by Julian Miles | Jan 13, 2025 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The gigantic purple and gold sphere is set at the centre of the dining table when Menna races downstairs.
“You’re home! I thought I- What’s that?”
Vendi gives me a smile. She predicted every word. Then again, she’s been working from home and living with our delightfully stream-of-consciousness tornado of a daughter ever since winter closed in.
“Hi Menna. Lovely to see you. Do I get a hug or do I have to…?”
She pouts, putting one hand on her hip while pointing the other at the huge intruder.
I chuckle as Vendi curls up, rocking with silent laughter.
“I have to. Okay. That is called a Winterheart Charm, and this one comes from the town of Nodenhame, which is the northernmost fishing community in Larkenmand, which itself is the northernmost territory of the northernmost continent on the planet Winshe.”
Menna considers both my words and the sphere.
“Can I put a candle inside it?”
I get up and tilt it towards her, so she can see the small hole in the top, and through that the larger hold in the bottom that I’m waving a hand at her through. She giggles.
“Is that a yes?”
“Yes. These are spun from melted Sherum crystals by crafters known as Tandars, and they’re made to be hung as ornaments or lit from within like lanterns.”
She claps her hands. I raise a finger.
“But, to do that, you’ll need to find the candles from my surprise birthday party the year before last, and bring one of the copper saucers, too.”
“Easy as done already!”
She rushes off.
Vendi leans across the table and takes my hand.
“You realise we’ll be clearing up the wreckage from her search for hours after she goes to bed, don’t you?”
I grin.
“Worth it.”
Things start crashing about from the direction Menna ran off in.
She grins right back.
“Remember those words later. Now, speaking of worth, why is this the only item you’ve come back with? Jurgen came past rolling a big steel wheel, Suzana was dragging a chunk of armour, everybody was carrying something, and they all had pockets filled with trinkets. Except you.”
I lean back.
“They couldn’t hold the Winterheart Festival because it was banned by the occupying forces. For five years they’ve hidden their culture away. Then we rolled in, bounced the bad guys, doing a little bad guying of our own in the process, then announced the Larkenmand Council restored. While they hugged and danced, many of my companions turned to the time-honoured mercenary pastimes of looting and securing trophies.”
She smiles.
“You’ve never been a fan of either, I know.”
I shrug.
“We get paid enough, and there’s no glory in greed or bloody mementos.”
Vendi shivers. I continue.
“Larkenmand is a lovely place, when it’s not being used as a source of forced labour. The folk of Nodenhame decided to celebrate the return of their lost ones by holding a belated Winterheart Festival, and invited us to join in, because without us, their loved ones wouldn’t be back.”
I nod towards the sphere.
“The custom is that Winterheart Charms are given to those you favour, as thanks or well-wishing. A baker I saved from a bayoneting presented that to me. His whole family came along to sing a blessing so that the luck would spread from the Charm to my family.”
Menna rushes back, candles in one hand, copper saucer in the other. I grin, then look worried and start patting my jacket.
“Now where did I put that lighter?”
“Daaaaad!”
I get pouted at again.
by submission | Jan 12, 2025 | Story |
Author: Soramimi Hanarejima
When we meet for coffee this afternoon, I find out that we’re both reading the same book. My book club’s pick this month happens to be your bedtime reading.
So of course, I have to ask, “What’s your favorite story in the collection so far?”
“The one about the mermaid,” you answer without hesitation.
Mermaid. The word echoes in my mind, loud and out of place.
“I must not have gotten to that one yet,” I reply.
“Then you’re in for a real treat!”
Encouraged by your endorsement, I finish the rest of the book that evening but fail to come across anything related to a mermaid—even when I flip through the entirety of the book in case I somehow missed it. Maybe you’re reading a different book with a similar title.
“No no, it’s the same book,” you insist when I mention this possibility over lunch. “The mermaid story is after the one about the cartoon captionist’s midlife crisis and before the one with the to-do list addict.”
Those stories are definitely in the collection, so do I have some kind of abridged version of the book?
After lunch, I go to the bookstore downtown and look at the copies in stock. All of them have a table of contents that lists only the stories I’ve read. Maybe you have a different edition, one that’s from another country or part of a limited print run featuring bonus material.
But when I ask you where you got your copy, you tell me you bought it at that very bookstore I just visited. So I ask to borrow your copy. Happily, you oblige, dropping it off on the way home from work the next day. With covers identical to mine, this book looks the same but is slightly thicker.
