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Short fantasy from @EAPodcasts BFA winner, Ignyte winner WFA, Hugo, Ignyte, Aurora finalists

#PC938: TALES FROM THE VAULTS - "Scry" by Anne Ivy. Rated R. Previously ran as episode 292 and first published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies.
#PC937: Kɛrozin Lamp Kurfi by Victor Forna, read by a full cast. Rated PG. A #PodCastleOriginal! Breath KADE MAKASI: In . . . ALL THE CHILDREN: Awt . . . Storyteller She tells the children to call her Kade Makasi, and if this was one of her stories, she’d describe herself as bent and wrinkled and spider-like for a touch of myth and poetry . . . but she’s none of these things . . . she’s tall, thick-browed, with two braided rivers of night on her head, and you’d have never guessed what she was: kurfi, dɛbul, demon, and that she stole my child.
#PC936: Ananconfabulation by Mar Vincent, read by Rosie Sentman. Rated G. A #PodCastleOriginal! Our homes are buried, so we built tunnels. From Tomas’ window to mine, from Ryan’s to Kimber’s and back to Tomas’ attached garage where it has little windows up high in the door. A rabbit’s warren of passages just wide enough for our juvenile bodies. I remember the day it happened. Opening curtains and seeing the sun, the trees, the clouds. Opening them again, only a few hours later, and seeing nothing but solid gray against the glass. Time keeps moving the cat clock on my wall and the appliances in our kitchens tick forward, but is it day or night or real at all? I don’t trust that time is what it used to be. The TV stopped working, and the internet, even the radio, so all we could do was guess what had happened. Was the whole world buried, or just the neighborhood around us?
#PC930: Parsley Girl, Parsley Girl, Let Down Your Trichobezoar by Natalie Zutter, read by ValerieValdes. A #PodCastleOriginal! Rated PG. Content notes for pregnancy loss, post-natal depression, and second-person narration If I were your mother, I would share with you this cautionary tale: Once there was a couple who yearned for a child. When the woman was finally pregnant, she craved naught but rapunzel. Unfortunately, this plant only grew inside a neighboring garden, walled off from the world. As the expectant mother began to waste away, her desperate husband stole into the garden and snatched as much of the leafy plant as he could. But he could not outsmart the enchantress, who protected the garden as if it were her own offspring. When she caught him, she demanded he trade her their newborn baby. He said yes. After the birth, the enchantress whisked the baby away to a tower in the woods.
#PC927: The One Who Carries Abinakhee Has Died by Jay Kang Romanus, read by John Chu. A #PodCastleOriginal! Rated PG. Content note for drowning I’m leaning in to kiss a stranger when the shooting star passes overhead. The sounds of people celebrating nearby swim through the humid air like the ancient turtle below us swims through the world’s ocean and the shooting star above swims through waves of night sky. I’m still breathing heavy from my performance, glowing from the warmth of so many eyes on me and the warmth of the stranger’s body next to me. “Did you see it?” I ask, momentarily distracted from his well-shaped lips. He nods. “My mother used to say they were the starships of those who left us behind.” He smiles at me with those extremely well-shaped lips. “I don’t think she was right about that, though.”
#PC926: TALES FROM THE VAULTS - The Gold Silkworm by Tony Pi, read by S. Qiouyi Lu Previously ran as #PC423 and first published in Fantasy Magazine. Rated PG-13 When I first became keeper of the Spirit of Grass, she and I made a pact to never turn away one in need, whether they be rich or poor. Madame Ke was one of the rich. She had heard of my skills in medicine from her sister, and asked if I would come to the Garden of Timely Rains. I accepted the invitation and arrived in the early afternoon, when the high sun gave glow to the garden pond and terraces. A servant escorted me to the Pavilion for Tasting Autumn Pears where a woman in her thirties awaited me. Madame Ke, radiant in a dress printed with gold hibiscuses, bade me to join her at the tea table. Though eager to consult a woman doctor, she asked first for proof that I wasn’t a wandering healer.
#PC925: The Immortal Rabbit by Audris Candra, read by Zilla Paramita. A #PodCastleOriginal! Rated PG-13 - content notes for homophobia, violence, the death of a spouse, and second-person narration. Your most painful death fell upon you when your soulmate had forgotten who you were. You’d shared a kiss in a previous life, under the lush grape vines on the cusp of Mediterranean hills. His lips were tender with wine, yours raw from his two front teeth. “We’re immortal,” you said. “Because when our flesh fails us, I will find you.” You had died together then, on the same battlefield, to defend your homeland against the Romans. In this life you’re forced to balance on your toes under the golden brush of the ginkgo tree just to catch a glimpse of him. Here he sat on a porcelain garden stool, spine straight and hands smooth from a good life led as a Qing dynasty imperial official.
#PC919: FLASH FICTION EXTRAVAGANZA: Possibilities! The Only Map is Memory (PG) by B. Morris Allen, narrated by Hugo Jackson, Valfierno (PG-13) by David McGuire, narrated by Steve Anderson and CoverLetter_Version5 (PG) by Courtney Floyd, narrated by Kaitlyn Zivanovich.
