Geek Fantasy Novel (9 page)

There are three types of shocked silences: the kind when your uncle jokes about his ex-girlfriends at Thanksgiving dinner, the kind when you’ve seen what should have been an amazing sight and you fake astonishment so you don’t seem hollow, and the kind when you experience something truly new and unknown. The third is the rarest and most precious, and was the silence of Ralph at the split second that he approached the battlement.

Below him wasn’t the wide blue space that he had expected but the perfect simulation of a meadow in full daylight, somehow re-created no more than twenty feet below the skyward castle.

When Chessie saw him, her face contorted into an unnatural expression — or perhaps it was the first natural expression he had seen on her. Her normal mask soon came down, and she grunted and lunged for him. As he saw the ten flashes of red nail polish zoom toward him, Ralph leaped, plummeting onto a thicket in the grassy meadow.

After the head-rush and joint-tingling had abated, Ralph contemplated his situation. He was propped on a bramble bush, staring at grassland that was almost two-dimensional in its unblemished perfection: The cerulean sky hung flawless and even; the surrounding green hills rolled but never tumbled; the songbirds sang in complex harmonies. There was no more rushing wind. This is what it was to be magicked.

Ralph stood up and looked around. The only break in the verisimilitude of the meadow was above him, where the fuzzy outline of a battlement wavered, almost disappearing from view and then faintly reappearing. From over that wall glared a very ticked-off duchess.

He coughed.

Chessie unglazed. “You,” she said, the word carrying as if over a long distance. “You!”

“Hello, duchess,” Ralph called.

She pointed her wand threateningly, then sighed and let it drop to her side. “I suppose you’ve come to mess everything up.”

“I want to help Cecil,” Ralph said. Then, when Chessie only scowled in response, he added, conversationally, “So this is where his wish is taking place?”

“Yes.” She sighed. “My nephew is questing even as we speak.”

“So how does this work?” Ralph asked, shielding his eyes from the fluorescent sun as he squinted up at the duchess.

Chessie sat on the battlement and dangled her feet into the meadow, glumly resting her chin on her hands. “They make a wish, have a quest, learn a lesson, and when they return to the real world are further along toward being adults. Classically, that’s how it would go. It’s been years since I’ve done a wish, and I wasn’t fully prepared this time. Gert keeps her children tucked away so thoroughly.”

She fiddled with her wand. “By the time you convinced him to come talk to me — thanks for that, by the way, though you don’t deserve any more gratitude than that, after this hysterical stunt you’ve pulled — I only had a minute to scramble all the necessary employees into the wish. These things take loads of time to arrange, and I’m afraid what’s to come will be a little slapdash. We’re all out of practice. The wish-granter — me — is supposed to hire actors to play the goblins and mentors and all that rot. I tried to call in J. J. Mucklebackit, the famous villainess from the nineteen-seventies — perhaps you’ve heard of her? — but she wasn’t available on such short notice. So I’m filling in as the villain for Cecil’s wish. It’s time I got myself magicked in, too.” She cracked her knuckles. “I think this may come off.”

“If you’re worried about Cecil’s safety, then you’re probably fine with me being here to help,” Ralph said.

“Having a sloppy American running about takes away some of the poetry, I have to say. But yes, I could probably use assistance in making sure Cecil doesn’t perish.”

“How do I do that?”

“Stop him from falling into bottomless pits, that sort of thing. Oh, and this is very important — by rules of narrative economy, his wish has to finish within a hundred pages. If it doesn’t … it has to finish in one hundred pages.”

“Is this all being written down somewhere? How am I supposed to know when a hundred pages have gone by?”

“Yes, it is being written. The narrator is in the catwalks above. He’s been tailing you for some time. If you squint, you can see him.”

Ralph peered up to the sun, and could make out a hazy structure before its radiance, something like a wooden rainbow.

“Don’t bother trying to communicate with him, though,” Chessie said. “He’s not allowed to interact with you.”

“Is that what happened to your son?” Ralph asked. “Did more than a hundred pages go by for his wish?”

Chessie paused. “I don’t know.” She shook her head. “It’s time to start.”

Ralph spun around. “Where’s Cecil?”

“Quests go at high speed. He got a big head start in those moments while you were jumping in.”

