sinfully delicious chocolate cake

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Cast of Wonders 609: Devil’s Food

Cast of Wonders 609: Devil’s Food is a Cast of Wonders original.

Bullying

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 43:18 — 59.5MB)

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Show Notes

Image by Dennis Wilkinson

Devil’s Food

by E. M. Dasche

Tristan was not what you might call a traditional evil sorcerer.

For one thing, he didn’t quite look the part. Most evil sorcerers do not wear Star Wars backpacks, or shoes that fasten with Velcro, or short-sleeved button-downs tucked into belted-up shorts.

For another, most evil sorcerers lived in exciting, exotic places. Brimstone castles with ghouls for guards. Ice palaces with magical moats. Underground crypts and catacombs crawling with spiders and slithering, slippery things. Most evil sorcerers do not live on cul-de-sacs, in the stumpy roots of suburbia, surrounded by kids on scooters and corgis on leashes and middle-aged men on put-puttering lawnmowers.

Lastly, and most importantly, most evil sorcerers could cast spells. Tristan could not. Not while anyone was watching, at least. (Continue Reading…)

bamboo forest in winter

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Cast of Wonders 608: The light that became a star

Cast of Wonders 608: The light that became a star is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:56 — 39.7MB)

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The Light That Became A Star

by A.N. Pinckard

The old monk of the temple warned us not to go to the meadow, but Haru and I, we could not help ourselves. The strawberries were so ripe, like jewels, and we were so hungry. Other children had vanished there, but we were willing to take the risk.

It was the fifth year of the clan war and the seventh year of the drought. The dry, cracked rice paddies, the dusty taste of millet, and the ever-present gnawing in our bellies defined our existence.

That spring, Haru and I rose early each morning to fetch water from the Yubari river before the heat became unbearable. We’d haul it back to the rows of millet, dump it on the ground, and watch it disappear into the cracks. Year after year, the customary summer and fall rains had not come, and the earth’s thirst was insatiable.

The cloud dragon was sickened by the war, the old monk said. The thunder god was insulted by the poor offerings. The mountain gods were angry and withheld the rain. Every few days he had a different explanation. What were we to believe? We knew only our hunger. (Continue Reading…)

donkeys being ridden on the beach

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Cast of Wonders 607: The Little Donkeys with the Crimson Saddles

Art (Riding Donkeys on the Beach) by Isaac Israels

Originally published in the short story collection The Silver Thorn in 1928

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 40:27 — 55.6MB)

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The Little Donkeys with the Crimson Saddles

by Hugh Walpole

The little donkeys went past the shop-window at eight in the morning and seven-thirty in the evening, punctually, rain or shine.

Miss Pope christened them Percy and Emily. The old man whose donkeys they were she had long ago named Voltaire because he looked wicked, un-Christian and clever — and because she liked literary allusions. One thing she often discussed with Miss Menzies, and that was why, being wicked and clever, he had not advanced further in the world. Miss Menzies suggested drink, and Miss Pope thought it probable.

On the other hand, were it drink he would for sure beat and abuse Percy and Emily, and this he did quite plainly not do, because they were both plump and well cared for. That might be, suggested Miss Menzies, that he kept them in good condition to benefit his business. No one cared to ride skeletons. Miss Pope, who was very thin herself, said that stoutness did no one any good, and Miss Menzies, who was plump like the donkeys, replied that it was greatly a matter of God’s will, although, as Miss Pope knew, she had no very good opinion of the Deity and often enough spoke of Him sarcastically.

Percy, Emily, Voltaire, Miss Pope, Miss Menzies, all lived in Silverton-on-Sea. ‘When you say lived,’ Miss Menzies would sometimes impetuously exclaim, ‘you are putting it altogether too high — exist is about the word!’ (Continue Reading…)

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay. Graffiti of a boy, screaming, in a Banksy-esque style

Genres:

Cast of Wonders 606: My Mother’s Voice and the Shadow

Cast of Wonders 606: My Mother’s Voice and the Shadow is a Cast of Wonders original.

Colonialism; Generational Trauma

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 44:11 — 60.7MB)

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My Mother’s Voice and the Shadow

by A. W. Prihandita

I pressed my palm onto my chest and said, “Marie.”

I pointed at my mother, took a deep breath and braved her abyssal eyes, asking, “And you? What is your name, Mother?”

