When I heard that Tor was interested in doing a full-length collection of my stories, I was so thrilled—especially when I realized there would be room to include some “deep cuts” from my back catalogue. I went back and re-read a bunch of my old stories, including some which I barely remembered. (And I honestly didn’t remember how many stories I started and never finished.) Even though every story in Even Greater Mistakes is previously published, there are a bunch in there that only appeared in tiny literary magazines or defunct websites, which I’d be willing to bet absolutely nobody has read before. There were some stories which I had spent years wishing more people had seen, because I felt like they were much better than some stories of mine that had reached a wider audience.

With well over a hundred short stories out, you have so much short fiction to choose from. How were the stories selected? Is there an organizational principle at work behind which pieces are in the collection—do you see a theme, or underlying elements?

My main goal was to include the stories that I’m proudest of from my whole career, the ones which still give me the feels when I re-read them. But I also wanted to put together a single book that really represents all of the directions my writing has gone in, from hard science fiction to weird fantasy to literary fiction to queer lit. I even snuck in one story that has no speculative elements whatsoever: “This Is Why We Can’t Have Nasty Things.” And I wanted to include stories that are pure goofy comedy as well as ones which go to some pretty intense, serious places. As much as possible, I wanted to curate a sampler that contains a whole bunch of different flavors, including chocolates with cherries in them, truffles, and some hazelnuts. I wanted this to be a book where you turn the page at the end of a story and have no idea what you’re going to get next.

Looking at the earlier pieces, “My Breath is a Rudder” and “Power Couple,” coming all the way up to very recent “If You Take My Meaning” and “The Visitmothers,” do you feel like your writing has changed in important ways?

I ended up revising “My Breath is a Rudder” and “Power Couple” quite a bit, because I wrote both of them back in 2006-2007, and I felt like the writing wasn’t quite strong enough, I’m afraid. In general, there was a sea change with my writing around the time I published “Six Months, Three Days” in 2011, where I started to get a little deeper into the emotions of the characters. Sometime in 2011 I did the thing that you’re not supposed to do, and read Goodreads reviews of some of my short fiction output. I came across someone on Goodreads who said of one of my stories, “Once again, Anders is using humor and snark as a substitute for fully-developed characters.” And even though I knew that feedback wasn’t intended for me—it’s important to recognize that reviews are not aimed at the author or creator—it still hit home, and I resolved to try harder to get into the heads and hearts of my characters. I thought of “Six Months” as a story that wasn’t particularly funny until I read it out loud at an event in NYC, and people were laughing. It was sort of a relief to realize that I could be funny without going into full-on comedy, or throwing the characters under the clown car.

In the Locus review of your first collection, Six Months, Three Days, Five Others, Rachel Swirsky said, “Anders’s unique humor provides a uniting theme. Only some of the stories are explicitly comic, but all benefit from her linguistic wit and her quirky but generous characterization.” Are there any stories in the new collection which your fans might find surprising?

I always hope that I can keep surprising people—and, like I said above, I hope that not all of the chocolates in this box are going to be caramels. I feel like there are some stories in this book that are weirder and maybe more experimental than people are used to from me. What I really hope is that people will make connections between the different stories, because I do think some themes carry across from story to story—like the way Mab’s determination to avoid being the heroine in some cheesy love story in “Love Might Be Too Strong a Word” connects up with Rachel’s need to escape and remain herself in “Don’t Press Charges and I Won’t Sue.”

What, for you, are the top stories that you hope people will read in this book—the stories that you are most proud of, that were most challenging to write, or that are most important to you—and why?

As I said above, there are some stories in this book that I desperately want to expose to a bigger audience. I feel like the silliness of “Vampire Werewolf vs. Fairy Zombie” lives very close to my heart, and so does the space-opera comedy of “A Temporary Embarrassment in Spacetime.” (I would write more stories about Kango and Sharon in a heartbeat, if I felt like there was an audience for them.) In 2021, particularly, I really hope that some of the political stuff in this book hits home. A lot of the stories are about trans and queer people trying to survive and build communities in a world that is not always kind or trustworthy, and they get pretty dark in places, but I really hope you come away with a sense of hope and acceptance, especially after you get to “The Visitmothers.”

You also have recent nonfiction book Never Say You Can’t Survive. Many people may think of you as a fiction writer, but you are also a respected non-fictioneer. You have done a lot of work as a journalist, not to mention writing numerous essays and articles for tons of different venues, including Esquire, The Atlantic, and The Washington Post. What were the biggest challenges for you in writing Never Say You Can’t Survive?

Never Say You Can’t Survive was a uniquely challenging project in so, so many ways! I had been writing short pieces of writing advice since 2008 on io9—which felt incredibly presumptuous, since back then nobody even knew I wrote fiction, really. But a whole book of writing advice, with a cohesive idea and a through-line, was a very different beast. I really wanted Never Say You Can’t Survive to leave people feeling as if they could write their own stories, but also as if they had been given a bunch of tools that would help make those stories happen. I knew when I pitched the book that 2020 was likely to be a really tough year, which is why I wanted to post the essays online in realtime—but 2020 was so much worse than I’d expected, and there were definitely times when I struggled to find the friendly, encouraging tone that I knew this book needed. I was having a rough year myself, so a lot of these essays were me reassuring myself as much as anyone else. The revision process was also a huge undertaking: streamlining this material I’d been writing week by week, eliminating any repetition or excess fluff, and then adding a ton more material. Honestly, even though the “posting a new essay every week” plan sometimes meant a lot of pressure, it ended up helping a ton, because I got so much great feedback on the essays in realtime.

Your intro to Even Greater Mistakes begins, “I swore I would never write a novel. My first allegiance, my deepest loyalty, was to short fiction . . . “ You had Victories Greater Than Death out earlier this year (your 4th novel I believe . . . ?) plus a nonfiction book! What was the drive behind writing Never Say You Can’t Survive? What was the inspiration for the project, and how did it develop?

Actually, Victories Greater Than Death is (counts on fingers) my eighth novel—but four of those novels never got published. (Except that I whittled “Rock Manning Goes For Broke” down to a novella and it saw the light of day in that form.) Never Say You Can’t Survive started out as a talk that I was giving at writing conferences and book festivals, back in 2017 and 2018—that talk, in a very different form, became the introduction to the book. I had been wanting to publish a book of my writing advice ever since I left io9, and for a while there had been talk of me doing a “science fiction writing 101” type book. But there are already a lot of books along those lines, and it became clear to me that I’d be better off doing a book with a stronger “hook” to it. And throughout 2019, I kept thinking that so many people I knew were struggling and feeling lost, and I kept being reminded that getting into that headspace of storytelling and creation was a balm and a huge source of consolation.

What is your favorite thing about Never Say You Can’t Survive, and what do you really want readers to know about it, beyond the blurbs and reviews?

My favorite thing about Never Say You Can’t Survive at this point is the response I’ve gotten from readers so far—every time I hear from someone that they had been struggling to write, or just having a rough time generally, and the book helped them to center themselves and reconnect with the inner storyteller that we all have inside us. The thing I’d really like more people to know is that this book is not prescriptive, or rules-based. I offer lots of ideas and suggestions for writing, and I express my opinions here and there—but I’m pretty careful not to tell anyone the “right” way to create characters and a world and string a plot together. If anything, I’m pretty down on the idea that there are rules or that there’s a template or formula for a good story.

Going back to fiction, and probably mostly for short stories, what is important for you when you write fiction—what are you focused on the most?

Like I talk about in Never Say You Can’t Survive, when I write a short story, I often tend to focus on one relationship, or one cluster of relationships, that I can track throughout the story. I feel like it’s more interesting to watch people change through their relationships to other people than to see them go through changes in a vacuum. I feel like one thing the stories in Even Greater Mistakes have in common is that you can usually identify one or two relationships that power them. Even in my novels, this is usually the case for me, and I feel like my novels are firing on all cylinders when you can track a particular relationship from beginning to end.

