Fantasy

A Beautiful Memory by Shannon Peavey   On Thursday, a windsor-knotted businessman paid Anna three times her normal asking price for a quartet of thought-birds. She normally sold two at a time, because their growth was so slow. But he insisted. A bird of each flavor: contentment, melancholy, joy, fury. “A few of the guys […]

I Will You Back to Time and Space by Dafydd McKimm   You are ten years unborn on the evening of the day that will soon become known as G-day. I am washing dishes in the kitchen of our newly bought terrace, cleaning the residue of dinner from our finest boot-sale porcelain. I bring two […]

Ribbons by Natalia Theodoridou   Monday’s lover tugs at Jan’s ribbon with his teeth. Jan doesn’t yell at the lover to stop. The guy just received bad news from the front — a friend lost to a bomb, perhaps, a sibling blown to bits; Jan doesn’t ask. He tells the lover, instead, to be careful: […]

The Morning House By Kate Heartfield   “This B&B is frankly unacceptable,” Dad says. “I want to go home.” Sylvia freezes, runs through all the things she shouldn’t say. You are home, Dad. No, don’t argue. Never argue. Rule number one. Don’t dismiss. Get into his world, because he can’t get into yours. Don’t you […]

Between The Island and the Deep Blue Sea By Jaxon Tempest   No one knew how the island floated, but everyone knew it shouldn’t. Four thousand square miles of concrete bones and metal veins, a million people circulating daily, and yet it sat in the middle of the Atlantic like a feather on a still […]

Beck’s Pest Control and the Case of the Drag Show Downer by Abra Staffin-Wiebe   I was sitting at the kitchen table, eating breakfast and arguing with my daughter, when my work phone broke the silence of our discussion. Not happening, I signed, quickly swallowing my last bite of peanut butter toast so I could […]

‘Til Death by C. J. Lavigne   My dear Clarinda, They tell me that when you heard of my wedding, you shattered a goblet, fell to the floor in a swooning fit, and did not arise for three days. I hear that the entirety of the manor was wreathed in black. Really, darling, it seems […]

The Bones Beneath by Vanessa Fogg   Four years ago, the bones began pushing up from the earth. Fay is now seventeen, and she feels the bones’ movements more strongly each year. It’s the end of winter, but not yet the beginning of spring. Snowmelt has turned the fields to mud, and the grass is […]

The Eight Hundred Legs of the Rio-Niterói Bridge by Renan Bernardo   Have you seen pictures of the unfinished Presidente Costa e Silva Bridge, with its columns telling stories of falls and drownings like tombstones for the never found and the cemented alive? I saw many in 1972, soon after Papai vanished during the bridge’s […]

The Gorgon’s Glass by M.E. Bronstein   There are people who try to blame Oken’s unhappy demise on the Gorgon, but if you read Oken’s notebooks carefully (and it’s my job to read his notebooks carefully), you know that he was already dying when he first met her. In fact, that is why he sought […]

The Artists’ Colony Patrick Freyne   Dear ­­­­­­­______, I think you would love it here. It’s so peaceful and you were always saying, back in the city, that we needed to get away. So let me describe what I can see from my writing desk. Outside my window I can see a silver lake which […]

An Incomplete Account of the Case of the Bird-Talker of Yaros by Eleanna Castroianni     PANAYOTIS M., interviewed by Eleni Haji, November 1975 When I first saw her, she was covered in wings. Sea birds flocked to her as if she was honey and they were the bees. Watching from the men’s prison, we […]

Water We Made to Breathe By Marisca Pichette When we were fourteen we went looking for the ocean at the heart of the woods. I remember the smell: earth and algae and damp, air thick as water. Our sweat mixing with the summer sun, our clothes in a pile on the shore. Max jumped in, […]

Fire In His Eyes, Blood On His Teeth By R.S.A. Garcia   He comes to me with fire in his eyes and blood on his teeth. Sometimes the blood is his enemies’. Sometimes it’s mine. Eventually, it’s mine. Always. He is different today, striding across the sandy soil toward my home with scuffed, much-mended boots. […]

The Travel Guide to the Dimension of Lost Things By Effie Seiberg   Have you ever felt so tired that you just don’t feel anymore? Where you wake up, burrowed under the covers with a shaft of light somehow piercing through them and right into your brain, and realize that here comes one more day […]

