"Us, in Another Universe" by A.C. Wise + "Crickets in Lost Light" by Jonathan Olfert

Hello, Starshine. The Earth says hello, and welcome to the Lightspeed Magazine Story Podcast. I'm your host, Janina Edwards. In this episode, you'll be listening to Us in Another Universe by AC Wise and Crickets in Lost Light by Jonathan Olfert. First up is our short shot, Us in Another Universe, narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Coming up right after this message. The holidays mean more travel, more shopping.

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Welcome back. And now, Us in Another Universe. Us in Another Universe by AC Wise

In this universe, we fight because we can't fuck. Call it Universe A, or One, the golden age where it all began. Though it began as relative when your timeline is constantly rewritten, rebooted, shattered to bits. Call it the universe where we aren't even supposed to show emotion unless it's anger, let alone kiss. Your fist skates over my jaw, bone against bone, skin brushing skin. I tie you up. Your muscles strain. We grapple, sweat slick.

Though you never seem to sweat half as much as I do. Everything is easy. You never have to try. At least that's how it looks from the outside. No wonder everyone thinks I hate you. Neither of us wins or loses, not permanently, and it all starts over again the next time. We've even killed each other in this universe a time or two. I'm almost certain I remember dying in your arms. Every fight leaves me shaken, breathless, wishing for more. But in this universe, we don't fuck, so...

this will have to do. In this universe, we switch roles. I'm the good guy, you're the bad. We still don't fuck. But look how little separates us. How similar we are. In this universe, we're both in female bodies, though I won't make any assumptions about your gender if you don't make any about mine. We still don't fuck, but everything is suggestive.

Because the audience, there's always an audience, is assumed to be straight and horny and male. Our chests heave. We bite our lips. You stand close when you talk. And when I threaten you, tied up again, of course, my hand rests alongside your jaw, bone against bone, skin brushing skin. You have superpowers. You could easily break free. But maybe you're happy here, right where you want to be. You smell like green apples in this universe. Probably your shampoo. Our backs...

make impossible curves, and we're each missing ribs. I'm not even sure we could fuck in these bodies without breaking them. Not that our other bodies are practical either, especially yours. Still. The smell of apples is nice. I hope I'll remember it when this version of you is gone. In this universe, we're flung back to prehistory. A beginning before it began. We flee and hide from dinosaurs and eventually team up to get back home. It's a temporary alliance. I wouldn't call us friends.

In this universe, we're actors playing our characters on a much-beloved show. Or we were. It was canceled after three seasons. There have been rumors and campaigns and meetings ever since, discussing a reboot, a sequel, a side-quell, an homage in which we would appear. Nothing ever comes of it, but hope remains.

We're at a hotel bar after a long day on the convention floor, signing autographs, doing meet and greets, answering questions. It's an anniversary year, so there are more demands for our presence. More retrospectives, where are they nows, and please, oh please, let the reboot rumors be true. So many years after the show, we're friendly, but not friends.

We see each other at conventions, exchange texts every now and then. But tonight, this universe has conspired so there's nowhere else either of us has to be. The bar is dark. removed from the convention, and no one recognizes us here. We talk about the old days, injuries on set, and difficult guest stars. We share war stories from projects we've worked on since.

and a little bit of our personal lives. You spend time in rehab. I briefly quit acting to write a book, but failed. Eventually, we get around to the convention itself. fans with tattoos of our faces, amazing cosplay. We talk about the weirdest things we've signed and the lovely gifts we've been given. And the slash, you say, now that you're buzzed. I laugh and try not to blush. I know, I reply. It's amazing how many fans want to see our characters get together. You say...

Not just our characters. A cheeky grin. Us, too. We laugh again because it's ridiculous, isn't it? I think about the universe where we don't fuck and your fists skating over my jaw. I wonder if this moment, our hands close but not touching, the goosebumps rising on my arm. is because of all the things our characters have never been able to say and do to each other. Or maybe it's this moment that ripples out to affect the way our characters feel.

Have you ever, I start to say, as you say, do you wonder? And we both stop, looking at each other, laughing again. Are you nervous, excited, embarrassed, hopeful? It's hard to tell. Our hands inch closer. I angle my head down so I don't have to look you in the eye. I say... I did have a tiny little crush on you back in the day, but you were married and we were friends. I feel you watching me intently when you reply, I'm not married now, and let the words hang.