Is there anything else you want readers to know about Even Greater Mistakes or Never Say You Can’t Survive—or, for that matter, Victories Greater Than Death?

I feel like, if someone reads all three of my 2021 books together, you’ll come away with a sense of what I’d call constructive absurdism, or “absurdity with feels.” I have spent my entire life trying to find ways to talk about how bizarre and nonsensical the “real world” actually is, and how much we need human connection to help us survive the nonsense. I feel like these three books, taken together, are the clearest expression of that theme.

For a while you were reviewing books, and you took the role seriously: you didn’t want to praise works which you felt didn’t deserve praise. As busy as you are, do you still have time to read? Are there any new works or authors you feel people should check out?

I try to read every day, because I feel like if I’m not reading, my writing suffers. And so does my general outlook on life. Right now, I’m devouring the works of Shruti Swamy, who’s an absolute genius. Her acclaimed short story collection A House Is a Body is full of strange, unsettling situations, but she peppers them with beautiful turns of phrase and arresting details that make them feel lived-in. Some of the stories in A House Is a Body would definitely count as speculative fiction, including “Earthly Pleasures,” in which a photographer who’s descending into alcoholism launches a complicated relationship with the god Krishna. But every story in that book is an incredible triumph. And I’m in the middle of Swamy’s debut novel, The Archer, the story of a girl in 1960s Mumbai who becomes a dancer. The Archer keeps taking my breath away, and it’s a truly dazzling performance. Other recent books I’ve loved have included Ryka Aoki’s Light From Uncommon Stars, Khadija Abdalla Bajaber’s The House of Rust, and Cheer Up!: Love and Pompoms by Crystal Frazier and Val Wise, a lovely graphic novel about a trans girl who joins a cheerleading squad. By the time this interview is published, I’ll probably have read and loved several more books, so please check my Goodreads page for more recommendations.

What else do you have coming up that you’d like readers to know about?

The second book of the Unstoppable trilogy, Dreams Bigger Than Heartbreak, comes out April 2022, and I’m working hard on the third book now. And I have a new adult novel that hasn’t been announced yet, which I’m having a total blast working on.

I don’t usually write this way, but the title came to me before the story. There’s a line from a really excellent Black Widow comic by Marjorie Liu that’s kind of haunted me for years: “Wolves and girls. Both have sharp teeth.” So the title “Girls Have Sharp Teeth” came from that, and from there I asked myself, “Okay, but why do they have sharp teeth? What happened that made their teeth sharp?” And then the idea of a bunch of high school girls getting fake fangs came to me and the story evolved from there.

I particularly enjoyed how in the opening you moved very smoothly between what the protagonist wishes her classmates’ response to Madison’s attack had been and the far uglier reality. Which reaction do you think happens most often and why?

I like to think as a society, we’re trending towards believing victims more often than not, but we definitely have a long way to go. I think part of why is what the protagonist says, “It was much easier to believe in attention-seeking girls than in trust-shattering boys.” It’s easier to think that there was some sort of “misunderstanding” or the victim is simply lying than to believe that some actor we admire, or a person we trusted and thought of as good, is actually a monster. Obviously, there’s a lot more to it than that, but I do think that’s one element of it.

Your protagonist has a particularly mature view on the realities of revenge, can you talk about that a little?

I love violent, feminist revenge stories, and I think the protagonist does too, but that we’re both realists, and in real life, you sadly can’t actually bite shitty men with your new fangs without facing jail time. I think her views on revenge have been shaped by whatever happened with her father because she hasn’t gotten revenge for it.

We never learn of what transpired between your protagonist and her father. Can you tell us why you made that choice?

There’s definitely an unwritten but kind of planned-out version of this story where I get into what her father did. I think that version gets more into the protagonist seeking some sort of specific justice, but I realized I didn’t want the story to be about that. I was also worried about the line between writing about trauma and writing trauma porn. Plus, I workshopped this and polled my classmates, and they agreed that I should leave it out.

What are you working on now, and what can we look forward to seeing from you in the future?

Right now I’m mainly working on the thesis for my MFA, which is a short story collection. There will be more stories with teenage girls and magic that I’ll hopefully find homes for!

Or that’s what I wish happened. The truth is much lamer. Because the truth is that the junior girls of Clark High definitely did not form a united front against the patriarchy. When word got around that Madison S. said Josh C. threw his phone at her while they were arguing, some girls said there’s no way that happened and Madison S. probably hurt herself practicing for field hockey, since she was kind of sucking this season. Some girls wondered if you could even throw an iPhone hard enough to knock out teeth, and also Josh C. would never throw his phone; he loved that thing. And he was such a nice guy. He always gave both Madison S. and Hannah W. a ride home after field hockey. And he did volunteer tutoring hours every day after school, which yes may have been mostly for college apps, but he was so nice about explaining why X equaled 3.

Some girls said maybe he did hurt her, but Madison S. shouldn’t have been dating an older guy, anyway. A senior? Who did she think she was? And it was rumored they had slept together. She had slept with her last boyfriend, too. Some girls did believe her story and did want Josh C. to fall in a well, but I’ve been told I have Daddy Issues, so I never trust men anyway. Some girls wanted to wait until they got all the facts before forming an opinion either way. After all, it was a he-said she-said scenario, even if Josh C. definitely did have a broken phone and Madison S. definitely wasn’t at school. When someone asked him how he broke it he said he tried to gently toss it to Madison, so she could add her pizza toppings, and she dropped it. He said he didn’t know how she hurt herself. A lot of the girls believed him, because who would lie about something like that?

So on Monday, with rumors flying, I sat at the lunch table with my friends and wished there was some way I could help Madison S. We weren’t friends, just barely acquaintances. I wasn’t the type of girl who played sports or was friends with people who played sports. My friends were in band and theater and I personally didn’t believe in after-school activities. It would have been weird to go over to her house after school, and I didn’t have her phone number. So I just sat there and ate my peanut butter and jelly and listened to Ashley tell her boyfriend, Chris, that she was so grateful for him while Chris said he was sure it wasn’t actually that big a deal, that the rumor mill was making it seem worse than it was. And Alexis said she couldn’t imagine being in love with someone who hurt her. My sandwich was hard to swallow.

And then Madison S. showed up to school the next day with four fangs replacing her front teeth.

I just mentioned the Daddy Issues because I think it’s only fair that you know I’m an unreliable narrator. We just learned about unreliable narrators in English while reading The Sound and the Fury. So I thought you should know about my trust issues, and also a lot of this story was overheard or pieced together from rumors and subtweets, so you can take it or leave it. I’m not gonna tell you what happened with my dad. I tell everyone he’s dead.

Anyway. Madison S. came to school Tuesday with four fangs: two on the top, two on the bottom. They were just a little longer than the rest of her teeth, but sharp and deadly-looking. When she smiled, which she didn’t that day, they weren’t always immediately noticeable because they fit into each other and didn’t leave any gaps in her smile. But even if you didn’t notice them right away, the hairs on the back of your neck would stand up in a small-animal-instinct kind of way. She couldn’t remember what they were made out of, but it was something strong. The dentist said it would take a lot more than a phone to knock her new sharp teeth out. She looked beautiful.

We should have lined up outside the dentist’s office the moment school got out. We should have all jumped at the opportunity to level the playing field a little, to bite back. But most of the junior girls still didn’t really believe Madison S.’s story. It was much easier for them to believe that she was a lying slut than that a boy you loved could overhand throw an iPhone 7 Plus with a shatter-proof case on it at your face so hard that, when it collided with your mouth, it split your lip and knocked out four teeth. It was much easier to believe in attention-seeking girls than in trust-shattering boys. And maybe I was kind-of jealous of them. Jealous that they still believed the people you loved wouldn’t hurt you.

