Fable From a Cage

by Tim Pratt

Let me tell you a little fable, a story I crafted while sitting inside this dangling cage, where the rooks shit on me and steal my bread all day, and the smoke from your town fires stings my eyes all night.

Did you know the owls feed me? They bring me rats, mice, squirrels, and I eat them. That’s why I haven’t died yet. I’ll never die, not here, wait all you like.

My fable? Yes. Oh, yes. It will, most assuredly, have a moral. Hunker down and listen for it, boys.

The Rowan Gentleman

by Holly Black and Cassandra Clare

Ashley watches Renata take a last deep drag and then stub out her comfrey cigarette on her dressing table. It’s already covered in spilled glitter, matches, paint, and the burned craters from other cigarettes. Ashley can hardly remember the fine wooden vanity Renata found on the street and dragged back to the Magic Lantern. It’s suffered a lot since then.

“Open the box already,” Renata says, pulling a lip liner from one of the drawers.

On the wall, a cracked mosaic of mirror fragments reveals Ashley’s face, filled with trepidation.

The Magic Lantern was one of the first places Ashley came to when she arrived in Bordertown. She’d sit in the back and watch whatever was playing or doze because she was sure she’d be safe. Once Alain Bach Glaimhin took over from O’Malley and started casting for simultaneous live shows, Ashley knew that she wanted to be on that stage more than anything.

Ashley loves working at the Magic Lantern. Her hands hesitate over the ribbon on the large package, the one woven with sprigs of rosemary and ragwort. She knows the more gifts Alain gives her, the closer she is to being asked to leave.

Buried Eyes

by Lavie Tidhar

The half-dressed girls passed silently between the lying figures, their bare feet making no sound as they stepped on the sand. Low-lying metal braziers cast a shifting glow and made the girls’ shadows move as of their own accord. Gorel of Goliris lay on his back on the thick rich carpet under the stars and what he saw no one could tell.

One of the girls stopped and knelt beside him. ‘Are you comfortable?’ she asked. She took his hand and put two long, graceful fingers against his wrist. ‘It is time for another one?’

She waited; presently, Gorel closed and opened his eyes. The girl, used to such minute communication, took it for assent.

The long thin needle was almost translucent but the nature of the material passing through it had stained it in fantastical whorls of yellows and reds . It was the quill of a small desert dweller; Gorel had captured and eaten several of its kind. The girl held his arm and her practiced fingers searched his naked flesh. Gorel’s lips moved, though little sound escaped. The girl stroked his hair. ‘Soon now,’ she murmured. ‘Soon. Hush now.’

Finding a suitable place, she pressed the needle into his arm with one practiced motion. The needle was attached by a long thin tube to a contraption of metal and glass standing upright beside Gorel and the girl. The bottom component was a glass jar filled with water. A pipe ran up and into a metal bowl. The girl moved her hand over the bowl and murmured words, too quiet to be heard. The bowl began to smoke. The smoke had a sweet, pungent smell. Everyone at the place knew it intimately. The water in the jar began to bubble. The girl took hold of a bulb attached to the side of the device and began to pump it. The water bubbled harder, and the smoke grew more intense. A sluggish substance began to drizzle down the long tube and into the needle. Gorel sighed, a weak exhalation of air, and closed his eyes. The girl continued to pump, and with her other hand stroked Gorel’s hair. ‘Better now,’ she said. ‘Everything is fine now.’

The Rugged Track

by Liz Argall

Once upon a time there was a plucky young woman called Princess Bite. She loved to roller-skate, and Roller Derby was her community.

Her mother, Lady Push Comes to Shove, had felt her daughter jamming from inside the womb.

“I had to keep the sounds of whistles away from you,” Lady Shove would say as she helped Princess Bite into her aqua and purple quads. “The slightest peep and you were off, bouncing around my insides like the joyous devil you are. The only way I could get you to be quiet was to zoom around the track.”

Princess Bite learned to skate as she learned how to walk. Lady Push Comes to Shove and Princess Bite would hurtle around the track so fast it felt like flying. Princess Bite and Lady Shove skated together every day until Lady Shove’s illness made it too difficult and painful.

Princess Bite loved everything about Roller Derby. She even loved cleaning up after a game, sweeping the floor with a broom twice her size, coiling cables and emptying endless garbage cans. Princess Bite loved the spectacle, the makeup, the glitter and ferocity. She loved crashing into people and trying to keep her feet when they crashed into her. She loved watching the teams train and playing with the other kids of roller mums.