#PC918: Waterways by Diana Dima read by Matt Dovey. A #PodCastleOriginal! Rated PG. Content warning for self-harm and coercive control. When his father died and left him the boat, he thought to himself, I can do it. I’m a boat-son, a boat-man, I’m no longer a child and no longer have to go home at sunset, when mother and sisters gather around the table and talk about the will and the debts. In the will his father had written to my son, who may yet feel at home on the water. So David spent days in the yard, scrubbing and polishing and waxing, and often fell asleep under the boat tarp in the cool May night. When he left, he did look back at the hunched house and the village, faint as a smear of dirt on the green and the blue. He did feel a pang of guilt deep under the ribs. But mostly he was driven like a powerboat, like a steering wheel under his father’s hand. So he steered toward the northern shores where they used to go fishing for pike and drop anchor for the night in quiet coves.
#PC917: TALES FROM THE VAULTS - To Follow the Waves by Amal El-Mohtar read by Marguerite Croft. Previously ran as episode 139 and originally published in Steam-Powered: Lesbian Steampunk Stories. Rated R.
#PC916: Woodpecker, Warbler, Mussel, Thrush by by Ruth Joffre read by Julia Rios. A #PodCastleOriginal! Rated G Yesterday, I was a bird. A slender-billed curlew, to be exact. My girlfriend helped me ID the bird. Took photographs of my decurved bill, the flash of white under my tail, the small brown speckles on my cream-white breast. “Some of these spots look like hearts,” I said this morning, once I was human again and able to compare her pictures to the one in an article I found: “The Slender-Billed Curlew Is Declared Extinct.” It always happens like this: a species disappears once and for all, and I transform into a replica of it for one day. Thirteen hours, at least, maybe more if I wake up especially early. It takes about an hour each way for the metamorphosis to be complete — long enough, in theory, for me to prepare. To lock the doors, rush to the bathtub if I feel gills opening in my throat. I often track the process in the mirror as it unfolds. Watch scales harden over my flesh, feathers push through my pores. It never stops feeling like magic.
#PC915: The Hunter, the Monster, and the Things That Could Have Been by Leah Ning, read by Amanda Ching. Previously published in Monster Lairs (Dark Matter INK, October 2023). Rated PG-13 You find the dying woman-thing in an alley, breathing her final wet, rasping breaths in a heap of white trash bags that seems more like a throne. Everything tells you to run: twenty-four years of instinct, the government monster information pamphlets, the hard, practical voice at the back of your head that sounds a lot like your monster hunter girlfriend. And then the woman-thing looks up. Her dark, scaled cheek drags on the distended belly of plastic that makes her pillow. Her chapped lips part and she says, in a voice like acid and smoke: “Eiko.” That should make you run, too. Things that know your name and shouldn’t are firmly in “get the hell out and don’t look back” territory. But something in her voice hooks into the bottom of your soul and tugs.
#PC914: The Magnolia Returns by Eden Royce, read by Laurice White. A #PodCastleOriginal! Rated PG. The Magnolia blooms out of nowhere at any time of year it chooses, bringing its dilapidated wooden slats and rickety front steps to a neighborhood that somehow believes it has always been there. The butcher shop itself is well-worn, looking like it has seen better days: peeling seafoam green paint on salt-blasted boards, the once-vivid red front door now a faded smear like lipstick after an ardent lover’s attention. Once it arrives, the locals begin to talk about visiting. They have always talked of the things they miss in life, and more often than not, it’s the food, the ingredients. Depending on when and where the Magnolia appears, either the supermarkets don’t stock the items the locals crave — the chicken feet, the pig tails, jowl, and ear — or these once-reviled parts of the animal have become so popular with the wealthy, it’s impossible for the poor to attain them.
#PC913: Verditsa of the River by Adriana Kantcheva, read by Kat Kourbeti. Previously published by Trollbreath Magazine. Rated PG - CW for drowning The Kamchia river had grown turgid after a storm. I surfaced from my habitual pool and bent over the young girl as she lay washed on the bank, her limbs cold and pale as the settling twilight. A small tin boat lay near her half-opened hand — the reason she took a tumble into my river. I paused. Yes, though weak, a current flowed beneath the child’s skin; her heart still worked. I placed a palm on her chest. The river water in the girl’s lungs had no choice but to obey me. I willed it out, and it obliged in a single great spurt. As if she had waited for just that, the girl’s eyes flew open, her hand clamping around my wrist with desperate strength.
#PC912: TALES FROM THE VAULTS - The Tanuki-Kettle by Eugie Foster, read by Tina Connolly. Previously ran as #PC28 and first published by Cricket Magazine. Rated G. When Hisa was a baby, her mother called in a soothsayer to cast her daughter’s horoscope. The old woman pulled out her astrology charts and consulted them while incense turned the air blue with perfumed smoke. That day, the fortuneteller had a headache and was in a black mood. Though Hisa’s mother brought her a cup of hot, green tea and fanned her sweating brow, the old woman continued to scowl. “This child will be too bold for her own good,” the fortuneteller grumbled. “Is there nothing I can do?” asked Hisa’s distraught mother. “I could hire tutors to teach her the folly of brashness.” “That is not sufficient.” The soothsayer’s eyes lit upon the brimming teapot. “She must grow up to be a lowly tea girl.”
