March 1, 2013

From “The Cold Blossom” by Cici Reiklaima

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Sun Anne-Wen tapped her staff to life against the ancient and abandoned stonework, drenching the area in a light as bright as it was cold. Each breath froze in the air as she moved, and the chill was enough to cut through her carefully prepared outfit as if it were nothing.

Such was the power of the phantom snow; it was a cold not of the body but of the mind.

Indeed, Anne-Wen was able to move through the knee-high drifts without difficulty, as if they weren’t there at all. Her parka kept the real cold of the place at bay, but it was only a matter of hours–perhaps less–before the warmth was sucked from her soul and she lay down to let the elements claim her. It didn’t happen much anymore, not since the Ru-Alim academicians had puzzled out the nature of the phantom snows that had sent Anne-Wen’s ancestors fleeing from the very halls she now walked.

Emerging into a great rotunda, Anne-Wen knew that she had arrived in the place Smith Ling-Harold’s notes had described. The upper portions had collapsed, spilling masonry and stone columns into the broad arcade below, and a ring of statues honoring distinguished men and women long forgotten (except by the most obscure and learned of the Ru-Alim academicians) maintained a lonely vigil over the choking phantom snow.

But in the middle of the chamber…Anne-Wen had to pass her hand through it in disbelief. Lit by a beam of cold sunlight and sprouting impossibly from an outcrop of solid rock forced through the floor by one of the great old earthquakes…

A single, luminous flower.

Inspired by this.

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February 28, 2013

From “The Zaar’s Treachery” by Hazel Pace Santiago

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“Give it back,” Jennie growled.

“Give what back? This?” The Zaar let Jennie’s pendant slip between its wax fingers, sending it toward a floorstrike shattering before pinching the chain at the last minute.

The Fáidh redoubled his chant, as did Cary and Syke at the other corners of the triangle hemming in the malicious spirit garbed in a wax-museum copy of Eamon de Valera. “You won’t let it break,” Jennie said with what she hoped was a convincing facsimile of courage. “My family jewels are too important to your boss.”

“Such naughty and ignorant words for a piece of clay,” sneered the Zaar. “But you have shown a certain promise in hunting me down and casting a circle, I must admit. I haven’t been bound since Aix in 1611.” Its dull eyes gleamed maliciously from behind its spectacles. “Perhaps it’s time for a new approach.”

The creature carefully replaced Jennie’s pendant in one of his pockets and then leapt at her with astonishing speed and ferocity. Its cold, waxy hands wrapped around her throat with surprising strength, while foul incantations hissed not from the Zaar’s borrowed mouth but from every point in its form.

“κατοχή του σώματος, αποβολή της ψυχής! κατοχή του σώματος, αποβολή της ψυχής! κατοχή του σώματος, αποβολή της ψυχής!”

“Break it apart, Jennie!” cried the Fáidh. “Its spirit is potent but the body is just wax! It only has the power you’ll let it have!”

The small ceremonial dagger Jennie had taken from Whelk’s corpse flashed, and the wax form stumbled backwards, stumps where its hands had been. A swift follow-up blow to the left leg led to total collapse; the simulacra of de Valera toppled to the stone and shattered into pieces. Knife in hand, the waxwork’s vanquisher fished the pendant out of the pocket that contained it and donned the jewel with a triumphant smile.

“All right, Jennie! cried Cary. “Rah rah rah, that’s how it’s done!”

“Nothing I couldn’t handle.”

Jennie’s companions crowded around, offering their congratulations.

“Thanks, but there’s no time to waste. We need to move, and quickly.”

The Fáidh nodded. “Come, let’s away from this dank and fetid place of suck for groovier environs.”

Jennie watched as she led her friends away, utterly perplexed at how she could see herself moving and speaking from such a detached viewpoint. “Hey, where are you going?” she cried. “That’s not me!”

Not only could her friends not hear her, but Jennie herself couldn’t either. The words were dead upon entering the world, and with horror Jennie realized that she had no lips to utter them with…not to scream with.

