Volume 3, January-March 2009 - Fickle Muses

Fickle Muses
Volume 3, January-March 2009
“The Strangers are Tuning” by Jesse Lindsay
Visit Jesse Lindsay’s Web site at http://www.jesselindsay.com
1

No Possum, No Aesop, No ’Gators
by Stephen Bunch
Pogo, the Fabulist, and Albert walked into a bar.
The possum ordered a pinot noir,
Aesop some ouzo, and Albert a gin and Gatorade fizz.
“I don’t serve talking animals,” said the barkeep.
“They can stay, but they can’t drink.
I only serve high rollers here, not”—
glancing at the reptile—
“rollers of big cigars.”
He poured Aesop’s ouzo.
“You underestimate these two so,” Aesop protested.
“They aren’t just ‘talking animals’—
this possum’s the most quoted, most read
animal in the annals of newspaper lore.
Go ahead, Pogo, tell him.”
The marsupial looked up at the bartender,
paused and through clinched teeth whispered,
“We have met the enemy and he is us.”
Albert exhaled his cigar smoke dramatically.
Aesop winked and went on:
“Now, let’s talk about the ecology, bud.
Back when wetlands still were called swamps,
these ‘talking animals’”—
he made quotation marks in the air with his fingers—
“were the first spokescritters.
And how about politics? These guys took on
the Jack Acid Society when John Birch
was just a sapling.
If you can’t give ’em a drink,
at least give ’em some respect.
And anyway, you served me.
If it weren’t for me these guys
wouldn’t exist. I’m the one who started
all those talking animal stories.”
The ’tender leaned across the bar,
appraised the trio from head to foot,
then took back Aesop’s ouzo and pointed
first to the floor, then to the sign by the door:
“No socks, no shoes, no service.”
2

As they filed out mumbling, “If Kelly were alive…,”
a barefoot beagle went up to the bar
and barked for a root beer.
“Sure thing,” the barkeep replied.
“For you, it’s on the house.
How’s the insurance business these days?
Want some peanuts with that?
Here’s a new jar, fresh from Tennessee.”
3

Gioll
by Jason Mccall
I told you that I wanted to see God, and you reached
into my mouth and spun my goodbyes into cries
for help and sent me away. Did you think I was going
to some magical place, some cocoon of therapy
and locked doors that would transform me into something
that was beautiful and new and safe? Did you hope
I wouldn’t remember why I ended up in that cage?
I do remember, and remember it well—
that scare when they gave the patients real
knives in the cafeteria. The shit-stained
underwear in the hallway and the roommate
who promised that he wouldn’t kill me
in my sleep. No, I didn’t grow the wings
that you wanted; the disease didn’t fly away.
But I did become a different animal. I was reborn
as a Fenris wolf; I still hunger for God.
Will you put your hand in my mouth again?
4

Fair Winds
by Helen Patrice
There was no power on the island when I arrived at dusk. A failed generator. I hauled my overnight
bag from the dock and climbed narrow sandstone steps towards the house. The skipper of the boat
could not wait to leave.
The island looked like a skein of hair, pulled upwards from the sea and twisted painfully into a spire.
Possibly the only ugly island in all of the Greek isles. Set into the mountain-side was the house. All I
could see from my approach was a single white wall, broken only by a balcony. The room behind was
dark, so that the balustrades resembled teeth in a gaping mouth.
I thought of my daughter’s jumbled teeth, and the money I should spend buying her braces.
The last steps stopped before a steel door. It was open. A lit lantern hung just inside and I saw more
steps trailing up through the hollowed-out mountain. They led into the foyer of the house, and more
stairs again took me up to one of the bedrooms. That door too stood open, and the bed was turned
down.
I was told my patient would have little to do with me, but I thought of the lantern and the bed and
decided she had welcomed me. Perhaps she was not a total madwoman.
The lantern light barely staved off the dark in the large room. The bed was shoved against the wall and
several pieces of heavy wooden furniture gleamed dully. I found candles in the desk drawer and I lit
almost a dozen to offset the gloom.
My bare minimum of toiletries and clothes looked forlorn in the huge wardrobe. The rest of my
clothes were coming by crate tomorrow.
The room had rippling shadows hung about it. Several patches of black were unrelieved and I fancied
I could see eyes. I blinked and spent some moments seeing faces in the shadows. A woman, a child, and
one particularly sharp image of a man with a long hooked nose. I was being ridiculous. Giving myself
Rorschach tests in the dark.
I changed into my worn flannelette nightie, all the while trying to open myself fully to this new place.
The sooner I became used to the noises and smells, the more I would feel at home. Then I could begin
my work.
I pulled the last two items from my suitcase and held one in each hand. Book and photo. Logically the
book must have weighed much more, but they seemed the same.
Gina smiled out of the photo frame at me. The picture was taken at her thirteenth birthday, two years
ago. I didn’t carry the more recent photo. It contained Gina, dressed in black, her hair drawn back into
a severe ponytail, and her eyes heavily kohl-rimmed. The sparkle in her eyes had hardened and her
teeth were bared in a parody of smile. She knew as well as I the simian aggressive expression. She, read
some of my texts. I was tempted to keep an earlier photo of her with me instead, where she was
genuinely smiling, and life had been simpler. Compared to Gina’s adolescence, my cases seemed easy.
I did ask her to come with me out of duty. My patient wasn’t violent and, by all accounts, kept to
5

herself most of the time. Gina and I could have sunned ourselves, waded in rockpools, and talked girl
talk.
“Yeah, right, Mum, with a nutter hanging around. I want to spend time with you, not your job.” She
opted to stay at school with her friends. I was relieved. She ruined a conference last year by coming
with me, acting bored when I gave my speech. No doubt she would have quickly tired of the island. I
wasn’t sure what Gina’s hobbies were, but they had to be more than endless sunbathing and horizongazing,
dull to a teenager, and relaxing for me.
I wanted to sleep, sun-soaked. And I was coaxed by the thought that I would be the one who made a
difference to the patient. No one else did. I wondered what made me think I would be the exception.
I had read the case notes and histories. Every approach had been tried. Here I was, hotshot psychologist,
straight from my doctorate, next on the long list. I couldn’t even get through to my own daughter,
let alone a difficult patient.
I thought I heard a sigh. There was no one. I heard the sea inside this windowless room, the sound of
someone breathing regularly. The light breath of a woman. The Earth bowing under her burden of
humanity. The sound of Gina, two thousand miles away, breathing her anger into the air.
She’d be at school now, frowning over her books, puzzling over something the nuns had given her to
read. I intended to move her from that school. Most of my clientele bore a heavy load of religious guilt
to dispose of. I didn’t want that for her. It was too much for me to undo later.
The sea sounded like a woman pacing, and I listened as I often listened and watched my patients pace.
I was pacing, casebook and photo clutched to me. I stopped and took deep breaths, unable to shake off
the ocean rhythm. I could not turn on the TV or the radio here. There was me, the ocean, and the
breeze expelled from my lungs.
I shelved the photo in the small bookcase. Something scraped. Pushed to the rear was a small figurine.
An ugly wooden horse no bigger than my thumb. The eyes bulged from the head, and the mouth was
a grimace.
In the candle flicker the roughly gouged musculature seemed to shift, and it felt warm in my hand.
The air around me heaved. Some of the candles winked out. I pushed the horse back on the shelf, far
away into the shadows. It rested against the back of the bookcase and I slammed Gina’s photo in front
of it. The air stilled and I straightened my back, deciding my movement had blown the candles out.
The room seemed cold, or I was. I couldn’t tell which. I placed my casebook on the bedside table and
jumped into bed. The bed was even colder than the room. Here, there was no comfort of a double bed
to stretch in nor my two miniature poodles curled into my stomach and behind my knees every night,
more soothing than any heating pad. The lantern dimmed and died of its own accord and the remaining
candle flame reflected off the photo frame glass so I could not see Gina’s face. I said good night to
her anyway and opened the casebook. I knew the typed notes of the other psychologists who had
practiced here almost by rote.
No one affected the patient. Half the psychs had given notice after not eliciting a response beyond the
mundane in the first month. My immediate predecessor noted that the patient started speaking to him
of his health. His notes ended abruptly when he resigned after a full medical check-up. Our employers,
the Greek government, had not passed comment or judgement, and simply advertised for a new
6

psychologist. Even they seemed resigned to failure.
No one knew what to do with her. Certainly she could not be released into society. Nor could she be
incarcerated with other patients. She had committed no crime so could not be executed. This island
was their only solution.
Gina isolated herself. During holidays she preferred to stay with her father or, as was more common
these days, stay at school. Further study she said, but I suspected her well-developed instinct for
spotting an opportunity to play the martyr. “My mother won’t come for me. She never does.” With a
heavy sigh and a tear-filled gaze at the nuns.
Damn her! Always my thoughts turned to her. Now when she had volunteered to stay at school out of
my hair, now when my work should come first, all I could do was think unpleasant thoughts of her.
I shut the casebook with a snap, blew out the candle and shrugged myself down into the bed. Clichéd
though it was, I counted sheep every night, and it usually worked. But the sheep turned into ugly
horses. It was a long time before I slept.
* * *
The morning was cold. I snorted the air in like a horse and reached for my journal to detail what I
remembered of my dreams. Gina and a strange woman, both standing with arms outstretched toward
me. Gina silent, the woman making the sound of the wind. The same dream I had been having for five
years, recurring with monotonous regularity around exam time and over holiday periods. Torn between
duty to my child and being swept away by my work. The meaning was obvious, and I was
disgusted with my subconscious’ lack of invention.
The shower was hot and pummelling, but my shampoo didn’t lather in the salt-tanged water. I stood
under the torrent for a long time, hoping to smell like the island when I emerged. My one crease-proof
sundress was creased, but I donned it and investigated the kitchen. Coffee had been left to percolate,
and I again thought that my patient was eager to see me.
I looked out of the window at the foreshore as I munched toast. I was slow to realise that the generator
was working again. I resolved to phone the mainland. I didn’t like unpredictable power, coming and
going like the wind. My contract didn’t mention running repairs, but I shrugged. Even if I had to pay
dearly, I needed reliable power.
I wondered where She was this morning and grimaced at the unconscious capitalization. My advisor
had warned me against it.
“Don’t give her airs. She certainly doesn’t. She’s quite a simple woman, weaving, drawing, singing to
the ocean—”
I tried to be clever. “I didn’t think she was one of those.”
He grinned. “Might be better if she were. You’d get a lot more visitors.”
We laughed together.
As I stepped out of the kitchen onto the sand-gritted cobblestones, I squinted in the bright light.
7

