiling, hidden in blackness, was dotted with sparks -- glowing flames, infinitely far away. Álfar and his family waded into the lake as people continued to flood out of the tunnel. The water of the cavern was different than what had been found in the reservoir, it wasn’t silky and smooth, but granular and tasted of salt.

The last of Álfar’s people ran from the tunnel just as the rumbling of the world shook the cave apart and the roof collapsed. Then at last the world was still.

The people were quiet, gazing at the beauty of the vast cavern, knee deep in the salty lake. They waited as light crept into the world. The greyness grew, and they could see the ceiling smothered in pink splotchy calcifications, just as Álfar had told them. They stood hand in hand and watched as light and colour grew all around them.


Written by: Sarah Scott
Photograph by: Blake Bronstad

The Sleeping Dragon

My brother, Lynn, was only one year old at the time. His first birthday had just passed. The first snowfall had arrived that afternoon and blanketed the fields and meadows surrounding the farmhouse. Night came early. Its black cloak settled over the white blanket, muffling sound, forcing whispers in deference to the silence.

My grandfather threw a log on the ebbing fire then took his place in his rocker. He motioned to me to join him. Lynn had gone to bed early. It was just the two of us. I crawled onto his knee, settling into the crook of his arm. The new log spat and flared; its flickering light danced on the walls and filled our faces with a warm, orange glow.

“Shall I tell you about the sleeping dragon?” my grandfather asked. “I think you’re old enough now.” He pushed the rocker so it settled into an easy rhythm.

And so the story began...

“The legend goes that even before the discovery of fire, the hole was there. No one could remember a time when it wasn’t there. It is there now,” he said. I looked up at him. “True.” He crossed his heart. “It’s in the north meadow. You’ll find it some day when you go exploring. No one knows how deep it is. It breathes a warm mist, keeping the cold air away. It even melts the snow and warms the ground. Ancient men believed it was a living thing--a sleeping dragon confined to the depths of the earth with no means of escape. And so, it sleeps.”

“Don’t it ever wake up?” I asked, a little scared. I’d only heard about dragons in fairy tales.

“No, no. It just sleeps and breathes,” he said. “Sometimes though, it burps.”

“Burps?” I sat up.

“Sometimes near the hole, it smells like rotten eggs.” As we rocked back and forth, he looked me in the eye. “But I figure the dragon just suffers sometimes from indigestion. Some of the ancient peoples believed the hole had magic powers, so they threw dead animals into the hole, hoping to appease the sleeping dragon. Whether that kind of thing works or not, no one knows. Seems people down through the ages have always been a little crazy. What do you think?”

“Sounds crazy to me. No wonder the dragon burps,” I answered. He laughed.

“Yes. Would give anybody heartburn. But still the dragon sleeps and breathes to this day.”

I stared into the lick of flames that curled around the sizzling log as long as I could. My eyes closed to the hissing of the log’s boiling sap trapped inside it. I dreamt of a hole in the ground and the warm, fetid breath of a sleeping dragon.

When I was twelve, my grandfather sold the farm. When the town built right up to its northern border, he’d felt the pressure to sell. He figured he was too old to stand in the way of progress. Neither my father nor his brother were interested in farming. They’d left the farm to pursue their own careers. For the sins of the parents, it was the grandchildren who felt the loss.

The farm was our home, our adventureland. We scouted the creek, meadows and woods that made up the the farm’s one-hundred sixty acres. We used to climb in through the shattered windows of an old, rusty Model A Ford that sat down by the creek and pretend we were gangsters running from the law. Lynn was five years younger than me, so I had to watch out for him. It was my parent’s mandate. But no matter what we did, my brother and I always ended up at the hole.

My brother knelt on the warm ground by the hole and stretched his back and neck as far as he could over the edge to look down into its dark throat. I crouched down beside him. The hole breathed in and out. On exhale, a sour puff of mist rose out of hole. We felt it on our faces and leaned back away from its edge.

“What do you suppose it is?” Lynn asked.

“Don’t know. Grandpa says it’s a sleeping dragon.” Lynn looked at me wide-eyed; then looked back at the hole.

“I heard those Nevitt boys, next farm over, tossed their dead dog in there. How long you think it’s been here?”

