Three Drops from a Cauldron - Issue 19

Three Drops from a Cauldron Issue 19 September 2017 Edited by Kate Garrett Poems copyright © 2017 Individual authors Issue copyright © Kate Garrett

Cover image is ‘Blue Day’ by Belinda Rimmer Image copyright © 2017 Belinda Rimmer

Three Drops from a Cauldron Issue 19 / September 2017 On making rowan jelly by Mandy Macdonald Bed Time by Phil Wood A Child Etched on a Stone by Jacob Butlett Changeling by Olivia Tuck Pixies and Tech by Simon Williams Three Poems by Margarita Serafimova Something Borrowed; Something New by Patty Blanchfield Sequana by David W. Landrum the selkie wife by Sharon Phillips Eagle Shadow by Mel Parks Taurus by Sergio A. Ortiz Wolf, Running by Bethany W Pope Dictionary for the Young Medusa by Katie Smart Eternity by Elana Gomel

On making rowan jelly first, pick your berries when the goddess of the tree hands clusters of fruit down to you in a graceful, stooping gesture a gift of red they must be as red as the face of a goldfinch as red as the rippling underside of a northern sunset as red as magic boil them up with apples and cinnamon boil them down with sweetness till they become syrup of rubies honeyed blood amber if your rowan tree lets you make free with her jewels, feeds you like this it must be done at the autumn equinox

Mandy Macdonald

Bed Time In a red saucepan milk’s bubbling to make my chocolate drink. Flames tickle the pan.

A pair of black beetles scuttles across the chessboard floor. They battle over crumbs.

I sip the hot sweetness and let the steam become a dragon’s breath to ghost my glasses.

Before I climb the wooden hill I'm read a tale of feasting on a house of cake.

I hear the creak of Nan rocking her chair and note her eyes are bloodshot, that two beetles are splattered under the rockers. I hear my grandad's clock. I hear the click of locks.

Phil Wood

A Child Etched on a Stone after Eavan Boland You discovered it among shadows and dust, in the coldness of autumn moonlight.

A child etched on a stone.

Crooked contours curved on a rough exterior in a Neanderthal’s resting place.

This is your face. Your ancestors etched it.

A stone drops from a cliff.

The sun ignites its fall in light.

The eternity of winter chills it in snow.

You’re etched there.

This is life. It’s the somber reminder of rebirth.

You desire a mirror you can live in. You desire a mirror you can climb out of.

You yearn to extract this trapped child as one catches a catfish in the summer, and releases it to its world of water, of continuance— So that spring which is still the soft look of leaves, the immortal frown on a poet’s face, the hardheaded grin of your younger self,

might be, from this moment, a golden flowerbed at your feet. Jowls. Lips. Might be a tongue whispering. Do not.

Do not forget.

Jacob Butlett

Changeling A mother woke and found an elfin decoy in the cot. Its chin was an icicle. Its ears were needlepointed. It was still when she lifted it to her breast. A sliver of cold moon. Her little one had had a way of looking at her. A flushed gaze. A giggle. He would have smelled of cotton; placed his hand against her jaw.

When she stared at the creature, it would turn away. Its face would morph into a jack-o’-lantern, as if supernatural light pulsed behind its carvings. She whispered, this is not my baby. To her husband, this is not my baby. To her parents, this is not my baby. To the prim health visitor, this is not my baby. To the solemn psychiatrist, this is not my baby. They shut her up. All of them. Said it was nerves. She would cry to the chime of the distant clock whilst those who could sleep did so. Valium brambles circled her. She was queasy. Skittish.

Throughout the dead hours, she would visit the nursery. Brush her fingers against the faery infant. Recoil. She knew. She knew. Five years later, the child has green eyes. I’m not a loving boy, it says.

Olivia Tuck

Pixies and Tech The battletank of Bellever is a good two miles from Dunnabridge Pound, among ‘field systems’ that look like little more than freehand walls.

On a day when the silhouette of rocks is cut against grey, as though someone’s drawn an outline and flood filled the sky, we climb between slid boulders, scramble the last rock plates to the trig pedestal and look at the wind.

