Storyfeather

Spencer frowned at the professor's curious claim, and glanced at their two guides. Their guides were men of the jungle, courageous and calm, but among the youngest and least experienced of their people. They would be treated as heroes if they returned from the expedition. But they had not been expected to return. From several yards away, they eyed the golden-bronze idol with as much caution and su...

He lifted the dog, her tongue lolling in the mild heat of the summer evening, and placed her on the truck bed.   Nico peered at her. "If I left you at home, you'd escape and come after me, and get hit by traffic or something. This way at least, if things don't go as planned, Dad will find you in the morning. Maybe…the others too." He rubbed her head, tousled her ears, and bent down to kiss her hea...

Joanie loved her gramps, but she most certainly did not love clowns. Still, as she sat against the wall of the playroom that her grandfather had made for her, she held onto the little clown doll with the dark fuzzy hair at the sides of his head, the tiny purple hat on his bald head, the blue shirt, and the red pants, and the ever-smiling face. She waited for him to answer her questions.   Growing...

Once upon a time, a town that sat nestled near the foot of a mountain, surrounded by forest evergreen, ran out of food and fuel in the midst of a deadly winter. They were not poor, the people of this town. They were not foolish with their provisions. The winter had just lasted far longer than any in the realm had expected. Every season of that year was winter. Many perished.   Shadowy spirits call...

An ancient people with great potential built a glorious thing before they succumbed to corruption, fell into ruin, and vanished from the world.   One person may have stumbled upon the forgotten creation of an ancient people who erased their very existence from all records. Genre: Mystery, Horror Tags: giant, glorious thing, Hyperion, worm   CREDITS Story : " The Riddle of Hyperion " Copyright © 20...

In the suddenly dimmed room full of seated strangers, I heard subdued coughs, the click of a heel, the crack of a knuckle, and the hushed hiss of fabric shifting against fabric or against the hard plastic chairs. The room brightened from the front, where the image slowly appeared and came into focus, radiant white and familiar. Gasps and murmurs rippled through the room as eyes adjusted to the mon...

Perhaps centuries from now, medicine will be able to restore what was lost from injuries such as his. But now, I must turn to practices arcane. Clara sighed as she watched the ink dry. She sat in the dim basement of the home she shared with her husband, who was working in his office upstairs. It was a chilly autumn day. Yet the basement was temperate. She dipped her quill into the well and continu...

The two cozied up on the bench seat of the red convertible, parked on a bluff that overlooked the glittering city below. "Thanks for letting me drive her," Raul said. " Him ." "What?" Maya grinned and reached out to pat the dashboard. "My baby's a boy."   Maya's boyfriend shares the origin of the mysterious monument that sits upon his secret spot. Genre: Mystery Tags: Maya, Mike Riley, monument st...

There are people in this world worth saving. Zoe repeated the mantra to herself as she gingerly pulled the sheet away from the skin of her back. Her back was aching, itching, burning, roiling, and writhing. There are people in this world worth saving , she thought to herself again. There are people in this world worth saving.   Zoe is a living amphora, a human vessel for knowledge or power that sh...

The first sound that either one of them heard as they woke was the scraping of a chain on the stone floor. After a few heartbeats of stunned silence, they both remembered what had happened to bring them there. They both looked at each other. The erpon spoke first, believing that the human child would need some comfort. He asked the boy's name, and the boy answered, "Cor." "Demetrius," the erpon so...

I reached out to the meteorite, a rocky mass with atypical glowing purple patches, knowing it might be the last thing I ever did on Earth. It didn't crash. It landed. It landed in a specific place. Right in the middle of a major metropolitan area.   Before an astronaut sets out on his first mission to explore space, space comes down to greet him.   Genre: Science Fiction Tags: alien, Cas, Earth, G...

"It is a cold and vast realm to which I cast my distant eye," the professor said, as he entered the western observatory, still dressed in his night-clothes. "And it was a warm and welcoming realm from which you pulled that eye." He turned to face his apprentice. "This had better be good, Geoffrey. I was enjoying a scrumptious dream."   A professor and his apprentice direct their telescope to the o...