I didn’t approach Madison S. on Tuesday. I should have, maybe, to tell her I believed her and I liked her fangs, but I felt weird and awkward. Since we weren’t friends, I didn’t want to make her feel weird, too. The worst thing was sympathy from strangers. So instead of talking to her I just glared at anyone who talked shit about her. My glares are pretty intimidating, if I do say so myself. When I got home from school I told my mom all about it, and she snorted when I got to the part about Madison S.’s fangs.

“Good for fuckin’ her,” Mom said. She’s great. “If you ever wanna go get fangs of your own, just let me know.”

“Maybe,” I said.

But the truth was I wasn’t sure if I was ready to commit to sharp teeth. I respected Madison S. for them, but they were also like a flashing sign that read “damaged.” Everyone already knew about Josh C. but no one knew about my dad. We had moved to a different state to make sure of that. If I got fangs people would wonder why. So I wasn’t the first girl to follow Madison S.’s footsteps.

Samantha A. and Sarah B. were at the mall Saturday afternoon when they noticed three older men kept looking at them while they slurped milkshakes at the food court. They noticed the men again as they left H&M. Then again when they left Forever 21. They were being followed. They had been planning on hitting a few more stores, but they were creeped out now. With the men following them a couple store lengths’ behind, they found a security guard and told him what was happening. The security guard said he couldn’t do anything since the men technically hadn’t done anything. Maybe it was just a coincidence that they seemed to be following Samantha A. and Sarah B. It was a small mall, after all. He’d walk them to their car, though. They sighed and decided not to argue that it wasn’t fair that they were the ones who had to leave and had the security guard walk them to Samantha A.’s car, where they drove straight to the dentist’s office.

Samantha A. and Sarah B. came to school Monday with fangs. They were like Madison S.’s, sharp and deadly-looking, but they had chosen to get just their top canines replaced, so they looked kind of like Twilight groupies. I sat next to Sarah B. in physics so she told me the whole story while we worked on gravity formulas. She said next time some creepy man followed her she thought she could scare him off with her teeth. That the teeth were better than pepper spray or those keychains that looked like cats but were brass knuckles. I nodded, hoping she was right. She said they weren’t actually full teeth, not like Madison S.’s, that they were just caps, and it didn’t hurt at all. She was recommending them to every girl she met, she said.

And her recommendation worked. Abigail M. got them the next week. Four fangs instead of her top front teeth. No one knew why she got them, and she wouldn’t say why, only that she liked them. Alexis had band with Abigail M. and said Abigail was really nice about it but just kept saying the new teeth made her feel safe. That was all anyone deserved to know, anyway.

Then Olivia got them that Friday. She had more caps added than anyone, four on top and four on bottom. She said the final straw was getting beat up by three senior boys on her way home from school, again. It was the only surgery her parents would let her have, since they’d only barely agreed to hormone inhibitors. With makeup covering her black eye, Olivia bared her new sharp teeth for me at our lockers after school and said she almost hoped those fucking boys would call her the t-word again. Her eyes were like sparklers. I hugged her and offered to walk home from school with her. She agreed, and when we got to the corner where the boys were waiting she smiled wide and fierce. The boys scattered, shouting “Freak!” over their shoulders. We shouted the worst curse words we knew back at them until our insults turned silly and we started laughing. It felt like a victory. I bought Olivia a slushie at the gas station and my mom picked me up from her house.

Jessica P. getting fangs was the real turning point. Jessica P. had been homecoming queen both Sophomore and Junior year and was probably going to be prom queen, too. Her house was twice the size of anyone else’s at Clark High, and she got a brand new SUV the moment she got her license. She had a boyfriend who had never thrown a phone at her, to the best of my knowledge.

She had both sets of canines replaced, but she didn’t look like a wannabe vampire at all. More like an actual vampire, deadly and not to be fucked with. Before the fangs, she had already walked like she was untouchable, and with them, she seemed to glide through the halls as people made way for her. When people asked her why she got them she shrugged and tossed her long silky hair.

“It seemed like the thing to do,” she said, and winked. I knew she was friends with Madison S., so I wondered if the fangs were in solidarity. On her, they weren’t a flashing “damaged” sign. They flashed “dangerous.” But then I remembered the rumors that had been flying just as I transferred to Clark High the year before, about a teacher who had been fired and no one knew why. Jessica P. had been one of his favorite students.

Now that Jessica P. had made them cool, more girls got fangs. At least a dozen more junior girls headed to the dentist. Some got just their canines, some just one random tooth. A few boys complained that they made girls look weird, but the same boys also complained about how mom jeans weren’t hot and it’s not like we stopped wearing them. In homeroom, I overheard Jake M. and Ethan T. complaining about the fangs, how they were ugly, so I leaned over and said, “Like either of you idiots wouldn’t still go out with Jessica P. if she even looked in your direction,” and they told me to shut up but from the way their ears turned pink I knew I was right.

Some girls’ parents couldn’t afford fangs, or wouldn’t let their daughters get them. So Kaitlyn H., who won a district-wide art competition last year, bought a bunch of cheap plastic Halloween vampire fangs online and revamped them with molding clay and non-toxic paint. She also cut them so you could still talk normally while wearing them, and started charging girls twenty bucks for them. She sold out in the first week and had to order more. I bought a pair, to try out. I locked the bathroom door at home, put them on and made faces at myself in the mirror for a long time. They felt heavy. And I didn’t know if they’d actually do any damage if I bit someone, or if that even mattered because if it got to the point of biting you were already in trouble, anyway. I wasn’t sure if it would have mattered or not, having fangs. If Madison S. had had them, Josh C. might have still hurt her; her teeth just wouldn’t have fallen out. I’d have Daddy Issues with or without fangs. The plastic teeth in my mouth felt like a bad costume, one that didn’t make me look or feel like someone else. Someone not damaged.

So I took them off and went down to dinner and told Mom about Kaitlyn H.’s thriving new business, but not that I’d bought a pair.

“Maybe I should get some. Whaddaya think, am I too old and uncool for fangs?” she said, smiling.

“Moms don’t need fangs,” I said and we were both quiet for a moment, wishing it was true.

“Yeah, we don’t. We have claws,” Mom said, and reached under the table and scratched my leg with her weirdly long and fast-growing pinky toenail that I tell her is an embarrassment whenever she wears open-toed shoes. I laughed and jumped and tried to scratch her back and she scratched me again with her other foot and we ended up finishing dinner still giggling, sitting cross-legged in our chairs so neither could reach the other.

In the better version of this story, more and more junior girls would get fangs until we all had them, a horde of sharp-toothed teens. We would visit Josh C.’s house in the night, the moonlight glinting off our smiles, and get revenge for Madison. Then we’d track down the men who followed Samantha and Sarah at the mall, then the boys who had given Olivia a black eye, then the ex-teacher. We’d ruin anyone who ever hurt us. The blood of our enemies would turn us into something new, some sort of untouchable, unknowable creatures, no longer just girls.

But here’s the crappy, truthful version: no one really got revenge. The ex-teacher got a job at a Best Buy one town over. The bullies grew up and maybe grew out of their bigotry, or maybe they just became better at hiding it. The men who followed two sixteen-year-olds around for three hours did the same thing the next week, and the week after that. Someone, maybe me, keyed Josh C.’s car, but that was it. Madison and her parents didn’t want to press charges. Madison formed a support group for victims of domestic violence, and some of the girls who joined had fangs, and some didn’t. The junior girls of Clark High still talk shit about each other, but in a gentler way. There’s more talk about bad hair and less about sleeping around. I think most of them believe Madison now.

