Changelings and fairy worlds, a wizard and her golem, a dragon and a cast-off princess, and portals to other worlds… 🔮
This month I had the absolute honor and joy of narrating three incredible stories for the October 2026 issue of Lightspeed Magazine. ✨
🧚 Uncanny Jack by Susan Palwick is such a poignant tale that I had to stop recording numerous times to pull myself together. Its title comes in part from the old changeling belief in British, Irish and Scandinavian folklore: fairies were believed to steal human babies from their cradles and leave one of their own in their place. In this story they steal adults too. Lucy takes on this belief because it’s easier to bear than the dementia that has claimed her once brilliant engineer husband, Jack. So she breaks him out to trade him back and is transported to a fairy world, where she finds her real Jack. Then, echoing Orpheus and Eurydice, Jack tells her he’ll follow her back to their world as long as she doesn’t look back…
🐉 All the Shapes We Have Ever Been by Kehkashan Khalid centers on a Dev, a shapeshifting spirit chained for years as a serpent to guard a tower where orphaned girls are left as prizes for princes. This is not a tale about Rapunzel by any means. One cast-off princess grows up loving the Dev and begins to plan how to set them both free, a journey that takes her to another world and returns her forever changed by fire.
🪄 Until the Cure by Marissa Lingen introduces us to Mehi, a wizard desperately trying to cure the heterokontic plague that has taken hold of her mother. Until she finds a cure, she builds a golem to give her mother the patience and care she feels she can’t, and the golem slowly becomes someone in its own right. This story shines a light on caregiving, guilt and needing to do something that actually helps.
At their heart, each of these stories is about love that has to change shape in order to survive, and each holds the power to transform whoever comes across them. Open that portal door and head on over to Issue 197, where these stories are waiting for you to read, or to listen on the Lightspeed Magazine podcast. 🌀
Heartfelt thanks to Lightspeed Magazine and Skyboat Media for sending these beautiful stories my way. 💜
