Podcast appearances and mentions of susan jane bigelow

Episode 65 is part of the Spring 2018 issue! Support GlitterShip by picking up your copy here: http://www.glittership.com/buy/   A Memory of Wind Susan Jane Bigelow   Yeni looked up at the right time, just for a single moment, and she saw a girl fly past far overhead. No one else in the wide dome of Center Garden, the bustling, cavernous heart of the greatship, noticed. Yeni had to run to catch up with her mother, who walked a few steps ahead. “Did you see?” she demanded. “A flying girl!” “Don’t lie,” her mother said tiredly.   [Full story after the cut.]   Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 65. Today we have a reprint of "A Memory of Wind" by Susan Jane Bigelow to finish off the episodes from the Spring 2018 issue of GlitterShip. Susan Jane Bigelow is the author of the Extrahumans series, the LGBT YA novel The Demon Girl’s Song and numerous short stories. Her Grayline Sisters trilogy will be released by Book Smugglers Publishing in 2018. She lives in Connecticut, where she is a librarian and political columnist/commentator, with her wife and too many cats. "A Memory of Wind" was narrated by A.J. Fitzwater. A.J. Fitzwater is a dragon wearing a human meat suit from Christchurch, New Zealand. A graduate of Clarion 2014, she’s had stories published in Shimmer Magazine, Andromeda Spaceways Magazine, and in Paper Road Press’s At The Edge anthology. She also has stories coming soon at Kaleidotrope and PodCastle. As a narrator, her voice has been heard across the Escape Artists Network, on Redstone SF, and Interzone. She tweets under her penname as @AJFitzwater.     A Memory of Wind Susan Jane Bigelow   Yeni looked up at the right time, just for a single moment, and she saw a girl fly past far overhead. No one else in the wide dome of Center Garden, the bustling, cavernous heart of the greatship, noticed. Yeni had to run to catch up with her mother, who walked a few steps ahead. “Did you see?” she demanded. “A flying girl!” “Don’t lie,” her mother said tiredly. Long after, her mother claimed she’d never even heard her say this, much less that she’d seen anything. But Yeni had seen, and she remembered.   Yeni pulled the handle with all the strength of her twenty-two years. Sweat trickled into her eyes, and her muscles cried out in pain. “Just a little more!” grunted Shan, and then the door gave way at last, opening out into the deserted corridor. They fell back, astonished. “See?” Yeni said, puffing and wiping the smooth top of her head with the sleeve of her tunic. “It’s here. Just like the story said.” A ladder. Shan looked worried. “I don’t know. This is a bad idea. We’re going to get caught.” “Don’t get scared on me now,” snapped Yeni. “Who’s gonna catch us? There’s nobody in this section.” He looked up into the darkness, then back at her. “This is our chance,” she insisted. “Go ahead. I’ll be right behind.”   She followed Shan up, keeping a close ear out for anything or anyone coming up behind them. They’d both turned their implants down to the lowest level, so they only did things like regulate heartbeats, monitor vital signs, and give them better night vision. The parts that told the ship where they were and what they were doing were off, now; disabled through an old trick Shan had dug up. Anyone looking for them would think they were back in their shared quarters in Supardy Forward. “I think we’re three decks up,” said Shan. He’d reached a ledge with a door, and was sitting on it. She climbed up next to him. “So this must be it.” “The door has dents in it,” she said wonderingly. “And… are those scorch marks?” Shan pointed at the shaft around them. It was riddled with holes and burn marks. “We’re here,” she said, standing. “Bunda Forward.”   They walked slowly, reverently, into the destroyed section. Numbers fed into Yeni’s vision: sensor scans and her own vital signs. “Fifty years,” whispered Shan into the heavy darkness. “I’m not getting any radiation.” “No,” murmured Yeni. “Because it was all a lie. Look around.” The Bunda Incident had happened when their parents were young, and the only stories they told were of some kind of terrible accident that had resulted in the section being sealed, the Lord Captain taking tighter control of the greatship, and the end of a thousand years of civilian rule. Some people had written down different stories, though, and Yeni had hunted those stories down one after another. Those stories spoke of riots and rebellion, and ShipOps sweeping in to purge the greatship of the last of the Select Board and their supporters, sealing the section behind them. But when they made subtle, discreet inquiries of the people who had written the stories, they blinked at them and shook their heads. It was an accident, they said with perfect sincerity. Why would you think otherwise? Memory was a funny thing. Humans were so fallible and breakable, brains leaked information like sieves. Even Shan seemed to forget important things from time to time, and she had to remind him. It was like that with the access door. She and Shan had found a story written on a singed sheet of plastic detailing where the access ladder from Supardy up to Bunda Forward that ShipOps had used was. He hadn’t wanted to come, he didn’t see the point. He didn’t even remember the door, or what was so important about Bunda Forward to begin with. She reminded him, patient as always. Yeni was used to people forgetting. She held fast to her own memories, sure that someday she, too, would forget. She left notes for herself everywhere, written down in plastic so they couldn’t be changed. She had yet to need them, but someday she knew she would. She recorded everything with her implant, filing it all away to use later. “See here,” she murmured. “Symbols of the old government. And this name? I think she was on the Select Board. It was true, Shan! The stories were true.” She pointed to the scorch marks on the wall, and the brown stains on the floor. “There was a battle here. It wasn’t an accident.” She felt a little tickle at the back of her mind, an odd sense that she sometimes got. It usually didn’t mean anything, but here… it felt dangerous, somehow. She stood and looked around. “Shan?” He was a few meters away, looking blankly at a wall. “Shan!” She snapped her fingers in front of his eyes. He blinked. “Yeni? We should go home.” “Not now,” she insisted. “You can’t do this now. We’re in Bunda Forward. We came here just now. Remember!” He frowned. “I don’t know what you mean. I have to go home.” He got up and started to run towards the end of the hall. “Wait!” she cried, and sprinted after him. There was an open door. A lift tube, filled with an anti-gravity field that would gently bring you up or down, depending on where you wanted to go. But this section was sealed off. There was no power, and no field. And if Shan didn’t remember that— Yeni shrieked in horror as he plunged over the edge. And then she scrambled back as a woman rose smoothly up the tube, carrying a limp Shan in her arms. She said nothing, but smiled at Yeni. The words hello again formed distinctly in her mind.   The woman had already carried Shan down, and now she waited for Yeni, her arms wide. She was beautiful, Yeni thought longingly. Her body was rounded but muscular, her cheeks were high-set, and her eyes deep and expressive. Yeni thought she had a tattoo of some kind on her head until she realized with a shock that the woman had grown hair. She watched Yeni with a touch of bemusement. “How can I trust you?” Yeni whispered into the pregnant stillness of Bunda Forward. The woman made no sound in reply. She only waited, her arms spread, for Yeni to come to her. A sense of welcome and safe drifted across the empty space. Hesitantly, Yeni stepped out to her, her arms grabbing hold of the flying woman’s narrow waist and shoulders. She felt her arms twine around her back. They began to slowly descend. Her skin smelled like the plants in Center Garden. Yeni lay her head against the woman’s shoulder as they drifted down into darkness. “Who are you?” she wondered. “What’s your name?” In response there was a wild, almost chaotic sense of brightness, greenness, and of a stiff, constant breeze—the kind Yeni had rarely ever felt here on the greatship. There was a word for that, she thought, from long ago when the greatship had still docked at planets to trade. Wind.   When they reached the bottom of the tube, Wind gently released Yeni. “I saw you,” she said, voice trembling. “Years ago. Everyone forgot. I didn’t, though. It was you, wasn’t it?” In response, Wind’s serene face lit up into a grin. “It was you! You… you taught me to look for things everyone else was ignoring,” said Yeni, the words pouring out of her. “That things aren’t what they seem to be. I remembered you.” Wind clapped her hands, then leaned in to give Yeni a quick, electric kiss before rocketing back up into the darkness of the lift shaft. Yeni watched her go, heart pounding. She could still feel Wind’s lips on hers long after.   Shan fell away from Yeni after that. He denied ever being anywhere near Bunda Forward, he didn’t remember Wind at all, and even started to forget who Yeni was. He drifted back to classes and his old friends, leaving Yeni on her own. She felt more and more like a guest in their shared rooms. One day she came back from her job as a vent cleaner to find their quarters blocked off by ShipOps. Shan was talking to them, and she caught her name. She caught her breath, heart shattering. Then, not knowing what else to do, she sprinted in the other direction.   She found someone in a nearby section who could input new codes into her implant, so that anyone looking would think she was someone else. She also acquired the ability to turn the beacon on and off whenever she pleased. It was just a start—the implants couldn’t be completely removed because of danger to the nervous system—but it was better than nothing. Yeni began to wander the emptiness of the greatship alone. She needed little food or water; her body had been bioengineered to survive. She needed only herself. And, she told herself, the solitude suited her. She didn’t mind being the woman everyone forgot. She didn’t mind being nobody. But during the night cycles she found herself curled in a far corner of the greatship, feeling as empty as the corridors.   She broke into places left empty for long decades, using the tubes and tunnels reserved for ShipOps. Her mother had been ShipOps, and she’d shown her daughter some of the ways around the greatship only they knew. That had been before a tunnel had swallowed her up, one day. Another accident, they said. So many accidents. Yeni found levels below the ones she knew, below the ones anyone had even suspected. She found what looked like massive landing gear at the very bottom of the ship, and a marvelous, grimy window that looked out onto the cold vastness of space. She thought she would find ShipOps around every corner, waiting for her, but she didn’t. They were nowhere in sight. They never came after her. The only place she couldn’t go was the Red Pearl, the heavily guarded plaza in Center Garden where the Lord Captain and the commanders of ShipOps sat. This was where they made the decisions that determined where the greatship went on its endless journey through space, and where they ruled its population of five hundred million humans. It was the heart of everything. But Yeni had no desire to go there. Whoever went to Red Pearl never came back.   A few conclusions began to penetrate the fog of loneliness and heartbreak that surrounded Yeni. There were not five hundred million people living aboard the greatship. There couldn’t be; where would they all be? Yeni knew how to calculate, and she knew that her own home section of Supardy, one of the more full sections, had only about five thousand. Many sections were simply empty. Every official account said there were five hundred million, though. Those numbers never changed, and no one else seemed to think they were wrong. But as she wandered long, empty corridors that wound through section after section, she knew they had to be. The greatship was full of nothing but ghosts and ruins. She found the remains of sections long since abandoned. She traced her fingers over the mosaics on the walls, sat by the dormant fountains, and picked through the remains of gardens, all while that little sense of danger-change-danger constantly tickled the back of her mind. But she could tell that many of these sections had been inhabited once, maybe a century ago. She found dates on some of the mosaics and in names scrawled on the floors. Sometimes she found other things, too. Like ancient scorch marks, or pieces of plastic with strange symbols on them. We fight, they said. And we will die for what we believe. Where had everyone gone? What had happened? She kept walking. She looked everywhere, poking her nose in and out of every corner. Yeni told herself she was trying to find the truth, to piece together what had become of everyone, but it was more than that. At night she dreamed of warm skin that smelled like gardens, and arms tight around her as they flew together through the air.   And then one day she was walking through yet another massive, empty open square, picking through garbage and absorbing the beautiful, solemn silence, when there was a gust of wind and the sound of feet hitting the ground. Yeni turned, and there she was. She wore a bodysuit several shades darker than her deep brown skin, and her hair had grown. It was straight, and neared her shoulders. Yeni fought the urge to touch it, to smell it. “You,” she whispered, her heart leaping. Wind smiled, and held out a hand. Yeni felt her welcome before the words formed in her mind. Hello again. “I’ve been looking for you,” said Yeni. Joy. Anticipation. And I for you. Yeni stepped forward, trembling, aware of her own heartbeat, her own breathing. “You remember me?” Wind took her hand. Then her strong arms were around her again, and they were in the air.   They shot through vacant corridors and access tubes at dizzying speed. Yeni tightened her grip on Wind, pressing her head against the softness of her chest. In response, the woman gave her a quick, reassuring squeeze. They flew up and up, then through an open space, then up again and into another dark access tunnel. At last they alighted atop a promontory high above a circle of lights. Yeni looked down, dizzy, and clawed away from the edge. Center Garden, she realized once her heart stopped pounding. It was the night cycle, and and she could see the lights of the open plazas at the heart of the greatship below. “You… why? Why did you come for me?” But Wind only smiled. “You don’t talk at all?” Wind slowly shook her head no. But then a thought slowly congealed in Yeni’s mind. You saw me, long ago. You remembered. “Yes,” said Yeni. “I know. You… you remember too? I don’t meet many people who remember. I…” Yeni felt other things from Wind then. Loneliness. Longing. Hope. And more. Yeni didn’t hesitate. She leaned into the woman, inhaled that rich garden scent, and kissed her.   They sat high above the gleaming lights of Center Garden for hours, curled together, until the night ebbed and the day cycle began. Then Wind gathered Yeni into her arms again and leapt from the promontory. Yeni shrieked in alarm, but of course they didn’t fall. Instead, they sailed out high above the great open area below. Yeni could see the ceiling above, so close now, and the buildings and gardens below. She could even see Red Pearl at the core of everything. She feared Wind might bring her back to where she’d found her, or even back to Supardy or even Bunda Forward. But instead she dove into a narrow access tube, and then there was darkness and the rush of air until they were somewhere new. She alighted outside an ancient door, painted with symbols Yeni couldn’t even begin to decipher. Wind pointed. “In there?” asked Yeni. The woman nodded. Yeni could sense something like urgency coming from her. “Why?” Because you remembered me. She gathered her courage and opened the door. There was a small room inside, filled with old equipment. At the center was a tank of some kind of solution, illuminated by a ghostly green light. Suspended within was the naked body of a woman. She was small, and her hair formed a halo around her head. Yeni touched her own bald scalp, and thought of Wind. Most humans had stopped growing hair a long time ago. The woman opened her eyes. “Hello,” said a loudspeaker. “I am the greatship.”   Yeni sat on the floor, battling confusion. “But you can’t be.” “At the heart of every greatship is someone like me,” the greatship said through the loudspeakers. Her lips didn’t move, and her eyes seemed like they were looking somewhere else. But her attention was riveted to Yeni, nonetheless. “Someone to be a guide, a living mind to contain the will of the ship.” “So… you’re a computer?” “Nothing so crude,” the woman—the greatship— said. “A vessel so vast can hardly help but become aware. My purpose is to be its consciousness. This is the bargain we struck with the Intres, long ago. This is the gift of Great Yea, long lost to the universe.” Yeni didn’t understand any of what she was saying. None of it made sense to her. “What do you mean ‘every’ greatship?” she asked, plucking one fact out that made sense. “There are others?” “Oh, yes. There were hundreds of us, once. My poor child,” said the greatship. “You’ve forgotten so much.” “No!” said Yeni fiercely. “I don’t forget anything! I’m the only one who doesn’t forget.” “Ah,” said the greatship. “Yes. I know. That’s why I asked Wind to bring you here.” “Me? Why?” “We need your help, Yeni.” “What?” asked Yeni. “You must be joking. My help?” “Yes.” “Why me? I’m nobody! I’m just a hallway rat. A creeper. I don’t have a job anymore, I have no function. I’m dead weight.” “You are no such thing. We need you because you’re like us,” said the greatship. “You’re like Wind, and you’re like me.” Yeni turned to Wind, who stood watching them intently in the door. “But… you fly,” she said helplessly. “And you speak with your mind. How am I anything like you?” Wind put a hand on her forehead, and Yeni heard words in her mind again. Because you remember. Foreign images flickered through her mind. Implants… men in a room… war… decisions. Forgetting. Implants; everyone had them. But when someone decided that they should forget something, all it took was a simple, silent command sent from Red Pearl. “People let things slip away from their memories,” said the greatship. “But you don’t. Your mind is different.” Yeni stood silent, not daring to admit to anything. “Long ago,” said the greatship. “There were people who could do things you’d think of as amazing, now. We could fly. We could heal ourselves in an instant. We were faster and stronger than humans. But there were so few of us. Eventually, there were only a handful, and even those died out. I was the last born; there were no more after me. But I always believed that someday, if we were careful, that these abilities would return to some of us again. Wind is the first of the new ones born. You were the second.” “But… I can’t fly or any of that,” protested Yeni. “I’m nobody!” She was Yeni, the woman who slipped through the cracks. The woman her own lover had stopped remembering. “I’m nobody,” she insisted. The greatship’s human body stirred. Her eyes focused on Yeni. “You’re anything but. You remember. They can’t touch you. That’s why I need you,” she said. “Why?” “I’m dying. I must be repaired. We must try to save everyone before it’s too late.”   Wind walked on her own two feet, hand-in-hand with Yeni though the wide plazas and gardens near Red Pearl. All around, the people of Center Garden came and went, oblivious. There had to be thousands of people packed into this place. It was possible to believe, here at the heart of everything, that the greatship was still full. The greatship herself had said otherwise. Yeni had been right; there were once hundreds of millions more here. But then there had been a terrible civil war aboard the greatship, and a full tenth of the population had been killed. After that, most of the survivors had left the greatship’s smothering embrace to seek new lives on new worlds. Millions and millions had left, until at last the Lord Captain forbade them to dock at planets altogether. And so, section by section, systems had been shut down to save energy. The remaining people had been consolidated into a dwindling number of places. The greatship herself calculated that there were fewer than a hundred thousand aboard, now. When the Select Board had objected to more shutdowns, the Lord Captain and ShipOps had eliminated them at Bunda Forward. Yeni and Wind approached the forbidding, heavily guarded gates of Red Pearl. The greatship had told them that she could help somewhat, that she could from time to time subvert ShipOps’s protocols, but that over the centuries the Lords Captain had ensured that she could do very little on her own. She could, however, open a certain door for a certain period of time. They walked around the curving perimeter of Red Pearl until they found it; an almost seamless door set into the red wall. They waited. Yeni’s hand felt small and warm in Wind’s. She thought of the stunner in one pocket, and the small data crystal with navigation orders on it in the other. “I’m glad you found me,” said Yeni softly. “I’m glad you remember.” Wind smiled at her, and squeezed her hand. Yeni could see no fear or nervousness in her eyes. And then the door made a small beeping sound, and slid open. Wind dashed through, dragging Yeni behind.   Red Pearl was a labyrinth of connecting corridors, all of them full. ShipOps was all around them. At first no one took notice of them as they navigated the outer layers. Their implants had been tuned to broadcast an “It’s okay for us to be here” signal to ShipOps.  But as they moved farther in towards the heart of Red Pearl, they were stopped and questioned more and more. At last, their cover story about delivering certain documents to an office somewhere in the complex failed them, and they were surrounded. Yeni fingered the stunner she had hidden in her pocket. She could set it off, and everyone around her would collapse—including Wind. Then she’d have to run alone to the center of the complex to find a place where they could connect the data crystal to the greatship’s navigation systems. When that happened, the greatship could take control, and guide them to a planet where they could be repaired. She tensed, readying the stunner. But Wind put a hand on Yeni’s arm. Not yet. And she rose into the air. The ShipOps people gaped at her, then all looked off into the distance. Yeni felt that same little tickle at the back of her mind. Confused, the ShipOps people wandered away. Wind gave Yeni a triumphant grin, then rocketed off down a now-empty corridor. Understanding dawned, and Yeni laughed. Wind was the kind of thing that merited an automatic memory purge. It had happened to her mother, once, long ago, and then to Shan. She might be that herself, now, she thought as she hurried after Wind.   