Fantasy Magazine Issue 40, July 2010

Table of Contents

Perhaps this is Kushi’s Story by Swapna Kishore (fiction) Violets for Lee by Desirina Boskovich (fiction) The Seal of Sulaymaan by Tracy Canfield (fiction) The Stable Master’s Tale by Rachel Swirsky (fiction)

Author Spotlight: Swapna Kishore Author Spotlight: Desirina Boskovich Author Spotlight: Tracy Canfield Author Spotlight: Rachel Swirsky

About the Editor

© 2010 Fantasy Magazine www.fantasy-magazine.com Perhaps this is Kushi’s Story Swapna Kishore

Elder Sister places pebbles to mark people in her sand village. She pats walls in place. She smiles in her know- it-all way as if to remind me that it is she who will marry the headman’s son and decide what our tribe does—all because she was born an hour before me. When she stands back to admire her work, I kick it in. “Younger Sister, why?” She gives a mournful look. “You hadn’t posted guards,” I mock. “A city is more than fields and huts and granaries.” “Hmmm.” She flattens the sand and drags a twig to sketch a new plan, this time including watch towers. She cups her hands around moist sand to shape buildings again. I hate it when she doesn’t fight. She will take time to build anything worth kicking, so I turn to the Maasa river. The pebble I throw skims over the flat blue water, touching the surface once, twice, three times before it sinks. The air smells of river spray and fresh grass and ripe wheat—too peaceful for me. My dreams have soldiers flashing swords and cities full of buildings and the sounds of song and dance. In my dreams, I rule people. My hand is moving to my bosom, as if that will stop the buzz of things I crave, when I notice Tribemother watching me. I straighten up; I do not want her to suspect anything. Tribemother’s face is so thick with wrinkles I never know when she is frowning. She must be over a hundred years old, because no one remembers her as young. They say she knows everything that can be known. They say she reads minds; at times like this, I worry it may be true. Yet I have not done anything wrong. Not yet. “Younger One, Elder One,” she calls out. “Come, I will tell you a story about a different tribe.” Elder Sister looks up. “Are they like us?” I had been about to ask, can we beat them in war?

***

Tribemother’s stories are stickier than glue. When I was five and heard her story about a mountain bear, I smelled raw flesh on its breath, and felt coarse paws on my arm. Its teeth were barely a hand-span away from my face when I blurted out that I would return Elder Sister’s wooden doll to make it go away. But right now, any story is good because it will stop me from imagining other things. Elder Sister and I squat near her. “This is the story of an orphan healer apprentice, Kushi.” Tribemother pauses to peer at us. “She was almost eight years old—like you girls—on the day the gods tore the sky open.”

***

Kushi was pulling out a medicinal plant wedged between rocks when the valley went dark. Thunder boomed in the air. The sky, blue a moment ago, was angry with black clouds. Alarmed, she ran towards the hut cluster. The men had rushed from the farms, some still holding hoes; the women gathered, babies dangling off their hips. Everyone—men, women, children—stared at the sky. The clouds split and the skies tore apart to expose an eye-burning white light. And down floated a bright purple feather. A feather gifted by the gods? Excitement tingled in Kushi. She had always assumed the stories to be ways to cheer younger children. Was it true, then, that the gods sent feathers to select leaders whenever the tribe was in trouble? Five hundred years ago, Khenpo, a feather- selected, foresaw an earthquake and made the tribe migrate just in time. And two centuries later, another chosen leader, Rigpa, averted a major split in the tribe by enforcing new laws for marriage and inheritance. But why did the gods send a feather now? Food in the valley was sufficient even if not abundant. People were almost content. Kushi glanced at the headman Yeshe; his face was stiff with tension. The feather hovered over a group of young boys who whooped and jumped to grab it. Then, boom! The skies sealed shut, the clouds vanished, and the feather shot into the hands of Bataar. Kushi’s stomach lurched. Bataar? How could the gods select a boy who snatched bread from younger children, cheated in games, and slept during nightwatch? Bataar raised his hand, fingers clutched around the shiny purple feather. “Behold the feather of the gods,” he shouted. Everyone looked stunned. Some men shook their heads; some women muttered. “Indeed,” said someone with marked lack of enthusiasm. Yeshe glanced at his deputy, Nawang, and then waved for silence. “Tribesmen! We are blessed that the gods have chosen Bataar though he is yet a tender ten- year-old. I will be honored to teach him so that I can hand over when he is wise enough.” Relieved cries of “Well spoken!” erupted all around. Bataar bowed stiffly. “I look forward to my rightful place,” he said haltingly. “And to learning whatever I need.” “Already he speaks wisely,” someone whispered. But Kushi could only stare at Bataar. He lowered his face, as if overcome by a sudden humility, but he was peering from under his eyelashes, and to Kushi, it seemed his face gleamed just as it did when he squashed a beetle or pinched babies to make them cry. Her skin crawled.

***

Within a few days, everyone was commenting on how Bataar had changed from a disobedient, stubborn pest to a model student who earned wholesome praise from the deputy headman, Nawang. And though Yeshe refused to comment on Bataar’s progress, Bataar stuck his feather in his headband to remind people that he had been chosen. Kushi remained wary. Once, when gathering herbs in an isolated spot, she saw Bataar swoop down on a squirrel. Laughing, he threw it far into the gulch; then he mumbled to his feather. He held it near his ear, nodded, and grinned. Kushi, crouched behind a rock, felt cold all over: the feather seemed to approve his action. Yet, in front of everyone, Bataar acted gentle and controlled. Was the feather teaching him to pretend? That evening, she told Healer Bolormaa what she had seen, and added, “Should we tell Headman Yeshe?” “No.” Bolormaa frowned. “Yeshe knows Bataar is pretending, and is looking for ways to refuse handing over. But the boy has managed to fool everyone else, even Nawang.” “If I tell everyone what I saw—” “Bataar is older, and chosen by the gods. No one will believe you. They remember how you scratched his face and said he hit Papo.” “He did hit Papo.” Surely Bolormaa hadn’t forgotten that? “Yes, but now Papo sticks to Bataar like a tail, and behaves like Bataar is a god. People will say you are jealous or possessed by an evil spirit.” Kushi shuddered. The only time she had seen her tribesmen handle a possessed girl had been terrifying— the girl’s screams as the spirit was beaten out of her still pounded Kushi’s ears. But the thought of Bataar leading the tribe was even more frightening. So she went to Yeshe’s hut. “Headman, Bataar tortures and kills squirrels,” she said. Yeshe sighed. “Maybe the gods will give him wisdom and compassion.” “They are making him worse.” Kushi’s voice sharpened with anger. “That’s heresy,” Yeshe said. “And you can’t prove it.” Kushi squirmed. They wanted proof—she would get it. As an apprentice healer, Kushi was busy all day, but whenever possible, while gathering herbs, she chose the mountain slopes and ravines where Bataar went in his spare time. Light-footed and agile, she trailed him without rustling anything. She watched him maim and kill small animals while speaking to his feather. Sometimes he threw his head back and laughed like a jackal. Yet Bolormaa or Yeshe ignored her reports. One day, Bataar caught a lizard and ripped open its stomach with a sharp stone. He scooped its dripping entrails and held them in the air. “Yes!” he shouted. “Yes!” Then he wrapped them in felt and punched the air with his fist. His face shone with excitement. Kushi ran to Bolormaa. “So,” Bolormaa said, irritated, “the boy wrapped the entrails instead of flinging the animal to its death. So?” “His face twisted in an ugly way—” “Don’t follow him if it frightens you,” Bolormaa snapped. “And don’t bother Yeshe—knowing about another dead creature won’t make a difference.”

***

Men and women danced and took swigs of beer from their gourds. Stew bubbled in cauldrons. It was the winter-begin day, the last festival celebrated before ice sealed off the passes. The elders had struck a good bargain with the nomads while bartering spare grain for ploughs and tools, and everyone was happy and relaxed. Kushi sat with the other children, breathing in the lovely smells, and imagining life in lands where people ate so well every day. Soon she would grow up and become a healer. She would marry. Her children would never feel as lonely as she had felt because she was motherless, though, of course, Bolormaa had been a kind foster mother and teacher and— “Healer!” Kushi jerked out of her daydream. Bolormaa was running towards a group clustered near the fire; Kushi ran after her. Nawang lay writhing on the ground, foaming in his mouth. Yeshe knelt near him. Nawang spasmed and stopped moving. Bolormaa examined his skin and eyes. She checked his neck for the throb of life, held her fingers near his nostrils. “Dead,” she whispered. She sniffed his upturned gourd, then spilled out the contents. A tangled lump fell out. She poked at it and her shoulders slumped. “A poisonous lizard fell in the gourd,” she said, her voice heavy. Those must be the entrails Bataar had been so gleeful about! Kushi couldn’t help herself—she glanced at Bataar. A mistake, she realized, because his gaze locked with hers. She knew her face was pale and eyes wide with horror, and in that awful moment she saw suspicion crowd Bataar’s face before he turned away. As Kushi sidled away, she heard people whispering: “Yeshe can use Bataar. . .” “. . . chosen. . .” “The boy will learn fast.” Sick at heart, sick in her body, Kushi retched out her insides behind a boulder. She wandered aimlessly till the smells and sounds of the winter festival seemed distant, then sat on a rock. The skies were black, the stars faint, and the moon a silver sickle. Kushi’s stomach knotted with fear. To whom could one turn if the gods taught murder? As the night deepened, Kushi’s fear became rage. “You gods!” she called out to the skies. “Stop troubling us.” The skies ignored her. “Why did you choose Bataar?” she shouted. “I am better with bow and arrow. I can heal. But I’m just a girl and—” Plop. A bright red sphere had popped out of nothing barely a couple of hands in front of Kushi. It was so hot that the air around it shimmered; Kushi jerked back, scared. Wisps of smoke rose from the charred grass under it. Kushi opened her mouth to shout, but the sphere began dulling into a tired red, and then shrunk into an orange feather. The whole thing took barely a couple of heartbeats. “I am cool now; pick me,” said the feather. It was hard and stiff—made of metal, like the ploughs the nomads brought. She held it carefully. “When Bataar got his feather, the sky tore apart and there was lightning.” “We need less energy to reach you,” the feather whispered. “We are the later gods.” “Later gods?” “We know about Bataar’s feather, but his feather does not know about us.” She shuddered. “Bataar is horrible. If you knew—” She bit her lip. “Sorry. Gods must know him well.” “His feather wants him to do evil. We will tell you how to stop him. Keep our presence a secret and learn all you can.” Holding the feather gave her hope. She felt honored because the gods chose her to stop evil. She tied the feather in her waistband, and fastened the band around her sheepskin cloak. The righteous gods were with her.

***

Through the winter that followed, and the spring and summer, Kushi soaked in all she could learn. From Bolormaa and other elders, she learned how to recognize herbs. She sewed sheepskin into cloaks, cut out yak skin shoes. She made weather-baked mud bricks and built huts. She cooked. She made butter-tea perfect enough for Bolormaa. Also, she observed people. She watched them bargain with nomads. She saw lovers exchange signals, angry parents scold children. She understood why some children were liked more than others. And she learned from her feather gods. They whispered tips on brewing herbs. They corrected her technique when she applied poultices and bandages, set broken arms, and helped women deliver. But Kushi no longer mentioned Bataar to anyone. Bolormaa and Yeshe knew the truth; let them handle it as they could. If they didn’t, her feather gods would help her defeat Bataar’s evil. Kushi’s gods often described lands beyond the forests and the valley. A river so broad you could not see the opposite shore. Blue water flowed gently and all the time; no ice lumps of glacier-melt after winter, no dry river-bed in summer. The ground was green with tall grass, and grain swayed in the fields, the crops so fulsome that no one went hungry. Ever. “You will lead your people to this land,” the gods said. “Do you know the future?” she asked. “Yes,” they said. “You will make it happen.” “If the future is fixed, why must I do anything?” “Because Bataar’s feather comes from enemies of your tribe and wants him to create a future where your tribe will die.” Kushi thought about it. “Can there be more than one future?” “In the real and good future, Bataar’s plans will be defeated. His gods do not know this. You will make that future happen.” Strange, but then Kushi could not expect to understand the ways of the gods. Luckily they knew the evil Bataar intended, and would help her stop him. Then one day as she was gathering herbs, her feather whispered, “Today you will stop Bataar.” “Stop him from what?” Kushi asked. “How?” “Bataar will be looking down from a cliff. Rush at him from behind, and push him. He will fall.” “But he will die! Why should I—” “He is planning more murders. Do you want him to succeed? If he falls over a cliff, everyone will think it was an accident.” She gripped the feather so hard it bruised her palm. “I am not a murderer,” she hissed. “I can tell Bolormaa.” “Don’t waste time. Destroy the evil.” She thought of how Bataar had always been a bully, and how gleefully he ripped open the lizard. She remembered Nawang’s death. But if she pushed Bataar off the cliff, would she be any better? She spotted Bataar going towards the cliff. “There he is,” whispered her gods. “Follow him.” “I don’t understand. How can you—” “Don’t waste time,” her gods shouted inside her head. No! Killing was evil. If Bataar must die, why didn’t the gods kill him? If they could see the future, if they made the future, why ask for a young girl’s help? Why not make him fall themselves? Why did they sound so anxious? Could they do nothing but talk? Had she been fooled by evil gods? Her head hurt from their shrieks. Her legs shook, almost compelling her to rush at Bataar. But she was not a murderer. No gods could make her one. She started running. She was almost near the huts when she bumped into Yeshe. “What’s the hurry, child?” He peered at her. “Kushi, what happened?” “Nothing. . . I mean. . .” He patted her head and grinned. “Children, yes. Always running around. Too much energy, yes?” She gave a faint smile and walked slowly, trying not to shake. “Kushi, you are back early.” Bolormaa glared at her. “Headache,” she mumbled. Bolormaa touched her forehead. “You’ve got fever.” A short while later, Kushi lay drenched with sweat, drowsy with the strong draught Bolormaa had forced down her throat. The voices in her head were faint and jumbled; the hazy dreams that came were full of dread.

