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 427: Squalor and Sympathy
by Matt Dovey
read by Louise Ratcliffe
Anna concentrated on the cold, on the freezing water around her feet and the bruising sensation in her toes. So cold. So cold. So cold, she thought. A prickling warmth like pins and needles crackled inside her feet. It coursed through her body to her clenched hands and into the lead alloy handles of the cotton loom. Each thought of cold! kindled a fresh surge of heat inside and pushed the shuttle across the weave in a new burst of power. Anna’s unfocused eyes rested on the woven cotton feeding out of the back of the machine. It looks so warm.
Click here to continue reading.
First published in Writers of the Future volume 32, May 2016.
Rated PG-13.
Author Matt Dovey
Matt Dovey is very tall and very English and is most likely drinking a cup of tea right now. He has a scar on his arm from an impoverished childhood working the looms in the Victorian cotton mills (he’s older than he looks). He now lives in a quiet market town in rural England with his wife & three children, and despite being a writer, he still hasn’t found the right words to properly express the delight and joy he finds in this wonderful arrangement.
His surname rhymes with “Dopey”, but any other similarities to the dwarf are purely coincidental. He is the Golden Pen winner for Writers of the Future volume 32 (2016) with this very story, and was shortlisted for the James White Award in 2016. He has fiction out and forthcoming all over the place; you can keep up with it at mattdovey.com, or follow along on Facebook and Twitter both as @mattdoveywriter.
Narrator Louise Ratcliffe
Your narrator is Louise Ratcliffe. She says, “My name’s Louise and I am a scientist and an artist. I spent my school days either trying to blow stuff up in Chemistry, or creating angsty pieces of writing and performance art. I’m originally from England, and came to New Zealand as a souvenir from an OE, I am currently doing everything I never planned to do out in rural Waikato.”