Archive for Rated PG-13

PodCastle logo

PodCastle 870: Two Hands, Wrapped in Gold – PART THREE

Show Notes

Rated PG-13


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…)

PodCastle logo

PodCastle 869: Two Hands, Wrapped in Gold – PART TWO

Show Notes

Rated PG-13


Two Hands, Wrapped in Gold – Part Two

by S. B. Divya

Walter and his small gang visited as promised. Taking my mother’s advice, I told them I had failed. They delivered a beating, which I accepted while curled into a ball on the ground beside my mother, my hands tucked into my armpits to protect the cloth wrapping. Some of them stood apart and watched. I gathered from their words that they had come mostly for sport, including Konrad stewards-son. Walter had debts to the elder Konrad. He’d allowed too many of his pigs to sicken, and he hadn’t given the vassal his due share of ham.

“Do better by next week,” Walter said as they left.

They came back again and again, and I gave the same excuse and earned us the same beating, but over time their numbers dwindled. (Continue Reading…)

PodCastle logo

PodCastle 868: Two Hands, Wrapped in Gold – PART ONE

Show Notes

Rated PG-13


Two Hands, Wrapped in Gold – Part One

by S.B. Divya

 

My parents taught me to lie as soon as I could speak. Before I knew the meaning of the words, before I understood heat or fire, and long before I felt the pain of singed flesh, I learned to tell strangers that I burned myself by grasping a hot iron pot.

Once a day, my mother would pour water over my bare hands, then bandage each one down to the wrists, first with cloth of gold, then plain muslin. She had a technique for winding them in a way that left each finger separate but fully covered, and at no point would her skin come into contact with mine. When I was old enough, she taught me how to wrap them myself. By then, I also understood the danger that she had put herself in.

My parents allowed me to transform small items and only rarely, usually before we approached a large city where people would ask fewer questions about our wares. They let me play with other children, never roughly. After all, if I had burned myself, I would find it painful to use my hands. Other boys my age would wrestle and scuffle. I always ran from a fight. (Continue Reading…)

PodCastle 867: The Witch of Endor

Show Notes

Rated PG-13


The Witch OF Endor

by Karim Kattan

 

There remained, in the mountains of Endor, a scattering of the elder people. Most of the others — the handfuls left — had moved to the cities of the south decades before. These people of mountains and hills, of ice fields and pine trees, now dwelled in seashore havens and desert cities, resort towns and neon oases.

The few families who had remained, huddled in the mountains surrounding Endor valley, lived in a half-dormant, savage state. He was acutely aware of their presence, hiding in the snow and behind the pine trees. Their half-closed almond eyes burned with a wildness he knew well. He was himself descended from these elder people; this mountainous terrain was his original land, this cold, this smell of pine trees. Yet the wind bit his flesh; the mountain suffocated him. He was only from here in imagination. In reality he was from an oasis of the south. His world was one of gurgling springs, swaying palm trees, and the bustling black market where anything — including eyes, diamonds, livers, rifles, children — could be sold and bought. His was the world where the hot winds wrap the body in a gentle, insistent caress. Here the wind was a slap in the face. (Continue Reading…)

PodCastle 866: Palestinian Voices – Badia’s Magic Water

Show Notes

Rated PG-13


Badia’s Magic Water

by Maya Abu-Alhayyat, translated by Yasmine Seale

 

Badia walks into Ramallah Hospital like she owns the place, unhurried, greeting everyone and taking in their greetings. Stories fly to meet her in a brew of caution, curiosity, and fear. From Samira the receptionist (recently married, keen to please) she wants to know if the tranquillisers had their effect on her husband, who makes love to her like a bull. To Said the errand boy she promises a special treatment for his spine, which keeps him up at night. Now handsome young doctor Sami, whom the nurses like to stop and ask ridiculous questions about the weather and incurable diseases, is running towards her, reverently kissing her hand in the way of old movies. “God keep you from harm,” she says with a laugh and asks about his mother, Sitt Fikriyya, who devoted her life to his becoming a doctor. (Continue Reading…)

PodCastle 864: PALESTINIAN VOICES – Al-Kahf

Show Notes

Rated PG-13


Al-Kahf

الكهف

By Beesan Odeh

 

There once lived a man who was stolen from the sea. Rare and magnificent, he lived in his cave, rising to the surface every so often to pluck the strings of his violin for the birds before retreating into the water to play for his kin. They spent their days enthralled by the doleful songs of the man who lived in the littoral cave. But there came a day when the songs ceased and the people stopped going and the man was nowhere to be seen. His people first forgot his face. Then they forgot his voice. And then his name. Until they remembered only the sweet music he played to keep himself company in the cave day and night.

