Sarah Stone
Hiding Places
At dinner, my friend says that her favorite game as a child was running away and hiding. She would get the other children to find a place they could be safe. We’d been talking about how old we were when we first learned our family histories. Her family, considering the neighbors, asked, who would hide us?
I’d kept my valuables handy. I rotated my stuffed animals night to night so they wouldn’t know who was my favorite, who’d be left behind when we ran. When fire flared in the kitchen, in moments I was out on the stone stairs with my little go bag and Mr. Merrythought, who had bells in his head. We played abducting witches or abducted princesses, humans taken to live on another planet where we had to serve alien masters. We built magical cities for dolls and horses, cities we knew would have to fall.
I tell you all your nice compassion is a privilege, but we are standing in the middle of privilege, the door locked. Early on, it was the Assyrians, Romans. Egypt, Cyprus. The Synod of Elvira. The massacres of the Byzantine Empire. York. Constantinople. Baghdad. Breslau. Ritual murder. Blood libel. When we caused the Black Death. You are reading about the mechanisms of autocracy. The city council says nothing to the repeated shouting that the Jews killed our own; on the other side of the country, the actress says now we finally have a taste of what it’s like. Our neighbors email the whole list to say that a sick possum has crawled under our car. We didn’t do anything, no one blames us, no reason to feel exposed, this ridiculous impulse to run away and hide.
Some winter nights, we’d sit and stare at the fireplace, the blue and green flames at the center, the wood turning to charcoal, crackling red and orange and then crumbling to ash. People often didn’t believe it mattered, to be Jewish, and I felt unclear on this myself.
The Dinner Guest
(“Long ago, on a hot summer night in Afghanistan, the King decided to leave the palace and go out into the city for some fresh air.” Howard Schwartz, Elijah’s Violin and Other Jewish Fairy Tales, “The Wooden Sword”)
Thousands of us, looking in, waiting for someone to look back. Laptops open over dinner, we show up at the productivity expert’s webinar. Maybe he can help us make peace with our inability to do almost anything. In the one building with internet in his village on the moors, the expert flicks on his PowerPoint. He says, “I change systems every couple of years.” GTD. Buddhism. New versions of Jungian theories. He is most famous for reminding us how soon we will die.
So friendly and cheerful—we want him as our dinner guest every day. In the old tale: the disguised king wanders his poorest district at night, watches through the window as the happy man and his wife eat their fruits and salads and drink their wine and strong drink, rejoicing. Every night, the king asks to come in. Not knowing who he is, they share what they have. Every day, he passes new laws. Now it’s illegal to mend shoes, carry water, cut wood. Each day, the man finds a new way to earn his dinner. Every night the king checks: can the man still rejoice?
If you change the rules every day, you, the game maker, are always the winner. When the king hires the woodcutters as palace guards and doesn’t pay them, the man sells his sword, makes his own. Prays to be spared having to behead a thief. Look, his sword is wood! A miracle! Now he’s a king’s advisor, he makes the systems.
At all times, the productivity advisor keeps in mind twelve insoluble problems, using his systems to keep notes. Maybe there is a loophole. The poor man’s wife, upstairs among the Queen’s ladies, learns which knife to use, how to judge embroidery and lace, which tiny betrayals to emulate. And God watches through the window, waiting for us to look outside.
Sarah Stone
Sarah Stone (she/they) is the author of Hungry Ghost Theater, a finalist for the 38th annual Northern California Book Awards, and The True Sources of the Nile, and co-author, with Ron Nyren, of Deepening Fiction: A Practical Guide for Intermediate and Advanced Writers. Sarah is a former LABA Fellow and a current Jewish Studio Project Fellow, has taught for UC Berkeley, the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers, and Stanford Continuing Studies, and has written for Korean public television, reported on human rights in Burundi, and looked after orphan chimpanzees at the Jane Goodall Institute. Sarah’s work has appeared in Image, Ploughshares, The Millions, Scoundrel Time, The Believer, 100 Word Story, CRAFT, Alta Journal online for the California Book Club, and elsewhere. A new book, Marriage to the Sea, is forthcoming from Four Way Books in 2026