ARROWS by Sarah Deeming

She was a goddess and her

wild fragrance warmed him...

They walked the water’s edge, the waves washing away their footsteps. The sun god was silent, something Orion was grateful for. Apollo liked to boast about his accomplishments, and Orion was incapable of leaving him unanswered. For every story Apollo had, Orion had his own which he felt were equally comparable.

Artemis told him to ignore her brother. Let Apollo talk, what did it matter? Talking and actions were two different things. Besides, her nymphs weren’t interested in Apollo or Orion, so their arguments were wasted. For all of Artemis’s intelligence, she was ignorant about some things.

Who wanted to impress a nymph when there was a goddess?

Apollo knew how Orion felt, or at least, Orion suspected he did. Apollo’s boasts were to demonstrate how no mere mortal was good enough for her. But Orion could play that game too, for Artemis was a strong and independent female, not another mouthpiece for her brother like the Oracle. The more Orion treated her with respect, the more she turned to him. Orion had learnt from those fools who had loved his goddess before him. The last who had tried she had turned into a hart and set her dogs on him.

Never objectify a goddess.

Apollo took a deep breath and stopped, looking out over the water.

“Are you a good swimmer?” he asked so quietly Orion wasn’t sure the god was talking to him until Apollo turned to face him.

“Yes,” Orion replied.  Simple responses were the best for dealing with Apollo.

“I suppose being the son of Poseidon helps.”

Orion bit back a hundred stories of his aquatic accomplishments. He wouldn’t let Apollo bait him.

Not today.

Last night by the fire, after the day’s kill had been roasted and all had eaten their fill, the nymphs had played their instruments and retold stories through dance. Artemis had sat beside him and had leaned against him as the night drew on, her wild fragrance warming him more than any mere fire could. She was a goddess, she didn’t feel cold or tired, so why had she done this? Orion believed, hoped beyond all reasonable hope, that this goddess he had given up his old life for was beginning to see him as more than just a hunting companion.

“How fast can you swim?” Apollo asked.

“Fast enough.”

“Shall we find out? Arte could be forever, we both know timekeeping isn’t a characteristic of hers.” Apollo unslung his bow from its quiver and strung it. “I’ll fire two arrows into the sea and we each have to get one. You can go first.”

“How will we time each other?” Orion asked. There would be some catch which would mean Apollo came out on top.

“Helios.” Apollo gestured up towards the god in his chariot roaming across the sky. “He sees all, he can time us. Or the sea, since it will know how long it has had to tolerate us in it. You choose.”

“The sea,” Orion said, removing his quiver and sandals.

Apollo loosed two arrows one after the other in quick succession.

“How do we know they’re next to each other?” Orion asked. “One could be closer to the other.”

Apollo raised one eyebrow in a manner reminiscent of Artemis when someone questioned her skill with a bow. Orion hastened into the water.

It was like coming home to an old friend. The waves greeted him joyfully, the mortal son of their godking. They buoyed him along, calming in rougher areas, remaining warm so his limbs did not cramp. Adrenaline kicked in. When he returned Artemis would be on the beach and she would see how superior a mortal he was, one capable of beating a god. She would listen to him, not Apollo. She would recognise Orion as…

An arrow through his head obliterated his next thought.

The waves swallowed Orion's body.

Artemis skipped down the sand dunes, hopping from peak to peak, with sure feet until she came to the place where Apollo stood, looking out to sea.

“You’re late,” Apollo said.

“And you’re not where we agreed to meet.”

“I got tired of waiting.”

“Isn’t Orion with you?” she asked.

Apollo shrugged. “I don’t keep tabs on your human dog.”

“Be nice. He’s a good hunter.”

“Is that what you tell him while you’re rubbing his belly in the evening?”

Artemis rolled her eyes. Apollo’s protective brother act was no longer amusing. She just wanted to hunt and spend time with her friends by the fire afterwards, but Apollo was spoiling it. Maybe a year or so without an invite to her hunt would remind him he could speak with her but not for her.