I smell apples. Just at that moment, the fucking fire alarm sounds, and we're ushered outside. In the parking lot, waiting for the fire department to give us the all clear, we bounce on our toes to stay warm.

and exchange awkward smiles. We joke about maybe the next time, because the soap bubble moment is broken and won't come again. Six months later, you're diagnosed with throat cancer. You announce your retirement. We text occasionally because talking hurts. We don't see each other in person again. This universe sucks. In this universe...

i'm a cat and you're a dog the multiverse is a weird place but i kind of like this we spend the days separate but together you happily chewing a ball in the sun Me stalking the fence line hunting birds. It's simple, uncomplicated. I wish we could stay. In a dozen universes we've never met. My mother died while she was pregnant or my parents never fucked. You never developed superpowers. You're an accountant and I'm a schoolteacher and we both lead perfectly mundane lives.

In a dozen other universes, it's always too late. I attend your funeral or you attend mine. We watch quietly from the back row until someone tells us to leave or a fight breaks out. Or we get up and speak, sharing grudging admiration or open regret that things weren't different, that we couldn't see eye to eye.

In a hundred fics and AUs, illustrated and written, shared on forums and swapped via email, we have always been in love. We fuck in every conceivable combination, all genders and none at all. with cat ears and myrrh tails, as ghosts and demons, sentient trees and distant galaxies. We are everything and everyone, and we are still ourselves, right down to our cores. Maybe this is the truth of us, rippling outward.

the seed of what we always should have been, and from which every other universe grows. Are there universes where there is no audience? What would we be there without the demands of story? Would I still... But that isn't worth thinking about. Though I do wonder, without constant resets and reboots, how might we grow? Would we...

even exist at all? In this universe, call it Universe Y or 52, the first, the last, reset number who's even counting anymore, We're in middle school. Another beginning before the beginning, starting us all over again. A tree grows out of the asphalt, casting shadows across the yard. A bully knocks me down. You're the only one who sees.

You walk over, speak to the bully in quiet tones, then offer me your hand. My nose is bleeding, and you apologize for not having a tissue. I say it's fine and wipe the blood away. We stand awkwardly under the tree shadows, not knowing what to say. I can tell there's something different about you. Something special. Your powers haven't manifested yet, but they're there.

just under the surface of your skin. In this moment, I don't feel like swearing revenge against the bully or making everyone sorry that they laughed at me by showing them all someday. Who knows? That might change. But right now, it's enough to stand here with you being kind, smiling and giving me a little wave and saying I'll see you around. And me saying, okay. I don't know if you mean it or if I do. But I smell apples. And I hope...

Somewhere, in some universe, even if it isn't this one. We'll be okay.

That was Us in Another Universe by A.C. Wise, narrated by Stefan Rodnicki. A.C. Wise is the author of the novels Windy Darling Hooked and Ballad of the Bone Road. along with various novellas, collections, and short stories. Her work has won the Sunburst Award and been a finalist for the Nebula World Fantasy. Stoker, Locus, British Fantasy, Shirley Jackson, Ignite, and Lambda Literary Awards. In addition to her fiction, she contributes regular review columns to Apex and Locus.

More info at acwise.net. Stefan Rudnicki is a double Grammy-winning audiobook producer and an award-winning narrator who has won 17 audio awards, as well as more than 35 earphones awards. and been named one of audiophile's golden voices. Stefan has been producing Lightspeed Magazine podcasts since 2010, eventually adding Nightmare and Fantasy Magazine. and sharing the Hugo Awards for Best Semi-Prosine in 2014 and 2015.

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Please enjoy Crickets in Lost Light, narrated by Mirren Willis. Crickets in Lost Light by Jonathan Olfert my own tongue proclaims yet the elders are my voice mysteries of the fivefold

Children's Instructive Edition A tithe convoy of the Five-Fold Church in Ander Carmona's sad experience left three kinds of weight. Armored wagons and oxen ripped lasting ruts in gravel roads, scarred them down to the mud. Tithe collectors gleaned their due from all. and sundry and left long swathes of land poorer than they'd found it and the third wake the bodies of any banded crew

daft enough to try its luck. But keep pace behind the convoy. Avoid churchmen outriders and hungry locals and the bandits in question. and you could make a gleaming of your own from the wreckage, if you had the need, anyway. Nowhere to lay your head, and nothing to your name. No trade. No decent boots. This time around, half a day passed Griever's Mill. The tank was the ruin of an ambush. Stacked stones marked three churchmen's graves. Robbers...

