Heather McDougal

Feb 19, 2024 | strangehorizons.com | Kathy Chao |Heather McDougal |Cecilia Caballero |Jay Gomez

We must confess that back then Father had us too overawed to question anything. It was difficult not to be—Father had that quality. Short of stature, wide of waist, midway through thirty and already stooped and wrinkled as a prune, he nonetheless radiated. Like a fire in a cave, like the sun at high noon. (Of course he was not really our father, being a eunuch, but we’d called him Father half our lives, and that was what we continued to call him long after.