The Song of the Blue Bottle Tree

by India Hayford

I believe in this wrathful god of the Christians and Hebrews, too. I just don’t believe he’s as all powerful as he’d like to be, and that some greater spirit somewhere keeps the God of Wrath from destroying the world.

Jezzie linked arms with her and drew her upstairs. Leah went along meekly. The world had shifted around her that evening, but she was only eleven. Someone else could sort things out.

I’d heard the expression “taking a turn on two wheels,” but I’d never done it before.

my own propensity for reading everything from novels to the backs of cereal boxes.

She puts those bottles out to catch any bad spirits that might come creepin’ around her yard.