Stories

The Great Hall was filled with light and flowers, there were so many flowers, so many candles, the whole floor was covered in them. It felt strange for Aifa to watch the Twins, who were dressed up in their simple white garments and had flowers woven in their elaborately braided hair, sit donning unearthl...

“Aifa,” grandmother whispered, although nobody in the house was sleeping. “Are you ready, granddaughter? It is time to go to the Hearth.”

Aifa wrapped her garment a little tighter around her waist and w...

Anyway, that afternoon Aifa and the Twins were out on the daffodil meadow, which Ama and Jal seemed to be particularly fond of, when all of the sudden the sky grew dark and shook with rumblings. Any other children would have run for the hills, screaming their lungs out, but not the Twins, who looked mesmeri...

From the moment the Twins arrived, poor Aifa hadn’t experienced a moment’s rest. They were five years old now, constantly moving around and getting into everything, and last, but not least, they never stopped talking. They seemed to have reached that glorious age when everything aroused their curiosity a...

The closer it got to the spring equinox, the more animated the Grand Hall of the Hearth became, engulfed in a flurry of activities related to sprucing up, clearing and decorating it for the arrival of the Twins. Every now and then one of the Caretakers went out into the yard, to check if the ice on the p...

The Day of the Blessings usually started early in Aifa’s household. Aifa and her siblings were already dressed up in their costumes by the time the sun was high up in the sky, and were crowding each other in the kitchen, where they were all gathered to stuff their goody baskets with filled pastries and othe...

Towards the end of February winter started easing its grasp on the mountain springs, allowing them to come back to life, almost suddenly, in bubbling expressions of movement and sound. The tiny brooks searched for each other down the mountain, forming tiny pools and waterfalls, and when they could, they joined their forces in larger streams, with the playfulness of living things, and very young ones at that. From the window of her ...

Ifyou were born in Cré at the beginning of February, you would be among the youngest people to enter the Hearth. It was the yearly tradition that new mothers should bring the babies who have been born over the course of the previous year to receive a blessing. Aifa was born in the summer, so she was a few months old when she first breathed the air of the Hearth, which was believed to be able to imbue people with health and vigor, a...

“Wake up, granddaughter,” Aifa’s grandmother shook her gently, so she wouldn’t be startled out of her deep sleep. “We need to go to the Hearth soon, we don’t want to keep people waiting.”

Aifa got up qu...

Aifa had always asked herself, ever since she was a little child, why would a community decide to perform a ceremony that featured water during the time of year when it was almost guaranteed to be frozen. Of course if she asked her mother, she would have gotten hours of cross-referenced instruction about...

Onthe longest night of the year, the women of Cré gather quietly, dressed in their festive garments, whiter than snow, to walk the gentle hill towards the Hearth of the Gemini, whose limestone walls glow ghostly in the distance. They have no lights to guide them, other than those of the stars and the moo...

“Taylor? Taylor Bradford?” a voice called from behind the counter, with non-dissimulated boredom. “I’ve got the reference materials you requested. Where do you want them?” Taylor pointed to the table in the middle of the reading room and one of the assistant librarians who were working in that section dropped the thick stack of books on it, went back behind his counter and adjusted his ear buds to disappear into his own musical wor...

“Whoa, what’s on fire?” Taylor woke up the next morning to painful, unholy banging on the door. “What’s gotten into Christine, and why doesn’t she just come in, she knows the lock doesn’t work?”

She stumbled towards the door, nursing a bear of a headache, surprised to see that somebody had already repaired the broken lock. The door burst wide open, slamming into the wall, and in came Matthew, carrying a giant pizza, steaming hot. T...

“Where are we?” Taylor looked around, trying to recognize her surroundings. There was something very familiar about the place, it felt as if she had spent a lot of time there, but so long ago, maybe in a dream.

“For lack of a better word, dead,” he clarified, too calm for comfort. “Not dead-dead, just on the other side of the river Styx, visiting, sort of. Don’t worry, we’re going back.”

“I didn’t know one could visit,” she thought...

”Are you sure you are ready for this? It may be a little unsettling,” he asked.

“As sure as I’ll ever be,” Taylor answered, doubtful. She hadn’t slept well the night before, well, with the sea lion visiting and whatnot, and was a little concerned about the extra preparation required for this door. “What is it this time?” she tried to anticipate her challenge. 

“Just remember, whatever you see or feel, it’s all in your mind. You are...

The thing about the human mind is that it trains itself to be very efficient, so it automatically eliminates the events that have an extremely low probability of happening so that the brain doesn’t get burdened with useless information to the detriment of day to day activity. When these very rare events happen, the mind gets confused and resentful, trying in vain to reconcile what it thought it knew about the world with the new ima...

Taylor woke up to a timid knock on the door, followed by a soft fumbling with the door handle. It was Christine, who was trying to balance a large box of jelly donuts and two cups of coffee. She entered, sheepishly, waiting for Taylor’s reaction.

“Peace offering?” she said, from behind the donut box.

“What gives?” Taylor asked, more curious than upset.

“I”m so sorry, Taylor! I realized yesterday afternoon it wasn’t you, it was that...

“Have the lessons from yesterday’s field trip reached you yet?” he asked, smiling politely.

“More than I care to process,” she thought, still upset about the musts and the have to’s, but she answered in the same good mannered vein. “A few, I’m still analyzing them.”

“Just remember, before we go through door number three, that not every rule is there to be broken, but it helps, every now and then, to question your assumptions. It se...