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PodCastle 950: FLASH FICTION EXTRAVAGANZA: Reapings

PodCastle 950: FLASH FICTION EXTRAVAGANZA: Reapings is a PodCastle original.

“The Deading Veil” content note for suicide

“Taking Root” content note for the death of a child

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 39:49 — 55.2MB)

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Show Notes

“An Acre a Year” Rated PG

“The Deading Veil” Rated PG-13

“Taking Root” Rated PG

An Acre a Year

By Gregory Marlow

 

An acre a year was all they asked. I agreed. Fifty acres was too much for William to work anyway, even with my help.

The first year, William didn’t notice. I stood on the hill behind the house and surveyed the fields below. Cows, hay, alfalfa, corn, sweet potatoes. It looked the same as the day I married William. Maybe a few corners rounded off in the distance. Or was that my imagination?

What was not my imagination was how the little men delivered on their promises. Travelers willing to work for a meal and a bed for the night. Cows delivering calves effortlessly. Neighbors offering to trade a tractor for a fraction of its worth. Fields of corn yielding twice the expected amount, allowing William to sell the excess and use the money to hire help.

And William, in my bed at night again. The man I married, not the exhausted shell dragging himself in after dark with barely enough energy to eat supper, much less tend to a lonely wife. The fields had been his mistress of necessity. She provided, but not nearly as much as she took. If I had not agreed to the trade, she would have taken him forever. (Continue Reading…)

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PodCastle 949: The Troll Road

PodCastle 949: The Troll Road is a PodCastle original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 50:05 — 68.8MB)

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Show Notes

Rated PG-13

The Troll Road

by Tony Dunnell

 

Sir Lederick dismounted in the Humble Woods on the southern flank of the Hopewine Valley. Here, on the boundary between the king’s realm and the Trollands, the Troll Road began. The ancient road had long offered the only viable route east, and the footfalls of man and horse once thundered along its path. Now, silence. An uneasy silence, if belligerent councillors were to be believed. They used the threat of a troll invasion to stoke fear and distrust among the populace, their whispers never far from the young king’s ear. As for the trolls, they were content with the treaty. The Long War was over, half a century had passed, and, being isolationists by nature, the trolls had embraced a policy of exclusion toward their cantankerous neighbours to the west. Two realms divided, but now the king of men, keen of mind and wise beyond his years, sought a conversation.

“Wait here, Tammy,” said Sir Lederick, stroking the muzzle of his chestnut steed.

The horse snorted and pawed at the ground. Not even a mount as gallant as Tamaleen enjoyed the smell of a troll. And it was a sleeping troll, a fully-grown male, that now blocked access to the road east. He lay snoring, stretched out, his massive head resting on the upper bank, his body obstructing the road. He was naked save for a simple sackcloth around his waist. His skin was a muddy, blotchy brown. (Continue Reading…)

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PodCastle 948: DOUBLE EPISODE: How I Did Not Make Friends With Teniel eu Letxie and The Gift of Her Light

“How I Did Not Make Friends With Teniel eu Letxie” was previously published in Baffling Magazine, Issue 14, January 2024

“The Gift of Her Light” is a PodCastle original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:04 — 39.0MB)

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Show Notes

“How I Did Not Make Friends With Teniel eu Letxie” Rated R

“The Gift of Her Light” Rated PG-13

How I Did Not Make Friends With Teniel eu Letxie

by Bree Wernicke

 

 

Two drinks, and I start telling people I can do syokk.

Is that entirely accurate? No. Can I stop myself? Also no.

The party is at my frenemy Eurli’s flat, and she air-kisses me hello as I push a bottle of my least favorite brandy at her. “Didn’t you bring anyone?” she asks, but fuck if I’m going to knowingly inflict Eurli on another human being. I shrug at her and escape to the drinks rack. I don’t recognize anyone here so this’ll suck unless I start talking to people, and fast. I hi-my-name’s-Gebrenie-what’s-yours around the place until I wind up in a circle of people sprawled on cushions, one-upping each other.

Well I had my very first paper published in Magic.

Well I got that grant for thaumoquantum transference; trials begin in City Brenetxie next month.

Well I just got off the waitlist for a Triu Tetxe wand.

“Oh, you’re all magicians,” I say. (Continue Reading…)

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PodCastle 947: Why a Spider Needs a Parachute

PodCastle 947: Why a Spider Needs a Parachute is a PodCastle original.

Content notes for domestic violence and spiders. Big — friendly! — spiders

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 35:05 — 48.2MB)

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Show Notes

Rated R

Why a Spider Needs a Parachute

by J. L. Akagi

 

I was the only person who knew that my friend Haru wasn’t a woman. They told me so a long time ago, but I only saw Haru as they were once.

The story goes like this.

It was the kind of New York summer that began in May. The hot wind up the coast brought in tropical storms and giant Joro spiders. The humidity created a jungle mist in Brooklyn so dense I couldn’t discern what was condensation and what was spider web. On my treks to the subway each morning, I’d walk face-first into at least one of the webbed parachutes the giant spiders used to glide.

Haru and I spent most weekends waiting out the heat, crowded in front of Haru’s window AC unit. Even in the airflow, I poured sweat from my temples and pits, but Haru remained dry. Never a silken hair out of place. This was something I suspected men loved about Haru: their physical and mental composure. Men loved feeling as if Haru needed nothing. (Continue Reading…)

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PodCastle 946: TALES FROM THE VAULTS: A Fine Balance

Previously ran as episode 517 and first published in Fantasy & Science Fiction.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 54:11 — 74.9MB)

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Show Notes

Rated PG-13

A Fine Balance

By Charlotte Ashley

My mistress, Shoanna Yildirim, was the greatest shot in the city.

