Амаль Эль-Мохтар - Seasons of Glass and Iron

“Yes,” says Tabitha, a choking in her voice, “yes, I do.”

“I believe you can walk without iron shoes. Leave them here — and in exchange, I will give you my shoes of silk, and we will fill your pack with seven golden apples, and if you eat from them sparingly, perhaps they will help you walk until we can find you something better.”

“But we can’t climb down the hill without a pair of shoes!”

“We don’t need to.” Amira smiles, stroking Tabitha’s hair. “Falling’s easy — it’s keeping still that’s hard.”

Neither says anything for a time. Then, carefully, for the hill is slippery to her now, Tabitha sheds her fur cloak, unstraps the iron shoes from her feet, and gives them and her pack to Amira. Amira removes the three remaining pairs and replaces them with apples, drawing the pack’s straps tight over the seventh. She passes the pack back to Tabitha, who shoulders it.

Then, taking Tabitha’s hands in hers, Amira breathes deep and stands up.

The glass throne cracks. There is a sound like hard rain, a roar of whispers as the glass hill shivers into sand. It swallows fur and shoes; it swallows Amira and Tabitha together; it settles into a dome — shaped dune with a final hiss.

Hands still clasped, Amira and Tabitha tumble out of it together, coughing, laughing, shaking sand from their hair and skin. They stand, and wait, and no golden apple appears to part their hands from each other.

“Where should we go?” whispers one to the other.

“Away,” she replies, and holding on to each other, they stumble into the spring, the wide world rising to meet them with the dawn.

Amal El — Mohtar has received the Locus Award, been a Nebula Award finalist for her short fiction, and won the Rhysling Award for poetry three times. She is the author of The Honey Month , a collection of poetry and prose written to the taste of twenty — eight different kinds of honey, and contributes criticism to NPR Books and the LA Times . Her fiction has most recently appeared in Strange Horizons, Lightspeed, Uncanny Magazine , and The Starlit Wood anthology from Saga Press. She lives in Ottawa with her spouse and two cats. Find her online at amalelmohtar.com, or on Twitter@tithenai.