Overview
The Palisade is a short story in No Return. It follows Matthew Saaland, an American consultant who discovers a ritual that carries him to the palisade, a forest realm outside ordinary time.
Publication History
The story appeared online in 2021. It is included in No Return, a short story collection released by Askari in 2024, and was later rerun in Futurist Letters in 2025.
Plot
Matthew attends the estate sale of the recently deceased Lionel Prescott and buys a self-published manual called On the Use of Focused Meditation for the Easing of the Mind and Visitation to Other Worlds. The manual describes a ritual involving laurifolia leaves, Avenforth Assam, and meditation. Matthew tries it in his bedroom and appears in a forest realm containing a cottage, where he meets Edith Seabrook.
At first Matthew treats the palisade as a lucid dream, but physical proof follows him back to Los Angeles. He returns and learns from Edith that the palisade is connected to Prescott’s old mystic order, has a return elixir, and runs on a different relation to time. Matthew and Edith begin a romance, and Matthew eventually uses a larger ritual space in an abandoned airport terminal to reach her again.
Matthew and Edith agree to spend what amounts to a year together in the palisade while only days pass outside. They make music, write together, and live apart from ordinary obligations. The arrangement collapses when Edith decides that she must return to her ill mother and to her own life. Matthew reacts with possessive anger, and Edith leaves the palisade after telling him not to wait.
Back in ordinary life, Matthew mourns the lost relationship and later tracks Edith through remaining supplies of Avenforth Assam. Months after a bitter phone call, Edith arranges a theatrical invitation for him. Matthew eventually meets her in Berlin, where he sees that she has spent years in the palisade, grown older, and moved beyond the version of herself he knew.
After the meeting, Matthew attempts another transit from a Berlin rooftop using a substitute tea. Instead of returning to the palisade, he arrives at Temple (realm), a desert oasis where a stranger warns him to leave quickly. Matthew declines the return elixir and chooses to remain.