The Disposable

by Katherine Vick

  It was no way for a prince to behave when not instructed to by Narrative. She was ashamed that she had ever given the deceitful, filthy traitor the time of day! How dare he drag her back into this hell? What kind of a cruel, heartless, evil excuse for a human being was he?

  “Go on, honestly! You shouldn’t be afraid to try new things, you know!” The backstabbing swine shuffled one foot slightly. “Is that not what all this is about?”

  The harridan and the bland one exchanged a long, slow look. And then carefully they extended the plates that they had earlier spent more than fifteen minutes scrubbing clean in the nearby brook.

  Heaped, steaming tree root was piled onto their plates. The ratty blond still looked wary, but at a sharp nudge from his bland friend, he too accepted a dollop of the traitor’s swill without complaint. Tentatively, the harridan reached down and speared a tree root with her fork.

  “It doesn’t smell too bad,” she offered. “In fact, it smells…good.”

  The fork rose towards her lips. Pleasance glared. I hope you choke on it! I hope it burns your tongue and rips out your tonsils! I hope it…

  The frizzy-haired wench gave a thoughtful chew. Her expression changed instantly from one of wariness to…

  “Mmmm!” she exclaimed, swallowing hard as her fork dived down towards the plate once more. “That is fantastic!”

  The bland one followed her lead at once. The ratty one was examining his plate with disbelief, as though trying to ascertain if she was eating the same meal that he was. Reluctantly and with resignation, he too dug in.

  “Ga’e’weawy goog!” The bland one, now mentally renamed the uncouth one, didn’t even have the courtesy to finish chewing before he spoke, shovelling down the food like a pig in swill. “Wewl gwne Guwarg!”

  “It doesn’t taste like tree, I’ll give you that,” the ratty one conceded. “Given that it is tree, that’s an achievement.”

  To Pleasance’s disgust, Prince Dullard actually blushed, his expression modest as he smiled and spooned another helping onto a fresh plate. To seek approval from Ordinary common Disposables was bad enough, but to be flattered by it! Why, she doubted they’d know good food if it was pelted at them in the stocks! Given the hogs’ food they probably ate on a regular basis, the sewer-drenched bread would probably have been a step up!

  “You enjoy!” he said with sickening cheerfulness. “I’ll go and feed Pleasance.”

  As he came to his feet, the ratty one gave an unpleasantly stewy snort. “Do us all a favour,” he chimed up chirpily. “Leave the gag on and pour it down her nose instead. After what happened at breakfast, it’s probably the only way you’ll come back alive.”

  If Pleasance hadn’t known better, she would have classed Dullard’s returning look as reproachful. Huh! As if he cared!

  “Don’t be silly,” he simply chided as he moved past the three pigs filling their faces by the fire and over to the tree against which she had unceremoniously been secured.

  “Hello!” he greeted her with that infuriating, awkward smile as he settled himself down on the ground beside her, placing the plate and spoon carefully out of kicking range. It was a lesson she’d taught him the hard way at breakfast time.

  “Now,” he said quietly, his anxious expression most likely fuelled by the venom she was spitting at him from her eyes. “I know you aren’t happy with me.” He paused a moment, allowing the vicious swipe of one foot she aimed in his direction to be completed. “You did make that abundantly clear this morning when I gave you breakfast. And I’ll say it again because I’m not sure you heard me this morning over your screaming: I am truly sorry I got you into this, and if there had been another way, I really would have taken it. But, you see, the thing is, shouting at people like that… Well, what good is it going to do? It’s not going to make us let you go, and it doesn’t exactly make anyone inclined to help you, now does it? Really, Pleasance, the best thing you can do for all of us, including yourself, is just calm down and try to be a little more reasonable about this. I know the others have threatened you, and I’ll be honest—I don’t really agree with that. But maybe if you’ll let me try and explain to you what this is all about, those threats won’t be necessary, and you’ll even understand a little better why it is I did what I did. All right?”

  The ratty blond snorted into his stew again. “You’re wasting your breath!” he called out in a mocking, singsong voice.

  Dullard, however, ignored him. “Now, I’m going to take the gag off. Please hold still. And…I’d appreciate you not biting me again. Thank you.”

  Spindly fingers reached around behind her head to where the knotted handkerchief had been secured. Gently, he teased it free and pulled the gag away.

