stately home garden distorted by a kaleidoscope

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Cast of Wonders 618: Beneath the Unreal Gardens of the Virtual Villa

Cast of Wonders 618: Beneath the Unreal Gardens of the Virtual Villa is a Cast of Wonders original.

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Beneath the Unreal Gardens of the Virtual Villa

By M.K. Hutchins

Self-defense class in the virtual reality sim is supposed to be safe. My green dummy-partner lumbers toward me like a particularly unthreatening zombie and grabs my throat. I clasp my hands together, crash down on those green elbow joints, then strike up at its nose with everything I have, just like Mrs. Rodriguez showed us.

Green blood sprays all over me.

I cough, splutter, stagger back. Who’d program a dummy that way? Several girls gape in horror. Two guys start laughing. No one else made their dummy gush blood.

Mrs. Rodriguez smells wounded social prey like a great white shark—Carcharodon carcharias. She hurries over with a plastic-fake, angelic smile. “As you can all see, Anne has gotten into the spirit of things! Excellent work, Anne!” (Continue Reading…)

axe and chopped wood

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Cast of Wonders 616: Worse than a Wolf

Cast of Wonders 616: Worse than a Wolf is a Cast of Wonders original.

Content warning for implied past sexual assault

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:29 — 36.4MB)

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Worse than a Wolf

by Wen Wen Yang

The sound of the metal grinding against the whetstone reverberated up my arms. My father was sharpening his ax, preparing for the day’s work. “I invited Mu to dinner tonight,” he said.

I shuddered.

Mu was a woodsman whose family came from a neighboring village in China and had settled in the same rural town in Oregon a decade before my family. How happy my family was to hear our dialect! It almost made this foreign country feel safe. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 591: Scrap Dragon

First published in the January/February 2012 edition of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction

Image by Dorothe from Pixabay

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Scrap Dragon

by Naomi Kritzer

Once upon a time, there was a princess.

Does she have to be a princess? Couldn’t she be the daughter of a merchant, or a scholar, or an accountant?

An accountant? What would an accountant be doing in a pastoral fantasy setting?

The people there have money, don’t they? So they’d also have taxes and bills and profit-and-loss statements. But he could be a butcher or baker or candle-stick-maker, so long as he’s not a king. (Continue Reading…)

watercolour purple dragon against a sunset sky

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Cast of Wonders 589: The Answer of the Fickle Heart

Originally published in Kaleidotrope, January 2023

Image by Oberholster Venita from Pixabay

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 44:15 — 63.0MB)

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The Answer of the Fickle Heart

by Eden Frenkel

Sophie had a fickle heart.

She didn’t know at first what fickle meant—the word reminded her of tossing a coin and waiting to see which way it lands—but her mother kept using it, and her sisters, and her brother. Maybe fickle meant that she liked sewing one day and sword-fighting the next, or that she kissed two different boys (and one girl) within the span of a single fortnight, or maybe it simply meant that she laughed too much, and often cried, and sometimes screamed.

Sophie knew, however, that there was a witch beyond the woods that bordered her village, and that witches could take care of such things for people, for the right price. She also knew that one shouldn’t—at any cost—approach a witch and ask for such a deal, because witches were cunning and snaky and fickle, in their own magical way. But Sophie was fickle too, and she wasn’t afraid. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 571: The Raven Princess (Staff Picks 2023)

Originally published in Cast of Wonders as episode 543 on 5 August 2023

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The Raven Princess

by Dani Atkinson

“Oh no,” Clarinda muttered, fluttering to the body of the fallen prince. His limp form lay sprawled at the base of a willow tree, the fine embroidery on his clothes gleaming in the shifting patches of sunlight cast between the branches. A basket lay near his feet, and an empty wine goblet lay toppled near his hand. Clarinda pecked his fingers. “No no no…”

Notchbeak flapped down to join her. “Who’s this? Are you going to eat him?” He started pecking the other hand. “Dibs on his eyes.”

“No!” Clarinda cried, hopping to the man’s chest.

Notchbeak ruffled his feathers in a shrug. “Well, fine, we can split the eyes. He has two, after all.” (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 543: The Raven Princess

Cast of Wonders 543: The Raven Princess is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:29 — 41.1MB)

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The Raven Princess

by Dani Atkinson

“Oh no,” Clarinda muttered, fluttering to the body of the fallen prince. His limp form lay sprawled at the base of a willow tree, the fine embroidery on his clothes gleaming in the shifting patches of sunlight cast between the branches. A basket lay near his feet, and an empty wine goblet lay toppled near his hand. Clarinda pecked his fingers. “No no no…”

Notchbeak flapped down to join her. “Who’s this? Are you going to eat him?” He started pecking the other hand. “Dibs on his eyes.”

“No!” Clarinda cried, hopping to the man’s chest.

Notchbeak ruffled his feathers in a shrug. “Well, fine, we can split the eyes. He has two, after all.” (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 462: Straw-Spun

Previously published in Sword & Sorceress 27, November 2012

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 48:02 — 44.4MB)

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Straw Spun

by Leah Cypess

‭Alina unfolded the letter slowly and with great care:‭ ‬it was very old,‭ ‬and‭ ‬felt thin and fragile under her steady fingertips.‭ ‬Her heart was pounding in a way unfamiliar to her,‭ ‬and not just because of the whispers she had heard on the way to the throne room:‭ ‬gold to straw from two passing courtiers,‭ ‬the end of‭ ‬the peace from a duke to a lady,‭ ‬Rumpelstiltskin‭ – ‬she hadn’t turned fast enough to see who’d said that.