Through some dark trick, the Zaar had torn her from her body and left her an aimless and un-anchored spirit.

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February 10, 2013

From “18,257 Days Until Emergence” by Christopher K. G. Deloise

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“Don’t you see?” Max’s glasses were fogged by humidity and excitement, his eyes glittering behind nearly opaque screens. “This is a chance to get even with everyone who’s ever pushed us around. It’s our chance to make things fair for everybody and make the town a better place. Hell, the world could be a better place.”

“I…don’t think you’d agree if you could hear yourself, Max,” said Sasha. The…thing…pulsed angrily behind Max, shifting colors from aqua to crimson, and the “veins” that twisted over its surface recoiled with what could only be described as anger. “We’ve seen what this thing will do when it gets bigger.”

“That’s with nobody controlling it, or with someone bad doing it,” Max cried. “With one of us, one of the geeks, in the driver’s seat…it’ll be different.”

“You can’t control it, Max!” Corrie said. “If anything, it’s controlling you!”

More red hexagonal “arms” crystallized from the central, but they were thinner, sharper, than the thick central core of the…thing. “You guys can either get onboard or get our of here,” Max said, a note of menace evident in his squeaky and occasionally broken voice. In school even he laughed at his voice sometimes; no one was laughing now. “If you try to interfere…you’re not going to like what happens.”

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January 30, 2013

From “The Mercenary Goblin” by Lucy Y. Shantell

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“But shouldn’t we hire someone a bit stronger? A bit taller?” Eyon squinted at the goblins lined up along Sellsword Street. “I think the tallest of them barely has a hand on me, and I’m short for my age.”

“Patience, boy,” said Gullywax. “Much as I’d like to hire you an oakshaft spearman or a fey crossbowman or even a human, we’ve not ten coins to rub together between the two of us. We’ll have to make do with a gob until more coin or more renown comes our way.”

At the wanderers’ approach, the goblins (and their handlers) began to shout and heckle them.

“You there, boy! Good strong gob here, eight coin!”

“Gob for hire! Will bring own arquebus if you bring shot!”

“Finest gob in Sellsword! Was chief of Earpincher tribe once!”

“Gob! Gob! Gob here! Kill protect and serve!”

Gullywax whispered advice at Eyon as they walked along the cobblestones. “Don’t pick any that are too short; goblins grow all their lives and the taller ones are the most experienced. Pick one with armor; it will last longer in serious combat and have a better chance in ambushes. A sword is better than a bow or hammer because it can parry blows as well as attack. Don’t be afraid to haggle, but keep in mind the lowest any will go is half their initial offer.”

Eyon paused in front of a goblin taller than he was with burnished armor and sword. “How much?”

“Hunnert coin fer ten days,” the gob sniffed.

“Too much coin for too short a time,” whispered Gullywax, his whiskers tickling Eyon’s ear.

Further along, a goblin in ramshackle armor was swaying as if drunk (or punch-drunk) and using a sword for a crutch. “Five coin, thitty days,” it panted. “Bes’ deal onna Shellshord.”

“Obviously something wrong with that one.” Eyon was inclined to agree.

Eventually, they came upon a goblin with solid-looking (if coated with a rusty patina) armor, a sword that shone at the edge and the point, and a massive iron helmet that covered its head and all its features.

“How much to hire you?” Eyon said. The gob looked a good compromise in height, and stood solidly with boots planted on the ground.

“Fifteen coins, thirty days,” said the goblin, its voice echoing in its helmet.

“Hm.” It seemed solid enough, and quiet in comparison, but that could as easily be an indicator of weakness or stupidity as strength. “Impress me.”

The goblin clanked forward, lifted its sword, and tossed it into the air. It pivoted, and with a short running start ran up a nearby brick wall before launching itself, seizing the sword in midair, and falling with it–a lethal spike–to the ground. The sword buried itself in the packed earth up to its hilt.

“I think we’ve found our gob.”

Inspired by this.

