Fantasy Magazine Issue 38, May 2010

Table of Contents

Daha’s Son by Keffy R. M. Kehrli (fiction) The Spontaneous Knotting of an Agitated String by Lavie Tidhar (fiction) Wishes and Feathers by Patricia Russo (fiction) The Sometimes Child by Caroline Yoachim (fiction)

Interview: Tim Pratt

Author Spotlight: Keffy R.M. Kehrli Author Spotlight: Lavie Tidhar Author Spotlight: Caroline Yoachim

About the Editor

© 2010 Fantasy Magazine www.fantasy-magazine.com Daha’s Son Keffy R. M. Kehrli

Honor. The light dims. Daha looks up from the corn she grinds. He stands before her, five times dead. He holds the obsidian disc, with its edges worn smooth by his fingers and his prayers. He is her son, and even so, Daha wonders whom he prays to. Does he pray to his new name, or to the name of the Fifth whom he will replace? Are there secrets granted only to boys who must become gods? “I won’t come back to you this time.” He says this as if he has ever cared before. His voice is distant and he is dressed in robes of dyed cotton. Patterns of jagged green pass under and over divine black from his shoulders to just above his sandaled feet. Dust lightens the bottom handwidth of cloth; he walks in the dirt as men do. He stands in the doorway to her little house made of clay and straw and the sunlight silhouettes him so all she can see is his outline and the broad patterns of his clothing. He smells faintly of orange blossoms. Daha feels a chill pass down her spine, though she has always known this day would come. For him, it is only another prepared moment in a life of rituals; for her, it is a sixth cut to her heart, wider and deeper than any other. He ducks his head to enter. He resembles her brothers more than his own father, so tall, now, and thin, even though he is fed better than the Berai king. His face still clings to a little fat, for an instant, Daha sees a frightened boy. Then he smiles with easy, cool arrogance and the illusion dissipates. Daha slides coarse-ground corn into the clay bowl on her left and adds a handful of dried kernels to her stone. Neither of them speak as she grinds two passes, her chest aching with the words she would say. Her oldest, he should be inheriting his father’s home and staying near to her when she grows too weak to grind corn or cook. When she doesn’t answer, he paces, stepping lightly over hard-packed earth. In days past, she might have rebuked him for leaving his sandals on. Daha looks up again when he is standing near the stone oven and she can see him better. He has let his hair grow to mid-back and laced it through with crow feathers and sparrow bones, with jade beads and copper rings. In thirteen years, the ways of death have been made his life, and he is the crueler for it. He worries at the obsidian, a hollow where his thumb rests. “I have waited for this all my life,” he says, finally. A little petulance tinges his speech. He is still young. “I must be freely given.”

***

Luck. Daha first lost her son before he was born. She had carried him half a year, from the cold dry nights of winter, to the long sunlight of summer. He moved as though running circles in her womb, and she slept many nights with her husband’s hand on the rise of her, fingers splayed to catch the movement. They were a handful of days from the solstice, and she spun cotton dyed the color of the sun with her husband’s sisters. They were all four unmarried, and lived in the small house morningward of Daha’s home. The day was hot and the air was unusually damp, storm weather. Her clothes stuck to her back and sides and her son moved constantly, as if the coming storm made him restless, too. Daha was tired, but she still tried to spin more than the sisters as a matter of pride. Only the youngest liked her enough to speak with her, and the other three tended toward silence, or brief conversations in their late father’s tongue. Alnide was new to womanhood and still fascinated by pregnancy; she had never witnessed a birth. She chattered to Daha like a little bird nesting in the woven-straw roof, but her fingers were so quick that her sisters didn’t pinch her for her words. They waited until she dropped corn or returned from the creek with pretty stones and no water, and then they showed her their jealousy. Daha knew enough of their father’s words to make out what they said, that Alnide was too dark to be pretty, her skin like newly turned soil in the spring. For all they said, however, it was Alnide’s white teeth that flashed smiles at everyone, and her ears that were weighed down with gold rings, gifts from the metalworker’s son. Alnide whistled like a hawk screaming to prey. “Daha, you are too fast! My fingers burn just watching you.” The oldest of her sisters said something sharp that Daha did not understand. Before Alnide could argue, Daha tilted her head graciously. “The heat makes me weak,” she said. “I spin faster so that I can rest.” “Your daughter wants to spin, too,” Alnide said, laughter chasing her speech. “That’s why she moves so much. She makes you quicker, so you spin enough for two.” Daha twisted the cotton easy and even, fingerlengths, then handlengths, then armlengths. Before Alnide could chatter off down some other road of conversation, Daha said, “Mehar wants a son, I think.” It was not a guess, she knew so much from the whispers in her ears, from the loving caresses. A strong son to hunt, to sell pelts and skins and carved bone and obsidian to the men on the coast who lived packed too close in cities to draw back their bows. But she could not simply say this. Mehar’s mind was his own, and Daha should not tell others what she knew of it. “A son!” Alnide laughed again, but she twisted cotton with more speed and skill so that her sisters would forgive her. “What good is a son? The boys in the village sit around and scratch themselves and throw rocks at snakes to make them rattle. Aheben should give you a daughter so you have help when we’re gone and married.” Careless words from a young girl. The silence stretched long and thin as the thread between Daha’s fingers. She sent Alnide to bring water from the creek, and sweat trickled down her neck and between her shoulderblades, between her breasts. Without Alnide, the stares of the sisters fell on Daha alone. She was relieved when she heard the far off rumble, like the sound of a hundred drums, and then the sky opened with a deluge that shattered the oppressive heat. After the rain, water sat in shallow pools, baking to dryness in the sun. Alnide had not come back. Daha put the cotton thread aside and she looked at each of the three sisters in turn, though they did not look up at her. “I will see what has kept Alnide,” Daha said into the silence. She slipped out through the open door. None of the sisters spoke until she was outside, and then Daha caught a burst of words in their father’s language. An argument? A discussion? She wished that she had any luck in convincing her husband to teach her the tongue. The few words she knew were not enough. Steam roiled from what was left of the rain, dissipating small puddles across the land for as far as Daha could see. The puddles were warm and she left her sandals just inside her door. Daha thought first that she would find Alnide on her way from the creek, but as she neared the dark crack in the land where the creek had cut its way down into the red-stone earth, it became clear that Alnide was still there if she were anywhere. “Alnide!” Daha called, but not even an echo answered her. She reached the canyon. It was maybe twice the height of a man, and the creek wound its way through the muddy bottom, racing between large rocks newly dislodged. The bottom and sides of the canyon were still damp in the aftermath of the flood that had flashed through, carrying with it the plants from the base and parts of the walls. There was Alnide’s jar, abandoned along the top of the canyon while she wandered off. The baby moved again, and Daha cursed Alnide quietly. She bent to retrieve the jar. A five-legged toad sat against the side, staring at her with wide, bulging eyes. Five legs, the sign of Aheben, the Fifth. Daha recoiled. She stepped too far and her ankle turned under her. There was a moment when she thought she had only stumbled, and she tried to take another step back to steady herself. Then, she realized that she had turned herself around and behind her was only air and the canyon below. Daha landed in the muddy creek bed, hard enough that the wind escaped her lungs all in a rush, and she spent the next few moments listening to the sound of the creek, thankfully no longer swollen from the rain. She got her hands under her, fingers digging into thick red mud. Fear made her stomach twist even more than the pain–she had landed on her unborn son. Before she could sit up, a flash of light grabbed her eye. One hand across her agonized middle, she reached out and pulled the gold hoop out of the blood-red mud. Alnide’s. It was with terror freezing her limbs that Daha called for her husband’s youngest sister, up and down the canyon. Later, she would not remember the walk home. She would not remember the hours stretching to a day as Alnide did not return, as it was determined that she must have washed away in the flood. What Daha would remember was the first time she heard a woman laugh freely afterward. She thought of Alnide, her hand clasped tight around the gold earring she wore on a thread around her neck, and she had to fight to keep tears from her eyes. She would also remember the moment she realized she had not felt her son move within her since she fell. Days and weeks stretched, unending, and she waited to lose a dead child out from between her legs. This release was never granted her. When she slept beside her husband, she cringed from his touch. Mehar grew quiet. He seethed at her avoidance, but he did not raise his voice. When winter threatened again, Daha gave birth to a living son.

***

Youth. Daha wanted to believe there was nothing strange about her son, that he had been born in the same manner as any other infant, and that she had not carried him through his first death. She was helped in this by the boy himself. He was not a solemn child. He did not suffer from most of the ailments of young children, and when Daha woke in the night to his crying, he was easily put back to sleep. When she was tired, Daha was told by the village women that her child was simple to care for, that there was no reason for her exhaustion. She worried, but she could not say why. They would not believe her, or, worse, they would accuse her of seeking favor among the Berai, who lived on the coast, and of claiming to carry their new god. Mehar loved the boy, but he was often gone, bringing what he had caught to markets where he could sell or trade. The other sisters married soon after Alnide’s death, scattered to the winds, made only three instead of lucky four. So it was Daha alone who woke one morning of her son’s second summer in an empty, echoing house, the bed beside her already gone cool. She sat up in the bed, panic making her heart thunder in her chest. She had not yet named him, so there was nothing to call but “boy”. She searched the house, fear making her movements quick and sharp like obsidian knives. Her son had hidden before in baskets, under tables, under blankets, and he was in none of those places. He could not have gone far on the short stubby legs of an infant. A snake lay in the doorway. It didn’t rattle. Daha poked at it with a broom handle and the snake did not strike or even move. It was dead. The day was but newly born, only a pink streak on the morningward horizon. Daha could still see stars to nightward. She thought of Alnide, lost in the raging flood, and was glad that it was not raining. Though, if her son had wandered off into the desert, it was much the same, too much water or not enough. She called for him, “son”, and “baby”, and “little Mehar,” as she had been thinking of that as a name for him for days. A stiff breeze blew from summerward, and in the haze of shadows, she passed a bird dead on the ground, its feathers ruffling in the wind, its feet hooked as though it had died on a perch. Daha stepped around it, heading for the small mud hut they kept tools in. A few feet further, another bird, also dead, this one an owl. Dread grew from the silent place in her heart where fear had crawled to stay. Around to the far side of the toolshed, she found him, laying still and motionless in a ring of dead snakes, stretched out like the marks on copper coins Mehar sometimes brought from the cities. Aheben’s five-legged toad sat just above her son’s head, its throat puffed out as if it were mid-croak. In the new day’s light, Daha could see more clearly, one limp snake in either of the boy’s hands, his face purpled from poison, his neck and back arched. He was not breathing. When she stepped within the pattern of dead snakes, Aheben’s toad turned and hopped away, trailing its fifth leg in the dust. She rushed to him and picked up her son. The weight in her arms was so familiar, but it was wrong. Too stiff and too still, more like a doll made of clay than a child. She carried him to the doctor, who laid him out to be prepared for funeral. Daha was summoned a day later, weeping, to find her son awake, alive and hungry. Men from the cities came, clothed in silks and other fabrics they must have traded for, wearing silver. They poked and prodded Daha’s son, still unnamed because Mehar had not returned from his latest hunt and Daha would not guess at his agreement with the name she’d chosen. They left. Time passed, and Mehar returned. Daha knew, though she would never have told it to another, that he knew about the Berai visitors long before she spoke with him. Daha’s son played outside in the dirt when Mehar entered, the smell of smoke thick on his clothing. His hands were rough on her shoulders, but still gentle. She remembered that afterward. Mehar glanced at the boy. Daha thought that perhaps they would talk about the boy’s name, but Mehar said only, “The Berai believe he is the Sixth.” Daha pulled away and went back to her weaving, a blanket she had begun with her son in mind. “They could be mistaken.” “I was told of the snakes,” Mehar whispered. “That he died and lay dead an entire day and a night. Do you fear him?” Daha gripped cotton thread tight in her fingers. “He is our son,” she said. “I have agreed to send him,” Mehar said. “I hoped you would share my thoughts.” Daha did not. “He is too young.” There was a desperation in her words because she knew that no matter what she might say to him, Mehar had acted before even speaking with her, acted with the certainty that he could know her heart and mind. Mehar looked back at their son. The boy picked up handfuls of dust and dropped it, sneezing. He babbled happily at the sun and the sky, at the earth and the dust he dropped in billowing clouds. “I have already agreed.” The choice was taken from her. Daha did not give her son to the Berai, but she endured his taking. Without speaking with Mehar, she named the boy Neiri, sorrow, and held the name in her heart as a symbol of the child she might have raised.

