He must have fallen asleep for when he knew next, the old man was standing over him, silently. Easily. Not as one who had crossed the waste from end to end. As surely he had. The sun would dip soon. As would he. And it would all be over. Living. This game they played, his annu had called it.
Read MoreThe Warrior Boy Who Would Not Suffer
Andrius Kavalauskas, the last magician of Lithuania, closed the door and rested his head against the wood as the nurse’s footsteps faded away. He smelled cabbage and pork cooking from the apartment across the hallway and knew that in a few hours he would find a plate of food sitting by his door. Daina was a good neighbor, a good friend.
Read MorePaskutinis Iliuzija (The Last Illusion)She scrabbled in the dirt, sifting through dust piles, raising turrets and smashing castles. Her hands were coated with grime, the mud dark in the lines of her palms. Pushing her skirt up around her thighs, she examined her socks, gray with grit. She crouched down closer to the earth, and pressed both hands, fingers spread out, into the impressionable ground.
Read MoreI Remember Your FaceYou want to fall.
You want to fall up, sideways, diagonal — towards the sun, or the moons, or the asteroid field. Out here in the vast pin-pricked black, it all feels like falling down.
Read MoreFall to Her
My brother shaped me, built me into the perfect bodyguard — skilled in lies and unable to lie to him; deadly in the arts of poison and steel; loyal only to him; unremarkable in looks but my body trained until I had exacting control over every muscle, every breath. I had no title and no name. My brother called me She.
Read MoreThe Gentleman of ChaosSo Beatrice sat up and patted her head. Pigtails still held, thank the Good Goddess Durga, as Dad used to say…although Dad hadn’t believed in any pantheon predating Darwin, had gone gravy to the slaprash an atheist and a scientist and taking in vain the names of all fiend-eating ladygods sharing cross references in the ‘cyclopedia.
Read MoreThe Big Bah-HaWe debuted the song at Harbor Bar (HarBar for short), a claustrophobic dive with walls painted yellow from years of cigarette smoke. Phalanx was still a three-piece then, but we were a full orchestra on “Thick,” exhaling the song like trees giving oxygen to the packed house.
Read MoreStarpower
Old Man Gasper was a hulking figure packed all uneven and lumpy into a canvas suit that didn’t hang right on his body. It folded backwards around the joints and bunched up over the rims of his boots and gloves. He wore a gas mask and a mining helmet and he never took them off.
Read MoreLazarus and the Amazing Kid PhoenixI am running. I am running and it is good, I am running in the dawn–dappled forest and the new air of the day is sharp and good in my lungs.
Read MoreActaeon