Monthly Archives: June 2022

The Voyage of the Minotaur – Chapter 2 Excerpt

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Iolanthe Dechantagne held onto the bedpost with both hands while her dressing maid Yuah pulled with all her might on the lacings of Iolanthe’s new Prudence Plus fairy bust form corset.  When the two sets of lacing holes reached as close a proximity as they were likely to, Yuah jerked the lacings down, pulling them into the crimping holes so that they would stay tight until she managed to tie them into one of her patented infallible knots.  Only when this knot, immotile as any which anchored a battleship to a dock, was tied, did Iolanthe let out her breath.  Though still able to fasten her own bustle around her waist, the beautiful young woman was now helpless to bend over and pull on her own stockings, so Yuah carefully rolled each of the expensive silk garments up a leg, fastening it at the top to the several suspenders hanging down from the corset. Then Iolanthe stepped into her shoes, which were alligator skin high-tops with four-inch heels.  The maid kneeled down once again, this time to fasten each shoe’s twenty-four buttons using a buttonhook.

“The white pinstriped dress today?” asked Yuah.

“No.  I wore that just last week.”

“The chantilly dress?”

“Yes I think.”

Yuah brought over the dress.  Yards of sheer black lace overlaid a pink silk base that was as smooth as lotion. The dressing maid helped Iolanthe put her arms through the sleeveless shoulders and then fastened the dress up behind her.  Then she helped her on with the matching jacket.  Though the dress was sleeveless and had a fairly low neckline, the jacket had long sleeves with puffs of black lace at the end, and fastened all the way up and around Iolanthe’s long thin neck.  The hat that went with this ensemble was a black straw boater, which like so much of Iolanthe’s hat collection, imitated a man’s style.  But in addition to the black lace veil hanging down to below her neck all the way around, the top of this boater was decorated with a dozen pink and black flowers and a small stuffed bird.  She wore no rings on her fingers or ears, but draped a cameo necklace carefully across her bosom.

Iolanthe turned and looked at herself in the floor-length cheval glass.  The cameo necklace, the hat, jacket, dress, shoes and stockings, and the Prudence Plus fairy bust form corset were only the finishing touches of a process that had taken the first two hours of the morning. A hot bath and shampoo had come first, followed by shaving her body (with straight razor), and then applying four different types of body lotion and body powder.  Next was a careful facial, culminating in the retouching of her very thin, carefully arched brows.  Styling her long auburn hair into a bun and constructing small ringlets with a curling iron to frame her face, had next occupied her.  Then she had donned her panties, her bloomers, her underbrassier, her brassier, and her camisole.  Yuah had carefully manicured her fingernails and pedicured her toes. Finally came rouge, eye shadow, mascara, and lipstick—just enough to look as though she didn’t need any and thus had worn none—painted on with the care and attention to detail of the finest portrait artist.

“You look beautiful, Miss.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Will there be anything else, Miss?”

“No.”

Yuah left and Iolanthe continued to stare at herself for several moments in the mirror. Once she had decided that everything was perfect, she hyperventilated for a minute before leaving.  Doing so allowed her to make it all the way down to the steam carriage without having to gasp for breath, despite the small inhalations allowed by the Prudence Plus fairy bust form corset, though doing so exacerbated the possibility of her fainting.  Women frequently fainted in Brech.  It was just part of the cost of fashion.

The house that the Dechantagne family owned in the Old City was a large square four-story building occupying most of a city block.  It was so large in fact that two thirds of the rooms were unused, the furniture covered by white linen drop cloths and the doors kept locked.  Iolanthe had been tempted to sell the house, as she had much of the family’s other city properties, but then finding a new place to live would have occupied far too much of her time, and she doubted that any place she found would have been appropriate for entertaining the class of people that she had needed to entertain during the past year.  Since she had been essentially forced to keep it, she had spent considerable money modernizing the portions that she used.  Houses built three hundred years before did not have the benefits of indoor plumbing and there was no way that she would go without her bathtub, or for that matter a modern flushing toilet.  Stairs were fine as well for making a grand entrance, but for the everyday up and down of three flights, an elevator was a must.  Then there were the dumbwaiters, the gaslights, and the upgraded kitchen.  The only things that hadn’t needed to be improved were the servants’ quarters, which were more than adequate.

The Voyage of the Minotaur – Chapter 1 Excerpt

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She had to wait several minutes for Carlo to notice her.  He was busy delivering sandwiches to the two soldiers who sat with the woman in the white pinstriped dress.  Not cucumber sandwiches on white bread.  Their sandwiches were thick slices of dark bread, piled high with slab after slab of ham. This was no surprise to Senta. Soldiers were always hungry.  She had seen them eating many times: the officers here at Café Carlo, and the common soldiers purchasing food from vendors near the park, or at the beanery in her own neighborhood.  At last, Carlo noticed her and held out his hand to her, dropping her fourteen copper pfennigs for the week into her callused palm. They were small coins, with the profile of the King on the obverse side, and the front of a stately building, Senta didn’t know which building, on the reverse side.  She stuffed the coins, a few fairly bright, but most well worn, into her pocket.