Above the ocean hum I heard singing. It drew me as true as any Siren’s song. Her records said she
spoke flawless English, but the song was in Greek and had an unfamiliar rhythm. I expected her to be
brushing her hair.
She was sitting on the sand, chin on her knees, singing to the waves. Unmoving, even though she
heard me approach. She too was clad in a simple dress, loose and somewhat reminiscent of the Sixties.
Her dark hair was long and wild, and held off her face by a knotted fabric scarf shot with gold threads.
At length she finished her song. I crouched down a small distance from her.
“Hello, Cassandra,” I said in my best professional voice, pitched an octave lower than usual. “I’m—”
“I know who you are,” she said. Her speaking voice was lower than my own and soft, her accent barely
noticeable. “I’ve read the letters you sent. The Greek Islands must make a nice change from a Melbourne
winter.”
I blushed. Were my motives common to her health care workers?
“The weather certainly seems nice,” I began.
She sighed. “Yes, first we’ll talk about the weather and the house and what I like to eat and what I do
all day. You’ll try to make something of that and then you’ll ask what I see in the cloud formations. A
crude Rorschach test. Believe me, Doctor, it’s all been done. And all the conclusions are the same. I
really do believe I’m who I say I am.” She wound down, then swivelled to face me. “Furthermore—”
She blanched and I felt her regard drill into me. I blushed deeply under her stare and told myself this
was a normal response to an unblinking gaze. She shook her head. “Sorry, for a moment I thought I
knew you.” Still, she stared. “Are you Freudian or Jungian? Do you wish to examine my childhood or
my dreams?” She smirked. “Or will you administer flash cards and mazes for me to run?”
“I’ll play it by ear for now,” I said, moving closer.
“An eclectic approach. That’s been tried, too.”
“I know. It’s evident from the notes that everything’s been tried.”
“To no avail,” she added.
“So I guess I’ll just have to try something new.”
She raised an eyebrow at that. “Such as?”
“Wait and see.”
She was clearly intrigued, and I hoped to get her asking questions.
Suddenly, she cocked her head to one side.
“You’d better answer the phone.”
A moment later, I heard it ring.
“You’d better go. The lines aren’t good here. Your daughter needs you.”
8

Gina. Always when I was working.
I shook my head. “It’s probably the shipping company. Maybe my crates have arrived.”
Cassandra was looking back out to sea. “All right, don’t believe me. Gods know, no one ever has.”
“Are you really who you say you are?”
She looked full at me, her brown eyes expressionless. “And who do I say I am?”
“The mad prophetess,” I muttered.
“I do not say that. Others say that. They are the ones who are mad, hiding away their one glimpse at
the future. Angry that I am right, mad as hornets that they are not touched by the gods.”
“Cassandra—”
“Go. She will hang up soon.”
I felt sick to my stomach as I ran for the house. One day and already I had entered her delusion. I
considered that. The one approach that hadn’t been tried. How does one analyse a seer anyway? Was
I on the edge of a breakthrough? Was I on the edge?
I stopped in the doorway and looked back at her. The wind was playing with her hair, making it drift
out like seaweed in the nearby water. Faintly I could hear something. Metal sliding against metal. The
sound set my teeth on edge, but I could see nothing to blame. Maybe the generator was at fault again.
The wind freshened, blowing cool after many days of sultry apathy. I goose pimpled inside the cold
house. I felt my way to the telephone, dazzled by the Greek sun.
“Hello?”
“Mum? It’s Gina.” She was crying.
I tried not to rush my words. From the window I could see Cassandra rise and begin to walk along the
shoreline. If I missed this opportunity for further talk... The notes said she only occasionally spoke of
her identity. It was red-inked “significant.”
“What is it, honey?”
“Mum, can you come home?”
“What is it?”
“Everything’s wrong. My friends are acting weird, and the nuns are... and—”
She never spoke of her boyfriend, but her diary had no lock.
“Honey, I’m halfway across the world. I can’t just—”
“Yes you can. You always said that if I really needed you, you’d be there. Well, I really need you. If you
can’t come here, can I come to you? I won’t be any trouble.”
9

I thought of Gina, with her dark dresses and attitudes, interrupting my talks with Cassandra. I spoke in
my most reasonable tone, all the while watching the window.
“You’ve left your run a bit late. I asked you to come and you said no.”
“I know, I know. But I really need you. I don’t think I can cope with all this much longer.”
“Now you just stop that nonsense, young lady.” I could turn into a parent when the need suited.
“You’re not the first girl who’s had a relationship end. I know it seems like the end of the world now,
but in a few weeks it won’t be so bad. Everything else just seems worse because of that.” The door
banged shut in the wind, emphasising my loud words. “You just hang in there. Think positive thoughts
and decide how you’re going to handle it all.” I platituded for a few more minutes.
Gina snuffled into the phone, competing with the static for the most irritating noise.
“Now, I want you to calm down. Take some deep breaths, and remember the relaxation techniques
I’ve taught you. You can manage. You know all my coping and planning skills.”
“Okay.” A little girl’s voice that came through the phone at me. She obediently took deep breaths and
blew them out, sounding like a horse. I thought of the figurine. Ugly, rough horse; ugly, rough child.
I clamped down on my mind.
“Mum?”
“Yes, sweetheart?”
“I’m really sorry to have bothered you at work.”
“It’s okay. I know you’ll pull through. Didn’t I raise you to be tough, hey?”
“I guess.”
“That’s my girl. Now, I’ll phone you tonight and see how you’re going, okay?”
“Okay.”
“I have to go now.”
“Okay.”
“Hang in there, honey. Bye for now.”
“Bye, Mum.” The line went dead abruptly.
The breeze was still as I emerged into the sunshine again. Cassandra appeared from around the cliff
face.
“Cassandra?” I hurried towards her. “I’m so sorry about that. My daughter, you see. She’s always phoning
me—” I lied wildly, hoping to re-establish the intimate space we had shared.
She said nothing for a long while. The sea breathed for both of us.
“She needs you.”
10

I nodded, then shrugged. “Girls always think they need their mothers. I’m sure she’ll be fine, whatever
the problem is.”
“You did not ask?” Cassandra’s eyes were wide.
“I—” I swallowed. “What can I do from here? I signed a three month contract. I can’t just—”
She spat at me. “In my world mothers gave up their sons, not their daughters!”
She lunged suddenly, her hands gripping my temples, forcing her face close to mine. We stood locked,
eye to eye. I could not struggle. Her hair blew around us and the rock face moaned in the wind. A
thousand, a million Greek voices crying; Trojan voices dying.
She wore a bevy of long metal earrings that clashed with each other. A long silver snake hit against a
miniature sword; teardrop against chain. They swung crazily and reflected the sun into my eyes.
Finally, she staggered back.
“You’ve come,” she whispered. “After all this time, you’ve come.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You won’t take me back to your world. No!” She turned to run. “All your women die. Sacrificed to
one thing or another.” She pulled free of my grasp.
“Cassandra?” I shouted. “Who do you think I am?”
She fled, skirting the rock face and running hard into the head wind. Her voice floated back to me.
“Agamemnon....”
I frowned. The woman was clearly crazed. The wind blew me against the rock face and I heard voices.
War cries, metal clash, sobbing, names. Hector, Paris, Clytemnestra, Agamemnon, Iphegenia....
I ran for the phone, the wind howling the sounds of battle and death behind me. There was no answer
on the hissing line. The wind tore open the door and clawed at me, screaming.
“Iphegenia.”
11

Eve Realises Her Purpose
Then Becomes Catholic
by Kathleen Kenny
Adam’s head lifts
as she sits straddled above him.
The pain in his side is her fault,
they both know this
but there is something about
what she does
that makes up for the loss,
the damage.
Tomorrow they will learn
how to chicken farm,
how to scratch out a living.
They will learn all about
the behaviour of the barnyard:
the big red hen of guilt,
the small red cock of pleasure.
“Eve Realises Her Purpose then Becomes Catholic” was previously published in Kathleen Kenny’s
collection, “Firesprung” (Red Squirrel Press, 2008), http://www.redsquirrelpress.com.
Kenny’s collection, “Sex & Death,” is available at http://www.diamondtwig.co.uk. Her collection,
“Goose Tales and Other Flights,” is available at http://www.koopress.co.uk.
12

