fishyroo

In the old city sunk between river and lake, there was a woman named Irene who only had bad dreams. Every night her sleep was troubled by visions of horrors and she knew no rest for the nightmares woke her in the small hours with wet cheeks and a trembling mouth. On a black night that had no moon or stars, only fog rolling off the lake to enshroud the city, she dreamt she was a young man spurned by his beloved and killed in a duel by his rival for her affections. The Beloved sneered as Irene died bleeding at her feet. On another night, the moon was molten silver and shone through the light haze. The very air seemed to boil it was so hot. Ir

Once upon a time, in the Land of Three Rivers, there was a little house perched on a sandy bluff. It overlooked the most beautiful of the three rivers deep in the piney woods. A witch lived there and her name was Janan.  She had pale skin and dark hair, which she kept in a braid as thick as a child’s arm down her back. She knew much about the herbs, wildflowers, and mushrooms that grew under the pines and loved to walk in the woods gathering them for her potions. Janan once loved a dark-haired man who came to Three Rivers from an island on the other side of the eastern sea. When he left to find his fortune in the sunken city to the sout

Birds of October A sly chill slunk under the door. It crept around corners and insinuated itself into every room, every crack and crevice of the small cottage. The tenth month of the year usually brought bright sunshine to the Land of Three Rivers but this day exhaled with the breath of February and the sky was leaden and dripping. The cottage sat on top of a low hill, the first elevation north of the conjunction of sea, lake, and river, and the great city that presided over those waters. The little house sat in a field on the edge of a vast wood of dark pines which towered like cathedrals as far as the eye could see. One enormous oak loome

Once upon a time, on the western edge of the world, a brown girl floated in a blue boat with a white handprint on its side. The channel in which she drifted was between the mainland and the small islands which were the last land to the west before the endless sea. Isra, for that was the girl’s name, could not have told you what time it was except that it was between tides because the water’s surface was like an obsidian mirror with only a few subtle ridges and swirls betraying the violence of ocean waters forced through the narrow spaces between rocky, evergreen islands. It was daytime for the sun was bright and high in a turquoise

Spring Rain Hugh was writing a letter when he saw her. It was a wet and chilly day in early spring. He was wrapped in a wool blanket and lingering over his correspondence and a cup of hot coffee on the wide porch that wrapped entirely around the spa at which he was staying. Cold rain was pattering and murmuring to itself as it fell. Hugh contemplated the beads of water dripping from the pine needles and the swollen river beyond banks of white violets and the first green fuzz of grass. The spa overlooked one of the rivers for which the Land of Three Rivers derives its name. Here this particular one of the three reached its widest point befo

A Silver Song It was a bright dawn in the high summer of my seventh year when I heard the song that would shape the rest of my life. I, like the other children could no more deny it than the rats could deny the song he played for them. How can I describe that song? It was wild and sweet and sad and merry. It described everything precious about childhood; laughter, summer days at play, treats at Yule, a mother’s bedtime song. How could a child not follow such a song? I tried to keep up with the other children as they skipped and danced through the town and the summer woodland behind the Piper but, although I strained so hard with my cru

Once upon a time, the Land of Three Rivers suffered from a drought.  This land had been green and was famous for its tall pine trees but even these were now marked by poufs of brown needles now that the cooling winds of autumn had brought no more rain than had the hot, still, dry days of summer. Those who have seen the pines of Three Rivers say that their beauty is greatest when they are crowned with the golden light of an autumn afternoon.  Despite the ravages of the drought they were glorious in the light of a cool afternoon but this beauty was lost on the woman cursing her vehicle and her own carelessness. She didn