Poison, By Samantha Bryant

Editor's Note: Nature, compassion, and survival all intermingle in today's enchanting story by author, Samantha Bryant. Enjoy!

Why? Ana Bautista looked at the ancient hawthorn, heartbroken. The massive trunk had turned ashy and spongy. Why would anyone hurt this centuries-old tree? 

Ana knelt, resting her palm against the damage. Eyes closed, she exhaled, calling to the tree’s spirit. Sharp pain shot up her arm, but she maintained contact. Her breath caught, reliving the cutting, the poison shoved into the tender wood, the bitter curse. The tree couldn’t tell who would do such a thing. It could only share the pain. 

The newspaper called it vandalism, but this was no mindless destruction. Someone wanted this specific tree dead. She couldn’t explain that to the community garden committee, though. They expected more mundane explanations.

Was it too late? Warmth ran up her arm. Ana grounded herself, resting her other palm against the earth, drawing energy and funneling it into the tree until, feeling woozy, she leaned her head against the trunk. 

Brushing the soil from her knees, Ana considered the area. From the window of a brick house across the road, a woman watched her. Ana noted the carefully tended garden in the otherwise neglected yard, identifying medicinal plants. Feverfew. Goldenseal. Saint John’s Wort. To an untrained eye, they seemed like any other spring flowers. 

With one last caress for the tree, Ana crossed the road. When she raised her hand to knock, the door creaked open. A voice called out, “You might as well come in.” 

In no hurry to make her intrusion complete, Ana paused inside the threshold, letting her eyes adjust to the dim. Surrounding a silver mirror spread a series of framed portraits of the same girl at different ages, the last one a memorial, death date last summer. 

“You want to talk about the tree.” 

Ana kept her surprise from flashing across her face. The woman clung to the shadows, an ill-defined collection of draping cloth. She might have been mistaken for a ghost. 

When she offered a mug, Ana accepted. “I do.”

“Then, talk,” the woman said, inhaling the steam from her own mug. 

Ana got to the point. “Why curse the hawthorn?”

The woman swirled her fingers at the air in front of her. “Why not? The tree was like the town--watching and doing nothing about the tragedy at its roots.”

Ana blinked. Did she need to remind the woman that trees lacked the power to do otherwise? Instead, she raised her cup, automatically identifying the lavender, chamomile, and valerian root in the blend. 

The woman smacked her lips disapprovingly, then met Ana’s gaze, her expression penetrating and direct. “Can you save the tree?”

“Maybe. I can counter the poison, but the curse…”

The woman peered into Ana’s face. A whiff of honey and dark fruit wafted from the tall mug in her hands. It held more than tea. Bourbon maybe. 

Ana centered herself for defense, but tolerated the examination, assessing the other woman. Tall, and younger than Ana’s sixty years, with unkempt hair and clothes, bags under her eyes, and a yellow tint to her dusky skin. Despite her frumpy appearance, power emanated from her--vibrating between them, making itself known. Ana sensed no animosity, only deep sorrow and bitterness that had poisoned the woman as surely as she had poisoned the tree. A sympathetic ache blossomed in her breast. 

At last the woman’s mouth twisted into a half smile. “You aren’t what I expected. I’m Evanora.” 

“Ana.” 

The woman’s sweater slid off one shoulder and Ana wondered if she had been a larger woman before grief began to eat her from within. She imagined Evanora with a fuller face and more formidable figure and decided she had lost considerable weight in her mourning. 

Ana asked, “Can I get some of what you’re drinking?”

Evanora smiled, dry lips stretching thin and pale across her teeth. “Do you want the tea, too?”

“Not really.” 

That got a laugh, a husky almost-cough, rusty as an unoiled door hinge. Evanora took the untouched mug of tea and returned with a short, curved glass of beveled crystal, two fingers full of a warm, honey-brown liquid poured over tinkling ice cubes. Their fingers brushed in the passing of the drink and a vision shone in Ana’s mind: an empty bottle of pills, a girl sleeping beneath the hawthorn tree, never to wake. Directionless anger flailing uselessly.

Ana shifted her gaze to Evanora’s, but the woman seemed unaware of what she had accidentally shared. Ana twisted the glass in her hand, and watched the bourbon slide slosh around the ice before raising the glass in a salute, and taking a long swallow. 

“Ready?” she asked. 

