sepia image of a bear and a woman

Genres: ,

Cast of Wonders 682: The Bear Wife

Episode art from an image by ImaArtist from Pixabay

First published in Metaphorosis in February 2019

This story can be read as a postpartum depression allegory

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 48:51 — 67.1MB)

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The Bear Wife

by Catherine George

The bear wife took the cub to mommy and me yoga. She didn’t look much like a bear without her fur, but somehow the other mothers seemed to sense it; when she came in carrying the cub they shifted away, drifting on their yoga mats closer to the windows, to each other. She was left alone in the middle like a stone dropped into a lake, each woman a wave rippling outward. In tree pose she was a lightning-struck pine at the center of a clearing.

It must be something primal, she thought, lifting the cub up in a sun salutation. A smell, maybe, or a musk that hadn’t gone away when the fur came off (worried now, she sniffed at her armpit as she twisted into warrior pose, but she smelled nothing but the plastic roses of her deodorant). Anyway, she didn’t blame them for staying away. The bear was still in there, just below the skin; if any of them threatened the cub she’d tear the heart from their chest.

As the mothers eased into downward dog — a ring of A-frame cabins, each sheltering a baby — the weathered blonde yoga teacher approached her mat and placed a gentle hand on the bear wife’s back, correcting her posture. “Like this,” she said. “Keep your back flat.” The hand pulled away, a bird taking flight, then settled again, on the hunch of her neck. “Focus on pulling the shoulder blades together behind you.”

The bear wife didn’t bother to tell her the hunch would never go away. No amount of focusing on her shoulder blades would remove the grizzly in her. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 681: Little Wonders 48 – Coping Mechanisms

Cast of Wonders 681: Little Wonders 48 – Coping Mechanisms is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:01 — 31.6MB)

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Show Notes

Episode art adapted from an image by Hello Cdd20 from Pixabay

A Chest Full of Storm Clouds

by Elisabeth Ring

It’s Philip’s text that finally does it.

“Happy birthday!” it says. Just those two words. Not, “Happy birthday! I miss you!” Not, “Happy birthday! I’m sorry!” Not, “I was wrong. I love you. Please take me back.”

Happy. Birthday. Exclamation mark.

As if the long, emotionally fraught blocks of text above it, mostly from me, and un-responded to by him, don’t exist. As if he hadn’t broken my heart in a million pieces even before he left. As if we’re the kind of friends you remember to text on their birthday but not well enough to come up with anything more creative than just “Happy birthday!”

Reading that text, I feel something break loose deep inside. I maybe haven’t been handling the breakup well to begin with, plus work has been extra tough lately and I’m going to have to juggle credit cards to pay for everything this month. This text just unleashes everything I’ve been keeping locked up and I know I need to get to a storm chamber or I might actually explode. (Continue Reading…)

colourful rabbit silhouettes on a red background

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Cast of Wonders 680: Firecrackers on 28 Mott Street

First published in Worlds of Possibility in February 2024.

Image by Pfeilgiftfeder from Pixabay

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 12:15 — 16.8MB)

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Firecrackers on 28 Mott Street

by Angela Liu

The children wield firecrackers as they enter the old shop on Mott Street. Copper wind bells chime as the door closes behind them.
Inside, velvet curtains block all natural light. Here the glow of porcelain lamps and red paper lanterns light the space. Glass display cases line the walls like a dusty museum: enchanted ivory boxes carved with intricate beasts, voice-altering fox masks, curse paper, flutes for conjuring love songs. Behind the unmanned register, a grinning cat amulet dangles on the wall alongside framed photos of the neighborhood’s most decorated magicians and standing next to each of them, in her signature tiger-print vest, is Miss Lin, the proud owner of 28 Mott Street, the last General Alchemy Shop in Chinatown.

Dino’s the first one to walk up to the display cases.

“Is that it?” he says, pressing a finger to the glass.

Sally swats his hand away. “You know Miss Lin likes to keep everything spotless.” (Continue Reading…)

Genres: ,

Cast of Wonders 673: Chloe Chew and the Museum of Undead Art (Staff Picks 2025)

First published as Cast of Wonders 645 in July 2025.
Image by Camila Denleschi from Pixabay

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:13 — 47.0MB)

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Chloe Chew and the Museum of Undead Art

by Olivia B. Chan

In Chloe Chew’s suffocating hometown, there’s only one place fit for necromancy: the parking lot outside Em’s motel, where summer heat wavers above cracked pavement, blurring the darkness on the horizon. Forest fires have driven away all the tourists, so Chloe’s safe to prepare her resurrection materials between the yellow lines.

