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On the first day of Windy Season, Mina woke at dawn. The house was already filled with life. Her mother boiled water in the kitchen, the hiss of steam matching the clattering of the wind against her window pane. Her brothers whispered in the room beside hers, the walls thin as the skin over their bones. "When the North Wind wakes, He carries a large sword," Vincent said, reciting the chant her family had spoken for years. "He cuts down the trees so the seeds will spread and circle the globe, making new life and forms." "Then the West Wind carries a large spoon to stir the waves," Samuel added, his voice reedy like the wind through the chimney. "He scoops up the pearls, the fish, the whales, and sweeps what we need onto the shore, to eat and rejoice." "Then the South Wind swallows the land whole. He kicks up dust and makes a fuss so we can see our better selves." "While the East Wind listens close for the ghosts of last year's sadness, and He gives them back to the land. So it can start again." "So it can start again," Vincent echoed. Mina repeated the final line for herself, "So it can start again." Then she let out a long breath, like she knew each of her brothers was doing, pretending to be the wind. Mina listened as her brothers scrambled into the kitchen, greeted their mother, and began breakfast. Though Windy Season would last another three months, allowing the dirt, crops, and landscape to change all around them, the first day was special. And while Mina had longed for this moment, she was also afraid. After breakfast and a reading from their grimoire, the family would gather the ashes of the dead. Last year, it was their dog, Sanders. The year before that, there had been no dead, only dried flower petals used as a substitute in order to say Thank You to the spirits for keeping them hale and fit. A different year, there was another dog, Mackenzie. Before that, a stray cat, a calf, and a fox that her father had accidentally killed. Then Mina's memory became fuzzy, like sand grains or snow squalls against a window. This year it was her father in the clay vessel on their mantelpiece. It was he, Jordan Sullivan, who would be released into the wind the first day of Windy Season, so he could begin his long travel to the land of the dead with the help of the four cardinal directions. Like all the deceased in their village, man or animal alike, Jordan had been cremated shortly after death. That had been six months ago, when a flu gripped his chest and not let go. The death midwife, a woman named Bea, delivered the ashes to them and stayed for a celebratory dinner, where they spoke about Jordan Sullivan's life. Though long ago now, Mina was still sure she could smell the venison, cooked potatoes and other root vegetables, and the flowery scent of the death midwife in the air. Mina had been silent during that dinner, only speaking a handful of words about her father--good man, I loved him--and her mother had been saddened. "You are the oldest," she chastised once the death midwife was gone and the ashes of her father remained on the mantelpiece, waiting for Windy Season. "You need to set an example." Mina had taken her lashings and apologized. But she'd also remained quiet, aloof, in the background, a shadow for the following six months. No more. Now that Windy Season had truly begun, she believed she could sing her father into absolution, leading him to his first stop on the journey of the dead. "Well," her mother said, once Mina had joined them at the table. "Look who finally showed up." Mina ate in silence. Her brothers sang their song, and though it moved their mother to tears, she didn't ask them to stop. Once the dishes were cleaned, they gathered their Windy Season gear: goggles, bandanas, and long clothing though the heat of the day would grow. The wind whipped against the house, clattering the windows, and making the chimney scream out. Mina grabbed her father's ashes. When her mother challenged her, she simply said, "Please." "If you're sure, then." Her mother held the door open, her knuckles white against the fierce winds. "Hurry. We do not have much time." The four of them assembled on their front lawn. Trees bent in all directions; all grasses were flattened; and beyond their hands, nothing was visible. Mina licked a finger to check directions, but it was soon caked with dust. Her bandana stood up straight, as if attacked from all sides. She didn't know what direction her father was to begin. "Hurry!" her mother cried. "He cannot wait another year." Mina surveyed the vast horizon. There was no sense of direction, no opening her father could ride to his final resting place. Nothing to see or hold