“I sent him for my bow and arrows,” Apollo said still staring out to sea. “I. I made a mistake.”

“Could you repeat that?” Artemis teased.

“Orion and I came across a mortal as we walked. He panicked when he saw us, and I knew. He was the one who forced himself on your nymph some weeks. He fled into the sea. But we’d left our weapons where we had agreed to meet you, so I sent Orion back to get them while I kept an eye on the mortal.”

Cold fury descended on Artemis. Her nymph had fought the human, but he had been stronger and overwhelmed her, ignoring her demands for him to stop.

Choice was a sacred thing. That any male thought they had the right to ignore the choice of a female, her right to turn them down, simply because they were a man or a god, angered her.

The underworld was too good for them.

“Where?” Artemis asked, unslinging her bow.

Apollo pointed. A dark speck floated in the water. A head bobbing up and down.

She calmed her mind, calmed her anger and took aim.

She loosed her arrow and watched the mortal sink beneath the waves.

Bending, Artemis put her hands into the water and asked the waves to bring back the body.

Then she thought of Orion. She would impress him with this story. That she was the goddess of the hunt and could make any shot she wanted wouldn’t matter. She liked the way he spoke to her, genuine and a little fearful, never forgetting what she was. He didn’t take liberates with her. Didn’t speak for her. Inviting him to join her company was a risk that had worked well.

Her self-congratulations died when the waves returned with their bounty. She would recognize that face, the shape of his body, his broad shoulders and narrow hips from any distance. The tunic she had given him. That mane of chestnut hair tangled and matted with blood. She knew her arrow no matter what head it protruded from.

Eternity stretched in front of her, a punishment of never hearing Orion’s voice again. Never hearing the teasing way he called her “my goddess” or the frustrating way he fell for Apollo’s baiting every time. Never trusting her back to him, confident he would protect her. Never feel his warmth as they sat together, sharing silence and.

And.

Artemis realized what she had lost.

“No!” she screamed, pulling Orion’s head on her lap. “No. Please. No. Say my name. Please. Just one more time.”

Apollo stood by his sister as Zeus set Orion’s body in the stars.

She had accepted his explanation that Orion must have chased after the fleeing mortal instead of getting his weapons as Apollo had asked. Watching her take responsibility for his lies hurt Apollo almost as much as her grief.

Not for the first time he questioned his choice. Was her pain worth what he had sought to protect her from? He loved her, not as Orion had loved her, as her brother he could never do that. He could never give her the companionship Orion could have, and yet that companionship wasn’t what she needed.

His sister was wild and free, impulsive, spontaneous. Orion would have changed that. He would have altered Artemis at her fundamental core. Taken away some of her independence and Apollo couldn’t let that happen. If he was order, she was chaos, and the world needed her as she was as much as it needed him. Her pain would lessen, of that he was certain, time healed everything. Even the pain of lost love.

Sarah Deeming lives in Cheshire, England. She’s a book reviewer and writer of short stories. Her work has appeared in anthologies and magazines around the world included Enchanted Conversation and Timeless Tales. When she isn’t lost in a story, she can always be found on Twitter @SarahLDeeming

Cover: Amanda Bergloff @AmandaBergloff

THE MILLER'S DAUGHTER AND THE GNOME by Lisa Kovac

I’m supposed to spin straw into gold.
Suggestions are welcome…

There was once a young woman whose father, the local miller,erroneously claimed to the king that she could spin straw into gold. When told either to recant this statement or to summon his offspring so that she could perform the purported feat for his majesty upon pain of death, the miller chose instantly to sacrifice his child rather than admit his addiction to tall tales.

“I must be optimistic,” the young woman said to herself as she scrutinized the royal environs for escape routes. “Whatever happens now -- whether I get out of here, whether I can barter tomorrow with his royal gullible-ness and save myself, whether some miracle happens and I really do wind up with gold, or whether I die tomorrow -- at least I’ll be rid of Father. He was bound to mix me up in one of his get-poor-and-run-out-of-town-quick schemes eventually. Or, mix me up more than I usually am by having to run behind him and return-fire with the rocks they throw after us.”