***

Love. One time, Daha killed her son by her own hand. When Daha’s son was nine years old, she was allowed to reunite with him in the city by the sea, where gods and governments lived and died. He was not the small child who had played at her feet any longer. He had grown thin and serious and when he looked at her, his eyes were windows to worlds Daha never wished to see. He met her at the gates to Aheben’s palace, and his manner was studied politeness. “Thank you for coming, Mother.” He spoke the language she had taught him at her breast, but the words tripped out of his mouth as though the city and the god had cut out his own tongue and sewed a new one in its place. Daha gathered him into her arms, disappointed when he remained arrow-straight, his arms at his sides. He did not embrace her until his keeper barked something at him in Berai. He responded, the words coming easier to his lips than the Thoyei he had left behind. She could not understand those words, but he hugged her, a quick acquiescence. She released him reluctantly and he stood to the side, looking at all the world but not at her. His keeper brought Daha before Aheben, where he sat on his golden throne. Neiri followed behind, but stopped just outside the doorway. Daha wanted to comfort him, but he did not expect or wish such contact. She wanted to believe this was another boy, not her son, but she could not, no more than she could wish Alnide back from the dead. Aheben was older by far than even the oldest names in the family songs Daha knew. His body appeared the same age as Daha herself, but he slumped in the throne as though he had grown tired of his position. A five-legged toad the size of a coyote sat by his feet, eyes each the size of Daha’s fist. “Thoyei,” he said. The stories said he could both summon life and crumble it into dust. Daha did not speak. She stood straight as she could, shoulders back far, far enough that she might have looked Berai to an unpracticed eye. He spoke softly and in his voice, Daha could hear the sound of waves breaking against cold stone cliffs. “There is corruption,” he said. “Among my people. You have not seen it, Thoyei, so far are you from the city, but it is there. I tire of them. Long before you were born, I had already tired of this age. With permission, my people have grown strong and apart from me. They do not need me, except as something to worship. They believe I am lazy, tired, and disinterested, and I become so. I have no more interest in this Fifth age. “Thoyei,” he said again, as though he were tasting her mind when he rolled the word over his tongue. “Your people worship me out of habit or of fear, but you do not teach the stories. You are unprepared. A pity.” Daha said nothing. “Do you know of the fourth god? Heaqika. His death was of love.” “You’ve brought me here to kill my son,” she said. The words were truths as she spoke them. Did Neiri stand behind her? Aheben laughed like a tree cracking in high winds. “The one who loved me most was my brother. Even he paid little attention and my leg tangled in the fishing net just before he released it over the side of our boat. The weights pulled me down until the water grew dark and when I screamed, the water burned my lungs and my death tasted of salt. It was necessary, my fourth death.” Daha clutched her hands one in the other. “Why have you brought me here?” “I have never been a patient god,” Aheben said. “And you love him most, even if you primarily know him as only the idea of your son.” She wanted to refuse. She asked the question she knew should never be asked easily of gods, “And if I were to refuse you?” His laughter was stifling and thick. “One day, your heart will wander, caught in the eyes of your younger children. I will find another who loves him more, and I will be unable to promise that his death will come as painlessly as you might give it.” When she looked back, Neiri’s expression was one of pleading, the desire of a child to do as he has been taught by those who raised him. He could have no thoughts of what it might cost her. Daha used poison in the night. She held him for the first time in seven years, smoothed his hair while he gasped, his arms and legs gone limp when the paralysis set in. She stayed with him an entire night and day, waiting to see him breathe again.

***

Death. “Mother.” When he begs, his accent is so thick that Daha thinks it must fill his throat and she expects to hear him choke. Daha grinds the corn more fiercely. Her elbows ache and she should not give vent to her frustrations, but eleven of these thirteen years have been for her like wind on rock, and she cannot help if her voice is sand thrown in his face. “And when I say yes,” she asks, “then what will you be? A new god for the Berai, to be worshipped and loved until I am not even a memory? Until some new Thoyei mother must give up her first son to a faith that gives nothing in return?” Her son, he-who-will-name-himself, Dei’itaqitaq in Berai, says nothing. Daha looks up and she sees a small round face, eyes wide. It is Mehar, her second son, now five years old. He peers in the doorway at his older brother, a stranger to him. Dei’itaqitaq does not look anywhere but at Daha, his lips pressed tight with the anger of one who has been given everything, but also nothing. He worships as the Berai do, constantly, and Daha watches the obsidian disc slip between the fingers of his left hand again. “No,” he says. “I am Thoyei. I will be a god for the Thoyei, and everything the Berai have can be ours too.” Daha wants to laugh. He was Thoyei for the first three years of his life, perhaps, but in the cities they hammered him like copper into some new shape that she is afraid to hold. He belongs in a world where it rains half the year instead of only when the air wills it. Looking at him again, everything is wrong. He stands with Berai posture, he wears their clothing. The beads and copper and bones and feathers in his hair are affectations. He would look strange if stood next to his uncles whom he resembles so much. “Your father,” she says, though she knows full well the choice is her own. “He has given me up. You are the only one left who must.” “How can I give what has never been mine?” Daha asks. There. A pain in his dark brown eyes, a flash of visibility in the raging sandstorm of godhood. She hadn’t thought to see that. He has been raised to be anything but her son. “Aheben waits to die.” Daha has ground enough corn but she does not want her hands to stop moving. She keeps busy. “I have no love for Aheben. If it is true death he longs for, then let him suffer.” She tries not to think. The only decision she has ever had to make for her son is how and whether to hurt him. Dei’itaqitaq looks toward the door and sees his younger brother. There is no recognition in his eyes. “What will I be if I am not the Sixth?” “A man,” she says simply, “Like your father.” Daha is silent a moment. Little Mehar has left where he stood in the doorway. Dei’itaqitaq crouches just before the stone. Light from the doorway shines from the copper in his hair. “I have died five times,” he says. “You hold tight to your dead.” Daha’s fingers stray to the earring she still wears around her neck. It is familiar as grief. Had she chosen earlier, would the decision be less painful? She unties the sunlight-yellow thread, and coils it over the gold in her hand. “I hope that the dead remember,” she says. “That they spare a moment to think of the living sometimes, of what is and might have been.” She gestures until he holds out his hand, and she presses the gold hoop into his palm, gentle but firm. “Go,” she says.

Keffy R. M. Kehrli lives in Seattle, where he is training to become a mad scientist. He is a 2008 graduate of Clarion and his fiction has appeared in Apex Magazine, Talebones, and Sybil’s Garage. His website is keffy.com. The Spontaneous Knotting of an Agitated String Lavie Tidhar