"Welcome to Melville Island, Doctor." "Thank you, Agent. Is it a heartbeat? That's the last I heard. But that was hours ago."   On an uninhabited Arctic island, something is stirring beneath the permafrost… Genre: Horror, Mystery, Science Fiction   Tags: Arctic, envoy, Ivar, Melville Island, report, sleeping, Straw   CREDITS: Story : " Age Upon Age of Frozen Sleep " Copyright © 2016 by Nila L. Pat...

The baker and the blacksmith were gathered around the inn's fireplace on a frozen blustery night. The fire was roaring and the wooden pillars from which the inn was built were stout and sturdy. Yet with every patron who entered, a sweep of snow and a shock of chill air barged in. It was late, and most patrons had retired to their rooms. But some remained in the common room, finishing the last of t...

"I should go first," Azi whispered, wiping his brow and adjusting his cap in one movement. It was unnaturally warm in the dragon's den. The little brown mouse, standing on her hind legs beside him, twitched her whiskers. "You're too big. She'll hear you, and she'll smell you. We've already decided. Why do you waver?" The two were hidden behind a large boulder on the other side of which was a great...

If we break the mirror barrier, we would have even greater control over the transformations between matter and energy than ever before. For this knowledge, we humbly ask our new friends from beyond the known stars. The only worthy god is a fallen god. Because a fallen god must walk the mortal path. Only a fallen god can be stung by nettles, or lashed by biting winds, or blistered by fire, or embra...

Cell phone cameras don't work for many miles outside of the perimeter that the common lore has designated the "certain death zone" (or CDZ).   A photographer of the unusual is shaken by something in his latest photos that he has never seen before. What does he see? Find out in this episode.   Genre: Mystery   CREDITS Story : " Unstable Stones " Copyright © 2016 by Nila L. Patel Episode Art: "SF_WK...

His person was bare of any adornment save the many rings that he wore on his fingers, and when he folded those fingers together and laid them on the table, the stones upon the rings aligned as if they were the very planets in my home system.   "They were worlds once," the man, the merchant, said, locking me in a gaze that seemed to vibrate from his carnelian-colored eyes, "before they fell into de...

It is said that just before a child is born, he is given every gift a person can possess in life.  But those gifts attract the attention of evil and greedy beings, who always steal them away one by one.  Every child manages to grasp hold of at least one gift so tightly that it cannot be stolen before the child is born.   Evil stalks the eastern forest. Evil abides in the capital.  Only one person...

The visions.  I'd had them all my life.  They're tricky to read, like tarot cards.  Vague sometimes, like dreams.  When I was a kid, I would tell my mom, and she had this way of pretending it was normal while still keeping it secret.  By the time I became aware that my ability was unique, I knew how to hide it.  I started to teach myself how to control it, and soon enough, how to use it.    A youn...

The kingdom was renowned for the quality of their spider silk thread and the many textiles that were made from it, gowns, cloaks, rope, and even armor.  The reason for the quality and abundance of the silk was a large, but benign, spider that lived only, it seemed, in the kingdom named for it, Tortanak.   Lucine's mother mastered spider silk and her stepmother mastered apples. To save herself and...

The secret ingredient in the biomaterial that had been used to treat, to cure, to advance the five volunteers lying in one of the most advanced burn wards in the world, was neither love nor magic.  But anyone might have thought so, the way the stuff brought those folks back to life.    A scientist invents an extraordinary biomaterial that can protect humans from the ravages of space travel, but th...

The surveyors found it when they went looking for a spot to put up a commercial office building. It was almost intact. Only the roof was partially collapsed. The basement was filled with dirt. There were unusual scorch marks on the walls and floors of almost every room of the sixteen-room house. Unusual in that they didn't seem to be caused by fire. The ceilings of each room—and only the ceilings—...

Three beautiful sisters were they, in those days.  They had eyes the color of jade with shades of honey flecked within.  They had hair like golden silk.  Their lovely smiles were made lovelier still by their dazzling white teeth.  As might be expected with beauty so bold, they were envied by many.  They were coveted by many.  Their mother fretted and feared over that envy and longing.  She did not...

She had told the police, of course.  But she hadn't told them the whole truth.  They wouldn't have believed her if she did.  They wouldn't have filed the police report that she hoped would scare people away from buying the house after she discovered that something sinister had already claimed it.   Perhaps if she'd known that some detectives were open to ideas so out of the box, they were out of t...