“What’s this I hear?” said a tiny man who appeared suddenly in the middle of the floor.

“How should I know what you heard?” the miller’s daughter answered. “Only you know how long you’ve been eavesdropping.”

“I did not,” said the gnome-like gentleman with an air of injured dignity as if to imply that she had grossly misjudged the extent of his misdemeanor, “enter in time to discern from you the exact nature of the task you have been set, although I understand it to be one which you are unsuited to. I also gather that the consequences of the task’s being left undone tomorrow morning may be somewhat injurious to your pleasing person or your still more appreciable mental faculties. If you care to enlighten me as to the precise nature of your predicament, perhaps I may be of assistance in some way so as to improve your chances of escaping this ordeal unscathed?”

“I’m supposed to spin straw into gold,” she said. “Suggestions are welcome.”

The gnome beamed at her.

“Happily, that particular task happens to be one of my own talents, which I will, of course, be delighted to exercise on your behalf. As a sensible woman who clearly comprehends the desirability of people being fairly treated rather than taken advantage of, you will, naturally, wish to repay me in some way.”

This little rascal was crafty. The miller’s daughter smiled. You knew where you were with crafty little rascals who liked to hear themselves talk. Such persons liked to be entertained, and they were often past masters at appreciating their own turns of phrase, clever antics, and bad bargains. They still more appreciated being out-witted by one-time opponents who gave guile for guile in defense of their own, but who weren’t interested in competing for the privilege of out-witting others professionally, and thereby stealing potential clientele. These people were so much easier to consort with than the giants who also liked to hear themselves talk but had no inkling that there were occasions upon which silent and self-interested observance of situations and consequences were warranted. This one had reason to think well of himself. His eloquence was as impressive as his ability to appear out of nowhere, which was, in turn, as admirable as his laudable if insufficient skill at rhetorizing his opponent into the wrong.

“What’s your price?”

“Your first-born child,” he said, evidently aping her brevity either out of a desire to imply respect for it, or, just perhaps, in genuine appreciation of it as an alternative manner to his own expansive one.

“Done,” she said.

She presented an immense heap of gold to the king that morning and upon the two following days. When he, in response, proposed, she politely declined the honor and retired to a house she bought with surplus magicked metal she’d gleaned from her supply before presenting the remainder to His Royal Gullible-ness.

The next evening, the gnome erupted into her kitchen bristling with the righteous outrage of the con man experiencing the indignity of being out-conned without the consolatory knowledge of exactly how the outsmarting had been managed.

“You didn’t marry that stupid king!”

“He’s much too stupid for me, don’t you think?” the miller’s daughter responded serenely. “I’m going to marry you, instead.”

The gnome stared at her in surprise for a moment, then grinned delightedly.

“And so, your first-born child will be my first-born child,” he elucidated the means by which this solution would fulfill the letter of their bargain. The miller’s daughter smiled back. She did not advertise the fact that she’d known he was the one for her well before he’d named his price. She’d save that tidbit for some significant anniversary, or some evening of celebration after they’d jointly pulled off an extraordinary bartering job. She would throw a few discreet rocks at people who might otherwise draw undesirable attention to them, he would employ his superb information-gathering and magical talents to good effect, and the baby would clap.

“And we’ll all scheme and connive happily ever after,” she said.

Lisa Kovac recently graduated with her Master’s in English from Western University in London, Ontario, Canada. She currently works as a writing tutor at King’s University College, one of Western’s affiliates.Her short story “Snow White and the Magic Mirror” appeared in Imprints: Ten Write Place Writers, a creative writing journal published by King’s University College in July 2018. In May 2017, her poem “Villanelle for the Writing Centre: A Monologue” was published in Connecting Writing Centers Across Borders, a journal of writing centre scholarship. She is currently at work on a collection of revisionist fairy tales.

