My horse shied before the vale of Avalo. I had been warned to expect it, and it was a simple matter to calm the animal. But when I tried to spur it forward again, it balked and looked back longingly at the grassy hills around us. I followed its gaze, but farther, imagining that I could see the gates of the Golden City Ilnar. Had it only been an hour ago that I left? Or a hundred years?

When going to a sorceress, one can never tell.

She said it would start with a chill. It was the first time she lied to me.

It started with a hunger, deep and hot like the burn of a branding iron. I felt it when I smelled the heavy stench of the slaughterhouse, when I watched my raven-haired Vivian slipping across the black ice pond, when I heard wolves baying late in the night. It came to me when I drank snow from her cold cupped hands, when I followed her down the lonely game trails deep in the foothills.

If it was someone's idea of a practical joke, Antimony decided, then it wasn't very funny. By rights, she ought to have the creature quarantined immediately. Appearances of lizards (of any sort) needed clamping down pretty severely ever since the Projectors in Room 309 had got hold of that Escher print. One gecko out of place and the whole of Lagado's Old Quarter could be patterned over by suppertime. The public health risk didn't bear thinking about. But for some reason, she felt strangely sympathetic towards it. Maybe it was the signboard. Maybe it was the prospect of finally getting rid of all those ducks.

I recall the day everything changed. It was winter, the happiest time of year for children who lived on houses that floated about a lake. We spent our days outside with finally some room to play.

That morning the women had been in a hurry. They were possessed by something and began slaughtering many of the animals and smoking their meats. Their fur and feathers covered the slaughter-house floor and blood scented the air.

September 18, 2053

Dr. Wenton said I was bound to be the department's good luck charm. I just think I'm the luckiest girl in the world, arriving at just the right time. What a day--and it's not even over!

I haven't admitted it to anyone here, but the only reason I applied for an assistantship at the LTTU lab was because they were new and I figured they'd need some extra help and I needed an assistantship. I read up a little about the broadcasts, but it wasn't anything that interested me too much--who could find them interesting; everyone says it'll take years to translate even part of one, right? Well, I couldn't have been more wrong. I haven't even been here two weeks and the computers had some kind of breakthrough. It's still going on. I'm on a quick meal break, sitting here with a sandwich in one hand and scribbling on the screen with the other hand. I didn't really intend to keep a journal, but this is so exciting I don't want to forget anything important.

The dizzying heat, the mosquitoes trying to nibble at his neck and the rum must have triggered some hidden mechanism inside John Leight, because all of a sudden he chuckled and said the most ridiculous thing.

“Last night I dreamt Agatha tore my fingers off.”

Richard, who had been babbling animatedly now grew quiet.

“There was a man who had nightmares such as yours. He dreamt of Agatha Regant and fell gravely ill. He is dead. His cousin, Madeline Locke, swears Agatha is a witch.”

The day Mary turned Daniel on, they were sitting under the apple tree. She had chosen this spot in the garden because it was the last place, perhaps the only place, that she could remember being happy with him. The trial had been over for six weeks. He had been sent to her days ago, but she had put this moment off, knowing that she needed more time to heal and to adjust to the idea of having him home again.

Dr. Henderson’s continued absence was peculiar. The man was in love with the alien in vault sixty-two and the second anniversary of its capture was approaching.

Sixty-two was the only thing I could remember arousing Henderson’s passion in the three years I'd worked here. Ever since its craft was found in the middle of the Gobi desert, Henderson had made it a special case. The fool had even petitioned to have it released into his custody for a weekend in Las Vegas during some science fiction convention.

If the powers that be had granted that petition, Henderson would have come back with a marriage certificate.

I woke from nothing. No dreams had stirred me. I had been a hundred years in darkness. I was a stone, waiting roundly. Blank.

I thought, Perhaps it is all over.

(When the sun was high I used to stand in the garden, toss a little golden ball to watch it shine. I played for hours that way.

It is for the best I pricked my finger.)

The keep was suspended, spider-webs gleaming in the open mouths of the half-dead. The vines had covered everything. There was no light left. I thought, Perhaps the sun has gone out, and despaired.

The covers are hard to miss in the bookstore -- dark and shadowy in tone, they show a beautiful young woman, usually tattooed and dressed in revealing clothes. She’s armed and the accompanying cover blurb informs the reader that this character is prepared to kick supernatural butt all the way back to hell if necessary. Welcome to the brave new world of urban fantasy.

Once, this corner of the speculative universe had broader boundaries. The term ‘urban fantasy’ encompassed everything from Tanya Huff’s crazed pantheon in Summon the Keeper to the twisted version of London’s Underground in Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, and on to Tim Powers’ Cold War spies in Declare, or the alternate streets Charles DeLint created for his Newford tales. Some great new fantasies with urban settings have come along recently. For example, Elizabeth Bear’s Blood and Iron deals with the intersection of Faerie with the modern world. The Secret History of Moscow, by Ekaterina Sedia, blends Russian folklore and mythology with the gritty reality of post-Soviet life. But more and more these sorts of stories are called ‘contemporary fantasy’ to distinguish them from the publishing juggernaut of urban fantasy.