Fantastic Shorts: Volume 3

For women who make changes

For themselves, and for everyone who comes after

Fantastic Shorts

Volume 3

Kari Kilgore

Spiral Publishing, Ltd.

Contents

Introduction

The Tech Empath

Sensing the Storm

Kati and the Witches in the Hill

An Adventure Well Begun

A Linchpin Life

About Kari

Also by Kari Kilgore

Introduction

I only realized the theme of this collection was change after I gathered the stories. To me that feels like yet another example of how my creative subconscious knows a whole lot more than I ever will.

The first story, The Tech Empath, features a woman in a position many artists and introverts know extremely well. Jena builds a life and career that allows her to use all her skills and gifts, while at the same time protecting herself.

But as is so often the case, she’ll truly have a chance to shine when she finds the courage to share her abilities with the world.

Dr. Sandy Hughes faces a different challenge in Sensing the Storm. She’s built her professional life on sharing and teaching others: helping train young doctors in a busy emergency room. Hiding her skill and considerable years of experience for any reason would never occur to her.

It’s when someone else pushes her into acknowledging a part of herself she’s carefully kept secret that her life expands into a whole new dimension. That hidden ability is the one that propels her forward into my post-apocalyptic series Storms of Future Past.

Much like Sandy, Kati wants nothing more than to help people, to mend their minds and bodies. In Kati and the Witches in the Hill, that desire combines with a longing to help her country during a difficult time to send her to the lovely city of Budapest, Hungary.

Kati never imagines the city and the land itself might be every bit as much in need of her.

In this case, more than the others in this collection, Kati’s story came from a real life experience. My husband Jason A. Adams and I were lucky enough to visit Budapest a few years ago, and we spent a few hours at the Hospital in the Rock. Much of that setting was drawn from our fascinating tour. An offhand remark from our guide on a day-long tour of the city inspired the rest.

My second short fantasy collection, Fantastic Shorts: Volume 2, included Odds and Endings. As soon as I finished that story, I knew I’d want to return to Lightning Gap and the magical bookstore.

An Adventure Well Begun follows EllaJane Cole as she embarks on her year-long residency at the Odds and Endings bookstore. And yes, I’ve returned to Lightning Gap repeatedly, including in Protecting Her Own, the first novel set in my own fictional version of Appalachia. Each story I write there opens doors to people I want to know more about, or another corner I want to explore. More to come!

Like many of my stories, A Linchpin Life has origins in a dream. In this case, it was a recurring dream when I was very young. In the dream, the main character (yes, even then, I knew the story wasn’t through my eyes, but through the eyes of someone else) had to leave a place she loved and people she loved.

And every time, the heartbreak wasn’t because she was leaving the people. She was leaving the world, perhaps the dimension, never to return. I’ve always wondered what got that dream started in my mind! It lingered for years, and forty years later, I still haven’t forgotten how that leave-taking felt.

Another wonderful travel memory—walking alone on the snowy beach in Ogunquit, Maine, under a full moon—gave that long-ago dream a storytelling spark.

I hope you enjoy meeting these brave women and reading their tales of change as much as I enjoyed writing them and putting this collection together!

To learn more about me and find other short stories, along with novellas, novels, and collections, visit www.karikilgore.com.

If you want to keep up with what I’m doing next, get free stories, read exclusive content not available anywhere else, and see adorable pet photos, pay a visit to The Confidential Adventure Club at www.confidentialadventureclub.com.

And last but certainly not least, thank you for your support of me and my writing. It means the world to me and keeps me coming back to tell the next tale.

For All My Fellow Girl Geeks

Chapter 1

Jena kicked her bare foot on the cool wooden floor of her front porch, pushing the swing into motion again. The chains groaned at the sudden adjustment, but not loud enough to drown out the sweet strains of Debussy floating through the early evening air.

One of the best things about her sometimes-creaky old Craftsman bungalow was the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra serenading her without having to leave home.

Even the dreamy Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun sounded better when accompanied by night-blooming jasmine growing in her own yard and with a freezing-cold bottle of crisp apple cider from her own fridge.

She pushed again, lifting her toes and shifting her weight like she had on playground swings as a girl. Jena had no desire to try for the mythical loop over the top, like she had back then, but she still loved the floating sensation.

Atlanta lingered in the rare spring days when a cozy sweater and jeans went just fine with bare feet. Jena knew miserably hot and sticky days were right around the corner, when she’d be all too happy to stay inside in air-conditioned solitude.

Tonight, though, she wished she could join the orchestra’s visible audience, lounging on the grass and actually watching the musicians create such ethereal beauty by simply vibrating the air around them. Jena hadn’t seen any live music for several years now.

Not since people started carrying electronic networks everywhere they went.

The music faded and applause echoed across the quiet houses. Jena glanced down at her sleek black smart watch. Serenade over, time to head inside.

She pulled out her phone, a perfect match for the watch, pausing for the briefest of seconds to feel how it was operating. All the microscopic circuitry opened up in her mind, shifting and turning as though she held a three-dimensional schematic drawing right in front of her eyes.

Like with any other piece of technology, as soon as Jena touched her phone, she knew as much about it as the original engineers and programmers did.

Most of the time, she knew more.

All was well with her pocket computer that happened to make calls, so she flipped on the wireless. She’d learned years ago—when the World Wide Web was barely learning how to connect itself—that she had to limit the input from any network.

It had been easy enough to gradually adjust from the primitive Atari video games of her youth through increasingly complex computers and even televisions, and to smaller and smaller microchips embedded in almost everything she touched. The technology seemed to grow along with Jena’s ability to absorb it then, at least through the Seventies and Eighties.

But the Wild West Nineties, with the online world expanding at a blinding pace, taught her painful lessons about self-preservation in a hurry.

She tapped the link she’d coded to open her email and nothing else. Couple of new programming work requests, one barely urgent enough to look at even