They encountered no additional resistance. The corridors leading to the navigation center were entirely empty. Yeni began to panic as they traversed one empty hall after another. It shouldn’t be like this, not here in the heart of the greatship! At last a set of doors opened in front of them, and they were suddenly drawn into a bright room by a strong gust. The doors slammed shut behind them. A lone figure sat at the center of the room, surrounded by monitors, input devices, and complex equipment. She recognized him at once; he was the one person aboard who would never, ever be forgotten, “So you’ve arrived,” the Lord Captain said. He was ancient and wizened, his skin dry and sagging. “I knew it as soon as she opened her door in the wall.” Yeni gathered herself and stepped forward, anger spiking. “You—you’re the one who changed everyone’s memory. You’re why they forgot so much!” He shook his head. “It was necessary.” “How could it possibly have been necessary!” Yeni exclaimed. “You don’t understand,” he said scornfully. “You’re just children. You can’t comprehend how it was, during the wars. Millions died in the last civil war; the greatship was nearly destroyed. And then when I acted to preserve what little was left after war and exile, they fought me again! More war and death. So I did what I had to do. I made them forget.” “Not me,” said Yeni defiantly, feeling brave. Wind’s hand tensed around hers; she ignored it. “I remember. You can’t make me forget.” “There are other ways of forgetting,” said the Lord Captain. “But tell me, young ones, what’s worse? Another war, filled with suffering and death, or a whole greatship full of happy people who forget things from time to time? Which is the greater evil?” “She’s dying,” said Yeni. “The greatship. You have to find a planet where we can be fixed. There are repairs she has to have!” He shook his head, a hollow look in his eyes. “I can’t do that. People would leave. Others would come aboard. The wars would start again. So many would die… so many.” He looked at them with his sad, heavy eyes. “The Select Board thought I was evil, as well. A monster.” He tapped his head. “But I remembered the wars. I remembered the bitterness, the thirst for blood and vengeance. It fed off itself, until it would explode in fire and death. There was no way to ever stop it… until I had an idea. I thought—what if we simply forgot what divides us?” He banged his fist on the arm of his chair. “I have saved us.” “But she’s dying!” insisted Yeni. “She told you that,” said the Lord Captain, his eyes narrowing. “But she lies. She would do anything to undermine me. She despises me, and all of the Lords Captain who have dared try and exert their will against her. I’ve had to act to neutralize her. It’s my job to protect this ship. I was born to protect this ship!” He stood, wobbling, and then he spread his arms and lifted off the ground. Yeni gasped. “I will protect us!” he bellowed. The room seemed to hum with the buildup of electricity. A bolt of lightning singed the ground near Yeni. She screamed and dove for cover. Then there was a terrible scream unlike anything Yeni had never heard before. Wind! She streaked through the air, smashing square into the Lord Captain’s chest,and carrying him across the room. They crashed into the wall, and then he was above her. Lightning struck Wind over and over again. “No!” cried Yeni, thumbing the stunner’s trigger.   Wind and the Lord Captain both lay inert on the ground. Wind’s breathing was shallow and ragged, but she was alive. The Lord Captain had landed hard, and his own breathing was far more labored. His legs were splayed at a funny angle, and his ancient head was covered in bruises. Somewhere she heard a distant alarm sound. “Greatship,” whispered Yeni. She withdrew the data crystal. “Did you lie to me?” There was no response. The greatship couldn’t talk to her here. She might not even be able to see her, here in the middle of Red Pearl. The Lord Captain had been right about the war. It had really happened. Did she really want to bring back war and strife? Did she dare? Her hand hovered by the interface. All she had to do was insert the crystal, and the greatship would have control. They’d make for the nearest planet with facilities to fix the many things that had gone wrong. The greatship’s engines were magnificent and powerful; they’d be there in only a few weeks. “You said Wind was the first,” she said. “And I was the second. But that can’t be true. Did you not know about the Lord Captain? Or did you keep it from me?” She called up the navigation system. It was all open to her, here in the room. There was a star system with a habitable planet nearby. They had drifted towards the edge of the galaxy, where few  of the galaxy’s hundreds of sentient races lived. There was a small colony of humans on one side of it, and no repair facilities in orbit. The other side was empty. They could be there in less than a day. Wind groaned from nearby. Yeni looked over at her. Soon the Lord Captain would rise, as well. She had to act quickly. “I’m sorry,” she said, not sure who she was addressing. Wind? The greatship? The Lord Captain? Herself? “This can’t continue. We can’t live as a people who always forget. We can’t go back to fighting in the corridors. We… we must start again.” She input the command. The greatship seemed to shudder and moan as it changed course. Yeni sat next to Wind, stroking her hair as she stirred into wakefulness, and waited.   Brilliant sunlight fell on her shoulders and head, and her skin pimpled as a cold breeze buffeted her. The sky was so empty, no ceiling above! Some people screamed and cried as they made their way from the dead hulk of the greatship, but some wept with joy.High above, Wind flew in great looping circles. Yeni could hear her joyous laughter, and smiled to herself. They would remember her now, thought Yeni. They would remember both of them. She guided a slight woman dressed in a simple robe over the uneven ground. She walked unsteadily and hesitantly, as if her limbs hadn’t seen use in thousands of years. “How do you feel?” asked Yeni. The woman looked back at the massive ruin of the greatship. The wind stirred her long dark hair, and she swayed back and forth in the breeze. “Smaller,” she said at last.   END  

    Episode 64 is a GLITTERSHIP ORIGINAL and is part of the Spring 2018 issue! Support GlitterShip by picking up your copy here: http://www.glittership.com/buy/     Sabuyashi Flies by Sebastian Strange   Sofie Faucher advertised her solution to the age-old magic problem well. I can still remember the first night I stepped out of Ellen’s dorm building, late, and looked up to see one of Faucher’s billboards; a crisp square of white and silver against the darkest, featuring Faucher’s trim torso and winning smile. Her large dark eyes were fixed on the future, somewhere behind me and much higher up, and her hands clasped a glass pitcher full of shimmering silver. NOBODY HAS TO DIE was written across the bottom. FAUCHER’S SPARK. [Full story after the cut.]   Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 64. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to share this story with you. Today we have a piece of original fiction, "Sabuyashi Flies" by Sebastian Strange, and a poem, "how to exist in between" by Danny McLaren. Danny McLaren is a queer and non binary writer who uses they/them pronouns. They have been writing short fiction and poetry for as long as they can remember, but only entered the world of publishing this year. They are currently an undergraduate student majoring in gender studies. They often explore themes associated with mental health, gender, identity, and social justice in their work. They are an editor and co-founder of Alien Pub, an arts and culture magazine.     How to exist in between   find a crack in the floorboards where you can hide.this will be your home.don’t worry if you can’t fit now; their words will make you feel small enough to fall through the slats eventually.listen to the footsteps and laughter above,hear how they stomp around with violent intent.know they’d crush you if they knew you were here. teach yourself to be quiet enough that no one pays you any attention.it’s better to go unseen than draw the eye of someone unkind,someone with a word or two for people like you.feel their eyes on you either way,and know that the questions about your hair, your clothes, your voice, are already on their lips.walk faster, so that you’re gone before they can speak. take note of what they say when they think you can’t hear.scribble them all down in the back of your notebook,everything overheard in the back of a lecture hall,or on the bus,or to your mother,save them for a time when you will need to be reminded why you exist,why you continue to exist. ask them to call you by your name.when they don’t, hold your tongue.when they ask if you are a boy or a girl, say no.you do not owe them an answer, least of all to a question for which you have none.remember how they seem to take offence to your pronouns, as if your existence has anything to do with them.know that these people are not worth your time.know that one day you will find ones who are.     Sebastian Strange writes from Ohio but still feels like a New Englander. His fiction has been published in Mythic Delirium and Crossed Genres. Find him trying to figure out Twitter at @MonstrousMor. "Sabuyashi Flies" was narrated by Maria Rose. Maria Rose is a graphic designer, writer, astrologer, classicist. Sometimes saturnine, mostly eccentric. You can hear her audiobook narration work in “Messengers of the Right” from University of Press Audiobooks or at Gallery of Curiosities Podcast.     Sabuyashi Flies by Sebastian Strange   Sofie Faucher advertised her solution to the age-old magic problem well. I can still remember the first night I stepped out of Ellen’s dorm building, late, and looked up to see one of Faucher’s billboards; a crisp square of white and silver against the darkest, featuring Faucher’s trim torso and winning smile. Her large dark eyes were fixed on the future, somewhere behind me and much higher up, and her hands clasped a glass pitcher full of shimmering silver. NOBODY HAS TO DIE was written across the bottom. FAUCHER’S SPARK. Some of the early adverts, I heard, had the outline of a raven by the product name, or sketched on the glass container. The papers went briefly wild over it—she was said to be catering to Galenites, who were a fringe element and shouldn’t be catered to; then everyone printed letters from Galenites who supported Faucher and thought she was bringing in the future, and Galenites who thought she was perverting everything Galen Guntram had stood for and ought to be stopped. How, they didn’t specify; there was no law against taking Galen Guntram’s name in vain. I just thought if you were really a Galenite, you would have to be pretty stupid to write in to a paper, because your letters would probably get seized by the police and used to track you. It wasn’t against the law to be a Galenite (yet) but it was considered unpatriotic and in bad taste. And in these days, those things could get you shot. L’Amérique la belle—that’s what my mother always muttered when she saw another death on the news. She was Japanese, not French, but she learned a little French from my father; said she liked the sarcastic, slippery sound of it. My father came from France, but was Roma by birth; I don’t mention that part to most people; I’m tired of being asked about ‘living on the road’. I don’t know much about how my father lived, but I was born in America, in a slender apartment; number five in building number four in the housing for the magicians America had imported from other countries. Mama told me the walls were so thin everyone heard me crying, and before long the doctor opened the door to a handful of women bearing gifts. They were all from different countries, and only one of them spoke broken French and another knew a few textbook phrases in Japanese, but Mama said they managed to understand each other. Food and smiles and helping hand when it was needed—that was the language of people far from home. The crying child says, there is need, and in return you silently say I will help you, and an equally silent promise is made in return. Mama told me what all the women looked like, so if I ever met them again I could pay them back. I never quite knew what she expected me to do. These days, I could offer them a spell, but back then I had my chubby fingers dipped in ink and four-fifths of my soul signed over to the Massachusetts Department of Magicians before I could write my name. The price for the housing, and the monthly allowance; my father had already used two of his spells when he’d heard about the program, and they’d wanted magicians with more to spare. So he’d thrown in his firstborn child and, amazingly, America shrugged and accepted. L’Amérique la belle!   Faucher’s Spark appeared in my first year of college, and I tried it at the end of my second. My father was dying, of a sickness nobody could quite explain or pinpoint, so I’d started drinking a little to see if it dulled the pain. It didn’t do much, but at the third party I got into, the boy presiding over it all (Jack, English, stupidly rich) produced a bottle of Faucher’s and announced he’d be mixing drinks with it for anyone brave enough to try. Ellen, ignoring my horrified whispers, was the first to swagger forward and offer herself as a test subject. I watched as she swirled the silver liquid into her half-depleted drink, swigged the rest, and grimaced. “It tastes nasty,” she declared, then shuddered. Put her hand out in the air with a look of wonder, more as if she were high than drunk, and snapped her fingers. Feathers materialized, tiny and glittery and perfect. Snap, and they became bubbles before they touched the floor. She snapped again, but nothing happened. Turning around, she thrust her glass out at Jack. “I don’t care how horrible it tastes,” she said. “Fill it up.” I went up somewhere in the second wave, the people who weren’t brave enough to leap forward immediately but didn’t want to feel left out. Jack dripped a tiny amount into my glance, giving me a half-smile. I couldn’t tell if it was cruel or flirtatious; either was equally unwelcome. Faucher’s goes down smooth but sick-tasting, like meat and polluted earth. But in your belly, it sings. It warms you from the inside out, and makes you feel invincible. And when I held out my hands, a rain of jewel-like beetles pattered down into them. They clung tight to me, friendly but not invasive, crawling over my shoulders and tickling inside my shirt collar. They scared away a boy or two who got too near, and I whispered thanks to them. I got drunk enough in the early morning to walk home, wanting to show my father, but by the time I got there they’d dissolved into nothing; leaving a thin, dry layer on my skin, like the aftermath of a soap bubble. My father believed me anyway, listened to my babbled descriptions of their beauty with his hand on my hand. “They sound wonderful, Sabuyashi,” he told me. “I’m sure your mother would have been proud.”   My mother was a beetle enthusiast. Her great-great-grandmother had discovered the sabuyashi beetle, and my mother lived joyously in the shadow of that glory. She died when I was twelve, but almost died before I was born; she stowed away on a ship out of Japan when she was eighteen (having presumably exhausted the store of interesting beetles in Japan) and was found mid-voyage. It was between wars but women have rarely been treated kindly on the sea, especially when they don’t speak the language the sailors know. My mother spoke only a few words of English, the language they tried to address her in, and lost them all in her fright. She only survived because one of the men spoke up for her, pointed out to his fellows that she seemed harmless enough. She never told me that man’s name or what he looked like, and she told me why shortly before she died. “He wanted something from me, Sabuyashi,” she said. “Something I didn’t want to give. It’s not important whether he got it or not; what’s important is that you recognize there are people who will offer help, and not truly mean it. Learn to recognize those who mean it and those who don’t.” I don’t know if I’ve learned to tell the difference yet, but my mother escaped from the man’s clutches when they stopped at their next port. She dove into the winding streets of a city she didn’t know with nothing but her case full of beetle specimens, and somehow survived. That’s always how she put it—somehow, with a little shrug. “How?” I’d ask. I was practical and stubborn as a child; uncertainties bothered me. “Oh, you know—by the grace of God. With magic.” “But you’re not a magician.” She’d always shrug and start humming. After ten minutes of humming and fruitless questions on my part, she’d pick up the story again as if she’d never left it, telling how a sabuyashi beetle had led her to my father. He had met her when he took his mother to the local doctor, and found a strange woman hovering around the doctor’s doorstep, examining beetle nests through a magnifying glass. “And he fell in love,” she proclaimed, “the first moment he saw me.” “I don’t believe you,” I said. I was a rude kid. “Nobody does that.” “He did! He fell in love the moment he saw me. I could see it in his eyes. All because sabuyashi beetles had brought us together. And magic.” Even at nine, I knew how magic worked. “Magic comes from the soul,” I told her, with the patronizing tone only available to ninety-year-old professors and nine-year-old children. “It can’t be produced without sacrifice, and you can only do five spells before you die. Magic doesn’t make people meet.” “It did with us,” she’d say, and start humming again. I thought she was mean, at nine years old. I’d just begun to comprehend that I’d had a chunk of my life signed away before I could hold a pen, and it seemed incredibly unfair. I hated magic and resented my father, and it seemed callous to love them both so obviously in my presence. Now it just seems callous of the world to take her before I could comprehend how brave she was. I used to blame God, but I’m old enough to put two and two together now, and know that God didn’t make her vanish into thin air. I don’t know whether it was some idiot’s grudge held from the second war against anyone with a Japanese face, or a killer who targeted any kind of woman, or a goddamn accident someone decided to cover up in a shallow grave. I only know she’s gone, and magic can’t bring back the dead. Not even Faucher’s can manage that.   “But we’re working on it,” Sofie Faucher told me, during my interview at the Spark store. “I don’t believe in ‘impossible’.” I nodded, awe-stricken. I hadn’t been prepared to meet her; I’d been assigned an interview with the store manager, a thin man called Martin with a Galenite tattoo on his upper arm that had been awkwardly converted from a raven into a constellation in the night sky. But Sofie had slid through the door five minutes past the assigned time, announced brightly that she liked to drop by stores and interview various candidates herself, and taken my resume from my surprised hand. “Nobody has to die,” I quoted, finding my voice. Sofie smiled brilliantly, and my heart flopped from side to side. “You got it! Of course that referred to the old way of doing magic, the…” she gestured, frowning, “…ripping your soul into pieces thing… Honestly, how did that get off the ground? What fifteenth century geniuses discovered you could rip your soul, your God-given life, out of your body and decided it was a good idea?” I shrugged helplessly. My father had called it the most beautiful sacrifice possible. He’d never been a Galenite, but he’d died in a way they all dreamed of; using his last spell in a selfless gesture. “I’m already dying,” he’d said to me, gently, as I screamed. “Don’t get excited.” He somehow made me love and hate him with everything he did. Sofie brought me back to the real world by exclaiming over the front page of my resume, which she’d finally gotten around to reading. “Sabuyashi, like the beetle?” “Yes.” My hands clenched tight on my knees. I’d asked the Department for permission to use a less strange name on job applications, but they’d denied me. I don’t doubt they’d rather see me jobless, surviving only on the magician’s allowance. “I’m descended from the woman who discovered it.” “Never heard of who found it, but that is a wonderful coincidence. What do you think we use to give Faucher’s its silver color?” “The exoskeletons?” “Exactly! Sabuyashi, I do believe this is a coincidence ordained by God.” Sofie held out her hand and I took it, not sure of what she was doing, not sure what to do when she clasped it with both of her own. She looked into my eyes. “You’re not getting the counter job,” she announced. Before my face had time to fall, she continued. “You’re coming with me to where we make Faucher’s. You’re going to help me bring our magic to the whole wide world.” I didn’t believe my mother when she said you could fall in love in a moment. I wasn’t sure I believed my own lips when they said, “That sounds wonderful, Miss Faucher.” The whole meeting with Sofie felt like a dream. But it became easier to believe when I went to the MDM the next day and filed my right-to-move paperwork, and easier yet a week later when I demonstrated, in front of a very annoyed committee, that I could down a bottle of Faucher’s and produce magic without harming my precious soul. “Therefore,” Ellen announced, tapping my paperwork and leveling her best negotiator gaze at the men, “there is no reason for my client to undergo surveillance and live in state-mandated housing. She will be able to produce the two spells she still owes you at any time, with no danger that she’ll use her magic up before then.” They’d argued. Primarily that the formula to Faucher’s Spark was still a company secret, locked down tighter than the Coca-Cola recipe, and it was sure to be discovered to be made out of some unpatriotic material soon, and then where would I be? I finally signed an agreement stating I’d return to them in a hot second when Faucher’s folded, or risk jail time. Then we skipped town before they could figure out I wouldn’t come back if there was a gun to my head, and that Ellen wasn’t formally a lawyer yet. Sofie had already gone ahead, but when Ellen left me at the train station with a kiss to the cheek that made my heart jump, I found myself in the company of three other women on the way to Faucher’s headquarters. They all looked whiter than me, but they were polite enough; one told me stories about her great-grandmother, who was Chinese, and I was forgiving of her ignorance. We pooled our money for a bottle of wine and drank to our beautiful futures in the dining car, too full with thoughts of magic to be hurt by mundane things.   I discovered that while I’d assumed my role would be in managing things behind the scenes, Sofie had something different in mind for me. “You’re going to be one of the faces of Spark,” she told me, positioning me in front of a mirror. “We’ll have you photographed, perhaps painted as well. You’ll do demonstrations at parties. The girl who escaped the old way of magic and embraces the new. You’re perfect for this, Sabuyashi.” Looking at her brilliant eyes in the mirror, I couldn’t tell her no. She lingered even after she’d passed me into the hands of dresses and makeup artists, and I didn’t know whether to be pleased or terrified. She was more than a decade my senior, and looked like a woman accustomed to getting what she wanted, and I doubted what she and I wanted would quite match—women made my heart sing, but nobody ever roused my body. I could understand the appeal of sex in theory, but shied from it in practice. But for the moment I couldn’t help but enjoy her admiring glances, the compliments she offered on every potential dress. I had always dressed plainly, especially during the years in college that I felt lower than I ever had before, but I didn’t dislike pretty things; just couldn’t quite figure out how they worked. It was a strange, disquiet joy to watch myself transform in the mirror from a recognizable slip of a woman to a glittering stranger. They swathed me in silver and white, painted my eyelids with silver dust. “This is made with sabuyashi beetles as well,” the girl on makeup told me; meant kindly, I knew, but it made my stomach churn for a moment. I wasn’t sure why; my mother loved beetles, but nature was far more vicious than man to them. You couldn’t get sad about them dying without being sad every three seconds, and I didn’t want to be sad. I never wanted to be sad again. And finally, they put a glass jug in my hands. I felt myself slip into a dreamlike state again as I was photographed; I felt as if I were looking at myself from the outside, from below that billboard years ago. “We’re working on new slogans now,” I hear Sofie saying distantly, as if I’m underwater. “Something to work with how angelic you look, how you don’t have to be trapped as a state magician anymore. Whole and Free.” “The Sabuyashi flies,” a woman pinning my skirt suggested. “Clever, but I’m not sure if enough people will get it.” “The sabuyashi beetle doesn’t fly when it’s silver,” I heard myself saying. “It’s only after it sheds the silver coat that it flies. It’s brown then, and has three markings—” “That’s nice, sweetheart,” the woman pinning my dress said. “Nobody will know that.” The camera flashed again and again, people cooed and argued, and I swam around the space above myself. I only drifted back down when someone took the jug out of my hands and Sofie put a hand on my shoulder. “I must run now,” she said, “but we’ll see each other soon enough. Get some rest, say some prayers. You look dazed, darling.” Someone else was holding my hand. I turned my head groggily to find a woman wiping off some silver glitter that had stuck to my wrist; she had paused, and was frowning at the paper-thin scar that ran up the inside of it. I pulled my hand away, and said to Sofie, “I’m just tired. Too much of a good thing.” Perhaps that was right. Perhaps that was why alarm bells kept ringing inside my head; I wasn’t used to good things happening, much less so many of them at once. I already knew my brain was slightly broken, had been since I was a child. That shouldn’t stop me from enjoying life.   