“See Gyula,” said Carlo.

A surprised Senta nodded and scurried back to the kitchen.  This was an unexpected boon.  Gyula was the junior of the two line cooks, which meant that he was the lowest ranked of the four people who prepared the food in the café.  An order to see him was an indication that she was being rewarded with foodstuffs of some kind.  When she entered the kitchen, Gyula looked up from his chopping and smiled. He was a young man, in his mid twenties, with a friendly round face, blond hair, and laughing eyes.  He was chopping a very large pile of onions, and the fact that he had only his left hand to do it, seemed to hinder him not at all. When Gyula was a child, about the same age as Senta was now, he had worked in a textile mill, where his job was to stick his tiny arm into the gaps in the great machines and remove wads of lint that had gummed up the works.  In his case, as in many others, the restarting machine proved quicker than his reflexes, and snipped off his arm just below the elbow.

“Hey Senta!” said Gyula, setting down his knife and wiping his left hand on his white apron.

“Carlo sent me back.”

“Excellent,” said Gyula.

He became a one-handed whirlwind, as he carved several pieces of dark bread from a big loaf, and piled an inch of sliced ham, slathered with dark brown mustard between them. He wrapped the great sandwich, which Senta happily noted was even bigger than those the soldiers had received, in wax paper.  He likewise wrapped a monstrous dill pickle, and placed both in the center of a large clean red plaid cloth; folding in the four corners, and tying them in a bow, to make a bindle.  Gyula handed the package to Senta, smiling.  When he had the opportunity, the young line cook favored Senta with great, heaping bounties of food, but he dared not do it without Carlo’s permission. It wouldn’t be easy for a one-armed man to find a job this good, and no one in his right mind, however kind-hearted and happy-go-lucky he was, would endanger it for a child he didn’t really even know.

“Thank you, Gyula,” said Senta, and grabbing the red plaid bundle, scurried out the door and down the sidewalk.

It was a beautiful day—though Senta didn’t know it, it was the first day of spring.  She made her way along, dodging between the many other pedestrians.  It was warm enough that she felt quite comfortable in her brown linen dress, worn over her full-length bloomers, and her brown wool sweater.  The weather was very predictable here in the Brech.  The early spring was always like this.  Late in the afternoon, the sky would become overcast, and light showers would sprinkle here and there around the city. Most days, they were so light that a person would scarcely realize that he had been made wet before he was dried off by the kindly rays of the sun.  Still, the ladies would raise their parasols to protect their carefully crafted coiffures from the rain, just as they now used them to protect their ivory complexions from the sun.

Summers here were warm and dry, but not so hot that people wouldn’t still want to eat in the outdoor portion of Café Carlo.  Not so in the fall or winter, however.  The fall was the rainy season.   It would become overcast, and stay that way for months, and it would rain buckets every day.  The streets would stay slick and shiny.  Then winter would come and dump several feet of snow across the city.  The River Thiss would freeze over and they would hold the winter carnival on the ice.  And the smoke from all of the coal-fired and gas-fired stoves, and the smoke from all of the wood-filled fireplaces would hang low to the ground, and it would seem like some smoky frozen hell.  The steam carriages would be scarcer, as the price of coal became dearer, but the horse-drawn trolley would still make its way through the grey snow and make its stops every three minutes.

Senta skipped and walked and skipped again east from the plaza down the Avenue Phoenix, which was just as busy as the plaza itself.  Travelers hurried up and down the street, making their way on foot, or reaching to grab hold of the trolley and hoist themselves into the standing-room-only cab.  Quite a number of couples could be seen strolling along together, arm in arm; the men usually walking on the side closest to the street, in case a steam carriage should splash up some sooty water.  Others on the street were shopping, because both sides of the Avenue Phoenix were lined with shops.  There were quite a few stores which sold women’s clothing and a few that sold men’s, a millinery shop, a haberdasher, a bookseller, a store which sold fine glassware, a clockmaker, a tobacconist, a jeweler, a store which sold lamps, a florist, and at the very end of the avenue, where it reached Prince Tybalt Boulevard, just across the street from the edge of the park, on the right hand side, a toy store.

Stopping to press her face against the glass, right below the printed sign that said “Humboldt’s Fine Toys”, Senta stared at the wonders in the store.  She had never been inside, but had stopped to look in the window many times.  The centerpiece of the store display was a mechanical bird.  It worked with gears and sprockets and springs and was made of metal, but it was covered in real bird feathers in a rainbow of hues, and would sit and peck and chirp and sing as though it were alive, until it finally wound down, and the toy maker would walk to the window and say the word to reactivate the bird’s magic spell.  Senta knew that the bird would remain in the window for a long, long time, until some young prince or princess needed a new birthday gift, because that bird would have cost as much as the entire Café Carlo.  Arranged around it were various mechanical toy vehicles—ships, trains, and steam carriages.  Some were magical and some worked with a wind-up key, but they all imitated the real life conveyances from which they were patterned.