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January 26, 2013

From “The Gorgon Evryali” by Jordan Iverson Peers

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It’s never a good sign when a client wants to meet you in an alleyway instead of your office. Granted, the average alleyway smells a bit better than my office and lets in less water when it rains. But the clients always want their suspicions to be alley’d, and I oblige; for my part, I think they’ve seen too many detective movies. I know I have; it’s where we both get our expectations for dress and the proper hardboiled tone for narration.

Evryali the Gorgon was waiting for me in the alley next to my office, her back turned, protected from the rain by a cheap paper parasol from Chinatown. “Your message said you had acquired it,” she hissed. “Let me see.”

I pulled out an old wooden crate–it’d held my last factory order of Lil’ Devil brand snack cakes– and dropped the small, wet packet on it, opening it to reveal the small but highly poisonous snake that had sent me to the emergency room three times and the toilet seventeen times since my halfling “brother” Mungle Snuh had surrendered it under duress of having his feast ruined by a torrent of sewage.

“I’m gonna bite you again, you know,” the snake said. “Even if you are bringing me back to my mistress. It’s just what I do.”

“You just do whatever you have to do,” I said. Sure enough, the tiny snake rose up and sank his teeth deeply into the iron knights’ gauntlet I was wearing, a late borrowing from Gilberte the Small, Knight Errant of 57th Street. The snake cried out in pain and recoiled.

“That’s him, all right.” Evryali turned and approached me, an envelope in her hands. “And here is our agreed-upon fee.”

I reached out to take it, but the snake interrupted my train of thought (money money money or something along those lines) with a startled squawk: “That’s not my mistress! What’re you trying to pull?”

I looked up, surprised. I should have known something was up; statistical analysis shows that 2/3 of my clients try to double-cross me (with the remaining third just settling for skipping out on the bill).

“Too bad you had to open your scaly mouth,” Evryali purred. She grasped her shades, ready to pull them down.

For my part, my anti-Gorgon shades were still with Chang’s Dry Cleaning and Pressing, so I pulled out my gun. I tried to, anyhow; it’s hard to handle a gun made for human hands, even human children’s hands, as a halfling. I dropped the gun instead, and it went off with a crack, with the .22 caliber bullet (hey, it’s the biggest round I can manage, recoilwise) ricocheted harmlessly off Evryali’s normal-looking but subtly armored skin. She laughed, and exposed her blood-red eyes.

Luckily for me, petrification isn’t instant death. As long as your ‘statue’ is intact, anyone with a little mandrake juice or harpy tear salve can being you back. In fact there are roving freelance gangs who do just that, picking up statues and holding them for “safekeeping” while relatives scrape together the cash for a de-petrification. That was the next thing I saw: a cigar-chomping satyr in suspenders and wifebeater, de-petrifying my face (and only my face) so I could arrange to buy my way into a full de-petrification.

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January 22, 2013

From “The Mountain Shrine” by Nokin Kobayashi, translated and adapted by Irene York

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Colonel Tsuyoski Sato was not personally enthusiastic about the annexation of Taiwan. He agreed with his old superior, Count Gotō, that the Taiwanese (especially the aborigines) were too different biologically speaking from the Japanese and could never be assimilated, only ruled like the British did their subjects in Africa and India. Frankly, Col. Sato would rather the Empire focused its energies elsewhere.

But his superior, General Nakano, agreed with Minister Takashi in Tokyo that the Taiwanese could and should become Japanese in time. Dismissing Gotō as “an overgrown Boy Scout,” Nakano had personally appointed Sato to his post in the mountains. Sato was to be, as the General put it, the “big stick” opposite the “soft-speaking” civilian administrators (the man was an admirer of President Roosevelt).

Sato accepted the post and the mission, and moved his family to the area from Taipei, out of loyalty to the Emperor. He felt that above all it was necessary to show his sons how a man of honor behaved. His eldest son, Masashi, was studying biology and chemistry at Tokyo Imperial University; Sato hoped that he would lend those talents to the Imperial military upon graduation. The younger boy, Ryuji, was still at home and in his father’s eyes remained an impressionable dilettante of a dreamer. A stern example was needed to toughen him up and wean him off the steady diet of novels stories he was always buried in.