  “TRAITOR!!!!” To Pleasance’s fury, Dullard just managed to get his hand clear before her snapping teeth could close upon it. “You treacherous, ungrateful, miserable excuse for a bastard worm! You’ve betrayed your heritage, you’ve betrayed your family, you’ve betrayed the Taskmaster and the Quest! You are going to rot in the deepest, dankest, foulest dungeon the world has to offer, and I will visit you there and I will spit in your face and laugh! Laugh! Laugh, I tell you!”

  She paused, breathing heavily from the effort of expelling her words with so much venomous force. She glared daggers at Dullard and waited for him to wilt into a puddle of contrite shame.

  But instead he simply lifted the plate and smiled. “Stew?” he said.

  Pleasance rallied her rage admirably as she wound back up to speed. “You are a canker!” she hissed. “A filthy, lying, deceitful, deceiving pustule on the Royal Family tree! If it were possible to drown someone at birth outside of Narrative, then they would have done it to you!”

  “It’s really very nice, apparently. Even Shoulders thought so.”

  “You are a weasel! You are a snake! You are a mongrel cur, a cowardly, pathetic animal! You are a swine and a maggot and a cockroach and a…a…goat! You are the bloodsucking tick supping on a flea that lives on a plague-riddled rat that’s been eaten by a rabid dog! You are scum!”

  “Only, it probably won’t be so tasty if you let it get cold.…”

  “When we get back to the Palace, I will take great pleasure in watching them kill you over and over again! I will personally tie you to four wild horses and watch them rip you apart! I will hold you facedown in that foul, disgusting sewer that you dragged me through last night! I will tear out your innards and hang you from the walls with them! You will rue the day you ever tried to ruin my Quest!”

  “And though I’ll happily make you some more—waste not, want not, I always say…”

  “WILL YOU STOP TALKING ABOUT STEW WHEN I’M THREATENING YOU???”

  Dullard looked genuinely taken aback. “Well, there isn’t much else to say, really,” he replied with a lopsided shrug. “All those things are just words. They aren’t going to change anything. And if you’re honest with yourself, I doubt they’re making you feel better any more than they’re bothering me.” He actually had the gall to keep smiling at her. “As my mother always used to say, sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.”

  Pleasance gritted her teeth. “Then get me a stick,” she growled.

  Dullard shook his head gently as he heaped a stack of tree root stew onto the fork he was holding. “As I’ve already explained to the others, there is no need to be uncivilised about this. Kindness breeds kindness, and common courtesy is never out of place. I really do believe that. So you can shout and scream and threaten me and call me as many names as you like, but the thing is…”

  He leaned forward carefully, the quiet smile never leaving his face. “You aren’t going to stop me being nice to you.”

  Pleasance stared at him thoughtfully for a moment: the jutting chin, the distinctive nose, the ridiculous expression, and the sincerity in his eyes. And then she bit his nose.

  The inconsiderate bastard still fed her the stew.

  And it was nice too. That was just rude.


  * * *

  “You know, there’s optimistic and there’s stupid.”

  As he mopped up the last of his delicious stew, Fodder glanced over at the sound of Shoulders’s voice. His fellow Disposable was watching the relentless prince feeding the recalcitrant princess her supper with a cynical expression on his face.

  “I don’t know.” Flirt grinned over her plate. “Maybe he’s getting through. She didn’t draw blood this time, did she?”

  “Not through lack of trying. Did you see those teeth strike? For a cow, she lunged like a snake!” Shoulders shuddered. “I’m bloody glad he was so keen to take her on, but I think he’s an idiot for trying to talk to her. We should have glued that ruddy gag on!”

  Flirt shrugged slightly as she dropped her cleaned plate down beside the fire and licked the last of the stew from her spoon and fingertips. “Let him try. He’s not doing any harm, is he?”

  “Except to himself,” Fodder pointed out as he deposited his plate next to Flirt’s. “Putting a stop to it might be for his own good. Or at least, the good of his extremities.”

  “And it’s hopeless,” Shoulders added archly. “There’s nothing between those perfectly formed Royal ears but rancid fluff. And banging on about laughing again. She can’t even think of an original threat!”

  Fodder glanced over to where Dullard, his nose looking distinctly tender, was still crouched, with a smile on his face, as he offered another heaped forkful to the pouting lips of the grimly glowering princess. Her expression could have skinned bark from the trees in white-hot strips.

  “I get the feeling Dullard just wants to think the best of people,” he remarked fairly.

