Kill the Farm Boy

by Kevin Hearne

  “Oh, Poltro,” Lord Toby said, appearing in solemn, unbedazzled robes that didn’t suit him at all and made him look oddly wise. His beard had grown in thickly, and he was more see-through than usual and also sort of glowy blue. “You’ve done it again, haven’t you?”

  “Done what?” she asked, pointing at her middle. “Not get cut in half? You’re right, I did that again! And I think not getting cut in half is a good policy.”

  “No, Poltro. You’ve used up your potions, lost your group, and eaten something very dangerous.”

  “But in my defense,” Poltro said, holding up an admonitory finger, “I didn’t do any of that rectally, so I was following your orders. And I’m planning to meet the group over some meat to mete out some justice, if I can just remember where ‘here’ is and when ‘later’ is. Everything gets muddled when it’s squeaky.”

  Lord Toby looked a bit sad, and Poltro wanted to ask if it was because he was dead, but that seemed a little rude, so she just smiled at him and said, “Had any good smoothies lately?”

  At that, his brows drew down in the way they tended to do when he was out of crackers and could summon only bricks of rye crispbread. “Poltro, this is serious. You need help.”

  “Oh, you always say that.”

  “No, I don’t mean in a therapy sort of way, although I stand behind that. You need to vomit up those mushrooms and find your friends before something truly irreversible and dire occurs. You’re very far from—”

  “Home?”

  “I was going to say sane, but yes. Head back down the hill. Follow the bisected dwarf corpses until you’re at the inn again. I do believe the fighting has died down. Use the—”

  “Some sort of mystical force?”

  “No, child. Your knife. Use your knife if anyone comes at you.”

  Poltro drew her dagger from its sheath at her hip. “Oh, cor. Forgot about that. Not much use against a sword, though, is it? Or squeaking?”

  Lord Toby’s smile somehow managed to get sadder. “Some things can’t be fought.”

  “Like smoothies?”

  “Yes. Like smoothies. And hubris and ego and wand envy. I didn’t realize it until I was dead, you see, but I was nearly as daffy as you. I spent all my days in that tower, longing to be a proper Dark Lord like my father, but even he told me I was totally unsuited to the task. I craved power and magic and money and cheese and never really enjoyed what I already had. I made lovely crackers, but to me they only ever tasted of failure.”

  “And sometimes garlic and other flavors.”

  “Sometimes. But life is what happens when you’re making other plans to steal someone’s still-beating heart for magical reasons. And I didn’t value my own heart. Remember that rose garden at the base of my tower? I think it must be the loveliest in Pell. And I never went down there and smelled the flowers. Just stood on top of my tower, felt superior, and wished for more.”

  “But sir, there were chickens down there, too.”

  “Ah, but one must be willing to encounter a few chickens if one wants to smell the roses.”

  Poltro burped softly and tasted her own liquefying kidneys. “I could skip both.”

  “You might feel differently if you still have an olfactory system tomorrow. Go down the hill, Poltro.”

  Poltro stood, feeling very loose in all seven limbs. Something about that wasn’t quite right, but she was so glad to have Lord Toby around again to tell her what to do that she didn’t stop smiling. He was a comforting sort, Lord Toby, always able to fix whatever she’d bungled. He could fix this, too.

  As she began walking, she turned to speak, but Lord Toby wasn’t ambling along behind her. He still stood at the top of the hill, in the shadows near the trees, looking bluish and sad and serious.

  “Come along, my lord Dark Lord, sir. They’ll be glad to see you, the others will. Missed your crackers, we have. Got all my words mixed around, haven’t I?”

  “No, Poltro. You must go on alone.”

  Poltro looked down the scary dark hill, knowing full well that the bottom of it was thick with dwarf corpses and slicey soldiers and squeaking. She looked up at the top of the hill, seeing only a pleasant grove of trees and a glowy sort of Dark Lord, plus some large building behind him, snuggled down in the forest. It was instantly apparent to her which was the right way.

  “Got you, Dark Lord. Stay with you here.” She walked back to where Toby stood, or rather floated, and tried to put a hand on his shoulder. Her fingers slipped through him in an embarrassing sort of way that recalled a certain uncomfortable moment back at the tower in which she’d gone to the kitchen for a sandwich at just the wrong time and found Lord Toby doing something she couldn’t explain. Ever since the Pudding Incident, she’d refrained from eating at night and had lost her second chin.