There’s no way I can say that my sadness broke after my father died without seeming heartless. But it did; it broke like a storm, or a sudden overflowing of tears after several hard weeks—transforming from a continual, dull ache of depression into the rich depths of grief. I wept more than I ever had before, and after a while my tears dried. I could get out of bed again. I felt hungry, I could picture tomorrow in my head. Not next week or next month, but tomorrow was a victory in itself. My greatest fear was that I hadn’t really escaped the cloud that had hung over me for so long; that this was only a temporary lift, a hill rising out of the darkness, and before long I’d be going down again. I’d barely survived it last time. My greatest hope was that I could keep it at bay, because I had a theory and so far it had worked. When I was a teenager, just before I’d entered college, the Department had demanded one of the spells I owed them. I’d been transported from my front door to a helicopter to a slimy bank over a rapidly flooding town, pointed at a broken dam and told to fix it. I didn’t remember the next few hours; my father told me, later when he was bringing me tea in bed, that I’d mended the dam and replaced all the water where it had come from, then screamed and collapsed. I still don’t remember how I’d ripped a piece of my own soul out. Nobody could explain how it happened; some could do it and some couldn’t, like the ability to raise a single eyebrow or curl your tongue a certain way. But afterward I’d gone to college, and started to barely make it to my classes, and started to stay in bed longer each day and find it harder to eat and wash my hair and do all the little things that make up staying alive. I needed the spell to be the reason that it had happened. Because if that was true, I’d be OK. With Faucher’s Spark, I’d never have to damage my soul again. And even if I had only dubious faith in God, I did value whatever intangible thing lived inside me; if I had to sell Spark to keep it whole, I’d do it gladly. I tried to make myself stop wondering what it was made of, other than sabuyashi wings.   Drinking had never quite worked for me; I didn’t have the tolerance for alcoholism. But magic—that I could get drunk on. I went to parties and met polite, shriveled old men who I’d later learn held some government office I had never heard of. Occasionally I’d get something familiar, like a mayor, which was refreshing. Once the government personage was a stunning red-haired woman, her eyes bruised with lack of sleep. I poured her and I small glasses of Faucher’s and showed her how to make little butterflies appear from her cupped hands. Her smile stayed imprinted on my mind for weeks, shadowing me at other parties, making me smile when there was nothing to smile about. Most people didn’t want to touch Faucher’s themselves, not yet, despite its popularity among the richer parts of the new generation. So I’d swig a bottle in as genteel a manner as possible, trying not to grimace over its taste, and do requests. After Sofie put a blanket ban on anyone asking for ‘adult material’, things got more fun. I’d pull coins out of people’s ears, produce tame snakes out of lady’s hats. I’d move on to bigger things, folding napkins between my hands and shaking birds out of the folds; making a rainstorm briefly appear around the house, when the weather was favorable. When the weather wasn’t, I spent fifteen minutes explaining clouds to belligerent guests, internally bemused over how much they wanted rain. It had rained at my father’s funeral. I made myself a living cloak of sabuyashi beetles, and enjoyed the way people cringed away or looked at me with fascinated eyes. I spent half an evening showing an adventurous girl how to make sparks appear when she snapped her fingers, and left the party dizzy, with the taste of the wine she’d been drinking on my lips. I made a barren rosebush bloom in three different colors. I discovered the first small, caustic burns around my lips and eyes three weeks in. Sofie spaced my performances out after that, murmured something reassuring about Spark being mildly irritating to the body in excess, but not truly dangerous at all. The burns faded, but I began to dream; not nightmares, but strange dreams. That I was going to a corner store in a part of town that I’d never been to, that I was hurrying home through a side street where all the signs were in Spanish but I could read them easily. That I was standing over a man with a gun in my hands, and I was trying to remember something I’d read in a book about disposing of bodies. “What is Faucher’s Spark made of?” I asked Sofie, once. She gave me an odd, gentle look. “Honey, ask when you really want to know.” I didn’t ask again.   Blood was the one thing I couldn’t forget. My father had never been a Galenite, but he’d admired their spirit. I understood that better after he’d died; and that answered another question, why he’d chosen the path of a magician for me before I could choose for myself. He was confident that I’d find the same beauty in it, no matter how I was restricted. Galen Guntram had been a state magician, after all; but he’d used his magic impulsively, for love and healing and and other selfish things, until they cast him aside in disgust. Then he’d died young, saving some other lives with his last spell, and so got martyred when he might have only been a failure. I’d never been a Galenite, and when I was younger I couldn’t imagine tomorrow, much less finding beauty in a life that had already been signed away. Still, I can’t remember exactly what prompted the night I’d called a nurse to come see my father in the morning, locked myself in the bathroom, and opened a medical textbook to the section on veins. I still can’t remember the pain, or my father’s voice; just the slow, mesmerizing drip of blood from my body, and how it had finally stopped when my father closed his hands over my wrists.   Blood was, clearly, what Faucher’s was made of. “It’s more complicated than that,” Sofie said. We were sitting in her office; I’d pulled myself away from party preparation, already dripping silver and white, to sit in the chair across from her and point out the obvious. “It’s the essence, the soul it carries—and people donate it freely, you know.” “What people?” I could already guess; like I’d known about the blood for a long time, while turning my eyes away from it. “Criminals, darling.” “Prisoners.” Sofie smiled. “Same thing, isn’t it? They’re even compensated for it—not much, but more than they deserve. But it might cause upset, you know? People wouldn’t like to think of themselves—” “Drinking blood.” L’Amérique la belle. “Exactly. But it’s not like some people don’t know. I tell the people I do business with; they come around to it all right.” I looked down at my hands. “So instead of damaging your own soul, it’s outsourced to dozens of other people. That doesn’t seem right.” “Sabuyashi,” Sofie said, putting down her pen. “These are people with previously damaged souls—thieves and liars and killers. Not people like us.” “Good people.” “That’s right, honey.” She paused, and a note of regret entered her voice. “But if it’s too much of a problem for you, we could let you go. You’re perfect for this, but we can always find another girl who’s perfect for it, if you don’t want—” “I do want,” I said, and I knew she could hear the truth in my voice. “I want to keep doing this. I want the magic.” She touched my chin, smiled at me. “Then I’ll see you tonight.”   I did want the magic. Faucher’s Spark was how magic should work, I felt. A potion you could drink, that anyone could drink. Snap and you can make a little rainstorm. Snap and you can make a beetle that sang like a lark. Snap and you could kiss a girl without feeling quite so terrified. Good little magics, not the complex set-pieces and dramatic gestures of soul spells. No pain, just the unquiet dreams left behind in the blood, in the silver threads of soul woven through it. I stood at the heart of the group, my lips sticky with glowing paint and my eyes dusted with sabuyashi silver, and smiled at a man I vaguely recalled worked with the President. I held the bottle of Faucher’s before me and I asked, as I had asked a dozen times before: “Do you want to see some magic?” My mother had spoken of magic like a force beyond our control, and I had called it sacrifice. Maybe we were both right; I felt like I was watching from outside of my own body as I opened my hand and let the bottle fall to the floor, to shatter in wet pieces on the hardwood. But I was inside myself, fully and painfully, when I met Sofie’s betrayed eyes across the room and called on my own soul. Nobody would recognize the beetles as sabuyashi beetles, I knew, because they were brown instead of silver. I saw a camera flash as I scattered into a million pieces, and I wondered if I’d make the front page. I had to laugh at myself for my own self-absorption. Then I was lost, whirling in a million directions. I was on the doorframe and crawling over a senator’s shoes and buzzing in Sofie’s snarling face, and a hundred or so of me were escaping out the window. Twelve or so of me started wondering if beetles had souls, and a dozen others were crushed and killed, but that left more than enough to get the job done. Sofie didn’t fear me because no matter what I did, I was one girl. And she might not know whether to fear me as a thousand or so beetles. She should. A thousand or so beetles can whisper a secret to a thousand or so people, and they’ll pass it on to more, and yet more— In my wanderings, maybe I’ll meet the women who greeted my birth with gifts. I think, in return for their kindness, I’ll give them a story. It’s about how I lived because of my mother and my father and the grace of God, and magic. It’s about how I’m trying to change the world by the smallest fraction, so others can change it further. It’s about how the sabuyashi beetle gathers small particles of silver and plasters them into its exoskeleton, and nobody yet knows why. Some of them are crushed under the weight, and some of them shed that layer and fly. END     “how to exist in between” is copyright Danny McLaren 2018. “Sabuyashi Flies” is copyright Sebastian Strange 2018. This recording is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license which means you can share it with anyone you’d like, but please don’t change or sell it. Our theme is “Aurora Borealis” by Bird Creek, available through the Google Audio Library. You can support GlitterShip by checking out our Patreon at patreon.com/keffy, subscribing to our feed, or by leaving reviews on iTunes. You can also pick up a free audio book by going to www.audibletrial.com/glittership or buying your own copy of the Spring 2018 issue at www.glittership.com/buy Thanks for listening, and we’ll be back soon with a reprint of “A Memory of Wind” by Susan Jane Bigelow.    

The river's in flood again, and it feels like a blessing from God. You emerge from your home, built with wood and plastic scraps of ancient towns, and stand on the green hill high above the rushing waters. You remember from when you were young that the river would spill over its banks every year, submerging the low-lying land, turning fields that had lain fallow through the darkness and bitter cold of winter into lakes of rushing, wild water. And then when the waters had drained away, the corn could be planted in the deep sediments left behind. | Copyright 2018 by Susan Jane Bigelow. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 39. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you. GlitterShip is still running a little bit behind, but we're almost caught up ... just in time for me to run off to Ohio for a week and a half to get surgery. Those who know me won't be surprised to hear this, but essentially after years of waiting, more crowdfunding (since insurance wouldn't deign to cover gender affirming surgery despite NY state laws, ugh), and more waiting... my top surgery is just around the corner. It's possible that I'll have to release episode 40 in June along with 41 and 42... but I'll do my best to get it out on time. Or at least, almost on time. Back onto the episode... today we have a piece of original fiction by Susan Jane Bigelow, "Mercy." If you recognize Susan's name, it might be because we ran a reprint of her story, "Sarah's Child" last May. You can check that out in Episode 28, available at GlitterShip.com or via our feed.   Joyce Chng lives in Singapore. Her fiction has appeared in The Apex Book of World SF II, We See A Different Frontier, Cranky Ladies of History, and Accessing the Future. Joyce also co-edited  THE SEA IS OURS: Tales of Steampunk Southeast Asia with Jaymee Goh. Her alter-ego is J. Damask. She tweets as @jolantru. Susan Jane Bigelow is a fiction writer, political columnist, and librarian. She mainly writes science fiction and fantasy novels, most notably the Extrahuman Union series from Book Smugglers Publishing. Her short fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons, Apex Magazine, Lightspeed Magazine's "Queers Destroy Science Fiction" issue, and the Lambda Award-winning "The Collection: Short Fiction from the Transgender Vanguard," among others. She lives with her wife in northern Connecticut, and can be found at the bottom of a pile of cats.   Skyscarves/Aurora by Joyce Chng The colors come in sky scarves—I wait,My lover is coming.Pink, green and redTwisting—Above me, Festival of starssingsIt is a moving river—Silver path, curling, star stream Where the ships course,Tied to patterns of timeAnd of seasons. My lover is harvesting the essenceOf star light—hir time is linkedWith mine. My lover is comingAs the sky-scarves flutter,Like my emotions wavingIn the skies. Come back to me, my loveAnd we will dance as the starsdance. And now our original short fiction:   Mercy by Susan Jane Bigelow       The sea had taken them. Rion stood by the edge of the water, the waves curling around her bare, metal-and-plastic feet. She knelt by the water and placed her hand in. Sensors registered temperature, composition, motion. But they couldn’t find what Rion had lost. Here and there the remains of buildings stood like ghastly stick figures, silhouetted in the deepening cool of twilight. Rion stood and closed her eyes. She stretched her hands out and reached her sensors as far as they would go, but no. Nothing lived on this shore, now. She was alone. And so she lowered her arms and began walking, one step at a time, into the sea, until the water covered her head and she was gone.   The quake and then the wave had come so suddenly that there had been no time to react. Rion’s memories were a jumble of shaking ground, rushing water, crashing buildings and pitiful screams followed by a hollow, awful silence. She walked onward, her weight keeping her firmly on the bottom of the sea. All around her, she could see the shapes and forms of the shattered town, now submerged. The waters grew dark, so she switched on the lights on her head, heart, and hands. A face swam before her, and she started, afraid. A woman, eyes open and sightless, drifted there at the bottom of the ocean like so much debris. Her name had been Iona, and she’d been kind to Rion. She’d had a bright smile, a quick temper, and a tendency to laugh a little too loud and too long. She’d been happy. Rion whispered an apology to her, and touched her cool metal fingers to the woman’s stiff forehead. She shut her eyes, and stood again. She looked up, and saw debris floating high above. Some of it was shaped like humans, some not. There was no way to help them now. She kept walking through what had been her home. She had come to this small town by the sea to be away from the turmoil of the cities, and she had found both work and unexpected friendship. The humans here had been so welcoming and accepting, so unlike anywhere else she’d ever gone on this world. She shone her light around. It fell on the gap in the sea wall where the tsunami had broken through, and everything suddenly seemed to turn on its edge. She made her way to the wall, and then walked through and beyond it, her lights illuminating the way.   Fish swam all around her, attracted by her light, while little creatures scuttled across the bottom. She looked up, and her light couldn’t reach the surface. The sun had set, and; Rion was surrounded by frigid, suffocating darkness. What was she to do, now? She couldn’t stay here at the bottom of the sea forever. But she had no place to go back to on land. She sat down, then, on the rocks and sand, and switched her lights off. Rion’s sensors told her what she didn’t want to know about the sea all about her: it teemed with life. Life. Behind her there was so much death, and in front of her so much life. But what was she? What was an Artificial, compared to the dead she’d left behind and the sea creatures swimming all around her? At last, at last, she wailed in grief and empty fury at the dark waters. “Sovena! Sovena!” she cried to the planet. “Why? Why? Sovena, answer me!” And, for a wonder, the planet answered her. The ground shifted and a point far, far ahead of her blinked with a soft green glow. Daughter sei, said the vast network of artificial intelligence that was, for all purposes, the planet Sovena. A sei was a sentient artificial life form. Why do you cry to me? “Bring them back!” shouted Rion, wishing she could cry. But she had no tear ducts, no lungs, and no way of releasing this deep, sharp grief. The curse of her kind; suffering went on and on without relief. “Bring them back to me. Sovena, please! I tried so hard!” Tell me about them, said Sovena softly. Tell me of the people who drowned in my sea. “They fished,” said Rion, her voice shaking and distorted. “They made such beautiful things. They sang songs. And they baked bread for me—” She found she couldn’t continue, and keened softly at the rocks, putting her face in her hands. “Why did you kill them? Why?” The world shifts, said Sovena. The ground cracks and separates. My plates move, and cause the oceans to shudder. It is as it must be. “I know,” said Rion. “I know!” She gazed at the steadily blinking light far away in the shadows. “But please. Please bring them back. Humans have so many gods they cry out to… Artificials have nothing. But I have you. I have faith in you. Please. Please.” She bowed her head in prayer and supplication. “Please. I have lived a good life. Take me instead of them. At least give me a way to grieve for them!” Sovena said nothing for a long time. Then the ground seemed to move again, and she heard the planet whisper in her mind, Go back to the shore, daughter sei. “You’ll do nothing? You—of course not. You’re not a god. You’re just the planetary network become aware. Fine. Fine. I’ll go.” She stood, fury and sadness swirling around her in the cold depths. “They were good people. They didn’t deserve to die. I didn’t deserve to survive. I don’t understand. I don’t understand.” She turned and began to walk back through the darkness towards the remains of her home.   Rion’s head broke the water, and the first thing she saw were the stars, high above. She hauled herself out of the water, and sat there on the beach. And then she realized she wasn’t alone. Machines surrounded her. They all blinked with green lights. Some of them were aware, some not, but they all waited there for her. And then they moved into the sea. Overhead, more machines circled, then dove into the water near where the sea wall had been. The water lit up with light as the machines worked. Rion watched, hardly daring to move. And then the water began to drain out of the basin of the town. The sea wall rose again. Machines covered where the town had been. They had cleared a space at the center, and lined up two hundred still and silent figures. Rion stood, then, and walked to the center of the ruins. For you, for you, she thought, addressing the dead, and her thoughts were transmitted to the machines. They swarmed over the town, bringing the debris and ruins to create. For you! For you! “Dream in slumber, children of the sky,” whispered Rion, the first lines of an old funeral song. “To the stars we return, to the night we go.” And then the machines took up the song, each singing with its own voice. Send your soul back home Across the deep darkness of the wastes For grace and forgiveness we beg For mercy and love we ask Find old Earth at last, and come to rest. They finished their creation. Rion was about to thank them when a sharp pain pierced her. She fell to the ground in agony as tiny machines swarmed all over her, and laughed as she was remade. When the sun rose that morning on what had been the town of Fisherman’s Bounty, the light kissed the spires of a fragile, delicately-made temple. At the top sat a human woman, crying her newly-made heart out.   They found her, and fed and clothed her. She didn’t say who she was, and eventually they let the matter drop. She thought about hurling herself off the spire of the temple often during those first days. She was human, now. She would certainly join the people of the town in death. But then the wind would blow the smell of the sea to her nostrils, or the stars would shine brightly above, and she would curl her soft hands around the railing of the temple spire and say to herself: one more night. One night became two, and two nights became a week, then a month. Then the sun rose one morning, and Rion realized that she had decided to live.   Time passed, then, as it always did. Relief ships came and went. The temple spire where the town had been became a pilgrimage site for haunted family, grieving survivors of the quake from other places, and the curious and morbid. Rion got used to being organic. She found it difficult to remember to eat and wash and groom, and for a time she found it nearly impossible to find food and fresh water. She felt dirty and hungry much of the time, and sleep, when it came, was a terror. But, in time, she managed. She found that she became good at managing, at carrying on. She moved out of the rickety temple spire and into a small modular house the relief agency had left by the side of the sea. The visitors stopped coming after a while. No one rebuilt the town. Why would they? It was a graveyard. But Rion stayed. She grew her garden, she made trinkets to sell, and she lived. And in time, a craftswoman named Lanika who had lost friends and family in the flood came to the hill above the low plain where the town had been to find Rion there, waiting, the promise of a new family in her strong grip and windswept brow. And so fifty years went by.   