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 …

Seven Things That Oughtn’t Cut Me By Jessi Cole Jackson They say troll girls appear only in brilliant shades of armored green. Their skin is faceted, unpierceable, and gleams in the sunlight like emeralds. They say we cannot be drab or fragile. They say we cannot bleed. If only. 1. A volleyball, round and hurtling. …

Folk By Eden Royce In a place beyond far, my braids are woven into the sweetgrass basket encasing me and I am surrounded by the scent of the ocean and its dead. A crack of light breaches my intricate prison and I shift, twist only a fraction, to take advantage of its brightness — there …

The Fall Shall Further the Flight In Me By Rachael K. Jones There are things that fly and things that fall. You must remember this distinction, because they are not the same. Devils are flying things that learn to fall. Lovers are falling things that learn to fly. Do not confuse them. Saints do not …