Category Archives: Excerpt

The Voyage of the Minotaur – Chapter 5 Excerpt

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“That’s very good. That’s very good indeed.  Because you see, my little Senta, you are going to come and live with me. And if you are very good and do everything that I tell you, I am going to teach you things.  Ponderous things.”

“I don’t know what that means,” said Senta.

“I know you don’t. My name is Zurfina the Magnificent.”

Zurfina stood up and took Senta by the hand and led her down the sidewalk, away from the palace where the woman who had once worn the white pinstriped dress lived. By the time she had taken her fourth step, Senta no longer wondered at the strange turn of events that had overtaken her.  By the time she had taken her tenth step, she no longer thought of pulling her hand from the grip of the blond sorceress and running away.  By the time she had taken her sixteenth step, it seemed to Senta as if she was exactly where she was supposed to be, walking down the street at the side of her mistress.

“Come along, Pet.”

Zurfina led Senta on a long walk through the city, finally turning south on Prince Tybalt Boulevard and passing Hexagon Park.  Throughout their trek, none of the many people on the street seemed to notice the strangely dressed woman leading a small child along by the hand.  No one turned a head at all.  Just past the park, they turned west on Prince Clitus Avenue and came to a small storefront.  There was a sign above the door, but Senta couldn’t read it.  It seemed to be written in a strange language. Zurfina opened the door and led her inside.

The shop contained counters and shelves filled with goods, though Senta couldn’t make out what they were.  Several shopkeepers scurried about to help the half dozen customers making purchases. But something was very strange. The customers, the shopkeepers, the counters, and the shelves were all translucent, as if they were made of the same stuff as rainbows, gathered together and transformed into the semblance of people and things one would find in a city shop.

“What do you see?” asked Zurfina.

“I see ghosts.”

“They aren’t ghosts.  They’re illusions.  To everyone else, they seem real enough.  To the people on the street, this shop is just one more emporium of useless mundania. No one ever questions it, and no one ever comes in.”

Zurfina, still holding Senta by the hand, walked through the shop and through a doorway in the back, to a staircase leading upwards.  At the top of the stairs were a landing and a door, but the sorceress continued up a second flight of stairs to the third floor, where the stairs ended in a blank wall.  The sorceress waved her hand and a door appeared.  She opened the door and led the girl in to a large and dark room, filled with all manner of strange things.  More of the translucent people were moving about.  Here they were packing away items in large black steamer trunks and stacking trunks into great piles.  Unlike downstairs in the shop however, the steamer trunks and the items being placed within them were not, like the people, partially transparent. The items being packed and moved here were real, opaque, and completely solid.

The first thing that caught Senta’s eye in the room was the dragon. It was almost an exact replica of the dragon that sat in front of Café Carlo—about three feet long with a wingspan of about four feet, sitting on a stone plinth.  Instead of a burnished brass color though, this dragon looked as though it were cast from steel.  The effect was that this dragon looked far less lifelike than the brass one at the café. It looked far less lifelike until it moved.  First it blinked its eyes, then it yawned, then it folded its wings and curled its neck up, exposing the underside of its chin.  Zurfina rubbed the bottom of its long neck with her fingers, but when she pulled her hand away, it snapped at her with a mouth full of needle sharp teeth.

The Voyage of the Minotaur – Chapter 4 Excerpt

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Iolanthe Dechantagne walked slowly down the wide, sweeping staircase that led into the vast foyer of her home.  She had expected to make a rather grand entrance, but was disappointed to find no visitor awaiting her at the bottom of the stairs.  The room was peopled only by several members of the household staff: the doorman, one of the maids, and a young man on a ladder cleaning the wall behind one of the gas lamps.  Iolanthe turned slowly to look at Yuah, who stood just behind and to her right.  The dressing maid, in a gray and white dress that made her look rather more like a governess than a maid, shrank back slightly. She knew how disappointed Iolanthe was, especially when she had purchased the new evening gown for just this occasion.   It was white, and the skirt featured seven layers, one upon the other, each trimmed with red and black, the hem creating a circle more than five feet wide as it swept the floor.  The bodice featured matching red and black trim.  It was of course so thin at the waist that no one could have worn it without a patented Prudence Plus fairy bust form corset and it featured, as was the style, a prominent bustle in back.  It was strapless, leaving an unobstructed view of Iolanthe’s long, thin neck, her smooth shoulders and the top several inches of her chest.  Instead of a hat, she wore an arrangement of red and white carnations atop her carefully curled hairdo, which matched the rest of her outfit perfectly.