onto. Vincent began to sing. Samuel followed. Their voices warbled, but not with sadness. Their words were plucked by the wind, steering the directions according to the song. When her mother joined in, the directions grew stronger. Mina sang too, the wind following all their voices in tune. At the final verse, Mina opened her father's ashes. They exploded like sparks on a lit fuse, like fireworks from another time period, distant and foreign. The wind took the ashes and held a body in place. A man, a shadow. Perfect. Then he was gone. Her family cried, tears mixing with dirt and making mud on their cheeks. They sobbed for their lost father, their husband, a man named Jordan Sullivan, who was now part of the earth, ready to fly towards his rightful place in the land of the dead. "So it can start again," Mina said. "So it can start again," the wind echoed back. Eve Morton is a writer living in Ontario, Canada. She teaches university and college classes on media studies, academic writing, and genre literature, among other topics. Her poetry book, Karma Machine, was released in late 2020. Find more info on authormorton.wordpress.com. Cover: Amanda Bergloff Twitter @AmandaBergloff Instagram: amandabergloff

Once there was a proud and independent prince. Although respectful in his duties and affectionate with his family, he was the first to leave state dinners and wander the gardens alone. The queen worried his independence would turn to loneliness. She often prayed for him and whispered her hopes to the palace blooms. But on the night of her untimely death, her young prince found himself alone with dreams of dark and pressing clouds. When he awoke, his toes were dark and stiff as if bruised by his dreams. With a hard swallow, he stuffed his feet into thick socks and stepped silently through the day’s doleful duties. On his second night without her, the dark clouds came with growing speed. They rushed like tides of smoke, blotting out blue patches and casting familiar shores in sickly, shifting shadows. In the morning, his body was heavy with change. His blackened toes felt neither silk carpets nor stone floors. His ankles were hard as stones, and purple shadows mottled his legs. With clenched teeth, he ordered tall boots and walked stiffly through another day. For seven nights, his dream clouds churned and piled. For seven mornings, he awoke to heavy bruises that climbed his body and sent out spidery streaks of festering green. He sought to cover them with dark britches, long robes, and flasks of whiskey, but on that seventh day, a beaten prince gulped for air and rang for help. The king responded with his best physicians, but their draughts proved powerless. He requisitioned augurers and holy men with incense and oils, but still the shadows pressed the young prince. He even called the red-faced nurse of the prince’s infancy with her porridge, but the darkness continued to spread. With a worry beyond pride and prayers, the king issued a public decree offering gold, titles, and even the prince’s hand in marriage to any who could cure his son. The noblewomen of the palace city came first with gifts of broth and flowers. Then came the wealthy women of the north with their fine firs and packets of ash tea. Even the golden maidens from the farthest coasts came with briny scrubs and cloudy stews, but no one could save the prince. His nightmares and their piercing winds increased. He was bruised to his neck, feverish, and sucking shallow gulps of air when a freckled maiden knocked at the service door. Her eyes were bright and blue as orchids, and she spoke with such calm assurance that a kitchen maid led her straight to the prince’s side. They found him confined to bed, thin lipped and sinking in his pillow, but the young woman did not quail. She took from her basket a candle, dark as his deepest bruise, and lighted it on the table beside him. She breathed in, slowly lifting her toes and lowering them as she exhaled. “Who is with you in your storm?” she asked. He closed his eyes like a weary cat, and she understood. Drawing from the basket a small pot of dark soil, she pressed into it a tiny, purple seed and sprinkled it with pearly feather down. She placed it near the candle and sang a lilting tune that drew from the prince his first public tear. This she caught on a golden spoon, warmed in the candle flame, and used to water the seed. “Who is with you in your storm?” she asked again, but the prince only blinked. So, she called his father King, his young sister, and a maiden aunt to his side. Each heard her strange tune, offered a single tear, and watched as she warmed it in the candlelight and watered the seed. When the last family tear had been added, she held the little pot