“‘18’x‘24’ lady veronica” by Charly Clerge
13

Sweet Cybele
Three a.m. is a lonely hour to die.
But there are
worse things.
Cybele follows a man
to a small, cold room.
He spends a lifetime there
buzzing in mad circles
like a wasp in a
field of a thousand flowers.
So many, many.
She gets drunk
and watches the fuzz
on the broken TV.
Soon she’s out
like a light.
He opens himself
gently
and lies down
to bloom.
It’s a night of honey and amnesia.
In the morning, a thick red
thread tracks the bathroom
to the bed.
When asked
she’ll say she doesn’t know
why he did that.
But she does.
He wanted to be
the loveliest
flower
of all
for her.
Two poems by Carolyn Adams
14

Building The God
In a stone basin of fresh water
the host shall purify his hands and mouth.
The subject shall be led
to the dew ground. In this garden
the dust of the world will be removed.
The subject is placed on a waist-high table.
One limb is held fast with garnets
the other is left free.
Place a cloud over the mouth.
Drip chloroform.
After marking to bypass defects,
draw upward the skin and muscle with considerable force.
If it is day, a gong shall sound.
If it is evening, a bell shall toll five to seven times.
The host shall make a circular incision.
It is difficult to provide exact instructions
as to how much of the original subject
is to be kept intact. The host shall determine this.
The saw is to be applied exactly at the angle
formed by a ray of sunlight and the bone edge.
The subject shall be cleaved into four octahedrons
parallel to each of the four directions.
Grind pavilion faces on the surfaces.
Polish to a high sheen.
Suture roses under the skin.
Apply isinglass plaster and bandage thoroughly.
The god will awaken thirsty and anguished.
No words shall be spoken
as he is dressed in noble metals.
The god shall then choose his name
according to the origin of his pain
and the volume of his suffering
he wishes to avenge.
The host shall bow
as he leaves.
All shall then
fear the god.
Visit Carolyn Adams’ Web site at http://carolynadams.110mb.com.
15

Puck Out of Luck
by Michael Panush
1917: At Cottingley, England the Otherworld chooses to reveal itself. The human and the fairy worlds
are inexorably linked and the destruction that humanity has unleashed in World War One could hurt
Otherworld. The only major fairy to come out against an end to secrecy is the Dagda, a powerful
horned spirit.
The 1920s: The first tremors of what is to come. Readily available iron floods the market in Otherworld,
providing an easy way for fairies to kill each other. Otherworld is used as a smuggling route by bootleggers
and a center for offshore gambling. Many important fairy figures find themselves caught up in
the action. Perhaps as a result of this, Oberon and Titania, the monarchs of Otherworld, find their
marital problems deepening.
World War II: The Axis and Allied Powers court fairy support. Balor, a one-eyed fairy eager for power,
strikes an alliance with the Nazis. British agents enter Otherworld through the Cottingley Portals in
order to sway Oberon and Titania to their side. Fairies and humans alike battle for control of both
worlds.
The 1950s: After the fall of the Axis Powers, a deadly Cold War arises. The Soviets and Americans
battle for influence in Otherworld. Supernatural elements transform the conflict, while human technologies
change Otherworld forever.
The Cold War: Nuclear Weapons and powerful warrior spirits trained by both sides await the final
orders. The USSR and the United States battle with proxy armies to secure support in the Third World.
Intelligence agencies, mercenaries and spies play a deadly balancing game, a Tournament of Shadows.
And in Las Vegas, an out-of-work agent gets dragged back into business.
I woke up around two in the morning, already my skin was crawling. I looked at the gorgeous blonde
next to me in my hotel bedroom. I shouldn’t have slowed down. I should have drunk enough to keep
me distracted, not enough to push over the edge and into the abyss of sleep. And the twenty lines of
high-grade coke didn’t help either. I pushed the blonde away and looked around the room.
The party was over, and everyone was passed out. I was merely pissed. I stood up and looked at myself
in the full length mirror, then stared out the mirror. Las Vegas glittered below me, every filament of
light urging me to spend what I have left. I didn’t come to her gamble. I came for the women and the
booze. Needless to say, humans don’t flock to me for my looks. Maybe I would convince some of my
old friends to whisk up a glamour on me that would make me gorgeous inside and out. But I ain’t got
the cash for that.
I looked at my spindly body and noted how I only came up to the waist of the girl sleeping next to me.
I’ve got faintly green skin, ears pointy enough to be used as kebabs and long nose to match. Then
again, some chicks really go for the Fey. They think we’re interesting and exotic and all that. Plus, I
was packing enough rolls of dollar bills to make the police suspicious. Not that I cared if some cop put
two and two together and realized I was the third gunman in the armored car robbery in Reno last
month. As a card-carrying resident of Otherworld, I got diplomatic immunity. No cop worth his badge
would finger a fairy. So I guess it all works out in the end.
16

I thought of heading down into the casinos to try my luck. I had this pattern going, a nice little gig. I
would find some local hoods needing a top gun for a big score, do the job right and get paid, and party
it all away in Vegas. It was getting awful close to routine, and that’s death for someone like me. But I
still had some more time to waste before it got old. I pulled on a pair of trousers, a collared shirt, and a
suit jacket, all bottle green. I tossed on my necklace, a circle of mushrooms dangling from a gold chain,
the fairy symbol. That way, no one would mistake for me for just some short, ugly human.
Then the hotel phone ruined everything by ringing. Like I an idiot, I picked it up. “Puck?” the voice
had a rasp to it, somewhat British and familiar like an old scar.
Like an idiot, I didn’t slam the phone down and run for it. “Yeah?”
“So it is you. Listen, Pucky-boy, we got a job for you. We’ll pay well, and you don’t have a choice in
the matter. Go to the lobby of your hotel and there’ll be a car waiting for you.”
“McManus.” I finally recognize the voice. It’s Adrian McManus, an old hand from the Cottingley
Days, back when we first came out of hiding to save humanity from itself. What a mistake that was.
“Leave me alone, will you? I done enough jobs for you.”
McManus is what we of the Fey refer to as Stayling. That is, a human being who has chosen to move
into Otherworld for a long period of time. He ages, but his world ages faster, meaning that most of his
friends and relatives will be in the nursing home before he gets pains in the back. McManus is probably
over a hundred now, going by human years. Fairies never measure time. It’s unlucky.
I heard every hard year he had lived as he barked into the telephone. “Listen here, Puck. You haven’t
paid the piper in a good long while, and we know all about your dancing. I can pull strings here and on
earth. I’ll have you in prison before morning. You know what they do to fairies in prison, don’t you?”
“What the hell do you want with me?”
“You need a compass, Puck. We gave you one after Oberon cut you loose, and it’s that time of year
again. Come downstairs. To the lobby. And I won’t hear no more of your bellyaching.” He hung up.
I cursed and looked around the room. The phone call hadn’t wakened anybody, not that I expected it
to. I rubbed my eyes and headed to the door. When the revelers woke up, they’d find the payment
from the robbery neatly stacked in a suitcase under the bed. Might even make those killer hang-overs
a bit more pleasant.
***
Four hours later I walked out of the Wintervale Portal to Otherworld. I caught the late flight, just like
the two nondescript mirrored sunglass-wearing grunts in the unmarked black car told me to. I walked
into the terminal, nothing on me but the clothes on my back. I looked outside the long windows at
Wintervale. Frosted formations gleamed back at me like a crystalline grand canyon. Beautiful. I jammed
my hands in my pockets and walked outside to the parking lot.
Most fairies weren’t up yet, as it was past the witching hour and dawn was too far away. There were a
few goblins sharing a smoke in the luggage area, but that’s about it. Another black unmarked car sat in
the parking lot. The door slid open and I ducked inside.
17

Adrian McManus was in the passenger seat. He was a broad-shouldered man in a neat brown suit. He
was a veteran of the Great War and every bloody trench in the Somme was etched across his face. He
patted the seat next to him and I sat down. He offered me a cigar, but I turned him down. The things
I had smoked a few hours ago would put any otherworldly tobacco to shame. The car rumbled to life
and took down the ice-slicked road, the only vehicle on it.
“So, McManus.” I rolled his name around in my mouth. “What is it this time? Royal family want me
back?”
“They still want you dead.” McManus chuckled. “But Oberon and Titania are not on speaking terms.
Otherworld doesn’t know it, and the humans don’t either, but it’s not exactly married bliss in the
golden palaces of fairyland. But you already knew that.”
“Oh, yeah.” Back when I worked for Oberon, half the things I did involved keeping him in a position
of power, and the other half involved making sure his wife didn’t push him out of it. When things got
too hot to keep me around, Oberon would have handed me over to Titania if I hadn’t made a deal with
the British government to save my skin in return for my services. I fought for them throughout World
War II, and kept Otherworld decidedly on the Allied Side, despite certain efforts of others of my race.
“But it ain’t the royal family you’re here about. It’s Balor.”
“When will that one-eyed bastard learn to pack it in?” I wondered. Balor had always wanted a piece of
Otherworld, and he was willing to do anything to get it. He had worked with the Nazis during the
war.
“Too late, it seems.” McManus clicked open the suitcase on his lap. He pulled out a set of pictures.
I flipped through them. There was Balor shaking hands with none other than Russian President Leonid
Brezhnev. Balor had a pair of sturdy Fomorians behind him and/or KGB guards, respectively.
“He’s been dealing with the Russians. They need a victory following their disastrous Afghan adventure,
and they’ve settled on the Otherworld. We think they’re backing a coup,” McManus said.
“You want Balor dead?” I asked. “Say the word. I’ll plant iron in that red eye of his.”
McManus smiled. “It’s not the good old days any more. We’re playing smart and keeping a low profile.”
He pulled out another picture. This one showed a squat fellow with a head like a brick. The only
parts of him not covered in thick black hair were his two dark eyes and his beard, which was long,
tangled and white. He had somehow crammed himself into a dark tuxedo. “This is Boris Pinecone,
Balor’s connection to the USSR. Don’t let the paunch and the cuddly appearance fool you. He’s the
only domovoi to complete Spetsnaz Training.”
Domovoi were Slavic domestic spirits, so enlisting in the Russian Special Forces wasn’t easy. “You
want him killed?”
“We want him marked.” McManus pulled out another picture. It showed Pinecone bent over a poker
table, another of him at the roulette wheel, and one more of him at the races. “He’s got a gambling
addiction. He’s spending Soviet money on these amusements, and he doesn’t want Balor to find out.
We do.”
“So that’s where we’re headed?” I rolled down the window and stuck my head out, getting a blast of
18

