Note from the Editors



I am searching for the thief who stole spring from me. Winter was grown so long in the tooth, summer appeared in a slap of sun — but where was spring? I remember crocuses, daffodils, bluebells as in a dream, but think I must have seen them in a different year to feel so distant from them.

This, then, is an issue to mark spring's passing, whether in mourning or celebration. It is an issue of longing for things to be other than they are, of small magics and great, of lies tangling truths in a net. Here you'll find oceans in a shawl and stitches in a landscape, dove-girls and owl-women, land-locked selkies and ravens stealing the moon.

(Perhaps it's to them we should look for our missing spring.)

So close your eyes, fill your pockets with salt, spin sun-wise three times with a petal on your tongue and let yourself fall backwards into change. Or read the issue. The effect is likely to be the same.

Thanks are due to Paula Friedlander for this issue's perfect art and to our contributors for their magnificent words. We'd also like to congratulate three of our past contributors whose Goblin Fruit poems from 2013 were nominated for this year's Dwarf Star Award: Jennifer Jerome's "Grief", Rose Lemberg's "The Journeymaker, Climbing", and Nita Sembrowich's "April". We wish them the best of the goblins' luck!

And our eternal thanks to you, dear readers — without whom our seas would be always sunless.