“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.”

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.”

Though the room was full, it was not difficult to spot Ellwood Cyrene, who had a table to himself right in the center. I had just reached his table, when someone called out “where is Ellwood Cyrene? I want to buy him a drink!” Naturally, I called back “I am right here!” It was then that I spied eight warriors moving through the crowd toward our table. I drew my sword as the first approached. His attention was completely on Ellwood Cyrene and not on me, and he continued to not notice me as I smacked him across the face with the flat of my blade. He went down with blood spewing from his nose.

Two of the other warriors were quickly upon me. Meanwhile, pandemonium broke out in the bar. People ducked under tables and headed for the exits. Both my new opponents swung their swords at me. In an incredible feat of dexterity and agility, I dodged both, while at the same time slicing into the middle of the first and kicking the second. Then whipping around, I ran through the one that I had kicked, all the while tossing a pair of throwing stars from my sleeve, hitting two more across the room. The first warrior, which is to say the one that I had hit in the nose, lunged for me. I grabbed him by his leather jerkin and swung him around to use as a shield as two daggers flew at me from two of his friends. I tossed his body aside as the remaining three warriors all attacked at once, and in what could only be described as the greatest demonstration of swordsmanship that the world has ever seen, I dispatched the three of them without so much as a cut on my finger.

I immediately sat down and began to write some notes, while Ellwood Cyrene climbed out from beneath the table where he had been hiding.

“What are you doing?” said he.

“I’m taking some notes for when I write the story of how Eaglethorpe Buxton defeated ten swordsmen while Ellwood Cyrene hid beneath the table.”

“I counted only six swordsmen.”

“Oh, there were ten.”

“Are you sure?”

“Oh yes. Don’t worry. This is going to be a very accurate account.”

“It will be accurate, will it?”

“Oh yes.”

“Then you are going to explain how someone called out “where is Ellwood Cyrene? I want to buy him a drink!” and you called back “I am right here!” causing the warriors to mistake you for me?
Are you then going to describe how the Eaglethorpe Buxton fighting the swordsmen was actually Ellwood Cyrene and the Ellwood Cyrene hiding under the table was actually Eaglethorpe Buxton?”

“I don’t really think that’s important to the story,” I explained. “What is important is that one of us fought twelve warriors and defeated them single-handed, not which of us did it.”