For Ubu, the gladiator life is short and brutal, but in the shadow of the arena there is a chance for something more. [15min]

Excerpt:

Ubu ducked and Klaus’s sword hissed over his head, death missing him by a fearful inch. Sand spurted into the air as he span left, rolling across the packed floor of the arena, his heart racing. The crowd roared as the huge German stomped after him. It was said that Klaus was half cyclops, his close-set eyes and eight-foot frame the mark of a monstrous heritage. Ubu felt the ground shake as he dived clear of another blow, grabbing a discarded trident as he landed.

Ubu swung the spear upwards, blocking a strike with a clang and a shower of sparks. He rolled back through Klaus’s legs. The giant stood for a moment bewildered, peering down in confusion through the narrow gaps in his helmet. Then Ubu thrust upwards with the might of desperation. The prongs struck below Klaus’s scraps of chain-mail, piercing flesh and scraping bone. The German turned, shaking the trident free. A crimson rain poured across the sand. He roared, raised his sword, and then staggered to one knee as pain and blood loss hit.

Ubu grinned in relief, white teeth gleaming in the sunlight. He leapt, feet first, crashing into Klaus’s chest and sending him sprawling in his own gore. Ubu heaved the long sword from the ground and turned his gaze to the imperial box, waiting to see his opponent’s fate.

The emperor’s thumb rose in the sign of death.

Andrew lives and occasionally writes in Stockport, England, where the grey skies provide a good motive to stay inside at the word processor. When not working in his standard issue office job he battles the slugs threatening to overrun his garden and the monsters lurking in the woods. He’s had over forty stories published in places such as Murky Depths, Redstone SF and Steampunk Reloaded.

• Listen to his story, entitled “Live by the Sword”.
• Andrew occasionally scrawls down thoughts about his latest stories at his website.

Caught between two enemies, the Dacouvri turned to the goddess of the mountains for protection. But what does that protection really mean – and what does it cost? [14 min]

Excerpt:

Yelto’s fingers scrabbled at the loose earth, and for one moment, just one bright and hopeful moment, he thought he might fall and die. But then he caught hold of a spur of rock, embedded deep enough in the soil to hold his weight; and he hauled himself up and lay, breathing heavily, at the top of the cliff. The air was thick and damp in his lungs. He rolled onto his back and sucked in great draughts of it, as if it were patxo smoke.

But it was not patxo leaves that were burning. It was the village of Duilhac. His home.

“You should not be out of breath from such a climb, little brother,” Riantxa scolded him. He looked up at her, a silhouette against the sky.

That was all she ever did. Nothing he had done had ever been good enough for Riantxa. She was the perfetta, the virginal knight of their village. She had been a paragon, and everyone had loved and feared her as they loved and feared one blessed.

But she was here. She was here at the top of the cliff, with him, where the Dacouvri had died before he was born, and while the Dacouvri were dying in the village below.

He took her proffered hand, and hauled himself upright, to stand blinking in the bright light. Or perhaps the smoke. Even here, five hundred spans above the village, the smoke was swirling, sharp in his face.

The smoke of a funeral pyre. The pyre of everyone he had ever known.

An Englishman now living in an obscure corner of New Mexico, Brian Dolton has traveled widely. He’s watched the sun set over Saharan dunes from the back of a camel; he’s played volleyball on a sandbar in the middle of the Pacific Ocean; he’s stayed in a Buddhist monastery on a sacred mountain in Japan. Occasionally, between all these distractions (and the need to do dull things with computers to pay the bills), he manages to write.

• Listen to his short story, entitled “Where the Dacouvri Died.”
• Visit Brian on Goodreads.

Midori Snyder is the author of nine books for adults and children, published in English, French, Dutch, and Turkish. She won the Mythopoeic Award for The Innamorati, a novel inspired by early Roman myth and the Italian “Commedia dell’Arte” tradition. Her most recent novel, Except the Queen, a contemporary urban fantasy was co-authored with Jane Yolen. Other novels include The Flight of Michael McBride (a mythic western), Soulstring (a lyrical fairy tale), The Oran Trilogy: New Moon, Sadar’s Keep, and Beldan’s Fire (imaginary-world fantasy,) and Hannah’s Garden (a contemporary faery novel for young adults). She has published numerous short stories for adults and young adults, a selection of nonfiction articles on myth and folklore, and essays on writing. She co-edited and designed the online Journal of Mythic Arts from 2003 – 2008 and continues to co-direct the Endicott Studio for Mythic Arts with Terri Winding.

• For more information, visit her blog, In the Labyrinth.

When the last of the sea ice disappears, Nattiq must decide whether her future lies in her seal skin … or in a different form entirely. [11 min]

Excerpt:

The snows were few, and light. Nattiq clawed a hole in the ice and eased her nose above the surface of the water, whiskers trembling at the sky. She smelled for snow. She smelled for the white bear. She smelled neither, and bobbed in the breathing hole, languid motions of her back flippers keeping her afloat.