“Forever, Grandpa says. Don’t matter. It’ll be someone else’s soon. Come on, let’s go.”

We walked across the meadow and through a stand of giant oaks to catch the path back down to the farm. We came to the fence that bordered the meadow and stepped out into a clearing. I put my hand on my brother’s chest to stop him.

We both stared at a dead deer. I advanced cautiously. My brother trailed behind. It was a full grown doe. It had tried to jump across the fence but had misjudged. Its leg had gone through the top hole in the fencing, and the top and bottom wires had twisted around its ankle, trapping its leg forever--to the end. The ankle was worn down to the bone. Though the doe had struggled and yanked and pulled, the wire held firm. It had starved and died, held by fear, the desire to escape, and two thin pieces of twisted metal.

“It must have been scared,” Lynn said.

“It just wanted to get away, but progress held on tight,” I answered. “Let’s give it a proper burial.”

Together we freed the doe’s leg from the wire mesh and dragged it back across the meadow to the hole.

“Think it’s deep enough?”

“We’ll find out. It’s like a sacrifice to the sleeping dragon,” I answered.

We pushed the deer carcass over the edge and watched it disappear into the darkness; then we headed back home in silence. We never spoke of it again, each placing the day’s memory in a special, hidden place only brothers shared.

In the years that followed, the town paved its way across the farmland and became a city. I got a job with the city highway department. I was supervisor on the night crew. One night, we were called out on an electrical fault.

I stood around the hole with my colleagues, hard hats in place, heads bowed, watching the progress of the John Deere backhoe. As soon as the backhoe hit a limestone crevice and the sour smell of rotten eggs hit my nostrils, I knew where I was and what was about to happen. If legend could be believed, one metal dragon was about to awaken a sleeping one.


Written by: James Shaffer
Photograph by: Matthew Wiebe

Junum the Young

Junum the Young was the last of the Cloud People. All the others from his tribe had disappeared one by one, wandering off into the fog when their time came. The Cloud People were quiet; they kept to themselves living in the crags and caves of the tallest mountain peaks.

At just over 7 feet tall, Junum was small for his kind. His long, thin limbs were coated in fine white hair. The fur sprouting from his grey skin grew chaotically, fanning out in all directions. It grew thickest on his head where it matted together, and if you saw him through the fog, you would see what looked like the distorted silhouette of a man. But you would never see Junum the Young, or any of his kind. They lived in small family groupings, hidden in quiet caves, melting silently into the mountaintops.

The skies were clear and crisp, and the clouds hung low in the world, hugging the barren rocks. Junum scrambled up the mountain using his strong hands to cling to the narrow ledges and heave himself along on his wide, sturdy feet. He was returning home after weeks out scouring the nearby mountains. He was returning alone, unsuccessful in his search. Junum had not found a companion.

For years he had searched the surrounding terrain for any other Cloud People. He had wandered until the rocks turned to grass and the clouds were high above. He traveled until the plants towered over his head. The world became flat and the air smelled of earth and flowers and other strange things he could not name. Junum was disappointed, for once again he had been unable to find any other creatures like himself.

As he crested the lip of the ridge and the ground opened up to reveal the mouth of his familiar cave, Junum caught the scent of something on the wind. It was the smell of meat, urine and salt, a smell his mother had told him belonged to man. The smell he had been taught to always avoid. There was something else, a foreign smell, both sweet and smoky. The strange aromas were coming from within his home. Junum knew he should disappear back over the ridge, he should blend into the fog and disappear before the man caught sight of him, but years of loneliness overruled his natural inclination for timidity, and Junum entered the cave.

The man was small. It sat unmoving with its legs folded and its hands resting palm up on its knees. Eyes closed it did not see Junum, and he was able to approach the creature and examine its strange appearance.

The man-thing was wrapped in skins that hung loosely from its body, obscuring its shape. The skins were unlike any pelt Junum had ever seen. They were the bright colour of summer berries and looked as soft as grass, as though they could be ruffled by the slightest breeze. The man-thing had no fur on its head, its pale skin was smooth and shiny. It held a collection of pebbles in its hands; each one perfectly round, and pierced through the centre. The pebbles had been strung along a piece of sinew. Junum watched as the man-thing mumbled strange sounds, sliding the pebbles along the sinew, passing them from one hand to the next.

