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 […]

The Satyr of Brandenburg By Charlotte Ashley By the inebriated light of dawn, October the 23rd, 1700, a swarthy figure skulked in the rosebushes lining the Villa del Sulcis, outside the Sardinian town…

Labyrinth, Sanctuary By A.E. Prevost Constance carves her timeworn tracks into the thirsty rock. With silent steps her footfalls smooth the stone, century into century, grooves and gullies growing green as time and seed take hold. Stone after stone, her hands build battlements and balconies, repair time-ragged trusses, stack spires towards the sun. Deep in […]

La Héron by Charlotte Ashley In the grayest hour of the evening of April 16th, 1699, when the sun had just vanished behind the great château that embraced the city of Caen but before her lantern-bearers had taken up the hooks of their trade, a gargantuan woman stooped to fit through the door of the Trois …

Call for Associate Editors! We’re recruiting! We’re looking to add additional associate editors (also referred to as slush readers) to our team. PodCastle is an SFWA short fiction market. We’re looking for associate editors who can read and commen… We’re recruiting! We’re looking to add additional associate editors (also referred to as slush readers) to our team. PodCastle is an SFWA short fiction market. via Pocket

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

PodCastle 553: Grounded Women Never Fly

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 …

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 …

The Last Exorcist by Danny Lore Author’s Note: This piece was commissioned and then declined by a prominent magazine. The only information that has been altered/omitted are locations, as those have been deemed a national security risk. Re-post and share at will. Naheem is our last great exorcist. When you point this fact out to …

The Original Science Fiction Podcast