Anthology 1: The Far Corners Page 9

  In runes.

  "I don't read Elvish," I said.

  Exasperated, the frog began to draw, using my skin as a canvas. The sensation was halfway between a tickle and a burn.

  I sat up. An empty whiskey bottle rolled off the bed. I groaned.

  The frog drew Tink, astride the Nick. The frog waved his little frog hands, and the image of Tink animated, the Nick's wheels spinning, walls and windows of Tir Na Nog flying past.

  Shadows gathered behind her, and Tink pedaled faster. Her pursuers raced past my elbow toward my wrist and entered the scene, mere fanged stick figures but awash with menace nonetheless.

  They closed in. Tink's feet were a blur, but they swooped up and over and down upon her.

  "They got her?" I asked.

  Cartoon Tink and cartoon Nick and cartoon thugs all vanished. The frog nodded, once and gravely, and then, hands on his hips, he looked up at me and spoke a rune.

  I didn't need a drawing.

  "I'm not a soldier," I said. "Sure as Hell not a hero."

  The frog drew furiously. He drew Tink, again, but this time she was bound, hanging from a chain, and one of the stick villains reached out with stick-hands and tore off her right wing and she screamed.

  He left the drawing there, Tink frozen in a scream.

  I rose. The room wobbled and spun, and I made a mess on the floor right beside the empty whiskey bottle.

  "I'm not a soldier," I said again, through a fresh round of dry-heaves. I wiped bitter drool from my chin. "I've never even been downtown."

  The frog-tattoo, which I now recognized as one of Tink's own motile sigils, looked up at me and spat a veritable cloud of angry Elf runes.

  Then he crossed his arms and turned his back on me, while his runes broke up and drifted away, ashes in a wind and gone.

  Fate's a nasty bitch. She waits until you're hung over and puking and then she springs a crucial life-changing moment of decision on you and gives you no time to ponder or deliberate or take a reasoned view of the big picture.

  "Hell with it," I said. "No frog's ever called Cannon Dale a coward before. Saddle up, Kermit. We're about to take a ride."

  And then I mustered what dignity I could, doubled over, and puked out the last of my daddy's good Tennessee whiskey.

  * * *

  Preparations took maybe half an hour. Tink's frog sigil paced up and down my forearm, hands behind his back, muttering runes so dark and dire they left skid-marks up and down my arm.

  I slapped the door remote, let in a wash of cold, cold Faery night. It smelled of fresh snow and seldom-emptied dumpsters.

  And then I stepped astride Storm, gritted my teeth, and took to the street.

  Storm glided out into the night, her wheels smooth and utterly silent. I pumped the pedals, shifted up, nausea rising with the effort.

  The frog on my wrist spat a single fat rune, and my nausea vanished.

  "Neat trick," I muttered. "I hope it's not your last."

  The damned thing snapped me a salute. A horn blew, and I swerved just in time to dodge a pair of scooter-gnomes who sent a flurry of hexflies after me.

  I felt a twitch on my arm, and the hexflies buzzed suddenly away, and I realized that, for the first time since crossing the Veil, I was out of sight of the shop.

  Out of sight of my Veil plugs and my road signs and any little link to home.

  A joke came to mind, then. What do you call a mortal alone in Tir Na Nog?

  Breakfast, came the answer. It still wasn't funny.

  I shoved the thought aside, and pedaled harder.

  Storm spun her Rhinopaws and leaped. I gasped and gripped and hunched down, feeling for the first time the simple joy of the ride.

  We passed right out of the New Quarter, Storm and I, in a blur of neon and the stinks of exhaust and occasional restaurant fans and the ever-present stench of something burning. I caught brief glimpses of places I'd heard about -- the dancing metal statue on the stoop at Singer's, the ensorcelled kraken flailing and heaving on the roof of the Bazaar.

  But I paid them little heed, my eyes fixed instead on the narrow swath of crumbling cobbles or poorly-mixed concrete that made up the road out of the New Quarter.

  Storm gobbled them up, picking up speed, moving more in the space between my pedals than any Earthly wheel should have done.

  Streets and wonders flew past. The smell of garbage, the sounds of horns, they both faded away, replaced by a shy fragrance reminiscent of flowers soaked in rum and the discrete tinkling of nearby elf-bells.

  The cobbles, still blurred, grew smooth and uniform.

  I was downtown. Downtown, without the Nick. Downtown, alone.

  I pedaled faster at the thought. If it was to be my last ride, I wanted to make it a damned good one. Elves danced and leaped, making way. Darker shapes, too, showed at the edges of my vision, now and then, but if they grabbed all they got was air.

  Storm was fast. Faster than I'd ever hoped. Faster than I'd ever dreamed. Far faster than the Nick, even on that day we'd pierced the Veil.

