Here is the link to the complete Chapter 1https://catchafallingstarbook.net/2018/11/24/hidden-kingdom-chapter-1-complete/
Category Archives: fairies
Hidden Kingdom… Chapter 2 Complete
Filed under comic strips, fairies, Hidden Kingdom, humor, Paffooney
The Necromancer’s Apprentice… Canto 6
The Cage
They put one of those magic-absorbing collars around my neck and tied a leash to it. Then they gave the leash over to the quiet boy in the blue jerkin while the mouse-boy and the gnarled old sorcerer tied my hands behind my back.
“So, can we learn sex magic by using this captive?” said the rather loud and obnoxious mouse-boy.
“Shut up, Mickey,” said the sorcerer. “There’s no such thing as sex magic.”
Of course, the sorcerer was wrong about that. I had learned necromantic sex magic from the necromancer. He had taught me the life-force-sucking kiss spell from the goblins he let me suck dry to practice. He also taught me the full-body magic transfer. If the sorcerer knew that, it must’ve been the reason he lied to the mouse-boy.
The quiet boy led me by the leash, but only very carefully, not trying to jerk me forward or make the leash hurt me. He had golden hair and the prettiest blue eyes I had ever seen on a Sylph boy. His blue jerkin had a sign sewn to the front that read, “Never kick the apprentice if the master is near.” He wasn’t wearing pants under the jerkin, only a white loin cover that he apparently had tucked in carefully. I admired his firm, round buttocks. But, of course, I wasn’t about to tell him that.
They took me into the castle in the willow tree. And my mouth surely dropped open at the sight. It was beautiful.
The iron gate was built into the roots of the tree with gatehouse towers carved directly out of the willow wood. But, no… not carved… shaped by magic, as I sensed with my magic tingle.
The inner court was all carved wood, as the willow was practically hollow all the way up to where the limbs branched away into the darkness above. The numerous stairs, landings, walkways, and castle-room facades were all lit by fairy candles which were both small, and exceedingly bright.
“This is our home, Derfentwinkle,” said the quiet boy.
He knew my name? And that was how the sorcerer took my power over Kack, the Demon Head, away from me. I resolved to learn their names next. I knew the mouse-boy was Mickey.
“It’s nothing like the mudhole where I live,” I said. “What is your name, quiet boy?”
“Don’t tell her, Bob. She doesn’t need to know it.”
“Shut up, Mickey. My name is Bob. As the wererat just told you.” He smiled at me, and a thrill went down my spine.
The sorcerer led us all up a winding stair that led to an audience chamber. There was a big, burly Sylph sitting on the throne, but he was no mere warrior-king. The pentagram on his chest glittered with magical energy. I got a powerful tingle from it. He was definitely a wizard… and definitely the boss here. Why was he sitting on the throne of Wotan, the deceased Erlking?
The sorcerer then pulled me in front of him.
“This girl is Derfentwinkle, the necromancer’s apprentice. It turns out that her master is old Bluebottom, my former classmate, better known to you as Kronomarke, waster of time and slayer of the Good Knight Pollinard.”
“She was driving the bone-walker?”
“Yes, with the help of a severed demon head to use as a repository of her master’s magic.”
“And why haven’t you killed her yet, Eli?”
The question chilled me to the bone. The wizard’s guards stepped forward, lowering their halberds.
“Because I chose not to. She’s my captive. I choose to keep her for whatever usefulness she might have. She knows little magic and is not a danger to us.”
“I hope you are right about that, Eli Tragedy. Your very name means you can be disastrously wrong.”
“She’s really quite plain-looking, ugly even…” remarked a fat, bug-like Pixie courtier.
I glared at him until he turned his stupid bug eyes towards his fat ladybug wife.
“Very well, then. But keep her safely in the cage you built to hold the harpy Sir Launcelot captured during the last siege.”
Up to that point, I had believed I could escape any time I really wanted to. But a cage built to hold a harpy? I would never escape that with lockpicking skills. And what if the harpy was still inside?
My mind was made up, however. If they weren’t going to kill me immediately, then I didn’t intend to escape.