The cave was filled with the same sweetly scented smoke, which had caught his nose outside. The smoke seemed to be coming from a small, solitary stick that had been stuck in the ground. Junum decided to approach, intending to extinguish the ember. The smoke caught in his nostril and stung his gentle grey eyes.

As Junum knelt in front of the man-thing, its eyes suddenly popped open. Its mumbles gave way to a shriek so shrill it seemed to have come from a bird. Junum stumbled back, and in an instant the man-thing rose to its feet. Fear ran swift and thick through Junum, coupled with regret. He knew he should not have entered the cave. Junum reached out to push the man-thing aside, intending to run away and disappear into the mountains. But the creature shoved him hard to the ground. Junum raised his hands to shield himself from the monster but its eyes were full of panic and rage. It grabbed a rock from the floor of the cave and slammed it into Junum’s head.

The impact shook Junum, and he fell to his knees in front of the howling creature. He felt blood oozing from his scalp. He looked up just as the rock came crashing down a second time against his skull. This time, Junum sprawled to the ground, immobilised by the impact. The third thud of rock against skull stole Junum’s vision, and as the world turned black around him, he knew the next blow would take his life.

Junum closed his eyes and thought of the others who had been gone for so long. He thought of his mother with her gentle hands and his father leading them through the hidden mountain paths that had been their home. Junum thought of the smell of the wind, the songs of the birds and the feel of cool mountain streams in spring. He thought of the taste of summer berries, sweet and vibrant. He did not think of the man-thing and his skins of the same colour. He did not think of his lonely years after the others had gone. He thought only of his home and the good things he had loved. Then, when the final blow fell, Junum the Young thought no more.


Written by: Sarah Scott
Photograph by: Rob Gregory

The Architect

Tamar watches her twin sisters gaze at the horizon as the merchants row them across the harbor toward the port town of Kerr. There is a crisp, salty bite to the winter breeze that blushes their noses and cheeks. This is the first time that Tamar will lead the priestesses to commemorate the winter solstice with gifts of dried sea plants and pearls. She hides her hands from the chill in the folds of her cloak as her head tilts to the side, eyes gazing beyond the blue as the boat rocks like a cradle.

“Are you excited to see the finished fane?” one of the twins, Adah, calls back without turning.

Tamar blinks to attention, remembering that she will meet with the architect they commissioned to build the temple that would serve as their headquarters during their solstice visits.

“Yes. I hope it meets Mother Aviva’s expectations. ”

“Do you think the architect is very old and bald?” the other sister, Zillah, asks.

Tamar’s hush comes out like a hiss as the twins giggle to themselves. The merchants hop into the shallows to pull the boat ashore as the black cliffside towers overhead. Tamar recalls a dream from the night before in which she stood waist deep in the sea and looked up at this very cliff, grasping a silver key in her hand. Her seven sisters stood in the water behind her, waiting as the waves lapped against the small of their backs. Tamar notices the merchant’s hand reaching to help her out of the boat and takes it as the memory of her dream dissolves.

“More comfortable in the water than on land, eh?” asks an older man with a craggy face.

“You should know,” she says, smiling as she steps onto shore.

                                                                                                    ***

Tamar did not expect to see the stained glass windows and the oak altar encircled by benches of shaped wood and stone. Breath stolen, she approaches the center, noticing light falling from above. She tilts back her head to see the window depicting an ornate silver key surrounded by panels of blue and green glass. She remembers her dream, the feel of the key in her palm, and her desire to find it’s owner.

A priestess acolyte approaches, bowing her head before speaking.

“High priestess, this is Liam Eklund.”

Tamar turns around, meeting eyes with a man a little over half a foot taller than herself. His beard is full and betrays his youth.

“Hello, Liam. I am very pleased with your master’s design,” she offers.

The acolyte’s eyes dart toward Liam and a flush spreads across her face and neck, but he is smiling.

“Oh, Tamar. Liam is the master architect, the one Mother Aviva commissioned for the fane,” the younger priestess stammers.

The architect is laughing now.

“It’s really fine. I’m used to it. You’d only know if you noticed the ink on my hands,” he says as he raises them.

Tamar sighs and covers her face for a moment before looking up at him.

