Folklore Reborn

There is a smell that comes before she does. Frangipani. The graveyard flower of the Malay world, white petals planted among headstones because the living thought the dead deserved something beautiful. The scent drifts through the dark, sweet and thi... more

You are standing at the edge of a well in the hottest city you have ever seen. The stone rim is worn smooth by four hundred years of hands. Gold dust fills the cracks. Drums are beating. A girl in white is walking toward the well, singing a melody of... more

A stranger walks into an Angolan village at the edge of the dry season. He is young, handsome, and speaks with the kind of warmth that makes people lean closer. He knows the right greetings. He brings the right gifts. Within days, the elders are cons... more

The whistle starts loud. Clear, melodic, a scale ascending and descending across the grassland at night. It sounds close. That means he is far away.

When the whistle grows faint, when it drops to a thread at the edge of hearing, when the frogs fall ... more

On the fourth of August, fifteen seventy-seven, a violent thunderstorm struck the county of Suffolk. In the market town of Bungay, the congregation of Saint Mary's Church had gathered for Sunday services when a black dog burst through the doors. It r... more

There is a light in the village tonight that should not be there. Among the fireflies pulsing above the cassava fields, one does not blink. Its glow is steady, cold, and it moves with purpose toward the room where a child is sleeping. Nothing can kee... more

In Japanese folklore, when too many people die and no one buries them, the bones accumulate. Individual identities dissolve. What remains is a collective fury that merges into something fifteen meters tall, with eyes that glow like foxfire and teeth ... more

In the fog off southern Chile, fishermen hear music. Accordion, drums, voices singing in chorus. Then light: a blazing three-masted ship that should not be there. They call it the Caleuche, the ship of the Changed Ones.

The drowned do not stay dead ... more