Days of Rain

by Rachael K. Jones

When the wind smelled savory and the clouds looked like burnished
gold, Mom would round up all the pots, pans, buckets, and basins in
the house and send us outside to tuck them beneath the rain gutters
ahead of the chicken soup rain. The summer draft only fell once a
year, and you had to know how to read the signs, but with Mom on the
watch, we never missed a storm.

If we were extra quick about it, Mom would open the special freezer
where she kept the remains of the winter draught and scoop out a
cupful of peppermint snow for each of us: one for me, and one for
Marie. We’d sit side by side in the heavy summer’s heat while the
clouds piled up and up, layer upon layer of gold with pulsing light in
their dark hearts. Marie liked to lick at the mound of snow in her mug
as if it were ice cream, while I preferred to let the heat melt it to
a shimmering slush before I sipped, sending a peppermint-sweet
coolness running through my whole body, the essence of winter to
banish summer’s weight.

We’d barely sleep from anticipation, the rumbles above echoed in our
tummies. In the middle of the night, Marie shook me awake to watch
faerie fire skip between the thunderheads. Then the downpour
started–first just a drop or two tapping the glass, and then quicker,
faster, a rising tempo, a thundering heartbeat, a deluge of chicken
soup, the essence of summer raining from the sky.

At dawn, if school was out, Mom would let us play in the soup as it
poured down in warm sheets. Marie and I would put on red galoshes and
raincoats and charge out the door, with a shouted promise to be back
by dinner.

For hours we’d splash in fragrant puddles swirling with noodles like
earthworms. Or we would throw back our hoods and stand with our mouths
wide open, taking summer into every fiber of our being. It made you
feel warm through and through, like a heavy blanket, or a sister’s
hug.

Once, an old beater of a blue truck rumbled by too quickly and kicked
up a wave of soup from a pothole, soaking Marie’s leggings above her
galoshes. Her eyes filled up, and I thought she might cry, so I
stripped off my own raincoat and let the storm soak me until she
laughed and didn’t mind anymore.

We decided to go home a little early to change into dry clothes. When
we rounded the corner into our cul-de-sac, we were surprised to find
Mom in the street barefoot and coatless, stomping in a puddle, her
skirt hitched to her knees, shrieking like a child. For the first
time, it occurred to me she might have been a little girl once, too.

“Mom, you look silly!” said Marie, giggling. “What are you doing?” Mom
dropped her arms, looking a bit sheepish as she shooed us inside for
some lemonade and a shower. “Every year goes by faster,” she said.
“Sometimes you have to make it stand still.” And that was all the
explanation we got. I watched Mom closely the rest of that day, but I
couldn’t detect anything else strange about her. I thought she
lingered at the window, but I could be misremembering that.

Once Dad got home, we’d circle the house together collecting the
buckets and bowls of summer draught, which Mom and Dad would pour into
red jugs. These got packed in the freezer to be reopened at the right
time.

Mom said you shouldn’t open a draught too soon, or in the wrong
season. “That ruins the magic,” she warned. “The potency grows with
time.” So we’d wait until the snow fell, and the sun shrank, and the
darkness grew. There would come a day when I’d come down with a cold,
or Marie caught the flu, and only then would Mom fish out the first
red jug from the freezer and set it on the kitchen counter. It thawed
almost instantly from its own radiance. I swear there was no better
cure for a cough or a runny nose, and no better tonic against the
gloom. All winter, we’d sip mugs of rain and feel warm again.

Now many seasons stand between me and those days of rain.  I have
become the one who thaws the soup rather than the one who collects it,
first for my daughters and nieces, and later, for their children.
Marie and I buried our mother, and eventually, I buried Marie.

Life is a rain of many small joys punctuated by sudden, rending
losses. But joy adds up with time. It has always been about the joy.

And so when the wind smells savory, I take off my shoes and step
barefoot into a puddle and turn my face upward just like my mother did
and wait for the summer draught. When you are as old as I am, you’ll
feel drunk when you taste it, all the memories of bygone years
sweeping down in a torrent so bracing you will shriek like the child
you once were when you dance in the rain of chicken soup, your mother
and sister and all you’ve lost returned to you in living memory. And
when you feel old and hungry and dry inside, like cracked earth, that
is when you will see clouds of burnished gold, and know the time is
near.

When I miss my sister the most, that’s when I know the rain is coming.

Tiktok and the Nome King

by L. Frank Baum

The Nome King was unpleasantly angry. He had carelessly bitten his tongue at breakfast and it still hurt; so he roared and raved and stamped around in his underground palace in a way that rendered him very disagreeable.

It so happened that on this unfortunate day Tiktok, the Clockwork Man, visited the Nome King to ask a favor. Tiktok lived in the Land of Oz, and although he was an active and important person, he was made entirely of metal. Machinery within him, something like the works of a clock, made him move; other machinery made him talk; still other machinery made him think.

Although so cleverly constructed, the Clockwork Man was far from perfect. Three separate keys wound up his motion machinery, his speech works, and his thoughts. One or more of these contrivances was likely to run down at a critical moment, leaving poor Tiktok helpless. Also some of his parts were wearing out, through much use, and just now his thought machinery needed repair. The skillful little Wizard of Oz had tinkered with Tiktok’s thoughts without being able to get them properly regulated, so he had advised the Clockwork Man to go to the Nome King and secure a new set of springs, which would render his thoughts more elastic and responsive.