None of these wonderful toys held as much fascination for Senta though, as the doll that sat in the corner of the window.  It wasn’t magical.  It wasn’t even animated by a wind-up mechanism.  It was a simple doll with a rag body and porcelain hands, feet, and face.  It wore a simple black dress.  Its blond hair had been cut in a short little bob, and looked like real human hair.  It had a painted face with grey eyes and pink lips.  It may well have been one of the lesser-priced toys in the shop.  It was definitely the least expensive item in the window, but Senta would never be able to purchase it.  Had she been able to save every pfennig she earned, it still would have taken her more than thirty weeks to purchase the doll.  And she could not save every pfennig she earned. Most weeks, she could not even save one.

Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Elven Princess

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Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Elven Princess tops 7,000 & 8,000 DownloadsChapter Fifteen: Wherein we take the road less traveled.

The following morning found both Jholeira and me awake and refreshed.  So we made an early start.  It was not as early as Ellwood Cyrene who had left at the crack of dawn.  However when I went down to the common room that morning, not only did I find that my friend had paid for breakfast for my elf girl and myself, but he had left a package for me as well.  Wrapped in a large oiled cloth were several pounds of dried beef, a wheel of yellow cheese, two or three pounds of raisins and a small cloth sack with a half dozen coins in it.

Ellwood Cyrene never seemed to be in need of money, despite the fact that he seldom took payment for his many acts of manly heroism.  I have seen a bucket of gold coins gathered together by a town to pay the hero that saved them from the threat of a raging monster, only to have it politely refused by a smiling Ellwood Cyrene.  I have seen him pass out coppers to every orphan in a six block radius of the inn in which he was staying.  To be fair I have seen him plunder more than one baggage train, and on numerous occasions he has rifled through the pockets of a man he has just stabbed– but who hasn’t done that, when you get right down to it.

I was not able to procure any oats for my poor steed, which is to say Hysteria, but I did get a small bundle of dried hay to supplement the small amount of forage we were likely to find in that country in winter.

We set off on the East Road, but following the advice I had been given, we soon turned off to the north, following a cattle path that wandered over the hills and down into the valley.  Our new path veered off from our previous course, but not enough that I thought we would lose our way.  In fact at tea time, we stopped among a small copse of trees at the top of a hill.  From this point we were able to look down to the south across a vast valley.  True to Ellwood’s warning, a great battle was being fought.  It was impossible to tell who the two sides were, as their banners at this distance were too difficult to read.  All that was certain was that both sides were humans.  I took some small pains to make sure that we weren’t spotted, but considering the distance and the chaos on the battlefield, I judged that there was little chance of it.

After journeying the remainder of the day, we made camp just off the path in a little hollow which had been formed by three massive boulders piled one atop of the other two.  I can only imagine that some giant piled them up thus as there was no nearby mountain down which they might have slid to come to rest in such a fortuitous configuration, which is to say a pretty good shape.

“We should reach the edge of Elven Wood tomorrow,” I told my companion.

“Really?  I don’t seem to recognize any landmarks.”

“Maybe when we get closer,” I offered.  “How long since you’ve been home?”

“Six or seven years I would suppose.”

“That must be tough, being without your family for so long.”

“Yes.”  She sighed.  “And what about you?  You’ve been without your family for quite a while now too.”

“What?”

“How long has it been?”

“How long has what been?”

“How long has it been since your family disappeared?”

“Oh.  That.  I really can’t say.”
“You know, I’ve been thinking.”  Jholeira stood up and began to pace back and forth beside the campfire.  “The purple drops on the floor, as I’ve already said, could be from the blueberry pie you were expecting.”

“Fiends!” said I.

“As far as Gervil’s knife being stuck in his bed is concerned, that could be an indicator of foul play or of nothing at all.”

“I see.”

“The floorboards being pried up however tells us something.  Whoever the culprit or culprits were, they were looking for something hidden under the floor.  Money maybe?  Family jewels?”

“The unpublished manuscripts of the world famous Eaglethorpe Buxton,” I offered.

“I suppose that is conceivable,” said she.  “What I don’t understand is the onions in the rafters.  The only thing I can think of is that they were trying to ward off vampires.”

“Monsters!” said I.  “But wait.  Isn’t that supposed to be garlic?”

“Maybe they couldn’t find any.  Or maybe they didn’t know the difference.  Garlic looks a lot like an onion.”

“Oh, my family would know the difference,” said I.  “My poor old father was a fine onion farmer.  In fact one variety, the Winter Margram onion was named for him.  My cousin Gervil wrote an epic poem about onions, though I was never able to memorize more than the first five hundred twelve lines.”

