Frames ON The Circular Library of Stones Frames OFF By Carol Emshwiller Poison (part 1 of 2) by Beth Bernobich 4/30/01 1/20/03 Our keepers, the They said all this wasn't true. That there had been no city on this site scientists, had used complicated words since even before the time of the Indians . . . that there had been no like metamorphosis bridge across the (now dried up) river and no barriers against the mud. "If and hormones and camouflage to you have been searching for a library here," they said, "or for old coins, explain us. We you've been wasting your time." could turn invisible, they'd said. We For lack of space I had put some of the small, white stones in plant could change from baskets and hung them from the ceiling by the window. I don't argue with male to female and back. Survival people about what nonexistent city could have existed at this site. I just adaptations, they'd collect the stones. (Two have Xs scratched on them, only one of which I called it. I wondered scratched myself.) And I continue digging. The earth, though full of if what Yenny did stones of all sizes, is soft and easy to deal with. Often it is damp and was for our survival. fragrant. And I disturb very little in the way of trees or plants of any real size here. Also most of the stones, even the larger ones, are of a size Rushes #1 of 12: that I can manage fairly well by myself. Besides, mainly it's the stones One Is All Alone that I want to reveal. I don't want to move them from place to place by Jay Lake except some of the most important small ones, which I take home with 1/20/03 "So," says a voice of rattling me after a day's digging. Often I have found battered aluminum pots and leaves and creaking pans around the site. Once I found an old boot and once, a pair of broken branches. "At last glasses; but these, of course, are of no significance whatsoever, being you return." clearly of the present. Interrupt by Jeff Carlson Gaining access to their books! If I could find the library and learn to read 1/13/03 Whatever their writing! If I could find, there, stories beyond my wildest dreams. A happened to the sun love story, for instance, where the love is of a totally different kind . . . a seems to be kind of ardor we have never even thought of, more long-lasting than our intensifying. This time I blacked out simple attachments, more world-shaking than our simple sexualities. Or a for at least five literature that is two things at once, which we can only do in drawings, days. where a body might be, at one and the same time, a face in which the breasts also equal eyes, or two naked ladies sitting side by side, arms L'Aquilone du raised, that also forms a skull, their black hair the eye sockets. Estrellas (The Kite of Stars) by Dean Francis For quite some time now I have had sore legs, so digging is an exercise I Alfar, illustration by can do better than any other, and though at night my back pains me, the Hal Hefner pains usually go away quite soon. By morning I hardly feel them. So the 1/6/03 He told her that such a kite was digging, in itself, pleases me. There is the pleasure of work. A day well impossible, that spent. Go home tired and silent. But mostly, of course, it is the slow there was no revelation of the stones that I care about. Sometimes they cluster in material groups so that I think that here must have been where a fireplace was, or immediately available for such perhaps a throne. Sometimes they form a long row that I think might have an absurd been a wall or a bench. And I have found a mirror. Two feet underground, undertaking, that and so scratched that one can see oneself only in little fish-shaped there was, in fact, flashes -- a bit of an eye, a bit of lip -- but for even that much of it to no design for a kite that supported the have been preserved all this time is a miracle. I feel certain that if they weight of a person. had a library, it's logical they would also have had mirrors. Or if they had mirrors, it certainly follows they could have had a library. Archived Fiction Dating back to I keep the mirror with me in my breast pocket. (I wear a man's old fishing 9/1/00 vest.) When people ask me what I'm doing out here, I show the mirror to them along with a few smooth stones. At night I write. I shut my eyes and let my left hand move as it wishes. Usually it makes only scratchings, but at other times words come out. Once I wrote several pages of nothing but no, no, no, no, no, and after that, on, on, on, and on, but more and more often there are longer words now, and more and more often they are making some kind of sense. Yesterday, for instance, I found myself writing: Let us do let us do and do