Perhaps that is why, after months of work in town, Col. Sato took Ryuji with him when he embarked on a minor punitive expedition. Aborigines and rebel bandits were using an old shrine in the mountains as a base, according to his informants, and Sato was determined to root them out and destroy their sanctuary.

Perhaps that is also why he did not return.

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January 20, 2013

From “Soda Dancing” by Annemarie Irajm

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The thing a lot of people don’t realize is that the skills available to a person are directly impacted by the contents of their day to day world. In the old days, the natural life energy that flows forth from the Divine Source might have graced a lucky Greek warrior with strength or high-invulnerability. The Chinese occasionally found their entreaties for ten thousand years of life at least partially granted, and magicians were able to call on at least some of the cantrips that are now associated with them in legend.

But today? Living in a consumer society with disposable income? The gifts that flow from the Divine Source reflect that environment. Gifts like miraculous extra mileage in an SUV, the occasional 500-calorie chocolate bar that registers as zero, and an intrinsic field that causes iPhones to lose their charge.

And then there’s Alethia Bussel’s gift: sodamancy.

She could manipulate any carbonated beverage, with the degree of control varying by how carbonated it was. Full bottles of soda pop could be levitated and manipulated, while flat Coke could only be coaxed to dance a little bit. She could also cause soda to instantly release all its carbon dioxide, shattering its container, or instantly cause painful gastrointestinal swelling (or monstrous belching) in anyone who’d recently imbibed the stuff.

Her favorite trick, though, was to take control of the stream that issued forth when you dropped a Mentos into soda. Soda dancing was perhaps the only joy Alethia got from her otherwise bothersome gift.

Then again, that was before the Agnates launched their secret campaign against everyone with a gift from the Divine Source…

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January 14, 2013

From “The Halfling Tuesday” by Jordan Iverson Peers

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They call me Tuesday because that’s the name on the door. It’s not my name, mind you; it’s just on the door. The last gumshoe in this office went by that name; fittingly enough, he disappeared on a Saturday. but his last rent check was dated Tuesday, or so the landlord tells me.

I really ought to change the name on the sign. But Tuesday is a good name for drumming up private investigation business, much more so than my given name of Hurgo Smendlings IV.

When the dame called at my door, she looked down the length of her nose at me. It wasn’t because of the fifth of gin in my hand or the revolver on the table or the stains from last week’s lunch on my suspenders so much as the fact that she was two and a half feet taller than me. Also she was in stiletto heels and I was at my desk.

“You Tuesday?” she said in a sultry voice. I mean that in the most literal way possible; even at my desk I could feel the humidity rolling off her tongue.

“That’s what the sign says. You need something detected?” I took in her dark sunglasses and the subtle bobbing and weaving of her headscarf…clearly a Gorgon, maybe even one with a real license instead of the fake ones passed around at the docks by snakeladies who petrify people for kicks. Luckily, my shades were Gorgon-proof–basic tool for the private investigator gig. Unfortunately, they were also in my coat pocket at the dry-cleaners.

“One of your people stole something from me,” the Gorgon said, still exhaling moist snake-breath all over my otherwise dry and pleasant office. “I’m looking for someone who knows the halflings and their ways to retrieve it.”

I leaned back casually and put my shoes up on the table. It hurt my back to do that, but people expected it of a private investigator almost as much as the gin and the gun and the fedora. “I have my sources, sure,” I said. “I can give it a shot. But you ought to know that ‘my people’ in Halftown don’t fully trust people like me who leave the community and do unhalflingish things like wear shoes and ask a lot of questions.” That was kind of true, but I was also a little anxious to hurry the humid snake-lady from a people famous for their duplicity and cruelty out the door so I could get back to my nap.

“I’ll pay the full going rate plus expenses and double it if you find the item.”

