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.

The Book

by Lavie Tidhar

There is a bookshop on Charing Cross Road in London and it’s never open. Its windows are covered in a thick film of dust and spiders grow webbed cities in its darkness. There are books inside that no-one’s ever read; books that human eyes had never seen, books where black ink spells secrets on black paper, books written in darkness that cannot be read in the light.

Crossroads

by Laura Anne Gilman

John came to the crossroads at just shy of noon, where a man dressed all in black stared up at another man hanging from a gallows-tree. No, not hanging; he was being hung, the loop still slack around his neck, his body dangling in mid-air. That, John thought, his pack heavy on his shoulder and his hat pulled low, was not something a wise man would get involved in. And yet, he could not resist asking, “What did he do?”

The man in black turned around and glared at John. “He asked too many impertinent questions.”

The man with the rope around his neck laughed at that, a rueful, amused sound, and John decided he liked the dead man.

“You might want to move on,” the man in black continued in a voice that wasn’t a suggestion. “This is a bad place to be for a lone traveler.”

Recognizing Gabe: un cuento de hadas

by Alberto Yáñez

“You do that better than your sisters, Gabe,” Mom says to me as I
spread the corn masa on the soaked husk and spoon the right amount of
shredded spiced beef onto it. The aroma of meat braised in a sauce of
chiles, garlic, bay, pepper, and cloves makes every breath feel like
Christmas. My stomach growls softly in a tiny fit of impatient hunger.
It’s the first time I’ve been actually allowed to help with the
tamales since . . . well, since a long time. My sisters are good
cooks, too, so Mom’s praise isn’t cheap. “They always overstuff them.”

I wrap up the tamal and try not to smile too much, but Mom ignores my
pride anyway. She doesn’t want me getting too cocky. This is women’s
work she’s letting me do, and she thinks it wouldn’t be good for me to
be too proud about it. I think she forgets sometimes, but I _am_ a boy
after all.

Because of that, I probably shouldn’t be standing there in her
daisy-yellow kitchen learning how to make tamales properly, but Dad
isn’t home right now and my brothers aren’t going to notice so long as
the food’s good.

It will be. Mom’s cooking is still the best.

Unpossible

by Daryl Gregory

Two in the morning and he’s stumbling around in the attic, lost in horizontal archaeology: the further he goes, the older the artifacts become. The stuttering flashlight guides him past boxes of Christmas decorations and half-dead appliances, past garbage bags of old blankets and outgrown clothing stacked and bulging like black snowmen, over and around the twenty-year-old rubble of his son’s treasures: Tonka trucks and science fair projects, soccer trophies and summer camp pottery.

His shoulder brushes against the upright rail of a disassembled crib, sends it sliding, and somewhere in the dark a mirror or storm window smashes. The noise doesn’t matter. There’s no one in the house below him to disturb.

Twenty feet from the far wall his way is blocked by a heap of wicker lawn furniture. He pulls apart the barricade piece by piece to make a narrow passage and scrapes through, straws tugging at his shirt. On the other side he crawls up and onto the back of a tilting oak desk immovable as a ship run aground.

The territory ahead is littered with the remains of his youth, the evidence of his life before he brought his wife and son to this house. Stacks of hardcover books, boxes of dusty-framed elementary school pictures—and toys. So many toys. Once upon a time he was the boy who didn’t like to go outside, the boy who never wanted to leave his room. The Boy Who Always Said No.

The Terror of Blue John Gap

by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

April 17.—Already I feel the benefit of this wonderful upland air. The farm of the Allertons lies fourteen hundred and twenty feet above sea-level, so it may well be a bracing climate. Beyond the usual morning cough I have very little discomfort, and, what with the fresh milk and the home-grown mutton, I have every chance of putting on weight. I think Saunderson will be pleased.

(Continue Reading…)

The Navigator and the Sky

by Ian McHugh

“Sing, Kio Lea! Sing!” Tapa O heard his wife urge, even over his own exhortations to his nephews and grandsons to paddle.

The young men bent their backs. Sluggishly, the big double-hulled canoe moved out of the harbour. Huddled on the platform that joined the twin hulls, a pile of shadows beneath the platform’s roof, the men’s wives tried to quiet their crying children. The sail hung slack, dyed orange by the light of the fires ashore, its turtle motif half-hidden in its folds.

Kio Lea’s voice rose at last. Tapa O put a hand to his chest, feeling the song in his heart and lungs, the pulse and breath of the world. His granddaughter’s voice belonged to the days of the ancestors, he was fond of boasting, when mankind still had one foot in the realm of the gods.

The Wind arrived, the goddess leaning into the sail as she inhaled Kio Lea’s song. The canoe surged forward. The young men gave a ragged cheer, the sail with its painted turtle filling out proudly above them.

Tapa O hauled on the tiller, bringing the canoe around. His eyes roved the heavens, mapping the tracks of the stars without needing to check the brass cylinder of the star compass at his feet. The Wind was a slight thickening of the air around the sail, distorting his view of the constellations directly overhead.