These are great, quick reads for waiting at the airport, in the bathroom, or wherever:

Sarah Micklem reveals a tapestric legacy of a bird automaton maker in the ultra-too-short “The Fabricant of Marvels.”

Lillian Csernica details the magical, almost redemptive power of good tea in “The Power Behind the Throne.”

In “The Pest Man” by Marianne J. Dyson, a man finds himself transformed, via witchcraft, into a cockroach in order for him to see environmental degradations firsthand.

A renowned rescuer is murdered by an evil witch in Steven H. Silver’s “The Destiny of Einar the Brave.”

“Twenty-Seven Rules for Coping” by Michael Haynes features Elise, who can sense and perhaps avert or affect a lot of her reality. It’s why she devised her strict rules for coping, in order to retain her sanity and keep herself from posing a dire threat to humanity.

In “Sharon” by John Walters, a man named Parker, a shift supervisor, intervenes in a store robbery only to find himself on a boat, drifting to who-knows-where, piloted by a woman named Sharon. Where is the boat going? More importantly, is Parker capable of mercy and forgiveness?