Alexis and Ashley both got fangs. Ashley said her boyfriend Chris was super into them. Alexis said they made her scary and then she snarled at me and we both laughed. They did look like the same girls, my friends, just with sharp teeth and a dash more confidence. But I liked the idea of scary, not scared. I went home and told my mom I’d like to go to the dentist.

I got my front two teeth capped. You can only see them when I smile, but I like the looks I get from strangers. It does make me feel stronger. Still damaged, I guess, but that’s okay. I’m more shatter-proof now.

We’re still just girls.

sword gleaming above the mantel—

there are those of us who find the belly of a castle

is no place for children who grow

like weeds, like vines, like yellow straw.

There are other predators than wolves,

upright beasts in fine cloth, with charming smiles

who can’t be stopped

with a rose or a kiss or a promise.

Sooner the belly of a wolf

whose hunger for meat and blood is honest

where given time

we might cut our own way free.

Under cover of night, we slip from too-soft beds

and flee through doors with practiced ease.

Our skills earned from years with witches,

spells and huts, where one misstep

meant hot coals, wide jaws or a hunter’s knife.

Some follow the stars or a compass of ivory.

A lucky few pull mirrors from their pockets

and whisper questions

while others put their nose to ground,

ears cocked for the baying hounds.

We find each other, join hands

as we wind through now familiar trees,

our eyes bright as mirror shards,

our feet tough as iron nails.

If asked where we’re headed, we’ll shrug, mumble

something about grandmother’s house

while we follow the whispered pull

of home, home, home.

Home

is where the woods are.

Home is where the old cottage burns to cinders

to feed the soil.

Home is where we kick off our dancing shoes

loose our hair,

bury our toes in the dirt

and grow roots

deep enough to tear down the tower

stone by stone by stone.

Home is a garden where once grew a briar,

where we bloom like apple blossoms

and shine like spun gold.

You get used to ignoring it, if you live in South London. Not your business.

One night Sammy can’t ignore it because it’s fucking 2 a.m. in the fucking morning and it’s a fucking Tuesday. He has work tomorrow. It’s right outside. It sounds like a pervert stepping on Lego and enjoying it. Another cry sounds like a man angry at a wall. There’s a stream of anger in a foreign language, but the word “POOPY” is there. Sammy thinks he misheard a foreign word but no, it was “POOPY” like the enraged man ran out of adult curses and went back to childhood.

He should call the police, except last time they said “call the council.” If not that, he should—as a Londoner—ignore it. Someone else’s business, don’t make a fuss. Instead he throws a jacket and shoes on and storms out of the flat and into the alleyway to yell, powered by righteous anger and fatigue.

What he sees in the alleyway is a hulking mass of rubbish in the shape of a man, with a head of raw meat smashed together into something with fangs, and screams.

Then he registers the half-dozen men. Three are smashed into the ground and walls. The other three gesture at the beast with v-signs and middle fingers, and they yell and curse and laugh. The beast swipes at one, and its hand of bin bags explodes into filth. It impacted on nothing but bravado and noise.

One man staggers, unable to keep yelling—he has to take a breath. As soon as he stops speaking, the beast strikes him down.

It laughs like a drunken sadist and holds up two fingers of detritus. “I’m winning.”

Sammy knows, a sudden and fearful instinct, that if this thing wins, London burns.

The other two shouty lads advance, effing and blinding and waving “come on then” gestures at the air, and the rotted thing takes a careful step back before lashing out again—if it lands, it’s all over.

The last bin bag hand explodes. With a wail like a roasting baby, the thing dissolves and rubbish is strewn across the alley.

“YEAH FUCK BACK OFF GOGMAGOG, YOU TWAT!” yells one man.

In the pause, as the two men help their comrades up, Sammy makes a brief, bewildered whine. The men turn and look. One winces in sympathy.

“If we don’t shout each night, London falls to darkness,” he tells Sammy. “And now you’ve seen it, you’re marked as one of us. The Mark of Wittington is upon you now.

“You really should have ignored the noise.”

Thanks, I’m excited to be here. Maham Anga was a real person, albeit an under-explored historical figure. I came across her while delving into the history of the subcontinent—which is where I’m from. And then, I found out that she was a clever, ambitious, almost ruthless woman, but also one of the only women who had managed to ensconce herself as regent in a world where women possessed nothing, least of all political power. The term, “Petticoat Government” was used in a derogatory way by the men who came after her to undermine her efforts—and scorn the very notion of a woman in political power.

Ever since I read that term, I couldn’t let go of it. I knew it was the title of this story. But there was so little that was known about Maham Anga and so much of it was interpreted in a cliched manner that I began to shape her history myself. What kind of past would she have had in order to have such drive? What sacrifices would she have to make to get what she wanted? I had to take a lot of liberties so I would say the story does not rely too much on biographical facts. It was more that this time period, and this woman who actually existed, became a medium for me to speak some truths.

I saw a lot in this story about the various approaches to and applications of power, such as the contrast between Akbar and Adham’s indolence and arrogance and Anga’s circumspection. Of all the powerful people in the story, Anga is the only one who wasn’t in a position to expect it from the beginning, and had to work for it. Was this part of the story from the beginning, or did it emerge during the writing process?

It was definitely part of the story from the beginning. It was the utter helplessness of the women around her, and their inability to break free of the tedious path they had been set on, that made Anga rail against those chains. The contrast between the brash behavior of her sons and her own careful words and actions was deliberate. They feared nothing because even if they lost everything they would still be free simply by virtue of their sex. Anga had to always tread carefully because a single wrong step could mean a descent into the life most harem women had.

What did evolve during the writing process was the ending. The ending went through many iterations as I struggled to find a version of success for Anga that was believable, because the real Maham Anga’s life ended in defeat.

The Koh-i-noor showing up in a story featuring kings and emperors immediately gave me Particular Feelings, and the story associated with it strikes more loudly than ever today. Adham, in particular, felt to me like the incarnation of the “second generation” of arrogant imperial power. How much did the nature of imperialism shape this story?

The Koh-i-noor is a real diamond but to children growing up in Pakistan it is a fabled and legendary stone. It was very natural for me to embed it into this fantastical story and more so because it fit the time-period to some extent. Now that you mention this angle, I can see further nuances and that’s a great example of how readers bring new dimensions to a story.

Since the stone was found by the Mughals, I don’t know if it hints at imperialism in this story, but if we extrapolate then certainly the stone is representative of it. With Adham, my intention was to juxtapose his behavior with Anga’s and most of that entitlement was due to the privileges afforded to his sex. In a modern context, with all that is going on in the world, I definitely agree that the lost diamond of a lost empire reflected in a story about a woman’s struggle and rise to power is poignant.

The quote “I had witnessed what happened when women relied on men” hit me as if it was the story’s thesis statement. There’s a deepness here of men causing devastation through their entitlement and women having to clean up after them. What drew you to emphasize this idea?

Wow, that is a very insightful way of putting it. This phenomenon of entitled men and suffering women is universal, but my experience of it derives from my culture. I think I was using this story to speak out against this status quo, and while this story takes place in historical times, the imbalance between how men and women are treated has not improved substantially even in recent times.

In that vein, even media portrayals of powerful women are difficult for ordinary women to relate to. They’re painted as quite cutthroat and this idea is perpetuated that an ambitious woman cannot also be a nurturing mother, with the idea of the latter being promoted as good. There’s already a lack of economic empowerment in my country for women, which is the first step towards emancipation and freedom of choice, and I feel those kinds of portrayals make women even less inclined to pursue independence. There have been quite recent accounts of women facing traumatic incidents simply because they stepped out of their houses, and the very streets in the dark are owned by men. So, the concept was something that was very close to home.

