“The spears of the day shall not touch them, the chains of the sun shall not hale them forth.”

The Talented Beetle

By Joanne Harris

Beneath a forest canopy of flowering trees and fruiting vines, there lived a talented beetle. He was a craftsman among dung beetles, making not only balls of dung, but also crafting other shapes, flowers and leaves and insects. They were only made of dung, and yet they were perfect copies of the real thing, so that soon word of the dung-beetle’s art reached the forest canopy, where the King of the Parrots lived, holding court, surrounded by his courtiers. The King of the Parrots was very vain, and fancied himself a great artist, although he could do nothing but imitate (rather badly) the songs of other creatures.

“This beetle is an artist,” he said, “and I shall be his patron.” Then, addressing the beetle, he said: “I hereby proclaim you the official artist to my royal court. You will henceforth be the official sculptor of my kingdom. You will build me a royal palace out of dung. Out of dung, you will create all my official statues.”

The dung beetle pondered this at length, and finally said: “I’ll need more dung.”

“You shall have it,” said the King of the Parrots, and instantly sent out his messengers across the land. “Bring me all the animals,” he said, “that eat the most, and therefore produce the largest quantity of dung. Bring me elephants, hippos, great apes. Bring me locusts. Send out the word that the gracious King of the Parrots will pay for their dung in fruit and meat, and leaves, and grains, and fish, and fowl, and everything that is good to eat.”

The creatures of the forest heard of the King of the Parrots’ plan. “The food belongs to us,” they said. “It is not yours to give away.”

“Rubbish,” said the King of the Parrots. “Food belongs to everyone.” And he waited impatiently for the completion of his great palace. But the dung-beetle worked slowly, taking weeks to make even the smallest sculpture out of dung, whereas the King’s ambition extended to far greater things. “I must have more beetles,” he said at last. “My legacy requires it.”

And so the beetle sent word to his friends to join him in the great work. Together they made a series of floral bouquets made out of dung. They looked very realistic, except for the colour and the smell, and the parrot King was delighted. “Now make some fruit trees,” he ordered. The beetles agreed, and before long, there was an orchard of trees around the King’s palace, complete with ripening fruit; all cunningly made from dung.

Of course, all this demanded a certain amount of sacrifice. The trees of the forest were stripped and felled to feed the new influx of animals. The elephants ate all the green leaves; the apes devoured the fruit, and the locusts did the rest, so that soon the forest was bare, and the animals were starving. Some left; others died, and the dung beetles kept on building, replacing plants and trees and fruit with perfect replicas crafted from dung. 

“See how my kingdom increases,” said the King of the Parrots. But most of his court had flown away, to be replaced by birds made from dung. Still, if you discounted the smell, they were quite convincing, and the King was delighted with his new, attentive entourage. 

“This new forest is just as good as the old one,” he declared, looking around at his silent court; his statues; his sculptures; his orchard of trees. “Surely I am a veritable patron of the arts.” 

And he reached out to pluck a dung beetle from the dwindling pile on his dinner plate, telling himself that great artists must sometimes make great sacrifice, and that a change of diet was a very small price to pay for the wealth of well-crafted dung he had amassed around him.

My Heart in a Snow Globe

by Archita Mittra

I watch my children in the snow globe all day. 

Little Liesel is looking out of the castle tower, a song upon her lips, snowflakes melting on her outstretched fingers, while Jana builds a snowman in the courtyard. She’s added tiny twigs for hands, buttons for eyes and a thorn from a rose bush for the nose. A fleck of blood glimmers at the dark tip. 

A little flavor, a little color. 

It fills me with pride that at least one of my kids is turning out an artist like me. I, who painstakingly painted every brick in this castle, enchanted each tiny detail to make this impossible diorama come alive—the tinsel butterfly waiting on Jana’s dark tresses; the green dragon plushie, crafted with sponge and cotton that accompanies Liesel on treasure hunts; the iridescent icicles glittering from the turrets, like tiny mirrors reflecting rainbow worlds within. Unperturbed by the cold, Jana dresses her creation with her blue overcoat, then invites Liesel to come down and play.

Don’t be afraid, I almost whisper, as my daughters play hide-and-seek, blissfully unaware that they are being watched. Nothing can hurt you in here. 

