The Christmas Abomination from Beyond the Back of the Stars By Heather Shaw and Tim Pratt “Mele Kalikimaka!” Uncle Ray shouted as Trish rushed down the steps from the little plane, sucking in great gasps of island air. The plane smelled like the trapped farts of three boys (maybe four; she wasn’t sure if the …

Home is a House That Loves You by Rachael K. Jones Before the war with Apsides, I wanted to be like my Aunt Martha, who at the age of forty five stepped into an abandoned lot near Aurora’s city center, buried her toes in dirt, stretched up her arms, and became a skyscraper. Her legs …

Crossing by A. C. Wise Emma Rose is four years old the first time she enters the ocean alone. All her life, she’s lived with the beach at the end of her street. Her parents carried her into the waves the week she was born. When she learned to stand, they taught her to float. …

Needle Mouth by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam When Hana Samsa woke from a fevered nap one afternoon, she found that she had been transformed into an enormous mosquito. At the foot of her bed, her tiny legs thumped against an empty bottle of Becherovka; she’d pushed it there that morning after licking the last particles …

Mateus Goes Higher by Natalia Theodoridou Mateus can no longer see the ground from the top of his tower. He calls it a tower somewhat pompously, as in reality it is but a crooked structure made of scavenged materials stacked higher and higher towards the sky. But what is he supposed to call it? A …

The Thirty-Seven Faces of Tokh-Bathon by Effie Seiberg I’ve counted eleven thousand, six hundred and fifty-two tiny soldiers carved in marble relief on the outer walls that ring the temple, though I’ve only named seventeen of them. Each one has a pointed headpiece, a carved cloth sampot, and at least one weapon. In preparation for …

Or Be Forever Fallen by A. Merc Rustad The raven’s ghost follows first. It’s not a surprise, if I’m honest. I killed a raven once —intentional, cruel — some time ago. (I don’t remember why.) At first I saw it in the distance while I prowled the ruins of the once-majestic forest, hunting the men …

What the Fires Burn by A. Merc Rustad It’s near dusk when VanDrake Tage Rannheim trudges into the city to meet a friend. He sticks to the lee of buildings, smog and shadow wrapping his coat. Don’t like a lot of attention. Can’t help it, mostly, but he keeps his greatcoat pulled closed to conceal weapons. …

A Spirited Education by Toni Pi Incense smoke drifted through the air in the apothecary like ribbons of kelp. The good doctor was brooding over an anatomy manual at his desk, reading by the light of his oil lamp. I summoned my courage, entered uninvited, and bowed deep. “Teacher, I’ve come to resume my lessons.” …

Ghost of the Shoals By Sandra M. Odell Pharah Dupree always wore her hair up tight. “You ever hear of Muscle Shoals, Manny?” she said one afternoon. We sat on the back porch steps of Rock Bottom Studios, her with a cigarette, me with a longneck Bud, thinking about how good it’d feel if she …

Emshalur’s Hand Stays By Anaea Lay I returned to Irishem with three sources of power: a letter from Kelian, a clear memory of why I left, and the space between my hands. The letter proved my right to enter as a citizen at the outer gate. It also got me past the boy keeping Kelian’s …

The Names of the Sky by Matthew Claxton Zoya wished one of her flying instructors could have seen her land on that muddy field. Always she had been criticized for her landings. “Light as a feather in the air, lands like a brick,” one had written on his assessment. But this time she brought the …

Godfather by Megan Arkenberg Today is your fourteenth birthday, and your godfather is coming to visit. You know because your mother is wearing a dress, a frilly lime-colored affair that certain magazine editors would refer to as a “confection,” and attempting to bake a pie. The tiny counter overflows with paper sacks of flower and …

Clay and Smokeless Fire By Saladin Ahmed Qumqam stood upside-down atop a cell phone tower, twirling at its pinnacle on his fingertip. When the humans had first started to besmirch the earth with the things, Qumqam had thought them hideous. But he’d come to love dancing on them the way he’d once loved dancing on …

A Thousand Tongues of Silver By Kate Heartfield I am a book. My pages are purple. This is how they made me. First, they flayed the calves, stretched and scraped their wet skins. Then they mixed lichen and leaves, rotted in human urine, to mimic the purple that comes of torturing sea snails to force …

PodCastle 554: Hosting the Solstice

For Your Consideration: PodCastle Award Eligibility 2018

PodCastle 555: Candied Sweets, Cornbread, and Black-Eyed Peas

The Half Dark Promise by Malon Edwards The first thing Bobby Brightsmith told me when I moved to the South Side of Chicago from La Petite Haïti with Manmi was to run like a scalded dog if I ever saw zonbi la in the half dark on the way home from school. See, when Bobby …