  “Sorry about that, sir. Didn’t mean to…er…put a hand through your torso.”

  “POLTRO, I AM A GHOST. I AM A SPIRIT SENT TO GUIDE YOU. PLEASE DO STOP MUCKING UP MY GUIDANCE AND JUST DO WHAT I SAY AND GO BACK TO THE INN.”

  Poltro’s eyes grew wide, and she backed away, wishing she hadn’t dropped her dagger down the hill a few moments ago.

  “A guh-guh-ghost?”

  “HOW COULD YOU POSSIBLY FAIL TO NOTICE?”

  Poltro relaxed and exhaled. “All good, then. You told me yourself that ghosts aren’t real. So there it is.”

  Lord Toby gave a comforting sort of exasperated sigh and rubbed his glowy ghost eyebrows. “Poltro, I was wrong. I know, I know—I’m never wrong. I was surprised, too. But ghosts are real, I am one, and if you don’t go back down that hill and find a healer—no. A wizard. I don’t trust healers anymore. If you don’t get help, you’re going to be a ghost, too.”

  She cocked her head on the side, considering. “That doesn’t sound so bad, m’lord. You’re a ghost, and you’re about the same as before, except you’ve got a bigger beard and nicer clothes and can just pop around as you wish without mucking about with horses. I could do okay like that.”

  Toby hung his ghost head and sighed sadly, another comforting sound. “I didn’t want to do this, but it’s for your own good.”

  That struck fear into Poltro’s heart. This was not the first time Lord Toby had said those words, and it had never, to Poltro’s recollection, been good. As she watched, fingers fumbling for her lost dagger and used-up potions, Toby knelt and then seemed to sort of…bubble up. His ghostly shape grew into a terrifying cloud of swirling vapor. The vapor coalesced into…a chicken.

  “GO DOWN THE HILL OR I WILL…GOODNESS…I DON’T KNOW. CLUCK AT YOU. CLUCK CLUCK. EGGS WILL RAIN DOWN,” Toby boomed.

  And because Poltro was Poltro, she let rip with a fearful, high-pitched ululation, dodged around the giant ghost chicken, and tore into the woods, heading for a promising sort of shadow that spoke of people and stairs and locking doors, albeit in the opposite direction Ghost Toby had indicated.

  “NO CHICKENS!” she screamed.

  Branches tore at her jerkin and snagged in her hair. Her hat got knocked off, and something smacked her across the face, leaving a burning welt. She looked behind, but as she’d predicted, the giant chicken couldn’t navigate the dense woods. Because chickens were stupid, of course.

  Dangerous but stupid.

  She slowed down, stepping more carefully. Woods like these contained other horrors—adders and harpies and face-eating spiders—and she had to keep her wits about her to ensure that her lucky streak kept on. She could see the building’s outline clearly now, and it had the look of a beloved grandmother’s snug cottage, all round with tufty bits of thatching poking out. On the keen lookout for a gate or a fence or stone steps or some other way to properly approach a kindly matriarch, Poltro realized she must’ve been headed toward the back door like a stealthy creeping person. She circled the house but still found no clear entrance path.

 
“Gardener around here is a right goof,” she muttered, not at all bothered by the fact that her legs had grown three feet and were bendy like rope and the trees had noses. “Might want to talk to Lord Toby’s hedge man. Get you a proper bit of hedge for your snug bungalow. Bug snungle.” She sniffed and waved her hand in front of her numb face, watching the blue-green vapor trails they left in the air. “Snugalow.”

  Garden path or not, she’d found a narrow porch and a door that looked frontish enough. She didn’t see any chickens in evidence, and she didn’t want to face any large and angry dogs, which meant she had to announce herself. Clearing her throat, Poltro called, “O kindly grandmother, are you at home? And will you shelter a poor starveling stranger?”

  That was what she meant to say. What came out was more like “Oi, gram! You gots any biscuits? Polty’s hongy!”

