Imaginarium 3
Page 38
“Your Figure Will Assume Beautiful Outlines” by Claire Humphrey. Copyright © 2013 Claire Humphrey. First published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Issue 135. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Salt and Iron Dialogues” by Matthew Johnson. Copyright © 2013 Matthew Johnson. First published in Salt and Iron Dialogues, Bundoran Press, 2013. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“The Salamander’s Waltz” by Catherine MacLeod. Copyright © 2013 Catherine MacLeod. First published in Chilling Tales: In Words Alas Drown I, Edge Science Fiction & Fantasy Publishing, 2013. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Said the Axe Man” by Tam MacNeil. Copyright © 2013 Tam MacNeil. First published in Betwixt, Autumn 2013. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Nahuales” by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Copyright © 2013 Silvia Moreno-Garcia. First published in Bull Spec, Issue 8+9, February 2013. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“The Fairy Godmother” by Kim Neville. Copyright © 2013 Kim Neville. First published in Shimmer, Issue 17. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Black Hen à la Ford” by David Nickle. Copyright © 2013 David Nickle. First published in Chilling Tales: In Words Alas Drown I, Edge Science Fiction & Fantasy Publishing, 2013. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Jinx” by Robert Priest. Copyright © 2013 Robert Priest. First published in Previously Feared Darkness, ECW Press, 2013. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Knife Throwing Through Self-Hypnosis” by Robin Richardson. Copyright © 2013 Robin Richardson. First published in Knife Throwing Through Self-Hypnosis, ECW Press, 2013. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“How Gods Go on the Road” by Robin Richardson. Copyright © 2013 Robin Richardson. First published in Knife Throwing Through Self-Hypnosis, ECW Press, 2013. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Conditional Sphere of Everyday Historical Life” by Leon Rooke. Copyright © 2013 Leon Rooke. First published in CVC, Volume 3, Exile Editions. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Rosary and Goldenstar” by Geoff Ryman. Copyright © 2013 Geoff Ryman. First published in Fantasy and Science Fiction, Sep/Oct 2013. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Stemming the Tide” by Simon Strantzas. Copyright © 2013 Simon Strantzas. First published in Dead North, Exile Editions, 2013. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Book of Vole (Excerpts)” by Jane Tolmie. Copyright © 2013 Jane Tolmie. First published in Strange Horizons, May 2013. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Fishfly Season” by Halli Villegas. Copyright © 2013 Halli Villegas. First published in Chilling Tales: In Words Alas Drown I, Edge Science Fiction & Fantasy Publishing, 2013. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Lesser Creek: A Love Story, A Ghost Story” by A.C. Wise. Copyright © 2013 A.C. Wise. First published in Clockwork Phoenix 4, Mythic Delirium Books, 2013. Reprinted by permission of the author.