The Necromancer’s Apprentice… Canto 5
Mickey’s Little Gambit
We had to walk for a considerable distance in the leafy, greenish-blue shade of the soybean field until we located the errant skull. We were not alone of course. Master Eli recruited a half-dozen Gingerbreads as scouts to help us locate the thing and make sure the bone-walker’s pilot didn’t escape alive.
Gingerbreads, as I’m sure you probably already know, are actually fairy golems. Their bodies are gingerbread-boy-and-gingerbread-girl cookies baked by the cook-witch Gretel, Anneliese’s mother. The souls that inhabit the cookie-bodies are the spirits of children murdered in Nazi death camps during a slow-one event apparently known as Were-Wore Two over in what the fairies call the Continent of Cernunnos the Horned One and Wotan the Wise. They were gingerbread-cookie fairies that, if any animal or slow one bit a bite out of them, could immediately grow it back from the stores of magical gingerbread dough stored in Cair Tellos.
It was a gingerbread boy named Johan that located the skull and took us straight to it.
It was Master Eli Tragedy, Mickey the Wererat, and me that moved to surround the skull and its occupants with the six gingerbreads.
But I caught my breath when I saw her. It wasn’t a little green wartole, or one-eyed Cyclopes that had been piloting the bone-walker, but a nude, young Sylph girl, holding what looked like a demon skull and talking to a pair of full-sized crows.
“So, what’s going on here?” roared Master Eli. “You are not a Gobbulun!”
“Call me later, Derfy! I can hear your thoughts. Gotta fly now!” said one of the two crows as they both turned and flapped away.
The girl turned to look at us. Her eyes were cold and gray, but they were also streaming with tears.
Eli pointed his magic wand at her with his finger tightly on the trigger. “Confess, child. How did the necromancer come to send the likes of you?”
“You are going to kill me anyway. So, why should I tell you anything?”
“How is it that you were able to make a non-magical crow talk? Your demon-head doesn’t normally have a power like that. Tell me, or I use the dragonfyre in this wand upon you.”
“I don’t know.”
“What?”
“I said I don’t know.”
Eli lifted the wand higher as if he was going to incinerate her. But, of course, he wasn’t. There was only one charge left in the wand, and he wanted to save it. It was unclear to me if he even had any reloadable charges for it.
“Tell me the name of your little demon head, and I will let you live for a little while longer.”
“No. I won’t tell you that so you can control the master’s demon head.”
“My name is Kackenfurchtbar. Please don’t kill my Derfentwinkle. I love her,” said the demon skull with the broken horn.
I looked at Mickey and he looked at me. Both of us had our mouths hanging open and our eyes nearly bugged out.
“Kack, why did you…?”
“Kackenfurchtbar, you will now only take commands from me, the great and powerful Sorcerer, Eli Tragedy!”
“Dammit, Kack!”
“Yes, oh, great and powerful Sorcerer, Eli Tragedy.”
“So, now you are finally gonna kill me?” she said softly to Master Eli.
“No, probably not,” said Master Eli.
“Oh, good! Does that mean we can use her to learn necromantic sexual practices and try them out on her?”
“Don’t be gross, Mickey,” I scolded.
“Mickey, whatever you and Bob decide to do with her on your spare time is between the three of you. You will not abuse a captive, no matter what else you do. And you know I give you two very little spare time.”
“Yes, Master,” Mickey said glumly.
“Kackenfurchtbar, what is the name of the necromancer?”
“Kronomarke, Necromancer to the Kingdom of the Valley-Eaters, and servant of the mighty King Stoor.”
“Oh, of course it is. Old Blue-bottom from Mistress Schulelehrer’s school for cursed youngsters. I knew the principal should’ve put him to death in the second grade for eating a classmate.”
“You know the necromancer?” I asked.
“Personally?” asked Mickey.
“I had Basic Runes classes with him about six hundred years ago. Ugliest damned kid in whole cursed school.”
“If you went to school with Kronomarke, why does he hate you so much?” asked the girl.
“Oh, told you about me, did he? By name?”
“No.”
“Ah, that’s a lie. My truth spell tells me you know about his oath of vengeance.”
