GlitterShip Spring 2020: GlitterShip, #10

By Keffy R.M. Kehrli and Nibedita Sen

The Spring issue of GlitterShip magazine! More queer fiction for your pulsing brain meats!

 

Table of Contents:

 

Originals:

All the Daughters of My Father's House — Gwen C. Katz
Lilium — Claire Humphrey
The Forests Here Are Always Dark — Phoebe Barton

 

Poetry:

By Mist and Salt — Kat Riddell
High Season — Lore Graham
You, Him and I — Elena Sichrovsky

 

Reprints:

Thou Shalt Be Free As Mountain Winds — Jennifer Mace
The Frog Comrade — Benjamin Rosenbaum
Requiem for the Unchained — Cae Hawksmoor

• Language: English
• Publisher: Keffy R.M. Kehrli
• Release date: Jul 2, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393789826

Book preview

glittership-spring-2020-flat-rgbsmol.jpg

GlitterShip

Spring 2020

Edited by Keffy R.M. Kehrli

GlitterShip Spring 2020 © Keffy R.M. Kehrli 2020

The Forests Here Are Always Dark © Phoebe Barton 2020

High Season © Lore Graham 2020

Requiem for the Unchained © Cae Hawksmoor 2017. Originally published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies.

Lilium © Claire Humphrey 2020

All the Daughters of my Father’s House © Gwen C. Katz 2020

Thou Shalt be Free as the Mountain Winds © Jennifer Mace 2018. Originally published in Skies of Wonder, Skies of Danger edited by John Appel, Jo Miles, and Mary Alexandra Agner.

By Mist and Salt © Kat Riddell 2020

The Frog Comrade © Benjamin Rosenbaum 2010. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction

You, Him, and I © Elena Sichrovsky 2020

Cover design by Keffy R.M. Kehrli.

Cover image: Photo by Joyce McCown on Unsplash

https://unsplash.com/photos/gpiKdZmDQig

Cover image description: Six glasses full of colored water stand on the right side of the image. Light shines through the glasses creating a rainbow of colored stripes across the white tabletop. Glasses contain red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple water.

Publisher/Editor: Keffy R.M.Kehrli

Assistant Editor: Nibedita Sen

http://www.GlitterShip.com

Table of Contents

Introduction

All the Daughters of My Father’s House by Gwen C. Katz

By Mist and Salt by Kat Riddell

Lilium by Claire Humphrey

High Season by Lore Graham

The Forests Here Are Always Dark by Phoebe Barton

You, Him, and I by Elena Sichrovsky

Thou Shalt Be Free As Mountain Winds by Jennifer Mace

The Frog Comrade by Benjamin Rosenbaum

Requiem for the Unchained by Cae Hawksmoor

Contributors

Editors

Introduction

It’s hard right now, for all of us.

To be honest, I always struggle when it comes time to write an introduction for issues of the magazine. Although, honestly, I don’t think I’m at all special for that. I think most editors struggle at least a little when it’s time to introduce the stories. You can’t just say, Oh! These are super great! Read them!

Or can I? Can I just say that?

The stories and poems you’re about to read are super great! Read them!

Okay.

On a more serious note: I know we’re trapped at home, most of us, by a pandemic that we either didn’t expect to experience (or hoped, hoped, hoped that we wouldn’t have to). A lot of us are struggling to keep our heads up. If you’ve lost someone, I’m sorry. Both you and they deserved better.

On another note, we’ve been following and sending what support we can to the Black Lives Matter movement, which is still fighting police brutality specifically in the United States, but there are also people fighting the same racist, unjust systems around the world. This is a reckoning for hundreds of years of injustice that has been long overdue. There has been some movement already, and we urge you: take a few minutes. Look into the fight in your area. Can you lend your support to people in your local area who are fighting to defund police forces that use overwhelming, military-grade force to attack civilians? Every town, city, county, state, that makes these changes will literally save the lives of our Black siblings.