  No warm lantern lit the window, nor did the door open to release the scent of baking cookies. But then again, no dogs began barking, either. Poltro’s eyes got that crafty, stealthy look, and she grinned.

  “Rogue’s gotta rogue,” she said, sneaking up to the front door and gently wiggling the knob. Much to her surprise, the door opened easily, creaking inward.

  “Gram gram? Rover? Biscuits?” she tried again.

  Nothing.

  Well, something. A faint rustle of straw in the thatching. But that was normal enough. Heaven knew, oodles of animals had lived happily in the thatch of her room in the barn on Lord Toby’s estate. Pigeons and mice and badgers and one very surly tortoise named Roy, as Pell in general had a problem with pestilential thatch-tortoises.

  That didn’t stop her. She rootled about the kitchen, finding none of the tasty evidence of grandmothers she’d hoped to see. No basket brimming with muffins or cookies, no cauldron full of stew. The cauldron, in fact, was full of something foul that smelled about how her stomach was beginning to feel, so she took that as a sign that it was a good place to yark and felt a lot better afterward. The floor was swept wood, and there were bits of herbs and sticks tied together, dangling creepily from the ceiling. Brooms leaned in every corner, suggesting an unhealthy hoarding problem. A black cat glared at her from under a chair, and a hand-painted sign suggested that WITCHES GET SHITE DONE.

  Far too slowly, it dawned on the tripping rogue.

  “Wait. You’re not a grandma. You’re another dratted witch!”

  The thatch overhead rustled in a way that seemed impudent and set Poltro’s guard up. She knew from her rogue training that thatches shouldn’t have thoughts regarding witches, especially not in reply to her voice.

  “Wait. Is the…witch…here?”

  Silence. No rustling.

  Poltro picked up the broom and jabbed it in the thatch, hollering, “Then don’t bloody rustle at me!”

  In response, the strangest thing happened. The house lurched upward unexpectedly, knocking her to the wooden floor. And then the house began to move. It was a hurried, ungainly lollop that caused Poltro to crash around, knocking into a table and the hearth and several brooms, which honestly seemed like the only things in the house that weren’t nailed down.

  And then the house did the most terrifying thing that a house could do.

  Even more terrifying than standing up and running with her inside it.

  It clucked.

  “Ahhh!” Poltro shrieked, scrambled to her feet, ran for the door, and leapt out of it into the aether. Her legs danced for purchase, finding only air, and she fell ten feet and finally hit the ground, rolling in a roguish manner that didn’t break anything but made her look pretty cool.

  It took her a moment to find her feet, and when she did, she looked up to find…more feet.

  Because the house had feet.

  Not just any feet.

  Chicken feet.

  Giant, scaly, talon-tipped chicken feet topped by bony orange chicken legs.

  “Buckaw?” the house asked, listing slightly to the side in an interrogative fashion.

  “AAAAAAHHHHH!” she screamed.

  “Poltro, no!” The ghost of Toby appeared suddenly, robes askew and still half chicken. He threw a glowing arm over his half beak. “Ignore the…the thing you see before you. Return to the inn. This is your last chance.”

  “LIKE I’M GOING TO TRUST ONE AND A HALF CHICKENS,” Poltro shrieked, running in the opposite direction from the inn and Lord Toby’s ghost.

  As if sensing her weakness, the chicken house gave chase, clucking and stomping behind her. So Poltro did the only thing she could do. She ran for her life.

  She didn’t know where she was running, except that it was away; it was senseless flight, driven by fear. Every thought, every tiny bit of sense Cutter had implanted in her, fled with her. Trees, boulders, clouds—the world spun together, trails and phantom chickens everywhere. Screaming, clawing at her own face, promising to never eat eggs or mushrooms again, even in a tasty omelet, Poltro flailed through the forest and straight off a cliff.

  Her last thought as she plummeted to the swamp far below was a peaceful one.

  “No more chickens,” she thought. “Never again.”

  Lord Toby’s ghost watched her final moments with a grim frown. He had definitely wasted his money sending her to Cutter.

  “That’s a right mess,” she said, appearing by his side in a glowing rogue costume with a fine hat and staring over the edge of the cliff.