She had come to the‭ ‬sitting room to ask her father about the whispers,‭ ‬but‭ ‬before she could say a word,‭ ‬he had handed her the letter.‭ ‬She smoothed out the last fold and‭ ‬focused on the ornate,‭ ‬flowing script‭ ‬so similar to her own.

The king was watching her.‭ ‬She‭ ‬composed her face and read. (Continue Reading…)

10th birthday image

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Cast of Wonders 459: Ten Years of Wonder

Previously published as Cast of Wonders Episode 53

murder, revenge, threat of sexual assault

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 41:34 — 38.5MB)

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With so many episodes to choose from, how can we possibly decide on what to pick as our birthday encore story?

Marguerite’s favourite episode of all time is Kulturkampf by Anatoly Belilovsky, narrated by Hans Fenstermacher – we released this as an encore story, in episode 360.

Mine — at least this week — is episode 381, The Lie Misses You by John Wiswell, narrated by Athena Haq.

Jeremy, our long-suffering audio producer, would choose the marvellous Why I Spared the One Brave Soul Between Me and my Undead Army, by Summer Fletcher, narrated by Katherine Inskip – this was episode 355, and a staff pick for 2019.

However, the story we’ve chosen to highlight today is our founding editor Graeme Dunlop’s selection:

(Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 416: The Wolf and the Woodsman

Originally published on the author’s blog

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 45:32 — 42.2MB)

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The Wolf and the Woodsman

by T Kingfisher

Here. Listen.

I’ll tell you a story.

Listen.

Once upon a time there was a girl. She was probably about twelve or thirteen, but that was an age when children were older than their years and expected to do real work and help with the harvest, so perhaps she was only nine or ten.

Her hood wasn’t red. Red dye is expensive and doesn’t hold well, and nobody who had to dye it themselves would make a red cloak for a child who could be expected to outgrow it by autumn. That was added later because it alliterated. It wasn’t a riding hood, either—the only horse she ever rode was the broad-backed giant that drew her father’s plow. Still, we make do. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 412: Eight to the Eighth

Cast of Wonders 412: Eight to the Eighth is a Cast of Wonders original.

Spiders

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Eight, to the Eighth

by Liam Hogan

Spider was fed up. Fed up, and upside down. She hung from a web in the darkest corner of Witch’s cottage, swinging back and forth in the most fed up manner she could fashion.

Each time she swung she scowled with all eight eyes at the torn open envelope with the Royal crest on the side table below. Witch’s gilt-edged invitation to the Palace Ball, the social spectacular of the year, had arrived that very morning.

Spider knew exactly how things would go. How the annual event always went. Witch would not, of course, RSVP. If pressed, she would say how terribly busy she was, and how she definitely hoped to make it, but she really couldn’t say for certain until much closer to the date. But she wouldn’t RSVP later on, either. Instead, Witch would turn up at the Summer Palace of the King and Queen of Freyen-Noyen, on the night of the Ball, invitation in hand, and claim she’d found herself unexpectedly free of an evening and she trusted her gracious hosts wouldn’t mind her unannounced attendance?

(Continue Reading…)

Text message from story

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Cast of Wonders 390: The Tale of Descruptikn and the Product Launch Requirements Documentation

Cast of Wonders 390: The Tale of Descruptikn and the Product Launch Requirements Documentation is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 32:39 — 30.4MB)

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The Tale of Descruptikn and the Product Launch Requirements Documentation

by Effie Seiberg

Once upon a time there was an associate project manager named Jaime. She knew she was lucky to have this job – so many others in her graduating class were still juggling nanny gigs and catering gigs and tutoring gigs and so many side hustles they could’ve been a dodecahedron.

It was at a small company that ostensibly helped foreign students find scholarships for American colleges, but actually if you looked closely you could see that the company didn’t do much and was just a vanity project so the founder could say he was innovating and disrupting and other such nonsense buzzwords. Considering how little the company actually accomplished, Jamie was astonished that she was the one hundredth person to join the team. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 388: The First, the Second, the Third

Cast of Wonders 388: The First, the Second, the Third is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 35:41 — 33.2MB)

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The First, the Second, the Third

by Katherine Kendig

In the winter, the mornings are colder inside than out. Lily sings at the window, her voice wending its way toward the barn, the willow grove, the creek, as pure as the snow it floats over. Her breath frosts as she sings, her gaze fixed on the horizon where the church is the only part of town we can see. Margot huddles in bed, her hair tousled over her face, shivering. Margot has never been able to stand the cold.

“Celia,” she says to me, lifting the blanket a little so I can crawl in beside her. We lie side by side and listen to Lily sing until our stomachs rumble and we go downstairs to make breakfast. Lily refuses to sing while she is working, but she hums under her breath as she makes porridge, and in my mind I am humming too. Margot insists on having jam with breakfast every day, even though she knows the jam will run out long before spring. Lily insists on reserving a jar of rhubarb for herself, so that she can savor it on special occasions, long after Margot has devoured the rest of it.

I don’t care much about the jam. I begrudge my tongue its sweetness.

(Continue Reading…)