to show him a small and waxy stem peeking through the dirt. Without a word, she filled herself with a long, slow breath, lifting her toes and setting them gently down again. Then, she sang her little song until exhaustion overcame his fears, and for the first time in days, he slept without dreaming. When the prince awoke, his cheeks were pink as if kissed by a warm wind, and the heavy shadows had receded below his shoulders. In relief he shed another tear, and this too she warmed on her golden spoon and poured over the little leaf which stretched tall as a lark beside him. “Who is with you in this storm?” she asked. But the prince merely pressed his lips together and looked towards the door. By way of her own answer, she took another measured breath, lifting and lowering her toes and then began to call the palace staff to his side. One by one she brought them; the befuddled valet, the red-faced nurse, the dusty maid, the cook with her tea, and even the kitchen girl who had opened the door to his orchid-eyed savior. They, too, heard the strange tune, added their tears to the spoon, and watched them used to tend the little plant. And when they had gone, she took another measured breath and sang him to sleep. In the morning, she asked again, “Who is with you in your storm?” and he replied with a small nod towards the window. So, she called to his side the Queen’s gardener, the royal grooms, and even the boy who saw to the barn cats. They had tears of their own to share, and these, too, she warmed in the candlelight and added to the pot. There could be no secrets with such a system, but no one could argue her results. Life returned to the prince. He breathed deeply, sat tall against his pillows, and hummed a lilting tune. So, when she asked again, “Who is with you in your storm?” he knew it would always be her. Together they sang the lilting tune, and she watered the waxy stalk and its first of many buds with her own candle lit tear. Susan K. H. Newman is a teacher from Northern Virginia and a Teacher Consultant for the Shenandoah Valley Writing Project. When not at her desk, Susan enjoys laughing with her book club, long walks, and baking cookies with her husband and kids. Cover: Amanda Bergloff Twitter @AmandaBergloff Instagram: amandabergloff

Zeus scowls down one summer Sunday afternoon at a town unconcerned with a grimace from the sky. He glowers. He glares. He strives to blanch the tame blue blush of pristine July. His frown intensifies. A single wet drop of Olympian spittle descends through contortions of cumuli. His grumble exacts no tribute save an idle upward glance and the half-hearted curtsy of my umbrella. Every other passerby ignores the once-lord of weather’s unheralded return. No one asks him for an alibi. The braised rage of the sun pierces a cloud in two places— his unblinking eyes. Blind to being so scrutinized, vacationers occupy beaches and benches, luxuriating in the leisure of their waning weekends while high above the trimmed green park, intermittent Frisbees fly. Only I spot Zeus observing the frolics of fearless apostates until the sharp breeze foretold on TV by pinstriped oracles with Hollywood smiles shears off his beard with such precipitous vigor and smothers his final, silent, harmless goodbye. Eric Pinder is the author of Counting Dinos, If All the Animals Came Inside, How to Share with a Bear, and other books about animals and nature. He teaches in New Hampshire at a small college in the woods, a few miles down the road less traveled. Cover: Amanda Bergloff Twitter @AmandaBergloff Instagram: amandabergloff

You're not like other fairy godmothers Her tone is disapproving As if my weakness is an affront To her--little brat Wait until the next storm rolls in Lots of people get headaches Yes, many do but this isn't Just a headache, this is migraine Systemic, my body perpetually Overreacting to stimulus It doesn't make them useless Not useless; just not what she's Used to and she knows not to push Too hard, because my power Comes in with the rain and lightning Is a storm coming? You'd think she would open with The question, not the light insults But she's never been terribly Astute--or kind Is that why you've got the lamps off? It's not, it's just a normal too-bright day But a storm is coming, I can feel it The same way she can tell when her Prince is looking at her Maybe we should move you to the dungeon This is an old--and tired--joke I don't bother answering "Take in the crops before Sunday" Her look changes; she has learned to listen Just the crops? I nod because the rest I must do Stay awake and keep our little kingdom On the border of the storm, make destruction Skip and jump and mostly miss us I hope this isn't like the one last