It was a hot July day in the mountains of Virginia. The earth swam in a faint blue haze of heat that rose from river and cliff.

Daniela and I walked side-by-side on a path alongside the train tracks, with scrub brush and the occasional mesquite tree on either side.

For a moment she pictured herself living somewhere else. Somewhere far away where women fixed things in order to live.

Surrounded by distant relatives he’d never met and couldn’t remember, the old surgeon lay wheezing in his deathbed, clutching the small model of a human heart.

It was late in October, and the Carolina mountains were dressed in the gorgeous reds and yellows of autumn.

People had known about the Claw beneath the sea for years, passing its story down again and again.

(for adults)

This week's work of literature heralds an occasional feature in which we publish stories that, by virtue of their age, find themselves in the public domain.