cold air. “The Wild Hunt Casino?”
“You are a sharp one.” That was from the passenger seat. A slim nymph turned around and smiled at
me. I guessed she was wood or water, as her skin was light turquoise and her hair was chestnut. She
wore a stealth black jumpsuit that showed off every bit of her. I was intrigued. I held out my hand.
“Name’s Puck. What do they call you, besides gorgeous?”
“Honoria,” she said, with a smile.
“Don’t flirt with her,” McManus commanded. “She’ll be your onsite intel. The driver will be your tech
man.”
The large head of a tomte turned from the wheel to smile at me. “Ja. It will be my pleasure.” He had a
thick Scandinavian accent, curling horns, and a small goatee. His jumpsuit was identical to Honoria’s.
“My name is Ivar.” He handed me a pair of ear-plugs, small enough to vanish in my large pointy ears.
“Put these on so we can always talk.”
“Sounds great,” I muttered. But I slipped the ear phones in. “So, the Wild Hunt Casino it is?” I looked
out the window. I could see the casino’s lights glowing through the falling snow, a couple miles down
the road. It was a series of large domes, glowing yellow in falling light. Vegas could only dream to be
like this. The joint was run by Krampus, a Germanic hunt-spirit who delighted in the chase. We owed
each other no favors.
“We’ve got a room for you in the hotel. You’ll find fresh clothes, a couple thousand dollars in various
fairy denominations, and a pair of silenced automatic pistols with iron-laced bullets. Just the way you
like it.” McManus grinned. “You shoot down a fairy, they’ll stay down.”
“Just the way I like it,” I repeated. Somehow, I got the idea it wasn’t going to be anything of the sort.
***
Time passes in odd ways in Otherworld. In the Unseelie courts of the south there’s hardly enough
daylight to brush your teeth, while the realm of Tir Na Nog, it stays nice and sunny year round, at least
when it’s not drowning itself in rain. It’s somewhat like the human concept of time zones, but most
fairies couldn’t care less about what order the seasons change. I know I didn’t even think it weird
when I walked into the swanky hotel room in the Wild Hunt Casino, went to bed after emptying the
mini-bar of anything alcoholic, and woke up on the bed the next morning with the snow still falling
through the darkness.
Something was ringing in my ears, and eventually I realized it was the tomte, Ivar. “Puck! Wake up,
Puck! The game starts soon!”
“Does it now?” I sat up on the bed and rubbed my large eyes. “Let me get dressed.” I opened the closet
and found a pressed solid white tuxedo dangling from the decorative antler horns. I nodded approvingly
and slipped it on. I checked under the pillow and found a suitcase containing the twin silenced
automatics in neat shoulder holsters. They had already been loaded, which was a good thing. Touching
lead bullets laced with iron would have my fingers aching for weeks. I slipped them on under my
white jacket. I let Ivar ramble on as I fastened my bow-tie.
19

“Honoria is on the main floor of the casino. She has reported Boris Pinecone playing Dwarf Bones with
a couple of Yama demons. You should get into the game, get a better look.”
“Yeah, sure.” I looked at one of the security cameras. “You got this room covered, right?”
“Oh, ja, ja.” The Tomte didn’t sound so sure. “Hurry up and get to the floor, eh?”
“Sure thing.” I pulled a metal suitcase from under the bed and opened it. It was full of colored skulls,
see-through stones, bundles of string, feathers, toadstools, cobwebs, moonlight, bones and more. A
fortune in a dozen fairy currencies. I grabbed a fistful of the stuff and saw that it was instantly replaced.
“Say, Ivar,” I asked. “How we’d get a suitcase made from the steel of the Dagda’s Cauldron of
Plenty?”
“McManus is very good at pulling strings.”
“He is that.” I clipped the suitcase shut and headed for the door. Pulling strings meant that this artifact
was taken, stolen, straight from the Dagda. That got me a little upset. The Dagda was the only fairy I
could really stand. He was the only one against revealing ourselves at Cottingley, and we should have
listened to the old man.
This whole assignment didn’t make much sense. If all McManus wanted was a little bit of blackmail
and Ivar could hack the security cameras, he wouldn’t need me, he wouldn’t need this whole set-up
and he certainly wouldn’t need the Cauldron of Plenty. I shrugged as the elevator took me to the main
floor. I had fortunes to win.
I walked onto the main floor. Rows of slot-machines glistened on both sides, but I left the small
change for the chumps and losers and headed right to the middle. The tables stood in a neat semicircle,
each one with a different game. Krampus himself sat in the middle, his antlers rigged with
dozens of roving security cameras. His minions, hopping, horned furry creatures known as pertchen,
dealt the cards at every table.
I looked past a couple of jackalope tourists in their cowboy hats, bolo ties, and rhinestone studded suits
and found the yamas and our domovoi. Boris Pinecone was already sweating hard through his fur, and
giving off quite the funk. I looked him over until Krampus noticed my arrival.
“Ah, Mr. Putz. What a pleasure to see you this evening.” Krampus had a face only a mother could love,
red, fanged, and dripping with drool. “I thought you had left us for the human world.”
“Don’t count on it, Krampus. And it’s Puck, not Putz.”
“Whatever you say, Mr. Putz.” Krampus waved a clawed hand at the tables. “So, what game of chance
can I interest you in today? Redjack is quite popular this time of year, as is Meadswill.”
“That’s for the tourists.” I pointed to the table with Boris. “What about that?”
“Oh, Mr. Putz. That is high-rollers only. Twenty Baby’s First Breaths is the minimum bet.” Krampus
clasped his hands. “That sound good to you?”
“Sounds great.” I patted my suitcase. “Set me up.”
Krampus escorted me to the table, and the pertchen at the table dealt me in. I knew the rules of Dwarf
20

Bones, but I was still a bit rusty. I looked at my cards. A Page of Staves, The World, The Hanged Man,
and a Three of Cups. I opened the suitcase, grabbed twenty Baby’s First Breaths and placed them on
the table. “All in,” I announced.
I looked around the table at the yamas. The big three-eyed Japanese demons growled and one fingered
the katana on his belt, but they made no move to bet against me. “I fold,” one of the yamas announced.
His fellows followed.
I looked at Boris Pinecone. He rubbed his furry paws together and gave me a toothy grin. “I like your
style, Mr.—” He paused. “I don’t believe we have met before.” He had a thick Slavic accent.
“Puck. Also known as Robin Goodfellow.”
“Robin. Is that not a girl’s name?”
“I wish it was.” I grinned. “So, Mr. Pinecone, do you fold?”
“I’ll raise you.” Pinecone pushed in twenty Baby’s First Breaths and then twenty more.
“Push him more!” Ivar whispered in my ear. “We must make him lose Soviet money!”
I matched him. “Let’s see them cards.” I dropped mine.
He opened his. The Knight of Rods, King of Cups, the Fool, and the Hierophant.”
The pertchen dealer looked both hands over. “The gentleman domovoi’s deck bodes ill. Puck
Goodfellow’s duck bodes well.” His voice was like the rustle of dead leafs. “Puck is the winner.” He
pushed the Baby’s Breaths towards me. I picked up the small bubbles and set them back in the suitcase.
“Well played,” Boris commented. “But you must admit, it was raw luck that gave you the victory,
nothing more.”
“Yeah, well sometimes luck is all you need.” I grinned and stepped away from the table. This whole
mission stunk to high hell, and I wanted to figure out how far I could push things. “But I’ll quit while
I’m ahead. See you around, Mr. Pinecone.”
“Dosvidanya!” Boris waved to me as I walked off. I headed to one of the slot machines and slipped a
bundle of cobwebs in the slot, then cranked the handle. I watched the one-armed bandit rob me, and
then a waitress offered me a free drink.
“Thanks,” I said, taking the chilled glass off of her tray. “You really know when a guy needs to cool
off.”
“What the hell are you doing?” Honoria looked pretty good in the vest, blouse, and tight black pants of
a Wild Hunt Casino attendant. “Get back into the game and bleed Pinecone dry!”
“First off, he’s playing Dwarf Bones. That’s a game with nearly no skill involved. You could have
recruited a half-created golem and he’d do just as good as me. Secondly, you stole the Cauldron of
Plenty from the Dagda. I respect the Dagda and that rubs me the wrong way. Thirdly, this whole setup
seems like some bad joke. Why don’t you let me in on it?”
Honoria sighed. “Oh, Puck. You don’t know the half of it.”
21