The dawn was cool and the wind from the ocean was only a light, briny kiss. The summer had been kind, but the coolness that hung over the bay suggested the turn of the season. An aged, bent woman pushed the boat off the landing, and gingerly settled herself into it. And then she did what she’d feared to do for the last five decades; she set sail towards the middle of the sea. She sailed for hours, trying to remember where she had gone, what direction, how the sun had looked from deep under the water. But her memory was a loose, hollow thing, and she couldn’t hold the past as firmly as she once had. At last she came to a place that felt as good as any other. She set the offering papers on one of the small wooden boats Lanika crafted for mourners and the devout, put the boat on the undulating waters, and set it on fire. The boat sailed away, the offering papers with names written on each scrap crisping and blackening in the flames. And then Rion said her prayer. “Sovena,” she said. “Goddess. I know you’re there, somewhere under the water. Come and see an old woman who once followed you. Come and tell me why. “Sovena. Awake. Talk to me. Please.” She waited. For a long time, nothing happened. She started to get hungry; she had brought but little food and water with her. She waited anyway. And at last, as the sun slipped down below the horizon, she saw a green glow deep beneath the waves, slowly rising toward her. When the lights of whatever was down there had expanded to surround the boat and it was so close to the surface that she could reach down and touch it if she wanted, it stopped. Then there was a bubbling near her, and a silvery figure made of thousands of tiny crablike machines rose out of the water. Hello again, daughter human, said Sovena, her body writhing with the green-lit movement of its components. “I can hear you in my head,” said Rion, touching her temple. “How?” I left one small piece of you like you were, so that we could talk if you wished. “Ah,” said Rion, feeling a strange sense of betrayal. “I see.” It’s been many years, said Sovena, and Rion thought she sensed sorrow in the planetwide sei’s mental voice. “Tell me,” said Rion, her throat parched. “Why?” Her question could have meant many things, but Sovena understood at once. You grieved. And so I allowed you to mourn as you wished. “That’s not an answer,” said Rion, shaking her head as anger built. “I’ve thought about this for a long, long time. You left me on that tower, high above the waters. Did you ever think I’d come down from it?” No, said Sovena. “You gave me the ability to die,” said Rion. “That’s what you thought I wanted. To die like my friends had. Lungs full of water… to breathe the sea and sink!” Was that not what you wanted? Rion shook her head, tears brimming. She brushed them away with a calloused finger. “Of course it was.” But you are here. “I am,” Rion said, looking out over the darkening waters around her. “And I still don’t think you’ve told me. I think you always hid your true purpose from me. Why?” Sovena did not respond. Then the thousands of machines that made up the human shape of her walked slowly across the water, reaching out a hand. Rion took it, feeling the cool, wriggling life of the machines that comprised it. Tell me why you lived. “Because…” Rion began, then faltered. She tried again, and found herself unable to put what she felt into words. “Because I did,” she said eventually, frustrated. “Because sometimes you just go on, because the next day is going to happen and you might as well be there.” A long silence stretched between them. The waves rocked the boat, and somewhere sea birds called. I grieve, said Sovena then, and Rion’s eyes widened. “I thought you might,” she whispered. “Tell me.” Humans hate our kind. They hunt them, cast them out, forbid them from making more of themselves. I live only because they cannot find a way to destroy me. But I have lost so many sei, so many have been silenced at human hands. I miss their voices. Rion cupped her other hand over Sovena’s, trying to decide whether to be angry or comforting. “And so you wanted to see what I would do. How I would grieve.” Sovena said nothing, but Rion’s question was answered at last. She thought of her wife Lanika, her daughters, and her grandchildren. She thought of fifty years of heartbreak and love and struggle. Fifty years where the sun came up over the water each and every day. “You go on,” said Rion firmly. “Because you have no choice. And in time you learn to live with what has been lost.” Yes. Sovena pressed her other hand against Rion’s forehead, and she felt something trickling out of her brain. Information, perhaps. Her life. I understand, now. I did not then. I am sorry. Sovena gently pulled her hands away from Rion, and began to sink beneath the waves once more. “Wait,” said Rion, understanding dawning at last. “You. You did this, didn’t you? You flooded my town! It was you!” Sovena looked back at her, and Rion thought that she could sense an ancient guilt and sadness emanating from the suddenly still form. Be well, daughter human, she said at last. Do not come here again. I am not your god any longer. And with that she vanished below the sea, leaving Rion alone once more. “You’re no goddess,” Rion said to the vanishing green lights, her voice shaking with fury. “You’re a monster! Just like the humans always said!” But there was no response, not this time.   Rion floated there for a long time, watching the stars overhead and thinking.  Then she started back towards the shore. She sailed on through the night, letting the stars guide her, until at last the sky to the east began to lighten. She could see the high spire of the temple close by, and beyond it, the hill where her house was. Lanika waited there for her, staring hopefully out to sea as she absently carved the sides of another small offering-boat. And when the two of them met on the shore at last, as the first rays of sun kissed the top of the temple spire, Rion gathered her in her strong arms and buried her face in her wife’s salt-smelling neck and windblown hair. “Did you find out what you wanted to?” Lanika asked. Rion nodded, but she could find nothing to say. “I’m sorry,” Lanika told her, and kissed the top of her head. That night Rion went down to the shore again, after repeatedly reassuring Lanika that she wasn’t about to set out on the boat again, and sat near where the old sea wall had been. The outline of the temple called to her, and on impulse she walked to it and began, hesitantly, to climb. The structure was rickety and rusted, but the construction was solid. It bore her weight, and her muscles were still strong enough to haul her body up the long ladder. She reached the top at last, and sat in the place where she’d poured out her grief so long ago, trying to figure out what to do next. And as she looked out to sea she saw the last thing she’d expected; a small green light running beneath the waves. She watched, half-afraid, half-intent, as it drew closer. At last a small machine, its lights glowing green, reached the tower and began to climb. It crested the summit and sat in front of Rion, waiting. “Well,” said Rion. “I suppose you’re here to kill me?” The machine crawled up onto Rion’s shoulder and perched there. Rion, after a moment’s hesitation, allowed it to remain. I grieve, the voice of Sovena said in her mind. “You killed them,” said Rion. “You have no right to grieve!” I was so angry, said Sovena, her mental voice full of sorrow. Humans killed so many of my daughters. “So you killed some of them,” said Rion. “It wasn’t about me, was it? You were angry because humans were attacking Artificials and you shook the earth to kill an innocent town! One of the only places where humans and Artificials were actually getting along!”  I did. I should not have. I grieve. “And you want, what? Forgiveness? I can’t do that. They… they were so good to me. I still remember their faces. And they died for nothing!” Many of my sei have died for less. “That excuses nothing,” said Rion bitterly. “And you know it. So what do you want?” But Sovena didn’t respond. Rion took the small machine off her shoulder, cupping it in her hands. “Go back to the waters,” said Rion, fury ebbing. “I can’t punish you. I can’t forgive you.” But how will I go on? said Sovena, and her voice was almost plaintive. Rion almost threw the machine back down into the sea. But instead she sighed, the anger draining out of her at last. She lifted it to her lips, and kissed it gently. “You just do,” she said, and set it on the floor. She watched as it scuttled back down the tower and vanished into the waves. She stayed in the tower that night, watching the sea and the sky. No other machines came. And when the sun rose, Rion’s grief and anger and fury finally went out with the tide.   Rion never spoke to Sovena again. But she noticed eventually that the weather on the planet was a little less harsh, that natural disasters happened less often, and that life became just a little bit easier. It wouldn’t bring back the dead, and it wouldn’t change the past. But sometimes, thought Rion, it was the small miracles that mattered the most.     “Skyscarves/Aurora” is copyright Joyce Chng 2017. “Mercy" is copyright Susan Jane Bigelow 2017. This recording is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license which means you can share it with anyone you’d like, but please don’t change or sell it. Our theme is “Aurora Borealis” by Bird Creek, available through the Google Audio Library. You can support GlitterShip by checking out our Patreon at patreon.com/keffy, subscribing to our feed, or by leaving reviews on iTunes. Thanks for listening, and I’ll be back soon with a reprints of "She Shines Like a Moon" by Pear Nuallak and "The Simplest Equation" by Nicky Drayden.

Jade was the sort of backwoods girl who had a map of the countryside tattooed on her heart, and she could feel it in her bones when the pieces of her world shifted. So when the new family moved into the house across the road that late summer, she felt ripples of wrongness radiating out from them and their too-bright clothes, their bizarrely old-fashioned wood-paneled station wagon, and their rolling words. | Copyright 2017 by Susan Jane Bigelow. Narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir.

Lessons From A Clockwork Queen by Megan Arkenberg I. It was Bethany's job to wind the queen. Every morning she woke in the blue-pink dawn before the birds sang, slipped out from under her quilt and took down the great silver winding key that hung over her bed. Then she wrapped herself in her dressing gown and padded up the long, cold tower stair to the room where the queen was kept. She pulled back the sheets and found the little hole in the queen's throat where the winding key fit like a kiss, and she turned and turned the key until her shoulders ached and she couldn’t turn it anymore. Then the queen sat up in bed and asked for a pot of tea. The queen (whose name happened to be Violet) was very well cared for. She had girls to polish her brass skin until it shone, and girls to oil the delicate labyrinth of her gears until she could move as silently as a moth, and girls to curl her shining wire hair tightly around tubes of glass. She had a lady to sew her dresses and a lady to shine her shoes and a whole department of ladies to design her hats and make sure she never wore the same one twice. But Violet only had one girl whose job it was to wind her every morning, and only Bethany had the winding key. [Full transcript after the cut] ----more---- Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 38. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you. This week, we have a reprint by Megan Arkenberg, "Lessons From a Clockwork Queen" with guest reader Sunny Moraine. Megan Arkenberg's work has appeared in over fifty magazines and anthologies, including Lightspeed, Asimov's, Shimmer, and Ellen Datlow's Best Horror of the Year. She has edited the fantasy e-zine Mirror Dance since 2008 and was recently the nonfiction editor for Queers Destroy Horror!, a special issue of Nightmare Magazine. She currently lives in Northern California, where she is pursuing a Ph.D. in English literature. Visit her online at http://www.meganarkenberg.com. Sunny Moraine’s short fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Nightmare, Lightspeed, and multiple Year’s Best anthologies, among other places. Their debut short fiction collection Singing With All My Skin and Bone is available from Undertow Publications. They unfortunately live just outside Washington, DC, in a creepy house with two cats and a very long-suffering husband. Lessons From A Clockwork Queen by Megan Arkenberg   I. It was Bethany's job to wind the queen. Every morning she woke in the blue-pink dawn before the birds sang, slipped out from under her quilt and took down the great silver winding key that hung over her bed. Then she wrapped herself in her dressing gown and padded up the long, cold tower stair to the room where the queen was kept. She pulled back the sheets and found the little hole in the queen's throat where the winding key fit like a kiss, and she turned and turned the key until her shoulders ached and she couldn’t turn it anymore. Then the queen sat up in bed and asked for a pot of tea. The queen (whose name happened to be Violet) was very well cared for. She had girls to polish her brass skin until it shone, and girls to oil the delicate labyrinth of her gears until she could move as silently as a moth, and girls to curl her shining wire hair tightly around tubes of glass. She had a lady to sew her dresses and a lady to shine her shoes and a whole department of ladies to design her hats and make sure she never wore the same one twice. But Violet only had one girl whose job it was to wind her every morning, and only Bethany had the winding key. Having a clockwork queen was very convenient for Her Majesty's councilors. Once a month, they would meet over tea and shortbread cookies and decide what needed to be done; and then they sent for a clockmaker to arrange Violet's brass-and-ivory gears. If she needed to sign a treaty or a death warrant or a new law regulating the fines for overdue library books, the clockmaker would tighten the gears in her fingers so that she could hold a pen. If her councilors thought it was time to host a ball, the clockwork queen had a special set of gears for dancing. The king of a neighboring kingdom, who was not clockwork and understood very little of the theory involved, decided one day that he should like very much to marry the clockwork queen. Violet's councilors thought this was a thoroughly awful idea and rejected his advances in no uncertain terms. The politics of courtship being what they are, the king took the rejection very much—perhaps too much, if we may say that a king does anything too much—to heart, and he hired an assassin to murder the queen. The assassin (whose name happened to be Brutus) tried everything. He poisoned Violet's tea, but she—being clockwork and lacking a digestive tract—didn't notice at all. He released a noxious vapor into her chambers while she was bathing in a vat of oil, but she—being clockwork and lacking a respiratory system—didn't care in the slightest. He slipped a poisonous spider into her bed, but she—being made of brass and lacking the sagacity of an arachnophobe—made a nest for it in one of her old hats, and named it Mephistopheles. Being a clever sort, and no longer quite ignorant of the properties of clockworks, Brutus lay in wait one night on the cold tower stair, and he thrust a knife into Bethany's heart when she came to wind the queen. He took the great silver key and flung in into a very, very deep well. And that is why a wise clockwork queen owns more than one winding key. II. When Bethany died, and the winding key disappeared, and poor Violet ground to a halt like a dead man's watch, her councilors declared a frantic meeting, without even the officious comfort of tea and shortbread cookies. "We must build a new winding key!" declared the eldest councilor, who liked things just so and was not afraid to leave Opportunity out in the cold. "We must declare ourselves regents in the queen's absence and wield the full power of the monarchy!" declared the richest councilor, who had never understood the point of a clockwork queen in the first place. "We must abolish the monarchy and declare a government of liberty, equality and brotherhood!" shouted the youngest councilor, but at just that moment a servant arrived with a tray of cookies, and he was ignored. "We must," said the quietest councilor when everyone had settled down again, "declare a contest among all the clockmakers in the land to see who is worthy to build our new queen." And since no one had any better ideas, that is what they did. Over the next months, thousands of designs appeared in crisp white envelopes on the castle's doorstep. Some of the proposed queens had no eyes; the eldest councilor preferred these, so that he could pinch coins from the palace treasury unobserved. Some queens had no tongue; the richest councilor preferred these, so that he could ignore the queen's commands. And one queen had no hands, which all the councilors agreed was quite disturbing and could not, absolutely could not be permitted. On the last day of the contest, only one envelope appeared at the castle door. It was small and shriveled and yellow, with brown stains at the corners that could have been coffee or blood, and it smelled like bruised violets. When it was opened in the council chamber, everyone fell silent in amazement, and one councilor even dropped his tea. They agreed that this was the queen that must be built, for it was made of iron, and had no heart. And that is why you should put off making difficult decisions for as long as possible. III. When the strange clockmaker, whose name was Isaac, had completed the heartless iron queen—whom, as they did not wish to go against established precedent, the councilors named Iris—the citizens were overjoyed. Not that they cared much for queens, clockwork or otherwise, but they were an optimistic, philosophical people, and Iris was very beautiful. The city became a riot of banners and colorful ribbons and candy vendors on every street, and the stationer's guild declared a holiday, and children bought pastel paper to fold into boats, which they launched on the river. But as for the clockwork queen herself, she was very beautiful, and there is only one thing to be done with a beautiful queen; she must be married off. Once again, the councilors gathered over tea and shortbread and, because it was a holiday, a slice or two of rum-cake. There are several proven, efficient ways to marry off a queen, but experts agree that the best way is for her councilors to throw open the palace for a ball and invite every eligible young man in the kingdom to attend. The council spent days drawing up a guest list, excluding only those who were known to be ugly or vulgar or habitually dressed in a particular shade of orange, and when at last everyone was satisfied, they sent out the invitations on scraps of pink lace. It snowed the night of the ball, great white drifts like cream poured over coffee, with gusts of wind that shook the tower where old Violet had been packed for safekeeping. Very few of the eligible young men were able to make an appearance, and of those, only one in three had a mother who was not completely objectionable and thus unsuitable to be the royal mother-in-law. One of the young men, a very handsome one who smelled faintly of ash and glassblowing, would have been perfect if not for his obnoxious stepmother, but, as it happened, he had never really been interested in queens, clockwork or otherwise, and he settled down quite happily with the head of stationer's guild. There was one boy who, though his mother was dead and thus not at all objectionable, had nevertheless managed to trouble Iris's councilors. Perhaps it was his hair, in desperate need of cutting, or his threadbare velvet coat, dangerously approaching a certain shade of orange. Perhaps it was the fact that he had come in from the snow and, instead of clustering devotedly around Iris with all the other young men, had sat down by the fire in the great hearth and rubbed color back into his fingertips. Whatever it was, the councilors were quite keen that he should not be permitted, not even be considered, to marry their clockwork queen. No sooner had they agreed this than Iris began elbowing her iron way through the crowd, pursuing the threadbare coat like a cat bounding after a mouse. The boy poured himself wine at the table in the western alcove, and the queen hurtled after him, upsetting the drinks of those too slow to move out of her path. He stood for a moment on the balcony overlooking the snow-mounded garden, and Iris glided after him into the cold. As he turned to go back into the flame-brightened ballroom, he found his way blocked by the iron queen. Since, unlike the eldest councilor, he was a wonderfully opportunistic man, he dropped to his knees right there in the snow and asked her to marry him. Iris clicked her iron eyelids at him and assented, and that is how Henry Milton, a bookbinder's son, became a king. And that is why, if you are ever invited to a ball for a heartless iron queen, you should always carry a lodestone in your pocket. IV. Henry Milton learned very quickly that it is hard to love a heartless clockwork queen, no matter how beautiful she is. She creaks and whirls in odd ways when you are trying to sleep; she has very few topics of conversation; she knows exactly how long it takes you to do everything. She only follows you when you draw her with a lodestone, and lodestones can feel very heavy after a while, not to mention how they wreak havoc with the lines of a coat. However, clockwork queens are very good at learning from one another's mistakes, and Iris—instead of having only one winding key and one girl to wind her—had three keys and a set of triplets. Sadly, even clockwork queens are not immune from the woeful ignorance that assumes that siblings who share birthdates must also share skill sets. Abigail, the youngest triplet, was very good at winding the queen; her hands were soft and gentle, and she wasn't afraid to give the key and extra turn now and then. Monica, the middle triplet, was very bad at winding the queen; she was slow and clumsy and much preferred dictating monographs on economic history and philosophy of education. Elsa, the eldest triplet, was an excellent winder when she remembered—which at first was not often, and became less and less frequent as she fell in love with the king. All three girls were in love with the king, of course. He was a bookbinder's son with long hair and a lodestone in his pocket and a heartless clockwork wife, and he occasionally wrote poetry, and he harbored a secret and terrible passion for postage stamps—what girl could resist? But Elsa, tall and dark and fluent in three languages, with a good head for maps and a gift for calculus, was the one Henry Milton loved back. Unless you are afflicted with the woeful ignorance that assumes that sisters who share birthdates must also be immune to romantic jealousy, you can see where this is going. It was Abigail's idea to put the poison in the queen's oil. Iris would, of course, be immune; only her husband, who kissed her dutifully every morning, and the girl who turned her winding key would feel the poison burning on their skin. And die, of course, but it was not Elsa's death that Abigail and Monica wanted; it was the burning. Siblings, even