Evanora nodded and Ana popped a bourbon flavored ice cube into her mouth and deposited the glass on the porch wall. Lifting her gaze, she took in the waxing crescent moon, an auspicious sign for healing. When Evanora joined her, she slipped her elbow through the other woman’s. It was like holding the hollow bones of a bird, fragile and brittle. 

Taking a deep breath, she tugged Evanora toward the suffering hawthorn. “Let’s make this right.” 

Street lights illuminated the tree, but the long branches sheltered the women from view when they knelt. Ana placed both hands against the damaged trunk and felt an answering thrum of life from the wood. It wasn’t too late. Beside her, Evanora rested her back against the truck, tufts of her fluffy hair catching on the bark. She hummed a song Ana had never heard and yet recognized. A sad song. 

Branches sagged and a few leaves fell into Evanora’s lap. 

“I’m sorry,” she said, fingering the leaves on her skirt. “I take it back.” 

The earth shifted among the tree roots and rumbled gently as distant thunder. Still connected to the tree, Ana felt the sigh of relief as the curse slid free and swirled into nothingness. The tree again had the will to fight. It had survived much. With a little kindness, it would survive this, too. As would they all.

Samantha Bryant believes in unexplainable connections and second chances. She loves lonely beaches and sunlight through the leaves of trees. She lives in North Carolina, but left her heart in Alaska. She’s tougher than she looks. She is best known for her Menopausal Superhero series of novels.

Story Graphic: Amanda Bergloff @AmandaBergloff

The Songs of Spring, By Kelly Jarvis

 

“Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?”—John Keats 

Far away, where an invisible line divides the earth into two halves of the same globe, high on a mountain top, suspended between the soil and the sky, is the home of the Goddess of Spring. 

It is a humble home, but no palace could be more majestic, for the simple dwelling is surrounded by a luscious garden that clusters outside the windows and spills down the mountainside in every direction, as far as the eye can see.  

Each morning, when the sun kisses the mountain awake with its warmth and light, the goddess and her consort, a man with kind, autumn eyes, rise to tend the garden which blooms all year round. There is a child too, a little girl, who skips among the hills and trees.   

The garden is a vast organic library containing all the flowers that have ever existed on earth. There are rosebushes releasing their romantic scent into the air and fields of phlox leading to flowering arbors formed of pink cherry trees. There are beds of bluebell and bleeding heart. There are bowers of daffodil and delphinium winking in the distant breeze. The feeling of first love and the bloom of new life permeate every path, and the goddess and her consort move among the beauty, their hands deep in the rich soil, as they plant and prune.  

Twice a year, during the Equinox Festivals, the goddess performs her most sacred duty. On the Vernal Equinox she stands beneath the mountain sky and gazes toward the North, inhaling the scent of her garden and breathing it out toward the farthest reaches of the hemisphere. The earth below her breath awakens to spring, and flowers, the goddess’ gifts of love, unfurl across the land. Even in the farthest reaches of the North, where frost always blankets the ground, her magic breath settles upon the snow making it glisten like the dewy petals of morning glories. When the Autumnal Equinox signals harvest and death for the North, the goddess turns her gaze to the South and repeats her ritual, filling the southern half of the world with the joy of new growth, life, and hope.   

On all the other days of the year, the goddess toils in her garden, softly singing the songs of spring. Her tune is caught by cardinals and repeated by the robins, it echoes in the call of peeping frogs and the buzz of bees. And even in the darkest days of winter, when the melody seems lost, the goddess sings it for the poets, so they might capture it in verse and imbue the world with hope that spring, however far away it seems, will always come again. 

In the evenings, when the mountain falls asleep to a riotous display of fading light, the little girl asks the goddess to tell her the story of the day she was found. She has heard the story thousands of times, but each word chimes like a silver bell, and she smiles as the goddess begins. 

“One twilit evening, while I was finishing my work in the garden, I discovered a new flower I had never seen before.  It was an evening primrose, which opened its goblet shaped petals as the full moon rose in the sky. I found you nestled within the golden leaves, a tiny baby, no larger than my finger, with a smile that drove the sadness from my heart. I named you Kora, which means little maiden, and I became your mother.” 

As her mother speaks, Kora drifts off to sleep, the songs of spring dancing through her dreams. 

The world spins, the seasons unfurl, and the little girl named Kora matures into a beautiful woman who serves in the garden alongside her mother. She waters the wisteria and coaxes the crocus forth from hibernation. She plants pots of peonies and sings to the sweet peas which explode with bright colors at the sound of her song.  