***
The door to the main room exploded outwards. A dozen men in green trench coats and similarly
colored ski-masks stormed into the room, firing automatic weapons in every direction. One of the
pertchen dealers died without a sound. Krampus ran from the elevator, and most of the other patrons
got to their knees and raised their hands. I headed back to the gambling tables, my hands high. Honoria
followed me.
“All right you money-grubbing bastards! This is a stick-up!” The ringleader of the gang walked into
the casino. He didn’t have a mask, after all, he was already an outlaw so there wasn’t much point in
covering up. His skin was dark green, his hair and beard were a mix of branches and leafs and he had
a wild look in his pure green eyes that I didn’t like. “All the cash you scumbags have stolen is now the
property of the Green Army!” He carried a machine pistol in each hand.
He walked over to me, grinning wildly. “Puck! Pucky-boy! What a surprise!” He looked at my suitcase.
“What’s in the case?”
“Nothing you’re gonna get,” I muttered. The Green Man was a psychopath who believed in constant
rebirth, meaning that things had to die and change around him. There was no way I’d give him something
as precious the Cauldron of Plenty. “Back off, Green.”
The Green Man snarled. “Wrong answer, Pucky-boy!” He leveled both of his machine pistols and
opened fire, but I was a little quicker. I kicked the table over, showering the Green Man in poker chips
and cards, then ducked low, drew my pistol and fired over the table. I scored a shot on his shoulder
and then I was up and running, dragging Honoria with me. We ran across the room to the bar.
“Puck!” she shouted. “Stop! You don’t understand!”
I pushed her behind the bar and fired at the Green Army with both pistols. I killed one of them,
splinters of wood and dry leaves pouring out of the wound, and then I ducked down as they returned
fire. Honoria was screaming something, but I didn’t hear it. The glasses and bottles above our heads
shattered.
“Stay here!” I shouted. I holstered one silenced pistol, grabbed my suitcase and took off running.
“Ivar!” I shouted. “Cut the lights! Give me some cover!”
“Stop running, Puck.” It was McManus’s voice. “You’re only embarrassing yourself.”
I reached the end of main hall and dashed down a service exit. If I could get outside, into the snow, it
would be a lot easier to take on the Green Man. But he was already hot on my tail. By the time I
reached the Wild Hunt Casino’s main foyer, he had appeared in the doorway after me. The Green Man
shot out dozens of branches and curling, thorny vines from his face. They wrapped around my arms
and legs, throwing me into the hard tiled floor. I dropped the suitcase. It skittered across the room
where it landed at the feet of Honoria.
She picked up the suitcase and tucked it under her arm, covering me with a snub-nosed revolver. “Let
him go, Green,” she said.
“Sure thing, Sis!” the Green Man unwrapped the vines and let me fall painfully to the ground. I sat up
to see the Green Man and Honoria standing side by side.
22

“You two know each other?”
“I’m a wood nymph,” Honoria said. “We’re brother and sister.”
I could see the resemblance. She was right. Ivar and McManus appeared behind me, each one covering
me with a drawn pistol. McManus sighed. “You couldn’t have played along, Puck. You had to go and
do things your own way.”
“You stole the Cauldron of Plenty from the Dagda.”
“He’s an old fool, Puck. It was easy.” McManus snorted. “It was the perfect lure for the Green Man and
his thugs, and their robbery would be the perfect cover for you to kill Boris Pinecone.”
“You sly dog.” I stood up. “You did want Pinecone dead. I bet that money he was spending wasn’t
Soviet at all.”
“Not a cent,” McManus agreed. “But now you’re a loose end, Puck. Time to tie you up.”
He leveled his gun, but I had been thinking ahead. I still carried another silenced pistol in my tuxedo
jacket. I drew it out and fired wildly as I ran for the nearest window. One shot shattered the glass and
I dived through it, twisting around in midair and firing at McManus until the gun clicked empty. I
tumbled through the air until the hard ice broke my fall.
***
As usual, gunfire woke me. I sat up and rubbed my head, quickly reloaded the pistol and looked
around. I was sitting on the snow, the Wild Hunt Casino towering over me. Above the Wild Hunt
Casino a couple dozen helicopters were exchanging fire with the Green Man Army, but not doing so
well. A bundle of branches lashed out from one of the windows and crashed through a helicopter,
bending steel and sending the fairies riding it to their deaths.
“No! I just had those windows installed!” I came to my feet and spotted Krampus standing on the ice
next to me. I walked over to him.
“Hello, Krampus. Some place you have there.”
“Mr. Putz! You must help me! The Wild Hunt is becoming a battleground!” Another helicopter took a
barrage of machine shots and started smoking. It spun out of control and crashed into the lower floors
of the casino. Krampus shrieked as if he had been struck.
One of the helicopters came in low, right behind us. I turned around and raised my pistol, but no shots
kicked up the snow at my feet. The helicopter flew low and a dozen fairies in black uniforms and
clutching assault rifles hopped out. I heard iron boots crunch down on the snow and saw the red
berets. Their leader was an ugly elf with a red campaign hat and a wrinkled face.
“Puck! Get your ass in the copter, now!” Colonel Bonecrusher Redcap led his men with an iron fist to
match his iron boots.
I snapped off a salute. “Good to see you, Colonel.”
“You too, Puck. Now move it!” The Colonel turned to Krampus. “And as for you, I’m sorry.” He low-
23

ered his submachine gun. Krampus raised his hands, but the Colonel had already squeezed the trigger.
Krampus fell backwards, riddled with bullets. Colonel Bonecrusher removed his hat and rubbed it in
the blood. “Nothing personal. My hat was getting a little faded, is all.” As a Redcap, the Colonel had to
keep his hat drenched in blood at all times. If it dried, he died. They worked as mercenaries in times of
war, and murderers in time of peace.
I hopped into the helicopter and it lifted off. The other choppers followed us. I strapped myself in and
nodded to the other Redcaps, then turned to the Colonel. “So,” I asked. “Who are you working for
now?”
The helicopters sped over the snowy ground of Wintervale. They headed south, where the snow fell
gray and existed only as sludge. I spotted a large concrete bunker below us, built to look like an old
medieval castle. A large flag featuring a red circle on a black background fluttered from the tallest
parapet. “Hell, Puck,” the Colonel muttered. “Can’t you guess?”
We touched down on the helipad and I was escorted at gunpoint through the halls of the castle. We
came to a large throne room, complete with glowing maps of Otherworld and the human world.
Technicians worked on various computer stations, whisking up spells and such. Lording over all of it
was Balor of the Red Eye. He had dark red skin and his famed bulbous eye was covered by a large eye
patch. He wore a gray Chinese tunic suit.
“Ah, Mr. Goodfellow.” His accent was untraceable, vaguely Central European. “Welcome to my base
of operations.” He had a pair of large Black Shucks, shaggy hounds the size of buffalo, at his feet, and
they growled at me. “Don’t mind the hounds. They always have trouble meeting new people.”
“I can relate.” I looked around the bunker. “You got quite a place here, Balor. I wonder how you keep
it all running.” I paused. “Do you work communally? Like in soviets?”
On cue, Boris Pinecone walked out from behind Balor’s throne. He swung a large revolver at me. “He
would have killed me!” Boris cried. “He would have ruined our dealings with the USSR!”
Balor stared at me. He reached for his eye patch. “Is that so?” he asked.
I shrugged. “Don’t look at me. And not with that eye.” I drew out my silenced pistol. “They gave me a
pair of these and the Cauldron of Plenty they stole from the Dagda and told me to gamble until Boris
was broke. They told me we were trying to catch Boris spending Soviet money for his own amusement.”
“That is a lie!” Boris shouted.
“Sure is, as I found out when the Green Army busted in. Their main goal was to kill you, and in return
they got the Cauldron of Plenty.” I shook my head. “I gotta tell you, Balor. I’m a bit pissed off at being
a pawn in someone else’s game.”
“Well, Puck, what do you want?” Balor asked, leaning forward on his throne.
“I want to return the Cauldron to its rightful owner. I want revenge on McManus for dragging me
back into this bloody game, and I want the Green Man dead.”
Balor smiled, not a pretty picture. His teeth were as red as his skin. “What a coincidence! I want
24