***

She woke to the sound of wails. She stumbled out of the hut. Everyone was gathered in the central square. Bolormaa was talking to other elders, but where was Yeshe? Bataar’s face was smudged with tears. He spotted Kushi; his mask of grief slipped momentarily. Men were talking: “He knew the mountains so well, how could he. . .” “Such a gentle headman. . .” Kushi knew in a flash what had happened: Bataar had pushed Yeshe to his death. She rushed at Bataar, crazed beyond control. “You pushed Headman Yeshe!” she shouted. “First you killed Deputy Nawang and then you killed Yeshe.” Someone slapped her. Bataar smiled gently. “She is merely a senseless child, blind with grief. She does not know Yeshe was like my father.” A few elders looked suspiciously at Bataar. Kushi’s rage died and became regret, like bile in her mouth. She should have spoken out earlier. Some people may have believed her. And even if they hadn’t, Bataar would have hesitated to murder Yeshe. It was her fault that Yeshe died. Her cowardice. Yesterday, even after the feather’s warning, she was so busy saying she was not a murderer that she did not consider Yeshe could be in danger. She had thought only of herself. She touched her waistband, but it no longer buzzed.

***

“Bataar will kill me next,” Kushi said. “You will say I should have kept quiet.” “No.” Bolormaa sighed. “After you spoke up, other elders also voiced suspicions. We formed a governing council to decide what to do.” “My feather wanted me to kill him.” “Your. . . what?” “I got this the day Nawang died.” Kushi took out her feather. It had stopped talking to her. “You should have shown this to me earlier.” Kushi almost pointed out how that Bolormaa had often dismissed her. “The feather wanted to remain secret,” she said instead. “Keep it if you want; I think it is evil.” “Bataar will not harm you right now.” Bolormaa caressed the feather, then tucked it in her waistband. “But once everyone forgets. . .” “I should go away,” Kushi said. Bolormaa thought for a while, eyes half-closed. “Stick close to me till I arrange something.”

***

The five nomads in the tent peered at Kushi. “She is too young,” the chief nomad said. “She is healthy and hardy,” Bolormaa said. “She can milk yaks and make cheese. She knows the mountains and herbs well, and I will give her medicinal herbs.” The chief pinned Kushi with his stare. “The mountain passes are frozen and slippery and very windy. They are strewn with bones of men who perished while crossing.” “I will be killed here.” Kushi said. “We don’t want to be accused of kidnapping children.” “Kushi often wanders in the mountains,” Bolormaa said. “An accident can happen soon after you leave. I may retrieve her belt which falls off as she tumbles down. We shall grieve Kushi.” The men consulted in their dialect, then the chief said, “Come before dawn tomorrow at the end of the gorge. Bring nothing that will be missed.” After they walked back, Kushi said, “Give Bataar a sleeping draught tonight, and I will steal his feather and destroy it.” She would have thought of this before, if she hadn’t depended on her feather for answers. “Tomorrow, I will say I sent you to gather herbs,” Bolormaa said. “By the time people wonder why you have not returned, you will be far away. May the mountains be your friends.” “And yours.” Kushi’s eyes stung with tears. She had never lived away from Bolormaa. But away from the tribe, she could begin her life afresh.

***

I wait and wait, but Tribemother sits back with a serene expression. “Then?” I ask her. “That’s all,” she says. “You can’t end a story in the middle,” I protest. The story is like a dish without seasoning. Tribemother turns to Elder Sister. “How would you end it?”

***

Elder Sister says: The nomads traveled hard every day. They ignored Kushi other than giving her food. She sometimes stopped to pick up wild onions from places the men missed, or nettle spinach, or strawberries. She cooked for the men. The men were not kindly, but not unkindly, either. The youngest, a youth barely a few years older than her, sometimes smiled at her. At night, she slept in the corner of a yak-hair tent, amazed to find it warmer than the mud huts she was used to. One evening, she was cooking when she heard the men shouting. She jerked upright. Past the smoke of a dim juniper torch, she saw a man carrying the youth. “Something bit him while we were walking back,” he said. “I tied a tourniquet but. . .” Kushi rushed to examine the youth. His leg was a sickly yellow below a crude tourniquet. His face was bloodless, his eyes high, delirium-like. She looked around at the wide-eyed, helpless faces of the nomads. “We must hurry,” Kushi said. “I have herbs that can help. Heat some water. Get clean cloth for bandage, or a soft sheepskin. A sharp stone, heated in a flame.” The chief knelt near the boy, held his hand, and began talking to him to keep him awake. As the other men bustled around her, gathering what she had asked for, Kushi chose herbs from her medicine pouch. She scraped the wound with the heated stone, and slathered paste. The men exchanged glances. Her stomach hardened with fear; she breathed deeply to remove her nervousness. “If my nephew dies, his mother—my sister—will never forgive me.” Tears flowed from the chief’s eyes. Kushi watched, amazed. A man, crying? “He will recover if your gods wish it,” she whispered. The boy stirred by noon the next day. When the nomads reached home some weeks later, the chief adopted Kushi as daughter. Later, when she was of age, he married her off to the youth, who was his heir. After some years, Kushi, as the new chief’s wife, looked after her new tribe using all she knew.

*** “Don’t be silly,” I say to Elder Sister. “Is this a love story or what? What about Bolormaa? Bataar? The real tribe?” “This is Kushi’s story,” she replies. “I guess the gods would have punished Bataar for his mistakes.” “Mistakes? The gods made him murder.” “If the gods made him do it, they cannot be murders.” Elder Sister’s eyes are bright. This is the girl everyone calls gentle and loving—blinded by just the mention of gods. “The tribe suffered because Kushi did not stop Bataar,” I point out. “Then she left everything to Bolormaa and ran away.” “If Bataar’s murders are wrong, how could Kushi murdering him be good? Or do you like Kushi more?” The words sting. It is true I liked Kushi, at least till she started acting like a scared fool. “Her feather told her she would lead her tribe.” “Maybe Bataar’s feather also said something similar,” Elder Sister says. “Bataar was a mean boy, feather or no feather.” Tribemother turns to me. “Younger One, how would you end the story?” ***

To me, the story is about the whispers of gods, and when Kushi gives away her feather, the story shifts to Bolormaa. I picture her returning to her hut after bidding Kushi farewell. “Everyone suspects Bataar when Kushi doesn’t return,” I say. “Bolormaa challenges him to prove he is still the chosen one. When he cannot find his feather, she displays Kushi’s feather and claims Bataar’s feather changed its color and came to her. Bataar is expelled and she becomes the leader.” “But Younger Sister—” I wave Elder Sister to silence. “Bolormaa swiftly becomes a powerful leader, and makes the tribe migrate to the greener lands using the feather to guide the way.” I pause to collect any dangling story threads. “She avoids contact with the nomads. She does not look for Kushi because she had expelled Bataar claiming he murdered her.” There, that’s neat, a much better job than Elder Sister’s soppy story. I expect Tribemother to praise me but her eyes are closed and a gentle snore rumbles out of her. Elder Sister returns to her stupid sand village; I let Maasa’s waters sweep over my feet and tickle them. The story has churned too many thoughts in my head. My own secret lies heavy in my bosom. I suspect Tribemother knows much more than she shows, that old crone.

***

By evening, I am restless enough to shake Tribemother awake. “Why do gods send feathers?” I demand. “Why do different gods send different feathers and want different things done? If the future is fixed, it will happen as it must, won’t it?” “Maybe there are many threads of life.” She shrugs. “Maybe each has gods to nudge us towards it. Now go and let me sleep.” I imagine Tribemother as young Kushi, and wonder whether she regrets not killing Bataar. But it is difficult to imagine Tribemother as an eight-year-old girl, so I imagine her as Bolormaa, because Tribemother once led our tribe, and maybe she brought us to Maasa. Or maybe the story is just a story. But why tell it today? Perhaps Tribemother has a feather and it told her to. So, should one listen to feather gods, or not? Bataar listened to his, and look how he got into trouble because he didn’t know there were later gods. Kushi’s gods ignored her after she refused to murder, but they helped Bolormaa. If the future was known and fixed, Kushi could not have disobeyed her feather. What would Elder Sister do if she got a feather? Would she, too timid to shoo away a rat, lead our tribe to war if a feather told her to? I don’t think so. She is not brave like me. Will our tribe suffer because of the one hour difference that keeps me ordinary but will make her a headman’s wife? But wait—Kushi was not born a chief’s wife. Nor was Bolormaa headman in the beginning. Yet they got themselves power. Had they really needed the feather? It is only when the sun lowers into Maasa, a ball of red, that I reach into my bosom. Yesterday, as I had been throwing pebbles in Maasa, a feather drifted near my hand, small as my smallest finger, jade-green. I caught it and looked up to find the bird it came from before I realized that the feather was made of metal. And then, words and pictures had flooded my mind. Now I grip the tiny green feather till it cuts into my palm, and its hum rings through my blood. Again, it hints that I can be a headman’s wife if Elder Sister is crippled in an accident. It reminds me that I can do brave and glorious things for our tribe—things that need to be done but cannot be done by a wimp like her. But do I need to be a headman’s wife for them? As Tribemother said, there are many threads of life. I can make my own. I step into the rippling waters of Maasa and drop the feather; it glitters as it falls, and I hear shrieks of its protest as it sinks.

Swapna Kishore lives in Bangalore, India, and writes both fiction and non- fiction. Her speculative fiction has appeared/ is forthcoming in Nature (Futures), Ideomancer, Strange Horizons, Sybil’s Garage 7, and other publications. For more about her, please visit her at swapnawrites.com. Violets for Lee Desirina Boskovich

I’m here, tunneling through. In a space that’s tighter than skin, there’s nowhere to go but forward. So I press on, ripping back curtains of viscera, tearing away fistfuls of damp meat, while my eyes sting with tears and blood.

***

Like all stories of loss and being lost, this one begins with something empty. Specifically, a glass canister. I ran out of sugar while baking a cake. I’d just finished making candied violets. It’s March, after all. (Or at least it was, out there. I don’t think time even exists in here.) You have to make candied violets with the first violets of March: that’s the rule. It was Lee’s rule. Preserved by egg white, super-fine sugar, and low heat, the violet petals live on, ossified versions of their former fragile selves. Then, there was the cake. Three slim layers of white cake: sweet as laughter and light as marshmallows. Then it came to the frosting. I’d run out of sugar. Generally, I’m a responsible baker. I check my supplies before I begin. Sometimes I even spread all the ingredients on the table so I can double-check. I clean as I go, ferrying broken egg shells to the trash immediately, rinsing oil-slick measuring cups in scalding water, maintaining a tidy kitchen environment. I’m like that. Not a fan of chaos, even controlled chaos. Not a lover of spontaneity and whimsy. (That was Lee.) And I am definitely not the kind of girl who wakes up tear-stained and hollow-cheeked on a bright morning in March and decides that today must not pass like other days, and so begins baking a cake that no one will eat. Not the kind of girl who goes out into the yard and the unexplored fields beyond to pick the early violets. Not the kind of girl who sits on the kitchen floor, cradling an empty canister, marveling at the drifts of crumbs and cobwebs and fluffy snarls of cat hair collected below the cabinets. I raised the glass. Peered in. Jostled it to dislodge the last few grains, just enough to coat a moist finger tip. Licked the fleeting sweetness. I’m not like that, but today I am. I needed half a cup of sugar. And a broom. ***

It’s getting hotter now, and the pulse is beating like a hollow drum in the walls. I’m on a journey to the center.

