Allpa received the magic sword from his grandmother, as she lay dying. “I’m afraid I don’t really need a sword, grandma,” he said. “No, nor do you deserve it,” she snapped at him. She was a fierce old woman with a nose like a hawk’s beak and skin falling away in folds from her cheekbones. …

Everything we believe is a story. That red in a traffic light means “stop” while green means “go.” The idea of Western scientific thinking as free of bias. That peanut butter and jelly is the perfect kid’s meal. The American dream. Everything. Whether they’re good stories or bad stories isn’t the point. What matters is …

I have reached these lands but newly From an ultimate dim Thule— From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime Out of SPACE—out of TIME. Edgar Allan Poe, “Dream–Land” The Poet’s Tale The dreamer, born bleak, invents an existence elsewhere. He tosses in his sleep, his hair tangled. His hands grasp at nothing, and his …

Folding Beijing by Hao Jingfang (translated by Ken Liu). Uncanny Magazine Issue Two. Short fiction.

Once, on the edge of a stony scrub named for a star that fell burning from Orion a hundred years ago, there stood a hut with tin spangles strung from its rafters and ram bones mudded in its walls. Many witches had lived in the hut over the years, fair and foul, dark and light, …

First came the murmurs. Then footsteps above our bedroom, where no feet should have been. Josh guessed we had squirrels in the attic. “I hope not,” I said, lying next to him the first night in our new rental. “Seeing as how we don’t have a key to the top floor. Anyway, it’s just the …

Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands, Oh, where have you been? They have slain the Earl of Moray, And they laid him on the green. —Child Ballad 181, “The Bonny Earl of Moray.” Things have consequences. Kids figure that out around the time they’re old enough to realize that when they touch a hot stove, they …

When the cave’s ceiling crumples, so do I. Through my body, stone kisses stone. I die. Afterward, footsteps pass by my head. I track them to the opposite wall, the one clear of debris. (If I’d been cowering there, I’d still be alive.) The bearer is wearing my dress, and when she reaches into the …

22. Tea for Three Published 1934, Harem House Press, 128 pages Gudrun hated her name, her mother, and bad art. She loved her house, a wild turkey called Murray who had decided to live out his sunset years in her garden, and Cold Palace Brand No. 1 Silver Needle Tea, which, by the time the …

The Heat of Us: Notes Toward an Oral History by Sam J. Miller. Uncanny Magazine Issue Two. Short fiction.

Planet Lion by Catherynne M. Valente in Uncanny: A Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy Issue Four.

Aworo, Lord of Horses, god of the Western plains, walked into the marketplace in Kalub in the third hour of the morning. It was early summer, and at this hour the sun was warm and comfortable. Pens of livestock and slaves, rickety stalls, rows of fish staring blankly, baskets of fruit, orange and red and …

I am seventeen. I am in Budapest, and it is the Communist era. At the airport, there were Russian soldiers with Kalashnikovs patrolling the runways. Only one airline flew to Budapest, the national airline Malév. There were few passengers. I stopped at passport control and showed my American passport. It contains a photograph of me …

When the desert finally lets you go, naked and stumbling, your body humming with raw power and the song of dead things coiled under your tongue, you find Marisol waiting for you at the edge of the bluffs. She’s dressed in long sleeves and a skirt over her boots, her black hair tucked under a …