dispatches from the ironsands

Okay so summer is the time to tell ghost stories in Japan which is why so many summer episodes of anime have ghosts in them and even why My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away takes place during summer. And coincidentally it’s also the original spooky season in my own country, Denmark, where we have Sankt Hans in June which is said to be the best time of year to do magic and communicate with the dead.

Walpurgis Night (engraving, 1669, Smith Archive)

In honor of one of my favorite short stories of all time being set today, August 4, 2026, here is a repost of a commission I got from the wonderful @bethfuller in early March 2020 of the poem featured therein (and that which gives it its title) by Sarah Teasdale:

I would be such a good high priestess in a fantasy world. I would be great at walking about in veils and only speaking loudly during important ceremonies, otherwise whispering short sentences into the ears of my holy attendants to speak for me. I'd be awesome at holding aloft a chalice of blessed water and/or blood and maybe even guarding a dark secret about how the god we all worship is actually evil and we're totally gonna sacrifice that wounded hero we just nursed back to health after finding him in the forest surrounded by thirty slain wolves.