Mrs. Pongboon, that great woman and mother, that seller of mysterious artefacts, walks down the street in her red-patterned sihn the colour of a naga’s crest, and people stare because to dress this way is to invite the wrath of the Ngeuk Laeng, the dreaded drought nagas—but it is all a nothing to Mrs. Pongboon, who had taken all her fear and her secret anxieties and put them in a talisman which hangs around her neck, a tasteful little locket of gold and quartz and state-of-the-art mass-produced Chinese technology. “Buy my lockets, my darlings!” she calls, and the women stop and stare, and the children giggle and are shushed, and the men look anxious and thoughtful. “Put away your loves and fears, and keep them for a rainy day!” But every day is rainy in the rainy season, and the Mekong snakes, as large as a naga, between the banks of Laos and Thailand, this snake-river, divider of countries, carrier of goods, all swelled up with its own importance and the water that falls from the sky and the water of the snows in the far away Himalayas, which have travelled a long way to come here, will travel a long way yet before they see the ocean. “Buy my lockets, for a fair and good price, transfer precious memories, store tender hearts! The deal is today, a one-of-a-kind, hurry, my friends, hurry, I say! Or you’ll miss out forever, when Mrs. Pongboon has passed, and was gone on her way.” But business is slow and besides, everyone knows about transference, and Mrs. Pongboon, as large and imposing as she no doubt is, is not alone in the trade—far from it. And yet. . . a young girl, in a black, carefully- ironed sihn, a white blouse with the sleeves buttoned around her slim wrists, in her high-heeled shoes bought second-hand, a small handbag from the Talat Sao, the Morning Market—a student, perhaps, or an office worker of minor importance and a minor salary to match— timidly approaches Mrs. Pongboon who, sniffing out a sale before, even, the girl had occasion to consciously think herself to it, says, ‘What is it, my darling? A broken heart? Did a young boy steal your happiness away? Come, tell Mrs. Pongboon, queen of the ladies, a mother to children – remember that mothers, too, were lovers once.’ “Is—” the girl says, and stops, self-conscious, and Mrs. Pongboon moves into the shadows of a music shop where a Laotian band is pumping out a cover of Thaitanium’s Tomyam Samurai, and the girl follows her and, free from the scrutiny of passers-by, her shoulder- blades seem to relax—“is it true?” “It’s technology,” Mrs. Pongboon says, importantly, employing the English word, which is one of the few she knows. The girl looks impressed—as well she should, Mrs. Pongboon thinks. “Here,” she says. “Try,” she says. She un-loops a second locket from her ample bosom—not the one with all her misery inside it but the sampler, the holy sampler—she had once confused the two with a potential customer and the results were. . . less than beneficial, in fact there had been a complaint, and since then she is extra careful, though she cannot bear to put her own, personal locket away—“Try and see for yourself, my darling little girl.” The locket is encoded with a Generic Spring Day, The Lovers, River Bank—it could be anywhere, it could be any two young people in any country in the world, Generic Sampler Number Two, version oh three point five six, and when Mrs. Pongboon pops the lock she can adjust the setting. Encode: Laotian-specific. Encode: Boy- Girl (she takes a hunch, you’d be surprised how often it doesn’t pay off)— ‘Here, give me your palm, little miss, little madam, close your fingers, close your eyes—can you feel it?’ (but of course she can). “Oh,” the girl says, and then—“Oh.” “And once you put it there,” Mrs. Pongboon says, “it’s gone. Like that.” She tries to snap her fingers but the humidity makes her sweat and her fingers merely slip off each other like careless dancers. “Until you want it again.” It is called transference, of course it does, though of course it is not exactly that. Mrs. Pongboon has a device, yes she does, and what the device does, is copy—how clever, those Chinese across the border!—is copy-and- delete. Not strictly legal, all this messing with the human brain—recording neurons as they fire their zero-one-zero- one emissions, even worse, resetting them inside the tender gooey mass of brain, erasing the pattern inside— but what price can you put on human happiness? “For a modest sum,” Mrs. Pongboon says, and pats the girl reassuringly on the shoulder, removing the locket from her hand at the same time, “a most modest amount, you could put away whatever you desire.” “There was—” the girl says, and blushes—she is quite pretty, Mrs. Pongboon thinks, in a plain sort of way —“there was this boy. . .” How often had she heard that! Always, they wish to confide in her, like in the old-days psychologists, the ones who came up with the term. But this transference is scientific, not the mumbo-jumbo of old spells and make- believe. This is real. And Mrs. Pongboon does not want to hear their stories. The day is long and the sun is hot and Mrs. Pongboon wants a cool bag of ice with a straw poking out and a bottle of Pepsi poured inside it, and besides she had heard the same story a thousand and one times before. “Your poor darling,” she says, “you are like a string.” The girl looks up at her, big round eyes confused—is that how you looked at him, Mrs. Pongboon thinks uncharitably, is that how you looked at him when he charmed you by the banks of the Mekong?—and says, “I don’t understand.” “Science,” Mrs. Pongboon says, with quiet dignity one could possibly confuse for self-importance. “It says everything is made of string.” “Of course,’ the girl says, and Mrs. Pongboon notices that, indeed, the girl is wearing three—or is it four?— white cotton strings tied to her wrist (now that the sleeve is pulled back a little)—tied for her by a monk or an aunt in the basi ceremony, for luck and the appeasing the family’s spirits. She nods, because she approves of tradition, and preserving the old ways, and because she has the memory of a memory (the thing itself locked away in an earring back in her drawer) of the last string her mother had tied for her, when Mrs. Pongboon was still young, before her mother . . . but she no longer remembers, and it is better that way, sometimes. “Science,” Mrs. Pongboon says again, and then falters, having lost her place. “Strings,” she tries again. “Everything is made of string. Thoughts, feelings, memories, they are strings of numbers in the brain. And science has proved that strings—even when they seem perfect (like you, you beautiful child!)—will come out all in knots. Whatever we do, life takes us (so says the great philosopher Mrs. Pongboon!) and ties us into knots. This way—” and she points to the locket, like a magician at a coin about to disappear—“is just a way science has of smoothing out the knots.” And she thinks—for a while at least. She does not tell the girls, but there will always be knots. That is called—she had memorized it in English— it is called the spontaneous knotting of an agitated string. “That’s a scientific fact,” she says, out loud. “How . . . how much?” the girl says, and Mrs. Pongboon smiles kindly (joyful inside, a bite on the bait!) and names a price, and the girl looks taken aback, but then rallies, and she offers a different price, and Mrs. Pongboon shakes her head mournfully but agrees to lower her offer, and the girl raises hers—not so stupid after all, this one!—and they arrive at a price that was more or less what Mrs. Pongboon had hoped for—maybe add ten percent. “Will it hurt?” the girl says. “Not at all,” Mrs. Pongboon says. She pulls out the dangling wires from her backpack and attaches them to the girl’s temples. The girl pulls back, then relaxes. The gel adheres itself to her skin—it is almost animal-like in the way it moves, until it settles, becomes still, and —“Just think of it, bring it to the forefront of your mind —” the girl is visibly concentrating, teeth biting lower lip, it almost makes Mrs. Pongboon smile, almost but not quite—“there, I can see you have it—” And she presses a button. It’s as easy as that. And the girl seems to sag, and there is a whirring sound from the backpack, and that’s it. “Is it gone?” the girl says, and then she smiles, and then she frowns, and she says, “There was . . . I was with . . .” ‘When you want to remember,” Mrs. Pongboon says, gently pulling the quivering gel-ends back, the tentacles of the memory-naga withdrawing into its backpack —“just hold this to your head” and she reaches back and the locket pops out, a pretty little thing (just like you, my darling girl!) and hands it to her. “Can I . . . can I try it?” “Do you really want to?” The girl smiles, and shakes her head, and says, “No. Not now. . .” and there is a faint trace of regret in her voice. In Mrs. Pongboon’s experience, there always is. The girl pays her, and Mrs. Pongboon waddles away, the sweat streaming down her face, and she thinks about that ice-cold Pepsi in a bag, with the straw sticking out, just what a mature lady needs in these troubled times. She walks away down the street, and the wind picks up, and she knows it is going to rain. She takes shelter in a noodle-soup kitchen, where the last breakfast diners are noisily finishing off their bowls. Mrs. Pongboon orders her Pepsi and while she waits she thinks of all the boys and all the girls who’d had their hearts broken, a spontaneous knot forming on the agitated strings of their hearts. She touches her own private locket and, when she brings it to her head, she can hear the sound of the Mekong at sunset, the waves nibbling at the shore, the sound of distant pop music from the other bank which is Thailand. She can hear the crickets’ marching band and the frogs’ military choir and the sound of laughter and clinking beer glasses from the stilt-houses up a way, and she buries her face in the boy’s chest, and smells his sweat and his passion and for a moment, even though she is a matronly woman now and sells trinkets on the streets of Vientiane, has had two husbands and three kids, had buried parents, friends, had suffered loss and pain and disappointment—for just a moment, she feels like a smooth young thing again, a smooth young string: one that is yet to form a single agitated knot.

Lavie Tidhar is the author of The Bookman and forthcoming sequel Camera Obscura. Other books include linked-story collection HebrewPunk, novel The Tel Aviv Dossier (with Nir Yaniv), novella An Occupation of Angels and a host of to-be-released novels and novellas including Cloud Permutations, Gorel & The Pot-Bellied God and Martian Sands. He also edited The Apex Book of World SF and runs the World SF News Blog. Wishes and Feathers Patricia Russo

