PodCastle is the world’s first audio fantasy magazine. Weekly, we broadcast the best in fantasy short stories, running the gammut from heart-pounding sword and sorcery, to strange surrealist tales, to gritty urban fantasy, to the psychological depth of magical realism. Our podcast features authors including N.K. Jemisin, Peter S. Beagle, Benjamin Rosenbaum, Jim C. Hines, and Cat Rambo, among others. Terry Pratchett once wrote, “Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can.” Tune in to PodCastle each Tuesday for our weekly tale, and spend the length of a morning commute giving your imagination a work out.
https://podcastle.org/
PodCastle 432: The Beautiful Bird Sits No Longer Singing in the Nest
by Kate Lechler
read by Stephanie Morris
My husband has hired Grace to come each morning, bringing food, medicine, and, as she puts it, “comp’ny.” She isn’t truly a witch—my father taught me that a belief in augury is the sign of an untutored mind—but I loathe her just the same. Each day, she drags the rocking chair from the adjacent room and sits knitting in it, her heavy breathing filling the space. At the end of the day, she scrapes the chair back through the door.
Who knows what trouble I might get up to with unfettered access to a rocking chair?
Click here continue reading.
A PodCastle original!
Rated R for adult content, disturbing imagery.
Kate Lechler teaches British Literature at the University of Mississippi and writes science-fiction and fantasy from her home in in Oxford, MS, where she lives with her husband, a dog, a cat, and seven fish. Her work has been previously published in the NonBinary Review, Dear Robot: An Anthology of Epistolary Science Fiction, and Illumen, and she reviews fantasy and science fiction for FantasyLiterature.com. She loves gardening, singing jazz, and watching bad (and good!) TV. You can find her online at http://www.therediscoveredcountry.blogspot.com/ and on Twitter @katelechler.
Stephanie Morris is a professional fangirl by day and the lone library assistant staffing a college circulation desk at night. She has narrated short stories for PseudoPod, PodCastle, EscapePod, Cast of Wonders, and StarShipSofa, guest-blogged on subjects ranging from book recommendations to zombie turkeys, and performed Shakespeare in a handful of weird churches. Until she suppresses her inner perfectionist enough to create a website, you can find her on Twitter at @smaliamorris.