It’s on the way back we follow the wrong line on the map among the gorse, hopping grass tufts to the Laughter Stone.

Looking back, you say I was pixy led, that I never made true friends of them, say how they dislike GPS, while I say there are more tracks than the OS cares to show (a fact confirmed by a brewer down the pub, the following week).

As the light fails like a global battery pack and neither of us shows our panic, I use the compass on my phone.

It says we should move away from all metal to get a better reading.

We head for a pine plantation across the headwaters of a stream.

In among the trees, walking twice the scheduled distance down a metalled track, we see two deer, white tails glowing in the dusk like cursors.

I still have no signal, but you walk with energy from hugging the cromlech, five bars all the way to civilisation.

Simon Williams

Three Poems One July afternoon among the Cyclades, watching the vivid waving reeds, I saw clearly that the wind was spirit. * Something whooshed.

A dark falcon passed over my shoulder.

In the shine of this summer, other lives are awaiting me. * For hours, the bright sea was drinking me, and falcons were winging.

The kingdom had come.

Margarita Serafimova

Something Borrowed; Something New The Sun lead Day after Day into Life – no direction but what the compass said was East – a trudging chorus of resolution. There was a time he would paint the sky for anyone watching, kiss the water in passionate bursts and caress every petal just to taste the silk nectar but he grew tired of the beauty below.

The aching perfection of the world stifled him. He hid his face behind the clouds and the mountains and let the rain r a i n d o w n rainbows and lingered longer and longer behind the horizon, retreating earlier letting the dreariness recede; he was sick of the bleak brilliance of each dimlit Day betraying his reflection till he hid his face behind the Sea letting the heavens drift without him and as the waves rose and fell in the deafening silence around him, he fell asleep.

Sick in apathy.

He dreamt of storms ravaging the mountains that were his shelter, lightning penetrating the Earth to its core and the gaping maw spreading wide enough to swallow him and the pressure was pulling him in to be buried.

When he awoke, he was afraid – his sin washed over him as the tide changed from high to low and he rushed to the crest of the waves to bring Day back as he swore he would, as he swore himself, as he swore to his duty anew in unfaltering fervour at the horror of his hubris but before he reached the break, he stopped.

The Sea and its skies were illuminated.

But how? He had slept...

He had slept and Day never managed to change without him before but here he is faded in the crest of a light so mesmerizing it pained him. It was a light without his care; a darker but warmer light that glistened in the waves the way his light never could and he was angry for wishing to bathe in that light, ashamed that the waves could seem happy without him.

Then he saw her.

The light that the waves, though she let them borrow the stars, wished only to embrace as they pulled harder and harder from the shore. The light that left a quiet over the chaos and let it breathe. The endless light was Moon and Sun trembled for her.

He crept slowly, beneath the waves, back to Day, intoxicated with the memory of her imperfect yet soothing glow.

He needed her light. Sun came back, again and again, beneath the waves, every time he stayed longer and longer longer than he should letting darkness fall sooner letting her night linger in the hopes she would know she would see that he favoured her light and if she wanted he would give her the sky just to watch her move and paint in vibrant mythology the story of her eyes and let him watch but something was wrong – she seemed… less. She began to seem less as each night wore on and the beauty she once held for him had faded into her sadness and she'd come to caress the waves but little by little she began to hide her face.

He couldn’t stand it. He wished to hold her, embrace her very self and let her borrow his light if need be, though he felt his light too harsh to compare.

He began to chase the night to ask her, comfort her, anything, anything to see more than the sliver of her beauty she left behind in the sober light of mo(u)rning.

Each night he’d chase her and each night she'd turn her face; he begged Venus for help and she laughed.

He began to burn the waves at every chance because they always seemed to be reaching for her but every night she cooled them in a kiss that cradled their depth.

In blind jealousy he asked Orion to shatter Morningstar who followed her too close

but Moon picked up every piece, careful as god, and scattered them in the Sea. He watched the glimmering shards drift and fade and in his anger the heat became a syphon out of which he seemed to seep and when he looked up, once again, his was the only light he could see.

And Moon turned her face.

