Fictional Worlds

Propagating Peonies By Suzan Palumbo This time, you were a burgeoning peony at the edge of a small cottage garden, stems ladened with clusters of dark fuchsia petals. Your scent perfumed the afternoon air, enveloping me as I walked my solitary way home. I did not want to wait for you. I crept back towards …

Maiden, Mother, Crone By Ann Leckie and Rachel Swirsky The mule nipped at Marjan’s hand as she burdened it with her packs. She pushed its nose away, careful not to hurt it. She needed the mule to be well. Her life — and her unborn child’s — depended on it. She led the mule outside the stable …

A Whisper in the Weld By Alix E. Harrow Isa died in a sudden suffocation of boiling blood and iron cinder in her mouth; she returned to herself wearing a blue cotton dress stained with fresh tobacco. She was younger and leaner, as she’d been when she first met Leslie Bell. Her skin shone dark and …

Blackbird Pastry by Megan Branning Sing a song of sixpence A pocket full of rye. Four and twenty blackbirds Baked in a pie. When the pie was opened, The birds began to sing. Wasn’t that a dainty dish To set before the king? A dainty dish? Oh, I suppose, but did you never wonder how …

Shadow Man, Sack Man, Half Dark, Half Light By Malon Edwards You keep running, even though you know you can’t escape the fifty-foot-tall Pogo. But you were built for this. You are taller than all of the girls and most of the boys in your Covey Four class. Your legs are longer. Your steam-clock heart is …

Zilal and the Many-Folded Puzzle Ship By Charlotte Ashley When Zilal Saleebaan Kamal was six years old, she built her first ship in a bottle. It was a fully-articulated craft of sandalwood and brass with eighteen oars that rowed in unison when the bottle was tipped to and fro. Her father presented it to the …

In Spring, the Dawn. In Summer, the Night. By Aidan Doyle It always seems to me that people who hate me must be suffering from some strange form of lunacy. – Sei Shōnagon, The Pillow Book, Circa 1000 C.E. On the third day of the third month, the good people of court traveled by ox-drawn …

All of the Cuddles With None of the Pain By J. J. Roth What is a Reborn? A Reborn is an artist-enhanced baby doll that looks and feels lifelike. Artists create Reborns as one-of-a-kind collectibles, often from ordinary play dolls transformed into art suitable for hands-off display—or hands-on cuddling. While reasonably durable, Reborns are not …

The Chaos Village – Part 2 By M.K. Hutchins Sarsa was cooking some kind of coarse flatbread — it appeared to be made of wild roots and ground wild seeds — on a griddle slanted up toward the storage pit. Her hut was mostly empty otherwise, packed up into neat baskets still sitting outside the …

The Chaos Village — Part 1 By M.K. Hutchins The ground under Rob’s feet shifted from sand to jagged shale and back again. The mountains folded into valleys, then spiked into cliffs. The green clouds turned into triangles and tried to stab him in the back, but crumpled and fell off. Rob turned another page …

How I Became Coruscating Queen of All the Realms, Pierced the Obsidian Night, Destroyed a Legendary Sword, and Saved My Heart’s True Love By Baker & Dovey No shit, there I was, knee-deep in necromantic weasels in the lair of the mad wizard-king, when Korgar and Elutriel both decided it was time to win my …

La Gorda and the City of Silver by Sabrina Vourvoulias I. I was born on a Wednesday, in the middle of a chapuzón. The sudden squall of sky water bears little resemblance to a thunderstorm — it’s more like a vertical flood, though very brief. I considered Chapuzón for my luchador name — I had …

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 …

Six Jobs By Tim Pratt 1. Exterminator’s Helper I was eleven when a little man with watery eyes who blinked and sniffed all the time shuffled into my classroom, moving carefully, not brushing up against any desks or people. My teacher stood frozen with her hand pointed at a map of Africa, and the …

National Geographic on Assignment: The Unicorn Enclosure by Sarah Monette In the unicorn enclosure, all five unicorns are clustered along the fence, batting their long eyelashes beguilingly at a troop of girl scouts. The girls ooh and aah and argue about which one is prettiest, and the unicorns trail them patiently down the perimeter line. …

Chasing Flowers by L. Chan Lian’s world is flat. Not just the landscape, which extends as far as the eye can see, horizon to horizon under the rolling twilight flux. Not just the houses, dotting the slate grey earth and the thunder cloud sky. Not just her folded servants, who used to pad around silently …

Who Binds and Looses the World With Her Hands by Rachael K. Jones 1. Stranger On days when Selene locked me in the lighthouse, an old familiar darkness would well up within me, itching my skin like it had shrunk too tight to contain my anger any longer. I had grown accustomed to the rage’s …