McManus and the Green Man dead as well.” He looked at Boris. “That would seem to put us in alignment.”
“It would seem to,” I said cautiously. “Tell you what, Balor. I got me an idea that could please all of us,
and without leaving much of a mess. Loan me a couple choppers full of Redcaps, a few bullets and
another pistol, and I’ll do your dirty work for you.”
“What are you going to do?” Boris demanded.
“I’ll tell you one thing—you ain’t gonna like it.”
***
A few hours later I returned to the Wild Hunt Casino, this time on foot. I walked towards the foyer,
nearly slipping on the ice-slick ground. Boris Pinecone walked ahead of me, his hands held high. I
pointed a silenced pistol at the back of his head. “Hey, McManus!” I shouted. “I got someone for you!”
The doors to the casino slid open. Boris and I walked inside. A couple Green Army fairies covered us
as we walked down the long hallway to the gambling room. The guests had all cleared out, and there
wasn’t anybody but the Green Army, their leader, and the three spies I was looking on settling with.
McManus stood next to the Redjack table, Honoria and Ivar behind him.
“Well done, Puck!” he cried. “I knew you wouldn’t disappoint me.”
“You know me better than I know myself.” I looked at the Green Man. He had both of his machine
pistols in his hands, and the suitcase was at his feet. This would be tricky. I jabbed Boris Pinecone with
my pistol. “You want to do him, or would you give me the honor?”
McManus grinned. “Let me. I think the only way to do something right is to do it yourself.”
“Got that right.” I kicked Boris Pinecone forward. He fell into McManus, knocking him over. I swung
the pistol at the nearest Green Army fairy and executed him with a single shot between the eyes. I
drew out my second pistol and spun around, leaning on both triggers. I dived out of the way of the
returning fire, my guns up and firing at the Green Man.
“You picked the wrong fairy to mess with, you long-nosed freak!” the Green Man shouted. My bullets
thudded into his arms, making his machine pistols fall to the ground. He called me every bad name he
could think of, and then the branches and vines poured out of his mouth and eyes. They wrapped
around my waist and arms, squeezing me like an anaconda. I ignored the pain and focused on aiming.
I shot away the branches and vines, and fell to the ground. Then I brought up both pistols and put two
slugs square in his head.
The Green Man hissed as he sank back. The leaves caught fire and burned. He died before he hit the
ground. I grinned. “Incendiary rounds,” I explained. “Courtesy of Balor.”
“Dirty traitor!” McManus prepared to kill me, but the sound of approaching helicopters stopped him.
One of the Redcap’s choppers swung by the large glass windows, shattering the glass with a swinging
rotor. McManus shook his fist at me and took off. I fired after him, but he reached the window in a
second and flew out the next. Fire burst out of the soles of his boots, sending him hurtling through the
sky.
25

“Seven-League Rocketboots,” I whispered. “Damn.”
The Green Army attempted to take down the Redcaps, but the mercenary fairies had gotten the drop
on them. Colonel Bonecrusher and his men wiped out the Green Army in seconds, with a minimum of
precise, killing shots. The Redcaps saw that the Green Army bled leafs and not blood, and turned
around without even saying goodbye. Balor had more missions for them, and their hats were already
drying.
I looked back at Honoria and Ivar. They looked at my pistols. I holstered them. “Sorry about your
brother, Honoria,” I muttered.
“He was a jerk,” Honoria said. “But what about us?”
I thought for a second. “I’d like to do freelancing. I forgot how fun this business is, and I want back in.
We could work for Balor, or Oberon and Titania, or the Unseelie Court, or maybe one of the human
governments.” I picked up the suitcase. “First we’re returning this to the Dagda.”
“But won’t McManus and his people be angry at you?” Ivar asked.
“I can’t please everybody.” I turned to Boris.
“Balor won’t stand for this!” he declared.
“Maybe not. But he can easily replace you, and this way, we’ll start out on decent terms with all major
players.” I leveled my pistol.
“You’re mad!” he cried.
“And you’re out of luck.” I shot Boris straight through the back of the head as he tried to pick himself
up. He let out a single sigh and collapsed. “Now McManus won’t mind us that much, and Balor won’t
either. He can find someone else to be his liaison to the Russians.” I looked at Honoria and Ivar.
“Anyway, I’m going freelance, and I’ll need some assistants. You want in?”
Ivar and Honoria exchanged a glance. They both nodded. I grinned and looked out at the snow.
Cottingley may have been a mistake for the Fairy Realms, but it sure made things more exciting. And
right now, that suited me fine.
“Puck Out of Luck” was previously published in the Fantasy Gazetteer.
Michael Panush’s first book, “Clark Reeper Tales: The Truthful Telling of the West’s Wildest Bounty
Hunter,” is a fully illustrated, weird western story available on
http://www.amazon.com/Clark-Reeper-Tales-Truthful-Adventures/dp/1439218501/
ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1229654464&sr=1-1
26

Voice from Niflheim
by Kenneth Pobo
In July, mist thickens. A stranger speaks,
offers no name, says she’s from Niflheim.
We expect to see flames dripping
off her. She’s in hell,
after all. Instead, she tells us of her husband
who loathed women yet fucked
so many. Marriage and slavery,
she couldn’t tell us the difference.
She fed him, kept the home clean.
He beat her. Savagely. As many men
did to their wives. Since she knew
he thought she was less than a rock,
she bludgeoned him with one
while he drowsed off his wine. She laughs,
says she never sees the man she killed,
even in dreams. Niflheim,
even when her bones feel like frozen stalks
and snow an ivory-handled knife,
is more joy than she ever imagined.
Read Kenneth Pobo’s online chapbook, “Crazy Cakes,” at http://scars.tv. His new book, “Glass
Garden,” is available at Amazon.com.
27

Friedrich Nietzsche and the Birth of Tragedy
by Sean Thomas
Maybe I’m a Teutonic Daedalus
tramping the misty streets of Leipzig
at dawn, peering into store-front
windows spotted with frost. I give birth
to dancing stars in my head: the parados
and exodos trilled by a goat-chorus
with wine-stained lips. The words
of Apollo and the music of Dionysus
are blood on a marble floor, epic and
lyric, shimmering, until the gods choke
on my labyrinth flesh. Eventually, all stars
die with sparks and smoke, leaving unlit
lanterns and red brick buildings washed
in winter rain. Imagination never saved
Schopenhauer from sadness, and I walk
among gelded horses pattering their hooves
through puddles, beneath bloated clouds
strangling the sky. I raise my forehead
to fight the storm, but there are so many
faces I’ve never seen on these endless
streets, so many white arms I’ll never
touch, and Icarus drowned in loneliness
long before wax wings strapped his back.
Read a short story by Sean Thomas at Vestal Review:
http://www.vestalreview.net/
28

“Morning Dream Place” by Christopher Woods
View Christopher Woods’ and his wife Linda’s online gallery, MOONBIRD HILL ARTS:
http://www.moonbirdhillarts.etsy.com/
29

