navigation

January 31, 2018

The Pearl - Sabrina N. Balmick

In the briny twilight,
a storm gathers...
In the briny twilight, a storm gathers, its edges stained grey as pearl. Fishermen scurry to moor swaying boats as a distant horn bellows a warning. King Luke, standing on his balcony, sips salted wine and watches the sea, his mind straying to the sea queen as her storm roils beyond world's edge. This storm might rage two, perhaps three nights. Forever, for all he cares. Tonight marks fifty years since she'd taken her leave of the world.

Laughter rises from the courtyard. The old king peers over the balcony to catch his granddaughter waving, the girl's sea glass green eyes sparkling with mischief. Her grandmother's eyes. He tilts a smile and she shrieks happily. Fat raindrops pelt down. She scampers away with her cousins, trailing laughter like bright ribbon.

Alone again, the king stands in the cold rain. When he is half-soaked and stiff-jointed, he retreats to his chamber. Muttering, he swings his cloak upon a hook before the fire, changes into dry nightclothes, and beds down. Memories of sea glass green eyes flit across his mind until sleep claims him.

Sometime after midnight, the fire dies. There in the hushed dark, the king dreams. Rain trickles like tears through an open casement and trembles across the room, little more than mist. He does not feel the air's chill kiss, or hear thunder crack open the sky. On the far side of his dreaming, the sea queen's voice beckons. He startles awake, an answer upon his lips.

The king lurches out of bed and stumbles to the balcony, ignoring complaining knees and groaning back. Panting, he leans across the railing, both hands gripping stone. He draws an open-mouthed breath, and tastes thunder in the air. A flash teases his eye; it is only his ruby ring, capturing lightning and flinging it out to sea.

A thousand and one thoughts crowd his mind. Dead, she may be. Or alive. He cannot know. Has no way of knowing.

Thumb and forefinger worry at the ring, a tiny beacon in the gloom. Hardly enough to summon anything. He's tried nearly everything, searched each year, wandering up and down the shore like a madman after dreaming of her and only her. Another year has passed, and another passing yet.

His fingers stray inside his nightshirt to fetch out the pearl hanging from its gold chain, her last gift to him, worn close to his heart ever since. He closes his eyes and recalls her skin beneath his palm, her breath at his throat.

"I don’t belong here," she had whispered, before she slipped into the sea with his heart.

Unbidden, he yanks the chain free. It falls forgotten at his feet while the pearl lies within his palm, a nacreous eye. His fist closes around the pearl, draws back, and flings it far out to sea. He cannot search for someone who does not wish to be found. The king withdraws from foam-flecked waves, and returns to his chamber. Behind him, the sea howls.

By morning, to his surprise, the storm has passed. Sunlight pours through his window to paint everything gold. His valet has attended his chamber while he slept, stoking the fire, laying out the day's clothing. A pot of jasmine tea steeps at his bedside. As he reaches for the teapot, a grey-gold wink beckons his weary eyes.

"No." He snatches the offering, cradles it between his hands. His mouth has gone dry and his eyes are wet. The pearl stares back, its grey surface gleaming gold.

Shaking, the king walks gingerly to the balcony. Sea foam dances at the shoreline. The sea curls away from the beach toward golden horizon. Tide rises and falls, bringing boats and news into the kingdom. The sight should be familiar. Nothing, this morning, is familiar. His eyes search the shore until he sees only light.

His hand, fisted around the pearl, aches. Pressed into his palm, he knows, is the pearl's imprint.

She has always been here.

King Luke bows his head and smiles. His fingers uncurl and drop the pearl into a pocket. He settles into his chair to pour jasmine tea, and listens to the whispering tide.

Sabrina N. Balmick was brought up on a steady diet of fairy tales and folklore. When she isn’t dreaming up new fantasy worlds, she leads content strategy and marketing for a national recruitment firm. She lives in South Florida.

COVER Amanda Bergloff

The Mountain's Heart - Deborah L. Davitt

He'd known that something
waited there for him...
The miner carved a path to the mountain’s heart,
though everyone said he was mad to think that he’d hit a seam
in this rough, unpromising patch—
not a trace of color in any stone he dredged up from the depths.
But he’d felt something when he first looked at its face,
a tremor in his hands, a twist low in his gut,
and he’d known that something waited there for him.

Nine years he dug, propping and shoring;
spent each night wrapped in the dull ache
of work-sore muscles and delicious exhaustion;
found just enough glistening opals
to pay for the pumps he needed
when the boiling water escaped the rock—
a narrow escape for him, dropping pick
and running up the shaft on scalded feet.