year I made the mistake of trying a new tincture Right before the storm: I slept through it And it tore through the land I let what's left of my power show in my eyes Are you trying to scare me? Frustration and betrayal surge through me And the shutters slam, one at a time She smiles, respect on her face like It used to be when she was young I guess you're not worthless after all I guess I'm not--I'd ask her To bring me some tea Or at least send a servant But she's already to the door Hope you feel better The worst hope and I've told Her so, this isn't a temporary illness That one recovers from--this is my life One she stomps all over Maybe try some exercise I let her hurt me because I need Her and at some point during Our campaign to win a prince I grew to love her Well, good night I'd like to say she loves me too But though migraine makes my vision Sparkle and dim, I can see the truth: I am useful to her and nothing more Gerri Leen is a Pushcart-nominated poet from Northern Virginia who's into horse racing, tea, and collecting encaustic art and raku pottery. She has poetry published/accepted by The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, Dark Matter, Dreams & Nightmares, and others. Visit gerrileen.com to see more. Cover: Amanda Bergloff Twitter @AmandaBergloff Instagram: amandabergloff

Once there was a girl born without eyes. She didn’t know any better, so she was happy. She had a voice like a nightingale and loved to tell stories. But her mother hated her because she was imperfect. One day as her mother stormed the girl asked, Why do you shout so, mother? and the older woman snapped Because you are so ugly! The girl asked what ugly was and her mother got crosser and crosser till she shouted Ugly is a bag of onions! and she threw onions at her daughter. But the onions did not hurt the girl. Instead, two fell into her empty eye sockets and suddenly the girl could see. Of course, they were still onions so her mother screamed and ran and the girl, sadly, bound up her possessions behind her and set out to try her fortune. At night Onions wandered villages and towns singing for her supper. She was always welcomed until she came into view. Then people ran away and she would weep. Unbeknownst to her, however, each time she cried—almost every night— her tears dissolved a ring of the onions. Rain didn’t dissolve them, nor snow. Just the hot salt of tears. Came the time it was winter. Onions burrowed into a haystack and made herself a room of sorts, where she could sit and sing, invisibly, and asked the villagers to leave food and water, which they did. An acrobat wandering by fell in love with Onions’ voice and paid the farmer good money to live in the barn and do chores so they could listen and talk to Onions. But she refused to leave the haystack. She had been beaten and run from enough. The acrobat persisted, saying the animals must have hay, and, finally, Onions couldn’t bear the thought anything, even animals, suffered because of her and she emerged hay every which way in her hair. The acrobat had never seen such beauty, As she raised her head, they saw her eyes, and they began crying. That must hurt awfully, they said, and as they wept and held her, the tears they shed rolled down her face. The last of the onions dissolved leaving real eyes as gold as onion skin. And they lived happily for many years. And that is why, child, you cry when you cut onions. Hurry up now. Put them in the pot. Jennifer A. McGowan won the Prole pamphlet competition in 2020, and as a result, Prolebooks published her winning pamphlet, Still Lives with Apocalypse. She has been published in several countries, in journals such as The Rialto, Pank, The Connecticut Review, Acumen and Agenda. She is a disabled poet who has also had Long Covid for 15 months at time of writing. She prefers the fifteenth century to the twenty-first, and would move there were it not for her fondness of indoor plumbing. Cover: Amanda Bergloff Twitter @AmandaBergloff Instagram: amandabergloff

Wind Spell —after Joy Harjo In the time before, it was never written down No pens. A long line of mouths. A wolfman hovers beyond the tree line, taste of flesh on his tongue. A basket over a girl’s arm, crumbs fallen. The predator prowls the woods, the path, the outlying cottages. He eats every unfortunate passerby. What he cannot eat, he saves for later. He makes wine. Jars flesh. Waits. Rumors run like pigs. Like school children. Like a mother’s butterfly stomach, weighted for the wind’s howl. Like shortcuts loafing toward full moon twilights. Like a basket inside a cottage door. A dandelion seed purchased where there is no wind spell for wishes to float free. Wait! Not this once. Instead, try Once there was