HONOURABLE MENTIONS
Alguire, Steve, “Driven Out,” Futuredaze
Ashby, Madeline, “Permacultures,” Cautions, Dreams, and Curiosities
Atwood, Margaret, “Cat’s Robo-Cradle,” The New Yorker, May 20. 2013
Bao, Lisa, “In the Courts of the Khan,” Strange Horizons, January 2013
Burgess, Tony, “Soft Shell Story,” Postscripts to Darkness 4
Chamberlain, Gregg, “Jimmy Smith Has a Dinosaur,” Daily Science Fiction, March 2013
Clink, David, “A Conversation Between a Time Traveller and his Apprentice,” Analog, December 2013, v. 133, no 12
Das, Indrapramit, “Karina Who Kissed Spacetime,” Apex Magazine, Issue 49, June 2013
El-Mohtar, Amal, “A Hollow Play,” Glitter and Mayhem
Favro, Terri, “Cold Comfort,” Broken Pencil
Graham, Neile, “With Bats in Our Belfry, Dear, Earth Water and Sky,” Stone Telling 9, February 2013
Hannett, Lisa L. & Slatter, Angela, “By Blood and Incantation,” One Small Step: An Anthology of Discoveries
Hannett, Lisa L., “Snowglobes,” Chilling Tales: In Words Alas Drown I
Heartfield, Kate, “For Sale by Owner,” Daily Science Fiction, August 2013
Heartfield, Kate, “Word for Word,” Waylines, Issue 3, May 201
Hoffmann, Ada, “And All the Fathomless Crowds,” Dead North
Hoffmann, Ada, “The Mother of All Squid Builds a Library,” Strange Horizons, 2013
Hoffmann, Ada, “The Tooth Fairy Throws In the Towel,” Mythic Delirium, Issue 29, October 2013
Humphrey, Claire, “Haunts,” Interzone, Issue 249
Jensen, Jan Lars, “Goliath of Gath,” Lonely Souls
Jones, Scott R, “Turbulence,” Innsmouth Magazine, Issue 14, December 2013
Katelnikoff, Joel, “Girl, Gun, Zigzag,” Lemon Hound 6
Kelly, Michael and Ray Cluley, “Other Summers,” readshortfiction.com
Kernaghan, Eileen, “Night Journey: West Coast,” Tesseracts 17
Künsken, Derek, “The Dog’s Paw,” Chilling Tales: In Words Alas Drown I
Lalumière, Claude, “Empathy Evolving as a Quantum of Eight- Dimensional Perception,” Suction Cup Dreams: An Octopus Anthology
Lamb, David J., “Love Should Grow,” Aescifi.com
Larson, Rich, “Let’s Take This Viral,” Lightspeed, Issue 34, March 2013
Matheson, Michael, “Hungry Ghosts,” Dead North
Moloney, Susie, “The Neighbourhood, or, To the Devil with You,” Things Withered
Moloney, Susie, “The Windemere,” Things Withered
Moreno-Garcia, Silvia, “Cemetery Man,” This Strange Way of Dying
Neville, Kim, “One Shoe Highway,” On Spec, Issue 91
Nickle, David, “Knife Fight,” Masked Mosaic
Parisien, Dominik, “My Child Has Winter in his Bones,” Tesseracts 17
Pflug-Back, Kelly Rose, “The River,” Ideomancer Speculative Fiction, December 2013
Ridler, Jason, “Forsaken Beneath the Stars,” Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Issue 134
Rogers, Ian, “Day Pass,” Chilling Tales: In Words Alas Drown I
Strantzas, Simon, “Dwelling on the Past,” Chilling Tales: In Words Alas Drown I
Trudel, Jean-Louis, “Trois relations de la fin de l’écrivain,” Utopiales 2013
Weatherbie, Rod, “Tribune Head,” Chain of Islands
Watts, Peter, “Firebrand,” MIT Technology Review
Wise, A.C., “For the Removal of Unwanted Guests,” Halloween: Magic, Mystery, and the Macabre
Wise, A.C., “Her Last Breath Before Waking,” Three Lobed Burning Eye, Issue 24
Wise, A.C., “With Tales in Their Teeth, From the Mountain They Came,” Lightspeed, Issue 32, January 2013
Yin, Anna, “The Path,” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal
Youers, Rio, “The Widow,” The End of the Road
Yuan-Innes, Melissa, “A Quest for the Vulture Gods,” Crossed Genres
ABOUT THE EDITORS
Sandra Kasturi is a Bram Stoker Award-winning editor as well as a writer, book reviewer and award-winning poet. She is the co-publisher of the World Fantasy Award-nominated and British Fantasy Award-winning press, ChiZine Publications. Her work has appeared in various venues, including ON SPEC, Prairie Fire, Shadows & Tall Trees, several Tesseracts anthologies, Evolve, Evolve 2, both Chilling Tales volumes, A Verdant Green, Star*Line, Abyss & Apex, Taddle Creek, 80! Memories & Reflections on Ursula K. Le Guin, They Have to Take You In, and Stamps, Vamps and Tramps. Sandra’s two poetry collections were released by Tightrope Books: The Animal Bridegroom (with an introduction by Neil Gaiman) and Come Late to the Love of Birds. She is working on her next book, Snake Handling for Beginners, and reading for Imaginarium 4.