Still, though the mountain seemed intent on his demise,
sometimes trapping him at his claim for months
with a snare of winter’s snow,
and never paid him enough wages to offer
more than a penitent’s diet of bread and beans,
he persevered.

He grew thinner by the year, slower to words
when he went to town; people there
called him a gray ghost, a vagrant,
a lost soul who came down to the valleys
covered in stone dust;
a hermit, but not, to their mind, a holy one;
he never told them of the silent songs
he heard the mountain sing,
of the chorus that water made against rock,
the ringing rhythm of his pick against stone.
He never told them that when the mountain sang to him,
he raised his voice and sang back,
and sometimes, the echoes that he heard,
returned distorted, in some other voice,
calling his name.

In the ninth year, he broke into an open cavern,
a bubble of space deep in the mountain’s bowels,
and as he waited for the foul air to escape,
he felt again that twist in his gut, the itch in his hands,
heard the mountain’s voice
pounding louder in his mind, and hoped that somehow,
through his years of diligence and privation,
to have been found worthy,
as he prepped his lantern for descent.

Deep inside, in a grotto formed of stalactites
and stalagmites, joined together like a grove
of flowing, flowering stone, he found her, growing
like a blossom from their bark, attached
along the long, lithe line of her spine.
Her tangled hair fell like dendrites,
like the swaying branches
of some seared, scarred nerve,
lifting up into the ceiling,
tangling through the branches
of the stone trees;
it gleamed like crystal, unyielding,
flayed his work-rough hand
when he reached to touch it;

When her eyes opened,
he felt neither fear nor surprise,
but met her opaline stare
with dazed wonder.
“Did you call me to free you?” he whispered,
hesitating over the words,
lest the sounds profane the sanctity of the air.

She didn’t reply, but the song rang louder
in his mind, and the sweetness of her sad smile,
was an answer of its own,
as a chill spread through him.

He looked down at his wounded hand,
to find the blood congealing into corundum.
He reached out once more, setting his fingers
against a cheek made of chalcedony,
and endured the poison as it wracked his body
till it reached his heart, as he’d reached the mountain’s,
transforming, transfiguring him,
into rutilated quartz, shot through
with gold, like stars falling from the heavens.

And then his carefully-shored tunnel
collapsed behind him, enwombing them in night.
Deborah L. Davitt was raised in Reno, Nevada, but received her MA in English from Penn State. She currently lives in Houston, Texas with her husband and son. Her poetry has received Rhysling and Pushcart nominations and appeared in over twenty journals; her short fiction has appeared in InterGalactic Medicine Show, Compelling Science Fiction, Grievous Angel, andThe Fantasist.
For more about her work, please see www.edda-earth.com.

Cover by Amanda Bergloff

The Sky Fell in Love - Marta Pelrine-Bacon

Though the sky moved
through the universe,
it couldn't stop fate...

The sky fell in love.

The sky fell in love all the time. It was so big after all, and there was so much to see. When the sky fell in love it shaped clouds into hearts or whatever it imagined the objection of its affection wanted—though rarely were these gestures noticed.

The sky fell in love with men and women. Sometimes it fell in love with a tree or a swath of green.

The sky knew little difference between the inanimate and the breathing. Some things moved about, yes, and some things stayed forever in one place, but the sky was unable to appreciate movement other than the turn of the earth, which the sky took for granted.

The sky had a thing for beauty.

The sky gave its loved ones gifts—a rainstorm at midnight, a breeze over a lake, or a snowfall at dawn.

Always the sky lost at love. The love was never returned and eventually the loved one died. The man or the woman aged. The tree aged too although more slowly and often disappeared, cut down and carried away. Green turned to sand or was plowed away. The sky wanted to reach down and save them, to stop the blade and the decay. But though the sky moved through the universe, it couldn’t stop fate.

Isobel Moran liked to lie down at the top of the hill and stare at the sky. She loved the birds and the clouds, and she’d drift off to sleep watching them.

One afternoon she woke up with the sense that someone was watching her. No one was around as far as she could see, and she got up, picked up her sandals and headed home. The feeling didn’t leave her. A soft rain began, and she enjoyed the cool wet on her face and her bare arms. She stopped, still barefoot, and tilted her face to the sky. The rain coated her hair and ran down her neck. She felt inexplicably happy. “Thank you, sky!” she shouted and then laughed at her foolishness.

