Far Fetched Fables

First Story:  “Steam Girl” by Dylan Horrocks The first time I see her, she’s standing alone behind the library, looking at the ground. Faded blue dress, scruffy leather jacket, long lace-up boots and black-rimmed glasses. But what really makes me stop and stare is the hat: a weird old leather thing that hangs down over her ears, with big thick goggles strapped to the front. Turns out she’s in my English class. She sits right next to me, still wearing the jacket and goggles and hat. She smells like a thrift store. “Weirdo,” says Michael Carmichael. “Freak,” says Amanda Anderson. She ignores the laughter, reaching into her bag for a notebook and pencil. She bends low so no-one can see what she’s writing. Dylan Horrocks is a cartoonist, writer and illustrator who lives in Auckland, New Zealand. He is the author of the graphic novels Hicksville, Incomplete Works and Sam Zabel and the Magic Pen...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Halloween Story:  “Riding Shotgun” by Charles de Lint I wasn’t surprised to learn that my father had died. He would have been seventy-two this winter and he’d always lived hard–I doubted that had changed after I left the farm. What surprised me was that I was in his will. We hadn’t spoken in twenty-five years. I hadn’t thought of him, except in passing, for maybe half that time. If you’d asked me, I would have said he’d leave his estate to a charity like MADD, considering how it was drunk driving that changed all of our lives.             I missed the funeral. There are a lot of Coes in the phonebook, so it took the lawyers awhile to track me down. Charles de Lint is a full-time writer and musician who makes his home in Ottawa, Canada. His many awards include the World Fantasy Award, the Canadian SF/Fantasy Aurora Award, and the White Pine Award, among others. Modern Library’s Top 100 Books of the 20th Century poll (voted on by readers) put...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out inform

First Story: “Public Safety” by Matthew Johnson Officier de la Paix Louverture folded Quartidi’s Père Duchesne into thirds, fanning himself against the Thermidor heat. The news inside was all bad, anyway: another theater had closed, leaving the Comedie Francaise the only one open in Nouvelle-Orleans. At least the Duchesne could be counted on to report only what the Corps told them to, that the Figaro had closed for repairs, and not the truth — which was that audiences, frightened by the increasing number of fires and other mishaps at the theaters, had stopped coming. The Minerve was harder to control, but the theater-owners had been persuaded not to talk to their reporters, to avoid a public panic. No matter that these were all clearly accidents: even now, in the year 122, reason was often just a thin layer of ice concealing a pre-Revolutionary sea of irrationality. Matthew Johnson is a writer and educator who lives in Ottawa with his wife and two...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out i

First Story: “The Master Miller’s Tale” Part 2 by Ian R. MacLeod THERE ARE ONLY RUINS left now on Burlish Hill, a rough circle of stones. The track which once curved up from the village of Stagsby in the valley below is little more than an indentation in the grass, and the sails of the mill which once turned there are forgotten. Time has moved on, and lives have moved with it. Only the wind remains. Once, the Westovers were millers. They belonged to their mill as much as it belonged to them, and Burlish Hill was so strongly associated with their trade that the words mill and hill grew blurred in the local dialect until the two became the same. Hill was mill and mill was hill, and one or other of the Westovers, either father or son, was in charge of those turning sails, and that was all the people of Stagsby, and all the workers in the surrounding farms and smallholdings, cared to know. Ian R MacLeod has been selling and writing professionally...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out inform

First Story: “The Master Miller’s Tale” Part 1 by Ian R. McLeod THERE ARE ONLY RUINS left now on Burlish Hill, a rough circle of stones. The track which once curved up from the village of Stagsby in the valley below is little more than an indentation in the grass, and the sails of the mill which once turned there are forgotten. Time has moved on, and lives have moved with it. Only the wind remains. Once, the Westovers were millers. They belonged to their mill as much as it belonged to them, and Burlish Hill was so strongly associated with their trade that the words mill and hill grew blurred in the local dialect until the two became the same. Hill was mill and mill was hill, and one or other of the Westovers, either father or son, was in charge of those turning sails, and that was all the people of Stagsby, and all the workers in the surrounding farms and smallholdings, cared to know. Ian R MacLeod had been selling and writing professionally...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out informa

