Sublime

A biographer of the novelist E. M. Forster wrote, “To speak to him was to be seduced by an inverse charisma, a sense of being listened to with such intensity that you had to be your most honest, sharpest, and best self.” Imagine how good it would be to be that guy.

zelkova tree

Leigh’s elm, Jean’s ash, Emmett’s ironwood, and Adam’s maple, each made from identical green puffballs.

In the months that follow, word spreads among the new-made steadings: the fey are abroad, invisible, of course, as told in the stories, but also nothing like the stories, for they seek bright iron. She listens to them, unseen, and smiles to herself as they whisper that no man may leave an awl or a chisel for a moment unwatched, or it will vanish;