  “You were tripping balls,” Toby noted. “It wasn’t your fault.” But Poltro’s ghost could kind of feel that he did think it was her fault, because he’d always had that way of saying one thing while obviously meaning the other, more unpleasant thing.

  “My house can be very territorial,” a witch said, and she seemed as if she’d always been there, standing beside the two ghosts, her arms crossed in her black dress and her eyes narrowed under her peaky black hat.

  Poltro looked down at her hands. They were glowing, just like Lord Toby.

  “Huh,” she said. “You’re right. Being a ghost is pretty cool.”

  “I never said that,” Toby muttered.

  “The clothes are good. I didn’t get a beard, though.”

  Toby rubbed his ghost beard. “No, Poltro, you did not.”

  “Hey, does this mean I get to haunt stuff?” Poltro asked, sounding hopeful.

  “Only very particular things. It would appear that ghosts form irrational attachments to the last moments of their lives. As I can only haunt you, Poltro, you can probably only haunt this house.”

  The witch put her head in her hands. “Boff that. I’m putting it up for rent tomorrow.” She walked away purposefully, chasing her house as it pecked among the trees.

  “I don’t know why you kept telling me to run the other way, Lord Toby,” Poltro said. “This is great.”

  Toby’s ghost looked at her like she was a raging idiot, which she still was.

  “Great? YOU ARE DEAD. Forever. IT IS NOT GREAT.”

  Poltro’s ghost smiled and cracked her knuckles. “I get to haunt that giant chicken, m’lord. And that means that in the ongoing fight between myself and chickens in general…I win. And I don’t think that I should settle for the rules here regarding who I haunt. If there’s any time to go rogue, m’lord, it’s when you’re a glowing blue ghost.”

  All was chaos back in the Braided Beard. In the half second of triumph Staph experienced after turning poor Mathilde back into a marmoset, Grinda was able to get part of a curse through the blasted pixie’s defenses and knock her one blue sock off, setting it aflame. That came with a certain measure of satisfaction but also inspired a rare case of Pixie Rage.

  “You heinous witch!” Staph shrieked, her hair standing out like she was about to get struck by lightning. “That was a gift from my Aunt Strep! It was all I had left of her!”

  In retaliation, she assaulted Grinda with a furious barrage of curses that
the sand witch was hard pressed to absorb and redirect. Grinda could feel her face melting a bit to one side, the cold caress of old age seeping into her skin and bringing with it a desire to eat at a buffet before 4 p.m. The air around her glowed with eldritch fire. And without Mathilde joining in, Grinda realized that the raw power of this pixie far exceeded her own not insignificant talents. Løcher’s did, too, of course. She had always beaten him by being a bit smarter rather than by burning through his defenses. She had studied magic to impose order upon unchained power; Løcher had sought power sufficient to disrupt order, and Staph’s arsenal was a significant part of that.

  The dying flail of a soldier slain by Fia sent Staph tumbling, causing her next blast to strike the ceiling near a supporting column. It punched right through the thatched roof and left a smoldering hole in it, an object lesson in why Grinda needed to keep her defenses up.

  The pixie dipped briefly out of sight, and Grinda saw her chance to escape. Directing her wand at herself, she intoned, “Canza oposs,” and then struggled to hold on to her wand with both hands as they shrank into tiny possum front feet that still had fingerlike toes and nails painted in a flamboyant pink. The rest of her shrank, too, of course, her perspective of the battle shifting significantly, her vision blurring and the sounds of combat altering into tinny echoes that reminded her of digging through a trash can. But she could smell fear and sweat now, dwarvelish beard oil, Fia’s rage, and so very much coppery blood mixed with the tang of iron. She poked her tail through the loop of her crab ring, then scampered underneath the table with her wand clutched awkwardly in one tiny hand. As soon as she was out of sight and smelling all the crumbs of food people had dropped onto the floor, she transferred the wand to the grip of her handy-dandy twisty tail, over which she had full control. That had taken some practice the first time she’d shifted into this form, and even though it had been years, it was still as natural to her as ordering Milieu Goobersnootch to take care of the estate in her absence. It was much harder to return to human shape and remember that she had no such useful tail. Milieu had told her in an unguarded moment that her post-opossum recovery included embarrassingly obvious butt clenching that was visible even through the most robust pantsuits.