First Story: “Save Me Plz” by David Barr Kirtley Meg hadn’t heard from Devon in four months, and she realized that she missed him. So on a whim she tossed her sword and scabbard into the back seat of her car and drove over to campus to visit him. She’d always thought that she and Devon would be one of those couples who really did stay friends afterward. They’d been close for so long, and things hadn’t ended that badly. Actually, the whole incident seemed pretty silly to her now. Still, she’d been telling herself that the split had been for the best — with her working full-time and him still an undergrad. It was like they were in two different worlds. She’d been busy with work, and he’d always been careless about answering email, and now somehow four months had passed without a word. David Barr Kirtley is the author of several dozen fantasy & science fiction short stories, including “Save Me Plz,” which was featured in the anthology FANTASY:...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out info

First Story: “Compartments” by Zoran Živković I ran as fast as my legs would carry me. The carriage had just pulled away from the buffer at the end of the track. Even though it was still moving slowly, had I been carrying any luggage, particularly anything heavy, I wouldn’t have made it. Luckily, all I was holding was my coat and hat. I didn’t know how to get onto a moving carriage. Was I first supposed to jump onto the step on the platform of the last car and then grab hold of the handrail, or the other way around? Who knows what I would have done if the back door hadn’t opened just as I caught up to the car. The conductor came out onto the platform. “Give me your hand!” he shouted. Zoran Živković was born in Belgrade, former Yugoslavia, in 1948. In 1973 he graduated from the Department of General Literature with the theory of literature, Faculty of Philology of the University of Belgrade; he received his...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

First Story: “Chasing the Wind” by Elizabeth E. Wein Martha Bennett sat on her trunk in the middle of Nairobi Airport watching the other passengers disperse. She had been sitting there for two hours, waiting for her father, and reading over and over again the terse telegram she had received the day before she left Philadelphia: MAY NOT MEET. TAXI WILSON AIRPORT. HART ALDEN FLY KWALE. She was not good at waiting. It made her nervous and irritable, but Martha could not quite believe her urbane Philadelphian parents would absolutely abandon her to her own devices in the middle of Africa, and she thought there must be a chance that her father would turn up at the last minute. Elizabeth Wein is the holder of a private pilot’s license and an increasing collection of random World War II ephemera. Her story of the friendship between a female spy and pilot, Code Name Verity, won the Edgar Award for Young Adult fiction in 2013. Her most...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

First Story:  “Troll’s Night Out” by Jenny Blackford There was a lot of shrieking and laughing going on at the table behind ours. “Girls’ night out,” I said, and took a good swig of my glass of red. David barked out, “What did you say, woman?” I shouted this time, hoping to penetrate the restaurant sound barrier: “Girls’ night out.” David snorted. With his impressive snout, that was something. “Trolls’ night out, more like it,” he said. He bared his long white canines in a toothy grin. The comment was typical of the David I’d known and hated, before I ran away to Scandinavia. Unfortunately, it’s not considered good form to scream at one’s ex in a good Melbourne restaurant. Instead, I cut off a piece of my salmon cutlet and stuck it in my mouth, fast. The aroma of David’s steak was tormenting me. Jenny Blackford is an Australian writer and poet whose work has appeared in...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

First Story: “The Shooter at the Heartrock Waterhole” by Bill Congreve The rifle kicked, and one of the creatures — the beautiful one — was dead. But the wyrde, as Dad would have called it, began long before then.  Two days ago, I shot and killed two sparrows, and a rabbit I’d called “Attitude.” Right after, I buried them out in the deep sand away from the water.  At dawn yesterday, I smelled them as I woke. The sun filtered through the needles of a lone desert oak straight into my eyes. I rolled onto my stomach, lifted my head, and there they lay, just outside the tent flyscreen.  The corpses had been dug from their half-meter-deep holes and had been laid out on the orange sand and the leaf litter as neatly as you like, half a meter from where my head lay on the pillow.  I hadn’t heard a thing. Bill Congreve is an award winning writer, editor and independent publisher (MirrorDanse Books). His stories have appeared in a number of countries in publications...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and op

