Author
Nina Kiriki Hoffman
http://ofearna.us/books/hoffman.html
A Stranger at the Door
Eleven-year-old Chiara was setting the table with the good silver and the red and green napkins for the big holiday meal, the one all the relatives came to, when someone knocked on the front door. Her aunts and uncles and cousins were all in the house already. The men and most…
In the Enchanted Forest
Thick as Honey was the one who discovered the man in the glass coffin. She was on her way to the mines with her six dwarven sisters, but decided to cut through the forest to check on her clay pits She had a pottery project she wanted to work on, and she wondered if the pits were…
Rummage Sale Finds
As soon as Corinne got out of the car and into the church basement where the rummage sale was being held, she spotted the gift she'd given her sister for Christmas. The basement was spacious, though the ceiling was low. Fluorescent lights made everyone and everything look a…
Departure
I sat on the bed and watched my slender, curly-headed, seventeen-year-old brother Darwin pack a suitcase. He was leaving the farm. People under eighteen never did that unless they were cast out. Darwin had many gifts. He could gentle animals, find water, and coax plants to…
Banquet
Because I lived in a public garden, I spent most daylight hours hiding. The conifer section was the best place for that--thick-needled trees with branches down to the ground. I found one pretty far from the gravel paths, because people could smell that I was dead, and dogs could…
Leaf Piles
At dusk, Anna went outside and grabbed a rake. The leaves weren't going to rake themselves. It was Halloween. She dreaded the annual influx of goblins and witches and ghosts demanding tribute. Maybe if she mounded the leaves up in a barrier wall, the monsters would skip her…
Real Enough
Sitting on the fence between dreams and reality, Annie peered into the swirling storm of other people's nighttime imaginations, looking for her mother, who had died eleven years earlier. Sometimes they managed to connect in dreams, although Annie wasn't sure if it was Real Mom…
Just Try It
"I don't want to," I told my younger sisters. I punched my frustrations out on the bread dough, then folded it into itself on the floured board, and kneaded. "Come on, Lila. What would it hurt?" asked my sister Stray. She was sitting at the kitchen table, shelling peas into a…
Friendship Is Magic
After a long night of vampire slaying, Helen was looking forward to some team-building with her TV. She showered and changed into her comfy home clothes, pink sweats with cute animals on them. What should she binge-watch to settle herself down and get ready to sleep the day…
Out of the Box
I unpacked them all, the encounters, conversations, meetings, planning sessions, all happening along my cables, wires, and airwaves in binary bits. The sudden increase in connections by Zoom and Hangouts during the global pandemic gave me much more data about humans and their…
Trash Fairies
I don't follow politics, but I will follow music anywhere. Music leads me all over the country, but I never stay in one place long before it calls me somewhere else. My name is Cyrus Locke. I carry a fiddle. I've been on the road following tunes for more than fifty years. When I…
Just Below My Heart
My boyfriend lives inside me. Okay, so he's not really a boy; The Druklad don't have the same genders as humans. And since we're different species, we can't reproduce, so who cares about genders anyway? Not that I want children. I am proud to be a drone and an Ender; my gene…
Vacation Station
Trevor and I were sitting in our favorite niche at Rube Cube, watching, hearing, and smelling the stream of people flowing toward and away from the bar. Trevor held my hand under our microtable. Our knees touched because there wasn't enough room for them not to. People bumped us…
Passed Down
I grew up on Kata Skip Station. Seven skip nodes lead here. My parent and I run SpiceFire, a restaurant catering to the Four Known Races. We have four separate kitchens and four special chefs who set the menus; we have four species-specific dining rooms, and one big common area…
Group Dynamics
***********Editor's Warning: Adult Story--Horny Gods*************** I should have gotten out of the goddess business a long time ago. It's hard to let go of power, though, even when most of it is gone. It's not like I can grant people good luck at the casino anymore, or destroy…
It Came from the Bottom of the Pool
My little brother Kio reprogrammed the lifeguard bot at the bottom of the pool to drag me down and hold me there. I'm not sure he meant to drown me. It might have been a prank. He's a sociopath, and so am I. We're smart, but we still have trouble figuring out the limits of good…
The Friendly Beasts