#PC911: Mycelium by Beth Goder, read by Tatiana Grey. Originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Rated PG. I only travel to the golden head when the dragonflies are in season. It’s Piack and me this year, rafting up the river past the lilies and arched trees. While I steer us through the river’s gentle snarls, he sings about lost keys to pass the time — he’s always had a thing about lost keys and the doors they’ll never open, the places we’ll never find. “Are you going to eat what the head gives you?” asks Piack. He’s one year older than I am — nineteen. With the sun behind him, his form swims in light. The dragonflies buzz around us, brush their wings against our faces.
PC910: Tusker Blue by Lalini Shanela Ranaraja, read by Shweta Adhyam. Previously Published in Strange Horizons. Rated PG-13 - Content warnings for animal cruelty, blood, and suicide. You still remember the first time Hailé visited the pharmacy, because that was the day the rogue battle elephant overturned the village water tank and flooded five stores on Sacred Heart Road. The pharmacy was one of them, and you were bailing it out with a plastic jug, swearing a blue streak, when the bells jangled over the door. Without turning, you shouted, “As you can see, the pharmacy is closed today!” “Please help me,” begged a voice hoarse with smoke, and you plunged your arm into the yellow water and cursed Raj, as you’d done frequently since the wedding, for leaving you to handle customers along with everything else. “If you just walk to Trincomalee Street, the surgeon’s office will be opening soon — ”
#PC909: Resurrection Rum by Stephanie Malia Morris, read by Dominick Rabrun. A #PodCastleOriginal! Rated PG-13 - content warnings for death, gun violence, and racism ALBEMARLE COUNTY, July 1927: WANTED! One ROBERT HOWARD for the MURDER of JOHN LITTLE. Physical description: NEGRO MALE of lightish hue, aged SEVENTEEN or EIGHTEEN, of LOW STATURE and AVERAGE BUILD, head PEANUT-SHAPED with CLOSE-CROPPED hair. Known to dress above his station in GENTLEMAN’S SUITS, outrageous HANDKERCHIEFS, and WING-TIPPED SHOES (stolen, all). Wanted also for the illegal possession and transport of RESURRECTION RUM across county lines. KNOWN ASSOCIATES: a gang of six or seven Negro rumrunners both MALE and FEMALE variously aged TWELVE to NINETEEN (descriptions, sketches below). DANGEROUS BY ASSOCIATION. REWARD $100 for information leading to hideout and/or capture. Suspect known to be ARMED and HIGHLY DANGEROUS. DO! NOT!! APPROACH!!! Report all sightings to the Albemarle County Sheriff’s Office at the following address: ——
#PC908: TALES FROM THE VAULTS - Said the Princess by Dani Atkinson, read by Andrew K. Hoe, Kitty Sarkozy, and Katherine Inskip. Previously ran as #PC722 and first published by Daily Science Fiction. Rated PG-13 Once upon a time in a far-off land, in a tiny room, in a tall tower, at the centre of a vast and impenetrable maze, the princess Adrienna cocked her head and frowned. “Who said that?” said the princess. She looked around the tower room, but saw no one. “This isn’t funny. Who’s there?” said the princess. She crouched by the bed. Underneath it she found the chamber pot and a nervous brown spider. The princess shuddered. Straightening up quickly and dusting off her rosy skirts, she paced the circumference of the room, searching every inch.
#PC907: Maintenance Phase by A. D. Ellicott, read by Emma Osborne. Previously Published by Body of Work, ed. C.Z. Tacks, Canberra Speculative Fiction Guild (2023) Rated PG - Content warnings for fatphobia and eating disorders. Mary woke in an unfamiliar bed, gasping for breath. She recalled the shots, the dancing, the giggling stumble into a stranger’s apartment while they pulled off each other’s dresses. Her internal organs felt cramped up together, as though they were rats fighting for scarce space in the sewers. Her plan was to sneak home later in the night and return to her own form, but instead she’d slept shifted. She groaned and smacked her hand over her eyes. “She wakes!” someone yelled from outside the open bedroom door. Her bedmate from last night walked in, red hair in a messy bun and spatula held aloft. “Want pancakes?”
#PC906: DOUBLE EPISODE: The House, The Witch, and Sugarcane Stalks by Amanda Helms read by Cherrae L. Stuart. Previously published by Lightspeed. And To Pluck a Twisted String by Anne Leonard, read by Christiana Ellis. Previously published by The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Rated PG.
#PC905: The Next Dead Wife by Jeanna Mason Stay read by Valerie Valdes. A #PodCastleOriginal! Rated PG-13 - Content warnings for coercive control, domestic violence, and murder. Every time a new wife crosses my husband’s threshold, I tell myself this time will be different. This time I’ll go free. As her body falls to the floor, I’ll seize my opportunity. As her soul rises from her body, I will snatch what should be mine — no cliched tunnel of light, just a doorway into the afterlife. But it will be my turn this time, my door. I’ll take it before she can. Not that I’ve been able to yet. When the moment comes, I am frozen in place. I can only watch as she enters the door and disappears. And I hate her for it.
