A.R. Geiger

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…

Everyone else is asleep. The captain confined us to our quarters the moment we stepped on his ship, as if our ragged, bloodstained clothes and battle-scarred weapons threatened him. The others complied easily enough, they don’t mind being confined for a few days or a week. Most of them have done nothing but sleep and…

At midnight, the clock in the hall chimes twelve times. I listen to it, waiting until the last echo has faded, and then I get up and fold my blanket. And wait for the children. They come in twos and threes, padding up to my rooms in the attic like little ghosts, dressed in their…

The mountains rise above us, black against the blue skies, against the white clouds driven on by the keening wind. I can see the eagles above them, floating in the breeze, black specks among all that blue, all that white. We’re following them. Following the eagles. We have nothing else to do. The paths we’ve…