Size / / /

(See also the introduction to this story by this week's reprint curator, SH fiction editor Jed Hartman.)


This story is no longer available in the Strange Horizons Archive by request of the author's agent.




Joan Aiken (1924–2004) was the author of over sixty books for adults and children, perhaps the best known of which are the Wolves of Willoughby Chase series. We published an Author Focus issue about her and her work in 2001.
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My obsidian shadows knifed the moon, drank moonblood until my wandering mouth filled to bursting
In this endless dark winter / he comes as furious as / a lion’s claw
Now that I am back in our homelands, I am haunted. I dream of faces hovering over me, taking my blood. They suck at my veins like infants at a bottle.
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