Free Tide of Shadows and Other Stories by Aidan Moher

keeping with the fairy tale tone, I also set myself another challenge: make the Kingdom of Copperkettle Vale as sugary sweet as a game of Candy Land. Puns galore, prose awash with alliteration, snappy dialogue, and big, loud characters all helped to bring the kingdom to life in a way that I hadn’t envisioned when first conceptualizing the story. Being a writer is full of surprises: when you think a story is going to left, it turns right. “Of Parnassus and Princes, Damsels and Dragons” is full of right-hand turns.
    This story is so wonderfully over the top that the serious bits come across as that much more impactful. My hope is that readers will find something new if they read through the story multiple times. Each of the characters has a story to tell and it’s up to you to open your ears and listen for the one that speaks loudest to you.

The Colour of the Sky
    on the Day the World Ended

Today is my Nini's birthday. She’s turning three hundred and eighty-four years old. That might seem old, especially if you're under a hundred and can't think of how somebody could live that long, but if you met my Nini, you'd believe her.
    Her labret flaps against her chin as she speaks, like a fish gasping its last breath in the bottom of a skiff. One day I will wear a labret too. I wonder if mine will ever be so big and beautiful. My sister once said that our Nini's lip disgusts her, and that she'll never be like our Nini. Or Mother. I can still feel the sting of her words. Mother died one the day the ocean rose in anger and swept away the world—the day the sky crashed to earth like heavenly fire—the day the mountain unleashed its fury.
    She asks me to bring her a gift. “A treasure to keep me young.”

    I leave the village to hunt for my Nini’s treasure. Alaga is with me, a village dog that adopted me as his own. He is white as starlight, so bright it’s sometimes hard to look at him. My family cannot see Alaga. Nini says he’s a spirit dog. She’s the only one who believes, even if she can't see him, either.
    Alaga isn't the only mystery in my life. This new world—with its skies like grey stone, sunsets like fire, and chill winds—is full of mysteries. Like my Nini. No one knows where she came from. Bitter men and women of my village call her bruha or mambabarang , and spit flies from their lips as they say it. "They are the drunk and the lost," my ma used to say. “Scared of kindness. Of difference." My Nini's skin is as black as Alaga is white. She came to our village a long time ago, from lands unknown, and kept my village safe when the world ended. I think Alaga came with her, across the vast oceans on her ship of stone. My Nini is the most beautiful woman in the world.
    We follow the trails that my village has used since before time had meaning. Before the sky darkened, before the heavens wept grey, dusty tears. These trails once wound through groves of fruit trees, wild with deer and other animals. The deer are still here, drifting through the grey forest, though most of the trees are just twisted dead things. They look so sad to me. Once free, now lost. Alaga barks at a doe and her fawn. They leap away—high, higher, towards the sun. They disappear into the clouds that never break.
    Alaga runs along the trail, paws leaving no mark in the ash. He stops before a tree, healthier-looking than the rest; its dusty boughs are splashed with a scattering of red and green, resilient and boldly alive in all the greyness. It is my Nini's tree—she'd planted it herself, the seed carried with her from her homeland beyond the waves. It's a magic tree, I think. I kneel under it and my knees sink into the drifts. Ash collects under my nails as I dig.
    There I find my Nini's treasure, gleaming where it landed after falling from the tree. More of the treasures hang above—shriveled, the colour of the sky the day the world ended, and more buds. A sign, maybe, that the world might return to what it had once been. They are