“I am sorry, master architect. I only assumed because you are young. I was expecting someone…”

“Old and bald?” Liam interrupts.

“Precisely.”

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, I didn’t expect the high priestess to be so young either. I guess this means I don’t have to be too formal?”

“Formalities are for funerals,” she replies. “Can you tell me about the key? Is that your signature or did we request it?”

Liam rests his hands on his hips and leans back to look up at the skylight.

“Mother Aviva said the image of a key came to her in a dream. When she was searching for architects, she found me because I tend to place it on my work,” he says.

“She had a dream?” Tamar asks, brow raised.

“Yes. She dreamt that her priestesses stood in the sea and one of them held a key. Then, she heard a voice say that love would reveal the truth of our desires.”

Tamar is silent, beginning to sweat beneath her arms.

“Anyway, that’s how she found me. And now I’m here.”

She swallows, hearing the chirp of birds outside beyond the heat of her ears.

“The stars know better than we. I’m very glad to meet you, Liam.”

“Me, too, priestess.”

                                                                                                    ***

The town is quiet and the moon is high as Tamar cracks open the door of the temple and slides in, closing it with a backwards lean. Her eyes are drawn to the altar, to the moonlight that bathes it and the cold silence emanating from the stones. She takes a seat on a bench and grips bunches of her cloak in her hands, thinking of Mother Aviva.

“Love will reveal the truth of our desires,” she whispers, wondering at the meaning.

“Priestess,” Liam murmurs, stepping into the light.

Tamar looks up, startled, and sighs with a laugh.

“Hello, Liam. I guess you couldn’t sleep either?”

The architect rubs the back of his neck with his hand as he takes a seat next to her, then leans forward with elbows on his knees.

“Strange dreams,” he says.

“You and me, both.”

“What did you dream?”

Tamar takes a moment to consider her response, then takes courage as she says, “I’ve been dreaming of your key, Liam. Even before we got here. And in the dream I’m desperate to return it, knowing it is lost and precious.”

“The key represents my mother. She passed after giving birth to my sister, whom I also lost.”

“Your sister did not survive the birth?”

“She did, but she was taken by female relatives. My father did not trust himself to rear her properly. I want to see her, to know her name, but all I remember is the darker patch of skin across her foot.”

Tamar turns her head, heart pounding. Liam also turns as she slides her foot out of her boot and pulls off her stocking, the birthmark just visible in the moonlight.

“Brother, I am here.”

Written by: Natasha Akery

Photograph by: Kayla King

Thin Man

“Thin Man, Thin Man, gonna eat your skin man.”

“Stop it, Fife, or I’ll tell Moma.”

“What’s the matter? Is Thin Man gonna getcha?”

Mira returned her focus to the seeds she was pulling from the pine cones, keeping her back to the skeletal, wooden man that glared at her from the top of the hill. The task was hard with Mira’s damaged fingers, twisted in an accident so long ago that she couldn't remember what she had been like before, when her hands worked, when her ears were still there to tuck her tangled hair behind.

Each nut needed to be pried from its woody husk, to be dried and stored safely away. They would be eaten through the winter, after the summer’s produce was gone. Moma Sups had some canned goods that she hoarded away like treasures, but mostly they ate what they could find in the woods and what they could pull from the sea.

The vagabond collection of kids had found their way to Moma one by one, and she fed them all, earning her the name Moma Sups.

“What’s for sups, Moma?” the little ones always chanted. Like baby birds, their gaping mouths begged for food, even when there was none to be had.

“What’s for sups?” they would sing, and Moma would shout for them to shut their yaps or Thin Man would get ‘em.

They lost three chicks last winter, and this year they had less to go around. Mira wondered which baby birds would be gone come spring.

Mira and her brother Fife were the first of Moma Sups’s kids. Mira didn’t remember, but she knew the story well. She was born in the belly of a beast as it tossed along the ocean waves. They had left the shores of their home; they were fleeing, trying to get somewhere new, somewhere safe, for when the rockets started to fly and the world ended.

The ferocity of the ocean on the night of her arrival matched that of her laboring Mother, and when Mira finally slipped from womb to world, she was wrapped in the intact waters of her birth. They called it a caul birth, a mermaid’s birth. When the bag popped and the waters spilled out across the swaying floor, Mira finally cried, and the ocean, hearing her mewling, quieted itself. The waves turned from jagged mountains to soft hills and rocked the baby mermaid to sleep.