Is there anything you’re working on now that you’d like to talk about? What can our readers look forward to seeing from you in the future?

At the moment I’m working on a couple of short stories, and I’m trying to write the second draft of my novel—it isn’t easy! I hope that these stories reach their final form and find wonderful homes like this one has. Until then, I have a story coming out in the Gollancz Book of South Asian Science Fiction Vol. II which is now available for pre-orders on Amazon and should hit stores soon. I’m also excited for people to read my very first horror story that is coming out in Chiral Mad 5.

If you’re interested in reading more work right away, my winning story “The Puppetmaster” is available on the Salam Award website, and “The Shape of Snowflakes” is available to read in an earlier issue of The Translunar Travelers Lounge—which was the first magazine to ever accept a story of mine, and give me hope that I could be a writer.

• • • •

Akbar grew up playing alongside my own son, Adham Khan, born of a brief dalliance with a court nobleman. I suckled one on each breast, and my love and loyalty was divided between them. The first horse Akbar rode was my knee, as I jounced him along to imaginary wars and schooled him in the ways of the Ottomans and the Europeans.

They spent their days weaving in and out of the courtyards, teasing the kitchen staff, dodging the harem girls who tried to paint their fingernails in henna. As Akbar’s primary caregiver, my status in the harem was rising, and Adham was almost treated as one of the royals. At night—one child nestled on either side, their hands tucked in the v-neck of my peshwaz frock—I traced my fingers along the contours of the filigreed ceiling above us and told them the stories I had unearthed in my hours at the library, a place of refuge when I had first arrived at the harem as a fourteen-year-old woman.

“Our emperor is like the sun,” I said, “he is the axis on which the empire spins.”

Through my words, Akbar learned of the father he had never known. I told him of his father’s Bisat-e-Nashist, the carpet of exultation still hidden in his abandoned chambers, embroidered with elliptical orbits around the sun—the divine position of the emperor. I told him of the dragons, their ribboned bodies unfurling along the edges of the carpet in threads of thrashed metal.

“They’re not real?” Akbar whispered.

“The dragons? Of course they are, and they bow to the will of those who find them. They say Babar, your great-grandfather, used to ride a serpent in the sky. A solar emperor must have a chariot of fire.”

“When I become king, how will I find my dragon?”

“I want a dragon too!” Adham interrupted.

Akbar’s reply was swift and sharp, “It’s not meant for you. Only kings may have it.”

I could see Adham glowering at Akbar’s words, but the princeling went on, unaware, “How do I find my dragon?” he asked.

I pointed to the moon at the edge of the curlicued landscape, round and full.

“By using the vajra, the diamonds. When lightning strikes rock it makes diamonds, jewels that spring to life under the moon, like the laughter of the harem women freed in the night. There is a special potion, laced with diamond flakes, that summons dragons. Do you know about the Koh-i-noor?”

The little prince shook his unturbaned head in mute wonder. Adham gave a rankled sniff and pushed away from us. He leaned against a pillar and continued to glower at us beneath eyebrows inherited from his forgotten nobleman father.

“It is called the diamond of hope,” I continued, “It was stolen from the eye of the statue of the Hindu goddess, Sita. All who rush to acquire it hope it will bring them good fortune, but it brings only death.”

“You women are obsessed with jewels,” Adham muttered belligerently from his shadowed corner.

“And what is so wrong with that?” The bangles on my wrist clattered as I flung my palm forth, my nath swinging wildly on its infinitesimal tether, “Diamonds are the insurance of those to whom nothing else may belong. If a woman is cast out, they are the tools by which she may buy her way to freedom. And if a woman is angered, splintered diamond can be a lethal revenge.”

Akbar laughed at that, his sparkling eyes followed every movement of my bangles.

“You may laugh now, little prince,” I placed the tip of my nail on his slender nose, “but remember, the sun is so enthralled by its own glory that it forgets the moon, rising to prominence in its shadow.”

• • • •

As the boys grew into young men, I continued my duties at the Zenana, the segregation wing. Here, obliterated behind stone walls, their personalities eroded like river-smooth stones, lay the women, ailing from age or childbirth, no longer desired. I walked in the narrow aisles between their colorless beds, switching out bedpans, placing my hands on their clammy foreheads and murmuring words of comfort.

“Maham bai, how is my son?”

“Maham bai, have you seen my little one?”

Everyday they asked after their children, the children they hoped would inherit the fearlessness they had once dreamt of, but I had no answers to offer.

“I . . . I don’t know. I don’t know.”

I had tended to these women ever since I had arrived here, six years ago. I remembered standing at the curtained doorway, watching my father’s wagon, loaded with gifts from the emperor, disappear down the roads of Agra. Six years, and yet, I could not accustom myself to this ultimate fate. I tugged my dress from their grasping fingers and ran.

• • • •

When Akbar’s father returned to Agra, it was to face an untimely death. The emperor was tottering from his library with an armful of books when the muezzin’s call rang loud. He fell to his knees at the first AllahuAkbar, prostrating himself as was his tradition, and in doing so tripped on his silken robe, toppling down the stairs to an undignified end. I outgrew the betel-stained, crimson lips and missi-blackened gums of the pearly-toothed concubines and became the matronly head of the harem. Akbar traveled to Kalanuar, Punjab, to be crowned, and ascended to the throne.

He was fourteen at the time. A slip of a lad in an embroidered paijama and sweeping yalek robes, a turban, block printed with golden suns, interplaited on his smooth brow. By morning, framed by a halo of sunlight, he held his head high in his darbar, a court of Rajput noblemen and Muslim astrologers. By evening, he put his head in my lap and relieved burdens too great for a child’s shoulders to bear.

It was this way that I became his advisor. The whisperer at his ear—some said, I was the nagin, the snake, coiled around the elephant’s neck. You must understand: my knowledge of the court far exceeded that of a fourteen-year-old child, my influence seeped farther than the four walls of the harem. Recall, I had waited patiently, a lotus flower blooming in mud, as conquerors came and went, and Akbar illuminated my path to freedom.

• • • •

When my influence began to grow, it was Bairam Khan, the interloper, who sought to relegate me to the harem, restrict the depth of my conversations with the young emperor, and exclude me from the political machinations of a court where women did not belong. An ancient statesman, too wise for his own good, he was trusted by Akbar beyond all others. Clutching the title the old emperor had given him, Khan-i-Khanan, King of Kings, Bairam thought himself a regent without whom Akbar would have no sway. He led Akbar to fight the descendants of the Suri who had shamed his father and, being a general of extraordinary ability, he flung triumph after triumph at the adolescent emperor’s feet. This is how he ensconced himself in Akbar’s good graces. But while they traipsed to war, I made affiliations—there were many detractors of Bairam Khan.

• • • •

One morning, as Akbar reclined on his throne, arms draped over the tavus-e-sidrat-ul-muntaha, the peacocks of heaven, I summoned his favored astrologers. A few jewels ripped from a peshwaz I wore in my younger, slimmer days, and some whispered promises, and the astrologers were ready to share fabricated concerns about the alignment of the Anuradha constellation of scorpions and friendships, and what it meant for the future loyalty of Bairam Khan. I urged Akbar to execute him, with the astrologers mimicking my insistence. But Akbar was yet innocent. He would not succumb to an unnecessary need for bloodshed to keep his seat as the Solar Emperor. He banished Bairam Khan on an indefinite pilgrimage to Mecca, where the Afghan loyals of Sher Shah Suri caught and killed the man whom Humayun had held in such high esteem. And thus, providentially, my decree came to pass.

• • • •

I took my place in the shadows behind the throne, and there were those who expressed their concerns that I had designs to puppeteer the king. We worked in such graceful tandem—I was the hand behind the curtain allowing Akbar to be the mouth on the throne.

