Archive for Episodes

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Cast of Wonders 166: Hard Passage

Originally published by Perihelion SF (2014).

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 35:22 — 32.4MB)

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Show Notes

Juliet Mushens’ book Get Started in Writing Young Adult Fiction is available now in the UK, and forthcoming in the US. You can find her on Twitter.

Hard Passage

by Holly Schofield

Daylan hurried along the edge of the crowd. He would violate the Heartcreed if he was late again.

As he approached the main wormhole gate, a new wave of arrivals washed over him. There should have been a few minutes grace. I’ve got the schedules wrong again, he thought, flicking his grimy pad into begging mode with an aching thumb.

“Help a poor orphan boy save for a ticket home,” Daylan called out to the kindliest-looking ones as he forged upstream, against the hectic flow of passengers, hunching to make himself shorter. He waved his pad, the large zero indicating his lack of credits. Most arrivees let their eyes pass over his ragged clothes and unblemished forehead, the lack of a visible brain implant labeling him idios.

Endless multitudes streamed by, a cacophony of colour and shapes: tall, elegant Naiphs; stocky Rassakits; right-sized Terrans. Humankind and the two known extraterrestrial species surged in a constant flux; arriving and departing ships determining the tidal ebb and flow of the spaceport.
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Cast of Wonders 165: Into The Forever Place

Originally published in the The Devilfish Review (December 2012).

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 43:14 — 39.6MB)

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Show Notes

Our story this week is a special re-broadcast of Into the Forever Place by Luke Thomas. This story originally ran in July of last year, but the recording suffered from a technical failure that meant we took it down almost as soon as it went up, so we’ve decided to re-release it for your listening pleasure.

Into the Forever Place

by Luke Thomas

I fasten the last braid about Jad’s shoulder and step back. My belly flutters as I look him over, which isn’t normal. Jad’s my best friend. I’m never more comfortable with anyone than with him. Today, though, he is to be venerated, and he looks the part. I knew the dyes used for this sash were precious, but only now do I understand what that means.

We both examine his reflection in the slab of mirrored glass leaning against the wall. The mirror’s old tain yellows everything—the wood and mortar walls, my pale skin and Jad’s dark—it’s all yellowed except the braids of the sash. They wind around Jad’s lanky torso in blues and greens more vivid than life. I know a veneration ceremony is about the clan, not about Jad, but we can both see he looks splendid. His chest swells. I can’t help but laugh. “Jad… you’re preening.”

He blinks, realizes how puffed up he is, and laughs. This doesn’t last long though; Jad recovers himself more quickly than I can manage. He’s a trained storykeeper, after all, and can isolate the rhythm of his breathing and trim the laughter right out of it. I’ve no such control.

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Cast of Wonders 164: Amicae Aeternum

Originally published in Reach for Infinity (May 2014).

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:50 — 24.7MB)

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Show Notes

Available from Solaris in The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume 9 (May 2015), and from Tor.com.

Once you’ve listened to the story, here’s the lullaby Rikki wrote!

Amicae Aeternum

by Ellen Klages

It was still dark when Corry woke, no lights on in the neighbors’ houses, just a yellow glow from the streetlight on the other side of the elm. Through her open window, the early summer breeze brushed across her coverlet like silk.

Corry dressed silently, trying not to see the empty walls, the boxes piled in a corner. She pulled on a shirt and shorts, looping the laces of her shoes around her neck and climbed from bed to sill and out the window with only a whisper of fabric against the worn wood. Then she was outside.

The grass was chill and damp beneath her bare feet. She let them rest on it for a minute, the freshly-mowed blades tickling her toes, her heels sinking into the springy-sponginess of the dirt. She breathed deep, to catch it all—the cool and the green and the stillness—holding it in for as long as she could before slipping on her shoes.

A morning to remember. Every little detail.