“Is that all?” she wondered.

“Tuki was Onion Queen three years running.”

“So it is possible that your family would have had onions around?  Say, hanging from the rafters?”

“Only at harvest time.”

“Was it harvest time?”
“Was what harvest time?”
“Was it harvest time when your family disappeared?”

“It could have been.”

“So there really are no clues at all,” postulated the half-orphan.

“What about the tracks?” I asked.  “What about the tracks that ended mysteriously after only fifty feet?”

“You said it was a stormy night.  The rain probably washed the tracks away.”

“You’re right,” said I.  “The next time it will be morning.”

“What do you mean next time?”

“Um, nothing.”

“You mean the next time your family gets kidnapped or the next time you tell this?”

“Well…”

“Your family never was stolen at all!”  She stood up with back straight and finger pointed accusingly.  She looked quite intimidating.  “You lied!”

“It’s wasn’t a lie,” I explained.  “It was a story.  Well, it was a first draft.”

Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Sorceress

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Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Sorceress tops 40,000 DownloadsChapter Fourteen: Wherein I divulge my plan to reunite the lovers.

I led the beautiful Megara Fennec, which is to say Megara Capillarie from the home of some unknown person, who was no doubt a chubby little red-head with a checkered apron and a brown bonnet, and out into the town square of Potter Town, where the shadows were growing long, which is to say it was getting late. My valiant steed Hysteria still waited patiently at the well. As we walked, I explained my plan.

“The plan is thus,” said I. “I will fetch from the apothecary a dram of a potion that is known as living death. You will go home and make peace with your parents and then take this potion. It will make you fall into a coma, a semblance of death itself. From you there will be no evidence that you still live: no breath, no heartbeat, and no body warmth. Your family will think that you are dead and place your body in the family crypt. In the meantime, I will send a message to your beloved in Oordport, telling him the entire plan and he will rush to your side, to reach you just as you return to life, having experienced nothing more than a pleasant sleep.”

We reached Hysteria’s side and I turned to smile at my lovely companion, but she was frowning.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“Your plan seems fraught with unnecessary problems,” she replied.

“How so?”

“If the apothecaries of the area are wont to sell drams of ‘living death’, won’t someone suggest that perhaps I have been given ‘living death’ when I appear to die of unknown causes.”

“Living death is pretty secret,” said I.

“How secret?”

“Really secret.”

“But not so secret that just anyone can purchase it from an apothecary?”

“No, not so secret as that.”

“What if, when I die, they decide to burn my body instead of placing it in the family crypt?”

“Why would they do that?”

“To save space.”

“You are a member of the family, are you not?”

“Yes, but I’m just a girl, and I’m young. I haven’t had a chance to do anything grand or impressive that would warrant entombing me in a place of honor. Our family has had that crypt for at least a dozen generations and there have been a lot of us. It’s getting pretty full.”

“But you are Lord Capillaries’ only daughter.”

“I am the only child of his current wife, true. But my mother is his fourth wife and I am his sixteenth daughter.”

“I see.”

“Now that I think about it,” she continued. “I don’t think that I would want to wake up in that crypt anyway. It’s got to be pretty rank in there, and there is always the possibility of zombie attacks.”

“Yes, I forgot about zombies.”

“The only people who can afford to forget about zombies are those people with no brains.”

“That is true,” I agreed. “I suppose we could plan to have your body sequestered somewhere else.”

“And here’s another thing,” she said. “What if your message doesn’t get to my beloved in time? Suppose he hears about me dying before he finds out about your plan. He might do something rash—like hurt himself.”

“He wouldn’t do that would he?”

“He might. He’s very passionate.”

“He’s passionate enough to kill himself?”

“Oh yes. He thinks about it all the time.”

“So what do you propose?” I asked.

“Why don’t we climb on your horse and you just give me a ride to Oordport, where I can meet beautiful, sweet Henri and live together with him there.”

“Well, it is not nearly so poetical a plan as mine,” said I. “But I will do it.”

Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Sorceress

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Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Sorceress tops 40,000 DownloadsChapter Thirteen: Wherein I hear the story of two star-crossed lovers.

 

I stood looking at the young woman, whom might well be the most beautiful creature that I had ever seen. She struck a pose and tossed her thick locks of dark brown hair back over her shoulder.

“You are so beautiful,” I said. “Why would you want to go into such a disreputable business as acting? You could do anything you wanted.”

“It’s not what I want; It’s all that I have left,” she replied. “You see, my family the Capillaries…”

“I thought you said your name was Fennec.”

“That’s my stage name,” she explained. “My real name is Megara Capillarie. And my family and other family, the Montenegroes, have been involved in a feud for dozens of generations.”

“Is it the kind of feud in which you fight the other family, or the kind in which you challenge them to some type of word game?”

“It is the kind in which you fight and kill the other family.”

“Hmm,” said I. “Those types of feuds can be bad, especially if you are the one being fought and killed.”