lay where they'd fallen, on all sides of a bend in the road where their work had gone sour. The convoy guards had snapped their spears. emptied their skinny purses into the tithe wagon's collection chutes, and moved on. All the silver was due elsewhere, far away for the church's glory. Two looters searched the dead with haste. Lista Bluelark, thief and swindler, knew her business. Ander Carmora, former tithe collector of the Fivefold.

knew only that he very much wanted to be elsewhere. There'd been a time when he guarded convoys, not picked at their carrion, and his new life didn't sit well. He kept an eye or two on the churned-up roads and the woods. One hand kept straying to the grip of his plain short sword. Gods and locals were watching, out of sight.

like all the other scavengers the smells there was no single smell to butchery pressed down on his spirits more than once he found himself rubbing the stone talisman knotted into his bracelet, a pebble carved as a simple elephant, with a few lines denoting fur, for a spark of good memory. As he searched the bodies and kept watch, he was halfway back in his long-lost childhood. Splitting his attention made him clumsy, prone to missing things.

But at least he had that bit of refuge. Old memories, dredged up by the stone's tired magic, kept him from thinking too hard. They kept the shame at bay. Your problem, Lista said, as they tugged off a rubber's putrefying footwear, is you still think this is beneath you. Which means, at some level, you think I'm beneath you. This was an evolution of an earlier spat, and she was probably right. The boots yielded no stashed coins, but a cornucopia of stink.

To buy himself time for a decent answer, Carmora searched the boots thoroughly. He wasn't as sure with his words as Lista. Never had been. As a servant at the church, He'd usually stuck to ritual and procedure, not conversation. I don't, he said at least, checking a toenail from the left boot. Mm-hmm. The sound he learned meant Lista thought he was lying and wanted him to know it. He hated that sound. He frowned and shook the boot again, and a little copper coin

flipped down in the mud. Lista, who was interrogating the dead man's belt pouches, leaned over and made the coin disappear. Nice find, she said. putting those tithe-taking instincts to work. He winced. I wish you wouldn't, he mumbled. I'm not proud of. She eyed him for a long moment. crouched there as she frisked the belt pouches early rain speckled the torn-up gravel don't forget she said with emphasis

She displayed a pair of thin coins and a twist of wrapped sausage and put them away and moved on. Kimora fidgeted with his braided bracelet, rubbing at the old talisman. that was the noggin a mammoth a god of memory slaughtered by the five-fold church and scoured from the hearts of karmora's people The carved stone held some shred of Nanagan. It bolstered Karmora's memory in times of need and helped her recall the childhood the church had stolen.

Just so long as he remembered the worst things he'd done. So long as he never let himself off the hook. A bad trade on its face. But the price had a grim piece to it. far better than the hollow absolution of flagellation. Given to the church young, he'd served as pupil, laborer, tool, tither at arms. between those jobs and his own wrongs. He had plenty of old shames to offer the dead god of his childhood, even before he'd started looting to survive. Don't forget.

Lista had said just now, meaning corpse picking its foul work, and I know it'll weigh on you a long, long time, and that's fair. but this is our life now. Better you accept it, or we won't have much use for each other. She'd never said all that as such, and didn't need to.

a good while they'd been on the run together a turncoat and a prisoner both may be assumed dead after a certain fire at a certain treasure vault inside the body of a certain tree god they'd changed their looks with dye and hunger and scissors covered the ornate rosette tattoo on comora's forearm Practiced walking and talking differently. Become new people together. They'd fumbled at night and laughed past embarrassment in the morning. They knew each other.

So when she dropped a last word that signaled she might actually feel guilty over looting, and recognized that he did too, but drew still a firm expectation, that he respect their work together, with all the potential consequences appended thereunto. He understood. Didn't mean he had the words to answer.

