Gregory Norman Bossert is relatively new to writing fiction, but he’s sold several short stories nonetheless. This story is a finalist for this year’s World Fantasy Award.

“Lord Dellus has passed,” Pearse said; the staff gasped and sighed, as if they had not known already from the cries that had haunted the house since evening last and had stopped so suddenly this morning. “Stopped without an echo,” Cook had said with heavy significance, and added, “That’s that, then,” as she did when a loaf went flat or a bird slipped from the spit to the ashes.

There had been no sighs then; the staff had exchanged weary nods and worried glances in the silence of a House without a head. And there had been a few curious glances toward Mel’s spot on the corner stool that had left Mel wondering what one was meant to feel, and if that dizzy burst of relief and fear was evident, was evil.

“In these difficult moments, we take guidance from the wisdom of tradition,” Pearse continued now. “The upstairs staff will see to the shades, and to the curtains in the conservatory. Ralph, the shutters, closed and latched, and then the front walk swept with the yew brush. The shrouds for the portraits may be found in the cabinet of the still room. The clocks must all be muffled, and a poppy placed on each mantle.”

The downstairs maid curtsied.

“Cook, a hare’s head for the dogs, a fresh one, if you please.”

Cook snorted—’as if I didn’t know,’ that meant—but quietly; Mel felt it more than heard it, a quaking of that vast thigh.

Pearse scowled thoughtfully at the wall; the panelling there was lighter, where a painting had been taken down and not replaced. “I believe those are the most immediate duties that custom and propriety demand of us. We shall convene at noon in the kitchen to discuss the period of mourning.”

Ralph the gardener cleared his throat. “The bees,” he prompted.

“Ah, yes, the bees,” Pearse said. “Where is the child?”

Ralph shuffled uncomfortably, and looked sideways at Neff. “It’s meant to be the youngest, ah, male in the household.”

Pearse acted, as usual, as if Neff was beneath his notice. “The child will do. Where is it?”

Cook rumbled with discontent, but placed her knuckles between Mel’s shoulder blades and pushed.

“Here, sir,” Mel said and stood straight, suddenly eager for the brightness of the gardens.

“You will come with me, boy.” Pearse glared from Ralph to Cook as if courting disagreement, and Mel’s expectation slumped to unease at that accustomed tension between the senior staff. “The Lord is dead. The bees will need telling.”

Keep reading.

Emily Gilman writes mostly short stories and not a huge number of those. That seems to work for her, though, as this story is one of the finalists for this year’s World Fantasy Award.

He thought the bears had smiled, though that might just have been wishful thinking; certainly they had looked at each other for a moment, and then they turned back to him. Yes, they said, that much we can do, and it is little enough payment for your services.

And they had turned him into a scarecrow.

Sure, it had gotten boring after a while, but it was also peaceful, and never needing to sleep gave one a lot of time to learn to read the sky; and then, rain and heat and wind and cold didn’t really bother him anymore. All in all, the birds and the wind in the trees weren’t bad company, and whenever he caught himself wishing he could go back to being a man, he remembered the bears, and the masterpiece he had built them, and the secret at its heart that he must never, ever reveal.

But then one day, when most of the leaves had fallen and evening came early, the wind changed. It changed just before sunset and blew all night long, coming from every direction like it didn’t know who it was or where it was supposed to be going and was trying to make up for it in sheer exuberance.

And then, just as the sun was rising in the morning, it changed once more: all at once it blew hard from the south—but strangely cold for a south wind—and so sharply and suddenly that he thought at first he had finally been knocked over. It took him a few minutes (probably—his scarecrow sense of time was not one that lent itself to such measurements) to realize that he hadn’t been blown over at all: he’d been blown out.

Jack looked up at the faded, battered scarecrow, still tall and proud on its seemingly fragile prop, and then looked down at his own hands. They looked solid enough, but he felt thin, and he would have sworn that the wind kept blowing through him, even as it drew him north.

“Well,” he said, but he didn’t know what else to say after that, so he fell silent. Well. He longed to just stand there, as (he felt) he always had, but something about being so near the ground made him uneasy, and in the end he began tottering, and then eventually walking, in the direction the wind wanted him to go.

Keep reading.