short stories

Unstringing the Bow


There are secret places in the world, and our maze was one of them. Sometimes a queen or an astrologer or a poet will follow some inward silence and find our maze; sometimes a king or architect or musician will follow some outward cacophony and seek our maze, and we must hide ourselves.

Fantasy with a Borgesian flavor, concerning scholars studying strange echoes, linguistics inverses, and an illiterate woman with a purpose of her own. Thanks to Peter Berman, Helen Keeble, Mrissa, Timprov, Stacy, my sister, Margaret Ronald, Andrew Willett, Bill Kohler, Teresa Nielsen Hayden (Evil Overlord exercises!–except I used Murphy’s Laws of Combat instead), and Angela. Dedicated to Mrissa and Myn. Appeared in Ideomancer vol. 5, issue 2.