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PodCastle Miniature 011: The Fable of the Moth

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 3:50 — 2.7MB)

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Show Notes

Rated G. Contains philosophical meanderings.

The Fable of the Moth

by Peter S. Beagle

Once there was a young moth who did not believe that the proper end for all mothkind was a zish and a frizzle. Whenever he saw a friend or a cousin or a total stranger rushing to a rendezvous with a menorah or a Coleman stove, he could feel a bit of his heart blacken and crumble. One evening, he called all the moths of the world together and preached to them. “Consider the sweetness of the world,” he cried passionately. “Consider the moon, consider wet grass, consider company. Consider glove linings, camel’s hair coats, fur stoles, feather boas, consider the heartbreaking, lost-innocence flavor of cashmere. Life is good, and love is all that matters. Why will we seek death, why do we truly hunger for nothing but the hateful hug of the candle, the bitter kiss of the filament? Accidents of the universe we may be, but we are beautiful accidents and we must not live as though we were ugly. The flame is a cheat, and love is the only.”

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PC024: It Takes a Town

First appeared in Strange Horizons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 35:15 — 24.2MB)

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Show Notes

Rated PG. Contains impossible science and a skyward thrust.

It Takes a Town

by Stephen V. Ramey

“They ain’t really going through with this,” Tom said. “Are they?” The pig smell intensified, driving off more pleasant fumes of paint and honest sweat. “First the casino. Then the amusement park. Now a rocket?” He chuckled. “Won’t you crazy townies never learn?”

“This is different. This will really put Thornhope on the map.” Anthony turned back to his work. “The whole town is pitching in.” He finished outlining the final T and selected a sash brush from his tool belt. The brush’s upper portion was crusted but the tips were flexible enough. He dipped it into black paint.

“What about materials?”

“Folks are donating–”

“And what about the rocket? Where you gonna get that?”

Anthony licked his lips, trying not to lose concentration. “There’s talk about that old silo on your property–”

“My silo!” Tom laughed hard and slapped his thigh. “What in hellfire makes you think a bunch of morons and a queerball crossdresser can launch a silo to Mars?”

Anthony rolled his eyes. This was exactly the attitude he hoped to escape. “Who’s to say we can’t?”

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PodCastle Miniature 010: The Desires of Houses

First appeared in Strange Horizons (full text online)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 7:25 — 5.1MB)

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Show Notes

Rated R. Contains desire.

The Desires of Houses

by Haddayr Copley-Woods

The floor is sulking. She almost always wears shoes in the basement, and the cement lies all day in agony listening to the first floor’s boards sighing loudly in ecstasy at the touch of her bare heels.

All it can hope for in its slow, cold way is that the woman will scoop the cat boxes, squatting on her heels, after she starts a load of laundry. Today oh joy oh joy she does. The floor is practically writhing at the smell of her (she always showers after the scooping, so her scent is thick)—the tangy rich odor. The cement feels (or maybe it’s just wishful thinking) just a bit of her damp warmth.

But then she is sweeping the floor, oblivious as always to the swooning house around her, ruining the floor’s pleasure with the horrible scented litter she sweeps up and tosses back in the box.

She yanks open the dryer, who feels violated and then guilty for enjoying it, dumps the hot, panting shirts and shorts into a basket, and heads back upstairs, carefully turning off the lights to avoid the lecture about electricity the man will give her later if she doesn’t. Even minutes later, the cords are still shaking in the darkness.

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PodCastle 23: Moon Viewing at Shijo Bridge (Giant Episode)

First appeared in Realms of Fantasy.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:34:08 — 64.6MB)

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Show Notes

Rated PG. Contains adventuring.

Note: This PodCastle Giant is longer than a normal episode. PodCastle Giants will air once every three months. Other episodes will remain our customary length.

For those listeners looking for a good point to pause the episode, Steve Anderson recommends minute 48 as a good time for an intermission.

Moon Viewing at Shijo Bridge

by Richard Parks

The full moon cast the man’s shadow across the thin screen that was my doorway. It wasn’t a mistake; he wanted me to know he was there. I pulled the screen aside, but I was pretty sure I knew who would be waiting.

He kneeled on the veranda, the hilt of his sword clearly visible. “Lord Yamada? My name is Kanemore.”

“Lord” was technically correct but a little jarring to hear applied to me again. Especially coming from a man who was the son of an emperor. I finally realized who he was. “Prince Kanemore. You were named after the poet, Taira no Kanemore, weren’t you?” I asked.

He smiled then, or perhaps it was a trick of the moonlight. “My mother thought that having a famous poet for a namesake might gentle my nature. In that I fear she was mistaken. So, you remember me.”

“I do. Even when you were not at Court, your sister Princess Teiko always spoke highly of you.”

He smiled faintly. “And so back to the matter at hand: Lord Yamada, I am charged to bring you safely to the Imperial compound.”

 

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PC022: Dead Girl’s Wedding March

First appeared in Fantasy Magazine, 2006.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 20:04 — 13.8MB)

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Show Notes

Rated G. Contains love between a rat and a girl five thousand years dead.

Dead Girl’s Wedding March

by Cat Rambo

“The Physician came with eager steps, for new cases were few and far between. He insisted on examining Zuleika from head to toe, and would have had her disrobe, save for her father’s protest.

“She seems well enough to me,” the Physician said in a disappointed tone.

“She believes she wishes to marry.”

