Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 16 by Kelly Link Gavin J. Grant Read Free Book Online

silver thread to drown you in a pool . The sweetest poison in the world, the faster the new wife danced at the wedding feast, the warmer the new wife's body, the quicker the poison seeps. Its taint spread quickly through the young, would tinge the eyeballs and veins of the self-possessed. But in the end they all die. I wear her like that rage.
    The first gift I gave him was my grandmother's ring, to put in his bag of bones. He must never tell me, he must not let me see it again. He would be undone. This is why my husband does not speak to me. Why my son does not tell his father he speaks to me, and why he will leave, one day, and never come back. My son knows these stories are true because they are not like the stories I read him, or the stories I tell him of my world. These stories have no ending.
    Our house is lined with portraits of people waiting to happen. Their eyes beg me to look away, to take my cold stare and return to my room. They ask my husband why he picked me, why he brought me here, when they knew I would only send you away.
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village of wolves
    (the backdrop for a fairy-tale)
    Michaela Kahn once, this place was under the sea.
    only quiet fish swam here, salt in eyes, sea horses trailing through silt like skeleton fingers...
    in the village of wolves, no one speaks at night.
    there are eyes in the houses that blink on and off, leaving pale green marks where they've opened.
    in the village of wolves there is a man who rents himself out to the villagers. they take him home and stand him in the corner of their kitchen. he watches the family eat potato soup, spinach, and bread, serve coffee with milk to their guests. he watches the children dance around the table with small golden packages of sweets in their hands. when the meal is over, his job is
    done and he leaves through the back door, his payment, a bottle of sweet red wine.
    in the village of wolves if you smell pine on the air, it's only Mr. Kanahan, opening the doors of his balsam oil factory. if you smell rain, it might really be rain—but it could be the dream of
    Mr. Sark, who circles the town square each night, singing “Rex tremendae majestatis, Qui salvandos salvas gratis, Salva me fons pietatis..."
    in the village of wolves, the last wolf was shot in
    1894, but there are still a few coyotes.
    Once upon a time....
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Moon, Paper, Scissors
    Yoon Ha Lee
    White shapes fell from Mei's hands: here a narrow triangle, there a half-ripped crescent. A shadow cut across the pile of scraps on the floor. Mei stopped, her scissors gaping wide and bright. She did not look away from the blades.
    The voice came, not from the TV. It said her name once, twice—a third time, stopping short of four. The words fell upon her like snow, individual sounds lost in the voice's inflections. The hands took away her scissors.
    Mei understood what the words wanted. The paper shadows she had cut out were safe in her sleeve, a frail, itchy presence against her skin. She would have to finish the last one later. The white fragments she swept up and scattered into the recycling bin. The voice lowered in pitch, intensified. Mei opened and closed her hands, making them into scissors. Those shadow-blades could not cut her.
    The moon curved across the window and over the sky. Night followed in its wake. After the hands tucked her in and the feet took the voice away, Mei brought her family out from under the pillow and laid them across the blanket, over her lap. Mama and Dada and her laughing, laughing big brother.
    She remembered the smoke in her lungs, the hot gritty cinders. She remembered a bed that was not this one, with a lumpier quilt, and her brother across the room. She remembered.
    The only one missing in the family was Mei. She did not have scissors to finish cutting out the last paper doll. If she tiptoed out of bed, the feet would come and the hands would hold her until she pretended sleep again.
    She had her own hands.