Fantasy Magazine. Issue 10, January Table of Contents

Fantasy Magazine Issue 10, January 2008 Table of Contents Bones by Leslie Claire Walker (fiction) Pahwakhe by Gord Sellar (fiction) Notes on the Untimely Death of Ronia Drake by Kelly Barnhill (fiction) Painting Walls in the Town of N by Stephanie Campisi (fiction) Author Spotlight: Gord Sellar Author Spotlight: Stephanie Campisi About the Editor 2008 Fantasy Magazine www.fantasy-magazine.com

Bones Leslie Claire Walker The crows dove from the pregnant summer sky, sleek and hungry. Ballard hadn t fed them in a week. I know I used to be his apprentice. His birds dug their claws into the limestone and glass of Rite Company Shackles, 899 Louisiana Street, Houston, Texas 77002, which this morning became a subsidiary of HOLY WELL PRISON UNIFORMS AND ACCESSORIES, EVERYTHING FOR THE PRISON-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX, IF YOU NEED IT WE VE GOT IT. As the last one out of the building, I took my life into my own hands by standing a few feet from the revolving door. The crows wouldn t care whether the gods made me from flesh and bone or from stone and sand and fire. They d eat me, too, if they could. It was their nature. Johnson circled around to my left, grabbed me by the wrist hard enough to leave bruises, and dragged me down the wide steps to the curb, where secretaries in shirtsleeves and sneakers and businessmen in their casual Friday attire craned their heads to watch the last hostility of the takeover. Johnson had hired me one week ago to

the minute to stop this after his own magicians proved unable to. How the hell had this happened? How could I have miscalculated so badly again? Johnson kept hold of me, his blue eyes wild with fright and his dark hair plastered back from his forehead. Perspiration beaded on his upper lip. The sign on the bank building down the street called the temperature at ninety-two degrees and the heat index made it feel like one hundred. But that wasn t it, of course. I d fire you, he said, if I had anywhere to fire you from. I d deserve it. No excuses. No platitudes. I thinned my lips. I got half my hundred thousand dollar fee via wire-transfer up-front, the rest payable only after I d shown Ballard the door. I d screwed up, but I d be all right with money except for the sting to my pride. Mr. Johnson s life, however, had radically changed forever. Why did I hire you? he asked, seemingly more of himself than of me. Because I m the best shot you had. Johnson shook his head. He went after us just so we would hire you. This never had anything to do with my company. He wanted to go head-to-head with you,

Smoke. Just you. If I d have held on longer, I could ve kept the place I ve spent twenty years of my life on. You re wrong, I said. Not about the first part. He wanted me on this job. But the rest he d have taken you apart in a heartbeat. For what gain? he asked. Maybe Johnson felt better pretending not to know. I ve never been one to allow anyone their illusions; I had none myself. Business was business. For the carrion, I said. Ballard was a scavenger. That was all he knew how to be. What did you do to him to make him hate you like this, Smoke? I had the nerve never to have had a family of my own and to want his. I had asked his god-daughter, whom he d raised from infancy, to marry me, and he d made me an offer I couldn t refuse. Prove to him that I could take over the family business, that I had the magical wherewithal to take care of it and Laurel, and he would give me the business and his blessing. I watched Ballard s crows pick apart Rite Company Shackles one square of stone, one steel beam, one scrap of carpet at a time. I bore witness long after the rest of the gawkers wandered away, while the sun set in a gold stain

behind the clouds and thunder sounded in the west. The first fat drops fell as the birds reduced the desks to toothpicks. The last one flew away in the rain with a doubleframed picture of someone s tow-headed children in its fat beak. *** I saw the message light blinking on the entry table as soon as I stepped into my apartment. I listened to the recording first, before I so much as turned on a light. Ballard had taken up smoking again, judging by the sandpaper of his voice. Maybe I made him nervous. Or maybe not. Sucker! You think you can outsmart me? Every time you put someone else between me and you, they go down. Every time. We ll keep on playing this game until I m tired of it. Then you ll be carrion, my friend. I d never give up. Never. I slipped off my shoes and socks, popped the cap on a beer, and opened the sliding glass door onto my private, wood-fenced patio. Over the tips of the boards, I saw no one and nothing but the live oak and the miniature rose

bushes in crimson bloom. The concrete felt cool on the soles of my feet. I sat in the metal glider beside the scarecrow I d stuffed and placed there, sipping and thinking while the stars appeared and the moon rose and the wind shifted southeasterly, carrying a salty tang off the Gulf. I thought of Laurel. Twenty-two, hot off my B.A. with honors from the University of Texas, I took the job with Ballard. I wanted more than bit experience so I could hop to another firm after a few years. I did it for more than money. I did it for her. She had violet eyes; that happened after so many years of heavy magic use. Yep, violet eyes and long brown hair that she wore in a French braid that flowed half-way down her back. She wore sleeveless dresses that showed off her freckled shoulders. She smelled of sunlight. Warm. I saw her for the first time at the card game. A friendly game of hold-em in a brewery bar with a good Irish stout and too many televisions mounted high on the walls. She smiled at me and looked away. Something in her magic sparked mine. I knew right then I d do anything to get her to marry me. Even sign away my life.

Laurel had a hefty talent for money magic. The kind that brought her four offshore accounts full of untraceable cash by the time she reached my age. She worked for Ballard. I went to work for Ballard. Simple, right? Ballard held the power of death. He could think you dead, and you d follow suit. His crows would come and pick you apart until nothing remained. The only thing that held him in check? The Almighty Contract Law. One false move, and he d be gone. Whisked away to the kind of prison built to deal with someone like him. So he put his expertise to work taking apart corporations instead of people. The old man kept a tight leash on me. A hard first contract a set-up which I broke and he reported me for. Not to the proper authorities, who might ve put me in jail but to everyone else that mattered. Anyone who might hire me. Then he threw me out of his nest as an adult bird would a fledgling. The bastard ruined me. People gave me jobs. After all, I could predict the future. Ninety-nine point nine percent accuracy. The other point one? The big problem or so it seemed, though I d been working on it like mad. That thing they say about practice and perfect. Ballard wasn t perfect. Although his decimal place

stretched out further than mine, he should only have been able to beat me on my small margin of foresight blindness once in a blue moon. Not every time. How did he do it? Why couldn t I see it? I looked up a full thirty-seconds before the beat of wings disturbed the air. A crow blotted out the moonlight. It dropped something silver and heavy at me. I reached out and caught it before it hit ground, and sliced my thumb on broken glass for my trouble, just like I knew I would. The picture carried off from the company this afternoon. The blond kids. One boy, one girl in the shade of cypress trees on a river bank, water smooth and shot with sun and leaf-shadow behind them. The crow wheeled once and cawed three times before it flew north and west, back to the home office. I knew a challenge when I heard one. I saw a flash of the future in that moment: the sky clotted with black birds on the corpse of another company. Barberry Uniforms. The old man would buy to fifty-one percent, first thing in the morning. I could expect the call from the owner before noon. ***

Barberry s small office occupied part of the third floor of the building catty-corner to the decimated Rite lot. All the blinds on that side of the building hung closed and to the floor, I assumed to blot out the eyesore. And the reminder that they would be next. The company had one secretary, one bookkeeper, five salespeople. It shouldn t be worth Ballard s time of day. Yet he d gone after them before. Gone after them and backed off at the last minute. I remembered the deal, though when it went down I was already on the outs with Ballard. I d heard rumors of a war chest too big for the old man to take on. Rumors always held a grain of truth. I met with the sole owner and magician, Ms. Glenn Wentwhite, in the only conference room, a maple credenza-and-table number that seated eight. Coffee service and a small tray of croissants and strawberries rounded out the hospitality. Ms. Wentwhite wore a rich silver suit to match her pearls and her very prematurely silver hair. She couldn t have been more than thirty-five. Her navy pumps were scuffed at the heels. She looked overwhelmed. And beautiful. She shook my hand and spoke with an East Texas accent so deep I could smell the piney woods. I hope you ll tell me what you re doing here today, Mr. Smoke.

Just Smoke, I said. She motioned for me to sit and took the chair beside me. I mean, I don t know. Why you re here, that is. I d never heard that before. You called me. She nodded like it all made sense. I studied her eyes. The pupils showed a little too much. Are you spelled? She set her elbow on the tabletop and wrestled with more than worried at her pearls. She didn t answer right away. Ms. Wentwhite? When she didn t answer me then, I took her nonresponse for a yes. People generally couldn t tell others they d been ensorcelled. Took all the fun and purpose out of it if everyone else knew the lowdown. Most of the time, though, magicians were better at camouflaging their work. Ms. Wentwhite gave it away so easy it felt ridiculous. It felt like an insult. What s really going on here? I asked. It s a trap, she said. No, I wanted to say. A trap was a foresight dream that your fiancé ran into a building about to be scavenged because she thought you were inside. She went in after you only to find no one at the computer terminal outside room 3702, where she thought you d be. Not a human

being as far as the eye could see. Only handsome blonde wood desks made from some nearly-extinct South American tree. Flat screens showing various stages of documents or personal e-mail or screensavers. Fichus trees losing their leaves by the windows. The flicker and buzz of the fluorescent lights overhead as the electricity stuttered. As the crows descended. You, the love of her life, supposed to be there, but somehow disappeared like smoke. Laurel died alone, in the dream. A trap was not knowing whether this death would really happen. Whether it emerged from my own gift or came from my for-all-intents-and-purposes father-in-law. I wouldn t put it past the bastard. He d send me something like that as a test. To see if I could be scared off. To make things more interesting. Had he done anything like that to Glenn Wentwhite? I doubted it. She smiled. The expression not only didn t reach her eyes, it didn t reach her mouth. I d like you to stay and talk with me a while, she said. When we re done, I d like you to get up and shake my hand warmly, like we ve agreed to work together. The hell you say. She kept on as if I hadn t said a word. She reached