“You don’t have a truth spell. At least, not active.”
“And how would you know that?”
“My magic tingle wasn’t tingling at any time during this whole encounter. And the electrical tingle I get is always accurate.”
“So, how could you possibly know that Bluebottom hates me more than any other boy from the whole cursed school? Are you a mind-reader?”
“Yes. Pretty much.”
“Kackenfurchtbar? How did Miss Doofy-Twinkle make that crow talk?”
“The crow claims to be her natural familiar.”
“I see. She has magical potential herself. Does Bluebottom know about that?”
“Not that he ever told me. I was only his fifteenth-best demon-slave when I was alive. And he sent us both on a suicide mission.”
“Ooh! Can we keep her? I will feed her and take care of her, and… um, she can even sleep in my bed,” shouted Mickey.
“We will keep her for a while anyway. I can put her in the iron cage we use for monsters and keep her there for a while.”
“Ooh! Good, good, good!” crowed Mickey.
“Bob, you, of course, will be in charge of the keys to the cage. You and Mickey will find out what magic she knows instinctively and write it all down in scrolls.”
“Yes, Master Eli, sir.”
“There you go again with the sir stuff.” Master Eli smiled at me.
I took charge of the prisoner, and we headed back to Cair Tellos. The gingerbreads surrounded us to protect us with their peppermint swords.
Filed under fairies, humor, novel, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney
Are Fairytales Controversial?
In some versions of Cinderella, her wicked stepsisters, at their wicked mother’s insistence, cut off parts of their feet in order to fit into the glass slipper. And then, the stupid Prince Charmhead doesn’t notice until talking doves and pidgeons point out on the way to Charmhead Castle, “There’s blood in the shoe!”
And of course the Prince is so dense that he goes through this particular ordeal twice with the two wicked stepsisters.
He doesn’t get it right until Cindy puts the slipper on without any blood spurting that gets noticed by talking birds.
Dang! Prince Charmhead is a real dumbhead. What kind of a local ruler would a man be if he picks the love of his life simply because she fits a shoe he likes?
But it is obvious that fairytales, especially the old ones that have been retold by a lot of fairly stupid people and changed with each new teller, deserve most of the criticism they receive.
My current work in progress is a fairytale (in that it is thoroughly infested by many kinds of fairies, mostly the little three-inch-or-smaller kind.) It is called The Necromancer’s Apprentice.
The book is a comedy, meant primarily to entertain and be funny, though. like Shakespeare’s comedies, it is intended to demonstrate themes of romance and love, and how they percolate emotionally in spite of obstacles (and the manipulations of evil fairies.)
But it will undoubtedly get criticized for its exploitation of fairies. Especially young girl fairies who agreed to pose nude for illustrations in the book.
This will not, however, be fully justified. I, as the artist, paid each nude fairy model a fair wage. Sure, it was mostly in pennies. But they are all between two and three inches in height. A penny is heavy and unwieldy for tiny arms to carry. And a penny buys a lot in Gerry-go-Gompert’s General Store for Sylphs, Elves, and Butterfly Children (no Gobbuluns allowed!)
And it you consider the context of a fairytale trying to portray fairies as they really are, you have to remember that Butterfly Children normally don’t wear clothing because it interferes with the flight of delicate butterfly wings. And all forms of actual fairy-kind are immune to heat and cold, and don’t need clothing for those reasons.
On top of that, most fairies believe in naturism and nudism as a healthy lifestyle and don’t object when I write a novel that promotes that idea a little bit.
So, once I am finished with this book, I am almost certain that it will be just as controversial as Little Red Riding Hood who climbs into Grandma’s bed with a big bad wolf, or Snow White who lives alone in the woods with seven little single men. But controversy can be a good thing for a story. Readers love a lurid tale. Even when the subjects are less than three inches tall.
Filed under art criticism, artwork, fairies, humor, novel, novel writing, nudes, Paffooney
The Necromancer’s Apprentice… Canto 4
A Small Murder of Crows
I came to with a splitting headache. The skull was still intact, but the rest of the skeleton was gone. And now the other eye-socket had a hole in it, while most of the inside of the skull was covered in blackened soot that apparently came from the explosive elf-magic that destroyed our bone walker.
