TABLE OF CONTENTS Issue 62, December 2020 FROM THE EDITORS Editorial, December 2020 Christie Yant and Arley Sorg FICTION An Indefinite Number of Birds Kurt Hunt If These Walls Whispered What Would We Hear? Aynjel Kaye Umami Anya Ow Tiny House Living Kristiana Willsey POETRY Things Might Be Different If We All Lived Underwater Kerry C. Byrne softening, come morning Hal Y. Zhang NONFICTION All the King's Women: The Sewer Clown Tragedy of Beverly Marsh Meg Elison AUTHOR SPOTLIGHTS Kurt Hunt Anya Ow MISCELLANY Coming Attractions, January 2021 Support Us on Patreon, or How to Become a Dragonrider or Space Wizard Subscriptions and Ebooks Stay Connected About the Fantasy Team © 2020 Fantasy Magazine Cover by grandfailure/Adobe Stock Image https://www.fantasy-magazine.com Published by Adamant Press. Editorial, December 2020 Christie Yant and Arley Sorg | 597 words Fantasy Magazine #61 has been very well-received–many thanks to all of our readers, old and new. Now we bring you issue #62 co-edited by Christie Yant and Arley Sorg. Hope you like it! • • • • AS: So – 2020. What a year. And what an intense past few months. We’ve had so many challenges! Between elections and personal stuff–as we write this, on November 9th, we are both looking back at a lot of obstacles which are now behind us; and we are looking forward, embracing new opportunities, engaging in new discussions. CY: I think we’re all ready to put this bizarre and tumultuous year in the rear-view mirror and focus on the future and new possibilities. We’ve all had the shared trauma of the pandemic and the U.S. election, which exacerbated whatever personal challenges we’ve all faced, the underlying theme of the year has been one of constant change, instability, and fear. What I’m most hopeful about right now is the sense that change can start to mean something else to us: change for the good, a “new normal” that can be better for more people than the “old normal” was. AS: What we are doing here, with this magazine, it’s important to both of us. This work inevitably reflects who we are as people as well as our environments. And with this platform hopefully, on some cultural level, we can help move things towards those positive changes. CY: The experiences of the past year are certainly going to affect how people tell their stories, and the kinds of stories that we’re drawn to. I’m not sure what that’s going to look like, exactly, but I suspect that themes of justice, hope, and overcoming obstacles will be increasingly appealing. AS: I am absolutely excited at that thought. I’m eager to find more wonderful work; and I love the ways that stories can transform, can reframe, can surprise. Whether people respond to the year we’ve had through their writing, or tap into other aspects of their experiences in spite of the year’s best attempts to disrupt their lives, I can’t wait to see what people will show us. It all comes back to our purpose: We are determined to bring quality fiction to readers and we’re determined to do it right! CY: Here in the northern hemisphere we’re entering a pandemic winter, a time when we’re going to have to find and embrace ways to bolster our health and happiness while stuck inside and with limited contact with friends and family. One of the things that has always given me comfort is literature, especially reading something written from a fresh perspective. I hope that our readers find little pockets of enjoyment in Fantasy Magazine— find a comfy chair, a blanket, something to sip on, and enjoy the issue! • • • • In this issue we have Kurt Hunt’s touching tale of two people struggling to connect in “An Indefinite Number of Birds”; friendship and love in Anjel Kaye’s moving and subtle “If These Walls Whispered What Would We Hear?”; Kerry C. Byrne’s beautifully imagined poem on communication and other-ness, “Things Might Be Different if We All Lived Underwater”; Hay Y. Zhang’s reflective poem “softening, come morning”; a vivid story of survival and sacrifice, “Umami” by Anya Ow; Kristiana Willsey’s surreal and captivating “Tiny House Living”; and a biting essay from Meg Elison called “All the King’s Women”. Enjoy! ABOUT THE AUTHORS Arley Sorg is an associate editor at Locus Magazine, where he’s been on staff since 2014. He joined the Lightspeed family in 2014 to work on the Queers Destroy Science Fiction! special issue, starting as a slush reader. He eventually worked his way up to associate editor at both Lightspeed and Nightmare. He also reviews books for Locus, Lightspeed, and Cascadia Subduction Zone and is an interviewer for Clarkesworld Magazine. Arley grew up in England, Hawaii, and Colorado, and