But behind one of the stained-glass windows, in a room locked from the inside so that the kids can’t get in, a cradle sways in the soft breeze. The baby in it does not stir. 

She does not stir because I failed to save her. It is a reminder of why I must do what I do. 

Despite all the wards, Billy still finds his way into the musty attic, my workroom.

He is looking for me, I suppose. He even brought along Jolly, the stuffed bear. The kid walks past the dusty dollhouse, peers at the shelves stacked with thick leather-bound books on spellcraft and biographies of artists that he’s too young to read. Then my curious boy saunters to my untidy workbench, scattered with tools and paraphernalia —a carving knife, a microscope, spools of thread, magnifying glasses, paper mâché, vials of paints, glue, a half-crumpled green origami dragon, several empty glass balls.

“Mummy?” he asks in a fascinated voice, looking around.

He hasn’t seen me yet because I’m clutching my chest, crouched behind a set of antique trunks, filled with customized snow globes for my clients. It isn’t safe for him to be up here. The knife could cut him or he could slip and fall. All it takes is one small accident; a careless wound, a life-threatening infection. My frail enchantments may not be enough and I could lose him forever. 

Like I’d lost my first baby. 

She’d died in the hospital, just two weeks after welcoming her into the world. The doctors shrugged, said it was a case of pneumonia, that there was nothing they could do. As my husband hauled me away, he reasoned that suing the medics for negligence wouldn’t bring our daughter back, that no power in the universe was powerful enough to bring her back. 

I swore I’d prove them wrong.

My heart is hammering as Billy finally notices the special snow globe on the table. He picks it up and stares wide-eyed at the children inside it. He smiles, tugged by the strings of memory.

It breaks my heart, but I must save him. The sooner, the better. That sense of urgency takes over my nerves. It’s a miracle that he even survived so long—almost ten years—what with all the murders and acid rain and plagues and riots that my husband so placidly watches on the television every evening while munching on roasted peanuts.

I think about how happy Billy will be as I whisper the ancient spell. For fear of frostbite, he’s never been allowed to play in the snow or build a snow man—yet. But at my husband’s insistence, we’ve taken our son to the zoo where unlike the other kids, he cried loudly seeing the animals locked in cages, and to the beach where he almost drowned when the tide slyly snuck up on us unawares. My fingers begin to glow faintly, impelled by a fire from within.

There isn’t much left for me to do as I slowly come up and surprise him.  

“Mummy! Look, I finally found Liesel and Jana. They are in here!”

I remember that look of shock in his bright blue eyes as I bury him in the backyard with his siblings. The snow globe rests in my pocket like a comforting hand while I shake and weep all over.

All that digging leaves me tired, but I still have more work to do.

I lie to my husband about a new commission and disappear into the attic. After all, there’s always the desperate customer who wants me to hex a policeman or craft a talisman to protect a loved one. But such measures are only temporary, undone by a more powerful will.

One of them was Jolly the stuffed bear, now sitting on the ground, forlorn. I pick him up, wondering just how much Billy misses him. Tears fill my eyes. For a moment I wonder if I acted too hastily, but I’d given Billy more time than Liesel—two years more, to be precise. I toss the toy aside and reach for my tools. I know just how dangerous this world is for little children, so carefully woven with curses and callousness and cruelty.

I toil all afternoon and evening. There’s a slight nip in the air, but I’m immune to the cold, now. I put on my goggles, twisting wire into a small frame, wrapping it with straw and spider silk. Over the years, my sight has dimmed and my fingers tremble, so it takes longer than usual to paint Billy’s blue eyes and sunny face. But making art all through my mourning has taught me the virtues of patience. From Jana’s old dollhouse, I take out a miniature bear and christen him Jolly. With oily fingers, I carefully screw the nuts and bolts to make a tiny wooden seesaw in a snowfield. I drill a hole at the bottom of a brand-new glassy globe. My labor brings back the joy I felt in the early months of pregnancy—all that anticipation and planning to create a happier, safer world, together. 

Shuddering, I close my eyes and murmur the magic words. My breath mists the glass. I feel afraid, so afraid. The first time I attempted this spell, it did not work. 

I wait. 

I wait.

Slowly, the snowflakes come alive, dance, swirl. 

