Xystus

Croquet. Ghosts. Or maybe not ghosts. But definitely croquet. (The latest story in the Notes from an Imaginary Place series.) 

To order at the restaurant under the sign of twin ibises, you need to write a menu no one can read. 

Ice-skating, strange creatures, a long-suffering saint, and a 16-century painter.

You grew up in a capsule like these--playing, learning. Now all these years later, you've come back. 

A poem. A glass box. A voice coach. A heist. 

Up in the branches of mile-high trees, a cartographer maps the routes between greenhouses.

In a place where the dead are never really gone, a hairdresser carries out his complicated profession on the deceased.

The old kilns are being converted into cozy living spaces. The only problem is that they're haunted, and not by ordinary ghosts.

An ecologist spends a summer in the dark and silent embassy as the honorary spy for the season. 

An looking office in the downtown of a big city--everything seems ordinary enough from the outside, although you might wonder what's up with all those wires running to its roof. And if you could see inside, you might wonder even more.