Congratulations on your Magic Sword"! For all inquiries as to its powers and perils, please consult the Virtue Exercises Manual". However, we know new users sometimes get in over their heads. That’s w...

Katarina, who had seen her share of premature deaths said, “Nonsense. I’m not a physician, I don’t cut live women open.” Still, death was coming for Vlasta, diving like a hawk on its dark wings. The b...

“My father forbid me to come to you, either with mushrooms or with the dog's collar,” Vanya told the dog witch. It had been early in spring when his father killed Mishka the three-legged dog. For sava...

From across the darkened rooftop of the long-abandoned engine plant, Geli heard the unmistakable whirring of drone blades. Shit, she thought. Not here, too. She looked up from her work weeding the…

Afterwards, while the mother and baby slept or cooed at each other, Jesset was freed to the fresh air to deliver the grace-bread. Sister Grain baked two loaves after every birth. One for the church, t...

Jempo took a deep bow on the iron platform. His body flopped forward, limbs like thick braided wire. No obvious weapons in his large and rubbery hands. Little digital eyes and a bright smile that lit ...

Rugg read her. Not just her face but the veil in front of it. The knit was funny to his eye, not the usual fine hatching but a more elaborate twisted warp and weft, and the fiber looked to be made fro...

From the pages of Trollbreath Magazine comes Volume One, an anthology of short speculative fiction. We’re celebrating the amazing authors whose short stories and poetry we were privileged to bring to readers in 2024 and 2025, our first two years. Between these covers, you’ll find:   A dancer faces a rising rival The survivor of…

Mother: “Where night is full of hungry mouths, / I lost my dream. I gave it to a coyote passing."

The woods up in the hills outside Española were tinder dry the summer Ennis and my dad died. Tasting the air was like licking a fossilized bone—sucked all the water out of your mouth.

He had neither the energy nor the interest to argue. Nor to talk at all. With a grunt, Guy got behind his cart and pushed it forward. The night would only get darker, and he had a long way to go to th...

1. Start by chopping the onions. Best to get your crying finished, if you can.

I used to like birdwatching, especially hummingbirds, until the feeder on my apartment balcony started getting one-star reviews on CHURP. “Those birds are so wrong!” I declared one Friday night…

The photos hardly did Smith House justice. Its stone façade loomed above the red oak, black cherry, and eastern hemlock that had thronged the country roads for most of my drive.