So he ducked against the rain's spittle and let her walk away, off to loot another. Our struggle is unending. Yet our triumph is assured. Mysteries of the Fivefold Children's Instructive Edition There was no treasure. but Cormona found better boots and a nice whetstone for his sword. The blade was short and flat ground on the great grinding wheels of church armories far, far away.

soon after his betrayal he'd defaced the hilt furniture and sword belt scraped off rosette insignia and formal trim he sharpened his plain sword hands muffled under his ragged cloak, as night fell on the tumble-down cabin they'd found for a shelter. The place had no roof, but resurgent pines had closed around the homestead. like a fist reclaiming all cleared land a few stars stabbed through the trees the rain had moved on to better things

This was no country for a fire, so their only comfort, once he'd hacked a pine bow bed, was each other. In past nights, he'd been eager. But now he felt a reticence, a distance that left him cold and unenthused. She was the eager one tonight, and he did his best, or told himself he did. because it felt like she was after something he couldn't name or give. Afterward, he turned his face to the wall and lost himself in scraps of memory.

By morning she was gone. So were the three little coins. So was the bracelet off his wrist, the talisman of Nanagan. Kimora sat there in the ruined bows. back against the sagging wall, jabbered at by jays, rubbing his wrist. Lista had given him the little stone talisman and never told him where she got it, probably a mercy. She'd braided the cord around it too, made a thing he could wear against his skin for memory and luck. She had a fair claim on it, but so did he, all anger aside.

Truth be told, if this feeling was anger, it wasn't the kind he'd known before. He'd nurtured his share of helpless fury, resentment. Terror-driven wrath, tired contempt, all leading up to the explosive night he'd left his life behind. The night he'd let himself admit his hate. He felt no hate now, no fear, no contempt, and certainly no helplessness. A small... long-buried part of him, the boy he'd been before church school, just wanted his pebble back.

All are equal under the divine. Yet, I know where I stand in the chain. Mysteries of the Fivefold Children's Instructive Edition You needed to track sometimes as a tithe collector to be sure every possible soul was properly asked. for their voluntary donation to the work of the Fivefold. Lista, for all her competence and adaptability, was a creature of cities and frontier towns.

found her trail, and stuck to it. She was not, it transpired, following the tithe convoy. She'd turned around for Griever's Mill, which was poor. unfriendly country, even before the convoy rolled through. Sawmill or not, the trees grew thick around here, bringing down a cold, false sunset. long before the sun met the unknowable horizon he lost the trail at the last bend before the village and kept going for lack of options either she'd taken shelter here

or he'd catch her tracks again in the morning, assuming it didn't rain. Since rain might drive her to shelter too, all signs pointed to Griever's Mill. The village was largely the silent old mill, its outbuildings and shacks of unknown purpose around a gravel crossroad. He glimpsed the evening fires of distant homestead. the glow of chimneys and wax-paper windows. A sullen river, choked with rotten logs, spoke of more prosperous days. He'd grown up

as a servant in the church's wars against lesser gods, including great pines as tall as mountains. Their faraway fall had reshaped waterways uprooted timber markets, starved out backcountry logging. Few lived here now, if they could help it. Lista might have found shelter in any homestead around here.

But, if unaided memory served, she got on well with the sawmiller's second wife. Kimora headed for the mill. Just days ago... The convoy's elders and senior guards had bunked here as their due. Rank-and-file collectors had recorded tithes in logbooks. and pressed inked brass rosettes to forearms, certifying that all the household were fully reconciled to the fivefold. Some had lingered to do the same service for travelers.

and locals. When Comora and Lista had passed this way the night before last, they had to arrange certain distractions to get out of having their own arms examined. this was for two reasons first was the collector tattoo on the inside of cormora's forearm each portion subtly graded for comparison against tithe stamps in varying degrees of fadedness match the inner part of the third petal and a supplicant might be known as a man who hadn't paid his tithes in months for example a collector's tattoo

on the arm of a filthy woodswalker would mark said woodswalker as an apostate, a traitor to the duty of the faith, an automatically untrustworthy person, and so forth. The other reason was as big a risk or worse. Lista also had a forearm tattoo, a simple rosette that replicated a gentle faded and still current stamp. such a thing was spectacularly foolish. A falsified tithe stamp could mean the gallows, and had often saved her money, or indeed helped her secure it.

