Fantasy Scroll Magazine Issue #4 by Iulian Ionescu

Author:Iulian Ionescu [Ionescu, Iulian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC028000, FIC009000, FIC015000, FIC003000, dark fantasy, fantasy, fantasy magazine, magazine, novelette, science fiction, science fiction magazine, short stories, short story
ISBN: 978-0-9916619-3-0
Publisher: Fantasy Scroll Press, LLC
Published: 2014-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

The next morning, mother went out to talk to the trees. She told Paylee the ancient ones said change was on the horizon. Paylee didn't need divine insight to gather that, but she also said a storm was coming, and with it, there would be irreversible outcomes.

Paylee didn't want to think about the future; it was only filled with uncertainty, and his past was more or less a vague memory of moving from mountain side to cave and mountain side again.

Today, though, in the stone garden, a nice cool breeze blew in from the North. Paylee sat silent and focused like a peregrine. He cleared his mind to the present, and deepened his breath into the now. In his hand, he held onto his own rock wheel, twine twisted and pulled taught around small rocks in a web pattern between a bent, rounded branch. When the wind blew, the rocks were supposed to vibrate, a sign of the ancients ready to commune. Paylee's didn't work so well. The rocks kept slipping loose of the twine or they sagged against it. Maybe that was the reason he hadn't heard their whispers, he thought. Either that, or mother was wrong, and he wasn't seer.

In the distance, across the river, Paylee overheard voices. He ducked around fir branches then stopped abruptly at the site of Raine with a girl dressed in village clothes, tapered, bright linens that formed to her figure. Paylee's heartbeat quickened, his fists clenched, and sweat dampened his face as he watched Raine pick her a small bouquet of flowers and tuck them into her hair.

Who was she? Paylee thought she looked like a princess, a lithe frame that moved as graceful as the Nymphs. He saw excitement beaming in Raine's smile, maybe it was happiness, but whatever it was, he'd never shared it with Paylee or their mother.

A sweep of anxiety flushed breath from Paylee's lungs as suspicion filtered into his thoughts. Raine planned to make his passage back into the village through the likes of the girl. Paylee peered at them closer and realized for the first time that Raine was almost a man. The village would take him in, no matter that he was the child of a witch and seer. He was handsome, muscular, and knew the land better than anyone. Unlike Paylee and their mother, the village needed him.

But so did they.

Tears breached Paylee's brutish fight to swallow them back, and he ran from the stone garden all the way back home.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.