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The Pale TaleThe sound was a low, wooden thud, like a heavy oak door latching shut in a room where no one was standing. Elias Thorne sat in his cubicle on the fourteenth floor of Meridian & Associates, the fluorescent lights humming their dull, electric hymn above him. He was forty-two, a senior actuary with ten years of service and a son, Julian, who was eighteen and already three months behind on his...0 Comments 0 Shares 1 Views 0 Reviews
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The Distant ClueThe first thing I noticed about Julian was not his face, but the way his fingernails had turned the color of old slate, brittle and cracking at the edges like dry riverbed clay. He was nineteen, a boy from the county line who had stolen a truck to get to a funeral he couldn’t afford to miss, and now he sat in the intake cell, shivering in a thin blanket while the fluorescent lights above us...0 Comments 0 Shares 1 Views 0 Reviews
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The Wistful IncenseThe vial sat on the mahogany table, a slender cylinder of glass filled with a liquid that smelled of rain on hot stone and the specific, aching regret of a door left open. I am Elias Thorne, court perfumer to the Duke, and for the last three months, I have been trying to synthesize the Wistful Incense to cure my wife, Clara, of her wasting cough. The opposing force is the incense itself, a...0 Comments 0 Shares 1 Views 0 Reviews
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The Distant CartographThe champagne in my glass was warm and tasted of vinegar, a fitting precursor to the speech Mayor Alcott was delivering from the podium. I sat in the back row of the City Hall basement, my knees pressed against the rigid wood of the chair, listening to the Mayor praise the "new era of transparency" while the crystal chandeliers above swayed with a rhythm that did not match the clinking of...0 Comments 0 Shares 1 Views 0 Reviews
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The Wistful DinnerThe letter lay on the mahogany desk, its edges curling slightly in the dry air of the study, and Elias Thorne held a fountain pen poised above the signature line, the nib trembling so violently that the ink bled into the paper before he had even drawn the first stroke. He was forty years old, a constable with twenty-two years of service, and he wanted to retire before the anniversary of his...0 Comments 0 Shares 1 Views 0 Reviews
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The Golden CellarThe dream was always the same, a suffocating weight of black water pressing against Elias Thorne’s lungs, the taste of silt and rot thick on his tongue, until he woke with a gasp that tore through the silence of the cellar like a scream. He lay on the straw mat, his joints aching with the damp cold that seeped up from the stone floor, his body heavy with the exhaustion of a man who had spent...0 Comments 0 Shares 1 Views 0 Reviews
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The Wistful AsylumThe dream came again with the smell of wet limestone and the weight of crumbling mortar in Elias Thorne’s hands. He stood in the middle of the village green, holding the broken pieces of the old boundary wall, trying to fit them together, while the wind tore at his coat. In the dream, the wall was a living thing, bleeding dust, and he could feel the years grinding against his palms. He woke...0 Comments 0 Shares 1 Views 0 Reviews
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The Pale BonsaiThe ink in the ledger does not dry; it waits. I have learned this in the three months since Master Aldous ceased to speak, his body shrinking like a dried apple in the corner of the scriptorium while his eyes remained fixed on the ceiling beams. I am twelve, an apprentice scribe, and I want only to finish the accounts before the winter solstice, a date that holds the power to grant me my...0 Comments 0 Shares 1 Views 0 Reviews
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The Golden ScarThe air in the Grand Atrium of the High Council tasted of ozone and rot, a metallic tang that coated the back of your throat as you adjusted the lapel of your uniform. You were Elias Thorne, Enforcement Officer Grade Four, and your eyes were fixed not on the Councilors in their silk robes, but on the pedestal in the center of the room where the Golden Scar sat. It was a luminescent orchid, its...0 Comments 0 Shares 2 Views 0 Reviews
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