over and patted my hand, for gods sake. Then I want you to step out into the foyer and tell my secretary you ll be right back. Walk out the front door and down the hall to the men s room. I ll meet you there. I didn t even pretend to understand. I reached out with the good sense the gods gave me to see what might happen in the men s room. I couldn t get any inkling. Except that this did not, of all things, stink of Ballard. For that, I gave her the benefit of the doubt. Twenty minutes worth. All the time I felt I could spare on anything or anyone besides beating the old man. The men s room in no way resembled a bathroom. No facilities to speak of. Not even a sink. Only one inch squares of brown-flecked cream tile. It smelled of cold platinum shielding, like metal on the tip of the tongue. Anti-magic shield. A room to block eavesdropping or x- ray vision or hindsight or even my own power. Ms. Wentwhite leaned against the far wall, hands braced behind her. I had no idea how she d got here ahead of me. In the tic of her muscles and the shudder in her neck, I could see her work her way through whatever spell she was under. She swallowed hard twice before she said anything. The piney woods had fled. She took it so slowly, she sounded like English was her second

language. I spell was. Spelled. You were right. I waited. I don t handle stress well, she said. Or secrets. If I hadn t done this to myself, I d have given the game away the second I saw you. Ballard s spies would ve seen me somehow. She was paranoid. And worse, she was soft. You said this was a trap. Yes, but not for you. For him. What kind of game are you running? She looked me in the eye. Ballard killed my husband. I saw how it was now. She thought I d be sympathetic. You ve heard about my fiancé. She had the grace to stare at her shoes when she replied. Yes. How you ll never see her again. It sounded rude. I could tell she hadn t meant it that way. Everyone watches Ballard. Everyone thinks they can out-maneuver him. To survive. Survival doesn t mean squat, I said. Not if you have to live in fear every day for the rest of your life. Who cares about fear? Her voice shook with barely contained violence. It only matters that you stand up.

Like she and her husband had stood up to Ballard before? How did your husband die? Emil. His name. Had a heart attack. After Ballard tried to scavenge us. I felt her words like a punch to the chest. I let it show a little. What I feared for myself and Laurel had actually happened to her and Emil. Why did he back off? He got wind of our arsenal. The rumored war chest. How much? A hundred million dollars in bonds and gold. I whistled at the depth of those assets. This company wasn t anywhere near carrion. You had resources Ballard couldn t mess with. You would have used it all fighting him off. By the time he got what he wanted, the return on investment would never be worth it. That s why he let you get away. She nodded. We bought Ballard back down to thirtyfive percent. It hurt. But we did it. He s left us alone, but he never let us go. And we ve had our problems since Emil died. Some ups. Mostly downs. You re ripe for the picking again. He s bought up enough shares. Yes, she said. It ll be a hard fight again. Harder, without Emil. I don t know if my heart can take it. If she had to wonder, surely she was right. That s

where I come in. I have a plan, Smoke. You re going to become a permanent asset of Barberry Uniforms. A permanent asset of the company. That meant if Ballard won here, if he bought out Wentwhite and scavenged her company, Ballard would scavenge me, too. Why on earth would I do that? It s all in the compensation clause of your contract, she said. I haven t signed one yet. You will, she said, filling her words with almost enough conviction to convince me. The deeper Barberry Uniforms goes into debt the more trouble we re into the more you re worth. And they would go into debt. On every non-liquid asset they owned. Brilliant. I d be worth more than my weight in cash and gold. If Ballard wants to buy the company, he ll have to buy you, Smoke. I looked at her. The stress of standing up to Ballard cost Emil his life and Ms. Wentwhite her husband. Most people would ve folded. People didn t stand up to Ballard the way they had. Do you want revenge? he asked. Keeping my company whole is the best revenge.

Indeed. Her proposal made this more than a contract. More than a job. I would have to put myself on the line in a way I hadn t done with Johnson or those other corporations Ballard had scavenged out from under me. Then, it had been all about beating Ballard. About proving myself to him. Screw him. Ballard acted according to his nature. I acted according to mine. I accepted Ms. Wentwhite s offer. I drew my line in the sand. All or nothing. This was it. This would be the last battle. I d finish things, one way or another, for all I was worth. *** Ms. Wentwhite and I took the limousine to see the old man. As we drove, the sun went down in a ball of molten orange, fingers of flame stretched across the sky. Ballard s live oaks didn t just stand stately, they held court. The house had the biggest set of French doors I d ever seen. And a bird barn out back that I could hear even before Ms. Wentwhite s driver muscled me out of the car.

I couldn t hear myself think over the caws and the rustle of wings. Ballard had always kept thirteen murders of crows. The house had no guards but those. He waited for us alone in his office, ensconced in the comfortable brown leather chair closest to the dark fireplace. The old man hadn t changed much in the past few years. His black hair, turning white only at the temples, fell in a wave of feathers down to his waist. His hooked nose resembled a beak, his hands talons. The eyes were the thing. Coal black, full of sly wit. Too much intelligence for his own good. He held a brandy, motioned with it toward the decanter and empty glasses on the oak mantle. He spoke with the same sandpaper edge as the message he d left. Would you like? Ms. Wentwhite thinned her lips. I never mix alcohol and business. Your loss, he said. It s good stuff. Celebratory. Isn t it, Smoke? I nodded. Ballard. I stood. Ms. Wentwhite sat on the red velveteen loveseat across from him. You know what we re here for, she said. I won t make a deal with you, Ballard said. This

time I m seeing it through. I ll take Barberry apart, just like all the others. You can count on it. You won t, I said. I ve signed on with Wentwhite. Ballard left off sipping his brandy and narrowed his eyes. I m in it until the end, I said. You may think the company is weak, but below the surface it s still strong enough to take anything you can dish out for a good, long time. We can still spend you into the ground. You can try to swallow Barberry, but I promise you ll choke on it. The corners of Ms. Wentwhite s mouth curved. She didn t look like she could help it. I turned to her. It won t be him, but eventually someone will take us apart. You know that s true. You have too much heart and not enough grit. It s got me this far, she said. This far and no further. You re at an impasse. She stared at me. What are you saying? You want to scavenge the company, Ballard. To make it yours. Ms. Wentwhite, you want to keep the company whole. We can battle this out, or we can try something different. Ballard watched me. He downed the last of his drink. Spit it out.

We sell Barberry to you. Barberry remains autonomous a subsidiary. I run Barberry, along with Ms. Wentwhite here. Ballard s eyes grew wide. You want to build the business. I nodded. I mean to. I would never have thought of that. Of course not. He was a scavenger. But I never have been. He mulled it over. After a minute, he gave a grudging answer. We ll talk. Ms. Wentwhite folded her arms across her chest. But she didn t get up to leave. I had crafted a proposition that thrilled neither of them. Then again, the best business deals never make everyone happy. Ballard set down his glass on the mantle. Good job, son. I raised a brow. I never cared whether you beat me, he said. After everything he d done, how could he say that? You could ve fooled me. Ballard rose and crossed to where I stood. Winning wasn t the point. He d thrown me out. Ruined me. Destroyed how

many lives? All because I was supposed to prove myself to him. Shit. I couldn t believe I hadn t seen it before. I never had to prove my worth to you. I had to prove it to myself. Ballard put his arm around my shoulders. You re a little slow, son. But you ll do. I wholeheartedly agreed, but I didn t tell him that. I realized suddenly, too, that I couldn t see how this whole thing would end up. My magic wouldn t tell me. I d opened a door to a lot of possibilities. Ballard leaned in. You know, son, just because I gave you a pass on this deal doesn t mean I won t take you apart on the next. You ll try. He laughed. Welcome to the family, Smoke. Do you want to see Laurel? She s upstairs. *** He took me to her, into a part of the house where I d never been, with champagne walls covered in so much tapestry you could hardly see them. Our footfalls echoed on the dusty hardwood floor. We must have been close to

the birds. The rustle of feathers had never been so loud. In the second room on the right of the hall, Laurel waited. Violet eyes. Strong arms. She smelled of the sun, still. When we turned to look at him, Ballard had gone. In his wake a set of human footprints, and after a short distance, a set of talon marks. Where d he go? I asked. Out with the crows, she said. He does his best thinking when he flies, and you ve given him something to think about. Any second now, the birds would take to the air. A black clot on the sky. Do you hate them? she asked. I thought of everything they d torn apart. How many bones they d picked clean. Corporations. Lives. It hadn t been their fault. They d only done what they were born to do. Like Ballard. Like me. No. She met my gaze. Good. Because you re marrying into the family. Outside, the rustle became a thunder of beating wings. Leslie Claire Walker hails from the lush bayous and concrete-and-steel

canyons of the Texas Gulf Coast. She lives in Houston with assorted animal and plant companions, and two harps. Her short fiction has appeared in many wonderful magazines and anthologies, including Fantasy Magazine. She can be found on the web at www.leslieclairewalker.com.