“She was here, Miss,” said Yuah.

It had been two days since her brother had learned from a police inspector that a powerful sorceress was available for hire.  She had arranged a meeting, carefully setting the precise date to give herself plenty of time to prepare.  When one met a powerful magic user, especially when one intended to hire a powerful magic user, one had to make a good impression.  If Iolanthe was going to hire this woman, if this woman really possessed the gifts that she and her brothers would need in their great enterprise, she intended to show the woman, right from the beginning, who was boss.

Yuah scrambled down the steps of the sweeping staircase and whispered to the doorman. The doorman whispered back.  Then Yuah ran back up the stairs to Iolanthe’s side.

“Master Augie just took her to the library.”

“Bloody hell, Augie, you idiot,” said Iolanthe.

She stomped her way down the remaining steps of the staircase and through the foyer, stopping just outside the door to the library. Hyperventilating for a moment, she stepped through the door with a stately and unhastened grace.   Yuah followed her, several steps behind.  The library was a relatively small room, about thirty by thirty feet, but with a ceiling two stories high.  All four walls were completely covered in bookcases to the ceiling.  Two railed ladders allowed access to the books at the very top.  The room made quite an impression—when full of books. Unfortunately, the books had been packed and loaded onto the H.M.S. Minotaur.  The resulting room, empty except for the three overstuffed chairs, two small tables, two oil lamps, and a single volume—Baumgarten’s Brech Stories—was noticeably unimpressive.  Along the far wall, Augie leaned against one of the ladders with practiced nonchalance.  In the center of the room stood the woman—the sorceress.

The Voyage of the Minotaur – Chapter 3 Excerpt

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Zeah Korlann watched as Miss Dechantagne spoke to the policeman.  If he had come home covered in blood, and then called the policeman to tell him that he had just shot two men in an alley, he would be sitting in the deepest darkest cell in Ravendeep by now.  Miss Dechantagne on the other hand, took a careful sip of her tea, keeping her pinky straight, from a teacup that matched her dressing gown, as she told the blue-clad officer of her “adventure.”  She then told him about how she had driven herself home and taken a long hot bath, after ordering her steam carriage cleaned and her clothing disposed of.   Maybe the key was not being nervous.  Policemen were used to dealing with guilty, twitchy, little people.  Miss Dechantagne never felt guilty about anything, she never twitched, and she was most definitely not one of the little people. Then again, the policeman probably wasn’t listening to a word she said.  She sat there with her luxurious auburn hair hanging loosely about her shoulders, her skin the very picture of porcelain perfection, her lips painted luscious red, and those unusual aquamarine eyes.  And she was wearing what? Certainly not a bustle or a corset, just yard after yard of violet and silver silk dressing gown, from her neck to the floor.  Maybe the key was that, as far as the policemen knew, there were no underclothes at all under that dressing gown.

“Normally in these situations,” said the policeman, “we would bring the journeyman wizard from Mernham Yard to cast a truth spell, but I really don’t see the need. Everything seems to be straight-forward enough.”

“Thank you officer,” said Miss Dechantagne.  “You have been most considerate.”

“My pleasure, Miss.”

“Would you please leave your name and address with my man before you leave?  I would like to send you a thank-you gift for your kindness in this trying time.”

“That won’t be necessary, Miss,” said the policeman, clicking his heels and bowing before he left, but he gave his name and address to Zeah anyway, revealing the true key to living an existence free from police trouble.  The officer would receive a gift basket filled with fresh fruit, expensive jams and jellies, canned kippers, loaves of rosemary and garlic bread, some very nice cheese, a sausage, and four or five hundred one mark banknotes.

