PodCastle Escape Artists, Inc

* Author : Samantha Henderson

* Narrator : Tina Connolly

* Hosts : Matt Dovey, Dave Thompson, Anna Schwind and Pria Wood

* Audio Producer : Devin Martin

*

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Originally appeared in Helix.





Content Warnings for carnivorous mermaids, sexual shenanigans in the presence of a minor, and near death experiences.





Rated R

The Mermaid’s Tea Party

by Samantha Henderson

The mermaid barely slowed her breakneck pace as she approached and ran herself halfway up a yellow beach, belly-down and arching her back so her torso was almost upright. At the same time, she flung Cassandra casually upon the sand, half-knocking the breath out of her. Cassandra gulped for air, then scrambled as best she could up the beach, out of reach of the mermaid’s grasp — or so she profoundly hoped.

The mermaid watched her and made no move towards her, a nasty grin on her face.

“I’ll find the tea, and you’ll make us a party,” she said. “Then, maybe, I’ll bring you some food.”

Cassandra stared. Then the import of the creature’s words struck her and she looked around, beginning to panic. The island was perhaps a mile around and very flat, save where white ridges were raised above the surface. A large wave would have swamped it. A few trees she recognized from picture books as palms clustered off-center, a green haze underneath them. There was not much else.

Nothing to eat, certainly.

The sand clung in a fine film to her dress and bare legs, and itched. Miss Murchinson would have been scandalized.

* Author : Lauren Ring

* Narrator : Rebecca Fraimow

* Host : Matt Dovey

* Audio Producer : Eric Valdes

*

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Previously published by Fantasy and Science Fiction





Content Warnings for racial discrimination, terminal illness, and the death of a parent





PG-13







(emet)

by Lauren Ring

i. detection

When protesters take out the power at her Silicon Valley office, Chaya is at home, watching a golem pull dandelions.

The morning air is clear and cold. Chaya can hear her computer pinging alerts at her from inside her farmhouse. As soon as the dandelion patch is gone, she wraps her knee-high figurine in satin, pressing the cloth against its soft clay midsection. She lays her golem gently down by the riverside. A single tap on her phone activates the preprogrammed subroutine that wipes the alef from its forehead, leaving only the letters mem and tav — every instance in its code of emet, truth, becomes met, death.

She slips the bundle into the water, watching the satin flutter away in the current as the golem returns to the wet sediment. All that is left of Chaya’s creation are smears of ochre on her fingers and lines of code on her hard drive.

Chaya wipes her hands on her jeans and heads back to her daily bug tickets, ready to find out the day’s fresh disaster. Working from home has its perks, but maintaining her plot of land would be impossible without the help of her golems.











After a few false starts, Chaya has the bestowal of life down to a science. Each morning at dawn, she molds assistants from clay, connects them to her wireless network just like any smart watch or Bluetooth dongle, and passes them the day’s variables: a list of chores, with each step painstakingly defined. The golem in charge of the dandelions finished early, but there are others of various sizes lumbering about the yard, carrying eggs from Chaya’s chicken coop and clearing loose stones from her long, winding driveway.

Chaya stumbles over a heap of dandelion roots on her front porch and swears. She has forgotten to specify that the golem must dispose of the roots on her compost heap, not just wherever they happen to land once plucked. Another tweak for her chore list. There is less and less time for quality assurance these days, and Chaya tries to pour as much of that time as possible into her code for Millbank Biometrics.

“Sorry I’m late.” She slides her headset on before she even sits down, logging in to the morning standup.

“No worries. Headquarters lost power just now, so I’ll be taking over until management can find a hotspot.” The sprint leader smiles as he speaks. Chaya will never understand how her coworkers can be so cheery, not with the bug tickets stacking up and the release date approaching. Millbank has contracts with social media platforms, telehealth doctors, and even law enforcement agencies, so management has been very clear that there’s no postponing this release. Still, Chaya doesn’t want to seem unmotivated. She smiles, too, and taps her mic back on.

“That’s the third time this month. Is everything all right over there?”

“It’s just the privacy protests again. Legal still thinks we’re only collateral, since the office complex also houses a few major surveillance vendors. There’s nothing to worry about — especially for you, Chaya.”

* Author : Chaitanya Murali

* Narrator : M. L. Krishnan

* Host : Matt Dovey

* Audio Producer : Devin Martin

*

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PodCastle 788: An Anklet Broken is a PodCastle original.











An Anklet Broken

by Chaitanya Murali

 









There is a man I am meant to love. He is the son of a sea-merchant, wealthy and well-connected. A friend of Karikalan, the Chola King.

And this man is my husband and a wastrel.