“Kack? Are we still alive?”
“You are. I wasn’t technically alive at any point in this mission. But now my magic power is completely exhausted. Used up by keeping you from being burned. “
He was telling the truth. My skin was not covered in the charcoal and ash that everything else was.
“Thank you for saving me, Kack. I know you didn’t have to.”
“I have grown fond of you, Derf.”
“Aw…”
I rolled off the spoiled dandelion blossoms and got to my feet. The skull had landed right side up, and the new eyehole was big enough to easily step through out into the wider world outside.
“Hey! Pick me up and take me with you!” whined Kack.
I reached back in and picked him up by the one unbroken horn he had on his little severed head. “It’s not like you are any good to me with all the magic blown out of you.”
“I am rechargeable, you know. And I saved your life. Don’t you owe me?”
“Yeah. I don’t have anything better to do. The fairy army of Cair Tellos will be here any second to execute me.”
“Oh, surely as sugar they won’t do that. Charm them with your naked sex appeal.”
“I’m a Sylph, but I’m not pretty like most Sylph girls. I’m plain… homely even.”
“I’d keep you around for romancing if I could.”
“You are just a dirty old demon. And not even a live one.”
“Well, of course you would have standards… that figures…”
As we were ragging on each other in our defeated misery, two huge crows landed, looking us over with both eyes on both crow heads.
“What are you looking at?” I said to them.
“Derfentwinkle? Daughter of Bizzbumble the Mediocre?”
“Yes… wait a minute, you can talk?”
“I’m Homer. This is my brother and best friend Bert. I… uh… don’t know how I know this, but I’m your familiar.”
“What? Impossible! Familiars are always magical creatures like dragonets or spirit doves, never full-sized, real animals.”
“I don’t know anything about that. How am I even talking to you?”
“Um, your mouth is not moving when you speak, so, I’m guessing you do it the way all familiars do… by telepathy.”
“Hmm… well, how about that?”
“That’s the silliest thing I eva hoid!”
“Stop with the Groucho imitations, Bert. It’s annoying.”
“Who’s Groucho?” said the other crow, apparently Bert.
“How can I be hearing both of you?” I asked.
“Well, you talk to me in my head, just like Bert does,” said Homer.
“So, this familiar arrangement is a package deal? And you are both way bigger than me?”
“I guess so,” apologized Homer. “I don’t really know how to be a familiar.”
“That’s obvious.”
“Um, Derfie… Dearest?”
“Yes, Homer?”
“An elf and some Sylphs are coming to kill you.”
“Uh-huh. I know. Wrong time to be a first-time familiar, bird-o.”
And then, without further warning… they were there.
Filed under fairies, humor, novel, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney
The Necromancer’s Apprentice… Canto 3
The Skeleton Attack
The alarm roared through the castle Cair Tellos on the feet of Sylph boys just like Mickey and me… except that they carried bull horns used by town criers to amplify their shouts, none of them were wererats, and over half of them were nude.
The Master ordered us to carry the boom-n-banger on it’s launch stick up to the middle parapet of the upper keep. Once there, we were to fix it for possible launch to one of the ironwood merlons and attempt to aim it at the skeleton even though the powder-loaded thing was as big as me and bigger than Mickey.
“Eli! You do not have permission to light that thing in my castle!” shouted Pippen, the castle’s wizard and high protector. He was a large Sylph with a booming voice and flowing blond hair. His robes were richly colored blue, and he wore the golden necklace of Merlini the Gray to show off his basic right to rule.
“How are you going to keep the bone-thingy from smashing us all up, then?” retorted Master Eli.
“My scouts have told me that the boy with the shottygun has been summoned by two of the slow-one boys.”
“And you’re going to rely on the same kind of lucky shot that Murphy hobbledehoy got off at that last bone-thingy?
“It worked before, didn’t it?”
“Well, what’re the odds that luck can save our bacon more than once in a blue moon?”
“I don’t have your faith in stolen slow-one magics. That thing could just as easily explode the castle wall as it would the attacker.”
