

	
			
		
						*  Author : Jennifer Hykes
							*  Narrator : Laurice White
							*  Host : Hamilton Perez
							*  Audio Producers : Eric Valdes and Pria Wood
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Rated PG
 
This episode is a part of our Tales from the Vaults series, in which a member of PodCastle’s staff chooses a backlist episode to highlight and discuss. This week’s episode was chosen by associate editor Hamilton Perez.
“Harlequin Moon” originally aired as PodCastle 393.
Harlequin Moon
by Jennifer Hykes
The man called Dirt was a master of riddles. It was his only gift.
He was not a riddler himself. From the time he could speak, he always called things exactly what they were and nothing else. He had tried, once or twice in his childhood, to craft a joke or to weave a pair of clever words together. But every time he tried to twist something sideways, he found that his tongue would not cooperate. So he stopped trying to be clever and went on his way, moving through his life in a straight line from day before to day after. He worked the fields on his family’s farm, he carted vegetables to market, he paid his respects to the temple gods at all the appropriate times. He grew tall and broad of shoulder, but even in the prime of his youth he moved with the deliberate calm of old age. He was not a riddler.
But he was a master at solving riddles.

PodCastle 757: TALES FROM THE VAULTS – Harlequin Moon

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						*  Author : E. F. Benson
							*  Narrator : Devin Martin
							*  Host : Matt Dovey
							*  Audio Producer : Eric Valdes
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				Originally published by Hutchinson’s Magazine, October 1928
 
			
						
			Content warning for references to grief
		
		
Rated PG
Pirates
by E.F. Benson
 
 
For many years this project of sometime buying back the house had simmered in Peter Graham’s mind, but whenever he actually went into the idea with practical intention, stubborn reasons had presented themselves to deter him. In the first place it was very far off from his work, down in the heart of Cornwall, and it would be impossible to think of going there just for weekends, and if he established himself there for longer periods what on Earth would he do with himself in that soft remote Lotus-land? He was a busy man who, when at work, liked the diversion of his club and of the theatres in the evening, but he allowed himself few holidays away from the City, and those were spent on salmon river or golf links with some small party of solid and like-minded friends. Looked at in these lights, the project bristled with objections.
Yet through all these years, forty of them now, which had ticked away so imperceptibly, the desire to be at home again at Lescop had always persisted, and from time to time it gave him shrewd little unexpected tugs, when his conscious mind was in no way concerned with it. This desire, he was well aware, was of a sentimental quality, and often he wondered at himself that he, who was so well-armoured in the general jostle of the world against that type of emotion, should have just this one joint in his harness. Not since he was sixteen had he set eyes on the place, but the memory of it was more vivid than that of any other scene of subsequent experience. He had married since then, he had lost his wife, and though for many months after that he had felt horribly lonely, the ache of that loneliness had ceased, and now, if he had ever asked himself the direct question, he would have confessed that bachelor existence was more suited to him than married life had ever been. It had not been a conspicuous success, and he never felt the least temptation to repeat the experiment.
But there was another loneliness which neither married life nor his keen interest in his business had ever extinguished, and this was directly connected with his desire for that house on the green slope of the hills above Truro. For only seven years had he lived there, the youngest but one of a family of five children, and now out of all that gay company he alone was left. One by one they had dropped off the stem of life, but as each in turn went into this silence, Peter had not missed them very much: his own life was too occupied to give him time really to miss anybody, and he was too vitally constituted to do otherwise than look forwards.
None of that brood of children except himself, and he childless, had married, and now when he was left without intimate tie of blood to any living being, a loneliness had gathered thickly round him. It was not in any sense a tragic or desperate loneliness: he had no wish to follow them on the unverified and unlikely chance of finding them all again. Also, he had no use for any disembodied existence: life meant to him flesh and blood and material interests and activities, and he could form no conception of life apart from such. But sometimes he ached with this dull gnawing ache of...

