by Sarah Rodgers

Sealskin does burn, it turns out.
               
She was sleeping in our bed when I slipped away to do the deed. She didn’t know I had found the secret skin she had shed, and she never will.

I told myself I was setting her free. She wouldn’t be torn between land and sea anymore. She would be with me, fully, and neither of us would be alone. Love can look like this, right?

I didn’t know she would feel it, though. I didn’t know it hurts when you burn a selkie’s skin. Of that bit, I am innocent.

Loneliness burns, too.

* * *

SARAH RODGERS is a storyteller who lives in upstate New York with her husband and three daughters. In addition to (or perhaps due to) her passion for storytelling, she also loves movies, reading, and dancing.

by Jenny Morelli

Dear Little Red, 

I understand now why you wore a hood tugged low around your head. It was to buffer your fears. I understand now why it was red. It flared with your heartbreak and despair. The edges were equally frayed from the depth of your rage.  

This was your life, your grim tale to tell, a tale that began on a snowy night when a fur-cloaked shadow howled with hunger into the wind, desperate to survive. When you approached, bearing meat from your basket, the wolf chewed and swallowed, lay her head in your lap with warmth and gratitude and a love you never knew.  

Then a crack split the snow-muffled silence and your lap grew warm with her blood-red-hooded eyes as the Huntsman ran to save you, to pull you free from the monster, but you didn’t need saving, so you shoved him away as tears drenched your fevered, red-raged cheeks.  

You ran and you ran along the beast’s beaten path to where her cowering litter lay huddled tight and you covered them all with your red-hooded cape. You lowered your frayed hood against the winds, against the savages and lived your life with a newfound purpose, with a confound hope, with a profound love. 

* * *

JENNY MORELLI is a NJ high school English teacher who lives with her husband, cat, and myriad yard pets. She’s published in several literary magazines including  Spillwords and Red Rose Thorns, and has four poetry chapbooks with Bottlecap Press. Visit her website: JennyMorelliWrites.com 

by Christy Hartman

I grate a teaspoon of nutmeg into the bowl; preparing Finn’s favourite cake is a rare reprieve from my burden. Winter-fever picks off more villagers daily, snuffing them like Mass candles after the Saints are beseeched. 
 
My throat is raw, eyes red-rimmed from hours wailing for wee Orla Murphy. Finn had slouched on the cottage’s porch with the other men. Futility and grief hung thick in the air. The women inside met my keening with their own cries. My vigil only ceased when the child’s spirit drifted through the open window. I retreated to my home, hidden beyond the mist.
 
I’m reaching into the oven when despair’s veil descends again. I shrug on my cloak and succumb to the pull, wild hair flowing behind me, untamed as the river that dragged me under, sealing my fate. Back then I was Clodagh, devoted fiancé; now I am only Banshee. 
 
I feel his essence fading as I approach the cabin, his fear twisting into me. Fever radiates through the open door. My should-have-been mother-in-law kneels at Finn’s bedside. I writhe above the cabin; my guttural screams shake the walls. When his tortured body finally succumbs, his soul soars past. I give chase, crying out as he slips from view, into the fog shrouding the moor. 
 
Cloves and cinnamon scent the air around my house. I pause at the window. Finn is there. My Finn. I weep with self-serving relief. Crossing the threshold, I am eternally reunited with my love.

* * *

Christy Hartman pens short fiction from her home between the ocean and mountains of Vancouver Island Canada. She writes about the chasm between love and loss and picking out the morsels of magic in life’s quiet moments.