I shouldn’t have been in her room, but my father was away, and I was a curious child. I stood in quiet trepidation and waited to know her.

She towered over me, shadow-like in the dark, but by a sliver of moonlight I could see the empty, crooked smile on her lips. It made me shiver—it always did. It looked like the painted simper of a porcelain doll, with eyes too wide and skin too white—except my mother’s skin was dark and wrinkly like shrunken leather. Her pitch-black eyes were an echoing emptiness, a starless midnight sky to fall into, with no thoughts to catch you, only darkness.

My mother was mute and feeble-minded—or so my father said. I would’ve believed him until the end of my days, had the shadow not shown me otherwise. (Continue Reading…)

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay. Graffiti of a boy, screaming, in a Banksy-esque style

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Cast of Wonders 604: The Restaurant of Object Permanence

First published in Diabolical Plots, April 2024

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 16:05 — 22.1MB)

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The Restaurant of Object Permanence

by Beth Goder

Kazia files a folder of correspondence and closes the manuscript box. She leaves the archives as the sun is setting. Her head is filled with the collection she is processing, the papers of Elgar T. Bryce, noted American biologist. For eleven years, she has worked as an archivist, arranging and describing the papers of scientists, economists, and professors. She loves the quiet of the archives, the way folders line up in a processed box, tangible history in her hands.

Outside the archives, there’s a strange flyer on the bulletin board. The first thing she notices is the paper, a small blue square, probably acidic, attached to the board by the thin metal line of a staple not yet turned to rust. It’s an invitation to the Restaurant of Object Permanence. To go, one is instructed to eat the flyer.

She pulls the paper from the board and swallows it in one bite. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 603: Three Wishes to Save the World

Cast of Wonders 603: Three Wishes to Save the World is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:49 — 43.7MB)

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Show Notes

World CleanUp Day

Three Wishes to Save the World

by Rebecca Zahabi

It started, like most of these things do, with a magic lamp.

Eden placed the lamp on the little Ikea table of their student housing and brushed their hand in one swipe from snout to handle. The burnished copper lamp turned to gold under their fingertips, glowing as if newly made, then began to rattle and puff silver-grey smoke.

The genie emerged with a hastily plastered-on smile. Contrary to popular belief, he was grey, not blue. He was wearing pointed shoes and a bright red tunic, through which his skin billowed out.

“Greetings, young…” The genie paused, hovering between ‘sir’ and ‘lady’. He had never had trouble identifying someone’s gender before. In the end, he settled for: “… young master.”

As a matter of fact, the genie was also what people would have called nonbinary, but lacking traditional female attributes, he had been considered male for so long that he now assumed he had to be a man of some sort.

Eden wasn’t awed by the genie’s sudden appearance. After years of witnessing a wilder, weirder, and worse reality on TV, and having also inherited their parents’ stiff upper lip, they greeted the genie with a thumbs-up. “You can call me Eden.” (Continue Reading…)

image of a dark haired boy's head in profile, overlaid with flecks of mud

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Cast of Wonders 601: Bokrug and the Boy

Previously published by The Dragon’s Roost Press, December 2022.

Episode image by intographics from Pixabay

Bullying; implied neglect

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 21:49 — 30.0MB)

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Bokrug and the Boy

by Liam Hogan

“You know we don’t care?”

“Yes. You’ve said.”

It wasn’t much of a beach. Estuary mud, littered with debris from both river and sea. A hulking, concrete sewage outlet, that only discharged at the minimum recommended distance from land when measured at high tide. Betwixt and between, neither ocean nor shore, even the seabirds avoided the area, as Samuel Pelsey trudged through the boot-sucking sludge, half-heartedly poking a stick.

No more than a giant step behind, the Great Old One lurked. Against the grey sky, reflected by the grey sea (or was it the other way around?), foregrounded by grey mud. The eldritch horror’s powerful limbs and webbed feet were better suited to the conditions than an eight-year-old’s short legs and hand-me-down, but still-oversized wellingtons, one of which had long ago sprung a leak, the cracked and weathered seals not up to the pull of the thick mud, rank water oozing in with every second step and soaking his doubled up socks. His jeans were turning the same dismal grey, caked layers that would only flake off when next he went to put them on, there being little point in being washed until the “holiday” was over. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 600: Double Yellow Lines

Cast of Wonders 600: Double Yellow Lines is a Cast of Wonders original.

death, road traffic accidents

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 22:27 — 30.8MB)

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Double Yellow Lines

by J. M. Bueno

Wednesday

We sit on opposite ends of the table, Charles’s beautiful breakfast spread laid out between us. He wears his distinctive ear-to-ear smile, and his eyes, beady, like those of a dead fish, never once stray from mine. I keep my own gaze downturned towards the silver cutlery and the perfect omelet on my plate, slowly cutting it open to reveal the runny inside.

