Hopeful Science Fiction. The Paths People Avoid Mara made lanterns for the roads nobody wanted. Her workshop stood in the hollow between two ribs of the sleeping giant, where rainwater tapped softly against bone and the village paths crossed beneath a ceiling of stretched sinew....
Fantasy. The Salt Jar At violet dusk, when the clouds turned the harbor the color of a bruise, Mara Vale found a salt jar beneath her shuttered shop. It was squat and blue-green, its stopper sealed with gray wax. No tide that day had reached the stone beneath her door. It had...
Fantasy. The House With the Speaking Walls On the evening the river turned violet, Mara Vale found a house weeping in its chimney. She was the village nurse, though village children knew her better as the woman who listened to houses. She carried a black leather bag of bandages,...
Weird Fiction. Orbit Was a Kind of Door Mara Vale had spent nine years above the world, keeping the station's agricultural lights aimed at fields that might no longer exist. Earth was a pale smear beneath the observation glass, a rumor repeated by transmissions, weather reports,...
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