I created the mansabdar—a salaried meritocracy of nobility that determined the worth of noblemen and women by the strength of their army and cavalry. It was time for the women to own the properties they had rightfully inherited, instead of merging without trace into their husband’s polygamous collection of estates.

And then I built the Khair-ul-manazil, the madrassa where the women would study. When I wasn’t aiding Akbar in court, I would squat before the mazdoor—wood workers, contractors, and craftsmen—and give them directions. Before my eyes, the madrassa rose from the arid ground, domes and arches engraved with intricate calligrams, burgeoning as if by the strokes of a pen. In the harem, we had Humayun’s library at our disposal, and yet none of us took advantage of it!

“Why do you waste your time, when you will never have recourse to use this knowledge?” The harem women would often pluck the books from my fingers. But knowledge is the gateway to power. It is a sword that, even sheathed, makes one a formidable opponent.

• • • •

Meanwhile, my son, Adham, had evolved from a belligerent boy to a recalcitrant man who walked through the palace hallways with the unearned swagger of a king. Every night, upon my return from the court and the construction site, I would be stung by the sight of him languishing under the care of massaging fingers. There were a few times that I took him aside, turning my face away from the whiskey on his breath, and tried to talk some sense into him.

“For shame, Adham. When you should be working your way into Akbar’s good graces, you squander your time in such ill-fated pursuits!”

“What need have I to work for my brother’s good graces, for we are brothers, aren’t we?” His grin was stained an unsightly, tobacco-orange.

“And what is this you are drinking?” I snatched the dusty bottle from his drink-slackened grip, “Is this from Akbar’s private cellar?”

“So what if it is? Indra himself drank Soma enough to fill a lake!”

This would not do. Akbar might be young, but he had all the pomp and arrogance of an irate emperor with years on the throne. He would not react kindly if news of this pilfering reached his ears.

In the days that followed, I made arrangements. Under the tutelage of two experienced soldiers, I inundated Adham’s life with militaristic discipline. And when the paunchy effects of alcohol had been purged from his skin, I brought him before Akbar. What man was better suited to be the general of Akbar’s army than his own fiercely loyal foster brother? I oversaw the preparations for Adham to depart to Malwa, in order to continue the conquests Bairam Khan had, so conveniently, begun for us. I lit candles at the altar of Skanda the Leaper, god of war, firstborn of Shiva and his consort Parvati, to pray for the safe return of my son.

• • • •

But, in all my preoccupation, I failed to notice that Akbar had begun to follow in his father’s footsteps. He ordered tapestries connoting his cosmic entitlement, and rotated the color of his garb in accordance with the lunar cycles. He regaled himself with evenings of poetry fueled by betel intoxicants. I had raised him to be a worthy and learned commander, not an indolent shirker of his duties. And without him, the instrument of my success, I would be powerless.

“Your majesty,” I pushed past the giggling girls in their tight-fitting bodices and lenghu pants, shimmering veils dancing across the lower halves of their faces, “When will you next hold court?”

“What?” Akbar stopped one bite short of a drugged laddoo offered to him between dyed nails, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing is wrong,” I gritted my teeth into a forced smile, “But your people would like to see you, to hear from you.”

“They have you, Anga,” he patted my cheek, “and they have me too, should they need me. How goes Adham’s invasion of Malwa?”

“Baz Bahadur, the opposition’s leader, has fled to Khandesh after the Battle of Sarangpur, but . . . ”

“Well, good, see? Everything is as it should be.”

• • • •

Everything is as it should be. People would not see it that way if they saw what Akbar had become under my regency. My hands curled into fists as I paced the charbagh in front of the harem, a quadrangle of horticultural marvels and shaded pavilions. Fruit-laden trees secreted a ripe musky scent that mingled with the heady perfume of the raat-ki-rani flower buds. I thought of the secret poisons crushed in mortar and pestle and stuffed into the lining of robes—refined instruments of assassination—to be given to those upon whom the emperor bestowed a khilat. Award someone the highest honor and, simultaneously, cloak them in death. Greed made it easier to fool the targets. Akbar would not be greedy, but he would be trusting. And I didn’t want to kill him. Our symbiosis was dependent upon his retaining the monarchy. Would the hakeems hidden in the darkest alleys of Agra have a concoction that could turn a boy into an emperor?

• • • •

I drew my purdah tighter across my face and wished I had left some of my jewels at home. They clinked and jangled as the wagon rolled down the pitted road, its wooden wheels sending billows of sand up my nostrils. I sneezed and clung onto my bangles. It would be preposterous if these jewels caused my death. Gunpowder was becoming freely available—a consequence of my glorification of the Europeans and the Ottomans to Akbar—and some vagrant could use it to threaten a walking goldmine such as me. When he wasn’t soaking in pleasures, carnal and narcotic, Akbar experimented with firearms. Canons had frequently been heard in the palace, blowing the delicate parts of statues to smithereens.

The wagon stopped in front of a darkened street in the slums of Agra. I nodded and the wagon jolted away. I almost called out to the disappearing driver, but fear seemed to have seized my throat in a bruising grip. To think that I, who lorded over an entire country full of politicians, still feared walking down a desolate street alone. Had Adham Khan been here—but no, I could not rely on him. I had witnessed what happened when women relied on men.

I rapped the knocker on the Hakeem’s door rather too desperately. The noise echoed in the stillness of the alley. Water dripped down grimy walls behind me. The Hakeem’s assistant opened the door, and I scrambled to get inside.

“Fear not, gentle lady, fear not,” the Hakeem was a paralyzed old man with a beard hovering below his moving jaw, like tendrils of smoke, “How can I help you? A tincture to bring you love, a salve to heal all wounds?”

“I need a potion that will reinspire a man, allow me to help him focus,” I glanced around the dilapidated hut. A meek fire burned in the hearth, coughing embers towards the Hakeem’s wicker chair. It illuminated him with a glow, not unlike the sun-halo that surrounded Akbar at his court, but altogether more malicious.

“Ah, but there are different kinds of men, and they require ingredients with varying potency. Would you say this man is a mouse, or a dragon?”

I paused and then unclasped a heavy gold bracelet from my wrist. It hit the table with a weighty thud. “A dragon.”

• • • •

That evening, my hand only stopped trembling once Akbar had left the room. He had suspected nothing, of this I was sure. He had taken the goblet from my hands and downed the potion in a thirsty gulp, the redness trickling to the edges of his moustache. I had smiled at him and he had smiled back, lopsided, like the boy I had known. Was it my imagination, or did the potion travel across his face in scarlet tributaries, reaching for his eyes like grasping fingers. His irises dilated. Beware, no concoction is without its side-effects; in reawakening his ambition, you could unlock other things, less desirable. The Hakeem’s words swam in my head, but I had done what needed to be done, and I would bear the repercussions time would bring.

• • • •

I sat on a divan below the throne, veiled from head to toe, and conducted the affairs of the kingdom. The peacock throne still sat empty; the noblemen had come to trust me implicitly. In the afternoon, during the darshan, when the priests of the temples and Imams of the mosques gathered for an audience with the king, I was the only one surveying them from the verandah. I sensed the clamor of their complaints before they opened their mouths, and I raised my hand to placate them, but before any of us could make our voice heard, a messenger, bedecked in military outfit, parted the crowds on his horse. Adham. My heart lurched to my throat. I ran back indoors and down the staircase. When I emerged onto the street, the priests and the Imams were jigging with delight and colored ribbons festooned the air in celebration. And yet, the messenger looked me in the eye, above the swaying crowds, his gaze austere.

• • • •

“He did it? Adham has conquered Malwa.” I clutched my bodice. “But where is he?”

