Tag Archives: The Shape-shifter’s Tale

My father called himself Irish but there was something else as well—something in the tilt of the cheekbones, the breadth of the nose, the wave of the hair. No one dared say it to his face, for those were fighting … Continue reading →

I liked to run about and to climb trees and to dance. The dancing became rather more formal, of course, and some of it we learned from vaudeville and from films, and some from the people that papa knew.  Papa … Continue reading →

I live in many worlds. There is a version of me who lives in the autonomous commune of Minneapolis and St. Paul (they never did change the old names), and another who lives in the America that never entered the … Continue reading →

My name is Sophie. In all of the worlds I know, I am one of three children. There is me, and there is Helen, and then Francis Patrick. We were all born in the teens of the century, … the … Continue reading →

What shocked me was that my father raised his hand to my mother. I saw that, and I saw as well that she suddenly wasn’t there, but across the room, and she said that she would not live like that. … Continue reading →

Then there’s the other thing they call love, which was rather longer in coming. There were girls my age, but they were not our kind, nor we theirs. No one ever spoke it aloud, but it was understood, and I … Continue reading →

I loved my mother, and my father as much as he would let me. But the first I really fell in love was when I was ten, and I got a baby sister and a kitten in the same day. … Continue reading →

I was twelve, the traditional age of apprenticeship, and my little sister was two, when my mother called me to the workbench and said that it was time. I had loved to watch her, of course, when I was small. … Continue reading →

This house is a fortress and a prize and a trap. I’ll sacrifice it willingly if it will draw the fire of our enemies and thereby reduce their strength. I think it will be a while before they figure out … Continue reading →

I can feel the grain of things. I don’t want to say that I talk to ghosts, but the evidence speaks to me much more eloquently. I am swifter to follow along to the place where the decisive thing lies; … Continue reading →