ALT #PC938: TALES FROM THE VAULTS - "Scry" by Anne Ivy. Rated R. Previously ran as episode 292 and first published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies.

ALT #PC937: Kɛrozin Lamp Kurfi by Victor Forna, read by a full cast. Rated PG. A #PodCastleOriginal! Breath KADE MAKASI: In . . . ALL THE CHILDREN: Awt . . . Storyteller She tells the children to call her Kade Makasi, and if this was one of her stories, she’d describe herself as bent and wrinkled and spider-like for a touch of myth and poetry . . . but she’s none of these things . . . she’s tall, thick-browed, with two braided rivers of night on her head, and you’d have never guessed what she was: kurfi, dɛbul, demon, and that she stole my child.

ALT #PC936: Ananconfabulation by Mar Vincent, read by Rosie Sentman. Rated G. A #PodCastleOriginal! Our homes are buried, so we built tunnels. From Tomas’ window to mine, from Ryan’s to Kimber’s and back to Tomas’ attached garage where it has little windows up high in the door. A rabbit’s warren of passages just wide enough for our juvenile bodies. I remember the day it happened. Opening curtains and seeing the sun, the trees, the clouds. Opening them again, only a few hours later, and seeing nothing but solid gray against the glass. Time keeps moving the cat clock on my wall and the appliances in our kitchens tick forward, but is it day or night or real at all? I don’t trust that time is what it used to be. The TV stopped working, and the internet, even the radio, so all we could do was guess what had happened. Was the whole world buried, or just the neighborhood around us?

ALT #PC930: Parsley Girl, Parsley Girl, Let Down Your Trichobezoar by Natalie Zutter, read by ValerieValdes. A #PodCastleOriginal! Rated PG. Content notes for pregnancy loss, post-natal depression, and second-person narration If I were your mother, I would share with you this cautionary tale: Once there was a couple who yearned for a child. When the woman was finally pregnant, she craved naught but rapunzel. Unfortunately, this plant only grew inside a neighboring garden, walled off from the world. As the expectant mother began to waste away, her desperate husband stole into the garden and snatched as much of the leafy plant as he could. But he could not outsmart the enchantress, who protected the garden as if it were her own offspring. When she caught him, she demanded he trade her their newborn baby. He said yes. After the birth, the enchantress whisked the baby away to a tower in the woods.

ALT #PC927: The One Who Carries Abinakhee Has Died by Jay Kang Romanus, read by John Chu. A #PodCastleOriginal! Rated PG. Content note for drowning I’m leaning in to kiss a stranger when the shooting star passes overhead. The sounds of people celebrating nearby swim through the humid air like the ancient turtle below us swims through the world’s ocean and the shooting star above swims through waves of night sky. I’m still breathing heavy from my performance, glowing from the warmth of so many eyes on me and the warmth of the stranger’s body next to me. “Did you see it?” I ask, momentarily distracted from his well-shaped lips. He nods. “My mother used to say they were the starships of those who left us behind.” He smiles at me with those extremely well-shaped lips. “I don’t think she was right about that, though.”

ALT #PC926: TALES FROM THE VAULTS - The Gold Silkworm by Tony Pi, read by S. Qiouyi Lu Previously ran as #PC423 and first published in Fantasy Magazine. Rated PG-13 When I first became keeper of the Spirit of Grass, she and I made a pact to never turn away one in need, whether they be rich or poor. Madame Ke was one of the rich. She had heard of my skills in medicine from her sister, and asked if I would come to the Garden of Timely Rains. I accepted the invitation and arrived in the early afternoon, when the high sun gave glow to the garden pond and terraces. A servant escorted me to the Pavilion for Tasting Autumn Pears where a woman in her thirties awaited me. Madame Ke, radiant in a dress printed with gold hibiscuses, bade me to join her at the tea table. Though eager to consult a woman doctor, she asked first for proof that I wasn’t a wandering healer.