This is a story about wishes and feathers. Reh Izo came from Toynejo, where they believed in wishes. Lopi knew Reh came from Toynejo because of her accent, and because of her rings, and because of way she always accepted packages with a little jerky nod. That was a Toynejo habit, that jerky nod. When they had first met, the old woman had worn rings on every finger, and on occasion Lopi had seen Reh stroke, then twist, one ring or another. Everybody knew Toynejo people wished with rings. And Reh pronounced the sound of o as if it were ou, and the sound of e as if it were ey. Clearly she was from Toynejo, but Lopi never asked her about it. They didn’t speak about personal things. At first, they had hardly spoken at all. Lopi made her delivery every other week, sometimes every three weeks. “Hello. Delivery. Sign, please.” “Thank you.” Of course Lopi had known the old woman was sick. Healthy folks did not have airsticks delivered to them regularly. Of course Lopi had known the old woman was not wealthy. The airsticks she received came from a discount medical supply firm, and were the cheap sort, the kind that didn’t need to be transported in coldbags. Plus that, there was the place she nested in, a couple of rooms half underground that never saw daylight, in the back of a big house that held three other families, one floor each for them. The entrance to Reh’s nest was at the end of a narrow alley. The door signal didn’t work, so Lopi had to knock, and knock loudly. The old woman was a little deaf. Lopi was not surprised that Reh Izo had come to Zormevan to live, for the people of Zormevan were kind. Everybody knew that, the same way they knew that the people of Cando were misers and that the people of Toynejo believed in wishes. Since Lopi had grown up in Zormevan, this kindness was not something she noticed every day. It was mostly when Lopi traveled outside the city, or met travelers passing through Zormevan, that the kindness of her home city was made sharp. Outside Zormevan, people stared. Strangers passed comments, sometimes to each other, as if she could not hear them or understand them, sometimes directly to her, as if she could not be hurt by their words. People stopped her, stood in her path as she walked, or even put their hands on her to force her to halt, so they could ask about her face. In Bogroco they did that a lot. The people of Bogroco believed in directness. That was another thing everyone knew. Reh Izo never stared at Lopi’s face, or asked her any questions. The first time Reh had opened her old wooden door, she’d looked, and then looked away quickly. She had not met Lopi’s eyes as she accepted her package, or when she had taken the stylus to sign the delivery tracker, or handed the tracker and stylus back. She had given her that quick, jerky little nod that Toynejo people did. And she had said, “Thank you.” The second time Reh Izo opened the door, she had made eye contact with Lopi, though she hadn’t smiled. Reh Izo, Lopi came to realize, rarely smiled. But perhaps when one was ill and far away from home, there wasn’t much to smile about. On occasion, when she was making other deliveries in the neighborhood, Lopi saw her outside, in the front garden that all the nests in the building had access to, sitting on one of the benches, turning her rings. Lopi wondered if the old woman was wishing for health, or money, or for something else altogether. Of course she would not ask. She did notice when the rings began to disappear from the old woman’s fingers, first the one with the blue stone, then the simple silver knot, the sort of token young people in early love gave to each other, then the two plain yellow bands. She was selling them, Lopi thought. In the garden, too, on occasion she saw the old woman scraping an airstick, carefully, with a tiny bright knife, her head lowered to inhale each curl as it came off the block. Reh Izo was in the garden once when Lopi had to make a delivery to the nest on the second floor of the dwelling. They nodded to each other as Lopi went by the bench on her way to the steps. The man who opened the door of the second floor nest greeted her kindly and offered her tea, which Lopi kindly declined. Handing back the delivery tracker, the man directed his eyes over Lopi’s shoulder. “It is good to see her sitting in the sun,” he said. “We worry about her. She is so alone.” “You are kind to be concerned.” “My wife cooks for her sometimes,” the man said. “And she is kind, as well. She helped my son with his mathematics homework, long ago, when he was in first school.” It surprised Lopi to hear that the old woman had lived in her small nest here for many years. She had thought, because Reh Izo’s accent was so strong, that she must have arrived from Toynejo quite recently. But, she supposed, some people lost their accents more easily than others, the same way that some people learned the steps of a new dance more easily than others. It surprised her much more when she discovered that the old woman was not an old woman at all, despite the evidence of her white hair, her bent back, her tentative movements, her deafness. Lopi learned of her mistake midway through the second year she made deliveries to Reh Izo’s nest, when the packages of airsticks came every week, and Reh’s thin, shaky fingers had lost all but two of their rings. The woman had dropped the stylus and not been able to bend to pick it up; as Lopi stooped, she thought, What if she can’t open the package, and she needs a new airstick right now, and as she straightened, she said, “Would you like some help opening the box?” Reh Izo had stared at her then, not at her face, but at her, breathing heavily, breathing heavily simply from standing. She blinked twice, and then she said, “Yes, thank you. You are kind.” It had been a crisp, cloudless afternoon, Lopi remembered. The air outside, the air most people never noticed, had smelled of the buds hanging thick on the sourbark trees that grew all along this street. It was the first time Lopi had been inside the woman’s nest; there was a front room, and a doorless doorway to an unlighted corridor, which probably led to a small kitchen and a smaller washroom. The front room held a bed, which, in Toynejo style, rose only a hand’s- span from the floor, unmade, with a sag in the center that must have taken years to become so pronounced, plus a low table and a couple of chairs, a set of shelves, and a pair of chests. Lopi put the package on the table, then offered Reh Izo her arm, to help her to the nearer of the two chairs. She settled the old woman, silently; and silently, after the old woman was seated, Lopi took the cutter from her belt and slit open the package, folded back its flaps, and removed the first airstick from the top of the stack. Of course it was encased in plasfoil. “Shall I open it?” “Thank you.” Lopi slit the foil, drew out the airstick, and placed it in the old woman’s hands. It was then that she remembered the little bright blade she had seen Reh Izo use. She looked around for it, but it was not on the table, nor immediately visible on any of the shelves. “May I borrow your cutter?” The woman’s breathing had not grown easier. “Let me do it,” Lopi said, and kneeling, carefully scraped a thin curl from the stick. As it deliquesced, Reh inhaled the bluish vapor. They added a coloring agent in the manufacturing process, Lopi knew. The vapor itself had no scent, no taste. She pared another curl, and another. “I used to be a sand runner,” Reh said, with a tiny, cautious laugh. “Came in third in the under-thirty ten-liga race, the year the Games were held in Cando. Can you believe it?” The last time the Games had been held in Cando, Lopi had been twenty-four years old. She did not say this. Shame began to heat her; she hoped Reh would not notice. She simply nodded, and asked, “Are you feeling better?” “Yes,” Reh said, after a moment. “Thank you. You are kind.” “Is there anything else I can do?” “No, thank you. I am sorry to keep you from your work.” “I am not sorry,” Lopi said, and as it seemed that Reh Izo did not know how else to end the conversation, Lopi smiled kindly and took her leave. She did not know if Reh perceived the kindness in her smile; the other woman–not an old woman, not an old woman at all–had learned some of the forms of spoken kindness of Zormevan, but not all of them, and even the people of Zormevan did not always know how to read Lopi’s expressions, given the misalignment of her features, and the fatty tumors that grew on her forehead, which made it difficult for her to raise her eyebrows, or frown, though the people of Zormevan, kindly, responded to her as if the expressions they could not understand must, of course, be kind ones. The next time Lopi knocked on the door of Reh Izo’s nest, the woman seemed stronger. She accepted the package with her little jerk of a nod, signed the tracker without losing her grip on the stylus, and then asked Lopi if she would care for some tea. “Thank you,” Lopi said, for though such offers were frequently only conversational formulas, she sensed that Reh desired to be kind, and it was kind to allow another to show kindness. When Reh brought the tea, in brown cup without handles, Lopi saw that she wore no rings at all. Lopi gave her the customary words of gratitude, and sipped the tea. Then she said, because she felt sorry, and because she thought that since Reh was of the Toynejo people, she would not notice that the question was not proper, and if she did not notice, then no harm would be done, “Have you sold them all, then?” Immediately Reh looked down at her hands, and Lopi felt hot again; the woman had understood the question was improper. But Reh answered mildly, “Yes, I suppose I’ll have to start selling the furniture next,” and turned her head slightly to the left, to signal a joke, and Lopi said yes yes in a soft voice, as was proper in response to such a joke from an acquaintance. To give someone the opportunity to make a joke was not unkind, and Lopi felt better. The tea was odd, though, much too sweet for her taste. “It’s all right,” Reh said. “It’s almost over, anyway. I think the money I have will last me out. The landlord has been very nice, very understanding.” Reh Izo had placed the new package Lopi had brought on the table, and gone through the dark, doorless doorway to make tea, walking slowly, breathing hard, but seeming in much less distress, much less air hunger, than the week before. “You look better,” Lopi said. She had managed to drink less than half of the tea in the small cup. She steeled herself to take another sip. “Thank you,” Reh said, and smiled in a way that Lopi did not understand. Lopi stared into her cup. There was so much tea left. “You people,” Reh said. “If you don’t like it, don’t drink it.” “I don’t wish to–” “You’re not. You won’t. Do you think I’d get my feelings hurt over a cup of tea?” She shook her head. “There’s being polite, and then there’s being ridiculous. Half the time, I swear–” She silenced herself. “I’m sorry. Different people, different customs.” “Like the wishes,” Lopi said, boldly. “Oh. You saw?” Reh laughed her shallow, cautious laugh. “I am done with wishes, too, I think. Besides, it’s hard to work a wish alone. The really big ones need two people.” Lopi had heard of that. A friend would slide a ring on the finger of the one who needed the wish; the friend would wish, without saying in words what the wish was. The ring must not be touched afterwards. When the wish came true, the friend would come and take the ring back. Or so Toynejo people believed. You would have to trust someone very much to do that, Lopi thought. The other person might wish anything at all, and you would not know it. “What about your family?” she asked. Reh’s eyes widened, only briefly, but Lopi could read that expression with no problem: surprise, and dismay. “No,” Reh said. “I have no family. I got away from them. Do you understand?” “I’m not sure.” In Zormevan, it was not possible to get away from one’s family, even if all of its members had died. One always belonged to one’s family. “Not everybody is kind. In the world, I mean. Understand?” “I’m not sure,” Lopi said again. “It’s all right. Not your problem. But I do not speak to them. They do no speak to me. I have no family.” “But you. . .” This was beyond bold. This was something one said only to an intimate. “You will die soon.” “Yes.” “In Zormevan, the family comes, to help with the passage.” “My family wouldn’t help, believe me. They would make things much, much worse.” Reh took the cup from Lopi’s hand, and set it on the table, near the unopened package. “The people you call my family nearly ate my soul. I have had to spend many years growing my courage. I have enough now, I think.” “But family is–” “Nothing. An accident of birth.” Zormevan people did not think that way. Lopi found it hard to comprehend. “What about friends?” She looked at the cup on the table. She felt bad that she had not finished the tea. “Friends have always been a disappointment,” Reh said, quietly. “Long ago, I stopped hoping.” Lopi felt very sad, but it would have been unkind to say so, for that might have made Reh sad, even though she was a Toynejo person. So she said nothing. Again it was clear that Reh did not know how to properly end a conversation, so Lopi said that she had to get back to work, and Reh gave her quick little nod, and they parted. And now we come to the feathers. Reh Izo did not get better. Lopi had always known that Reh would not recover; stiffening of the lungs was a progressive, incurable condition. Some people lived with it for years, though, even as long as a decade. But the next time she came to deliver a package, it was not Reh Izo who opened the door, but a neighbor from the first-floor nest. Reh Izo was in bed, with three pillows behind her back. Her face was the color of puff-bread dough. “It will not be long,” the neighbor said softly, accepting the package, signing the tracker. “We have contacted her family. They are coming.” “Her family?” “Yes. It took a while to find them. The comm addresses in her reminder were very old. But we located one. He will gather the others. Don’t worry. We will keep her here until they come.” The man was young, and clearly a bit nervous. This was natural. He, and all the other families in the building, were performing one of the most critical kindnesses that anyone ever could. “You searched her possessions?” “It was necessary, to find her family.” “Did you ask her? The man looked puzzled. “She does not speak much, now. It is difficult for her.” Yes, Lopi thought. Yes, of course it would be. And even if Reh Izo had managed to say No, no, don’t, this man and the others in the building would not have understood. Lopi wasn’t quite certain she understood herself “May I see her?” she asked. “You are a friend, I see. All right. Come in, but only for a moment. She is weak.” Lopi did not say, yes, I am her friend. Lying always made her feel queasy. Reh Izo lay propped up on the pillows, her eyes closed, her breaths coming with the sound of dance sticks clicking against each other. The people of the building had already started to bring in feathers. If you fill a room where a person is dying with feathers, this will help delay the moment of death until all the members of the departing person’s family are able to arrive. Everybody in Zormevan knew this. Lopi looked at Reh, lying in the bed, her eyes closed but her body shaking, turning, her hands clutching at the covers, as if she were battling an enemy. Lopi looked at the room, feathers piled in every corner. Soon, they would cover the floor, the table, the chests, the shelves, the bed. Different people, different customs. Different people, different magics. “I’ll come by again later, after I finish my route,” Lopi said. “All right,” the young man said. “It is good to be kind.” “Yes, it is.” Lopi did not hurry to make the rest of her deliveries. She needed to think. Could one person be a friend to another, she wondered, without that other person’s agreement? Could you be a friend to someone who did not want you to be, or did not believe that it was possible for you to be? When her work was finished, Lopi went to a jeweler’s shop on Mada Road and bought an inexpensive ring, a braided band of some gray metal with no trade value. She had to guess at the size, but she was guessing at a lot of things today. When she returned to Reh Izo’s nest, the nervous young man from the first floor had been replaced by an older woman with a bustling manner. More feathers had arrived; Lopi saw that the chests had been piled over and the shelves stuffed full. “I have come to say goodbye,” Lopi said. “That is kind.” “Yes.” On the bed, Reh Izo still turned, and turned, pushing at the air, kicking at the covers with no strength. Lopi took Reh’s right hand, and slid the cheap braided metal ring on her first finger. It was a little loose, but it would hold. Lopi wished. Though the feathers the neighbors had gathered had all been washed, they still made the nest smell like a farm coop. Most of the feathers were gray, the best color. “The ring is my gift for her passage,” she said to the bustling woman. She did not feel as queasy as she had feared she might. “Please do not remove it.” “Of course not,” the woman replied. “It is good to be kind.” “Yes.” “Her family should arrive soon. Perhaps tomorrow.” Because this woman was older, and did not seem as burdened by the task as the young man had been, Lopi asked, “Have you ever thought. . . that there could be different sorts of kindness?” “I’m sure there are many sorts.” “And many sorts of courage?” “Certainly.” The woman waited patiently, perceiving that there was a further question. “What about different sorts of families?” Now the woman frowned. “I’m not sure I understand.” The sort of family that ate your soul. Lopi could not say those words. “Nothing. I must go. Thank you for your kindness.” “It is good to be kind.” “Yes.” Lopi went outside, and waited. Night was coming, and the air was turning cool. Ah, yes, she thought, people do notice that about air, whether it is cool or warm, humid or too dry. Sometimes. Sometimes they noticed it. She sat on a bench in the garden, not the bench Reh Izo always sat on, the one closest to the narrow alley that led from her nest in the back of the house to the front, but the one across from it, on the opposite side of the garden. She could be seen, she knew, from the windows of the nests on every floor of the building. She did not think anyone would come to chase her away. Everyone in the building knew who she was, even if they did not know her name. She was the woman with the face one did not stare at, who delivered packages. The lights were on in all the nests. This was customary, when someone was dying. As night drew closer, more people would join the older woman keeping watch over Reh Izo. Some neighbors were probably still out gathering feathers. They hadn’t yet covered the bed. A day, she thought. So the older woman had said. Reh Izo’s family would arrive in a day. The trip from Toynejo did not take that long, not unless one came on foot. But the other neighbor, the young man, had said that the relative they had managed to reach had to contact the rest of the family. In Zormevan, that would have taken less than a few minutes. Different places, different customs. The sky became black. The lights stayed on. Lopi saw people, Zormevan people, enter the alley. From where she sat, she could not see them walk to the back, but she did hear them knock; she heard the door open, and close. Zormevan people, only Zormevan people. She waited. She did not know how wishes worked in Toynejo. The people of Zormevan did not believe in wishes. But as she sat on the bench, growing colder and colder, she wished again. Despite the cold, and the hard bench, she was nearly asleep when she heard the cry. She rubbed her eyes, and straightened her back. The cry came again, louder. Someone must have opened the door. Three or four voices cried out now, in the wordless, three-note call of dismay Zormevan people used when a terrible unkindness had occurred, an unkindness that could not be repaired. Lopi stood up. The backs of her legs were numb. She walked to the alley. Her head was a little numb, too. The door of Reh Izo’s nest was open; light streamed out. The cries streamed out, as well, a chorus of disappointment and regret. Lopi went inside. The floor was covered with feathers. The bed, too, she saw, had been piled thick with them. Only Reh Izo’s face was exposed. Lopi had to dig under the feathers to find the coverlet. She pulled it back. The ring had not fallen off; it was still there, on the first finger of Reh’s right hand. Lopi removed it. People said that the dead looked peaceful. Reh Izo did not look peaceful. She looked like someone who had fought a long, hard battle. “It was what she wanted,” she said, to the neighbors, five of them, the nervous young man and the older woman, not bustling now, but holding hands with the others, their heads lowered. They glanced at her, but said nothing. Lopi thought to speak further, then changed her mind. They had only been trying to do the right thing. To add to their consternation would be very unkind. Heading for the door, she did say, “I was her friend.” As she left, she heard the chant of sorrow for thwarted kindness sound out once more. They would continue it until daybreak. That was the Zormevan way.