***

I’m not the kind of girl who wanders outside, barefoot and clad in an egg white-streaked apron, tear-stained cheeks camouflaged by flour smudges, clutching my empty measuring cup like a baking beggar woman. Supplicant with measuring cup, my triptych could be called. Halfway down the path I realized I’d forgotten my shoes.

***

The old lady gave me shoes, but those are gone now too. And the measuring cup. I think I dropped it on the way up the ladder. I am that kind of girl. I lose things: small things, big things, everything. It began with thimbles, left socks, right earrings. Grocery lists. Birth certificates. Phone numbers. Light bulbs. Favorite books. Favorite lovers. Things I love. The first neighbor didn’t say anything about my bare feet. She wasn’t wearing shoes either. She stood inside the house with a baby on her right hip and a little boy clinging to her left. He stared at me as if I was the one who lost all his Legos. “You’re the lady who moved in couple weeks ago?” she asked, friendly. “Stop staring, Jack.” But she didn’t have sugar. She sent her little daughter to check; the daughter came back chewing her hair, complaining that there were no Pop-Tarts, either. “I should keep a better pantry,” the young mother said. “Come back, later? Soon.” I thought she was about my age, young beneath her worry lines. I guess we all lose something, no matter how hard we try. She sent me to Don, the graying divorcee down the street. He didn’t have sugar, either. “Since Susan left, I haven’t done much cooking,” he admitted. “But if you ever need to borrow a frozen dinner or a can of pork ‘n’ beans, I’m your man.” He laughed loudly, like his own private tragedy was the funniest thing going. I laughed, too. “You shouldn’t run around without shoes, though,” he said. “Catch your death of cold, this time of year.” “I know,” I said. “Who’s the cake for?” “My sister. It’s her birthday.” “Try Miss Harriet for the sugar. And tell your sister I said Happy Birthday.” “I’ll try,” I said. Right now I keep wondering what I meant by that. If I already knew, somehow: there would never be any cake. If I really wanted this, whatever this is. If I had a plan. If I meant anything at all.

***

Don pointed me down the narrow country road to a house two doors away. I walked along the shoulder, shuffling and pirouetting through the winter thistles and shifting gravel and greening kudzu vines. Budding branches cast angled geometries of pale sunlight on the warmed asphalt. Birds sang in the crooks of branches as if it were the happiest day they’d ever seen. Maybe it was. I thought about the cake. The cake, when finished, would be beautiful: three luscious layers, topped with drifts of glittering white frosting, piped around the edges in curlicues of lace, sprinkled with petals of candied purple violets. (White is mournful and pure. Purple is mysterious and powerful. It was also Lee’s favorite color.) Miss Harriet took a long time to come to the door after I rang, so long that I almost walked away. She was dressed in a floral housecoat, the white strands of her hair pulled into a walnut-sized knot at the nape of her neck. “Hello?” Stooped, she stared up at me, squinting in the sunlight. “Miss Harriet?” “The very one.” “Don said you might have some sugar to spare.” “Sugar? Well, come in, come in. It’s cold out here.” Inside her living room it was warm and stuffy, thermostat set to eighty at least. A gray cat napped on a pink plastic-covered couch. There were knickknacks on all the coffee tables and faded photographs on the walls, full of memories from forgotten years when everybody smiled. I could never be old, I thought, because to be old you have to accumulate a lot of stuff. And I lose everything first. My living room would be bare with despair. But I’m pretty sure I will never have crocheted pillow covers or a ceramic owl sculpture or a Coca-Cola cuckoo clock, even to lose. I followed her into the kitchen, frozen feet tingling with the sudden heat. She was old and lonely; the stalling was inevitable. “What’s the sugar for, darling?” “I’m trying to bake a cake.” “Sugar. Let me check.” She peered slowly into a couple cabinets around the kitchen, like she couldn’t remember where anything was kept. “I was just getting Mr. Roberts his Fancy Feast.” “Mr. Roberts?” “The cat.” She peeled open a tin of cat food: salmon and tuna. The cat mewed and pleaded, throwing itself ecstatically at her ankles. I watched. “Why are you baking a cake, dear?” “For my sister. Today’s her birthday. She’d be 24. But she’s dead.” “When did you lose her?” “Last summer. Car accident. This is her first birthday after being dead.” I started to cry. “And. It’s a really fucking terrible birthday cake without frosting. So I like. I really need some sugar.”

*** I know that old lady had sugar. I can visualize her kitchen with perfect clarity, and there’s the sugar bowl, sitting on the counter in plain sight: plump ceramic, the lid ringed with a maudlin circle of blue ribbon and dancing ducks. Why didn’t I just grab it and run? I could have been back inside my house before she even made it across the street. (Heat stroke must be making me loopy. Normally I would never even consider stealing an old lady’s sugar bowl.) Blinded by tears, I didn’t think of asking for it. I was too confused by what she said next. “Have you seen the heart?” she inquired, stooping as she clutched the cat’s dish. “The. . . what?” “The heart. When you came to the door. I thought it might be yours.” Snotty-nosed, violet-stained and flour-smudged, I gaped at her. “Follow me,” she said. She gripped my elbow in her bony fingers and pulled me out of the kitchen and across the dining room, cluttered with detritus of opened-mail, half-finished craft projects, gifts for grandchildren. Everything smelled like floral perfume and old meat gravy. She pushed me to the window. I looked out at the backyard, sticky with mud and gleaming blades of new grass, a dry birdbath and a weather-faded gnome. Beyond the backyard lay a burnt wasteland, the ground a jagged scar, flat as a dinner plate. A dark mass jutted against the horizon, inarticulate and vague. A twisting path began in the backyard and wound its way through the wilderness, fading into the haze. A few fires burned, contained. Even the sky was ashen gray. “It just landed there. A while back now,” the old woman said. “I was thinking it might be something important, but I have trouble getting around.” “And? What does it have to do with me? It’s not a gigantic lump of sugar, is it?” (I was still crying, more pitiful than bratty. Though maybe both.) “Well, I called my son about it. He didn’t seem to understand. He thinks I should be in a home, you know. But Mr. Roberts. . . I don’t think he’d like that too much. . .” I took a tissue from the box on the table and blew my nose. “So you want me to go check it out.” “I thought maybe I could call the police, but it’s not really committing any crimes, is it? Maybe. . . trespassing?” “I’m not even wearing shoes.” “Oh, don’t worry, dear. You can borrow mine.”

***

She gave me her house shoes, the only ones that fit. And then I set out. I walked the winding pathway, toward the fires burning in the distance, flickering beacons with drifting columns of smoke. The feverish air was clogged with smoke, hard to breathe. I held my apron to my mouth and choked through. Rocks stabbed my feet through the slippers, and the scorched earth burned my soles. But already I’ve almost forgotten that journey, as I’ve begun another. The present absorbs the past, so that even memory is lost or becomes impossible to hold. Even candied violets won’t last more than a few weeks; maybe I should have made sour pickles. A crow flew past, then landed by my feet. It hopped beside me, a crude blotch of a bird like a child’s drawing. “Where are you going? What are you doing?” “I’m looking for sugar.” “Where are you going? What are you doing?” “I’m investigating the heart.” It cawed harshly in a caustic imitation of a laugh, then flew away. On the horizon, the inarticulate mass grew bigger, until it blotted out the sky and I walked in its shadow. The bloated contour remained blurry, undefined. I guess that’s what a heart looks like when you view it from the wrong angle. Blood leaked down the side, trickling like a stream down a cliff face. Beneath the heart, the black ground was sodden with blood. I placed my palm against the pulsating wall, and felt the shuddering beat reverberate through my body, struggling to keep time when so much else was lost. I circled the thing. There, on the far side, leaned a ladder—like it was left for me by firemen, or a hapless teenage lover caught climbing into my heart’s window. The ladder was narrow yet sturdy, expandable and made of aluminum. I did what anyone would do, confronted with such a ladder. I began to climb. Yes. Now you see. One foot, one hand at a time. Step, reach, climb. I dropped the measuring cup and began to climb faster. The climb continued. I lost track of time. I couldn’t see the sky: all I saw was the heart. Finally I reached the top. There was a gash, jagged like a logging scar. From the wound leaked blood, flowing in rhythm like waves, blood welling over the edge with each beat. I stood at the top of the ladder and looked down. At this point there was no other way to go: either back down the ladder or down into the heart. So I fell. Dived from the top of the ladder into the open wound. Into the narrows. Into the gash. Into the leaking canal. I tunneled and crawled, the warm blood dripping onto my face, the spongy tissue springy beneath my palms like turf in a playground. The tunnel angled downward, constricting then widening again. And I crawled and crawled, squeezing through the narrowest parts, flesh sliding against moist flesh. I lost my shoes and kept crawling, knees rubbed bare.

***

And now I’m here, tunneling through. It’s hot—about 98 degrees, I guess. My salty sweat mixes with metallic blood, flowing down my forehead, stinging my eyes, collecting at the corners of my mouth. As I move toward the center, this constricted universe grows more tender. My hands sink deeper into flesh and viscera, sticking at times in the spongy ground. I imagine myself crawling through a Southeast Asian jungle, but all the foliage is dripping red. Keep going forward. Keeping going forward. With nothing else left to think about, I think about Lee. She’d just graduated from college. She was a dancer. She wanted to live in New York City. I would have visited her there: to fuss over sardine-can apartment, cockroach-infested kitchen, bedbug-colonized couch. Funny, I’m the one who finds myself in cramped accommodations now. Keep going forward. Keeping going forward. Endless summer evening, driving home from the airport, new darkness crawling the horizon as the sun crept away to its own side of the world. (You stay on your side. I’ll stay on mine.) There were two drivers involved in the crash. One of them was drunk. One of them was me. I should have seen him weaving, but I was laughing instead. Laughing at Lee, telling a story about the flight. (You stay on your side. I’ll stay on mine.) He crossed the line, headlights in my eyes, and I swerved away, into the. . . Into the future where there was nothing left to lose. Keep going forward. Keeping going forward. I hope I reach the center soon. I don’t know how much longer I can keep going. A terrible thought strikes me. What if there is no ending? What if the tunnel goes on forever, down into the center of the earth and beyond? After all, it has been getting hotter. I’m almost there. I tell myself. I’m almost there. I’ve lost my apron. I’ve lost my shoes. I decide to take off my dress, too: it’s sticky and dripping wet, tangling around my knees as I try to crawl. So I come to the center naked and empty, holding nothing. The center is hollow, the size of a child’s tent. Finally I can stand, just barely: scraping my hair against the… ceiling? The walls glow translucent pink, light emanating from just beyond the flesh. I sit. I stretch my legs, then hug them to my chest. Before me are two doors, side by side. Two dripping red doors with blown glass knobs. Etched on the doors is looping cursive, written in a language I don’t understand. I feel I should know which door to take. I know my heart, after all. Don’t I? But I don’t. So I wait. Curled up against the beating wall of my heart I’m calm at last, floating in a peaceful dream. Reliving lucid hallucinations of days past, memories more real than this surreal and unlikely place that I’ve come. A tent in the backyard at midnight. A blanket fort in a sunny room. A hut at the beach. A fashion magazine shared under the covers, read by flashlight. Every small and safe place we ever shared together. I pray to return to small and safe places. No more stretching highways, no more burnt wastelands, no more empty skies. A picnic on a hillside in the spring, Lee pirouetting to her favorite song as it played on the radio. A breaking wave that sucked us under as we danced in the ocean, tasting salt. A clear night blazing with stars as we lay in sleeping bags and talked about other worlds. Sleepily I dream of the worlds that were and the worlds that will be, but gently and firmly the center brings me back to the world that is. Before me are two doors, side by side. I press my face against the door to the right. I hear Lee’s favorite song again; if I’m very silent and very still, if I hold my breath, I hear her laughter too. I press my face against the door to the left. There’s only the rhythmic silence of my beating heart. The truth is you never know where the door will lead, but I still know which door to take. I take the door to the left. Naked I emerged from this door, and naked I return. The glass knob is slippery in my grasp. The door swings open and I step forward, into the blinding light. Another step, and the light fades into the cool brilliance and blue skies of a beautiful spring day. The breeze on my forehead cools the sweat and dries the tears. I breath deeply of fresh air that smells like heaven. Another step. I take the winding path, rocky as ever but lush with violets. I don’t look back until I reach the edge of the old lady’s backyard. Behind me, on the horizon, the wounded heart grows smaller and smaller. Dark and vague as a bird in flight, it flaps its wings and flies away.

Desirina Boskovich is a freelance writer, specializing in weird, fantastic and unlikely things, both true and imaginary. She’s also obsessed with avocados, llamas, perfume and keys. Her work is forthcoming in The Way of the Wizard, and has previously appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, Realms of Fantasy and Last Drink Bird Head. She lives in Brooklyn, where she pets cats, drinks coffee, and enjoys other stereotypical things. Find her online at crackingdes.livejournal.com. The Seal of Sulaymaan Tracy Canfield

1.