Cover: Amanda Bergloff @AmandaBergloff

WHAT THE WATER TAKES by Katherine Kendig

She had eyes the color of the river,

the color of the lakes,

the color of the sea...

In those days the water was the water, whether river, lake, or sea, and it grasped and grasped and grasped. Rain and wave and current took what they could: gardens, boats, bridges, fools. Folk stayed close to home, kept sturdy boots on solid ground, and never, ever swam. Only Dell was different. Dell had eyes the color of the river, the color of the lake, the color of the sea. She soaked up rain like it was the blood in her veins, she floated on her back and let the current take her, she stood at the end of the old half-rotted pier and cast her line – and all might have dined on the bounty she brought in, if only they’d had the courage.

When they were grown, women were expected to choose a man to marry – but Dell had not. “I can’t marry a man who doesn’t love the water,” she said. “I can’t marry a man the water doesn’t love.” A dozen families drew up marriage contracts anyway and sent them to Dell, who tore them all into pieces. Each time, she ran to the end of the pier and tossed the tiny scraps into the water, where no one could reclaim them. They floated, paper stars in a watery sky, and then the water took them.

One day, a gray, wet day only Dell could love, she slipped out to fish. At the edge of the forest the pier stretched pocked and jagged into the mist, a remnant of a bolder time Dell had never seen – and there on the shore, hunched against the rain, feet planted firmly in the mud, was a man. Dell stopped dead, and they stared at each other.

“Dell,” the man said, straightening. “Good morning.”

Dell nodded, wary. The man waited for a word, but none came. He glanced at the forest behind her, gazing as if it might give him courage. Then he looked back at Dell, a little sadly. “I don’t suppose you remember my name,” he said, and he was right. He looked familiar, but Dell often remembered faces as if they were underwater: dim and blurred and shifting. Her silence stretched out, and the man flushed.

“This is for you,” he said abruptly, and he thrust a folded paper at her, creased by his grip, damp at one corner. Another contract. She shook her head and took it and stepped past him, onto the pier, already making the first tear, and the second. His voice followed behind her.

“I know you don’t want to marry,” he said, “but I truly –” Dell could hear his boots on the wood of the pier where none but she dared venture, and felt a shock – “I truly want to know you, Dell, and make you happy, and I hoped you might…” The voice trailed off, but the footsteps kept on, awkward and hesitant. Dell slowed and almost looked back, but what would it matter? She kept on, weaving confidently past the weak wood, her basket bouncing on her arm.

When she reached the pier’s end, she turned. The man was edging past a patch of rotten boards with his arms half-raised for balance, making his determined way forward. She waited until he stood in front of her, panting and sweating, his hood fallen back, face flushed.

“What do you want?” Dell asked. She held his torn-up contract in her fist.

He cocked his head. “You should know I – I would never try to keep you away from the water,” he said. “I know you love it.”

“But you don’t,” Dell remarked. She looked around at the dark water shivering with raindrops and the stark lines of the pier and the smudged shapes of the land they’d come from. She waved a hand. “You don’t find this beautiful.”

He looked at his surroundings, frowning with concentration, and then at her. “I find you beautiful,” he said.

Another fool, Dell thought, disappointed. She flung out her arm and the fragments of contract scattered past the edge of the pier. The man watched the scraps whip into the water, be pelted by the rain, slip under the surface. He bowed his head. “All right,” he said, pulling his hood back up as if he were surrendering. “I understand.” He took a careful step back, and Dell turned to the water to cast her line.

His quiet voice came from behind her. “I find you beautiful,” he said again. “And this – all this – it looks like you. It feels like you. I was going to say, I think I could learn to love it.”

You don’t have to, Dell might have said, gently. Other women will not ask you to. It will be better for you to find someone else. But she stared at the water as the man made his wary way back to the good solid dirt he loved, they all loved, and said nothing.

