Wizard’s Apprentice

by Delia Sherman

Mr. Smallbone peered at him through his round glasses. “Humph. You’re letting the cold in. Close the door behind you. And leave your boots by the door. I can’t have you tracking up the floor.”

That was how Nick came to be the Evil Wizard’s new apprentice.

At first he just thought he was doing some chores in return for food and a night’s shelter. But next morning, after a breakfast of oatmeal and maple syrup, Mr. Smallbone handed him a broom and a feather duster.

“Clean the front room,” he said. “Floor and books and shelves. Every speck of dirt, mind, and every trace of dust.”

Nick gave it his best, but sweep as he might, the front room was no cleaner by the end of the day than it was when he started.

“That won’t do at all,” said the Wizard. “You’ll have to try again tomorrow. You’d best cook supper—there’s the makings for scrapple in the icebox.”

Since the snow had given way to a breath-freezing cold snap, Nick wasn’t too unhappy with this turn of events. Mr. Smallbone might be an Evil Wizard, ugly as home-made sin, and vinegar-tongued. But a bed is a bed and food is food. If things got bad, he could always run away.

Mister Hadj’s Sunset Ride

by Saladin Ahmed

The toughest man I ever met? That’s an easy answer to give, but a tricky tale to tell.

Mister Hadj was from the same place as my rattlesnake of a Pa. Araby, or someplace like, though I don’t rightly know the name since neither him nor my Pa ever said a blasted word about the Old Country. You’d ask and ask, and all you’d get back was a look as hard as rocks. No use digging after that.

I’ve ridden with good men and bad men, but I never rode with a man like Mister Hadj. That wasn’t his proper name. Just a way of calling the old man respectful-like. My Pa taught me that, if I ever met a man from the Old Country, to call him ‘Hadj.’ Damn near the only thing that sonuvabitch ever taught me.

State Change

by Ken Liu

When Rina’s soul finally materialized, the nurse in charge of watching the afterbirth almost missed it. All of a sudden, there, in the stainless steel pan, was an ice cube, the sort you would find clinking around in glasses at cocktail parties. A pool of water was already forming around it. The edges of the ice cube were becoming rounded, indistinct.

An emergency refrigeration unit was rushed in, and the ice cube was packed away.

“I’m sorry,” the doctor said to Rina’s mother, who looked into the serene face of her baby daughter. No matter how careful they were, how long could they keep the ice cube from melting? It wasn’t as if they could just keep it in a freezer somewhere and forget about it. The soul had to be pretty close to the body; otherwise the body would die.

Nobody in the room said anything. The air around the baby was awkward, still, silent. Words froze in their throats.

Card Sharp

by Rajan Khanna

He reached into his pocket and withdrew the Seven of Diamonds. The card flared like phosphorous in his hand, then disappeared in a wisp of smoke. He felt an ephemeral film coat his body. He moved from his hiding place behind some trees and moved down the walkway and to the ramp leading up to the riverboat.

He could feel the stares of the riverboat guards on him, even though he knew they could not see him. Using the Seven of Diamonds might have been overkill, but better safe than sorry. Still, his neck hair prickled at the idea that at the moment, their rifles could be trained on him, preparing to fire.

He made for a small washroom near the center of the main deck. As he approached it, the riverboat’s great paddlewheel began to move, churning the water in a great roar. With a lurch, the riverboat began to move, taking Roland Ketterly and his men down the Mississippi.

Quentin slipped through the washroom door, taking care to close it quietly and minimize his noise. Whatever concealment the first card had provided was visual alone.

Abandonware

by An Owomoyela

I sat at my desk, feet jammed between the Quadra’s tower and my Dell’s, window cracked to let in the wet air. It’d been raining. Andy loved how the air smelled after it rained; I didn’t smell anything. I was just looking through Andy’s zip disks, thinking about her.