When the head butler had closed the front door behind the policeman, he turned on a heel and walked back into the parlor.  Miss Dechantagne already seemed to have forgotten that she had been dealing with police business.  She continued to sip her tea, but now she did so while reading the latest issue of Brysin’s Weekly Ladies’ Journal.  Yuah entered carrying a small plate with three carefully arranged peppermint candies upon it.  She gave Zeah a quick wink.  It was just like the girl to get cheeky on her birthday.

“Are you ready to go about your duties for the day, Zeah?” asked Miss Dechantagne.

“Yes, Miss.”

“A little birdie has reminded me that it is your daughter’s birthday,” said Miss Dechantagne, biting into one of the peppermints candies.  “I do hope you have plans to celebrate it.”

“The staff will be presenting her with a cake at dinner,” said Zeah.

“Excellent,” said Miss Dechantagne, then turning to Yuah.  “Take the rest of the evening off.  I shan’t need you.”

“Very good, Miss,” said Yuah.

“Birthdays are important,” said Miss Dechantagne.  “They come only once every three hundred seventy-five days.”

“Yes, Miss,” said Yuah, and exited the room.

“Do you have a gift for her?” the lady asked the head butler.

“I’m picking up a scarf for her today.”

“Excellent. Pick up something appropriate from my brothers and me.  Charge it to my account.”

“Yes, Miss.”

“I’m sorry to ask you to make an additional stop today, Zeah.  I had planned on stopping by the docks this afternoon to consult with Captain Gurrman on how much space still remains in the cargo hold and what other equipment that we might need.  Unfortunately, my ‘adventure’ pushed those plans completely out of my mind.  I need you, after you have completed your other duties, to stop at the docks and complete this mission in my stead.  I trust this will not make you late for your daughter’s birthday party.”

“I’m sure it will be fine, Miss,” he said.  He well knew that taking a side trip to the docks, in addition to everything else he had to do, would make him miss any birthday celebrations entirely.  What he couldn’t figure out was whether Miss Dechantagne didn’t understand the constraints of time on his schedule, or did understand and simply didn’t care.

Zeah left the house on foot.  Anyone else might have called the abode a mansion, or a manse, or possibly even a palace, but Miss Dechantagne called it a house, and so it was a house.  He walked with the brisk pace of a much younger man.  He could have taken the steam carriage if he had wanted.  Miss Dechantagne would have allowed it without a second thought.  He had her complete confidence, as his family had held the complete confidence of her family for five generations.  But he had never learned to drive, and he was too old to learn now.  It didn’t matter.  With the breadth of the horse-drawn trolley system in the great city, under normal conditions, he didn’t have to have to walk very far. Going to the docks in the evening would complicate things of course.  He had carefully planned out his journey in his mind, to minimize his travel time and allow him the efficiency that always gave him comfort.  He would follow that plan to the exact step.  The first stop had to be the bank, and so he traveled due west.

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 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 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 6

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Hysteria clomped along slowly down the snow-covered road for some time. The orphan was so quiet that for a while I thought he must have fallen asleep. But at last he stirred and shifted a bit in his seat, which is to say upon Hysteria’s flank. I myself had been quiet as I remembered the events of that horrible night.

“What are you thinking about?” asked the orphan.

“I’m thinking about that horrible night,” I replied.

“Did you never find your family?”

“No, though I searched for weeks. My mother was to make me a blueberry pie that night, and I not only have never seen my mother since, I did not get to eat that pie either.”

“I’m sorry I brought up such a painful memory,” he said, and then paused. “Do you suppose that the purple drops on the floor could have been from your blueberry pie?”

“Fiends!” said I. “To rob a man of his mother and his pie in the same night!”

“Perhaps it were best that we think on something else,” said he.

“Perhaps,” I agreed.

“If you are really such a great storyteller…”

“The greatest in the world.”

“And if the story of the Queen of Aerithraine is a great story…”

“Wonderful. Exciting. True. Profound.”

“Well, maybe you could tell me the story.”

“I get half a crown for that story in Illustria,” said I.

“I have a shiny penny,” said he.