Patty Blanchfield

Sequana Goddess of the Seine River Sequana sees bridges as chains that hold the river down, though, too, she knows they form a sheltering space for creatures that have served as its décor, its choir and health, cleaning its filth and slime, replenishing its life through tiny tasks, millennia on end.

The Celts and Romans knew her in a time when marshes were the cushioning on which the river slept, when frogs in symphony sounded at night, even in Paris, then a garrison village. The Gallic folk, conquered by Caesar, heard their song—so did Centurions. Sequana would stretch out her healing hands to the infirm. Her shrine, set at the source of the Seine’s waters, still yields images: the limbs and sculpted parts of bodies, sickened, brought to her in hope.

She still walks by the light of stars. Healing is in her tread. The unexpected cures we read about and marvel at are from her touch of grace—bestowed despite the dearth of offerings, absence of small girls’ hands stretched forth to bring, in simple purity of maidenhood, a sculpted eye, carved arm, a plaster foot her acolytes, the girls who were dedicated to the temple held before her image; things the hopeful wrought trusting the river goddess would be kind and send her healing from the stream that flowed out of a spring and made a river, wide, mysterious, benevolent, divine.

David W. Landrum

the selkie wife after all the dry years sea stings her skin her first strokes a fledgling flurry until her arms find pitch and sweep, her breath its beat, body sleeks, legs kick out strong, stronger and she soars, loops, twists, tumble-turns, heads for home.

Sharon Phillips

Eagle Shadow The shadow of my husband’s eagle form settled in my stomach as he disappeared into the sky that day. It stomps around in there, dances, fidgets, throws balls against walls. It comes out to play now and then, swoops over cracking dirt where I plant seeds in straight lines to escape from high pitch of violins and smells of burning flesh dripping on the flames below. The eagle’s shadow stays, makes its bed and lies in it as my hair grows straggly and dry, my skin tightens and I press my sinking chest. Standing at the well with cupped hands, I drink until my fingertips wrinkle, but still I cannot soothe my throat.

The shadow comes out to play in the black of the night. I cannot sleep, bed curtains shiver as it creeps, ready to pounce. I feel a scream in my chest, let it escape, echo around the room. Gronw sits up, eyes wide in the dark. He strokes my sweat-soaked back, pulls me down, tucks me in. His face, hovering over me, is not the one I’ve kissed so many times. His hair is feathers, nose a pointed beak, eyes, yellow and sharp. A smell of eggs and blood seeps through his skin. I will my eyes to close, open them and there he is, head on the pillow, familiar features again. I touch every part of that face and keep my hand on him as I drift off to sleep; shadow tired, settles for now. Dawn comes and I carry buckets of water to my seeds, like presents.

Mel Parks

Taurus -after looking at a Remedios Varo’s painting What delirious dream drew your yellow figure, winged bull, feminine face, horse legs, sad look and mustache you rise lost in self-created limbo expelled from your house, the second in the zodiacal path away from your earth element you cross with visible resignation the constellations of the canvas and there is not enough space for you in catalogs and scholarly classifications there are no phrases that translate your drama using other phrases because the astral loneliness that you inhabit is only yours you come to me with an ignited arrow narrowly missing my eyes you come from the pit of the past, a dark bird carrying charcoal wounds in its beak you talk to me about the internal scorch that crying leaves the tedium that engulfs us for several days making it impossible to speak to others the links found between the departure of the man I loved (also Taurus) and your pathetic sovereignty in the void the memory that moves away slowly like a beggar tired of alms somehow all this abandoned you at last and blood nebula finally covers your body.

Sergio A. Ortiz

Wolf, Running When Wolf was young, she crawled out from those thighs Her mother was so proud of. She was wet, Encrusted with fluids, but her nose caught Near-intoxicating scents, something with Water and blood in it. When Wolf was four Ordinary stories bored her. ‘Why you Little fool,’ her mother said, stirring pots Full of bone soup and noodles, ‘you can't fit Worlds in that girlish head. Leave stories to A wiser teller.’ Wolf grew angry, ‘You Stupid woman. I’ll know everything!’ That Fight lasted fourteen years, through falls, winters, Inching springs and blooming summers. Wolf’s wrath Returned again and again, its bright fire Enveloping her; a warm garden of Need. Eventually, she ran away, found Relief in the rough chalk of the road. The Angry soles of her feet blistered and bled. A Grey pelt of dust grew across her skin. What Enchantment led her on, to leave her with Dry manna on her tongue and weeping eyes?