#PC904: TALES FROM THE VAULTS - The Illuminated Dragon by Sarah Prineas read by Steve Anderson. Previously ran as #PC018 and first published by Strange Horizons. Rated G. Rafe Greatorex thought he'd spotted a dragon. From where he stood on the cobbled street that ran between the leaning tenements, only a narrow strip of sky was visible. Rafe craned his neck. He was sure -- almost sure -- that something had flown by, above. A black shadow, an X against the distant blue. He looked down again, rubbing his neck. No, it was nothing. Dragons had been outlawed thirty years ago. He must have imagined it. Sighing, he adjusted his glasses, took up the string bag of potatoes with one hand and the canvas bag of books and supplies with the other, and trudged on toward home.
#PC903: On the Shoulders of Giants by Charles Chin read by Eric Valdes. A #PodCastleOriginal! Rated PG. I was born a T12. Sure, it was the lowest of the thoracic vertebrae, but it was higher than any of the lumbars. I should be thankful to have been born high enough to see above the clouds. The L2s and L3s that climb beside me spent most of their youth in the haze below, unable to see the sun, not knowing how much more of the giant there was left to climb. But not me: fortunate me. I grasp at rocky outcroppings and pull myself up the well worn stairs, carved into the ground by those who came before me. Moss hangs from the edges where feet avoid stepping, lest they slip down into the endless void of white below. The wall to my left rises as a sheer cliff of granite, or perhaps marble. It is difficult to know from the amount of lichen and foliage that hang down like curtains. But through the small holes cleaned out by the hands of travelers before, I can sometimes see the glint of the giant who breathes underneath.
#PC902: Godzilla as a Young Man Named Mike by E. M. Faulds read by Eliza Chan. A #PodCastleOriginal! Rated PG-13 - Content warning for ableist attitudes.
#PC901: Moths in a Fluttering Heart by Christine Lucas and read by Kat Kourbeti. Previously published by Abyss & Apex. Rated PG-13 - Content warnings for ableist slurs and attitudes, violence, and misogyny.
#PC900: Sour Fruit written by Gillian Knox and read by Karen Menzel A #PodCastleOriginal!. Rated PG-13 - content warnings for domestic abuse and the death of a parent.
#PC898: Broken All My Boughs and Brittle My Heart written and read by Cat Rambo.Previously published by UNLOCKING THE MAGIC, edited by Vivian Caethe. Rated PG - Content warning for PTSD, suicidal ideation, and body horror.
#PC898: This Mentor Lives by J.R. Dawson & John Wiswell. Read by John Bell. Previously published by Haven Spec. Rated PG.
PodCastle Disability Pride and Magic
#PC897: Oops! All Swords by Jessie Roy. Read by Kyle Akers. A #PodCastleOriginal! Rated PG-13. Content warnings for repeated violent death and strong language throughout. Blackness, and a ringing in your ears, and the smell of ozone, frankincense, woodsmoke. Something’s happened. An accident. A magical accident. But you’re conscious, and your heart’s beating. You’re alive, probably. That’s a start. Vision returns in sparkles, resolving into blinding lines of glitter. You squinch your eyes almost shut as the image clears. It’s your master’s workshop, sort of. Bookshelves and scroll racks, salt-crusted alembics, a human skull perched on the mantelpiece above the motionless flames. Your master in the doorway, caught in the moment of hanging up his pointed hat. But through the haze of your lashes, swords gleam from every surface. Huge zweihanders pierce the countertops; miniature bodkins velvet the floor.
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#PC896: Defy the Grey Kings by Jason Fischer. Read by Wilson Fowlie. Previously run as #PC438, and first published by Beneath Ceaseless Skies (#180). Rated R, for frequent and bloody violence. There are many ways to kill an elephant. When that mountain bears down on you, shaking the earth and screaming for your blood, show no fear. Only without fear will you see the truth. They are quick, even draped in chain and iron, but you are quicker by a whisker. They fight like devils, but it only takes three people who know what they are doing to bring an elephant down. They are afraid of you. All elephants can die.
#PC895: The Day of the Sea by Jennifer Hudak. Read by Pippa Alice Stephens. Previously published by The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Rated PG-13. When the Sea came to our village, she was an old woman. She arrived when the water crested and draped over the earth, its salty fingers pushing out offerings of sea glass and bladder wrack. Her dress trailed behind her, hair tangled with kelp and tentacles. No one doubted that she was the Sea. Everyone was disappointed. We’d all heard tales about the power of the rising ocean, how it leveled towers and returned rock to sand. How it would destroy everything in its path in order to make its way home, to our village. In those tales, the Sea was a warrior, beautiful and terrible, slashing her way across the continent, swallowing everything in her path. Even when gossips at the market began to whisper about nearby towns swallowed by salt water, about boats crushed like kindling and bones strewn across the ocean floor, even as the smell of salt wafted on the breeze, we did not seek her out.
