Alexandra Sarafidou

Take your children to the river spirit, the villagers used to say, and do not fear for them.

These people turned to sand.

(This is the second story about The Dean and his crew.

Guardian Agent Thirteen sat weeping on a spinning chair in front of a gigantic plasma screen on which myriads of black threads ran, intertwined and crossed each other like jagged spiderwebs.

A knife.

The four of them were talking all at once and gesturing wildly in the basement of the palace: the professor of history and art, and the other three – not quite humans, one of whom was currently blaming another for a leak in a massive vintage water heater

Every morning Momo is awake before the sun creeps up above the mountain ridge.

Things didn’t go right from the very beginning.

She was turning into a fish, she said.

Witches lived in the mountains.

Thaleia was a witch with a lopsided crystal ball, and a heavy heart.

That winter was so cold that blinking felt like sliding eyelids over frozen marbles.

Three things distinguished Alba from other people.

Ino saved a mouse from his mother’s mousetrap.

Seizures returned with the heatwave that was now baking the island.

A girl was born in the North.

That tribe had the most cattle and they were the strongest.

“If you can’t fit in with the crowd, fit in with the trees,” the Eldest sister said.

Alejandro lived in a small town near the jungle.

“We came from water, and to the water we will go.”

Down the whitewashed road he ran, full of joy.

The pile of rocks as sharp as dragon teeth rose at the end of the dirt road that was used only in summer.

Their island had been baked deep in the heart of the planet, the locals said.

Once, very deep in the mountains, near a river, there was a village that no one could find.

Once upon a time, there was a brother and a sister who could never meet.

People built their village close to an ancient forest that fed and protected them as long as they took no more than they truly needed.

Eliseo couldn’t pay his taxes.

Wherever the Gray Coats appeared, people would disappear.

In the desert, where even the dunes complained about the heat, a man was walking alone.