The first night, she slept beneath a bridge with Heaving traffic shuddering high above the Encampment she made from stained cardboard. Slow Green slugs laid their tracks on her legs, but no Odious thing could wake her. She dreamt. ‘You Delirious seeker’ the woman, all Obscured by her fat, spoke, ‘you need new food.’

‘A place, rich and filled with wild odours (I Remember it well) is waiting. Your thin, Groaning legs are strong enough, though you're tired, Unused to traveling. Follow the road. I Expect to see you finally striding in With a bag full of treasures. I’m waiting In the desert.’ When Wolf woke, the sun was Tracking its way across the wide sky. You

Have to take dreams with a grain of salt. In This case, she trusted instinct. She found a Hard, straight stick to guide her steps. Her hair, thin, Extremely short, grew slick with sweat and gummed Black with airborne exhaust. Her armpits grew Liquid pools. Her eyes sparkled like mica.

Remember being young, filled with hunger, all Wrought through with some unspoken need? ‘If I Inquire far enough,’ Wolf thought, ‘off of The ordinary paths, I’ll find it, the Heavy answer whose absence is draining The colour from the earth.’ She sought out her Heavenly desire in burnt out cars, the Edges of towns where the noxious weeds grow, Where madmen push carts laden with rotting. ‘I Invoke the singer of the bones,’ Wolf’s thin, Neglected lips split into a grin, ‘With Dread in my heart.’ She bent to the dirt. The Arid sparkle of a blade called to her.

Silver in the dust, she fondled her shiv.

Excitement and sharp teeth; life will gnaw all Innocence to gristle. She slept in the Nictophobic heart of an old yew tree, Safe where foxes had bred and welped. The dark Suffered itself to be broken; the fall Haze seeped in through a break in the bark. Fly Excrement speckled her skin. She slept off Beers begged from pedestrians outside the Exxon station by the highway. When a Cop car slowed enough for eyes to track her And take note of her face, she bolted. Rough branches Marked her face with false lines of age, far too Entrenched to fade when the scabs flaked free from Septic skin. Wolf liked them. She liked looking fierce.

Delicate things, seeking fulfilment, the Excitement of new trials, never last. Firm Voices draw them home again. Wolf thought, ‘I Offer you the fibers of my brain, the

Urgent thunder of my heart. I give this Rash-pocked skin, these teeth, as partial payment In exchange for a vision.’ She saw, with New eyes, the jewelled wings of the cricket, the Gleaming eyes of the crow. She saw the skulls (Human) glaring up from foundations. ‘You Empty bowls’ she spoke to the dead children Reclining under every house, ‘growing Enraged at your emptiness, rise into New forms.’ The skulls said nothing. They burned cold.

Rituals are not enough to slake dread.

An abandoned toolshed could not hide the Trembling Wolf from the rage of winter. ‘Tac, Initow, M’hama’ her words warped. ‘I Ought to find some better shelter.’ Frigid Nature cast her out. She wandered to the Address of a doctor’s house, one she found Listed in yellow pages swollen with Black mould. The phone book was dangling from the Artistically-mangled cord, the booth sour, Resplendent with urine. The doctor, halfRetired, offered a mug of grappa, Edged with a sedative. Well drugged, Wolf slept, Never waking; ferried by ambulance.

Inside the high wall, something fierce howled. How Slowly one forgets oneself. Trapped here, Wolf Opted for the expected madness. ‘You Little shit!’ she screamed at the night nurse, ‘Call Anyone and they’ll tell you about Wolf!’

The nurse smiled, a calm white moon. Wolf fumed, ‘I Explained my quest already!’ Under her Drooping dress, Wolf’s belly swelled, raised by the Hard lump of a baby. Knifeless, hungry, Enraged by her fear, Wolf sought comfort. Her Right hand drew her suitor in. She said, ‘I Insist on this moment, but you can’t win.