PodCastle 841: Pirates



	
			
		
						*  Author : Rachael K. Jones
							*  Narrator : Heather Thomas
							*  Host : Matt Dovey
							*  Audio Producer : Devin Martin
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				Previously published by Nightmare Magazine
 
			
						
			Content warnings for gun violence, school shootings, child endangerment, references to child murder
		
		
Rated PG-13
The Sound of Children Screaming
by Rachael K. Jones
 
 
THE GUN
 
You know the one about the Gun. The Gun goes where it wants to. On Thursday morning just after recess, the Gun will walk through the front doors of Thurman Elementary, and it won’t sign in at the front office or wear a visitor’s badge.
The Gun does most of its damage in the first five minutes. The Gun doesn’t care about lockdown drills, and it will not wait for the SWAT team to arrive. The Gun can chew through a door, a desk, a cinderblock wall, and kids don’t wear those bulletproof backpacks during reading time.
Everyone has a right to a gun. Nothing can take that away from you. What you lack is a right to the lives of your children.
The Gun likes a game of hide-and-seek. The Gun will rove the grounds until someone stops it. The Gun has been here many times before.
The Gun is not working alone.

THE SHOOTER
 
He is never anyone special. Just a man exercising his right to a gun.

THE TEACHER
 
Michelle Dalton has taught fourth grade for nine years, long enough to know how the job yawns wider each year, collecting all the loose threads that society needs done but no one wants to pay for. Michelle has six figures in student loans and makes less than $50,000 a year. She shares a rental house with two roommates and has a weekend job at Trek & Field selling athletic shoes to make ends meet. She does not get paid overtime, and the school district does not buy the art supplies. She is not entitled to bathroom breaks or a nonworking lunch, and she doesn’t get paid for summers.
Michelle wears the armor of an elementary school teacher: an A-line dress in an ocean print, a blue cardigan to match. She bears no weapon but a sharp-edged teacher’s tongue that cuts through noise like scissors.
Every teacher in Thurman Elementary will sense the Gun moments before it opens fire as a tense, drawn-out pause, an upset child drawing the breath to scream. They will not visibly panic, not with twenty-one pairs of eyes locked upon them for guidance. Michelle’s body will act before her mind comprehends the threat.
It is Michelle’s job to keep her students safe, just as it is her job to take the blame for whatever harm the Gun inflicts in the process.

THE PORTAL
 
You know about the Portal too, although not by that name. The Portal seeks the places where children hide. It stalked the air raid shelters in London during the Blitz. It lurked in underground cellars during the Cold War, crouched between the canned corn and rancid Crisco. It has fed itself in Italian orphanages and Australian residential schools, and it has only gotten hungrier.
The Portal has been exhibiting itself at gun shows recently, a gleaming bullet-proof vault in which to store kids when the shooter comes. The Portal has been installed in every classroom, funded by bake sales and cereal box tops, bought at the expense of pencils and math books and a music teacher.
The Portal is not wheelchair-accessible.

PodCastle 840: The Sound of Children Screaming



	
			
		
						*  Authors : C.S.E. Cooney and Carlos Hernandez
							*  Narrators : C.S.E. Cooney and Carlos Hernandez
							*  Host : Matt Dovey
							*  Audio Producer : Eric Valdes
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				Previously published by Clockwork Phoenix and as PodCastle episode 669
			
						
			Content warnings for illness and death
		
		
Rated PG-13
The Book of May
By C. S. E. Cooney and Carlos Hernandez
From: Morgan W. Jamwant 
To: Harry Najinsky 
Date: January 22, 2015 12:58:59 p.m. est
Subject: Death Is the Tree
Eliazar,
Dude. I wanna be a tree when I die. Make them put me into one of those urn-y things. The biodegradable ones with the seed inside. Go look it up. I swear to God. Gawd. Gerd. Gods. All of em.
I wanted to be oak, ’cause of what you wrote a hundred billion years ago in our high school yearbook. “To Morgan, an Oak amidst the Spruce.” But I didn’t see oak on the website. Maybe I should go sugar maple instead. I’d be so fabulous in October.
Can you take this seriously? I mean, not too seriously but a little seriously? I’m kind of on a time crunch here, they tell me.
M. W. J.

