27 Comments
User's avatar
Nick Winney's avatar

delicious. Thank-you!

Expand full comment
Jane Dougherty's avatar

Glad you enjoyed the menu :)

Expand full comment
Mike Young's avatar

I love that there was one kid, the loner, the one that teachers said was always daydreaming and never could buckle down and work, that all the other kids thought was a little weird. Until the day he spoke up and spun a tale and captured their imaginations. After this visit, they still thought he was a little weird, but now they were fine with that.

And perhaps back in class the teacher challenged them all to come up with their own ending.

Expand full comment
Jane Dougherty's avatar

Thanks for the lovely comment, Mike! I have a feeling though that nobody will talk about the visit to the split rock for a long time.

Expand full comment
Liz Zimmers's avatar

I love this! A magnificent “fairytale”! I collect them, you know, and this one is a prize.

Expand full comment
Jane Dougherty's avatar

Glad you like it! I enjoy writing my own fairy tales, legends, myths. Why not? They’re all only stories after all :)

Expand full comment
liza.deare's avatar

Oh, I like this a lot. A bit of sky for sapphires, new leaves for emeralds—that was good.

Expand full comment
Jane Dougherty's avatar

Thank you. The myth that salamanders lived in fire has always fascinated me. Having seen one, I can see why they were thought to have strange powers!

Expand full comment
grapeling's avatar

Jane, this is superb. it rivals anything you might find in Grimm.

Expand full comment
Jane Dougherty's avatar

Thank you! At least it doesn’t have some poor innocent condemned to horrors for eternity :)

Expand full comment
Ferdinando Casagrande's avatar

Wonderful, Jane. Thanks.

Expand full comment
Jane Dougherty's avatar

I’m pleased you enjoyed it!

Expand full comment
beth h's avatar

Fantastic!! Salamanders at the centre of the earth😍

Expand full comment
Jane Dougherty's avatar

And where else would they be? Glad you like the story!

Expand full comment
Adriaan Odendaal's avatar

Kids, they'll ask you "And then what?" until you reach the end of history. Or "But why?" until you arrive at the prime mover of the cosmos.

Expand full comment
Jane Dougherty's avatar

Often they know the answers better than we do.

Expand full comment
Patience Mackarness's avatar

Great story! I love that the gems we humans find are the spat-out pips of the good stuff.

Expand full comment
Jane Dougherty's avatar

Who knows? Nobody’s ever been down there to find out :)

Thank you!

Expand full comment
Patience Mackarness's avatar

And thank you for subscribing to mine. I'm following your posts with interest - still finding the Substack thing confusing, but yours is a good one to watch for engagement and inspiration.

Expand full comment
Jane Dougherty's avatar

Thank you! I can’t read a lot of your posts, or maybe I’m doing something wrong. I find most techy things confusing—Substack is not exception.

Expand full comment
Patience Mackarness's avatar

Oh dear! All my posts except the Paris one have a link in, wonder if I’ve done the links wrong. Thanks for pointing out.

Expand full comment
Jane Dougherty's avatar

More likely to be me not looking in the right place!

Expand full comment
Liz Gauffreau's avatar

I love the ending!

Expand full comment
Merril D Smith's avatar

Oh! I love this one!

Shivers.

Expand full comment
User's avatar
Comment deleted
Oct 23
Comment deleted
Expand full comment
Jane Dougherty's avatar

I am! Sort of :)

Expand full comment
User's avatar
Comment deleted
Oct 23
Comment deleted
Expand full comment
Jane Dougherty's avatar

I meant publishing them here :) I have published collections of short stories before and nobody read them. I know you’d do your damnedest though xx

Expand full comment
User's avatar
Comment deleted
Oct 23
Comment deleted
Expand full comment
Jane Dougherty's avatar

I took them all down except a couple of collections of short stories. The publisher who was going to publish a series demanded that I take down the prequel series first. I did, then they sold out.

Expand full comment