Category: issue 4

Recipe: I told Cindy that I really liked Lorraine but Lorraine wouldn't even talk to me, and Cindy said she'd read about this love potion recipe in an old Polish book she read when she was little (because she grew up in Poland and went to school there for Grades 1 and 2.)

Since the shuttle accident that broke my brain, getting out of bed is like marshalling a poorly-trained and easily-distracted army. Turns out I’m not a good general. I’m a medtech, or at least, I used to be. Nursing is the only thing I’ve ever been good at, but I really can’t be trusted near sharp objects anymore.

I'm getting really tired of people dying. And coming back to life. And dying. And coming back to life.

The speedboat coasted through Tripoli harbor, running swift and quiet past the last indignant bastions of loyalist territory. Maryam huddled with her coded notes, diligent as ever, reviewing the file on our target. I leaned back in my cold plastic seat and watched my kindred stars as they stepped through the slow obedient constellations of their dance.

We didn’t know the Dark Lord would raise an army of the dead. We never thought the young prince could turn traitor. We’re menaced by ghost-wolves, stranded in an outpost on the cold edge of the world, and all signs say that we are, as our first-year Master of Field Operations Planning would say, “utterly fucked.”

Sen was the twenty-third Chosen One to save the world. She knew she would not be the last.

That night, as she shook out the laundry, Corinne got called in by her mam when the sun started tucking itself in behind the horizon, even though she was grown. “The rooks come out at dusk,” her mam said, the same warning she’d always given.

Margaret Appleheart remembered her father tossing her into the air, exclaiming how light she was, as though she were part of the air herself. When she was slightly older, she remembered being carried on his back when they went to town, held in place by her father’s hands to keep her from blowing away. As a teen, she learned to carry rocks in her pockets to hold herself down, or she tended to drift from step to step instead of plodding along the dirt or mud roads like most of the worn-out folk of Westham. Her father explained the need for her to hide her ability: “My little angel, you’re different from the others, and people will hate you for that.”

They name me a god, and I wish I was worthy of the title.

Like most accidents, this one happened in slow motion: Sharra could only watch as her cat, Pumpkin, tightening his haunches and wiggling his rear, fixed his gaze on the usually-empty cart. That cart was now full of the glass bottles she’d moved carefully from the shelves for her weekly dusting. Large and small, frosty white and brightly colored, sturdy and delicate as spun sugar, all of them swirled with inner light. Her cries of “Pumpkin, no!” accompanied too-slow movements as he launched himself.