Fiction

Fantasy

The Belfry Keeper

I rang the Academy bell the first time, when both it and I were new-penny bright, and I rang it at the end, when it was gray-green with the centuries. I was the school’s mascot and its totem and its faithful servant. By night I cleaned the halls and read the chalkboard ghosts before consigning them to oblivion. In the library, I gently laid sleeping heads on tables and reshelved the books they’d used as pillows. It may be hubris for a soulless thing of brass to say so, but if the Academy belonged to anyone, it belonged to me.

In May 2023 (Issue 156)

Science Fiction

Blood for a Stranger

by Timothy Mudie

Author spotlight

Crunches and shrieks buffeted the Magellan LLC smartship as it plunged into Enceladus’s kilometers-thick ice crust, making their way to the subsurface ocean and the rival LuxeSpace corporation’s station situated there. Warning signals flashed through Jarrell and his fellow shipminds’ readouts, but they followed their orders and continued inward. They’d long since learned to ignore such dangers—the digitized brains of former human corporate-soldiers that controlled smartships could afford to take risks and go places traditionally-crewed spaceships wouldn’t dare.

In May 2023 (Issue 156)

Fantasy

Saturday’s Song

by Wole Talabi

Author spotlight

The seven siblings sit in a place beyond the boundaries of space and time, where everything is made of stories. Even them. Especially them. People are made of stories too, but only the versions of their stories that they tell themselves. Curated, limited, incomplete. Many of the stories people tell themselves are lies layered on partially-perceived things to give their lives structure and meaning. The siblings that sit beyond sit true, for they are made of all the stories that were, that are, that are to come.

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In May 2023 (Issue 156)

Science Fiction

When Shiva Shattered the Time-Stream

by Sharang Biswas

When Shiva shattered the time-stream, he was in love. Well, maybe he didn’t shatter it per se—more like twisted it into a knot. But there were too many “Vassiliev invariants” and “nugatory crossings” in the mathematics of it that Shiva didn’t understand, so he preferred to think about it in terms of breaking rather than knotting. Besides, he was named after a god of destruction, so “shattered” fit. Poetic license and all that. When Shiva shattered the time-stream, he was heartbroken.

In May 2023 (Issue 156)

Fantasy

The Sword, the Butterfly, and the Pearl

by Deborah L. Davitt

The butterfly sword of chaos is never the same twice. But then, neither is its wielder. The sword changes those who bear it, transforming, transfiguring. The temple where you found it was a ruin, roof caved in, snow-covered floor. When you took it from the statue of the smiling god in the temple, it didn’t look like a sword at all. It perched on that stone hand, a frozen butterfly, its forlorn wings outstretched.

In May 2023 (Issue 156)

Science Fiction

She Blooms and the World is Changed

by Izzy Wasserstein

Author spotlight

My sister Sera was twelve standard years old when our parents confined her to our family habitat. They kept her there for over a year, and then they died far from home (expedition, landslide). I’ll never know if they were seeking a cure for Sera, or a way to protect the world from her. They must have died mid-morning, but I didn’t learn about it until I left Sera’s side to make lunch. The habitat’s weak AI played their pre-recorded message once I was alone.

In May 2023 (Issue 156)

Fantasy

One Heart, Lost and Found

by Kat Howard

Author spotlight

I came to the city to find an egg. A robin’s egg, to be precise, an oval of pale, perfect blue that echoed the spring sky. Inside, not a robin, but an emerald. Inside the emerald, a wizard’s heart. He had decided he missed it, and he wanted it back. It was the usual sort of thing, or so he had assured me. His heart taken out and stored for safekeeping, a place where his enemies—and certainly there were many, jealous of his power—would never think to look. So well hidden, in fact, that he himself was no longer quite certain where it was.

In May 2023 (Issue 156)

Science Fiction

Moons We Can Circumnavigate in One Day, or the Space Probe Love Story

by Natalia Theodoridou

For the last day we have together, I thought we could go back to Io, where I saw you for the first time. Her volcanoes will be reflected on your solar array once again. We will bathe in her Plasma Torus until our sensors tingle so hard we can’t take it any more. Then I will make a bouquet for you to carry on your way home: sulfur for passion, oxygen for remembrance, and sodium, for good luck.

In May 2023 (Issue 156)

Fantasy

The House, the Witch, and Sugarcane Stalks

by Amanda Helms

Author spotlight

The house wakes from its somnolence as the witch trudges up the path made of tarts. Through its rock-candy windows, the house scans her figure for any signs of hurt. The witch’s errands in the city make her nervous. And the house, being made of her magic and therefore of the witch, worries along with her that the wrong person might recognize her, or simply think they do.

In Apr. 2023 (Issue 155)

Science Fiction

Every Bone a Bell

by Shaoni C. White

In the eternity of star-ache where space coils around matter like a wounded animal, I hang in agony. Three supermassive black holes lurk in the corner of my hearing, each in a different corner of the galaxy cluster. Triangulation points. The calculation is redone every 4.5 microseconds, balm and torture both to my space-stretched mind. The ship’s computer tugs ceaselessly at my fragile gray matter.

In Apr. 2023 (Issue 155)