The Gae Bolg
by Alan Lewis
There was a young man in our Gaelic language class in the 1890s—’95 or ’96, it must have been, when
we were first getting started. He seemed notable mostly for his awkward posture and his painful shyness.
I was posted to Africa at the time and able to attend the classes only sporadically during my home
leave, so I didn’t know him well. He always sat in the back of the room, and seldom spoke up, except
to speak or read his bit of Gaelic when it was his go. And when he did, he would be utterly transformed;
it was as if the language entered him, took hold, shape-shifted him into an entirely different
beast—or the person he was meant to be.
Cuchulain was the strongest and most steadfast of the ancient warriors. He was the son of Dectera,
who was the daughter of Queen Maga by the Druid Cathbad, and Queen Maga was also wed to Red
Ross, the King of Ulster, and his descendants were the Knights of the Red Branch. Dectera was wed to
Lugh of the Long Arm, and they presented their child, who would be Cuchulain, as a gift to Ulster.
Today’s lesson was to tell a story in Gaelic. I was barely able to recount the amusing tale of nearly
being eaten in the Calabar, when I was consul there, but young Padraig was mastering one of the
richest tales in Irish legend. He was sixteen, had been studying Gaelic since he was eleven, and spoke
it more eloquently than anyone I ever heard.
“Cuchulain studied and contested with the mightiest warriors of the day, and slew his best friend and
his own son in tests of battle. He was the master of the Gae Bolg, the fearsome spear of a thousand
barbs, launched with the foot to drive upward into the body and bring agonizing death from within.”
The lad’s delicate, nearly classic features mimed the action, drawing tight against his bones and his
breath catching as the Gae Bolg was positioned and the sinews of the calf made ready, then seeming to
expand for a long moment and then suddenly going slack as the barbs tore their way up through the
victim’s gut. I remember being struck by the odd look on the young man’s handsome face as unspeakably
horrible death radiated out from his core: It was the beatific look of one who has just consummated
the act of love.
“Now it came to pass, after Cuchulain had done his mighty deeds in the wars against Connaught, and
slain hundreds of foes, and married the princess Emer and bedded many another besides, that a wicked
lord called Bricriu of the Poisoned Tongue invited all the Knights of the Red Branch to a banquet. He
thought, in his wickedness, to sow strife among them by offering the hero’s portion of the feast to the
Knight who could prove himself bravest.
“Three candidates stood above all the rest: Conall of the Victories, Loegaire the Triumphant, and
Cuchulain, the Hound of Cullen, the son of Detera and Lugh.” The character of Cuchulain now seemed
to move into Padraig’s soul, and his stooped posture straightened, and you could see into his deep-set
eyes. His beautiful crest of hair rose from his crown like a banner of defiance. “The warriors stepped
forward to see what contest Bricriu would require, and what weapons employed, but he surprised
them by opening a box, out of which popped a demon called The Horror. ‘I did not say the strongest
knight or the most skilled,’ Bricriu declaimed, ‘but the bravest. Methinks it requires little bravery for
the strongest, most skilled warrior to take the field, for he has little chance of death. But which of thee
shall dare cut off the head of The Horror?’
“All stepped forward. ‘Wait!’ cried Bricriu. ‘Whoever so doeth must present himself the next day, to
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have The Horror, in turn, lop off his head.’
“Now Loegaire and Conall each in turn declined, but Cuchulain accepted without a moment’s pause.
He sliced off the demon’s head, grabbed it by its foul green hair and hurled it against the stone wall, at
which the head howled in pain, and the demon’s body grabbed the head and ran off still mewling.
“The next day, as promised, Cuchulain laid his neck upon the chopping block, and The Horror stood
above him with the same sword that had cut off his own head, and once, twice, thrice he brought it
down, but each time he deliberately brought it wide, and then proclaimed to Cuchulain, and to all the
company, ‘Cuchulain is the bravest of the Red Branch, and the champion of Ulster.’” There was just a
brief moment of exhilarating triumph, and then the character suddenly evaporated from Padraig, and
he bent over and slumped back to his seat.
He was still Patrick Henry Pearse then, the child of an English father and an Irish mother. Whatever
misgivings he may have developed about the English spelling, he was proud that he’d been named
after the colonial patriot who had famously demanded of the British, “Give me liberty or give me
death.” It would normally be too facile to say that his name at birth propelled the young lad directly to
his fate, yet if you knew him, you might think there was a germ of truth in that. And if you managed
to get a good look into those deep dark eyes, the way they lit when he spoke Gaelic and burned when
he retold the legend of Cuchulain, you could see Ireland’s birth reflected in his impatient death.
This story is excerpted from Alan Lewis’s novel-in-progress: “Banna Strand,” the true story of Irish
patriot and gay martyr Roger Casement.
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Krishna and the Cowgirls
(after Surdas)
by Larry Turner
Sir, I believe you are what we in the village
call a “philosopher,” a man
who spends his nights in deep thoughts
because he cannot get a girl to share his bed.
You come to teach us the love of Krishna.
Believe me, we cowgirls have so much love
for Krishna that our insides melt
and our bodies burn when we hear his name.
We were the first to name him Mountain Lifter,
though more often we called him Butter Thief.
To be yogis, you say, we must think
of nothing but Krishna night and day.
If so, we are the most devout of yogis,
constantly scanning the horizon,
impatient for him to return to our arms.
You say the real Krishna is not the hero
who shared our beds and stole our butter,
but some sort of inner spirit for whom we should
abandon lovemaking and other pleasures.
Since he went away we have abstained,
and I tell you it is no fun.
What kind of physician can you be, the poet asks,
who hands out prescriptions
when he doesn’t know the disease?
From Larry Turner’s poetry collection “Eden and Other Addresses” (Infinity Publishing, 2005).
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Bluebeard’s Clockwork Bride
I.
Synthesis
He finds it tiresome, all this flesh—
this repetitious strangling
and mixing of solvents
to remove bloodstains
from glass keys,
hens’ eggs. So, he weds
a robot, a burlesque,
a pantomime bride.
He winds the spring
in her back, torques
her tinheart, twisting.
A wife should be all gears
and timing, the proper measure
of mechanical stress.
She is programmed
to prepare curries
on Sunday, to ignore the dead
bodies along the walls.
On her wedding day,
a porcelain rose
is affixed to her hair
with magnets.
II.
Analysis
The corpse-closet
is no longer nailed shut.
She serves blackberry pies
on golden plates,
this perfect itch, unflappable
bitch, with her fearless
legs that never quiver, her prayerless
mechanical lips.
She dusts the tapestries
three times a week,
like watchwork.
He walks her through his gallery
of girl-parts:
Two poems by Susan Slaviero
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in a silver box,
a beringed hand—
rubies and fire-opals gleaming
in candlelight, the dark
and clotted wrist.
A jar of incurious
eyes, hazels and blues,
each one a jewel
for his new bride.
She might wear them
in her sockets, this unimpressed
automaton.
He takes a saber
to her joints, unthreads
his machine
in a fit
of bloody boredom.
III.
Reassembly
Servants scrub her parts
with soap and sand,
buff her
limbs to a high shine.
Perhaps a harp
in her chest, he says,
or a music box between her winding
hips? She should be better equipped
for staircases.
She should taste like honey.
He reattaches her head
with pipe-dope,
props her up
in front of the looking glass,
surrounded by ashes
and kindling.
This time, he gives her skin.
This time, he programs her
to be afraid of fire.
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Briar Rose, In Cryostasis
Sometimes, the evil fairy wears a lab coat.
She pricks your finger with an infected needle,
suspends your head in a thermos flask.
You might be trapped in a liquid nitrogen
enchantment for a hundred years, surrounded
by cracked glass and jagged ice crystals,
waiting for the prince to defrost you,
to kiss the stump of your pretty neck.
Susan Slaviero is designer and poetry editor of the online literary journal http://www.blossombones.com:
Read Slaviero’s http://mythology-and-milk.blogspot.com.
Slaviero’s chapbook, “An Introduction to the Archetypes,” is available from
http://shadowboxpress.blogspot.com and her forthcoming chapbook, “Apocrypha,” from
http://www.dancinggirlpress.com/.
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House of the Fox Spirits
by Lisa D. Chavez
At the center of every haunting is absence.
The end of every love affair is absence.
Every love story is, therefore, a ghost story, a haunting formed from lack and loss. It is less a visitation
than an obsession with what is gone. It is a vortex, a vacuum, a funnel of wind the teller is sucked into.
Never to return.
Not in original form, anyway. When the teller returns, she is always pallid and wan, a mere ghost of
herself.
See how these stories turn in on themselves? Who is haunted, who haunting?
This is the story of a woman haunted by a fox spirit,those elusive creatures that most often take female
form. They are powerful, mischievous and beautiful beyond endurance. This is not the story of a love
affair gone wrong because the important relationship here is not with the lover—who is, after all, a
mere absence at the center of the story—but with the woman and the fox spirit who haunts her. Who
is her. Either way, it’s not about the man.
And yet it starts with him.
Kitsune wield illusion. They transform an earthen den into an estate, a field into a kingdom, a fox into
a noble beauty. Of course, there is no real transformation; just a shifted perception, and at some point
the lover will wake, as if from a dream, to discover the palace he thought he dwelt in was simply a fox
den, the fabulous riches bits of leaves and grass.
This is the house wrought by a wild fox spirit. An enchantress lives here—fierce and not a little fey.
Her hair is black and gray, like the silver fox prized for its pelt. Her eyes are dark and wild. Her teeth
sharp. She hunts alone, and her den is endless, an enchanted castle with corridors so long you’ll lose
yourself in them. Lose yourself in the pleasure of exploration—the sheets of heavy linen, the comforters
of silk. Her body plush beneath yours. When the winds batter at the walls of the house there is
nothing to do but stay, stay in the enchantment she creates. The house a cage you enter willingly.
When you exit, you’ll do so in surprise. There is no longer magic there, in that ordinary place. What
possessed you?
In English there is one just the one word: fox. In Japanese, Kitsune. But also these names: Genko,
Shakko, Kiko, Nogitusne. Koryo, Kuko, Reiko, Tenko.
Black fox, red fox, spirit fox, wild prankster fox. Haunting fox, goblin fox, ghost fox, celestial fox.
Kitsune. In Japan, both magic and ordinary—the fox transformed or the fox of the field.
The night she’d met him was wind-wracked and wild, a bloody moon sliding from full-eclipse as if
giving birth to itself. That night he’d seemed more than mortal—his hazel eyes god-bright. A trickster,
thrown to earth. Dark as a black fox, dark as a jaguar. A visitation—she should have known he wouldn’t
stay.
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She fashioned names for him, as if naming would bind him to her. Little Raven. Wounded Crow. Dark
Jaguar. Fox. Sometimes she’d think of him so hard, a raven would appear before her, peering into the
window. And later he’d say, I was thinking of you so hard.
I saw you, she’d say. A raven.
He’d smile his sorcerer’s smile.
As if he were an enchanted being. Sometimes he was.
And he wasn’t. He was a small man, lean and sharp as barbed wire. When he smiled, which was rare,
his face turned bright as the steel he worked with. He drove a battered truck. Wore a bandana around
his shaved head. Earrings. No tattoos. Ordinary.
Kitsune is an animal wanton by nature. She satisfies her desire through the art of bewitchery.
There is no language between lovers other than the syntax of skin and tongue, the grammar of caress.
It is a language fraught with the illusion of meaning; each touch seems significant, each glance weighted
with promise. And yet it is only gesture with no significance beyond the moment, or perhaps the
meanings are so internal, so private as to be meaningless even to the lover. They move together like
marionettes—each acting out a script unknown to the other. No promises will be kept but absence.
He was what she most desired. And he was the reflection she feared: at the heart of this obsidian
mirror is a web of smoke and darkness. He was her shadow twin; she was his monstrous sister. They
gave each other gifts: a necklace of claws, recently ripped from a paw. A box full of secrets, barb-sharp
to puncture the eardrum of whoever heard them. The things they shared drew blood. They wrestled
with one another, tearing at themselves.
He said they were meant to be together; she knew it to be true. Yet she questioned—was it like the
song they listened to that first night—if one turned away, were they forever lost? Or were they twin
spirits who stalked one another across time? Who was hunter, who was prey? She couldn’t tell.
Either way, the result was the same: one always stalking, the other running away.
Like ghosts, fox spirits sometimes haunt a room of a house. Usually solitary, sometimes they throw fox
drinking parties, and the parties and the haunting goes on night and day.
Then he was gone.
His leaving as much a mystery as his arrival. Like her, he had been entirely possessed, neglecting work,
family, friends. Then as quickly as the wind shifts, he changed. Turned cold. He shed his sorcerer’s
skin, became human again. He asked her to change, to become neat, domesticated, wifely. She refused.
She tried to coax him back to her bed, to lure him back to wildness. He refused.
There is an alchemy of transformation: the process is fiery and complex, and once transmuted, there is
no going back to what you once were. This he feared. This she embraced.
And so her house was haunted. Haunted by memories and by his absence, tangible as the wind battering
the house.
Many months she mourned. She raged. She broke things—her house possessed. Sounds from another
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oom: drunken voices slurred and singing, a woman’s laugh, very like her own. A crash of glasses, a
crazy chorus of fox barks. She’d shake her head, shake herself awake. It was only the wind. Or the
coyotes singing in the hills.
In the mountains the wind rose, and she listened to the sound of it, strong as waves, buffeting the
house. Sometimes it blew so hard the house shook and sighed deep in its foundations, and then she felt
she really had set sail, lying in a ship of a bed cast out on a black, star-pricked sea. Wild nights, like the
night she’d met him when it seemed he brought the wind with him. She returned again and again to
that first night, when he’d appeared out of the darkness, bringing his feral smile, a bottle of wine. The
north wind and the wild voices of his ghosts.
He hadn’t fallen there, into her house, her arms, her bed, on his own. She could conjure winds, call the
wild birds borne on them. Like him—wounded raven, staggering flight. She’d conjured him out of
longing, on the cold nights she’d shared her secrets with the sky. She’d called; he’d answered. Lord of
the Night.
But when she doubted her own power, the conjuring no longer worked. In the end, they both faced
the smoking mirror, and what they saw there was too all-consuming to face. They turned away, shaken,
and chose instead to see each other as mere-mortal. They gave up on magic, came back to earth. That
was their mistake. He left. She mourned. And though it wouldn’t have surprised her if he’d appeared,
bidden, on one of those windy nights, he never did. Though he told her how on a windy day in his
haunted hometown he’d thought of her, fought his thoughts, and known then that he loved her. And
that he loved her still.
Those words were worthless.
The transformed kitsune can control neither her shadow nor its reflection; that is how one knows she
is a fox.
One night, too lonely to stay in the bed they’d once shared, she fell into a restive sleep on the couch.
She woke to the patter pat pat of footfalls on the stairs. She felt no fear. What did she expect to see
coming down those stairs? Him? No. She thought she’d see herself. As he’d seen her: beautiful, naked,
skin glowing golden in candle light. Her shadow odd, elongated. Her hair brushing her back like a tail.
What she saw was a fox.
Stalked by a shadow not its own.
There were other nights. Wind rising. He refused to return; she refused to plead. No lover conjured
from the storm. Still she saw fox prints around the house. Still she saw field foxes, gazing at her
curiously as she drove past.
Desire is a madness we choose to succumb to, even when a future is impossible, even when it will
disrupt the orderly march of our days.
Or we choose not to succumb.
Either way, desire is a choice, and whether we choose it or not, the end is the same.
Desire remains, the coal-bright face in the smoking mirror. It will haunt us whether we succumb to it
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or not.
A muffled knocking is the sound of the fox...For a fox knocks at doors with its tail... if you are a friend
of foxes, the visitor will present you with a little gift which will seem much larger that night than in
the morning. Only a part of a fox-gift is real.
Some say love cures love. She succumbed to this lie, and let another in. This next lover complained of
the house. Of the strange shadows he’d see in the firelight. Of the things he thought he saw out of the
corner of his eye. Of the sounds—fox cries? A muffled knock at the door? She never saw these things
herself—they happened mostly in her absence. He heard footfalls on the deck, felt it shiver beneath a
human weight, but saw nothing. He complained of her past, her history. He complained of the time
she spent away from him, the others he thought he sensed.
And she dreamed of a fox spirit chasing him away with bared teeth.
She didn’t love him and he knew it.
The house became dusty, dispossessed. Tufts of hair and leaves collecting in corners, dirty dishes
filling the sink. A ragged fox den. The house cold, unwelcoming. Doors slammed in his face. Ice
beneath his tires made the route to her house slick and dangerous. Like her caresses. It wasn’t that she
lied, it was that he misread the language of her touch, as if they spoke words that sounded the same but
had very different meaning. Like the bark of a fox and dog, which never mean the same thing. He
loved the long nights with her, but he thought what she gave him wasn’t enough—as if she was never
trying hard enough or as if she held back the real treasure he knew she possessed.
Again, at the center of this story, an absence.
Kitsune-tsuki: the state of being possessed by a fox. Some say it only happens to women—a kind of
hysteria driven from too much anger, independence. As if fierce women cannot be human. Fox possessed.
The first lover called her possessive. Too passionate, and much too wild.
The second lover called her angry. Too independent, too much like a man.
She called herself crazy, in her bad moments. When she let those voices in—not wind voices, not fox
voices. When she turned her fears on herself. It was in human voices she would drown. She tore at
herself like an animal in a snare, crazed.
Those days were dangerous.
Foxes can be protective and will sometimes guard a house against any intruders.
The fox spirit was not hysterical or malevolent, but she was vengeful and she was protective. After all,
the fox is only a small animal, and sometimes she must win through trickery and sly intimidation. The
trapped fox seems larger when she shows no vulnerability: eyes ablaze, teeth bared. And so the fox
made noise. And so she laughed loudly, or broke things in the house. She intimidated through fear,
through haunting, for there was not much damage her small fox claws and teeth could do against men.
The fox spirit became impatient. Irritable, snapping and biting. Trying to raise the figure on the couch,
the figure on the bed, the wan woman who wouldn’t get up. Tugging at her hand with sharp vulpine
39