“Maybe you’re right. Perhaps I use my sorcery to summon Golden Dragonfire?”
“You’ve got to be kidding! Captain Bobkin’s headquarters are still smoldering from the last time you used that.”
At that moment, the two “hobbledehoys” that Master Pippin had mentioned showed up with the third one, the bigger one (hobbledehoy, as I understand it, means a tall, skinny and totally awkward slow-one youth) with the so-called shottygun in his hands, following behind while trying desperately to pull his pants on with one hand.
“Couldn’t this have waited until I was finished in the bathroom, Mike?” shouted the biggest one,
“It’s a walking skeleton, Danny! Right out of a horror movie,” shouted one of the other hobbledehoys.
At that moment, the bone walker passed through the castle’s glammer shield meaning it would be totally hidden from the slow ones by Fey magic.
“I don’t see anything!” growled the one trying to pull his pants on while hopping on one leg, pulling on the pants with one hand, and trying to aim the shottygun with the other hand.
“It was right there a second ago!”
“You shoulda let me kill it with a baseball bat, Bobby!” swore the other smaller hobbledehoy.
Suddenly, “BLAM!” the shottygun went off, shredding the unoccupied leg of the hopping hobbledehoy’s pants.
“Dammit!”
Mickey grinned at me. “He must be too stupid to remember to wear pants too.”
“Of course,” I said.
Meanwhile the skeleton reached up with one boney hand and totally smashed that hand against the ironwood walls of the lower parapet.
Up in the hornet’s nest, Captain Bobkin ordered an attack by the wasp-riders as the three hobbledehoys hopped back towards their own distant domicile.
“What did Master Eli mean when he called those things hobbledehoys?” Mickey asked me.
“It’s a slow-one word, in English, I think, that means what you and I would be if we were as big as slow ones.”
“A foofy git that blows up his own pants when trying to put them on?”
“Exactly.”
The skeleton brought his bone fist down on the parapet again, but this time the bones splintered and the fist turned to dust.
“Aim the boom-n-banger at the skeleton’s nearest eye socket, Bob,” commanded Master Eli.
“Even though Master Pippen told us not to?”
“Of course. He just doesn’t understand slow-one magic like I do. I’m gonna light that sucker up.”
Mickey and I turned the powder-filled thing until I could sight a strait line along the top of the tube all the way to the right eye socket of the skull. Eli then snapped his fingers and a spark set the fuse ablaze.
When the thing took off with a fizzing sound instead of a boom, I was disappointed. But it hit the skull, removing the head from the rest of the skeleton and flying it off into the bean field.
Once the skull was gone, the evil magic dispersed, and the rest of the skeleton fell apart at the roots of the willow tree that formed the base of Cair Tellos.
Master Pippin looked Master Eli in the eye.
“Well, you disobeyed me again… but it worked. It is now your responsibility to go find the skull and kill the evil thing that was controlling the bone walker.”
Master Eli’s smile instantly faded. “By your will, Master Pippen.”
Filed under fairies, humor, novel, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney
Composing the Next Chapter
My life now, after retiring from teaching for poor health, having a heart kerfluffle that created a hospital bill that dumped me into bankruptcy, and a pandemic that could easily have been the death of me, is really now only a matter of writing the next chapter and completing the next book.
Currently the novel I am working on is a fairytale called The Necromancer’s Apprentice. The title is a play on the Fantasia segment where Mickey Mouse plays the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, set to the orchestral music piece by Paul Dukas.
The current chapter is called Mickey’s Gambit. In this chapter Derfentwinkle’s bone-walker, a skeleton she has been driving like a tank to attack the fairies of Cair Tellos, the fairy castle in the willow tree, has been destroyed by the Sorcerer Eli Tragedy. Now Derfy knows that Tragedy and his two apprentices are coming to kill her. But she is not the typical gobbulun, all warty and green. She’s a nude Sylph girl, no different than hundreds of Sylphs who live in Cair Tellos.
But she is also the apprentice to an evil necromancer who sent her to attack the fairy castle.
