The days and nights grow warmer; more and more geese fly overhead. She counts the seconds, watching Amira’s empty hands. 17: The Deluge" by, "I Live With You" by Carol Emshwiller (2006), "Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience™" by Rebecca Roanhorse (2018), This page was last edited on 15 January 2021, at 07:56. She has been thinking about shoes for a very long time: the length of three and a half pairs, to be precise, though it’s hard to reckon in iron. That’s all I ever wanted—for no one to be able to touch me. Mini-Review (click to view--possible spoilers) Pro: This story subverts two … She has weathered storms here, the sleek–fingered rain glistening between glass and gown, hair and skin, seeking to shift her this way or that—but she has held herself straight, upright, a golden apple in her lap. it seemed like just the thing. Oh.” A pause; Amira has never seen a river. I purchased my very first wok after moving from Malaysia to the US to attend university in the year 2000. I have a notion that the stranger the surface—the harder it would be to walk on something usually—the faster the sole diminishes. Reprinted by permission of the author. “The apples—or the hill itself, I’m not sure—keep me warm enough. Then, carefully, for the hill is slippery to her now, Tabitha sheds her fur cloak, unstraps the iron shoes from her feet, and gives them and her pack to Amira. Amira smiles at her, bends forward to kiss her forehead. “Falling’s easy—it’s keeping still that’s hard.”. Said the Ticktockman, The Secret Lives of the Nine Negro Teeth of George Washington, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Seasons_of_Glass_and_Iron&oldid=1000477777, Hugo Award for Best Short Story winning works, Nebula Award for Best Short Story-winning works, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, "As the Last I May Know" by S. L. Huang (2020), "Forever Yours, Anna" by Kate Wilhelm (1988), "Bible Stories for Adults, No. a creaking, like a stove door with no squeak in it, as if the geese are machines dressed in flesh and feathers. “. No, I just—” Tabitha coughs, slightly, embarrassed. Only—that’s why people try to climb the hill, you know.”, “Oh. Promises are important to bears. Not there.”, Amira looks up. Before your suitors return. That it had nothing to do with a curse? © 2016 by Amal El–Mohtar. Her fiction has most recently appeared in Strange Horizons, Lightspeed, Uncanny Magazine, and The Starlit Wood anthology from Saga Press. A wolf’s maw or a glass hill.”, “On the hill,” says Amira, lips tight, “I want for nothing. The magic keeps her brown skin from burning during the day, and keeps her silkshod feet from freezing at night—so long as she is still, so long as she keeps her glass seat atop her glass hill. “They feel broken too. I have to leave before the suitors come back.”, “Oh?” Amira smiles softly. She decides to change the subject. She only worked harder to please him. . She coughs. Word count: 5,765. Winter thaws, and everything smells of snowmelt and wet wood. That being said, it is not maintenance free… “I love you, and I do not understand how someone who loves you would want to hurt you, or make you walk in iron shoes.”. When Amira stops speaking, she is taken aback to feel Tabitha scowling at her. As she eats, Amira feels Tabitha’s eyes on her empty hands, waiting to catch the apple’s reappearance, and tries not to smile—she’d done as much herself the first fifty or so times, testing the magic for loopholes. She waits until sunset, and sets out across the clearing. Three pairs of shoes ago, she was in a pine forest, and the sharp green smell of it woke something in her, something that was more than numbness, numbers. She is stepping out of a forest; the morning sun is vicious, bright with no heat in it; the frosted grass crunches under the press of her iron heels, but some of it melts cold relief against the skin exposed through the straps. Issue 13 is wholly available in ebook form, and the first half of it is live online today, including “Seasons of Glass and Iron,” my story in The Starlit Wood anthology. Burn his bear skin, said her mother. “But you looked so cold—”, “Perhaps it’s like your feet,” says Amira, before she can stop herself. “Wait. You can register here. "Seasons of Glass and Iron" is a 2016 fantasy story by Amal El-Mohtar. You did nothing wrong.”, “That’s funny,” says Amira, unsmiling, “because to me, every day feels like a test: Will I move from this hill or not, will I grasp at a bird or not, will I toss an apple down to a man when I shouldn’t, will I speak too loudly, will I give them a reason to hurt me and fall off the hill, and every day I don’t is a day I pass—”, “I love you,” says Amira, very softly. In the shifting light of the moon both their faces have a bluish cast, but Amira sees Tabitha’s go gray. You’ve been eating golden apples a long while. Then, quietly: “Why are you even up here?”, Amira looks at her coolly. Tabitha walks, and thinks of shoes. Amal El–Mohtar has received the Locus Award, been a Nebula Award finalist for her short fiction, and won the Rhysling Award for poetry three times. It woke her husband, who flew into a great rage, saying she had broken her promise to him. Some part of her feels she should pause before accepting food from a magical woman on a glass hill, but it’s dwarfed by a ravenousness she’s not felt in weeks; in the shoes, she mostly forgets about her stomach until weakness threatens to prevent her from putting one foot in front of the other. They stand, and wait, and no golden apple appears to part their hands from each other. “The shoes,” she says, marveling. Our energy-efficient glass and thermally engineered framing and roof systems keep you comfortable in winter, spring, summer and fall. I wasn’t sure if—I thought it was meant as a prize for whoever climbed the hill, but I suppose the notion is they don’t go away unless I give them to a man.”. 3. Didn’t I just eat it? By night, she strings shapes around the stars, imagines familiar constellations into difference: suppose the great ladle was a sickle instead, or a bear? She reckons the quality of her pain in numbers, but not by degree: if her pain is a six it is because it is cold, blue with an edge to it; if her pain is a seven it is red, inflamed, bleeding; if her pain is a three it has a rounded yellow feel, dull and perhaps draining infection. Perhaps that is his curse. It was first published in the anthology The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales. Tabitha counts—the moments, the bites, the number of apples—until there are seven in her lap; when she takes an eighth from Amira, the first seven turn to sand. Tabitha is cursed to walk in iron shoes. “I’d like to tell you a story.”, Tabitha pauses—then, resuming her braiding, says, “I’d like to hear one.”, “I don’t know if I’m any good at telling stories,” Amira adds, turning a golden apple over and over in her hands, “but that’s no reason not to try.”. 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