Fine Flying Things

by Adele Gardner

Frankie watched, open-mouthed, as the cats soared up into the sky.

All he could think of was Dali’s photograph, that crazy one where the
cat flew across a stream of water while Dali perched on a chair. He
ran outside.

In that little space of time, yet more cats had lifted off from earth.
They floated like furry balloons, orange and gray and tiger-striped.
Some looked scared, their claws extended to full panic, like a kitten
caught in a tree; but there was nothing to grasp in the sky. The
clouds didn’t seem to slow them down.

Others looked mildly interested, their whiskers drooping in curious
contentment. Still others seemed entranced with possibilities,
stretching their claws to snag unwary birds as they soared by.

Frankie gaped at the spectacle of cats dotting the sky like a flock of
migrating birds. As the felines swarmed through the air, he glimpsed a
familiar gray leg. By instinct, he reached up to grab the striped
appendage, just as he might have done to spare the china. The skinny
leg jerked taut, and he found himself looking up into the startled
blue eyes of his Maurice.

Tiger in the BSE

by E. Lily Yu

There was once a tiger in Mumbai, a Kshatriya and a ruthless trader of stocks, who lived in a glossy high-rise the color of the sea. His suits of slick poplin and seersucker were confected by two tailors in Milan; his bath was cut from marble as rich as soap, and always drawn warm and fragrant for him at the end of each day; and his suppers, which threw the meat markets into an uproar, were prepared under the hands of some of the finest cooks from Mangalore and Chengdu. He had, in short, the kind of life that any well-bred tiger could hope to have. But he lacked one thing, and it made him pace between the red walls of his living room and bite the pads of his paws.

He went to the house of an old friend, where he and his trading tips were always welcome, and said, “Brother, I have no mother or father to help me in this matter, and no family except my friends. For the sake of the tricks we played in school, for the beatings I took for you, will you help me find a bride?”

Squonk and the Lake Monster

by P.M. Butler

Sometimes, you don’t realize how bad a bad idea _really_ is until your best friend is suddenly plummeting head over ringtail to his certain death.

Squonk and Slowfingers had been playing catch–well, _trying_ to play catch. You see, Squonk was a dragon, and his best friend Slowfingers was a raccoon. They were both apprentices to a wizard named Wendel. They liked hanging around each other, but there wasn’t a lot they could _do_ together. Unlike most of Squonk’s other friends, Slowfingers didn’t have wings; and unlike Slowfingers’ other friends, Squonk had to be very careful to not step on him.

But according to Wendel, being a wizard didn’t mean you ran away and hid from problems; it meant grabbing your problems and showing those problems who’s boss. So Squonk had come up with the idea of playing a nice game of catch.

It worked like this: Slowfingers would pick an acorn, and throw it as hard as he could–from the top of a tall tree, since his throws needed the head start. Squonk would try to watch the teeny tiny acorn as it bounced off leaves and branches and stick out his paw where he thought it would land. After inspecting his paw carefully to confirm he’d missed, Squonk would set another acorn in his paw and use a talon on his other paw to flick it at Slowfingers. If he was lucky, he’d get it somewhere near the tree Slowfingers was in, and Slowfingers could watch it go by.

This was every bit as frustrating and not-fun as it sounds.

To Ride Beyond the Wide World’s End

by Caitlin Brennan

“Those verses of yours,” old Coel said as the fire died and the hall subsided into a sort of rollicking quiet, “they’re clever. Especially your description of that son of a swine down the valley–how did you know he’s wall-eyed and has a distinct left hook to his private member?”

“Well,” said Madog, “the eye’s easy to see when you’re singing in front of him. As to the other — let’s say it’s a trade secret.”

Old Coel’s bushy white brow arched; he laughed. “Caught him in the jakes, did you?”

Madog shrugged and smiled. Sometimes it was safer to let the patron decide how the story went.

Coel thumped him on the shoulder, and grinned when he barely swayed. Madog was light and wiry as horsemen often are, but he was strong as they often are, too. “Gofannwy won’t thank you for the things you sang of him, but I’ll be warming my evil old heart for days with the thought of them. I owe you a debt for that; I’d like to pay it, for my honor and your pleasure. You’re a horseman, you say? And yet you walked through my gate.”

Madog nodded. His throat still tightened when he thought of his beautiful mare down and gasping in the snow, so far gone with pain that she could not even will to move. He had cut her throat for mercy, and wept for hours after.

Old Coel saw the tears that brimmed in his eyes, and nodded. He was a horseman, too. “In the morning,” he said, “we’ll go out to the fields and see what’s minded to follow you on your travels.”

The Christmas Mummy

by Heather Shaw & Tim Pratt

Trish led Nate from the room, into the hall — their parents’ door was closed — and onto the stairs. She could hear someone moving down there. Trish crept down the carpeted steps. The only light in the living room came from the bright Christmas tree. Even the yule log in the fireplace had burned down.

Two men, dressed in black pajamas with their faces covered, were tying a big red ribbon around a crate that was bigger than the couch.

“Ninjas?” Trish whispered to her brother.

“Christmas ninjas,” Nate said.

One of the ninjas pulled up his mask a little and ate one of the cookies they’d left for Santa. He drank the milk, too, leaving a white mustache on his ninja mask when he pulled it back down over his mouth.