First Story:  “Perchance to Dream” by Isobelle Carmody Anna woke knowing she had been dreaming, but as so often with dreams, to wake was to forget. Strange to remember vividly that she had dreamed, yet to have no recollection of the dream. On the rare occasion that she did remember, the minute she tried to describe it, the dream would dissolve. Pinning a dream down was like trying to catch hold of a skein of smoke. Isobelle Carmody wrote her first book, Obernewtyn, when she was 14. It was accepted by the first publisher she sent it to and since then she has written more than thirty books and many short stories, which have been translated and/or won awards including the prestigious CBC Children’s Book of the Year Award. Her most recent book is The Cloud Road, which she also illustrated. Isobelle is currently working on The Red Queen, the final book in the Obernewtyn Chronicles, and the screenplay for Greylands, on a Film Australia grant. She has also begun...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and o

First Story: “The Funeral, Ruined” by Ben Peek It was the weight that woke Linette. Her weight. The weight of herself. The flat red sky above Issuer was waiting when she opened her eyes. Five hours before, when she had closed her eyes, it had been a dark, ugly brown-red: the middle of the night. Now it was the clear early morning red, and a thick, muggy warmth was seeping through her open window with the new light. There would be no rain today. Just the heat. Just the sweat. Just that uncomfortable, hot awareness of herself that both brought. The worse was Linette’s short dark hair, dirty with sweat and ash. The ash that had come through the open window during the night. It had streaked her face and settled in her mouth and she could taste it, dry, burnt and unappealing in her gums. Her left arm, with its thick, straight scars across the forearm, felt heavy and ached; but it always ached. Ben Peek is the Sydney based author of Black Sheep, Twenty-Six...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-ou

First Story: “The Flying Woman” by Laurel Winter The boats rested uneasily on the surface of the sea, waiting to leave. Chief Loah gripped Raff’s shoulder in one hand and tilted Dannilla’s face up with the other. “Swear you will not use your unnatural power to leave this island,” he said. “Swear on your father’s life.” His fingers squeezed Dannilla’s chin. Their father sat in one of the boats, his face shiny with tears. “I swear,” she said. “I swear. Please don’t hurt him.” Raff held silent, and then he gasped as the leader’s hand closed on his arm. “I swear.” The leader pushed him, hard, and let go of Dannilla. Her eyes blurred and she fell to her knees in the sea. Laurel Winter grew up in the mountains of Montana and attended a one-room country grade school with 12 to 25 students in grades 1 through 8. She then went 30 miles one way on the bus to Absarokee High School, where there were 33 in her graduating class. Since...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Art by Chang Yuan changyuanjou.com changyuanjou.deviantart.com   First Story: “Of Men and Wolves” by An Owomoyela I woke with salt on my face, ghost trails of the night’s tears. My skin was cold. Even my back was cold where my husband should have rested; he was gone, and I should have enjoyed that aloneness. Instead a noise from the verandah roused me: a soft scuffle against the swept clay, coupling with wet, insistent sounds. It turned my stomach. I pulled my beddress tight around me, and went out. An Owomoyela is a neutrois author with a background in web development, linguistics, and weaving chain maille out of stainless steel fencing wire, whose fiction has appeared in a number of venues including Clarkesworld, Asimov’s, Lightspeed, and a...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

First Story: “Jack Shade in the Forest of Souls – Part 2” by Rachel Pollack Jack Shade, known in varied places and times as Journeyman Jack, or Jack Sad, or Handsome Johnny (though not any more), or Jack Summer, or Johnny Poet (though not for a long time), or even Jack Thief, was playing Old-Fashioned Poker. That was Jack’s name for it, not because the game itself was antiquated—it was Texas Hold Em, the TV game, as Jack thought of it—but because of the venue, a private hotel room, comfortable, elegant even, yet unlicensed and by private invitation only, in the age of Indian casinos no more than a few hours drive from anywhere. …. Rachel Pollack is the author of 35 books of fiction and non-fiction, including Unquenchable Fire, winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and Godmother Night, winner of the World Fantasy Award. Rachel’s books have been translated into fourteen languages, and are sold all over the world. Rachel’s most recent work is The Burning Serpent...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy an