Patricia Russo’s stories have appeared in Lone Star Stories, Electric Velocipede, Abyss and Apex, Talebones, Tales of the Unanticipated, Not One of Us, in the anthologies Corpse Blossoms and Zencore, and in many other places, both print and online. The Sometimes Child Caroline Yoachim

Martha killed the wolf as it belly-wiggled out from the chicken coop. A head shot, on account of the wolf was only halfway out, and the fence blocked most everything else. With her newfangled Winchester, she could’ve had another shot, but there was no call to waste a second bullet. The wolf was practically dead before she shot it, nothing but fur and bones. She set the rifle down and pulled the wolf free. Mangy fur fell away in clumps, hanging off the edges of the chicken wire like fur trim on a winter coat. A decade ago, she and Joseph would’ve taken the pelt up to Wheatfield to collect the bounty, but that money had dried up, and Joseph was gone. She rolled the wolf onto its back, exposing swollen teats. Damnation. It shouldn’t have mattered that the wolf was a mama, a predator was a predator, and she could ill afford to lose the chickens. Shouldn’t have mattered, but it did. At least the wolf hadn’t gone after the flock. Martha still had blood crusted underneath her fingernails from earlier that afternoon, when the last ewe had finally lambed. She was grateful for Snow and Cotton, those dogs would protect the flock from a grizzly, never mind a wolf. Kept her company too, in these lonely months of spring when the school was closed and the children were off helping their families plant their crops. Martha dragged the wolf away from the chicken coop, past the barn and the smokehouse. Flies buzzed up when she moved the ragged corpse, then settled back down. On a scorcher like today it wouldn’t be long before the wolf started to smell something awful. She pulled out her knife, then paused, torn between skinning the wolf and going off to find her den. It was getting dark, but tonight was the Milk Moon, plenty bright for her to follow the trail back to the wolf’s den. Joseph would have wanted her to wait until morning. She shook her head. He’d have been forty-five this year, and come June they’d have been married for twenty-one years. She always used to find comfort in being younger than Joseph, as if she could never be too old, as long as she was younger than him. Now that he was gone, all she ever felt was old. Old and tired. She picked up her rifle. Come morning there would be bread to bake, milk to skim, and plenty of other chores that needed doing. Anything she didn’t do herself didn’t get done, and that included making sure there weren’t any other wolves prowling around. Besides, she was the best shot there was this side of Kansas City–well, depending on where Annie Oakley happened to be at the present moment. She followed faintly scratched paw prints down to Sawmill Creek. Joseph had built her a spring house, set over a little side branch of the creek, with cold flowing water running right under it to keep it cool. So much nicer than a root cellar. Martha unlatched the door and made a cursory check, but there was no sign anything had gotten into the vegetables on the shelves or the crock of cream she’d set into the water to keep it from going too far sour. Much as she wanted to, she couldn’t linger, so she stepped outside and latched the door behind her. Even with the sun gone down, it was hot. Sweat trickled down her neck and soaked into the collar of her dress. Between the heat and the mange, the wolf had been shedding heavily, so it was easy work to follow the tufts of fur on thistles and stickleburrs. The trail wove through the oaks and maples growing alongside the creek. Clouds of bugs swarmed around Martha in the humid evening air. Swatting them didn’t do any good, but she waved her hand in front of her face anyhow. About a mile up the creek she saw a well-worn trail of paw prints, starting in the mud at the water‘s edge and disappearing up the hill. Just the one set of prints, from the female wolf. The hillside was a place Martha knew well but had long avoided. The creek cut deep into the limestone, and the water barely moved. When Emma had fallen ill, this was where she and Joseph had baptized her. Good thing too. By the time Brother Stone had arrived, their baby girl had left them. Pa passed away that same week, taken by the same sickness. The both of them were buried up at Crown Hill cemetery, alongside Ma, who’d died when Martha was too young to even remember. Then, a year ago last week, another grave, for Joseph. The moon shone silver on the water, its light cut into bits and pieces by the tree branches. Martha turned her back to the creek and followed the paw prints up the hillside. The mouth of the wolf’s den was hidden between two roots of a cottonwood tree. It was the sort of tree that little boys would have delighted in climbing, with thick branches splitting off at even intervals, nearly down to the ground. There was no sign of a papa wolf. Martha ducked her head under the lowest cottonwood branch and reached into the den. A pitiful yipping came from inside, spurred by fear, or hunger, or loneliness. The volume of the yipping increased, and it was joined by an unmistakable sound–the wail of a human infant. Martha yanked her hand out of the den. She’d been thinking of baby Emma, and now her mind was playing tricks on her. No one would abandon a baby out here, and even if they did, how would it survive? Martha sat on her heels and looked over her shoulder at the creek. Emma’s baptismal creek. A breeze rippled the surface of the water, and the moon’s reflection wavered and danced. Clouds drifted in to cover the moon, and the water went dark. The only sound was the rustling of cottonwood leaves. Martha thrust her arm back into the den. Her hand settled on warm fur, and she pulled out a wolf pup. Not more than a month old, she guessed. He was darker than his mother, with fur the color of damp soil. His eyes were open, but he’d never survive on his own. The clouds parted, blown along by a constant breeze. The leading edge of a storm, maybe, and refreshing on her damp skin. She reached into the den again, and her fingers brushed against smooth skin. Skin, not fur. With both hands, she pulled a baby girl out into the moonlight– a naked baby girl with eyes the color of summer wheat. A miracle. The wolf pup she’d removed from the den nudged in closer. Martha started to pull the baby away, then remembered that they’d been in the den together a few moments before. The pup licked the baby’s feet. Martha untied her apron and wrapped the baby in it. “What are you doing all alone in the woods?” The baby blinked at the sound of her voice, then dribbled out a glob of drool. Her first tooth poked out from her gums, but she seemed too small to be teething. Not thin, but undersized–barely as big as the wolf pups. Martha stroked the sole of her foot, and her tiny toes splayed wide. Martha set the swaddled baby down, and the brown pup nestled close. She emptied the rest of the den. There were four pups: three browns, and one with grayer fur, like the mother. They huddled close together around the baby. It would be cruel to leave the pups here, they’d starve to death. She couldn’t bring them home, either– they were cute, but they were wolves. They’d be dangerous as adults. Her eyes fell on the baby. Swaddled tightly in the apron, the girl was drifting off to sleep. How someone could leave a baby girl to die out here–it was beyond reckoning. “I’ll call you Grace,” she said, picking the baby up. Emma had been named for Martha’s mother, Emmaline. If they’d had another daughter, she’d have been named for Joseph’s mother, but Abigail didn’t seem fitting. “I’ve been waiting for you a long time, and it’s by God’s grace that I’ve found you.” Martha laid Grace gently in the lowest crook of the cottonwood tree, and picked up her rifle. She asked the Lord to give her strength, then stood back and took aim. The crack of the gun woke baby Grace. She screamed until her face went red. The three remaining wolf pups whined. Martha took Grace into her arms and rocked her back and forth. She whispered, “Don’t cry, love, don’t cry, we’re almost done.” She spoke as much to herself as to Grace, repeating the same refrain over and over, until four shots had been fired and the pups lay silent and still. She pushed the limp bodies back into the den and kicked at the opening until it collapsed. Grace cried the entire time, as though she understood what Martha had done.

***

The woods reeked of blood and smoke. His fur bristled. He splashed across the creek and ran up the hill. The smells were strong enough to taste. He dug into the earth, following the scent of his pups. He found them and lifted them from the crumbly soil by the napes of their necks. They were coated in dirt and crusted with blood. He licked them clean, then nudged them with his nose. They didn’t move.

***

Martha lit a candle and rummaged through the hope chest until she found Emma’s white christening gown, hidden beneath Ma’s favorite quilt. There was a hole in the lace where a moth had gotten at it, but Grace wouldn’t know the difference. She fashioned a diaper out of a strip of linen, and slipped the gown over Grace’s head. It was absurdly big, despite being designed for a newborn. Martha tied her apron into a makeshift sling. She cleaned her rifle, and Grace slept, soothed by her warmth and the steady beat of her heart. Martha wondered if anyone was searching for the girl. She hadn’t heard about any lost child at church last Sunday, or when she’d taken eggs down the road to Widow Barnes a couple days back. She could hear Joseph’s voice in her head, telling her she should go to Wheatfield and ask around. It was a terrible idea. Grace’s mama left her to die. People like that didn’t deserve children. Besides, Wheatfield was a city of lone men, coming through to find work with the railroad company. Martha sat on the long bench by the kitchen table and held the baby. She should try to sleep some, but she couldn’t bear to set Grace down. Instead she stayed up all night. She fed Grace a bit of milk mixed with honey, and swapped her linen diaper for a clean one when she soiled it. Dawn approached, and Martha could barely stay awake. She should go milk Daisy, and stoke the fire in the stove, and start baking the day’s bread, but she didn’t. One minute more with the baby, then another minute after that. Martha cradled baby Grace in her arms and rocked the sleeping infant back and forth. The downy hairs on Grace’s cheek glowed in the first slanting rays of morning sunlight. A patch of hair grew thicker and darker in the middle of her cheek. Then the darkness spread, like muddy water in a flooding creek. Martha shook her head, trying to wake herself up. Grace’s nose lengthened into a furry snout. Martha screamed. The creature in the blanket woke and began to squirm. It was all she could do not to hurl the swaddled monster away. She set the creature gently on the floor. “She can’t be a wolf. She was a girl, a human girl,” Martha said. “I didn’t dream it. She was my little baby girl.” The pup was darker than the mother wolf, almost black, and its eyes were the same golden color now as when it was a baby. She stared at the pup in horror. The pup squirmed out of Emma’s christening gown and scampered into the corner of the cabin, back behind Martha’s spinning wheel. There had been four other pups. “I killed them. Shot them one by one.” She knew she should stop, that saying it out loud would only make it worse, but she couldn’t help herself. “What if sometimes they were children too?”