  Streets and light and shadow flashed past, entirely out of proportion now to the speed at which I pedaled. The shadows that grasped for me withdrew, as if realizing that Storm and I were no meat for them, that night.

  I laughed. I laughed aloud, and shouted my defiance at the heart of Elfland, and it was then I heard Storm speak for the very first time, and she told me I was home at last.

  I felt a tugging at my wrist, and saw Tink's sigil pointing frantically to my right.

  But in that span of an instant, in that magic time between the turning of Storm's wheels, Storm and I talked, and I thought, and for the first time since leaving the shop I had a plan to save Tink.

  And so I didn't take the right. Instead, I looked out upon the twisting streets of Tir Na Nog, and Storm spoke to me new words, and I saw an entirely new direction, hidden in the windings and turnings of the cold Faery night.

  And so we went, Storm and I, seemingly immobile, watching as streets and alleys and lights whisked past in a blur. Motion was merely a matter of balance; a hint of a twist this way, and the world itself changed direction. A small nod that way, and the world again changed its route, while I remained still and serene, poised perfectly at the heart and center of all creation.

  "I know what it means now," I said.

  "Magic is motion," replied Storm, in the metallic tongue of the bicycle.

  Tink's frog frowned, shook his head, and spat runes.

  I saw them too, now, and saw the meanings that lay behind them.

  "We're heading back to the shop for a moment," I said. "Need to pick something up. And my mother did no such thing."

  The frog ogled, and I laughed, and Storm leaped inside the breadth of a passing shadow and we reached our destination.

  * * *

  I braked, softly so as to be silent, and when Storm halted I waved a hand and hid her in a cleft of new-minted shadows.

  My frog went wide-eyed, and would have spat runes, but I shushed him with a finger to my lips.

  Warily, we looked about.

  Like any city, Tir Na Nog has an industrial corner. Even Elves who loathe iron need silver for their wands, gold for their rings, aluminum for their body-armor and patio furniture.

  And thus was born the Bangs. And true to its name, the street in the Bangs pulsed to the beat of a thousand Elvish steam-hammers.

  "Here?" I whispered.

  My frog nodded, all business.

  The door before us was metal, obviously imported from my side -- my former side -- of the Veil.

  I walked up to it. Hot ashes rode the wind, stinging my face. I pushed them away with a word I'd never used before, and grinned when it not only repelled ashes, but left the air around me free of soot as well.

  I grasped the knob. It turned, not even locked.

  I chuckled and stepped inside.

  "You'll be stopping right there," said a melodious Elf-voice.

  "Or your lassie will be losing another wi
ng," said a second.

  "Oh, she'll lose it soon enough," said the first. "We'll let you watch, we will. Will you like that, bicycle man?"

  I heard a Word spoken, and then I could see them.

  Tink hung from a chain, her back to me, her tiny feet not quite touching the concrete floor. Her back was covered with blood, blood which still leaked from the stump of her right wing.

  She was still, deathly still, and silent.

  Two tall, pale elves flanked her. Both had Tink's blood on their hands, on their chests, and even on their mouths. I quickly surmised where Tink's missing wing had gone.

  "We saw her little friend leave," said one elf.

  "We hoped he'd fetch help," said the other.

  "Shall we dine?" said the first. Both giggled.

  The Nick lay in a corner, bound up in a tangle of glowing spider-webs that held his wheels still, though I could see his spokes quiver in an effort to free himself.

  "Not so fast, shithead," I said. And then I spoke a Word -- another new word -- of my own, and I pulled Grandpappy's Winchester out of a hole in the air.

  Both elves stared down the Winchester's black barrel, more surprised by my pronouncement of a rune-word than afraid of the shotgun.

  "Fool mortal," said the first, his golden eyes aglitter with mirth. "We know of this gun you bear. And we know it cannot function, beyond that horrid little shed of yours."

  I nodded. "Ordinarily, that would be true," I said.

  And then I pulled the trigger.

  The blast was deafening. I hadn't put the stock tight against my shoulder, so the kick spun me half-around -- but not before I saw the elf's head splatter in a ragged bloody arc across the back wall.

  His body didn't fall at once. It even took a single awkward step toward me, its long pale arms flailing, before it went limp and hit the floor.

  I trained the barrel on the remaining elf, who went wide- eyed and slack-jawed and slowly raised his dainty hands.

  "Guess this is no ordinary day," I said.

  A bit of elf-skull fell from the wall and punctuated my words with a wet plop.

  "How?" Said the elf.

  Tink still wasn't moving.

  "She'd better be alive," I said. "Or you get join your buddy there in the Headless Corpse brigade."

