There is evidence that Joan of Arc was a man. Accounts of her trial state that she did not suffer the infirmity of women. When examined by the prelates prior to her incarceration, it was found that she lacked the characteristic escutcheon of women. Her pubic area, in fact, was as smooth and hairless as a child’s.

The winds blow pretty regular across the dried-up lake. Traction’s good — when luck’s on your side you can reach three hundred KPH or faster. Harper watches the hot rods race on thick white salt so pure and bright the satellites use it for colour calibration. Harper doesn’t care about souped-up hot rods.

Coming back from my Wilderness Week, I sat by an odd sort of man in the bus. For a long time we didn’t talk; I was mending stockings and he was reading. Then the bus broke down a few miles outside Gresham. Boiler trouble, the way it generally is when the driver insists on trying to go over thirty. It was a Supersonic Superscenic Deluxe Longdistance coal-burner, with Home Comfort, that means a toilet, and the seats were pretty comfortable.

Diomedo Obron and the Archon Filidor passed the evening and much of the night in the latter’s study, discussing the next day’s journey into the wastes of Barran and the expected confrontation with whatever survivor of the Nineteenth Aeon wizards’ cabal still lurked in the Seventh Plane. Erm Kaslo struggled to try to understand the concepts the two thaumaturges threw onto the table — sometimes literally.

I don’t just want to be with you. I want to live with you. In the kingdom under the hill, we could have been together forever. I didn’t want that. I wanted you — all of you. But that was before I understood what that meant.

Kamaria turns into a helicopter gunship at the full metal moon. She stalks the fallow killing fields by night, chop-chop lost in the wind. Helicopter thoughts are slick with oil, but she will not fire her guns. That much she holds in place, like a single sputtering candle underneath the roar of her blades.

Patrick Rothfuss is the author of the epic fantasy trilogy, The Kingkiller Chronicle. The first two books, THE NAME OF THE WIND and THE WISEMAN’S FEAR, are out now. His latest book, THE SLOW REGARD OF SILENT THINGS, is a novella set in the same world.

This month, Amal El-Mohtar reviews work from Lisa M. Bradley, Jennifer Marie Brissett, and Sonya Taaffe.

Chance plays a major role in my compositions — sometimes it’s the only thing to fall back on when my imagination fails me and all my ideas start to look the same. Studying natural, randomized elements like tree bark or smoke helps remind me that shapes don’t need to be precise or carefully planned to be beautiful — borrowing from these sketches and snapshots provides a wealth of new ideas.