Back when there were other ifriit to talk to, I’d tell them Morocco was as far as you can get from Mecca without leaving civilization. In Agadir, with its casinos and five-star hotels and nightclubs filled with Moroccan tourists sporting European fashions too daring to wear at home, even these most fractious of beings could not have argued; but here, a mere twenty miles out of town, I could barely have spoken the words myself without laughing. A thousand and one trashbags flapped and snapped on the branches of the argan trees, blown by the June breeze from every dump in the country. A plastic Ayn Sultaan bottle arced from the window of a passing truck, trailing a mist of carbonated mineral water, and bounced in the dust. Except for the bags, the bottle, and the asphalt road, the landscape was much as I had always known it: rolling hills and twisted gray-green trees, dust and blue sky. One tall tree had been cleared of bags, and a herd of goats perched among its branches, nibbling the pointed argan fruit. A goatherd in a dusty jalbiib leaned on his stick and watched them. I thought of King Sulaymaan (may they build a halaal McDonalds on his grave) leaning on his own stick and took a step out of my way to crush the Ayn Sultaan bottle under my heel. I had arrived at a discreet distance, but I needn’t have bothered. The goatherd was facing the other way, and the only other people in sight were three men minding an argan oil stand by the road. Nothing new about that, either, though nowadays they displayed their wares on a folding table instead of a carpet, and the jugs were plastic. The goatherd turned to greet me. I’d heard the phrase before, but wasn’t sure of the proper response. I’d never learned Berber. “Good morning,” I said in Arabic. “Good morning.” He placed his right hand over his heart. The sun had left his face cracked and dark. “Please accept this, O pilgrim.” I handed him a twenty-dirham note. I can afford to be generous. He thanked me. I circled the tree slowly. The creature I was looking for was more like a goat than anything else. Perhaps I could learn something here. The argan’s branches were perhaps an inch across, narrower than the goats’ cleft hooves, but they walked daintily to the very tips to get at the fruit. The argan nuts inside fall to the ground—that’s where argan oil comes from. The goats watched me indifferently from slotted round eyes. “You speak Classical Arabic,” said the goatherd. “You sound like a book.” “I suppose I would.” Moroccans call it “Classical Arabic” even when it’s on their televisions. From my accent he seemed to conclude I was a tourist. And I suppose a Moroccan woman would have been traveling with her husband, or at least a woman friend. But who would I ask to accompany me? I’m not about to explain my affairs to a lesser jinni. Or a human. “You may take pictures,” said the goatherd. “Go ahead.” I wasn’t carrying a camera, so I produced one from my jacket pocket. Fluffy kids, too small to climb, drummed on the trunk with their forefeet. The goatherd lifted one up and set it on a branch. “That’s a good picture,” he said. “Cute. I’ve never seen a camera like that. Is it Japanese?” Maybe there was nothing I could learn from these tame animals. My quarry was feral, born to wild jinn goats who had not known masters for generations. But argan nuts, argan oil. . . that gave me an idea. . . The three men from the stand wandered over. They wore jeans and short-sleeved shirts with plastic buttons, but they were clearly the goatherd’s sons. Thirty years ago his hair had been as thick and black; thirty years from now their faces would be as crackled with wrinkles. They hadn’t brought the argan oil—that was for Moroccans to cook with, and I was obviously foreign. One had a split geode which would have been prettier if the crystals hadn’t been stained red with iodine. Another, a handful of bracelets—he ran his lighter under them to show me they were real stones, not plastic. The third held a tarnished copper bottle. It was engraved with prayers in a language no human now spoke. Its neck was sealed with a sign I had contemplated for centuries when I was trapped beneath it. I rushed away in a wind, and the plastic bags shook, but not as much as I.

***

2.

There’s a Moroccan curse—”May you perform your ablutions with the urine of a Jewish jinni.” Blasphemy, piss, anti-Semitism, and the nameless fear of the jinn, melded with poetic succinctness. If you could put a dog in there, it’d be perfect. It was Allah who made the first jinn from the smokeless fire, but we are not all of one faith. Once there were indeed Jewish jinn—a few worked for Sulaymaan (may his name be cursed among humans as it is among jinn) but I haven’t seen one since I was freed. The Christians teach that the Christ died for men alone, so any Christian jinni would be a heretic and perforce no Christian. Many humans believe that when some jinn accepted the teachings of Muhammad (peace be upon him, though I’m under no particular compunction to say so), the rest allied with Ibliss, the strongest of the ifriit and the most insincere of shaitaan if you ask me. They forget that many of us were still confined in Sulaymaan’s bottles during the days of the Prophet (pbuh). We emerged to find that many jinn, including some who were greatly honored among us, had submitted to this new religion; while others (many just as honored) had taken Ibliss’s oaths. I. . . I thought I would have more time to decide.

*** 3.

The argan oil had given me an idea, but it had to wait for morning. The sun was low, and the clean expanse of the Sahara was so near that I could not keep it from my thoughts. I did not think the desert would raise my spirits after the sight of that bottle, but I longed to return once more. A human would have to jolt down a rutted desert path in a jeep for half an hour to reach the nearest guest house, but I can go anywhere as quickly as I can think of it. Unfortunately, so can my goat-like quarry, and until I can learn where it wants to go, I will never catch it. All my magic will not tell me where it is. When Sulaymaan (may diabetic dogs discover an affection for his tombstone) was old, he walked with a cane. He was leaning on it, overseeing jinn workers, when he died. But the cane held him up, and the jinn kept working for forty days and forty nights until termites chewed the cane away and the body fell down. Only then did they realize he was dead. Truly Allah alone is all-knowing. I think the goat is looking for me, too. I took a male form and sidled over a small dune. The rental camels had handles on their saddles so they wouldn’t spill the tourists when they seesawed to their feet. Once I had camels of my own, white and black horses that loved to run, a tame cheetah who brought me the bones of its kills and stropped its spotted face on my thigh. Now the good-looking young guide was insisting on taking my hand to help me onto the saddle, and leading my mount with a rope. I didn’t mind. It was pleasant to rock with the camels’ gait, pleasant to watch our shadows ripple across the sand, pleasant to contemplate the guide’s long legs in his blue pants. We crossed three dunes before we halted in a spot chosen, I think, so the guesthouse and its campgrounds would be concealed. The guide—Hassan, half the young men in Morocco are named Hassan at the moment—sat beside me and offered me polished fossils from the nearby beds at tourist prices. For Hassan the Sahara was spare and empty, but he could not see as I do. We, the ifriit, the greatest among the jinn, we built our cities here. Our roads stretched from from the ocean west of Africa to the salt sea to its east. But long ago the trumpets had sounded. Allah and Iblis had summoned their ifriit troops. Where they fought, whether they fight now, I do not know. It was not they who laid waste to our kingdoms, but indifferent, implacable time. Our jinn beasts rut and grow misshapen in our ruins, and of all the ifriit I alone remain to see it. “Where are you from?” said Hassan. I started. “Do you know the Ghaylaan Valley?” I said. “In the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia?” “Isn’t it near Mecca?” “Maybe even a little too near.” We watched the sun set on two landscapes. Sand sifted across the broken jinn thoroughfares. Below us, three lesser jinn squatted on their haunches among the toppled slabs of an ifriit home. They had long ago looted the last of its treasures, torn them apart in their squabbles and never used them—our scrolls and our tapestries, our chessboards and our ouds. What once was a jinn dog unwound itself across the road. The sun sets so fast here, in the dry air. “Will you (if Allah is willing) dine at the guest house?” said Hassan. “Have you seen it? We have carpets on the sand and you dine under the stars. There is music, Berber music, drumming and dancing.” He smiled. “I know a place we could go afterwards.” I smiled myself. Once two human kings traveling in the wilderness saw a jinni approaching and hid in a tree. The jinni landed beneath them and set down a chest locked with heavy chains. He opened it and took out a beautiful human woman. After the jinni had fallen asleep, the woman waved at the two men and made it clear by means of gestures that she wished them to do as the jinni had done. They shook their heads but she gestured that she would wake the jinni, who would kill them. So they did as she wished. Afterwards she slipped the rings from their fingers and threaded them onto a long cord with many others. The jinni, she said, had abducted her on her wedding night so she would never know another; but despite all his precautions she had ninety-eight rings on her cord. For humans it is a story about the perfidy of women, but originally it was a story for jinn. For us it is about the perils of desiring humans.

***

4.

I waited on a Qalat Maguunah street for a perfume shop to open. I didn’t care which one. There are twenty in a row, all essentially alike. The first nineteen yielded nothing. Let me tell you the tale of the twentieth. I could have touched the opposite walls of the shop with my outstretched arms, and I was not in one of my larger forms. It would have seemed tiny if I hadn’t spent all those centuries in a bottle. The pop concert poster inside the door was the only thing that wasn’t pink. Pink bottles held rosewater shampoo. Pink tins held rosewater lip balm. Pink heart-shaped soaps were piled on the counter. It was like being inside a human’s body on a sunny day. The owner showed me the same rosewater hand lotion, rosewater anti-wrinkle drops, and rosewater- scented cosmetics I had seen nineteen times before. Here and there I saw a few tan cakes of argan soap, the source of my inspiration. There was rosewater in atomizers, cheap plastic pumps, little glass jars, all labeled in Arabic and what was probably French. I never learned French. “I would like your advice, O pilgrim,” I said at last. “I am looking for something exceptional. My mother lives next to a tannery, and at times the stench is not to be described. I need something very strong, but also very pleasant.” “Something for the lady’s mother.” He closed his eyes and nodded. “I know exactly the thing. My brother-in-law has a perfume shop in Fes, and a few days ago there was a terrible odor in the air. Goats rutting, he said, were more fragrant by far.” “Indeed?” I said. I felt such excitement that I feared he would see the smokeless fire in my eyes. “Like rancid chicken guts boiled in shiishah water, he said. So I sent him this.” He pulled a cut-glass bottle out from under the counter. “This is the finest rose oil in Dades Valley. The merchants from Suuq Al-Attaariin lined up to buy from him. Your mother will love it (if Allah is willing).” “He’s in Suuq Al-Attaariin?” The perfume-makers’ suuq. This might just be a colorful specific calculated to lower my sales resistance. Still, it sounded more promising than anything I’d heard at the last nineteen shops. The proprietor clinked the bottle on the counter to suggest I was missing the point. “His shop isn’t in the suuq. It’s a big shop. Let me give you his card. I sent him my whole stock and it sold by noon.” “Except this bottle.” “Only because I missed it.” I bought it. I couldn’t see why not.

