The crowd has already begun to gather by the time I reach the market place. Everything is sold here, everything can be bought. Melons, meat, corn, gold, silver, jewelry. Slaves. I look away when I pass their pens, because the sight still turns my stomach. It wasn’t so long ago that I was up on…
Last Sunday, I did absolutely nothing. Like, nothing at all. I lit a fire in my wood stove, made popcorn, and read the whole day. It. Was. Lovely. The book I chose was an old one, and probably familiar enough to most of you. I mean, who hasn’t read Anne of Green Gables? Besides me,…
I’m making tea when they arrive. They knock on my door, although anywhere else they would have kicked it in. “It’s a routine search,” they tell me. “Only a formality.” I let them in. What else am I supposed to do? Even I can’t make them go away, although their master thinks so highly of…
My breath hangs like a cloud in the still air when I step outside. The grass is frozen now, and the needles of the pines are white with hoarfrost. I missed these days during the summer. Our home is beautiful enough during the warm seasons, when the grass is green and the creeks are high.…
The birds are flying south now. When I go for walks in the morning with my dog, their nests are empty and the trees where they used to sit and sing their songs are bare. I can’t really blame them. It’s the wood sprites that chase them out, really. They don’t like the cold or…
“A maiden fair and a knight so fine went riding on a summer’s morn . . .” The song echoes in the narrow corridors outside my cell, bounding from ceiling to floor, stone to iron bars. I lay my head back against the wall and listen. Another tavern song, written to make the women blush…
A.R. Geiger