Fantasy Archives - Lightspeed Magazine

In Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 198 (November 2026)

I. The Oracle at the Ministry of Truth

Ayinla could not say when he first heard of the Oracle. Perhaps at the barbershop, where he had settled himself into a rotting and dangerously unstable barber’s chair, robe too tight around his throat, silently cursing the barber who stopped every now and then to argue with “hangers.” (There were always hangers at barbershops; jobless, often shirtless men who were as much a fixture of the shop as the harsh fluorescent lights that exposed Ayinla’s pores).

All the Shapes We Have Ever Been

by Kehkashan Khalid

You have always guarded the tower, even before the king left the first orphan-daughter under the apple tree. Curled around its pearlescent moon dome, your black scales invisible against the night sky, your red eyes watch the courtyard where a little girl paces left then right and then stands in the middle, utterly lost.

Uncanny Jack

by Susan Palwick

Everyone thinks the uncanny folk steal children, but they steal adults too, steal their minds and memories, put their own folk where ours used to be. The new folk don’t know their loved ones, don’t know what a toilet is, don’t know how to deposit a check. Of course they don’t. Why would they? They didn’t need any of that, didn’t know any of those people, where they came from.

Until the Cure

by Marissa Lingen

The golem who cares for my mother is patient, as I am not patient. The golem who cares for my mother is kind. It is precise. I took everything I wanted to be as a daughter, and am not, and I put it into the golem. I’m still afraid I am failing her.

Congratulations on your Magic Sword™

by John Wiswell

Congratulations on your Magic Sword”! For all inquiries as to its powers and perils, please consult the Virtue Exercises Manual”. However, we know new users sometimes get in over their heads. That’s why messages like this may appear on your blade. If you see such a message, heed it promptly, and everything will be fine. Welcome to heroism. We’ve been waiting for you!

Jempo

by Thomas Ha

Jempo took a deep bow on the iron platform. His body flopped forward, limbs like thick braided wire. No obvious weapons in his large and rubbery hands. Little digital eyes and a bright smile that lit the rounded ball he had for a head. More clown than competitor at first glance.

The Dragon, the Scarab, the Wolf, the Dragon

by Rhiannon Rasmussen

Ánar’s bootheels echoed on the iron floor. What a groundbreaking honor this ceremony was for a landless tenant like him—joining old house Veivilkas, of the wolf. Such an honor that it made him leaden to think of, made him long for sleep. At the conclusion of the ceremony, he would no longer be merely Ánar from the undercity, scarab-kin, but Ánar Veivilkas. Nobility. The first scarab-kin to wear that name, no less.

Long Goodbyes

by Anya Ow

Sui grunted as she straightened her back, digging her shoulder up into Taxue’s belly. The Zheng’s hind legs dragged awkwardly on the sand, trembling as the paws knuckled, the sudden weight on Sui pushing the knee she’d braced into the dirt. Sui braced her palms up under the Zheng’s hind legs, feeling for the distended sac of her bladder, swollen larger than Sui’s head overnight. Muscles bulged over arms used to drawing heavy longbows as she compressed it. For a heartbeat, nothing happened.

A Guide on How to Repay Your Vow to the Deity of Many Faces

by Oyedotun Damilola Muees

If every effort to bring down your child’s fever is unsuccessful and the doctors cannot diagnose anything wrong with her, then you should seek other means to alleviate her health. Before you help her into the house, if you notice that her shadow refuses to follow her body, then you should know that her sickness is numinous, and it is beyond what science can cure or fathom.