“The story begins in Aerithraine, far to the west, along the coast of the great ocean sea. From storied Illustria, its capital, to Cor Cottage just outside Dewberry Hills in River County, Aerithraine has been a great and powerful country for some seven hundred years more or less. By more or less, I mean that it has been more or less seven hundred years that Aerithraine has been a country and that it has been more or less great and more or less powerful during those seven hundred years. But about fifty years ago, it was less. That was when the old king died, and as is the way of kings, a new one was crowned. He was King Julian the Rectifier.

“He was called Julian the Rectifier because he was chiefly interested in rectifying. He spent most of his time rectifying. He rectified all over the place. And he was good at it. He rectified like nobody else.”

“It means setting things to right,” said the orphan.

“Of course it does and that is just what he did. Under his reign, the kingdom was prosperous and wealthy. And, as he wasn’t so interested in warring as in rectifying, there was peace throughout the land. King Julian had only one son, and he passed to that son the strongest and wealthiest kingdom in all of Duaron, and if it had only remained so, Elleena would have become nothing more than a minor princess perhaps.”

“Which would not have made a half-crown story,” pointed out the orphan.

“That is so.”

“Carry on then.”

“King Justin was the son of Julian. I hear tell that he was once called Justin the Good and Justin the Wise, though now when storytellers refer to him, they usually call him Justin the Weak or Justin the Unready.”

“What do you call him?”

“I just call him King Justin,” said I. “Though I truly believe he may deserve the title Justin the Brave, it is not what the listeners want to hear.”

“Go on.”

“King Justin married a princess from the faraway land of Goth. The Arch-Dukes of Goth, which is to say the rulers of that land, have for generations, maintained power through a tightly woven web of treaties with its mighty neighbors. Their chief barter in this endeavor is the marriage of the many female members of the family. I hear the current Arch-Duke has but four daughters at least as of yet, but his father who was Arch-Duke before him had seventeen, and his father, which is to say the grandfather of the current Arch-Duke had nineteen.”

“That hurts just thinking about it.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Go on.”

“It must have been quite a coup of diplomacy for the Arch-Duke of Goth to make a match with the King of Aerithraine, but he did, marrying to the King his daughter Beatrix. And though I hear that the women of that country wear too much make-up, she was never the less accounted a great beauty. She had pale white skin, raven hair, smoldering eyes, and a gold ring in her nose, as is the fashion in the east.

“King Justin and Queen Beatrix had four strong sons, the eldest of whom was Prince Jared. He was particularly beloved of the people. I saw him once when I was a child of four or five, sitting on my poor old father’s shoulders as the Dragon Knights passed on their tall white steeds. That is to say, I was seated on my father’s shoulders and the Prince was not. Neither were the Dragon Knights nor their steeds. I don’t remember why the Prince and the knights were in River County. It was too long ago. He would have grown to be King upon his father’s death if it was not for…”

“Goblins!”

“Yes, that’s right. You didn’t say you had heard the story before, though I’ll warrant it wasn’t told as well…”

“No!” screamed the orphan. “Goblins! Right there!”

He pointed straight ahead, and sure enough, stepping out of the shadows and into the moonlight were a half dozen creepy little man-things. They were no more than three feet tall, their over-sized round heads, glowing eyes, and gaping maws giving away their identity. As they came closer those mouths widened into grins filled with jagged little teeth, looking far too much like the teeth on the blade of a cross-cut saw for my taste. They brandished what weapons they had, mostly things they had picked up from the ground—a stick, a length of cord with a knot in it. But a couple of them carried old, discarded straight razors.

Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Elven Princess – Chapter 5

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“You said that you do not live far from here,” I mentioned, once we had finished the pies. One might say the purloined pies, but I would not. I would instead insist that they rightly belonged to us in recompense for our unjust confinement.

“That is correct,” said he.

“The pies rightfully belong to us?”

“No. I live not far from here. Are you carrying on some other conversation in your head about the pies?”

“Of course not,” I replied. “You are an orphan.”

“I am well aware of that fact. There is no need to keep rubbing it in my face.”

“What I mean is you don’t have a proper home anymore now that you are an orphan.”

“Even an orphan may have extended family,” he explained. “Perhaps I live with them.”

“Do you?”

“One might suppose that I do.”