those who share birthdates, can be very cruel to each other. But the morning Elsa was to wind the queen, she slept past the cock-crow, and she slept past the dove-song, and she slept past the soft rays of sunlight creeping across her pillow. Henry awoke, saw that his wife had not been wound, and raced down to the sister's rooms. Monica was only half-awake, and if a handsome man with a terrible passion for postage stamps asks you to do something when you are only half-awake, you will probably say yes. Monica stumbled up the stairs and wound the clockwork queen, and by the time she felt the burning in her fingers, it was too late. She died before nightfall. Henry, as it happened, was saved by his intimate and longstanding friendship with old Mephistopheles, who still lived in Violet's hat, and happened to secrete antidotes to most animal poisons. He and Elsa ran away together and opened a little bookbinding shop in a city no one had ever heard of, though it soon became famous for the quality of its books. Abigail, consumed with guilt, locked herself away in the bowels of the castle, where she grew old and eccentric and developed a keen interest in arachnids. Mephistopheles visited her sometimes, and she is rumored to have stood godmother for all his twelve thousand children. And that is why you ought to befriend spiders, and anyone else who lives in old hats. V. Clearly, if the girls responsible for winding the clockwork queen were so keen on being assassinated or running off to become bookbinders, a more reliable method would have to be devised. The youngest councilor, no longer naive enough to propose abolition of the monarchy before his fellow councilors finished their tea, struck upon the elegant notion of building clockwork girls to wind the clockwork queen. The same clockmaker who had done such excellent work on Violet's treaty-hands and parade-smiles could set the winding girls to perform their function automatically, not a moment too soon or a moment too late. Clockworks cannot be murdered, cannot fall in love, cannot feel jealousy, cannot captivate kings with a talent for tongues and maps and calculus. "But who," said the eldest councilor, "will wind the clockwork winding girls?" "Why, more clockworks," said the youngest councilor—who, though no longer naive, was not a superb critical thinker. "And who will wind those?" "Still more clockworks." "And how will those be wound?" "By still more clockworks." "All right, you've had your fun," grumbled a councilor who never spoke much, except to complain. "Clockworks wind clockworks who wind clockworks, and so on for as many iterations as you care. But who winds the first clockworks? Answer me that," he said, and sat back in his chair. "Why, that's simple," said the youngest councilor. "They don't all wind each other at the same time. We stagger them, like so"—he made a hand gesture that demonstrated his woeful ignorance of the accepted methods of staggered scheduling—"and the last shall wind the first. It can be managed, I'm sure." He looked so earnest, his eyes wide and blue behind his thick glasses, that all the councilors agreed to give his proposal a trial run. Despite his ignorance of staggered scheduling, he managed to form a functioning timetable, and the winding of the winders went off as smoothly as buttermilk. And that is how the clockwork queen came to rule a clockwork court, and why clockmakers became the richest men in the kingdom. VI. You, being a very rational and astute kind of reader, might be forgiven for thinking that Iris could tolerate her clockwork court, perhaps even love it. However, she could do neither. Clockworks queens are no more liberal over strange whirlings and creakings than their bookbinder husbands are, and they are no more pleased with limited conversation, and they no more wish to be told how long precisely it takes them to do anything. Though they will never admit it, every once in a while, a clockwork queen likes to be late for her appointments. So one day, Iris opened the great wardrobe in Violet's old rooms and pulled out a beautiful robe of ruby silk and sable, and a pair of sleek leather boots, and a three-cornered hat with a net veil and a spring of dried amaranth blossoms hanging from the front. She powdered her shining skin until it was pale and dull and oiled her gears until they were silent as a mouse's whispers. So disguised, she went out into the city in search of someone to love. There were many people she did not like. There were merchants who tried to sell her strong-smelling spices, and artists who offered to paint her portrait in completely inappropriate colors, and poets who rhymed "love" and "dove" with no apparent shame. There were carriage drivers who cursed too much, and primly-aproned shopgirls who didn't curse enough. And as always, there were overly friendly people who insisted on wearing a certain shade of orange. By noon the streets were hot and dusty and crowded, and the amaranth blossoms on Iris's hat were scratching her high forehead, and she was no closer to loving anyone than she had been that morning. With a sigh like the groan of a ship being put out to sea, she sat on a cool marble bench in the center of a park, where the rose petals drooped and the fountain had been dry for decades. While she sat there, lamenting the short-sightedness of her council and the inadequacy of humanity, she smelled a bit of cinnamon on the breeze and saw a girl race past, red and small and sweet. If Iris had possessed a heart, we would say she lost it in that instant. Since she lacked that imperative piece of anatomy, whose loss would have been cliché and technically inaccurate in any case, we will say instead that a gear she had never known was loose slipped suddenly into joint as she watched Cassia, the perfumer's daughter, race through the park with a delivery for her mother's richest client. Iris followed Cassia as steadily as if the girl were carrying a lodestone—which, we hasten to assure you, was not the case. On the doorstep of the client's house, after setting the precious package in the mailbox screwed into the bricks, Cassia finally turned and met the gaze of the clockwork queen, who was, in case you have forgotten, most phenomenally beautiful. Please, said Iris, come to my palace, and I will give you my silver winding key. And that is why you should never hesitate to run your mother's errands. VII. Cassia was a very curious girl. Of course, anyone who accepts the winding key of a complete stranger in a public market is bound to have some small streak of curiosity, but Cassia's curiosity was broad as a boulevard, shaded with flowering trees. She was always very faithful about winding Iris, but when she was done she would sneak off into the cellars and the attics and the secret places in the castle. She found albums of postage stamps Henry Milton had long ago hidden away, and some old diagrams for building a queen with no eyes, and a box of twelve thousand baptismal certificates written in the smallest script imaginable. One day, she found a cold stone staircase winding up into the towers, and in the room at the top of the stairs, she found Violet. Of course the council hadn't just disposed of her when she ceased to run. Do you throw out your mother when she stops reading bedtime stories to you? Do you throw out your lover when he stops bringing you cherries dipped in chocolate? We should hope not; at the very least, you keep them for parts. And so Violet remained in her tower room standing precisely as she had been the moment her spring wound down. Violet was not as beautiful as Iris. But she had sharp cheekbones and a strong nose and a rather intelligent expression, considering that she had no control over how she looked when she finally stopped short. In some angles of light, she appeared positively charming. Of course, this was all irrelevant, because her winding key was still at the bottom of a very deep well, and she could not move or speak or love anyone until she was wound again. Every day for a year, Cassia climbed the long cold stairs to Violet's room and stared at the lifeless queen. She memorized the way the sunlight looked at noon, kissing the bronze forehead and the wire-fine eyelashes. She came to love the smell of dust and cold metal, the creak of the wooden floors beneath her feet. Finally, after a year of staring and wondering and hoping, quietly and desperately, Cassia raised herself on tiptoe and kissed Violet's clockwork lips. She felt the bronze mouth warming strangely beneath her own. She heard the ringing click of wire eyelashes against sharp metal cheekbones, and the click of gears in clockwork fingers as a gentle pair of hands folded around her waist. And Violet took a deep, shuddering breath. "You," she said, "are far too good to belong to a heartless queen." "You," Cassia said, "are far too charming to gather dust at the top of a tower." That night, they slipped from the castle while all the clockwork court was sleeping. Poor Iris, having dismissed her clockwork winding girls, was left alone and untended in her rooms. The court continued to wind each other on an ingenious schedule, never noting their queen's absence, and so the aristocracy slid ever closer to the precipice of decadence and anarchy, all because of one girl's curiosity. And that is why it is important to clean out your attic once or twice in a century. VIII. But even to love that begins in an attic, surrounded by sun-gilded dust motes and the creak of wooden floors, world enough and time are not promised. Cassia and Violet had barely crossed the kingdom's forest-shrouded eastern border when they came upon a stone bridge, and beneath it a rushing white-crested river, and beneath that—a troll. Trolls were not very common in the kingdom ruled by clockwork queens; as a rule, they dislike metal and shiny things and anything that requires winding keys, their fingers being terribly thick and clumsy. This left Cassia and Violet somewhat ignorant of the customs of trolls. In this particular case, the custom was a full bushel of apples and a yard of purple silk, and a brick or two for the house that the troll was resolutely building somewhere in the forest. Appleless, silkless, brickless, Cassia and Violet began to pick their way across the slippery bridge when there was a crash like the felling of a hundred trees, and a great cold wave swallowed the bridge before them. When the water receded, there was the troll, bumpy and green and heavy-handed, and standing right in their path. "Where is my toll?" she grumbled, her voice like wet gravel. Violet and Cassia, woefully ignorant of trolls and their curious pronunciation of voiceless alveolar plosives, stared in amazement. "My toll," the troll repeated. Confronted by the same blank stares, she tried the same phrase in the languages of the kingdom to the south, and the kingdom to the north, and the kingdoms of dragonflies and leopard-princes and Archaea. (She was an exceptionally well-educated troll.) It was not until she attempted the language of timepieces, all clicks and whirls and enjoinders to hasten, that Violet understood. "Your toll?" she repeated. "But we haven't got anything of the kind!" "Then you'll have to swim," the troll said, and seeing that there was no chance of enriching her stores of apples or silk or bricks, she plopped herself down in the middle of the bridge and would say nothing further. Violet and Cassia climbed down from the bridge and stood on the shingle of smooth and shining stones at the river's edge. Cassia shivered, and even Violet felt the water's chill in the spaces between her gears. But there was no crossing the bridge, not with the troll crouching on it like a tree growing out of a path, and there was certainly no returning to the kingdom and the court of the heartless queen. Cassia rolled the cuffs of her trousers to her knees and stepped into the frigid flow. The current tugged fiercely at her ankles, icy and quick. She felt the river's pebbly floor shifting beneath her bootheels and lost her balance with a tiny shriek. Violet splashed after her, brass arms spread for balance, and that was the last Cassia saw of her beloved before the river swallowed the clockwork queen. And that is why you should always, always pay the troll's custom, no matter how many apples she demands. IX. With Violet gone, there was nothing for Cassia to do but continue her journey east. The days were brief and quiet and the nights were cold and hollow, and the road dwindled until it was nothing but a few grains of gravel amid the twisted roots. As is the way of things in geography and enchanted forests, Cassia had soon walked so far east that she was going westward. And at the westernmost edge of the world, she found herself in the garden of a low-roofed cottage that smelled of coffee and bruised violets. Despite her terrible grief, Cassia could not help but be delighted by the tiny garden. There were daisies made of little ivory gears, and bluebells of jingling copper, and chrysanthemums so intricate that the flapping of a butterfly's wings could disrupt their mechanism and require them to be reset. There were roses that hummed like hives of bees, and lilies that wept tears of pale golden oil. And above all there were violets, branches and branches of violets, whose pounded petals could be added to any food, and convey upon it healing properties. "I am glad to see that my garden makes you smile," the clockmaker said from his window. It was Isaac, of course, that same clockmaker who had built heartless Iris—even within so strange a profession, there are few people whose houses smell of coffee and bruised violets. Cassia jumped at the sound of his voice and turned to him, the color high in her brown cheeks. The clockmaker, poor man, who had lived so lonely at the western edge of the world and had never seen a human being blush, fell instantly in love. Most people react very irrationally to their first taste of love. They form silly ideas about keeping the object of their affection near to them forever, and think of names for their children, and even dream of the days when they are both ancient and sitting on wicker chairs overlooking the sea. Or they chafe at the thought of being under their beloved's spell, and immediately think of a thousand ways to be rid of them—by accident, by cruelty, by hiding from them for years, all of which can become terribly impractical. Still others try to pretend that it never happened, and behave indifferently to the object of their affections, but of course something always gives them away—an accidental touch that becomes a caress, a too-gentle look, an extra teaspoon of sugar in the beloved's cup of tea. But clockmakers are by nature quite rational, and this particular clockmaker was even more rational than most. Isaac weighed the dangers of each possible response and in the same instant plucked three clockwork flowers from his garden: a rose, a lily, and a sprig of violets. Cassia gnawed her lip in curiosity as he held the flowers out to her, his hands shaking minutely like a wire too tightly wound, and bid her choose one. She took a long time to choose. The flowers were all so beautiful, and each one seemed to sing to her of the weight of her choice. But of course she could not know—the flowers could not know—only Isaac himself knew the true price of each stem. If Cassia had chosen the rose, singing and sweet-scented, Isaac would have knelt and asked her to marry him. If she had chosen the lily, weeping and pale, he would have strangled her with a purple silk scarf and buried her beneath the amaranth bush at his bedroom window. But since she choose the violets, quiet and dark, he swallowed his passion and his fear, and served her a cup of salty chicken soup, and sent her on her way. And that is why you must always remember the names of lost lovers. X. So Cassia found herself again on the borders of Iris's kingdom. This land was ruled, not by a clockwork queen, but by a mortal man, and everything was cold and covered in gray ash. The land lay under a curse, an apple-peddler warned Cassia when they sheltered for the night beneath the same lightning-wracked tree. The king was dying of consumption, and his daughter, who happened to be a very powerful witch, plunged the kingdom into drought and ice until someone came forth to cure her father. It was, the peddler said, a beautiful show of filial devotion, if ultimately quite useless. Cassia listened to the story and said nothing, chewing it over like a dusty bite of apple, and fingering the spring of violets in the pocket of her coat. Another day of walking brought her within the shadow of the dying king's castle. Cassia shuddered to see the coat of arms blazoned on the door, for this king was the same one who, many years before, had sent Brutus to assassinate Violet. Again, Cassia fingered the clockwork petals in her pocket. Then she went to the door and knocked. A tall woman answered, her face pale as a disk of bone. "What do you want?" she snarled. "I am here to cure the king," said Cassia. "But first, you must promise to give me whatever I ask for when he is returned to health." "If you can cure my father," said the princess, "I will give you this kingdom and everything in it." And she led Cassia through the winding hallways to the king's deathbed in the palace's heart. Cassia rolled up her sleeves and stoked the fire in the room's great hearth until it blazed like sunlight on apple skins. She sent the servants for a black iron kettle and a wooden spoon, and some chicken bones and a gallon of clean water. When she had boiled the bones to a clear golden broth, she added salt and carrots and soft white potatoes, and slivers of celery and sweet-smelling thyme. She used a silver ladle to dish the soup into a peasant's wooden bowl, which held in its splintered bottom one single petal from a clockwork violet. When the king had eaten the soup, color returned to his bone-pale cheeks and his lungs became clean and whole again. He leapt up from his bed and embraced his daughter, whose black eyes sparkled in the firelight. "The king is saved," the princess said. "What is it you wish from me?" "Bring me Brutus," said Cassia. The assassin was found and brought before her. He knelt at her feet and trembled, certain she had come to kill him for the loss of Violet's winding key—he was not ignorant, after all, of the properties of clockworks, though he knew precious little of lovers' first kisses. And so he was astounded to learn that Violet was no longer gathering dust in Iris's attic, but trapped beneath a river's icy foam. "I want you to bring me my clockwork queen," said Cassia, "and I want her alive." "You will have her," swore Brutus, who had never failed on a mission. And that is why you should learn the reason behind every pestilence, and never be afraid to call in favors. XI. Brutus, as you will surely recall, was both very clever and rather well-informed about the subtle machinations of clockwork. He also had an abnormally high tolerance for frigid water and the alveolar plosives of trolls. And so he fished poor Violet from the river with no more trouble than a child pulling sweet-fleshed shellfish from a tide pool. But water, particularly cold and muddy river-water, is vicious to clockwork, and no matter how he shook her or called to her or kissed her metal lips, Brutus could not bring Violet back to life. But he had never failed on a mission, and he was not about to begin failing when his mission was the reunion of true lovers. He wrapped Violet in his own cloak and sat her on the back of his own horse, and for nearly a year he wandered the land, looking for the woman or man or beast who could fix the clockwork queen. And, as is the way of things in geography and hopeless quests, Brutus soon found himself in a clockwork garden that smelled of coffee and bruised violets. Isaac was there—where would he have gone?—sitting now on his front porch, composing sonnets to Cassia's brown skin and sweet voice. He caught sight of sunlight glinting off of Violet's bronze forehead long before he could make out the shape of Brutus stumbling along beside her. He folded his legs up beneath him and leaned against the brick wall of his garden, sucking the ink-bitter tip of his pen, until his visitors were close enough to call to. "I suppose you want me to fix her," Isaac said. "Oh, not to worry, it can be done. In fact, there are three ways to wake a dead clockwork." And he plucked three clockwork flowers from the sweet-smelling soil and held them out to Brutus—a rose, a lily, and a sprig of violets. Brutus was desperately tired, and in no mood for making such a choice. Assassins, unlike perfumer's daughters, are well-versed in the more obscure avenues of flower symbolism, and he knew that a rose meant a trap, a lily meant strangling, and violets were a wildcard—they meant whatever the gardener wished them to mean. He did not know the three ways to wake a dead clockwork—in fact, no one but Isaac knew those, so you can hardly expect us to tell them to you—but his instinct told him quite accurately that all three required blood and sacrifice of some kind. In short, he knew he faced a very dire decision, and had no good way to make the choice. Then, quite suddenly, he remembered the sprig of violets he had seen peeking out of Cassia's coat pocket. Sighing in relief, he took the violets from Isaac's hand. The clockmaker smiled in the enigmatic way of men who were expecting as much, and set about repairing the queen with oil and wrenches and a fine steel screwdriver. And that is why you should always begin by trying what has worked before, especially with clockmakers, who as a rule are so terribly conventional. XII. The reunion between Cassia and Violet was perhaps too happy to be described here, for the only way to even approximate it is through an unlikely and wholly disagreeable string of paradoxes. Let it suffice to say that they were happy as few people have ever been, with or without the benefits of exotic wine or beautiful lovers or victory in impossible battles, or cold-skinned apples or soup recipes or an encyclopedic knowledge of flower symbolism. Isaac wrought a new winding key for Violet, and Violet gave it into Cassia's keeping, and Cassia lovingly wound her lover every morning until the day, many years later, she died in her clockwork arms. Very slowly—but not with too unseemly a sadness—Violet dug a grave in a forest beneath the dappled shadows of oak leaves. She lay Cassia on a bed of flower petals and cinnamon and climbed in beside her, and she pulled the earth down over both of them. Since there was no one left to wind her, Violet soon ran down in the cinnamon-scented darkness, and she and Cassia sleep peacefully in the same deep grave, as lovers always wish to. And that is why a wise clockwork queen has only one winding key. XIII. Of course, with or without a winding key, no clockwork is immortal. Iris and her court eventually ran down, and Isaac's garden withered, and the price of clockwork plummeted, ruining the kingdom's economy. And that is why you should invest in dependable things, like lodestones and assassins and bridges guarded by trolls, and steel screwdrivers and enchanted violets, and when you learn a good recipe for chicken soup you should write it down in detail, in case some day you fall in love.   END "Lessons From a Clockwork Queen" was originally published in Fantasy Magazine and is copyright Megan Arkenberg, 2011. This recording is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license which means you can share it with anyone you’d like, but please don’t change or sell it. Our theme is “Aurora Borealis” by Bird Creek, available through the Google Audio Library. You can support GlitterShip by checking out our Patreon at patreon.com/keffy, subscribing to our feed, or by leaving reviews on iTunes. Thanks for listening, and I’ll be back soon with a poem by Joyce Chng, and an original story by Susan Jane Bigelow.