Pahwakhe Gord Sellar It s almost dark. My daughter is sitting outside, the bundle still and silent in her arms. The singing voices out on the water are moving, sad fiddles calling out like broken birds. They re coming here. I never imagined them returning. They re drifting through the dark and fog, toward the shore. She s waiting for them. *** Not long ago, I was a happy man, and not just rich like I am now. Each of my daughters was more beautiful than all the girls in all the nearby villages, but the oldest and the most beautiful one s name was Pahwakhe. She was quiet, and tall, and strong. Any man would happily have taken her as his wife. The chiefs of the other villages came to my longhouse one by one, bearing gifts for her hand. They wanted me to marry her to one of their sons. But I kept her for myself.

You know how a father enjoys his girls when they bring him food, and talk to him, and listen to him tell the old stories. So I said no to every man, no to every father, no to every son in the villages. My wife chided me that I would never have a grandson, and after a while, I began to hear people cursing my name when they thought I couldn t hear. They laughed at me. They said terrible things, prayed for terrible misfortunes to befall me. They said I was a bad man for keeping her to myself. I understood why they said these things, why they couldn t understand me, but still I kept her in my longhouse. As for Pahwakhe, she said nothing to me about it, but endured this waiting cheerfully. She smiled as I told stories, tried to give me my joy, but I could see something within her, slowly changing, growing heavier and more weary of me as the nights grew cooler and the days, one by one, carried whispers of winter s approach. *** One chilly night, there were voices out on the water. Singing, accompanied by eerie music that reminded me of

the sound of a broken, widowed bird. One of the old women heard them first, that s always how it goes. She came to me and she told me there was something singing out in the fog, coming up to the beach. We went down to the water to meet them, but their canoes had already been pulled up onto the stony shore. They stood together in a small group, six or seven men, each pale, ghost-thin, and hairy-faced, wearing wide, bright sashes and skin boots, their brown and yellow hair hanging loose around their faces. A couple of them held strange wooden things under their arms, which they called fiddles. The rest of them carried bulging leather bags. Stories about them echoed in my memory, things that other chiefs had whispered about to me. It was nothing more than rumors, things they d heard from canoe-traders and wanderers. Nobody knew how they crossed over from their world to ours, or why they were so pale. That they could kill a man with a yell, that they could kill the soil in a place so nothing would grow there, that they sometimes stole away girls and women in the night because they had none of their own. The smoke in my longhouse swirled thick, thicker still around their strange faces. They sat all around me on brightly-colored mats and frowned, wrinkled their big

noses as they tried to speak our language. I offered them bone spoons and cedar plates loaded with salmon and seal oil and nuts and blackberries. We ve brought many gifts, they said, our words heavy like stones on their tongues. They opened the bags, and set down handfuls of colorful round beads, hard axes, pouches bursting with long-traveled pemmican, braided sweetgrass, and tobacco. They set these things down before me, and then one of them their chief stared across the fire at my eldest daughter. They gave me so much that I couldn t refuse their unsaid request. Pahwakhe wept and shivered when I offered her to them. Her sisters and mother beat their breastbones and cried, but what could I do? They could have stolen her away, or stolen all of them, if they wanted. I had no choice. So we married her to their young chief. Our women sang mourning songs as young men danced, feathers swirling in firelight as drums pounded in darkness. After that, our guests made their weeping fiddles sing broken birdsongs until just before dawn. It was still very dark, though, when their canoes cut out across the water, carrying Pahwakhe out into the fog that separated their world from ours. She did not look back to the shore as the canoe she was in drifted into the twilight.

As they drifted slowly away, we heard their fiddles and the song they played was solemn, a funeral song. *** A year later, an old woman hobbled out of one morning s fog into our village, and came to my longhouse. She told me that she lived between the worlds, in a halfway place to the land of the ghost-people, and that my daughter s husband was a ghost. She told me their bodies were just bones and dust in the daytime, but at night they came to life, sang and danced and made love. Maybe the old woman had once married one of them too, I don t know. I did not ask her these things. I could tell she was not lying to me. She told me that my daughter had given a son to her ghost husband, but the child was not wholly ghost, and living with ghosts was too difficult for it. The villagers there thought the child ought to live with us, the living, with its mother s people. The old woman sat down on a mat on the ground outside my longhouse, and waited. Half a day passed before my oldest daughter stumbled out of the fog. She was cradling a bundle in front of her,

and I guessed it was a baby. Pahwakhe! I was so happy to see her. She was still beautiful, but there was something very tired about her. The skin under her eyes was darker, her face wearier. Father. Is this your baby? Her eyes were wild, haunted. I m tired. She squeezed the bundle to herself, out of my reach. The old woman watched us with heavy eyes. I set my curiosity aside and brought Pahwakhe into my longhouse. Then I set out a cattail mat on the floor for her, and let the cedar smoke hush her to sleep. *** I was finally a grandfather. I had not thought of it, had not wanted it, but now that it was true, I felt greedy. I wanted to look at him, to find my face in his own. But I never saw my grandson s face. Pahwakhe said he was only halfway one of us, and still halfway one of them. She told me he had to be wrapped for twelve days straight, to stop being a ghost and become a living baby. I tried to wait, and tried to wait, but my woman, she got me curious. She kept fanning the embers of my

curiosity, asking me if I believed her, telling me how pretty she was sure the baby was. Finally, when I could not wait any longer, I was too curious. I heard the baby cry a little late one night, glimpsed my daughter giving it suckle. Once daylight came, my daughter slept and the baby made no sound. I wanted to see, so badly; I could feel the want growing inside me, bigger and bigger, as the day went on. Nothing eased it, not smoking, not lunch, not a walk in the bush. Nothing. So that afternoon, I unwrapped the bundle. I didn t know what those things were at first, those little white shapes lit by the sun. There was dust all over them. But when I looked closely, for a few moments, I realized what they were. Bones. The baby s tiny skull almost fell from the bundle, almost fell to the ground. Pahwakhe woke up, screamed, and wrapped up the bones, but I could tell from the look on her face that there was nothing to do. It was too late to take back what I d done. *** The living and the dead are not very different. They both want to see everything in the world, to taste it, again and again. They want to own everything they ve ever

touched. So they re coming back, for her and the baby. I think she might have called out to them somehow. Asked them to come for her. She looks at the bundle, speaks to it. She holds it close. I sit beside her in the darkness, waiting. I want to speak to her, but I cannot find any words. They re heavy on my tongue, too, now. Their voices are getting louder, the mourning fiddles drifting closer. Canoes scrape against the shore s cold stones. Gord Sellar was born in Malawi, grew up in various parts of Canada, and is currently living in South Korea. He used to play saxophone in various jazz and rock groups, but now he just dreams of finding himself some Korean free-jazz geeks to jam with. He attended the Clarion West workshop in 2006. His fiction has appeared in Nature, and he has work forthcoming in Machine of Death, and Postcards from Hell. The paint on his face is Korean and it says Jazzpunk.

Notes on the Untimely Death of Ronia Drake Kelly Barnhill 1. The last sound she heard was water. It bubbled and flowed from the masses of decaying snow piles, slicked the path and fanned into the spongy turf and sleeping grass. Bits of puddle splashed up on her white socks and white and red legs a spangle of gray salt drips curving up to the knee. She did not mind, but continued to run across the park, gaining speed as she went. She ran with ease, with a surety of motion and grace. She did not worry about growing tired, or hurting herself. She ran without fear. The path and park were empty which surprised her because the day was warm at last after an endless winter of endless cold. She wore shorts and a t-shirt that said Big Mama s Bar, which she was pretty sure she had been to once. The westerly breeze nipped at her upper arms and thighs, and while it was warm enough to melt the snow, she probably should have worn leggings or a wind

breaker. Should have. In all honesty, however, it didn t really matter either way. In about ten minutes, Ronia Drake s life will end. She will not see death coming, nor will she see it scuttling away, its large mouth damp, drooping and satiated. She will only know a sharp knock, a flurry of feathers and fur, a whisper of her name, and a sharp, curved finger at her throat. Or perhaps it will be a burst of light. Or perhaps it will be nothing at all. 2. Once upon a time, there was a little girl who wanted to be a princess. She wanted a pretty ring that glimmered on a pink-tipped finger, a small foot slipped neatly into a smart beaded shoe. She wanted a crown of curls framing a delicate face. But she was large-footed and ungainly. Her face was broad and fleshy and unbalanced. There was nothing that twinkled. Nothing. Once upon a time, there was a little girl who came into a little bit of magic. Well, perhaps came into is the wrong phrase. Perhaps stole would suffice. Either way,

the girl felt, it was nothing more than semantics. When people inherit money they say came into, and since the previous owner was as dead as could be, came into was a good a description as any. Magic, stolen, inherited or otherwise, is an unwieldy tool, but like any other useful thing, can be mastered by anyone who bothers to learn it. There once was a little girl who wanted to be a princess, and learned magic to make it happen. After several attempts on unsuspecting proxies, the girl turned her magic on herself. She marveled at her tiny feet fit snug in lovely beaded shoes with heels that clicked over a blue tile floor. She marveled at her face, milky soft and delicately boned. A princess s face. She looked longingly at her hands, her long-fingered hands, as pale as pearls. There should, she felt, be a diamond. And a prince to go with it. Once upon a time, there was a princess who stole a prince. No, she thought, not stole. Came into. And so what if she used her little bit of magic. Her little inheritance. So what if he needed some encouragement to turn his head. No one cared, anyway. If she could have her way, and she often did, she would tell a new story the right story and she would write it like this: Once upon a time there was a princess. A very pretty princess. Prettier than you. Once upon a time, a very

