THE LATEST ATTEMPT

THE LATEST ATTEMPT, by Devan Barlow, artwork by Miguel Santos

 

One vial of tears gathered

from the milliner in the town’s least-haunted shop

 

I must have my memories back, please let this

be the recipe that finally works

 

Two hours of pestle-work

with shed swan pinions and crystallized moon glow

 

So many failed attempts, filling my cottage

with smokes and saps and scorches

 

Three petals plucked from roses

who’ve never known the taste of blood

 

Deciphering old maps, tracing paths rendered

useless by time and shifting earth

 

Four nights of waiting for the so-brief interval

when crystal flowers open, revealing their pollen

 

Completing trials for the cauldron-keeper

who demanded my worth proven

 

Five shells discarded by crabs

who moved on to bigger things

 

Sorting piles of grains, coaxing wandering felines home

spelling decades of scaling off kettles

 

Six riddling-debates with an orchard keeper

before she granted me a sapphire plum

 

A tattered, hard-won text, requiring

translation, temper, toil

 

Seven drops of blood from my fingertips

already so scarred

 

My memories were stolen I can’t

even recall the thief’s face

 

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Devan Barlow is the author of the Curses & Curtains series of fairy tales-meet-musicals fantasy novels. Her short fiction and poetry have appeared in several anthologies and magazines. She can be found at her website devanbarlow.com or on Bluesky @devanbarlow.bsky.social. She reads voraciously, and can often be found hanging out with her dog, drinking tea, and thinking about sea monsters.

 

Miguel Santos is a freelance illustrator and maker of Comics living in Portugal.  His artwork has appeared in numerous issues of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, as well as in the Heroic Fantasy Quarterly Best-of Volume 2.  More of his work can be seen at his online portfolio and his instagram.