An Old Lion’s Roar

by SaraG

Rabbit sat in the shade, scratching his ear with his hind paw. A strand of grass was stuck between the gears of his head, and it tickled mightily.

In the distance, he heard He Lion roar. Mechanical birds screeched and whirred to safety. Possum played dead, although it should have known by now that its tick-tack gave it away. Even Bear lumbered away. But Rabbit didn’t move. It was getting too old for He Lion’s roaring. It was getting too old to play the same games over and over again. It was getting too old to hop all over the place. Besides, the straw in his ear itched. So Rabbit stayed put and listened to the roaring coming closer.

“Me and Myself! Me and Myself,” roared He Lion when he saw Rabbit.

Rabbit scratched his ear.

“Me and Myself, I said,” said He Lion.

“Yes, I did hear you. I may be old, but I’m not yet deaf.”

He Lion snorted and shook his whitened mane. It wasn’t just Rabbit who’d gotten old.

“Well, aren’t you going to run away?” said He Lion.

Rabbit considered this carefully. He Lion might need his gears oiled and wound more than he needed to eat Rabbit, but he still might crush Rabbit with his foot, just for the fun of it. Rabbit and He Lion went back a long way, but the lion was a stickler for authority.

In the old days, whenever Lion got in a funk like this, Rabbit would trick him into meeting Man. Man always knew how to take care of Lion, what with his guns and all and then Lion would behave for a while. But Rabbit was tired and Lion was old and Man was quite possibly dead by now. Man was the most literal of all the fabled clockwork creatures of the jungle and, as such, one couldn’t expect much from him and certainly not infinite survival.

“Can’t run,” Rabbit said. “Got something in my ear.”

Lion clambered up to Rabbit and sat down, realizing he wasn’t going to get much fun out of the hare today.
“Hmm,” growled Lion, “That sucks.” Lion turned to face the sun, eyes half mast and lay down. He always did like to bask.

The Sorceress’s Tale

by Rudi Dornemann

The acolyte knocked before going in. He didn’t hear a response, but he knew she’d heard him.

The air inside was thick with the reek of rotting fabric and rich with the sound of hundreds of crickets. The Grand Metropolitan Sorceress hadn’t left this small room in over a decade, but still she kept the peace throughout the city and the suburbs beyond.

“Mistress?” said the acolyte. “Your dinner?”

“Keep it,” said a husky voice from the darkness.

The acolyte hadn’t heard her speak more than a murmured “leave it on the table” or “less pepper next time, please” in months.

“I’m doing a great working tonight,” said the sorceress. “My last, if it works.”

“You need to keep up your strength madam.” The acolyte felt around until he found an empty chair, and set the tray on the seat. “When you skip meals, you always feel it the next day…”

“If this works,” said the sorceress. “Tomorrow won’t happen.”

The acolyte stumbled back into something that jingled like crystal.

“That was too dramatic,” said the voice from the darkness. “There will be a tomorrow; it just won’t happen for many years. I’m turning back time.”

“What? You can’t.”

“I have to.” The sorceress’s voice had dropped its usual commanding tone. “I can’t hold back the hungry realms more than another few weeks. We can’t win against them.”

The acolyte swallowed twice. “But everything might change. And we still won’t be able to stop them.”

“We would have been safe, if I’d never done the Spell of Cold Knife.” Her voice was right in front of him. “It’s my fault.”

“But,” said the acolyte, “without that spell, you couldn’t have stopped the apocalypse meme. Thousands would have died.”

“I’ll find another way.”

“My parents,” said the acolyte,” they met in one of the refuges, while the knife spell ran.”

“They might still meet,” said the sorceress.

The acolyte swung at the voice, felt his nails scratching her cheek.

“Mistress! I’m sorry…”

“Blood,” said the sorceress. “The final ingredient, and I couldn’t shed it myself.”

The acolyte tripped as he stumbled back. The darkness was going out.

“Thank you,” said the Grand Metropolitan Sorceress. “I hope we meet again.”

Then the room was gone and Eyve Ariel was a girl again, neither a sorceress nor grand, standing in a vacant lot with mud on her journeywoman’s gown, no one to see or hear her as she shivered in spite of the heat.