Fictional Worlds

Amma’s Kitchen by Rati Mehrotra   I can always tell what dish my customers will order. Knowing what the dead crave is my gift. Or my curse. It’s hard to know which. This girl, for instance. Brown, like me, but pale, as if the color’s been leeched out of her skin. Dark, staring eyes, weeds […]

Against All Odds By Anna Mikhalevskaya Translated by Elvira Rizaeva   Time is slipping away drop by drop, along with sweat on deceptively calm faces. He runs through the shafts of stairs, through abandoned tunnels. Seeps through the ceilings into echoing hangars, stumbles upon crooked figures, shakes oilcloth curtains, rolls empty mugs, beats metal on […]

The Golem Lover by J.H. Siegal     I have learned of a lace that runs through my little village. Geilevska, nestled within the bosom of nearby hills, rests upon these strands, sewn around the fertile patchwork of letters learned in the men’s yeshiva, through the words traded by merchants, beneath the whispers of the […]

On Snowflake-veined Wings by Chip Houser   Amalia runs her finger around the inside of her Tupperware, wiping up the last of her leftover poutine. Her fall allergies kicked in a few days ago, so she doesn’t really taste the gravy. But she’d rather finger-clean her Tupperware at her table than go wash it because […]

The Sound of Children Screaming by Rachael K. Jones     THE GUN   You know the one about the Gun. The Gun goes where it wants to. On Thursday morning just after recess, the Gun will walk through the front doors of Thurman Elementary, and it won’t sign in at the front office or […]

Pirates by E.F. Benson     For many years this project of sometime buying back the house had simmered in Peter Graham’s mind, but whenever he actually went into the idea with practical intention, stubborn reasons had presented themselves to deter him. In the first place it was very far off from his work, down […]

His white skin looked even more pale in monochrome. In the final chapters, he had worn his officer’s uniform, to remind me of his country’s authority over my city.

Clarkesworld Magazine - Science Fiction & Fantasy

I knew she was there. Lenet believed she was stealthy, and would perhaps have been correct, had I not been the cat of the Duke’s Theatre for four long years. All the sounds that grand old building could make were known to me . . . including the sound of a barefoot Cait Sidhe girl stalking the rafters like the ghost of Hamlet’s father. The footsteps stopped above my head. “Rand,” Lenet hissed, voice pitched low to keep it from carrying to the audience below.

The Aunties Return the Ocean By Chris Kuriata Auntie Roberta landed badly on the roof of her escarpment house, scraping her knees across the flagstone shingles and splitting her pantyhose. Her arms were too full of black water to keep her balance so she nearly slid off the edge. She carried so much ocean she […]

Clarkesworld Magazine - Science Fiction & Fantasy

The Mountain and the Vulture by Nick Douglas   “High in the North in a land called Svithjod there is a mountain. It is a hundred miles long and a hundred miles high and once every thousand years a little bird comes to this mountain to sharpen its beak. When the mountain has thus been […]