Issue 53

NewMyths.com

A quarterly ezine by a community of writers, poets and artists.

Issue 53 - December 2020

Dear Readers,

Whether sequestering at home this year, or working in the front lines, we wish you a happy holiday reading season, from us to you. Pull up your chair and escape with us into other worlds, dark and deep, or bright and shiny, and none of them, I promise you, plagued by a pandemic.

We're honored in this issue to bring you poems from some of your favorite poets, and to welcome another favorite poet/author, Geoffrey Landis. Here you'll find poems of courage and fun, luring you into the faerie realm of goblin markets or candied houses, or swallowing you away forever into the dark holes of space. And here too are stories of mystery and adventure, to send you escaping from hellish planets, or disappearing in huts on full moon nights, or writing new lies to revise history. And last, be sure not to miss a story as beautiful as any poem “After the Roses Have Faded Away,” by Wendy Nikel.

Keep safe all! And happy reading.

-Susan Shell Winston, Editor

Table of Contents

Fiction

"Lord of All Seas" by Mike Adamson

“The oceans grow angry,” the Priest of the Shark said softly. “When they no longer are content to lap our white shores with gentle waves, when they rise up in tumult and destruction, and bring the storm to our very gates, our hearths, we are reminded that for all our apparent mastery of the blue expanses, we are, as ordained by nature herself, dwellers upon the land.”

"Hell is the Morning Star" by Gustavo Bondoni

“Buckle up, people,” Rina shouted. “It’s going to get bumpy.”

She was right. The slight turbulence that had felt so disturbing was nothing compared to the sudden violent buffeting the ship began to take. Rina laughed and shouted over the roar. “Winds here are strong, but it’ll calm down once we get a little closer to the surface. The pressure and density are going to work in our favor there. We’re not riding one of your dinky little Mars landers here, you know..."

"Palmer's Folly" by Dirck de Lint

Outside, moonlight fell on the irregular columns of whatever it was that took the place of the folly...

On his phone, under the picture of his friend, ...was a subscript signal lost.

"After the Roses Have Faded Away" by Wendy Nikel

Violet is the first color to disappear. It's always the same for everyone, a fact as certain as the rain and sun, as predictable as the blossoming of crocuses in the narrow box outside Penelope's window. Yet it still comes as a surprise, on the day her parents bring home her new baby sister, when the lavender petals turn ashen gray.

"Parables for Children after Domefall" by K. A. Rochnik

A child asked his mother, how did the world end--with a bang or with a whimper?

The mother considered the question, then spoke sadly, with lots of bangs, child, and lots of whimpers. Great calamities were unleashed on us, and by us, like Pandora and her box. Too many to defeat.

The child asked, what happened next? After the world ended?

The mother replied, to escape the calamities, we made ourselves a hell.

Flash Fiction

"Treatment" by Conrad Adamson

McKayla rubbed her eyes. It wasn’t just that she had been staring at a screen—it was the content she was studying: explanations of cell division, images of irregular nuclei, and the multitude of information the internet had on malignant growth. Three soft knocks came from her door. “Come in,” she said.

"Castles in the Air" by E.L. Bates

They rounded the corner and Bruno saw the actual castle, rising up from the ground in all its fairy tale-esque glory, the mountains providing an impressive background for it. Except ... after that half-seen imagined castle, all golden and white from the sun glimmering on the rocks, this castle felt a little flat. More like an imitation of a fairy tale than the tale itself.

"A Sky Full of Stars" by David Barber

They tell me Mermoz is dead, or as good as dead to us now, lost in a timestorm over the lands that history called the Mid-West.

"Corpora" by David Houston Jones

As a result, the habitants revived to find their language changed since their last period of consciousness. This, more than the changes in their environment, disconcerted them the most...

NonFiction

"Journey to Perdition" by Peter Jekel

Several recent missions to Venus detected a number of interesting chemicals in the atmosphere, about fifty kilometers above the surface, that may be signatures of life.

Poetry

"Winter's End" by Davian Aw

"Vulture Bone Flute" by Gary Every

"The Forest in the Full of the Moon" by Geoffrey A. Landis

"How to Forfeit the Future" by Mary Soon Lee

"Night and Apotheosis" by Andrew Roberts

"Dark Forest" by Christina Sng