“One might suppose a great many things,” said I. “But would it not be better to base our future activities less on supposition than on actual remembrances?”

“One might suppose we should,” said he.

“You have an odd way of talking,” I commented. “You don’t quite sound orphanish at all.”

“Really? How many orphans have you known?”

“Quite a few actually,” I revealed. “The Queen of Aerithraine…”

“With whom you once had the pleasure of spending a fortnight.”

“Indeed it is so. The Queen of Aerithraine, with whom I once had… well, she has a soft spot for orphans. Some years back she opened an orphanage called Elleena’s House.”

“Is that because her name is Elleena?”

“Why would her name cause her to have a soft spot for orphans?” I wondered. “No, I believe it is because she was an orphan herself.”

“No. Is it called Elleena’s House because her name is Elleena? And how could a queen be an orphan? Doesn’t she have to be a princess? Or did the King find her in an orphanage and come to sweep her off her feet? That would be a lovely story.”

“Well, there is no king,” said I.

“Gah!” he exclaimed. “You are the worst storyteller in the world. You are messing everything up and making me confused.”

“Forsooth! I am the best storyteller in the world. I do not expect you to know so, as you are an unfortunate orphan without any knowledge of the world.” I looked over my shoulder at his pinched little face. “In truth I was not trying to tell you the story of the Queen of Aerithraine. If I had, you would be filled with wonder and excitement. I have made half my fortune from that story, and a better story, a truer story, a more profound story; you are not likely to hear in all the days of your life. But I was not trying to tell that story. I was trying to explain that the Queen of Aerithraine has a soft spot for orphans. In fact, I suppose that I do so myself, as I am almost an orphan.”

“You are almost an orphan?”

“Indeed.”

“How can you be almost an orphan?”

“Why couldn’t I be?” I demanded. “If anyone can be, I could be.”

“What I mean is…” He took a deep breath. “How can one be almost an orphan?”

“Oh. Well, it’s only that my parents aren’t dead.”

“I see,” said he.

“But they were kidnapped,” I confided.

“Are you sure they didn’t just run away?” he asked.

“It was a stormy night and I had been away from my parents’ home, which is to say my former home, which is to say Cor Cottage just outside Dewberry Hills, and I was returning for a visit. As I approached I heard a disturbance, though at first I attributed it to the sounds of the storm. Then I looked up at the cottage window to see figures silhouetted on the shade, locked in a grim struggle.”

“What did you do?”

“Why, I rushed forward to aid my poor old mother, who as I recall smells of warm pie, and my poor old father, and my sister Celia, and my aunt Oregana, and my cousin Gervil, and my other cousin Tuki, who is a girl cousin, which is to say a cousin who is a girl, which makes sense, because whoever heard of a boy named Tuki.”

“They were all struggling by the window?”

“They may all have been struggling by the window, or some of them may have been, or perhaps only one of them was struggling by the window. I don’t know, because when I burst in through the front door, they were all gone. The back door was open wide and the rain was splashing in.”

“What happened to them?”

“I know not.”

“Were there any clues?”

“Indeed there were.”

“What were they?”

“The table had been set for nine, which was two places too many.”

“Three places!” said the orphan triumphantly. “You thought I wasn’t paying attention. There was your father, mother, sister, aunt, and two cousins. That makes six.”

“They would also have set a place for Geneva.”

“Of course they would have. Who is she?”

“She’s my other cousin, which is to say Gervil’s sister, only she’s imaginary, but she wasn’t always imaginary, which is to say she died, but Gervil still sees her, so Aunt Oregana always sets a place for her.”

“What other clues?”

I listed them off. “There was a knife stuck in Gervil’s bed. Floorboards had been loosened in several rooms. There were drops of purple liquid leading out the back door. And someone had hung bunches of onions from the rafters of the dining room. Most mysterious of all was the fact that the tracks led away from the house only fifty feet and then disappeared entirely.”

The orphan gripped me around the waist and squeezed. “How terrible,” he said, in a tiny voice.

His Robot Girlfriend – Chapter 9 Part 2

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“Is there something the matter?” asked Miss Treewise.

“Just a headache.”