She presses her hands to the torn-up canvas as it flaps in the wind off the highway, Asperthbell’s skyline rippling in its peeling acrylic. Her victim is a painting she found in the back of Miss Plent’s classroom, wedged between old answer keys, entirely forgotten. Perfect for a resurrection. She recognizes Asperthbell’s gas station in its streaks of red, but besides that the painting’s portrayal of her hometown is unrecognizable—no ash. No smoke.

The painting’s ghost trembles in her hands. (Continue Reading…)

Genres: , ,

Cast of Wonders 672: Feeding Spirits (Staff Picks 2025)

First published as Cast of Wonders 642, June 2025

Friendly haunting, bereavement

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:51 — 35.5MB)

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Feeding Spirits

by Emmi Khor

What does one feed a hungry ancestor? Fish and chips, chicken parmi, or steak pie didn’t seem like something my recently deceased Popo would enjoy.

I’d just returned from my backyard swamp with a full trash bag, when the phone rang. The call bounced with around-the-world echoes and I’d barely said hello, when Ma started in on her visit to the medium.

“I asked your Popo if she was comfortable. Ai yah, Li-Li,” cried Ma, “she scolded me! She said: Twenty years my granddaughter doesn’t come home. I go all the way to Australia to visit and she doesn’t even offer me a meal.” The click of Ma’s tongue was like a slap. “You should respect your ancestors!” (Continue Reading…)

Genres: ,

Cast of Wonders 668: The Sundress and the Serpent

Cast of Wonders 668: The Sundress and the Serpent is a Cast of Wonders original.

Death of a parent

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:51 — 32.7MB)

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The Sundress and the Serpent

by Craig Church

Tears burn my eyes as I crack open the sliding door and slip out the back of the house. I pull up the hood of my jacket and cinch it tight against the heavy, damp cold, looking over my shoulder to where the flickering light of the television illuminates Dad’s beer gut, rising and falling in time with his guttural snoring. At least one of us can sleep.

The sun will be up before long. I need to get a move on.

I know the path by heart after making this trek so many times, so the soupy morning fog doesn’t deter me. I stroll past the dark, uninhabited vacation homes dotting the shoreline and recall how indignant I was when Dad moved us into a cramped mobile home along this remote stretch of Oregon’s coast. He’d just wanted to run away after Mom died, and didn’t give a second thought to uprooting his teenage daughter. At the time I’d hated him for it.

Now, maybe not so much. (Continue Reading…)

green-toned image of a bayou

Genres: ,

Cast of Wonders 653: Life and Death and Love in the Bayou

First published in Writers and Illustrators of the Future Vol 40, April 2024

Domestic Violence. Mention of past attempted rape.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 32:10 — 44.2MB)

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Life and Death and Love in the Bayou

by Stephannie Tallent

It was the February the rain fell so warm and hard the bayous swamped over old man Rochambeau’s gator curing shack and the whole parish smelled like graveyard mold and sour-smelling gator crap, even the houses built up on stilts above the high-water line, that I decided to help my mama once and for all. No matter the cost to my soul.

’Bout that shed . . . I knew old man Rochambeau would just hit up my mama to use the ham hut for his haul, and she’d say yes, so I didn’t feel too bad. Not for him, anyway.

Felt bad for my mama, who’d be stuck bumping up against log- shaped hunks of gator meat while she seasoned and cured the hogs. Touch one of those logs of meat, and it’s like the Spanish moss is dragging against the back of your neck, like the spirit of the gator is still there and pissed off and just waiting to chomp on you and roll you.

Those spirits are truly there, lurking to garner just a bit of power, enough to touch the living world. (Continue Reading…)

old playing cards

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Cast of Wonders 651: The Liar

Image by Emilia from Pixabay

First published in The Book of Witches (edited by Jonathan Strahan, August 1 2023, Harper Voyager)

swearing, assault, murder

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 53:43 — 73.8MB)

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The Liar

by Darcie Little Badger

The Mysterious Woman

Jodie sat in a bench-filled lounge outside the Dominion Casino poker room. It was 6:18 p.m., and she’d been waiting for a table since 5:30. A 32-inch flat-screen TV on the wall displayed the standby list and indicated she was up next, along with four others identified as Pete M., Joe T., Olav A., and Bartholomew S.