Billy blinks his eyes and gets up, awed by the white world around him, his new and eternal playpen. He picks up Jolly and up and down they go in the seesaw, laughing. He’s right where he’s supposed to be, saved by my art. The ache in my heart slowly unclenches, as Billy tells Jolly his new plan of taking down a mountain troll. I feel so satisfied and relieved, each element of my tableaux snugly in place.

Safe and immortal, at last.

I’m so caught up admiring my children that the outside world, the wintry chill, all fade out—until my husband is at the foot of the stairs, shouting that it’s dinnertime already and our son isn’t home yet. He usually respects my artistic process but lately, the powders in his food seem to have lost their potency. I let out a loud sigh. It is getting more and more difficult to cover my tracks, but no one ever said that motherhood would be easy. I kiss my precious snow globe and slowly put it down beside the other one, with a promise to return.

As I leave the room, a ray of moonlight from the open window catches me unaware.  A few flakes of snow gently drift past, and I shiver at the eerie sensation of being watched.

Exposed, Every Inch Visible

by Kat Day

Emil is standing in the wings and I watch him frown at the first few jazz chords. He wasn’t expecting this song. I fixed it with Jules who does the sound, of course, but I spoke to no one else.

He can frown all he likes. He’s hardly going to walk onto the stage and drag me off. Not in front of all these people. Dragging people away is something he does when he’s out of sight of witnesses. Funny thing, up here I’m exposed, every inch of me visible. And yet I’m safe. Seen, and safe.

I blink into the blinding lights and shrug out of my cloak, letting the soft fabric pool around my feet. Breathe in – the scent of makeup thick in my nostrils – and then, on precisely the right beat, I begin to sing. It’s a familiar song and my voice is, as always, perfect, but it’s not the sultry number I was supposed to be belting out. After a small gasp at the reveal of the skimpy, gold, glittery costume underneath my cloak, several audience members look back to their drinks.

So I start to point at people as I sing, mic in my right hand, one manicured nail extended from my left. People smile – some even laugh – as I single them out, and it’s not long before everyone begins to relax, even Emil. I glance at him again and see he’s staring at the screen of his phone. Little fool.

Time for the final verse.

As I reach the antepenultimate line I begin to grin.

Widely

So widely.

Too widely.

A hush rolls over the audience like spreading frost as they begin to realise, one by one, that something isn’t right. The ones I pointed to earlier, all associates of Emil, aren’t laughing now. Their eyes roll back as they slump in their chairs. I shimmy and shrug once more, and this time it’s my skin that begins to fall, splitting at my mouth and slithering wetly off my skeleton, crumpling at my feet, a red slick muddling with discarded golden fabric. Some glossy beads of blood reach the edge of the stage and drop into the empty pit. Someone screams. Soon, there are many screams.

The gore evaporates from my beautiful pale bones like so much mist.

I hope everyone’s enjoying reality.

I turn to Emil in the wings once more, my hand outstretched, still grinning. Actually, I don’t have much choice of facial expression, now.

‘I’ve got you, under my skin,’ I sing softly.

He drops his phone and, clutching his chest, collapses like the worthless sack of potatoes he is.

I turn back to the audience as the final piano riff plays from the recorded track and dip my head. The screams are fading. The lights are fading. It’s all to the dark, nothing left but the scents of copper and dust.

I pick up my black cloak and pull the hood over my skull.

Ah, but it’s nice to be free of all that skin.

We Told You of the One Who Lives in the Mound

by A.L. Munson

Dear Edie,

I found you. I told you I would. Maybe not to your face, but I’ve shouted it to the heavens enough times while cursing your name.

You probably don’t remember me. I’ve spent the past twenty years paying for what you did, but I likely haven’t crossed your mind once since you left. Allow me to refresh your memory.

You were seven years old. So was I. You had just moved to our town from some big city—I forget which. Those strawberry-blonde curls and green eyes of yours made you stand out like a blue heron in a flock of snowy egrets. Even your name, Edie, with its hard ‘d’ sound, was so foreign to us. You said your last name had been “Burkowski,” but your new, adoptive parents changed it to “Tims.”

I, too, have a new name because of you.