Every year at the Shifter Solstice Party, I get my heart broken, and sometimes my tail. Not this year! My apartment mate and best friend, Chester Cheetah--he doesn't actually turn into a cheetah; he's more like a coyote on steroids, but it's his game name--and I got to the Dream…
What Remains
I was the only one alive when the Picti found our shipwrecked shuttle pod. Sang, Tadala, and I had jumped through the wrong skip node on our way back to the mother ship. We landed on a planet we found on the other side of the uncharted node. Our rescue beacon probably couldn't…
Child of Snow
The man I learned to call Papa came home from a five-year journey the winter I turned three years old. He was large, and his pale face was hidden behind a thick, dark beard. All of the rest of him was wrapped in snowy clothes and furs, and he carried a pack on his back. When he…
A Hundred Babies
When Father Robert stepped outside the rectory Monday morning to visit the pauper's grave where he prayed every day, he found the cemetery playing host to scores of babies. They were all different races, most wrapped in brightly hued gowns that, he hoped, kept out the chill of…
Company for the Holidays
"There's nobody else, Aunt Phyllida," my niece Alice said over the phone. "You have to take Sam for Christmas." "I can't. I absolutely, positively can't," I said. I set down the golden candleholder I was carrying and glanced around my living room. The windows were covered in…
First Faces
I love October. That's when I can wear the mask and people ask the right kinds of questions, like who made it, where'd I get it, and what it's supposed to be. The answers vary according to my mood. I never tell the truth--an ancestor made it, it's come down from mother to oldest…
Don't Answer
Tonight is the night they come back. My parents locked me and my younger sister India in our room every year until this one. Now they say I'm old enough to sit in the living room, to hear the knock on the door, the cries and whispers at the windows. My sister is up in our…
Simon Says
***Editor's Note: Adult story.*** I don't know how many of us are in this head. I just got here, and I'm ready to leave. We have to take turns using the eyes, face, and mouth. Simon the repeater has been telling me the rules. The core personality gets to hog the eye time,…
Wishmas
A knock sounded on the door. Arly was sitting at the table with her little brother Sim on her right. Sim was eight, and would have been gone by now if Mama had been normal. Mama sat at the head of the table with the turkey in front of her, and Now-dad sat at the foot of the…
Solstice Cakes
I'm not the one who should get the family recipe. It has passed from mother to daughter for more generations than anybody can count, and I'm a son, not a daughter. But my three sisters didn't have the vision to read the writing on the family recipe page, and I did, so Mom was…
The God of Rugs
***Editor's Note: This is a story for adult readers*** My mother worshipped the god of rugs, which gave her peculiar powers, and gave me the conviction that I needed to find a god of my own. "Well, Karen," Mom said, "so glad you finally decided to visit." "You make it so…
While Memory Holds a Seat
Give us your sky for two hours and we'll fill it with story-telling spectres! That's one of the pitches we use for our traveling troupe, Wide Sky Theater. We ride the skip nodes bringing cultcha to everybody, or so we tell ourselves and each other, and then we sometimes snicker,…
The Key to Everything
My special talent was pissing people off. That wasn't the technical term for it, but that was what I was good at. You would think there wouldn't be much demand for this talent. That would be you, wrong again. On a station like Confetti, where three different alien-to-each-other…
Just Today
***Editor's Note: One incident of mature language in the following tale*** My best friend, Ben, is dead. We still hang. Not too many other people can see or hear him--just little kids and animals, and an occasional weirdo, so Ben is kind of stuck with me, which works for me. We…
The Power of the Cocoon
The living room had the usual appearance of Christmas aftermath, as though a herd of many-trunked elephants had rushed through, grabbed anything wrapped in paper, ripped the paper off, tossed it on the floor, then stomped on it. The multi-colored twinkly lights on the Christmas…
Test Drive
It was my turn to wear the mask, but my egg-sister Linney wouldn't give it up. She'd been wearing the mask all morning, set on Smile, and it was a test day, too. Everyone thought she was so pleased and relaxed and Earthy. I am wretched at tests, but the mask would have helped. I…
Boy Seeds
Most of Noma's study friends were growing their own boys with the new Vampire, Werewolf, or Wizard Seed kits. Her best friend Celestine invited Noma to the grow room in her family compartment to take a look at a half-grown vamp. "I specified the golden hair and dark eyebrows,"…