Stories

“How did you end up here?” she asked No. 5, in a daze, realizing the inappropriate nature of the question before she had the time to call it back. It was no business of hers how these men ended up in the middle of the desert, enacting classic tragedies in the original Greek, and she would have been offended if they questioned her choices. In fact, she wouldn’t have known how to answer such a quest...

“Sit down,” No. 5 ordered, “you’re late for class.” ‘What class?’ Gwen looked around and saw everybody was sitting in a semicircle around the speaker, ostensibly to attend class. “Just sit!” No. 5 rolled his eyes, displeased by the time wasting. No. 4 and No. 1 scooted over to make room for her. By means unknown, someone had produced a notepad and a pencil, sharpened to a fine point, and the two i...

The crickets were loud in the night air, Gwen never realized there were so many insects in the desert, and their combined noise was loud enough to pierce through the gasps of the fire and the monotonous rhythm of the conversation, slowed down by the smokes and the tequila. No. 4 wielded a stick with which he kept poking at the fire, absentminded, and he looked as if he had retreated into a world o...

The purpose of the serenity path finally made itself clear a couple of mornings later when Gwen woke up very early to find No. 1 meditating at its end, perfectly at peace.  One would have assumed he was watching the sunrise, but a closer look revealed he was gazing way farther than that, through the sunrise into another reality, shielded from perception by the limitations of our senses.  An even c...

The next morning Gwen awoke to a sustained but orderly shuffling of boots, bags and paraphernalia and watched in bewilderment how the seven were quietly preparing for what looked like a military campaign. They looked serious and none of them was speaking, which rose Gwen’s anxiety to panic levels. She didn’t dare ask what they were doing. No. 5 spoke eventually. “Are you coming?” “Where are you go...

When Gwen was awakened by the chill of the desert night, she found herself in an empty house, dead quiet except for the eerie clinking of the bead curtains.  The quiet of the desert reaches beyond silence; it preempts the emergence of sounds, like an anechoic chamber. In the desert, one only hears two things: the wind and total silence. She tried to go back to sleep, but her three nights in the de...

“Welcome, light of the Sun, the fairest/ Sun that ever has dawned upon/ Thebes, the city of seven gates!”  ‘What in God’s name is this racket?’ Gwen jumped out of her made shift sleeping accommodation on the couch to watch a glorious sunrise accompanied by what sounded very much like an ancient Greek chorus. “Sophocles,” a soft voice replied, so close she could feel its breath on her ear. She jump...

She’d been walking through the desert all night. She figured it was better to walk at night, despite the cold; at least she wouldn’t get fried to a crisp in a place with no shade. One could say Gwen was experiencing an existential crisis and was trying to find herself, even though she was only twenty-four and the middle of her road was so far into the distance she wouldn’t get a glimpse of it for...

The meeting room of the Council Hall was filled with the electricity of anticipation but eerily quiet, as if the solemnity of the event muffled the usual banter and pleasantries. A request for a full plenum from Mrs. Eberhart was a rare occurrence, and even if quite a few of the ladies of the Circle knew what the meeting was about, they were still somewhat nervous about the details. Mrs. Eberhart...

The following Wednesday Giselle showed up at Lucille’s house for a nice cup of tea and a lengthy demonstration of her new embroidery pattern. The table in Lucille’s drawing room got covered quickly with bits of yarn, several types of canvas, scissors and pads of paper covered with sewing motifs, wristband pincushions, thimbles, cups and saucers, a teapot, a sugar bowl, a plate of cookies, still wa...

“So,” Lucille said casually, “I hear that our safely guarded secret school is the talk of the Village!” Mary looked at her with genuine bewilderment. “Giselle told me all about it yesterday over a cup of tea. Oh, by the way, could you ask somebody to figure out how to make this work? She left it with me to get looked at,” Lucille pulled the tablet out of the basket and set it on the table.  “How d...

After many months with only an impressive collection of desert artifacts to show for, Rosemary and her team were called back by the Council, despite clamorous protests and, on occasion, veiled threats. Every time she had to go to a meeting, Rosemary got into the habit of carrying around an object or other from the collection, which she liked to parade around the room as a symbol of her righteous o...