a woods that was only a woods. The village folk used to go birding, speak to owls, hear the throaty croak of ravens, listen for the songs of a nightingale. They had lived together, cooked together, whispering rumors of red sky mornings. They had tried to pretend a wolfman hadn’t moved in, grandmother’s cottage was under construction and the disappeared had left only damp shadows soaked into paths. But once again Once upon another time Memory failed and the forest shadows grew larger and toothier with eyes sharp enough to see in the dark— the fallen fabric of a daughter’s red hood, the ribbon, the sash, a walking shoe wilting beside the path of pins the basket lined with cloth for protecting cakes Start with a different once! Once, after a lifetime lived inside the village walls grandmother had moved, longing for the seclusion of the forest. Trusting her granddaughter would come, she had left the cottage door unlatched, curled up in her nightgown, recalling memories of trips made when she had been a girl. Choosing her path. Before If the girl in the red hood starts here she’ll never make it to the end of her story. Someone has to keep her eyes open, sings her grandmother to the day, to the night, to the wind spell that can carry dandelion wishes to far-off places where it can seed into the heart’s loam and take root even as the girl walks the path of pins or that of needles. It would not matter. For even if grandmother was eaten, the girl would have the sense to escape. And she would find helpers along her journey home. Yes. Once upon this story. Kristen Baum DeBeasi’s poetry has appeared in Blue Heron Review, Contrary Magazine, Menacing Hedge and elsewhere. She was Moon Tide Press’s Poet of the Month for July 2021. When she isn’t writing words or music, she loves testing new recipes and collecting fallen leaves or twigs for her fairy garden. Cover: Amanda Bergloff Twitter @AmandaBergloff Instagram: amandabergloff

Her sorcery-cloaked sisters come seeking her spells. The Sea Witch asking for An ocean tempest for a prince’s doom and A mermaid’s voice. The Ice Queen willing To pay for a shard to pierce an eye and Freeze a heart. The Enchantress in need of Gloom and rain to seal a merchant’s fate and A daughter’s loss. Stirring storms of fire and ice, Water and wind, Shadow and light, The Weather Witch obliges. Chanting Meteorological incantations, she conjures Cold nights for lost children and Dry wastelands for sightless lovers, Sea squalls to drown sailors and Blizzards to blind travelers. Her cauldron brimming with Gale and flood, she speaks the spells Her sisters seek. Brewing Air and atmosphere, The Weather Witch obliges. Deborah W. Sage is a native of Kentucky, USA. She has been published in Enchanted Conversation, Eternal Haunted Summer and Literary LEO. A former business executive who after years of being committed to the bottom line is gaining equilibrium in her psyche through her endeavors in folklore. Cover: Amanda Bergloff Twitter @AmandaBergloff Instagram: amandabergloff

They always talk about the shoes, not the electric slick slide of soles on glass, or the ice that shook me on the stairs— what use are slippers against tempests? Those things I couldn’t reuse, I left scattered like lentils on a dress of ash. Hurricane in a pumpkin, we dressed my carriage with my skirts as a sail. Mice are better than rats, nimble rescuers, enough fairy magic left to bless passing squash, disemboweled into a fleet of floating gourds escaping on the tide as the moat rose, waves crashed. As the clock struck midnight I looked up in fear, not of losing wishes or princely kisses, but at clouds leaving blood in their tracks. I ran, prince with one shoe went for help, but now we float tethered to branches of hazel and willow. When the waters subsided, we cleaned together, hands clasped, my limping, blind sisters grateful to learn to survive. I wept in the muck and turtle doves carried us seeds. My love first kissed me in that field, sparkling shoe embracing life as a trowel. The story doesn’t mention that the former prince sold a marvelous slipper to feed our people through winter. Or that our wedding happened amidst the rubble, my dress of sailcloth, his suit of rags, attended by survivors, busy rebuilding a city and not a castle. Dyani Sabin is an author of speculative fiction, poetry, and science journalism. Her work has been published in Strange Horizons, as well as National Geographic, The Washington Post, and Popular Science. You can find her haunting a cornfield, chasing ghosts on the endangered species list. Cover: Amanda Bergloff Twitter @AmandaBergloff Instagram: amandabergloff