  "We rendered her silent," said the elf. "Her screams annoyed."

  "Given any thought to rendering her un-silent?"

  "There is a Word," said the elf. "It is --"

  I saw the shape of the Word form on his lips. It wasn't a Word of unbinding. I fired again. Another elf-corpse stumbled to the floor.

  I saw a Word of unbinding flit past, consonants trailing like the tendrils of a jellyfish. I spoke it, and it darted away.

  Tink arched her back and inhaled with a wet rasp and screamed and kept screaming until I put down my Winchester and went to her and turned her gently to face me.

  She didn't see, at first, as her eyes were squeezed tightly shut. But she heard my voice, and opened her eyes, and when I loosed her chain she fell into my arms and sobbed for a good long time.

  I spoke a Word, softly, so as not to frighten her, and the bleeding from the stump of her wing ceased.

  She drew back from me, still sobbing, but not shaking anymore.

  "Dale?" she asked. "You?"

  "Me," I said. "Plain old Cannon Dale. I just learned a few new words on the ride over."

  She shook her head. "Your gun. It shot them. How?"

  I stepped back, and opened my jacket, and unbuttoned the top four buttons of my shirt to reveal the 120 volt Veil plug set right over -- right into -- my heart.

  "I brought a little bit of home with me," I said. "Wherever I go, a little shotgun will follow."

  Tink wiped her eyes. "You can never go home," she said.

  "I am home," I said. I let my jacket fall over the Veil plug. It didn't even itch, though it did buzz, just a bit.

  Tink nodded, wincing at the effort. "Then you are no longer Cannon Dale," she said. "That name was tied to your other world. You shall need a name in this one, and that name shall be Veil-heart. Veil-heart, speaker of the Words."

  The Nick freed himself from the tangle of elf-glow and rolled over to us, his spokes flashing silver.

  "Hiya, Nick," I said. He responded with a gleeful splash of sun. "Good to see you, too."

  Tink stepped daintily over the corpse of her former captors, reached under the Nick's seat, and withdrew a length of tarnished brass about the length of my palm.

  "There's still time," she said. "Still time!"

  I spoke another healing Word. Some of the gold returned to her eyes.

  "I'll ride along with you," I said. "Just to keep things civil. How about that?"

  Tink smiled. It was a small smile, and a weary one, but it held within it a certain promise that had nothing to do with Faery glamor. Nothing at all.

  The Nick called out, and Storm rolled her way inside. They spoke words I could not ken, as if sharing a private joke, and then they turned to face Tink and I.

  "Magic is motion," I said. The steel door behind us flew off its hinges, and the Nick laughed with a spray of Alabama sun.

  "And motion is magic," said Tink. In a flash, she was stride the Nick, through the doorway, and looking back over her shoulder at me.

  "Race you to the Heights," she sang, and was gone.

  Storm beckoned, traces of blue-white lighting playing amid her spokes.

  I handed my shadow the Winchester. On the back of my right hand, my tattooed frog flipped me a snappy salute.

  "You're on," I said to Tink, and we took to the silver-grey streets of home.

  THE END

  I hope you enjoyed these short stories! If you did, please check out my other ebooks here at Smashwords!

  WISTRIL COMPLEAT

  MALLARA AND BURN: ON THE ROAD

  Wistril Compleat

  All three of Wistril's magical misadventures are included in this complete compilation of cantrips and catastrophes!

  Wistril Besieged --

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  Wistril Afloat --

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  Wistril Betrothed --

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  On the Road

  Being a female Sorceress with a bodiless but smart-mouthed assistant is trouble enough for anyone. But for Mallara, appointed by the Crown as Royal Sorceress to the Five Valleys, trouble is all in a day's work.

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  In "The Ringed Round," Mallara must face a ring of vengeful stones and the trapped embodiment of an ancient har
vest feast -- which may or may not be the friendly old sprite he appears to be!

  "Night Stand" finds Mallara and Burn camped amid the ruins of a haunted villa for what the villagers swore was a routine Cleansing. But as night falls, the duo realize the villagers may have left out a detail or two concerning the true nature of the haunting.

  Trolls haven't been seen about for decades -- but in "The Asking and the Vow," Sorceress Mallara comes face to face with not just a Troll, but with the weight of history itself.

  Finally, Mallara and Burn arrive at a village besieged by a small but growing army of overly-helpful goblins. Every roof has been patched, every walk has been swept, every fence has been mended. But what will the goblins do next, when they've run out of chores? Join Mallara and Burn as they take on the task of patrolling the Five Valleys, and discover magic and mayhem with every turn of the road

  Frank's email address is franktuttle@franktuttle.com

  Visit Frank's webpage at www.franktuttle.com