The Patron Saint of Liars

by Ann Patchett

Yesterday I doubted what she had said about me, but today I believed.

"Maybe she won't know," I said. "She'll be asleep and they'll take the baby away from her and she'll never know."

"You always know," Sister Evangeline said.

The Flight of Gemma Hardy

by Margot Livesey

Why did I always need to be valiant? Why couldn't I have a home, like other people?

The Naming

by Alison Croggon

"Come Maerad. It is better far to put away fear than to be driven by it. You know that."

Yes, I know that, Maerad thought sardonically. But I'm tired of having to be brave when really I'm so terrified I scarce know what to do. She swallowed hard, and then stood and drew her sword.

Six Word Story

by Ernest Hemingway

For sale: baby shoes. Never worn.

The Princetta

by Anne-Laure Bondoux

The waves lapping at the rocks made their perpetual murmur. Above the ship the sun was still shining, but down below, the crew was crushed by the weight of a terrible truth: in both the Known and the Unknown Worlds, living things could die, suffer, love, hate, struggle or surrender. Only nature itself never changed. Despite tragedy and torment, there would always be the waves, and the sun would always rise and set.

Hush

by Donna Jo Napoli

The day goes on in slow, deliberate work. The people pull together, letting go of their grief. Either these are callous folk or they know a bottomless well of courage.

Metapatterns

by Tyler Volk

Borders function as bulwarks against forces of disruption. They cloak creatures and their internal parts against the ravages of the exterior world--the ionizing, lysing, dissolving, jolting, combusting, dispersing, bursting, rotting, eating, and crushing world. Borders hold at bay all that would destroy the difference between being and environment; they prevent universal homogenization.