Fantasy Magazine, April 2011

From modern mythcraft to magic realism, Fantasy Magazine is your guide to magical realms and worlds beyond tomorrow:
Do you remember reading the Choose Your Own Adventure stories as a kid? Well, in Kat Howard’s “Choose Your Own Adventure,” you can’t cheat and peek at the endings before you make your choice—and the stakes are life and death.
Magic and myth collide in Peter S. Beagle’s “The Woman Who Married the Man in the Moon.” When two children bring home a wandering magician named Schmendrick, their mother and the stranger spin stories all night...stories that hide and reveal remarkable truths.
Jonathan L. Howard has written several stories and novels featuring Johannes Cabal, necromancer extraordinaire. But in the tale “House of Gears,” Cabal’s expertise in the dark arts offers little help when he faces down a mad scientist with a thirst for immortality. Music boxes and robotic dogs are the vestiges of a long tradition of mechanical wonders.
Hunting unicorns is a lucrative business for the right team of hunter and bait. In Carrie Vaughn’s “The Hunter’s Ode to His Bait,” one hunter and his maiden assistant decide to wrap up their careers in a dangerous quest for the ultimate unicorn.
"The most dangerous moment in any story is the beginning. As the story opens, every ending is equally possible, every path unwalked, every question not only unanswered, but unasked. The unread story is infinite possibility. Yet the ending is already written, and though you be clever, though you be brave, there is no outwitting it. Are you brave enough to begin? If so, turn to page 1. If not, remain safe. Close the book and return it to the shelf. No one will think any less of
you."