From Modern Mythcraft to Magical Surrealism

THECONDUCTORS

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Fiction

Fiction

And This is How to Stay Alive

by Shingai Njeri Kagunda

Author spotlight

Kabi finds my body swinging. I watch my sister press her back against the wall and slide to the ground. My mother shouts, “Kabi! Nyokabi!” No response. “Why are you not answering? Can you bring that brother of yours!” My sister is paralyzed, she cannot speak, she cannot move, except for the shivers that take hold of her spine and reverberate through the rest of her without permission. She is thinking No, no, no, no, no. But the word is not passing her lips which only open and close soundlessly. Mum is coming down the stairs.

And This is How to Stay Alive

In Nov. 2020 (Issue 61)

Fiction

gezhizhwazh

by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

everyone always tells wiindigo stories when they should be telling gezhizhwazh stories. that’s what this old one says.

"gezhizhwazh" by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson (art by Aana Bracic)

In Dec. 2016 (Issue 60)

Fiction

Black, Their Regalia

by Darcie Little Badger

Outside, the quarantine train was unblemished white. Where its tracks skirted populated regions, barbed wire and warning signs—DANGER! ¡PELIGRO! INFECTIOUS MATERIALS! ¡SUSTANCIAS INFECCIOSAS!—discouraged trespassers from marking the cars with spray paint. The interior was another story. In her cabin, a narrow sleeper with four beds (one for Screaming Moraine, one for Fiddler Kristi, one for Drummer Tulli, and one for their carry-on luggage, several densely packed grocery bags, and an electric violin), Tulli found graffiti scrawled near her upper bunk.

"Black, Their Regalia" by Darcie Little Badger (art by Emily Osborne)

In Dec. 2016 (Issue 60)

Fiction

Eyes of Carven Emerald

by Shweta Narayan

Sunrise glinted bloody on giant tumbles of statue; it edged the palace beyond with blood. A limestone arm, severed elbow to thumb, came almost up to Alexandros’ waist. Fingers thick as logs lay scattered behind it. Sunrise glimmered in the statue’s blank, rain-filled eyes, and trickled down the pitted stone cheek. So too would Dareios of Persia have fallen, had the coward not fled.

"Eyes of Carven Emerald" by Shweta Narayan

In Dec. 2016 (Issue 60)

Fiction

The Things My Mother Left Me

by P. Djéli Clark

Tausi sat listening to her aunts, who crowded in a circle at the far end of the room. Their dresses were a kaleidoscope of greens, reds, blues, and yellows, each worked with repeating patterns that shifted with the eye. Huddled like that they seemed to her one polychromatic beast with seven heads and fourteen limbs. None of them made an effort to whisper as they planned her life.

"Things My Mother Left Me" by P. Djèlí Clark (art by Reimena Yee)

In Dec. 2016 (Issue 60)

Fiction

The Padishah Begum’s Reflections

by Shweta Narayan

Hidden by the feathers of the Peacock Throne, Jahanara watched the Frenchmen’s heads appear at the top of the steps. Diwan-i-Khas, the hall of so-called private audience, would loom before them now. Morning light caught on its outer pillars and scalloped arches, setting the whole aglow: marble embers sparking with pearl and silver inlay in creeper patterns wound around gearwork. Light slanted through the hall, danced on silk and dust and metal, and threw the delegates’ shadows in before them unannounced.

The Padishah Begum’s Reflections by Shweta Narayan (art by Sam Schecter)

In Dec. 2015 (Issue 59)

Fiction

Kaiju maximus®: “So Various, So Beautiful, So New”

by Kai Ashante Wilson

It hadn’t come down since great-grandparent days, but as its last descent had left no stone on stone—nor man, woman, child alive—anywhere people had once dwelled aboveground on the continent, the hero would go up before it came down again, and kill the kaiju maximus. They would go too: the hero’s weakness, and her strength.

Kaiju maximus®: “So Various, So Beautiful, So New” by Kai Ashante Wilson (art by Odera Igbokwe)

In Dec. 2015 (Issue 59)

Fiction

The Lily and the Horn

by Catherynne M. Valente

War is a dinner party. My ladies and I have spent the dregs of summer making ready. We have hung garlands of pennyroyal and snowberries in the snug, familiar halls of Laburnum Castle, strained cheese as pure as ice for weeks in the caves and the kitchens, covered any gloomy stone with tapestries or stags’ heads with mistletoe braided through their antlers. We sent away south to the great markets of Mother-of-Millions for new silks and velvets and furs.

The Lily and the Horn by Catherynne M. Valente (art by Goñi Montes)

In Dec. 2015 (Issue 59)

Fiction

Ledge

by Austin Bunn

Mother, I have seen such marvels. Like the ocean aglow at night with a cold green fire and a fish with a child’s face and two fleshy whiskers. (No man would eat it. We blessed the creature and tossed it back.) I’ve seen a corpse with golden hair in a boat set adrift; his eyes were the slits on a newly born kitten.

Ledge by Austin Bunn (art by Vlada Monakhova)

In Dec. 2015 (Issue 59)

Fiction

The Glass Bottle Trick

by Nalo Hopkinson

The air was full of storms, but they refused to break. In the wicker rocking chair on the front verandah, Beatrice flexed her bare feet against the wooden slat floor, rocking slowly back and forth.

The Glass Bottle Trick by Nalo Hopkinson (illustration by Ashley Stewart)

In Oct. 2014 (Issue 58)