Long ago, in the coastal village of Soltriste, while dreaming, a woman named Dolores met Death. Santa Muerte was wandering the shore not far from Dolores’ home, her bare, skeletal feet sinking into the sand. The early morning sky grew overcast with dark gray clouds, and the wind blew tremendously, its howls causing Santa Muerte’s robes to flutter and her bones to clack. The diosa stopped where the waves could perfectly kiss her ankles and stared out at the open sea. Dolores turned to find what captured the skeletal woman’s attention only to discover a fishing boat: her beloved Rio’s boat, undoubtedly loaded with the village’s men at work. Her Rio, who had weathered her through her family’s fever-induced deaths, who had saved her from all her pain, sorrow, and grief. The water, wind, and sky morphed at alarming speeds, churning and blowing and darkening into a much different landscape. Rio’s boat shook violently, bobbing and weaving out of control. Santa Muerte raised her arms with palms turned upward, and realizing her intention, Dolores screamed, begged, dropped down to her knees. She tried, quite futilely, to grab at the diosa’s robe, but her hand simply passed through, her words failing to reach Santa Muerte’s nonexistent ears. Trapped in this helpless hell, Dolores could do nothing but watch as the clouds, at their stormy peak, unleashed a lightning bolt that struck Rio’s boat, splintering wood and setting the deck ablaze. After a brief second, which stretched into infinity, Dolores awoke following the boom of thunder, tears streaming down her cheeks, to a cold and empty bed, a terrible storm raging outside, and a bright pinprick of orange light sinking from the horizon into the sea. For days and weeks and months afterward, the remaining villagers of Soltriste found the sailors’ bodies washed up on shore, distorted into unrecognizable, bloated forms. A heavy melancholy dominated over lost fathers, sons, family, and friends. The air, already so salty, carried an even more distinct tang as tears were shed, their salt evaporating into the communal atmosphere. Dolores did nothing but sit on her porch day after day, legs tucked close to her chest, arms wrapped around, body facing the ocean, waiting for a return that would not come. One particularly foggy, rainy day, Dolores was curled into herself upon that porch once more, a dash of color amongst the gray in her yellow rebozo. As she kept her dull-eyed vigil, Santa Muerte suddenly materialized from the fog, condensing from airy mist into solid bone in a matter of seconds. The diosa approached, rain bouncing off her figure as it dared not to soak her, while Dolores looked down to hide her anger. Stepping onto the porch, silent as if she glided rather than walked, Santa Muerte knelt to Dolores’ level. Up close, she could smell the diosa’s compelling floral scent, Aztec marigolds and roses among her robes, which, mixed with the rain’s rich, earthy aroma, evoked the coming of spring. “Hello, mija,” Santa Muerte said with her ancient voice, reminding Dolores of her long passed abuela. “I sense you are quite angry with me, so I have come to listen.” “I-I am not angry with you,” she denied. “Now, we both know that’s not true.” The diosa spoke with such authority that Dolores couldn’t object. “Mi niña, I am here. Speak what you must.” A long moment hung in the air before Dolores said, her voice cracking around the edges, “Why did you kill them all? Why didn’t you spare them, spare him?” “Because I am death, mija. All living things must die; it is my duty to carry away the souls of those departed. I am not the arbiter of when or where or how.” Dolores’ rage and despair twisted into a messy knot inside her tattered heart. “But why him?! Why Rio?! He was a good man—I loved him—he didn’t deserve this!” “It was his time, mi niña. Nothing can change that, not even I.” “Liar!” Dolores’ impudence poured freely from her mouth. “You didn’t need to do this! You didn’t need to take him from me, why couldn’t he have stayed?! Why have you done this-” “No one’s ever really gone, Dolores,” the diosa replied kindly, despite Dolores’ harsh words. “Everywhere and in everything, you can find those you’ve loved and lost. All you need to do is keep an eye out for the remaining traces of their time on this earth.” Santa Muerte raised her skeletal hand and cradled Dolores’ cheek, her bony grip smooth, warm, and gentle. Her skull’s eyeless stare bore into Dolores with a depthless wisdom. “Go on, mija. Hurry, and take that look.” Weary, Dolores obediently turned her gaze around, desperate for any hope. And there, astoundingly, she found it, him, in the rain. Rio didn’t look the same as before, constructed now with water, translucent and nearly featureless. But she could see his outline, his figure, tall and slender and strong—she