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Edition 20: The Bone Maiden by Greg Chapman
Marcella is orphaned and her aunt’s prisoner. Seemingly without hope, Marcella finds a friend in her dark place that may be her only chance at freedom. SY
(Inspired in part by “The Maiden with the Rose on her Forehead” by Consiglieri Pedroso)
In a locked bedroom, Marcella clutched her parents’ bones between shivering fingers, wishing for the day they would return to save her.
The orphan wept into her tangled raven locks, soaking the filthy bedding and nourishing the countless insects that called her bed home. She wanted to be dead, resting deep and cold beneath the earth alongside her mother and father. But her aunts weren’t ready to let her die just yet.
Hearing the key turn in the lock, Marcella sat up in fear. She secreted her parents’ bones beneath a pillow and put on the bravest face she could as her aunts bled into the room. Both were swathed in muck-soaked gowns of tattered lace. Vorrada wore a pointed cone the tint of a winter storm atop her haggard head, while her twin Eseina’s swollen visage was framed by a crooked Elizabethan collar. The pair drifted like smoke across the floor, their sunken eyes and indigo lips wide and wanton. Vorrada held a silver platter in her gnarled hand.
“Here child!” she said. “Here.”
Edition 20: Three Trophies by S. G. Larner
The nameless groundskeeper brings sacrifice after sacrifice to his queens to satisfy his bargain. His offerings may be enough to take him home again, but is it enough for him? SY
The ground scraped his nose as he bowed low before his majesties. As he straightened he pulled the rough cloth off the prize with a flourish.
They gasped. The sound shivered and bounced off the grey slate walls.
“What is this, sisters?” The multilayered voice buzzed with harmonics as each mouth spoke in unison.
The man waited. Their husbands—mute fools that they were, white and black and brown with jutting erections—clapped and capered. He averted his eyes from their folly. Instead he observed the offering.
When he’d found it upon the slopes of the windiest mountain, it let itself be taken. The long neck bowed, it kept its wings folded by its sides. It could have flown away.
“Oh sisters, I know! Mercy is white, mercy is wise!”
Edition 20: A Song For First Hours by Kirstyn McDermott
Making pacts with supernatural beings can be a dangerous practice. Hespa, whose connection with her young daughter is at stake, must suffer uncertainty for many years before the reckoning… SY
The baby monitor was silent. It wasn’t the soft ambience of a sleeping infant but rather a cold, plastic void. Wishing they’d paid extra for the model with an inbuilt camera, Hespa rolled out of bed. She didn’t bother to wake Martin; a dead battery in the transmitter was the likely culprit and there was no use both of them losing sleep over it.
Halfway down the hall, she paused, breath catching in her throat. As usual, the door to Lisel’s room stood generously ajar but from beyond it there came a faint glow, almost a shimmer in the air, like the play of summer heat on a long bitumen road.
She all but ran the rest of the way.
Bending over the crib was a thin, pale figure who straightened swiftly as Hespa lurched into the room. The slippery, shimmery light seemed to emanate from that strange frosted skin, or perhaps it was the spider-silk hair that glowed, or the robes that fell in spangled waves from shoulders narrow and sharp.
“Get away from her!” Hespa gasped, hastening over to where Lisel lay sleeping with little hands curled loose into fists.
Edition 20: The Black Bull by Liam Hogan
Uncle Mort has a puzzle and his nephew has decided to sort it out. Not everything is what it seems, and the black bull, which is at the centre of the conundrum, is the key. GH
I desperately repeat my mantra as I walk slowly across the muddy field:
I must not run.
I must not fall.
And above all, the jet-black mountain of muscle and sinew that is busy snorting clouds of vapour-laden air and digging a mighty hoof through the soft earth, is not what it appears to be.
I’m further from the safety of the gate than from the beast when it finally breaks its stance and trots a few heavy paces towards me, expecting me to turn and flee. Instead, I take another tentative step and this time when it bows its head and launches forward it’s the real thing: a thundering, full-blooded, earthshaking charge. My legs tremble and I stagger half a pace back before I can stop myself.
“I know what you are,” I say, in as steady a voice as I can manage.
Edition 20: The Drummers of Po Chu by Michael Anthony
In a time of need, Chi Lai of the Drokpa dreams of his salvation in a haze of illness. The drummers arrive, but how will they protect the nomads from the cruelties of soldiers? SY
The lowly traveler stood trembling in the shadow cast by the ebony stallion and its helmeted rider who sneered, “Old man, when will the Drokpa learn that even they must pay tribute to Chen Sheng, Lord of the High Mountains?”
The small figure struggled to keep his footing as the sweaty hindquarters of the soldier’s horse nudged him closer to the edge of the narrow mountain trail. Several more steps and there would be nothing between the aged leader of the Drokpa nomads and the valley floor far below.
“My people have but a few yak, some goats, the tattered tent in which we sleep and what scraps of food we carry,” the old man replied. “We trade not in jin as do the gold merchants along the road to the Gobi. When we near this end of our journey, we always pay our respects to your master by offering our best bull. But, this season, misfortune caused us to lose the best ones in the flood waters of the Tsangpo. Still, we will pay tribute. When we return next season we will offer your lord not one, but two young bulls.”
