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Etherea Magazine #13

Etherea Magazine, August 2022. The anniversary issue!

Because she is a glutton for punishment, Katie McIvor reviews both Sair Back, Sair Banes, by Anthony Engebretson, and Skin Grows Over, by Lucy Elizabeth Allen.

Aidan Wilson steps down from his ivory tower, and provides a review of Every Version of You, by Grace Chan

THE STORIES:

She almost shook her head no but then asked for a Negroni too. Courage in a glass. What would he do when she told him? If she told him. She could still call it off. No. She was almost thirty-two. If she wasn’t going to die alone, she had to get past this with someone – Growing Feathers, by Eva Moon

First her mother, then the moon. That was how it went. Ilmur was certain of this, though in truth she wasn’t sure who disappeared first. Only that one moment she had been asleep, curled against her solid warmth, and in the next she woke to shouts and the sound of unbridled waves gnashing ashore – Moon, by Carly Racklin

When the last sliver of sun passed below the horizon, the longhaus grew from the hearths. A sound like a rockfall avalanche ricocheted around the clearing and the scents of long-lost clay-beds filled the air. The gathered clans watched as the hearth bricks unfolded and spread, multiplying until two beautiful and unique longhaus stood complete – Wall or Hearth, by Melanie Harding-Shaw

The tavern smells like sweat, not that it matters to me. Not with the day I’m having. The door slams shut behind me, and I walk to the bar as quietly as I can, but every step with my right foot sounds like a hammer. Everyone in the place looks up from their tables and stares. I can’t say I blame them. I’d stare too – Ride or Die, by R.J. Russell

Mersen returned to whetting his blade, his bare, gnarled hands made long, confident strokes with the stone. The knife’s point had snapped off at some stage leaving a blunt-nosed blade the length of his thumb. He stopped and tested the edge across the back of his thumbnail. With a grunt, he pushed the knife home into its leather sheath then shoved them both at the boy – Dragon’s Breath, by H. Robert Barland

I laugh 24% more with him around according to Compatolytics, and that app knows. It found someone to marry Joanna. And they’re happy. I love Joanna, but my best guess for her long term relationship was “cat.” The CompatoCoach says I need to get out of my head and enjoy the moment – Compatolytics, by David Far

The bargain between a wisher and a shooting star sems too good to be true. Nevertheless, the benevolent stars seem to want nothing in return. So, in the dead of the summer night, Anet climbs the rooftop, limber and strong, despite her eleven-year-old awkwardness. She scurries along the shingles and grabs the chimney into a one-armed hug. Below, drowned out by distance, a voice calls to her, “Anet, you get right back here. No daughter of mine will be out this late. Not while you live under my roof!” – Banquet of the Shooting Stars, by A.D. Sui

My brother won awards and prizes, was tall and athletic while I could not use my legs, but this is not why his infinity was infinitely bigger and infinitely better than mine.  I’m sure people wondered how anyone could fail to love my brother when he was so brave and shining–but I think they have the causality backwards. Everybody loved him and he took all of that love inside himself until he could not help but glow like a nebula pinpricked with stars – Divided By Zero, by Samantha Murray

To please his mom, Theo had agreed to organize the hundreds of correspondences his Great Uncle Simon had sent home to his sister, Stella, during World War II. But until he’d pulled the seaman’s trunk out of its position in a little-visited corner of the attic, Theo had no idea the magnitude of the project for which he’d volunteered – The Brass Fly, by Vonnie Winslow Crist

Tony got his suborbital license. And no one regulates who you take up in a SubOrb plane; as long as you file your flight plan in advance, the government can’t really say anything. So Ma was going to get to go up as far as they would let her, all without having to pay anything to the expensive SubOrb tour companies. Tony had managed to snag the use of a plane from a guy he knew from training; otherwise, it would have still been way too expensive – The Sweetness at the End, by Jenny Rae Rappaport

She’s only been into The Forest of Hands twice: first when her grandfather died of heart failure and then a year or so later when her grandmother joined him. When the eulogies had finished and Sally had laid an armful of daffodils on their chests, her mother had done the honours of cutting off the corpse’s hands just above the wrists – In The Beginning, All Our Hands Are Cold, by Ephiny Gale

“Dee said you were looking for a boarder!” he yelled over its patter, his hood still obscuring his face. He looked like the kind of guy you’d find lined up in front of the Salvation Army over by Byward Market, but because Dee had sent him, I didn’t hesitate to invite him in out of the rain – Thunderclouds & Lifelines, by Wendy Nikel

Then two of the moons imploded and took away the tides. The powers that be made the place into an outpost that served as a rehab prison, since all the old buildings were intact in what was now a desert too dry for rot to set in. The land stretched out to the horizon without a boulder or a bit of brush to show for it. In the daytime, anyway – Rose-Colored Glass, by Regina Clarke