Despite your strangeness, my friends and I welcomed you into our clique. We called you “Iti,” meaning “tree,” to make you seem more like one of us, but you didn’t like it. Perhaps we were wrong to try to change you. Or perhaps your refusal to integrate was a sign of your disrespect for us and a warning of what was to come.

We showed you around, taking you to all the farms and stables, to the river where the Ones Who Came Before drowned themselves and now live beneath the waters, to the burnt and blackened ruins of the only church anyone dared to build here, to the clearing in the woods where the Forest Dwellers abduct and return the chosen children, and lastly, to the mound.

We told you of the one who lives in the mound and how he would leave his home each morning for the river and return late at night, always remaining unseen. We told you his mound was a burial place and an altar. We told you these things, and still you did what you did.

You said there was no creature in the mound, no drowned people living in the river, and nothing kidnapping children in the woods. It was all in our heads, and we were being silly.

I warned you to respect the beings around us. The last time someone came to our town and mocked them… well, you had seen what was left of the church.

You rolled your eyes at me and said something like, “Fine. Whatever.”

For nearly a month, you made no further fuss. You attended our ceremonies around the mound in silence, though your expressions conveyed boredom, judgment, and general discomfort. Then your birth mother arrived. She blew into town like a hurricane, seeming every bit as “unfit” as the courts had deemed her. And once she was here, she and your adoptive parents fought constantly, leaving you caught between them.

I don’t blame you for being angry and needing a release, but you knew what you did was wrong even as you did it.

After a particularly bad argument between your mother and your parents, I saw you run from your yard carrying a short-handled shovel. I called to you, but you ignored me. It was clear then what you planned to do.

I ran after you, but your long legs moved faster than mine. You scrambled to the top of the mound and shouted, “This is what I think of your backwards, hick town!”

You plunged the shovel into the earth while I pleaded with each panting breath for you to stop.

You said it was just a hill of dirt and grass and that I needed to “chill.” But as you scooped out the shovel, something more than dirt and grass came with it. You bent down to examine the upturned earth and said, “Hey, this is all clay. Did someone build this thing?”

I finally caught up to you, grabbed your arm and led you away. Black clouds took over the sky, and the birds of Thunder and Lightning circled overhead. I pointed them out and warned you that they were alerting the one in the mound. But it was like you couldn’t see them. You looked right at them and shrugged, saying it was just a thunderstorm, no different from the ones that blew through every night in our “stupid town.”

But it did more than just storm that night—it flooded. You didn’t know this, though, because you were long gone. It wasn’t until the floodwaters subsided and the school reopened that I learned you were missing. Your neighbor, Bishkokok, said she saw you climb out of your bedroom window in the middle of the downpour. You got into a car with your birth mother behind the wheel. No one in town ever saw you after that. Unfortunately, the consequences of your actions didn’t leave with you.

The flood was only the first wave. Next came the fire ants, which invaded our homes and devoured pantries of food. Do you know how quickly they destroy crops too? Do you know how painful their sting can be?

Packs of coyotes arrived soon after and killed the livestock. They even attacked the horses. Alligators and water moccasins came next, hiding in people’s yards and sunning themselves in the streets. All schools and businesses shut down as everyone was too afraid to venture outside. And the worst part was that there was no end in sight.

Our second-grade teacher, Ms. Pinti Tohbi, hanged herself on the tree outside her home. The note she left behind said she had sacrificed herself to appease the one in the mound. It didn’t work. He didn’t want a sacrifice; he wanted restitution from the one who had wronged him. I know this because I saw it in a dream. I saw him in a dream. His scales reflected sunlight like no reptile I’d ever seen. They glistened with every color on the spectrum. He ascended the mound and stared directly at me. I knew what I had to do.

I snuck out of the house while my parents were still asleep. The water moccasins all slithered away from me as I ran through the streets, and the alligators and coyotes merely followed me with their eyes.

I went straight to the mound and found a door embedded in the base that hadn’t been there before. It was only large enough for someone of my size, and behind it was a tunnel that spiraled down into the earth. I followed it, keeping one hand on the clay wall to guide me through the dark. The tunnel opened into a fire-lit cavern furnished like a house with a kitchen and a bed. At first, I wondered what use these furnishings were to a serpentine creature, and then I realized they were for me. This was my home now.