“Where do I find him?”

“Ask about, be resourceful. I have to rush now — the boy’s already been weeks in his quest without a villain, and he’s sure to be at a complete loss. Now, before I dash away I need you to know something very important,
Ralph. We all change when we enter a wish. It’s an essential part of the magic — we become more accepting of oddity, for one thing.”

Ralph nodded.

“As for me, I’m going to be performing a role, and you will find my interpretation quite convincing. I suggest you flee if you come across me at any point. I will no longer be sweet Auntie Chessie, do you understand?” She bent down to stretch, touching her toes.

Ralph nodded again, amused at the idea that there had ever been a “sweet Auntie Chessie.”

“Is that very, very clear? I will try to kill you next time I see you.”

Ralph stared back at her.

Chessie screeched, hurled herself over the wall, and vanished before she hit the ground.

BOOK II:
CECIL’S WISH
FAIRY REBELLION

Ralph stood beaming at the white sunshine, thinking it remarkably similar to everyday sunshine, only prettier (like sunshine frosting, really), when from around a corner of a path he heard the grinding of carriage wheels. He scanned about for a hiding spot … but idyllic meadows, he discovered, weren’t ideal places in which to find cover. The best he could settle on was a large tuft of grass, into which he threw himself. Any observer could see that, while his head was neatly covered, the rest of his sprawled body was exposed. He was no better than a cat hiding in a rhododendron.

One side benefit of terrible concealment is a terrific view. Ralph saw that the approaching carriage was pulled by four black horses, chugging with all the unabating ferocity of miniature steam engines. Regardless of their labors, the horseman made cruel use of a fourfold whip, lashing all the creatures’ stinging backsides with each flick.

The vehicle itself was Cinderella’s pumpkin. Or, rather, it was Cinderella’s pumpkin if glimpsed at a ball by a jealous royal and then demanded of an engineer whose previous specialty was torture equipment. Hundreds of orange metal surfaces were welded with the finest precision, resulting in what was either the most beautiful carriage ever to exist or a malevolent biscuit tin.

As the carriage neared, Ralph was surprised to discover that the horses were not horses at all, but unicorns.

About unicorns: More sentimental narrators possess three unwavering tendencies: 1) to follow “want” by “need” (“She wanted his love. She needed his love”); 2) to take time out of stories for young heroines to (positively) assess their reflections in mirrors; and 3) to make unicorns invariably white/gentle and in need of rescue by a dashing, nonthreatening hero — in short, horsey princesses. Her horn, set upon so eagerly by rapacious goblins, is a symbol of her innocence, and once it is pried from her she will become just a horse, as common as any other.

A crucial difficulty: Unicorns with horns aren’t female. Just like rams and narwhals — none with a tusk or horn is female. The
Origin of Fantastic Species
confirms that unicorn horns are the evolutionary results of competition between males of the species, for while a horn doesn’t do a unicorn a lick of good in fighting off a pack of Brimstone Hyenas, it is enormously handy in competing with other unicorns.

As far as our tale is concerned, suffice it to note that, given their glistening horns and foul dispositions, these four jet-black unicorns were doing nothing to draw Ralph out from his hiding place.

As the procession neared, the birds fled and the rabbits stopped chattering (disappeared entirely, in fact, into a nearby warren), so the only sound Ralph heard was the soon-deafening grinding of gravel beneath the carriage’s wheels. Ralph debated calling out to the driver, in case he might get a friendly response. But the wild animals’ reaction to the carriage cried out that whoever was inside was one hundred percent villain.

Ralph scrunched his eyes shut as the vehicle approached. Once the noise peaked and then began to fade, he knew he would soon be safe.

But he had forgotten his allergies.

And did Ralph have allergies! He’d sneeze crossing the grass median of a New Jersey strip mall. Generally, he kept them in control through medications. But of course, it is hard to remember to collect one’s prescription drugs while fleeing a gatehouse-engulfing tree, so Ralph was caught without a single tablet. And this was bad news indeed, for fantastic worlds are homes to all sorts of pyrotechnically hyperallergenic pathogens. Among the more plentiful are griffon dander and cold-fused nuclear ragweed.

