Archive for Cast of Wonders Originals

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Cast of Wonders 375: Reclaiming Our Narratives (Banned Books Week)

Cast of Wonders 375: Reclaiming Our Narratives (Banned Books Week) is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 37:51 — 35.3MB)

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Our Skin Will Now Bear the Testimonies

by Innocent Chizaram Ilo

“Nduka, you better hurry or you’ll be late for school! Your breakfast is getting cold and you know you don’t like when curds form in your pap!” Aniele calls from the kitchen.

“Yes Mama,” Nduka answers from his bedroom.

The boy tiptoes to the door and gently bolts it before unbuttoning his school shirt. He stands in front of the mirror and looks at the string of words that snails along his belly. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 374: Take Heart (Part 2 of 2)

Cast of Wonders 374: Take Heart (Part 2 of 2) is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:56 — 24.3MB)

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Take Heart (continued)

by Claire Eliza Bartlett

The break had been clean and would heal up nicely. That was the good news.

The bad news was, well, everything else. Julia entered the factory hospital an hour after Magdalena had been patched up, wearing a storm cloud face. She flopped into one of the cheap metal folding chairs, making it scrape across the floor.

Neither of them spoke for long moments. Magdalena wanted to muster the courage to apologize, but shame choked her whenever she tried to speak. She’d tried to be cleverer than Julia. Now she was more useless than ever.

(Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 373: Take Heart (Part 1 of 2)

Cast of Wonders 373: Take Heart (Part 1 of 2) is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 22:23 — 21.1MB)

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Take Heart

by Claire Eliza Bartlett

Magdalena perched on the edge of a flimsy folding chair, fingers knotted. The overseer’s office reverberated with the movement of the factory: a steady, pounding rhythm that made up the heartbeat of the city of Tammin. She focused on the way the inkwell trembled, rather than on the overseer behind the desk. The woman who held Magdalena’s past—and immediate future—in her hands.

The overseer wore a severe blonde bun, a high-collared dress, and a frown. She leaned over and lit a gas lamp on the desk with a flash of spark magic from her fingers, pushed aside the little sign that said Mrs. Vorona, and held Magdalena’s papers up to the light.

“I see why Mrs. Uchenka recommended you,” Mrs. Vorona said at last. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 372: Little Wonders 22: #FantasyWorldProblems

Cast of Wonders 372: Little Wonders 22: #FantasyWorldProblems is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 48:45 — 45.5MB)

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Show Notes

“Whatever the Price” and “The Supervisor of Accountants and the Great Grey Wolf” are original to Cast of Wonders (2019)

“An Evil Opportunity Employer” was originally published in Unidentified Funny Objects 6, edited by Alex Shvartsman (2017)

Whatever the Price

by Matthew Bailey

The road to defeating an evil Corpse Lord is long, the oracle had told me, but it always starts with proper financing.

With a deep breath, I stepped into the Rootbridge Savings and Loan praying I wouldn’t have to sully my honor. Knowing I would, if it came to it. One way or another, I was getting what I came for–whatever the price.

At least the place wasn’t as imposing as the larger, marble-hewn banks I’d already tried back in the capital. Banks that would laugh at anyone without their own personal standard and at least one hornblower. Banks that existed solely to help those who already had money make more of it. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 371: Knitting in English

Cast of Wonders 371: Knitting in English is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 16:37 — 16.0MB)

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Knitting in English

by Brit E. B. Hvide

Looping the thread over her needle, Kari caught the sun in her knit. It was an old spell: warmth trapped in rows of neatly patterned wool to stave off the winter wind. The first spell her pappa taught her. The only one she knew.

Ironically, the spell was supposed to be easier to cast here at the equator, but more useless for the same reason: the sun was strong enough. She let a long leg dip into the pool, imagining the chill of it as snow. At fourteen, she’d never seen winter outside of the movies. Above her, a gap in the tall tembusus and rain trees showed a clear blue sky with rain clouds off to the east. The cicadas chirped, their call vibrating against her skin, comforting as an old blanket. The rainforest was always full of noises. Silence didn’t suit her.

Kari bit her tongue and focused on the yarn in front of her: knit, perl, knit, perl. She wasn’t good enough yet to try anything more complicated than a seed pattern, still dropping stitches and backtracking to pick them up again. But it was a start. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 370: Breaking

Cast of Wonders 370: Breaking is a Cast of Wonders original.

Content Warning: Terminal illness

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 20:38 — 19.6MB)

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Breaking

by Maya Chhabra

Mom’s kind of bizarrely happy for someone with a daughter about to croak, but I don’t mind. She saved my life. When I collapsed, I was still only fourteen: too young to have an imprint taken. If she hadn’t found me in time, I would be dead already, and gone. Now I’m safe, and they’ve pretty much stopped everything but palliative care. I’d like to be corporeal longer, and grow human-wise, but there’s nothing more they can do. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 369: Glass Gardens

Cast of Wonders 369: Glass Gardens is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:41 — 23.9MB)

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Glass Gardens

by Y. M. Pang

I was the eldest daughter, so I knew I was doomed.

