Genres: Modern Fantasy
Owl hadn’t been real to her since she stopped reading WINNIE-THE-POOH on her thirteenth birthday. That day, she realized she had become Eeyore, losing her metaphorical tail in real life.
Later, her husband hadn’t been real to her since the divorce.
Even later, the rest of Clementine Dresden’s family had faded from her life one by one.
Genres: Fantasy
Hello everyone. Here in England the seasons have completed yet another quarter turn. The leaves are falling, the wind is gusting, and the pumpkin spice lattes have been packed away faster than you can say Christmas sales.
To accompany the longer nights and contemplation of the cycles of life, this week we’re proud to present The Mothgate, by J. R. Troughton, originally published in Shimmer.
19th September
“This is your most important lesson.”
It was a rifle she handed me. Long and cold, ornately decorated. It was heavier than I’d expected, heavier than the one I had practiced with. She laid the barrel on the low wall before us and that helped.
“Watch and wait. No mistakes, Elsa. I know what is coming,” she had said, staring off into the trees. “Look for the butterflies. See them, and you’d best be ready to shoot what’s coming behind.”
We knelt behind the crumbling wall, rifles balanced over its brow, peeking over the moss-stained stone and into the dense trees that lay beyond. I tried as best I could to stop my teeth from chattering, but the winter night was bitterly cold. Mama Rattakin didn’t seem to notice. She was staring toward the tree line, pointing with her black and withered hand.
(Continue Reading…)
Genres: Fantasy, Urban Fantasy
You can find the Uncanny Magazine Kickstarter here.
Makeisha has always been able to bend the fourth dimension, though no one believes her. She has been a soldier, a sheriff, a pilot, a prophet, a poet, a ninja, a nun, a conductor (of trains and symphonies), a cordwainer, a comedian, a carpetbagger, a troubadour, a queen, and a receptionist. She has shot arrows, guns, and cannons. She speaks an extinct Ethiopian dialect with a perfect accent. She knows a recipe for mead that is measured in aurochs horns, and with a katana, she is deadly.
Her jumps happen intermittently. She will be yanked from the present without warning, and live a whole lifetime in the past. When she dies, she returns right back to where she left, restored to a younger age. It usually happens when she is deep in conversation with her boss, or arguing with her mother-in-law, or during a book club meeting just when it is her turn to speak. One moment, Makeisha is firmly grounded in the timeline of her birth, and the next, she is elsewhere. Elsewhen.
Makeisha has seen the sun rise over prehistoric shores, where the ocean writhed with soft, slimy things that bore the promise of dung beetles, Archeopteryx, and Edgar Allan Poe. She has seen the sun set upon long-forgotten empires. When Makeisha skims a map of the continents, she sees a fractured Pangaea. She never knows where she will jump next, or how long she will stay, but she is never afraid. Makeisha has been doing this all her life.
(Continue Reading…)
Genres: Fantasy
When Princess Draciona was born, it was obvious something wasn’t quite right. She had emerald eyes and viridian hair. Most unusual of all was her scaly, moss-tinted skin.
“This baby looks a little like a . . . ahem . . . dragon,” said Prince Rupunzelson (named after his great-grandmother).
“No, no,” insisted his wife, Princess Penelope. “That’s just green eczema. She’ll outgrow it.”
Prince Rupunzelson nodded and decided to let his wife worry about it. He would rather think about battle.
But Princess Draciona did not outgrow her eczema. To make matters worse, when she started to teethe, she grew sharp, dagger-like fangs. When she didn’t get her way, she sometimes breathed fire.
“Princesses do not breathe fire just because they don’t get their way,” said Rupunzelson, who was king by now.
Genres: Fantasy
Want to see those OTKs I mentioned? They’re at Sock Dreams – and tell them I said hello!
Perdy saw Grandpa Zeke sitting in the swing on the front porch as she carried the empty laundry basket. She pushed open the old wooden screen door and went to sit next to him. She leaned her head against his shoulder as the two of them just looked out into the yard. Perdy sighed.
He asked, “How you be, Perdy Perdy?”
She squeezed his arm and cuddled closer to him.
Grandpa Zeke slipped his arm around her. “Did you find those missing socks?”
Perdy shook her head. “No. They aren’t in my room. Do you think a squirrel got into the house again and took them? Or maybe we have a sock eating washing machine.”
He laughed.
She sat up and looked at him. “Really, I looked everywhere.”
Grandpa Zeke smiled at her. “I am sure you did. Most likely was the sock gremlins.”
Perdy stared at him, waiting for him to continue.
Genres: Fantasy
Cool air swirled in through the window and carried with it the faint tapping of claws scratching against stone. A spiderling was climbing my tower.
Lilymiya stirred. She’d spent the daylight hours in her corner with all her legs fanned out across the floor, trying to ward off the summer heat. My poor spider. Her fur, so thick and comforting in the winter, was patchy and ragged. Clumps of it gathered along the base of the walls, and thick strands clung to the grimy sweat on my skin.
The spiderling appeared on my windowsill. It was medium-sized — bigger than a loaf of bread, but a hundredth the size of Lilymiya. I didn’t want it to disturb the webs that decorated my walls, so I reached up and grabbed it with both hands. The spiderling twirled its legs in the empty air as it tried to cool itself.
Genres: Fantasy, Science Fiction
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.
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.
Genres: Fantasy
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.
Genres: Fantasy
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.
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.
Genres: Fantasy, Modern Fantasy
Learn more about the new LGBTQ podcast Glittership!
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.
Genres: Comedy, Fantasy, Modern Fantasy
“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.”
(Continue Reading…)