Where the Dark Stands Still

by A.B. Poranek

“Don’t you know?” the Leszy says, wry and enigmatic at once. “Anything can be a door. You simply need to know how to open it.”

“If I look like a monster,” he says roughly, “then no one will be surprised when I do monstrous things.”

“He does not deserve you, Liska Radost.” “Nor I him,” she replies. “But nothing is ever equal with humans, really—we give and we take, the scales ever tipping. That’s just the way of it. I am what he has, and he is what I have—there’s no point keeping score.”

(Of women, he’s heard it said: “She will be the end of me,” or “She will be my undoing.” None of that is true for Liska Radost. She is not the end of anything, but the beginning of everything. He has been dead a long time, and she is his resurrection.)