by Yoon Ha Lee
“Come in,” said the witch absently. “Would you like something to eat?”
“I would be much obliged for some breakfast,” said the visitor, “but I have nothing to offer you.”
The witch looked up at the visitor, a tawny woman with her hair in a crown of braids held in place with hairpins decorated by feather tufts, and a talon-curved knife hanging at her belt. She wore a scratched pair of spectacles and her boots looked as though they were one day’s travel from falling off her feet, but her cloak was very fine, and its hood was lined with soft white down. “Don’t trouble yourself about that,” the witch said. “Have a seat?”
The traveler shook the snow off her boots and wiped them before coming in, then sat, polite as you please. “I had heard that there is a witch in the Hills who likes to eat visitors for breakfast,” she said, quirking an eyebrow.
“People say the unkindest things about people they don’t know,” the witch remarked, ladling the traveler a hearty bowl of stew with rice and a mug of hot citron tea. “What I would like to know is, why would you come to the hut of a witch suspected of consuming her visitors?”
The traveler smiled. “Perhaps it’s occurred to me that such a witch might grow lonely for companionship.”
“Presumptuous,” the witch said, not unsmiling. She set down a platter of sliced bread and a little dish of salted butter, then sat to nibble at one of the slices herself. “What would someone like you know of the ways of witches?”
“I know that in the Hills of the Sun there is no such thing as breakfast,” the traveler said, “because there is no night, and thus no one ever sleeps, either. It must grow tiresome, long days that stretch ever longer, with no one for company but the birds.”
“The birds are perfectly delicious company,” the witch said. “And their bonesong is welcome when I need to do some cleaning.” She looked meaningfully at the drumstick the traveler was gnawing on.
The traveler raised an eyebrow. “Even birds eat birds,” she said, and there was something of the raptor’s hunger in her eye. “Still, it would be remiss for the queen of the birds not to seek to spare some few of her subjects.”
“I’ll make you a bargain, then,” the witch said. “Come visit me once a year, so that I have someone to practice my cooking on, and I will turn my attentions to the rabbits and voles instead. Unless you are also here on their behalf?”
“Hardly,” said the queen of the birds. “The rabbits and voles can fend for themselves. Besides, they, too, make an excellent breakfast.”
for cyphomandra
Thunder
Sometimes it’s about thunder, and sometimes it’s about the pale horses who thrash the sea into storm, and sometimes it’s about gunfire opening your heart. Fruits smashed down to their glistening pits. Petals that stain your wrists; wine that scours your throat.
I cannot give you soft hands, a sweet mouth, supple words. But let me call out your name in the language of conflagration. Let me bring you flensed fairytales and fossilized endearments. Let me answer the percussion of your heart with the weapons that I know; let me answer the march.
The Godsforge
The godsforge lies at the center of the earth, and there are as many paths to it as there are ways for steel to break. Some paths pass through caverns where crystals unfed by unsunlight glow in unchanging gardens, and fungus feasts on the bones of forgotten heroes. Others have driven people mad with the sourceless sound of water ever dripping in a monotonous beat, or so mazed them with darkness that their useless eyes were sewn shut.
Down, down through the halls of stone came two women and a man. The color of the darkness was the color of their skin. The path they took is not important.
The godsforge was in a cavern densely hung with stalactites. Gaps had been broken into the stalagmites so they could enter. Past supplicants had carved the symbols of their sects and nations into the limestone: two-headed tigers and bird maidens, fish-tailed lions and phoenixes.
The three stepped past the stalagmites and stood before the godsforge. It was hot almost beyond bearing, but they had been selected because they were the bravest and wisest of their people, and they endured.
The first woman held out her offering, a sword with its blade damascened in gold with poetry in her people’s abjad. “This sword is our faith,” she said. “Let it strengthen our god.”
The man held out his offering, a six-flanged mace of watered steel. “This mace is our honor,” he said. “Let it strengthen our god.”
The second woman held out her offering, a curved dagger whose blade was polished mirror-bright. “This dagger is our truth,” she said. “Let it strengthen our god.”
A voice came out of the forge like the hammering of iron on iron. “What god would you have me forge for your people of these objects? There is no more suitable weapon than what is in your hearts. Go back to your people and nourish the strength that is already in them.”
Leaving the weapons behind, the three returned to their people, empty of hand but better-armed.
for Sam Kabo Ashwell
About the Author
Yoon Ha Lee's short story collection Conservation of Shadows came out in 2013 from Prime Books. His fiction has appeared in Tor.com, Clarkesworld Magazine, Lightspeed Magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and other venues. He has also authored the StoryNexus game Winterstrike from Failbetter Games. He lives in Louisiana with his family and has not yet been eaten by gators.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Flash Fiction The Fox’s Tower
Carousel Foals
The Third Song
Candles
The Crane Wife
Raven Tracks
Magician’s Feast
The Mermaid’s Teeth
The Dragon Festival
The River Soldier
The Fox’s Forest
The Melancholy Astronomer
Harvesting Shadows
The Stone-Hearted Soldier
The Gate of Bells
The Workshop
The School of the Empty Book
How the Andan Court
The Last Angel
The Virtues of Magpies
Two Bakeries
The Witch and Her Lover
Moonwander
The Palace of the Dragons
Hibernation
The Red Braid
Sand and Sea
The Birdsong Flute
Two Payments
A Single Pebble
The Pale Queen’s Sister
The Sunlit Horse
Tiger Wives
Dew-Weighted Roses
The Firziak Mountains
The Rose and the Peacock
The Youngest Fox
The Witch and the Traveler
Thunder
The Godsforge
About the Author