Bleaker Collegiate Presents an All-Female Production of Waiting for Godot

by Claire Humphrey

Making friends with Ginevra was like taming a stray cat. First I started hanging around in areas where she might be found. If she showed, I didn’t approach her. I just stood there, smoking, or I read something, glancing at her secretly from behind my hair. Then I started catching her eye once in a while. Then I started smiling.

Then I started dating Christopher Potter; I dumped him after a few weeks, but that got me introduced to Pete Janaczek, which got me the invite to Pete’s party, which got me in the same room as Ginevra while she was tipsy and expansive, and then-finally-it happened.

All that was a lie, you know. As if I could plan anything like that. It’s only in hindsight that I realize why I started spending time in the smoke-hole in the first place. So many of the things we do, we keep from ourselves.

Where Virtue Lives

by Saladin Ahmed

Doctor Adoulla Makhslood, the best ghul hunter in the great city of Dhamsawaat, was weary. Two and a half bars of thousand-sheet pastry sat on his plate, their honey and pistachio glazed layers glistening in the sunlight that streamed into Yehyeh’s teahouse. Adoulla let out a belch. Only two hours awake. Only partway through my pastry and cardamom tea, and already a panicked man stands chattering to me about a monster! God help me.

He brushed green and gold pastry bits from his fingers onto his spotless kaftan. Magically, the crumbs and honey-spots slid from his garment to the floor, leaving no stain. The kaftan was as white as the moon. Its folds seemed to go on forever, much like the man sitting before him.

“That hissing! I’m telling you, I didn’t mean to leave her. But by God, I was so scared!” Hafi, the younger cousin of Adoulla’s dear friend Yehyeh, had said “I’m telling you” twelve times already. Repetition helped folk talk away their fear, so Adoulla had let the man go on for a while. He had heard the story thrice now, listening for the inconsistencies fear introduces to memories– even honest men’s memories.

Adoulla knew some of what he faced. A water ghul had abducted Hafi’s wife, dragging her toward a red riverboat with eyes painted on its prow. Adoulla didn’t need to hear any more from Hafi. What he needed was more tea. But there was no time.

On the Acquisition of Phoenix Eggs (Variant)

by Marissa Lingen

The usual bidders were there, of course: Dame Eleanor in her sensible pantsuit, Miss Hawes and Miss Singh in their black leather jackets, the full brocade skirts of Mrs. Perriwhite. For whatever reason, we women have always made up the majority of phoenix egg collectors, and nowadays we did not have to send male proxies to do our bidding for us; now we could cordially hate each other directly.

There were other women, less serious than we five, and three men in the auction room: the auction house manager, Mr. Samoilenko himself, and John Weadsleigh. John was one of us, and we accorded him the respect of cordially hating him without regard to his gender. Even Miss Hawes, whom I suspect of hating men in general, did John the courtesy of hating him individually, as a competitor for phoenix eggs rather than as a man, which may be the most generous thing I have ever known her to do.

This was not a situation that encouraged generosity.

The Very Strange Weird of Endart Sscowth

by Scott H. Andrews

“Please lend me your second copy of the Chronicles, O magnanimous lord of bound volumes,” cried the scholar standing in the street.

Endart Sscowth, the most prosperous bookseller in all Samech Tern, and by that token in the whole of Hyposudia, was startled from his reverie by the reedy voice.  His ruminations, as he walked homeward that evening, had been lavish with the parchment scent of antique books, the supple smoothness of age-worn buckram, and the vivid hues of many-lettered spines in piles, stacks, and teetering columns, all atop the bookshelves of Endart Sscowth.  Now this scholar had chased that vision from his mind.

“Your pardon, but I ceased lending my treasures long ago, after too many were returned with dents and creases.”

“Then I offer to buy it, O generous one.”

Everything You Were Looking For

by Samantha Henderson

Never explore a cave alone like I just did. Here at the entrance, the roof domes high in the weak light, but at the back you’ll see it starts to narrow. I just went half a mile in.

I found a crack in the back, wide enough to squeeze through if I turn sideways and hold my breath. I stood at the maw and waited for a while, listening, waiting for my breathing to quiet. At last I turned the flashlight off.

And in the dark I heard it, faintly, far back there. The chanting. It fades in and out though the passages inside the mountain. Because they are on the move; they are always on the move.

I’ve found them. I’ve found her.