She stayed on the pier in the murmur-quiet of the rain and pulled up fish for her basket, one after the other, and eventually she stood to go home. By this time the rain had stopped, and the water was mirror-bright and mirror-still, so she couldn’t ignore the flash of white that rose to the surface, eddying with an unseen current, dancing for her notice. A single slip of paper, small and ragged. She frowned at it, but she knelt and reached into the water, trailing her fingers across the surface until the scrap curled into her grasp.

The water did not love people, but it loved Dell. It gave her food, protection, solace, joy. And now it washed up a single word, in ink that should have long since blurred in the wet: the man’s name. Dell held it in her palm and wondered.

She found him sitting against a tree at the woods’ edge not far from the pier with his knees drawn up, gazing fiercely across the water, lost in thought.

“Kaeth,” Dell said. His eyes swung sharply toward her, wary and solemn, surprised and hopeful.

“I could teach you to swim,” she said. “If you wanted to learn.”

Kaeth stood up, slowly, and his glance flicked again to the hungry shifting deeps that held Dell’s heart.

“Yes,” he said. “I want to learn.”

The water lapped at the shore, each wave its own breath, its own yes. Perhaps she would teach him and he would be terrible. Perhaps he would never stop fearing the water. Or perhaps he would learn, and she would learn, and one by one they would dredge the pieces of a shredded contract from the depths, and remake it.

Kaeth smiled. In a certain light, Dell realized, his eyes were the color of the river, the color of the lake, the color of the sea.

Katherine Kendig recently earned an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her work has been featured by The Cincinnati Review, PodCastle, and Shimmer Magazine. She lives in Champaign, IL. Twitter: https://twitter.com/kendigles

Cover: Amanda Bergloff @AmandaBergloff

ROSE PETALS AND BRINE by M. A. Ray

There’s a price, my dear,

There’s always a price…

Let me tell you a story.

Once upon a time, there was a witch with one white eye, one black. The white eye was white as spilled cream, as blue as driven snow, and it saw the world of spirits. The black eye was blacker than pitch, as blue as the feathers of a crow, and it saw the world of the dead. To the living world, where people walk, she was blind, because there's a price, my dear, there's always a price.

The witch had a stick, which she used to feel her way around her little house in the swamps, but if she lost it, which she sometimes did, she had trouble until she could find it again. She wasn't quite used to seeing the things she saw, not yet. She'd gone most of her life seeing things the way anyone does: over there, the table, and next to it the chair, and so on. But now she saw the spirits of the wood that had gone into making the table, and the soul of the flax used to weave the chair cushion. She saw the chipmunks and snakes and squirrels, every animal that had died here, down to the last spider.

Sometimes she screamed at what she saw: the breadth of it, and the depth, like the wide sea. She remembered that sight, the glittering top of it. She remembered her father's tobacco-breath whispers of what waited beneath the surface, the monstrous mermaids and the shining serpents. The mystery beneath the waves was like her mystery now, a mystery so great she couldn't contain it.

In all her time, she had never laid eyes on a man she wanted to see the rest of her life. She couldn't imagine waking up next to the same bristly face again and again, watching it soften and fall with age, watching the stubble gray and whiten like twigs covered with frost. It had seemed no sacrifice to give up her living sight, but now she could never see it even if she wanted to, and she felt the loss so much she had retreated from the village into this little house.

She remembered her father's face. When she closed her eyes, she could see his smile. Once, down at the well, she had spoken to the last remnants of him when his bones went warm seawater-soft, unable to contain him any longer. He did not approve of how she supported herself now, but he hadn't called her any names. He'd only looked concerned.

"Silath," he had said, "honest work never hurt anybody."

"No," she'd agreed, "but what honest work is there for a woman who's blind? I'm an excellent witch. I give all the little boys the creeps."

A thin line had appeared between his brows, the way it used to; his forehead had wrinkled just as she remembered. "That may be so," he'd said, and then he was gone, never to return in the land of the living or of the dead.

