“Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.”

The words of composer Gustav Mahler animate this collection of sixteen tales from award-winning author Marie Brennan, inspired by mythological and folkloric traditions around the world. Here you will find flames of revenge, immortality, and grace, as a valkyrie seeks peace, a queen weaves and unweaves her own fate, and a goddess vanishes from mortal memory — but never from the page.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

* This Is How

* Serpent, Wolf, and Half-Dead Thing

* The Waking of Angantyr

* Silence, Before the Horn

* Daughter of Necessity

* Your Body, My Prison, My Forge

* For the Fairest

* The Wives of Paris

* The Me of Perfect Sight

* The Gospel of Nachash

* Salt Feels No Pain

* At the Heart of Each Pearl Lies a Grain of Sand

* Centuries of Kings

* The Old Woman and the Tea

* Ghost and Fox

* Speak to the Moon

* Story notes