From: Harry Najinsky 
To: Morgan W. Jamwant 
Date: January 22, 2015 6:07:21 p.m. est
Subject: Re: Death Is the Tree
Hey May,
You know you’re the only one who still calls me Eliazar? And it’s not like I don’t hang out with all our old D&D; buddies. It’s just that all we play these days are Eurogames, and you don’t give yourself cool, vaguely medieval names in Eurogames. Mostly you do math. I guess all that resource management makes them feel adult or productive or something. To me it feels like a job. I miss D&D.;
So I googled it. Eco-urn? It doesn’t sound like you. It sounds like earthy-crunchy ooey-gooey overpriced bourgeois bullshit. I mean, it’s not like we have a choice. We’re all recycled eventually. Do you think Nature gives a shit about how we’re packaged when we die? She’ll eat us any way we come prepared.
But okay, you said take you seriously. So you want to be an oak? I can see that. I see your hair, and I can imagine it defying gravity and tendrilling up toward the sky. I’m imagining each lock crusting over, becoming strike-a-match rough, radiating like a bark-brown crown around your head. Then come the leaves, not slowly like boring normal trees, but in one verdant, fireworks-ical explosion. You’d spontaneously generate a heavy load of acorns, and the squirrels would be so pleased that they’d learn to speak, just so they could sing choir songs of gratitude.
How’s that? I was never as good at that shit as you. You were always the roleplayer. I was the rules lawyer. It’s why we made such a good team. Well, and you knew the Raise Dead spell, and could bring me back to life every time I miscalculated.
I wish I hadn’t said Raise Dead. It’s just too painful to contemplate a world where a spell like that could exist. That’s the real reason we don’t play D&D; anymore. Fantasy is hopeful. Fantasy hurts.
You’re not a sugar maple. I forbid you from being a maple! Maple trees are all sweet and Canadian and self-sacrificing. “Yes,

PodCastle 839: TALES FROM THE VAULTS – The Book of May



	
			
		
						*  Author : Sara S. Messenger
							*  Narrator : Cherrae L. Stuart
							*  Host : Matt Dovey
							*  Audio Producer : Devin Martin
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				Previously published by Fantasy Magazine (Reprinted in The Year’s Best Fantasy, Vol. 2, 2023, Pyr Books)
			
					
Rated PG-13
Potemora in the Triad
By Sara S. Messenger
 
There are always three: the father, the unfather, and the child. That’s why Vriskiaab threw my unfather off his back after she bore my baby sister, or so Vriskiaab tells me when he stops in the shade of a dune, his massive scales warm under my calves and the tail of him stretching behind me for leagues. My baby sister is soft and crimson-tacky in the crook of my arm.
I cup her warm, wobbly head. Her birth shook the earth, and the sand shakes under us still.
We have no milk, I say.
Hush, child, says Vriskiaab, his voice a thrumming coil under my heels. That infant is not ours. Your unfather left me a riddle, and now I must solve it.
I don’t care much for the balance of our triad, but the earth will crack open unless he solves it, so I hug my sister to my chest. Her cries are so shrill, and they ring like struck ceramic.

Things I will say to my baby sister, come the end of the world: If you need to kill me, I don’t mind if you watch me kneel; and, vultures flock in odd dozens, and cactus fruit come in fours or seven, and you have two tiny moles under your left eye; and, I don’t care that you have a different father because we tread in the desert the same.

Vriskiaab names my sister Baaiksirv. This quiets the rumbling under our feet, but not entirely; some of the canyons we pass have already collapsed, and there are no altar-men where instead exists rubble. Vriskiaab goes without his slain offerings and drinks from a nearby river, muddier than befitting him, and he filters it as he trickles it down the length of his back to the ridged hood under which I live.
The water is cool and silty, and my tears hot, my mind empty.
Father. Unfather. Child.
My unfather’s stories never depicted a triad with a hole inside.
My father cradles my sister in his mouth, in a birthing pocket behind his fang. His eyes are hooded in consternation. The ground shudders still, but we are not bereft, yet.
It will be two years before I see Baaiksirv again.

