Category Archives: NOVEL WRITING

Several Moments of Truth

I could tell when Master Eli handed me the bottle imp that used to be my friend Kack, that Kack was no longer trapped in a severed head.  He was now a free-floating intelligent smoke trapped in a bottle made of some Slow-One’s special substance.  It was not real magic because it did not make my magic-sense tingle.  It was some kind of trick with Slow-One chemicals.

“So, Miss Derfentwinkle, tell us about yourself.  And keep in mind your “Horrible Poop” friend will now tell us instantly if you are telling a lie.”  Master Eli was looking at me with one eye opened wider than the other.

“Yeah, um…  I am Derfentwinkle.  I am the servant of an evil necromancer.”

“Do you like working for a necromancer?” Bob, the quiet boy, said.

“I hate it.  I hate Kronomarke.  He’s cruel, and he sent me on a suicide mission to get me killed intentionally.”

I swirled Kack around in his bottle.

“That is perfectly true… every word,” said Kack.

“Do you like me?” asked the weird mouse-boy.

“I find you mildly disgusting, but it was entertaining when Bob knocked you out.”

The quiet boy chuckled softly when I said that.  I am not sure, but I think Master Eli did too.

“Would you be willing to betray your former master?” Master Eli asked.

“I would do so quickly and efficiently and deeply enjoy it.”

Master Eli grinned at me at that answer.

“So, is that true too, Kackenfurchtbar?” asked Bob.

“Derfie almost never tells a lie, but, sadly… this is not entirely honest.”

“What?  You won’t really betray him?”

“She can’t.  People she loves have their lives in his evil hands.  But her heart is set against the necromancer, and she would betray him happily if she could.”

“Ah, I expected as much from old Bluebottom,” said Master Eli.

“So, are you going to kill me, then?” I asked, feeling doomed.

“Oh, no.  Of course not.  But I am not going to let you go either.  You belong to me now.  I expect I will hang onto you for a few years now.”

“As a sex slave?” asked the mouse-boy with an ugly smirk on his mouse-face.

“No.  She’s free to fall in love with you, Mickey.  But she’s also allowed to hate you if that’s how she really feels.”

The mouse-boy hung his stupid mouse head in shame at that reproach.

“Tell me, young lady, do know any of the spells used by your former master?”

“I don’t think I have any magical skills, and I know I don’t know any spells.”

“Not completely true,” blurted Kack.

I gave the bottle a violent shake.  His floating eyeballs bounced off each other in the smoke.

“You probably know a lot more than you realize,” said Master Eli.  “I heard those two crows claim to be your familiars.  Not fairy-sized birds, but normal-sized crows.  That takes a lot more real magic than you should be capable of.”  He was grinning at me even more now.

“Does your evil master know about the crow familiars?” asked quiet Bob.

“I just found out myself.  I don’t think he knows.  But I’m sure Kack will tell you I’m lying about that too.”

“She is not lying about any of that,” Kack said.  So, I gave him another violent shake.

“Wait a minute,” said the mouse-boy.  “Why does she get a familiar when you, me, and Bob don’t, Master Eli?”

“Well, Mickey, a wizard is different than a sorcerer.”

I immediately thought a lecture was coming on.  Something about wizards, warlocks, and sorcerers makes them want to explain every little detail in one long-winded speech.

“Wizards, you see, are different than we are.  They get their magic from books and scrolls and head-knowledge.  They have to study to get their magic working.  They have evolved the ability to have so much head-knowledge that they eventually need another head to put it in.  Thus, their minds invade and meld with an animal familiar, usually a fairy cat, fairy bird, spider, or some other fsairy-sized creature.  I have never known a fairy wizard to have a full-sized animal familiar that was bigger than they were.”

I totally nailed it about the lecture thing.  This guy was just as boring as old Kronomarke.  Except he wore bright red smart-guy robes which were much more interesting than Kronomarke’s usual black robes.

“So, why don’t sorcerers have familiars?” genius mouse-boy just had to ask.

“Because our magic is different.  Our magic is not head-knowledge.  It is more from the gut.  Intuition over intelligence.  We pull magic out of our passions, our feelings, our natural insights…”

“Our sexual abilities?” mouse-boy attempted to add.

“No, Mickey.  And that kind of thinking can get you killed around a necromancer.  Derfentwinkle’s magic comes from a wizarding-way that draws on life and death.  She may know Succubus spells that can drain the lifeforce out of you and leave you a withered husk.”

Dang!  There went any chance to use that trick!  Mouse-boy might not get it, but Bob just learned what to look out for, and he didn’t seem to miss anything that was said.

“So, you still haven’t said why we don’t have no familiars?”

“Ah, Mickey.  Such a stupid child.  At least you were bright enough to put on pants this morning.”

“He is right, though, Master.  You still haven’t explained why…” Bob said.

“Ah, yes.  Although you would be smarter with pants on, Bob, you are right.  Sorcerers don’t need familiars.  They draw spell energy directly from the ether, and don’t pass it through the brain of any creature.  Not even their own brain.  They apply it directly to the target.  That’s why we use wands and staves and such rather than saying a lot of spell words and wiggling our fingers.”

“Oh.  Thank you master.  That was a very useful lesson,” Bob said with a cute little smile.

“So, Derfentwinkle, has your master shown you any spells, or made you read any books?” Master Eli asked me.

“No.  Of course not.  All the magic he gave me was inside Kack’s stupid little demon head.”

“She’s not telling you the whole truth.  She has seen the Evil Master cast spells and heard the words he used to do them.  And she read some of the books over the Evil Master’s shoulder.”

“Thank you, Kack.  I wanted them to know that, but I couldn’t tell them because of one of Kronomarke’s spells.”

“She is telling the truth about that.”

Master Eli’s face split with a huge grin.  “Very good, then.  I think it is about time I employed the Magic Hat.”

I had no idea what that meant.  But I knew it might be dreadful.

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.

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.

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.”