A tithe-payer stamp opened doors to better work, lower taxes, church toll roads, and the trust of men of means. So the pair of them had thought it best

to avoid expert examination of their respective forearms, which they'd managed by the skin of their teeth. At the time, Carmora had the feeling that the sawmiller and his two wives judged them as less than on the level no questions had been asked not in front of the tithe collectors and not afterward but this was a different night in the mood in the common room

had an unseasonable chill the sawmiller a blocky disappointed man was sharpening the teeth of a great blade on trestles at the side of the room his wives were nowhere. In fact, the common room, normally a dour little social hub for the town, held only the sawmiller at his desk. and no fewer than four tithe collectors your arm sir said the sawmiller straightening up with the file held like a knife

Maybe he meant to intimidate. Maybe he was casting out a warning through incongruity. He'd seemed decent enough, tight-lipped but polite to visitors. even after he sacrificed the expected portion of his silver to the church. He hadn't taken it out on them. A quiet sort, but not tonight. Your arm.

the sawmiller repeated louder i'll have only faithful men cross my threshold by the five the tithe collectors could set up their logbooks and other affairs at a table opposite the sawmiller where nobody carmora knew from past tours youngish brave clean men far different from the tired and seasoned collectors who'd politely gouged the mill's coffers two nights before karmora clamped down on a spike of fear and showed his arm this place was lit only by candles

in thin bronze reflectors. In bad light, at this distance from any of them, a good five paces, his rosette tattoo would look like a reasonably recent stamp. I'm reconciled to the five, sirs. He said in the differential way they'd expect and rolled his sleeve back down not too fast. Has my wife come this way? red-brown hair done up in braids they were still looking at him all of them for no reason he could pin down he forced himself not to stare at the tithe collectors

at how close their hands were or weren't to their swords. Is that a tithe collector's blade? said one of the collectors, as if he already knew the answer. which in fairness he did camora bit back an impious curse he'd defaced the sword and its furniture of course with the same gloom that muddled his tattoo, reduced his gear to outlines and proportions. And, of course, it was all just like what these four boys wore every day. Their own swords were coming loose now.

Did you loot a churchman's body? spat another one, and all four of them were getting up from their table, and the sawmiller was, in the corner of Carmora's eye, slipping away into another part of the mill.

The common room held little to recommend it as a battlefield. Fifteen paces long and five or six wide, low-ceilinged, dimly lit. A table at one end and the big saw blade on trestles at the other. A door outside and two more leading elsewhere. Carmora flexed sore toes. inside his new-to-him boots and drew his sword. There was nothing else to be done. Any one of these younger men would run him down with ease if he bolted.

They closed in like dogs on a fox. He sidestepped and got his shoulder against the door and slid out on the creaking front step. Cold mud shifted. Bad footing. But he held that spot. They could only come out through the door one at a time. He'd hoped that might give them pause. They developed the opposite problem. Three of them...

pushed forward to be the first, and they jostled each other, sought for balance and preeminence. One man's sword went awry and took a careless chip out of the doorframe. Carmora had killed a handful of churchmen since his departure, sometimes men he'd known. Those deaths weighed on him, which was appropriate. You couldn't go through life

without piling up some justifiable guilt. Lista had told him more than once, flipping the stone and nagging talisman between her scarred fingers like a coin. Better, she'd said. to make peace with that in advance. Expect it like a bad guest and keep doing what you need to do. He moved in on his mutually encumbered attackers. To his surprise, he found himself as eager as they were. Of the three men in the doorway, he scrambled back, and the other two came at Cormorra with simple hard swings.

blocking the more dangerous one, jolted him up to his shoulder. Kimora backed up a notch, which was as much ground as he could give them. That put them on the sagging front step. nestled between log pillars deep in the gloom of the cedar shake overhang. One man put a foot wrong. His sword flailed aimlessly as he fought for balance. just for a heartbeat. Carmora slid in at an angle and put his sword through the younger man's floating ribs. He drove the point straight on. Maybe...

shearing out the bottom of a lung until the blade clinked against the spine from the inside. Blood rushed down the blade, over the simple guard, and washed hot. against Karmora's thumb and forefinger. Eyes bugged out, pale in the gloom, and Karmora felt a need to comfort him. Bah. Bah. The rest of the dying man's breath bubbled out between his ribs, stinking of beer and bad teeth.

and Karmora's empathy ebbed again. The collector slid off Karmora's blade nervously. His rosette-marked sword came free of his grip. nearly missed Karmora's foot and bit into the old step. The point tore up a spreading hand of splinters, pale in the dark. The third man... exploded from the door, and struck Cormora full on, body against body. A hack from the first man went wide as Cormora staggered away.

Gamora kept his feet, but not by much. The fourth man, still inside the mill, shrieked like the five-fold gods were whipping out his penance personally. and generating not the slightest speck of adoration. That scream set Cormora's gut on edge. It would have got him killed, but the two men arrayed against him paused as well.

