Author
Kate Heartfield
Chameleon
I'm glad you can't see me, I lie to the girl in the window seat, with the rainbow hair. It's OK. I'm not much to look at. I'm not beautiful like you. She's my age, but I'm not made of rainbows and a Propagandhi t-shirt. At the moment, I'm a girl made of a rough polyblend weave…
Ad Infinitum
Time and space can masquerade as each other, but most of the time I think it's a trick. A pavane. A three-card monte. I've probably always thought that. "Always" for us being, we think, about 88 billion Earth Prime years. And here we are, 86.9 billion light-years away from Earth…
This Is the Humming Hour
It is 4:32 when Arabella's head smacks the top of the rocking chair and she wakes. She lets her facial muscles mimic a groan but risks no sound, nothing to disturb the warm weight in her arms. Gigi's face is a watercolor in pink and blue; her lashes sleep on her cheeks. Arabella…
Isabelle the Stupendous
Isabelle fell back and kicked forward as hard as she could, looking down the length of her body to where her Spiderman shoes pointed to the setting sun. The swing chains wriggled like pond frogs in her hands. Her tummy lurched just like it did when the plane took off on their…
"I'm lonely": Immune to Apraxia, Toronto doctor refuses to give up on a cure
Nov. 4, 2016 Lily Abello thought she would lose her ability to speak in April, just as everyone else she knew did. "I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop," she says in her clear alto voice. "I watched my husband, my mother, all my friends, have difficulty forming words,…
Born on a Glumday
Maudlinday Empathetic magic is cruel magic: the more skilled the wielder, the more he risks every time he enters the trance. Now that you are senior apprentice, it will not get easier. It gets much, much harder. You know this. I know you know this. You are a young man; you know…
Cattail Heart
My mother told me, "You are my heart." "I don't want to be a heart." "I don't mean a heart like a lump of bloody meat. I mean a heart like the center of a thing. Like the pith at the base of a cattail. If someone peeled all of me away bit by bit, what would be left would be…
For Sale by Owner
Ron allowed himself one shallow breath before gripping his cane and creaking to his feet. There was no need to rush. More than a century before, he had counted the steps that would take him from his watching-chair, across his living room, through his front door, off the porch,…