handsome prince stole the very pretty princess. No, not stole. Came into. And he would not get out. 3. The moment Ronia Drake died, her daughters turned to their stepmother and pointed. Girls, the stepmother said, don t point. You, the girls said, their small fingers pointing to the stepmother s pale gold curls, cropped prettily under her ears. You, the girls said, pointing at the stepmother s swollen belly, which had enlarged upon itself, doubling, then tripling its size until people joked that it must be a medicine ball shoved under her skin. Or a go-kart. Or a truck. Girls, she said again, but she stopped. She never called them by their names. She only called them girls when she was feeling petulant and ladies when she was feeling fine. Now with the pointing and the accusations, she was feeling petulant. But when she reached for the first one, the one with the scar over her eye (and if only she could remember which one had the scar over her eye) she caught sight of her hand and drew it back with a sharp cry. The stepmother always had lovely hands the

color of pearls. Or, at least it seemed like always. She told people that when women let themselves go, the first place it shows is in their hands. No man wants to make love to a woman with red knuckles and cuticles jutting out like spikes. No man wants a woman with quick bitten fingernails, or fingernails rimmed with dirt, or spots or wrinkles or cracks. Ronia Drake had dreadful hands. It was no wonder her husband left her. The stepmother said this as though it were true. No one noticed the way a smile slicked across her milk-pale skin. No one noticed the strange glitter of her terrible beauty. Or, at least, they pretended not to notice. Instead they nodded to her comment about hands. So true, they said. So very, very true. But now. Now as the stepmother reached for the accusatory point of one of the girls she saw a hand covered in blood. A hand missing a pinkie and a thumb. And what was worse, it wasn t her hand at all. It was Ronia Drake s hand. 4. As Ronia Drake ran along the path, the wind seemed to curve around her, twisting around like yarn. She didn t notice the wind, or at least she mostly did not notice.

What she did notice is that her hair wouldn t stay tied back and instead wisped free, tickling her eyes and ears and nose. The left side of the path was a strip of grass that soon would be green but was currently brown, and though it looked prickly, she knew that if she removed her running shoes, the ground would be spongy and cold and soaking. Beyond the grass the ground fell away in a tangle of leafless branches and trunks and thorns that wove against each other in their tumble towards the river below. Ronia Drake always warned her daughters to stay out of those woods. You never know who might be living in those woods. As Ronia Drake ran, she did not notice the eyes in the woods. She did not notice the way the ravens gathered and re-gathered, only just behind her as she ran. She did not notice the pale reflection that glimmered on the edges of the oil-slicked sheen of the dark puddles. Pale curls danced on the rippling water. And a delicate mouth slashed open in a grin. Every once in a while there was a bench made of river rocks held together by gravelly mortar with a few splintery planks set across for sitting on. Additionally, there were the occasional ancient barbeques and fire pits with chimneys that pointed effortlessly towards the sky. These, too were made of river rocks. Once, when she had

taken her daughters here for a picnic, Anna, or perhaps it was Alice, shimmied to the top of the chimney, her long bare arms and legs moving with the chaotic grace of an insect. Now that she thought about it, it was both Alice and Anna, but it was Anna who fell, slicing the tender skin between her eye and brow on a particularly sharp piece of granite. Alice remained on top, crying, and Ronia never knew if she cried because her sister fell, or if she was frightened, or if she simply did not like to be separated from the girl who shared her face. A man called nine one one on his cell, and the fire truck came to bandage Anna and pluck Alice from the sky. The girls, reunited, wrapped their long, pale arms around each other, whispering soundlessly in each other s ears. That night, Ronia had a dream that the girls lived in a nest at the top of the chimney. Their hands gripped the edges of the rocks like talons and they peered down at the people on the path. When Ronia walked along the path looking for her children, the girls threw bits of twig and feathers and dry grass at their mother, but it did not reach her. It blew up in a twisting wind and vanished over the edge of the empty trees. She called to the girls to come down, but they were not girls any longer. They stared down at her with their large, complicated eyes, their gentle antennae clasping and unclasping with the other,

their long, thin, green legs, folded under their bodies, ready to spring. Ready to fly away. And they did fly. Over her head, her girls, or her grasshoppers, or her grasshoppers who once were her girls, vaulted across the sky in a buzz of leg and song and endless green. When she woke, she did not remember the dream, although she told everyone she knew about the strange dream that had haunted her the night before. I had the strangest dream, she told people. What was it? the people asked. No idea, she said, and assumed that it would be enough. 5. The police were called, more than once, although no one could tell them why they called. People dialed the emergency number and found themselves staring at the place where Ronia Drake once lived and breathed, but now did not. One man vomited on his phone, ruining it forever. A fourteen year old girl tried to explain what she saw, but she fell to her knees and began speaking in tongues instead. An older woman began to have heart palpitations, and asked the dispatcher a kind woman named Eunice to send out an extra ambulance while she

was at it. When the ambulance arrived, they found the old woman seated under a tree, her legs stretched out in front of her, her body pressed to the trunk of the tree as though pinned. She had faced herself away from the remains of Ronia Drake, which seemed sensible enough, but had died anyway, pressing one hand against her eyes and one on her heart. The fourteen year old girl remained in the center of the path, kneeling, her hands and face pointing to the sky. Her voice had gone hoarse by the time the ambulance came, and the second ambulance, and the fire truck and police car. But her lips continued to move. The paramedic knelt by some of the remains of Ronia Drake. A hand, a severed ponytail, a bit of tee-shirt that said Mama. The others would begin looking for any kind of identification, though they would find none. They did find a shoe, ten toes (in ten places), a shoulder, a blue eye. Each part was sliced cleanly, as though with a scalpel. There was little blood. The paramedic picked up the ponytail and brought it to his nose. He smelled bread and long limbed children and cut grass and a curved pink lip exposing white teeth that had been sharpened to points. He smelled bright green grasshoppers tenderly washing their faces. He smelled a slim, long-legged deer, bending sweetly to feed upon the damp grass. A deer with two grasshoppers balanced on her delicately boned head. A

deer with a blue eye. Ronia Drake, he said to the others. Her name was Ronia Drake. He did not explain how he knew this, and no one asked. And this, he said, picking up the two hands that had been clasped together as though praying. One hand was red-knuckled and quick bitten. The other was pink tipped and pale as pearls, with a diamond that would have gleamed were it not for the drop of blood that had landed on the stone and no where else. This, he said, is not her hand. Above their heads a tribe of ravens gathered and dispersed and gathered again. They landed on empty branches, on signs declaring which path was for biking and which for walking, and on the wet ground. They opened their black beaks and called to another, and back, and back again. The paramedic looked into the glinting eye of the biggest, shiniest of them all. Although he knew it was crazy, he could have sworn the ravens were calling Ronia, Ronia, Ronia. The stepmother locked herself into the bathroom. You, the girls said on the other side of the door. They did not knock or bang. 6.

Shut up, the stepmother whispered, her voice like glass in her ears. You, the girls sang. No screeched. No, sang. Sang like birds, like bugs, like gathering ravens. They sang with the voice of something small. Something scuttling. Something with a damp, satiated mouth. Tzzz, tzzz, tzzz, they sang, their voices reverberating on the tile and porcelain, shaking the walls, vibrating the stepmother s perfect house. The stepmother covered her ears, felt the coagulating blood gum up on the side of her cheek. Her left hand was bloody still, and still not her own. Ronia Drake s hand. Ronia Drake s hand missing a pinkie and a thumb. With the hand that was her own, she gripped at her belly, swollen so taut and tight that threatened to split down the middle. The child inside did not move. It had not moved all day. When Ronia Drake was pregnant, her husband said that her belly twisted and rumbled from morning to night. He said that the girls were a constant tumble of arms and legs and wings. He said that if you placed your ear on Ronia Drake s belly, you could hear the girls singing. What did they sing, the stepmother asked, not because she was interested, but because she felt it would be polite.

Tzzz, tzzz, tzzz, he sang on the tips of his white teeth, the teeth she insisted that he bleach. That s not a song, she said. Oh, but it is, he said, and he sang it again. Tzzz, tzzz, tzzz. He sang it gorgeously, lovingly, magnanimously. He sang it with a smile curving across those white white teeth. He never sang that way for her. As her belly grew, swelled, puffed, she bought a stethoscope, and listened for the sounds of her own child singing. It was silent. And the stepmother hated the girls. Not the ladies. The girls. And the stepmother hated Ronia Drake. 7. As Ronia Drake ran, she did not miss her daughters. She knew she should feel guilty for this but she did not. When she was young, she was afraid of being alone and filled the empty spaces of her life with boyfriends and best friends and intimate acquaintances. But now. Now, it was different. Ever since her husband learned how to bleach his teeth, how to tousle his hair with pomade, and how to love the woman that would be her daughters stepmother,

Ronia had her children on Wednesdays through Saturdays, and her husband had them on Sundays through Tuesdays. This was an arrangement that worked for a long time while the stepmother did not conceive. But the stepmother wanted a baby. Of course she did. Pretty girl like that would want to pass it on. Ronia Drake, when she was young and slick with love, wanted a baby as well. She got two, and her body showed it. Then her husband left. So it goes, she told people. Finally, the waist of the stepmother swelled prettily. She bloomed, blossomed, was ripe and happy. At first. But after a while the growing was more rapid and uncontained. She doubled, tripled and quadrupled. She grew out of her maternity clothes and hired a nice woman named Lupe to sew new shirts to cover her enormous middle. You re fine, the doctors said, you have a healthy boy and just one, so don t worry. But the stepmother worried and Ronia Drake could tell. For two weeks, the stepmother had avoided allowing the girls into her home. I m so tired, she said. My back hurts, my ass hurts, my belly hurts, my legs hurt, she said.