Nothing of yourself matters to me.’ DogArrogant, she stole the doctor’s frail seeds.

Enchanting, she thought. There’s treasure here. I Never knew that something so pure could be Created by me. She held her new child In her arms for five minutes. They took her off, Regulations blazing behind them, to Cry behind a thick panel of glass. ‘Poor Little thing’, thought Wolf. ‘She will have to grow Exactly as alone as I did.’ A Dottering aid had not secured the flat Slot of the restraints into the buckle.

Her window was brief, nurses checked this floor Every half an hour. Wolf ran till her breath Carved blood from her lungs. She ran into the Road with a howl, leaving fear at the door.

Dreamt true, the world brightens from the desert.

Radiant light seeps up from the dirt. A Young woman, here, resembles a hunter.

Every morning the fog left few. Her shiv Yearned for (found) the throat of an antelope.

Every day, her strong teeth lengthened, sharpened, Stood out from receding gums. Plumped full of Bloody meat, Wolf grew joyous and sleek. No Uninvited guests could find her, here. Far Removed from the rational city, sin Never even a concept, she thought, ‘I Expect that men taste like roast pork, crackling, Delicious with fat.’ She held her knife with Shaking fingers, desiring to find out.

Beneath the soil, something wild crept up with Eerie singlemindedness. It wore the Rough scales of a rattlesnake and spoke, ‘How Excellent, Daughter, to find you here, no Fellow creature to hold you back.’ Her small, Terrible eyes glittered in her skull. ‘If Obvious dangers are too empty, flabFilled, I have a new adventure for you.’

Wolf leaned in closer; hungry, panting. Her Aching stomach felt fat against her thin Thighs. ‘Yes. Please, yes’ She answered the serpent.

Ecstatic, the rattlesnake showed her fangs.

Reaching up, delicately, she sunk both Through the skin of Wolf's throat, setting death free.

Ominous steps. Wolf met death; glad, grinning, Peeling free from her flesh with a tremor; Ecstacy often leaves you reeling. She Never felt so free. A single black fly Encamped on the jelly of her eye. With Death, there comes a great uncaring. ‘If I Had the choice again, I’d still do it.’ Cold Encroached, stilling her synapses. In the Rare rain, her skin rotted, drying once a Cloud (lost as everything) passed. In the thin Radiance of the moon, her bones grew old, Increasingly disjointed; stolen, with Scraps of her clothes, by meat-hungry crows. The Prize of Wolf’s seeking drew her very far.

Never doubt the strength of your teeth. There’s no Escape from death, but it doesn’t last. You Will learn that nothing is forever. Lost Bones clicked and clattered across the dunes. The Open-eyed skull rolled up a hill, a shiv (Dent-handled) caught between its cracked teeth. The Young body of a girl formed itself. Big, Straight thighbones birthed the rest of the corpse. Her Tiny wrists reformed from marbles, and the Entire thing refleshed itself. A slow Percussion filled the air; the sound of Pumping blood, the rough rasp of a breath. Her Exsangunated skin softened into Delicate features; a lithe, lovely form.

Evil that can't be mercifully slaughtered (Xenon-bright and intangible) lurks. ‘I Sought out knowledge, and found it in death. No Anger lingers in me anymore. You Need to get up’ she thought to herself, ‘This Godless desert holds no mystery. Stab Until your knife gives out and you'll find no

Ingot you don’t already own.’ Lost in Nearly endless light, she wandered. As the Arid desert softened into loam, as The venom of the serpent left her, with Every step she walked she seemed to glow. The Darkness had entirely passed. With fear Outgrown, Wolf threw back her head, released howls.

When Wolf was young, she crawled out from those thighs Enveloping her; a warm garden of.

A place, rich and filled with wild odours.

Remember being young. Filled with hunger, all Excitement and sharp teeth. Life will gnaw all Delicate things, seeking fulfilment. The Rituals are not enough to slake dread.

Inside the high wall, something fierce howled. How Enchanting, she thought. There’s treasure here.