One day, she wakes to find hundreds of mortals waiting to meet her, men and women who have heard stories of her beauty and kindness and have journeyed to the mountain in the sky to seek her hand in marriage.  

“The time has come for you to choose a consort, Kora, for the human world must work with the heavens to ensure the return of spring,” her mother explains.  

Kora looks at the crowd; there are princes on horseback, knights wearing silver armor, and shepherds with earnest smiles. She has no idea how to choose. 

Her mother’s consort speaks in a clear, loud voice. “To win the hand of our fair maiden Kora, you must search the world and bring back the most valuable gift you can find.” 

The suitors’ hearts ignite at the chance to compete for Kora’s hand, and they bid her farewell to begin their journeys. 

It is ever so long before the first suitor returns, a nobleman with a chiseled face. “I bring you the softest satin from the East,” he proclaims, unfolding a skein of cloth in the garden clearing. It feels cool against Kora’s skin, but it is not as soft as the clover which grows in the shade of the willow trees, and Kora turns the nobleman away. 

The world spins, the seasons unfurl, and another suitor returns bringing fine wine which tastes like ash to Kora who has spent her life drinking garden ambrosia. Another brings precious rubies and amethyst which pale next to the dark red geraniums and purple heather in her mother’s meadows. When a suitor offers Kora a velvet pouch of expensive coins, the sound of their jingling falls flat against the melodic ringing of the garden wind chimes, and Kora believes she will never find her consort. 

“True love takes time,” her mother says, “and we have much to do in the garden to keep us busy.” 

So, they water and they weed, they plant and they prune, until, many seasons later, another suitor, a lowly shepherd, finally returns. 

“I have come to apologize, my lady, for though I wanted to travel the world and find you a valuable treasure to express my love, I was needed to tend my sheep,” he says sadly. “So, I have brought you a gift of honey from the bees that live in my garden, and I ask only that we sweeten and share one pot of tea together, before I take my leave.”  

He holds out the jar of honey. It glistens like gold in the sun. Kora shivers as she notices an autumn glint in his kind eyes. 

“Will you stay with me and help me sing the songs of spring?” she asks. 

His smile makes her heart skip a beat. 

When they marry, the bees swarm happily round the wedding arbor, pollinating the garden until it overflows with love. 

     

The world spins and the seasons unfurl. On the Vernal Equinox, the goddess takes Kora by the hand and tells her that in six months’ time, the ritual to renew spring will pass on to her. Confused, Kora begs her mother to explain. 

“All things in the garden must grow and die. The fallen petals fertilize the seeds that wait patiently for their time in the sun,” the goddess begins. “When it is spring in the North, it is autumn in the South, for there can be no life without death, no love without loss.”  

“I cannot live without you,” Kora cries. 

Her mother takes her in her arms and sings a song to soothe her fears. “You will never be without me. Six months from now, when you bury me and my consort in the grove of apple blossom trees, you will understand. But for now, we have much to do in the garden to keep us busy.” 

So, they water and weed, they plant and they prune, and day by day, the goddess and her consort grow older and older. 

When they die in each other’s arms on the eve of the Equinox, the Goddess of Spring, gray, stooped, and wrinkled, is more beautiful than she has ever been. 

The new Goddess of Spring, once known only as Kora, buries the couple beneath the apple blossom trees. Her own shepherd consort digs the grave and holds her while she weeps over it. Her tears water the ground and when they dry, the soil blooms with tiny blue flowers that have never been seen before. The goddess inhales their sweet perfume, and parting the soft sapphire petals, finds a tiny baby, no larger than her finger, nestled in the shadowy leaves. The baby’s smile drives the sadness from her heart. “I shall name you Kora, which means little maiden,” the goddess whispers, “and I shall be your mother.” 

Far away, where an invisible line divides the earth into two halves of the same globe, high on a mountain top, suspended between the soil and the sky, is the home of the Goddess of Spring. 

Her garden is a library containing the stories of all the flowers that have ever existed on earth. There are valleys of violets and hills of honeysuckle. There are planters full of pansies, hanging baskets of begonias, and, in a grove of apple blossom trees, there is a carpet of blue forget-me-nots that fills the air with the sweet fragrance of memory. 

The goddess toils in her garden with her consort and her child, surrounded by the floral remains of all the beautiful souls who have given their service to the steady renewal of the seasons. The goddess sings as she works, and her tune is shared by the sparrows and matched by the mayflies, until it reaches the coldest and darkest corners of the earth, filling the hearts of the poets who hear it with the hopeful songs of spring. 