I opened one case and a disc fell out, dropping between the wheels on my chair. It’d been stuck between the pages, not fit into one of the pockets, and that was weird, considering Andy. Whatever the original label said had been worked over in sharpie, and the new label read only BURN THIS DISK.

Obviously, she hadn’t.

Andy was always open with me–ten years older and thinking she could tell me the secrets of life. She wanted me to tell her about girlfriends and classes and any juvenile delinquency I got into, and she told me about alcohol and sex and everything Dad didn’t want to talk about, like the time she got busted sneaking into a topless bar. I couldn’t think what she’d want to burn.

I turned on the zip drive, booted up the computer, and stuck the disk in. It was an early drive and an early disk, and it made a lot of noise for 100 megs, but it worked pretty well. Andy kept it fixed up.

The disk was named EraseMe. It had one file in it, a 77Mb document named SELDON.crn.

The Bear in the Cable-Knit Sweater

by Robert T. Jeschonek

How’d you like to go through life looking like a werewolf, right down to the hair on your palms?  All thanks to the miracle of hypertrichosis, the disease that blasts hair growth into perpetual overdrive.

Welcome to my world.

Imagine the constant ridicule and abuse I put up with from day one.  Imagine being abandoned by my parents at age three, then juggled like a hot potato from one foster family to the next.  Always the freak, always the outcast, always the dog-faced boy.  Growing up to scrape by as a home-based telemarketer.  Hardly ever leaving my apartment, and then only with everything under wraps.  Always just hanging on to life and sanity by the skin of my teeth.

Imagine living like that, and maybe you’ll get it.  Maybe you’ll understand just how happy I was with Stan and the bears.

And why it hurt so unbelievably bad when I lost them.  Why that birthday party turned out to be my last happy night on Earth.

Balfour and Meriwether in the Adventure of the Emperor’s Vengeance

by Daniel Abraham

“Assistant Curator Olds,” the man said. “I was working with Lord Abington on behalf of the museum. I was supposed to have been present at the unsealing, but Lord Abington ordered me out at the last moment.”

“Lead on, young Mr. Olds,” Meriwether said. “There may not be a moment to lose.”

The halls of the museum rose above the men in a gloom darker than the autumn sky. The scent of dust and still air gave the great triumph of English culture the unfortunate aspect of a necropolis. Their footsteps echoed against the marble and stone, dampening even Meriwether’s gay affect. Mr. Olds led them down a long corridor, up one long flight of stairs, and then another to a hall designed around a pair of great oaken doors. Two other men, clearly minor functionaries of the establishment, huddled in the harsh light of a gas sconce. The hissing of the flame was the only sound. Balfour stepped immediately to the closed doors, scrutinizing them with an expression so fierce as to forbid speech. Meriwether paced back and forth some length down the hall, his pale eyes moving restlessly across every detail, his footsteps silent as a cat’s.

(Continue Reading…)

The Beautiful Coalwoman

by Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud. Translated by Edward Gauvin

“Sire, if it pleases you to take your rest here, this house is yours.”

“Thank you, old man. Heaven will be grateful for your hospitality toward its humble servant, for I am a Christian knight.”

The old man crossed himself at once. In school, Maxence had been taught the how to pay his way in the coin of word. The oldest of the children reappeared, ewer in hand.

“My thanks, boy. Tell me, would you know how to look after my steed?”

The boy gazed at his grandfather without answering.

“Of course he does, sire!” said the old man. “Off you go—you know where fodder can be found, and make sure you give the horse a good rubdown!”

The boy walked toward the horse. Maxence told him he could ride it instead of leading it to fodder. The boy smiled at last. Maxence plunged the ewer into the spring’s fresh water.

“It’s good water, it is, sire,” the old man said. “It’s kept me in good health for seventy years, it has!”

“Upon my word, seventy years! It must be good indeed—you seem quite sprightly still!”

On hearing these words, the old man couldn’t keep from contorting his face in a grin. Maxence saw he would have food and shelter tonight for a trifle.