Edition 20: Unicorn Meat by Gary McMahon
There’s a unicorn tucked away in an old tin shed at the end of an alley. For Jessie and her brother it’s the little bit of magic in their troubled existence. Until they are not the only ones who’ve seen it… SY
It doesn’t really matter when I found the unicorn. I think it had always been in my life, waiting for me to notice it there: a tale waiting to be told, a mystery to be unravelled. Maybe it was hiding in the shadows, or perhaps I wasn’t able to see the animal until I reached a certain age, a specific point in my existence.
All I do know is that I found it there, near the old tin shed in the back lane, a few weeks after my twelfth birthday.
The following day I took my sister, Jessie, to see the unicorn. It was just after school. Not quite dark yet. She was excited when I told her that I had a secret, and that she couldn’t tell anybody what I was about to show her. In truth, I still wasn’t sure if I’d really seen it myself.
“Can Dolly come?” she asked, dragging her battered old Cabbage Patch doll along by one arm. I hated that doll—it was ugly.
“Sure,” I said. “I don’t see why not.”
We went out of the house, through the gap in the fence at the bottom of the back garden, and across the little area of waste ground to the cobbled alley. It was late in the year. The sun dipped behind the roofs of the old terraced houses at the edge of town and there was a chill in the air. Jessie held onto my hand. Her grip was surprisingly strong for one so young.
Edition 20: Nne: Mother by Shawn Frazier
Fa’izah dreams of the mother who disappeared out of her life into the forest long ago. Her father has never stopped searching. Seeking her mother out in her dreams, Fa’izah encounters more than she bargains for. SY
Each time Father went to West Africa—Igerbian—he searched for my missing Mother. A remote land surrounded by rivers, valleys and rainbows, where fog blanketed the water. Don’t look for it on a map; you won’t find it. Father brought many things back, but never her. He found her brown sandals, a red scarf and an untouched white sundress hanging on a coco tree in the forest. The last time Father went, he never returned.
~~~
I went to Igerbian without ever leaving my bedroom in New York. I made a pot of soup—just like Mother taught me when I was a young girl—and placed it beside my bed. Inside the pot was a liana; a long woody vine that is hollow and native Nigeria. I brought it at the African market on 116 Street. The stems were dry, unhealthy, but I had nothing else to use.
Liana grows in the tropical forest and ensnares other plants. It is too complicated for the white man to understand, so they ignore it. The vine grows unpredictably and is known throughout West Africa for its wondrous abilities.
I chopped and boiled it in a huge black pot; it must be in a black pot. Before going to sleep, I wrapped my mother’s red scarf around my head and dressed myself in her white sundress—the one Father found. I placed the black pot beside my bed. My spirit flew upwards, through thick gray smoke, before landing safely in Igerbian—a place I have not visited in years.
Edition 19: Night Blooming by Jason Nahrung
A teenager in love with the darker side of life has disappeared. Detective Shane Hall, struggling with her personal demon, follows the trail to parts of Brisbane’s seedier side, The Valley. She must keep control to find the missing young woman, and for her own self-preservation. SY
Deborah Brown—Jazmine Nocturna to her friends—had it bad for the unliving. Shane stood in the teenager’s bedroom, taking in the nu-vamp celeb posters, the black lace, the incense.
The girl’s mother stood at the bedroom door. Ms Brown wore a pencil skirt and heels, a crisp white blouse, but stray hairs were pulling free from her tight bun, and the shadows under her eyes showed through her makeup. Early to mid-forties. Gym toned, suntanned, a gold cross above her modest cleavage. No wedding ring, but a pale line where one had been. She radiated anxiety.
Join the club, sister.
Edition 19: Number Man by Sean Monaghan
Tommi’s fresh out of prison, looking for a clean break. But his brother Kevin sucks him back into that world, the only place an ex-con can catch a break. Tommi’s got some decisions to make, and his little girl is waiting for him to get it right. SY
Tommi rode the airboat from the prison gates right to Del’s house. He had sixteen dollars in his pocket, his old notebook and a freshly laundered collared shirt. It felt like it belonged on some guy who worked fifty stories up, pushing figures from one bank account to another. The screws had burned his old clothes.
Sixteen dollars wasn’t going to buy him much. Prices had changed in four years.
And he didn’t want to have to lift anything. He needed a day or two to gather his thoughts.
He wished that he could have at least stopped to get Del some flowers.
Edition 19: Arrest By Hall Jameson
The circus is back in town and a father searches for his missing daughter in a world that doesn’t quite make sense. A wandering clown is the herald of an unwelcome admission. SY
The clown disappeared around the corner of Lady Sapphire’s tent, and I followed. He should not have been there. This was a carnival, not a circus.
But maybe he knew where my daughter was.
The abandoned, ash-dusted carnival grounds reminded me of January, after a weeklong thaw had melted the dirty snow of December and the ground had hardened up again, with a fresh skim of snow covering the asphalt and dead grass. My boots cut blurry prints in the parched lawn with each step.
The halo of smoke surrounding the fairgrounds was thick like a wedge of ice fog. Creaks and groans drifted from the empty stations and booths, boards covering their rainbow faces until their owner’s return. The wind wailed through the spokes and benches of the Ferris wheel and caressed the nose of the zebra on the merry-go-round, his black-and-white striped muzzle wearing a toothy grin.
SQ Mag 