Each morning, according to her wishes, I cleaned and loaded her revolving pistol. I oiled the clip on her holster and checked the stitches in the leatherwork. I strung a fresh sash of weighted bullets and laid it by the vanity over her scarves.

“Your pistol, Mistress,” I would say to her as she rose from the mirror, her wide, brown lips and dark, sly eyes painted to perfection.

“Thank you, Emin,” she always replied. “But I will not need it today.”

Each morning, she left the gun where it lay. Mistress Yildirim was the greatest shot in the city, but she hunted Kara Ramadami with a blade. That was just one of the many rules of sahidi. (Continue Reading…)

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PodCastle 945: Gray Skies, Red Wings, Blue Lips, Black Hearts

Previously published in Apex Magazine (2021)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 53:41 — 73.7MB)

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Show Notes

Rated PG-13

Gray Skies, Red Wings, Blue Lips, Black Hearts

by Merc Fenn Wolfmoor

 

A girl has lost her soul down deep in the City. It wandered away while she chipped out another grave in the catacomb brickyards. She set down her pickax, wiped grit from her cheek, and noticed how empty her body was. Looked down at her wrist and found it blank.

That’s what she tells Redcap Kestrel as she sits cross-legged on the abandoned warehouse floor, well away from the grimy windows. The girl who lost her soul doesn’t offer a name. Few people do in the City.

“You want me to find it?” Redcap Kestrel asks. She crouches at a right angle to the girl, not looking her in the face. It’s for the girl’s sake. No one likes to look at a half-alive thing for too long, lest you find yourself on the wrong side of dead. (Continue Reading…)

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PodCastle 944: Mail-Order Magic

Previously published in The Sunday Morning Transport March 2, 2025

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 44:56 — 62.2MB)

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Show Notes

Rated G

Mail-Order Magic

by Stephanie Burgis

 

Shopping online during a bout of brain fog was a terrible idea. Unfortunately, like everything else Hayley Bent tried to carry, common sense had a habit of slipping from her grasp whenever she was trapped in that state of thick confusion.

“I can’t take this.” Standing in the open door of her grandmother’s ramshackle wooden house, Hayley stared at the deliveryman, who waited for her to accept a barred crate from his hands. His van was still running on the street beyond her overgrown lawn, the driver’s door hanging open. “I’m sure I didn’t order it!” Almost sure. “I ordered . . . uh . . .” (Continue Reading…)

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PodCastle 943: At Death’s Door

PodCastle 943: At Death’s Door is a PodCastle original.

content notes for suicidal ideation and second-person narration

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 33:28 — 46.0MB)

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Show Notes

Rated PG-13

At Death’s Door

by T. R. Steele

 

Here are my instructions for passing through death’s door:

1. Trap one of Them, one who crosses in and out of the realm of death, and steal her name by any means necessary.

A. This is not entirely the first step, but I want to get to the point. In reality, first, you need to find the door. My advice is to find it in childhood. Like most doors that aren’t doors, it moves frequently, but is most often caught in the roots of old, old trees. Usually the tree has survived some sort of deforestation or upheaval; in my case, it was an ancient oak in the suburban sprawl, caged on all sides by duplexes and public parks. Me? I wasn’t sure what the door was when I first found it; an impossible shadow, shifting at the roots even when the sun was blocked by clouds. But after I followed the owls and bats and foxes through the woods and watched as they slipped into the gloom underneath, I knew: it led somewhere. Somewhere else. (Continue Reading…)

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PodCastle 942: TALES FROM THE VAULTS: Burning Season

Previously ran as episode 519 as a PodCastle Original

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 53:25 — 73.8MB)

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Show Notes

Rated PG-13

Burning Season

By C. L. Clark

It was burning season in Rashid. Again.

Even in the shop, I could smell the smoke. Can you believe I used to like the smell of burning paper? With my eyes closed, I can still see pages glow red before they burst into flame and curl into ash until they crumble.

I clerked at a small sundries shop in Commercial. The owner was a Duchies woman, one hand peach-pale, the other brown as her shop counter. She had no love for the All-King, who had toppled her Grand Duchess, but you don’t need love to run a business, just enough money to buy mercy. After that expenditure, though, she couldn’t afford to hire a licensed Translator. Coincidentally, I couldn’t afford a license, so she paid me a little extra to quietly broker transactions from the non-Duchies customers and shippers she couldn’t understand.

I am an Omniloquist. Some say we’re a curse the last true Rashidan king put on his enemies before he died, so that we’ll never flounder helpless under a conqueror. More say we have no true power, just an uncanny ability to pick up foreign sounds quickly. Until the All-King came, I was inclined to think the latter. We were a skill with a guild, like any other. And then he came, with his Collectors. There’s nothing natural about them. Maybe there’s nothing natural about us. (Continue Reading…)

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PodCastle 941: Last Train from Deadwall – PART TWO of Two

Previously published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies Issue #433

Content note for suicide attempts

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 51:05 — 70.1MB)

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Show Notes

Rated R

Last Train from Deadwall Part TWO of Two

by André Geleynse

 

The second time Knucklebone tried to kill himself didn’t work out any better than the first.

Sometimes, during the endless months of repair work on the endless track, Knucklebone and the other mechanical revenants amused themselves by crushing coins and other small bits of metal under the wheels of the train. Coins would fly off into the gravel bed, pancaked into paper-thin discs. Nails became miniature swords and tiny cogs spread into misshapen stars. The construction crew collected the most interesting shapes, trading them among themselves as an underground currency.

There wasn’t much that could crush a piece of hammered titanium, such as the one that housed Knucklebone’s aether core. But he was willing to bet that six-hundred tons of iron and bone just might get the job done. (Continue Reading…)