(And beyond mere allergens, Ralph had already been infected with a half-dozen mythically virulent diseases, all of which produced symptoms much more severe than sneezing. As he had built up none of the fairy-tale resistances of, say, your average miller’s son, Ralph was already halfway to dead. The most virulent of these diseases had already permeated his bloodstream and had begun turning his frontal lobe the consistency of a tomato left in the sun. It was
distempus shamblis,
Shambling Mound Distemper. But for right now, the important thing for you to notice is that Ralph inhaled a mote of cold-fused nuclear ragweed.)

He sneezed.

At which point the sound of the wheels receding on the gravel stopped, the unicorns whinnied wickedly, and Ralph opened his eyelids to see ten spiteful eyes on him.

“What do you think you’re doing?” the driver asked after an extraordinarily long pause, for it had taken him a few moments to come to terms with the oddly-dressed young man half-hidden in the grass.

Ralph sat up and blithely twirled a piece of grass in his hand. “Hi. Could you give me directions? I’m looking for my cousin Cecil, who’s around here somewhere. I really don’t know where I am, and I —” Ralph coughed. “Well, I’m sure, man-to-man, you could tell me where to go.” Ralph coughed again. “Because I know this isn’t
really
a fairy tale. Let’s level.”

The driver stared.

“I spoke with Chessie,” Ralph continued nervously. “The Duchess, I mean. She’d be fine with your giving me some directions, I’m sure.”

He continued to stare. The unicorns tossed their horns in the air, equine (and male) beauty queens.

“You seem like a nice guy. What’s your name?” Ralph tried lamely.

The driver cocked his head at an odd angle, and it took Ralph a few moments to realize that he was receiving some sort of instruction beamed into his head. Eventually the man spoke aloud: “About five-eight, slender, awkward looking … Under authority Ten-A or Ten-C? … Please confirm that stiletto is most appropriate…. Thank you.” He looked straight at Ralph. “You are not permitted to be here,” he announced severely, and dismounted.

“Could you maybe pretend we didn’t meet, then?” Ralph asked, scrambling to his feet as the driver approached.

“No,” he said. “This isn’t your wish.” He brandished a unicorn-horn stiletto.

“Does that mean I can’t be part of it?”

The driver lunged at Ralph. Ralph, who until now could name dodging a bully’s punch as his most violent encounter, was entirely unprepared.

He was caught flat on his feet, a condition which would, alas, make his death all the easier.

The blade was poised to penetrate Ralph’s chest at the center, the squishy part below his sternum. It would be an easy crossing for a stiletto, as any conscientious medical student can confirm — the blade would enter where there was no bone, cross through a layer of upper abdominal tissue and lacerate the inferior vena cava before puncturing liver and hitting vertebra. The question of whether it was so well-aimed as to slide between the joints in the bone and sever Ralph’s spinal cord is moot, as unicorn horns are naturally coated with anticoagulant, and Ralph would have bled to death within minutes.

Ralph’s salvation came from an unlikely source — the same fantastic allergen that had undone his camouflage. Even as he watched the stiletto jab toward him, he felt another tickle in his nose (or rather, significantly more than a tickle; imagine staring up at the sun, with the sun then picking up its skirts and entering your nostrils) and suddenly he sneezed explosively. He bathed the driver’s knife-hand in mucus and was rocketed backward by the blow, landing atop the bunny thicket.

The briar was dense and brambly, and it would take Ralph a few seconds to extricate himself. The driver would have had ample opportunity, therefore, to finish his stilettowork … had the mote of cold-fused nuclear ragweed
not had some mischief left. The particle, having evacuated Ralph’s system, thereby found itself dripping from the man’s collarbone. Once it neared his chest it swam toward his skin.

If you’ve never directly contacted a mote of cold-fused nuclear ragweed, it’s difficult to conceive. It’s painful enough on mucous or other non-feeling tissues, but directly on your skin — well, it’s like a pinprick, only with a touch of the entire continent of Antarctica to it.

So now the driver was howling, and the unicorns were prancing around him, and it was causing such a ruckus that the occupant of the carriage finally opened her window to find out what was going on.

“Oh, hello!” Chessie said.

Ralph picked himself off the thicket and bowed slightly. “Hello, Duchess of Cheshire.”

“Please. Call me Duchess.”