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Cast of Wonders 163: Speaking to Skull Kings

Originally published in Betwixt issue 4, Summer 2014

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 36:13 — 33.2MB)

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Speaking to Skull Kings

by Emily B. Cataneo

When Bird with his crown of black roses disappears from the clearing, Genevieve knows she and Joseph won’t be safe anymore. At night, while Joseph sleeps, she sorts the walnuts and lingonberries that Bird gathered for them to eat, counting fewer each time. Her stomach aches and she flinches at the rustle of the skull kings in the ghost forest beyond the clearing.

Sometimes, she clambers up trees, her boots slipping on bark, straining to hear the rustle of Bird’s wings, the growl of his caw.

Night after night, Bird doesn’t return.

Night after night, the skull kings crunch through the undergrowth, closer and closer.

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Cast of Wonders 162: Sister Winter

Originally appeared in The Colored Lens, Issue 12, Summer 2014

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:41 — 23.5MB)

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Sister Winter

by Jenni Moody

We were just going to bed when the townfolk came, led by Mrs. Hutch with her know-all voice.

I climbed up the cabin ladder to the loft, careful to curl my toes over the rough beams of wood. Ma had fallen off the stairs just a week ago, and now she slept downstairs on the sofa. The cabin was just one big room, so she could still yell up at me and Minn to make us quiet down.

Minnie had the covers pulled up over her head. I could see her eyes shining out from a little hole, like a cat in her cave.

“Move over, Minn.” I swung my legs under the covers. She scooted back, and I pressed my feet against her thighs.

Minnie wrapped her hands around my feet. Their warmth prickled. “So cold!”

The underside of the covers twinkled with little points of light. Minnie touched her finger to the sheet. When she pulled it back there was a warm, red star there. She made two rectangles, a star in each corner of the boxes. An arc of stars lead from the bottom of one rectangle to the center of the other. My feet in Minnie’s hands.

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Cast of Wonders 160: The Haunted Jalopy Races

Originally published in Shimmer, Number 16 (2013).

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:11 — 23.1MB)

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The Haunted Jalopy Races

by M. Bennardo

It all started when gallant Joe Jones and shiftless Sylvester Sneep agreed to race each other for the hand of pretty Sadie Merriweather. Except that’s not really how it started at all, not the first year anyway, not back in 1938.

Back then, that first year, Joe Jones wasn’t thought especially gallant and Sylvester Sneep wasn’t thought especially shiftless. Sadie Merriweather was indeed thought especially pretty–at least by most of the boys in Rock Falls–but Joe and Sylvester weren’t racing for her hand.

Not even in Rock Falls, not even in 1938, did anybody think that the outcome of a jalopy race could decide the affections of a teenaged girl. Instead, it was purely a matter of honor. Sylvester had felt his pride pricked when Sadie chose Joe over him, and so the challenge for the race had been given. The challenge was well-known among the upper classes at Rock Falls High School, but the rest of the town only got their first inkling of what was happening when the boys revved up their modified flatties at the top of the square pointing out to Falls Bridge down on Five Falls Road, and by then it was too late.

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Cast of Wonders 159: There Are No Marshmallows in Camelot

Cast of Wonders 159: There Are No Marshmallows in Camelot is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 22:45 — 20.8MB)

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Show Notes

Learn more about the new LGBTQ podcast Glittership!

There Are No Marshmallows in Camelot

by Christian McKay Heidicker

Leticia Andrews saw the wizard hat on a Monday morning at 7:06 a.m. She was eating Lucky Charms in the kitchen nook. The hat was gray and tattered and sat in the window of her plastic princess house, which was in the backyard.

“MOM!” she screamed down the hallway. “DO I HAVE A WIZARD HAT?”

“Don’t think so! Unless Uncle Lewis . . .”

“DOES JAKEY?”

“Honey, I don’t know! I’m working?”

Jake, Teece’s baby brother, did not have a wizard hat. She was 96.2% sure. At least not one so pointy and floppy and not covered in glitter like the ones from Toys ‘R’ Us. Even though Teece had never seen one before, she knew the hat that currently sat in her princess house was a real wizard hat. And that meant things.

