Too late, of course. They pried my mouth open. The old lady spooned a morsel of something—barley, I think—into my mouth. When I spat it back at them, they caught the pieces on a piece of bamboo cut into a jigsaw puzzle piece. This they gave to a spellscribe, who wrote my full name at the top in grass-green ink.

Zilpit-nai-Rinah hit steel against tinder, harder than she’d intended. Her lantern, unreliable and imperfect though it was, would provide enough light for her purpose. She pulled out a pen, her own clever mechanical design that allowed ink to be stored in a small cartridge equipped with a pumping mechanism. She’d used her jeweler’s tools to construct it—more useful than jewelry perhaps, though she had no intention of selling it at market.

She sang those lines with a fierce, forlorn glee. The ballads took her that way, wherever they would, be they sad or glad. It was that blinding, unearthly intensity in her singing, her ability to sway thoughts and glances, that was the reason the townfolk looked sideways and crossed themselves or made the old warding signs. Part of the reason.

The fire inside Shams was turning, filling him with a bursting hot hunger, and he would have gulped down every leaf and every tree, the stones and earth, the home and the hill and world for his want of her. “Stay,” he said, and the low branches blackened and curled by his breath. “Stay. Stay. Stay.” She sat with him, sweating but unmoved, and she let him hold her and she let him kiss her, and no more. His hunger remained inside.

Ada shook her head, staring once more at the Thames. "I do not think what I had in mind will work. The size of the wing, if it is to be large enough to lift me—my body cannot possibly generate enough force to move it. Not with the speed required." Especially not when she kept growing. Every inch meant more weight for the wings to lift, without a commensurate gain in strength.

"This isn't your choice," said Jade. "You're dead." She and Dominic glared at each other over the stale pond, as if they were arguing over a simple thing like dirty dishes, like they used to when Dominic was a man of flesh and blood. A pang of grief and longing welled up unexpectedly in Jade's chest, but she pushed it down, away. Focused on keeping her pistol steady instead.

Old Iris laughed. “Of course not, boy. I take only the bodies of those fish who offer themselves to my beak. But the world is too big now, and too hungry for light. More wanting out there than there are gifts to be given. For that, it will fall.”

At every opportunity, I asked a variation on the question that haunted me: what would happen to my village if Kirren died before I returned? If we weren't special, why didn't they teach more of us, so there would be no risk of my family starving? They never answered.

Colton had never seen grains project random memories like this. It was almost as if something had shattered the collective consciousness of the tiny machines on this land, forcing them to communicate without thought or reason.

She pumps her legs harder, lifts higher. Slapping back. Strike, strike, strike. She cannot slow. She must not sink, stone-skipping on webbed feet. On and on and ever on. Her arms burn with the effort of carrying her child.

Leu wiped the plate clean—his eyes on the pot—and then, swiftly, like a bird plunging into water, scooped the egg free with a slotted spoon. From the spice pouch around his neck he took a pinch of Fera sea salt to bring out the flavor. (I always slow my hand as I lower the last flake of salt, to draw out the moment, to make the diners lean forward. When you recreate this dish, you must think how you wish to present your egg, what part of the war you wish this dish to tell.)

A pounding at the door chased away the need for words. Cyra's face lost its brief malaise and found the fear it had held a week prior. Adia put a finger to her lips. She led the girl to the cupboard across the room. She whispered for her to be strong. To be brave. And to keep silent. Then she hid her away in shadow.

Flotilla Laputa rises and falls with the currents of the wind. The gasbags in their hundreds above that hold Flotilla aloft kiss the cumulus clouds. The ships and barges and broken hulls that comprise the Laputa creak at the strain. via Pocket

Long shadows skittered before us, cast by a newly risen sun. Kayta and I loped across burnt desert; tracked the wind-eroded dusty treads of uncounted pilgrims, Covenant youth, warriors. Evaded what few sentries patrolled the perimeter. Empty sky, em…

The mama mmiri is the mother of the Ofia River, and she loves her food in pairs. Every month the villagers toss goats and fowl into her water so that in return she will allow them to fish and row and wash in it. via Pocket

In the town of Svalgearyen, on the thirty-third day of the months-long winter night, Grandma Marit abruptly cast her knitting aside and marched toward the door. Her granddaughter, Adda, set her own knitting down with far more delicacy but also a gre…

Grandmother kept her cloth of winds in the orange room, a storage chamber painted in fire and lit to a translucent glow by dozens of floating candlebulbs created by the older women’s magic. via Pocket

The stories begin: there was a lowland man, and he loved a mountain woman. From there they diverge, but the bones of it remain the same. The poet, who had never been to the mountains, gained enough fame that the metaphor worked its way into the lexi…

There are two kinds of secrets: those we keep from others, and those we keep from ourselves. My mother told me this after one of her too-silent nights with my father. She told me that the worst ones, the ones too terrible to believe, are the second …

The first thing he feels after being brought back to life are the gentle strokes of wispy fingers trying to touch him. They clamor around his body—weak voices in his ear imploring him to describe ever…

Today it’s the moon that has him thinking of long ago, but lately anything might do it: leaves blowing over the river, the goosegirl driving her angry geese along the road, the clatter of hooves on th…

A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z A Acks, Alex “The Book of Autumn” — in Issue #49, August 12, 2010 Ahmed, Saladin “Mister Hadj’s Sunset Ride” — in Issue #43, May 20, 2010 “Where Virtue Lives” — in Issue #15, April 23, 2009 P...

The crow kept watching me. Wherever I went, I could look up and see its eyes upon me. I didn’t realize that until I saw it out in the moon garden. It hopped up on the edge of the center urn and reached out, not with its beak, but with a foot. It took a purple berry in its talons and squeezed until juice oozed out over its claws.

Perdita gripped Grandfather Mandrake’s shotgun and closed in on the slew with a cautious but unfaltering step. Whoever had been caught by it was still struggling, much to Perdita’s admiring surprise. She could see the dark red striae pulsing in its almost-body where it clung to the victim, leeching the lifeblood away in what she knew to be painful sips.

His grip tightens. He looks up at me with an honesty reserved for saints and the soon to be executed. "If you do this, it'll ruin you. Please, come back with me to the school, give up this alliance with the Empress, and together we can find a way to save the boy. Armila, please, this kind of murder, to one so young? You can't come back from that kind of corruption."

“Of course I will come,” said the Dragon Queen. Her voice was muted beneath the layers of dark cloth that covered her, but a ripple of amusement sounded as she added, “I should hope my old friend has not forgotten my favorite blend, after all these decades. I shall be disappointed if there isn’t a fresh pot awaiting me.”

The other ghul came at them. Raseed sped past Adoulla, his forked sword slashing. The creature snaked left. The boy’s weapon whistled through empty air. The ghul drove its scaly fist hard into the boy’s jaw. It struck a second time, catching Raseed in the chest. Adoulla was amazed that the boy still stood.

I am an ugly thing of flesh and stone. My eyes, like glittering points of quartz, peer out from beneath the ridges, dark as coal, that protrude from my cheeks and forehead. I am my father’s son, poisoned by the same rituals that have turned his flesh to rock and that have already begun to do the same to me.

I was born a slave, like all of you. My master was a hoary old bull known as Ascaro, one of the Bull-King’s champions. Twenty feet high at the shoulders, and even past his prime he was a quick devil, though old trunk muscles were turning into fat.

It had been over ten years since Gort last heard that, chanted by children. Scare-song. Shiver at night: Stey who stripped a whole island of its flesh, Stey who wore it all and danced and finally tore off her own skin, Stey who was ripped to shreds, Stey who still stalked the islands. Teeth in the wind!