Ulykke crouched in the darkness, just beyond the sunray’s reach. Before her, along the forest path, an entourage of huntresses passed on horseback, armed with arrows and blades of finest silver and armor too strong for even Ulykke’s teeth to pierce. Among them, on a dappled-gray mare, rode the princess Dania herself: beloved ruler of …

One More Song By Eliza Chan After Mira closed the door the selkie shed her skin, leaving the mottled grey fur in a heap like stepped-out-of work clothes. Mira handed her one of the many robes hanging on the hat stand and kept her eyes on her blue and green rug, only catching glimpses of …

PodCastle 563: El Cantar de la Reina Bruja

PodCastle 562: Cooking Creole

PodCastle 561: Baby Teeth

PodCastle 560: Suddenwall

PodCastle 559: Dying Lessons

Words Never Lost by DaVaun Sanders Imala spat on the schoolhouse’s brittle timbers as she passed, slipping behind the Tyre Orphan School’s woeful outbuildings and through the fence. A lashing awaited anyone caught here, but she had broken her promise to meet Vachaspah one too many times. The soft crack of fledgling bone pulled her …

Burning Season By C. L. Clark It was burning season in Rashid. Again. Even in the shop, I could smell the smoke. Can you believe I used to like the smell of burning paper? With my eyes closed, I can still see pages glow red before they burst into flame and curl into ash until …

One Day, My Dear, I’ll Shower You With Rubies by Langley Hyde “Elusia Cooper,” she said. “I’m the only child of the accused, Verus Bloodrain.” Her father, clean-shaven and dark-haired, sat at the defendant’s bench. He looked exactly as he had when Fort Beatitude had fallen, about thirty years old, but then magic would do …

When Shadow Confronts Sun By Farah Naz Rishi [Allah] will say, “Enter among nations which had passed on before you of jinn and mankind into the Fire.” Every time a nation enters, it will curse its sister until, when they have all overtaken one another therein, the last of them will say about the first …

PodCastle 558: A Place to Grow

PodCastle 557: The Griffin and the Minor Canon

PodCastle 556: Shadow Boy

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 …

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

For Your Consideration: PodCastle Award Eligibility 2018

PodCastle 554: Hosting the Solstice

Today the Drabblecast brings you "Diamante and Strass" by Lucy A. Snyder.

PodCastle 553: Grounded Women Never Fly

AUTHOR: Beth Goder NARRATOR: Amy H. Sturgis HOST: Alasdair Stuart Murder or a Duck is an Escape Pod original. Discuss on our forums. For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our Wikia Thank you for visiting us on Facebook and Twitter about the author… Beth Goder worked as an archivist at Stanford before becoming a full-time mom […]

PodCastle 552: The Watchers

Every House, a Home By Evan Dicken “I guess nobody wants haunted houses, anymore.” Derek checked his reflection in one of the Cape Cod’s filmy windows, teasing his hair back to mussy perfection. He glanced back at me. “That was a joke, Natalie.” I gave him my best approximation of a smile. He blew out …

En Plein Air by J. T. Glover A gust of wind boiled off the James without warning, flattening cattails and clumps of spikerush as it swirled around the inlet where I was painting, and of course it caught my canvas. The morning’s work rushed away from me like a sailboat before a storm, taking my […]

Greener Pastures by Michael Wehunt “You ever can’t sleep?” the trucker said. Forsyth glanced up out of his thoughts. The man standing at his table was big and worn out, his eyes raw and heavy even in the shadow of his cap’s bill. He had a young face with an old beard matted on the […]

Ten Things I Didn’t Do By Maria Haskins I didn’t die. I promised you I wouldn’t, so I didn’t. I know you said the words in jest when you dropped me off at school, “Don’t die, honey!”, with that hoarse laugh and sideways wink you do, but I rolled my eyes and said “OK, mom, […]

The Blue Widow By J. P. Sullivan It was good tea, all things considered, and I really did admire his efforts at being a good host — but the fact was, I was there to kill him. This was, unfortunately, something of a trend in the profession. He spoke with the confidence of his kind. “You’ve …

Paradise Regained By Edward Lerner My head hurts. I expect it: this is winter. I want it to be spring. Paradise does not ask what I want. The winter is young, and I think the dogs are not yet so hungry as to attack me. Still, I hold tight to my spear. Dogs or no …

Oracle By Dominica Phetteplace The two biggest applications for predictive software are killing people and selling things. Rita was quite successful at the latter. She founded a nail-polish-of-the-month club that used an online personality quiz to determine customer preferences. Bold cremes for basics, chunky glitters for the outrageous, and dark, sparkly metallics for edgy, forward-thinking geniuses …