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GlitterShip is an LGBTQ SF&F fiction podcast - bringing you audio versions of great queer science fiction & fantasy short stories!
Episode #65: "A Memory of Wind" by Susan Jane Bigelow
GlitterShip
39 minutes
6 years ago
Episode #65: "A Memory of Wind" by Susan Jane Bigelow
Episode 65 is part of the Spring 2018 issue!
Support GlitterShip by picking up your copy here: http://www.glittership.com/buy/
A Memory of Wind
Susan Jane Bigelow
Yeni looked up at the right time, just for a single moment, and she saw a girl fly past far overhead.
No one else in the wide dome of Center Garden, the bustling, cavernous heart of the greatship, noticed. Yeni had to run to catch up with her mother, who walked a few steps ahead.
“Did you see?” she demanded. “A flying girl!”
“Don’t lie,” her mother said tiredly.
[Full story after the cut.]
Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 65. Today we have a reprint of "A Memory of Wind" by Susan Jane Bigelow to finish off the episodes from the Spring 2018 issue of GlitterShip.
Susan Jane Bigelow is the author of the Extrahumans series, the LGBT YA novel The Demon Girl’s Song and numerous short stories. Her Grayline Sisters trilogy will be released by Book Smugglers Publishing in 2018. She lives in Connecticut, where she is a librarian and political columnist/commentator, with her wife and too many cats.
"A Memory of Wind" was narrated by A.J. Fitzwater.
A.J. Fitzwater is a dragon wearing a human meat suit from Christchurch, New Zealand. A graduate of Clarion 2014, she’s had stories published in Shimmer Magazine, Andromeda Spaceways Magazine, and in Paper Road Press’s At The Edge anthology. She also has stories coming soon at Kaleidotrope and PodCastle. As a narrator, her voice has been heard across the Escape Artists Network, on Redstone SF, and Interzone. She tweets under her penname as @AJFitzwater.
A Memory of Wind
Susan Jane Bigelow
Yeni looked up at the right time, just for a single moment, and she saw a girl fly past far overhead.
No one else in the wide dome of Center Garden, the bustling, cavernous heart of the greatship, noticed. Yeni had to run to catch up with her mother, who walked a few steps ahead.
“Did you see?” she demanded. “A flying girl!”
“Don’t lie,” her mother said tiredly.
Long after, her mother claimed she’d never even heard her say this, much less that she’d seen anything.
But Yeni had seen, and she remembered.
Yeni pulled the handle with all the strength of her twenty-two years. Sweat trickled into her eyes, and her muscles cried out in pain.
“Just a little more!” grunted Shan, and then the door gave way at last, opening out into the deserted corridor. They fell back, astonished.
“See?” Yeni said, puffing and wiping the smooth top of her head with the sleeve of her tunic. “It’s here. Just like the story said.”
A ladder.
Shan looked worried. “I don’t know. This is a bad idea. We’re going to get caught.”
“Don’t get scared on me now,” snapped Yeni. “Who’s gonna catch us? There’s nobody in this section.”
He looked up into the darkness, then back at her.
“This is our chance,” she insisted. “Go ahead. I’ll be right behind.”
She followed Shan up, keeping a close ear out for anything or anyone coming up behind them. They’d both turned their implants down to the lowest level, so they only did things like regulate heartbeats, monitor vital signs, and give them better night vision. The parts that told the ship where they were and what they were doing were off, now; disabled through an old trick Shan had dug up. Anyone looking for them would think they were back in their shared quarters in Supardy Forward.
“I think we’re three decks up,” said Shan. He’d reached a ledge with a door, and was sitting on it. She climbed up next to him. “So this must be it.”
“The door has dents in it,” she said wonderingly. “And… are those scorch marks?”
Shan pointed at the shaft around them. It was riddled with holes and burn marks.
“We’re here,” she said, standing. “Bunda Forward.”
They walked slowly, reverently, into the destroyed section. Numbers fed into Yeni’s vision: sensor scans and her own vital signs.
“Fifty years,” whispered Shan into the heavy darkness. “I’m not getting any radiation.”
“No,” murmured Yeni. “Because it was all a lie. Look arou
GlitterShip
GlitterShip is an LGBTQ SF&F fiction podcast - bringing you audio versions of great queer science fiction & fantasy short stories!