“Begum, he has lost his mind,” the messenger bowed his head, “We warned him of the dangers of hoarding the treasures of Malwa for himself, how that would appear to the Emperor. But he would not listen. And . . . ”

“What, what is it?”

“Order a carriage, begum, and I will show you.”

“Take me there now,” I insisted. I could see reluctance in the soldier’s eyes but, propriety be damned, this matter could spell the difference between freedom and death. The veil slipped off my head, diamond kan phools gleaming at my ears, as I pulled myself onto the horse. I heard shocked gasps from the Imams, at the sight of a woman sitting astride a horse, but there would also be many who would appreciate my policies more for the robust masculinity of my behavior. I cracked the whip and we raced to Malwa.

• • • •

Adham, what have you done? The streets of Malwa reeked with the stench of burning flesh and grass. Fields of incinerated rabi crops, that should have been ripe for the plucking, unravelled like ashen carpets on either side of us. My mind conjured images of the scholars herding their families to a safety that was nowhere to be found, fire licking at their running feet. If Akbar should visit Malwa, what action would he take at the sight of Adham reclining, amidst a sea of destruction, with a harem and treasures that do not belong to him? Would he call the conquest of a scorched city a victory? By the time I reached Malwa, dark circles were etched beneath my exhausted eyes.

“You imbecile,” I gripped the sash woven across Adham’s waist, “How could you let a victory turn into your greatest failure? How are we to keep this from the emperor?”

“I did nothing wrong. I decimated his enemies,” Adham shook my hand off.

“You killed the very scholars Akbar reveres! Unlike you, he is a vessel of knowledge!”

“Unlike me . . . you preening, proud woman,” Adham spat at my feet. “From the day his incapable parents left him at your door, you have been a slave for him. Why is it wrong for me to covet the things he possesses in droves? If I am his brother, where is my harem, my treasures, my kingdom?”

This is not about you! My head spun and I reached for a pillar to steady myself. Adham would never understand. He roamed the world with the entitlement that was the legacy of his sex. I needed to be the sensible one; provoking Adham would mean the downfall of everything I had built. “You are right. And you will get the things you deserve, my boy,” I turned towards him, “but not if you anger the emperor. Step by step . . . ”

“Step by step what, Begum Anga?”

I whirled around to see Akbar standing at the doorway. Had he followed me here? How much of our exchange had he heard? Words deserted me; I was a dry and forgotten well.

“You see,” Akbar moved further into the room, and I saw the messenger writhing in his grip, “You may think my pursuits blind me from what is happening under my nose, but I am not so stupid. You have hoarded the wealth of Malwa for your own gain, you have committed heinous war crimes, and you have been plotting against me.”

“No, your majesty, no,” I stepped forward, but the disdainful leer that twisted his handsome face halted me in my tracks. In that swift moment we were no longer mother and son, but emperor and deceitful concubine. He was alien to me. The messenger’s neck snapped. Akbar loosened his grip, letting the corpse slide to the floor.

Adham, cowardly as ever, threw himself at Akbar’s feet, swore to return every stolen penny and person, and begged Akbar to forgive him for the atrocities he claimed to have wreaked unintentionally upon the people of Malwa. With his nose pressed to the cold ground Adham did not see the way Akbar’s breath fanned out of his nostrils in plumes of smoke, nor the way his pupils contracted into scarlet slits. But only the messenger died that day. Akbar followed his advisor Ataga Khan’s recommendation and removed Adham from his post as general.

• • • •

Akbar’s path began to fork away from mine, and Ataga Khan would not be as easily displaced as Bairam Khan. The noblemen at court, at least, were still loyal to me. Wresting power from me would not grant Akbar authority.

“Akbar will be reigning over his own court from today.” Ataga Khan found me strolling in the harem gardens, and grasped my arm in a painful grip. “And he will have no need for your petticoat government.”

I grew still as the grass against my sandals.

“I think Advisor, you will find that there are few who remember the sound of Akbar’s voice, and fewer still who trust him.”

“The world draws closer to the apocalypse when women and eunuchs govern us,” Ataga Khan hurled the saying as an insult before he stalked out.

Akbar returned to the court, but he could do little without my guiding hand. Problems that have been years in the making need years of understanding to resolve. One cannot wake up from opium-induced sleep and saunter into court, to miraculously change lives. So Akbar sat on the peacock throne, and I whispered behind him, and in the court below us Adham and Ataga Khan exchanged looks of venom, vowing to be each other’s downfall.

• • • •

“I can’t stand him,” Adham Khan’s nightly outbursts wearied me. “He is gloating for having removed me as a general. I should be the advisor! Haven’t I been alongside Akbar through thick and thin?”

“Adham, if you think your life is so precious, why won’t you be wise?” I pleaded. “Akbar has been ill-tempered of late and it would not benefit us to anger him. You have lived a life of luxury, and it has stolen your ambition and replaced it with entitlement!”

“I do not call being the son of a worthless concubine a luxury.”

• • • •

Within the space of a few months, the new general appointed by Ataga Khan cornered Baz Bahadur, the fleeing ruler of Malwa, and Akbar ordered him and his closest allies to be trampled beneath the hoofs of elephants. I was there as the rearing animals were led into where the prisoners were tied to stakes in the ground. Was this the same boy who had shied from executing Bairam Khan? I looked at Akbar’s aquiline profile while the rest of the crowd roared at their vicious entertainment. The skin above his beard was ragged and flushed as if an unsteady hand had flayed it with a razor.

“Akbar, are you well?” I whispered.

The eyes that turned towards me had slit pupils, and they were wide with helpless fear.

“Akbar . . . ” His face hit my bangles as I caught the falling emperor in my arms. Men rushed towards us to carry him to the hospital wing. I followed, watching my sandals slap the stone floor, my mind elsewhere. I was thinking of the hakeem and the undesirable things his tincture might have unlocked.

• • • •

Akbar had barely recovered when Adham murdered Ataga Khan. The latter stood in court spouting a speech so pompous my toes curled in my jhutis. As people milled about, praising the wisdom of Ataga Khan, Adham swerved into the room where Ataga had the effrontery to mock him for his ignoble blood.

“Look who is here,” Ataga clapped Adham on the back in a patronizing fashion, “The Emperor’s entitled bastard brother.”

I saw the maniacal gleam in Adham’s eyes too late to stop him. He leapt upon the advisor. Wine and blood pooled onto the floor in a foolhardy mess.

• • • •

Akbar was on the fort ramparts when the courtiers rushed to inform him of what had happened. He ordered Adham to be brought to him immediately. I followed, hoping to delay his judgement. I saw the way Adham mocked the Emperor openly, proclaiming to have done his administration a favor. And yet, I never dreamt that Akbar would enact a swift and cruel judgement.

When Akbar lifted Adham by the waist, there was fear in the eyes of both my sons. There was a ringing in my ears as Akbar flung Adham from the rampart. I do not know how long I clung to the crippled mess of Adham that lay plastered on the floor many feet below the gaze of our emperor.

“This is the outcome when a woman gets ideas above her station,” a bystander said. For a moment, doubt assailed me. Had I hunkered down in timid obedience, had I never strived against the injustice of being locked away in a harem, I would not be facing this grief right now. Akbar made his way down the ramparts and came to stand beside me. I quelled my doubts. The decisions I have made will always be more valuable than the decisions made for me, no matter where they lead. So I looked him in his slitted eye and with a level voice I praised him,

“You have done well.”

• • • •

Word began to get around. Something was wrong with the emperor. When Akbar appeared in court, there was no way to hide his marred face except to veil it like a woman’s. And yet, he could not stay away lest someone else seize power as I had. So he ruled behind a screen, and I was accused of being a co-conspirator in the assassination of Ataga Khan. It was not so difficult to convince those who were already uneasy about a woman gathering political power. Akbar ordered that I be dragged to prison.