You understand, of course you do, she said. Ronia Drake held her tongue. Lazy, she thought but smiled kindly instead. Ronia Drake loved her daughters. Loved them. She loved the mown grass scent of their matching scalps. She loved their reedy arms and matching pale lips, and how, no matter what color they wore, the mind s eye dressed them in green. She loved they way they pressed their fingertips on her cheekbone when she pretended to sleep. They were her girls, and she loved them. But when her husband no, ex-husband and sometimes her husband s new wife, came to pick up the girls in the brand new Audi, Ronia Drake kissed their mown grass heads, and straightened their pink shirts and brown pants (though in her memory, they would only be wearing green), and told them to be good girls as she caressed their delicate faces, pressing her fingertips gently along their cheekbones. She stood on the curb and waved to them. They watched her through the window, their faces drawn and solemn. They waved back, the car rumbled then glided away, and her children disappeared. Then, Ronia Drake did not miss her children. She painted. She worked. She ran long runs along the river, or the creek, or from one end of the city to the other. Sometimes, she ran for hours without tiring. She felt

unfettered, faceless and unnamed. Lost, yes, but there is a freedom in being lost. There is a freedom in abandonment too, if you thought about it right. She painted the walls in large, complicated murals that changed when she felt it was time for them to change. In the girl s room, she painted a collage of important women, to inspire them, but when the girls found them boring, she covered up the severe suffragettes and painted bugs instead delicate arachnids, luscious butterflies as they pleasured trembling flowers, and surefooted spiders pulling filament upon filament from their bellies. She painted figures that looked like girls if you looked at them in one way, and bugs if you looked at them in another. In the living room, she painted a girl sitting on a park bench with an old woman. The girl was unattractive, unpleasantly so. The old woman was so old, the folds of her skin so complicated and fragile as to render her shockingly beautiful. People asked her: Does she glow in the dark? How did you get the old woman to shine like that? I don t know, Ronia said truthfully. People asked her, Is it just me, or is that the ugliest looking ugly girl you ve ever seen? They saw the way the ugly girl has just moistened her lips with her cracked

tongue, the way the tip lingered under her sharp teeth. They noticed the way her knuckles were bent, ready, itching to strike. And look, the people said. The branches look like eyes. And look, the people said. The grass looks like a mouth. A grassy mouth with hungry teeth and a large damp tongue. Oh, Ronia said. I hadn t noticed. 8. Once upon a time, there was a little girl who sat next to a witch as the sun set over the park. The witch was old and kind, with fragile skin that folded and creased upon itself like a complicated map. When people walked by, the witch would smile, and though they did not notice, they began to relax, soften, become unaccountably happy. You see, the witch said to the girl. It is neither good nor bad. It is Itself, but can extend our goodness or badness, our foolishness or our intelligence. It s difficult to use. It has consequences. It is not a toy for children. She said this kindly, gently, attempting to put her off without being off-putting. She inquired after the girl s studies, after her friends, but there was little to say in that

department. Besides, the girl was busy rewriting the story: Once upon a time, there was a princess under a spell. A wicked spell. Cast by a wicked witch. The witch had magic that should not have been hers, while the princess was denied the honor of beauty. In order to break the spell, the witch s magic needed to be stolen away. The princess broke the spell. She reached into the complicated folds of the witch s throat and squeezed. The girl felt the old woman s magic (neither good nor bad. But unwieldy. With consequences.) surge into her open, astonished mouth. 9. The police arrived and summarily scratched their heads, wondering where to begin. The paramedic told them what he knew, though he did not say how he came into that knowledge. Better to be vague, he thought. They began to mark the places where the body lay scattered in the damp, brown grass. The paramedic was worried about the ravens that gathered in greater numbers on every branch, on every park bench, on every sign. But they did not make for the meat. In fact, they had stopped calling all together. They watched silently: a gathering, black-

coated crowd. The girl speaking in tongues was coaxed onto a gurney and examined. Her eyes, dilated and wild, circled the sky while her mouth continued to make words that were not words. All right, sweetheart, the paramedic said. In we go. But the girl sat up, her long brown hair falling into her face. She grabbed his uniform and looked directly into his face. Tzzz, tzzz, tzzz, she said. Don t worry honey, he began but she shook her head. Tzzz, tzzz, tzzz, she said again, more loudly this time. The paramedic ignored this, and with a one, two, three and a heave, he and his co-workers inserted the gurney into the open maw of the ambulance. He patted the back, and the driver took her away. The ravens watched her go. The paramedic walked to his bag and reached for it, when he noticed a large, shocking green grasshopper on his hand. Hello, he said to the grasshopper, bringing his hand to his face. The grasshopper did not move, but stared at

him with its iridescent eyes, its long legs gently wiping its mouth. Tzzz, tzzz, tzzz, said the grasshopper. That seems to be a popular song these days, the paramedic said, and then stopped. Because the song wasn t just coming from his hand. It came from the grass, then the tree, then the tangled forest tumbling down to the river. Then, it was everywhere. 10. The stepmother leaned her expanding bulk against the door. She knocked the back of her head against the teak veneer which she had ordered herself, and had polished to a high gloss. Outside, inside, or perhaps in her head, the girls voices went from accusation to song to accusation again. You, they said, their voices sharp as scalpels. Tzzz, tzzz, they sang, their voices an insistent whirr. You re doing it wrong, she shouted. This isn t how the story goes. Her hand itched. Except it wasn t her hand. Ronia Drake s hand itched. But that couldn t be right. Ronia Drake was dead. The stepmother watched it happen in a slick of water, and water can t lie. The old woman told her so. And a dead woman can t itch.

And yet it did, and it was driving her mad. That and the constant drone of the girls outside the door. Not the ladies. The girls. She rubbed Ronia Drake s hand on the lump of her belly. The child inside did not move. It never did. And it did not sing. She rubbed harder, trying to block out the itch, trying to block out the sound that whirred in the tile, in the air, in her bones. As she rubbed her belly grew. Her buttons popped and cracked the far window with a sharp ping. Her knees buckled under its weight and she crashed to the ground. She looked at the hand. Ronia Drake s hand. The thing she did not expect. And it had to go. With great effort, she grasped the edges of the sink and lifted herself up. She threw open the door to the medicine cabinet, cracking the mirrored surface against the wall. Grabbing her husband s razor, she hacked at the skin that bordered Ronia Drake s unattractive hand with her own pale and creamy skin. It wasn t enough, of course. How could it be? More, she said to the razor. Be more, goddamnit. And the razor was more. First it was a butcher knife. Then a machete. Then a scimitar. The blade was so sharp it glinted and sang in the air. Tzzz, sang the blade. Shut up, commanded the stepmother. Just cut. And it cut. The skin cut quietly. The bone sliced with a

short, quick snap, and Ronia Drake s hand fell softly to the ground with a thud. If there had been time, the stepmother would have stopped the bleeding with towels, though it would not have been necessary. There was very little blood. But this she did not see because the glossy surface of the door split apart and the air sang. Grasshoppers, electric green and delicate and utterly wild, swarmed into the bathroom. They covered the shower curtain, submerged the sink, blanketed the toilet. They blocked out the light, crawled into her mouth, blocked up her nose, peered into her eyes. And they were beautiful. The stepmother thought, You look just like Alice. Then she thought, No, perhaps it s Anna. But before she could decide, darkness thundered from all sides and she was lost. 11. The paramedic shaded his eyes, even though it was cloudy. One cloud, dark, thick and undulating, approached quickly over the tops of the empty handed trees. The cops stopped scratching their heads and looked up at the sky. What the hell is that sound? one of them asked. The cloud moved faster and faster. When it arrived,

the paramedic realized that it wasn t dark at all. It was green. Deep green, like a still, dark pool. Grasshoppers landed lightly on the brown grass. They balanced on the beaks of the motionless ravens and buzzed wildly in the air around the cops and paramedics and everyone else who stopped at the edge of the police line to watch. The paramedic cupped his hands around his eyes. He crouched down and tried to get a better view. The grasshoppers seemed familiar to him, though he did not know why. He seemed to recall a girl perched on the top of a stone chimney, and another girl who shared her face crying on the ground beneath. He remembered a woman, a tall woman with long, dark hair and shockingly blue eyes, kneeling next to the girl on the ground, her eye fixed on her child clinging to the edges of the stone. Ronia Drake, he started to say, but a grasshopper flew into his mouth. Hush, he thought he heard it say. Or maybe it was Tzzz. A moment later, the cloud lifted as quickly as it came, tumbling over the twisted bramble and down to the river. By the time the cops and paramedics registered their astonishment they looked down at the ground, at the places where they had marked the locations of the remains of Ronia Drake. The markers still lay on the

grass, untouched, but the severed, bloodless pieces of the body of Ronia Drake were gone. 12. The night after her husband left her, Ronia Drake lay alone in her bed and cried herself to sleep. During the night she had a dream. She dreamt she had fallen off the path in the park and tumbled in the bramble as it fell to the river. She rolled until she reached a narrow ledge where she found a table and two chairs. She sat down. An old woman sat on the other side. She had hair so white it seemed to glow and skin so delicate that, as it folded again and again upon itself, seemed to be the most beautiful thing in the world. Tea, the old woman said, handing her a cup. They drank. Watch out for puddles, the old woman told her. All right, Ronia Drake said, her mouth inside the tea cup. And take this. She reached across and fastened a pendant around the neck of Ronia Drake. What is it? Change, the old woman said. Change is good. When Ronia Drake woke up, her legs were covered in

red scratches and cuts, and a pendant was fastened around her neck. She never took it off. 13. Once upon a time there was a man who had a wife that he lost and another wife who was currently locked up and was therefore as good as lost. He could not remember his first wife, though he knew he should. He had an inkling of daughters as well, but that seemed to come and go as well. Still, he felt lonely. Still, he felt lost. Once, someone told him that there was a freedom in being lost. And in abandonment, too, if he thought about it right. But he could not, and could only think about the blank spaces where a family should be. The man s other wife lived in a tower far away. He rode to see her when he could. Once upon a time, this wife was pretty. Pretty as a princess. But not anymore. Not since they plucked the baby, purple and twisted and waterlogged, from her distended womb. Not since she was found with the hand of a dead woman in the bathroom, with children missing, and razor slices up and down her arm. Now, she lived in a white tower with white walls and a long white gown that tied in the back.