It’s hard. It’s a marathon. But we have to all keep showing up. Any single one of us alone cannot be the hero that saves the world, but maybe all of us together can.

This issue has a selection of stories and poems that I hope will give you something to enjoy and something to think about during your down time.

Keffy

Originals

All the Daughters of My Father’s House

Gwen C. Katz

Flotsam that had once been the bow of my ship washed against the white rocks. The prow end of the keel jutted into the air like a flagpole. It had once been a cedar tree, unshakable as the mountains it grew on, then the spine of a vessel just as sturdy. When it had cracked during the storm, I thought the sound was another thunderclap. It was hard to comprehend that the surface I stood on was splitting apart under my feet.

It wasn’t supposed to happen, something so solid giving way. I’d been four years old when I first experienced that sensation, the day my mother informed me that my brother could have his hair cut and put on trousers, but that I had to keep wearing dresses like a baby. She’d explained that there were two kinds of children, the kind grew to be men and my kind. I didn’t understand. Seb and I were identical in every way. Same height, same face. I could run just as fast as him and hit just as hard. That day something splintered between Seb and me that never recovered.

Now, as I lay vomiting seawater onto the Illyrian sand, I found the two of us again divided.

No one else could have survived the wreck. I’d washed up on the only stretch of flat beach among the cliffs. The rest of the ship, and the crew with it, must have either been dashed apart or sunk in the stormy ocean. I was alone.

I lay there, waiting for my head to stop swimming. Sand encrusted my lips and eyelashes. My hair was stiff with salt. A bird pecked at me experimentally and tugged on my clothing, trying to determine if I was alive or dead. I blindly waved it off, then forced myself to sit up and take stock of my situation.

I ran my hand over my arm. A shock went through me when I found only my bruised skin. Seb’s bracelet was gone. It must have torn off during the storm. I cast around the remains of the ship, turning over each piece of broken wood and raking my fingers through the sand. Nothing.

I wanted to bury my head in my arms and cry, but crying wouldn’t help. Instead I looked around. I was in a secluded cove surrounded by rugged rock faces dotted with small, gnarled trees. A dirt path led into the hills. There was no sign of civilization aside from some old fishnets and the remnants of my ship.

Illyria. Land of romance and adventure, by reputation, anyway. At the moment I was less in the mood for romance than for a hot drink and a bath, but I wasn’t going to find either on the beach. I tied back my disheveled hair, straightened out my clothes, and made my way up the path.

Scene break

So you see, it could be months before anyone realizes we’re missing, and in the meantime, I don’t have money to rent a room or even send a letter. I’d like to enter your service, my lord, if you’ll have me. Just until I’m back on my feet.

Duke Orsino stroked his beard and considered me. He had a good reputation, which I was counting on rather heavily. He would have to take me at my word that, despite my bedraggled appearance, I was a gentleman and not a brigand waiting to rob him.

If I had been a robber, Orsino’s opulent, silk-draped palace would have been the perfect target. And the duke himself, draped over a chair as if his spine didn’t work properly, a gold torc around his neck, was the most opulent part of all.

Where were you sailing from? he asked.

Messaline, I said, hoping he wouldn’t offer to send a letter home for me. That would really put a hitch in my plans, as if the shipwreck hadn’t done that already.

Messaline? He furrowed his brow. I’ve never heard of it.

It’s the biggest port in our part of the world, I said defensively. Our father was an important man there. Ask anyone.

I didn’t mention that my father had been a spellcrafter. You never knew how people would react, especially in foreign lands. Seb and I had inherited his skill but not his patience. We’d only ever worked one enchantment between the two of us.

What’s your name, lad?

Lad. Of course that was what he saw before him, dressed like a sailor in boots and a loose white shirt. I gave him the only man’s name I had. Sebastian.

Orsino took a sip of wine. All right, Sebastian, I’ll take you on. You washed up on my shore and I suppose that makes you my responsibility. I’ll have my servants get you cleaned up and made presentable.

"Thank you,