A sin it is for me to say these words, think these thoughts, but what else do you call a man who has pulled you from the sea and married you, only to then leave you for a courtesan?

Who bears a child on that courtesan, only to then leave her on the suspicion of her infidelity and come crawling back to you for forgiveness?

“Please, Kannagi. I was wrong to leave you — I know this now. The gods have punished me and left me destitute. I know now that I cannot live without you. Will you take me back?”

Left him destitute?

“Please. I cannot go back to my family penniless. I cannot bear that shame.”

What of my shame, Kovalan? Does that mean nothing to you?

But my mouth smiles, the expression warm and genuine, a beacon for this beleaguered cretin.

“Of course I will take you back; you are my husband, are you not?”

I reach down, unclasp the anklet around my right leg, and hold it out to him.











Kovalan stares at it, confusion etched into his face. He does not recognise it.

“You gave this to me when we were first married. There are sapphires inside. We can pawn this for some money, start anew.”

The hand that reaches out to grasp mine is sweaty, and the feeling is of oil that will stick to my skin forever. When it retracts, it takes with it the anklet, grasping it the way a drowning man grasps a life-rope.

“Sapphires, yes. Your favourite.”

If my loving husband knew anything, he would know that they are not my favourite. I do not like sapphires. I have always been partial to pearls.

I am a girl of the open seas. I have lived upon them, and beneath their waves. What beauty would I see in rock and stone from the earth?

Sapphires in particular, I detest. Cheap imitations of water, fashioned from stone. They are false, and they are wrong — and a perfect representation of this marriage.

These sapphires are more than just a display of his indifference towards me — they are chains of fire, tying me down to this man, keeping me from leaving.

That was the bargain I entered into when I left the waves, younger, and captivated by a soul of the land. I bound my power within them, fashioned the anklets to store them, and gave myself over to him. I did this for him, to prove my love.

I am meant to love this man, but I am tired of love.

And because of that curse of love, I am trapped, tied to him. As long as either of the anklets is in our possession, we are bound to one another. But he does not remember this, does not care for the sacrifice I made, and so I make this gamble.

He beams, spinning the anklet to hear the stones trill. He does not look at my face.

Does not hear me whisper.









“May this gift be the ruin of you, Kovalan.”



He does not tell me of his escapades during the two years we were apart — he has sense enough not to do that. But the stories are easy to find; they are everywhere in ...

* Authors : Tanya Aydelott, M.K. Hutchins and Lindsey Godfrey Eccles

* Narrators : Kaitlyn Zivanovich, Sofía Barker and Karen Menzel (née Bovenmyer)

* Host : Matt Dovey

* Audio Producer : Devin Martin

*

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“The Greenhouse Bargain” was previously published by Flash Fiction Online, September 2022

“Shattered Petals of Celadon” was previously published by Daily Science Fiction

“War Doesn’t Know What It Wants” is a PodCastle Original!





“The Greenhouse Bargain” has a content warning for death.

“War Doesn’t Know What it Wants” has a content warning for death, death of a child, loss of a spouse





“The Greenhouse Bargain” is rated PG

“Shattered Pearls of Celadon” is rated PG

“War Doesn’t Know What It Wants” is rated PG-13





The Greenhouse Bargain

by Tanya Aydelott

He sent my mother’s ghost to deliver the terms of the bargain.

I accepted; there was no choice. When I asked what to expect, she said, Ten good years.

The Whipstitch Man had visited me twice, once to take my sister and once to collect my mother. The second time, he caught me tucking my fingers into the cold pocket of his patched-metal coat. His pinch-hold on my mother’s elbow tightened as he gave me a choice: I could keep the silver I’d tried to steal, but I would also have to keep my mother’s ghost. She would never journey to the underworld. And when I, too, passed, we would stay and watch all the sunsets and sunrises together, forgotten and scavenged by whatever horrors lived in the night.

Or I could trade places with him. He would steal time from my human life, and then he would give me eternity.

Either I damned my mother and myself, or I damned myself to become a thing of metal and darkness — how was I supposed to choose?

But the Whipstitch Man had no patience for my begging. The dead cannot survive in the world of the living and my mother’s ghost was already beginning to sag. I shrieked that I would trade with him; I would take his place when my time came.











Three nights, his rusted-nail voice said. In three nights you will learn the final terms.

When my mother’s ghost came to the door, frail and already so unlike my mother, I wept. And when she told me I would have ten good years, I felt each of those tears as a needle through my skin.