Kelly Jarvis teaches classes in literature, writing, and fairy tale at Central Connecticut State University, The University of Connecticut, and Tunxis Community College. She lives, happily ever after, with her husband and three sons in a house filled with fairy tale books.

Cover Painting: "Spring" by Franz Xaver Winterhalter, 1850

Cover Layout: Amanda Bergloff @AmandaBergloff

A Hedge of Rampion, By Kiyomi Appleton Gaines

Editor's Note:  Rarely understood are those that follow their own path. Perspective is everything in a tale, and Kiyomi Appleton Gaines' story offers a different view on a classic. Enjoy!

I never meant to be a witch. You should know that from the start. You don't notice at first, and by the time you realize what you are, it's too late.

I never wanted to be a mother. I always assumed it would happen one way or another. When you're young, you never imagine your life will look very different from others. Yet I was different even then. Odd. We married so young in those days, and I didn't want to marry just any man. Silly as they were, once girls were Mistress Baker or Goodwife Smith, they were no longer children. Girls my age started becoming mothers before we even knew what it was to be women.

I didn't want that. I didn't want any of those things. My father, resentful of my lingering, said I must earn my keep, so I tended the midwife and learned from her how to ease pains and treat minor ailments. I never kept a garden well. Strange, since that is what I am now best known for. But I know a little of plants and children, birthing and dying. And living.

I was old for a bride when I married my tinker. He came through with tales of distant places, and I dared to ask why I couldn't have that life too? Eventually, we settled in a place, a village not so different from this one. He offered services making repairs and traveled out every few months to bring goods from elsewhere. I had my garden and my knowledge of herbs, and so we made our way. The women there did not trust me, though, I with no small ones clutching at skirt and breast. They still came to me for those other things, to soothe a headache or a sour stomach, to heal a wound. But they did not trust me, and I knew what might come, and then knew that it would. I urged my husband to leave, but he didn't believe the threat in those evil looks. I left before their fears became dangerous.

I met my tinker again later. Our little home was burned, and he was chased out after me. He returned to tinkering. I went to another place.

The people came, though how they knew I could help, I don't know. I charged them nothing, hoping for goodwill, hoping to be left alone. You will understand my dismay when one evening I found a man digging in my garden, stealing ramps.

I grabbed a rake and brandished it, demanded his account.

He startled and had the grace to look ashamed. "Please, mistress," he said, "it's my wife. There's a little one coming. She says she must have ramps, or she'll die."

"And you can find them nowhere else but my garden?" I asked.

He looked down at his little pile of plants, "None like these, mistress."

I lowered the rake. I would have to spend the next day repairing my garden, but I did not want to take to the road again. "Take them and begone then, if she'll die," I snapped at him. "And don't let me find you stealing from me again."

He scrambled to his feet, mumbling apologies and gratitude, and left. He returned a few days later bearing a hen and begged more of my vegetables. I kept the woman in ramps for months.

You think you know what comes next, but you're wrong.

They brought the child to me whenever it became ill, and I did what I could. It was a sickly baby. I wanted nothing to do with it. If it did not thrive, who would they blame? But they begged me to help, so what could I do?

When she was a little older, she took a fever. I put her in a cot by the fire and tended her. For days I sat by that little cot. Her parents visited often at first, then less so. The fever passed, but she was still weak when her parents told me they had "happy news" once more. She was not their first nor only child. That isn't to say they didn't care for her. They just stopped coming. I called her my little Rampion, for the ramps that had brought us together. I taught her everything I could, and she grew up.

I did not keep her prisoner. I wanted to protect her. I didn't want her to be stuck in the life I had fled, nor did I want her to pursue my path, which had produced its own dangers. I wanted something better for her. When I learned a young nobleman would be passing through the town, I took her there and put her in his way, again and again, for the duration of his stay. That was my mistake. When he left, she said he would never have gone without her, that he loved her, that I had trapped her. It was some few months later, when her condition was just showing, that she ran away.

I searched for her. I went to the town. I begged at the castle for any hint of her. I went to the tinkers. I would not stray far or for long from my home in case she came back, but I asked them to look for her. They found her, with her child. When she came back to me, she was frail and sick, and never recovered. I laid her in the garden, and let the ramps go to flower over her. And I have raised her daughter, whom I have called like her mother, my Rapunzel.

I own my mistakes, Sister, I will not see them repeated. She must be safe, warm, educated. I know well what you do to ones like me, who are odd, we witches. Yet here is my confession. Do with me as you will, only take her as a novice.