Dreamt true, the world brightens from the desert Beneath the soil, something wild crept up with.

Ominous steps. Wolf met death; glad, grinning.

Never doubt the strength of your teeth. There’s no Evil that can’t be mercifully slaughtered.

Bethany W Pope

Dictionary for the Young Medusa blow-dry, v.

Slow roasting golden ringlets to a hiss.

Thanks for the back-story but malevolence for the sake of violence is better, thanks for the sympathy vote.

Athena, you can’t be serious.

Serpentinian locks are all the rage this year anyway and the pain that sentiency brings: curlers, straighteners, hairdryersbrandishing them, a forge welder.

Don’t let them blow-dry your hair like a woman’s hisstory, n.

What may have happened retold.

Serpent-speech.

Cursed to crawl, slither, sleep and sex on their stomachs, so often aligned with those who expand theirs.

A cold-blooded, bite the apple, snow-white-type could really use it.

Lisping sounds better than limping half-truths.

Honestly, I can’t remember, that’s all ancient hisstory petrify, v. a. An age-old case of victim blaming, are not a pillar of salt.

Cast your gaze downwards, being.

look to your god not mine, at least you

Borrow this face then. you’ll still be culpable for

…the power you’re supplying, it’s petrifying b. Making (someone) so horrified they are unable to move.

The mistake of thinking a temple is a safe place.

speakless, adj.

Lips split at the corners from navigating vowels, applause disguises moans from mouths that do not want to be quiet yet.

The passage is hollow, even with the tongue playing teeth as a mute xylophone, itching to pick out and swallow morsels which snag on the last sentence spat out.

Better to chew it over inaudibly cut off that hand stealing semantics from tongues too nerved to touch them, the cowardly doormen to all that flesh.

She did not remain speakless, though ‘her words fall almost always upon the deaf male ear’

Katie Smart

Eternity There was frost this morning, sparkles like scattered diamonds on the withered grass. I knew we had to move. Time was unstoppable, carrying us away from ourselves.

I came downstairs to make breakfast. In the yard the blowzy rose bushes shed petals. I do not like roses – the nostalgia for our childhood has curdled into sourness – but beggars can’t be choosers. We rent a new house every season as we followed the sun.

Marie started wailing and I had to attend to her. When I came back to the kitchen, Kai was methodically resetting the table, aligning forks and knives in exact parallels. I could not even coax my irritation into honest anger.

He brought the baby down and rocked her while I brewed tea. My friends admired him. In their praise of him I could always hear an implicit comparison. He was handsome; my skin was roughened by icy winds. He was well-bred; I spoke with a gypsy accent. He was calm and deliberate; I was impatient and moody.

Perhaps this is why I have few friends.

“Gerda,” he said, “the winter is coming.”

Once again, the drudgery of packing; once again, the hard, thankless work of finding a sturdy wagon and a couple of ponies; once again, pots and pans, diapers, clothes, household items…

I had spent my girlhood on the road. But the roads I had traveled were guarded by ice wraiths and snow dragons, not by custom officials. And my possessions at the time had consisted of a rose and a pair of red shoes.

The worst part of our last move was when we stayed in a roadside inn. Marie, then a newborn, was fretting and I was at my wits’ end. And then I heard, from the main room, the voice of a minstrel telling the story of the Snow Queen and the fearless girl who braved the white hag’s wrath to rescue her childhood sweetheart from the imprisonment in the Diamond Dome. The story ended with the kiss that melted his frozen heart – and with the tinkling of coins falling into the minstrel’s plate.

“I don’t want to move,” I said.

I was astonished at the words coming out of my mouth, though I should not have been. With me, action always precedes thought. When I found

myself on the road north, wearing red shoes and clutching a rose Kai had given me, I was surprised but I did not turn back. When I slunk out of the Gypsy Princess’ hideout, I cursed my own stupidity but went on through the Black Forest.

But this had been a long time ago.

Kai’s blue eyes clouded but his voice was as measured as ever.

“But you know…”

“Yes,” I yelled, “I know! She’ll come for you and take you back to the Diamond Dome. She’ll enchant you once again with that stupid jigsaw you played with while I was battling monsters on your behalf. So let her! This time you can get out of there yourself!”