The creature of the mound arrived soon after—his very presence radiating so much power that I fell to my knees. He conveyed to me through thoughts rather than words that he would stop punishing the town if I remained with him as his servant. My main task was to find the one who had desecrated his sacred home and bring her to justice.

I know this seems unfair to you. It’s been twenty years. You’re not the angry, hurt young girl you were at age seven. But, Iti—you may not want to be Iti, but it is the fate I chose for you—all actions have consequences. The passage of time doesn’t change this.

You have no need to fear me. Yes, I kidnapped your dog and held him for ransom, but it was only to lure you here. I’m not out to kill you or even harm you. In fact, I will give you a much longer life than you would otherwise have. Your roots will extend into the earth and support the structure of the mound. Your branches will provide shade to our worshipers during the hot, summer months. Your twigs will fuel our ceremonial fires. And in this way, you will serve our people for generations to come.

Don’t bother trying to run. If you’re reading this letter, it means you’re here at the mound, and your toes began to take root the moment you arrived. Your schnauzer is safe. Our town will care for him like all the other strays. Maybe he’ll recognize you.

I’ll return to the mound within the hour. See you soon.

Your old friend,

Lukfi Ohoyo, The Clay Woman

formerly Issuba Hihla

Host Commentary

PseudoPod Episode 984

July 11th 2025

 Flash on the Borderlands  LXXIV (74): Thy Shields Between Them and the Light

Written by Joanne Harris, Archita Mittra, Kat Day and AL Munson

Narrated by Joanne Harris, Tatiana Gray, Kat Day and Samantha Loney

Hosted by Alasdloneyair Stuart with audio by Chelsea Davis

The spears of the day shall not touch them, the chains of the sun shall not hale them forth. 

from “To the Darkness” by Clark Ashton Smith

Welcome to Flash on the Borderlands 745. I’m Alasdair your host and our opening quote comes from To the Darkness by Clark Ashton Smith. I love the ambiguity in this, the oil slick prism that changes your perspective as it reflects something like light. This is a hymn to the inalienably heroic. This is a warning about the things that lurk in the dark. This is a banishment ritual. This is a plea. This is Flash on the Borderlands.

To start with, The Talented Beetle, written and narrated by Joanne Harris and originally published on BlueSky on 13th April 2025. Joanne Harris (OBE, FRSL) is the award-winning author of over twenty novels, plus novellas, cookbooks, scripts, short stories, libretti, lyrics, articles, and a self-help book for writers, TEN THINGS ABOUT WRITING. In 2000, her 1999 novel CHOCOLAT was adapted to the screen, starring Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp. She holds honorary doctorates from the Universities of Sheffield and Huddersfield, is an honorary Fellow of St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Her hobbies are listed in Who’s Who as ‘mooching, lounging, strutting, strumming, priest-baiting and quiet subversion of the system’. She is active on social media, where she writes stories and gives writing tips as @joannechocolat; she posts writing seminars on YouTube; she performs in a live music and storytelling show with the #Storytime Band; and she works from a shed in her garden at her home in Yorkshire. 

So pay no attention to the smell. Only the truth.

As is always the case I find one or two lines that jump out and there’s one in particular here.

‘Surely I’m a veritable patron of the arts.’

There’s a lot to unpack in this clever beetle’s ball of dung starting with the horror story every creative I know has lived for the last few years. Generative Ai Art that looks like art but isn’t. The comforting shapes of the familiar, just moulded from the detritus of everything else. A garden as long as you look at it one way. A manure field another. And all the while the people foisting this thief machine technology on us demanding to know why we aren’t grateful for how slowly they’re killing us.

Then there’s the Emperor’s New Clothes of it all, and again, every creative person I know laughs a little too sharply. We survive because the people who hate us are amused by us and that’s not a fire you can warm your hands on for long. I have friends who haven’t worked in their fields for two years because Ai has taken their jobs. I have another friend employed right now to correct the mistakes Ai makes. Mistakes which, for some reason, must be made before they can be corrected. Not avoided altogether. Capitalism demands consumption. Consumption causes detritus. Eventually, shit really is all there is to eat.