First Story: “Jack Shade in the Forest of Souls – Part 1” by Rachel Pollack Jack Shade, known in varied places and times as Journeyman Jack, or Jack Sad, or Handsome Johnny (though not any more), or Jack Summer, or Johnny Poet (though not for a long time), or even Jack Thief, was playing Old-Fashioned Poker. That was Jack’s name for it, not because the game itself was antiquated—it was Texas Hold Em, the TV game, as Jack thought of it—but because of the venue, a private hotel room, comfortable, elegant even, yet unlicensed and by private invitation only, in the age of Indian casinos no more than a few hours drive from anywhere. …. Rachel Pollack is the author of 35 books of fiction and non-fiction, including Unquenchable Fire, winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and Godmother Night, winner of the World Fantasy Award. Rachel’s books have been translated into fourteen languages, and are sold all over the world. Rachel’s most recent work is The Burning Serpent...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy an

First Story: “Blood, Oak, Iron” by Janny Wurts The old king of Chaldir lay dying. Everyone knew. Scarcely anyone cared. He lay under quilts in a bed with gold posts and purple hangings, his waxy, cadaverous face throwing grotesque shadows by the guttering glare of the candles. Whole seconds passed, while his unsteady breath seemed to stop…. Janny Wurts’ current audio book titles include stand-alones Master of Whitestorm, Sorcerer’s Legacy, and the Cycle of Fire trilogy, and the Empire trilogy written in collaboration with Raymond E. Feist; in print, a stand-alone fantasy, To Ride Hell’s Chasm, and the Wars of Light and Shadow series. Her imaginative paintings and cover art have appeared in exhibitions of imaginative artwork, among them, NASA’s 25th Anniversary exhibit, Delaware Art Museum, Canton Art Museum, and Hayden Planetarium in New York, and been recognized by two Chesley Awards, and three times received Best of Show at the World Fantasy Convention.

Art by René Aigner http://www.rene-aigner.de/ http://facebook.com/reneaignerillustration First Story: “Tengu Mountain” by Gregory Frost Ando met his fate in the form of a priest while he was climbing up the mountain to his Aunt Sakura’s house. Ando nearly stepped on him. The priest lay across his path like a log that had rolled down the mountain-side and come to rest where the path cut between two outcroppings of stone and, at first, that’s what Ando thought he was seeing…. Gregory Frost is the author of eight novels (including Shadowbridge, Lord Tophet, and Fitcher’s Brides) and well over fifty short stories of the fantastic, including dark thrillers, historical fantasy and science fiction. His novelette “No Others are Genuine” (Asimov’s Science Fiction...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

First Story:  “Lost Son” by Maurice Broaddus “I will make my arrows drunk with blood, while my sword devours flesh: the blood of the slain and the captives, the heads of the enemy leaders.” Deuteronomy 32;42 “Favor us with a tale, storyteller,” Ghana Menin asked in his way of implying a threat if disobeyed. His lanky frame slumped in his high backed seat, still unused to the power at his command. The celebration of their latest trade agreement had gone well. Soon, more treasure would be flowing to them, insuring Wagadugu’s place as the pride of the continent. The central fire roared before them. The tall flames danced wildly in the night, holding the ghana’s court of counselors, ministers, interpreters, and treasurers in rapt attention. Maurice Broaddus has written hundreds of short stories, essays, novellas, and articles. His dark fiction has been published in numerous magazines, anthologies, and web sites, including Asimov’s Science Fiction...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out informa

First Story: “Neverland Blues” by Adam Browne Michael Jackson bobs mothsoft and white in the North African nightsky. His many eyes tic and tick. Expensive lenses shiver into place, swivelling down. He takes in the view. Morocco. Tangier; the Kasbah; so beautiful, an Aladdin’s Carpet a thousand metres below him. Wanting to see more, Michael Jackson twitches an aileron. But he’s still clumsy in this body, and the movement is too emphatic. He spins, the city revolving under him, the soukh a disordered whirl, the Old Mosque glimpsed then gone, the Oriental Quarter a flash of red and gold… Adam Browne, 50, lives in Melbourne, Australia. His story ‘Neverland Blues’ originally appeared in 2008 in Dreaming Again: Thirty-five New Stories Celebrating the Wild Side of Australian Fiction. It won the 2009 Chronos Award for Best Short Fiction. His first novel, Pyrotechnicon: Being a True Account of the Further Adventures of Cyrano...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.