The Sky Spider
Melissa Tyler

THE SHIP’S SPIDER was called Death-Eye. At any rate, that’s what the captain and I called him. The crewmen called him Deadeye, and my mother called him Mario.

It wasn’t until much later, when as a grown woman I read about the horrors of Africa in the mid-21st century—horrors I had not only survived but been happily oblivious to through most of my childhood—that I learned more about Spiders. The history books don’t call them Spiders, they call them “linemen,” and by that fact alone I’m quite sure the historians have never seen one in action.

I’d never heard of Spiders or linemen, or perhaps even airships, before the day we packed up and left our home. Before that trip I’d been the sort of self-centered child who paid no attention to what adults were doing. So when my family and Mr. Muenda walked into the steep, rocky hills behind the American compound, I never thought to ask the reason. I only wanted to know why we weren’t going in Papa’s truck.

It was mid-afternoon, but sunless and humid. I cried, largely from anger and frustration, most of the way up. We climbed the trails until we passed between tall rocks with moss and webs in the dark cracks, and then stood at the edge of a big open place where the grass lay flat and brown on the ground. In the middle of the field stood a solitary man, small and old with wrinkled skin the color of dry leaves and eyes like little black beetles.

A Very Old Man With No Wings At All
Jay Lake

THE HEAT WAS HIS OLDEST FRIEND. In this place it wrapped him like the hand of the divine, vast and never-ending, flavored with salty grit as if God had lately been digging a grave in the sand. He had never understood how a place so close to the eye-blue sea could be so dry, either. The sun stole everything and gave back only light and shadow.

The old man lived beneath an ancient dhow long since taken by worms and the strange desiccation which eventually seized wood in this place. He liked to think of it as the process of making a fossil, direct petrification without benefit of æons of burial beneath the earth. The boat had once belonged to a man named Muusa. This always struck him as particularly appropriate, given the reed-banked sea muttering just outside the hull of his home.

Someone knocked on the wood. The old man started, unsure if he’d been sleeping, dreaming, or dying. He wasn’t certain there was a difference anymore.

“Enter into my presence,” he called in Adamic tongue. Remembering himself, he switched to Egyptian Arabic. “Peace to you.”

The Underthing
Ryan Neal Myers

AFTER BRUSHING HER TEETH and changing into her pajamas, Constance retrieves the half-pound of ground beef that has been rotting for three days on her apartment balcony. It smells like vomit, but she’s used to it. She zaps it back to room temperature in the microwave, then carries it to the bedroom on a Fiestaware plate.

She pauses in the little bedroom, her toes pinching the carpet fibers as she thinks of what to say. On the wall is a body-length mirror, and she studies herself to see if she looks the way she feels. The worry on her face is hard to notice because her face is small and unreadable. She doesn’t have enough nose, and her dark eyes are sunk too deep behind her glasses. Her small frame is lost in the baggy folds of her pajamas.

“I smell beef,” says the low octave hum under the bed. “Ground. Lean. But you know I like the fat.”

For most people it takes more muscles to frown than to smile, but Constance isn’t wired like most people.

“You’re eating beef while I’m eating ramen, and you’re complaining?” she says, her voice almost as husky as the Underthing’s.

“It’s late,” says the Underthing. “I can smell how tired you are.”

Brighton Bay
January Mortimer

THE HOTEL POSSESSED an air of faded grandeur: of magnificence worn to tawdry pretence. Darns ill-concealed moth holes in the drapery and the dining room tables and chairs were hulking mahogany beasts. The place direly needed fresh paint and some loving attention.

What it did not need was a forest.

Unfortunately, there was one sprouting in the ballroom.

“How extra-ordinary,” I said. From my seat I could see trees growing from the beeswaxed floor, their branches reaching up to vanish into the cavernous ceiling. Vines crept through the grand double doors and into the dining room, snaking and spreading and rippling with a whisper of moving greenery.

I spread jam on my toast. “Edwin, I think they’re having a bit of a weed problem.”

My brother snorted and unfolded the morning edition of the Times. He glanced at the front page—where headlines shouted scornfully about Lloyd George’s budget and the latest exploits of the Suffragettes—and turned to the schedules of steamers and trains.

He said, “Pass the kippers, will you, Fiona?”

Edwin always did lack an appreciation of the absurd.

The Hanging of the Greens
John A. Pitts

Legate Atticus spurred his horse forward through the thickening snow. The expectancy of combat pulsed through him as the air hummed with the foul taint of magic. Once again the Gauls called upon the Fey to assist them.

At the top of the ridge, above the tents, he stopped to survey the troops as they prepared for the day’s battle. The left wing moved into position—three cohorts strong. The center had been in place since sunup. He grimaced at the ragtag formation of the four cohorts on the right. Their skirmish line spread across the field like a ragged scar. The new recruits needed discipline.

“Damn this winter.” He spat onto the frigid ground. “It takes a heavy toll on Caesar’s best.”

A thick blanket of new winter snow covered the hollows for miles around Hindman, Kentucky. Schools had been closed for a week and a festive mood crept along the back roads and trailer parks like a hunting beast. Once again, the warm glow of Christmas graced the little country church deep in Tadpole Hollow.

The women of the church bustled around the hall. A fire burned merrily in the huge fireplace along the eastern wall, filling the hall with warmth. Children played with the wooden nativity set. Christmas music droned in the background, adding a nice undertone to the quiet, eager exchanges between the parishioners. Excitement reached a tight pitch as the festival preparations began to finish up.

The Song of the Rice Barge Coolie
Rob Hunter

HAIL TO OUR MOTHER, who caused the messenger, the soldier, the worker, who scattered the seeds of her body as she came forth from Paradise, great and white, fat with honeydew, her diadem a ring of captive queens.

Hail to the goddess who shines with her bright wings, triumphant in the face of the deceiver.

Hail to our mother, who dropped her wings, who poured forth abundance as she came from Paradise.

See how they love her, gathered near!

“Oh, Jim—it’s a full cape,” trilled Ginny Levitan. The house was a daisy chain of architectural whimsy, a ramble of weathered ells, wings and add-ons in the style of whatever moment. Their house-to-be cuddled coyly behind a tangle of alders and runaway roses.

The house was not unoccupied. Ten-by-ten-inch white spruce sills had been shaved thin from the inside out, resonant as a fiddle back for over a century. Raddled with passageways, the sills still supported the house. Beneath the floors, past wide boards of ancient pumpkin pine pumiced, oiled and varnished by successive generations of householders disappeared, dead, or run away, lay the galleries of the Long Walkers.