#PC894: The Summer of Lugubriosity by M. T. Lee. Read by A. J. Fitzwater. A #PodCastleOriginal! Rated PG-13. We did the ritual on a Wednesday. Josh brought the candles, I brought the book, and Deek brought the lamb. We’re still not sure where he found it. “Reckon it’ll work?” The beach wind was chilly, and Deek’s voice was muffled beneath his coat. “Duh,” I said, taking out the Necronomicon we’d found in the Halswell Community Library three weeks ago. But actually I had no idea ‘cos even though the demon goatfish stuff had gone really well, this one was at the end of the book and written in blood or maybe crappy red ink. Really, this was all Dad’s idea. “You boys should do something with your holidays instead of playing on the TV all the time,” he’d said. I brought this up the next time we hung out. “We boys should do something with our holidays instead of playing on the TV all the time,” I told them.
#PC893: Counting Fairies" by Victoria L. Dixon Read by Eleiece Krawiec. A #PodCastleOriginal! Rated PG-13. Content warning for injury to an animal. Inside her carport, Janet Littleton turned off the bike’s grumbling engine and removed her pit bull’s goggles. Buddy wagged his tail until she unbuckled him from the sidecar. He bolted downhill toward the rock quarry. Janet groaned, praying he didn’t go into the quarry. If she entered, there were too many rocks to count, and she’d never leave. Never be safe again. She whistled through her teeth. Buddy barked but did not return. He must have discovered yet another helpless creature to save. She took the dumplings they’d bought and entered her old clinic, walking across the foyer and through the doorway into her home’s adjoined kitchen. She stowed the dumplings in the fridge, her mouth watering at their greasy scent. “So much for breakfast.”
#PC892: TALES FROM THE VAULTS - The Cambist and Lord Iron by Daniel Abraham Read by Wilson Fowlie. Previously published as #PC051! Rated PG. For as many years as anyone in the city could remember, Olaf Neddelsohn had been the cambist of the Magdalen Gate postal authority. Every morning, he could be seen making the trek from his rooms in the boarding house on State Street, down past the street vendors with their apples and cheese, and into the bowels of the underground railway, only to emerge at the station across the wide boulevard from Magdalen Gate. Some mornings he would pause at the tobacconist’s or the newsstand before entering the hallowed hall of the postal authority, but seven o’clock found him without fail at the ticker tape, checking for the most recent exchange rates. At half past, he was invariably updating the slate board with a bit of chalk. And with the last chime of eight o’clock, he would nod his respect to his small portrait of His Majesty, King Walther IV, pull open the shutters, and greet whatever traveler had need of him. From that moment until the lunch hour and again from one o’clock until six, Olaf lived and breathed the exchange of foreign currencies. Under his practiced hands, dollars became pounds sterling; rubles became marks; pesos, kroner; yen, francs. Whatever exotic combination was called for, Olaf arranged with a smile, a kind word, and a question about the countries which minted the currencies he passed under the barred window.
#PC891: Trending Now! Help With Legal Fees for Reluctant Swordsman by Mitchell Shanklin Read by Elie Hirschman. A #PodCastleOriginal! Rated PG-13 - content warnings for child endangerment and injury. Hi, I’m Joshua Henzel. You might have heard of me from the New York Post article or all the YouTube videos. I’m the guy with the giant flaming sword who’s suing the NYPD. One thing the articles and videos got right is that I do have to stab myself in the heart to ignite the flame. But no, I don’t do it “for fun.” If the flame dies, so do I. I’m sick of all the lies and If I’m going to ask people for help, they should know the whole story, so I’m going to tell my side of everything. My lawyer told me I should only tell part of the story (sorry, Mr. Schmitz!), but my best friend Billy told me that lawyers are paranoid little poops and I trust Billy. (He didn’t say “poops” exactly, but I don’t like profanity, so I edited it, even though he says I’m way too young to be such an f-wording prig).
#PC890: The O'Brien and Palmer Show - PART TWO of Two by L.S.Johnson, read by Nicola Chapman, Peter Seaton-Clark, and Matt Dovey. Previously published by G Is for Ghosts, Poise and Pen Publishing. Rated PG-13 - Content warning for era-specific homophobia IINTERVIEWER: The war isn’t the only subject you delve into with this new show, is it? PALMER: You know it’s not, or you wouldn’t ask the question. INTERVIEWER: I have to say, we weren’t sure if we could ask the question at all, legally. You were quite the topic of conversation upstairs. PALMER: Oh, I’ve heard that before. [laughter] INTERVIEWER: Have you been afraid at all, talking so openly? That you might lose your audience, be fined, perhaps even arrested? PALMER: Talk about what, John? [laughter] But do you see what I mean? I’m sitting here right before you and you’re avoiding saying what I am.
#PC889: The O'Brien and Palmer Show - PART ONE of Two by L.S.Johnson, read by Nicola Chapman, Peter Seaton-Clark, and Matt Dovey. Previously published by G Is for Ghosts, Poise and Pen Publishing. Rated PG-13 - Content warning for era-specific homophobia INTERVIEWER: My guest tonight is comedian Timothy Palmer, who recently returned to the stage for a nationwide tour. Please welcome Timothy Palmer. [applause] PALMER: Thank you. Thank you very much. It’s great to be here, John. INTERVIEWER: Before we get started, I must tell you that we polled tonight’s audience before you arrived. Over the years you’ve done some remarkable cameos in films and television, and we asked the audience what was the line they most wanted to hear you say. The winning line was from ‘The Ladies of St. Agnes.’ [laughter and applause] PALMER: My God, I’m funny and I haven’t even said anything. [laughter] It’s every comedian’s dream.