would have recognized him anywhere. She jumped up from the porch, Santa Muerte already vanished before her, and rushed into the street, her rebozo dropped into a puddle in her haste. She threw herself into Rio’s arms and found him surprisingly solid, droplets from the downpour hitting his aquatic skin and incorporating into his being. Dolores clutched him close, and he embraced her back, running his wet fingers through her hair as she sobbed and professed her love, his only means of comfort without a voice. The two lovers swayed together in the street, locked in a simple, affectionate dance. And as she calmed, Dolores finally noticed her fellow villagers, greeting their own loved ones, all as ethereal and diaphanous as her Rio. Tears fell, smiles bloomed, and laughter abounded as everyone delighted in the company of the dead, who soon faded from sight with the storm’s passing. None despaired however, for they knew that no matter what new sorrows sprung up, they could always look forward to the next rainfall. Sarah Garcia is an MFA Creative Writing student at Mills College. A self-described Chicana bisexual disaster, she loves fairytales and writing the weird, horrific, and fantastical. Her writing has been featured in UCLA's FEM Newsmagazine and Westwind, and she received honorable mention for Mills College's Marion Hood Boess Haworth Prize. Cover: Amanda Bergloff Twitter @AmandaBergloff Instagram: amandabergloff

Mushrooms emerging From saturated ground Mist bearing shoots Scatter faintly Among tree roots Chirping echoes above As other nests Are feathered Crocus peaks out Through remaining Scattered icy traces Chrysalis spinning On softly greening limbs Cloudy dreams forming May soon come true Chartreuse froglets Multiply high and low Curious young things Explore bright colors Lured by scents Returning from deep Within the Earth But straying far Extracts a high price Beware destroying angels Bewitching mimics Fool the untrained eye Sampling newly emerged Saprophytes which Seem like treats Yield a death cap Toxic though tempting Such smell and taste Transports its victim To another realm Never to return Maria DePaul is a Washington, DC-based writer whose poetry, prose and reviews have been pushed extensively in print and online, most recently in Haikuniverse, Haiku Journal, Poetry Quarterly and Three Line Poetry. Cover: Amanda Bergloff Twitter @AmandaBergloff Instagram: amandabergloff

Editor's Note: Fairy tales and flowers - the perfect way to celebrate spring - is today's enchanting essay by EC's very own, Kelly Jarvis. Enjoy! In the early spring months of my New England childhood, when snow still spilled from the sky to embrace an awakening earth, my grandmother and I circled our backyard searching for the first signs of flowers. She told me the story of the crocus, bruised purple from its daring ascent through the frosty ground, and the tale of the fragrant hyacinths, collapsing under the weight of their own riotous beauty. She taught me the names of all the flowers, and I delighted in her words as much as I delighted in the blossoms. As the weeks unfolded, forsythia, azalea, magnolia, and hydrangea rose as if at her call, sprinkling the still barren landscape with spots of color. Wild bunches of Queen Anne’s lace, silver swords, bluebells, and fairy slippers ignited my imagination and made me feel like we were walking through a storybook, gathering magical bouquets to usher in the season of new life. Now, as I wander through volumes of fairy tales, my memories of my grandmother help me notice the flowers that scatter themselves across the page. The Brothers Grimm have several tales that feature flowers. In Little Red Riding Hood, the wolf distracts the girl from her journey by pointing out a field of beautiful flowers, and in Jorinda and Joringel, a blood-red flower disenchants everything it touches, turning hundreds of nightingales back into girls and stripping an old witch of her evil powers. In the lesser known A Riddling Tale, three women are transformed into flowers and in The Pink, a Prince who is gifted the power of wishing turns a maiden into a bloom to transport her through the forest. Snow White’s sister, Rose Red, is named after a red rose tree that grows just outside their lonely cottage, and the Grimms’ Sleeping Beauty is called Briar Rose after the climbing hedge of thorns and petals that will knit themselves together to protect her enchanted sleep. The Brothers Grimm have even leant their name to a variety of Fairy Tale Roses that grow in clusters of orange blossoms. No fairy tale rose is more famous than the one featured in Beauty and the Beast. In Jeanne-Marie LePrince de Beaumont’s version, it is Beauty’s request for a rose which prompts