Talub had experienced much in his thirty years, including heartache at the loss of others like him, rare and magnificent and stolen from the sea. Few existed, living in trenches and corals and caves, each possessing an instrument chosen in youth, forever playing a song that kept them alive — a song that was theirs to play and only theirs. Adored for their sublime skill, they were also hunted by men from the surface who sought their music’s healing properties. It was rumored that the rich notes of a horn or a few strums of an oud could cure injury and illness, but mankind could not leave rumors as rumors, nor could he forsake the opportunity to benefit. (Continue Reading…)

PodCastle logo

PodCastle 861: A Most Lovely Song

Show Notes

Rated PG-13


A Most Lovely Song

by Albert Chu

 

It’s 1939, and the drone of piston engines fills the sky over Chungking. The G3M bombers are right overhead, close enough for people to see the red hinomaru emblazoned beneath their wings. They release their bombs, one by one, and the explosions rattle the earth, and they flatten the buildings, and in their wake, they leave behind the dead.

Now, a boy cries, “Baba! Baba!”

He’s crouched by a pile of rubble, trying in vain to pull a lifeless arm out from under it. Nobody’s around; only the shattered buildings witness his struggle.

He doesn’t notice the straggling G3M until its shadow passes over him. As he looks up in alarm, he hears the whistle of the falling bomb. He’s stuck staring, frozen, at the sky. (Continue Reading…)

PodCastle logo

PodCastle 858: Roti Time Travel

Show Notes

Rated PG-13


Roti Time Travel

by Joshua Lim

 

You put a strip of roti in your mouth and chew —

and now your living room is wreathed in shadows by the angry grey skies outside the windows. Your son crawls across the floor, chasing after the ball which rolls under the sofa where you sit. He looks up at you with large pearly eyes, saliva dripping from his lips. “Appa.”

From the kitchen you hear the clatter of utensils. Your wife is spooning baby food into a container. You attempt to move, but your body is rooted to the sofa. All you can do is stare at your son’s pure, innocent face, wishing you could remain like this forever. (Continue Reading…)

PodCastle logo

PodCastle 856: TALES FROM THE VAULTS – Clouds in a Clear Blue Sky

Show Notes

Rated PG-13


Clouds in a Clear Blue Sky

By Matt Dovey

It were a clear blue day, what with the factory shut for the funeral and wake.

Colin was slumped in the pub garden’s swing, his straw hair sticking out every which way despite his mam’s best efforts with the Brylcreem. Me and Trev were stood by quiet, our hands lost in the oversized pockets of our borrowed suits. Trev’s cheeks had gone red and purple in the heat, his top button still done up and straining against his neck.

Mark came back out the pub with a plate of sausage rolls that he offered round.

“What’s it like in there?” I asked.

“Grim,” said Mark. “Your Uncle Gareth’s lost his jacket, and then he says it doesn’t matter compared to losing Colin’s dad, and then he starts crying again. Seen it happen three times while I were at the buffet.”

“Yeah, well,” I said. “Best mates, weren’t they?”

Colin grunted, swung himself a bit harder, but said nowt.

“Here, Colin,” said Mark, holding the plate out. “Fancy a sausage roll?”

Colin shrugged, carried on almost as if he hadn’t heard. Then he got up and stomped to the picnic bench and drank his Coke back in one go, then slammed the glass down so hard we all flinched thinking it’d smash.

“This is shit,” Colin said. “Really shit. Shit shit shit.” (Continue Reading…)

PodCastle logo

PodCastle 854: DOUBLE FEATURE: City Grown From Seed and Harvest House

Show Notes

City Grown from Seed-Rated PG-13

Harvest Home-Rated G


City Grown From Seed

by Diana Dima

 

Long before you came along, I was myself just a seed in Raffa’s pocket, something she fumbled with as she stepped onto the plane, her other hand clutching her mother’s. Small as I was, I sensed her fear. I tried to hum reassuringly. Above the ocean, I helped her fall asleep.

She planted me soon after landing, behind the park by a graffitied wall hidden from view by maple trees. She seemed half ashamed, yet she came every day to water me and sit beside me. We can’t grow without stories, and she made sure I never went hungry. At first, they were stories from home, full of her aunt’s golden yeast pastries and hand-knitted dolls. Later they were made-up tales of dragons that came to whisk her away from the cramped walk-up apartment, or fairies that did her mother’s work while she slept, or spells that made you speak every language in the world. I loved all the stories, even those that made Raffa sad. Little by little, I bloomed: a single clock tower (there is a tower at the heart of every living city), no bigger than a blade of grass, with little dirt roads radiating from it; then tiny red-roofed houses and a neoclassical theatre and kiosks on every corner and markets and packs of stray dogs. (Continue Reading…)