***

Martha picked up a handful of washed wool and spread it onto her carding brushes. The brushes scritched as she drew them across each other. Grace’s fur bristled at the sound. Scritch scratch, scritch scratch. Martha folded the carded wool over itself in a neat roll, and set it to the side. Repeat, repeat, repeat. It was boring work, the sort that made her arms ache, but left her mind to wander. Judging from the sky, there was another storm coming. The air inside the cabin was stifling, like trying to breathe the steam coming up off a pot of stew. Rain would clear the air, maybe cool it down a little. Grace wove between the dye pots and the loom, circled around the spinning wheel, paced beneath the kitchen table. The pup was restless, but bad weather was as good an excuse as any for keeping Grace indoors, so she couldn’t run off. Martha didn’t want her to leave, even if she was just a wolf pup, and not a little girl. Thunder rumbled, and Grace made straight for Martha’s skirt. She’d taken to hiding herself in there any time she got scared. Martha figured it probably reminded her of being in a den. Hail rattled against the roof, and Grace whimpered. Martha scooped Grace into her lap and stroked her fur. “What am I going to do with you? I can’t keep you locked up in here forever. Promise me you won’t run off next time we go outside?” Grace squirmed, and Martha let her down. When the storm had passed, Martha heaped the carded wool into a basket, and stoked up the fire in the stove so she could fix the stew for supper. Grace tried to stick her nose into the pot, and Martha pulled her away and scolded her. It was time to take the pup out to do her business. From the moment they stepped outside, Martha kept a close eye on the pup, ready to scoop her up if she tried to run off. It reminded her of herding sheep, which gave her an idea. “Grace,” Martha said, hoping the pup would eventually come to recognize the name. “Come here, Grace.” Grace ignored her. Martha called for Snow and Cotton. The dogs were with the sheep, huddled in the shade of the barn to escape the afternoon sun. They’d been raised with the flock, and likely thought of themselves as big, aggressive, protective sheep. They trotted over when she called. Snow caught Grace’s scent and growled. “Stop it,” Martha scolded. “This is Grace. She’s family.” The dogs approached cautiously. They didn’t know what to make of the pup–she smelled like a predator, but Martha’s familiar scent was on her too. Grace showed no sign of being intimidated by the much larger dogs. She growled. Sniffing, Cotton inched closer. Grace snapped at Cotton’s nose and both sheepdogs leapt backwards at the sudden attack. They lowered their heads and barked. Startled, Grace hopped backwards too, falling over her own hind legs in the process. Seeing weakness, Snow rushed in and took Grace’s neck in his teeth. Martha reached in to pull him off, thinking that he was being too rough, but he let go before she had a chance to do anything. Grace stayed low to the ground. She’d stopped growling, and Martha was hopeful that she’d accept the dogs as dominant members of her pack. The dogs wagged their tails, and their tongues hung out as they panted from the burst of activity. Grace rested her head on her feet, then yawned. The confrontation was over. “Our dogs must be the only ones in Kansas with sheep for parents and a wolf for children,” Martha mused. Snow picked Grace up by the nape of her neck, and Martha smiled to see the sheepdog holding a wolf pup so gently in its mouth. Martha couldn’t help but love her, even if she was a wolf, even if she’d imagined that wonderful first night.

***

One sweltering evening in June, it happened. Grace was a girl again. A toddler this time, at least in terms of her physical form. She’d grown several inches, and her pudgy baby legs had stretched thin. “Grace,” Martha said, picking the child up, “you’re growing so fast. Soon I won’t be able to carry you.” She was growing at a wolf’s pace. Martha wondered if she’d started her on meat too soon. She wished she could have asked Doc Harding about it. Grace cooed. “Aren’t you such a big girl now,” Martha said. Grace tried to swallow, then choked and started coughing. Martha held her upright, but Grace kept sputtering. Then she started to cry, which only made the choking worse. “Shh,” Martha said, “It’s okay, hush now.” Eventually Grace calmed down. She was having trouble adjusting to her human form. Her arms flailed, her legs kicked, and if her hands grasped onto something, she couldn’t figure out how to let go again. Outside, Snow and Cotton started barking. Martha peered out the window. Something dark moved in the trees behind the outhouse. She swaddled Grace in a blanket, which looked strange for a toddler, but calmed her down and stopped her flailing. Then she lit a lantern and took her rifle down from the hook by the door. “I’ll be right back, Grace. It’s probably only a coyote. I’ll just go have a look.” The moon was bright enough that she hardly needed the lantern. Animals tended to be wary of fire, though. After what happened last month, Martha would just as soon scare the animal off as shoot it. She headed towards the barn and caught a brief glimpse of yellow eyes at the edge of the woods. Then there was nothing but darkness. Those gleaming eyes could have been a coyote, but something told her it was a wolf. A wolf with dark fur that blended seamlessly into the night. A wolf with golden eyes.

***

By autumn, Grace was bigger than Cotton, and she’d overtake Snow soon. The dogs wouldn’t let her near the sheep anymore, and she started spending her waking hours in the woods hunting prairie chickens and small game. She’d been a girl five times now, always at night. After the third month, Martha had figured out that it was always the night of the full moon. Martha saw the dark wolf four more times, always in the distance. He only came on nights when Grace was a girl. Last month, Grace had started to crawl, and it was only a matter of time before she figured out how to open the door. It wasn’t safe to have that male wolf running around. Since the harvest started, she’d been working long days bringing in wheat and corn–her crops, and the neighbors’ too, since it was more efficient when they worked in teams. They all disapproved of her doing a man’s work, and she hated to leave Grace out wandering with the dogs all day, but it had to be done. She came home exhausted, and most nights she fell asleep soon after supper, with Grace curled up next to her in the bed. Most nights, but not tonight. Tonight was the full moon. Martha was dreading what she had to do. A few hours before sunset, she went for a long walk, not thinking where she was going. The autumn wind blew against her face and chilled her skin. Dry leaves crunched beneath her feet as she stomped further into the woods. Without thinking, she walked back to the den where she found Grace. She poked through the leaf litter, looking for remnants of the den. It was hard to remember exactly where it had been, but she eventually found the cottonwood roots, and, between them, a depression in the earth where the den had collapsed. Part of her wanted to dig into the den, to find the bones of the wolf pups, to see if they were still there. Instead, she went back to the creek. She scooped up the icy water with her hands and splashed it over her cheeks. The cold calmed her, gave her the resolve she’d need later tonight. When her knees started to ache, she stood up. Martha heard something coming up behind her. She turned, and the dark wolf stared down at her. Icy water dripped down her neck and her skin turned to gooseflesh. The papa wolf, and she didn’t have her gun, she was defenseless. He trotted down the hill and licked her hand. “Grace,” Martha realized. “What are you doing out here?” Grace pushed her head against Martha’s hand. Her favorite place to be petted was behind the ears, and Martha obliged with a good long scratch. It gave her heart time to slow down. This Grace had nothing to fear from the dark wolf that came on the night of the full moon. She was a coordinated hunter, a quick-witted wolf. The Lord’s will was so hard to understand. Grace was a perfect wolf for 30 days and 29 nights, but the one night she was human, she was flawed. Tonight she’d have the body of a six-year-old girl, but in her human form she could barely crawl, and she still hadn’t spoken a single word. “But I love you both ways, Grace,” Martha said, kneeling down to bury her face in the dark fur of Grace’s neck. Grace stood patiently for a moment while Martha hugged her, but when it became apparent that no additional ear-scratching was forthcoming, she wriggled away and waded into the creek. After lapping up several mouthfuls of fresh water, she trotted up to where the den had been, sniffing. “Come on, Grace, it’ll be getting dark soon,” Martha said. Grace sniffed one last time at the collapsed den before following Martha back to the cabin. The wolf–too big now to be called a pup–curled up in front of the hearth and fell asleep. She was still napping when her change came. Her sleek fur melted into skin, and she whimpered as her flesh stretched into arms and legs. The changes were getting harder on her. Each time there was more of her to rearrange. Martha stared out the window, waiting for the dark wolf to appear. Grace rose onto her hands and feet. She didn’t crawl on hands and knees as a baby would, for when did a wolf ever touch its knees to the ground? Grace put her head in Martha’s lap. Martha stroked her hair. She resisted the urge to scratch behind the girl’s ears. It was one thing for Grace to act wolfish, but she tried to treat her like a girl, as best she could. Martha pulled a dress down over Grace’s head and smoothed it into place. It was one of her own dresses, several sizes too big, but at the rate Grace grew, there was no point to making her special clothes. “Sit up, Grace,” Martha said, “A little girl can’t go around on all fours like that. Come on, sit up.” Sitting was a command Martha had taught her as a wolf, and some understanding carried over. She crouched into a squat, keeping her hands on the ground in front of her. It still didn’t look natural, but it looked slightly more childlike. Martha gently lifted Grace’s hands off the floor. When she seemed to have her balance, Martha let go. The pose looked pretty good. She was sitting with her knees tucked up against her chest. A child might sit that way. She patted Grace on the head and went back to the window. Across the yard, halfway between the barn and the cabin, was the golden-eyed wolf. Martha took her rifle down from over the door. “I’ll be right back Grace, you stay here.” The wolf made no move to leave when Martha came outside. He’s dangerous, she told herself, he won’t leave us be. She repeated justifications in her head, over and over until they ran together and lost all meaning. She held the gun pointed at the wolf until her arm was tired, and still she couldn’t bring herself to shoot. He was Grace’s father, he had to be, and what if sometimes he was human? The wolf approached her, baring its teeth and making a low growling sound at the back of his throat. She shouldn’t be out here, she should be inside with Grace. The wolf came closer, slowly, a hunter stalking its prey. A few yards away, he stopped and sniffed. The rifle trembled in Martha’s hands. If he leapt for her, she’d have to shoot him, but he stood completely still. The growling stopped. Could he smell Grace on her? Martha put the rifle down and held out her hand. “Here, wolf,” she called, “I won’t hurt you.” She waited with her arm extended, but the wolf did nothing. He refused to come closer, and he refused to leave. Martha was just as stubborn, though every moment she spent out here was a moment not spent with her little girl. They sat that way until dawn. As the sky brightened and the moon set, the wolf lay down in the dirt. He changed the same time Grace did, his fur changing into skin. He screamed from the pain of it. Inside the cabin, Grace howled. “Don’t look at me.” His voice was higher than Martha expected. He curled up his legs to hide his nakedness. He’d been a full sized wolf, but now he was just a boy, eleven, maybe twelve years old. Martha gestured for him to come inside, and he followed her warily. She gave him a pair of Joseph’s britches to wear, and one of his old shirts. They were too big for the boy, but better than nothing. He said his name was Daniel, that he lived up north of Wheatfield, and worked for the railroad off and on. “I’m sorry about the pups,” she told him. “Why didn’t you come back for them? You could have taken the pups away, taken them home. . .” “All I remembered was a smell, a place I been, sometimes a taste. I never knew what it meant.” “You could have stayed to find out.” He traced the wood grain of the table, and for a moment Martha thought he wouldn’t answer. “I didn’t want to find out. I wake up lying by the creek every month, hoping I ain’t killed nobody I know. Best thing for me is not to get too close to people. Ever since I can remember I never did stay long in one place.” Wheatfield was the perfect place for a boy to live that kind of life, a town where everybody was just passing through. Everybody left. Everybody left her behind. Martha’s eyes fell to Grace, curled up in front of the fire. “I’ll take good care of Grace,” Martha said. “She’s like the little girl my husband and I lost. We were married for nineteen years when he died, and we always wanted another little girl. You can trust her with me, and head out farther west where there’s plenty of open land–” “No.” He refused to look at her. “I can’t leave. I already tried. Next time the moon came full I’d be right back, looking for her.” Daniel nodded toward Grace. Grace was curled by the fire. She noticed Martha was watching and edged closer, on her belly. Martha patted her head. Daniel was Grace’s father, even if he was just a boy. She couldn’t ask him to abandon her. “Stay and live with us.” They would be a strange family, Martha and her sometimes children, but at least she wouldn’t be alone.

