This Mentor Lives

by J.R. Dawson and John Wiswell in Issue Sixteen, July 2024

Abraham was rushing through his miracles. He drew out the rune-etched broadsword of young Haddad's great-grandfather and laid it in the boy's hands, along with the elegant sheath that lunar moths had woven from their own silk. Then came the maps that would send Haddad on the next leg of his journey: those that told how to navigate mountains by constellations of the sky, and those of the eight oceans that could only be read amid sea breeze.

Underneath that pile of iron and parchment and enchantment, the little Haddad wriggled. He was barely visible under the pile of destiny he held.

"Wait! What...

Skinless

by Eugenia Triantafyllou in Issue Sixteen, July 2024

"Not all women were monsters, of course," the man who works at the tourist trap says. His chair is tilted against the wall, legs resting leisurely on the counter.

He strokes the pelt on his lap. His stubby fingers tousle the golden-red fur, grease it with sweat from his clammy hands.

The girl winces. Her ginger hair, feather-light, falls in ringlets on her shoulders.

"I mean, I'm married. I have a devoted wife. Two grown daughters." He nods in a reassuring way. "None of them a monster."

The girl knows he is wrong because all women are monsters. All girls as well. That's how it's always been.

B...

Reciprocity

by Valerie Kemp in Issue Sixteen, July 2024

Amber has been dead three days when she wakes up in her boyfriend's bathtub. It isn't the scritch-scratch of the tattoo needle that brings her back—although that sting is strange and unexpected. No, it's the cold that shocks her back into the world. She's buried up to her neck under bags of melting ice.

"Holy shit," Cash, her supposed-to-be-ex-boyfriend, shouts at the sound of her involuntary gasp. "I did it!" He's crouched beside the tub, tattoo pen in one hand, her wrist in the other.

Of course. Amber can barely hold back her sigh. Of course.

Never underestimate the power of an entitled man ...

Human Habits

by Bree Wernicke in Issue Sixteen, July 2024

It is of vital importance to brush one's teeth, says Maralka, even though there are the horrors. Brush twice a day, waking and going to sleep again. And one mustn't eat an hour beforehand, which is easy the first time because Joni can't eat while sleeping, and come to think of it also easy the second time, because there's not so much food in the high cupboards of their little room that she could spend all day eating it.

You can't eat before because your saliva still has digestion modes, says Maralka, and the combination of salivary acidity plus the abrasion of the toothbrush can compromise you...

Conjured from the Rubble

by Marissa Lingen in Issue Sixteen, July 2024

After the quake, the air smelled like dust and blood and the ozone of lightning spells. The students were all on a mountain retreat with the chancellor, so there was no one to do the heavy work of cleaning up the university but the faculty and staff.

The quad had been hit hard. Most of the statues of glorious wizards of yore had sustained damage, including Head Wizard Barra's, which had plummeted from its pedestal, separating head from body. I didn't even understand where all the stones and debris had come from, but a lot of it would have to be removed through pure backbreaking labor.

Most of ...

Through A Glass, Face To Face

by Rin Willis in Issue Fifteen, May 2024

The first time, I'm watching cat videos on my laptop when my chest starts to ache, and a long line of pain from my forehead down past my navel splits me into two.

And then, the sensation of fingernails, scratching under my skin.

When it's over, she stands naked in the moonlight, her body a mirror of my own. Same slightly upturned nose, same mouse-brown hair, same curves. But her eyes are filled with different histories, and her mouth is twisted in a smile that I have never been able to accomplish. In her right hand is a knife the color of old bone.

She stretches, popping her spine, then walks ...

The One Who Listened

by N. R. M. Roshak in Issue Fifteen, May 2024

There is a language that I know, but my tongue cannot form the words. Even if it could, the sentences are too long for you to listen to. They stretch across hours, or days. You are like the small fast ones of the forest—the birds, the lightning sparks of minnows in the creeks—words pour off your tongue, your hands flutter in the air. I can move quickly, too, but language is meant to be slow.

You were trying to save me, I know. But it is very lonely here.

You showed me a mirror and looked so thrilled when I marvelled at its silvered surface. My image was so much clearer, brighter, than in the f...

Ten Ways of Looking at Snow, Reflected Off an Obsidian Armor

by Avra Margariti in Issue Fifteen, May 2024

1.

You were cruel when we first met.

It would have been easy to claim I was sleepwalking, under your compulsion. But the truth was, I sought you out that midwinter night, in my spiderweb-flimsy nightgown and bruised, bare feet, chasing after a woodland vista I was taught through catechisms and beatings always to avoid. I left my bed in the smallest of hours despite parents and priests cautioning I stay away from the Erl-Queen's territory.

You were cruel, but you were honest too, unlike the honey-concealed callousness of my family and villagefolk. Wrapped in obsidian armor, you inspected me thr...

Ghost Apples

by Madi Haab in Issue Fifteen, May 2024

Another dead rabbit had grown out of the snow.

Cathilde pulled her foot back, shuddering at the sight. The rabbit was just outside the tent, laid out like an offering. Beady brown eyes stared up at a sky the colour and texture of meringue; its soft white fur rippled in the crisp wind, and a spray of red berries grew out of its mouth, covered in a thin lace of frost.

The first time it happened, Aglahé had sliced open the rabbit's—seemingly innocuous—belly to reveal a furl of pale flowers growing between its organs. The second time, a tangle of roots had grown overnight next to their tent, a whi...

Every Breath a Kiss

by Natalia Theodoridou in Issue Fifteen, May 2024

He thought drowning would feel blissful. Scary at first, the panic of breathlessness, but then pleasant and mostly serene. He had already decided that, when the time came, he would be eclipsed from this life with a mangled Manfred quote: "It is not so difficult to die, after all."

It was not peaceful.

The salt stung the inside of his torso, his ribs turned to knives that sliced him open. His very blood felt like an attack: an enemy of his own making. He swallowed mouthful after mouthful of seawater. His throat burned, his stomach distended to bursting. The sound of the ocean filled his ears: a...