Flock

by Caspian Gray

They met in a birdcage, in those last precious days before they became birds themselves.  They were too panicked to ask each other’s names.  The boy beat his palms against the wire bars as impotently as he had beat them against the giant’s fist; the woman brushed her fingers first against her sternum, then along the cage floor, even through the boy’s kinky hair, to prove that she was not mad or dreaming.

“Don’t touch me,” he said, making the order into a question.

The woman drew away.  “Are you hurt?” Her hands still moved restlessly, diffident as butterflies.  They were in a ramshackle attic full of cages whose inhabitants were sparrows as big as she was.

“I didn’t know,” said the boy.  He slumped against the bars of the cage.  The woman watched the wire press indentations into his shirt.  “I didn’t know there were giants in Ohio.”

“Oh.” The woman squatted next to him, careful to keep their shoulders from brushing.  “I didn’t know there were either, until today.” She paused.  “What’s your name?  Where did the giant take you from?”

“Avery.” The boy’s eyes were as brown as tree bark.  “I was in the backyard, working.  Who are you?”

“Jack.”

Avery blinked.  “Jack is a boy’s name.”

Her expression did not change.  “But if we’ve been kidnapped by giants,” she murmured, “the only way we’ll ever escape is if one of us is named Jack.”

Crow Gifts

by Angela Lee

It is a simple matter to track a deer, to bring it down with a single shot to the neck. I follow it by the red droplets in the snow, then drag the carcass back to the clearing of the crow gifts. Each bit of offal in its turn: black heart, worm-like entrails, pink spongy lungs. I save the liver for myself, and a haunch. The rest I cut apart, leave in a starburst – and by now I am surrounded by crows, a circle of beady-eyed children in cloaks of iridescent black feathers. As I back away, the crows descend, cawing loud enough to wake the dead.

The crows give me gifts in turn. At first they pelted me with rocks that shone ruby and emerald when broken open. I am richer than any king I could name, here in my empty forest, far from any human city. I began it by sharing my kills, inadvertently at first; I give blood and flesh, and they give me what humans want.

The Creation and Destruction of the World

By Ann Leckie

At one time the waters were divided and contained, and dry land was raised up out of the sea, mountains and valleys, hills and plains, and the people lived there.  They lived this way for a long time, standing on the bones of the world, until it chanced that they angered the lord of wind and storm.  The lord of storms caused it to rain, and it rained for days, for weeks, for months, until there was no dry spot on the face of the world.  The low places were deep lakes, the high places awash.  In the highest place every step was ankle-deep in water.  The clothes the people wore, the beds they slept in, were soaked and dripping.  The very food they ate was soaked and dissolved by the rain.  And day by day it rained, and the water grew still deeper.

“We will drown!” the people cried.  “Alas for us, and for our children! It would be better if we had been fish!”  And many of these people, who cried so, were turned into fish, and swam away into the sea.  And after this no one gave birth to anything but fish.

There was a woman who gave birth, and the child was a fish.  The woman would not put the child into the sea, because it was hers and sickly, but instead kept it beside her.  “I will go to the lord of storms,” the woman said, “and beg for the god’s forgiveness, and the life of my child.”  And so she did, swaddling the child and keeping it wet with her tears.  She traveled far, where even the waters could not reach, until she was too weary and grieved to go further, and some way past that she came to the palace of the lord of the winds.

Who Binds and Looses the World With Her Hands

by Rachael K. Jones

1. Stranger

On days when Selene locked me in the lighthouse, an old familiar darkness would well up within me, itching my skin like it had shrunk too tight to contain my anger any longer. I had grown accustomed to the rage’s ebb and flow, sometimes bubbling near the surface, sometimes dormant as a seed awaiting the right time to break open. But it always rose to high tide on my days of confinement.

I knew better than to complain to Selene. I often watched from the windows of the lanthorn, the little room which housed the lighthouse’s beacon, when the merchants made landfall. From my distant perch, I could just make out Selene, resplendent in dyed blue wool, hands spinning impossibly fast in the bewildered men’s faces. Out beyond the dock, two green arms of land reached toward our island home in an incomplete embrace. That was the Mainland, where sorcerers lived. Long ago, it was sorcerers who built our lighthouse in the stone branches of the ancient petrified tree.