***

5. I wandered the Fes suuqs in the shape of a black dog, dodging kicks and thinking up curses. My goatlike enemy had not been here—I was sure of it. Its reek was like no other. But there was another smell, a harmony to the jinn- goat’s melody. . . less jinn and more mortal, less fire and more earth. I followed it past a butcher shop with a camel’s head hanging from a hook in the ceiling. Even as a dog, the smell of fresh meat repelled me. Jinn do not eat flesh. The piles of dried apricots and figs next door were almost as bad, and the shopkeeper threw a rock at me. The source of the musk was nearby, I was sure of it. But the crooked lanes conspired to lead me away whenever I seemed to be getting closer. I thought I saw the copper bottle among a dozen brass hands of Fatima, but I kept going. Even if I was wrong, Fatima had been no friend to the jinn. Five in your own eye, Fatima. The trail, faint as childhood memory, led me out of the suuqs and onto the street. A driver leapt from his car to berate a tailgater in three languages. A bus from the girls’ school passed, and a teenaged boy swerved his convertible so his friends could hold up signs with their cell phone numbers. I darted between pedestrians in Western and traditional clothes. A Berber pharmacy’s herb baskets ignited a fireworks display of scents in my nostrils. But the musk was like a drumbeat that can be heard regardless of how many other instruments play. I followed it to a great house—some merchant’s home, once. The high walls were topped with broken glass to keep intruders out, for all the difference it made. I flew invisibly to the open patio atop the house. The flat roofs of Fes, studded with satellite dishes, were heaped in every direction around me. A dog again, I trotted down the steep stairs. Wool threads trembled in the air, clung to my wet nose, made me sneeze. Every room was filled with carpets: stacked flat, in piles eight feet high; rolled like woolen pillars; hung from the walls. The colors were wasted on me—dogs’ eyes don’t work that way. The putrid stench flowed from the fifth carpet from the bottom of an enormous stack. I returned to my usual unseen form, and the musk smell cut off as abruptly as a snuffed flame. It must have shifted when the rug arrived in the city, then dimmed with time. Jinn magic is like that, sometimes. The residue of ill-made wishes accumulates in the old places, and accursed things flare in its presence. But with no one to shape these forces they soon smolder and die. I lifted the other carpets and set them aside. Most Moroccan carpets are variants on common themes— medallions and tulips, big geometric Berber patterns— but this one was a stark field of red-orange. Bent lines and striped squares wandered across it without any pattern I could discern. I set the other carpets back on top of it and left invisibly. I returned the next morning (as a human) to the conventional entrance. Rashiid, a balding salesman, answered the door and told me the shop was part of a collective. Rural women wove the carpets, but as it would be improper for them to work as saleswomen, the men in Fes handled that side of the business. “Where do the weavers live?” I asked. “All over Morocco. Every region,” he said. “We can get you any style you want.” Mint tea was produced, and Rashiid and I sat and talked before I looked at any of his wares. The carpet is a gift for my son, I said. I have measured the room, chosen the colors. We have visitors from all over the world, said the salesman. He himself speaks French of course, German, English, Italian, and Turkish—at least when it comes to carpets. I asked him how high he could count in Turkish. High enough, he said. How did I like Morocco? How long had I been here? Had I looked at any other carpets yet? I would certainly prefer his. Moroccans and their carpets! Every human in this country knows a carpet salesman who will give them a little something for steering them a sale. Even though hardly any Moroccan carpets fly. Something orange, I said, would be best. And it began. Rashiid’s assistants rushed in with carpets in every shade of the setting sun, unrolling them side by side, snap-snap-snap. Something lighter? Darker? Yellower? An Arab pattern, or a Berber? Rejected rugs piled up on the floor. The salesman was undeterred. So was I. I hadn’t yet seen what I was looking for, but I knew Rashiid would happily show me every carpet he had if he thought there was a sale to be made. When the musk-touched carpet appeared, I made a wholly unnecessary inspection of the reverse. The knots were a bit irregular; the carpet was made by hand, not by machine. The summer and the winter sides were equally colorful and strange. “You have excellent taste,” said the salesman. “That’s the Rehamna style.” “Where was this made?” I asked. “Here in Fes?” “No, no. This is real village craftsmanship. From Asni.” I listened carefully for any trace of glibness but heard none. He had given me the only thing I needed here. He bargained as fiercely as I’d expect from a Moroccan carpet salesman. I drove him down lower than he realized he’d go. I could have just flown away, but I bought the carpet. I can produce modern banknotes as easily as I once did gold coins. I can afford to be generous.

***

6.

I found the hammaam on a side street, if a village as small as Asni could be said to have side streets. I was in luck—the sign said tonight was a women’s night. I entered invisibly. I always feel a ripple of pride when I smell the soap and feel the steam tickle my nose. I designed the first hammaam for the Queen of Sheba, to make her goat-haired legs white like silver when she met with Sulaymaan (may his descendants consider him a baseless legend). The changing-room television was turned low, but it echoed harshly off the tiled walls anyway. Two tayyabataan giggled so hard at a soap opera that their big brown-nippled breasts quivered. Business must have been slow for the bath attendants to be in here instead of the steam rooms. It is true we jinn are drawn to what is unclean, dumps and dungheaps; but this place where things become clean can be our home as well. I found the lesser jinni who lived here folded up in a corner where the ceiling met the wall. “Good evening, O my child,” I said. I wondered if the empty vocative would have grated on me as much if I’d had children. The jinni squinted at me and hopped down to the floor. “Good evening, O ifriit,” she said, unseen and unheard by the customers in their flip-flops and panties. “By my horse and my spear, how I hate the sight of naked flesh.” “You could move somewhere else.” “Do you know a place?” I thought of the quiet cemetery where I lived. “No,” I said. “I used to live in a man’s urethra.” She paused, bobbing her small head and blinking her large blue eyes. “I’ve never seen a real ifriit before,” she went on at last. The lesser jinn are stupid. “Are any of the carpet weavers here tonight?” I asked. “The ones from the collective?” “A couple.” “They’re Rahamna, are they not? Arabs?” “I see why everyone says the ifriit were stuck in the past. Don’t worry.” The jinn grinned an inhumanly wide grin. “I know loads of Berber.” After pissing me off by pointing out a woman who turned out to be the local English teacher, and another who was a tayyaba, the jinni indicated two women washing side by side and speaking (praise be to Allah, because I’m not giving that jinni any of the credit) Arabic. I leaned down. You do wonderful work, I whispered, considering what you have to work with. One woman’s brow furrowed. “It’s really too bad we can’t consistently get a good grade of wool,” she said. Sometimes—She dumped a bucked of water on her head. Sometimes it smells. “You remember how I had to keep washing the wool we got from Yattuy a while back.” That’s a Berber name, and she clearly knew him personally. He couldn’t be far. “Yes, yes, I remember,” said her friend merrily. “That reminds me. . . Larbi called from Fes today,” she said. “Some Saudi paid way too much for the rug I put that wool in. Now Larbi’s wondering if I could do another just like it.” “Stupid Saudis,” crowed the jinni, like a rooster that’s seen an angel. That was all I could tolerate. And I’m not even Saudi! There was an Arabia long before the Saudis. I flew home for a dinner of bones on which the name of Allah had not been written and some rest, but the goat had found my resting place. Musk hung in the air thick as smoke. The tombs were smashed open, trampled all over with cloven hoofprints. The goat-beast had even left me a gift: a copper bottle.

***

7.

A jinni once tried to teach sheep the alphabet, but gave up after baa. I have heard sheep say “alif” but it doesn’t happen very often. The sheep reciting their lessons at me now were penned in a round enclosure woven from brush, or clenched between the boots of the Berber men shearing them. They didn’t struggle, didn’t alter their flat tone or their impassive expressions. Baa baa baa, they said, as they’d been taught. “Cigarettes?” said a boy of about twelve. His younger brother mimed. “Do you have any cigarettes?” I tossed him a pack and he examined them curiously. “French?” he said. They must have looked wrong. “Saudi,” I said. “Would you like to have tea with us?” For a tip, I understood. Berber shepherds are nomads, so finding every Yattuy on the plains around Asni had taken me some time. Bribing a town bureaucrat wouldn’t have helped, since there’s a government ban on registering Berber names. At least the purple and red flowers in the fields were pretty at this time of year. I had even learned some Berber: aghrum d wattay, “bread and tea.” The boys’ mother welcomed me into a round tent covered with layers of woolen blankets. The side facing the road was open. I hoped the boys, who were outside kicking around a punctured water bottle, wouldn’t go looking for my car. Yattuy’s wife Tagwillult had a blue tattoo beneath her lower lip and a small curly-haired girl pouting behind her skirt. I wondered if Tagwillult’s hair was as curly under her scarf. The teenage daughter who’d had the most school came in to translate for me. “European students with backpacks come through here all the time,” she said. Berber music played on a battery-powered radio in the cabinet where the tea set was kept. “They fly on airplanes and cross the sea to take pictures of sheep.” I tore off a piece of flat bread. Flies clouded around it and strolled across the butter. It wasn’t bones or rock or dung, so I wouldn’t actually eat it, but no one will ever know. “I don’t think they know a normal sheep from an odd one,” she went on. “Last year when the lambs were born, one looked very strange. When the time came, we sheared it and found Arabic writing on the skin. I read it.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. I didn’t know if she was translating or narrating. “It said shaitaan seed ruin all shaitaan, all wound together.” “That isn’t even grammatical,” I said. Stupid jinn- goat. She chanted her words like a reluctant witness testifying before a cruel magistrate. “We killed it. We didn’t eat any of it. We burned it all. We sold the wool, though. The wool wasn’t the problem.” And not even with another goat, but with a sheep! Disgusting. Outside, a boy muttered something in Berber. I didn’t know the words, but I know a wish when I hear it. “Would the boys like a soccer ball?” I said. “I got it for my son, but his grandmother had already bought him one. I was wondering what to do with it.” “You have a soccer ball with you?” said the girl in evident surprise. “It’s in my car,” I said. So I had to make a car after all.

***

I sat on a minaret in another city and let the amplified call to prayer thrum through my invisible bones. I couldn’t chaperone every eligible sheep in Morocco. My search was mere folly. I had no clues. But had I done all I could with the ones I had? There was something else to learn from the goats in the trees. Goats will go to great trouble to get exactly what they want. I didn’t need to locate a desirable sheep. I just needed for the goat to think I had one. And how hard could it be to fool? It was a goat. ***

8.

I bought a sheep, instead of making one, for fear my conjuration would stick to it and make it smell strange. I did give it a salon shampoo and trim, and spritzed rosewater behind its ears. It didn’t have much patience with the lipstick, and it ate the veil. Jmaa el Fnaa, the biggest square in Marrakesh, has changed so little in the time I’ve known it that the differences aren’t worth noting. I wandered in human form among the entertainers. Two dancers, bearded beneath their veils, shook their sequined skirts to the laughter of the crowd. A comic performer told a folktale I had witnessed myself, about a man scheming to trick the angel Jibriil into giving him a motorcycle. The different voices for each character were inspired even if they didn’t achieve documentary accuracy. Tourists fed cherries to chained Barbary apes and snapped digital pictures. Sometimes I’ve whispered in the fortune-tellers’ ears, told them secret truths mixed with whatever falsehoods amused me, but there would be none of that now. What could you want that isn’t sold here? How could you be dissatisfied here? Well, in my case, I grant, I can’t buy that goat-beast. And a human could get their pocket picked. I set up my tent between a snake charmer with a rugful of harmless charges and a henna hand-painter who kept trying to shove her book of designs at me before she realized what I was doing. Their hangers-on menaced me, but I threatened to give them the evil eye, and apparently they found the threat as credible as it was. For forty days and forty nights I stood on the square, shouting “Behind this curtain, and nowhere else in the world, you will (if Allah is willing) see the most beautiful sheep ever born! Her eyelashes are silk feathers, her rump rivals the gazelle’s. Her fleece is as white as fat and fluffy as the spring cloud. Her bleat, song made pure!” Business was slow. The sheep knew something was wrong before I did. It kept up its baa baa so insistently that passersby stopped to goggle, which was more than I usually managed. A slow wind crept across the square. A rack of T- shirts inscribed in European languages waved its welcome. The henna painter’s customer winced, and the painter bit her lip, wondering how to fix the pattern. The kick would have killed me in human form. But I had already changed. I crashed into the lantern shop behind me. A million dirhams’ worth of craftsmanship banged down on my head. I picked myself up and faced my foe for the first time. It stood with one melon-sized hoof on the wreckage of my tent. Its two goat heads were fused. Two mad yellow eyes shared a single central socket. Two more stared off to either side. Yellow slime hung in ropes from its snouts, and its matted black fur was as stiff and sharp as scrap iron. Two pointed gray tongues licked square yellow teeth. “Shaitaan,” said one head, with a mouth that had never been made for words. “I,” said the other. The monster lowered four horns at me and charged. I leapt aside, grabbed for a horn, and got a handful of greasy fur instead. The beast shook. My knuckles bounced off a marble-hard muscular body and I went shooting towards an orange-squeezing stand. I didn’t knock the stand over, but that’s really because I hit two customers first. Panic caught here and there among the crowd, like the first raindrops disturbing a still pond. The humans could not see or hear us, but the lantern-seller was standing in front of his shop abusing everyone in earshot, the women I’d knocked down were wringing juice out of their skirts, and the goat shook the pavement with every step. I did not have the strength to pierce its hide, but I refused to believe this being of accursed ancestry could defeat me. I had all the guile of the ifriit. What did it have? Two heads as big as a wardrobe, and a goat’s wit within. It bounded to a roof and wailed. I alone could hear, but every mortal creature in Marrakesh trembled. It lowered its double head and snorted. Its horns twisted like poisoned serpents and glistened like poisoned scimitars. With the force of the gale, the earthquake, with a might like the word of truth, it hurled itself down at me. And when its spittle touched me and I felt its hot breath on my face, I conjured a lance. It hung impaled above me. Its lips formed some final oath. Its eyes fogged. Its body went limp. Something moved inside my tent. I flew over and lifted the flap. The sheep was unscathed. Perhaps the goat had wanted to save it for later. “Baa,” said the sheep. “Baa baa baa baa alif.” The crowd was in such a tumult that I didn’t bother looking for a private place to turn human. The goat and I had moved across the square like an unseen cyclone. An umbrella-topped table from a rooftop restaurant lay on the street, surrounded by shattered neon tubes that had once hawked women’s clothing. Licensed guides hurried their infidel customers elsewhere. A beggar took a skewer from a kebab stand with a deft hand, then a second. Someone tugged my sleeve. I turned, preparing to give the evil eye. “Good evening.” A short, plump man in a round hat and a white jalbiib smiled at me congenially. “Could I interest you in this bottle?” I sucked in my breath. What warped magic brought this thing back to haunt me? But before I had seen as stupidly as the goat, with my heart and not my mind. This was indeed one of the ancient instruments of imprisonment, but it was no threat to me. The seal of Sulaymaan was intact. No one was going to trap me in this bottle. Some other ifriit was already inside. I paid the man. I didn’t even bargain—he seemed startled. The smokeless fire within warmed the copper. Imagine, to be locked away in the days of the ancient kings, and emerge in the days of the personal computer. A millennium passes in that copper chamber, and you wait, wondering if the human who will free you has yet been born, never guessing that you are bobbing in the currents of an old and undirected magic that will carry you inexorably towards the last of your kind. I ran my thumb along the green-tarnished neck. We may become lovers, we may become enemies, but you are alone no longer, and neither am I. I broke the seal.

