by Escape Artists Foundation
The Fantasy Fiction Podcast
Language
🇺🇲
Publishing Since
11/20/2018
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April 29, 2025
Comedian Timothy Palmer discusses his return to the stage and memorable cameos with interviewer John O'Brien, including a famous line from 'The Ladies of St Agnes' in this interview.
April 22, 2025
<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> * Author : <a href="https://podcastle.org/people/mimi-mondal/">Mimi Mondal </a><br /> * Narrator : <a href="https://podcastle.org/people/elizabeth-green/">Elizabeth Green</a><br /> * Host : <a href="https://podcastle.org/people/kaitlyn-zivanovich/">Kaitlyn Zivanovich</a><br /> * Audio Producer : <a href="https://podcastle.org/people/devin-martin/">Devin Martin</a><br /> * <br /> <a href="http://forum.escapeartists.net/index.php?board=57.0"> Discuss on Forums</a><br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> Originally published as PodCastle 349<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> Content warnings for violence and disturbing imagery<br /> <br /> <br /> Rated R<br /> This Sullied Earth, Our Home<br /> by Mimi Mondal<br /> <br /> A few hours after the Majestic Oriental Circus rolls into Deoband, Johuree steps into our tent and whispers, “This is the place where I took you in. It was here.”Outside, it looks just like one of the many small towns we wind our way through, halting for a week or two to put up a show. It has been raining for days. The university dome in the distance glistens with dark moss against the ponderous sky. The fairground is all mud, sludge and clumps of grass, sucking in our tent posts like a fumbling, ungainly monster. A group of local men, hired to dry up enough ground to put up the main circus tent, have been working since the morning. So why does this miserable earth feel like a familiar taste, again?We wonder if Johuree would like a cup of tea. He agrees. There is no milk, but he sips the dark brown brew in silence.We watch.“There is a cottage at the far end of the town. Little more than ruins now, I presume. Would you like to visit?”Johuree never goes anywhere. We don”t recall him ever stepping out into the daylight. We don”t recall much anything. Though we travel far and wide with the circus, we have never left the camp site and gone “sightseeing”, as some others in the troupe are in the habit of doing.<br /> Nor has he.<br /> <br /> <br /> “He was my friend. My brother. We had fought together through our darkest hour.”<br /> Johuree never reminisces, the least of all about family. We are not sure if there is anything to reminisce. He shifts his bulk upon the faded patchwork rug that is the only seat for guests in our tent. He places the empty cup and plate delicately on the floor.<br /> We sit on wooden chairs set against the mirror and the dressing table. We nod.<br /> “Well, then. We leave after lunch and return by sundown. I will send Bansiram out to find a pair of hooded raincoats for you . ”<br /> After he leaves, we fiddle around our tent, grappling with the thought.<br /> Eventually, Elia speaks, “Our . . . father.”<br /> “Should we put on our makeup?” says Sascha.<br /> “He didn’ t say. ”<br /> “He didn ‘ t say not to.”<br /> That is a fact. We never leave the tent without our makeup. But then, we never leave to go anywhere but up on the stage.<br /> “What if we dress up as one of each?” Elia suggests. “You take the light one, I take the dark.”<br /> This sounds reasonable. Sounds like the way we think people in the non-circus world might dress.<br /> Our efforts meet Johuree’ s approval. We are less sure that his silver ringmaster jacket is the appropriate attire for a visit to the dead. But we do not know what is, so we hold our judgement.<br /> <br /> “Going out, babu saab?”<br /> Wading through the mud towards us is one of the men working on the ground. Soaked, mud-splattered kurta pajama lingers against translucent skin that stretches tight over his bones. The man sucks vigorously at a sodden beedi.<br /> “Just taking the children out for a walk. Bit of sightseeing.”<br /> “Some weather for sightseeing.”<br /> “Not likely to improve any time soon, is it?” Johuree displays his teeth.<br /> The man stares at us. We recede under the hoods of our oversized raincoats.<br /> Then he smiles.
April 15, 2025
<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> * Author : <a href="https://podcastle.org/people/filip-hajdar-drnovsek-zorko/">Filip Hajdar Drnovšek Zorko</a><br /> * Narrator : <a href="https://podcastle.org/people/yaroslav-barsukov/">Yaroslav Barsukov</a><br /> * Host : <a href="https://podcastle.org/people/kaitlyn-zivanovich/">Kaitlyn Zivanovich</a><br /> * Audio Producer : <a href="https://podcastle.org/people/eric-valdes/">Eric Valdes</a><br /> * <br /> <a href="http://forum.escapeartists.net/index.php?board=57.0"> Discuss on Forums</a><br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> Previously published by Beneath Ceaseless Skies<br /> <br /> <br /> Rated PG-13<br /> The Cuckoo of Vrežna Mountain<br /> by Filip Hajdar Drnovšek Zorko<br /> <br /> I realised I was in love with Ivor the day he went up the mountain to speak with the goddess.<br /> We were at that age when the affectionate ease of childhood tips over into something different, when every touch could be the casual brush of friendship or something more and I would never know in advance which was which. There were many times, in those days, when Ivor would take my hands in his, larger and warmer and smooth with the orange-blossom oil he rubbed into them; and I would jerk away with some hasty apology and adjust my trousers while he was not looking. To this day, I find the smell of oranges arousing at the most inopportune times, of which, in a town known for its citrus trees, there are uncomfortably many.<br /> Which is to say that it was not entirely unexpected, this matter of my being in love with him, except insofar as I had never considered the option until it was upon me; and if we had been boys further up the coast, away from the Oracle and her mountain, perhaps this would have been a cause for celebration: the sort of slow exploration of love and youth that ends, mutually, in a friendship deeper than it was before.<br /> But Ivor was a scion of the city Vrežna, and his mother Silva was a devout woman. Her ways were the old ways, and that was why I awoke early one morning to climb a mountain with Ivor and wait out the dew, wait out the dawn, wait out the moment he emerged from the goddess’s temple a betrothed man.<br /> The temple stood facing the sea, the bulk of the mountain shielding it from the town below. It was a simple structure, columned and open to the elements with a tall pointed roof. Inside, the floor was given over to a shallow pool of water that was a hand deep at most. There was no altar. The Oracle did not accept gifts.<br /> Ivor splashed through the water like a man born to the task. Silva and I remained outside, but the demarcation was immaterial. The Oracle’s temple was curiously small. It was easy to see everything that went on inside. Vrežna’s people claim that only those born within sight of her mountain could see the Oracle’s physical form. I do not know if this is true. I do know that until that day, until I looked at the thing slumped at Ivor’s feet, I had never seen anything in the temple.<br /> It was a woman, slumped against the shallow steps rimming the pool. Her skin was the same light brown as Ivor’s but mottled with pale splotches, like someone had spilled ink that sapped colour rather than granted it. Her open eyes were an even grey. She looked as though dead, I thought, until her lips opened around an indrawn breath.<br /> “How strange,” Silva said to me, and it took me a moment to realise that she was not looking inside the temple, not speaking of the woman lying there, “to stand with one of the Godless on the Oracle’s mountain. Or perhaps three dead gods is not enough for you? Would you strike down our Vrežna, given the chance?”<br /> She said it as if she had not herself stamped the permission form that allowed a non-Vrežni access to the mountain.<br /> “Two dead gods,” I murmured. “The third survives.”’<br /> “Even worse! Yours are not the only people to suffer the death o...
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