The youngest marries the prince. The youngest saves the kingdom. The youngest is immortalized in song. I told myself I didn’t mind missing those things. I didn’t want princes, or kingdoms, or songs. I was happy being the wicked one.

If only I knew a single story–just one–where the wicked sister won. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 368: If Only a Word for All Things

Cast of Wonders 368: If Only a Word for All Things is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 32:48 — 30.5MB)

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If Only a Word for All Things

by Jameyanne Fuller

I hunched my shoulders and leaned closer to the automatic ticket machine. I punched in the date and time with tense fingers, chose the train I wanted, and stuffed some crumpled Euros into the slot. At any moment a carabiniere would take one look at me, know I was somewhere I shouldn’t be, and march me right onto the train back to Assisi. But I wasn’t running away, not really. I was going to Paris to find Maman and bring her home. We needed her home. Her and her magic words.

The ticket machine thought, then spat out my ticket. I seized it.

“Do you know where to go, signorina?” a station guard asked at my shoulder. I jumped, but I reminded myself she was only trying to be helpful. As long as I didn’t give myself away, I would be fine.

(Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 365: Blame it on the Bees

Cast of Wonders 365: Blame it on the Bees is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 37:23 — 34.7MB)

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Blame it on the Bees

by Rachel Menard

I can’t find it. Digging through my drawer, shoving aside patchy band shirts and pilled hoodies, I feel for the soft fabric of one, very important Sex Pistols tank top. My fingers hit the base of the drawer. No shirt.

Maybe it’s in my bed.

For the first few weeks, I slept with it wrapped around my pillow, cheek pressed to the chipping paint on the logo. That was when it still smelled like Haley, like strawberries and her baby powder deodorant. When I closed my eyes, I could see her in it, the way the soft cotton hugged her body. She’d left it here because we’d gotten caught in the rain on the way home from the skate park. I’d slid it off her wet skin, around her draping curls of strawberry blonde hair, and kissed the lingering rain drops on her shoulders. She tasted like salt and cool rain.

A pain hits me in the gut. I need that shirt. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 364: Remember to Breathe

Cast of Wonders 364: Remember to Breathe is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:30 — 22.0MB)

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Remember to Breathe

by Matt Dovey

Vikram watches with growing uncertainty as Isaac turns round and around, searching for a landmark in the heavy fog. Neon signs glow through it like stars, tinted green by the algae: it’s like a rainbow galaxy surrounds them, dotted with light. They may as well be floating in a nebula cloud for all they can see of San Francisco anyway.

Vik signs a question. Their face-masks muffle whispers, and they dare not raise their voices and alert any drones. They’re not stupid. Every SF kid knows sign language for fog running, and Vik has picked it up fast since moving here from Sacramento.

(Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 363: SOUL CLEAVER Clarence

Cast of Wonders 363: SOUL CLEAVER Clarence is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 38:59 — 36.2MB)

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Show Notes

Matthew told us, “This story began life as a PodCastle flash fiction contest entry. While it only made it to the semi-finals, Katherine Inskip commented that she’d love to see a longer version submitted to Cast of Wonders. Armed with this encouragement, I worked to fill out the characters, their struggles, and a plot. It took a fair amount of feedback and editing, but I was delighted that the finished story was one that Cast of Wonders was interested in publishing!”

SOUL CLEAVER Clarence

by Matthew J. Jarvis

“My dear dragon,” the princess announced as she held aloft Clarence’s topaz windflower, its gemstone petals glinting beautifully in the sun. “These are, without doubt, the finest sculptures in all the land!” Around him the humans attending the faire clapped enthusiastically. “State your name, dragon, and ask any favor in my power to grant, for you have truly won first prize.”

Clarence glowed with pride. “My name is–“

“SOUL CLEAVER!”

The thunder of his father’s roar shattered the late-afternoon quiet of the forest, as well as Clarence’s reverie. He clutched the real topaz windflower in his claws and frantically cast about for somewhere to hide it.

(Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 359: Tiger, Tiger

Cast of Wonders 359: Tiger, Tiger is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 13:42 — 19.3MB)

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Tiger, Tiger

By Drea Silvertooth

Echo had always thought that when the world ended, she’d either be running with a motley band of survivors or instantly vaporized. Not a single book, show or movie had prepared her for being apocalypse adjacent.

In the Tropical Asia building, protected by thick glass walls and a ventilation system designed to keep air warm in the winter and sticky in the summer, she hid with her animals. Warty pigs snuffled through the decorative undergrowth, a siamang family sung like sirens in the canopy overhead, and the Malayan tapir and small-clawed otters had taken residence around the cement-bottomed stream that wound through the exhibit. There was still no sign of the sloth bear or the orangutans. Echo wondered if, while she’d been lying face down in the public restroom fighting for consciousness, they might have been evacuated.

(Continue Reading…)