They had to balance in that moment the threat from Cromorra and from whatever had just hurt their teammate. In the same moment, they also had to negotiate the compounded bad terrain of a corpse in a sagging step. Experience, if they had any, might have led them to draw back and regroup. They had no experience. They had training, and their training said, prosecute the withholder. When one of them tripped, Carmora, his sword specifically, was there to catch his fall.

The sweeping upward strike, a backhand, really, grated off the collarbone and bit deep into the side of the neck. The collector thunked into the torn-up earth. A wagon rut muffled the last of his voice, which came out entirely the wrong part of his throat now. The last of the three moved in with punishing hacks. that cost Carmora real pain to block, all up and down his arm and spine. Every impact jolted Carmora's wrist and tore at his grip. The Last Collector

was smiling. Teeth back, eyes wide, exhilarated. He kept up the attack in a rhythm clear enough for Kamora to counter on a better day. Tonight... offered no chance to breathe that rag and rut caught komora's boot and wrenched it into a stumble something twanged up the side of his foot pain and a galt jolting terror that he'd broken himself irrevocably. Nothing like the first time he rolled his foot on bad roads, of course. But in the moment, the panic was rational and real.

he forced his mind and body into balance limping back as his foot swelled and his boot grew painfully tight he needed distance but the tithe collector was not feeling generous. On a miss, the tip of the collector's sword slid through Carmora's coat and left a hot, wet sting across his chest. Another graze. left Carmora's sword arm bloody. A kick put Carmora on the ground, where, frankly, he knew he deserved to be.

The withholder cripples the work, yet no jealous miser shall prevail. Mysteries of the Fivefold Children's Instructive Edition Sprawling, aching, he kept his grip on his plain sword as a matter of principle. He'd earned it, hadn't he? On bad back roads like this one. Throw down your blade, said the collector, as collectors did. He stood over Komora, just out of range of a kick or a swipe. The collector glanced at his two dead fellows, one pierced deep in the low ribs, one slashed.

in the base of the neck. And that smile went lopsided. Throw it down and earn mercy. Kimora staggered to his feet. His stolen boot now clamped around his swelling ankle, was more stable than he'd feared. Not mercy, no, Kimora said, clicking mud from the tarnished sword. You're just trained to spare a man who can still pay tithes and pray under a lash. Behind the collector in the doorway of the mill, a woman leaned.

on a long saw blade. Bloody hair and fabric choked its teeth. Backlit, she looked strong and wore her hair in braids. and Komora knew it was Lista Bluelark from the way she watched him losing. Despite everything, he found a smile on his face. Dead man!

She taunted, voice hollow and slurred, to one or both of them. You going stiff yet, dead man? The last tithe collector chose this moment. to not be a fool he shifted sideways off toward the crossroads while turning to keep the pair of them in his line of sight at the same time sword still pointed at karmora he eyed lista the saw and the gloomy room where his last comrade had disappeared she shook the saw blade with a sound like rain a rushing

and a splatter. To the collector's credit, he set his feet and gave wariness its proper place. I need the stone back. Kimora said to Lista, as if they were alone, as if she'd only borrowed it. He limped toward her, past the tithe collector, daring the younger man to strike. The standard choice would be a crack upside the head with a flat at the sword, and Komora would wake on a gallows. The collector moved just so, a shifting of his boots in the mud.

Kimura leaned his head aside, balance sickeningly unreliable, and let the sword rip past. His own sword came up, a lurch. Nothing fancy. The tarnished point sank into the collector's armpit and tinted out the leather armor above the shoulder blade. The young man breathed in. or maybe out, like Kumara had yanked on his lungs. The sound was a squeak, incongruous, caught high in his throat. Just like that.

Pain took the last collector from clever, prudent, half-innocent zealot to a thing to be acted on, a rabbit kicking in a snare. Tears And words might have fought their way free of the blazing wreck of the young man's mind. Given time. Redemption, too. Well, maybe. He'd had so little time to build regrets. He fell with his brothers. Their blood, Karmora felt, was what glued his fist to the sword.

