“Keerful with them chickens.” Jack McGuffin eyed Earl warily as he loaded up the final crate and closed the cargo hatch of the Mud Runner. “They’re priceless, you know.” He clasped my hand in his gnarled claw. “Swiped their mother from a giant back in my youth.”
I nodded politely, ignoring his senile ramblings. It’s bad business to upset a customer, especially one paying so well.
I stroke the strings of my finntler as I set it up under the burning lights of the spaceport overhead.
I reckon the best way to describe a finntler is it’s mighty like a xylophone, ‘cept with strings. That and it’s my life on a table. I’m just a boy, but most cain’t mimic the way I play. Travelers passin’ by throw coins. A few stop to listen to the music; my regulars clap along, whoopin’ and cheerin’ as I finish.
This city was no place for a werewolf.
The sound of heavy boots thundered behind him, and Clawson Fangsworth dodged down a dark alleyway. His bare, hairy feet squelched in a puddle of questionable substance. There was the filth, for one thing. On all fours, any werewolf worth his silver bullets could outpace a copper on his tail
“I can’t find anything wrong with you, Frank.” The doctor leaned back in his chair to look at his clipboard over his wire-frames.
“Come on, Doc. There’s got to be something. This ain’t normal.” Frank put his head in his hands. “I’m tellin’ you, I’ve been hearing music for three days straight.”
Hank wandered about the empty house, bored out of his mind, from the kitchen with a fridge full of meals, to the TV showing only reruns, to the shelf of books he’d read a dozen times, then all over again. He’d expected having his parents away for five weeks would give him a sense of ecstatic freedom.
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I’m coming Mara. I shoulder my pack, set my walking stick on the path, and start up the slope.
“I wouldn’t go that way if I were you.”
I jump, my foot catches on a patch of gravel, and I tumble to the ground. My elbow scrapes against a rock as I land hard on my seat.
“Woah there, it’s not safe to be that kind of clumsy on a mountain.” A short woman sits on the ledge above me, kicking her heels.
“Five minutes, King.”
I let out an irritable sigh at the warning transmitted into my head. “Copy.” I’ve only just arrived, and I’m already running out of time.
Where did he put it?
The serum has to be here. We’ve spent years tracking it across time and space and through the fibers of alternate dimensions.
Eggs are magic.
They seem simple: shell, white, yolk. Cook them scrambled, fried, boiled.
But separate the parts and find complexity. Whites may be whipped into foam light as cloud and stable as glass. Yolks, yellow as sunshine, whipped with oil and lemon juice turn white, or whipped into a bechamel of butter, flour, milk,
The warlock Jasper Throe first met Caroline Donadeiu when she had only two tattoos.
Tonight, she showed up on his doorstep shabby, with more tattoos than he could count, hands in fists by her sides. Jasper hardly recognized her.
Caroline bit the inside of her cheek. Instead of “hello,” she said, “I’m sorry. May I come in?”
It’s too late to say I’m sorry, Jasper thought, but not without kindness.
Hammer toe. Trigger finger.
The noonday sun bakes my skin. I swipe at the sweat on my brow, and place my hand over the hollow of my belly. Will it rumble? Does it remember how?
“Not a peep,” I say aloud. “That ship sailed ages ago. Ha!” I laugh at my own joke,
“The citizens of New Earth must be expecting someone to appear from the ancient depths of space.” I didn’t know if I was trying to reassure myself or my assistant. “After all, the cradle of life is littered with functioning spaceships.”
The tractor beam continued to draw us in.
“They’ll welcome us, surely.”
I stared at the looming sphere of Earl Grey dominating The Seeker’s viewport. Not Earl Grey as in the tea—Earl Grey the planet. Some doofus had the nerve to name the planetary collection “The Tea System.” Of course when you hear the name, it sounds like “The T System,” which is way more categorical.
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