She had put it from her mind; most days, it was far away from her. Now she sold seawater in little bottles with bits of rose petals floating inside: love potions. Now she sold wormwood, tansy, and rue to girls whose love potions worked too well; now she sold ginger, garlic, chamomile, rosemary. The spirits of the plants spoke to her, and she found each one by touch, by sight of their souls. People brought her milk and honey; the last one to bring meat was Obadiah the butcher, and she screamed and threw him out of her house. The soul of the cow it had come from stared dolefully at her, and she couldn't bear to eat it. They brought her bread and sometimes, not often, they brought her a little coin with a hole punched through it.

That was Silath, and that was fine. She didn't have the least problem with her life, except that even when she felt lonely she was never alone. The spirits and ghosts crowded in around her when she most wanted to be left to herself, and she supposed it must be a bit like that to have children. (Silath would never know for sure if her idea was correct, but as it happens, she was close enough.)

Today the spirits and ghosts were giving her a headache with their constant bouncing and whizzing. She couldn't hear them--hadn't traded her ears--but they whirled and swirled and bounded around the room until she had to shut her eyes. Even then she could practically feel their wild excitement, like buzzing on her skin. She was cranky about it, too, so when the knock came at her door, she snapped, "What is it?" in her least businesslike way.

"May I come in?" said a girl, muffled through the door. She hadn't come before, or Silath would have known her from her voice.

"Yes, yes, come in," Silath said hastily. Her hand went to the front of her dress; she knew it wasn't on back to front, but she'd checked so often she did it on reflex.

The door creaked, loud on its hinges, the way she liked it, and a soft step came on the boards of the floor.

"Hello. I heard you sell love potions. Is that true?"

"It's truer than it isn't," said Silath, playing her Professional Witch role to the hilt. "Is that what you're after, little girl? You want to make a man fall in love with you so hard he can't see anything but you?"

"Well," said the girl, "not quite. But they do work, these love potions, don't they?"

Silath heard the girl's foot shuffle back and forth, shy. "They work more than they don't," she said, grinning huge and ghastly.

"Then I want to buy one."

"All right," said Silath. "Let's see what you've got to trade me."

"Hold out your hand," said the girl, and when Silath did it she put two coins in the palm, unpunched and perfect.

Silath felt them, felt the faraway king's face standing out like the coins were new. She bit one, and her teeth sank into the metal; real gold, heavy, chilly on her tongue. "This is too much," she said.

"It's all my fortune," the girl told her, "and I want a love potion."

"If you insist," she said, and found her stick just where she'd left it, to the side of her rocking chair. She used it to lever herself up and tapped the floor over to the shelf, though she knew where it was, knew exactly where the potions were. She could see the faint dying spirit of the rose she'd used to doctor the seawater, its petal clothes curled and dry as paper, and she found just the one. "Here you are."

The girl said, "I want you to drink it."

Silath couldn't help herself. She laughed and laughed, and the spirits and the ghosts covered her like a cloak. "Is this some kind of revenge?"

The girl's tone was so matter-of-fact it burned. She didn't move, and there was no change in her breathing. "No. I just want you to drink it."

"A love potion won't work on a blind woman," Silath said, full of scorn.

"Are you afraid?"

That didn't even deserve words. She tore the cork out of the little bottle with her teeth, drank the fierce saltwater down to the last drop, and flung the bottle to the floor. It shattered there like her own heart, and she lifted a bare foot.

"Stop!" the girl cried, as she stamped down on the fragments.

Silath stood there with blood seeping from her foot and tears seeping from her eyes, one black, one white. "Was that what you wanted?"

"No," said the girl. "I wanted to see if you'd fall in love with me. I guess you didn't, but sit down and let me clean this up. It doesn't have to hurt to try, you know," she added, with a smile in her voice.

"It does," said Silath. "Trying always hurts. There's always a price."