#PC888: TALES FROM THE VAULTS - This Sullied Earth, Our Home by Mimi Mondal, read by Elizabeth Green. Originally published as #PC349. Rated R. Content warnings for violence and disturbing imagery. A few hours after the Majestic Oriental Circus rolls into Deoband, Johuree steps into our tent and whispers, “This is the place where I took you in. It was here.”Outside, it looks just like one of the many small towns we wind our way through, halting for a week or two to put up a show. It has been raining for days. The university dome in the distance glistens with dark moss against the ponderous sky. The fairground is all mud, sludge and clumps of grass, sucking in our tent posts like a fumbling, ungainly monster. A group of local men, hired to dry up enough ground to put up the main circus tent, have been working since the morning. So why does this miserable earth feel like a familiar taste, again?We wonder if Johuree would like a cup of tea. He agrees. There is no milk, but he sips the dark brown brew in silence.We watch.“There is a cottage at the far end of the town. Little more than ruins now, I presume. Would you like to visit?”
#PC887: The Cuckoo of Vrežna Mountain by Filip Hajdar Drnovšek Zorko, read by Yaroslav Barsukov. Originally published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Rated PG-13. I realised I was in love with Ivor the day he went up the mountain to speak with the goddess. We were at that age when the affectionate ease of childhood tips over into something different, when every touch could be the casual brush of friendship or something more and I would never know in advance which was which. There were many times, in those days, when Ivor would take my hands in his, larger and warmer and smooth with the orange-blossom oil he rubbed into them; and I would jerk away with some hasty apology and adjust my trousers while he was not looking. To this day, I find the smell of oranges arousing at the most inopportune times, of which, in a town known for its citrus trees, there are uncomfortably many.
#PC886: Houyi the Archer Fights the Sun by Cynthia Zhang, read by Curtis Chen. A #PodCastleOriginal! Rated PG-13. “I,” Houyi the Archer says one bright August afternoon when the thermometers hit 103 and the teenagers crack eggs on the sidewalk to see if they’ll fry, “am going to fight the sun.” “Husband,” says Chang’E, three thousand years into immortality and long past reacting to these types of statements, “please do not fight the sun. We only have the one left, and most people would not appreciate having it gone.” “Some might, though.” Above them, the ceiling fan whirls, valiantly trying to assuage the heat. The maintenance company, when Houyi called, gave the next available date for fixing the air conditioning as Monday, which — while not too far away — is crucially not today. “The tanuki pack in Arlington Heights or all those hipster vamp kids in Logan Square, I’m sure they’d come down to personally thank me.
#PC885: Prisoners by Si Wang, read by Shingai Njeri Kagunda. A #PodCastleOriginal! Rated PG. The fortress was as large as a city and empty as a dried-up well. During the days, I followed a tattered map annotated by many hands and took many wrong turns through cramped hallways, treacherous stairways, and rusty gates. At night, I couldn’t sleep. Resting on the cold, stone floor, I clutched a delicate metal ringlet weighed down by heavy keys, worried I might lose it. After five days, the claustrophobic ceiling finally opened up into a courtyard. The air was cold and fresh. The full moon illuminated a cloudy sky. At the center of the courtyard, a rusty cage hung a few feet off the ground — just enough distance so that the man’s feet couldn’t touch the stone floor. The man was as gaunt as the cage. They were one and the same with the way he sat: motionless, his thin arms wrapped around the bars, his thin legs protruding from the bottom.
#PC884: TALES FROM THE VAULTS: All of the Cuddles With None of the Pain by J.J. Roth read by a full cast. Previously published as #PC480. Rated PG. What is a Reborn? A Reborn is an artist-enhanced baby doll that looks and feels lifelike. Artists create Reborns as one-of-a-kind collectibles, often from ordinary play dolls transformed into art suitable for hands-off display—or hands-on cuddling. While reasonably durable, Reborns are not children’s toys. Rough play may damage them. How do the dolls become “reborn”? An artist re-paints each doll with more lifelike skin-toned paints, mixed to achieve the actual skin tones of real babies across the racial spectrum. Delicate veins and blue wash undertones give the newborn baby a more realistic appearance. Hair is sewn strand by strand into plastic bald or molded hair-grooved heads through a process called micro-rooting.
#PC883: Redo by Brigitte Winter, read by Julia Rios. Previously published by New Year, New You: A Speculative Anthology of Reinvention. Rated R - content warnings for violence and coercive control. 3. In our third timeline, I met you on New Year’s Eve. I had slept off a migraine half that day, so I wanted nothing more than to spend the evening by the fireplace cuddling with Jamie and our ancient basset hound. But New Year’s Day would be my fifth wedding anniversary with Jamie — our “wood” anniversary — and he had gotten tickets to a burlesque show because he thought he was hilarious. Predictably, he insisted that it would be wasteful to skip the show because the tickets were fifty dollars each. Plus, booze was included. Plus, he could watch women dance out of their clothes, which was significantly more interesting than watching me sit around all night in the oversized sweater and leggings I’d been wearing since Christmas.