“Why so stiff today, Raleigh?” Charles chirps. “Is the food not to your liking?”

I snort. “Charles, the one thing you’re always good at is cooking.”

“You wound me. I’m certain I have other good qualities.”

Proudly displayed in the table’s centerpiece, all rich mahogany and sharp steel, is a large carving knife. I remember the way it gleamed in Charles’s hand last night. From the head of the table, Charles smiles. (Continue Reading…)

Genres:

Cast of Wonders 596: The Thief of Memory

First published in Reactor in August 2022. 

Episode image by BENMANSOUR ZAKARIA from Pixabay

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 45:58 — 63.1MB)

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The Thief of Memory

by Sunyi Dean

Miquon set off across the endless desert to catch the Thief of Memory. On her belt she carried a knife made of ice, to freeze the Thief when she caught him. Across her back she carried a hollow staff, to siphon his stolen memories.

Hot sand burnt her bare feet as she tracked his steps over shifting dunes. Her people wore shoes for the desert heat, special ones picked out with embroidery and beads, but Miquon could no longer remember what the beads looked like or the significance of the colours, nor did she know anymore where her people might be found.

There were holes in her mind, gaps from the Thief. Until she caught him, that could not be fixed. And she knew that—how? She wasn’t sure. Fragments remained, bright constellations of truth gleaming in the emptiness of her savaged memories. Meanwhile, she went barefoot and cursed the sun. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 595: Come in, Children

Image by Stefan Keller from Pixabay

This story was first published in issue 10 of Hexagon magazine in September 2022

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:28 — 41.8MB)

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Come In, Children

by Ai Jiang

Yejin rubbed her eyes. A cyst was growing at the edge of her right lid. She didn’t have to feel this terrible, but ever since she’d stopped draining the youth of lost children who wandered into the forest, the wrinkles had settled in, her brown hair streaked with grey, and her teeth had become brittle, sensitive to brews both too hot and too cold. She hated lukewarm tree sap water, but it would have to do.

When a knock on her door came, Yejin fumbled for her glasses on the nightstand next to her bed. The old crow that lived in the large oak with its branches draped over her mushroom-shaped house hadn’t yet called. It was far too early for the beginning of her business hours.

The rapping against her creaking wooden door quickened—staccato and urgent. But Yejin’s movements remained slow, steady, and calm, as though she were in a trance. At least it wasn’t a smart phone. Technology, she could never understand the appeal. The quietness of the forest was much more desirable than the roar of the city. She refused to use the Internet, though she snuck into the city every decade or so just to peek at the state of the world—more often than not, it was a mistake. People were foolish, brutish, shortsighted, and utterly helpless on their own, but she had renounced the world and did not intend to return, no matter how clearly they required her services. They’d have to come seek her out for it, and there would be a price—there always is. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 592: Flawless

First published in 2013 in the short story collection Twisted Winter, edited by Catherine Butler

Image by Leonhard Niederwimmer from Pixabay

 neglect and dysfunctional relationships

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:11 — 47.0MB)

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Flawless

by Frances Hardinge

When people stay in hotel rooms, they suddenly turn into toddlers. Weird, creative, screwed-up toddlers.

Let’s smear jam on the wall! Let’s leave apple cores in the drawers! Let’s hide used nappies behind the radiator, so that they fill the whole room with the smell of cooked poo! Hello, whoever cleans this room! I’ve left you a surprise!

Maybe they think there’s some hidden handle we pull to flush the room clean. But there isn’t. The only ‘handles’ are Mum, ‘occasional Kev’ from the village, and me. Kev’s just Occasional and Mum has everything else to do, so cleaning is mostly my job, particularly during the school holidays. (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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 33:26 — 45.9MB)

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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…)