The rain stopped and Isobel continued on her way. “Never walk past the graveyard without your shoes on,” her mother said. “You don’t know the consequences of walking on the dead.”

“I’m not walking on their graves, mother,” Isobel had replied.

“And why should you think the dead stay in their graves?”

But Isobel knew more than her mother dreamed of. She knew that if she walked through the graveyard with her feet bare and her heart filled with desire she could talk to the dead. And Isobel Moran had her heart fixed on a young man who’d died before she was born.

The grass was wet but drying quickly in the warmth of the sun. At the cemetery gates she glanced back up at the sky now clear without a hint of the rain. Her dress was already dry and if not for the bit of moisture on the back of her neck under the spill of her hair, she’d have forgotten all about the rain.

Her mother didn’t suspect a thing, for her mother believed there was no trouble in the graveyard in the light of day. Her mother thought the dead couldn’t bear the sunlight and the waking world.

But the ghosts loved the sun as much as the living. The sun burned right through them, warming them inside in a way nothing in the dead world could.

Christian Fairfield waited near his grave. The others were jealous of his good fortune. The newer dead, who had no one visit or believing, and the ones who had yet to make peace with not being seen, all watched the young woman approach. A few, though, were not jealous but sad. They’d seen a lot in their years on that side of life, and they saw failure from the point it began.

Christian and Isobel walked side by side to the churchyard nearby. Anyone who happened by would see only Isobel, and they would sigh. She always was a little strange, talking to herself where everyone can see.

“When you look at the sky,” Isobel asked Christian, “what do you see?”

“Blue, sweetheart. Did you think I could glimpse heaven? I am no saint.”

She shook her head. “It was the strangest thing today. I felt as if the sky was watching me as much as I was watching it.

He looked up. To her he was almost solid, an opaque form. The church loomed behind him as if in a fog. “Being dead, I’m afraid, hasn’t given me a greater knowledge of the universe.”

“I have to be home soon or my mother will come look for me.”

“Then we shall have to hurry…but not too much.”

Isobel laughed, and followed him into the dark places in the woods where the sky couldn’t see.

Christian had learned with a mix of passion and will and the help of the magic scattered around the graves to be real for a little bit of time each day. A few of his fellow dead could do the same if they cared enough to haunt the places of the living. And the effort took so much energy that it wasn’t unusual for the dead spirit to burst apart into the air and vanish for a few hours or even days.

When Christian was gone, Isobel picked herself up off the ground and brushed the dirt and grass from her skirt. Perhaps, she thought, he would back to himself by tomorrow, and she slipped on her shoes to walk home.

The sky had seen lovers before, lovers of all kinds, but it was rare for the sky to care. But this time it was Isobel Moran and the sky was in love.

Jealousy as big as the sky is an awesome thing, and the sky felt betrayed. All that blue and caressing rain dismissed and forgotten for a moment in the dirt, and the sky did hate the dirt more than it ever hated anything. The sky worked itself up into a storm. Here was the enormity of the sky wrapped around the world, and the girl chose a wisp of a man who couldn’t even feel the air in his lungs.

Black clouds rolled and thunder banged along the earth. Isobel looked up at the sky and remembered the gentle rain from earlier. “So unpredictable you,” she said, and quickened her pace.

The sky had never been good at containing its emotions—why should it be when it was greater than everything else living? And the sky felt its rage at every loss it had felt over its long life. It would be alive when Isobel Moran was an old woman. The sky would remember her forever, and while she could turn away from the blue and the weather and shut herself inside, the sky could never look the other way. The sky was always looking no matter what it didn’t wish to see.

Isobel was very close to home now, but the rain came down in a pour and the wind whipped at her as if trying to tear her feet from under her. She held up a hand as if her fingers could block storms.

It was unfair to be trapped above the world, thought the sky, throwing its thunder and lightning. The sky pressed in on the earth in an effort to feel something, and it did. The sky felt the usual turning of the planet, turning like it always did, never speeding up, never slowing down, never considering what, for once, the sky might need or want.

Within sight of her home, Isobel fell. The pavement cut her knee. She couldn’t see the blood for the rain washed the blood away faster than the blood could flow. The wind swallowed her voice. “Damn you,” she shouted at the sky.

In its fury the sky threw itself at the earth. It pressed and pressed itself again and again. The sky didn’t see any of the animals or other people cowering and praying for to be saved. Only the dead were not bothered, tucked away in their graves or letting the water go through them. A few of the dead suspected more would be added to their number. A storm like this always did damage after all.