Will had not much to do with it. Lista swayed in the door. The long saw chewed at the frame in falling. Kimora's instinct was to go catch her. but she fell before he listens to that instinct. He limped over the bodies, up the creaking step. The sword sank home in its sheath. all far too foul to clean tonight. There was blood pasting his sleeves to his arms, warmer and gummier than the mud. Nonsensically,

He found himself checking that his tattoo didn't show through the blood cloth. He thought of scraping it off his skin entirely. This all might do. My day is irredeemable, yet our dawn is divine. Mysteries of the Fivefold Children's Instructive Edition He found Lista curled up against the inside wall. She kicked the saw away hatefully. She'd done a number on the collector in here, used the blade's weight for a descending cut or two. Not a fighter, Lista, but a killer when she had to be.

She wore the cord bracelet with Nanagan's talisman until Komora stripped it off. There was wine on her breath, and she was crying. The stench... and weight of his own new kills sank in too. The young tithe collectors might have turned like him someday, found, if not honor, then at least their own paths. They'd each been some grandmother's little boy, chasing snakes and crickets. They'd gone off to church schools and been remade.

in his mind's eye, crouching there with a little stone mammoth in his grimy hands. He felt he carried two balanced weights, the guilt that spoke of brokenness. and the rack of clinging to tatters of memory. Nanagan was dead, after all. The talisman had only so much power. Most days, his childhood was buried deep. Holding the first weight was the price of the second. Instinct not just the stone's demands, said that facing the one was what made him fit for the warmth of the other. Mere Shreds

scraps of grandmother and sunlight and crickets were all he deserved. Such mazes of thought and feeling had their place. He shoved them aside and focused on Lista, weeping there against the wall with bloody hands. But now that he'd taken the bracelet, her breathing slowed. from a sob to something more controlled. She wiped her tears, smearing herself with blood across the eyes, and stood alone.

I figured I could live with killing again, she said. I couldn't live with letting them do for you. It was an awkward turn of phrase. Not her style at all. She'd never had a problem discussing murder plainly or finding the right words after a drink or three. Carmora was used to being the tongue-tied one. From now on, he said, as he nodded the bracelet back on his wrist. We should carry this in turns.

But she was shaking her head, as if she didn't care that he was offering forgiveness. Making that much place for... for guilt. That's no kind of life for me. It's too much. All the shames I've laid up in store. Almost got me killed tonight. She gestured vaguely at the bracelet and stumbled to the door. He limped after her down the sagging stair, over the dead, down into wagon ruts.

that's lost with cooling blood. She stood there in the gloom, looking around the tumbledown village in the equally uncaring woods, all dark. and colorless the distant homesteads had banked their fires and vanished in the night there was no clear way to go and no destination worth pursuing. And the stars were cold. He wanted to let good excuses shrug him out from under the weight of the dead.

They'd drawn first. They'd come at him to shed blood for the church that had stolen his whole life. Even without the stone that stirred up the memory of his greatest crimes, and the pain they'd incurred. It would be so easy to make those excuses a natural channel for the flood of feeling that welled up after a killing. But thinking back... He could have avoided those deaths any number of ways. At minimum, he'd worn that sword into a place where collectors might be. Deep down,

he'd known what he might do. For that, and for all the lives he'd impoverished and leeched as a collector, only a coward would let himself off the hook. The moment Kimora decided that, the stone's blessing answered. Precise memory blossomed. Lista last night, in the tumble-down cabin on their bed of bows, skin under starlight. He'd thought she was the eager one for once. But thinking back, her face had lit up with a different kind of wanting.

He hadn't noticed at the time, caught up as he was in his own knots and nets of feeling, in the selfishness of conscience. She'd been searching for what? For him to respond in a way that made her feel as if he didn't consider himself better than her? Maybe she'd taken back the stone because she was a looter, a survivor. and it had value. Or maybe she'd wanted to feel a little worse about a life of corpse-picking, because then he'd like her better. The chilly silence cracked.

Lista flinched as Kimora's sword grated out of its filthy scabbard. He got it flat against the inside of his wrist and slid the tip through the bracelet. sheared away the new knot the little stone mammoth the last scrap of his grandmother's god thunked in the convoy's ruts as if it weighed vastly more than it did lista hiccuped a sob that might have been a laugh You poor broken soul. No. That's not the way tonight will go. Think a move or two ahead. That pebbles...

all you still like about yourself. Deep down, you'd resent me forever. He shook his head and tried for words. It means what it means to me. But Lista, you're the only one who, at least... And because I do care about you, she said, filling in the rest. I'm telling you, no. Keep true to your dead little god and be someone you respect. She drew herself up in the dark, feet planted in the bloody ruts.