***

When the moon rose, he woke in a strange place. It smelled of burnt wood and humans, but also something familiar. His pup, the last remaining pup was here. He followed the smell, but found only a human child, lying naked and hairless on the floor. A strange pup, but definitely his. He licked its skin and rubbed his head against its legs. The pup rolled onto its back, exposing its throat. It was a good pup. He wished he could run with it in the woods, as he had run with its mother. He wanted to teach it how to sneak up on deer and sheep, how they could work together to bring down prey. The pup rolled upright again and sat on its hindlegs. It did not look like a hunter; it didn’t even look like it could run. He rested his head on its fat hairless leg, and it rubbed circles behind his ears with a soft forepaw. There were many things he could not share with his pup, but at least they could share something. At least they could share this.

Caroline M. Yoachim is a writer and photographer living in Austin, Texas. She is a graduate of the 2006 Clarion West Writers Workshop, and her fiction has appeared in Asimov’s, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Fantasy Magazine. Her website is carolineyoachim.com. Interview: Tim Pratt David Steffen

It’s often interesting to hear the origins of particular stories. Can you tell us the origin of one of yours? For instance, “Captain Fantasy and the Secret Masters” (or another one, if you have another with a more entertaining origin story).

The origin of “Captain Fantasy” is both ridiculously complex and pretty boring to recount, and that’s likely true of most of my stories. There’s not usually a clear, unambiguous seed to any story–usually a bunch of separate ideas float around in my head until they form a clump that has some shape and heft to it. For instance. . . well, take my story “Troublesolving”. I wrote that relatively recently, so its origins are pretty clear in my mind. First, I was reading about gangstalking, a particular form of paranoia where people believe they’re being stalked, harassed, and persecuted by large groups of strangers–essentially, everyone you encounter is a potential member of the conspiracy, and virtually any inconvenience or bad luck or accident that befalls you can be attributed to that conspiracy. So I thought, “What if someone really WAS being persecuted by a huge group of people, but didn’t believe it, because they aren’t paranoid?” That gave me the basis of my plot. The heroine, Cameron, came about because after years of writing ass-kicking urban fantasy, I wanted to write a heroine who didn’t solve her problems through violence, just to stretch my brain a bit. I’d also been reading about interior design as art, and discovered the existence of pink handguns, and thought it would be funny to have a time machine that was too small to transport a person, and was walking a lot in my old neighborhood in Oakland (where the story is set), and all that stuff went into the hopper–and out came a story. Basically I read a lot and listen a lot and anything remotely interesting goes into the compost heap in my brain to form soil for stories. (To butcher a metaphor.)

Many writers prefer to write either short stories or novels. You’ve been successful in both venues. Do you find one easier than the other? More rewarding?

They both have advantages and disadvantages. When I’m working on a novel, I always know what I’m doing when I sit down to write: who the characters are, what I’m driving toward, what the world is like, etc. Even more so in my series work, where I’ve spent previous volumes with at least some of the characters, and know them really well. With a short story, I have to invent a whole new world and populate that world nearly every time I sit down (I tend to draft stories in one, two, or three sittings at most). Writing 100,000 words of a novel is a lot less exhausting than writing 100,000 words of short fiction, because of that greater necessity of invention when it comes to stories. Of course, novels take weeks or months write, while stories take hours or days, so there’s a lot more instant gratification to a story. I like novels because there’s room to build in subplots that reflect or comment on or recomplicate the main plot, and because there’s room for weird little digressions or just exploring ideas because they’re interesting, while stories–even my own admittedly sometimes overstuffed stories–require more focus.

In five years, where would you like to be in your writing?

Writing whatever books I want and selling them for large quantities of money! My career took a hit during the publishing economic apocalypse, which hit just when my publishing contract ran out, alas. Lately I’m doing some work-for-hire books for extra money, and while they’re all fun projects and I enjoy the gigs, none of them are books I’m intensely passionate about–I hope one of the original proposals I have going the rounds clicks with an editor soon.

If you could give just one piece of advice to aspiring writers, what would it be?

Read a lot, and read outside your field as well as within it. It’ll keep you from reinventing the wheel and give you more material to write about.

You’re married to Heather Shaw, who is also a professionally published writer. I imagine this makes for an interesting dynamic. How has this affected your writing? Do you think your co-existence as writers launches you both to new creative heights?

It’s certainly easier than being married to a non- writer, because she understands that when I appear to be staring at the ceiling I’m actually working; because she likes going to conventions; because she’s good about giving me time to work; because we can talk art and craft and such. It’s good for us to have a passion in common. She’s amazingly supportive, and I hope I’m supportive of her work, too (you’d have to ask her for confirmation. . .).

What other creative outlets do you have besides writing prose?

Uh. . . precious few. I used to draw (badly) and play flute (really badly) and bass guitar (passably), but I gave all that up to focus on writing, where my true strengths lie. I used to write a lot of poetry, but I’ve done less of that in recent years, for whatever reason; probably because I realized I’d gotten as good as I was ever going to get as a poet, and it wasn’t good enough, while my fiction writing is still improving. I do enjoy cooking, though I’m just starting to learn how to do things more complex than cooking casseroles or grilling steaks.

Are you a gamer? If so, what are your favorite games?

I’m a very casual console/computer gamer. I play World of Warcraft intensely for several weeks after a new expansion comes out and occasionally the rest of the time. (Though I did get an invitation this week to join the Beta test for the latest expansion, which is threatening to slaughter my productivity.) I play a little Left 4 Dead 2, a little Splinter Cell, a little Katamari Damacy. . . As for non-video games, I like playing cards (particularly Oh, Hell) with certain friends, and the occasional game of Scrabble or Trivial Pursuit. (My days of playing Strip Risk are long behind me.)

What do you like to do when you’re not reading or writing?

Hang out with my wife, play with my son, take walks, cook, eat, play games, watch TV and movies, have sex, lay on beaches drinking rum and fruit juice. (That’s not necessarily in order of preference, though the first two usually take priority.) I’m basically a lazy hedonist. (If I didn’t enjoy writing, I wouldn’t do it.) Life is about maximizing your own enjoyment of life, insofar as you can do so without causing pain or discomfort to others. Call it ethical hedonism.

What’s your first memory? Standing in the snow in West Virginia when I was maybe four or five. Assuming it’s a real memory. Memory is a fallible thing, easily influenced and altered.

What scares you more than anything else?

Like I’m going to answer THAT in an interview anyone can read online! Haven’t you ever read Clive Barker’s “Dread”? That kind of information can lead to disaster.

Imagine that you are the one with whom aliens make first contact. What would you say?

Assuming they can actually understand me, which is a big assumption with aliens, probably something like, “We’re not as bad as we seem, really. Most of us mean well. We just have primate brains that evolved to be really, really bad at comprehending the long-term (or even middle-term) consequences of our actions.”

What was the last book you read?

The Escapement by KJ Parker, third in the Engineer Trilogy. Parker does fantasy-without-magic, basically historical novels set in imaginary places. Good stuff.

Your favorite book?

Impossible question! I could just about compile a short list of favorite authors, but narrowing it to one book is impossible as it changes depending on my mood. But I can mention books that influenced me profoundly and that I’ve read several times: Jonathan Carroll’s Outside the Dog Museum; Joanna Russ’s The Two of Them; Clive Barker’s Weaveworld; Terri Windling’s The Wood Wife; Stephen King’s It and The Stand; Peter Beagle’s Folk of the Air. . . and I’d better stop as I totally failed at your question.

Who is your favorite author?

Again you wound me! Two answers, all-time and current: the first novel I ever read was by Stephen King (Carrie, age eight), and I read every novel of his, even the minor ones, with varying degrees of pleasure. Other authors do various things better than King does, but no other writer has given me as much enjoyment over the years. My favorite writer at the moment is Irish crime writer Ken Bruen, especially his Jack Taylor series. That guy can stomp a mudhole in your heart.

What was the last movie you saw?

In a theater, Kick-Ass; at home, Temple Grandin.

What is your favorite movie?

You may have noticed I have a hard time nailing down favorites. But I like Wes Anderson movies a lot; The Royal Tenenbaums is probably my favorite of his.

Do you have any publications coming out soon that we should watch for?

The major thing is the ongoing serialization of my novel Broken Mirrors, fifth in my Marla Mason series. (Bantam Spectra published the first four, then dropped the series, but my fans wanted me to wrap things up a bit, so I’m self-publishing online, with a print version coming from a small press when it’s all done.) That’s been going up at the rate of one chapter per week since March, and should take 20-25 weeks overall. I also have an anthology I edited, Sympathy for the Devil, coming from Night Shade Books late this summer.

Can you tell us about your works in progress?

Mostly Broken Mirrors at the moment. It’s about halfway done. I just finished a short story called “Antiquities and Tangibles” that’s out on submission; with luck it will appear somewhere in the future. After Broken Mirrors I have some work-for-hire stuff to do. Not sure what the next major personal project will be– depends on whether I sell a proposal!

Tim, thanks for taking the time for this interview. I’ll be looking forward to your next story. Good luck, and I’ll see you around.

David lives with his wife and three dogs in Minnesota, where he writes computer vision routines and fiction stories. When he’s not shortsightedly enabling our future robot overlords, he is writing about other worlds, none of which have yet involved robot dominance over humans (some subjects hit too close to home). He has fiction published or upcoming in Pseudopod, Brain Harvest, Bull Spec, and two anthologies by Northern Frights Publishing, to name a few. He also co-edits Diabolical Plots, a repository of interviews, reviews, and editorials all centered around speculative fiction. Author Spotlight: Keffy R.M. Kehrli T.J. McIntyre

Where did this story come from? What was your inspiration?

