Wallie's Wentletrap
The Wishing Pool (173 words)
Where the wishes went, no one knew. Silver pennies went up and down, disappearing into the bottomless black water.
“Shh, shh, don’t tell me what it is,” said the goblin. “Just let it go.”
That was an impossible thing—letting wishes go. Emmy looked down at the coin in her hand and dropped it into the water, a little girl’s wish going down, down, and down.
Sang-Col (595 Words)
It was on a cliff of stone and ice where they met, the goblin chieftain and the human king. So the goblins called the cliff and the field itself Sang-Col, which in their tongue means “Blood-Call.”
The goblin chieftain was Scrape, known to her people as a fair but unyielding ruler. In the days before goblin lords and the self-named goblin king, a goblin chieftain recognized no path but their own, and Scrape acknowledged no master of her actions but herself and the God whom the goblins named Ovallen. For this reason, against the advice of her kin, she had seen the human king’s youngest son Patrick and dared to love him.
Christmas Day
The moon is shining in the sky
The stars are twinkling down
The frost is glistening on the grass
And on the rooftops ’round
And I am sitting in my bed
And thinking of the way
One night turned all nights upside down
And made this Christmas Day.
The Right Gift (119 Words)
No, not flowers. He liked flowers, but it didn’t seem right.
She sat, looking down at the quiet ground that was so unlike him. Davy had never been quiet. He had never stood still. Even in sleep, he was always tossing and stealing the blankets for himself. Peg’s mouth crooked in a smile. Darn it, she missed him.
But he wasn’t here.
Reflection (74 Words)
O looking back the way I came,
I found my future much the same;
The dreams short-lived, the shadows tall,
Still one true Light above it all.
The Waking (1019 Words)
He woke through stillness and cold. That waking was precarious, and came and went, like a lazy tide. But at last, consciousness impressed itself on him. He opened his eyes to the world again.
Eddie breathed deep. The heavy motion almost made him cry out. His hand went instinctively to the bandage around his middle.
“I wouldn’t.” Wurther’s voice was low but firm. “You are still healing.”
Amorphous
Summer’s lease is short
But if he had compared her
To a cloud we’d know
It was true for clouds
Somehow are never
The same but always
Changing under
Under the eye
And yet
They are always
Just the same
As a
Song.
Selkie Mom (99 Words)
Annie always wondered why great-grandmother never insisted on the truth. She wondered why the old woman allowed the legend to persist, when the twists to the story were often so lurid.
Then one day as she sat listening to her husband talk to their little daughter, she realized.
True Life (46 Words)
Pictures on the wall my stand
Day and month and year
No picture ever yet can catch
The memories we hold dear
Fire Arrows (331 Words)
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Sir Pedder raised his head. “Tell you?” he questioned, slowly.
“Tell me that you knew my father.”
The knight held the young woman’s gaze steadily. “I did not know him well,” he said. “But I remember him. He was a brave man. It was a loss to all of us, when he died. My duties kept me mostly at the castle, but when I was able I journeyed with him and his men, and was glad to fight beside him.”