The Augur and the Girl Left at His Door by Greta Hayer The augur looked at the bridegroom’s back and sighed. He bent close to the bridegroom’s skin, examined every bump and line in his flesh. Most apparent were the red lines, claw marks from fingernails. A less experienced fortune teller would have seen those […]

Bride, Knife, Flaming Horse by M. L. Krishnan   To Kalavati, it was well known that if one reached marriageable age, parents and aunties and cousins thrice-removed would clump themselves into anthills of worry. Missiles of relationship managers and matrimonial websites would then be launched to nab a match. It would be a process of […]

The Cat Lady and the Petitioner by Jennifer Hudak Laurie stands in front of a door. It’s old but solid, as many old things are. Whatever paint once covered it has long since worn away, and the wood beneath is striped, and furred with splinters. It is her very first door, of her very first […]

The Fireman by Christoph Weber   I face the forested mountains, raise my hands like a conductor readying an orchestra, and point to my first section. A glow flickers to life in the inky darkness beneath a grove of trees. Arms of flame climb the bark and the canopy explodes, turning trees into torches, illuminating […]

Two Siblings, Seven Fish by Rebecca Zahabi   Maybe this story started when Dad inherited the calabash; or maybe when my great-grandfather ran his thumb along its rugged surface, listening to the coins rattling within; or maybe even before then, when it was still green and growing, waiting to be plucked, carved and dried. But […]

The Elixary of the Evanescent Market by Marina Ermakova Iris eyed the interior of the carriage with caution as the train came to a screeching halt. Potions clinked against the clamps which held them in their travel positions, but didn’t come loose in a crash of shattering glass. A wheeled cart smashed against the wall […]

Miss Bulletproof Comes Out of Retirement by Louis Evans Miss Bulletproof comes home and there’s a god sitting at her kitchen table talking to her kids. “Did you like my presents, children?” says the god. “It was I who got you those gifts, those funny little things, including that long and slithery one, which you […]

The Cinnamon Thread by Beth Goder Anna is grateful to lie on the bed in the cool house where there are no expectations, no labyrinthine thoughts to swallow her in the night. Outside, the wrens muck about in shallow water. Waves rush up against the sand. Dusk seeps in through windows thick with salt lines. […]

Just One Last Mango by Chaitanya Murali “Do you want one?” Meghna asked between bites. She was sitting in the upper branches of Balu maama’s mango tree, with half a dozen golden fruits bundled in her podavai and another one in her mouth. I shook my head, keeping an eye out for maama, and an […]

Said the Princess by Dani Atkinson   Once upon a time in a far-off land, in a tiny room, in a tall tower, at the centre of a vast and impenetrable maze, the princess Adrienna cocked her head and frowned. “Who said that?” said the princess. She looked around the tower room, but saw no […]

A Chestnut, A Persimmon, A Cunning Lie By Michelle M. Denham   If you are going to battle a tiger, my darling one, you need three things: a chestnut, a persimmon, and a cunning lie. Haewon’s Omoni brought home the tiger-hearted girl and said, “This is your sister, Hyojin. She has been reborn to us, […]

Where the Old Neighbors Go by Thomas Ha   The man standing on the porch that night seemed like an ordinary gentrifier at first glance: young and tall and artfully unshaven. His jeans were tattered but strangely crisp, and his shirt was loose and tight in all the wrong places. He had the appearance of […]

Smilers by Chip Houser   Aiden rests his chin on the back of the living room couch, watching his older brother mow down zombies in ZomPlex. The zombies grab at Zach’s avatar, mouths moving like they’re chewing. Aiden’s not sure if they’re supposed to be hungry or angry or both. Their facial expressions don’t match […]

2021 was quite the year here at the Flying Castle. We published fifteen original stories and thirty-one new reprints; we were nominated for Hugo, British Fantasy, Ignyte, and Aurora awards; and we bid farewell to former Co-Editors Jen R. Albert and Cherae Clark, as well as to Assistant Editor and Host Summer Fletcher at the […]

Memoirs of a Magic Mirror by Julia Knowles It started when three magicians, two fairies, a couple of wizards, a witch, and one very drunken sage decided it was a good idea to give consciousness to a mirror that had to answer any question truthfully. Personally, I blame the alcohol. The sage ended up keeping […]