The Game of Leaf and Smile
Lawrence M. Schoen

JUST AFTER TWILIGHT, in the first full seconds of the evening of the autumnal equinox, in the city mortals call Philadelphia, a demon invoked a random act. The demon was named Kejstvil, a recently anointed Lord of Pain, the self-styled Friend of Fallen Foliage, and the autumn tourney champion of the past one hundred ninety-seven consecutive years. The random action involved a surge along a neural pathway in a motorist’s foot, just as he began to move it from accelerator to brake. The foot twitched. The brake went untouched. The driver’s car struck and killed a child playing in the street. Time froze.

In that instant the air filled with dust, scattered motes of perception and far-seeing sent by every major demon, and many lesser ones too, bearing witness to the start of this year’s tourney. Silently they looked on as Kejstvil’s minions caught the boy’s soul, clutched it fast with claws of smoky anguish, and stretched it wide for their master’s inspection. As befit a defending champion, the Pain Lord took corporeal form first, assuming the aspect of autumn leaves. He swept in close, a swirl of gold and red and brown.

His challenger rippled into existence on the other side of the young soul, man-shaped and shadowy, head devoid of ears or eyes or mouth, and with just the hint of a ridge where a nose might otherwise be expected relative to the chin. Lord Zhole, eldest of the Lords of Disease, had been roused from self-imposed retirement by the ill luck of a demonic lottery. Demon law required an autumnal contest, and if no one would volunteer to face the reigning champion, then all of demonkind drew lots. Not even the eldest of the Lords of Disease could pass, and so Zhole found himself there now. Together with Kejstvil he examined the soul of the newly dead child, peeling away the fading memories of its recent life.

“You need not have killed this mortal to mark our game’s setting,” said Zhole, his tone heavy with contempt.

Blood Pith Crux
Kelly Hale

I LICKED THE SALT OF OCEANS from his skin. Tongue and flesh. I remember that. I think I remember that. He tasted of home — a home I knew the name of once. World remembered. World gone. Sketched into the sand and washed away by morning.

My hair is so long now. I can scarcely tell where it ends and the seaweed begins.

But this is not the story of Calypso. Not really.

Washed upon the shore is a man, his body rocking in the surf. The waves are the hands of Nereids. They pull him to safety now, but if he doesn’t wake soon, they will drag him into the sea again.

A Game of Cards
Carrie Richerson

FOR THOSE UNFAMILIAR WITH DOGS, it might be difficult to imagine how much of the personality of those intelligent animals resides in their ears — until they hold in their hands a smooth canine skull, shorn of those semaphores of mood, temperament, and interest.

I keep the skull of Anubis upon my mantelpiece, where it tells me of the past, the future, and the far distant present. An invaluable seer. Yet without the twitch, the prick, the swivel, the laying-back of its ears, I have difficulty interpreting what it tells me in its dry, husky growl.

I saw him this evening, my enemy, my nemesis: on the gangway, boarding the sternwheeler Fidel, bound for New Orleans from St. Louis. At least, I think it was he. He had affected the fashion of a riverboat gambler: tight black breeches and jacket, a snowy ruffled shirt, shiny black boots with ridiculously pointed toes, and a flat-brimmed black hat with a narrow silver band. Somewhere on his person he would have concealed a derringer. It was all so overdone.

The Tinker's Child
M. Thomas

EPHAN BUILT A METAL THING in the shape of a boy. In its head was a small, dried seed, which the golemnist Pinoy put there to bring it to life. Sometimes, when the metal thing turned its head too quickly, the seed rattled around in its skull. It had a small furnace inside its chest, which Ephan taught it to keep stoked with coals. By this it was able to move from room to room in the house, and to speak in a voice that crackled with the unsteady enunciations of fire.

Ephan called it Olaz. It kept him company when he was home, rested in a dark corner of the kitchen at night, did small chores, and fed the cat.

“It is the cat’s birthday,” Olaz said one day. “The cat will not eat its cake.”

Ephan looked up from his tinkering on an especially troublesome cauldron. “I’ve asked you not to bother me when I’m working. And leave the cat alone if it doesn’t want to be played with.”

The Knife Birds
Kij Johnson

“TELL ME SOMETHING NEW,” the youth said to Homer: “something all my own.”

There was always a youth. They were not always the same youth, but they changed so often that it hardly seemed worthwhile learning their names. There was always someone in love with words, eager to be moved, with a bright passionate voice and hungry ears. Poets attract youths as lilacs do bees: Homer knew this, and did not take the boy’s enthusiasm personally, however tender their nights might be.

The blind poet leaned on the youth, grateful for the strength of his arm. His bones hurt now, an ache that never eased; he coughed in the mornings and tasted what the youth said showed as blood when he spat. He could ignore the pressure of wonders awaited until he sat again.

The youth threaded them past clustered voices and the absorptive silences of plastered walls, past the sighs of dogs sleeping in the dusty streets, past the sharp smells of wine and urine, spilled and baking in the sun.

Copper Angels
Joseph Paul Haines

THE DEKE LADY WAS NICE. She had pretty hair like Mommy’s, only not as bright. Mommy’s hair shined like it had a little bit of the sun in it. Well, it used to. Mommy didn’t wash her hair as much anymore. Not after that time she fell down.

I didn’t know what to do, and I was sad that Mommy got scared by the Dekes, but they tell us at school that if something isn’t right you have to tell a Deke about it. Sometimes they were scary; all dressed up in all that plasticy stuff they wear and a big black sunglass that comes down from their helmets so you can’t see their eyes. But this lady wasn’t like that. She wore a long black dress and I could see my reflection in her shoes. She smelled like nice soap.

“Is Mommy going to be okay?” I asked her.

She smiled at me and put her fingers together, like a church steeple. There was a desk in her office, but she didn’t sit behind it to talk to me. She sat in a chair right next to me and stroked my hair. It felt nice. “Your Mommy is going to be fine, Mary. They’re both going to be fine.”

End of Day
Laura Anne Gilman

WHEN WE FOUND THE BODY stuck up on the signpost, we figured for sure the howlers were back. I mean, who else would leave all that meat there to burn?

Jody wanted to leave him there. Once howlers have their paws on meat, who knows what’s gotten into it? But you don’t waste. No profit to it. So while Roo and Nance stood guard, I got to shimmy up and unhook our corpse. All the joys my Changes have brought, slinging a dead weight over my shoulder ain’t one of them. And the flies kept getting into my nose and mouth.

Landing hard, I dropped the corpse on the ground. Flat white face stared back at me. I hadn’t noted that before. He was white. Pure white. The dark hair had me fooled, I guess. Like a signpost: dumb bunny here.

“Howlers caught him wandering” Jody guessed, standing behind my shoulder and watching like the corpse was gonna get up and dance. I shrugged, cracking my fingers back into human-normal shape. Joints would hurt like hell, next time a storm blew up, but it was nice to be useful. Jody couldn’t have done that. Not Nance either. Roo could do anything it wanted, but it never did want. Couldn’t figure out why the Olders kept it around, except it was a cruel hunter, and we always needed the meat.