OWAIN THE RED AT CASTELL DOLBADARN, by Nicole Rain Sellers, audio by Karen Bovenmyer, art by Simon Walpole North Wales, 1275 AD The infant moon swells full again, relentless, lonely wheel. Clouds asphyxiate this house swaddled in royal fields. Spent heather bleeds out honey and flocks surrender wool, betrayed as I, as powerless in […]

FORD, by Mary Soon Lee, artwork by Gary McCluskey  Rain, wind, water, mud– men and horses slowed so that the two-day journey took three days, though they set out before dawn and rode past sunset.  Wind, water, mud, rain– the last light lingering in the west when they climbed the ridge overlooking the ford, the wide river swollen, the plain across the river flooded. Diminished shapes […]

THE DEMON IN THE JAR, by Cullen Groves, artwork by Miguel Santos Under the watchful old eyes of the Carian wizard Hydáspes Onto the black ship of Draba a single amphora they loaded, Painted with sigils strange, stowed in the stern by the steering oars; Draba the captain, night-dark of skin, overtowered the wizard Standing […]

THE PRIESTESS’ DAUGHTER, by Jennifer Blackford I barely remember my father’s golden eyes, or his shouted laugh that made even my solemn priestess mother smile. She knew too much and not enough of wild things. Before my father died, all the village children envied me. He was the only man we knew with his own […]

JUMBLE, by Mary Soon Lee, art by Gary McCluskey Twilight. Two men on the snow. Tsung’s thoughts jumbled, snow below him, above him, branches thickened by white. King Xau bent over him, blood trickling from the king’s shoulder. Red blood, white snow as Tsung drifted in and out, the king’s hands on his stomach– pressure, […]