Fantasy Archives - Page 59 of 68 - Lightspeed Magazine

Fantasy Fiction

The changeling hides in the window seat. On one side of her is glass, gauzy with rain. On the other, a thick curtain. November whistles through the crack in the window frame, but she dares not move. In this house she is a creeping, persecuted thing. Best if they don’t see her. She opens the book. Reading, she knows, is dangerous: none of the books in the house are hers, nothing is hers, and the family will hold this small act against her. But reading is a better escape than none at all.

In Dec. 2013 (Issue 43)

Miss Nobody Never Was

by James Patrick Kelly

Author spotlight

Everybody thinks that bartenders steal. You know what? They’re right. Maybe there’s an upright bartender someplace where it’s all parking lots and cornfields and traffic lights flashing yellow, but I doubt it.

In Dec. 2013 (Issue 43)

Yard Sale

by Kit Reed

Author spotlight

“Mark them ONE DOLLAR OR BEST OFFER.” I want everything out. Out, so we can leave this place and lock the door behind us. Between us, Mare and I have pushed or dragged most of the big stuff onto the grass in front of the house and now we are tagging the little stuff, everything the Praying Hands hasn’t already taken. It was hard getting it out the door, but we managed. It was hard getting out the door ourselves, but it won’t be hard much longer. We are on the road to freedom.

In Dec. 2013 (Issue 43)

Sleeper

by Matthew Hughes

Author spotlight

Erm Kaslo always found that a strong drink or two helped clear his head of the after-effects of the sedative that cushioned the fragile human psyche from the irreality of passage through a whimsy. He was sipping from a glass of red abandon in the second-class lounge of the second-rate liner, Armitou, when harsh bells clanged throughout the ship. Immediately, the ever-present underhum of the vessel’s normal-space drive lowered its pitch then began to fade. In a few moments, Kaslo couldn’t hear the sound at all.

In Nov. 2013 (Issue 42)

Tonight We Fly

by Ian McDonald

It’s the particular metallic rattle of the football slamming the garage door that is like a nail driven into Chester Barnes forehead. Slap badoom, slap badoom: that he can cope with. His hearing has adjusted to that long habituation of the rhythm of wall-to-foot-to-ball-to-wall. Slap baclang. With a resonating twang of internal springs in the door mechanism. Slap baclang buzz. Behind his head where he can’t see it. But the biggest torment is that he never knows when it is going to happen. A rhythm, a regular beat, you can adjust to that: The random slam of ball kicked hard into garage door is always a surprise, a jolt you can never prepare for.

In Nov. 2013 (Issue 42)

The Insect and the Astronomer: A Love Story

by Kelly Barnhill

Author spotlight

The Insect has never been in love. The Astronomer has never been alive. It is important that you understand this.

In Nov. 2013 (Issue 42)

Bit-U-Men

by Maria Dahvana Headley

Author spotlight

Made clean, kept clean, wrapped dust-proof. An Energy-Rich Candy Made in the Great City of Chicago! Don’t confuse us with the competition!

In Nov. 2013 (Issue 42)

An Invocation of Incuriosity

by Neil Gaiman

Author spotlight

There are flea markets all across Florida, and this was not the worst of them. It had once been an aircraft hangar, but the local airport had closed. There were a hundred traders there, behind their metal tables, most of them selling counterfeit merchandise: sunglasses or watches or bags or belts. There was an African family selling carved wooden animals, and behind them a loud, blowsy woman named (I cannot forget the name) Charity Parrot sold coverless paperback books, and old pulp magazines, the paper browned and crumbling, and beside her, in the corner, a Mexican woman whose name I never knew sold film posters and curling film stills.

In Oct. 2013 (Issue 41)

The Master Conjurer

by Charlie Jane Anders

Author spotlight

Peter did a magic spell, and it worked fine. With no unintended consequences, and no weird side effects. Two days later, he was on the front page of the local newspaper: “The Miracle Conjurer.” Some blogs picked it up, and soon enough he was getting visits from CNN and MSNBC, and his local NPR station kept wanting to put him on. News crews were standing and talking in front of his house.

In Oct. 2013 (Issue 41)

The Five Deaths of Marvin Dimitri

by Dylan Otto Krider

Author spotlight

I first met Marvin several years ago, but you don’t have to know Marvin to know his story. That’s the sort of thing that’s just understood, that comes from living in Beaumont, Texas, where Marvin lived most all of his lives.

In Oct. 2013 (Issue 41)