Misty and the Magic Pumpkin Knife: Tales From Far Beyond North

By Ruth Nestvold

Misty Mankin hated Halloween. She hated ghosts and princesses and black and orange. Especially orange. She hated frozen pumpkin pie, the most common kind in Rolynka, Alaska. She hated witches and masks and what qualified as seasonal office parties near the Arctic Circle. She hated all the interruptions of her evening accompanied by screaming and giggling and variations from innocent to profane on the three words "trick or treat."
She particularly hated the pumpkin knife — and the fact that it contained the ghost of her mother...

"Misty and the Magic Pumpkin Knife" is a short story of approximately 5,000 words (20 pages), a new installment in the series "Tales From Far Beyond North."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Red Dragon Books
• Release date: Feb 4, 2015
• ISBN: 9781507028148

Ruth Nestvold

A former assistant professor of English in the picturesque town of Freiburg on the edge of the Black Forest, Ruth Nestvold has given up theory for imagination. The university career has been replaced by a small software localization business, and the Black Forest by the parrots of Bad Cannstatt, where she lives with her fantasy, her family, her books and no cats in a house with a turret. Her short fiction has appeared in numerous markets, including Asimov's, F&SF, Baen's Universe, Strange Horizons, Scifiction, and Gardner Dozois's Year's Best Science Fiction. Her fiction has been nominated for the Nebula, Tiptree, and Sturgeon Awards. In 2007, the Italian translation of her novella "Looking Through Lace" won the "Premio Italia" award for best international work. Her novel Flamme und Harfe appeared in translation with the German imprint of Random House, Penhaligon, in 2009 and has since been translated into Dutch and Italian.

Book preview

Misty and the Magic Pumpkin Knife

A Short Story in the Series Tales From Far Beyond North

by

Ruth Nestvold

Copyright 2012 Ruth Nestvold

Cover by Britta Mack and Ruth Nestvold

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Misty and the Magic Pumpkin Knife

Misty Mankin hated Halloween. She hated ghosts and princesses and black and orange. Especially orange. She hated frozen pumpkin pie, the most common kind in Rolynka, Alaska. She hated witches and masks and what qualified as seasonal office parties near the Arctic Circle. She hated all the interruptions of her evening accompanied by screaming and giggling and variations from innocent to profane on the three words trick or treat.

She particularly hated the pumpkin knife — and the fact that it contained the ghost of her mother.

Or so Misty suspected.

Nothing else explained the talent she had inherited for carving pumpkins along with the ancient knife; she'd never been the least bit good at it until her mother died in the accident. Which in itself was just plain unfair, like so many things in her life. How many people were killed by a bear running out into the road and getting thrown onto the roof of their car?

Finally, Misty hated the way everyone brought their pumpkins to her to carve in the weeks before Halloween — and the way she couldn't help carving them, as if the knife had possessed her somehow. It was magical, they said, how she could bring life to an orange vegetable the same way her mother had.

No, it was the blasted carving knife.

Besides, carving pumpkins was