Her body told her the pup would come soon. She had seen the sun, though it stayed yet low in the sky. She should have been eating cod, building a burrow, preparing for her pup. But the ice didn’t carry enough snow to make a refuge from the white bear. She had tried, again and again. Her attempted burrows were so shallow she could barely turn around inside, and inevitably, they collapsed on her. The ice floes were no longer a safe place to birth a pup. Nor were the floating heaps of human garbage that accumulated in the gyre, full of metals and plastics–as much a death trap as the white bear.

Nattiq didn’t want to face the obvious answer. Land. As a pup, she herself had lived near the land, each year migrating farther north, chasing the ice. To go back now seemed impossibly far.

A ribbon of cold and salty water brushed her fur, and the pup bumped in her womb.

Nicole Feldringer is a Ph.D. student in atmospheric sciences and a former Himalayan earthquake geologist. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with a Frisbee-obsessed Australian Cattle Dog and writes short stories, science fiction novels, and academic essays on climate dynamics. She can be found online at nicolefeldringer.com.

• Read “Beached” a mythic, cryptofiction tale of an arctic creature affected by global warming.
• Visit Nicole’s website.

When the search for a missing ship becomes a desperate race with an unknown creature across New Zealand’s untamed wilderness, how far will one man go to rein in both the monsters roaming the wild, and those lurking within himself? [27min]

Excerpt:

Boulcott Farm Stockade, Hutt Valley, Wellington, January 1855

Sun lanced off the airship’s fittings as it descended. Kent patted the report in his breast pocket, his lips moving silently:

“Welcome to Wellington, Mister Faulkner. Morgan Kent, from the Governor’s office, to brief you on the disappearance of the HMS Kestrel. I have prepared a report…”

Faulkner was a living legend, and his despatch to the colonies vindicated Kent’s suspicions about what had really happened to the Kestrel. This was no maritime misadventure. Faulkner’s arrival was proof that the taniwha truly existed, and that there was a future for a man like Morgan Kent in searching for such elusive beasts. Impress the suspenders off Howard Faulkner and Kent might find himself on a fast airship back to England and a life of hunting real monsters, not just the myths and lore which were his stock in trade as a Royal Ethnographer.

A dozen iron harpoons loosed from Waka-a-Rangi and slammed into the earth. Internal winches creaked, drawing the airship down. Faulkner had the good sense to trust the locals, Kent noted. Unlike the British, the flyboys of Ngati Poheke were not prone to crashing their dirigibles on the Auckland-Wellington passage. Poheke were wanderers, taking to the skies as readily as their ancestors had crossed the ocean to reach this lost paradise at the bottom of the South Pacific. And just as the Maori had adopted the settlers’ weapons and improved on their battle tactics, so too had they mastered their airships of brass and steam in ways that British pilots simply hadn’t. Mercenaries they may be, but they were worth their coin.

The groundcrew secured the dirigible and a gangway folded out. Faulkner appeared, his leather overcoat snapping like the wings of some giant raptor, white hair framing a weathered face beneath his wide-brimmed hat. At his belt hung knives and pepperpot pistols, as if prepared to find himself in the midst of battle at any moment. Maybe, Kent thought, he too should carry a pistol. Steeling himself, he crossed the field.

Dan Rabarts is a speculative fiction writer, sometime narrator of podcasts (including stories for the Hugo award-winning StarShipSofa), occasional sailor of sailing things, and father of two wee miracles in a little house on a hill, under the southern sun. He has work published or forthcoming in the Wily Writers Podcast and at Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. He can be found lurking in a dark corner of the web at dan.rabarts.com.

• Read “Waking the Taniwha” a mythic, cryptofiction tale of an encounter with a giant monster.
• Read Dan’s award-winning science fiction story, “Crucible.”
• Visit Dan’s blog.

Excerpt:

Takemoto-sensei took in a slow breath. Released it. He cleared his mind. He willed the arthritis out of his fingers. He did not have time for the pains of an old man. The performance was about to start. As he put on the blue robes that symbolized his invisibility onstage, he prayed to the gods of the theater and of his clan. Tonight’s performance would be perfect. It had to be perfect; with his age and the censors and the changing tastes of the audience, Takemoto never knew which performance would be his last.

After discussing the matter with his projectionist, Takemoto had chosen a portion of The Trials of Crimson for tonight. A perennial favorite, though tonight they would be performing a more dramatic rather than romantic section. The Revolution of Fire and the destruction wrought by the Imperial forces. An appropriate reminder for these latter days. Let the audience and the censors make of it what they will.

He had been told that the theater was full, or at least that all the tickets had sold. Such was the strength of the play’s reputation. But too many patrons in these latter days bought tickets and did not attend the performance. It was advantageous to be seen as a patron of the arts, but that did not mean one enjoyed them, much less appreciated them. And Takemoto’s art was one most people found difficult to understand.

It was not a holonovel, where audience and performer were one, the viewer the solipsistic star of everything. Nor was it teleradio, with thoughts and emotions beamed directly to the brain. It was not a net opera, with everyone jacked into the same experience. His art was cineraku, and Takemoto was a master.