Parenthetical Visitors

by Rudi Dornemann

The women in long white dresses (who weren’t really there) said they were travelers. They’d traveled a long, long way.

They told Robert all this (without making any noise), and asked if he could turn over a moss-covered rock on the side of the road.

He was early. The Keeper of the Royal Signet probably wouldn’t reach the field for another hour–another insult, added to those that had finally pushed Robert past respectful silence, and had, ironically, made the Keeper the injured party. He kicked the rock over with his heel.

The women in long white dresses (who weren’t really there) were fascinated by what they found in the mud, pointing at bugs that scurried through their incorporeal fingers. Robert wanted to ask if there was anything else they wanted, but couldn’t bring himself to talk to what he were just figments of his exhaustion, bits of dreams he might have had if he’d been able to get any sleep since the day of Carolyn’s refusal, the day he walked out of the Keeper’s service, the day of the challenge.

The women either couldn’t read his thoughts or were too busy to bother, so he tipped his hat slightly enough anyone would think he was adjusting it and continued between dew-soaked fields, past trees as laden with thieving birds as fruit, and over the bridge. The Keeper was there, early and impatient.

Then twenty minutes of waiting while Robert’s second didn’t arrive, the Keeper staring at Robert with a hatred undercut by frequent yawns, Robert trying not to look back. Then ten seconds that might have been a year while Robert chose his weapon. Then a time that hadn’t seemed to happen at all: the burning in his chest crowded out any memory of turning or hearing the tenth pace called.

“I bet the Duke a dozen by midsummer,” he heard the Keeper say. “This makes seven.”

Robert saw that the women in long white dresses (who weren’t really there) were there again, bending down over something even more fascinating than the underside of a rock. He went over to join them, and looked down at his own body (he wasn’t really there anymore either).

The women in long white dresses said they’d traveled a long, long way. Would Robert like to join them? And perhaps he could show them some interesting things before they left this world?

The Origin of the Blue Bay

by AlexM

Long ago there was a man called Keha, the finest kite-maker in the kingdom. In his house was a small workshop, where he taught children how to make kites: how to assemble the wooden frame and cover it with handmade paper that he painted for them in intricate designs.

When Keha was an old man, he told the children to stay away from his house while he built them a surprise. They waited impatiently in their village until the day he invited them back. Daydreaming of kites, they ran through the rice fields to where he lived, but they found only one wall of his house remaining. The others had been knocked down to make space for his surprise.

Smiling broadly, Keha greeted them from the side of the largest kite ever built: larger than his house, painted blue like a clear, deep lake, with all manner of creatures swimming across its surface. Great fish with bright scales of red and yellow bared pointed teeth or held a wide tail above the waves. Serpents with green scales and wicked smiles waited beside small, fragile ships. Women with bare breasts and gold crowns around their topknots, and each with the tail of a fish, sat on rocks and held out lotus flowers to passing sailors.

The best thing about this kite, as far as the children were concerned, was not its beautiful decorations: this kite was magical and, with the right wind, the children and Keha could fly on it.

Many joyous days passed on its back, flying over the rice fields and jungles of the kingdom, even glimpsing the capital with the shining gold chedis and the multicoloured roofs of its palace and temples.

Then, on a day when the children were working for their parents, Keha watched fearfully as a great wind blew up. His massive kite tugged on its ropes, snapping one and then another. Not wanting it to tear apart under the strain, he cut the other ropes. He watched as the kite flew away and never saw it again.

But people from the far south of the kingdom are known to say that, once upon a time, a kite larger than a house fell, ripping apart the ground where it crashed, and that a great blue bay filled with fish and other creatures was formed.