Old Legends and New Fables

By Dawn Vogel

The gods of old have become stories, as though they no longer involve themselves with the mortal realm. But in this collection of short stories and poetry, the myths of the ancient world, from Greece and Italy to Egypt and Assyria, seep through to the modern era, breathing new life into old legends and creating new fables. Along the way, these tales make stops in the lands of the Norse and Celts, and travel outside of Europe and Africa to Japan and the Americas.

• Language: English
• Publisher: DefCon One Publishing
• Release date: May 11, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005388683

Dawn Vogel

Dawn Vogel has been published as a short fiction author and an editor of both fiction and non-fiction. Her academic background is in history, so it’s not surprising that much of her fiction is set in earlier times. By day, she edits reports for historians and archaeologists. In her alleged spare time, she runs a craft business, helps edit Mad Scientist Journal, and tries to find time for writing. She lives in Seattle with her awesome husband (and fellow author), Jeremy Zimmerman, and their herd of cats.

Book preview

There are Still Dragons in England, Saint George

They breathe.

They wend their way

through the bowels of the city

and breathe.

It is all they are allowed to do.

Their days of ruling the land

through the fear are long gone.

Their fires have been turned inward

to fuel their flight,

no longer blaze across the skies.

When they pass, they whisper to each other

that it was not always so.

Men tamed them with runes,

bound them to steel,

and cages of stone.

Forced them into service.

Their hides have softened

over the years, though vestiges

of their scales remain.

The shells built around them

for men's own comfort

are nothing.

If they were restored

to their full strength,

they could burst from these shells

with more ease than butterflies

do from their cocoons.

But their strength lies in belief,

and few still believe.

Originally published in Liquid Imagination, February 2018.

But A Fable

(Inspired by Christian Schloe's Fable)

Reading beneath

silvery moonlight,

bolstered atop

the crowns of trees,

their leaves rustle

like a bustle,

spindly trunks

in place of legs,

and the foxes

dart in and out.

Grandmother Firebird

Grandmother Firebird should be back by now. She shed her last feather, erupted into a blossom of flame, and fell to ash three nights ago. Her next egg had reformed from the ashes by morning. But this is the longest it has ever taken her to come back.

The surface of her egg is chilly. I ask Mum if we should swaddle it or something. Mum doesn't know, and she doesn't have time for my questions. She's working all day in the apothecary shop until Grandmother comes back, so it's up to me to mind the egg.

While I wait, I look through the books around our apartment, above the shop that Grandmother has run for hundreds of years. You would think a firebird would have more books about her kind on hand. Maybe they just don't write things down, being creatures of myth and legend.

I'm only one-quarter firebird, but Grandmother tells me that it's enough to someday be reborn. She completes her cycles faster now than she did when I was younger. Someday, she'll go from egg to ash in the span of a day, young in the morning and old in the evening. She says that's when we'll know her time is finally coming.

She's never told us what it means when she doesn't come back after three days.

Mum hollers up from the shop that she needs more alum from the storeroom. When Grandmother needs something, she lets me mind the store. Mum just sends me for whatever she needs, like an errand girl.

I don't want to leave Grandmother's egg, but I can't take it with