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Cast of Wonders 158: This Is Your Problem, Right Here

Originally published in Daily Science Fiction (November 2012).

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 12:14 — 11.3MB)

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This Is Your Problem, Right Here

by David Steffen

“This is your problem, right here.” The plumber’s deep voice resounded from beneath the maintenance hatch by the main pool at Cascade Reef water park. “You’ve only got one troll left. For a pool this big, you need fifty minimum, seventy-five if you want everything to run smoothly.”

“Pardon?” shouted Anita Westegard, the owner. “I only have one of what left?”

The plumber appeared beneath her. His arms were covered to the elbows with green slime. “Trolls. See?” He held one grimy hand up toward her holding a tiny skull. It was almost human in shape, with two thick tusks and curved ram’s horns. “Poor things must have been starved to turn on each other like that.”
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Cast of Wonders 157: The Seal King (Part 2)

Cast of Wonders 157: The Seal King (Part 2) is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:26 — 28.0MB)

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The Seal King (Part 2)

by Jennifer Noelle Welch

Rattle rattle rattle rattle rattle…

Lou’s forehead hurts where it rests, mashed against the keel, and tracing the source of the sound, her brain awakens with a pinch. The coat is wrapped around her shoulders, and somewhere a steel cleat is vibrating. Raising her head, she remembers. The skiff, the size of a tiny teacup, spinning lazily towards the horizon. Are those really the first stars? had been her last thought, before her eyes swam and the darkness swallowed all.

In the stern, the seal king hugs his curled legs, shuddering uncontrollably, his eyes locked on her face.

“You did it,” she whispers. “How did you…”

Forming the words, he seizes, his voice fluttering into her head instead. S-swam. I had t-trouble pulling you back in. I’m s-sorry. He nods at her side, and Lou finds a bleeding scrape above her hip.

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Cast of Wonders 156: The Seal King (Part 1)

Cast of Wonders 156: The Seal King (Part 1) is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:40 — 21.8MB)

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The Seal King (Part 1)

by Jennifer Noelle Welch

The girl with apricot-colored hair sits on a dock the color of driftwood, her back against a stone wall retaining the land against the push and pull of the sea. Buoys bob and clang. On this small peninsula on the shoulder of the Atlantic, close-set fishermen’s cottages cluster together for comfort. When the wind rakes the swells into whitecaps, yellow foul-weather waders lift on the clotheslines.

It is early September, and the saline haze of summer still hangs ripe and full over the harbor. Louellen, or Lou, as she is called, pulls the frayed cuffs of her father’s coat farther over her hands and presses her spine against the afternoon of too-busy family and heckling high-school classmates. The splashing kids have cleared the dock platform and small swimming beach for another season, leaving her mind to dance with everything and nothing.

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Cast of Wonders 155: Aisha Bets Her Life on Magic

Cast of Wonders 155: Aisha Bets Her Life on Magic is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 16:53 — 15.6MB)

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Aisha Bets Her Life on Magic

by Jarod K. Anderson

Aisha Gonzalez was half asleep when the ceiling pressed against her nose.  She made an unconscious move to brush away whatever was touching her and smacked the textured surface of the ceiling hard with the back of her hand. She started awake, scraping her forehead. She barked out a scream and shoved hard at whatever was hovering over her.

Aisha’s mattress receded from the ceiling, bumped against her box springs, then slowly floated upwards. She watched the ceiling move closer with wide eyes, then raised her foot and pushed off back toward the floor. She rolled onto her stomach and looked over the edge of the mattress. She was still in her little studio apartment. Her work clothes from the day before were scattered on the floor next to her humming box fan. Outside the French doors that led to her rickety little balcony she could see the lights from the Speedway gas station next door. The mattress rose and gently pressed her back against the ceiling.

She lay still, sandwiched between mattress and plaster, staring down at her apartment.

“I’m awake,” she said aloud just to hear her own voice. “I’m not dreaming.”
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