The Carnivale of Abandoned Tales by Caitlyn Paxson
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Number Ten $6.00 THE CARNIVALE OF ABANDONED TALES BY CAITLYN PAXSON PLUS, AN INTERVIEW WITH CORY DOCTOROW Number Ten Shimmerµ Table of Contents Letter from the Editor Blue Joe 2 Dear Readers, by Stephanie Burgis Welcome to our 10th issue! We're celebrating this The Carnivale of Abandoned Tales 11 milestone with our best issue yet: we've got an by Caitlyn Paxson interview with Cory Doctorow, and twelve wonderful One for Sorrow 26 new stories. Because we want as many people as by Shweta Narayan possible to celebrate with us, we're making the electronic edition available for free. Let your friends Beth Wodzinski A Painter, a Sheep, and a Boa Constrictor 23 Editor-in-Chief know: www.shimmerzine.com by Nir Yaniv Huge congratulations to our Art Director, Mary Robinette The Bride Price 39 Kowal, for winning the John W. Campbell Best New Writer award. by Richard S. Crawford Richly deserved—and she's just getting started. Mary’s been Jaguar Woman 43 instrumental in Shimmer since the by Silvia Moreno-Garcia beginning, so it is with great sadness that I announce that this is her final issue for Firefly Igloo 47 by Caroline M. Yoachim ...we’re making us. Thank you, Mary, for all you’ve done for Shimmer. The Fox and the King’s Beard 50 the electronic Award-winning artist Stephen by Jessica Paige Wick Stanley, whose work has appeared often Interview with Cory Doctorow 58 edition available in these pages, will be stepping in as our by Jen West new Art Director, and I'm sure he'll do an River Water 64 extraordinary job. Welcome, Stephen! by Becca De La Rosa C o m i n g t h i s s u m m e r : T h e for ƒree². What to Do with the Dead 78 Clockwork Jungle Book, co-edited by by Claude Lalumière George Mann, our collection of steampunk animal fables. The Spoils of Springfield 83 byAlex Wilson As always, we'd love to hear what you think. Get in touch: [email protected]. Happy reading! Counting Down to the End of the Universe 91 by Sara Genge Contributors 95 Artists & Illustrations 98 Shimmer is distributed four times yearly by Beth Wodzinski, PO Box 58591, Salt Lake City, UT 84158-0591. Shimmery Staff 99 [email protected]. Issues: single $6 or $22 for four. All rights reserved. Submissions to: [email protected]. Copyright ©2009 by Shimmer Magazine. Individual works are copyrighted ©2009 by their creators. All rights reserved. Table of Contents Letter from the Editor Blue Joe 2 Dear Readers, by Stephanie Burgis Welcome to our 10th issue! We're celebrating this The Carnivale of Abandoned Tales 11 milestone with our best issue yet: we've got an by Caitlyn Paxson interview with Cory Doctorow, and twelve wonderful One for Sorrow 26 new stories. Because we want as many people as by Shweta Narayan possible to celebrate with us, we're making the electronic edition available for free. Let your friends Beth Wodzinski A Painter, a Sheep, and a Boa Constrictor 23 Editor-in-Chief know: www.shimmerzine.com by Nir Yaniv Huge congratulations to our Art Director, Mary Robinette The Bride Price 39 Kowal, for winning the John W. Campbell Best New Writer award. by Richard S. Crawford Richly deserved—and she's just getting started. Mary’s been Jaguar Woman 43 instrumental in Shimmer since the by Silvia Moreno-Garcia beginning, so it is with great sadness that I announce that this is her final issue for Firefly Igloo 47 by Caroline M. Yoachim ...we’re making us. Thank you, Mary, for all you’ve done for Shimmer. The Fox and the King’s Beard 50 the electronic Award-winning artist Stephen by Jessica Paige Wick Stanley, whose work has appeared often Interview with Cory Doctorow 58 edition available in these pages, will be stepping in as our by Jen West new Art Director, and I'm sure he'll do an River Water 64 extraordinary job. Welcome, Stephen! by Becca De La Rosa C o m i n g t h i s s u m m e r : T h e for ƒree². What to Do with the Dead 78 Clockwork Jungle Book, co-edited by by Claude Lalumière George Mann, our collection of steampunk animal fables. The Spoils of Springfield 83 byAlex Wilson As always, we'd love to hear what you think. Get in touch: [email protected]. Happy reading! Counting Down to the End of the Universe 91 by Sara Genge Contributors 95 Artists & Illustrations 98 Shimmer is distributed four times yearly by Beth Wodzinski, PO Box 58591, Salt Lake City, UT 84158-0591. Shimmery Staff 99 [email protected]. Issues: single $6 or $22 for four. All rights reserved. Submissions to: [email protected]. Copyright ©2009 by Shimmer Magazine. Individual works are copyrighted ©2009 by their creators. All rights reserved. 