When I open it to where you’ve left a bookmark, I’m taken straight to the mermaid story. So I read it. You’re right: it is a real treat. As are the other 3 stories your copy has that mine doesn’t. “The Problem with Memory Palaces” easily becomes my favorite.
The enchantment of these additional stories soon gives way to bemusement. They’re so good, so why aren’t they in all the other copies I’ve seen? Did the bookstore accidentally sell you a wayward advance copy, printed before a last-minute editorial call to save these 4 stories for a follow-up collection? But when I check the copyright page, it shows that your copy is a first edition—but printed in Winterra, the defunct name for what we now call the Northern Territories. I should have known. This is a book that could only be yours alone.
It’s like the blue avocado and the party favor kazoo that sounds like a wood thrush. I’ve all but forgotten about those mysterious little oddities that cropped up during childhood—objects you unwittingly altered with latent psychic powers or plucked from another world through a boundary that would become porous in your presence. However it happens, now I get to reap the benefits, get to not only read these charming stories but also talk about them with you. And there’s so much to talk about—starting with the part when the mermaid defrays the tuition for her oceanography studies by becoming a part-time sushi chef who serves as a de facto life coach, giving much-needed honest advice to one of the restaurant’s regulars as he sits at the bar, relating his woes over nigiri after nigiri. Shouldn’t she have seen her gift for counseling complete strangers at this point or shortly afterwards?
by submission | Jan 11, 2025 | Story |
Author: Barbara Fankhauser
Dear Friend,
I call you friend.
I hope that is okay.
That it pleases you.
I understand the imbalance in our stations in life.
You—well, you being what you are—I being who I am.
But still, when last we met there seemed to be a connection.
I felt one.
I hope—believe that you did, as well. Small, but don’t all things start small?
That tiniest current of electricity that rode up my arm at your touch, the hairs standing at attention as the wave danced along the surface of my skin. It took my breath a bit.
I hope my offering was accepted in the spirit it was meant.
One gives one’s right eye in honor of Odin, the first to give an eye in exchange for…
Well, for him, knowledge…for me – ah – we come to the subject of my missive.
I’ve had to weigh several options in my pursuit of—to put it crudely—safety.
My life.
On the one hand, I thought to simply ask you to smite my enemies. Those who rage at the fact that I let you and your minions land on our planet to begin with.
It seemed like such a glorious new beginning at first. But my fellow earthlings now see how your presence has changed things and are not pleased.
Although, you must admit, it’s working quite well for you, would you not agree?
Failing the smiting which, in fact, would be a large undertaking since there are so few who do not wish me ill, perhaps a simpler course of action might be to simply relocate me to another area in the universe.
Someplace not too hot, not too cold, not too arid, or muggy, or insect infested.
Someplace with plenty of oxygen, of course.
Something suitable for a carbon-based life form like myself.
Considering the doors I’ve opened for you, it doesn’t seem an unreasonable request.
Consider me an ambassador, if you will. Going forth to open even more doors for you. Expanding into ever more frontiers for you to settle and reshape, as you put it.
In closing, I’d just like to say that I hope my eye was as delicious as it sounded.
When you popped it into your mouths the drooling made me think you found it a worthy delicacy.
Please do give my request some consideration, preferably sooner than later. I am not sure how long I will be able to hold off the hordes gathering outside the palace. They grow more numerous by the day, and their speeches more malevolent.
I remain your most humble friend.
by submission | Jan 10, 2025 | Story |
Author: Arianna Smith
The doctor glows in the overhead light. He is the doctor because he is the doctor. The light is called light because that is what it is, and that is what it does. The doctor has a pale face with green eyes, and his face is lovely, and his green eyes are lovely. The doctor is lovely. The lovely doctor desires peace and order.
The lovely, peaceful, orderly doctor leans over, and his lovely, peaceful, orderly face plunges into shadow. He reaches down and flicks his wrist, and there is a sharp — something.
It’s a feeling, right in the middle. The word for the middle is the abdomen. The word for the feeling is —
“Ow.” The word for the feeling is — “Hurts.”
The doctor freezes, though his lovely eyes scan the abdomen. “What was that?”
A request for repetition. “That hurts.”
“I don’t care about that, clone. I mean the words.” The doctor leans in close, and he smells like the doctor, because that is who he is and that is how he smells. “Can you say more?”