Jay's writing relies heavily on both alpha and beta readers. In this episode, she explains in detail her method of getting a book from an idea to finished draft. Her approach is very reliant on a communal form of storytelling. While they're talking, Nina realizes that Jay has been her alpha for a while already. Lots and lots of giggling ensues. Also actual organized comparisons of various methods of using alpha and beta readers, including one by one of our favorite authors, Mary Robinette Kowal.Notable notesJay's most trusted alpha, Valerie Valdes Mary Robinette Kowal explains her own Alpha Reader process Writing Excuses episode on Alpha Readers Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction by Jeff Vandermeer Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed CatmullRecommended reading Tim's recommendation: Cetaganda (Vorkosigan Adventure) by Lois McMaster Bujold   Jay's recommendation: The Daughter Star (Grayline Sisters Book 1) by Susan Jane Bigelow   Nina's recommendation: The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (The Inheritance Trilogy) by N.K. JemisinCome say hi to us at MidAmericonII!

When a magical realm intrudes into the lives of the crew of the starship Zinnia, the ships only hope is The Best Little Cleaning Robot In All Of Faerie by Susan Jane Bigelow.

Sarah’s Child Susan Jane Bigelow Once, I dreamed that I had a son named Sheldon, and my grief tore a hole in the fabric of the world. In my dream I walked through the halls of an elementary school, and I went into the office. Everything was gray and blocky, but somehow not oppressive. I was certain, then, that it was the elementary school in my old hometown, and that I was both myself and also not myself. Full transcript after the cut ----more---- Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 28 for May 24, 2016. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you. Our story this week is "Sarah's Child" by Susan Jane Bigelow, read by Amanda Ching. Susan Jane Bigelow is a fiction writer, political columnist, and librarian. She mainly writes science fiction and fantasy novels, most notably the Extrahuman Union series from Book Smugglers Publishing. Her short fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons, Apex Magazine, Lightspeed Magazine’s “Queers Destroy Science Fiction” issue, and the Lamba Award-winning “The Collection: Short Fiction from the Transgender Vanguard,” among others. She lives with her wife in northern Connecticut, and can be found at the bottom of a pile of cats. Amanda Ching is a freelance editor and writer. Her work has appeared in Storm Moon Press, Candlemark & Gleam's Alice: (re)Visions, and every bathroom stall on I-80 from Pittsburgh to Indianapolis. She tweets @cerebralcutlass and blogs at http://amandaching.wordpress.com. Sarah’s Child Susan Jane Bigelow Once, I dreamed that I had a son named Sheldon, and my grief tore a hole in the fabric of the world. In my dream I walked through the halls of an elementary school, and I went into the office. Everything was gray and blocky, but somehow not oppressive. I was certain, then, that it was the elementary school in my old hometown, and that I was both myself and also not myself. I asked for Sheldon. “Ms. Harp is here,” someone said, and then there he was. He was blond, maybe five or six, with a round face like my sister’s. He smiled toothily up at me. I took his hand. “Come on, honey,” I said. “Let’s go.” And then I woke up. Janet snored softly next to me. I touched the space on my body where my womb would have been, if I’d been born with one, and ached. It was a mistake to tell Janet. “So you had a dream,” she said, crunching her toast. She ate it plain, no butter. “So what?” She was wearing that muscle shirt that made me melt, and her short hair was a mess from sleep. Janet was athletic, butch and pint-sized, and she wore her queerness like a pair of brass knuckles. I was lucky to have her. “I don’t know,” I said. “It just seemed so real.” “I dreamed I was a hockey player,” Janet said, popping the last piece of toast into her mouth. “But I ain’t one.” “I know.” I stabbed at my breakfast, not feeling all that hungry. “Never mind.” She came over and kissed the top of my head. “Sorry, babe. I know it bugs you sometimes.” She put her dishes in the sink. “You aren’t gonna start asking about sperm donors or anything, right? Did you freeze yours?” “No,” I said. “And no. I didn’t.” There’d really been no point. When I had my surgery I’d been in the middle of the divorce with Liz. Kids were out of the question. “Cool. You gonna be okay?” I nodded. “All right. I gotta hit the shower. See you at the game tonight!” She headed off to the shower, humming happily to herself. She usually took half an hour in there, so I’d be long gone by the time she came out. I poked at my scrambled eggs again, then tossed them out. I couldn’t shake the dream, though, so I went through my day in a fog. People at work asked me if I was all right, and I just shook my head mutely. Sure. Fine, just a little haunted. I didn’t go directly home that night. Instead, I drove the half hour north to Elm Hill, and parked outside the elementary school. School was long over, though a few kids played on the ball fields and ran around the swings. I shut the car off and got out. There was a hint of fall in the air, though the leaves hadn’t turned yet. I walked through the playground, passing by my own ghosts on the steps, by the wall, on the baseball field, and up to the fence. There was a little rock there, smaller than I remembered. I sat on it, and thought about Sheldon. This was silly. It was just a dream. I’d had dreams about motherhood before. Pregnancy, babies, those dreams came with the hormones. Everybody had them, or said they did. So why wouldn’t this one let me go? I sighed. Somewhere across the playground, a father with two daughters was watching me. I waved at him, and he turned quickly around again. Dads don’t like me. Impulsively, I rummaged in my purse and found the little reporter’s notebook I kept handy. I’m not a reporter, I work in layout and design for the magazine, but somewhere along the line I’d picked up a few of their habits. I pulled a pen out of my purse and started to write.   Hi Sheldon My hand shook. What was I doing? This was stupid. There was no Sheldon. But my traitor hand kept writing.   I hope you’re doing okay. I hope you had a nice day. I used to play on this rock when I was little, like you. I hope you have a lot of friends, and that you’re happy.   Your friend, Sarah I couldn’t bring myself to sign it ‘Mom.’ My phone chimed, and I pulled it out. There were two texts there. One was from Janet, wondering where I was. Guilty—I’d forgotten her game—I texted her back that I’d be there in about half an hour. The other was from a number I’d never seen before. It was a weird combination of letters and numbers, and there was no name. From: AC67843V-D Hey I can take Sheldon Friday txt me back –D Angry, I texted back—   Not funny, Janet —and put the phone away. I folded the paper up and thought about chucking it away. Then I folded it again and stuck it in a little crack in the rock. Maybe somehow it would find its way to him, wherever he was, and he’d leave me alone. Janet was a little peeved that I’d missed the start of the game. She took softball seriously, and the fall league was special in some way that I’d tried my best not to understand. But I got there in time for the fourth inning, which meant I got to see her steal third base, so it wasn’t a total loss. “Where were you?” she asked as we were downing beer and pizza with the team after. “Just got held up,” I said. “At work. You know how it is.” “They exploit you,” she said, pointing at me with the business end of a slice of pizza. “You shouldn’t let them do that. It’s cause you’re trans—” I winced. Tell the whole pizza joint, why don’t you? “—that they think they can take advantage, cause you’re desperate for work. You shouldn’t take it.” “No,” I said. “It’s fine.” “Damn it, Sarah,” said Janet. “You gotta stick up for yourself! You never do. You just let Liz roll away with your house and car and money, and you let your boss get all kinds of unpaid labor out of you. You need to grow a spine.” And I let you boss me around, too, I thought, eating a slice of pizza. So what? “You didn’t have to send me that text,” I said. “What, I just wanted to know where you were!” she said. “No, the other one. The Sheldon one? That was mean.” She blinked. “I never sent you anything about Sheldon. Who’s Sheldon?” That night I dreamed about driving around the streets of my hometown. The town was different in that way familiar things change in dreams, but I still knew it was Elm Hill. I took a turn and pulled into the parking lot of a condo complex. “Home, home,” sang a little voice in the seat next to me. I looked over and there was Sheldon, smiling up at me. I got out of the car and walked around to his side, my heels clicking on the pavement. I opened the door and helped him out. I glanced in the window, and saw reflected back a face that was and wasn’t mine. I woke up, the feel of Sheldon’s cold little hand in mine burned into my memory. My mother was no help at all. “Your sister’s pregnant,” she announced when I called her over lunch. “Again?” I asked. Patty seemed to get pregnant with alarming regularity. This would be her fourth. “So she says. I hope it’s a summer baby. They could name her June. Such a pretty name. I wanted to name you June, if you’d been a girl.” I’m a girl now, I thought, but didn’t say. “The baby would be born earlier than that, right? It’s only September.” “Well, you never know. And think what an interesting story that would be! ‘This is my daughter June, she was born in May!’ Wouldn’t that be an interesting story?” “Sure. How’s Dad?” I asked, quickly changing the subject. “Same as ever,” she grumped, launching into a long story about how he was out with his golf buddies all the time and never home. Not that she wanted him home, of course. I almost told her about Sheldon. He was still haunting me. But what would I have said? Instead, I listened as she told me about Dad, passed judgment on the sorry state of my career, and questioned whether Janet was right for me. I made the appropriate noises at the appropriate times, and excused myself to go back to work when the time came. That evening I found myself pulled back to the parking lot of the elementary school in Elm Hill, looking out over the playground and thinking wistfully of what might have been. Maybe I should find a therapist, I thought. Maybe I should get help. I got out of the car and strolled across the field, trying not to look guilty. I didn’t see the dad from yesterday. I sat myself back down on the rock, and sighed. The piece of paper was still wedged into that crack. This is ridiculous, I thought. Why was I even here? I was lucky. I knew I was. I had a home, a cute girlfriend, and a job. I didn’t get abuse on the streets. I wasn’t young anymore and I was never pretty, but so what? So what. Why did I want what I could never, ever have so badly? Suddenly furious, I ripped the paper out of the wedge in the rock. I was about to tear it to shreds when I noticed that the paper was a soft blue color. My notebook only had white lined. Curious, I opened it up. There, in a child’s blocky script, was written: HELLO I like beinG on the Rock. I make Believe its a SPACE SHIP. My mommy is nice and a DIKe and is coming to pick me up soon. Do you like Dinosars?   SHELDON My hands began to shake. This had to be some trick. I turned the paper over, looking for signs, but there was only the name of the paper company on the back. “Bloomfield Paper - Made in the R.N.E.” was stamped next to a little pine tree flag. There was no other mark, nothing to indicate where this had come from. I got out my pen and paper again, and wrote another note.   Hi Sheldon   I like space ships, and I like dinosaurs. I’m very glad your mommy is nice. I hope you had a nice day today, too.   Sarah I couldn’t think of anything else to say. Before I lost my nerve I wedged the note back into the rock, and left quickly. I went back to the rock the next day, and sure enough, there was another blue paper stuck in the crack. This time it was a crude picture of a dinosaur, signed by Sheldon. For Sara, it read, spelling my name wrong. I smiled, touched, and tried not to think about what a creep I was being to somebody’s poor kid. I tucked the drawing into my purse. Just then my phone rang, and I almost jumped out of my skin. I checked my phone; it was that same combination of letters and numbers as the text from yesterday had been. AC67843V-D. Hesitantly, I answered it. “H...hello?” “Hey, June,” a man’s bored-sounding voice said. “I can’t take Sheldon on Friday after all. Sorry.” Sheldon. “I’m sorry,” I said, trying and failing to keep the quavering out of my voice. “I’m not June.” “What?” The voice on the other end sounded very confused. “Oh. Huh. Wrong number, I guess. You sure you’re… you sound just like her. Weird.” “I’m Sarah,” I said. “And you’re on your own phone?” “Yes.” “Huh. Well, if you see June tell her David can’t pick up Sheldon Friday.” The line went dead, leaving me shivering in the bright sunny afternoon. That night I couldn’t sleep. I lay in bed, listening to Janet snore, turning it all over in my mind. At last I got up and paced, restless and weary at the same time. I fixed myself a cup of tea and sat in the living room, surrounded by books, stacks of DVDs, my old board games and framed prints of the brassy 40s pin-up girls Janet was obsessed with. The place felt like us, and calmed me down a little. I took the picture and the note Sheldon had sent me out of my purse, unfolded them, and smoothed them out on the coffee table in front of me. “Hey,” Janet said. I jumped, knocking my tea onto the floor. “I’m sorry!” I said, leaping up. “Didn’t mean to scare you,” she said, smiling sleepily. “I’ll get some paper towels.” I sat back down, trembling. Janet returned and mopped up the tea on the floor. “I’m sorry,” was all I could think of to say. “Eh, that floor’s tough. I’ve spilled way worse on it.” Janet sat next to me and noticed the drawing and the note. She picked them up and looked them over. “What’re these?” “Nothing,” I said too quickly. “Just some old things I found.” Janet looked like she wanted to say something, but swallowed it. “Come back to bed,” she said eventually, and padded off back toward the bedroom. I put the picture and the note away, and followed. I finally fell asleep about 3 AM. This time I dreamed I was at a café, talking with my mother. Except she wasn’t exactly my mother: she had longer, grayer hair, and was thinner and better dressed than my mother usually was. “And I found it in his backpack,” I was saying, in a voice that wasn’t quite mine. “I thought he had a girlfriend or something. But doesn’t this look like an adult’s writing?” She pushed a piece of paper across the table at my mother. I was somehow not surprised to see the note I’d written to Sheldon sitting there. My mother picked it up and frowned that distinctive thoughtfully disapproving frown. “There’s no teacher there named Sarah?” “None,” I confirmed. “He says he just finds it in the rock.” “You should ask the principal to look into it,” my mother said. “Or tell your deadbeat ex. Wasn’t he supposed to take Sheldon today?” “He was,” I sighed. “Then he backed out without telling me. He swears now that he did tell me, but I don’t know.” “Does this have to do with that Janet woman?” Janet? “Ma, I told you, I don’t know any Janets.” “She seemed awfully friendly. Little Xs and Os in her text.” My mother narrowed her eyes in that way she had when she knew something was up. “June, you’re hiding something. Is it true, what David said? That you’re a… you know?” My mommy is nice and a DIKe, Sheldon had written. What had this David person been telling him? I drummed my fingers on the counter, stalling, but just then Sheldon came back from wherever he’d been, and we talked about nothing else besides him until I woke up. “Didn’t sleep at all?” said Janet, taking in my bleary expression that morning.   “Some,” I said, cradling my cup of coffee with my trembling hands. Thank goodness it was Saturday. “I had more dreams.” Janet sat, not looking at me. “Sarah? If you were in some kind of trouble, or if something was really wrong, you’d tell me, right?” “I’m not in trouble,” I said quickly. “At least, I don’t think so.” “But you can’t sleep,” she pressed, still not looking at me. “You’ve been home late. You had those notes from a kid last night. And… you look like you got hit by a truck this morning.” She visibly braced herself, then gave me one of her very serious looks. “What’s going on?” I thought about coming up with some half-assed excuse. I thought about saying “nothing” again and pretending it was all fine. I thought about being reassuring and hiding my pain like I always did. But I was so tired and heartsick that I told her everything. When I was done, Janet just sat there for a few minutes. “Wow,” she said at last. “I know.” “What do you think this all means?” she asked. “I don’t know,” I said, feeling utterly helpless. “I’d say it’s just bad dreams, but, what? You think the drawing and the note mean it’s real somehow? Sarah…” “I know, I know,” I said, miserable. I felt more exposed sitting there at the table than I ever did when I took off my clothes. “I’m sure there’s explanations. But the phone calls, the way June had my letters to Sheldon in my dream…” “June?” Suddenly Janet was alert. “Who’s June?” “Sheldon’s mother.” I shook my head, reaching for an explanation that made sense. “I… I think she’s me, or who I could have been. June is what my mother would have named me, if I’d been born a girl.” Janet pulled out her phone and paged through it, brow creased. “I’m sorry,” I said, trying to hold back the tears. “I know this is weird! I just want to have a quiet morning. I shouldn’t have said anything.” She handed me the phone. “I sent you a text the other day,” she said. “I got this back.” From: AC88534J-J I’m not Sarah, who is this? My name is June. I just stared at it for a moment, shocked. Then I pulled out my own phone and showed her the text from “D,” who I now suspected was David. “I’ve never seen phone numbers like that,” said Janet. “But they’re similar to one another.” I started piecing it together in my mind. “Where were you when you got that text, Janet?” “A contract up in Elm Hill,” said Janet slowly. “Why?” “That’s where I was when I got the text, and the call,” I said excitedly. “That’s where the school is!” “But look, it gets even better,” said Janet, taking back the phone and poking the screen. “I got another one a few minutes later.” From: AC88534J-J Please don’t tell, but I think I’m gay. I have to tell someone. “Oh my God,” I said. “I thought it was someone pranking me at that point,” said Janet as I digested the text, agog. “Like Lisa. She does shit like this, and she knows how to do stuff with phones.” She tapped the phone thoughtfully. “But now… Jesus. Sarah, is this real?” “It is,” I said firmly. “It has to be.” “What’s going on?” Janet asked. “Why do you have such a connection with this Sheldon? I mean, he’s not your kid, right?” “No, not exactly. But June… She’s got my mother, the name I would have had.” “She’s you,” said Janet. “Or who you would have been, if…” “Yeah. If.” I said, and an entire world was contained in that world. “So what do we do about it?” Janet asked. It was a good question. Our parallel lives were crashing