Now, her feet are large and ungainly, her face is broad and unbalanced. Now, she whispered stories of witches and insects and a wicked, wicked woman named Ronia Drake. Ronia Drake, the man thought, and though he could not place it, he liked the sound of that name. It had heft and weight and fragrance. It was familiar, somehow. Once, the man went walking in the park and fell off the path. He had been warned never to stray from the path, that you never did know who lived in those woods, although, for the life of him, he could not remember who warned him, if anyone did. He fell off the path and tumbled into the greening wood. Halfway down, he reached a ledge of sorts and stood up. The ledge became a path that switched back and forth until it reached the river. He followed it. He couldn t go up, and perhaps he could find a route to a boat landing, and maybe a road. As he walked, he became aware of something following him, something with soft, sure steps. He turned. A deer stood in front of him, her narrow head tilted slightly to the right. Her breath clouded prettily from a damp, black nose. She was brown and sleek and lovely, her coat shining like a queen s. And her eyes were wide and intelligent and blue.

Above each eye rested a grasshopper, glimmering like two green jewels. They tilted their iridescent faces towards him, and he could have sworn that one of them winked. You, he said. Tzzz, said the grasshoppers. Or perhaps it was the deer. Or perhaps it was the wood. Once upon a time there was a prince who searched for his lost love in the deep, dark forest. He never returned. Kelly Barnhill is a writer and teacher from Minneapolis, where she lives with her three little kids, hardworking husband and emotionally unstable dog. Her work (fiction and nonfiction, Literary, Speculative and Otherwise) has appeared in journals such as The Sun, The Rake, and Fantasy Magazine, and is forthcoming from Weird Tales, Nightshade Books and Notorious Press. Additionally, she writes funny science books for kids, where she gets to explore such heady topics as the importance of bat droppings in deep cave systems, and the exact volume of, well, material, that flows through the sewers of Paris each year. It s a fun job, actually.

Painting Walls in the Town of N Stephanie Campisi My boyfriend felt an immediate kinship with the town of N, even with our having arrived three days later than intended due to the winding, tree-wrapped roads that had been freshly redrawn with a shiny coat of ice. I think this affinity may have had something to do with the very namelessness of the place. My boyfriend, himself named M, after a Russian town in a mouldering book by Dostoyevsky, confessed to me once that his namelessness had bestowed upon him, or so he thought, at least, a sort of intangibility or even an invisibility. He is petite, standing a few inches below my own 5 6, with limbs that seem to bow gracefully in the middle rather than bending through use of a pointy knee or elbow. His eyes are a jarringly light blue several shades too pale for his dark hair and olive skin; he always jokes how he had been put together by a first-day intern of God s. Not only is he sometimes invisible, but somebody else s eyes clamour about in his head. I imagine how the wrong pair of eyes might affect one s world view. Would M see flashes of a world belonging to say, a Mary, or a

Hilda, or a Frederick? And would they occasionally do the same, tuning in as the smooth column of M s nose snuggled against my cheek as he kissed me? Would they feel a momentarily confusion, that uncertainty of waking up in a room that is not your own? Would they think for a moment, just a moment, that something had gone wrong and they were wearing somebody else s face? A woman in America received a face transplant, you know, I said. I was swathed in coloured smears of handmade blankets. My knuckles ached from the cold. I ve been suffering the niggling beginnings of arthritis for some months now, but haven t done anything about it other than occasionally rubbing in Deep Heat or covering my fingers with a hot water bottle. Arthritis is an old people s disease. Having arthritis would make me old, even though at twenty-three I am far from it. M smiled. He has a small mouth with large lips, and occasionally reminds me of a fish when he smiles. I expect him sometimes to blow bubbles. Could you imagine walking down the street and seeing a stranger wearing the face of your dead mother? I poked my head out of the swaddling nest I had cocooned myself in and regarded him. Three days ago, I had never seen snow except in my grandmother s freezer and on television. Winter on television seemed so much

softer than the reality; the snow seemed to be made of polystyrene that warmed and hugged you. The snow drifts were merely decorative, added for aesthetic reasons; coating the sharp rise of a chimney here or the curve of an eave there. This snow, this real snow, was concocted from a recalcitrant pragmatism, intent on hiding the real beauty of the world beneath a rug of sharply ersatz beauty and cleanliness. Like the foundation I applied routinely every morning, taking pains around the darker circles beneath my eyes and the grease-shiny tip of my nose, snow concealed, hid impurities, swept them beneath it like a penguin would an egg. Imagine if you were saddled with ugly face, or the wrong sex face, or getting a grandma s face. Do you think there would be controls for that? So that a supermodel couldn t be saddled with a hare lip? M lit a cigarette, cupping his hands to tease the flame from the lighter and to coax the cigarette to light. He smokes two cigarettes a day; when he wakes up, and before dinner. Although smoke perhaps isn t the correct word, considering he lights them and lets them burn down in one of his many ashtrays. He has a fascination with ash, he says, and prefers to experience the smoke choosing to come into his lungs rather than being forced. This reflects M s general outlook on life, I believe. His

mother jokes that when she was in labour, he asked her permission to be born; then just floated out of her womb. M, though I don t yet love him, intrigues me. He said, Maybe there would be a black-market trade in celebrity faces. That supermodel would turn up on the inside of the coat of an old Russian man, amongst six hundred reproduction Rolexes. The Mafia and the Triads would get involved, definitely. He trailed the cigarette lazily in his hand, as though it were an additional digit he didn t care to use. I don t think I d want somebody else to have my face. They can have anything else, but not my face. There s just something not quite right about thinking of somebody else living a life that should be yours. Imagine, like somebody else s eyes staring out of your face. M nodded, his gaze, with those eyes so pale they could be mistaken for being sightless, on the frostthickened window of our second-story bedroom. When the frost subsided the window looked out on the peaked old buildings of N, with their dark strapping and latticework and their fat little chimneys spread at the tops like elephants feet. The luminous forest with its swaying pine trees drifting in a somnolent acceptance of the fact that they would never drag themselves away from their perpetual home was a vivid background in the tapestry of

the town. That day, however, the icy fractals clinging to the slightly sunken glass, which had migrated downward slightly with age, were the only thing that could be seen through the window. M had taken out a book, and had unfolded his marked page. His folding of pages and breaking of book spines is my pet hate. The only books of mine he has permission to read are those I ve bought second hand the ones already dog-eared and with pale creases in the dark card of their cover. The book was Kerouac s On The Road, a book I ve not read, but probably should have. I ve a list of such books, and it extends into the hundreds, perhaps even thousands. At my previous job, I worked with an ex-english professor, who frequently quoted Yeats and Keats and a hundred other things that I had not read, and I had been torn between lying, saying that I had indeed read them, and between the truth of my own ignorance. She was sixty-two, I twenty-two. There was a forty year reading discrepancy between the two of us, and I felt it to be a most unfair advantage on her behalf. I am a voracious reader, yet have not read Dickens or Chaucer or Austen, although I could easily quote lines of their prose or summarise their work for you. M read quietly, as is his way. His stillness and silence invariably turn into invisibility; a sort of

chameleonistic camouflage. He develops a one-ness with everything about him, as though he exhibits a gift that enables him to find a common thread in all things, and is able to mould himself in the exact same way so that he too becomes part of that common thread. Yet for all this, for all of his gentle kindness and consideration, M goes virtually friendless. We had come to N to escape those things in M s past, in my past, in our collective past. M had said that our room displayed some evilly chthonic sentiment with its friezes of goatish men and women far too beautiful to be innocent and godly. The rest of the room comprised our wrought-iron bed with its dark musty sheets that looked to be older than I myself am, a small table adorned with a tired old chess set and surrounded with cowering chairs, a bookshelf, built-in robes, and the fireplace. This fireplace merely fed M s opinion that there was something darkly Lovecraftian about the place. Having not read any Lovecraft, I had to assume that he was correct in his assertion, and that, yes, it was indeed possible that a monster of unimaginable, indescribable horror could quite well be lurking in the heavy flue. I pulled out my worn diary and slashed away the day with a fat X.

