Fantasy Archives - Page 16 of 67 - Lightspeed Magazine

Fantasy Fiction

The Noon Witch is not a cat person. She likes the color purple, hates police procedurals, loves breakfast foods, thinks scented bath products and anchovy pizza are gross. Hates platform shoes. Hates walnuts in brownies. Used to like the electropop group all the girls at school like, until they used too much synth on their latest album, so now she hates them too. The Noon Witch isn’t an overcritical person. She’s just at that difficult age when you’re desperate to figure out who you are, so you lean too much on your likes and dislikes to try to cobble together what you think should be your personality.

In Nov. 2022 (Issue 150)

The Graphology of Hemorrhage

by Yoon Ha Lee

Rao Nawong, aide to Magician Tepwe Kodai, had not been on the hillside for long with her. The sky threatened rain on and off, and the air smelled of river poetry, of lakes with their scarves of reeds. Water would make their mission here, in the distant shadow of the Spiders’ fortress, more difficult, if not outright impossible. The Empire’s defeat of the upstart Spiders, whose rebellion had sparked a general conflagration in the southwest provinces, depended on the mission’s success. At the moment, Nawong found it hard to care. His world had narrowed to Kodai’s immediate needs, politics be damned.

In Nov. 2022 (Issue 150)

The Dragon’s Hand

by Alex Irvine

Author spotlight

A boy traveling alone was beset by bandits on the outskirts of a strange town at sunset. They left him stripped and bloody in a ditch by the side of the road in the deepening dusk, as a bright full moon appeared over the trees. The boy watched it moving across the sky, his pain and shame a kind of trance. For a long time nothing happened. When he heard footsteps on the road, he was afraid, but something was broken inside him and he dared not disturb it by moving. Still he looked up at the moon, filling himself with its light. He felt a distance growing between himself and his body. The traveler’s steps paused.

In Nov. 2022 (Issue 150)

The Blindfold

by Tobias S. Buckell

I’ve got a mother that wants to get in on a long-term financing agreement to change her son’s race for a trial, Ecstasy pings you. His court date is coming up; the hearing for the random race generator is next Thursday. Thursday. That doesn’t leave a lot of time. But, then, that’s why E is pinging you. They’re paying in cryptocurrency, Ecstasy says. My commission is the usual 10 percent. They’ve already set up the chain; you just need to agree to be on the other side. Local judicial computer systems have shit security. It’s always been the case.

In Nov. 2022 (Issue 150)

What If the Whole Camp of Kids Learned How To Liquefy?

by Maria Kelson

When she melts, it’s like a balloon collapsing, but fast. Her body turns to an inky puddle, a pool of shadow. Then, in a snap, she goes clear. Shimmering. When all the other children are asleep, when the guard is looking at something else, when the camera eye is on something else. That’s when this happens. When she becomes a shadow, then a shimmer, and slithers out from under her thin silver blanket, onto the ground. She can slide, fast fast, between gray sleep mats with kids snoring, gray sleep mats with kids crying, she can slide past a gray sleep mat where one boy pulls up the corner to bang his head on the concrete floor.

In Nov. 2022 (Issue 150)

The Dirty Golden Yellow House

by Debbie Urbanski

Author spotlight

On the first floor of a Colonial-style house constructed last century out of planks of old growth cedar, a monster is dragging a woman’s husband from room to room. The specific path this monster takes will be evident the next morning from the gashes in the wood floors and the splattering of the husband’s innards upon the plaster walls. Blood on the ceiling. The woman herself is hiding in the upstairs bedroom in her closet, face buried in the nylon hems of her patterned dresses, hands to her ears, a washcloth between her teeth so she can bite down hard on something that isn’t her tongue.

In Oct. 2022 (Issue 149)

Three Tales from the Blue Library

by Sofia Samatar

They were a pair of fools, husband and wife, and none of their labors prospered. Their mint grew ragged, their chives sprouted thorns, and their child swelled and shrank with the weather. Nobody knew what this child’s sickness was. In winter he filled up with poisonous gas, his limbs grew too stiff to move, and his parents had to drag him about in a wagon. In summer he withered and red streaks appeared on his skin. His desperate parents devoted their every instant to keeping him alive. They tried hot baths, ice baths, sunshine, darkness, vegetables, sweetbreads, gruels, exercise.

In Oct. 2022 (Issue 149)

Apolépisi: A De-Scaling

by Suzan Palumbo

Author spotlight

I find Aleda’s scale, sticky with ichor, tucked between the tentacles of our pink anemone bed. I tweeze it out from the undulating appendages with my thumb and index finger and flounder against my escalating heart rate. Aleda’s swishing back and forth, getting ready for work near the mouth of our cave. It’s time for her to catch the current to the school where she teaches merlets the whisper of the sea. “I love those ‘mussel heads’,” she’ll say when she returns and rests her hands on my shoulder later tonight. I’ll swivel around and squeeze her so close a longing will bloom in my chest.

In Oct. 2022 (Issue 149)

The Three Books and What They Tell

by Alexandra Manglis

The first book is always a new and shiny hardback. It smells freshly cut and bound, with satisfyingly thick cotton pages, beautifully type-faced, each word aglow with the unshifting present. It has a fixed number of pages, though exactly what that number is no one has quite figured out. The second book usually settles itself into a worn out, dog-eared paperback. The number of its pages fluctuate—the quality and material of the pages are inconsistent as if the book is made of several editions. Some pages seem ripped out, others are no longer there, and the typeface changes intermittently throughout.

In Oct. 2022 (Issue 149)

Her Five Farewells

by Martin Cahill

Author spotlight

When the Asphodel Queen decides she’ll die to save our people from her ex-husband’s tyranny, she commands me to build her a coffin, the very first in our world’s history. Her ageless face of ivory and emerald is water on a windless day; her stillness betrays nothing of her decision. As the Senate screams in sorrow, I am held by her imperial glare, the enormity of my task sinking in like sunlight on skin. “Me, Your Majesty? I’m but a humble craftsman.” Her voice rises above the growing din, as panic races through data-vines and across the crystal-network.

In Sep. 2022 (Issue 148)