“But there’s more. I met a lovely young man and fell in love with him, only to find out later that he was none other than Henri Montenegro, the son of my family’s great enemy. We met and exchanged fair words and fair kisses. But then yesterday there was a fight in the street and Henri, beautiful, sweet Henri killed my cousin.”

“So you don’t love him anymore? You hate him now.”

“Of course I don’t hate him! I love him! But we can never be together. He has been banished to Oordport, and I shall never see him again.”

“It so happens that I already have all the actresses that I need to portray the characters in my play,” said I.

“You are one short,” Megara said, tossing her hair back. “Two days ago, the Sorceress Myolaena Maetar arrived at the theater just after the performance and turned your lead actress Angelletta Seedling into a tree.”

“Oh bother,” said I. “I suppose though, that with a name like Seedling you have to expect that sort of thing. I guess I will have to find someone who can change her back.”

“I’m afraid that won’t be possible. You see the locals are in constant need of firewood, and well…”

“They didn’t.”

“I’m afraid so,” she said.

“I find myself in need of an actress then,” said I. “But I could not claim the names of Buxton and of Eaglethorpe, which is to say Eaglethorpe Buxton if I were to take advantage of your unfortunate predicament, which is to say your situation, for my own gain. Before you settle for the life of the stage we must see if we cannot reunite you with your lost love.”

“You would do that for me?”

“Of course,” I replied. “I am Eaglethorpe Buxton, friend to the friendless, protector to the defenseless, finder of lost children and reuniter of lost lovers. And I have a plan.”

Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Sorceress

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Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Sorceress tops 40,000 DownloadsChapter Twelve: Wherein, as you probably guessed, I don’t die of poison.

 

“Wake up, Master Buxton, wake up.” I felt a gentle slap upon my right cheek and then my left. “Here. Drink this.”

The mouth of a small bottle was pressed between my lips and cool sweet liquid flowed over my tongue and down my throat.

“Is that an antidote?” I asked.

“Antidote to what?”

I looked into the face above me. It was one of the most beautiful faces that I had ever seen. Very large brown eyes, like cow eyes, but in a good way, which is to say large and brown, and with long lashes. A cute little nose. Perfect lips.

“I’ve been poisoned.”

“How?”

“You are the most beautiful woman that I’ve ever seen. Kiss me quickly before I die.”

“What poisoned you?”

“Quickly, the kiss.”

“I don’t think I had better kiss you if you’ve been poisoned. I might get some of the poison on my tongue.”

“Don’t use your tongue. Just use your lips.”

“Well, that’s not really much of a kiss, is it?” quoth she.

“I like the way you think,” I said, sitting up. “If you didn’t know I was poisoned, what was that liquid you just gave me?”

“That was water from the well outside. It’s supposed to be naturally healthful.”

“I feel much better, but ‘naturally healthful, does not quite equal ‘antidote to poison’.”

“I ask again. With what were you poisoned?”

“That pie over there.”

The young woman got up from my side and walked across the room to where the remainder of the pie still sat. From my vantage point, I could see that, as beautiful as her face was, it was nothing compared to her body, especially that part of her body which she presented as she walked away across the room. In a word she was fetching, which is to say very attractive.

“Is this a disconsolateberry pie?” she asked.

“Yes. It was one of the finest buttocks I’ve ever had.”

“What?”

“I said it was one of the finest pies I’ve ever had.”

“Well you can’t poison somebody with disconsolateberries,” she said, walking back over to me and kneeling down. “They are a natural counteragent.”

“That’s very breast for me,” I said, getting up.

“What?”

“I said that’s very lucky for me.”

“They are full of natural antioxidants too,” said she.

“Is that good?”

She nodded. “Would you like that kiss now?”

Then it was my turn to nod, as I was suddenly but momentarily mute. She put her hand on my cheek and gave me one of the best kisses that I have had in my entire life. The only better ones that I can think of off the top of my head, which is to say within easy reach of my memory, are the kiss that I received from the Queen of Aerithraine, in whose company I once had the pleasure of spending a fortnight, and my cousin Tuki, who was the first girl I ever kissed and was also a first-rate kickball player.

“What are you thinking about?” the beautiful young woman asked.

“Kickball.”

“Well, stop it. I want you to think about me.”

“I don’t even know your name, or how you found me, or how you know me, or what you want, or how you were able to squeeze into that dress, or how much pie is left.”

“My name is Megara Fennec, and I’ve been looking for you for more than a week. I want to be an actress in your play.”

Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Sorceress

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Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Sorceress tops 40,000 DownloadsChapter Eleven: Wherein we discuss evil, the secret to good pie crust, and a writer of little importance.