The thing I love about this story is how perfectly it captures the terror so many folks in the techbro and nouveau riche classes feel at interacting with art. One of the notes I made was, ‘You can’t speedrun art,’ and you really, really can’t. The same thinking that leads people to try leads to the elemental terror so many men in particular feel when they feel literally anything. You feel what you feel and it doesn’t matter what makes you feel it. Dung is dung, art is art and sometimes, even in extremis, they’re both. The horror here lies in this wholesale destruction and murder being an amusement, a polite lie everyone tells themselves until it’s feeding time. And in the end, as we realise this may all have been the cruellest of jokes, we realise that it’s always feeding time.

Next is My Heart in a Snow Globe by Archita Mittra, a PseudoPod original. Archita Mittra is a writer, critic, editor and artist from Kolkata, India. Her work has appeared in Lightspeed, Locus Magazine, Reactor, Strange Horizons, and elsewhere. She is an Ignyte finalist for the Critic’s Award while her fiction and poetry have been nominated for the Pushcart and best of the net prizes. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram 

Your narrator this time is Tatiana Grey. Tatiana Grey is a New York City based actress of stage, screen, and of course, the audio booth. She adores travelling and counts her lucky stars that acting and dancing have taken her all over the United States, to Montreal, Vancouver, Ireland, and Holland… but she loves coming home to New York where it all started. Equally at home speaking heightened language in a corset, in a leather jacket spouting obscenities, and as a dancer she has been compared to such dark, vivacious heroines as Helena Bonham Carter, a young Winona Ryder and Elliot Page. This depth and facility with multiple genres garnered her a New York Innovative Theatre Award Best Featured Actress nomination for her work in The Night of Nosferatu. Her facility with accents has landed her quite a few audiobooks and numerous on-camera roles including the role of Evgenya in the award-winning I am A Fat Cat. Tatiana is a proud member of Actor’s Equity Association.

So prepare your tools because we have a story for you and we promise you it’s true.

A note from the author:

The idea for this story came to me while thinking about “helicopter parenting” and how it ends up doing more harm than good to the child—shutting them inside a bubble that’s always under surveillance and stunting their emotional development—as symbolized by the metaphor of fragile snow globes that our narrator is so fond of crafting.

Since my mum passed away last year I’ve found myself thinking a lot about elements of my childhood, and how much life is shaped by the things your parents can’t do and think you can’t. I wasn’t especially socialised. I was a quiet, bookish, 6’0 linebacker/prop forward-looking teenager and the vast gulf between my physical presence and my intellect was largely down to the fact my brain was the one muscle my parents knew how to feed. I don’t say that to speak ill of the dead or living. I say that as someone who at 48 has finally made peace with his physical presence in a way neither of my parents quite managed. I was a helicopter kid, but I was always in the back seat of the helicopter while they dealt with depression and work stress while lacking the vocabulary or tools to cope with it. They did their best and I love them both. But I’ve been the kid in the bubble, or rather, I’ve been the kid they really should get around to putting in the bubble and that’s a prison with no keys.

Next we have Exposed, Every Inch Visible by the amazing Kat Day. Exposed, Every Inch Visible originally appeared on The Fiction Phial in June 2024. Kat Day is a PhD chemist who was once a teacher and is now a professional editor and writer. She first entered PseudoPod Towers in 2019, became Assistant Editor in 2021 and is now Deputy Editor. Her scheme to take over the world is working… but she’s starting to wonder if she ought to have thought a little more carefully about what that actually entails… The best place to find her is on Bluesky, @chronicleflask.katday.com. So please welcome to the stage, another true story.

A note from Kat.

 In the summer of 2024 I was walking with my family along London’s River Thames when I saw a street performer using a small, plastic skeleton as a marionette. I just about had time to pull out my phone and make a note and, later, this story was born. 

Again, one of those lines that just pops for me:

‘I hope everyone’s enjoying reality.’

And we’re back to the prism. Looked at one way that’s a gristle slick singer leaning too far forwards, puncturing the audience’s bubble of protection and asking where they flew  in from. Looked at another, it’s a hope. Maybe everyone else is enjoying this, whatever this is. Looked at a third, it’s a dead-eyed smile. Laura SanGiacomo locking eyes with the camera and saying, ‘We are dead and this is Hell.’

But that’s show business. Where the artist has all the freedom a stage can contain and an audience can deign to give. But no more. The spears of the day shall not touch them, and they know that so maybe, just maybe, it’s time to play Freebird.