That’s the way Moma tells the story. Fife tells it different. He tells Mira of their mother’s screams and the blood that spilled from her. He tells Mira of the body dropped over the side of the deck, into the waves. He doesn’t tell Mira their mother’s name; maybe he doesn't remember.

Moma had been the midwife, so she took the two little ones back to her berth, and they were hers from then on. When the boat finally came to shore, the world was quieter--broken, but quieter. They set up a shelter on the edge of a forest, and one by one, the others had gone away.

Moma stayed, and the lost chicks found their way to her. Fife brought most of them back. Abandoned, forgotten little souls--they followed him home. That was before, when he could still scavenge. Now Moma wouldn’t hear of him setting foot anywhere near the towns. In the last ten years they had seen smoke from time to time, but they knew the others were there now in greater numbers.

Thin Man had arrived in the night. There were no clues to explain his arrival, but Mira always wondered if he was a gift from the town people. Fife laughed and said he was Moma’s Thin Man, there to scare the kids. When they woke to him up on the ridge, blocking the view to the harbour, Moma had said, “Ya’ll better stay away from that thin man, there’s dark magic round him.”

“Thin Man, Thin Man, gonna eat your skin man,” Fife taunted as he ran down towards the water with his crab traps slung over his shoulder.

The sun slunk across the sky, and Mira’s fingers were dry and sore from her work. She was nearing the end of her pile of pine cones when she heard the voices. At first she thought it was Thin Man come to life. The kids were all in the lodge with Moma, and Fife was at the shore--who else could it be? Then she saw the dancing shadows. They fluttered around the long, still shadow of Thin Man. Mira stayed still and waited, listening to the voices, till their shapes appeared on the hill.

The first thought that came to Mira was how bright they were, so many colours, like bird feathers. The blues so sharp, the yellows so vivid, a crisp white visible under the collar of a deep purple jacket. A girl waved to Mira, and they started down the hill towards her. The easy swing of their arms stiffened as they came close to where she sat.

"Are you alright?" the oldest woman asked.

"Geez, what's wrong with her?" a young girl whispered into her protector’s shoulder. Mira could see the girl’s finger nails had been sculpted into perfect crescent moons, painted white at the tips.

"Do you need our help?" the older woman asked Mira.

"I don't get any cell service out here, should we go back to the truck and call for help? Would they even have a hospital back in that town?"

The tall boy, his hair combed smooth, looked past Mira to the lodge behind her, taking in the racks of drying fish and seal meat, the faded fabric that hung from the tree branches. He didn’t notice Moma taking aim.

"Do you live here?" he asked.

The staccato beats of the gunshots were softened by the dense forest to the West, swallowed by the waves to the East. One by one, the bright birds fell where they stood. Mira stayed seated, covered in the detritus of the pine cones as the singing children came out of the lodge and surrounded her. She watched the strangers, till they were still. She watched the children dance around the clearing. Fife dragged the strangers away, back to the chopping shack. When the last had been hauled from sight and the rhythmic sound of Fife's axe could be heard in the distance, Mira joined the children, raising her voice in song.

"Thin Man, Thin Man, gonna eat your skin man."


Written by: Sarah Scott 
Photograph by: Chris Boyles

She Whistled in the Night

I had been working the overnight shift at the Windsong Assisted Living Home for just shy of two months. Once I adjusted to the hours and the smell, a smell of atrophy that was somehow also antiseptic, I had grown to really enjoy it. By no means was I thinking of it for a new career, but it was the best in the long string of bad jobs I had since I left the Army.

The residents all varied in age and ability, and in their propensity for conversation. Most of the ladies were genial and would gossip and flirt. The men treated me with a polite indifference, until they found out I was a vet. And there were a few, I quickly learned which ones, who were so lonely after being unceremoniously dumped by their families that would latch on until I feigned an emergency just to escape their room.

And then there was Manon Pelletier. Never once had she uttered a peep. Until now.

“Could you leave the curtains open tonight please?” she asked, her voice a hoarse, cracked whisper.

