The Londonderry Sentinel
February 23rd, 18—

At half past seven o’clock this morning, Timothy Harrison of Southwark was walking the south bank of the River Thames when he discovered the body of a woman half in the water and half on the shore. Dr. Samuel Kilgrew soon arrived and pronounced life extinct, noting bruising and lacerations around the neck and face. Black stones with peculiar markings were found in the throat...

In other worlds and other lands, curses might come from gods or demons seeking revenge, but mine came from a lover. As a recent widow and mother of two, I craved someone to hold at night. I prayed for it. Syla found me in my darkest hour and brought light back to my life. She had certain appetites that I did not share, that I did not even know of. They say opposites attract, but they seldom end up together...

Our daughter wants me to move to a place where I can be watched over. I try to tell her that I’m already being watched over, by the Quiet People, but she doesn’t believe me when I say they exist. She pretends not to hear and says, “Mamá, it will be nice and clean there.” Is cleanliness all that matters? I know Lupe is talking about sending me to an old folks’ home. The air will be too cold and the chairs hard and un-lived in. And it would smell of antiseptic layered over urine like every nursing home and hospital. That’s not what I want, but Lupe won’t listen. How could I abandon all that I know and love?

There is stone beneath you, ancient stone, ancient as the Earth itself. It hums of the world’s birth against your craggy limbs, and you awaken. Your obsidian eyes take in the shadow-wrought room. You cannot move, as earth does not move, not in a way that can be seen.

So this is life.

A man stands at the window, his back to you. He calls himself an alchemist.

Beneath the light of double moons, the pale trees looked like skeletal hands reaching up from the grave. Ferron strained to focus on the names carved in the bleached bark—all Earthers who had died within the last fifteen years—and scoured for his daughter’s name: Runa Daye. According to the Pavitra, the trees sprouting from the dead were living gravestones that bore the names which gave them life.

Hers was missing.

Condensation dripped down the side of Anton’s cocktail glass in alternating reflections of chartreuse, teal, and violet. The bar’s ambient lights transitioned among the three shades in a sad attempt to mimic the exclusive clubs in Haven Hill. His glass was a lonely disco ball lighting up an empty dance floor, the party-going Mids too despondent to rise from their seats and too apathetic to even speak. Fuzzy elevator music rambled in the background. The drink itself was supposed to be a color-changing Roulette cocktail, the preferred beverage of Haveners, but the bitter concoction in front of him was a poor-man’s imitation. Its mood-modifying effects barely registered in his brain. Still, it was the best he could get in Midtown.

Some things should happen only in the dark, when the world still sleeps and dreams innocent dreams. It has always been this way and always will be—and you would have it no other way, because you are one of the few who thrive during the time when the sun has not yet risen, when the lamplighters are not even awake.

A smile creeps across your lips as you light the hearth and feed it a few logs. The embers burn bright and warm the kitchen. Malcolm will join you soon with the faeries. You are eager to mix the day’s teas and fill each pouch with the perfect assortment of herbs, flowers, and faery morsels. Like anything made with love, it takes devotion. It takes sacrifice.

Gold streaks of the evening sun streamed in through the single window, a perfect square of light in an otherwise dark room. Warwick stood on the edge of sunlight, feet bare and cold against the limestone floor, dropped his arms to his sides and opened his palms. Closed his eyes. The gods did not come unless their worshippers made themselves vulnerable, like an animal exposing its belly to the hand that could kill it. And the gods could certainly kill him.

“Goddess,” he said. “Why are you silent?” The square of light shifted closer toward him as the sun approached the horizon. “Why are all the gods silent?”