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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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(Continued)
The sky was just
starting to brighten into a false dawn when Elly awoke. She sat up
quickly, not sure if a rat had somehow made it into her bed and
was crawling over her even now. With a muffled scream, she whipped
the blanket off to reveal absolutely nothing. She sat alone in her
bed, without even a flicker of a rat’s whisker to suggest that
things had been different all night. She was just relaxing once
more when she heard a strange sound. Soft, gentle and coaxing,
sunlight and dawn.
Curious, she walked
cautiously across her room, keeping a wary eye out for the
fearless rats. Well, almost fearless—they absolutely refused to
go anywhere near her mother’s kitchen. But they would run right
up to a person to try and steal their meal from their hands, and
lounge in plain view in the middle of the day, certain that they
could escape anything. Still, no rats leapt out at her, so perhaps
the day-walking rats of her town had finally gone to sleep. She
pushed her bedroom door open and peered into the hallway. Also
rat-free. But the sound was growing louder, so she followed it
downstairs and outside.
Piper sat on the
porch, pipe to his lips. He still wore his hat, and he had
recovered his boots and coat, so he looked especially out of place
sitting outside, the only visible figure at that time of night. He
looked like he was playing a role in a play, or like he was a
jester in some court. The sweet, coaxing song that came from his
pipe completely defied any of that. "An angel’s music
couldn’t sound that beautiful," Elly thought. It was so…
Just what it was she wasn’t certain, but it was amazing.
He looked up with a
clack of his beaded hat and stopped to smile at her. "Hello,
Miss Elly. Did I wake you up?"
"Maybe."
She sat down next to him, feeling tired again. "It’s very
pretty."
"Isn’t it?
You can stay and listen, if you like."
"That would be
nice." She closed her eyes as he continued to play, weaving
pictures in her head. It was as though he was coaxing the sun to
rise, making sure that the day would be brightened by his music.
Slowly she began to drift off to sleep, leaning against the gangly
man. There was a slight hesitation in the music, almost as though
the player was confused, and then a warm weight settled around her
shoulders – a rather beat up, too-large coat. Then, almost as an
afterthought, another weight, on her head. She smiled, nearly
asleep, and snuggled up against the strange man who somehow made
her feel safe.
If anyone had been
awake to see it, they would have been as stunned by Piper’s
smile as by his music. But even the rats were asleep.
***
A rat, large and
black with a long scar running down the left side of his body,
poked his nose out of his home. The sun was coming up, and the
baker would be making bread. That meant there was fresh food to be
had, for the baker still only shouted when he saw rats, rather
than throwing something in the hopes of scaring the pests away. He
set out with a surprisingly derisive squeak, skittering across the
wooden floor of the Mayor’s house and only pausing long enough
to bite a hole in the coat that had foolishly been left on the
floor.
Suddenly something
held him in place and he sat up on his haunches, twitching his
nose and ears back and forward. It wasn’t food-scent or
fire-scent, wasn’t dog-bark or man-shout, but it had drawn his
attention. So he listened, curious. And he liked what he heard.
A place, the
feeling whispered to him, for all of the rats. It was a strange
feeling, a combination of sound and smell and thought and
certainly nothing he was familiar with. A place with humans as
foolish as these, but with challenges. Grain, so much grain,
enough for a hundred thousand rats and a hundred thousand more.
That last was a mental image of many, many more rats than there
were in this town. Dogs that know what they’re doing, but many,
many places to hide from them. Cats, lazy and arrogant, that can
be tricked, too. Tricked by a clever rat.
No rat would
declare that it wasn’t clever. That was a concept understood by
the creatures, and a point of pride to them. So they scurried from
their homes, children not even old enough to be leaving the nest
following their mothers, old rats who could barely feed themselves
hoisting themselves up, all of them intent on finding the source
of this strange feeling, this challenge.
It wasn’t hiding,
simply standing in the middle of the town. It was a man-creature,
but it didn’t seem quite as foolish as the rest of the beings in
that village. It stood far higher, and its eyes held more than the
glimmer of intelligence that the others had. Its scent was
unfamiliar, but…
I know where the
place is.
A sea of black
surrounded the strange man-creature, the one who knew how to speak
with sounds and smells and ideas. The man-creature couldn’t do
it alone; it needed aid from the long thing that it held to its
muzzle. Still, it was far more than any of the town’s rats had
seen for a long time. A clever ratspeaker.
Follow me.
The rats ran after
the man-creature as it strode down the streets, sending assurances
of rich foods and places for tricks, not just the boring fear the
man-creatures of that town held for them. A place where they could
prove that they were as clever as they knew they were. So they
followed, followed the sound of the long, thin object held to the
ratspeaker’s mouth, followed the clacking sound of the
many—tails? Ears? Hairs? —That hung from its strangely shaped
head.
Eventually, the rat
realized that they weren’t following the man-creature anymore.
It was long gone, only the glimmers of the feeling it had
projected leading them on. But…
He sat up on his
haunches, sniffed the air. It was thick with the scent of rats, of
kin, but over it all he could smell a strange, wild scent: food,
tricks, and a struggle for survival. He liked that scent. He would
go there. So he set off, breaking away from the clusters of
confused rats. And they followed him into the large forest west of
the town.
(Turn
the page)
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