Tracy Canfield’s first fiction sale was to a magazine that promptly folded. Her next fared better: “Starship Down” won the Analytical Laboratory award for best short story appearing in Analog. Since then, she’s had other fiction in Analog and forthcoming elsewhere. Canfield is a PhD candidate in linguistics at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, and is about to put her graduate education to good use by flying to Australia to record an audio tour in Klingon for the Jenolan Caves. The Stable Master’s Tale Rachel Swirsky

I was born a baron’s daughter in a kingdom that no longer exists. My father’s stables were the most important part of his holdings. By the time I had ten summers, I could soothe a panicked stallion and help birth a breech foal. By the time I was fifteen, I’d realized I didn’t want to marry into some tedious house where I’d be expected to dedicate my life to child-rearing and embroidery. I knew this fate would inevitably befall me if I stayed, and so I packed a few things and snuck away in the night. I walked alone for days until I crossed the border into the kingdom of Thelden where I submitted myself to the king for a position in the stables. King Eram accepted my petition, not because he suspected I had any talent, but because he found it amusing to insult my former queen by employing one of her noblewomen as a menial. Over the years, I proved myself as more than a way to annoy neighboring monarchs. When the old stable master died, King Eram appointed me in his place. I wore a long green skirt when I went to attend him. I curtsied. The king laughed. “Wear your riding clothes. A woman like you should bow.” That same year, invaders took the kingdom where I was born, and put its nobles to the blade. My father’s surviving servants wrote me letters about how it happened. The invaders approached my father’s lands on a cool, autumn day, when he was out working with his trainers to break new foals. The enemy didn’t even recognize him; a foot soldier thoughtlessly cut his throat as they rode past. The rest of my family died before the sun reached noon. It’s painful to remember them—my brothers, my sisters, my parents, my cousins. When I do, a single memory dominates. It was summer and I was six summers old, standing in the corral with my eldest brother. The day was hot and golden, the air strong with the reek of flowers and horse droppings. My brother sat beside me, stealing a moment to practice the flute he’d wheedled from our nurse. A great wind began to blow. My brother jumped to his feet. At first, I thought he was scared; my brother was as lazy as a housecat, and ordinarily nothing but a swat on the rear could make him move quickly. The horses panicked, tossing their heads, eyes wild. The rushing wind gained speed. Yet my brother laughed. He spread his arms to the sky. “What? What is it?” I demanded. He picked me up. I saw nothing. “Look toward the mountains,” he shouted. Suddenly, I saw them: great, golden bodies extending enormous gossamer wings. There were half a dozen flying in a circle, chasing each other’s tails. Sunlight sparkled off their bodies. They were glorious and terrifying. I whimpered and hid my eyes. “Don’t worry,” my brother said. “They’re too far away to hurt you.” The great golden bodies circled in the darkness behind my eyelids. They were terrifying. They were beautiful. By the time I opened my eyes, the dragons were gone. I did not see a dragon again for many years.

***

I was helping the stable hands muck out the stalls when the king’s messenger rushed in. He was a child, eight or nine, face pink with exertion. “The knights have returned!” “Already?” I asked. We hadn’t expected them for another season. The king had sent them to clear the southern wilderness so that settlers could build another outpost between us and the ambitious southern kings. “They brought treasure,” said the messenger. “The king wants everyone to gather in the great hall.” “They couldn’t warn us? We’ve got half the stalls left to do.” “They brought treasure!” The boy’s eyes glittered with excitement. My stable hands had been taken by the same spirit. Jerod and Barr stared at us, gape-mouthed, grips slack on their shovels. They’d be disappointed when they saw the knights’ treasure was only moldy relics and uncut stones. “Come on then,” I said. “Enjoy your reprieve. You can finish tonight.” The messenger led us outside, sprinting when we hit the cold air. He crunched a trail in the snow leading back to the castle. We nodded at the guards as we crossed the drawbridge, our boots trailing snow on the flagstones as we entered the great hall. Courtiers, servants, and townsfolk gathered inside. Noblemen wore expensive fashions, but our homespun fare wasn’t out of place; Thelden was a poor kingdom. King Eram and Queen Senna sat on their thrones, eight-year-old Princess Amory on a small chair beside them. The princess had caught the assembly’s excitement. She wriggled in her seat, trying to look everywhere at once. Trumpets blared. The crowd turned. The king’s favorite, Sir Kenley, paraded in and sketched a long, overwrought salute with his sword. The other knights marched behind him, their armor stained with dirt and rust from long months on the road. The squires entered last, dragging carts of treasure. Everyone bustled. Exclamations of awe pierced the air as the contents caught the torchlight. Gold and silver spilled glitteringly out of canvas sacks, accentuating the sparkle of diadems and jeweled goblets. Even I was taken aback. Where had our knights found such treasure? Sir Kenley removed his helm. “Your Highness. We were clearing the southern wilderness by your royal command when suddenly one of our squires was taken by —” he paused, drawing in the crowd’s attention—“a dragon.” Women screamed. Those in over-tight bodices fainted. “We followed the creature back to its lair. It was so enormous that it filled the entire cave. While my men fought, I stayed back, waiting for an opportunity to employ cunning rather than brawn. When the beast reared, I aimed my spear at a soft patch on its throat. By God’s grace, I struck true.” King Eram beamed with pride. Kenley offered a bow. “I have not yet shown you the greatest treasure.” He lifted a bundle wrapped in fine white cloth. The bundle squirmed, and the fabric slipped aside to reveal the snout of a baby dragon the size of a housecat. I was jostled from all sides as those around me drew back in fear. Kenley laid the dragon at Princess Amory’s feet. The princess stepped down from her chair, eyes filled with avarice. She reached out gingerly to touch the dragon’s head. “Its teeth haven’t grown yet,” Sir Kenley said. “It’s as safe as a kitten.” Emboldened, Amory grabbed the bundle and clutched it to her chest. The dragon’s snout protruded. It blinked up at her with onyx eyes. “Precious,” she crooned. “I want to name him Precious.” ***

Princess Amory tied a ribbon around the dragon’s neck and had a stool brought so it could perch beside her during dinner. She fed it mashed lamb mixed with milk. “Precious is hungry,” Amory said to her nursemaid. The nurse cowered away from her charge’s pet. The other diners glanced furtively at the dragon as they ate, whispering behind cupped hands. As the royal stable master, it was my duty to oversee the king’s beasts, so by royal decree, I’d been seated opposite Princess Amory. I sat uncomfortably, ignoring my food. Amory told the dragon stories as she fed it. “You’re a dragon, and I’m your mother, okay? I’m very rich. I could have everything in the world, but everyone hates me. They think we burn the huts and eat the sheep. But that’s not us. That’s the mean dragons.” The dragon’s transparent inner lids fell closed as it struggled to stay awake. “It’s probably full now, young Highness,” I said. “You should let it sleep.” “Precious is very hungry,” said Amory. “Even dragons get stomachaches.” Amory’s brows drew stormily downward. The dragon wheezed. Its eyes bugged out. It wheezed again. It vomited milky mutton, followed by a gust of flame that blackened the flagstones. The nurse grabbed the princess and whisked her back into the crowd of shocked courtiers. I approached the dragon cautiously from behind. It wobbled on its stool, unsteady with nausea. I put my hand against the soft scales on its stomach. They were hot with indigestion. The knights stood around me, their swords drawn, ready to dispatch the poor thing for the sin of having been force fed. I looked to King Eram. “Perhaps I should take it to the stable for the night,” I suggested. Princess Amory had a fit, but it was done.

***

I put the dragon in the stall beside Princess Amory’s pony, Silky, a gelding with a fine red coat. Silky had cost more than five times my yearly wage. Princess Amory had adored him the first month, spending long mornings brushing his coat before taking him out to ride all afternoon in the fields, overseen by myself or one of the hands. Now I groomed him and led him out by the reins a few times a week. He’d grown heavy and lazy. He raised his head wearily as I passed with the dragon. Jerod and Barr eyed us cautiously. They were finishing the morning’s interrupted work, but it was clear they’d get nothing done while watching the dragon. “Go up to bed,” I told them. “Go on. Shoo.” Their eyes remained on the dragon as they climbed the ladder to the loft. The dragon vomited until all the food and flame was gone, leaving only char and embers. “Well done, Precious,” I congratulated it, scratching its head, but I couldn’t stand the too-sweet name. “Let’s make that Ember. Don’t tell the princess.” It was a sleek dragon, with brown-gold scales. A check under the tail revealed it was a she. I’d learned a bit about dragon lore from a beast trainer who’d stayed awhile in my father’s fortress. He’d taught me that female dragons were bigger and more violent, although peasants often claimed the large, aggressive animals were male. Real male dragons were small and short-lived and rarely descended from their icy mountain lairs. Ember fell asleep, her chin on my hand. I shifted her head onto the hay. Her tail twitched but she didn’t wake. She looked a month old, perhaps two. Soon her teeth would grow. By summer, her fire would be at full blaze. I cursed Sir Kenley for a fool. He should have killed the poor beast along with her mother.

***

The next morning, I was called to participate in the royal deliberations. “As long as the creature can fly, we can’t control her,” said the king’s uncle, a huge man with a thicket-like beard. “We must cut her wings.” Sir Kenley, arrogant in jeweled rings awarded by the king, pointed at Ember’s massive talons. “Got to get rid of those, too.” Ember perched on a pedestal, a tray of chopped goose liver laid before her. A silver chain wound around her leg. She split her time between pecking at the food and trying to free her foot. “What do you think?” asked the king, turning to me. I’d always respected King Eram. He was an ambitious, intelligent man who spent most of his time searching for ways to strengthen Thelden against its larger, wealthier neighbors. The last time that the great kingdoms had become restless, they’d descended like vultures on the kingdom where I was born. Now it seemed as though it might be Thelden’s turn to die at the invaders’ swords. “You should have her killed,” I said. “Killed?” “A dragon will never be a pet. She’ll be dangerous as long as she’s alive.” King Eram regarded me from dark eyes shadowed beneath thick brows. “We can’t clip her wings?” “We can burn the connective tissue between her wing-bones,” I said. “And mountain calmstone will quiet her fire until summer. But she will get bigger, and her fire will grow stronger. We won’t be able to control her indefinitely.” The king stroked his beard. “Then we’ll settle for controlling her for now.” “Your Majesty,” I pressed. “Dragons live in herds. They’re social creatures.” “My daughter can keep her company.” “Can she fly with her? Speak to her? Some people believe that dragons communicate through vibrations.” I paused. “Moreover, dragons are territorial. During the summer mating season, other females will smell Precious. They’ll hunt her down.” “We killed her mother,” said Kenley. “We’ll kill them, too.” “Her mother was on a nest and under a ceiling.” Ember rumbled. She tried to move toward me, but her leg caught her up short. She flapped to regain her balance. King Eram laughed at her surprised expression. “Burn her wings and clip her claws. We’ll revisit the matter in summer.” “Your Highness—” I began. The king’s humor disappeared. “My decision has been made.”

***

They burned the tender connective tissue of Ember’s wings and crippled her forelegs. When her teeth came in, they pulled out the sharpest and filed the others. They dug out her claws with a knife. I restrained her throughout the mutilations so she wouldn’t injure herself more than necessary. I covered her eyes with a hood so the men and their knives wouldn’t panic her. She writhed and whimpered while I stroked her back. I tried not to think about my father and my sister as they cut into her flesh. I hated being forced to stand there while they hurt her. Ordinarily, my job was to end animal’s pain; when a horse broke its leg, I was there with the knife to end its misery. “We’d both be better off if I snapped your neck,” I whispered to Ember when we were alone. At night, Ember curled against me, whining her pain into my skin. I saw her hurt and her pleading, but I also saw her curiosity when she woke in the morning and saw flies buzzing through the air. She had the vibrancy of young things. She wanted to live. At least, I convinced myself she did.

