It is an insult to die at midday.
In the mountain country where I was born, such things take place in the dark of night: the fall of an axe, the knotting of a noose. Here, it is a spectacle. From the narrow window of my tower room, I can see the road that leads away from the castle, down to the sea; it is already lined with people, jostling and squabbling amongst themselves for the best view of my execution.
by Suzanne J. Willis
read by Graeme Dunlop
Hosted by Aidan Doyle
First published in SQ Mag.
Spring had stretched the daylight hours and dried the damp-weather rot in my hands by the time the old woman, Emmeline, began visiting the orange grove. By then, I knew enough to see she wasn’t well. I had been placed in the grove to scare away the mynahs pecking incessantly at the fruit. At first, I couldn’t remember being made, or recall the hands that sewed my body and my clothes. Who was it that stuffed me full so I plumped out like a real man?
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Rated PG-13.
Suzanne J. Willis is a Melbourne, Australia-based writer, a graduate of Clarion South and an Aurealis Awards finalist. Her stories have appeared or are forthcoming in anthologies by PS Publishing, Prime Books, Fablecroft Publishing and Fox Spirit Press, and in Fantasy Scroll Magazine, SQ Mag, Mythic Delirium, Capricious SF and the British Fantasy Society Journal. Suzanne’s tales are inspired by fairytales, ghost stories and all things strange, and she can be found online at suzannejwillis.webs.com.
Many thanks to everyone who sent us their work in 2016–we’ve received an outstanding number of submissions this year and we’re impressed and delighted by the fine quality of the stories we’ve read. In order to give proper attention to the stories in queue, and to give the castle staff a much needed rest over the holidays, we will be closing to submissions on December 1. We expect to reopen our submissions portal in mid-January 2017.
Thank you for a great year!
All the Best,
Jen R. Albert and Graeme Dunlop
PodCastle Co-Editors
by D.K. Mok
read by Graeme Dunlop
First published in Insert Title Here.
Part of our Aurealis Month, celebrating the Australian Aurealis Awards.
Hosted by Margo Lanagan.
What is time?
It’s a question I never asked myself while I was still alive, and now, I suppose time is something that happens to other people. Gainful employment, on the other hand, only happened to me after I’d died.
My colleagues call this place the Wings—we’re the before and the after, enfolding the stage of the world. Here, in my lonely turret on the hill, the sun is always noon overhead. Go seaward, towards the misty waters of Unan, and the sun hovers in eternal dawn. Go worldward, towards the Golden Vale, the realm of Transformation, and the sun dips into the cusp of night. Travelling across the Wings can give the illusion of time passing. Long ago, I found it comforting. Now, it makes me vertiginous.
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Rated PG-13.
D. K. Mok is a fantasy and science fiction author whose novels include Squid’s Grief, Hunt for Valamon and The Other Tree. D. K. has been shortlisted for three Aurealis Awards, a Ditmar, and a Washington Science Fiction Association Small Press Award. D. K. graduated from UNSW with a degree in Psychology, pursuing her interests in both social justice and scientist humour. D. K. lives in Sydney, Australia, and her favourite fossil deposit is the Burgess Shale. Connect on Twitter @dk_mok or find out more at www.dkmok.com.
Accordions unpleated welcoming songs the day the mermaids returned.
The first notes droned joyful at dawn, played by young men with wool collars unrolled against the wind. Mattress-clouds bulged above land and water, miles of damp cotton dulling the fishermen’s music. As the sky blanched, fiddlers sawed harmonies, horsehairs screeching on weather-warped bows. Bodhráns were rescued from blanket boxes and cupboards, clatter-spoons from the backs of junk drawers. Soon drummers thumb-pounded down autumn-gold slopes from the village. Beats jigged and reeled past the wharves, along the coast, then splashed through froth seething to shore.
Part of our Aurealis Month, celebrating the Australian Aurealis Awards.
“Where do you think they keep their brains?” Eva asks. “They have to have one somewhere, don’t they?”
She stands motionless beside her younger sister, Fiona, the two of them staring past their own reflections and into the tank beyond. On the other side of the glass drift dozens of moon jellyfish, gently pulsating in the water as though dancing to imperceptible music.
Rated PG-13.
Mordecai plucked a beetle from the magnolia, crushed it, and sucked the juices from its head. This rejuvenating trick was one of many secrets known to the imperial gardener, but even he did not know everything the gardens hid—that the ivy conspired, the worms gossiped, or that, far beneath the ground, the magnolia’s roots knotted around a skull.
Rated PG
So, reason number 572 why living with a wicked witch sucks? Sometimes it’s a gorgeous summer Saturday, and instead of getting a well-deserved break from Sarmine’s weird witchy chores like dusting the dried newts, you end up as an unpaid babysitter for a party full of little witches.
I set out the plates and forks for the birthday cake while surveying the swimming pool full of witch-kids. From up here they looked like any small children having fun—laughing and splashing and squealing and biting. Except, if you got close enough, you could hear them threatening to turn each other into frogs.
Around me, Witch Sarmine and all her nasty witch friends hovered around the pool like we were the first course at this birthday party. In a way, I suppose we were.
There are many ways to kill an elephant. When that mountain bears down on you, shaking the earth and screaming for your blood, show no fear.
Only without fear will you see the truth. They are quick, even draped in chain and iron, but you are quicker by a whisker. They fight like devils, but it only takes three people who know what they are doing to bring an elephant down.
They are afraid of you.
All elephants can die.
Rated PG-13
I thought the tendriled horrors were angels when we woke at sea that disastrous night and saw them falling on the waters. Now, Suneeti, on this abandoned island, they are radiant in the setting sun, their translucence licked gold by dusk.
The first one crashed onto the deck of our little boat. Its body was round, jellyfish-translucent, with six wing-like fins, and fine waving tendrils like underwater kelp. An alien, ethereal beauty–of course you reached out and brushed a tendril with your fingers. You were always the curious one. I caught you before you collapsed on the deck, fast asleep. The horrors swarmed the hull, their soft feet sticking like little kisses climbing up a neck, but I took you below and locked the hatch. Tendrils groped through the cracks, but they couldn’t reach us through the door. (Continue Reading…)