EA Metacast: New Websites
Show Notes
Hi there! A short metacast to tell you all about our new websites. Transcript follows for those who who prefer to read along.
Archive for Podcasts
PodCastle Miniature 100: Seven Things That Oughtn’t Cut Me
Seven Things That Oughtn’t Cut Me
By Jessi Cole Jackson
They say troll girls appear only in brilliant shades of armored green. Their skin is faceted, unpierceable, and gleams in the sunlight like emeralds. They say we cannot be drab or fragile. They say we cannot bleed.
If only.
PodCastle 495: Shadow Man, Sack Man, Half Dark, Half Light
Shadow Man, Sack Man, Half Dark, Half Light
By Malon Edwards
You keep running, even though you know you can’t escape the fifty-foot-tall Pogo. But you were built for this.
You are taller than all of the girls and most of the boys in your Covey Four class. Your legs are longer. Your steam-clock heart is stronger. Your determination is unmatched. Even against the rocks they throw. Even against the insults they hurl. Even when they entimide you and chase you home after school every day, all because your mother could not save their friends.
They have not caught you yet. And they never will. Because you will not let them.
PodCastle 494: Folk
Show Notes
Upcoming anthology, “Sword and Sonnet” an anthology of stories devoted to the union of battle and poetry — lyrical, shimmery sonnet-slingers, grizzled, gritty poetpunks, and word nerds battling eldritch evil! Edited by E. Catherine Tobler of Shimmer, and PodCastle’s own Aidan Doyle and Rachael K. Jones.
Folk
By Eden Royce
In a place beyond far, my braids are woven into the sweetgrass basket encasing me and I am surrounded by the scent of the ocean and its dead. A crack of light breaches my intricate prison and I shift, twist only a fraction, to take advantage of its brightness — there is no warmth from it.
I look at the pads of my fingertips. The flesh, bloodless, has been stripped away, and instead of muscle and meat, there is a network of twisting reeds, coiled, wound tightly into green-brown curlicues. Three of them in a staggered pattern like stepping stones in a garden. I touch my fingertips to my face and feel the prickly scrape of dried palmetto leaves.
PodCastle 493: The Fall Shall Further the Flight In Me
The Fall Shall Further the Flight In Me
By Rachael K. Jones
There are things that fly and things that fall. You must remember this distinction, because they are not the same.
Devils are flying things that learn to fall. Lovers are falling things that learn to fly. Do not confuse them.
Saints do not fly, precisely, although they may seem to as they bear our prayers up the sky. They merely learn not to fall. It takes long years of repentance to master this art, and even then, some saints fall anyway, like my mother did.
PodCastle 492: The White Fox
Show Notes
Rated PG-13
The White Fox
by L. P. Lee
Five days have passed since I was a prisoner in those red brick walls, but every night I return there. In my night time terrors I am back in the squalor of that cell, surrounded by anguished people, so cramped that you can barely sit comfortably, let alone lie down to sleep. Cells without heat in the harsh Seoul winters, or cool relief in the sweltering summers; breeding grounds for exhaustion, frost bite and death.
PodCastle 491: Bullets
Bullets
by Joanne Anderton
It had once been a sheep, and it wasn’t dead yet. A mangle of smouldering wool, scorched skin, and cooked meat, breathing in puffs of hot ash. Outrun by flames, tangled in underbrush, or crushed beneath a falling tree, who could tell? Everything was charcoal now.
I pull the mask from my nose and mouth and breathe the warm smoke in. Load the rifle, aim between what’s left of the poor thing’s ear and eye, and give it peace with the slow squeeze of the trigger. Try to ignore the shakes, the tears stinging my eyes. I’m soaked in sweat and covered in ash, but supposed to be grateful that I’m still alive. At this point, it’s hard to even give a shit that the house is still standing.
Thank god, mum. We thought you were a gorner this time.
PodCastle 490: The Names of the Sky
Show Notes
Rated PG-13.
The Names of the Sky
by Matthew Claxton
Zoya wished one of her flying instructors could have seen her land on that muddy field. Always she had been criticized for her landings. “Light as a feather in the air, lands like a brick,” one had written on his assessment. But this time she brought the bullet-riddled fighter in perfectly, despite the dead engine, despite the ruts that tried to fling her sideways. She bumped to a halt where the field ended and a bare-branched forest of white birches began.
PodCastle 489: Emshalur’s Hand Stays
Show Notes
Rated PG-13
Emshalur’s Hand Stays
By Anaea Lay
I returned to Irishem with three sources of power: a letter from Kelian, a clear memory of why I left, and the space between my hands. The letter proved my right to enter as a citizen at the outer gate. It also got me past the boy keeping Kelian’s door when I arrived, though the house was closed for the evening. “Sealed save for family and Emshalur,” go the ritual words of denial.
Though the boy gave me entrance into the hallway, I had another obstacle to pass before admittance to the hearth room. Before seeing Kelian again. A young woman with Kelian’s narrow eyes and full lips, but a flatter nose and a head of glossy curls, emerged from the depths of the house mere moments after the boy disappeared to fetch a member of the family. “Tyman says you have a letter to admit you. You will show it to me.”
PodCastle 488: Crossing
Show Notes
Rated PG-13
Crossing
by A. C. Wise
Emma Rose is four years old the first time she enters the ocean alone. All her life, she’s lived with the beach at the end of her street. Her parents carried her into the waves the week she was born. When she learned to stand, they taught her to float. Older still, they showed her how to stretch her body out long, how to reach, and turn her head to breathe, letting the water guide her like a friend.
Now, her parents watch from towels on the shore. Sun reflects off the Dover chalk cliffs so they shine brilliant white. The wind plays with Emma Rose’s curls, and the tide garlands her toes with foam. She steps carefully and the water swirls up to her knees, her waist. There’s a small moment of doubt, but surely the water will keep her safe. She knows it as well as she knows the sound of her father’s voice, the touch of her mother’s hand.