What the Fires Burn by A. Merc Rustad It’s near dusk when VanDrake Tage Rannheim trudges into the city to meet a friend. He sticks to the lee of buildings, smog and shadow wrapping his coat. Don’t like a lot of attention. Can’t help it, mostly, but he keeps his greatcoat pulled closed to conceal weapons. …

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 …

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 …

PodCastle 554: Hosting the Solstice

For Your Consideration: PodCastle Award Eligibility 2018

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

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 556: Shadow Boy

PodCastle 557: The Griffin and the Minor Canon

PodCastle 558: A Place to Grow

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …