In this revelatory story about first love from Karen Russell's Orange World, a young man falls in love with a two thousand year old girl that he's extracted from a mass of peat in a Northern European bog. Through a darkly comic lens, Russell explores the vertigo of falling in and out of love, and the way that our shallow projections and fairytale fantasies can cover over the mysterious reality of another human being. A Vintage Short.

KAREN RUSSELL has received a MacArthur Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship, the "5 under 35" prize from the National Book Foundation, the New York Public Library Young Lions Award, and the Berlin Prize from the American Academy. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband, son, and daughter.