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In this episode of the Strange Horizons podcast, editor Anaea Lay presents Kate Heartfield's "Limestone, Lye, and the Buzzing of Flies." You can read the full text of the story, and more about Kate, here.

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Anaea Lay lives in Chicago, Illinois where she writes, cooks, plays board games, reads too much, and questions the benevolence of the universe. Her work has appeared in many places including Apex, Penumbra, Lightspeed, Daily Science Fiction, and Nightmare. She lives online at anaealay.com.
Kate Heartfield is the author of historical fantasy novels including The Tapestry of Time (2024), The Valkyrie (2023), and the Sunday Times bestseller The Embroidered Book (2022). Her debut novel was rereleased as The Chatelaine in 2023. She has also written interactive fiction through Choice of Games, and Assassin’s Creed novels. She won the Aurora Award for Best Novel three times, and her fiction been shortlisted for the Aurora, Nebula, World Fantasy, Crawford, Locus, Sunburst, Scribe and Ottawa Book awards. She is currently the Writer in Residence for the University of Ottawa. A former newspaper journalist, Kate lives in Canada with her partner and son and a black cat named Minerva.
Current Issue
9 Feb 2026

sometime in the night, we heard rocking and knocking and rapping and tapping, a million trillion tiny feet
“I’ve never actually visited the pā before,” she said out loud. “Is this where they gather lāʻī to make the pūʻolo?” she asked. “Yes,” Benny responded, glancing to see where Nanea was pointing. “Here and in other places as well. Many of these ti have been growing for decades now.” She paused for a moment. “I think about all the work you guys do, you know, up in those offices, and I think that all of that work actually starts from right here, in the ground, all covered in the earth and the pōhaku and the ti. Most people don’t even know it, but it all starts right here.
The triangles bred and twisted, replicating themselves.
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Friday: Manga's First Century: How Creators and Fans Made Japanese Comics, 1905–1989 by Andrea Horbinski 
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