Now, the other characters involved in this chapter are the Sorcerer Eli Tragedy, his apprentices Bob and Mickey the Wererat, and a handful of gingerbread children. Eli is a grumpy old coot who is quite capable of putting Derfy to death. But Bob, his number one apprentice, is much more pliable and soft-hearted. And Mickey the Wererat, is a cursed child, half-Sylph and half-rat, who can always be relied on to make the worst possible choices. There is a slim chance of survival.
The chapter is purposed as part of the story that drives the plot forward. This is the first meeting of the protagonist (Bob the apprentice) and the antagonist (Derfentwinkle.) This chapter reveals the over-arching danger of the evil necromancer. It puts Derfy in the hands of her enemies. And it is the beginning of the major themes of the book; No child or student is irredeemable, and all people, no matter whether they are Elf, Sylph, Fairy, Wererat, Gobbulun, or Crow has value.
So, that’s a look at my writing process in working on a novel, showing you how I put a chapter together. You will be seeing this chapter soon on my Tuesday novel-writing posts.
But life in reality is also about turning the page daily and setting the scene and working out the action. This I am doing by exercising more. I am also trying to get healthy enough to visit Bluebonnet Nudist Park again on the weekend before the weather rules against it. I am eating healthy. I am doing what is necessary to continue after losing my mother. I am dealing with household repairs to plumbing and yardwork. And I am working particularly hard not to lose anything more to the pandemic.
Filed under fairies, humor, novel, novel plans, novel writing, Paffooney
The Necromancer’s Apprentice… Canto 2
An Ordinary Day at Bob’s Place
Eli Tragedy, my master, was busy writing on a parchment with a quill pen. He did a lot of writing, that one. He claimed that he didn’t like writing magical script, especially with a quill pen made from pigeon pin feathers. Yet, he was writing morning, noon, and night whether he really needed to or not. And he wouldn’t use any pen but a pigeon quill.
“Bob, be a dear and pour me more of that head-straightening potion,” Eli said as he held out his mug made from an acorn shell.
“Master, the slow ones you stole that from call it coffee.”
“Of course, they do. The giant piffle-brains never name a thing for its actual usefulness, now do they?”
“No, sir. Of course, they don’t, sir.”
“Bob, you call me sir way too much. You need to vary it up some.”
“What else will I call you, sir?”
“How about Gloriously Majestic Magic-Master Tragedy? Or the Most Powerful Mage of Tellosia?”
“Yes, sir. I shall try, sir.”
“I guess that’s the best I can hope for, isn’t it?” the master said in the grumpy voice he always used before he had enough of his stolen head-straightening potion.
The master, of course, told me regularly that I was not very smart. And being the master, he was, of course, right about that. But I thought it best not to contradict him in any case. After all, I was only a stupid Sylph boy that had to be reminded to wear pants every day. I never actually forgot my pants before being reminded by the master. But I regularly took his wise directions anyway. He was a wise and famous Elf Sorcerer known far and wide amongst the Fey Children throughout the countryside. And I was his apprentice. He was going to teach me real magic one day.
“When will you teach us real magic?” complained Mickey the Wererat. He was in the tub near the stove, bathing himself by the master’s orders, trying to remove at least some of the stench of being a wererat.
“I am teaching you real magic now. Use that magical stink-removing potion on yourself. Every bit of your furry little stink-factory body needs to be covered with the magical lavatory potion.”
“The slow ones you stole that potion from call it soap, master.”
“Of course, they do, Bob. You are so good at reminding me of the English name for all the little things we borrow. Now if only you were not so dumb all the time…”
“Yes, master.”
It didn’t pay to argue with a sorcerer. Especially not one who could turn you into a frog, newt, or grasshopper. I had been a grasshopper for a week once. Once is enough.
“I just wish you would teach me a spell to allow me to control my were-form so I wouldn’t always be a half-rat boy all the time,” complained Mickey, scrubbing furiously at black rat-fur. His body always seemed to naturally morph into the form he was trapped in at the moment. He had a mouse-like face, the naked body of a regular Sylph boy covered in black-and-white fur, a rat’s tail, and paws instead of feet. We would’ve called him a “weremouse” if it weren’t for the fact that he got lycanthropy from the rat-bite of Augustus the Gut, wererat from Suchretown.