The headache didn’t go away and by the time lunch came at 11:30 Mike thought his head was going to split open.  He followed the other faculty members out the school’s front door, squinting in the bright sunlight.

“We’re going to Hot Dog Paradise,” said Mr. Franklin, slapping him on the right shoulder.  “Do you want to come along?”

“Maybe…”  Before Mike could get anything more out of his mouth, his own car pulled to a stop in front of him.  Patience rolled down the passenger-side window.

“I have your lunch ready at home,” said Patience, poking her head out.  Mike climbed in, not paying any attention to those watching him from the school parking lot.

Patience drove around the block and pulled into their driveway.  Opening the garage door with the remote, she drove right inside and parked in the shady interior next to the Tesla.  Mike climbed out of the car and stepped through the door into the family room.

“What’s the matter Mike?”  Patience asked.

“I think I’m having an aneurism.”

“Really?”

“No.  But I’ve got a bitch of a headache.”

“Sit down here,” she said, pushing him into his recliner.  “I’ll make you feel better.”

In less than a minute she had unfastened Mike’s pants, completely disrobed herself, and straddled his lap.  And though she did work valiantly to make him feel better, and if he were truly honest about it he would have to admit that he did feel better, he still had that bitch of a headache.  It hadn’t diminished at all.  Mike didn’t tell Patience this.  He just thanked her with a kiss, sat down and ate the lentil soup and strange little salad (with cous cous, bell peppers, dried fruit, and mint leaves) that she had made for him.  Then he had Patience stay home and drove himself back to school.  He arrived back just as his fellow teachers did.

“So, who was that,” asked Miss Treewise.

“That was my girlfriend.”

“Nice,” said Mr. Franklin.  “Did you tell her you were rich?”

“She’s a Daffodil,” said Miss Treewise.

“Really?  She didn’t look like a robot.  You didn’t have any of that trouble we heard about over the summer?”

“Nothing to speak of,” replied Mike, making his way past them and into the school.

Holding on to the side of his head, as if to keep his brains from spilling out his ears, he unlocked his classroom door, opened it, and then relocked it and sat down at his desk.  The rest of the afternoon was devoted, for most teachers, to decorating their classrooms and getting their materials together.  Mike had been in the same classroom for ten years now and had very few changes to make in any case, and he certainly didn’t feel like hanging up posters.

He sat with his head in his hands for about an hour.  Nobody bothered him, but his headache didn’t improve.  Finally he got up and sorted through some of the files he would be using for the first unit he was teaching—Latin America.  He walked copies to the reprographics department to have them scanned for the students’ texTees, rather than sending them directly.  After he had filled out the necessary requisition forms, he looked up at the clock on the wall.  It was nearly a quarter past two.  He was legally required to stay until 2:46 PM, but screw it.  It wasn’t like they were going to fire him two days before the start of school.  He headed out the front door, climbed into the car and drove home.

Patience wasn’t waiting at the door when he came in.  Of course he was earlier than expected.  Climbing the stairs, Mike made his way through his bedroom and into the bathroom, where his opened the medicine cabinet and retrieved the bottle of aspirin there.  As he tossed five or six into his mouth and started chewing, he glanced out the window into the back yard.  Patience was there, wearing her large hat, digging some kind of pit or trench.

Mike sighed and walked back through the bedroom, down the short hall and into his study.  As he stepped through the door, it suddenly hit him.  For a moment he thought he really was having a stroke.  He was seeing things that weren’t there.  Where his desk now sat was a baby crib and across the room where Patience had her own little desk, was a baby changing table. The walls were covered with 8×10 and 11×14 pictures of a happy little blond girl with chubby little pink cheeks and huge eyes.

“Agnes,” Mike whispered, feeling the blood drain from his face.  “Aggie.”

He stepped quickly across the hall to Harriet’s room, but it wasn’t Harriet’s room anymore.  It was the guest bedroom.  Mike moved through it in two steps and threw open the closet, but it was completely empty. He went back to the study and opened the closet door.  The interior had been covered with shelves, now filled with the things that Patience had been buying and selling on eBay—Depression glass dishes, Hummel figurines, Disney memorabilia.  On the floor in the back of the closet were six brown storage boxes.   Mike pulled the first one out and opened it.  It was filled with brochures from family trips, old maps, movie ticket stubs, and pressed flowers.  He pushed it aside and opened the second box.  This box was full of framed pictures.

