I’d overslept that morning and had run from the house with wet hair and an outfit only one oatmeal-colored cardigan away from being everyone’s mental image of librarian-chic. My mad dash screeched to a halt only a few miles down the highway. And now I sat, trying not to let my frustration at the stalled hover-carts bobbing all around get the best of me. Somewhere up ahead, the dwarves had…
Fantasy
The Strange Disappearance of Shelly and Bobby Ray
PLAINSFIELD—This tiny upper Midwest farming community is forty miles from its nearest neighbor, so remote along the old, weather-battered county road that cartographers routinely forget to include it on their [...]
The Peacock and the Raven
Madge leaned against a large elm, facing the blue ridge of the Shenandoahs. A flash of fiery red caught her eye and took her breath; a pair of cardinals fluttered [...]
What the Emperor Wants
Marching into a bad town was the only time the Emperor wanted Feru to rampage like a giant, but he was thirsty and didn’t feel like breaking trees or throwing [...]
Gift Horse
They were waiting for Haji on the platform. He squinted at them through the window grime. They were the only whites waiting for the train. The woman’s golden hair spilled [...]
Rubes
“Three days?” McMurphy squeezed his cigar into pulp between his molars.
“Yessir. Could’ve been much longer.” The engineer jerked his head toward the whitewashed shack at the end of the tracks. [...]
Ruin
The ruin has history. No, histories. A Roman Villa cannibalized by the Britons; a Saxon Castle besieged by the Normans; a Catholic Monastery sacked on Henry VIII’s order.
In the present, [...]
Five Songs and a River
I was born in darkness, in a cool, shadowed spring lined by smooth rocks, and that’s why I didn’t know. I grew up to the sound of my sisters, Madlenka [...]
The Carver’s Son
In the time when the world was still forming, there were a few animals, some people, and many, many gods. At this time, there was a dry valley that had [...]
The Queen in the Poplar Forest
All the omens meant it was a good morning for a hunt. Legends of the Bronze-Backed Bear have said that one drop of his blood dripped, into eyes, would cure [...]
Jessamine
High in the bluffs, with its tower and its wicker-woven hut, we watched the long north road. We saw her as she came, head held high and her beating heart [...]
The Weatherwoman
They came for him in the stillness of shadow and artificial moonlight. It could not even be called midnight: there were no nights in the Citadel but those requested by [...]
A Little Bit Like the Tooth Fairy (Only Not Quite)
There are three hares in my bedroom when I wake up on Wednesday. Long-legged and soft-furred, they hop about agitatedly. One of them has made a nest out of yesterday’s [...]
Der Führer’s Bunker
The Soviet artillery is a steady heartbeat above our heads now. Reminds me of a child stomping about the house inside his daddy’s oversized boots, moving from room to room. Footsteps instead of detonations. I rather like the image. So do a few others in here with me. It lessens the fear. And down in our hole, there’s a lot to fear these days…
Viy
An ogre’s worth five minutes. Demons are ten. Double that if you’re working with two people; triple it for three. Multiply it by six if you want a horde. Increase [...]