You are listening to a Clarkshould magazine podcast. I'm your host and narrator Kate Baker. Welcome to the

fourth story for the month of July 2025, issue 226. Our title is called Serpent Carriers and is by

K.A. Terina and translated by Alex Schwartzman. Now, this story, along with all of our stories that

we've ever brought you in the history

of Clark's World, starting way, way, way, way, way, way back, I've always been brought to you

by your support. So thank you if you've gone to patreon.com forward slash Clarksworld. Thank you for

going to Clarkswildcitizens.com or buying a subscription or telling a friend or doing all the

things that make a magazine

live long and prosper. So if you haven't yet, please consider doing so. We can't bring you the

stories, the art, the podcast, the nonfiction, and putting it all together. It all costs money.

So if you can potentially do so, it doesn't have to be a lot. Any bit helps. But if it is a lot, we thank you in advance too. So, K.A. Tarina is an award-winning author and illustrator. She was born in two places at once, one of which is beyond the Arctic Circle. Her fiction has been translated from Russian into six

languages. English translations of her stories have appeared in Reactor, Asimov's, F&SF, and elsewhere.

Her English language short story collection, Black Hole Heart and other stories, is forthcoming

this fall from Fairwood Press. As of late, Chekhov, the cat, has become K.A. Turina's co-author.

He's in charge of keeping her warm and firmly in her seat. Now our translator, Alex Schwartsmens,

translations from Russian have appeared in Clark's World, Reactor, FNSF, Asimov's Analog,

and many other venues. He is the author of Eridani's Crown, the middling affliction,

and cagostocracy fantasy novels. So my dear listener, I hope you can sit back, relax,

and let me tell you a story. Old people are of little use, but on occasion they know stories and are skilled at telling them.

Jorge, an old man with a face wrinkled and cracked like last year's berry, kept his stories to himself.

As she looked at him from afar, Rioja imagined how stories accumulated within Jorge,

how they roiled and mixed and quarreled.

...