studied Asian Religions at Pitzer College. He lives in Oakland, and, in non-pandemic times, usually writes in local coffee shops. He is a 2014 Odyssey Writing Workshop graduate. Christie Yant writes and edits science fiction and fantasy on the central coast of California, where she lives with a dancer, an editor, a dog, and four cats. She worked as an assistant editor for Lightspeed Magazine from its launch in 2010 through 2015, and, in 2014 she edited the Women Destroy Science Fiction! special issue of Lightspeed, which won the British Fantasy Award for Best Anthology. In 2019 she co-edited (with Hugh Howey and Gary Whitta) Resist: Tales From a Future Worth Fighting Against, an anthology benefitting the ACLU, and co-edited The Dystopia Triptych series of anthologies (with Hugh Howey and John Joseph Adams). She is also a consulting editor for Tor.com’s line of novellas, and her own fiction has appeared in anthologies and magazines including Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2011 (Horton), Armored, Analog Science Fiction & Fact, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, io9, and Wired.com, and has received honorable mentions in Year’s Best Science Fiction (Dozois) and Best Horror of the Year (Datlow). An Indefinite Number of Birds Kurt Hunt | 1523 words Stanley began watching birds on the day he panicked and asked JD how much he really loved him, and JD responded, “Oh for fuck’s sake, Stanley. How many birds are in the sky? I don’t know—a bunch!” Stanley couldn’t get the question out of his head. By week’s end, he’d bought a birdwatching guide and an embarrassingly expensive pair of Leica binoculars. He spent a tense Sunday morning ready for the birds to awaken and sing the day’s gossips and confessions, watching and ticking things off in his journal as dawn grew from a hint to a bloody smear to proper daylight. His expectation was symphonic. The reality, sitting on the stoop in front of their fat brick apartment building, was subdued: two mourning doves mindlessly echoing each other, and one ill-looking pigeon walking silent circles around the municipal trash can across the street. Stanley counted and recounted, the kid that ran out of flower petals at “he loves me not,” fighting the irrationality of his disappointment. “You okay, babe?” JD leaned out the window. “Uh. Yeah. Yeah, I’ll be in in a sec.” Inwardly, Stanley cursed love, the father of superstition, and, in the long tradition of bouquet catchers and mistletoe hangers and lonely souls praying to so many gods to please, please, let me find love, let me be worthy of love, he counted the birds again. • • • • The next morning, the doves were quiet. The pigeon was dead. • • • • Weeks passed, much the same, and winter came. Grim and bare-skied, it mocked Stanley’s daily ritual. He grew more terse and withdrawn. JD continued making breakfasts and leaving love notes, oblivious to the ebbs and flows of the birds, the significance of each entry in the journal. Some days—the plentiful—they laughed and leaned against each other over coffee. But most days Stanley said nothing, or went straight back to bed after birdwatching. More time passed, much the same. • • • • “A week in Tucson and a week in the Chiricahuas?” “Tickets right here.” JD slid them—always so elegant—from the inside pocket of his jacket and passed them over. “Also, the travel agent gave me two words he said would get you pumped.” He smiled and leaned close, his lips against Stanley’s ear. “Elegant trogon.” “Elegant… uh…” JD leaned back and blushed. “Or, I don’t know, maybe that’s more specialized? Shit. Um, there’s like dozens of hummingbird species and hawks and… lots of birds. It’s like Mecca for birdwatchers, I guess.” But as JD smiled, Stanley remembered the question—how many birds are in the sky?— and the empty clouds whispered to him you are not special, and the whisper became a voice within him saying he doesn’t love you; he just pities you, and that voice became a scream. “Are you making fun of me?” He was yelling. He could hear his voice cranked an octave too high—the voice his first boyfriend called faggy. JD looked like he’d been slapped. “I just… Jesus, Stanley.” His face hardened. “I’m trying to do something nice for you, and I thought ‘hey, birds, he likes those, God knows why.’ And I thought a vacation would be good because you’ve been stomping around like a little bitch all winter and—” “There it is.” Stanley threw the tickets. “It’s a good thing you’re so nice, otherwise people might think you’re a fucking prick.” He had to yell the last few words because JD had already walked out and slammed the door behind him.