Helen Marshall is an award-winning Canadian author, editor, and doctor of medieval studies. Her poetry and fiction have been published in The Chiaro
scuro, Abyss & Apex, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Tor.com and have been reprinted in several “Year’s Best” anthologies. Her debut collection of short stories, Hair Side, Flesh Side (ChiZine Publications, 2012), was named one of the top ten books of 2012 by January Magazine. It won the 2013 British Fantasy Award for Best Newcomer and was shortlisted for a 2013 Aurora Award by the Canadian Society of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Her second collection, Gifts for the One Who Comes After, was released in September 2014 to rave reviews. She divides her time between Toronto and Oxford, England.
COPYRIGHT
Imaginarium 3: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing © 2015 ChiZine Publications
Introduction © 2015 by Ian C. Esslemont
Cover artwork © 2015 by Susanne Apgar
Cover and interior design by © 2015 by Samantha Beiko
All rights reserved.
Published by ChiZine Publications
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either a product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
EPub Edition FEBRUARY 2014 ISBN: 978-1-7714-8315-5
All rights reserved under all applicable International Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen.
No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.
CHIZINE PUBLICATIONS
Toronto, Canada
www.chizinepub.com
info@chizinepub.com
Edited by Sandra Kasturi & Helen Marshall
Proofread by Dominik Parisien
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $20.1 million in writing and publishing throughout Canada.
Published with the generous assistance of the Ontario Arts Council.
IMAGINARIUM 2012
EDITED BY SANDRA KASTURI & HALLI VILLEGAS
Orphan children destroy their nasty superintendent and create a clockwork replacement; a professor publishes a list of known vampires, but doesn’t get it quite right; a military drone achieves sentience—and an unfortunate conscience; self-replicating humanoid robots fall in love with humans; an alien ship lands in a schoolyard and shows the teenagers the infinite probabilities of the universe. . . .
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eISBN 978-1-77148-317-9
IMAGINARIUM 2013
EDITED BY SAMANTHA BEIKO & SANDRA KASTURI
A teenage boy with a bull’s head goes to high school; Jane Austen converses with the Devil; a waitress succumbs to a most peculiar audit; wizards and warriors square off; birds and their ghosts haunt telephone wires; an augmented fighter gets the ultimate chance for glory; two siblings won’t join the revolution against alien visitors; strange creatures inhabit a freakshow; Norse gods with memory loss inhabit retirement homes; and a girl with extraordinary powers wreaks havoc in a small town. . . .
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978-1-92685-168-6
WE WILL ALL GO DOWN TOGETHER
GEMMA FILES
In the woods outside Overdeere, Ontario, there are trees that speak, a village that doesn’t appear on any map and a hill that opens wide, entrapping unwary travellers. Music drifts up from deep underground, while dreams—and nightmares—take on solid shape, flitting through the darkness. It’s a place most people usually know better than to go, at least locally— until tonight, at least, when five bloodlines mired in ancient strife will finally converge once more.
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eISBN 978-1-77148-202-8
KNIFE FIGHT AND OTHER STRUGGLES
DAVID NICKLE
A young man at loose ends finds he cannot look away from his new lover’s alien gaze. A young woman out of time seeks her old lover in the cold spaces between the stars. The fleeing worshippers of an ancient and jealous deity seek solace in an unsuspecting New World congregation. In a suburban nursery, a demon with a grudge and a lonely exorcist face off for what could be the last time.
In Knife Fight and Other Struggles, David Nickle follows his award-winning debut collection Monstrous Affections with a new set of dark tales that span space, time, and genre.
