Story Child

By Kristine Kathryn Rusch

In the years after the Abandonment, the event's survivors face yet another devastating struggle. Michael does his best to treat the persistent illness, but he secretly wonders if it marks the end of them all.

Until the child appears. A child who seems to offer hope.

But hope might prove the biggest challenge of all.

"Like early Ray Bradbury, Rusch has the ability to switch on a universal dark."

—The London Times

• Language: English
• Publisher: WMG Publishing
• Release date: May 25, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201822415

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

New York Times bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch writes in almost every genre. Generally, she uses her real name (Rusch) for most of her writing. She publishes bestselling science fiction and fantasy, award-winning mysteries, acclaimed mainstream fiction, controversial nonfiction, and the occasional romance. Her novels have made bestseller lists around the world and her short fiction has appeared in eighteen best of the year collections. She has won more than twenty-five awards for her fiction, including the Hugo, Le Prix Imaginales, the Asimov's Readers Choice award, and the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Choice Award.   

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Story Child

Story Child

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

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Story Child

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About the Author

Story Child

I remember the story child as well as I remember the Abandonment. Now, almost a generation later, I can’t quite say what she looked like. But I know what she taught me, and how hard it was to learn.

The day she arrived, the noise was fierce. People were moaning, crying out in their delirium. And the cafeteria was too cold. The chill from the floor-to-ceiling windows that lined the eastern wall seemed to cover me, even when I worked with patients in the far back corner of the room. I thought that the heat from their skin would warm me; they were all burning with fever, faces flushed or too pale, their hands shaking with weakness. We had had so many unexplained fevers, unknown diseases, and malingering illnesses in the past two years that I often wondered which would give up first, the germs or the people. I knew that I would continue until I dropped.

Michael, Arlene asked as I applied the patch thermometer beneath her tongue. I’m going to die, aren’t I?

I looked at her. She had been pretty once, two or three years ago, before all this started. Now her skin was drawn and ashen, her cheekbones too prominent and her eyes