Isobel felt pinned to the ground, the sky loosening itself around her. Thunder shook the ground, and she resolved to get to her feet and make it home. “I shall hate the rain forever,” she said, pushing herself up. And she looked for one last time at the sky.

The sky shuddered, threw one last bolt of lightning, and Isobel Moran fell, burned from the inside out.

Her funeral was lovely, but Isobel paid it no mind. She and Christian embraced, their figures like morning mist. “I didn’t expect you to join me for many years to come,” he said.

The ghost of Isobel Moran smiled. “Maybe the sky saw our love. Maybe the sky wanted us to be together.”

“I didn’t want you to die on my behalf, my love, but I shall be forever grateful to the sky.”

“So shall I,” Isobel replied.

And the lovers leaned into one another, never again feeling the fall of the rain or the warmth of the sun. It didn’t take long for them both to forget about such things as the sky.


Marta Pelrine-Bacon is an author and artist in Texas. She's the author of the novel The Blue Jar (originally published by Plum Tree Book/UK) and her short stories have appeared in Cabinet des Fees, The Austin Review, Flash Fiction Magazine, and 50 to1. Her art has been featured in numerous journals including Cabinet des Fees, 7 Impossible Things before Breakfast, Out of Context: HandEye Magazine, and The Fairy Tale Review: The Ochre Issue. Her inspiration comes from coffee, Doctor Who, Twin Peaks, and naps.
Her writing or her art can be found in various places:
Etsy.

Cover: Amanda Bergloff @AmandaBergloff

Cinder & Ella - An Illustrated Tale - Salina Trevino

Enchanted Conversation Magazine 
presents our first
Illustrated Tale:
Cinder & Ella
by Salina Trevino
debuting in this issue.
CLICK on the cover below to view
in a digital format.
Salina Trevino is a cartoonist and actor living in Los Angeles, California. Originally hailing from Michigan's upper peninsula, a childhood of long winters spurred her artistic development. She hopes that her cartoons warm your heart... or spook you out!
Learn more about Salina here:

Cover by Amanda Bergloff

Chained by Love - Erin Sweet Al-Mehairi

His heart he opened freely
the day his eyes gazed upon her...
Raymond loved Melusine,
her flowing locks like flames,
her voluptuous curves,
but most of all,
her smile of sparkling stars.

She was divine in his eyes,
his heart he opened freely
the day his eyes gazed upon,
none other was as mesmerizing,
she had captured him whole.

Dancing lithe among the forest drapery,
her lyrics as pure as a harp.
She was enchanting,
when laughing carefree,
teasing playfully by the wooded river,
as the moon does when toying in slivers.

Eventually, as searing
as the emblazoned sun over France,
seething in tirades of jealously,
Raymond’s fear kept her locked
away in his stone fortress,
her presence all to his delight.

She first blushed at her fortune,
to have Raymond to love her,
someone to care for her,
to make her feel young, vibrant,
and alive.

But she only asked,
with a coy demeanor,
he never pull back the curtain
during her drawn bath,
for her image, though humble,
would need to be replenished.

He always loved to hunt, too,
and he left his beloved,
weekends or evenings both,
and when once she used to go,
now he left Melusine alone.

In the opulent bedroom,
bedecked for her pleasure,
one clear and chilly night,
she paced and she roamed,
then she settled into warm water,
sipping on weakened wine,
to think, to exist.

Raymond acted in surprise,
lovesick with a fervor,
he galloped steady,
pinning for her supple kisses,
straining to hear her sing,
and he arrived home early
without a second thought.

He raced up the stairs,
candlestick in hand,
and flung open the door to exclaim—

…but a half-serpent woman,
tail of matte scales,
wings of dragon,
in shock and in horror,
jumped out the window,
wails of melancholy surfacing
as she plunged into the river below,
with tears inking her joy.

His nightmare unfolding,
his eyes singed in torture,
he watched his love glide
through the water out of sight.

But what is love held captive,
intent not considered,
as confinement of true being
is as good as death.

Erin Sweet Al-Mehairi has Bachelor of Arts degrees in English, Journalism, and History. She has 20 years of experience in the communication and marketing fields and is currently a writer, a journalist, a publicist, and an editor among many other things.
Follow her book world at:
Twitter: @ErinAlMehairi

Cover by Amanda Bergloff
SITE DESIGNED BY PRETTYWILDTHINGS