The Tawlish Island Songbook of the Dead

E.M. Linden

The living have been leaving Tawlish for centuries; this evacuation is only the latest and last. There are good reasons for it: the freshwater spring gone brackish; the water, always encroaching; the colicky, relentless wind. No schools for the children. No doctor. We should have seen it coming, but sometimes we forget what the living need.

We cannot cross salt, so we watch from shore. Our loved ones and descendants wade into the sea. The men strain to hold the boats steady against the waves. Everyone’s weighed down by possessions, a village crammed into sacks and lifeboats. Spoons, spindles, fish-hooks, balls of yarn. A clothes-peg doll in a twist of old apron. Seabirds’ eggs wrapped in blankets: habits ingrained by generations of scarcity. They’ve even dug up their potatoes.

Katie Zell’s mother is already on the boat. The songbook is tucked inside her jacket. (Continue Reading…)

The Hand That Feeds

by Louis Inglis Hall

Last Christmas a mermaid died in the school swimming pool. It was only a small pool, built up at the sides with wooden panels, more like a tank for training children in. That meant it froze over very easily, but a mermaid couldn’t know that. It stood in a courtyard in the shadow of the school, and the sun reached it only at rare intervals.

Behind it lurked a stone and sulking outhouse, pebbledash walls lashed together with a corrugated plastic roof. In its damp darkness the children undressed, and tripped, and snapped tight, powdered rubber caps over their skulls. Under its benches something black grew wetly out towards them. It was the hut that Freya hated most of all. (Continue Reading…)

Last Ritual of the Smoke Eaters

By Osahon Ize-Iyamu

I didn’t want to eat Joshua, but he turned into dust, and the way things go in Carucchi village is that if someone turns into ashes you inhale them till there’s nothing but smoke in your lungs and redness in your eyes. Sometimes we have to eat people to make us less lonely. I didn’t want to do it, but Joshua named me as his eater, so my entire village forced me down on the floor and told me it was necessary. Great-aunty Chinny held my hands and made me inhale his smoke till his entire presence was roiling through my body like the last movements of a dragon.

When Joshua had finally settled in my body, he felt like a weight in my throat. (Continue Reading…)

Homes for the Holidays

by Heather Shaw & Tim Pratt

I stood on the slumlord’s doorstep and took a deep breath — one of the last I would take in this body, which had served me well despite being treated badly. It’s not the body I was born with — I don’t think I started with a body at all. I don’t know what I am, or where I come from, just that I need a human body to host my own consciousness.

My current body wasn’t totally worn out yet, but sometimes I switched for strategic reasons, like now. Even if I want to settle in, I’m forced to take a new host every twenty years or so. Maybe that sounds like a lot compared to a human lifespan, but since I’m immortal (so far), twenty years is a fraction of a fraction, and it feels like I’ve barely settled into a new skin before I have to go looking for a new one. Even when I pick a young, healthy body, something about hosting me puts unusual strain on the brain, and they usually pop an aneurysm, even if I take good care of them.

I hadn’t taken such good care of this latest body. But I was trying to do better. (Continue Reading…)

Two Hands, Wrapped in Gold – Part Three

by S.B. Divya

I was hidden in a tree near the mill when the Duke of Bavaria arrived in Talgove. I had never seen the man before, but the coat of arms matched the hangings I’d seen in Salzburg. The sizeable retinue stopped by the water wheel.

Blasius emerged from the building, staggering and red-faced from drink. “My lord,” the miller said, his face wrinkled in confusion, “the steward’s house and the inn are —”

“I’m here for Trudy of-the-mill,” the duke interrupted. “Your daughter, I presume?”

Balsius’s befuddlement deepened. “Yes, but —”

“I hear that she can spin flax into gold, that she has a special instrument from a witch who used to live in these parts. I wish to witness this skill for myself.” The duke grinned.

The miller executed a deep, sloppy bow. “My lord, indeed she is a talented spinner and weaver. Beautiful, too.”

“Then let us see this lovely and gifted creature.” (Continue Reading…)