by Patricia Russo
Read by Wilson Fowlie and M.K. Hobson (PodCastle’s Sons of Buttery Thunder)
Originally published in Clockwork Phoenix 4, Edited by Mike Allen.
When The Old Woman With No Teeth decided to have children, she didn’t go about it in the usual way. Well, really, what else could you expect from The Old Woman With No Teeth? If she ever did anything the usual way, even boiling a pot of water, the world might start spinning widdershins on its axis.
“Now you just stop that. I can read perfectly well, you impudent ragger. Set down what I told you, and don’t believe all the stories you’ve heard about me.”
There are many stories about The Old Woman With No Teeth, but people should not believe all of them. The most popular one is that she wore away her teeth by chewing a tunnel to the six-sided world. Nobody knows if this story is true. Many people have looked for the passageway she is supposed to have gnawed through reality, but none of the venturers have managed to pinpoint it.
“None of the ones who’ve come back, you mean. Silly bastards.”
Rated PG.