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eISBN 978-1-77148-305-6
COLD HILLSIDE
NANCY BAKER
In the remote city of Lushan, they know that the Fey are not fireside tales but a dangerous reality. Generations ago, the last remnants of a dying empire bargained with the Faerie Queen for a place of safety in the mountains and each year the ruler of Lushan must travel to the high plateau to pay the city’s tribute. But one year, disaster falls and the traditional price is not met, yet the Queen still demands payment—in the services of Teresine, once a refugee slave and now advisor to the Sidiana. Teresine must navigate the treacherous politics of the Faerie Court, where the Queen’s will determines reality and mortals are merely pawns in an eternal struggle for power. Years later, another young woman faces an unexpected decision that forces her to discover the truth of what happened to Teresine in the Faerie Court, a truth that could threaten everything she loves.
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eISBN 978-1-77148-311-7
THE YELLOW WOOD
MELANIE TEM
For Alexandra Kove, the path of her life took her far from the claustrophobic forest where her father raised her. She believed that she had to escape, that her only road was away from the family and circumstances of her birth. Now, her road has turned back, converged with the paths of the family she thought was safely in her past.
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eISBN 978-1-77148-315-5
THE DEAD HAMLETS
PETER ROMAN
Something is rotten in the court of the faerie queen. A deadly spirit is killing off the faerie, and it has mysterious ties to Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet. The only one who can stop it is the immortal Cross, a charming rogue who also happens to be a drunk, a thief, and an angel killer. He is no friend of the faerie since they stole his daughter and made her one of their own. He encounters an eccentric and deadly cast of characters along the way: the real Witches of Macbeth, the undead playwright/demon hunter Christopher Marlowe, an eerie Alice from the Alice in Wonderland books, a deranged and magical scholar—and a very supernatural William Shakespeare. When Cross discovers a startling secret about the origins of Hamlet itself, he finds himself trapped in a ghost story even he may not be able to escape alive.
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eISBN 978-1-77148-317-9
ANGELS & EXILES
YVES MEYNARD
In these twelve sombre tales, ranging from baroque science fiction to bleak fantasy, Yves Meynard brings to life wonders and horrors. From space travellers who must rid themselves of the sins their souls accumulate in transit, to a young man whose love transcends time; from refugees in a frozen hold at the end of space, to a city drowning under the weight of its architectural prayer; from an alien Jerusalem that has corrupted the Earth, to a land still bleeding from the scars of a supernatural war; here are windows opened onto astonishing vistas, stories written with a scientist’s laser focus alloyed with a poet’s sensibilities.
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eISBN 978-1-77148-309-4
PROBABLY MONSTERS
RAY CLULEY
From British Fantasy Award-winning author Ray Cluley comes Probably Monsters—a collection of dark
, weird, literary horror stories. Sometimes the monsters are bloodsucking fiends with fleshy wings. Sometimes they’re shambling dead things that won’t rest, or simply creatures red in tooth and claw. But often they’re worse than any of these. They’re the things that make us howl in the darkness, hoping no one hears. These are the monsters we make ourselves, and they can find us anywhere . . .
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eISBN 978-1-77148-335-3
WHAT WE SALVAGE
DAVID BAILLIE
Skinheads. Drug dealers. Cops. For two brothers-of-circumstance navigating the violent streets of this industrial wasteland, every urban tribe is a potential threat. Yet it is amongst the denizens of these unforgiving alleys, dangerous squat houses, and underground nightclubs that the brothers—and the small street tribe to which they belong—forge the bonds that will see them through senseless minor cruelties, the slow and constant grind of poverty, and savage boot culture violence. Friendship. Understanding. Affinity. For two brothers, these fragile ties are the only hope they have for salvation in the wake of a mutual girlfriend’s suicide, an event so devastating that it drives one to seek solace far from his steel city roots, and the other to a tragic—yet miraculous—transformation, a heartbreaking metamorphosis from poet and musician to street prophet, emerging from a self-imposed cocoon an urban shaman, mad-eyed shaper of (t)ruthless reality.
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eISBN 978-1-77148-323-0