Blue Beyond the Sea, by Laura Vogt

Prose, chapbook, 36 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

Bavaria, 1108. Edigna flees an arranged marriage and creates a home in the hollow of a linden tree. She illuminates manuscripts for a nearby abbey, and as she becomes a legendary story told round fires, she begins to lose her grip on the physical world. She doesn’t want to be only a story: she wants to be a body too. An enchanting short story that reimagines the medieval legend of Edigna of Puch as the original Rapunzel, for fans of V. E. Schwab’s Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, Naomi Novik’s Uprooted, and Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi. Inspired by the surprising blue fragments of lapis lazuli found by archeologists in the remains of a medieval woman’s teeth, Blue Beyond the Sea is a rewrite of the history of women in art.

A cloudshadow fell over the tree, so the eerie blue glow of dawn shaded the branches ash and smoke. I thought of that tale of a girl abandoned in a tower, the one with the coils of yellow hair trailing down like vines rooting into the earth. Maybe she hadn’t been trapped there—maybe she’d climbed up herself.

Laura Vogt writes historical fiction, fabulism, and poetry. She studied literature and history in undergrad and graduate school, focusing on Shakespeare, folk tales, and the History of Mentalities. She also attended the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop writing program in Dublin, Ireland. Her poetry is published in several journals and her prose has placed in a few contests. She is currently querying her second novel, a historical fiction and fabulism blend based on her ancestor. She lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma with her family. Connect with her on Instagram, Twitter, or her website, www.lauravogt.com.