She was a tiny speck of a woman, just wrinkles and bone, really. Every night when I came in to her room, she would be hunched in her chair, bundled under her tattered, old blanket, staring as images flashed across her television. And every night my “How are you tonight, Ms. Pelletier?” fell on deaf ears. Or so I thought.

“Sure thing, Ms. Pelletier,” I said, shocked at her request. “You want to see the lights?”

Due to a spate of recent solar storms, the news was reporting that the Aurora Borealis would be visible as far south as the Mid-Atlantic, and up here in the northeast kingdom of Vermont, they were forecasting quite a spectacular show.

“Have you ever seen them before?” I asked, trying to coax a little more conversation out of her.

She gave no response. I went on doling out her meds in silence, and then, just before I was about to leave, she spoke, her voice growing stronger and taking on the French Canadian lilt that is common this close to border.

“When I was a girl they would call us half-breeds, my sister and I. Our father was Québécois, and our mother was Inuit. We lived with her people when I was small. Every night we would watch in silence as the lights danced across the sky. They were beautiful, but we were afraid.”

“Afraid? Why?” I asked.

“There is a saying the Inuit have. The great peril of our existence lies in the fact that our diet consists entirely of souls. You see, we don’t believe in God, but we believe that everything; man, walrus, caribou, whale, seal, everything--has a soul. And when they die, that soul is released. That is what you see at night. The lights are the souls of the fallen, of the dead. And it is said if you whistle at them, they will come down and take you away forever.”

“Whoa. That’s crazy.”

For the first time her gaze deviated from the TV and over to me. Her eyes held a fierceness, a spark that belied the deteriorated state of the rest of her body.

“You don’t believe me.”

“I’m sorry, I’m not calling you crazy, but…”

“It’s ok. I understand. But I am going to tell you something, something I have never told anyone, not my husband, not even my parents. When I was a girl, things were simple. Simple, but not always good. There was a man, my mother’s uncle. He was a bad man. He did bad things to my sister. She was twelve, two years older than me. I would pretend to be asleep, wishing he would leave her alone, but in a way, thankful it wasn’t me.”

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered.

“One night after he left our room, I saw her sneaking out. I followed. The lights were brilliant that night, swirling on the horizon. When she began to whistle I got scared and ran to her. She was crying. When she saw me she yelled at me to go back home.”

Tears started to well in her eyes, and she stared ahead blankly, searching her memory for details about that long-forgotten night.

“She said she couldn’t take it anymore… I wanted to stop her… She made me promise that I would go back home…”

I took her fragile hand in mine just before the dam burst, unleashing a lifetime of tears.

After a few minutes, she regained her composure.

“As I ran back home, I heard my sister start to whistle again. A harsh, frigid wind kicked up. I could hear something behind me, like the sound a train makes as it splits the cold, still air. I threw the blankets over my head and cried myself to sleep. In the morning, when they discovered she was gone, I told my parents not about the lights, but about my mother’s uncle. We left for Montreal soon after that.”

“I’m so sorry,” I repeated, not knowing what else to say.

“I’m very tired now, could you help me to bed?”

“Of course.” I hesitated. “Ms. Pelletier, do you still want me to leave the curtains open?”

She smiled at me.

“Yes, please. And thank you for listening to my story.”

“Anytime.”

I closed her door and walked back down the hall towards the front desk. Out the dining room window I caught a glimpse of shimmering green light. I turned out the lights and stood at the window, transfixed, as the Aurora, ethereal and electric, swayed in the night sky like whispers of smoke off some unseen, supernatural campfire.

I don’t know how long I was watching or what made me go check on her, but as I approached her suite, I heard a high-pitched whistle. I struggled with my keys, searching for the one that would unlock her room. The temperature dropped as a cold draft rushed out from the beneath the door. The whistling was joined by another noise, a hushed murmur that rose up into a throbbing, unsettling hum.

“Ms. Pelletier? Are you alright?” I screamed as I pounded on the door.

And then, just like that, it was gone. All of it. The whistling, the hum, the cold.

When I finally got the door open, Manon Pelletier was nowhere to be found. Her bed was a jumble of diaphanous sheets, soaked through with sweat. Her window, closed and locked when I left, was open. And out in the distance the lights danced on.

Written by: Ben Cook

Photograph by: Erin Notarthomas