This story is based in a world setting I’ve been working on for years. I have novels planned in that world, and this story would be relatively ancient history by the time the first novel starts. I have a problem in that every time a historical figure or deity is mentioned in passing, I immediately want to put together a piece of fiction related to that character. I was thinking about the historical background of that world, and this story fell out. I’m also interested in the power that narrative archetypes have over people. The archetype (or cliché, depending on who you ask) of the “chosen one” is very common in epic fantasy, and even though I have seen it done to death, I still think there’s something worth examining in that type of story. These narratives have such a hold over us, these cartoon versions of our reality. I want to explore that.

Okay, I’d like to talk about world-building a little bit. You’ve created quite the exotic setting in this story. What real-world cultures, if any, served as your inspiration? What steps did you take to keep the world-building consistent throughout the narrative?

This is a difficult question to answer. In general, all of my world-building comes from paying attention when I hear about how people live. I try not to specifically think of any single culture when I build a setting because I tend to get annoyed when I read fiction in which culture X is obviously the English or culture Y is obviously meant to be the Japanese. I try to spend less time with culture-specific details and more time with the broader implications and power dynamics of the different conflicts between them. No culture exists in a vacuum, so if I build a fantasy culture, I also spend time thinking about what contact exists with the others in the world.

One of the more evocative aspects of your narration was the character and place names themselves. How did you go about naming your characters and settings?

I usually start with a basic phonological basis for the language, and then decide if I want the name to be another form of a name I’ve already created for another culture in this world. Sometimes I just think, “Well, I want this language to sound a bit like X real language.” Other times, I make a list of common and uncommon sounds or syllables and build names out of those. Descriptive names are fun and sometimes I end up deciding things about the grammar of that particular language by what happens in the name. In Berai, for instance, if somebody is doing something to themselves, that’s shown through reduplication of the verb. When I start naming things, I often get too deep in imaginary-language-land. Not only do I have to worry about whether or not the names mean something in languages I don’t speak, but I often get so deep that I don’t realize that the name is an English word pronounced differently until it’s pointed out to me. Never let linguists write fantasy.

For me, as a parent, the emotional heft of the story came from the image of a mother who no longer knows her son, who may never have really known him at all. Where did this theme come from?

Parents are often treated in fantasy literature as being too inconvenient, which is why we have so many stories about magical orphans. . . I think that all parents have an idea of who their children are, and I think that this idea is not always entirely accurate, for various reasons. I’m transgender, so it’s easy to say that I’ve never quite felt like the person my parents thought they were raising. I wanted to think about the other side of things for a while, and to be honest, it is easier for me to do that through fiction.

So, what’s next for Keffy R. M. Kehrli? Do you have any upcoming publications we can look forward to you would like to mention here?

I have three short pieces due to come out by the end of the year. “Shoes Worn Once” will be appearing in Electric Velocipede #21, which should be out in August. “The Ghost of a Girl Who Never Lived” will probably be in either the October or December issue of Intergalactic Medicine Show. I also recently got an acceptance for “A Well-Embroidered Heart,” which will be in the Beauty Has Her Way anthology.

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: Lavie Tidhar Jennifer Konieczny

“The Spontaneous Knotting of an Agitated String” is the second of your South East Asia stories that Fantasy has run. The inspiration for last year’s “The Integrity of the Chain” arose from a tuk-tuk ride. Could you tell us about the process of writing “The Spontaneous Knotting”? Was it also inspired by a specific event?

Maybe less obvious than the tuk-tuk thing—it was me walking around and seeing this woman walking from shop to shop, selling trinkets—and it sort of clicked. I wanted to write about this woman, or someone like her. And it tied in, strangely, with this scientific theory of agitated strings that I’d read about around that time. I thought, that’s pretty cool research! Someone needs to do something useful with it! Going back to tuk-tuks though, one of the stranger evenings I spent in Laos had to do with meeting a midget hunchback tuk-tuk driver. The next day I had a terrible hangover so naturally I wrote a story about it. . . and “Aphrodisia” is going to appear in Futurismic in a couple of months. Life really is weirder than fiction.

In “The Spontaneous Knotting” memory and understanding are tied to language. Mrs. Pongboon reminds the girl that “mothers, too, were lovers once” and uses English words to associate her lockets with advanced technology. When her customers transfer their memories to the lockets, they erase even the language to describe the memory. What, do you find, is the relationship between language and memory? How does the relationship change when working within several languages?

It’s a tough one. I’m not actually sure how to answer it. I think English is very much associated with technology. I see it in Israel as well as in Laos. And then, since Laos was a French colony before, the French are still there trying to push the French language, while everyone in their 20s is out to learn English—there’re Business English books everywhere and courses. The English are winning against the French still. . . But languages acquire words and terms from one another all the time. It’s very possible Chinese will be the dominant language in a century, or we’d end up with a new sort of pidgin. . . I think the most startling—the most obvious— example, for me, of the way language works in the brain is in remembering numbers. I remember some telephone numbers in English and some in Hebrew, and it’s virtually impossible to make a rapid switch between them. So if you ask me for a number my brain stores in Hebrew, I will have to literally go digit by digit and mentally translate them for you—whereas I could just dial them immediately otherwise. It’s just a very clear example of the brain as a storage device—the same way we have a short-term memory “number buffer” that can store 7 plus/minus 2 digits. So the brain as machine fascinates me, and the way you probably could, in future, manipulate it more directly with technology. We’re not there yet, though. . .

Now for a tangential question. Both stories mention Pepsi instead of Coke. Is Pepsi more popular in Vientiane? Where do you fall in the great Pepsi/Coke debate?

You’re absolutely right. Pepsi has a factory and distribution in Laos. Coca-Cola doesn’t. So while you can get Coke, it comes in from Thailand, whereas Pepsi has a strong presence everywhere (including advertising, etc.). In fact, the way you’d normally get a Pepsi in Laos isn’t by buying the bottle, but getting a plastic bag full of crushed ice, into which you pour the Pepsi, and then stick a straw in it. This way the sellers keep the bottles for recycling, see. . . Which is unfortunate, because—please don’t tell anyone!—I’m definitely on the Coke side of the debate. . .

Your work on World SF highlights unity and distinctions within the global SF community. Do you see particular trends at the moment and where do you think the community or the market will head in the future? What would you recommend for authors or readers who want to engage with the wider community?

I’m not sure if there are trends—at the end of the day we’re looking at a whole bunch of very diverse people working in very different environments, and what I try to do—with the World SF Blog, and with the Apex anthologies (I’m working on a second volume at the moment, with a different geographical focus to the first volume)—is to simply showcase some of it. It’s been very exciting—there’s a definite sense of people interacting with each other now, of a lot more openness. It’s telling that a lot of our visitors to the blog now are not from North America, but from mainland Europe and from Asia. People are bypassing the American SF scene to some extent, and talk to each other instead. How do you engage with the wider community? You’d be surprised how just being interested can make all the difference. We never really run out of material to post on the blog! But of course, we have the whole world to look at. . . and you should probably pick up a copy of The Apex Book of World SF, to get just a taste of what people are doing right now.

Your debut novelThe Bookman has recently been released in the UK and Australia and is due in North America later this year. Before we conclude, could you tell us what else you have coming up?

I have far too many books coming out in the next couple of years. The Bookman is coming out in the US in October; Camera Obscura, the second novel set in that world, will follow in both the UK and US in early 2011. I have a short novel due, probably this year, from Apex Books—Martian Sands is something between Schindler’s List and Total Recall—it has kibbutzim on Mars, possible time-travel, four-armed Martian warriors, plots, schemes, fictional detectives and the Holocaust. Apex will also release a revised edition of my novella An Occupation of Angels. My novella Cloud Permutations should be out fairly soon from PS Publishing in the UK. It’s a sort of planetary romance set on a world settled by Melanesians, and about a boy who wants to fly. . . PS are also doing another novella of mine—Gorel & The Pot-Bellied God (my sex, drugs and guns homage to sword & sorcery)—as well as a novel I’m tremendously excited about. I’m not sure when Osama comes out but when it does I’ll be very happy. A lot of commercial publishers were afraid to take it on and I think it’s to PS’s credit that they did. It’s going to be awesome.

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: Caroline Yoachim William Sullivan

How did you decide on the setting of Old West Kansas?

Some people start writing from a character or a setting, but I generally start from a vague idea. In this case, I began with some musings about what a second generation werewolf might look like. As I was brainstorming, isolation and loneliness emerged as important themes, and I quickly realized that the Old West would be a perfect backdrop for the story. With the exception of Texas, where I currently reside, I’m not terribly familiar with the states that make up the Old West. And while the weather in the opening scene was inspired by my first Texas summer, it didn’t feel right to set the story in Texas. I ended up choosing Kansas after chatting with a Clarion West classmate of mine, Tina Connolly, who grew up there. She was invaluable in making sure I had all the right details about climate, geography, and vegetation!

Daniel and Grace’s inverted transformations somewhat parallel Martha and her recently deceased husband. Both pairs are separated by an insurmountable barrier, but they also keep returning to each other. While the nature of each relationship is very different, how might the reader interpret that parallel?

That’s an interesting way to look at the story. Certainly both Martha and Daniel long for relationships that they can’t have. Martha misses not only her husband, but also her daughter, who died as an infant. Daniel, in wolf form, wants to raise his pup. It is this parallel desire for family that draws the two of them together, because Grace helps to fill a void in each of their lives.

Both Daniel’s and Martha’s families have several members die, leaving both Daniel and Martha alone. How much do those tragedies affect their ability to be open to the events and people in this story?

The death of so many of Martha’s family members has left her to fend for herself, no easy feat for a widowed woman in the Old West. As a result, she has developed a balance between being practical and being sentimental. She has to shoot predators to protect the chickens, but she still has her dead daughter’s christening gown from two decades ago. Furthermore, Martha has already faced disapproval for doing work that was generally done by men. Certainly these experiences, combined with her own loneliness, make it easier for her to except Grace and later Daniel. As for Daniel, I don’t think of him as being open to what’s happening. He doesn’t have a choice about turning into a wolf, and in that form his actions are largely driven by instinct. Even at the end, it isn’t the family members he’s lost that make him open to staying, it’s the fact that Grace is still alive.

The old west was full of folks like Martha who kept to themselves and spent a great deal of time alone. Doesn’t that buffer from society and civilization leave more room for extraordinary stories, like yours?

Having a buffer from society was a key feature for this story. When I wrote earlier drafts, Martha was far less isolated, but having her face societal disapproval and inquisitive neighbors wasn’t working. Having Martha be truly alone turned out to be important for her character, and for determining how she would respond to the various events of the story. That said, I don’t think that isolation from society necessarily leaves more room for extraordinary stories – it just influences the sort of story you end up with.

Is there anything else you’d like to say about your story?

Writing this story made me grateful to live in modern times. If I want milk or bread I just run to the grocery store, and when the weather here in Texas gets too hot I can stay indoors where it’s air-conditioned!

William Sullivan is a writer, computer programmer, and musician living in Austin, Texas. You can find his website at enkrates.com. 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.