Summary: Read by Kada McDonald Music by Robert Farmer Audio Engineering by Bruce McDonald Nicholas Ozment teaches English at Winona State University. By night he is an sf writer of stories and poetry for publications such as Weird Tales, Mythic Delirium, SUSURRUS: THE LITERATURE OF MADNESS, MYTHIC CIRCLE, AFTERBURN SF, and RAVEN ELECTRICK. Two of his stories have been podcast on PSEUDOPOD. He reviews books and movies at DOWN IN THE CELLAR (http://downinthecellar.com) and MANNING'S MANLY MOVIES (http://manning.coldfusionvideo.com). He lives in Minnesota with his wife and a strange black dog. by Nicholas Ozment Marigold was bending over to pick a morel mushroom when she heard something crashing through the woods. It grew louder, coming towards her. Her heart jumped and she stood up straight, hoping it was only a spooked deer. She grasped the handle of the knife she carried beneath her cape, fearing it might be a far less pleasant denizen of the forest—a wolf or a boar or a bear. Not that the small knife would do the young girl much good against boar tusk or bear claw. It was more handy for whittling pocket-sized boars and bears out of sticks. Then it—or rather he—burst from the trees not forty yards from her, running at full tilt. He came leaping over brambles and branches and bushes, his great long legs taking huge strides so that in the span of a heartbeat he was already nearly upon her. He was a gaunt, wiry giant of a man. He didn’t notice Marigold until he nearly ran her over. Then his gangly body, all waving limbs like a daddy-longlegs spider, came to an abrupt halt. He towered over her, glaring down with gray, owl-like eyes