“Gerda,” he said, “I appreciate everything you’ve done for me but we are a family now. Families stick together.”

As if on cue Marie started crying again. But I did not pick her up. I rushed out and stepped on an ice-crusted puddle in the front yard. It splintered with a tinkling sound.

In the Diamond Dome the light had been clear and sharp; not like the damp light of the South. It was reflected in jagged ice pieces that covered the floor. Kai’s hand hovered delicately above them. He did not even lift his head when I stumbled in.

He had never told me what these pieces were.

I did not come back into the house until the sun set. Marie was asleep in her cradle; Kai – in our bed. I stood there, looking down at the face of my husband and tried to remember the boy who had given me the rose that I carried with me to the North Pole. But this boy had been taken away by the passage of hours, days and years.

I slept on the couch. And I had a dream.

The sparkling web overlays but does not obscure the innumerable stars. There are glittering shapes frozen into the floor. A banner of purple and green light is arching above my head.

My blood is not moving; my heartbeat is gone. This moment of clarity lasts forever. Time has been frozen into a lump of sparkling ice.

There are slivers of ice scattered on the floor, their chaos an affront to the order I see. But they are beginning to move, falling into a pattern…

At the far wall of the dome stands a slender white figure, its face veiled.

I was woken by Kai’s arms around me. I pushed him away and rushed out into the bright night.

The grass under my bare feet crackled. The roses were silvered by moonlight. Or rather, they were silver. I touched a flower and cut my finger on its sharp edge.

The white-cloaked figure stood just beyond the gate. I could not see its face.

I stepped toward it. Its long-fingered hand touched the rose bush and the metallic petals clattered down, forming a word on the frozen grass. The word was “Eternity”.

I ran toward the Queen and I thought I had caught a glimpse of her face – or was it her? I was not sure. I ran, and I slipped in the petals and fell, and when I pulled myself up, they were scattered and broken, spelling nothing.

The sun was rising.

I went back into the house and found my red shoes. They no longer fit, my feet having been misshapen by pregnancy, but I forced them in. The blood did not show on the red.

Marie cried again and I thought, with relief, that she would never remember me.

And I walked north.

Elana Gomel

Biographical Notes Cover Artist Belinda Rimmer has poems in magazines, including, Brittle Star, Dream Catcher, ARTEMISpoetry; Obsessed with Pipework; Sarasvati. On-line successes include Cloud Poetry, Picaroon Poetry, Ground, Writers Against Prejudice, and Amaryllis. A few poems are in anthologies. Recently she came second in her first Poetry Slam. She has won The Poetry in Motion Competition as part of Cheltenham Poetry Festival and is looking forward to seeing her poem turned into a film. She is a keen crafts person and likes to sew or make things from discarded books.

Writers Mandy Macdonald is an Australian writer living in Aberdeen, trying to make sense of the 21st and earlier centuries. Her poems have appeared in the anthologies Full Moon & Foxglove (Three Drops Press), Outlook Variable and Extraordinary Forms (Grey Hen Press), Aiblins: New Scottish Political Writing (Luath), A Bee’s Breakfast (Beautiful Dragons Collaborations), and elsewhere in print and online. She writes in the strong hope that poetry can change the world, even just a little.

Phil Wood works in a statistics office. He enjoys working with numbers and words. His writing can be found in various publications, most recently in The Lampeter Review and Clear Poetry.

Former poetry editor of Catfish Creek, Jacob Butlett holds a BA in Creative Writing. In 2012, he received a Scholastic Arts and Writing Awards Gold Key for literary excellence. His current work has been published or is forthcoming in Outrageous Fortune, Clarion, Cold Creek Review, The Shallows, Twelve Point Collective, and Picaroon Poetry.

Olivia Tuck lives in Wiltshire with her parents, sisters and dotty Cocker Spaniel.

She won her first writing competition when she was six and hasn’t stopped scribbling since, creating poems and flash fiction. Olivia has been a ‘Wicked’ Young Writers’ Award finalist, has had work accepted by Amaryllis Poetry and had a piece published in Issue 16 of Three Drops from a Cauldron. She intends to read English and Creative Writing at university – as soon as possible!