Deftly, the girl plucked shards of glass from Silath's foot. "Well," she said, "we both paid one. Shall we try?"

Her name was Rowan.

And she stayed.

M.A. Ray keeps their meat shell in Wisconsin. Where they keep their heart, they will not say.

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Cover: Amanda Bergloff @AmandaBergloff

HEARTWOOD by Hope Denney

Her beloved tree curved into

the shape of a heart at its center...

On the day that Princess Eleanor’s betrothal was announced, her favorite olive tree died. The most striking thing about the tree was that its two main boughs had curved into the shape of a heart at the tree’s center. Lightning struck it during a September thunderstorm and broke the heart. It severed the trunk halfway so that the tree leaned over, exposing all its heartwood to the driving rains. The tree was as beloved by Eleanor as family, so Hugh was surprised it didn’t bleed as it lay exposed to the elements, but no one asked the thoughts of a squire. To Hugh, the tree’s broken heart was a sign that the Princess didn’t love her betrothed. Although he was heartsore at the tree’s death, it also gave him hope.

As a lowly squire, he’d never spent as much time with Eleanor as he would have liked. He didn’t believe in love at first sight, but he also didn’t believe that it took long to see someone’s true heart. In a kingdom beset with treachery and selfishness, he’d never met anyone with Eleanor’s goodness. Instead of isolating herself behind palace walls, she tended to the sick and poor within the village. It was during these times that he got to know her. There were times when her eyes lingered on him for a moment longer than necessary when he spoke; when a slow flush would spread across her cheeks as if she noticed they were kindred spirits. Over the years, such events had grown more commonplace, and he knew some part of her returned his feelings.

Beset with grief over losing her, he sought the advice of the royal court.

“Have I a chance with her?” he asked the court astrologer.

The old man looked at him with eyes that had seen ages old kingdoms fall within minutes and unspeakable evil continue for generations.

“A princess is not meant for a squire,” he said through his time-streaked beard.

“But I love her,” Hugh said. He wondered what the astrologer saw in his zodiac; if the mere mention of his name with Eleanor’s sent stars colliding and the world off its course. He began to tell the astrologer of her heart, but the old man interrupted him with a chuckle.

“Love is a strange thing,” said the astrologer. “There are as many kinds as there are grains of sand on the shore. It never runs out, and there is always someone else waiting to accept your love. You will never have the princess. My advice to you is to find another woman.”

The words stung, but Hugh’s heart was unhardened. Next, he called upon the court magician, who was said to have greater powers than anyone at court.

“These are modern times,” the magician said. “We are firmly in our fifteenth century, but Paris holds on to a bit of magic yet. It delights my heart! I can cast a spell to make you a dazzling speaker, or make you grow taller. With the right words, I can make you clever, but there is no spell to make a woman love you. Even if there were, I wouldn’t be brave enough to meddle with another’s heart.”

“Love is a wondrous gift. Why should it cause me such pain?” asked Hugh. “Do you mean to tell me I am really to let Eleanor marry some dignitary she’s never laid eyes on, when I could love her better?”

“People are given gifts every day that cause them pain. Your tragedy is only one of thousands in this moment. You will learn to live with it, in time, and you may find that your feelings change.”

I shall go to the mage, thought Hugh. I will ask her advice.

Hugh found his way over deserted forest paths that whispered with the secrets of time immemorial, and he asked his intuition to guide him to the formerly sacred stone paths that once led to the temples of the gods. Eventually he came to a stone cottage hidden among curling vines and the leaves of thousands of autumns. His knocks went unanswered, and the birds above called their alarm at the sight of a human in a forgotten place. For three days, he waited outside the cottage, and when a west wind blew and the crickets shivered in response, the mage returned to her home.

“Child, I was out gathering herbs. Come in,” she said, although her voice was barely more than a sigh.

She examined his teeth, read his palm, and then looked at the dregs of his tea.

“Your heart is broken,” she observed, going to the stove and stirring a tincture that smelled of another world’s disappointments.

