Eight Questions for the Goddess
Eight questions, no time to prepare. Nobody likes a pop quiz.
Preview
14–20 min read
A girl summons a goddess the night before her sixteenth birthday. She gets eight questions and no time at all to prepare. Nobody likes a pop quiz. Will the goddess grant her wish, or curse her with a life of obscurity? And will she survive the night? Twenty minutes.
Love in a Dead Language
You cannot lie by omission to someone who reads the silences too.
Preview
15–23 min read
She paid her way in here with money nobody should have had. She is in love with a novice who can feel a lie the instant it is spoken. She has been lying to her since the day they met. Everyone has one thing they would have to say out loud. Twenty minutes.
How to Deal with Death
She has nothing left to trade. She is going to negotiate anyway.
Preview
13–20 min read
A woman kneels in a clearing while two teenagers argue about how deep to dig. The ghost of the woman who loved her is standing right there, unseen and unheard, trying to get a hearing with the Lord of Death. He is not a generous man. Fifteen minutes.
What About the Yak in My Mother’s Kitchen?
Everyone has had something in the way. Not everyone had this much of it.
Preview
13–20 min read
It is her sixteenth birthday and she is running away before lunch. She only wanted to bake her mother’s cakes first, for people who have never once thanked her. There is a two-thousand-pound yak standing in the kitchen. The doorway is intact. Fifteen minutes.
Keeping Up with the Daughters of Mara
Everyone has a feed they cannot put down. Hers is curated by demons.
Preview
12–19 min read
She taught herself to stay awake inside her own dreams. Now three of Mara’s daughters have adopted her, and they keep suggesting places to go — a bedroom, a yacht, a rented room in Tokyo. Everyone has a feed they cannot put down. Fifteen minutes.
A Portrait of the Daughter as a Young Rebel
She has one lunch to get out of a marriage. There is an audience.
Preview
9–14 min read
Sunday lunch. Her father. The man in his seventies he has promised her to. And her, sixteen, sitting right there while the two of them discuss what sort of sons she will produce. She has until the plates are cleared. Ten minutes.
A Study in Silver
She took the job to tide herself over. That was a long time ago.
Preview
9–13 min read
A farm girl walks into a walled city of millions with fourteen silver coins and a plan to study. Everyone has taken a job just to tide themselves over. Hers is still going. Now there is a way out, and it belongs to somebody else. Ten minutes.
Parallel Lives of Melvin & Mei
Two people fall asleep fifty years apart and wake up in the same room.
Preview
13–20 min read
A woman hiding in a warehouse in 1920 and a boy in a bedroom in 1970s New York fall asleep and wake up in the same room. They have never met, so they tell each other everything. Four armed men are already driving toward her. Fifteen minutes.
Sister Ruth
First day at a new school, and she is twice everyone’s age.
Preview
10–15 min read
She sold what she had to get into a seminary that teaches rather more than scripture. First day: she is twice the age of everybody in the room and does not know a word of the ceremony. Then somebody hands her the laundry rota. Ten minutes.
The Joy of Painting Your Own Reality
She sees the dead in every room. She would very much like that to stop.
Preview
9–14 min read
She sees the dead. In the halls, in the classrooms, crowds of them in every room she walks into, and she cannot turn it off. So she goes to the library to ask the formidable old woman behind the desk an embarrassing question. She does not get an answer. Ten minutes.
Uninteresting Moments of Necessary Silence
Half a potato. Ten years of vows. Nobody has said anything yet.
Preview
9–14 min read
Here you work in silence and you sleep in silence, and lunch is the one hour of the day anyone is allowed to talk. She has just offered the pretty new girl the rest of her potato. It is the most nothing gesture in the world. It is going somewhere. Ten minutes.
Milarepa’s Ghost
Never meet your heroes. This goes double for the dead ones.
Preview
11–17 min read
Twelve weeks into a year-long retreat — no water, no kitchen, scorched all day and frozen all night — she gets a visitor in her tent. He is a saint. He has been dead for centuries. He will not look at her and will not answer her. Fifteen minutes.
The Three Mahasiddhas
She has decided to freeze to death sitting up. Then the visitors arrive.
Preview
17–25 min read
Deep into winter, with no fire and no teacher and nobody within forty miles, she has decided she will freeze to death sitting upright and perfectly still. Then three long-dead masters turn up one after another, each with something to take away from her. Twenty minutes.
