•   CONTENTS                                                           Before Paphos
                          The Pale
           Art Gallery                                                 by Loretta Casteen
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                          By Liz Williams
           Articles                                                    8 January 2007
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                          30 August 2004
           Columns                                                     It starts again. The baby begins
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                                                                       to cough and choke.
                          She came out of the poisoned sea, my
           Fiction
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                          mother, out of darkness and winter.
                                                                         Locked Doors
                          When my father found her she was close
           Poetry
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                          to death. The December storms had              by Stephanie Burgis
           Reviews        beaten her to and fro and at last the sea
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                                                                         1 January 2007
                          had cast her up onto the shingle. My
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       o                  father said that he had been watching
                          from the cliff top, and, thinking that a seal You can never let anyone
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                          had been washed ashore, he had rushed suspect, his mother told him.
                          down to retrieve the fat carcass. It was That was the first rule she
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                          rare to find a seal this far into the reaches, taught him, and the last, before
                                                                         she left him here alone with It.
           Guidelines     or fish, or anything that had not been
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                          transformed by the waters: things with
                                                                         Heroic Measures
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       o                  lumps where their heads should be, things
                          that were eyeless. When my father found by Matthew Johnson
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                          her, he saw that she was not a seal after
                                                                         18 December 2006
                          all, but a woman.
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                    Long, long ago the people in Shetland andPale as he was, it was hard to
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                    Orkney called them the seal people, the believe he would never rise
      o Donate      selkies, and even now, in this year of our from this bed. Even in the
                                                                 darkest times, she had never
                    Lady one thousand and ten, you still
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                    sometimes heard the ancient name. The really feared for him; he had
                                                                 always been strong, so strong.
      o Merchandise men of the trawlers said that the selkies
                    had always been there, riding the tide.
                                                                 Love Among the Talus
•                   Sometimes they came to shore and,
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                    casting aside their sealskin guise, would sitby Elizabeth Bear
      o Forum       on the rocks, singing and strolling as one
                    might walk upon a summer Sunday. Who 11 December 2006
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                    could believe such talk of magic these
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                    days, now that we have been abandoned Nilufer raised her eyes to his. It
                    by the world beyond the Pale, our ruined was not what women did to
                    coasts closed? Yet, now that I am grown, men, but she was a princess,
                    it seems to me that if there is a time for and he was only a bandit. "I
                                                                 want to be a Witch," she said.
                    legends to come true, it is in this new
                    century, now that science has failed us "A Witch and not a Queen. I
                                                                 wish to be not loved, but wise.
                    and truth is open to interpretation.
                                                                 Tell your bandit lord, if he can
                    My father gathered the woman up from give me that, I might accept his
                    the rocks, and she lay heavily in his arms, gift."
                    like a sodden counterpane. There was
                    blood in her hair. Stumbling, he carried Archived Fiction Dating back
                    her up the beach and along the hawthorn to 9/1/00
                    track to the house, where he set her down
                    in front of the fire. Then he sat back on his
                    heels to catch his breath, and looked at
                    her. He could see very little of her face
                    beneath the covering, but as he watched
                    she opened her eyes and stared at him.