#PC882: How to Steal the Plot Armor by Luke Wildman - PART TWO of TWO, read by Hollis Monroe. Previously published in Writers and Illustrators of the Future, Vol. 37. Rated PG. Something was obviously wrong from the moment we entered the great hall. Too many folk milled about, too many by far. Logs crackled in the firepit. The tables groaned under a weight of food and drink too profuse for the number of retainers who abided here while the Lord of Omlath was absent, and something was wrong with their eyes . . . a sort of dull light. They moved in a jerky, mechanical way, as if someone had wound them up and set them to clanking from task to task. Disconcerting, to say the least. The explanation soon became apparent. In a flower-carved throne at the head of the hall, the Lord of Shadows presided. The Master of Darkness swung his gaze to us when we entered, and his obsidian eyes seemed to pierce all hopes and disguises. “Ah,” he said, “entertainers. Come! Play a song for your great lord.”
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#PC881: How to Steal the Plot Armor by Luke Wildman - PART ONE, read by Hollis Monroe. Previously published in Writers and Illustrators of the Future, Vol. 37. Rated PG. The day before it started, I had to chase off three more heroes with a stick. I swear, winter is the worst season for them. You get a few enterprising farm boys during the spring and summer, and fall’s the time for disinherited princes looking to reclaim kingdoms that their uncles stole from their murdered fathers, but winter is when the big ones arrive. There’s nothing worse than sitting down in front of the hearth, a tome on your knee and a tankard of ale at your elbow, all cozy while the blizzard howls outside — and hearing a knock at the door. You’ll have no peace till you open it. When you do, you’re greeted by the sight of a hulking, smelly barbarian, snow clinging to his fur cloak, sword bigger than your leg strapped over his back, with a story of an omen-prompted journey into the mountains to seek one who will tutor him in magic, or guide him to hidden paths...
#PC880: TALES FROM THE VAULTS - Kiki Hernandez Beats the Devil by Samantha Mills, read by Sandra Espinoza. Previously published by Translunar Travelers Lounge and as #PC639. Rated PG-13. Kiki Hernández, rock legend of the Southwest, had seven devils on her tail. They scurried through the roadside scrub, not even trying to sneak. She could hear their scrabble-claws and clacker-tails, their dripping maws and teeth. If they were trying to round her up for a crossroad deal-making, they were going about it all wrong. That’s what happened when devils got hungry. They made mistakes. Kiki hummed as she walked, watching eddies of dust form tornadoes on the road ahead. It was a swagger of a walk, born of a perfect record: Kiki 72, Devils 0. She would have been bored, if she hadn’t been so eager for an encore. “Come on out!” she hollered.
#PC879: The Tawlish Island Songbook of the Dead by E. M. Linden, read by Louise Hewitt. A #PodCastleOriginal! Rated PG-13 - Content warnings for grief, infant death, and a reference to suicide. The living have been leaving Tawlish for centuries; this evacuation is only the latest and last. There are good reasons for it: the freshwater spring gone brackish; the water, always encroaching; the colicky, relentless wind. No schools for the children. No doctor. We should have seen it coming, but sometimes we forget what the living need. We cannot cross salt, so we watch from shore. Our loved ones and descendants wade into the sea. The men strain to hold the boats steady against the waves. Everyone’s weighed down by possessions, a village crammed into sacks and lifeboats. Spoons, spindles, fish-hooks, balls of yarn. A clothes-peg doll in a twist of old apron. Seabirds’ eggs wrapped in blankets: habits ingrained by generations of scarcity. They’ve even dug up their potatoes.
#PC879: The Tawlish Island Songbook of the Dead by E. M. Linden, read by Louise Hewitt. A #PodCastleOriginal! Rated PG-13 - Content warnings for grief, infant death, and a reference to suicide. The living have been leaving Tawlish for centuries; this evacuation is only the latest and last. There are good reasons for it: the freshwater spring gone brackish; the water, always encroaching; the colicky, relentless wind. No schools for the children. No doctor. We should have seen it coming, but sometimes we forget what the living need. We cannot cross salt, so we watch from shore. Our loved ones and descendants wade into the sea. The men strain to hold the boats steady against the waves. Everyone’s weighed down by possessions, a village crammed into sacks and lifeboats. Spoons, spindles, fish-hooks, balls of yarn. A clothes-peg doll in a twist of old apron. Seabirds’ eggs wrapped in blankets: habits ingrained by generations of scarcity. They’ve even dug up their potatoes.
#PC878:The Carving of War by Somto Ihezue, read by Mofiyinfoluwa Okupe. Previously published by Tor - Africa Risen anthology. Rated R - Content warnings for violent murder and the death of an animal. Odili was a child when Nkeala, her grandmother, died. All she remembered of her were her braids, a tangle of clouds that reached for the floor. She remembered her eyes, how they swallowed her face. To look into them was to be lost in a vastness. It was to find eyes — owl eyes, bold eyes, brown eyes — staring back at you. Most of all, she remembered her kindness, an unending sea. Nkeala had been dìbìā — keeper, to Idemili; the roaring python, they who drowned oceans, mother of mothers. At the birth of time, Idemili, like beads dancing on a fragile waist, had wound herself around the clans of Obosi. Out of her mouth, the Eke River poured, its brooks and streamlets giving sustenance to the corn in the farmlands, the antelopes of the wild and the Irokos that split the sky.