***

Princess Amory visited daily. She shrieked with delight as she rocked the maimed dragon against her chest. “Precious is getting bigger, aren’t you? What will we do when you get giant? Will you fly around my tower and keep me safe?” “That dragon will never fly,” I snapped. Amory looked up, anger and surprise bright in her eyes. “Don’t talk to me like that!” Behind us, Jarod and Barr laughed. I gave them a dirty look. “Why don’t you take the queen’s mares out for a ride?” I asked, thinking the brisk wind of early spring would give them some sense. Turning back, I saw the princess pick Ember up. The dragon was almost too big for her to hold. Amory pinched Ember’s wing under her arm. Ember keened. “Lift your arm!” I cried. Remembering myself, I eased my tone. “Your Highness.” Glaring at me, Amory shifted her arm, leaving Ember’s legs dangling. I made my way to Amory’s pony. It tried to nip my hand. I pushed its nose away. “Why don’t you come over here? Silky misses you. Help me get his coat nice and shiny, and you can ride out for a picnic.” Amory set the dragon on a bale of hay. “Precious wants me to stay here.” She took Ember by the forelegs and began to make her dance. The wound on Ember’s right foreleg cracked open and began to bleed. “What are you doing!” I shouted. At first, I was too angry to notice my disrespect. Then I decided I didn’t care. “That’s a wild animal! She could hurt you!” Ember keened. Amory twisted her toward me. “She likes it, see?” With a howl, Ember launched at Amory, stretching out her ruined wings. She snapped her jaws at Amory’s arm. I sprinted toward the Princess and pulled her away from the baby dragon. One of Ember’s teeth had been filed jaggedly. It pulled free, lodging in Amory’s arm. Blood spurted from Ember’s mouth and Amory’s wound. I set the girl behind me and went to face the dragon. Ember hissed, flapping her tattered wings in a threat display. She reared up, her mutilated forelegs clawing at the air. “Hush,” I murmured, as I did when she was in too much pain to sleep. “Be still.” The moment passed. Fury cleared from Ember’s eyes. She furled her wings and settled on all fours, favoring her mutilated forelegs. Gently, I picked her up and returned her to her stall, locking the gate behind me. Amory stood by the hay, watching. She looked frightened and confused, frozen for the moment, like a rabbit confronted by a predator. I kept my tone even as if I were still working with a wild animal. “Do you want me to take you back to the castle?” I took a step toward Amory. Suddenly, she began to cry, her body shaking with fierce howls of fear and anger. She turned and fled the stables, her rapid footsteps squishing through the early spring mud.

*** “You will treat my daughter as an extension of the royal self,” said King Eram, voice taut with anger. I had been granted a private audience. My years of service had earned me this, that I would not be humiliated before his knights and advisors. I knelt, my head bowed. “Your Highness.” “Because you are a woman of noble birth, you will not be beaten, but you have forfeited the season’s pay. If it happens again, I will banish you.” I did not move. It was more generous than I had expected, but I dared not show my relief. “You may rise.” I rose slowly, allowing his gaze to linger on my exposed neck as if I were the weaker of two sparring dogs. I expected to be dismissed but he said nothing. “Your Highness—” I began. I thought better and closed my mouth. He leaned back, his hands on the carved lion’s heads decorating his throne. “Say what you have to say, stable master.” “Your Highness, my regrettable behavior was motivated by concern for your daughter. The dragon has struck once. It will strike again.” I tried to read his expression, but he remained clouded with anger. “The weather is warming,” I continued. “Soon, the dragons will hunt her down. She endangers everyone, your daughter most of all.” The king tapped his fingers on the lions’ heads. “The southern armies have made a weapon that can shoot a hundred arrows.” “I’ve heard the rumors, Highness.” “They are not just rumors. My knights intercepted a band of merchants who’ve seen the weapon. A flying rain of arrows.” “Troubling, your Highness.” “But even the greatest kings cannot tame a dragon. I am the only king with a dragon for a pet.” I felt ill. “Your Highness?” “Sir Kenley has a plan to drive away the dragons when they come after Precious. We’ve met with traders from the east and purchased tame stars that can be thrown into the sky where they burst into lights and colors. Kenley’s knights will hurl them at the dragons until the beasts are blinded and confused.” “Dragons won’t be easily bewildered—” “—Come summer, we will host a festival for merchants and traveling players. When the dragons arrive, we will array our guests on the fields so they can see how we dispatch a circle of dragons. They’ll spread the news of our prowess like lightning among our foes. No other kingdom will dare to challenge us.” I could scarcely find my voice. “Your knights will die, your Highness.” His voice was full of disgust. “You have tried my patience enough, stable master. Be off. Take care of my dragon.”

***

After that, Princess Amory wouldn’t go into the stall unless I was with her. Even then she backed away from Ember like a spooked animal. I took Ember out in the afternoons while Jerod and Barr exercised the horses. She enjoyed ambling across the meadow, stretching her strong hind legs. She was as big as the princess’s pony. Spring sun gleamed off her brown-gold hide. I took to grooming her after I’d done the horses. She butted her head against my hand as I rubbed ointments into her hide. Her onyx eyes filled with what I like to think was affection. The weather warmed. Cicadas took up their mating calls, thrumming into the night. Ember sang with them. The noises she made were throaty and dark. The vibrations in her chest lulled me to sleep as I lay against her, as if I were the baby, and she the caretaker.

***

Summer’s first heat pulsed almost visibly through the air. The horses whimpered and leaned against their stalls. The stable hands and I shared their languor. We labored slowly, drenched with sweat. I ate nothing. The heat made me sick, but here was a greater worry in my belly. Summer had come. Dragons would not be far behind. They appeared early one morning, a dozen circling overhead, bright streaks of gold against unending blue. Jerod and Barr went outside to watch them, necks craned, and I thought of my long-dead brother who had lifted me up to watch another dragon circle, long ago. The king had made good his festival plans. Merchants and commoners gathered on the fields, shielded by canopies from the worst heat of the sun. The princess and her mother sat on beribboned chairs, fanned by servants. Laughter and conversation drifted on the breeze. My eye traveled toward the castle where the king and Sir Kenley waited. Sunlight glinted off of the armor of the knights who stood on the towers, holding the sparklers for their insane plan. “Your knife,” I demanded of Jerod. “What?” “Your knife.” He pulled it from his belt. “Why?” “If the dragons see Ember’s corpse, maybe they’ll relent.” Under my breath, I added, “At least it’ll spare her the pain of being torn apart.” Ember was as big as the horses now. She sprawled in the back of her stall, trying to cool down. She rumbled when I came in, raising her head. She probably expected me to pour cool water on her hot, aching hide. I opened the stall and approached. She stood, her neck extended. My boots felt like iron as I took the last steps forward. Ember’s eyes fixed on my face, bright and trusting. But there was wildness underneath. I knelt, moving slowly to avoid startling her. She rested her head in my lap. I stroked her long, supple neck, eliciting a thrum of contentment. She held out her cracked foreleg for me to oil. I set it gently aside. I considered how much easier it would have been to do this when she was still puppy-sized, before I’d known her and slept by her side. “It’s for the best,” I murmured. “Better me than them.” She rumbled again, content. I drew back the knife. She sprang up, trumpeting, and kicked me aside with one of her huge hind legs. The knife fell into the straw. She pinned me beneath her declawed forelegs, her huge, tattered wings spreading into a threat display. Her eyes shone with fury. My breath came fast and hard. My heart pounded. I rolled my head back to expose my throat. “Go ahead,” I said. She shrilled at me and flapped her wings, and then drove away, barreling through the stall gate and through the stable wall. I pulled to my feet and raced after her. Outside, the dragons flew in a low circle, their immense bodies blocking the sun. Merchants and musicians cowered and fled, their canopies swept aside by wind from the dragon’s enormous wings. The servants with the fans started to run, but Queen Senna shouted and they returned. Amory shrank in her beribboned chair. A trumpet played from the castle walls. The knights lit their tame stars and hurled them into the sky. They detonated with a series of pops, bright sparks blinding. I blinked, seeing white. The trumpet bugled and pops heralded a second round. When my vision cleared, I saw the dragons flying unperturbed toward the castle. Shouts tore the air. The knights pulled out their bows. Arrows glanced off the dragons’ scales and fell to the ground. A dozen angled toward the commoners on the green. One struck Queen Senna’s throne and she fled, screaming. Princess Amory watched her go, but remained, frozen by fear. The dragons were circling the castle now. They looped closer, breathing hot flame. It seeped through the castle’s slitted windows, lighting a terrible blaze. Barr cried out. “Mum’s in there!” Jerrod staggered forward, his mouth open, unsure what to do. “Why are they attacking the castle?” I shouted, regaining my head. Recalling Ember, I spun, searching. She’d leapt atop a storage shed where we kept spare equipment. She stretched her tattered wings and roared, her cry blending with the noise of the other dragons. One beast turned to look at her. All the dragons were golden, but their hides shone with different hues, their eyes shading from topaz to umber. This dragon shared Ember’s sleek build, onyx eyes, and brown-gold scales. It raised its forelegs to her in salute. They’re family, I realized. “If they’re not after her,” I said, breathless, “what are they after?” The other dragons continued their siege, tearing chunks of stone from the turrets. Sir Kenley leaned out of a window to shout at the fighters. A dragon spotted him and breathed flame. His armor melted. He fell, no longer even shaped like a man. A green-gold dragon ripped the roof off of the great hall and dove inside. When it rose into the sky again, it held a struggling body in its claws. Gold sparkled on the form’s distant brow. “The king,” I breathed at the same time as Jerod and Barr startled with recognition. The dragon pulled its victim higher and higher into the air and then released him. As the king tumbled down, the dragon exhaled a fiery plume. When it cleared, there was nothing left of the king, only clear blue sky. A small voice piped through the wind. “That was my father!” I looked down and saw Amory standing beneath a russet-gold dragon, her hands balled into fists. The russet-gold dragon gazed at her, hotly. I ran toward the princess, desperate to push her out of the way of those enormous claws, but the dragon only blinked at the girl and veered away toward the castle. I had just enough time to feel relief before huge talons dug into my shoulders and lifted me into the air. Flying in another creature’s grip was dazzling, terrible. It was the brown-gold dragon that held me. She swooped toward Ember, joining into a circle with three other dragons already wheeling above the shed. Looking down at Ember from above, I saw her mutilations anew. Her wings gaped with holes; her mutilated forelegs looked like stumps. She opened her mouth to cry and I felt sick looking at her filed teeth. The brown-gold dragon began to thrum as Ember had to the cicadas. The others joined, the pitch of their combined voices rising. I felt myself lifted high, as the king had been. I steeled myself for the fall and the flame. A new note joined the song, higher and sweeter. It was Ember, rearing on her hind legs, her head thrown back so that her throat was exposed as it vibrated with her song. The other dragons fell silent. Ember’s trill continued, sweet and silvery. The brown-gold dragon rumbled, questioningly. Ember’s voice grew throatier. She sat on her haunches, baring her blunted teeth. My stomach flipped as the brown-gold dragon swooped to the ground and set me upright. It glared at me with its onyx eyes so like Ember’s, but wiser and angrier. I regarded its immense, muscular form: this was what Ember should have looked like but never would. Rearing back, the dragon released a stream of flame. I ducked. It burned over my head: a clear warning. The dragon’s eyes were dark and hard. I knew that if it ever saw me again, I was dead. Gently, the other dragons helped Ember to mount the brown-gold one’s back. The brown-gold dragon launched into the sky, and Ember trilled brightly, stretching her tattered wings to the sun. She looked down at me and cocked her head. Her eyes held wildness, and intelligence, and splendor.

***

The dragons demolished the castle and all its fighting men. Queen Senna survived to take her husband’s crown, but she was forced to treat with Thelden’s enemies for protection. Thelden would lose some land, and all of Sir Kenley’s treasure, but it would survive. I requested an audience with Queen Senna, and suggested it would be best if she terminated my service. She agreed. After all that had happened, I could not remain. I packed a few clothes and my riding equipment. I said my farewells to Jerod and Barr—surprised at the tears that caught in my throat. I’d seen the boys grow. I would miss them. There was no one else I wished to bid goodbye. I’d lived in Thelden for ten years, but my closest friends were my horses. Everyone I cared for in the world was years dead, and I would have joined them except for the mercy of a dragon I had helped maim. I remembered clutching my brother so long ago as he lifted me up, my eyes squeezed shut because I was afraid. My brother was dead now, but dragons had saved my life. I donned my pack and set onto the road.

Rachel Swirsky’s short stories have appeared in a wide range of magazines and anthologies, and been nominated for the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, the Locus Award, and the Sturgeon Award. Her first collection, a slim volume of feminist poetry and stories called Through the Drowsy Dark, is available through Aqueduct Press. Author Spotlight: Swapna Kishore T.J. McIntyre

What inspired “Perhaps this is Kushi’s Story”?

I was walking under monsoon clouds one day, pondering on whether the future is fixed and whether there are alternate worlds, when some unknown sky- wandering entity floated a feather my way.