Kiyomi Appleton Gaines loves folklore and fairy tales for what they teach us about what it means to be human.  Her writing can be found at workofheartkag.wordpress.com.  She lives in New Orleans with her husband, a one-eyed cat, and a snake.

Cover Design: Amanda Bergloff @AmandaBergloff

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Night, the Hardest Time to Be Alive, By Melissa Yuan-Innes

Editor's Note: Love in its many forms can uplift or curse those that find themselves under its spell. It is a theme that resonates in fairy tales set in the past and the present. We hope you enjoy this unique tale as much as we did.

His mother never permitted his father to sleep.

She would prod him awake with her elbow or kick him in the backs of the knees.

In fairness, Da never wanted to sleep. He rigged up his own devices to keep his eyes open, including a bed of nails. He shivered under a thin blanket when the snow lay three feet thick outside. He tried not to lie down because if he did, he said, he would never wake up.

"Why?” the boy asked.

Neither mother nor father answered. All their energy seemed devoted to this strange task of keeping Da from sleeping. Ma made a meager living taking in laundry and doing embroidery. Da worked in the fields when he could, but he took a chill more often than not. His hacking cough kept all of them awake for weeks.

Until one day Da fell asleep under thin blanket.

"Da?” Michael said when he came through the door. He forgot the dirt crusted under his nails and the straw in his hair from weeks of harvesting. He saw only his father curled up by the dying embers of the fire. And his mother curled over his Da, weeping silently and saying, "I killed him."

Michael ignored her. He shook Da's shoulder. Da rolled toward him, but his eyes had finally closed. Da's chest lay still, his lips slightly parted.

"Da?” Michael repeated, in a higher voice. He wanted to tell his father about the harvest, that he had made enough money for wood and a bit of meat this winter.

Tears dripped from Ma's face on to Da's blanket. "I killed him. I cursed him," she said.

Michael finally held his mother while she blurted out some story about how she had been a nymph, had given up her immortality when she married his father and bore Michael. But when she caught Da cheating on her, she cursed him. "You promised me you would love me with every waking breath. So be it. When you fall asleep, you will die."

Michael patted her shoulder. Poor Ma Ondine. Raving. In his head, he calculated how much a funeral would cost out of his new earnings. They would only have to feed two mouths this winter, but they could no longer count on Da's small income, either. He would have to take care of the family now.

Generations passed.

Ondines loved and cursed their mates. Michaels grew old before their time, caring for both of them. The cycle repeated without breaking.

Always the Ondines. Always the tragic loves.

And always the Michaels. If they survived their parents, they swore to work and never love anyone except themselves.

The 21st century Michael loved women. He loved the way they ducked their heads and looked sideways up at him through their hair. He loved the way they walked, undulating in front of him. He loved the way they smelled.

And there it ended. His parents had paid too high a price. He would not make the same mistake.

Little did he know that his parents continued watch over him in every incarnation. And with each generation, the power of their combined love and protection grew stronger. They were his guardians. You might call them his seraphim.

If only their power could overcome the curse.

"Abarka. Thank you.” Nina Chowdary flashed the final slide of her presentation, showing herself and the rest of the medical team surrounded by Gambian doctors and nurses and children. Dr. Nina's brown skin contrasted with both the ebony villagers' faces and the rest of the pale Canadian complexions. "From all the children in Gambia who can now smile, Abarka.” Nina massacred the Gambian words, but language wasn't her forte. Surgery was her strength. Microsurgery, to be precise. She'd been the only resident invited on the medical mission and she'd taken up her precious vacation and study time to go.

While everyone applauded, a waiter handed her a glass and she downed it, realizing too late that it was champagne instead of water. She choked on the bubbles. Her microphone picked up the noise, and everyone laughed.

She cleared her throat and croaked, "I'm not worried because if I have any airway trouble, about 90 percent of the people in the room know how to resuscitate me."

The crowd laughed some more.

"Sorry," said the waiter.

She took a closer look at him. Blond guy, young, carefully spiked bangs. Deep blue eyes. A good body hidden under his uniform. But not a good waiter, although the champagne flute would've given the alcohol away if she'd been paying attention. "Don't worry about it--” She glanced at his lapel pin--"Michael."

And that was that, except when she snuck a cigarette at the back door at the end of the night, she spotted the waiter tossing out a garbage bag. When he turned, he called, "Hey. You're a doctor. Don't you know those things are bad for you?"