Do not talk to the Mainlanders,  Selene always warned, hurrying me up the stone steps which spiraled inside the tree’s heart. She would repeat the warning later at night, when we watched the beacon flash round and round through the window over our bed. I would nestle against her chest, and her hands would dance out tales about sailors, how their days at sea would drive them so mad with lust they would seize any woman when they made landfall. I am sorry to hide you, she would say. I do not want to lose you. The apology mollified the darkness inside me, but never quelled it completely. (Continue Reading…)

This Sullied Earth, Our Home

by Mimi Mondal

Prospero’s Last

by Den Patrick

‘Oh, it’s you,’ slurred Duke Prospero, holding the lantern higher. The corridor was a barely remembered passage in the winding sprawl of Demesne, a route for those who wished to pass unseen, or persons in no particular hurry. Infrequent candles lit wax spattered sconces, the flagstones were furred with compacted dust; rat droppings added to the miasma.

‘You nearly scared me half to death, hiding in the shadows like that.’ Stephanio Prospero peered into the darkness, unsteady on his feet, breath heavy with the scent of wine. His flushed complexion and red-rimmed eyes conspired to make him porcine in the candle light. Cheeks glistened, difficult to tell if it were tears or sweat that that lent their sheen to his ruddy features.

‘I’m afraid I have sampled one vintage too many tonight.’ The Duke grinned, his confession overloud in the corridor, words chasing each other, tumbling down the stone stairs at his feet, spiralling into blackness.

‘You’ve never really been one for La Festa, have you?’ Stephanio hiccuped. ‘I can’t say I blame you. La Festa is a time for lovers, for courting, for flirting.’ The Duke stared off into darkness, mouth set to a pained curve above the weak chin. ‘Those days are long past for one such I.’ A frown settled over the black beads of his eyes. ‘If I ever saw them at all.’

Testimony of Samuel Frobisher Regarding Events on Her Majesty’s Ship CONFIDENCE, 14-22 June, 1818, With Diagrams

by Ian Tregillis

I joined His Majesty’s Royal Navy in 1808, and a man more grateful for the press-gangs you’ll never meet. To answer your question, Sirs, I spent four years in the service of
Captain Nares ere I beheld the tentacled Bride.

A brave and virtuous soul was the captain, never given to rage nor drink during my years with him.  And upon my oath, never once did he take the lash to a sailor’s back without just cause before she arrived. But he changed the moment that accursed creature slithered upon the deck.

Begging your pardon, Sirs?  I lost much of my hearing on the
last voyage of the Confidence.

Aye.  I get ahead of myself.  I’ll start at the beginning.

Look, Up in the Sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a Flash Fiction Extravaganza! Containing:

“The Sea City Six (Where are They Now?),” by Jenn Reese
Read by Mur Lafferty
Originally published in Flytrap.

We find Florence Collins in the most unlikely of places: a dive bar called Tyko’s Haunt on the edge of Sea City’s factory district. Gone is her silver spandex, shimmering like frost, her white leather boots and gloves, the blue crystal necklace nestled in the hollow of her neck. She stands behind the bar slinging drinks, a dark flannel shirt hanging loosely over a stained black t-shirt, her jeans held up with a wide leather belt and a massive Sea City Stags belt buckle. We make sure to get some closeups. 

“The Colors,” by John M. Shade
Read by Sean D. Sorrentino
Originally published in Daily Science Fiction. Read it here!

In the main tent, around the sand and dirt floor of the arena, a wooden wall is erected eight-feet tall. The worn, angled seating rises from there. A makeshift gate sits on the side where the opponents emerge, and another across from it from where I emerge. Real boulders dot the floor for cover or weapons, or both. Everything is wood or stone, nothing metal.

“I’ve had plenty enough experience with magnetic controllers to know that a little fire ain’t so bad,” Mother Circus would say.

“So You’ve Decided to Adopt a Zeptonian Baby!” by David Steffen
Read by Rish Outfield (of the Dunesteef Audio Fiction Magazine)
A PodCastle Original!

Whether you are adopting by chance because you found the smoking crater on your property or whether you volunteered for the Zeptonian Childcare Service, congratulations and thank you!  There is no more rewarding choice you will make in your lifetime.