Lifting the topmost picture frame and examining it, Mike looked into his own eyes. No, not his own eyes; the eyes of a Mike Smith that existed fifteen years ago.  This Mike Smith was looking directly into the camera and smiling the type of smile that said he had everything he ever wanted.  To his right was his wife Tiffany, with her happy grey eyes and that twisted smile that was just a bit too playful to be called a smirk. His almost grown daughter Harriet, with a her hair pulled back and thick glasses hanging from chains like an old time librarian, held onto his left arm, and his teenage son Lucas in his boy scout uniform, stood to his far right.  And in Mike’s arms was a perfect little baby, with chubby cheeks and a smile like Christmas, and just a bit of that soon-to-be awesome blond hair. Aggie.

“Aggie.  How could I forget you?”

He saw it all again, only this time it was a memory and not a dream.  Tiffany was lying on the hospital bed, her body broken and bloody.  Her mangled arm and crushed hips were far more alarming than the tiny bump on her head that had actually killed her.  And just beyond her, on another hospital bed, lay little Aggie.  She was several years older than she appeared in the framed picture—a precious four year-old that would grow no older.

“Traumatic amnesia,” said Patience’s voice from the door.  “The memory of her death was so painful that you took down all the pictures of her and boxed them away.  Then your mind did the same thing to your memories.”

“I remember everything now,” said Mike.  And he did.  He couldn’t stop the flood of memories suddenly rushing around his insides.

“We didn’t even really want another kid.  Harriet and Lucas were almost grown up.  But… nobody in the world knows this but me.  Tiffany had this kink about getting pregnant.  She really got a thrill from the possibility.  Her favorite sex talk was about “getting knocked up”.  Even when she was young, before we met, she hadn’t used birth control.  She was just lucky she hadn’t gotten pregnant before. She never took pills, so after we decided that two kids was enough, I used condoms.  Then after a couple of years, Tiffany wanted to spice things up. She started opening the boxes of condoms as soon as we bought them, and she would poke holes in half of them.  I suppose it was only a matter of time, but it was almost ten years…”

“Before Agnes was born…” offered Patience.

“God, she was perfect.  The cutest baby.  She didn’t even cry.  She used to fall asleep in my arms every night.  As soon as she was able to sit up, I started reading to her every day. Well.  When Harriet was little, I was finishing my masters, and then Lucas came along and I was working two jobs.  I suppose I was so happy to be able to spend time with Aggie.  I guess I gave her all the attention that I had wanted to give the others.  And then she was dead….  Um, the police said that Tiffany was probably bending over to get something, God only knows what, and she veered into the other lane.  Aggie was in her little seat.  Tiffany always buckled her in.  But… well, it was a head on.”

Patience put her hand on Mike’s shoulder, but he pulled away and stood up.

“I want to put these pictures back up,” he said.

“I know where they all go,” said Patience.  Mike looked at her.  “I saw pictures in the scrapbooks that show them hanging.”

Mike nodded and walked out of the room.  He went downstairs and climbed into the car.  Pulling out of the driveway and steering his way to the end of the block, he wasn’t conscious of his destination, but something down inside him knew where to go.  He turned into the cemetery and drove very slowly to the southeast corner, parking a short distance from Tiffany’s grave.  He got out, leaving the car door hanging open, and walked across the newly mowed grass.  He briefly brushed off Tiffany’s marker and then moved on to that other grave.  He dropped down to sit next to the tiny little angel statue which wore a nightgown and held a flower in her left hand, her right hand raising a handkerchief to her eye.  Agnes Winnie Smith.  2016-2021.

Mike lay back on the grass next to the little grave.  And he cried.

His Robot Girlfriend

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Mike Smith’s life was crap, living all alone, years after his wife had died and his children had grown up and moved away. Then he saw the commercial for the Daffodil. Far more than other robots, the Daffodil could become anything and everything he wanted it to be. Mike’s life is about to change.

His Robot Girlfriend is available at the following locations.