 

As the sorceress said, disconsolateberries grow all over the southern coast of Lyrria. As you may know, disconsolate is a word meaning sad. It is a medium powerful word for sad, which is to say that it is more sad than crestfallen, but not so sad as woebegone. A disconsolate person is somewhat worse off than a person who is merely downcast, but not in nearly so bad a shape as a person who is inconsolable. You might suppose that the name of the berry comes from the feeling that one may feel after eating a few disconsolateberries, but you would be mightily mistaken. If anything, disconsolateberries lighten the mood of anyone who eats a few handfuls of them. It is my understanding that their name comes from a young man who lost his love. Wandering the hills along the coast, he was determined to die of starvation, but was unable to because he tasted one of the berries and thereafter kept eating them, despite his sadness and desire to die.

“You just made that up,” said the sorceress.

“Made what up?”

“That bit about the young man who lost his love.”

“Were you reading my thoughts?”

“No, you said that aloud.”

“I did?”

“I heard that the disconsolateberry got its name because being so tasty that one cannot stop eating them when out picking them, one can never gather enough to make a whole pie, leaving the maiden who is trying to do so, disconsolate.”

“I like my story better,” said I. “Although your story does have the benefit of having a pie in it.”

“I see you’ve finished your piece,” said Myolaena. “Would you like more poison pie?”

“Yes please.”

“I was being sarcastic.”

“So I can’t have any more?”

“Why would you keep eating the pie, once I told you it was poisoned?”

“For one thing, being evil, you are probably lying about the poison…”

“I’m not evil.”

“Evil people never think they are.”

“What about Shakespeare’s Richard III? He is determined to play the villain.”

“I’ve never heard of him.”

“Who? Richard III or Shakespeare?”

“Neither one of them.”

“One was a king in a faraway country. The other is the greatest writer of all time.”

“Which is which?” I wondered. “Never mind. I don’t care about a king in a faraway country, and clearly I am the greatest writer of all time.”

“That is a matter for some debate,” said she.

“Anyway, for another thing, once I’ve been poisoned and I’m going to die anyway, it seems a shame to deprive myself of one last piece of delicious pie.”

“You really think it’s delicious?”

“Yes. Did you use magic to create it or did you kill some poor cook and take her pie?”

“Neither. I made it myself.”

“You did? Really? How about the crust?”

“Of course I made the crust. You can’t have good pie without good crust. It’s one of the simplest recipes and yet it is so important.”

“That is so true,” I agreed.

“The trick is that the butter must be chilled.”

“Really?”

“Absolutely. And you must work it in enough to incorporate it, but not so much as to warm it up all the way.”

“It is so nice that you took the time to make it right,” said I. “So many people just go through the motions now-a-days.”

“That is true.”

“So tell me the truth. You didn’t really go to all that trouble of making such a fine pie, just to poison it.”

“No,” she said. “I went to all that trouble of making such a fine pie to poison you.”

Suddenly the room began to spin. I slid from my seat and flopped back, smacking my head on the dirt floor and stared up at the wooden ceiling. Myolaena moved around the table to peer down into my face.

“Goodbye moron,” she said.

Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Sorceress

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Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Sorceress tops 40,000 DownloadsChapter Ten: Wherein I taste a disconsolateberry pie and other things happen too, but the pie is the part that I remember best.

 

I waved goodbye to my friend, but did not dally, for though a man may well wait for a pie, it is a verifiable truth that a pie seldom waits for a man. So, leaving Hysteria where she was, I hopped over to the where the chubby little red-head with a checkered apron and a brown bonnet held her pie.

“Good day, lovely piesmith,” said I, bowing at the waist.

“Good day, Sir.”

“Might I inquire whether that pie is bound for an inn or perhaps the market?”

“Indeed it is neither, Sir.”

“Then might I purchase it?” I asked.

“Might I ask first your name, Sir? You seem to be a man of heroic bearing and noble manner.”

“You are very perceptive, my pretty piesmith, for indeed I am Eaglethorpe Buxton, famous storyteller and adventurer. Really of late I have been more of an adventurer than a story-teller, for though my tales of the great heroes and their adventures have been repeated far and wide across the land, I find myself having even more wondrous adventures than any of the characters in my stories. Still, the appellation, which is to say the name of Buxton and of Eaglethorpe, is best known for stories so I still introduce myself as first a storyteller and then an adventurer.”

“It is so very nice to…”

“Now that I think about it, I should introduce myself as Eaglethorpe Buxton, playwright, adventurer, and storyteller, as my play ‘The Ideal Magic’ is such a success that I am sure I will be doing much more of that.”

“I’m very pleased to…”

“On the other hand, it might seem strange to say playwright, adventurer, and storyteller, seeing as how storytelling and play writing are so closely related. Perhaps one ought not to separate them from one another by placing them on either side of adventuring. And it is worth noting that I have been doing quite a bit of adventuring since writing the play.”

“Do you want pie or not?” she asked, one hand on her hip and the other holding up the delectable object in question.

“Oh yes. Pie please.”

“Come inside,” she said, leading me into a simple but clean little cottage, where I sat down at the only chair at the old but serviceable table.