The more Mary delved into the recovery of the database the more she became tangled in the old story buried inside it, almost as if her own memories were finally brought back to life. At times she felt as if she had awakened from a long sleep and found herself in a room she recognized without knowing why. She had learned enough of the old code to understand that the Que’d held technical instruction...

In all fairness, Mary was banished indeed. The makeshift team at the rock mound spared no effort in setting up means to detect her presence, if and when she decided to approach the apparently agreed upon meeting place and look for her aunt. Every day a small group of ladies took it upon themselves to check all the tracking markers, only to notice that their condition always changed. The wind, the...

In the agitation created by the events that surrounded the search for Mary the Circle almost forgot about the cursed poppy experiment, and was only reminded of it when the second generation of plants emerged and bloomed even bluer than the first. Mrs. Eberhart shrugged at the sight of the field donning the color of the sky, irritated that the Council had wasted her time again with superstitious no...

Later that day Lucille prepared a basket of food, like she did every evening, not forgetting Mary’s favorite cookies, fresh out of the oven, waited for the night to fall and stepped out into the desert quietly, careful not to attract attention. She walked without noise through the soft, powdery sand, under the stars that shone so bright they cast shadows around the dunes and brightened the desert...

The cleansing ceremony in the desert came and went with no consequences, which was a little disappointing for Rosemary, who was hoping for some sort of vindication of her beliefs. Weeks passed, then months. The girls were as tired as always, but finally figured out ways to keep out of sight and thus managed to rest at least long enough to prevent themselves from falling asleep in company. Life in...

“May I have your attention, please?” Lucille cast her voice over the audience, and the murmurs and shuffles subsided. “Is everybody here?” she scanned the cave to make sure all the girls had made it inside, safe and unnoticed. When she was reassured that they were all there, she continued. “Before class starts, I don’t think I need to reiterate the importance of keeping this knowledge to ourselves...

It’s been said that nothing happens on this earth without leaving traces of its passing. Sometimes those come in material form, through the testimony of even the most mundane objects, other times through the subtle changes in behavior, and taking upon a different way to see the world. The lessons in the cave didn’t get lost on the girls’ hearts and minds, how can one discover an entirely new world...

The cave was sealed at dawn, with a very tired Lucille gazing at the endeavor in a sour mood, irritated by the fact that now she had to walk another fifteen minutes around the hill to the next entrance. Rosemary directed the activities with almost ceremonial gestures, pleased to have won this epic battle over the Que’d and unaware of the fact that she’d already lost the war. When the Circle was fi...

“Aah, Lucille!” Rosemary pinned her under an icy stare. “How nice of you to finally join us, dear! We were starting to worry that you might have gotten lost on the way here,” she commented, her sarcastic comment well padded by a sweetness that almost made Lucille gag. Since Lucille lived two blocks down from the Council Hall, the insinuation that she might not be all there didn’t escape anyone in...

Lucille returned after dark, and to her shock, she found the new cave completely transformed: a console had been installed, as promised, but also furniture, personal accommodations and storage modules. She saw what looked like a kitchen towards the back of the cave and set down the basket of food on the table. Mary wasn't there, and Lucille started to panic, prompting the one in the mirror to prov...

“Answer him, girl!” Mrs. Gentry prodded a very confused Mary, whose young heart oscillated between shame and terror. “Mary! Her name is Mary!” the lady clarified. “Who are you?” the grumpy guy retorted bluntly, making Mrs. Gentry recoil with indignation. “I believe it's untoward for you to address me, given that we're not related, nor have we been properly introduced,” she protested, ready to leav...

“Now what!?” Mary thought. “Oh, I knew it! I just knew it! It had to be!” Lucille couldn't contain her excitement, and all of a sudden she looked much younger, an echo from the care free days of her girlhood, when, much like her niece, she was willing to take on the world, no holds barred. “Do you think we can order the mirror to do things?” Mary asked. “Probably,” Lucille said thoughtfully, “if w...

Lucille and Mary spent the following week trying to learn more about what the mirror could do. There was one aspect of this endeavor that none of them could shake: as exciting as it was to communicate with the magical object, the Que'd manuscript beckoned from the chest where it had been carefully stashed, wrapped in linen and strewn with lavender buds to ward off the moths. Lucille couldn't let g...