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Cover
Table of Contents
Editor's Notes
Donations
Submission
Guidelines
Website
Stories
& Essays
A Wedding Toast For Daddy's
Little Girl
_ By Miriam N. Kotzin
Bread
_ By Debbi Pless
Flowers
_ By Rachel Miller
Gyokusai
_ By
Julie Jordan
Hearts Without Armor
_ By
Angela P. Markham
Mental Constipation and Brain Vomit
_ By
Winnie Khaw
My Best Subject
_ By
Ashley Polker
Piper
_ By
Samantha Rae
Requiem For An Author
_ By
R. Holsen
Sometimes It Pours Only Dogs
_ By
Saana Tykkä
The Black Tape
_ By
Brad Jashinsky
Poetry
A Slave To Time
_ By
Clyde Windjammer
Colour
_ By
Kaleen Love
Death By My Lover
_ By
Jessica Tempestad
I Am A Pineapple
_ By
Rachel Miller
Lament For the Lost Soldier
_ By
Melissa Augeri
Laundry Arcade
_ By
Ashley Polker
Left Silent To Dream of Wine
_ By
Kaleen Love
Mortality
_ By
Henry Grieves
Ode To Microsoft Spell Cheque
_ By
Arielle Demchuk
Reminiscent of Society As An Individual
_ By
Henry Grieves
Ship's Cook
_ By
Heather Inwood
The Phoenix
_ By
Kaleen Love
The Raven and the Dove
_ By
Melissa Augeri
Train Dreamer
_ By
Heather Inwood
Art
& Photography
S. Camargo
_ Photography
and Drawings
David C. Clarke
_ Photography
Wiltekirra Samaxionn
_ Photography
Anca Sandu
_ Paintings
Austin
Tanney
_ Photography
Ray
Tsang
_ Paintings
Mark
Warren
_ Photography
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Piper
By
Samantha Rae
Sunlight and leaf
whisper, peace and games.
That was what Elly
thought of when she looked up from her never-ending carding in
time to see the tall, gangly man in patchwork clothing stroll down
her street. There was just something in his sparkling eyes, in his
unassuming face, that reminded her of her early childhood, when
all that mattered was food and shelter and love. Mixed with the
reassuring promise that all three would be forthcoming in
unlimited measure, he was the most appealing adult the twelve year
old had ever seen. So she watched him as he walked past her house,
then giggled and blushed pink when he made a gently teasing bow
toward her with a warm smile on his face. She waved when he walked
around a corner before resuming her all but forgotten chore,
sighing her frustration when a large clump of briars appeared in
the wool.
Others would
disagree with her first impression. They would happen to look out
upon the gangly man who strode down the main street with inborn
confidence, admire the lavishly decorated, broad rimmed hat that
he wore as proudly as a king's crown, realize with some shock that
his clothing wasn't made of the silk and fine linen that his
confident smile declared them to be (but rather tattered cotton of
a rather coarse weave), and go away with their own views on the
stranger. Some thought that he sang of wealth and power, with the
means to raise others to that station; others nodded unconsciously
at his promise of safety and security. Still others thought that
he could mend anything broken, or close the rift between old
friends, or help find the right words to prove love. But all of
the townspeople who saw him, from beggar to Mayor, were absolutely
certain that anything he promised would be realized.
Having seated
himself at the town gates in the hopes of picking up a few extra
coins from the scattered travelers that occasionally passed
through, Axim—Hamelin’s sole beggar—was the first to meet
the man who radiated assurances of good, warm food and a safe,
comfortable home. Being the first to meet someone was hardly new
to him. What was interesting was the fact that rather than
hurrying past the beggar as so many travelers before him had,
intent on seeing the Mayor, the tall man paused mid-stride,
considered Axim for a moment, and then gave him a quick, ironic
smile before resuming his journey. It wasn’t the condescending
one that the beggar had seen all too often, but a shared moment of
understanding of a beggar’s lot in life, as though the stranger
had once been familiar with the trade. The only ones who could
have known about the rather gangly man before Axim were the rats,
and they had been comfortably asleep, safely away from the reaches
of the midday sun. That proved that the creatures were far smarter
than the humans that worked through the hottest part of the day,
or—at the very least—it proved it to the rats.
Mayor Tommer was a
crinkled old leaf of a man, with a crazed maze of wrinkles that
decorated his oak brown face, the impossibly gnarled twist of his
hands and fragile build only adding to that impression. He’d
been Mayor of the town for so long that perhaps the only people
who remembered him as anything other than Mayor Tommer were his
children—who called him Father or Mayor, depending on the
situation—and his grandchildren—Grampa Mayor Tommer. He was an
only child, and his beloved wife of forty years was a decade dead,
his parents even longer so. Whether or not he remembered his given
name, no one knew.
He was also the
only person who didn’t trust the stranger.
A moderate amount
of caution was one of a responsible mayor's qualities. Tommer's
son called it paranoia, but what did he know? It wasn't wholly the
gangly man's fault. With his proud, open stride, easy smile and
quiet charm, it came as a shock to many that the man who seemed to
be the key to their every desire was likely to be the one most in
need of aid. Safety, food, power, love—nothing was beyond him.
And what Mayor Tommer expected, no, what he wanted, was a rival.
He wanted the challenge of proving that though he was more than
half a century old, he could still hold his own against a
competitor. He wanted a foe dangerous enough to prove that he
wasn’t about to step down, yet not so skilled that he would lose
his town.
When the man stood
in Mayor Tommer’s office, the Mayor analyzed him carefully
through eyes half-buried in the mass of wrinkles on his old face.
The stranger's broad rimmed hat hung over his eyes and shadowed
his face, and beaded strings dangled from the brim clacking
against one another whenever he moved his head. A large, black
feather was tucked in the wide blue ribbon tied around his hat,
pointing back at the door as though telling Tommer to watch the
door. His dirt-brown knee-length coat was decorated with an
assortment of mismatched buttons that might possibly keep it
closed, though the Mayor doubted it. At that moment all of them
were undone to reveal a frayed red shirt that hung off of the
gangly man’s body, a few surprisingly neat seams that looked as
though they had been done with threads pulled from the shirt,
adding variety to the plain top. His pants (mostly hidden by the
coat) and his mud-caked black boots were only revealed as grey and
dingy when he moved. "Perhaps not a rival then, " Tommer
thought, but the confidence and not-quite-hidden pride that shone
through his tattered clothing still marked him as trouble.
It was more the way
he stood than anything else, radiating a quiet self-confidence,
gloriously certain that things would always work out in the end. A
small smile crossed his face as he met the Mayor’s probing eyes,
the sort of smile that was given to unimportant relatives of the
influential. The sort of smile that accompanied the phrase,
"Charmed, I’m sure," when it was obvious that the
speaker meant anything but. So Mayor Tommer replied with the sort
of smile that said, "As am I."
"I’m Mayor
Tommer," he declared, extending his hand and waiting to see
what would happen.
"Piper,"
the gangly man replied, accepting the hand. He gave it a firm,
brisk shake, not testing the Mayor’s grip but still revealing
some of his strength. "Charmed." He didn’t need to add
the rest of the phrase, didn’t need to use the condescending
tone or the smile.
That same smile
that had so charmed Elly had somehow become a challenge in
Tommer's mind, just as the once unusually fascinating clothing had
become all but a mess of rags. Or perhaps it wasn't the Mayor's
mind, but simply another aspect of Piper, that he could speak such
disparate worlds of meaning with the same smile.
"And what
brings you to our town?"
(Turn the page)
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