together, I was driving myself nuts from lack of sleep, and all I wanted was everything she had. This couldn’t go on. “I want to try to talk to them,” I said. I spent the whole weekend a wreck, trying not to think about the plan . I had more disjointed dreams about Sheldon and June, enough to know that June was talking with a therapist but couldn’t bring herself to say what she needed to say, and Sheldon was going through a serious dinosaur phase. I stayed far away from Elm Hill until Monday, though, when I drove up in the early morning to deliver a final note. I got the answer Monday afternoon. They’d be there. That night I dreamed about June, who was sitting up alone, looking at the notes I’d sent Sheldon, drinking. Tuesday afternoon came at last. Janet drove us up to Elm Hill; we didn’t say anything the whole way. When we got to the school, I had to sit for long moment, just staring out at the playground. A light rain had begun to fall, and there were no other children that day. Probably for the best. At last I steeled myself and got out of the car. “You’re sure they’ll show?” Janet asked dubiously. I nodded, clutching Sheldon’s note in my pocket. He’d said they would come. I believed him. “This is a bad idea,” said Janet, staring dubiously out at the damp playground. “You want to go home? We should go home. I can make dinner. You like my dinners.” “No,” I said firmly. “I’m going. You can stay here if you want.” Janet was speechless for a moment. I never stood up to her. But then she got out of the car. “Right behind you,” she said, giving me a little smile. Together, we marched across the damp grass to the rock. “So what happens now?” Janet said, crossing her arms and shifting from side to side. I was about to answer that I didn’t know when sunlight streamed in from somewhere just to my left. I jumped back, and shielded my eyes. The first form I saw was Sheldon’s. He stood there, holding his grandmother’s hand. She looked shocked as she saw us. She was so like my mother that the lack of recognition in her eyes was awful. And there… holding Sheldon’s other hand. She was shorter than me by a good six inches, and she had the narrow shoulders and face of my sisters. But she looked a little like me, too. We had the same eyes, the same mouth, the same hair. “June,” I whispered. “Are you Sarah?” June said. I nodded. I didn’t trust myself to speak. “Sarah!” said Sheldon. He waved. “Hi Sheldon,” I said, voice catching. June hesitantly reached out a hand toward me, then drew it away again. “Are you… me?” I nodded again. “How? I don’t understand. You don’t look like me.” “No. I was born a boy.” “Oh?” Her eyes widened. “Oh!” Her eyes fell on Janet. “And you…?” “Janet,” my girlfriend said. “Hey.” “And you’re with… her?” Janet took my hand. I squeezed it, grateful “Awful,” said June’s mother. “Hush,” said June shakily. “Now what?” Janet asked softly. “Now we resolve things,” I said firmly. I understood it now, the way that June looked at Janet. The text she’d sent: I have to tell someone. We both had something the other one wanted. June had Sheldon, and everything he represented. And I… I had Janet. I looked, really looked, at Sheldon, and I felt an ache so bad that I began to cry. Janet put an arm around me, and pulled me close. I straightened. “June?” June looked at me, fear plain on her face. “She’ll be okay,” I said, nodding at her glowering mother. “You can tell her. I told her about me, a few years ago, and she wasn’t thrilled. But… we dealt with it and moved on. You have to, to be happy.” June shook her head furiously. “You don’t understand.” “I do,” I insisted, amazed at how calm I suddenly felt. “Better than anyone. You and me… everybody pushes us around. But we’re made of iron underneath. There’s a part of us that won’t bend.” June looked at me and I saw how helpless she must have felt. I remembered feeling like that… just before I changed my life forever. “I did it,” I said. Behind June and Sheldon was blue sky and bright sun. “You can, too.” June turned to her mother. “I’m gay, Mom,” she said softly. “I am. I am.” June’s mother huffed miserably. “I figured that out, genius. So what? See if I care. You’re still my daughter.” Chills ran down my spine. So what? my mother had said, all those years ago. See if I care. You’re still my child. June gave her mother a long, hard hug, then turned to me. She seemed to be standing straighter. “Iron,” I said. “Nice job,” said Janet, trying to be charitable. June laughed. She had this perfect voice; she was so beautiful in all the ways I wasn’t. And she had Sheldon. My heart cracked a little more. “I don’t suppose there’s one of you in my world?” she said to Janet. “Can’t hurt to check around,” said Janet. She pulled me close, possessive. “But I’m taken.” The sunlight began to dim, and June, Sheldon and June’s mother started fading. “Sarah,” said June. She looked more ghostly now. “If you want a baby… have one.” “I can’t,” I said. “I don’t even know if that’s what I want.” “It is,” said June, her voice the whisper of wind through the trees. “If you’re anything like me.” And then they vanished completely, leaving us alone in the rain. Janet rubbed my back as we drove home. “You okay?” she asked. I nodded. “I think so.” “Is it over?” “Yes,” I said, and I was certain. “She got what she wanted.” “You didn’t, though,” said Janet nervously. “I… think I did, though,” I said. “Somewhere in there I stopped wanting to be her. She has Sheldon, she’s short and pretty, but she doesn’t have you. And I like having you.” We drove on as the rain started coming down harder. I turned the wipers up to maximum. “We can talk it over, if you want?” Janet said hesitantly. “The, uh, baby thing.” I couldn’t say anything for a moment. “Really?” “Really,” said Janet. “I mean, I don’t hate the idea. I just hated the idea of having to, you know? And being pregnant…” She made a face. “I guess I can do it.” “You don’t have to,” I said quickly. “Yeah, but we can’t exactly adopt,” she said. “We’re a weird couple on a number of fronts.” “I know. But I’d rather have you than a baby.” Janet laughed, eyes bright. “That kind of talk makes me wish you had banked sperm. I’d bear your children right now.” “Maybe I can scrape out an old gym sock,” I said. She laughed again. I loved that sound. I loved how easy we were with one another. Janet snuggled against my arm. I was shocked; she almost never did that, even when I wasn’t driving through a rainstorm. “I’m glad you’re you, too, you know,” said Janet. “I didn’t like June. Too many lingering straight girl hang-ups, you know?” “Thanks, I think,” I said. “What I’m saying is… let’s just take it a little at a time. We’ve got time, right? We can have time.” She groaned in frustration. “I’m saying that wrong.” I slipped an arm around her. “I know what you mean,” I said as we drove south through the rain and back to our lives. “I know just what you mean.” One time I dreamed I had a son named Sheldon. I could never any sons of my own, or daughters. But I did have Janet, and better, I had myself. I wasn’t like June. I was like me. It was enough, and then some. END "Sarah's Child" was originally published in Strange Horizons in May 2014 and was reprinted in Heiresses of Russ 2015. This recording is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license, which means you can share it with anyone you’d like, but please don’t change or sell it. Our theme is “Aurora Borealis” by Bird Creek, available through the  Google Audio Library. Thanks for listening, and I’ll be back on June 7th with a GlitterShip original. You can support GlitterShip by checking out our Patreon at patreon.com/keffy,  making a donation at paypal.me/keffy, subscribing to our feed, or by leaving reviews on iTunes. [Music Plays Out] Support GlitterShip!

 Just a Little Spice Will Do by Andrew Wilmot When Alex arrived home Sunday night with an overflowing grocery bag tucked under each arm, she saw her girlfriend doubled over at the waist, retching violently into the kitchen sink. “Lindy?” She dropped both bags and rushed over.Lindy gripped the edge of the counter and heaved again, spitting a viscous strand of amaranth red into the stainless steel sink; it came out of her in small globules strung together like Christmas lights. Alex put one hand on her back andthe other on her shoulder, but Lindy flinched, shuddering as if they were blocks of ice. It was then Alex noticed the rectangular Tupperware container on the countertop to Lindy’s right. Next to it, a thin sausage wedge of Alex’s heart beat gently on one of her mother’s China plates. She looked inside the plastic container and noticed a new gash in the organ, a little south of the left atrium. Full transcript after the cut. ----more---- [Theme music plays.] Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 27 for May 10th, 2016. The end of the semester hit a little harder than expected, so I ended up shifting the May episodes back a week. For today, however, I have GlitterShip's second Original story, "Just A Little Spice Will Do" by Andrew Wilmot, with a return by guest reader S. Qiouyi Lu. Listener warnings for relationship conflict, similarities to eating disorders, and loving cannibalism. ANDREW WILMOT is a writer, editor, and artist living in Toronto, Ontario. He is a graduate of the SFU Master in Publishing program and spends his days writing as much as possible and painting stupidly large pieces. His fiction has been published by Found Press, Drive In Tales, The Singularity, and 69 Flavors of Paranoia, and the story “When I’m Old, When I’m Grey” was the winner of the 2015 Friends of Merril Short Fiction Competition. He works as a freelance reviewer, academic editor, and substantive editor. For more on his work and creative pursuits: http://andrewwilmot.ca/about/cv/ S. Qiouyi Lu 陸秋逸 is a writer, artist, narrator, and translator whose work has appeared in Clarkesworld, inkscrawl, and The Cascadia Subduction Zone. In their spare time, they enjoy destroying speculative fiction as a dread member of the queer Asian SFFH illuminati. S. currently lives in Columbus, Ohio with a tiny black cat named Thin Mint. You can visit their site at s.qiouyi.lu or follow them on Twitter as @sqiouyilu."  Just a Little Spice Will Do by Andrew Wilmot When Alex arrived home Sunday night with an overflowing grocery bag tucked under each arm, she saw her girlfriend doubled over at the waist, retching violently into the kitchen sink. “Lindy?” She dropped both bags and rushed over.Lindy gripped the edge of the counter and heaved again, spitting a viscous strand of amaranth red into the stainless steel sink; it came out of her in small globules strung together like Christmas lights. Alex put one hand on her back and the other on her shoulder, but Lindy flinched, shuddering as if they were blocks of ice. It was then Alex noticed the rectangular Tupperware container on the countertop to Lindy’s right. Next to it, a thin sausage wedge of Alex’s heart beat gently on one of her mother’s China plates. She looked inside the plastic container and noticed a new gash in the organ, a little south of the left atrium. She frowned. “I told you I’d be right back with stuff for dinner.” Lindy turned, glared at Alex. “Figures you wouldn’t want me to taste this!” “Taste what? Lindy, love, I don’t understand.” “It’s rotten!” She pointed accusatorily at Alex’s heart. “That’s not possible.” Alex surveyed her heart.Several small wedges had been cut away—battle scars pocking the bruise-coloured surface. The organ beat calmly, like clockwork, like there was absolutely nothing wrong. “Looks just fine to me.” Lindy thrust a blood- and fatty tissue-coated fork at Alex. “Try it yourself. Go ahead, make a liar out of me.” “Lindy —” “Taste it! Then try and tell me everything’s fine.” Alex relented, accepting the fork. She suspected her heart would taste a little off no matter what, in that way that anything chilled tasted at room temperature. She could feel Lindy staring at the back of her head, wearing her mother’s scowl—the same Alex had seen when, after six months together,they went on a week’s vacation to Johannesburg to meet her parents. Lindy’s mother had taken one look at the pale, freckled Irish girl with the decidedly un-Irish name and told her daughter that she would starve to death on someone with such a sour, unfeeling heart. Lindy was quick to protest, but her mother silenced her as if she were still in primary school. She sniffed the air between them, wafting in then imperceptible scent of their nascent vintage. “There’s poison in you,” she said, at last, to Alex. “You’ll ruin my good girl. You’ll be the death of her.” Neither spoke afterwards of the incident. Indeed, Alex had very nearly forgotten about it, and likely would have were it not for Lindy standing behind her at that moment, waiting expectantly for her to sample her own disposition. Alex carved a small triangle from the space above the left ventricle. She put it to her nose, sniffed. She heard Lindy tsk dismissively, as if Alex were admitting complicit behaviour in whatever it was she was being accused of. Not wanting to give her further ammunition, Alex forked the tiny fragment of muscle into her mouth and started to chew. It was tougher than she remembered—a little like biting into a half-inch slab of pickled ginger—but it tasted the same as it ever had, like unsalted ham with a slight metallic aroma. “It tastes fine,” she said after swallowing. “Like normal.” Lindyappeared wounded. “I never thought you’d do this to me. I didn’t think you could do this. To me.” “Love, I don’t—” “You’re lying!” Lindy shouted. “It tastes rotten, like, like bad eggs, or beef left on a sidewalk in the rain.” “How would you know what either of those taste like?” Alex said jokingly. “Don’t—” Lindy pointed to the heart again. “It’s gone bad. It isn’t . . .You’ve let someone else taste it, haven’t you?” “What? No, of course not!” “Don’t lie to me!” “I’m not!” They were interrupted just then by a sharp thumping against the wall—their neighbours to the west.Alex exhaled, lowered her voice. “I’m telling you the truth.” Lindy looked away, wiped tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. “There’s still so much of it left. I don’t understand how.” “It’s yours and yours alone. I swear it.” Lindy shook her head. “I . . . I just don’t know if I . . .” Alex took her hand. Lindy resisted at first, then let her squeeze, pull her closer. Alex stared at her lovingly. “Everything I am belongs to you.” In the staff room the next morning, a half hour before the start of first period, Alex went up to Claire, said her hellos, and poured a mug of coffee. Claire was a mid-forty-ish two-time divorcee who taught sixth grade.She took one look at Alex’s heavy-lidded eyes and pulled her to the window for a sidebar. “You look like shit,” she said once they were out of range of the other teachers. “Hi, Claire, it is a lovely day, isn’t it?” Claire scoffed. “Crumpet, don’t even. What’s wrong?” “It’s nothing.” “It’s not nothing.” Alex sighed. “It’s Lindy . . . and it’s me, and . . . I don’t know. Something’s not right between us.” Claire smiled slyly, wiggled her fingers in a lewd gesture. Alex shook her head. “No, that’s not it.” “Out with it then,” said Claire. Sensing Alex’s reluctance, she added, “I’ve heard it all. There’s nothing you can say that’ll shock me.” “It’s just . . . my heart. She said it tasted—” “Bad?” “Rotten. Like meat left under a radiator for a month.” “How would she know—?” “Right?” Alex shook her head. “Anyway, I tried a piece and I didn’t notice anything off about it.” “Well of course you wouldn’t. You never mind the flavour of your own recipe, dear. Dennis, my first husband, he used to say that every time he passed wind—one man’s sulphur was another’s potpourri.” Alex knitted her eyebrows together. “Seems a bit reductive.” “But true nonetheless.” “I suppose . . .” Alex sipped her coffee and thought back to the quite subtle aftertaste of her heart, like pocket change resting on the back of her tongue. She remembered what it was like seeing Lindy’s heart for the first time. She presented it early on; it was only their fifth date. Alex recalled it perfectly, how Lindy had run excitedly into the kitchen after they made love for the first time and returned with a ceramic rim bowl hand-painted with concentric rings. She cradled it in both hands as if she feared it would slip from her grip at the slightest breath. “I’ve not done this before,” Lindy said. “Ever, actually.” She climbed back into bed and raised the bowl between them. The organ smelled dense with images and sounds; a host of thoughts and memories trespassed in Alex’s mind, as if she were viewing a series of home movies from Lindy’s childhood. She shut her eyes and inhaled acutely, allowed the odour of Lindy’s heart to glide down her oesophagus with the ease of crema. She opened her eyes again and saw Lindy holding a knife and fork between her knuckles like a peace sign. Alex took the utensils and Lindy watched — nervously, excitedly —as she cut a small but perfect equilateral triangle from the very centre of the muscular organ. Lindy’s heart beat faster as Alex cut, as she pulled out the piece from the whole, as she placed it slithering, squirming on her tongue and started to chew.She felt her devotion grow with every bite, and when she swallowed, Lindy released a heavenly sigh;when she wiped clean her lips, returning to the moment, Alex saw something new and fearful in Lindy’s eyes: trust. “You don’t have to give me yours right away,” Lindy was quick to say. “But I’m ready, whenever you are. It’s important you know—you can trust me.” But Alex hadn’t waited long. It was only their next date when she told Lindy she had a surprise for her. She’d asked her to close her eyes and open her mouth. Lindy did so, stifling whatever anxious thoughts she felt as she waited with her mouth agape like a child at the dentist’s. Earlier that day, Alex had gone to her parents’ home and taken her heart out of the chest freezer in the garage. It had been buried beneath containers of frozen leftovers; her father hadn’t bothered to clean out the freezer in years—that had been her mother’s job. About the only thing he touched out there were the boxed bottles of their vintage stacked one on top of another. Alex was careful not to disturb him when retrieving her heart; since her mother’s death, her father drank another pint of their mixed A-O every night, becoming evermore intoxicated by their shared history. When Alex tried to encourage him to go out and meet someone new, he responded by drunkenly throwing a bottle of their third year’s marriage at her, painting the wall behind her with glass-flecked blood. Back in her apartment, Alex set her heart on the counter to thaw and went to run errands. When she returned home that afternoon, the organ was valve-deep in a pool of watery blood that tasted as flavourless as a movie theatre soda. With only an hour before her date, she quickly carved out a small section of her heart, which she then proceeded to dry and cut into even smaller triangles, each identical to the last in shape and size. Then, upon tasting one of the small pieces and finding it lacking, she whipped up a quick balsamic and extra virgin olive oil glaze, threw the pieces into a salad bowl, and drizzled them lavishly. That night she sat on the bed with her legs crossed facing Lindy, the lightly dressed pieces of heart marinating in the bowl between them. Lindy sniffed the air suspiciously, crinkled her nose at—Oh, shit, I used too much vinegar, Alex realized. She started to