“Deal.” Then again, a customer was a customer. “What are you looking for?”

“A single lock of my hair,” hissed the Gorgon.

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January 13, 2013

From “Astride the Great Fish” by Victorina Rudolf

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Without Bear to guide her, the girl could only wander aimlessly and desperately through the endless forest. She’d have given anything to have him back by her side, despite his often irritating old-fashioned demeanor, despite the secret fear that the others from school would laugh at her if they knew her childhood toy had escaped the dumpster (which had long since consumed her classmates’ toys).

Absent his determination, his steel, she was lost. It was painful to admit; twelve years old was practically grown up, after all, and what sort of grownup relied on teddy bears to guide them through far and enchanted wolds? What sort of grownup hovered on the verge of tears instead of taking charge?

And what sort was consumed by a deep and trembling fear when it was clear something was following her?

Horrified that it might be more gobs, or worse, the girl deliberately wandered through a muddy patch backwards, making it look like she had stumbled in the other direction, and then carefully doubled back through patches of fallen leaves that would betray no sign of her passing. It was a trick she had honed in years of hide and seek in the woods at Grandpa’s house, and her naturally light step allowed it to be pulled off without more than a soft rustle of fall foliage to betray her position.

The girl approached the shadow in the woods from behind, with the gob dagger drawn, though she had no idea how to use it. As the approached, the creature came into focus: a great grey blob that floated on the still air, controlling itself with large and gossamer fins. It looked like nothing so much as a large fish.

Hoping to scare it, the girl burst out of the underbrush with what she hoped was a very fierce yell and the gob dagger raised high. The curious fish-thing pivoted and faced her with a terrible gurgling sound, and the girl prepared to bury her dagger in her pursuer up to the hilt.

Then she saw its eyes.

Wide, sorrowful, fearful…they were like a mirror of her own. The girl lowered her weapon. “You’re just like me, aren’t you?” she said in her most soothing tone. “Lost and afraid.”

The creature bobbed, approximating a nod despite its lack of a neck.

“What do you say we travel together, then?” the girl said. She approached and calmly stroked the beast’s scaly surface. “We can be lost together.”

Gentle fins lofted her off the ground and onto the fish-thing’s neck, and the girl rode her newfound companion in the direction of the setting suns.

Inspired by this image.

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January 12, 2013

From “The Dark Ship Calls” by Kendrick Inzunza

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Kapteynport had, at once time, been a center of trade and commerce. At the mouth of the River Barnard, it was a key artery in bringing trade from the inland cities to the colonies. That had changed when the river mouth silted up and it changed course–the trade now flowed through Maanenburg. But Kapteynport had maintained a low-key prosperity of a sort with its fishing fleet, enough that the grand old buildings from the old days could be maintained and occupied after a fashion.

That all changed on the day the Black Ship arrived at the bay mouth.

Larger ships still called occasionally to take on salted fish or when the wharfs of Maanenburg were full, but the appearance of a tar-black carrack was still unusual. Aside from the white of its furled sails, every inch of the vessel–even its lines–was as if blackened by pitch. Stranger even than that was its position: anchored within the sheltering arms of the cove but not anywhere close to the docks.

After it had been there for nearly a week, a group of townsfolk boarded it and found the ship to be deserted, without so much as a nail aboard that wasn’t part of the blackened timbers. No further parties were sent, as every last member of the boarding party was stricken dead within a week, either by illness or an unfortunate accident. That, and the subsequent failure of the next month’s fishing, led the citizens of Kapteynport to conclude that the black ship was a cursed vessel.

Many abandoned the town, but others resolved to rid themselves of the curse. Volunteers cut the anchor line and attempted to tow the ship away, but their vessel foundered before much headway could be made, as did its replacement. Despite the calm waters and nearness to shore, there were no survivors from either wreck. A final attempt had desperate Kapteynporters flinging lit torches onto the ship, which burned for hours without incurring any visible damage.

The conflagration that swept through town less than 48 hours later led to Kapteynport’s final and total abandonment.

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