As far back as I could remember, Oma warned me about the bats. She said they would eat me if they found me exposed at night. But I knew the green light of the moon would protect me, even when I was still smaller than Oma.
These nights, when Gramma fell asleep in her rocker, Luba knelt on all fours to press her ear to the rug; she heard the Undersea rising, the roar of the sea-lions, a faint song of sirens luring ships to invisible rocks. And just last night she heard beneath the rug the faint deep sound of a cello.
Everything had changed. I shouldn’t have been surprised. The whole reason we had moved to the Isle of Lewis was because everything everywhere was changing. Here seemed like the best place to face that.
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Lying in bed last night I felt fingers reach in, grabbing. I opened in spite of myself as you clawed me with your fingernails, flattened, panicked. Split throat, iron tongue, white masks ranged overhead, the rings on their fingers scraping me as they reached in to take you.
I was twelve when my mother was born. Twelve or thereabouts. If I’d been older, I could have said things like I never wanted to be a daughter; I don’t have a filial bone in my body. Relatives could have tilted their heads at me, insisting I’d change my mind. But I was twelve so I said nothing. I had no relatives.
As Lys grew older, she learned that people didn’t take interest in the crows or linger in the woods, not even other hunters. She learned that they didn’t pick up feathers and buttons and broken stones and keep them in their rooms.
We are amazed, awed, delighted and have wept (in a good way) at the sheer talent represented in the stories, poems and essays. In fact, we are saddened that we couldn’t represent all of Southeast Asia. We have so much talent.
"Because," Lau sighed, "Kuan Yin is the most compassionate and merciful who alleviates all our suffering, which is everything an all-loving mother is. We call her Kuan Yin Ma because compassion is motherly, not Kuan Yin Ba, or Kuan Yin Kor. Kuan Yin is our supreme mother, no one else." Her recitation was flawless, only marred by her eye-rolling at each word as Ava|_0 stared impassively.
Maria was somewhere between sleeping and waking, not knowing how many moments passed, not feeling hunger, barely feeling thirst. She could not even dream of the days with Julian, of the days with Pedro. Her eyes opened, then closed again, not feeling anything around her.
She interlaces her fingers, my fingers, and spins around to face me. Shockingly, when I am not floating above her we are almost exactly the same height. “I wanted to say I’m sorry. For stealing your hands. I wasn’t lying, I steal from manananggal all the time, especially those that are just lying around in alleyways or in the bushes of the park. I stole a toe from my tita once. They never care. I really didn’t think you would.” I open my mouth but she ploughs on, twisting my fingers into pretzels until they go white. “But then I heard you in the music room earlier today and I realized you really meant it. Those hands aren’t yours, and these hands are, even though they’re attached to me. So I’m sorry. And also your music sounded really bad.”
Their story begins with a quick-witted mouse deer who escapes the clutches of a ferocious tiger. From the crisp ring behind Pelanduk’s voice to the natural bass tones found in the thunder of Harimau’s pride—this is where their rigorous vocal training comes to light. Weaving between different timbres in their arsenal, a prized technique that has been passed down to them.
And I smelled it on the air and tasted it in my memory: when it all blended together salty, sweet and smoky, the smoothness of the noodle and the crunch of the green chives, the sultry luxury of the lap cheong and all of it, inextricable together, a kind of magic that conjures up something other—something not quite of this world. And then it’s gone almost as soon as you taste it.
The city was so large now there was no longer night and day, only glowing blue hours as endless as the low hum emanating from the chalky skyline. It beamed cyan light through her darkest curtains, staining green the mango-yellow sunrises and sunsets of her city, which lived now only on her dresser, as three snapshots. Each one was no taller than her finger, and propped up beside everything else Rosamie’s aunt called trash and kept begging her to throw away: a half-torn concert ticket, a withered butterfly wing, a dented bottle cap fished from the pearly gutter that was all that remained of Kasama Restobar after its upgrade to a flat plane of humming whiteness.
Isabel said, “I think I’m being possessed.”
You said, “You’re not being possessed.” You also said, “Don’t be so dramatic,” which you would later look back on and regret.
It is said that when Bibi Siti wrapped herself in the pennant, the cloth was soaked by her blessed sweat and warmed by the prayers she breathed into it. Overflowing with her wild graces, the pennant pledged itself to the same way of truth and righteousness, out of adoration for the saint who had held it close.
Dreamless, xe drifted downstairs—and found a swamp. Old linoleum shimmered under a sheet of water spattered with moonlight. Ferns and horsetails hid the walls, choked the back door. Broken logs slumped out from the pantry. Gnats and mosquitos found xer arms and neck.
The day after the oracles announce that Spire’s Ledge is doomed, Keth takes the long way to her shop, walking to her favorite spots in the city, passing five decades’ worth of life in a single morning. There are few people on the stone paths into the city center, and the very air hangs heavy around her. Keth almost thinks that she could reach out and see the history of her city suspended in the air.
I can’t swallow anymore. I can barely suck in a breath through airways that are clogged with comb. I feel movement everywhere, little legs, tiny wings that long to beat in the air. When I open my mouth, bees fly out and in. I can’t sit still. I buzz wherever I go.
Your knowledge of mudang comes from a book you checked out from the college library and a shaky video of a shamanic ritual called a kut in a language you barely speak. Are you ashamed? Your employers don’t care, and your clients are too busy grieving to notice.
Things I haven't told the person I love: There are aliens at the International Space Station, in low Earth orbit. They've been there for over four months, while we try and work out what they want. We know what they say they want. But we don't know if these two things are the same.
Screw you, she almost said. Screw your blossoms and your wheat and your green growing crap, it’s Charlie I want. Charlie with his missing front tooth and his way of whistling through it, Charlie in the passenger seat whooping as she drove down narrow roads, Charlie with his clever hands in the back seat, Charlie laughing as they sped away from the cops.
The storm raged, and all night Suuana stalked the corners of her candle-bright cottage. With bare feet, she stamped shaking into the earth; each time she lifted a foot she pulled the grains of soil with her, loosening them.
At night, what she sees are feathers—grey, blue, white. Soft coo of a kit of pigeons huddled together in a dovecote. They aren't dreams; she opens her eyes (her outer eyes) and finds herself in her neighbor's coop, the pigeons sleepy but startled by her presence.
The Archangel told me I was chosen, expecting. I thought a little and answered: I couldn’t give my consent. The power balance was such I could not ascertain whether there was an element of coercion involved.
When the insensate currents finally calm, I am alone in foreign waters, still tangled in the kelp where I had intended to give birth. My eggs are heavy; the uprooted end of the kelp tickles my stomach. The sea here is cold and dense, murky with the storm. I do not panic.
I step toward the heart and it pace quicken, like it could sense that it close to home. I stare at the beating mass, full of memories, and realise somebody would have to cut it up in bite-size pieces and force it down my throat.
The land burns so hot and high tonight that Let can see its orange glow even from the heart of The City of Birds. It burns so thick she can taste the whole year’s growth of leaves and branches on her lips. It burns so fast she can almost hear the deer and cottontails scream as flames outrun them and devour them whole.
