In celebration of the recently released THE NEW VOICES OF FANTASY, Tachyon and editors Peter S. Beagle and Jacob Weisman present glimpses into the future of fantasy from several of the volume’s magnificent tales.

The
Husband Stitch

by

Carmen
Maria Machado

(If
you read this story out loud, please use the following voices:
Me:
as a child, high-pitched, forgettable; as a woman, the same.
The
boy who will grow into a man, and be my spouse: robust with his own
good fortune.
My father: like your father, or the man you wish
was your father.
My son: as a small child, gentle, rounded with
the faintest of lisps; as a man, like my husband.
All other
women: interchangeable with my own.)

In
the beginning, I know I want him before he does. This isn’t how
things are done, but this is how I am going to do them. I am at a
neighbor’s party with my parents, and I am seventeen. Though my
father didn’t notice, I drank half a glass of white wine in the
kitchen a few minutes ago, with the neighbor’s teenage daughter.
Everything is soft, like a fresh oil painting.

The
boy is not facing me. I see the muscles of his neck and upper back,
how he fairly strains out of his button-down shirts. I run slick. It
isn’t that I don’t have choices. I am beautiful. I have a pretty
mouth. I have a breast that heaves out of my dresses in a way that
seems innocent and perverse all at the same time. I am a good girl,
from a good family. But he is a little craggy, in that way that men
sometimes are, and I want.

I
once heard a story about a girl who requested something so vile from
her paramour that he told her family and they had her hauled her off
to a sanitarium. I don’t know what deviant pleasure she asked for,
though I desperately wish I did. What magical thing could you want so
badly that they take you away from the known world for wanting it?

For more info about THE NEW VOICES OF FANTASY, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover art by Camille André

Cover design by Elizabeth Story