In The Stacks

by Scott Lynch

On the clock outside the gate to the Manticore Wing of the library, the little blue flame was just floating past the symbol for high noon when Laszlo and Casimir skidded to a halt before a single tall figure.

“I see you two aspirants have chosen to favor us with a dramatic last-minute arrival,” said the man. “I was not aware this was to be a drama exam.”

“Yes, Master Molnar. Apologies, Master Molnar,” said Laszlo and Casimir in unison.

Hargus Molnar, Master Librarian, had a face that would have been at home in a gallery of military statues, among dead conquerors casting their permanent scowls down across the centuries. Lean and sinewy, with close-cropped gray hair and a dozen visible scars, he wore a use-seasoned suit of black leather and silvery mail. Etched on his cuirass was a stylized scroll, symbol of the Living Library, surmounted by the phrase Auvidestes, Gerani, Molokare. The words were Alaurin, the formal language of scholars, and they formed the motto of the Librarians:

RETRIEVE. RETURN. SURVIVE.

Urchins, While Swimming

by Catherynne M. Valente

In the morning, she called me always by my name, Kseniya, and her eyes would be worry-wrinkled—and her hair would be wet, too. While she scraped a pale, translucent sliver of precious butter over rough, hard-crusted bread, I would draw a bath, filling the high-sided tub to its bright brim. We ate our breakfast slick-haired in the nearly warm water, curled into each other’s bodies, snail into shell, while the bath sloshed over onto the kitchen floor, which was also the living room floor and the bathroom floor and my mother’s bedroom floor—she gave me the little closet which served as a second room.

In the evening, if we had meat, she would fry it slowly and we would savor the smell together, to make the meal last. If we did not, she would tell me a story about a princess who had a bowl which was never empty of sweet, roasted chickens while I slurped a thin soup of cabbage and pulpy pumpkin and saved bathwater. Sometimes, when my mother spoke low and gentle over the green soup, it tasted like birds with browned, sizzling skin. All day, she sponged my head, the trickle ticklish as sweat. The back of my dress clung slimy to my skin.

Before bed, she would pass my head under the faucet, the cold water splashing on my scalp like a slap. And then the waking, always the waking, and hour or two past midnight.

Destiny, With a Blackberry Sauce

by David J. Schwartz

During my brother Mel’s final test to become a guard, he performed a flourish with his halberd and cut off his left foot. You wouldn’t think it was possible to slice your own foot clean off while you’re standing on it, but he managed. He says that he didn’t really feel any pain at first, but he did feel the tendon in his leg rolling up like a window shade.

My parents were mortified. My dad just set his jaw like he does when he can’t yell at us right exactly then, and my mom covered her eyes. Me, I watched the whole thing. There was a lot of blood, and of course Mel was screaming—they say you’re not supposed to, that it makes a bad impression on the test officers, but I’m pretty sure I would have, too. Then the healer came over and made an incision in the back of my brother’s leg. He reached in and found the tendon where it had gone into hiding and pulled it down to where it belonged, chanting the entire time. Mel was screaming a lot louder by then. Five minutes later the foot was reattached. It’s pretty much as good as it ever was, but Mel still has nightmares about the pain.

Not that I’m the least bit sympathetic. If you ask me, he did it on purpose.

Their Changing Bodies

by Alaya Dawn Johnson

Judy had been painfully aware of him since her arrival two weeks ago, when she had seen him across the mess hall. They talked a little, but Judy hadn’t been prepared for his appearance or his popularity. She hadn’t expected him to change quite so much.

Judy had first met Brandon last summer in the woods of rural Michigan, at an institution the promotional brochures called Better Image! for Teens. The kids sentenced to this energetically punctuated camp had referred to it as the Penitentiary, but Judy’s sister Alice had more accurately called it Fat Camp. Judy came home thirty pounds thinner and possessed of a first kiss that had admittedly also encompassed some of her cheek. Still, at sixteen she had finally accomplished several of her goals in life: a) meet a boy, b) talk to the boy, c) impress him with her knowledge of esoteric subjects like grafting apple trees, and, finally, d) mack on him like crazy.

If pressed, Judy admitted that perhaps she still had a slight distance to travel until she fully accomplished d). Even though Brandon had attempted to insert his tongue in her mouth, the reality of it wagging wetly in the air had so disconcerted Judy that she turned at the exact wrong moment, thereupon forcing Brandon’s tongue to slither over her cheek until he realized what had happened and put it back in his mouth. How, she asked Alice, does anyone make out with so much spit? Alice just shrugged and said you got used to it.

Judy hoped she would get used to it.