She very fetchingly began to cut a generous piece of the pie. Though it smelled wonderful, I couldn’t quite place the combination of spices.

“What kind of pie is it?” I wondered.

“Disconsolateberry pie,” said she.

Disconsolateberries seem to be common in this area. I just tasted some disconsolateberry syrup and the other night I had my first bowl of disconsolateberry wine. Though I have yet to taste disconsolateberry chutney, I hear it is very good indeed.”

“They are indeed common all over southern Lyrria,” she said, setting the slice in front of me. “I had considered making it toad pie.”

I took a large bite. “What?” I asked with my mouth full.

“I baked that pie especially for you, Eagletwirp Buckethead.” Though she still had the appearance of the chubby little red-head with a checkered apron and a brown bonnet, now her eyes were flashing green.

“You are the sorceress,” I said, taking another bite.

She picked up a wooden spoon and waving it before her, she changed into her normal slender, blond, attractive self. The wooden spoon took on the appearance of her flashing wand. I was surprised, though not so surprised as to stop eating.

“Are you familiar with alliteration, Eagletwit Bumpkin?” she asked.

“It’s Eagletwirp… I mean Eaglethorpe… Of course I’m familiar with alliteration. I’m a talented writer.”

“How’s this then? Poisoned pie punishes poetic pinhead.”

“I don’t follow,” I said, taking another bite.

“When I said that I made that pie especially for you,” said she, “I meant to imply that I had poisoned the pie. And then when I added the bit about alliteration, you see, I actually told you that I poisoned the pie.”

“Did you in fact poison it?” I asked, taking another bite.

“Yes.”

“What a waste of a perfectly fine pie.”

“And you’re still eating it!”

“I can’t help it. It’s yummy.”

Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Sorceress

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Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Sorceress tops 40,000 DownloadsChapter Nine: Wherein we stop at the well at Potter Town.

 

Taking into account that a group of sword-wielding would-be assassins, fifteen strong, had found and the gone after Ellwood Cyrene, attempting to kill him, notwithstanding my valiant efforts on his behalf, we decided that it was probably a good idea if we found some other location for ourselves. To wit, which is to say therefore, we left. Ellwood had brought my horse Hysteria and had her stabled nearby along with his own, so we quickly packed and set off for Potter Town, which was an area of simple houses and low class eating establishments just outside the northern city gate. Ellwood offered that it was a good idea to get out of Antriador entirely, but I was loath to leave as I was still expecting to make a sizable fortune from my play. Ten percent of gross receipts are nothing to sneeze at. We stopped at the local well to discuss the matter.

A word about the well in Potter Town. This particular well was a relic of some earlier civilization who had inhabited the promontory where now sits Antriador. It was made of stone, which is to say the well was made of stone and not the previous civilization, though a good many of the monuments from that civilization are indeed made of stone. This well had carved all around the outside, fanciful images of people now long forgotten. Its center was formed of a round silo some eight or nine feet tall, and above this was constructed a wind-mill to take advantage of the plentiful breezes that made their way up the slope from the sea. The windmill turned a long shaft with a screw which pumped up the water from some unseen underground aquifer. The water poured out of about twenty spouts cut into the stone silo and flowed into a pool thirty feet around. This three foot deep pool was enclosed by close-cut stone walls, which too were carved into the images of people, and it was this pool which the local people dipped their buckets into for their daily water. This alone would have made it an interesting landmark, but there was more. Shooting off from the pool in three directions, like three spokes of a wheel, were stone horse troughs. Water flowed into these troughs when there was an excess in the pool and they were six inches lower than the pool itself, so there was no backflow. From each of these horse troughs, a series of gutters spread out like the branches of a tree, carrying the small amount of overflow away. What need of the builders of this system was fulfilled by these gutters, one may only guess, but the locals today use them to bring water to their gardens.

As Hysteria and Ellwood’s horse drank from the troughs, he and I talked over our options.

“I know you don’t want to leave for any length of time,” said Ellwood, “but you should at least leave for a few days.”

“I don’t see how leaving for a few days will help pie.”

“What?”

“Pie. I smell pie.”

“Oh no,” said he.

“Oh yes,” I replied.

I scanned the little square until I could see that which I could smell, which is to say a pie. A chubby little red-head with a checkered apron and a brown bonnet stood in an open doorway holding a pie.

“Eaglethorpe.”

“Hmm?”

“Eaglethorpe!”

“What?”

“As I have no desire to interfere with the love of your life…”

“I’ve never even seen her before,” said I.

“I meant the pie,” Ellwood continued. “As I have no desire to interfere, I’ll be leaving you now.”

“Where are you going?”

“I have business in Auksavl, but I’ll be back to Antriador in five days.”

“That will be the twelfth night.”

“Twelfth night of what?”

“It will be the twelfth night of this business with the sorceress.”

“Is that significant?”

“Not really.”

