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CONTENTS
In the Late December
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Art Gallery
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By Greg van Eekhout
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Fiction
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CONTENTS
In the Late December
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Art Gallery
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Articles
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Columns
By Greg van Eekhout
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Fiction
22 December 2003
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Poetry
Here's a secret of the North Pole:
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Before Paphos by Loretta Casteen 8 January 2007 It starts again. The baby begins to cough and choke.
Locked Doors Santa powders his hands with talc before donning his thick red mittens. by Stephanie Burgis 1 January 2007 It is a small secret, true, but some would give anything to steal even that. A secret is a detail, and here in the You can never let late December, a detail is as precious anyone suspect, his mother told him. That as a true name. was the first rule she Santa, a red exclamation in a white taught him, and the last, before she left him here world, walks the reindeer line, stroking sugar-and-cinnamon fur. The alone with It. reindeer shiver and snort and stamp Heroic Measures their hooves, the lines connecting them to the parcel-laden sleigh by Matthew Johnson jingling. Santa looks over to his candy-brick castle and waves 18 December 2006 good-bye, but no one stands in the doorway to wave back. With a sigh, Pale as he was, it was hard to believe he he climbs onto the sleigh's driver's seat, the bench creaking beneath his would never rise from this bed. Even in the weight. He pauses, holding the smooth and supple leather reins, and darkest times, she had never really feared for considers how to start the team. Onward? A-heya? Giddyup? Ho-ho? him; he had always been strong, so strong. No, he's already used those. He makes a point of uttering a different Love Among the Talus word to inaugurate every outing, because he's been doing this for a by Elizabeth Bear long time, and if he didn't deliberately insert some bit of novelty into the 11 December 2006 procedure, he fears his jolly round Nilufer raised her eyes head might well explode. That is to his. It was not what another detail. women did to men, but Then he has it. He snaps his fingers she was a princess, (no mean feat in his mittens) and with and he was only a a brisk snap of the reins, he shouts, bandit. "I want to be a "Zorxa!" Witch," she said. "A Witch and not a Zorxa was a great emperor whose Queen. I wish to be realm once encompassed sixteen not loved, but wise. degrees of the Curvature, and though Tell your bandit lord, if his despotic rule made him a natural he can give me that, I enemy, Zorxa knew how to accept a might accept his gift." gift as well as anyone.
