Corbin collapsed outside the dragon’s lair, acrid smoke wafting from his armor. He was getting too old for this. He’d never asked to be the gods’ favored champion. Sunlit forests spread out below him, a peaceful world unaware and unconcerned that he’d almost been eaten. Twice. Corbin drew a shuddering breath and wrenched a dragon…
I’d always watched the whaling boats going out to sea in the morning; big, asbestos-lined vessels churning through the lava, leaving a black wake behind them. My parents’ house was close enough to the beach that the shingles warped and blistered in the heat, and if you stood at the kitchen window you could see…
Between one moment and the next, she was gone. Lorleigh felt the human spirit fly through the hall—a wispy rush that was there and then gone. Released. It had come from the third room on the left. Lorleigh let the sadness rush through her. A heavy weight that would never lift again. Working around the…
Dozer and Digger eased out from the forest’s shadows, taking care not to damage the new growth. Dozer tilted its solar panels toward the sun. Its programming didn’t allow it to enjoy the afternoon’s warmth, but the increase in available power gave it something akin to satisfaction. Over the centuries, little had changed about their…
I ride into the clearing with my lance pointed skyward. My horse is already skittish. The dragon slaying business is always rough on horses, and I replace mine the way other riders do horseshoes. I didn’t even bother to name this one. But losing a horse always gives the story a little something. I circle…
Senn had been lost in space for five months when the devil first offered her a deal. He appeared in the mess as she was reconstituting protein. Naturally, she assumed the isolation was getting to her, and she retreated to her bunk to cry; but the next morning, nothing in the tiny kitchen was where…
The planet couldn’t suppress the shiver of excitement rippling over its surface when a transport landed in a ring of fire and smoke. Its first visitors! How air-light their steps, so miniscule and fragile. It tried to stay stone-still as they ambled about. Look! the planet thought. See my ravines? Like rivers of stone. That…
Today we are adults, all of us in our cohort. For our second gift, we will be marched out of the Foundling Complex, where we have spent the entirety of our lives, and put on the spaceship we have been trained to crew. Our first gift—in my hand is a memory chit containing all that…
I hefted the bulky envelope and stared at the return address. Wellsley college. Well, damn. They don’t send heavy packets to rejects. I didn’t even need Cousin Lei’s red-envelope-telepathy to tell me what it said. The rest of us held our red envelopes up to the light to see what bills were inside. Cousin Lei…
Rat-tat tat-tat-tat. Someone was knocking on the door. This would have been strange enough, given she travelled here alone, but Simone knew the other side was bare. Nothing surrounded the doorway but crumbling rubble of the building that had been, the inside gone over to weeds and weather. The door stood in the ruin, a…
