Apparition Lit, Issue 10: Transfiguration (April 2020)

By ApparitionLit

Welcome to Apparition Literary’s transfiguration edition. We wanted works that transformed characters, questioned social mores, and changed our perception.

SHORT FICTION
*Possible Human Hearts by Lyndsie Manusos
*The Bear Wife by Leah Bobet
*The Order of Stolen Hearts by Xan van Rooyen
*What the Water Gave Her by Avra Margariti

POETRY
*Still by Rachel McKinley
*All the Better by Jessica J. Horowitz

INTERVIEW
*Artist Interview with Tijana Jankovic

ESSAY
It’s OK to Cry During a Pandemic by Amy Henry Robinson

Apparition Lit is a quarterly speculative fiction magazine that features short stories and poetry. We publish original content with enough emotional heft to break a heart, with prose that’s as clear and delicious as broth.

New issues will be published each January, April, July and October.

• Language: English
• Publisher: ApparitionLit
• Release date: Apr 14, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463461273

ApparitionLit

Apparition Lit is a quarterly speculative fiction magazine that features short stories and poetry. We publish original content with enough emotional heft to break a heart, with prose that’s as clear and delicious as broth. Every issue of Apparition Lit includes:*Editorial from the staff*Four short stories that meet the quarterly theme*Two poems that meet the quarterly theme*Interview with the Cover Artist*Nonfiction EssayNew issues will be published each January, April, July, October.

Book preview

Table of Contents

Editorial

A Word from our Editor by Tacoma Tomilson

Short Fiction and Poetry

The Order of Stolen Hearts by Xan van Rooyen

All the Better by Jessica J. Horowitz

The Bear Wife by Leah Bobet

What the Water Gave Her by Avra Margariti

Still by Rachel McKinley

Possible Human Hearts by Lyndsie Manusos

Interview

Artist Interview with Tijana Jankovic

Essay

It’s OK to Cry During a Pandemic by Amy Henry Robinson

Thank You to Our Sponsors

Past Issues

A Word from our Editor

by Tacoma Tomilson

Welcome to Apparition Literary’s transfiguration edition. We wanted works that transformed characters, questioned social mores, and changed our perception. As a writer, I often wonder what kind of stories a magazine is looking for, the secret to cracking a market, and why my story was rejected. I think we’ve all been there, wasting time looking for clues in Twitter threads. As such, I thought I’d share a look into our selection process.

Not every work included in this issue involves a physical metamorphosis. When we select themes at the beginning of the year, we can never guess how authors will view them (and that’s part of what makes diving into our submissions so exciting). We consider each work by itself—the quality of the writing, the central idea, and how the writer approached the theme. We look for concepts that recur throughout different submissions, but we also seek works with singular visions of the theme.

When it comes time to decide, we often find we’ve put similar works on hold, showing that certain ideas resonated with the Apparition Lit team and with our submitters. This makes it much more difficult to narrow down the four stories and two poems we can afford to publish. Sometimes we have to decide between two similar stories (although it is tempting to publish an entire issue of six witch works), but we like to provide our readers with variety.

Our next theme is Redemption, publishing in July. Considering the times, it’s a promising theme. Hopefully, the self-isolating will have worked and July will be a better month for all of us. But in the meantime, if you’re at home wondering what kind of story we’ll be looking for during the submission window (May 15th through 31st) know that the theme must be central but that sometimes it comes down to us already having seven stories on hold about a dancing beetle.

But without further ado, we are pleased to share the following selections with you this April and hope you are taking the time to be kind to yourself and others.

Stories:

Possible Human Hearts by Lyndsie Manusos (3,200 words)

The Bear Wife by Leah Bobet (3,800 words)

The Order of Stolen Hearts by Xan van Rooyen (4,200 words)

What the Water Gave Her by Avra Margariti (3,400 words)

Poems:

Still by Rachel McKinley (45 lines)

All the Better by Jessica J. Horowitz (18 lines)

Please consider supporting us on Patreon and following us on Twitter. Without our barnacled friends, this issue wouldn’t exist.

Thank you,

Tacoma Tomilson

T.M. Tomilson’s short fiction has appeared in Crossed Genres and Devilfish Review among others. She received an MLIS from San Jose State University, where she learned the obscure skill of identifying books based on one sentence descriptions. A constant student, she is currently an MFA candidate at Seton Hill University. When not engrossed in homework, she can be found playing video games or enjoying a round of kickboxing. You can find her forgetting to tweet @TMTomilson..

The Order of Stolen Hearts

by Xan van Rooyen

The heart in my chest aches and trembles, it stutters and lurches behind my ribs. It’s always been too big, leaving bruises on my lungs. I press my hand to the bulge on the left of my sternum. Feel the scar tissue crack against my palm, a seam splitting as ventricles quake and falter.

Two hundred years. It was never meant to last this long.

The bucium sounds and the mountain echoes the call, note for solemn note, until the very stone beneath my feet starts screaming. I move, drawn by the bugling, down the winding stairs of our school. My slippers whisper across uneven flagstones, the bottom of my robes catching on the gnarled fingers of reaching creepers, leaves burnished by autumn.

Above me, the sky is a wound. The sun has gashed open the clouds, bleeding ribbons of red through twilight blue and dousing the flanks of the mountains in violet.

Fellow Solomonari join me in the descent. Most are clad in similar mossy green. Some wear the white of Elders; few wear the patched, brown robes of acolytes. Tonight, those who have proven studious, pious, obedient, and courageous will cut open their chests to lose their human hearts.

The scales across my cheeks flare despite my efforts to remain impassive. When I was an acolyte, the courage required to transcend was real and necessary. We trained as warriors, learning the way of the sword long before we learned the art of spell-weaving.