2 Shimmer 3 “All they meant was, you don’t look like that lump she married.” Blue Joe The man reached the stage and jumped up onto it as easily as if it were only an inch high, instead of four feet from the ground. “You by Stephanie Burgis take after me.” Josef Anton Miklovic, Blue Joe, was twenty-one years old and Joe looked the man up and down and knew it to be true. They playing the sax in a nightclub in Youngstown, Ohio, when he met his shared the same crazy golden eyes, the same jet-black hair, though father for the first time. Joe’s was slicked back into fashionable lines, and the same great, Joe was on stage with his family band: Karl on keyboard, hunched hooked nose, about which Joe’s brothers had always teased him. and intense; Niko on drums, grinning his lopsided, dreamer’s grin; He turned to look at his brothers now, and the man before him and Ivan, as smooth and polished as shook his head. a Croatian Clark Gable, playing his "No. They’re not mine. Your mother and I had parted ways by then. shining trumpet like a peal up to But I told her I’d come for you to raise you right, when I was ready." Joe’s brothers were as heaven. “And you waited till now?” Joe laughed, despite the shock. “You Smoke swirled across the tables, left it a bit late, don’t you think?” still as statues on the obscuring the waitresses in their “It took time to make my way over. Do you remember the journey Betty Boop outfits and the you took?” stage around him, and he customers in their sharp suits, with Joe shook his head. “I was only a baby when we came over to the dyed blondes on their arms. Ivan States.” thought he probably had hooked up with the son of a “Well, I took a longer route. It’s harder to leave the old country, for local mob boss to pull this job, and some.” ½ought to be scared. the rest of the brothers knew how Some. Joe didn’t know exactly what the man meant, but he didn’t lucky they were to get it. Ivan had care to ask, not with the rest of the nightclub frozen around them like big plans, and Joe was happy to go stills in a newsreel. Whatever power this man had, it was obviously along with them. more than the local mob, and that was enough to scare anyone with Joe soared into his lead break, and at the end of it, as he emerged sense. sweating and victorious, he met the fierce gaze of a hawk-nosed man “I’m here now,” the man said, “and it’s more than time. Your at the back of the room, through all the smoke and the darkness. Time mother hid you too well.” He fixed Joe in his hawk-like gaze. “Time froze around them, and the music stopped. to go.” “You don’t look much like your mother,” the man said as he “Hey, I’m not going anywhere.” Joe stepped backward, crashing crossed the room. He wore a long black coat from a different era, and into Karl’s keyboard. “I’ve got family.” it flapped around him like the wings of a crow. “I’m your family.” Joe squinted through the smoke, watching the man sidestep “Uh-uh.” Joe drew strength from his brothers’ presence around frozen Betty Boops and customers’ arms flung out in mid-gesture. him, even though they couldn’t move. “I’m in a band. We’re going Joe’s brothers were as still as statues on the stage around him, and he places together. Might even break into Hollywood, if we’re lucky.” thought he probably ought to be scared. His father snorted. “You’re as stupid as your stepfather, if you “Everyone always said I took after her,” he said mildly. really think that.” 2 Shimmer 3 “All they meant was, you don’t look like that lump she married.” Blue Joe The man reached the stage and jumped up onto it as easily as if it were only an inch high, instead of four feet from the ground. “You by Stephanie Burgis take after me.” Josef Anton Miklovic, Blue Joe, was twenty-one years old and Joe looked the man up and down and knew it to be true. They playing the sax in a nightclub in Youngstown, Ohio, when he met his shared the same crazy golden eyes, the same jet-black hair, though father for the first time.