Their men and boys were gone before they’d crossed into Nebraska. Teddy was the last to go. Mary never thought he would make it as long as he did due to his temper and his drinking. But he did. Then one night, he went out to take a piss while they were camped inside a […]
Ahalya ran her fingers through the folds of the veil before taking it from her handmaid’s arm. Its deep red fabric was fine and thin between her fingers, and she whirled it around her body in a fluttering scarlet typhoon before draping it over her head. The slender, dark-haired princess looked over her shoulder at […]
We met in college, which is to say, Ohio. A small liberal arts school you’ve probably heard of and regard with either approval or suspicion, depending on your politics. Me, enrolled in the music conservatory, and her, art history, although really, her heart was set on baking. It was a coffee shop sort of thing, […]
CHAPTER I They come on the kind of night that Adele would have loved: wind strafing the mountain and pounding the cabin in rainy gusts. I’m in my usual spot in the darkened front room, near the windows, accompanied by my memory cube and Holox, recombining old stills and vids into a misty cone of […]
The alert cuts across my inputs: a ship exiting superluminal, just cusping the system’s heliopause. Long-range scanners confirm its identity as the Freighter. It is three minutes and forty seconds behind schedule. It is unlike it to be late. I am glad it is here. My planet can be a lonely place. An observer might […]
The spray hitting Evrier wasn’t just water. It was stinging grains of sand, limp strands of weed, pebbles rattling off the battered howdah and thudding against Maiwee’s flanks. The huge jellyfish didn’t flinch, but Evrier felt her pain, tremors running from her mind into his. Her tentacles tugged at currents that threatened to break them […]
The coldness of space clings to the alien ship. It lands where earth-moving machines disemboweled a humid Florida swamp rich with the nests of birds whose feathers were an iridescent white, whose feathers lifted into waves of lace. The birds are gone from here now. Instead, soil is piled high and flat to form the […]