“You are so odd, Eaglethorpe.”

Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Elven Princess – Chapter 8

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I put away my knife and then climbed back into the saddle. The orphan had regained his feet and I reached down, took his hand, and lifted him back into his spot behind me. He reached around my waist and held on tight.

“Thank you,” he said.

“All is well,” said I. “A few goblins are no match for a trained warrior.”

“Then how did they manage to prevent Prince Jared from becoming the King of Aerithraine? Did they catch him asleep and murder him?”

“One might have supposed that, under ordinary circumstances.” I continued my story. “These times were not ordinary. Goblins are not only small and stupid and smelly; they are disorganized. But every once and so often, there comes along a goblin who is big enough and just smart enough to unite the goblin tribes and lead them on the warpath against the civilized lands of humans.”

“I had always heard that none of the human lands were truly civilized,” said he.

“What an odd and unorphanish thing to say.”

“Um… oh. I’m just discombobulated from the incident with the goblins.”

“Even so,” I agreed. “Well, at the time my story takes place, there was one such goblin king, who came to power by killing and eating his many rivals. And as happens when the goblins become unified in such a way, they experienced a population explosion. The mountains of the Goblineld were teaming with the little blighters. When the mountains could no longer contain them, they swept out across the southern third of the Kingdom of Aerithraine, destroying everything in their path.”

“Frightening,” said the orphan.

“Quite frightening.”

“Still…”

“Still what?”

“Humans are so large and goblins are so small. You vanquished three pairs of goblins, and did it quite handily too.”

“Thank you.”

“And you don’t seem particularly skilled or particularly bright.”

“What?”

“I just wonder that an entire human kingdom could not put together an army to destroy even a large horde of goblins,” said the orphan. “I would imagine that even a well-trained militia could do the job. I once heard the story of the Calille Lowain who held off five thousand goblins at Greer Drift.”

“I don’t know that story,” said I.

“Perhaps I will tell it to you sometime,” said he. “But what about it? Couldn’t the humans defeat the goblins?”

“There were tens of thousands of them. Hundreds of thousands. Thousands of thousands. But you are right. In other times, such hordes were sent packing, back to their mines and tunnels in the Goblineld. This time though, the goblins had a hidden ally. Far to the east, the Witch King of Thulla-Zor, who is always looking for ways to cause destruction and chaos, saw this as an opportunity. He supplied the goblin king with magic and weapons, and sent trolls and ogres to strengthen his ranks. None of these facts were known to King Justin when he rode forth with the Dragon Knights to meet them.

“King Justin, his three younger sons, and all of the Dragon Knights were slaughtered—to a man. Prince Jared, who had been in the north fighting sea raiders, hurried his forces south, only to meet a similar fate. The goblins were waiting for him. The entire southern third of the kingdom fell— and remained in the goblins’ filthy little hands for almost twenty years. And the Goblin King feasted on the spoils of war, sitting on his throne far below the surface of the mountains, drinking his disgusting goblin wine from a cup made from the skull of King Justin.”

“How horrible,” murmured the orphan.

“Yes indeed,” I continued. “And I think the worse part of the story is what happened to Queen Beatrix.”

“What happened to her?”

“She died. She died of a broken heart. And her unborn child almost died with her.

“Unborn child? It didn’t die?”

“No, the court physician cut the child from the Queen’s belly. It was a tiny baby girl.”

“Queen Elleena!” snapped the orphan.

“She should have been,” said I.

“What do you mean?”

“She should have been Queen the moment she was birthed, but that wasn’t to be. There were too many competing interests at court. Too many nobles wanted the throne for themselves. And in the chaos that followed the fall of the south lands, they might have done it, had it not been for the church. Little Princess Elleena Postuma was whisked off to the temple in Fall City, where she stayed for the next fourteen years, and Pope Bartholomew became the regent of the kingdom.”

“Did they keep Elleena prisoner in the temple?” wondered the orphan.

“Of course they didn’t,” said I. “Though I will wager she sometimes felt that she was in a prison. She could go anywhere she wanted to as long as she stayed in Fall City and under constant protective guard. In the meantime she was given all the training and education that was necessary for one who would one day rule.”

“It is like prison,” said the orphan.

“Neither you nor I will ever really know the truth of that.”

At that moment, I spied a light in the distance. The story, or at least this chapter of the story over, conversation ceased. I urged Hysteria forward, which is to say I encouraged her onward toward the distant light, which turned out to be a small cabin on the side of the road. Yellow light spilled from its tiny windows onto the snow.

Not having had the best of luck so far that night with regard to welcomes, which is to say that I had been attacked three times already that night, two times of which I have already described for you here, I dismounted and crept around to the side of the cabin to the window and peered inside. Lying on the floor in a pool of blood was a man in common work clothes. The single room of the little cabin had been ransacked. And dancing around, or sitting and singing, or drinking were more of the little, round-headed blighters, which is to say goblins.