Fantasy Magazine’sreaders are often interested in world-building techniques. How did you go about building the fantasy world detailed in your story?

My story needed simple people leading difficult lives on a harsh terrain. The Himalayan region, with its stark mountains, sparse vegetation, ice, and blocked passes was a possibility. I checked out pictures on the Internet, and grew convinced that the terrain was a good fit. Then I searched out information to extrapolate how my characters would have lived there, and added dollops of my imagination. I found the metallic feathers to be a very interesting construct. There are several colors of feather mentioned in the story. What is the significance of the colors of these feathers?

Ah, the metallic feathers. I chose metallic feathers instead of normal feathers to highlight the contrast between the technology-rich ‘gods’ and the tribesmen who believed legends of the feather- chosen. Besides, a normal feather would get singed in its transit through the worlds, and arrive charred and curled and smelling awful. Not impressive. Also, I made each subsequent feather arrive in a more subtle and sophisticated manner to indicate that the later ‘gods’ were more advanced.

I often like to ask a question of the author straight from their own character’s lips. In the first scene of your story, Younger Sister knocks down Elder Sister’s sand village. Elder Sister asks: “Younger Sister, why?” What’s your answer?

Because she’d rather vent her frustration by kicking in a sand village instead of actually harming Elder Sister (which is what her feather wants her to do). Because, despite all her anger and ambition and frustration, Younger Sister will fight only if Elder Sister initiates it. I see Younger Sister seething with raw energy that has not yet translated into destructive action. Despite her poor opinion of her sister, she does not want to do anything she considers wrong.

So, what’s next for Swapna Kishore?

More time spent in writing, for sure. More ideas explored. Maybe venture out of the short story arena and dust out the drafts churned out during various NaNoWriMos and start agonizing over them.

T.J. McIntyre has seen his short fiction and poetry published in numerous publications including recent appearances in Everyday Weirdness, Ruthless Peoples Magazine, andScifaikuest. He is a member of various writing organizations, including the Science Fiction Poetry Association (SFPA), and serves as a moderator for the Lobo Luna and Western Writers writing communities on LiveJournal. Until earlier this year, he published Southern Fried Weirdness, an anthology and web zine celebrating speculative fiction and poetry with a Southern perspective. He lives in a busy household in the muggy heart of rural Alabama with his wife, two young sons, an aging Doberman mix, five tiger barbs, and three salt-and-pepper catfish. Author Spotlight: Desirina Boskovich William Sullivan

“Violets for Lee” is told mostly in flashback, which is thematically powerful for a story about regret and loss, both of which are backwards looking emotions. The technique also heightens the mystery of the story as we get bits of the present and bits of the past all at once. How did you decide to write the story in flashback?

To be honest, I never considered doing it any other way. The story began with my image of someone tunneling into a bleeding heart on a burnt wasteland to discover a series of doors at the center. How and why this occurs came to me later. It only made sense to reveal the emotional back story through flashback, foregrounding the exhausting physical journey of the character.

The main character spends most the story without any shoes. Missing shoes suggests two important aspects of her condition: vulnerability and also a kind of numbness to the world. What were you trying to show by having her walk around without any shoes? Yes. Vulnerability and numbness. And also a sense of being completely childlike and unprepared for the experience. She attempts to use her lack of preparation as an excuse, but Miss Harriet preempts her. Prepared or not, we cope with the experiences that come to us. And I wanted her to experience this one with a completely childlike lack of defenses, stripped down to essentials. It’s like rebirth in a way: take nothing in, take nothing out.

Miss Harriet is the perfect keeper of the heart, as often the people best able to cope with loss and regret are the elderly. How should the reader interpret the other two people the main character meets before she gets to Miss Harriet?

The first neighbor, the mother, is dealing with the loss we experience through transition. She’s chosen a certain lifestyle, and even if she’s happy with it, inevitably she’s had to give up other things. The loss she’s experienced is the loss of possibility, potential, other life paths she could have taken. The second neighbor is dealing with the break up of his marriage and the changes that come with that, the loss of security and domestic contentment. Sugar is a meaningful missing ingredient for the cake, as an overpowering loss like losing Lee can feel like the “sweetness” of life is absent. What should we make of the fact that Miss Harriet was the only person who had any sugar?

Loaning a cup of sugar is one of those banal things that neighbors do for one another—or at least promise to do for one another. I wanted to find something prosaic to balance out the surreal events of the story. Sugar, like you said, it’s sweetness; and sweetness is what she finds on the other side of the door, just not exactly the kind she sets out looking for. Somewhere along the way as I was working on this I began listening to REM’s song Sweetness Follows. It’s the perfect soundtrack to this story, and definitely shaped how it evolved. Miss Harriet has accepted and come to terms with her loss. She’s just a little bit crazy, though, and this gives her a liminal perspective, which allows her to serve as the portal into the absurd.

“Violets for Lee” portrays an incredibly hard part of losing someone we love, which is letting that person go. Letting go can feel like a betrayal of the person you’ve lost, but as in the story, life necessarily goes on. Did you ever feel tempted to end the story with the main characters choosing Lee’s door?

In fact, in earlier drafts of the story, my protagonist did choose the other door; she chose the absolution and uncertainty of the next life, wherever it would lead. But after thinking about it for a while, and asking my own sister for some writing advice, I realized that this approach wasn’t quite right. Choosing the other door might symbolize suicide, and that wasn’t the story I wanted to tell. It takes more courage and offers more redemption to choose the door that leads outward, to move on and leave loss behind, and that’s the choice she makes in the end.

Is there anything else you’d like to say?

Thank you so much to everyone who took the time to read my story! This is my first sale to Fantasy Magazine —hopefully not the last—and I’m so excited to have my work published in this market that I’ve admired for so long. My next story, “Love is the Spell That Casts Out Fear,” will be found in The Way of the Wizard anthology edited by John Joseph Adams, coming out in November 2010. You can find me online at crackingdes.livejournal.com.

William Sullivan is a writer, computer programmer, and musician living in Austin, Texas. You can find his website at enkrates.com. Author Spotlight: Tracy Canfield Jennifer Konieczny

What inspired “The Seal of Sulaymaan?”

I spent a week and a half traveling in Morocco with friends, and everywhere I looked, I saw the old and the new side by side—people in traditional clothing chatting on cell phones, satellite dishes on rural farmhouses. Which raises the question: what are the beings from the old stories doing in the era of the Internet? How have they dealt with the world changing around them?

The ifriit remarks twice “I can afford to be generous” and fulfills the boy’s wish for a soccer ball. Are the ifriit traditionally represented as generous or are they compelled to fulfill wishes?

I would say the ifriit are more arrogant and irritable than generous. In the old folktales, they’ve usually been enslaved and forced to work for a master. The question raises an interesting point—many people today believe in the existence of the ifriit, so when I wrote “The Seal of Sulaymaan”, I tried to make the supernatural elements consistent with these beliefs—what djinn eat, where they live, what they can do.

To follow up on that question, if you could have a wish granted, what would it be?

I’d wish for perfect eyesight, so I wouldn’t have to fool with contact lenses any more. I know, I know, that’s bland. But I’m writing this from Australia because a company flew me out to record an audio tour for the Jenolan Caves—in Klingon. I would get up at dawn and watch a wild platypus splash around the lake outside the hotel. The world sends us more amazing things than I could think to wish for—I just want to be able to take advantage of them without crawling around on the floor looking for a lost contact.

The asides made the ifriit very personable while the rich commentary on Morroco, especially comparisons between the ancient and the modern, reinforced the supernatural character. Do you find there’s a difference between writing human and non-human characters? How do your characters usually develop? Non-human characters are very different. I recently had a story in Analog, “Heist”, about high-tech con games. I found that the human characters could be very lightly sketched, because readers have so much knowledge about humans that they can bring to the story. In contrast, the AI characters perceive the world very differently, because they don’t have human senses; and they want and value things that humans might not care about.

At the end of “The Seal of Sulaymaan” the ifriit is no longer alone. Do you have plans to write more about the two ifriit?

I don’t have any immediate plans, though I did think it would be interesting to see the contrast between one ifriit who’s adapted to the modern world, and one who’s encountering it for the first time.

What’s next for you?

I have an SF story coming out in Strange Horizons later this year. I’m also finishing up my studies for my PhD in computational linguistics. Also, this wasn’t one of your questions, but I wanted to mention it. In “The Seal of Sulaymaan”, I wanted to make the Arabic words easily readable for English speakers—so, for example, I used a transliteration system that doesn’t include a lot of dots and diacritics. In general, I thought readers could pick up the occasional Arabic word from its context. However, the Arabic plural for “ifriit” is roughly “afaariit”—and I didn’t want to use that in the first sentence where it would be meaningless for both readers. I decided to go with “ifriit” throughout the story. After “Seal” I wrote “Heist”, which takes place in part in an online RPG. The game includes a djinn, Jim St. Jim, who’s completely based on the Western idea of what a djinn should be—and who lives in a city called Al- Afaariit.

Jennifer Konieczny hails from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. An alumna of Villanova University, she now pursues her doctorate in medieval studies at the University of Toronto. She enjoys working with fourteenth-century latin legal texts, slushing for Fantasy Magazine, and scanning bookshelves for new authors to read. Author Spotlight: Rachel Swirsky T.J. McIntyre

What inspired “The Stable Master’s Tale”?

My friend Sarah Prineas (author of the MagicThief books) is always talking about how awesome dragons are, and how fun they are to write. So I thought I’d give it a try.

“There were half a dozen flying in a circle, chasing each other’s tails. Sunlight sparkled off their bodies. They were glorious and terrifying.” This is an evocative image, reminiscent of a large-scale Ouroboros. Why do they fly in circles?

I was thinking of eagles. Although now that you point it out, the circling might not be the best explanation from an animal behavior perspective. Eagles are solitary and the dragons flock. I don’t know how multiple animals flying in a circle would affect the wind—would it hinder flight or help it? And while a circle is a good way for a single animal to survey the ground, a flock could probably gather information more effectively with a different method, especially since they have sophisticated communication.

A real kinship forms between the protagonist of “The Stable Master’s Tale” and Ember. Why do you feel this mutual bond became so strong between these two characters?

I feel like that’s something I’d rather leave open.

Could a dragon ever be tamed? Why or why not?

If you’ll forgive me for digressing a bit, this question reminded me of a story from Ursula Vernon’s website. At some point she got really tired of displaying her dragon paintings at art shows, only to hear people grumble, “Dragons don’t look like that.” So she drew this picture of what dragons really look like to settle the question once and for all. Dragons live in underground caves, you know, and have moist skin that has to be protected with bandages when they go up to the surface. Also, they’re blind, so they need seeing-eye lungfish. This is all indisputable. Thank you for answering my questions. Okay, so what’s next for Rachel Swirsky?

My first collection, Through the Drowsy Dark, a slim volume of feminist stories and poetry, just came out from Aqueduct Press (it’s also available for the Kindle). I’ve also got stories forthcoming in the usual places, including another one here, and one at Tor.com, and one at Subterranean Magazine. Personally, I’ve got a lot of travel coming up. . . and of course, writing, writing, writing!

T.J. McIntyre has seen his short fiction and poetry published in numerous publications including recent appearances in Everyday Weirdness, Ruthless Peoples Magazine, andScifaikuest. He is a member of various writing organizations, including the Science Fiction Poetry Association (SFPA), and serves as a moderator for the Lobo Luna and Western Writers writing communities on LiveJournal. Until earlier this year, he published Southern Fried Weirdness, an anthology and web zine celebrating speculative fiction and poetry with a Southern perspective. He lives in a busy household in the muggy heart of rural Alabama with his wife, two young sons, an aging Doberman mix, five tiger barbs, and three salt-and-pepper catfish. About the Editors

Cat Rambo lives, writes, and teaches by the shores of an eagle-haunted lake in the Pacific Northwest. Her 200+ fiction publications include stories in Asimov’s, Clarkesworld Magazine, and Tor.com. Her short story, “Five Ways to Fall in Love on Planet Porcelain,” from her story collection Near + Far (Hydra House Books), was a 2012 Nebula nominee. Her editorship of Fantasy Magazine earned her a World Fantasy Award nomination in 2012. For more about her, as well as links to her fiction and information about her popular online writing classes, see www.kittywumpus.net.

Sean Wallace is the founder, publisher, and managing editor of Prime Books. In his spare time he has edited or co-edited a number of projects, including two magazines, Clarkesworld Magazine and Fantasy Magazine, and a number of anthologies, including Best New Fantasy, Japanese Dreams, The Mammoth Book of Steampunk, People of the Book, Robots: Recent A.I., and War & Space: Recent Combat. He lives in Germantown, MD, with his wife, Jennifer, and their twin daughters, Cordelia and Natalie.