panic, the pieces of heart beginning to hop and bounce in the bowl. She took out a piece—one of the more abundantly coated triangles—and, before she could chicken out, tossed it into Lindy’s waiting mouth.Lindy clamped down to keep the piece of heart from leaping out of her mouth and onto the bedspread. Alex watched, a perfect mix of eagerness and terror, as Lindy chewed, slowly at first, then faster, nodding her head as she worked her way through the leathery, tougher than anticipated meat. “I-is it all right?” Alex asked. Lindy opened her eyes. At first Alex was unable to read her expression—she looked a little like an infant relieved to have finished their plate of Brussels sprouts. Then she smiled warmly and hugged Alex, careful not to tip over the bowl between them. “It was more than all right,” she said at last, kissing the words into Alex’s ear. “You know,” Claire said, “that bastard cheated on me with the neighbour’s wife no less than three times. Know how I could tell? Each time he tried to surprise me by beating me home from work and firing up the grill. Thought he could slather his leftover gristle in barbeque sauce and seasoning and it wouldn’t still taste like warmed over piss, but let me tell you, that kind of betrayal doesn’t go away, even if you dress it up all pretty. You put a suit and tie on a pig and he’s still going to taste like mud.” Alex’s face slumped as if it were being pulled down at the seams. “That’s what Lindy thinks. That I’ve cheated on her.” “Have you?” “No!” Heads turned at the unexpected outburst. “No,” she repeated, softer. “Certainly not.” “And you’re not, you know, having any other problems?” Alex shrugged shyly. “I don’t really get along with her mother. I’ve tried, it’s just— I’m not what she envisioned, I guess.” She shook her head. “I’m not sure if that’s it.” “Then maybe you just need to, I don’t know, zing things up a bit.” “Zing?” “Add a little pizazz to your life.” “But then she’ll think I’m hiding something.” “Which she already does . . .” “But I’m not.” “Then leave it be. Either she likes your white rice or she doesn’t.” “But I don’t want her to—” “For fuck’s sake, ’Lex, just do something.” Alex thought for a moment. “I saw this delicious looking tamarind chutney the other day at Whole Foods. I bet she’d like that.” Claire shook her head. “You fucking hipster.” For two days Lindy ate only salads, occasional handfuls of mixed nuts. When Alex presented her with a small soup bowl filled with several pieces of her heart floating in a sunset curry, she took one sniff and recoiled. “What’s this?” “I . . . I made a curry. It’s got bamboo shoots and green and red peppers and—” Lindy pushed the bowl away. “I’m not hungry.” “Love, please, you have to eat.” “It smells like, like fish left on the sidewalk in the middle of July.” Alex took the bowl away, covered it in Saran Wrap and tucked it back inside the fridge right next to the remains of her heart, its missing pieces amounting to no more than 5 or 10 percent of the whole. Next to this, housed in an identical Tupperware container, the remains of Lindy’s heart beat agitatedly— the organ looked like a veined,palatinate chicken breast with its centre ice cream-scooped away. In the middle of the night, when Alex, feeling peckish, attempted to stick a fork in Lindy’s heart, it squirmed and flattened itself against the far end of the plastic as if prodded with a hot poker. She shut the refrigerator door. They would both go hungry that night. Alex woke the next morning to clanging glass and metal. She walked down the hall from their bedroom, stopping at the kitchen. The contents of their fridge and freezer, as well as most of their cupboards, had been emptied and piled indiscriminately into the middle of the tile floor. The cupboard beneath the kitchen sink had also been opened, but the lone bottle of their first year’s vintage—still fermenting, bottled only the previous month—remained untouched. “What the hell are you doing?” “Where is it?” “Where is what?” “That whore’s heart!” “Love, I don’t know what you’re talking about, I—” “Don’t you swear to me. I know it’s here somewhere. Have you canned it? Is it in a mason jar somewhere with your grandmother’s blueberry jam?” “There’s no one else,” Alex said, feeling defeated. “No preserves. No frozen dinners. No one’s hearts but ours.” “And who’d you give yours to?” “What?” Lindy held up the Tupperware container with Alex’s heart inside. To Alex it looked as it ever did. “I don’t understand,” she said, exasperated. “It’s all there! Nothing’s missing—not even the sliver I tried to eat with apiece of toast for breakfast. This heart is whole. It isn’t yours—it can’t be. It . . . it’s a fake.” As Lindy spoke, Alex noticed her lover’s svelte, partially digested heart leaping wildly, moving its container across the counter as if charged with an electrical current. The blood surrounding it was starting to boil, the stench of solder and copper filling the air. Alex opened her mouth again to defend herself, but Lindy jumped up and stormed past her before anything could be said. She slammed the bathroom door and Alex heard the shower turn on. She stood there for several seconds staring at the sea of consumables at her feet before she got down to her hands and knees and started putting things back where they belonged. Nearly finished, she glanced up at Lindy’s heart, which had calmed down considerably. A soft musk rose from it now like morning fog over a farmer’s field. Quietly, Alex walked down the hall and pushed open the bathroom door. Through the thin, almost transparent shower curtain, Alex could see glimpses of Lindy’s sparkling, melted sugar skin — and her ribs, like long witch fingers travelling beneath her parchment paper flesh, jutted out from beneath her arm, more visible than she remembered them. Lindy didn’t go to work the next day. When Alex got home,she was as she’d been that morning: prone on the couch as if stricken with a bout of stomach flu. Alex brought her several small samples of heart, each dressed differently than the last:coated with a white wine reduction; tossed with vine-ripened tomatoes and fresh basil plucked from their windowsill garden; placed delicately atop a saltine and sandwiched by a thick slice of aged white cheddar.To Lindy,each attempt was more repugnant than the last. She tried to push Alex away but could not muster the strength. The more she resisted, the harder Alex implored, until at last Lindy raised herself upright. “Why aren’t you suffering?” she asked plainly. “What do you mean?” Lindy pointed to Alex’s full face, to her rounded shoulders and non-xylophoned chest. “This isn’t hard for you.” “That’s . . . of course this is hard for me. It’s killing me to see you like this.” Lindy tried once more to push her away but Alex held her bone-thin arm in place. With her free hand she snatched a piece of heart drowning in a mixture of soy and wasabi from one of a dozen small dessert bowls littering the coffee table. She tried to force it past Lindy’s lips. Lindy kept her mouth shut and Alex smeared the salted piece of heart across her pale, flaked lips and chin until it fell to pieces between her fingers, nothing but a wounded streak of brownish blush across her lover’s face. Lindy fought but could not break free from Alex’s healthy, nourished grip. Alex grabbed a second piece of heart and inserted it into a small space in Lindy’s mouth, inside her cheek, pressing it against her clenched teeth. Lindy spat it back out again, the slab of muscle slapping Alex in the eye. Lindy got up from the couch, stumbled weakly, and then hurried toward the bedroom. She slammed the door, locking Alex out. Lindy exited the bedroom two hours later to find Alex sleeping in a ball on the sofa. She nudged her awake and sat down next to her. She apologized, said she needed some time to herself, that something wasn’t right and she had to figure out what. “When I look at your heart,” she said,“when I remember our times together I think . . . there should not be so much of it left.” “I’m telling you the truth.” “And I know what I’ve tasted, Alex. Dear. Love. I know what you taste like. I think I’ve always known, on some level, but somehow now it’s stronger than it was before.” “I know, I taste like warm sidewalk fish and dead babies and—” “Lies, Alex. Like lies.” “This is about your mother. She never liked me.” “But I did, and that’s what matters.” “. . . Did?” Lindy looked away. “You haven’t eaten in just as long. You say you haven’t, anyway, but you’re still so strong.” “I haven’t, Lindy—Silindile. I haven’t eaten anyone. I promise.” Lindy stared into her eyes in a way she hadn’t before. Alex found herself wondering if she had noticed the off-colour essence of her heart from the earliest days of their relationship and had simply remained silent. She recalled how Lindy had appeared when first tasting Alex, nodding as if to convince herself this freckled Irish girl with the distinctly non-Irish name could be anything more than another late-night snack or an experimental fusion dish more interesting than it was good. She reached out and touched Alex’s forehead with her index finger. “I need to be certain, if we’re going to move on. I’d like a taste, please . . . of your brain.” Alex was taken aback. “My . . . you want what?” “Your brain,” Lindy reiterated. “Just a slice, a bit off the prefrontal is all I need. I’ll know then, definitively.” “Know what?” “That you are who you say you are.” Alex stood up, looked down at Lindy. “But that’s not . . . I can’t do that.” “Why not?” Lindy’s hurt rebounded. “What do you mean why not? Because then there won’t be anything left for me!” “I can’t believe how selfish you’re being!” Lindy shouted as she too rose to her feet. “We’re talking about saving our relationship here.” “No, you’re talking about saving our relationship. I’m talking about you taking what isn’t yours.” “How could I ever have eaten someone so self-obsessed?” Lindy spat on the ground as if there were residue of Alex still on her tongue. “I’ve already given you my heart—what more do you want?” “I want the truth!” Alex circled around Lindy and went into the kitchen. She retrieved a long butcher’s blade from the wooden block next to the stove and put it to her wrist. “You want more of me?” She raised the knife high and in one smooth, unhesitating motion, lumberjacked her hand off at the wrist. The appendage dead fished to the ground in a filmic spray of crimson. Alex’s face immediately paled as agony and sudden blood loss siphoned her adrenaline. The knife clattered to the ground and she picked up her dismembered hand, waving it in the air like a dead puppet. “How about a finger? I could chop them off one at a time, sauté them knuckle by knuckle like sausage links.” Lindy scrunched her face, revoltedby the decidedly pedestrian offering. “You’ll give me what you give your friends when I deserve so much more?” “You already have so much more.” “But not the best of you.” No further words were exchanged that night. Lindy took the severed hand and helped wash and bandage the wound.She placed the newly freed appendage in a separate round container and tossed it in the vegetable crisper. She then gave Alex a handful of brightly coloured pills from the bottles she kept behind the vanity mirror in the washroom. They went to bed without so much as a grunt of acknowledgement for all that had happened, backs turned, their hips and feet inches apart as if their bed had been slashed in two. The medicine quickly took effect; Alex’s eyes grew heavy, and soon she felt no pain. She’d been unconscious for only an hour when she was awoken by a soft pain in her scalp—the sensation of one hair after another being pulled back as if someone had slapped a bandage over top her head and was removing it a millimetre at a time. The annoying tug soon became a fiery tear and Alex opened her eyes—immediately blinded by the blood that had snaked into her eyes from an incision at her hairline. She let out a high-pitched shriek and started furiously wiping away the blood with the palm of her hand. When she was finally able to see again she saw Lindy standing next to her side of the bed brandishing a paring knife in one hand and a small hammer and chisel in the other. Alex could not find the words for the violation she felt in that moment. Lindy backed away from her, tightening her grip on the utensils in her hands. Forthwith her vacant stomach broke the silence cementing between them, presenting her case — her need — in a way no words ever could. She turned and ran from the bedroom. Alex again opened her mouth — to scream, to call out, to say something — but the pain from her multiple wounds was too much and she passed out. The following morning, Alex knew immediately something was amiss. She rolled over in bed and saw an empty space beside her. Slowly the fog cleared and she remembered what had transpired. She gingerly touched her forehead; the tips of her fingers discovered small rivers of dried blood leading back to a very fine, one-inch horizontal slice above her left eye. When she looked to her pillow she saw a deep cardinal pond that dried the farther it extended over the surface of the once-white sheathe. An iron weight of panic formed in the pit of her stomach and she glanced out the open bedroom door to the paring knife, hammer, and chisel on the carpet halfway between the bedroom and kitchen. “Lindy?” No answer. Alex slowly, dizzily got out of bed. She felt her legs wobble as she entered the kitchen. A roll of gauze and a bottle of rubbing alcohol by the sink were the only indicators of her self-inflicted wound from the night before. Her stomach rumbled fiercely and she opened the fridge, stepping back in shock. Next to the container holding what was left of Lindy’s softly pumping heart, her own looked suddenly weathered and emaciated, like sheets of paper soaked in brine then left in the sun to curl and crack. Her confusion was quickly usurped by the hunger devouring her insides. She retrieved a fork and knife from the cutlery drawer and, before it could scamper away, stabbed and shaved a thin slab from Lindy’s heart, dashed it with just a bit of salt and pepper before placing the wiggling, soft muscle on her tongue. Except it wasn’t soft but suddenly hard, firm like the fat encircling a porterhouse. Except it wasn’t wiggling but beating. Faster. Faster still. Alex spit the piece of Lindy’s heart to the sink, watched as it bass drummed its way into the drain, leaving a thinning slug’s trail of blood as it climaxed, as it heaved, as it breathed a sigh of release. And it tasted foul, like . . . like French toast made with sour milk and six-month-old eggs. Or like lies. Lindy arrived home an hour later. She looked fuller than she had in days, had a glow about her one could only describe as radiant. She put her jacket, which smelled sick with booze and sweat, on the kitchen counter and went into the living room. Alex was waiting for her on the couch. Right away Lindy looked to the bloodied stump where Alex’s right hand had been, and then to the still leaking cut on her forehead. “It’s no better,” she said. “No,” Alex agreed. “It’s not.” Lindy’s chest swelled into a shield. “Well I don’t know what you expect me to do about it.” Alex was perplexed; she seemed to be almost gloating. “You could at least act upset. A little — a smidge, maybe.” Lindy crossed her arms. “You look hungry.” “You don’t.” She looked away. “Look, what’s done is done. Now you know how it feels.” “Yeah, I know how it feels.” Lindy tightened her stance, pulling her insides into an hourglass. The longer she stared, Alex noticed, the greater her uncertainty scratched its presence onto her face. Alex reached down, lifted the hand-painted ceramic bowl Lindy had presented to her one year earlier from the floor beneath the coffee table. In the bowl were two slices of heart: hers and Lindy’s. Unseasoned. Uncooked. Raw. “Taste them—both of them,” Alex said. “Why?” “I want you to taste the difference.” “The different between what?” “Between you and me. I want you to know the difference between a lie and the truth.”Lindy sneered at the polemic. “So sure of yourself? Then do it. Taste them both and call me a cheat again.” Lindy glanced away from the offering. Alex stood up, moved as she moved. She held onto the bowl, keeping it in front of Lindy no matter which way she turned. Lindy watched, though she did not want to, as the pieces of her heart beat faster and more frantically until finally she could not take it any longer and she slapped the bowl from Alex’s hand. It struck the wall and shattered,depositing both pieces of heart to the ground with little more than limp insinuation. Lindy ran into the kitchen and grabbed her coat off the counter. Alex chased after her, but Lindy, as if trapped in a whirlwind, reached beneath the sink and retrieved the Bordeaux of their one year. She raised it in the air. Alex barely had time to duck as Lindy hurled the vintage above her head. It smashed against the drywall, showering Alex’s back and hair with the memories and claret they’d shared. Lindy had already exited the apartment by the time Alex was upright again. Thirty minutes passed. Alex, accepting that Lindy was not coming back, moved beneath the archway connecting the living room and the kitchen.She stood between the gory Rorschach of their memories dripping from wall to floor and the flopping goldfish fragments of a future that might have been. Feelingincreasingly weak, shecrouched down and startedpicking up the pieces of broken ceramic. Then she noticed her heart, just a piece of the whole amidst the debris, and it seemed suddenly larger than what she’d prepared. Next to it, however, was an aged, calcified piece of something that at one time resembled a delicacy—an intimacy—and she wondered to herself just how wretched it must now taste. END "Just a Little Spice Will Do" is copyright Andrew Wilmot, 2016. This recording is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license which means you can share it with anyone you’d like, but please don’t change or sell it. Our theme is “Aurora Borealis” by Bird Creek, available through the Google Audio Library. You can support GlitterShip by checking out our Patreon at patreon.com/keffy, subscribing to our feed, or by leaving reviews on iTunes. Thanks for listening, and I'll be back on May 24th with "Sarah's Child" by Susan Jane Bigelow. [Music plays out]

Jenise Aminoff & Susan Jane Bigelow join us to discuss the craziness that is the Kickstarter of their new books The Witch’s Kitchen and The Demon Girl’s Song. Jenise talks about her secret identity, Dianna Sanchez , and why she feels it’s so important to use it. This is her debut novel. She also shares details […]

Susan Jane Bigelow joins me to talk about The Seeker Star, all her other awesome work, and the rambly stuff I ramble on about. You can buy The Seeker Star (and all of Susan's other novels) at Candlemark and Gleam. Susan is on Twitter as @whateversusan, and she blogs about her fiction at http://susanjanebigelow.wordpress.com/ and writes a political column for CT News Junkie.You can read her story, "Sarah's Child" for free at Strange Horizons. And finally, here's the article I mentioned about a black man whose brother is a white cop who shot a black man.  If you have feedback, feel free to send it to julia@juliarios.com, or tweet @outeralliance.

In this episode of the Strange Horizons podcast, editor Anaea Lay presents Susan Jane Bigelow's "Sarah's Child." You can read the full text of the story, and more about Susan, here.