Finally, We Told You of the One Who Lives in the Mound by A.L. Munson and another PseudoPod original. A. L. Munson is a SFWA associate member and an HWA affiliate member whose work has appeared in Cosmic Horror Monthly and in the anthology Seers and Sibyls from Brigids Gate Press. She is from the small town of St. Rose, Louisiana and belongs to the Vancleave Live Oak Choctaw tribe. You can find her at almunson.com or on Twitter @A_L_Munson.

Your narrator for this story is Samantha Loney is a MET-ee Métis filmmaker and podcast producer from the Laronde-Sauvage, and McGregor-Riel families. A graduate of the Vancouver Film School, Samantha’s films have screened at the Vancouver International Film Festival, Weengushk International Film Festival, and Maoriland in New Zealand to name a few. Samantha’s podcast work has been featured on Canadaland, at the Victoria Arts Council’s Levelling Up, Breaking Down Exhibit for International Women’s Day, and on the Indigenous 150+ Podcast. Her current podcast Travelling Métis can be found wherever you listen to your podcasts.

When not making podcasts or films, Samantha is a journalist for Simcoe Community Media covering Metis news stories as well as other issues concerning Indigenous communities across Turtle Island.

So get ready for one more true story.

Some story notes.

This story is a blend of real-life events from my childhood and my tribe’s traditional beliefs. Edie (not her real name) is based on a friend of mine who disappeared when we were children. Rumor had it that her birth-mother had kidnapped her from her adoptive parents. To this day, I don’t know what really happened to her, but her disappearance inspired this story as much as the many Choctaw legends referenced here.

‘The chains of the sun shall not hale them forth’ has an invisible ‘And may the gods have mercy on us if they do.’ I love how this story folds adolescent pangs around a very real supernatural threat. I also love how much of this is so even-handed, not in a ‘both sides’ sense but rather in the acknowledgement of the main villain’s youth. This is a stupid thing a child did and they knew it and were so terrified they fled. That’s tragic.

But it’s not excusable.

One of my favourite video games is an indie release called The Excavation at Hobs Barrow. It follows an Edwardian female archaeologist, voiced by future Karlach Samantha Beart as they’re drawn to a small Yorkshire town and the final dig their father ever went on. It’s a point and click pixel adventure, and the blocky graphics may put some people off but it has the same brutally pragmatic approach as Munson’s excellent story. The cultural common ground of paying respect but nothing else to the things that live around you is an immensely powerful space to tell stories in and I love how nuanced the horror Munson finds there is. The horror of cultural appropriation mixed with the horrors of adolescence. The horror of exploitation combined with the relentless horror of the scale needing to be balanced. The chains of the sun can’t hale them forth because if they do, steps will have to be taken. Roots put down.

Wonderful work from all, thank you. 

Onto the subject of subscribing and support: PseudoPod is funded by you, our listeners, and we’re formally a non-profit. One-time donations are gratefully received and much appreciated, but what really makes a difference is subscribing. A $5 monthly Patreon donation gives us more than just money; it gives us stability, reliability, dependability and a well-maintained tower from which to operate, and trust us, you want that as much as we do. 

If you can, please go to pseudopod.org and sign up by clicking on “feed the pod”. If you have any questions about how to support EA and ways to give, please reach out to us at donations@escapeartists.net.

If you can’t afford to support us financially, then please consider leaving reviews of our episodes, or generally talking about them on whichever form of social media you… can’t stay away from this week. We now have a Bluesky account and we’d love to see you there: find us at @pseudopod.org. If you like merch, you can also support us by buying hoodies, t-shirts and other bits and pieces from the Escape Artists Voidmerch store. The link is in various places, including our pinned tweet. 

PseudoPod is part of the Escape Artists Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, and this episode is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 International license. Download and listen to the episode on any device you like, but don’t change it or sell it. Theme music is by permission of Anders Manga.

Join us next week for Think of Me by Lindsay King-Miller, narrated by Kitty Sarkozy with Chelsea on audio production and, I’m pretty sure, me in the host seat. Before then, PseudoPod wants to remind you, thanks to both The Excavation of Hobs Barrow and Othello that ‘it is the very error of the moon.’