Simon Williams has seven published collections. He latest pamphlet, Spotting Capybaras in the Work of Marc Chagall launched in April 2016 and his latest full collection, Inti, was published in July of that year. Simon was elected The Bard of Exeter in 2013 and founded the large-format magazine, The Broadsheet. He co-organises two poetry-based events each month, an open mic in his local pub and the Café Culture cabaret of poets, musicians and storytellers, in Totnes.

Margarita Serafimova has published two collections of poetry in Bulgarian. In English, her work appears in London Grip New Poetry, A-Minor Magazine, Minor Literatures, Noble/ Gas Quarterly, The Birds We Piled Loosely, Obra/ Artifact, Ginosko Literary Journal, Dark Matter Journal, Window Quarterly/ Patient Sounds, Peacock Journal, Anti-Heroin Chic, In Between Hangovers, and elsewhere. Some pieces: www.facebook.com/MargaritaISerafimova Patty Blanchfield values, above all else, the importance of self expression through the most effective medium; she fell in love with mythos, music, poetry and art at a young age and never stopped studying. She wishes to highlight that which is beautiful with the darkness of that which is ugly in attempt to soothe the dissonance that often occurs when they are seen as conflicting ideals.

David W. Landrum’s mythic poetry has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Mythlore, The Dark Ones, Atavic Poetry, The Horror Zine, Tipping the Sacred Cow—and Three Drops from a Cauldron. He teaches Literature (and often World Mythology) at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan, USA. Sharon Phillips is retired and lives in Dorset. Her poems have been published on websites including Ink, Sweat and Tears, Algebra of Owls, Snakeskin, and Three Drops from a Cauldron. Her blog can be found at: outtograss.wordpress.com.

Mel Parks has been writing professionally for about 20 years, freelance for more than half that time. She writes web content, blog posts and magazine articles, often about childcare and early years. She runs creative writing workshops upstairs in an independent bookshop in Sussex and has just completed the first year of a part-time MA in Creative Writing at Brighton University, when she delved into The Mabinogion for inspiration and universal themes.

Sergio A. Ortiz is a two-time Pushcart nominee, a four-time Best of the Web nominee, and 2016 Best of the Net nominee. He won 2nd place in the 2016 Ramón Ataz Annual Poetry Competition sponsored by Alaire publishing house.

His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in FRIGG, Tipton Poetry Journal, Drunk Monkeys, and Bitterzeot Magazine. He is currently working on his first full-length collection of poems, Elephant Graveyard.

Bethany W Pope is an award-winning writer. She received her PhD from Aberystwyth University’s Creative Writing program, and her MA from the University of Wales Trinity St David. She has published several collections of poetry: A Radiance (Cultured Llama, 2012), Crown of Thorns (Oneiros Books, 2013), The Gospel of Flies (Writing Knights Press 2014), and Undisturbed Circles (Lapwing, 2014). Her collection The Rag and Boneyard was published in 2016

by Indigo Dreams and her chapbook Among The White Roots was released by Three Drops Press last autumn. Her latest collection, Silage, was released by Indigo Dreams this year. Her first novel, Masque, was published by Seren in June 2016.

Katie Smart is an MA student reading English Literature at the University of Sheffield. She has previously worked on the poetry editorial team for the university’s creative writing journal, Route 57. Katie frequently writes about gender, sexuality and feminism. She is intrigued by polyphonic and intertextual poems; these interests can often be found within her work.

Elana Gomel is the author of five non-fiction books published by Routledge, Macmillan and others, of and numerous articles on subjects ranging from science fiction and fantasy to posthumanism and Victorian literature. Her fantasy stories appeared in New Horizons, Aoife’s Kiss, Bewildering Stories, Timeless Tales, The Singularity, New Realm, Mythic, The Fantasist and other magazines; and in many anthologies.

Previous Publication Credits ‘Eagle Shadow’ by Mel Parks was originally part of Flowers Out of Dark, a poetry/art collaboration with Sarah Bell for the author’s MA Creative Writing at Brighton University.