* Author : Jennifer Hykes

* Narrator : Laurice White

* Host : Graeme Dunlop

* Audio Producer : Peter Wood

*

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PodCastle 393: Harlequin Moon is a PodCastle original.

Rated PG

Harlequin Moon

by Jennifer Hykes

The man called Dirt was a master of riddles. It was his only gift.

He was not a riddler himself. From the time he could speak, he always called things exactly what they were and nothing else. He had tried, once or twice in his childhood, to craft a joke or to weave a pair of clever words together. But every time he tried to twist something sideways, he found that his tongue would not cooperate. So he stopped trying to be clever and went on his way, moving through his life in a straight line from day before to day after. He worked the fields on his family’s farm, he carted vegetables to market, he paid his respects to the temple gods at all the appropriate times. He grew tall and broad of shoulder, but even in the prime of his youth he moved with the deliberate calm of old age. He was not a riddler.

But he was a master at solving riddles.