Flash Fiction Online #108, September 2022
“Words from the Whispering Woods” by Cislyn Smith
“Everything You Once Were” by Marisca Pichette
“The Greenhouse Bargain” by Tanya Aydelott
“Neighbors and Little Thieves” by Monica Joyce Evans (reprint, not reviewed)
Reviewed by Victoria Silverwolf
Three original tales of fantasy appear in the latest issue of this magazine of very short stories.
“Words from the Whispering Woods” by Cislyn Smith consists of several short messages, some from trees, some from a witch, some from children who have run off to join the witch. They vary in form from written words on parchment to dried mud on wood. The messages ask those who receive them to behave in ways that respect the trees and the environment.
The almost telegraphic structure of this variation on familiar themes from fairy tales is its most interesting aspect. The story’s ecological theme is a worthy one, if not entirely original.
“Everything You Once Were” by Marisca Pichette is a fantasy of reincarnation. The main character dies and is reborn multiple times, transforming from a little girl into a flowering plant, then into a man, and so on. The process leads to a transcendent climax.
The story has an evocative sense of the unity of nature and the immensity of time. Its vivid descriptions make it more of a mystical prose poem than a fully developed work of fiction.
In “The Greenhouse Bargain” by Tanya Aydelott, a metallic man takes the souls of the dead to the underworld. When the narrator steals silver from his pocket, he offers her the choice of cursing her and her dead mother so they remain as ghosts forever, never reaching the other world, or taking his place when she dies after ten more years of life. She opts for the latter. While waiting for her fate, she manages to make the metal man more interested in flowers than the coins he usually takes as payment.
As this long synopsis of a brief story makes clear, this is a strange tale, with an unusual fantasy premise. The surrealistic nature of the metal man raises more questions than it answers. The resulting work is intriguing, if opaque. If nothing else, the reader can enjoy descriptions of many flowers.
Victoria Silverwolf likes flowers, but does not garden.