“Yes, my heart is broken, and I don’t know what to do,” Hugh confessed. “I have loved Eleanor for years, and now that she is to be married to someone else, I’m heartsick. At court, they all think me a fool. How is it foolish to love?”

“There are some who think it’s worth saving your love for those who can accept it,” said the mage. “I say it matters not. When the world was yet an infant, I strolled through her and admired the newness of it all. Some waters granted immortality, and there were patches of earth that restored life to the dead. There was a time when I spoke the language of the trees. But, for all the miracles that I’ve witnessed in this surprising world, there is nothing to make me believe that two people can come together if they aren’t both willing. If I were you, I’d ask for strength to bear your burden. That I can provide.”

“Yes!” cried Hugh. “Make me strong enough to bear it. Help me live with it, and let it never turn bitter in my heart as it does for some.”

“Are you sure?” whispered the mage. “There are many kinds of strength. There’s the strength of brute bodies, and the crack of lightning. There is death, and there is also strength in the back of a humble ant. I can grant you strength, but I do not know what form it will take.”

“I am certain,” said Hugh.

The mage turned to the stove and added leaves from her basket. When the scent of sleep wafted through the cottage, she dipped up a ladle of her tincture. “If you mean it, take this,” she intoned.

Hugh swallowed. The medicine was acrid. All the bloodshed and mercy the world had ever known spilled over his tongue. Time folded in on itself, and then there was nothing until he awoke.

He was in the courtyard of the palace. His arms were poised with grace and strong enough to hold the heavens high, but his skin was soft enough to invite birds and rain. His face was immobile and eternal. Eleanor gazed upon him with exultation.

“My old olive tree!” she laughed. “It’s alive, but how? Straight as an arrow once more, and the heart in the center is healed!” She leaned forward and kissed him.

If Hugh had a heart, it would have beaten faster, but instead, he let his leaves translate the music of the wind.

Eleanor sighed in contentment. “Indeed, I don’t know why, but this tree feels like home to me.” She curled up at the base of the trunk. “How lucky I am that my betrothed lives nearby, for I will visit as often as I like.”

In the sun-dappled morning, he reached out his boughs to her, and he felt his roots fanning out, seeking her as well. She rested there all day. When at last the sun sank behind the purple-crested horizon and she went in for the night, he was not sad, for he knew she would return.

Return, she did, again and again. Across fifty springs, he continued to love her. She read aloud under the shelter of his branches, and nursed her children at his foot. When her children were old enough to hear of her past life, she told them of a squire who had disappeared from court and of how she still thought of him from time to time.

“We were alike,” she mused, shaking her graying head, and Hugh allowed his branches to just caress her shoulder. “I always thought he could make me happy, but we could never have been together.”

The years rolled on across the horizon. Spring. Summer. Autumn. Winter. The sun rose and set. People lived and died. And still never a week went by that Eleanor did not make her way to him. As time went on, she moved slower and grew weaker, but Hugh only saw that there were tears of joy in her eyes on these visits. Memories flooded her soul in his wake. Like him, she hadn’t gotten everything she needed from life, but she had lived well nonetheless.

Then the day came when she fell into that last great sleep, and at her final request, was brought there by her children and the court. They made a dark, soft bed for her and, with tears, left her to rest. Hugh’s roots moved slowly and patiently. Forever had passed, and he was in no rush to finally hold her. As the birds sang and as the seasons continued their relentless march, he continued to carefully approach her. Until at last, his roots cradled her with tenderness, and over time they embraced her until, imperceptibly, they became one.

Hope Denney writes many kinds of fiction, but her one true love will always be Southern Gothic fiction. You can find her admiring the heavens through her telescope on most nights. Her work has appeared in The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Twisted Sister Lit Mag, Philosophical Idiot, and many other places.
She tweets under the handle @HopeDenney

Cover Painting: John William Waterhouse

Layout: Amanda Bergloff @AmandaBergloff