“They fly very swiftly, and prey upon the wing, being of great use to mankind, in clearing the air of innumerable little flies.” —Chambers Cyclopedia.

If she’d asked anyone out in the town, they would have happily told her the town is always empty and the hotel is always full, because those who pay for a night don’t always rise in the morning. Bu…

When Nina first met Owl-with-a-capital-O, harbinger of death, destruction, and despair, He resembled Athene cunicularia, a wee burrower.

I didn't tell my brother that we'd been eating our father's cremains until a few days had passed. I know Ben well enough to know that he needs to be eased into things.

"I can guess his goddamn origin: Disaffected rich kid. Fled America and trained with mystical Eastern warriors. Soon became the best—one year at ninja camp is always enough time for a gringo …

I was never brave or mad enough to fly from a bridge. I should never have been mad enough to eat that apple.

That morning, at great personal risk, Stephen's waffle iron attempted to tell him something.

Yann kept the dynamite in his coat closet. I smelled it as soon as he let me in.

I promised my family I would turn away from my studies, all the while resolving to continue in secret. I committed everything I knew to memory, burned all my papers, and embroidered my most unfath…

His skin wasn’t brown, or even a man’s skin any more, but instead glistening, polished alabaster. They’d even cast his inner ear in the stuff, and his fingernails; Akeem was willing to bet that Cai…

Suddenly people remembered older stories, the kind where people die, and are reborn, and birth is difficult. The end of the world just made it worse.

STORY: EP538: The Starsmith AUTHOR: Jonathan Edelstein NARRATOR: James Odcombe HOST: Tina Connolly This story has not been previously published, but is set in the same universe as “First Do No Harm,” which appeared in Strange Horizons. Discuss on our forums. For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page Thank you …

I was going to St. Louis inasmuch as I'm ever going anywhere. Not all who wander are lost, sure, but at that point, I definitely was.

We told you what we told every pilgrim: if your health wasn't bad, you had to stay with us a year before we'd lead you into the depths, before an angel would show you to the sapphire gate. Before w…

You bear our weight on your leg; when you tire, I bear our weight on mine. We work our two eyes together.

Remember to tread as gently as possible in the Museum of Printing History, for these machines are delicate. They have withstood wars and insurrections, high-level humidity, and long droughts. They …

«They're coming,» Rosa said. She was out of breath, and Alex watched her put one hand on the door frame to steady herself. So much for hope, Alex thought.

The story of the Red Bride is a slave's tale in slave speech, which I do not generally hold in my head around humans lest my face betray me.

Ming called Sopha a haunted child. The monks at the village wat looped red strings around her wrists to keep her spirit from being carried off, but we always knew she only half belonged to us.

Heather Lindsley’s short fiction has appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Greatest Uncommon Denominator, and Strange Horizons. This story first appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, was reprinted in Year’s Best SF #12 and Escape Pod, and has been translated into Polish and Romanian. Lindsley is also a graduate of the Clarion Writers’ …

Zara’s response was the best one, when he told her his diagnosis. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry we as scientists haven’t fixed this yet. That we haven&…

If there's one thing Anat knows, it's this. She loves Oscar her brother, and her brother Oscar loves her.

I’d not long been made journeyman when the Schöpfers’ Guild gave me my first commission in 1928. Frau Leitner from Bavaria had written to request a small restoration–I took the so…

This is the sort of thing people like: the implication that, despite their minivans and microwaves, if they found the door in the wall, they too could enter fairyland.