her father to pluck a flower from the Beast’s garden, setting the plot into motion. Walt Disney uses the rose as an icon for its treatment of the tale. An old beggar woman offers the flower as payment for shelter in a castle. When the Prince of the castle rudely turns the poor woman away, he is transformed into a hideous beast who must find true love before the last petal of the enchanted rose falls. Oscar Wilde explores the red color of this most romantic flower in his heartbreaking fairy tale The Nightingale and the Rose. When a student complains that his professor’s daughter will not dance with him unless he gifts her a rare red rose, a nightingale offers her sweetest song to stain the white petals scarlet. Upon learning that “only a Nightingale’s heart’s-blood can crimson the heart of a rose”, she concludes that love is greater than life, and allows the rose-thorn to pierce her heart. Wilde wrote during the late Victorian Era when the language of flowers was used to convey complex messages about love and affection, but even contemporary floriography recognizes the red rose as a symbol of passionate love and the dark crimson rose as a symbol of grief. Hans Christian Anderson fills the gardens of his fairy tales with roses as well. In Little Ida’s Flowers, a little girl dreams about flowers attending a ball, seeing “two roses who wore gold crowns” and in The World’s Fairest Rose, the title flower is the only thing that can save the life of a dying queen. The air is filled with the scent of roses at the triumphant conclusion of The Wild Swans, but this story turns on another flowering plant known as the stinging nettle. Only after Elisa gathers nettles from a graveyard and blisters her hands by sewing the leaves into shirts for her swan brothers can she transform them back into human form. It is a tulip with red and yellow petals which gives birth to Anderson’s Thumbelina, a child so small she sleeps in a polished walnut shell with a “mattress made from the blue petals of violets and a rose petal coverlet”, and flower imagery can even be found in Anderson’s winter masterpiece The Snow Queen. Kai and Gerda play among the rosebushes growing on the rooftops of their houses, and when Gerda journeys north to rescue Kai, she enters the garden of an old woman where “every flower you could imagine from every season stood there in full bloom.” The beauty is so intoxicating that Gerda forgets her quest for some time, and it is only when a painted rose stirs her memory that she asks the tiger lily, morning glory, daisy, hyacinth, buttercup, and narcissus to share information that will help her find her lost friend, but the flowers are “standing in the sunlight dreaming up their own fairy tales and fables” and offer her only cryptic messages about love. Inspired by far-away fairy tales and long-ago garden walks, I like to think about the stories that flowers tell when they unfurl their leaves against the warm, damp air of the season. Trapped in darkness and nourished by melting snows, their roots must know of sorrow and grief. Yet, each year they send their tender shoots struggling to the surface to paint the chalky gray landscape with brilliant colors. As the forsythia, azalea, magnolia, and hydrangea bloom, I can still hear my grandmother’s voice whispering their names on the breeze, calling my attention to their beauty with her enchanted incantations. Each year, I gather her ghostly words like petals and tie the bouquets of her old stories together with silky ribbons of memory to celebrate the precious return of spring’s fairy tale magic. Kelly Jarvis teaches classes in literature, writing, and fairy tale at Central Connecticut State University, The University of Connecticut, and Tunxis Community College. She lives, happily ever after, with her husband and three sons in a house filled with fairy tale books. She is also Enchanted Conversation’s special project’s writer. Image: Pixabay

When we fell apart Snow took us in - She muffled our sorrow, Forged our tears into Jewels and Knives. The taste of snowflakes and The smell of cold winds - These we devoured together, like Candy, like love. What is ice but a Mirror Dark enough to Hide sorrow, Sadness, Memories? We want none of them. We want: Avalanches, Blizzards, storms, Shards strong enough to Rip through who we Should, would, were. Dr. Sara Cleto and Dr. Brittany Warman are award-winning folklorists, teachers, and writers. Together, they founded The Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic, teaching creative souls how to re-enchant their lives through folklore and fairy tales. Their fiction and poetry can be found in Enchanted Living, Uncanny Magazine, Star*Line, and others. Story Graphics: Amanda Bergloff