*** During the day, M and I are painters. Before we came to N, neither of us had picked up any form of paintbrush since year seven art class. Fortunately, the ad through which we had found the job hadn t required any previous experience, and between us, we felt that such a job would allow us to eke out an entirely different existence from the one we d left behind. Our boss, Mr Kants, is a wartish old man whose nose tucks neatly into the cleft of his upper lip. He walks with a cane, and stoops gravely as a result, giving the impression that he is a bent and broken man. Unfortunately, this is not so; in addition to being an extremely harsh employer focusing almost solely on the end result rather than the process of the work, he fancies himself a writer, and can always be found with a gnawed biro and a stained notepad in hand. I ve never seen him write. Oddly, he seems to spend much more time ruminating about being a writer than actually writing anything. The town of N is not sufficiently degraded to be considered an historical or heritage listed site, and is often threatened by business men and greedy governments and tourists. The citizens of N are by nature very quiet and

subdued; they would prefer that the status quo be maintained. As none of the inhabitants has experienced life outside N, and their day to day life is essentially unchanging, their newspaper editor was forced to place an advertisement in another publication requesting the skills of two young people interested in working with the elderly facade of N. No one knows how exactly he went about placing this ad, as the town is constantly snowed in, and has never had a working telephone system. M and I wake each morning with the sun, as clocks do not seem to fare well here. The freezing climate of N makes it tremendously difficult to get up in the morning, and often our dozy condition persists for an hour or more as we huddle front-to-back in an S of warm flesh, M s fingers entwined in the curls of my hair, and the musty warmth of the stale slept-in air of the bedroom pressing against us like an additional blanket. After crawling out from the covers, I check the date in my diary, but it never seems to change, although I distinctly remember marking it each day. Sometimes, we re woken by our landlady, Meredith, who is a portly thing rather resembling the soft puffy glaze of a teapot. She has thin, thready ankles that miraculously support the heft of her calves, which are like enormous upside-down teardrops stuck beneath her flesh,

and the similar bulk of her thighs, the softly-fatty rippling of which is all too visible beneath the sheath of her cotton uniform. I ve always wondered about overweight women who persist in wearing skin-tight clothing. It occurs to me that it might be a denial of the fact; through wearing tight clothing, they shun the idea of being fat, as after all, fat women cannot wear fitted clothing. Perhaps it is a rebellion against the shapeless tentiness of plus-sized clothing, which serves only to make the wearer look even larger. Or perhaps they understand that they are supremely sexual, what with the aggressive thrust of their pendulous breasts and the strong lines of their hips and legs that cut through their clothing. I sometimes wonder if M would prefer one of these uber-women in place of my lanky frame and narrow hips. If I covered my hair with a baseball cap, one would not be able to discern my gender. Meredith makes us a breakfast of obese red sausages that hiss and spit and bubble oil even as they rest on our plates, and a chunk of sweet bread with home-made cheese. M usually cradles his coffee in fingers faint and discoloured from the cold, digging the tips in to the hard surface of the mug, as though this will prevent the allencompassing cold from reaching him. His cigarette usually lies unlit on the table, the gold rim of the filter

blending in with the corn-yellow tablecloth. M is often distant in the morning; so distant that it often seems that he has taken a stroll outside his body, and is visiting somebody else s, staring through their eyes. He blames it on being tired, on needing coffee, but it reminds me all too much of my last boyfriend, whose moodiness we would always explain away in the same way. I regret that last relationship, place it at the top of my mental list of things I wish I had not done. I suspect it is that way for most people when they think about those people they gave themselves to, emotionally, physically, only to find themselves rejected. It is such a personal rejection, having a relationship end without your realising it, after a year or more. It is not your lack of knowing each other that is the problem, but rather the other person knows you well enough that they decide they do not wish to have anything to do with you. I choose to believe that M is indeed tired. After breakfast, we pile on our extra socks and scarves, most of which my grandmother had knitted over a ten year period, and had lain forgotten at the back of my wardrobe until our coming to N. I had little need for scarves in my previous life. M stuffs the leather fingers of his gloves with some sort of massacred, feathery, and I pull a faux-fur hat over

my head. The hat is one of those flat-topped hats worn by Russians and the glamorous actresses of the 1920s. I am far from glamorous, but my ears are vaguely protected from the sheets of wind that rage between the tall rows of buildings. The wind in N is so strong as to be an almost solid object, and it pummels mercilessly those in its way. If we are to paint the exterior of a building, we must first erect a shelter to ward off the wind s attacks. These shelters need to be propped up on both sides by fat bags of sand, which sit forlornly against the scarred wood, bending their tasselled edges. We prise open the dribble-stained lids of paint using thin metal bars like smoothed-out spoons, and stir the fuming, seething concoction within. The paint is a murky substance, a colour between grey and invisible, and it reminds me of melted-down liquorice. Our brushes are long and flat, the width of my hand, and bristly like the tip of my ponytail. They last until the end of the working day, after which they seem to dissolve in their rinsing jars. Considering the effect that our handiwork has upon the buildings we have been told to paint, I m not entirely surprised by this. Our task yesterday was the library, one of the few places in N to which power lines, like writhing black snakes, are connected. When the snow falls, the power

lines shudder, performing that flimsy side-to-side movement characteristic of serpents. I m wary of power lines, and have always been. I fear that their tightly-coiled spines might one day unravel, allowing them to fall to the ground, sliced in half: garden worms spitting electric lifeblood at passers-by. We d painted only the far left wall of the library, having spent much of the previous day pulling at snarls of brambly creepers and stubborn spokes of bird-limed ivy, our fingers throbbing from cold. The wall, once stripped of its leafy clothing, had been clean, with few wounds to show from the choking vines other than a long, whipping line through the dark brick here and there, scoring into the wall like a frown. That day, the wall crumbled softly and with dignity, as might an old woman wrapped in pearls and a reminiscent smile. It stepped gently downward over itself, pulling a train of mortar behind it. M stood watching, one hand on his hip, and the other clasping at the wrist of the first. His paintbrush wandered like an incongruously large cigarette between his index and middle fingers. His boots ground into the snow as he trudged over the smashed-brick path to the western wall of the library. He looked somehow wrong against the backdrop of the library: his clothes were too deep, too blue. It were as

though he were encroaching upon the territory of N, and I was unnerved by this, as M has always managed to meld seamlessly into any world or reality he chose to inhabit. The curved edge of the paint tin banged against my shins as I carried it before me, gloved hands curled around the wire handle, which squeaked as the tin rocked back and forth. A crow, glossy and black and huddled in a branch bent with snow, called out, as though replying to the conversation of the container. My ears ached from the wind, which tunnelled past the library walls and forked off in several directions, tormenting the growing cracks in the facades of N s buildings and insinuating its way through objects not quite solid. The wind took up the call of the crow, carried it along, and as my ears pulsed in freezing agony, I fancied for a moment that the told was perhaps not the reason for my aching ears. Perhaps, instead, the wind, and the call of the crow, and the squeaking of my paint tin were all in some way connected, were each a part of an unfathomable whole. M s paintbrush had a plastic orange handle, and he held it gingerly, dabbing paint on to the peeling western wall. The building s old rendering had chipped off in places, leaving dark brick flaked with slivers of dull cement. Here and there, curls of white paint dangled from

window frames or from the tin spouting. *** That evening, M lay supine on the patterned quilt of our bed, holding his Kerouac above his face. The book cast a broad shadow across his eyes and hair, and he looked for a moment as though he were dipping his head into a pool of water. The stuttering light from the fireplace caused the book s shadow to jig. You know, I can t concentrate, he said presently. I ve been reading the same page for the past ten minutes. I was seated in one of the subdued chairs pulled up to the tiny table in one corner of the room. I had swept aside the chess board so that I might have room to place my pen and paper. A black bishop lay on its side, and a rook was lolled from side to side on its rounded base. I was writing a letter to my grandmother, and was doing so with my favourite fountain pen. I have always held a fascination for fountain pens; they seem to be a mysterious reminder of another time. M teases me sometimes by hiding my pens and leaving a cheap Bic biro on my desk, but as he knows that it is impossible for me to write with such an

implement, always returns them within the hour. A biro is somehow unable to render my voice upon the paper; it is not a conduit as is a fountain pen. Yet, though I had been sitting with pen poised to paper for a similar amount of time as M had been reading, I had not written anything beyond a simple salutation. I sucked at the inside of my lip. Why is that, do you think? Could be the cold, said M. He tilted his chin up and regarded me. It gets into everything. I feel like I ve been tainted by the cold. I nodded, and inched my chair toward the fireplace. It s almost violating. But I think it s the remoteness that gets to me the most. The remoteness? That is why we came here, you know, M pointed out, his too-pale eyes still fixed on me. To escape my mother, mostly. He grinned. The fire danced, refusing to go out even though it had burnt most of its fuel. It seemed in striking contrast to the stillness and silence outside. Don t you feel that everybody seems to be detached? Mr Kants? Meredith? We ve only met two people in the entire town, and they seem to want to keep away. M folded the corner of his page, and closed his book. He rolled it into a funnel and spoke through it. I

was glad that it had not been a book that I had spent good money on, but had to wonder whether he was deliberately frustrating me by destroying it. We have only been here three days. Yes, but what are we even doing here? Painting weird paint on walls to help them crumble so that N can be heritage listed? Don t you think that s utter crap? M stretched his arms over his head, then crawled off the bed and over to me. He pointed his toes toward the fireplace, and hugged the metal legs of my chair. His face pressed into my hip. Crap, maybe, but the pay is good, and the town is pretty cool. I could live here, I think, for good. It s so peaceful; so untainted by city-ness. I ran a finger affectionately over the stubble dusting his cheeks: his beanie hid his hair from view. City-ness? You spend your whole life reading classics, and come up with words like city-ness? He shrugged, and rubbed his cheek against my finger like a cat. You re such a romantic. Wanting to live in a village by a forest. I rested my head against the high back of my chair. What s the bet the people here have sold their souls or something, so that the town can stay beautiful? It wouldn t surprise me, M muttered, nestling the warmth of his bare neck against the fuzz of my clothing.

