She grows more, basking in the light, too big now to be contained. I cry aloud as pain flashes through me, and then she is reft from me.
When my eyes clear, I hold a perfect black plum in my hands, and Jessamine is gone from my head.
She stares across the table at me. “What happened?” she whispers, pale and frightened.
“It’s all right,” I say. The spell is gone and I send gratitude after it. I set the plum on the table. I look at the cookies on the plate and sigh with happiness, blessing my singular state. “Don’t ever do that again.”
She picks up her computer, turns it so I can see the spell on the screen. She selects the entire document and hits the delete button. The spell vanishes.
“Take it off the flashcard too,” I say.
Her eyes widen, but she opens the memory storage card and removes the spell from that as well.
It doesn’t matter. If she really wants to, she can reconstruct the spell from scratch. I know better than ever how her mind works now. Anything she spent so much time crafting is etched into her brain.
“I love you,” I say. “But I don’t want to be you.”
She shakes her head. “I understand.”
“You don’t,” I say. “You don’t want to.” I push the plum and it rolls all the way across the table to stop in front of her. “But if you want to know what it was like to be you inside of me, taste this.”
She picks up the plum and stares at me. I remember two girls sitting on a front stoop in Brooklyn. I remember us walking along a seaside street on a misty evening, things silvered with street light and damp, the only warmth her hand in mine.
Sometimes I want never to see her again.
Sometimes I’m so angry with her I want to scream.
She’s my best friend in all the world.
She raises the plum to her mouth and takes a bite.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
WILLIAM ROOT BLISS (1825-1906) was a New England author who published such titles as Colonial Times on Buzzard’s Bay, The Old Colony Town, and September Days on Nantucket.
M.E. BRINES is the author of Maitre’d to the Damned (2011), The Donuts of Doom (2011), and The Queen’s Martian Rifles (2011). If those titles aren’t enough to get you to check them out, we give up!
LORIE CALKINS has published short stories in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine, Once Upon a World, and the Sword and Sorceress anthology series.
JOSEPH CONRAD (1857-1924) was a Polish-British writer regarded as one of the greatest novelists to write in the English language. He was granted British nationality in 1886 but always considered himself a Pole.Though he did not speak English fluently until he was in his twenties (and always with a marked accent), he was a master prose stylist who brought a distinctly non-English sensibility into English literature.He wrote stories and novels, many with a nautical setting, that depict trials of the human spirit in the midst of an impassive, inscrutable universe.
JANET FOX (1940-2009) was an American fantasy and horror writer, poet, teacher, and founder-editor-publisher of the now-defunct Scavenger’s Newsletter. She published a substantial amount of fiction in small press magazines, much of it fantasy and horror, in a time when there were almost no professional markets for such material. Wildside Press acquired her estate several years ago and has been working to reprint the best of her work.
ELIZABETH GASKELL (1810-1865), often referred to simply as Mrs Gaskell, was an English novelist and short story writer during the Victorian era. Her novels offer a detailed portrait of the lives of many strata of society, including the very poor, and are of interest to social historians as well as lovers of literature. Gaskell’s The Life of Charlotte Bronte, published in 1857, was the first biography of the eponymous novelist.
BRUCE GEHWEILER is an author and anthologist, as well as a frequent collaborator on short stories with C.J. Henderson
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE (1804-1864) was an American novelist, Dark Romantic, and short story writer.
C.J. HENDERSON (1951-2015) was one of the most prolific short story writers of recent years, publishing about a thousand stories in many different genres, but with a special affection for supernatural and detective fiction.
NINA KIRIKI HOFFMAN is an American fantasy, science fiction and horror writer. Hoffman started publishing short stories in 1975. Her first nationally published short story appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine in 1983. She has since published over 200 in various anthologies and magazines. Her short story, “A Step Into Darkness” (1985), was one of the winners of the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future award and was published in the first of the Writers of the Future anthologies. Her second collection of short stories, Courting Disasters and Other Strange Affinities, was nominated for the 1992 Locus Award for best collection of the year.
MARY LEADER (1917-2004) published only two novels, Triad and Salem’s Children, but both were best-sellers. Stevie Nicks was inspired by Triad to write the song “Rhiannon” in 1975.
MARISSA LINGEN is a freelance writer living in the Minneapolis suburbs with two large men and one small dog. She has published over 100 short stories. She makes a mean Guinness gingerbread.
H.P. LOVECRAFT everyone knows Lovecraft—the Cthuthu Mythos guy.
ELIZA LYNN LINTON (1822-1898) was the first female salaried journalist in Britain, and the author of over 20 novels. Despite her path breaking role as an independent woman, many of her essays took a strong anti-feminist slant.
MARK McLAUGHLIN is the author of Best Little Witch-House in Arkham and the co-author of Casino Carcosa. Check out his web site at: http://bmoviemonster.com/
SKADI MEIC BEORH is the author of Always After Thieves Watch: Stories of Childhood & Other Fantasies, as well as other books available from Wildside Press.
ROBERT REGINALD is the principal pseudonym of Japanese-born bibliographer, librarian (attaining the rank of Professor at California State University in 1984), publisher, editor and author Michael Roy Burgess (1948-2013). As Robert (or as R) Reginald he published many important bibliographical and critical work in the science fiction field.
DARRELL SCHWEITZER is an American writer, editor, and critic in the field of speculative fiction. Much of his focus has been on dark fantasy and horror, although he does also work in science fiction and fantasy. Schweitzer is also a prolific writer of literary criticism and editor of collections of essays on various writers within his preferred genres.
CYNTHIA WARD writes science fiction, fantasy, horror, and more. If you’d like to know a little about her, please visit her web site: http://www.cynthiaward.com
LAWRENCE WATT-EVANS became a full-time writen after selling The Lure of the Basilisk in 1979 (published 1980). He won a Hugo Award in 1988 (for “Why I left Harry’s All-Night Hamburgers”), served as president of the Horror Writers Association from 1994 to 1996, and as Eastern Regional Director and treasurer of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. Despite his busy life, he somehow manages to find time to write! His most recent Wildside Press book is The Ulwelcome Warlock.
HENRY S. WHITEHEAD (1882-1932) was an American writer of horror fiction and fantasy. He served as acting archdeacon of the Virgin Islands from 1921 to 1929. While there, living on the island of St. Croix, Whitehead gathered the material he was to use in his tales of the supernatural. A correspondent of H. P. Lovecraft, Whitehead published stories from 1924 onward in Adventure, Black Mask, Strange Tales, and especially Weird Tales; in his introduction to Jumbee, R. H. Barlow would later describe Whitehead as a member of “the serious Weird Tales school”. Whitehead’s supernatural fiction was partially modelled on the work of Edward Lucas White and William Hope Hodgson.
LADY WILDE Jane Francesca Agnes, Lady Wilde (1821-1896)[1] was an Irish poet under the pen name “Speranza” and supporter of the nationalist movement; and had a special interest in Ir
ish folktales, which she helped to gather. She married Sir William Wilde on 12 November 1851, and they had three children: William ‘Willie’ Charles Kingsbury Wilde (1852–1899), Oscar Wilde (1854–1900), and Isola Francesca Emily Wilde (1857–1867).
WILLIAM J. WINTLE (1861-1934) is the author of the classic ghost story collection Ghost Gleams (1921).
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