Lowering her phone, she wondered if the sweaty, pink-faced man sitting next to her was Joe, Olav, or Bart. There were a dozen people in the room, but he was the most visibly nervous, his right leg bouncing.

“Howdy,” he said, noticing Jodie’s attention.

“Afternoon. What’s your name?”

“Pete.” He jabbed a thumb at the waitlist screen. “That Pete.”

“Call me Jodie.” (Continue Reading…)

silhouette of a woman with her arms raised against a backdrop of the golden gate bridge

Genres: , ,

Cast of Wonders 649: Little Wonders 46 – Seize Your Future

Cast of Wonders 649: Little Wonders 46 – Seize Your Future is a Cast of Wonders original.

Abortion themes, loss of agency

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 18:17 — 25.1MB)

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Show Notes

What the Water Gave Her was first published in Pop Goes the Page, May 2023

What the Water Gave Her

by Race Harish

The witch was a small man, but otherwise rather ordinary. He had white hair, kind eyes, and a fondness for darjeeling tea. He called himself Mother.

The directions were unclear. But it was unwise to question a witch so she pays that as little mind as she can. The slip of paper bearing the directions crumples in the tight clutch of her fist, the writing surely too smudged and sweat soaked to be of any use to her now. She is glad that she had the sense to commit it all to memory before she began the journey. (Continue Reading…)

illustration of a motel and parking lot

Genres:

Cast of Wonders 645: Chloe Chew and the Museum of Undead Art

Cast of Wonders 645: Chloe Chew and the Museum of Undead Art is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 33:07 — 45.5MB)

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Show Notes

Image by Camila Denleschi from Pixabay

Chloe Chew and the Museum of Undead Art

by Olivia B. Chan

In Chloe Chew’s suffocating hometown, there’s only one place fit for necromancy: the parking lot outside Em’s motel, where summer heat wavers above cracked pavement, blurring the darkness on the horizon. Forest fires have driven away all the tourists, so Chloe’s safe to prepare her resurrection materials between the yellow lines.

She presses her hands to the torn-up canvas as it flaps in the wind off the highway, Asperthbell’s skyline rippling in its peeling acrylic. Her victim is a painting she found in the back of Miss Plent’s classroom, wedged between old answer keys, entirely forgotten. Perfect for a resurrection. She recognizes Asperthbell’s gas station in its streaks of red, but besides that the painting’s portrayal of her hometown is unrecognizable—no ash. No smoke.

The painting’s ghost trembles in her hands. (Continue Reading…)

Australian Billabong

Genres: , ,

Cast of Wonders 642: Feeding Spirits

Cast of Wonders 642: Feeding Spirits is a Cast of Wonders original.

Friendly haunting, bereavement

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:39 — 35.2MB)

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Show Notes

Image by Daniel Burkett from Pixabay

Feeding Spirits

by Emmi Khor

What does one feed a hungry ancestor? Fish and chips, chicken parmi, or steak pie didn’t seem like something my recently deceased Popo would enjoy.

I’d just returned from my backyard swamp with a full trash bag, when the phone rang. The call bounced with around-the-world echoes and I’d barely said hello, when Ma started in on her visit to the medium.

“I asked your Popo if she was comfortable. Ai yah, Li-Li,” cried Ma, “she scolded me! She said: Twenty years my granddaughter doesn’t come home. I go all the way to Australia to visit and she doesn’t even offer me a meal.” The click of Ma’s tongue was like a slap. “You should respect your ancestors!” (Continue Reading…)

teddy bear reading a book, against a light blue background

Genres: ,

Cast of Wonders 638: A Spell of Grief

Cast of Wonders 638: A Spell of Grief is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 16:59 — 23.3MB)

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A Spell of Grief

by Rae A Shell

The library was closing in ten minutes.

Lucas stared at the picture books, paralyzed by both indecision and nostalgia. Hurry up! he screamed at himself. If he was late, if he screwed up the ceremony again….

Sure, Lucas would be hardest on himself. Aunt Meg was more likely to comfort him than scold him, but the two of them had agreed, were adamant, that this year, this year he would succeed. (Continue Reading…)