Stories by Javier Marías, Joy Williams, Patrick deWitt, Ben Stroud, and Roberto Ransom

Our fourth anthology celebrates the transportive joy of entering a vividly imagined world. Celebrated Spanish author Javier Marías spins a tale of a mild-mannered teacher turned ghost-hunter. Mexican writer Roberto Ransom (translated here into English for the first time) introduces us to a master fresco painter and the conservationist who tries to recapture his magic hundreds of years later, with mystifying results. Pulitzer Prize-nominee Joy Williams pens a fable about Baba Iaga and her pelican child, kept safe in a hut on chicken legs, until a mysterious historical figure asks to paint her portrait. Ben Stroud tells the harrowing story of a destitute cripple sent by his emperor to destroy a holy man and preserve the kingdom, and Patrick deWitt chronicles the deviant adventures of a man known only as “the Bastard.”

BUY IT NOW >>

Preview this issue:

“Baba Iaga and the Pelican Child” by Joy Williams

After this, Baba Iaga continued to fly through the skies in her mortar, navigating with her pestle. But instead of a broom, she carried the lamp that illuminated the things people did not know or were reluctant or refused to understand. And she would lower the lamp over a person and they would see how extraordinary were the birds and beasts of the world, and that they should be valued for their bright and beautiful and mysterious selves and not willfully harmed, for they were more precious than castles or the golden rocks dug out from the earth.

But she could only reach a few people each day with the lamp.

“The Resignation Letter of Señor de Santiesteban” by Javier Marías

Translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa

Whether it was one of those bizarre occurrences to which Chance never quite manages to accustom us, however often they may arise; or whether Destiny, in a show of prudence, temporarily suspended judgment on the qualities and attributes of the new teacher and delayed intervening, in case such an intervention should later turn out to be a mistake; the fact of the matter is that young Mr. Lilburn did not discover the truth in the strange warnings issued to him by his superior, Mr. Bayo, and other colleagues only a few days after he had joined the Institute, until he was well into the first term and sufficient time had elapsed for him to forget, or at least to postpone thinking about, the possible significance of the warnings.

“Three Figures and a Dog” by Roberto Ransom

He never managed to interest the dog in accompanying him home, and where it came from was a mystery since the painter and his wife had no neighbors for many kilometers around them; besides, it was strange that an animal so small could survive on its own a region rife with wolves. Furry, with short legs and a big, round head, it wagged what remained of its tail–the other part seemed to have been left in a trap–every time it saw the master painter, although it never barked.

“Byzantium” by Ben Stroud

At dusk I would escape through the back entrance to wander the dark streets, going as far as the Hippodrome. There I would watch others taking their pleasure—keeping to the shadows, my hand hidden as I studied a chariot racer leaning into a prostitute, her leg wrapped round his torso, or libertines goading a gilded crocodile in the bearpit, their bodies slurred by powders from the east. When the Persians came and encamped across the Bosporus, laying siege to the city, I went up to the roof every night to watch their attacks and then their slow retreat. When a traitor’s body was dragged through the streets I would join the mob, unnoticed, and kick at the corpse and curse it as the chariot pulled it toward the harbor. I had no vocation. I had no life or standing beyond our house’s walls. So I lived until my twenty-eighth year, a rattling ghost in the great hive of the city.

“The Bastard” by Patrick deWitt

The Bastard wrenched the mug from the drunkard’s claw and returned the rye to the bottle. There was enough left to poison the farmer once more, perhaps twice. And after this, then what? I don’t know, and I can’t care, he thought. He had never been one to fret about the future. He stood and stepped further into the room, taking in his new surroundings with his hands behind his back, like a man luxuriating in a museum or rose garden. Each time this crucial maneuver of entering a home was accomplished, he was struck by the image that a house was, after all, much like a human skull.

Cover Artwork: Now We Hunt Hippopotamus by Aaron Johnson

BUY IT NOW >>

BACK TO STORE >>