Baaiksirv will smell like venom, a sharp, sour smell that rises from her soft cheeks and hair, but mostly her suckling mouth. Unlike me, she will have round pupils, and no scales anywhere, not even in a thin line down her spine. In that way, she is just like our unfather.

When I turn twelve, I will sneak off my father’s back during that rare time he is deeply sleeping, after he fondly observes one of his festivals. It will be a relief to get away from the endless hazy sand and the distant chime of diamond sparring against bone. I wear a deep cloak because the cities are unfriendly to things that look almost-human, and I get moderately drunk for the first time, even though it tastes somewhat like my prodigious sister smells.
It will be the first time I encounter a double history. Slumped in the shadows of the beer-merchant’s iron tent, the constant tremor of the earth a gentle ring up the walls, I listen to an elderly orator quarrel with a young woman about how the festival story goes.
It is the same everywhere, with minor variations, the orator says.

PodCastle 838: Potemora in the Triad



	
			
		
						*  Author : Alexia Tolas
							*  Narrator : Omega Francis
							*  Host : Matt Dovey
							*  Audio Producer : Eric Valdes
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			PodCastle 837: Good Fortune For a Beloved Child is a PodCastle original.
		
				
			Content warnings for the death of a child, racism, and allusions to sexual assault
		
		
Rated PG-13
Good Fortune for a Beloved Child
By Alexia Tolas
 
There ain’t no body for Thomas funeral, so we bury an empty coffin.
Not empty, Daddy did tell me as we followed the undertaker to the cherry-woods and mahoganies. The coffins they pretty up with ivory velvet and pillows and other shit the dead ain’t gonna care about ‘cause they dead. We don’t even know if Thomas really —
Quintia . . . 
But I hear him at night. Singing.
Please!
When the tide goes out.
Enough! 
The undertaker cleared his throat. Daddy nodded at the mahogany for $6,000.
For his mother’s sake, enough.
His mother.
Ain’t she my mother too? That’s what she told me the day we picked up the adoption certificate.
Since there ain’t no body to bury, we filled the coffin with the pieces of Thomas we find around the house. A softball glove. A crawfish spear. His favorite rashguard. There’s still pieces of him on the sleeves. His smell — sun-tan lotion and sugar apple. A strand of his yellow hair. I tried to keep it, but Daddy said Thomas needed to be laid to rest.
Mummy don’t want Thomas to rest. She near dead when she see Daddy pack the rashguard away with the other pieces of her child. Her cries did shake the walls. Her tears flooded the tubs and sinks. She did sink her words into the box, and with every plea and threat, she take back another piece of Thomas.
Was the coffin a dumpster?
Was Daddy that eager to give up on his one child?
Was Thomas so easy to replace?
But you can’t blame her for being angry. Every day there’s more and more blank spaces in Thomas room. And the more Daddy take away Thomas, the more he fill up the house with me.
I can feel her eyes burning through my skull as I walk up to the coffin to pay my last respects. Daddy and I avoid her hate by taking the side aisle back to our pew instead of the center aisle Mummy takes to the nave.
Mummy. That don’t sound right in my head no more.
Of all people, she should’ve believed me. She who follow Thomas singing to the bluff every night. She should’ve been happy to know that I too hear his voice riding the white caps to shore. But that ain’t all I tell her. I tell her something I ain’t tell the police. Something I ain’t tell Daddy. I tell her about the wet girl. The wet girl with barracuda teeth and backwards feet who pulled Thomas into the sea.
I run my tongue along the gash inside my cheek. That’s how hard Mummy slapped me.
Mummy rests her hands on the coffin, and a hush falls over the congregation. There’s a knowing in the people, a knowing I can touch but can’t feel. There ain’t no separate sorrows, just one mourning, like a song with many voices. Is not like the sorrow at my grandmother’s funeral where two of my aunts tried to jump into the grave. The wails at Grammy wake can’t compare to the stifling anguish in this room. What’s more, it’s a secret anguish, one that don’t show itself in tears (because there ain’t a wet eye in this church) – or in screams (because it’s so quiet I can hear my own blood rushing through my ears). It almost feels like . . . defeat.

PodCastle 757: TALES FROM THE VAULTS – Harlequin Moon

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