“So, when are you actually going to teach us real magic?” That question was a central theme to Mickey. I wanted to learn magic as badly as he did, but I had also learned that asking annoying questions only got you one of two answers.
“Stop complaining. Magic is a volatile thing and must be handled with great care. You should be grateful that I am making you master slow-one magics like coffee and soap first. It keeps you from blowing yourself up with a fireball or freezing yourself with a winter-wind spell.”
So, there was one of the two answers.
“Or shall I turn you into a newt? Newts smell better than wererats.”
That was the other possible answer.
At that moment, Anneliese the Storybook came in through the castle passage into our tower rooms. Now she was a fine-looking young Sylph. But, of course, she was way out of my league. Storybooks are immortal Fey magically created when a human storyteller writes down actual stories that happened to the actual fairy.
“Hello, Eli. Hello, boys.”
She had a rare Germanic beauty about her. I was told that she had once been a human girl, put to death by evil Nazi humans in the slow ones’ years of the 1940’s. And her mother brought her back to life with human witch-magic. Her mother. Gretel, was also a Storybook Sylph now, and served as our castle cook-witch.
“You have gingerbread for us, Anneliese?” asked Eli while slyly looking over her bare-bodied beauty. Some Storybooks wear clothes. Anneliese and Gretel did not.
“You know I do. Mutter knows you have a taste for it. And it is fortified with magic to make you healthy, strong, and wise.” She put the basket she had brought for us down on the table.
“Bob, can you bring me my pants?” begged Mickey from the tub. Mickey was shy. He was like a tree with no bark on it when he was naked in his rat form, and he didn’t want the beautiful girl to see his naked personal twig. I grabbed his little blue lederhosen from the chair where he left it. I looked briefly at the two yellow buttons he always wore on the front of his pants. No suspenders to attach, but buttons there anyway. He snatched the pants from me and put them on while still wet. Then he was out and greedily sorting through the basket to find his favorites before I might take one.
“You are very kind to your brother apprentice, Bob,” Anneliese said to me. “And I am amazed at the way you always seem to notice everything,”
“I am teaching him that. One must be very observant if one is to succeed at the ancient arts of Sorcery.”
“Yes, I see you are teaching him by example, Eli.”
She had him there. She was fully aware of the parts of her that the old Elf was looking at. Probably aware that I was trying not to look at those parts as well.
My master wasn’t evil or anything. But he did appreciate girl Sylphs and fairy beauties.
I liked the fact that Anneliese came by at least twice a week. I wanted to see her even more often. But I could not for the world summon up the magic it took to talk to her on purpose and tell her how I felt.
But the moment ended with a gingerbread boy coming through the door.
“Ah, Pavel, what brings you to my tower, cookie-man?” the Master said to him in a joking manner, managing to hide any embarrassment he might’ve felt in front of Anneliese.
“You are to come right away! The castle is under attack by a second bone-walker!” said the animated cookie.
That, of course, immediately had us rumbling out of the tower door to do our magical duty. Necessary implements of magical firepower were all well in hand.
Filed under fairies, gingerbread, humor, novel, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney
Upside Down and Inside Out
Ideally a writer must not become stuck in a rut, thinking about things in print from only one angle. If you fall into that trap you are doomed to be Tucker Carlson on FOX News, an evil, greedy, and anal-retentive soulless propagandist. Instead you need to have many eyes and notice things from up and down and all around.
As a writer of fiction I use the magic of observation, perception, and imagination together as three very different eyes. You use the observation eye, the one that sees naked Little Mickey in the center for what he really is, a naked, sometimes stinky, immature little brat who thinks he’s funny, to ground your thoughts in reality. You use the perception eye, the eye that discerns the things under the surface, like the presence of a happiness fairy and a sadness fairy in the picture, to determine what lies underneath everything, thoughts that may not be true, but are based on evidence and represent your best thinking. And you use the imagination eye to realize that you can take old pictures and paste them together in a new way to be creative and think a thought you totally never even thought about before.