*** We remained in N for what seemed like year after calendar year. Each night, I would mark off the day in the vinyl-covered diary I had stolen from my last job, and each morning, the mark seemed to be gone. M called it cabin fever, snow blindness, laughingly mocked what he called the last vestiges of my sanity. Living like this, where time is not measured by newspapers or watches or Greenwich Meridian, you have to learn to count differently, I suppose, he would say. I would lean against the fragile windowsill and squint off into the haphazard forest, where the ribs of the old church steeple, bruised a rank blue in the slow light, presented themselves like ivory tusks, and the liquorice-black hands of the clock kept their position, never wavering, never straying. And when the summer never comes, and M and I continue to take to the softly-gritty buildings of N, breaking down cobblestones and strapping painted virgin white, and scouring at the snow-drowned boughs of the trees that push too close to the town, and my joints ache from an arthritis that makes me feel old, but never progresses, and M never finds a face, the eyes, that are

truly his own, we realise that our work, here, in this town of abject silence and loneliness, is the only way to press on, continue, take a precipitous step away from the frozen present. But I know that M, my companion, my chameleon, will take on the attributes of the town, and I will find him one afternoon, hard to the touch of my wind-burnt fingers, and ageless. Stephanie Campisi s work has been published in various magazines and anthologies. You can find her online at misapostrophication.blogspot.com.

Author Spotlight: Gord Sellar K. Tempest Bradford Where do you get your ideas from? Living in Asia! When I left Montreal in 2001, I had only two friends with cell phones and I connected to the net using dialup. I flew to Seoul, which looked like a scene out of Bladerunner, and where everyone even little old ladies had cell phones and broadband internet. I ve been out for drinks with gangsters, and met one in my YMCA swimming class, too. I ve played a gig at a major Korean rock festival, met crazed Vietnam war veteran cabbies, and been served food where the main dish was still dying, wiggling on the plate. That cognitive estrangement that Darko Suvin used to write about as central to speculative fiction that s my bread and butter. If not yourself, who would you be? Yes, exactly. This dilemma is precisely why I m content just being me.

(Though ask me again when we have the technology for an industry of intercranial tourism, and I may answer you differently.) Who are your favorite painters and composers? I could go on for hours about this I studied the saxophone and music composition for years but to keep it simple: Igor Stravinsky, Steve Reich, Johannes Ockeghem the latter, his stuff is amazing! I just got that Michael Torke boxed set, Ecstatic Collection, and it s excellent, too. But, of course, my main musical interest has always been jazz, where s mostly about performers, not composers: John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, John Zorn, Eric Dolphy, Ornette Coleman, Matthew Shipp, Branford Marsalis, Don Pullen... there are so many I could name. I also think Nick Drake was an outstanding songwriter. And I have a thing for Mouse on Mars, and the now-defunct group Hum. Oh, and this bizarre Korean group Hwang Shin Hye Band, that consists of only one guy and is about the weirdest popular music ever. I m less clued in about visual art. I ve always liked

Dali and Kandinsky. For some reason I can t pinpoint, Chaïm Soutine s portraits really get me. But these tastes are purely idiosyncratic and admittedly ignorant. I do think highly of Jeremy Tolbert s weird photoshoppery. That mushroom with the eye... gah! Your favorite heroines or heroes in fiction? Well, really, I distrust this whole idea of heroes. You should have seen the differences in opinion between my Korean students and Chinese exchange students regarding whether Mao Zedong was a hero or a villain of history. So often, the stories about heroes are the kind of thing one imagines to have been written by people whose teachers work for The Party, you know? The notion of a hero is like a carryover from times when the biggest thug in the group called the shots. We ve internalized it, it might even to some degree be hardwired into us look how we vote, after all but when you look at it, this hero-worship is worse than useless. Sometimes, when it s sublimated to geek-heroism, like in books by Greg Egan or Charlie Stross, that works for me, but otherwise, mostly I ve got misgivings. Many of the protagonists who mean the most to me

are really just people like anyone else, who get caught up in personal and historical circumstances. These are the kinds of characters Peter Watts writes about I ve just started reading him, and he s wonderful for that and Bruce Sterling creates a lot of characters like that. Maureen McHugh, too China Mountain Zhang showed me that there was room for books about normal people in the SF genre. About folks surviving, adapting, and dealing with life s bizarreness as intelligently as possible. We don t think of that as heroic. The old definition blurs that out, makes it just seem quotidian, but it really isn t. Actually, I m fascinated by the the characters who are more peripheral, who normally wouldn t be the focus of a novel, though they appear one or two times, and live and breathe for those few moments onstage. Perhaps that s characteristically Canadian of me, all that interest in the periphery, since we re so conscious of, and obsessed with, our own peripherality? Like that evangelical-vegetarian couple in Graham Greene s The Comedians those two still hang around in my imagination, though I read the book years ago. Or the heavy prole woman outside the window from Winston and Julia s hideout in Nineteen- Eighty-Four, hanging her washing and singing. She haunts me.

What is your favorite occupation? I actually love teaching, at least when it s a challenge. In my job right now, for example, I get to work with college-aged Koreans who re actually trying to learn about and understand Western culture(s), literature, history, and society, and things like that, which is a really rewarding process to help them along with. They surprise me pretty often, and occasionally, they just blow me away. For example, I published a chapbook of my students poems last semester. Some of the poems they wrote in their second or third language, English about love and heartbreak, about historical or personal tragedies and things like that... they were just stunning, and I simply had to get a chapbook together. Your favorite names? Names are like colors: I don t really have any favorites. But I love the sound of the indigenous Korean names that have grown more popular, especially for female children, since the 70s. They re really earthysounding. Most modern Korean names, like, say, So- Young or Jin-Hee or Ji-Young, they re Sinicized names, that is, based on Chinese words and names. But native

Korean names are slowly getting more and more popular, names like Haet-Bit, or Bo-Ram, or Ha-Neul, or Mi-Reu. To my ear, these names just sound richer and earthier somehow. What natural talent would you like to have that you don t? I m not sure whether I would choose a bigger talent for languages, the ability to do any kind of mathematics at all I m pathetically innumerate or perhaps the ability to dance, and I mean, to really, truly dance. Not this wiggling-shuffling-through-the-crowd business we politely call dancing nowadays.

Author Spotlight: Stephanie Campisi K. Tempest Bradford Where do you get your ideas from? Much to the dismay of my friends and family, anything you do or say around me is fair game. Happily for me, I find that this influences their behaviour in such a way that not only are they as a result fascinatingly lucid and well-spoken, but also unfailingly nice it s as though I am a one-woman panopticon. I steal shamelessly from other authors, newspapers, magazines, dreams, and of course, my own experiences. What author do you admire and hope to be compared to someday? As awfully narcissistic (and unlikely, but hey, this is Fantasy Magazine, so I imagine flights of fancy are quite allowed) as it sounds, I d love to be up there with the Parmuks and Ecos and Calvinos and Burroughses and Gogols and Rushdies and so on of the world. Those who say bugger off to those plot-first people and instead mire

themselves in language, toying with it and stretching it to a point where it s almost broken. There s nothing wrong with getting one s mitts a little grotty from linguistic wallowing I always feel that those who look for transparent forms of writing are perhaps better suited to another medium. And to be able to write with some decent insight into humanity and human motivation in the style of Dostoyevsky and Chekhov and Oe and so on would probably not be something to complain about, either. What author do you admire yet hope never to be compared to? Solzhenitsyn (not that this is in any way likely, anyway). He s akin to eating Brussels sprouts though you know they re good for you, three failed three attempts are probably an indication that they re probably not your thing. Is Star Wars science fiction or fantasy? What a deliciously ambiguous sentence! I ll take the intended reading and say that although

I m a bit anti- Star Wars myself, and have avoided it rather assiduously since childhood, I d be perfectly content to stick it pretty generally under a fiction banner, or if I must streamline a little more, then speculative fiction. I m not so much into labeling things and dividing things neatly and slotting them in here and there and trying to align them as though they are pieces of something purchased from Ikea, but acknowledge that people are pretty reductive, as are marketing gurus, so it s something pretty inevitable. Tell me a little about Painting Walls in the Town of N. What was the first image or phrase or impetus that made you sit down and spin it out? I have a document on my computer that contains the sentence we painted the wall with cracks, which was obviously the image that kicked off the story. Beyond that, I m not entirely sure where it came from, or how it came to be. It did sit unfinished for months and months on my computer whilst I tried to figure out what on earth to do with it... I suppose it was an odd story in the sense that I had absolutely no idea where I was going with it.

Dear me, Stephanie, what on earth were you thinking? Although this is a question I get asked rather often, it always delights me, because it means I m doing something right. Well, in some sense, on some level, at least.

About the Editors Cat Rambo lives, writes, and teaches by the shores of an eagle-haunted lake in the Pacific Northwest. Her 200+ fiction publications include stories in Asimov s, Clarkesworld Magazine, and Tor.com. Her short story, Five Ways to Fall in Love on Planet Porcelain, from her story collection Near + Far (Hydra House Books), was a 2012 Nebula nominee. Her editorship of Fantasy Magazine earned her a World Fantasy Award nomination in 2012. For more about her, as well as links to her fiction and information about her popular online writing classes, see www.kittywumpus.net. Sean Wallace is the founder, publisher, and managing editor of Prime Books. In his spare time he has edited or co-edited a number of projects, including two magazines, Clarkesworld Magazine and Fantasy Magazine, and a number of anthologies, including Best New Fantasy, Japanese Dreams, The Mammoth Book of Steampunk, People of the Book, Robots: Recent A.I., and War & Space: Recent Combat. He lives in Germantown, MD, with his wife, Jennifer, and their twin daughters, Cordelia and Natalie.