The Mermaid's Daughter

“Do you hear yourself? Schedule and fun all in the same sentence.”

She has a voice like the inside of a New England church.

Magic collects at the edges of stories, eddies before them and surges in their wakes.

I dreamed of the sea before I ever saw it, lovely dreams of a blue-lit world where everything undulated softly all around.

“My dear,” Ruzena says, and now she turns a little to include the audience, “you will die a thousand tragic deaths onstage. It’s the curse of the soprano. The tenor makes a fool of himself for love, the baritone must perfect an expression of evil glee, but we are the ones who die, my dear, every time.”