And as a writer, you have to realize that everybody has a point of view that is uniquely their own. So, if you use the first-person narrative as much as I do, you have to learn to enter the character’s head and figure out how to be that person. I have become a small-town boy obsessed with monster movies. That one was easy. I became a somewhat dyspeptic and grumpy older man who owned a failing business. That was easier. Also I became a seventh-grade girl who lost her father and has to discover what post-trauma love is all about. Dang! That one was really hard. And I became a sentient sock puppet whose actual memories, perceptions, and personality reside in the head of his autistic puppeteer. Wow! Just wow!
So, what am I saying in this silly, unfocussed blog post? That you need to practice using your many eyes, and look at things from upside down and inside out, and finally see it’s not so unfocussed after all.
The Fey Children
The Fairies : Butterfly Children
In the background of several of my novels, there lurk little people with magic powers. In this modern age of science they still exist, but are reduced in size to about three inches tall for the adults. As I am now working on a book set in their world, I am therefore using today’s post to elucidate what they are and categorize them a bit.
Butterfly Children is a nickname for the winged fairies. And most fairies not only have wings, but don’t wear clothing because, not only do shirts, jackets, jerkins, and such interfere with wings, but they, like me, prefer to be nude if possible.
The Butterfly Children are not really made of flesh and blood, but rather coherent magical energy. That is the reason they rarely become spellcasters themselves, but can lend their energies to the spell-casting Sylphs; witches, wizards, sorcerers, warlocks, liches, and some Storybooks.
They refer to us as “the Slow Ones” because we are easily fooled into not seeing them for what they are. They use concealing glammers to convince us that we are seeing a bug or a bird or a glare of sunlight instead of what they actually are. They also have the ability to allow slow ones to see them if they choose to voice the necessary spells. Some rare slow ones are able to see through their glammers and view them in spite of their wishes.
Sylphs and Elves : The Man-shaped Fey
Once, long ago, the Fey Children who looked human could pass themselves off as slow ones. The Elves, of course, had pointed ears to hide. But they looked like what we would call “regular people” because they were our size. But human science developed things that stop magical energies like brass or drain magical energies like iron and copper. The Fey became smaller and smaller. Things like discarded nails and lost pennies decreased the places where they could live and build homes.
Eli Tragedy (in the middle above) is an example of both an Elf (with pointed ears) and a magic-using Sorcerer. His apprentices, Bob and Mickey, are both Sylphs. Like Butterfly Children, many Sylphs would rather not wear clothes. Magic-using Sylphs and Elves learn to wear clothes because garments can be invested with protective spells.
Mickey is different than other Sylphs in that he has been bitten by a wererat and has been infected by lycanthropy. Since he is now an uncontrolled wererat, he constantly looks like a boy with a mouse head and tail, a fur-covered boy’s body, and paws instead of feet.
Sylphs can occur in many different non-manlike forms. The Mouse from Cornucopia is a Sylph in the form of an anthropomorphic mouse. Radasha, also seen to the left, is a Faun. Pixies, Nixies, Boggarts, Gremlins, Centaurs, Minotaurs, and other magical creatures have gotten far smaller since ancient times when human beings added greatly to the magical energy loose in the world through their imaginations, faiths, fears, nightmares, and dreams.
All of those magical creatures have odd and sometimes horrific shapes. You can see that in the insect-like Pixie to the right.
Storybooks : Immortals Amongst the Fey
The other Fey Children that need a special mention are the Storybooks like Silkie pictured in the acorn beret and leaf dress to the right. These lucky Sylphs, Elves, or other Fey Children who’ve been singled out by slow ones in their slow-ones’ books and literature are made magically immortal by the power of stories told by humans, especially those preserved by print. They no longer die. They can no longer be killed or grievously wounded.
General Tuffaney Swift is another good example of a Storybook. He exists as an immortal because some of his early adventures, were overheard and written down in stories about Tom Thumb. He was instrumental in bringing Grandma Gretel and her daughter, Anneliese, into the Fey World. She is responsible through her magical baking skills for the entire races of Gingerbread Children and Cookie Monsters.
So, there’s a brief overview of the Kingdom of Tellosia and the World of the Fey Children.
Catch a Falling Star 