• • • •

I spent seven days staring at the bars on my window, imagining an impossible escape. I was told they would come for me at the next full moon, and I would be executed. I wished someone could bring me a splintered diamond. It would be better to die amongst the jewels of my youth, and by my own hand. This was not the end I desired, and yet, I was perversely proud to suffer the fate of a political prisoner. I chose it over languishing in the sick beds of the harem, curtained off from the carnal frivolity where infirmity and illness have no place.

A key jangled in the metal grille of the prison door. I looked up quizzically. I did not expect the guards to bring me a meal at this time.

“What have you done to me, Anga?” It was Akbar. He stumbled forward and clutched my shirt with unsteady hands. Up close, I could see the pearlescent marks on his skin where scale overlapped scale. His eyes had acquired a yellow tinge behind their scarlet pupils.

“Save me,” he begged. He veiled his face and I followed him out of the prison and into his chambers. When he dropped the clothes from his body, I could see the transformation was too far gone for me to stop it, even if I were to try to find the hakeem who had caused it. And I would not.

“Akbar, my dear boy,” I placed my hand on his heaving cheeks, feeling the ripple underneath his new reptilian skin, “Do you think you deserve to be saved? Would it not be better if I saved your kingdom for you?”

When the emperor’s turban fell to the floor, I picked it up and placed it upon my head. The instruments on the dresser, and years of painting faces, helped me create a semblance of Akbar’s features which would, nevertheless, be obscured by a veil. The dragon watched me with an indifferent gaze, as if it no longer remembered. I wondered which woman had ridden the dragon that had been Babar.

Soon, I would go tell the others of Maham Anga’s baffling escape from the prison. I examined my new self in the mirror. It would be a cumbersome disguise to apply every day, and an unbecoming one. But I could be myself, bedecked in chiffon drapes and diamonds, on the nights when I soared above roads travelled by ordinary men and forbidden to most women, on the back of a dragon, undulating through the skies like a flying carpet.

Eat it! Lest

the world murmurs

oaths buried

in your manuscript.

• • • •

It’s a Doofus

Escape is a burst of tears stowed with an eon. Next [n. /nɛkst] is temporality. Held in abeyance at a wonky intersection of slog and poise. An interchange of fact and fiction. Imagine this: a cerebral download metamorphosed with a nincompoop. The world is spinning with lost chronicles, missing ballots, sad songs. A jaunt of storms. A zigzag of lightning.

crackling to stillness

at the foot of a brand

new gravestone.

AS: Definitely. This is our first anniversary issue: We launched this iteration of Fantasy Magazine with the November 2020 issue! I feel gratitude to you and John, as well as Wendy N. Wagner, plus the folks who have helped us along the way, and especially gratitude for the readers who join us on these imaginative journeys!

CY: We’re so lucky to be able to do this. And we haven’t done it alone: Chloe Smith, Devin Marcus, and Anthony Cardno are our copy editor and proofreaders; Veronica Henry and Phoebe Barton are our interviewers for the Author Spotlights; Jeremy Tolbert built and maintains our website, which feeds into the ebooks that John Joseph Adams formats and makes available on Amazon and in our own ebookstore, built by Adam Israel. And of course we’d be completely lost without Matt Kressel’s irreplaceable Moksha submission system.

AS: Looking back on the challenging events of the past couple of years, both luck and privilege went into the fact that we’re still here, that we have survived. Which isn’t to say it was easy. Because it really, really wasn’t. But I’m grateful to be here, to be alive, and to be able to provide a home for some fantastic works, as well as share these works with the world.

CY: Seriously, I feel like congratulations are in order to every single person who has made it this far in the face of everything and somehow continues to put one foot in front of the other, trudging ever onward toward a brighter future. I hope that we’ve been able to provide a few moments of escape and comfort, and something to think about other than the state of the world outside our doors.

AS: To be honest, every time I read a story or poem which really does something special for me, I feel grateful for that work, and for the author; I feel glad that other people will see it, and I feel like the world is a better place for the fact that ideas and emotions can be shared in these ways. Fiction, poetry, even nonfiction, they are often so important in people’s lives, and they can have such an impact on our culture. If you’re reading this magazine, I hope you find something which moves you, which touches you, which makes you think. Read on, knowing that we are grateful that you’re reading.

• • • •

In this issue’s short fiction, Kehkashan Khalid offers a condensed epic, where a mother must contend with her fractious sons, in “The Petticoat Government,” and Genevieve Mills gives us a taste of revenge in “Girls Have Sharp Teeth”; in flash fiction, Billie Cohen’s “Lessons” features a different kind of imprisonment, and there are consequences for Charles EP Murphy’s “Shouty Lads”; for poetry, we have “Unfinished” by Eugen Bacon and “After The End” by Jessica Cho. Finally, we have an interview with the author of Victories Greater Than Death, Never Say You Can’t Survive, and Even Greater Mistakes, Charlie Jane Anders. Enjoy!

I pushed my toe against the air, right above where the blacktop meets the meadow. I’m not sure if I imagined it: the thin film flexing and shimmering like a soap bubble against my shoe. I imagined that someday I’d burst it. The meadow draws me every morning before the students get here and every afternoon when they leave, but I’m nearly certain it is unreachable.

The children who arrive chattering and boisterous to our one-room school don’t have the same problem. They don’t see a bubble; they aren’t affected by it, and they pass through it daily as if it’s not even there. Which of course makes me wonder if it is. But I’ve never asked them about it. And I’ve never asked them for help. I don’t remember how I started this job, but I remember that I am their teacher, and it’s a responsibility I feel proud of. I know my job is to take care of them, not the other way around. And the job is the only thing that keeps me going. So I obediently watch them come and go each day, and try to ignore how much it hurts to see that they are blissfully unaware of any boundaries, as all children are.

I teach a science lesson every year about bubbles, which inevitably devolves into chaos. The children squeal and jab their fingers at the floating spheres. And they laugh. So much laughter. It’s why I enjoy repeating the lesson, even though no student has ever, in all my years, looked at the delicate orbs and understood my laughable cry for help.

Usually, when I try to explain the science, I’m met with suspicious looks—as if I were trying to steal the magic from something wondrous. I hope that’s not what I’m doing. But I also hope—in a place so deep down in my heart that I’m scared to look directly at it—that one of them will eventually notice that I’ve never left the school grounds. That I wear the same five outfits every week. That over the years I have taught their siblings, parents, and grandparents, too, for god’s sake. That I have no recollection of what happens between the time the bell rings at the end of the day and the time it rings in the morning.

But I remember each of my failed attempts to leave. The disappointment is devastating. The realization that I am ready to accept defeat is even worse.

This morning was the bubble lesson again, and I couldn’t help myself—I laughed along with the delighted children, even as I gave up on them. The reliably disruptive Sean Hobbs guffawed as he pelted his crumpled worksheets at other students, and they in turn aimed paper bullets of their own. I was about to reprimand them all when Sean suddenly froze mid-lunge for the soap bottles on the window counter. A curious look washed over his face, and he gazed out the window intensely, then glanced back at the bowl of shimmery water on his desk. I swear I heard a little gasp, right before one of the other kids clocked him in the head with the balled-up homework assignment and they all erupted back into the usual cacophony.

At recess, I spied Sean standing between the seesaw and the swings, squinting his eyes and stepping from side to side, as if trying to catch something from different angles. I watched him for what felt like hours. I held my breath. “Teacher, come look at this,” he finally shouted, not bothering to look back toward me, focusing all his attention instead on the air right above where the blacktop meets the meadow. He poked his finger out tentatively, and, to my shock, the bubble bowed and shimmered. Then he turned to me with a wide, wicked, triumphant smile and reached out for my hand. “I can take you.”