#PC877: The Hand that Feeds by Louis Inglis Hall, read by Pippa Alice Stephens. Previously published by The Colored Lens. Rated PG-13 - Content warning for the death of a child Last Christmas a mermaid died in the school swimming pool. It was only a small pool, built up at the sides with wooden panels, more like a tank for training children in. That meant it froze over very easily, but a mermaid couldn’t know that. It stood in a courtyard in the shadow of the school, and the sun reached it only at rare intervals. Behind it lurked a stone and sulking outhouse, pebbledash walls lashed together with a corrugated plastic roof. In its damp darkness the children undressed, and tripped, and snapped tight, powdered rubber caps over their skulls. Under its benches something black grew wetly out towards them. It was the hut that Freya hated most of all.
#PC876: TALES FROM THE VAULTS: Nine-Fingered Maria by Hilary Moon Murphy, read by Christopher Reynaga. Previously published as PodCastle 58. Rated PG. …this girl appeared from behind a door and caught my ball. She was probably my age: several inches taller than I am, with long straight black hair pulled back in a ponytail, plain white t-shirt, denim jacket and jeans with a hole worn in the knee. She stared at me with intense dark eyes and said, “What are you doing here?” “I was just getting my ball,” I said, stepping out of the way of two movers carrying a large red bureau with multi-colored wax stains all over it. “No, you weren’t.” She cocked her head to the side, and raised her eyebrow. “You were spying.” “I wasn’t!” “That’s okay, I like spies.” She gave me back my ball and showed me her hands. “I have nine fingers. I’m a witch.”
#PC875: Last Ritual of the Smoke Eaters by Osahon Ize-Iyamu, read by Takudzwa Sharon Kirimi. Previously published by Lightspeed Magazine. Rated PG-13. Content warnings for grief and the death of a spouse. HI didn’t want to eat Joshua, but he turned into dust, and the way things go in Carucchi village is that if someone turns into ashes you inhale them till there’s nothing but smoke in your lungs and redness in your eyes. Sometimes we have to eat people to make us less lonely. I didn’t want to do it, but Joshua named me as his eater, so my entire village forced me down on the floor and told me it was necessary. Great-aunty Chinny held my hands and made me inhale his smoke till his entire presence was roiling through my body like the last movements of a dragon. When Joshua had finally settled in my body, he felt like a weight in my throat.
#PC874: The Husband by P.C. Verrone, read by Eric Valdes. A #PodCastleOriginal! Rated R. Content warnings for sex, violence, and references to the death of a spouse He has never taken a man for a wife before. This becomes clear as he introduces me to his other wives. The youngest wife bristles and the wife with the long, dark hair avoids meeting my eye. The tallest wife just looks from him to me and nods. Her face betrays no hint of hospitality. They are aware that he and I have exchanged vows, exchanged fluids. However they may feel, nothing can be done about it now. He has chosen me. He wants a feast to celebrate. We order delivery. When the driver arrives, the youngest wife invites him into the house. She is beautiful and coy, and the driver is stupid. As soon as he steps inside, our husband sinks his teeth into the man’s neck. At the sight of blood, my eyes fill with red. I leap at the body in our husband’s arms, but a sharp jab in my rib sends me tumbling to the floor.
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#PC873: The Third Time I Saw a Fox by Cécile Cristofari, read by Wilson Fowlie. Previously published by Interzon. Rated PG. Content warning for dementia “You know what I think, the world is going bonkers,”’ the circus man says. I nod, draw a gulp of burning coffee from my thermos flask. A decent night watch needs to start with a little bitterness on the tongue, the first drink just a little too hot before the next cups fade to lukewarm. It’s the only excitement I’m afforded, after all. No one ever breaks into natural history museums. “Who needs the world when we have this?” I say, encompassing the anatomy exhibits with a wave of the hand. “And the two of us, of course.” The circus man nods, sagely. Even though I’m not looking at him, I can hear it from the creaking of his vertebrae, grinding against the copper wire that holds them together.
#PC872: TALES FROM THE VAULTS - The Ghost of Christmas Possible by Heather Shaw and Tim Pratt, read by Ian Stuart. A #PodCastleOriginal! Previously #PC188 Rated PG. I was asleep: to begin with. The hour was just before midnight on Christmas Eve when a ferocious knocking woke me from my slumber. My first muddled thought, or rather hope, was that some specter or spirit stirred beneath the cramped rafters of my newly rented accommodations. Such a prospect aroused in me no little excitement — for though I am well versed with the actions and habits of apparitions, ghosts, and hauntings of all sorts, I have always had to seek out such extraordinary creatures in situ, as it were, and their attentions had never been initially directed toward me. I thought immediately of the incident of the Knocking Well, when I helped lay to rest the unquiet spirit of a lost child in Somerset, and so I leapt to my feet and pulled on my dressing gown to begin my investigation. I followed the sound of knocking, now ever more ferocious, through the corridor and down the narrow stairs.