•   CONTENTS                                                               Before Paphos
                           The Game This
            Art Gallery                                                    by Loretta Casteen
        o
                           Year
            Articles                                                       8 January 2007
        o
                           By Lisa Goldstein
            Columns                                                        It starts again. The baby begins
        o
                                                                           to cough and choke.
                           28 July 2003
            Fiction
        o
                                                                           Locked Doors
                           It is a little before midnight, and three old
            Poetry
        o
                                                                           by Stephanie Burgis
                           people, two women and a man, are
            Reviews
        o                  laboriously climbing the stairs in a
                                                                           1 January 2007
                           ramshackle old office building.
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                    Lily, the youngest-looking of the three, You can never let anyone
•   ABOUT US
                    carries a box-shaped package. She looks suspect, his mother told him.
                    like a woman you might see in a shopping That was the first rule she
      o Staff
                                                                   taught him, and the last, before
                    mall or a church though a little
                    over-dressed and behind the times. The she left him here alone with It.
      o Guidelines
                    other woman, Grace, is wearing a long Heroic Measures
      o Contact
                    coat patched together out of sky-blue
                    velvet and emerald silk and ivory lace and by Matthew Johnson
      o Awards
                    embroidered upholstery fabric. Her gray
                    hair is tied back in a bun, and a tabby cat, 18 December 2006
      o Banners
                    the same color as her hair, rides across
                    her shoulders. Collier, the man, is using a Pale as he was, it was hard to
•   SUPPORT US
                    stout staff to pull himself up the stairs. All believe he would never rise
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                    the bulbs have burned out; the only light, from this bed. Even in the
                    a soft golden illumination, comes from the darkest times, she had never
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      o
                    top of his staff. He is bald except for a really feared for him; he had
                                                                   always been strong, so strong.
      o Merchandise few tufts of white hair, like sheep's wool,
                    that surround his head. He stops, panting, Love Among the Talus
•   COMMUNITY       and pushes up his round gold spectacles.
                                                                   by Elizabeth Bear
      o Forum       They come to the third floor and head
                    toward the office at the end of the hall. 11 December 2006
      o Readers'
                    Lily is moving too quickly; she steps on
         Choice                                                    Nilufer raised her eyes to his. It
                    the train of Grace's coat. There is a
                    tearing sound and the cat turns and mews was not what women did to
                                                                   men, but she was a princess,
                    softly. When they reach the office Lily
                                                                   and he was only a bandit. "I
                    opens her purse, takes out a heavy
                    old-fashioned key, and unlocks the door. want to be a Witch," she said.
                                                                   "A Witch and not a Queen. I
                    She switches on the light and they stand wish to be not loved, but wise.
                    clustered together in the doorway for a Tell your bandit lord, if he can
                    moment. There is an old battered desk give me that, I might accept his
                    and chair in the office and nothing else. gift."
                    Dust is everywhere; it covers the furniture
                                                                   Archived Fiction Dating back
                    and is strewn across the floor. In the
                    breeze from the open door it spins and to 9/1/00
                    coalesces in the corners the way stars are
                    said to do out in space. The cat sneezes.

                           Lily sets down her bundle and flings open
                           the window. The window does not look
                           out on more office buildings but on a