Print PDF ‘You are here to become that Corvus,’ the birdman says. Zach shrugs off his hood, the wind slicing through his jaggedly shorn hair as though determined to bareblade him. He misses Stella terribly; get real, she’d have told this creature with an earthy laugh. It’s easy to picture the flash of her scissors, clipping [...]

Print PDF At Stella’s name, Zach closed his eyes against and against, lashes trembling. He made no sound except the sound of a laboured bellows, as if he had to remind himself to breathe. Is there ever a right time for such news? His scar glinted with the veneer of healing, a pearly sheen, and [...]

Print PDF As soon as Zach emerges from the iglu, an icy wind snatches the breath from his lungs. He shuts his eyes and doubles over, gripping his knees till a shout drags him upright. Through his tears he discerns Pani silhouetted against the horizon, gesticulating anxiously. Despite the clouds, colour is returning to the [...]

Print PDF Zadie set a large latte down in front of the backpacker studying his Lonely Planet. ‘You don’t want to go there,’ she said, indicating the left-hand page. ‘You’ll get ripped off, that’s a market for tourists.’ Sometimes advice was rewarded with a bigger tip, but this lad looked as if he could barely [...]

Print PDF Pani has saved his strength for good reason, needing every bit of it, and then some, to haul hard on the line while Zach braces himself and heaves, claws and heaves and finally flails over the lip of the crevasse. Both sprawl in the snow till they catch their breath, though it’s Pani [...]

Print PDF As it turned out, Zach didn’t get his hour of sleep, not then, and not later that night either. Laura rushed back after about twenty minutes, her mobile clutched in her hand. It was hateful to rob him of the rest he obviously needed, and under other circumstances she’d have been alarmed at [...]

Print PDF Pani has cleared overhanging snow from a section of the crevasse, shaved away its lip, and tamped down his harpoon as reinforcement, across the shaft of which he lowers a line that reaches Zach’s brow but looks too fragile to support his weight. To loop it round his chest is all but impossible. [...]

Print PDF Obediently, the lift halted at the third floor. Zach stepped into the corridor, his eyes travelling from the familiar security doors to the ID card in his hand to the lens of the prominent surveillance camera. Mockery will get you nowhere, Jiao would say in a voice whose chilly menace had hovered over [...]

Print PDF Pitched echoes descant above the sound of water. Zach follows the flight of two—no, three—small silvery bats, wondering how the course of history would have differed if humans had been able to comprehend the language of animals. Less bloodshed or more? Sapiens have always preferred to rid themselves of inconvenient voices. He studies the [...]

Print PDF History favours the grandiose—the magnificent failures no less than the heroes. Zach would never imagine himself as either one, but by the time of his final run at Fulgur, he will have already become an urban legend; hated by many, idolised by many others. In time the explosive power of his grief will [...]

Print PDF ‘What does your name mean?’ Pani asks. ‘What a little pest you are!’ Zach says, caught off guard. ‘Names are important,’ Pani insists, unabashed. ‘They’re part of your soul.’ ‘What makes you so sure I’ve got one?’ ‘If you’ve left it somewhere, I’ll lend you a piece of mine.’ ‘Not the tailpiece, I hope.’ Pani ducks his head, but [...]

Print PDF ‘I know about Max.’ Laura’s father did nothing dramatic like jam on the brakes or swerve into a parked car. Perhaps he hadn’t heard, so she raised her voice to compete with the windscreen wipers. On the passenger side the black rubber of the blade was scritching wide bands of slurry across the glass, [...]

Print PDF Zach has gone back to studying the sculpted tusk when Nashuk appears with a steaming bowl. ‘I’ve brought you some broth.’ ‘Thank you,’ he says. ‘Smells good.’ She indicates the tusk. ‘Mikitok is always making something. Do you like it?’ ‘It’s very beautiful.’ ‘I’ll tell you the story while you drink.’ Standing on one leg, she rubs [...]

Print PDF Fulgur headquarters is located on a substrata of Jurassic oolitic limestone, deposited after the breakup of Pangaea when sea levels rose a good 200 million years ago. Fossilised dinosaur bones and footprints have been found throughout the region, where swamps and salty lakes remained once the seas subsided again. Andrea Frechen, principal architect for [...]

Print PDF Zach stumbles from the canoe, chastened by the ease with which Uakuak, despite his age, has pulled for hours against a sea becoming rougher and rougher, a surly headwind. They’ve beached near a camp from which several young boys erupt at a brisk trot to help drag the kayaks over the groundfast ice [...]

Print PDF The fountain was never turned off, and Laura had always meant to ask her father how they prevented the water from freezing. Tonight it flowed gold-shot red and green in keeping with the Christmas season, one colour from each of the dragon’s twin jaws, and Laura couldn’t help admiring the skill with which [...]

Print PDF Absorbed by the intricacies of the sonata, Zach hears nothing until a small clump of snow slides to the floor by the cold sink, followed by a second. He lowers the clarinet to listen, but assumes it’s only some pieces breaking off from the roof of the entry porch. Almost immediately, a shouted [...]

Print PDF ‘Who’s there?’ Laura cried, whirling instinctively to peer behind her. There was no answer, and though she could see the flickering on the screen from the corner of her eye, there was no beam of light from the projection booth either. Her hand unsteady, she swept her torch over the seats, discovering nothing—discovering how [...]

Print PDF On the third day . . . no, Zach can’t be sure any more about the passage of time, it might be only two days, or already five. Without change there’s no measurement, and it’s only the amount of his food and fuel that changes. At least he supposes it changes, he seems to have become muddled [...]

Print PDF The freeze continued, promising a white Christmas. Promising Yuletide Blessings. Seasons Greetings and Best Wishes for the New Year. Through deep snow may Friendship’s glow our hearts unite this Christmas. Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will to men. Homo sapiens, of course. There were no further bombings in the [...]

Print PDF A cognoscens is unaccustomed to the complete absence of light. With returning consciousness Zach sees patterns in the deep blackness where there are none, patterns which hover on the threshold of signification. He fixes on them, dazzling and puzzling, a message to decode, a formula to derive, an art form to explore. Like [...]

Print PDF His head next to hers at the window, Zach murmured something inconsequential about her hair. He noticed such things—a pair of new earrings, the smell of the lemon juice she’d used as a hair rinse. There were so many questions Laura wanted to ask—needed to ask—but none found its way past the ticking [...]

Print PDF With only one husky, it’s slow going—visibility poor, the ground jagged and uneven beneath the thick layer of snow, the horizon obliterated. A misstep, and they too could slip off the edge of the world. From time to time they catch a glimpse of the moon, and Lev reckons the storm has moved [...]

Print PDF ‘It’s getting worse, and we’d bloody well better take some sort of action!’ Pelly sipped from his glass of sparkling water to keep from smiling. Slade was competent enough as a research head, but the squat toad had no clue about PR, and very little about crisis management. Must be fifty-three, fifty-four already. There [...]

Print PDF ‘So explain.’ Zach, of course, should have known that Lev has his own idea of what constitutes an explanation. And certainly should have guessed when told to set down his mug of tea. After that it’s a matter of seconds for Lev to power up his little game. Zach’s protest is strangled mid-breath by [...]