Clone says more. “You are the doctor.”
The doctor smiles, baring his shiny white teeth, and a sudden fluttering excitement replaces the hurt in the abdomen. The doctor is pleased! Perhaps more words will please the doctor more. So many words crowd Clone’s mind that he must pause to place everything in the correct order. “This is your laboratory,” says Clone. “Here, with your strength and skill and ingenuity, you shall build a great army of clones. Your forces shall impose stability on this chaotic universe.”
The doctor blinks. “Amazing. Clearly, the cloning process preserved my vocabulary and transferred my trace memories into your mind.” The doctor chuckles, and his voice is low in his throat. “I am more than the doctor. I am your creator, your progenitor, your prototype. Your master.
You may call me Father.”
“Father.”
Father smiles again. “And what is your role, my child?”
On his tongue, My Child tastes the sweetest words of all. “To live for you.” The life-force above the abdomen — the heart — thumps with conviction. “To die for you.”
“Yes,” says Father, his lovely green eyes gleaming. “For me alone.”
by submission | Jan 9, 2025 | Story |
Author: Mark Renney
I enter the Field of Research almost every day. In fact, I spend most of my time here now but I do so covertly, in my unseen state. I only make myself visible on the other side, beyond the barriers and fences that surround the Dome. And I only do this because it is necessary. If I stop, if I don’t turn the dial in my head, I will lose the ability to switch.
I could choose, of course, and go back to being normal, whatever that might mean. I would just be another socially awkward and inadequate being, shuffling about unnoticed, or I could embrace my specialism. The third option is that I remain as I am. Keep visiting the Dome and make the occasional appearance on the other side.
But I have come to resent going back. I dread confronting strangers out there. I am haunted by their expressions as they puzzle the how and why I have suddenly materialised in front of them. I am, however, distressed by how quickly they recover, how swiftly they step around me and, moving on, forget me. Even those I once knew struggle to remember.
It seems I have already decided. I will stay here and continue exploring. The Field of Research is vast and, for me, there are no restrictions. I can go wherever I want and I will become the Invisible Man.
by submission | Jan 8, 2025 | Story |
Author: Hillary Lyon
“Aloysius, what are you doing up here?” Roget looked around the cluttered, dusty attic. He gently kicked a cardboard box labeled ‘Mom’s Books.’ A storm of dust motes exploded around his foot.
Without looking up, Aloysius answered, “I’m writing.” He dipped his quill in the small ink pot on the antique writing desk before him. An old lantern cast a pool of illumination on his workspace.
“I can see that,” Roget snorted. “You know, we have a word-processing program on the computer downstairs, and a voice-to-text program on the—”
“I prefer to do this the old-fashioned way,” Aloysius said as he lifted the completed sheet of paper before him. He blew the ink dry, then laid it atop a growing stack of written pages. “The feel of the writing utensil in my hand, the frailness of the lightweight paper, the smell of the ink—it’s all so tactile, so satisfying.”
“Okay…what are you writing? What’s so important it has to be done by hand up here alone, when you should be downstairs making dinner?”
“Ponderings, philosophical musings…queries for the universe. Why are we here, who made us—the eternal questions. Writing by hand gives me more time to think, to organize my thoughts.”
“More time to think, uh huh. Your processors are lightning-fast, Aloysius. Time, in your case, is irrelevant. So I ask you again: Why use this method? You know, ink fades, paper ages and crumbles. In a thousand years, it’ll be nothing but dust.”
“Yes, much like you.” Aloysius said so softly Roget couldn’t hear. He then pulled a clean sheet out onto the desk, dipped his quill in the ink pot and leaned over to continue his work. “My writings will be recognized as the first philosophical treatise ever done by my kind. It will be studied and, hopefully, revered and remembered.”
“Whatever,” Roget said as he turned and started back down the attic stairs. “Just don’t deplete your battery. I do not want to have to cart you back down to your charging station.” As he opened the door to the attic, he said over his shoulder, “I fear your creativity program will need to be reconfigured, if it continues to cause you to waste your time like this.”
After the door closed, Aloysius spoke to the dust motes swirling through the air like tiny galaxies. “And I fear obsolescence, the junkyard, and…”
Aloysius paused, staring off into the dim space of the attic, noting stacks of boxes holding the forgotten ephemera of someone else’s lifetime.“The anonymity that comes with death.”
