PodCastle

* Author : C.S.E. Cooney
* Narrator : Julia Rios
* Host : Summer Fletcher
* Audio Producer : Peter Adrian Behravesh
*
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Originally published in Uncanny Magazine. Previously published in Jonathan Strahan’s The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume Twelve, and Subterranean Press’s The Best of Uncanny Magazine (2020).


Rated PG-13.
A statement from PodCastle on the ongoing protests against police brutality and anti-Black racism (included in audio at the start of the episode): As you know, protests are happening all over the U.S. to draw attention to police brutality and the ongoing injustice Black Americans are forced to endure. Make no mistake, PodCastle supports Black Lives Matter and we demand justice George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery & all victims of police violence. If you want to help and don’t know where to start, please donate to your local bail fund and the National Bail Fund Network. When everything looks bleak, and you don’t know what to do, look outward to your community. We help ourselves by helping others. Solidarity.
Though She Be But Little
By C.S.E. Cooney
Emma Anne had a tin can attached by a string to her belt. Lots of things on strings bounced and banged from it: some useful (like the pocket knife), some decorative (a length of red ribbon longer than herself, looped up), some that simply seemed interesting enough to warrant a permanent yo-yoing to her person (a silver hand bell, a long blue plume, the cameo of an elephant head wearing a Victorian bonnet).
“Emma Anne’s Heavy Weight Stacked Plate Championship Wrestling Belt,” Captain Howard called it. Captain Howard often capitalized the first letters of words she spoke out loud.
The belt was leather and embossed bronze, like a python wrapped twice about Emma Anne’s torso. It had appeared along with Captious and Bumptious the night the sky turned silver. So had the tin can. They were all part of Emma Anne’s endowments. (“Endowments” was the pirate word for objects or traits materializing Post-Argentum. “Post-Argentum,” another phrase of their design. Pirates had words for everything. But pirates were liars.)
Emma Anne hadn’t known how to use any of her endowments at first. Nothing was obvious until it was.
She brought the tin can up to her mouth and spoke into its cavity as clearly as she could. Endowments obeyed intent.
“Emma Anne to Margaret Howard. Come in please, Captain Howard.”
Captain Margaret Howard, Way Pirate of Route 1, did not deal in tin cans. What she had was her parrot, George Sand. George Sand got reception.
“Rrrawk,” Emma Anne’s tin can blatted back at her. “Whaddya want?”
“What do you want, over,” Emma Anne corrected.
She wouldn’t have corrected Captain Howard to her face, but George Sand never failed to get on Emma’s nerves.
“Rrrawk! Take it and rrawk yourself,” said George Sand. “Over.”
There was a pause while Emma Anne’s chest tightened.
The tin can blatted: “Cap’n Howard makes her apologies for her rude bird, over. Please continue, kid, over.”