I squandered the first year, and the second. The third I spent away from home, trying to outrun my nightmares. In the fourth year, too many scents reminded me of my mother’s house and I returned, chastened. Her gardens were in shambles and it took me months to repair the arbors, patch the hedges, and replace the glass in the greenhouse. Curious neighbors came, bearing gifts of plants and mulch, until finally my mother’s roses bloomed and the fig tree burst into fruit.

The stories started that year, too, the townspeople crowding into my greenhouse to report what they’d seen. How the Whipstitch Man came to collect a boy from the baker’s house, but paused at the doorway to sniff a bouquet of my hydrangeas.

* Authors : M. Stevenson and Jo Miles

* Narrators : Andrew K. Hoe, Eric Valdes and Valerie Valdes

* Host : Matt Dovey

* Audio Producer : Eric Valdes

*

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“My Custom Monster” was previously published by Fireside Fiction August 2021

 “Scales” is a PodCastle original.





“Scales” has a content warning for child abuse

“My Custom Monster” has a content warning for depression





Rated PG-13



Scales

By M. Stevenson





The boy stands at the edge of the forest, bare toes digging into the cold loam. Mist curls between the trees like the breath of a living thing. As if the woods are alive.

Monsters live in this forest, so it’s said. Demons of scales and teeth and fur, creatures that will rend a child asunder until only the smallest bones remain. The thought wraps chilly fingers of fear around the boy’s nape. It’s hard not to be afraid of what everyone says is real.

But there are other monsters too, monsters that he knows are real. He thinks of bared teeth and flying spittle, a face gone red with rage, a poker gone red from sitting in the hearth. The boy’s hand creeps to the shiny patches of skin on his bare forearm, scars where his flesh has thickened into silver scales. There are more on his legs, his back: places his clothes always cover. The monster grew more careful after the first time, when people noticed and she had to make excuses.

He was playing with the poker. He tripped and fell.











The boy said nothing then. He was too young.

When his mother gets home, he knows it in his bones: today, she will kill him. There is no escape from a monster within its own house. His only choice: face the monster he knows, or dare to face the ones who may exist.

He thinks of his sister, barely old enough to sit up in the cradle. Her skin pink and unblemished. A different father, his mother has said. A face to love, not to hate.

He hopes that never changes. He can’t protect her by staying.

The boy takes a deep breath, filling his skinny ribs.

He steps into the forest.



The trees’ embrace is as dark and cold as it looked from the edge.

The boy walks for a long time. Mist twines around his ankles with each step. The ground is damp, dark water seeping up from the moss each time his foot compresses the green growth. The forest echoes with sounds he doesn’t recognize: strange skitters, a distant wail, the groan of trees rubbing together. The sun might never have existed, and soon every direction looks the same.

In the distance echoes a howl of rage. A voice shrieking his name. His mother has discovered that he’s gone.

The boy keeps walking, trembling, and does not look back.



After a time, he sleeps, and when he wakes a monster is watching him.











The boy stays still, his breath shallow. He knows that monsters welcome provocation.

This one looks like the tales predicted: great moss-green eyes with slitted pupils, scales and claws and sinuous coils, a body large enough to entirely fill the boy’s house. (The monster’s house.)

And yet, it also looks nothing like the tales.

* Author : Benjamin Rosenbaum

* Narrator : Graeme Dunlop

* Hosts : Matt Dovey and Ann Leckie

* Audio Producer : Eric Valdes

*

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Originally published in All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories, edited by David Moles and Jay Lake.





Rated PG

Episode 785 is part of our 15th Anniversary special and includes an interview with Ann Leckie, the first assistant editor of PodCastle.

Biographical Notes to “A Discourse on the Nature of Causality, with Air-planes” by Benjamin Rosenbaum

by Benjamin Rosenbaum

It is true that I had not accepted Prem Ramasson’s offer of employment — indeed, that he had not seemed to find it necessary to actually ask. It is true also that I am a man of letters, neither spy nor bodyguard. It is furthermore true that I was unarmed, save for the ceremonial dagger at my belt, which had thus far seen employment only in the slicing of bread, cheese, and tomatoes.

Thus, the fact that I leapt through the doorway, over the fallen bodies of the prince’s bodyguard, and pursued the fleeting form of the assassin down the long and curving corridor, cannot be reckoned as a habitual or forthright action. Nor, in truth, was it a considered one. In Śri Grigory Guptanovich Karthaganov’s typology of action and motive, it must be accounted an impulsive-transformative action: the unreflective moment which changes forever the path of events.

Causes buzz around any such moment like bees around a hive, returning with pollen and information, exiting with hunger and ambition. The assassin’s strike was the proximate cause. The prince’s kind manner, his enthusiasm for plausible-fables (and my work in particular), his apparent sympathy for my people, the dark eyes of his consort — all these were inciting causes.