of the convoy's wake head high cold stars glinting on her cheeks i don't think i've ever made a good choice andor Call this my first one. Go on. It's all right. Pick it up.

don't need to, he crouched, grabbed the cut bracelet, and wiped filth off Nanagan's stone with his thumb. The smooth old lines of the mammoth trapped bloody mud too easily. He scrubbed it against his grimy trousers in vain. Lista, we can still... She disappeared into the dark before he stood. The forest and the night made their separation feel permanent, vast, the moment she was gone. He had no fair claim to follow her.

and anyway his ankle felt as heavy and rotten as the old logs sloshing in the river there were torches out there and the sound of horses Karmora snugged his fist around the stone and limped into the cold forest without direction, knowing only that he couldn't linger with the dead. He needed presence of mind. Instead, his focus committed itself to all the moments he should have made her understand how he valued her and their life together. How much...

He admired her. Those lost chances were irrevocable. Facing that burden paid Nanagan's price. Far away or long ago, a mammoth trumpeted in pain. Perfect memory surged from the stone, clear and lasting. How tall Lista Bluelark had stood just now. And the pride and freedom in her eyes when she knew she was better than him. It was like she walked beside him, too far away to touch, and never reaching out, no matter how he reached for her. Cold Comfort that vivid presence, but not bad company.

That was Crickets in Lost Light by Jonathan Olford, narrated by Maren Willis. Jonathan Olford's fiction and poetry have found homes in over 40 venues. including Strange Horizons, Analog, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies. His work has been shortlisted for the Reisling Award and appeared in Year's Best, Canadian Fantasy and Science Fiction.

Jonathan comes from Alberta and lives in Atlantic Canada. He has worked in public policy, polling, and non-profit management. And in days of yore, he wore out his share of work boots. actor of film, stage, and television, is the winner of the prestigious Audi Award for Best Narration in 2012 and a finalist for the Audi in 2015, as well as the winner of several audiophile earphones awards.

for his audiobook recordings. He has worked extensively in film and television and on stage with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the Houston Shakespeare Festival, and the Ensemble Theater, among others.

The war is over and both sides lost. Kingdoms were reduced to cinders and armies scattered like bones in the dust. Now the survivors claw to what's left of a broken world, praying. The darkness chooses someone else tonight, but in the shadow dark, the darkness always wins.

This is old school adventuring at its most cruel. Your torch ticks down in real time, and when that flame dies, something else rises to finish the job. This is a brutal rules light nightmare with a story that emerges organically. based on the decisions that the characters make. This is what it felt like to play RPGs in the 80s, and man...

It is so good to be back. Join the Glass Cannon podcast as we plunge into the shadow dark every Thursday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on youtube.com slash the glass cannon with the podcast version dropping the next day. See what everybody's talking about and join us in the dark. If you love those, wait, what? Moments? You'll love something you should know.

I'm Mike Carruthers, and on my podcast, we explore the fascinating ideas hiding in plain sight. Like how elevators change the entire world. How gravity affects your health more than you think. or how to instantly become a better conversationalist. Each episode is fast, fun, and full of insight you'll want to share. So give it a try. Search for Something You Should Know wherever you get your podcasts.

Oh, the Regency era. You might know it as the time when Bridgerton takes place, or the time when Jane Austen wrote her books. But the Regency era was also an explosive time of social change, sex scandals, and maybe the worst king in British history.

And on the Vulgar History podcast, we're going to be looking at the balls, the gowns, and all the scandal of the Regency era. Vulgar History is a women's history podcast, and our Regency era series will be focusing on the most rebellious women of this time. That includes Jane Austen herself, who is maybe more radical than you might have thought. We'll also be talking about queer icons like Anne Lister.

Scientists like Mary Anning and Ada Lovelace, as well as other scandalous actresses, royal mistresses, rebellious princesses, and other lesser-known figures who made history happen in England in the Regency era. Listen to Vulgar History wherever you get podcasts.

Lightspeed Magazine is edited by John Joseph Adams and published by Adamant Press. The podcast is co-produced by Stefan Rodnicki and Alison Belbus at Skyboat Media. and the stories and podcasts are copyright 2025. Post-production was by Alex Barton at Phase Shift, and our music was composed and performed by Jack Kincaid. Thanks for listening, Sarsha. This is your host, Janina Edwards, reminding you that our struggle is unending, yet our triumph is assured.