https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/elizabeth-eve-king/episodes/Saint-Esteban-of-the-Children—A-SHORT-STORY-e2tecff
SEASON 2 OF MY PODCAST ON SPOTIFY – GODS & MONSTERS IS FINISHED- THIS IS THE FIRST SHORT STORY!
SAINT ESTEBAN OF THE CHILDREN
by E. E. King, read by E.E. King
( Originally Published 2018 in Cosmic Roots & Eldritch Shores & Flame Tree 2022)
This story was written when I lived in a magic town in Mexico, San Miguel de Allende. Magic towns are actually designated by the Mexican government – they are places where customs remain unchanged for hundreds of years. Old places, magic places. Places where ghosts linger in the shadows and memories crouch behind each doorway.
A time for special magic is Day of the Dead, Día de Muertos, in Mexico, a time when we can almost touch the past.
At midnight on October thirty-first the children rise from their graves and spent the day with their relatives.
The air is thinner on those nights when the dead brushed shoulders with the living. Ghosts mingled with the smoke of burning candles and cigars. Calaveras, sugar skulls, brilliant with sequin eyes and icing lips, crumbled over the graves, sparkling in the moonlight like a rare crystalline snow on the high desert.
When the party is over, long after midnight on the second of November, the dead are not yet ready to return to their slumbers. There has been too much excitement. Too much color and noise. Too much raw emotion. Too much loss and laughter. Young couples had snuck behind the gates of the cemetery exchanging first kisses. Their love and desire lingered in the air, the polar opposite of death.
So, on November third, when the cemetery was empty of life and yet life still lingered in the air, a voice rose out of the earth, fighting its way up through a blanket of fading lilies and marigolds.
It was thin and weak as the voices of the dead always are. Lacking body and vocal cords it’s nearly impossible to speak with power. That is why when spirits whisper it’s hard to tell child from adult, or male from female. Death makes neuters of us all. Stealing our muscles and our dreams, our ambitions, and our desires. In return, it gives us peace, peace, and respite from pain, not a bad trade perhaps, but few make it willingly.
The voice crawled out of the grave, hanging in the air like fog over a mountain lake.
“Let us tell our stories while we can. This night before we sleep again. While we have the memory of breath in our lungs.”
Thus began Noche de historias, the Night of the Stories, a holiday not found on any calendar. There are no pageants or parades, no preparation, or planning. Yet on November third, when the living have all gone away leaving only love, tears, and dying flowers, the dead share their histories.
This is one of their Stories.
I hope you like it.