"Terrible," she called back, waving the cigarette at him. "Don't turn me in."

"Hey, I'll just make you choke on some champagne again."

She took a last drag and stubbed the cigarette out. "Good. That's one way to make people laugh and donate more money."

"Glad to be of service."

Their eyes met across the night air.

What surprised Nina the most was not that he turned out to be nine years younger than her, a barely-legal 21, or the fact that he'd actually read Emmanual Kant, which was more than she could say. It was the way he always closed his eyes in bed, squeezing his eyelids shut as if to block out everything except the sensation roaring inside his body.

"Open your eyes," she coaxed him the third time, the tenth time, the twentieth time, until she finally gave up and figured there were worse things, like premature ejaculation. At least this way she could make whatever faces she wanted and he'd never know.

Until he left her ten months later. "No offence," he said. "I just don't do this.” He gestured around her sky blue bedroom, ending at her window, left ajar to permit the May breeze inside.

"You don't do windows?" she said, even though her heart cracked in her chest.

"I don't do love. Sorry.” He closed the bedroom door softly behind himself. Two weeks later, she heard he'd taken up with a high school student who catered with him. Young. Not too bright. But with big tits and a tinkly laugh, someone who might not do love, either. Or, if she did, he'd saw the heart right out of her chest.

Well. Nina was a surgeon. She knew how to put things back together. She hoped.

For weeks, she wrestled with strange dreams. A man who commanded her not to give up, that she and Michael were so close to “the beginning.” A dark-haired beauty who warned Nina that she was in danger of sealing over her own heart. “Forgive, start anew. Love.”

Both the man and woman looked so majestic and yet hauntingly familiar in the shape of their eyes, the lift of their chins, or the twist of their lips.

Sometimes, in Nina’s dreams, she heard a rush of wings.

Twenty years on, a blond man in a tuxedo offered Nina a flute of champagne at a fundraising dinner. She held up her glass of water, barely glancing at him. "I've got a drink, thank you."

"Plus ca change," he said, and gave a crooked smile that tugged at her memory.

"Michael?” she said, sloshing her water in its glass. She examined his broadened cheekbones, the looser jaw, the threads of white mixed at the temples, and his filled-in build. He still looked hot, damn it. But then, he'd only be about 42. Prime time for men. Unfortunately.

He bowed his head. "Dr. Chowdary."

She held out her hand as if he were an old acquaintance. Which he was.

He shook it, holding on a little too long. His palm felt cool. "You look great."

She shrugged and pulled her hand away. "I do all right.” Plenty of her colleagues had opted for Botox, filler, or a face lift or two, but Nina had resisted everything except laser therapy so far. "How are your wife and kidlets?"

"I don't have any.” He swallowed the champagne she'd refused and dropped the flute on the tray of a passing server. "Are you wondering why I'm attending the reception instead of catering it?"

She sipped her water. It seemed to hang in her throat before she swallowed it. Somehow, she was always choking around this man. "You were a lousy waiter."

He laughed. "Yeah, you're right. Okay, I'll tell you why. I wanted to see you and make a donation to your foundation."

"Thanks. You'll get a tax receipt.” She signaled the organizers that she was coming.

He paused. "I guess I deserve that. Can I call you?"

She adjusted the strap on her scarlet gown. "Sure. The foundation knows how to reach me.” And then she crossed to the podium with a practiced smile stretching across her face.

He wasn't the only one who had learned to live without loving.

But when she slipped out the back door and saw him leaning against a maple tree, silhouetted in the moonlight, she stared at him.

He raised his head. "Sneaking a cigarette?"

"No, actually. I gave it up ages ago."

"Good for you.” He patted his front pocket with a rueful smile. "I was going to offer you a light."

Just like that, she crossed to his side. Because although she had learned not to love, she also knew how to heal. And she was willing to try one more time. Because everyone knows that once in a great while, a curse, instead of a true heart, may be broken.

Ondine and her lover spread their wings around Michael and Nina—wings too far and to ephemeral to be felt by mere human flesh.

And yet, in that precise moment, all four of them smiled.

Melissa Yuan-Innes is a doctor who loves fairy tales. As Melissa Yi, she writes werewolf thrillers (Wolf Ice), teenagers who save the world by talking to animals (High School Hit List), and the critically-acclaimed Hope Sze medical mysteries. Find Melissa Yi Yuan-Innes on Facebook, @dr_sassy on Twitter, and www.melissayuaninnes.com.

Cover Design: Amanda Bergloff @AmandaBergloff