You are listening to a Clarksville magazine podcast with your host and narrator Kate Baker.

Greetings Clark's World Citizens.

I hope this podcast finds you extraordinarily well.

Welcome to the sixth story for the month of August 2024 issue 215. As always

thank you for your ongoing support of the magazine. Whether this is your first

podcast or somewhere over a thousand at this point. Thank you for your ongoing support.

This is your first foray into audio fiction here at Clark's World.

Please consider supporting either through a subscription or by going to

Patreon.com forward slash Clark's world. Our story is titled the

deformed saint and the poison wind is by David McGilbury. David McGilbury was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, but now lives with his family in London.

After a long stretch away from making things up, lockdown inspired him to begin writing again.

Since then, his fiction has appeared in Interzoned Digital,

a Starship sofa, and Wild Blood,

and is forthcoming in Analog and Shoreline of Infinity.

So, my dear listener, I hope you can sit back relax and let me tell you a story.

A karate danced on the wet sand that the tide had left behind like a clean writing slate.

She placed each step with great care, for only with accuracy could she draw the perfect

Mandala that would transport her to the sacred space.

Every sweep of her arms, every closed and opened eye, every inclination of her neck and turn of her

claw added to the pattern. A witness sitting on the beach would have seen her shape

silhouetted against the red fire of the setting sun, a petitioner to the spirits of the

ocean and the sky.

...