“Tut, tut,” the Physician said in astonishment. “Well now. Love. And you wish this cured?”

“Before the contagion spreads any further or drives her to actions imperiling us all.”

 

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PodCastle Miniature 009: What Dragons Prefer

First appeared in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 4:35 — 3.2MB)

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Show Notes

Rated PG. Contains draconic lechery.

Read by Loupe Savich

What Dragons Prefer

by Dayle A. Dermatis

“Dragonslayer,” he greeted, his smile slick beneath his well-oiled mustache. “Thank you for coming to aid us in our time of terror.”

“I prefer ‘Dragonseeker,'” I said politely. “It is not enough to have the skills to slay a dragon–one must learn about him as well. To know one’s enemy is to destroy him.”

And most people knew so little about dragons. I knew, for example, that dragons only fed once every twenty years, and then usually only one human. Is that such a bad thing, really, when wolves kill so many deer in the forest to survive, or humans kill sheep because roast mutton is so tasty? But people panicked if they saw a dragon glide far overhead on the highest currents, or if they caught a faint whiff of its acrid scent when the wind turned just right.

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PC021: Hallah Iron-Thighs and the Change of Life

First appeared in Chicks in Chainmail (Baen)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:40 — 23.8MB)

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Show Notes

Rated PG. Contains scantily clad barbarians of the female persuasion.

Hallah Iron-Thighs and the Change of Life

by K.D. Wentworth

“I wouldn’t do that, if I were you,” I called after him. “This pass is dangerous. You never know when you’re going to run into a bunch of low-down, dirty, skulking ban–”

“And just who are you calling `dirty’ there, ducks?” a familiar male voice called down from the rocks above. “Actually, I’m thinking the two of you could do with a bit of spit and polish your own selves.”

“Lomo, you skunk!” Corpsemaker’s hooves clattered as I pulled her up.

“That’s Lomo, King of the Bandits, to you,” he said haughtily.

I leaped out of the saddle, my sword Esmeralda in hand. “I thought I split your thieving head open the last time you waylaid us!”

“That,” he said loftily from his unseen perch, “was merely a clever ruse on my part.”

“Rats and eels, I hate it when they won’t stay dead!”

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PC020: Cup and Table

First appeared in Twenty Epics

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 41:10 — 28.3MB)

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Show Notes

Rated PG. Contains mysteries, religious and philosophical.

Cup and Table

by Tim Pratt

The Old Doctor welcomed Sigmund, twenty years old and tormented by visions, into the library at the Table’s headquarters. Shelves rose everywhere like battlements, the floors were old slate, and the lights were ancient crystal-dripping chandeliers, but the Old Doctor sat in a folding chair at a card table heaped with books.

“I expected, well, something more,” Sigmund said, thumping the rickety table with his hairy knuckles. “A big slab of mahogany or something, a table with authority.”

“We had a fine table once,” the Old Doctor said, eternally middle-aged and absently professorial. “But it was chopped up for firewood during a siege in the 1600s.” He tapped the side of his nose. “There’s a lesson in that. No asset, human or material, is important compared to the continued existence of the organization itself.”

“But surely you’re irreplaceable,” Sigmund said, awkward attempt at job security through flattery. The room shivered and blurred at the edges of his vision, but it had not changed much in recent decades, a few books moving here and there, piles of dust shifting across the floor.

The Old Doctor shook his head. “I am the living history of the Table, but if I died, a new doctor would be sent from the archives to take over operations, and though his approach might differ from mine, his role would be the same — to protect the cup.”

“The cup,” Sigmund said, sensing the cusp of mysteries. “You mean the Holy Grail.”

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PodCastle Miniature 008: Believe

First appeared in Son and Foe (full text at link)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 6:00 — 4.1MB)

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Show Notes

Rated G. Contains quarters in unexpected places.

Believe

by Katherine Sparrow

“I’ve been practicing.”

Kenya nods her head. “It takes a lot of practice.”

“How long did it take you?”

“Forever!” Kenya claps her hands and makes two more quarters appear. At lunch she buys two chocolate milks with her quarters and gives one to Maria. It is sweet and thick and better than the wheat bread and yellow rubber-cheese sandwich her Mom packed for her.

They have a test in long division after lunch and Maria feels mad that Kenya can just get an ‘A’ with magic but she has to work hard. She knows how to do it but keeps forgetting to carry the ones and the twos and the only thing that matters to the teacher is getting the answer right. I believe I’ll get an A, Maria thinks as hard as she can. D into A, D into A!

“Can you do more magic?” Maria asks Kenya at recess.

“Yes.”

“Will you show me?”

“Maybe tomorrow. I have to believe more first.”

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PC019: Galatea

First appeared in Heliotrope

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 32:44 — 22.5MB)

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Show Notes

Rated PG. Contains alienation from community and spirit

Galatea

by Vylar Kaftan

Since I moved to the city, I’ve been dying piece by piece. It’s not really the smog, or the crowds, or my tiny apartment above the Arabic bookstore, or any of the things that bother most people. It’s the way people hurry around, their faces to the sidewalk, darting through the streets like ants swarming over a dead lizard. City life is fractured into thousands of pieces–faceted like the view from insect eyes. Maybe it makes sense to ants. To a small-town girl like me, it’s overwhelming.

The problem is that I’ve been here long enough to start dying. I lost two fingers last week. They fell off while I was sleeping. I found them next to my pillow in the morning, and put them in a shoebox with my big toe.