teeth. Setting her life back in motion.
Yes, the woman missed her jaguar lover, her dark twin, but it was not about him alone. It was a sheer
ache: for passion, for adventure. What she sought was no ordinary man. What she wanted was what
she rarely found: fox or jaguar or wind. Someone more than human. She wanted the Lord of the Hunt,
the man who could match her, strength for wild strength.
And when she understood that finally, her transformation was complete.
When someone is haunted by a fox spirit, they set up a shrine, burn incense, make offerings. Things
quiet down after that.
Perhaps this is not the story of absence after all. Because the fox did not leave. The men did, and were
mourned, but less and less each time. The fox was invited to stay. They learned to live together well,
the woman and the fox. Yes, the house was haunted. But by invitation—the fox spirit was welcomed,
made much of. An altar set for her, with fox fetishes and fox delicacies: saki and rice cakes, incense of
musk. The house alive with fox-faced dogs who might scare a field fox, but wouldn’t frighten a protective
spirit. They learned to coexist.
Each day she grows more fierce, more feral. Until in the end she is most certainly herself—a solitary
woman with the shadow of a fox. She sits on the deck under a full moon, drinking from a glass of
blood-red wine. She thinks of what she’s had and what she’s been. And what she’s conjured. Fox made
of thought, fox made of shadow, fox made of wind. She smiles to herself, fierce and not a little fey.
And when the wind rises, she sighs, knowing the one she seeks is long in coming, if he will come at all.
She sighs, then goes to sleep safe in the house protected by the spirit of a fox. As for the absence of
men? She learns to live with it.
40

Loss and Attainment
The Trojans kept Helen for twelve years,
winning at least a little while.
So often we focus on the loss
rather than the years of attainment.
But any love that matters will one day
be taken for granted. Last night,
lying down to sleep next to you
on wrinkled sheets, warm where
the dog curled, cold by our feet,
I realized as your hand grazed my thigh
you hadn’t touched me all day.
Each morning when I wake I understand
you’re like an eagle scanning the next ridge.
The bed heaves as you rise first,
your steps hard, stiff, while the erupting
sky behind you eases from gravel gray
to blue. You don’t glance back
at the soft curve of my body,
not yet rigid with the day’s to-dos.
What you do is place cereal and fruit
in a bowl, then call my name.
The milk cold. The peach sliced.
Without motive or need
we sleep, eat, read, breathe together,
you running a hand under my shirt
whenever you want. But I was talking
about Helen, about how she loved
as she wished at least once, willing
to witness the loss of a world for it.
Three poems by Charlotte Pence
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Date Night
Leda, Leto, Echo….
Striped by porch-light, stretched
across our bed, his fattened
chest humps up like a boat
on a flat sea. Beating dead
center of his sternum, absence
of my hand, of my nails, raking.
I hesitate, stand over him
while outside our window
the wind and pecan tree
shuffle their skirts and hems:
gutter pings, roof pops, twigs crick
as nuts fall, unripe, yet rotten.
Europa, Eurynome, Mnemosyne….
To the gods above, I know
I pause within an arm’s touch
of this marriage and the night
with its broad demands.
What I ask: my own list
of names I invite to this bed.
Never have I chosen a man,
so preoccupied with
who pursued me. How many
wives stand naked, slivered
by the gray light of porches
this Saturday night,
pausing before we bend
a knee, climb up? Do they
wish for someone else as I do?
Yes, let the pecan tree’s shadow
writhe its narrow branches
all down the length of this bed.
Compel the wind to lick
where salt from want still lingers.
42

At Opry Mills Mall
People-watching outside The Gap,
Zeus and I smell the anxious
celebration of Saturday night:
food-court fries, freshly-showered
skins that hint of chlorine, musk aftershave.
We try to decide if I’m sad.
I tell him how most nights
I blink in the dark, worrying about
what I need to do. He says
I don’t understand what’s normal,
sadness only a perspective.
But then he tugs on that oversized
ear lobe of his, takes a breath,
and suggests maybe always wanting more
has finally hurt me. What does a wife do
when told an unpleasant truth?
I change the subject to his faults,
tell him he’s never had enough ambition.
He sighs, bums a dollar to buy
a big pretzel dusted with garlic.
We share it and lick our fingers
while we watch the sales clerk
call her boyfriend when she thinks
no one’s looking. She says, “I can’t wait
to get out of this god-forsaken place.”
“Loss and Attainment” was previously published in New Millennium Writings 2007-2008, issue17,
under the title “Helen of Troy.”
43