  Shoulders gave a snort. “You think her best is much better than her worst?”

  “Not really.” Flirt agreed, shifting awkwardly as she began the nightly struggle to extract herself from her chain mail shirt. “But like I said, there’s no harm in letting him try, is there?” With a grunt and a heave, she tipped herself out of the shirt with an ungainly, metallic slump, revealing the stained padded under-tunic and Cringe’s velvety purse dangling on a leather strip around her neck. She breathed a sigh of relief. “Blimey, that’s better. It’s nice to be armoured-up, but that thing doesn’t half chafe.”

  Fodder could smell a dangerous sentence when he heard it, and his tongue almost tripped over itself in its haste to change the subject.

  “Whose turn is it to do the washing up?” he exclaimed in a rush.

  Flirt’s long, slow look only made it worse. But thanks be to whomever was in charge of such things, she let the dodge pass. “I’m not sure,” she replied. “We haven’t really had a rota, have we? Volunteers?”

  The profound silence that followed this statement made it clear she was not onto a winner.

  “Okay then,” she rallied. “Anyone got a coin? We’ll have to toss for it.”

  A brief search of all available pockets turned up nothing. Fodder hadn’t really expected that it would, since coins were a Narrative tool rather than something they needed, and if they happened to cross into Narrative in the near future, having spending money would be the last thing on their minds. But Flirt was not to be thwarted.

  “I know!” she exclaimed, grasping at the velvet purse and emptying it swiftly onto her palm. “We can use this.”

  The facets of the ruby glittered against the curling tendrils of gold that folded it against the Ring. Mystical symbols glinted mysteriously.

  “The Ring of Anthiphion.” Shoulders’s tone was flat. “You want to use the mysterious, all-powerful Ring of Destiny to toss for the washing up?”

  Flirt shrugged. “We aren’t In Narrative. Out here it’s just a shiny piece of costume jewellery. Mystical symbols upside down or right way up?”

  “They’re mystical symbols,” Shoulders pointed out. “How can you tell what way up they are?”

  “We’ll use this swirly one here by the ruby.” Flirt grinned. “Weird knotty flowery bit up or down?”

  Shoulders gave in. “Down,” he said with resignation, though his eyes remained incredulous. “Though it’ll probably blow a crater a mile wide when it lands.”

  “It’s just a ring,” Flirt repeated deliberately. “Mystic doesn’t work outside The Narrative, does it Fodder? Oh, and up or down?”

  Fodder had to admit he’d never thought much about it. But Flirt’s assertion rang an immediate bell in his head. Oh, the pixies had the power to change whatever they saw fit to change of their non-Narrative world, but mystical, magical objects of awe and terror were of little use but for decoration once The Narrative had passed. Magic was a Narrative domain.

  And for the first time, Fodder found himself wondering why.

  “Yeah,” he agreed absently. “And up, please.”

  “And I’ll say up too,” Flirt exclaimed. “Here we go.”

  And with one jerk of her hand, she tossed the Ring into the air.

  By all rights, it probably should have exploded or blown a hole in the ground or hovered, glowing mysteriously in midair. But the little spinning shape of red and gold simply arced briefly into the darkness before tumbling down into the leaf litter at Flirt’s feet with an utterly unremarkable clink.

  Fodder had fought to conceal a wince as it had tumbled back to earth. Shoulders failed entirely not to shy away.

  Flirt stared at them both and shook her head but thankfully did not remark upon their wussiness. She simply stared down at the Ring.

  “And the weird knotty flowery bit is…down!” she declared. “All yours, Shoulders.”

  Shoulders’s shoulders slumped noticeably, brief primal terror at being blown to smithereens replaced instantly by mundane irritation.

  “Oh, that’s bloody typical, isn’t it?” he grouched immediately, peering round the fire to squint at the Ring and then groaning again at confirmation that the Barmaid was indeed telling the truth. With a moody snatch, he gathered up their plates and utensils. “Who needs mystical when you’re ruddy unlucky?”

  Still in a huff with his mucky cargo clattering, the Disposable turned and marched off towards the river. Fodder considered pointing out the brook was closer but suspected it wouldn’t be well received.

  Flirt flashed a grin at Fodder as she gathered the Ring up from the leaf litter once more and tossed it gently in the palm of her hand. “You didn’t really think it was going to explode, did you?” she asked him.

  Fodder stared at the glittering ruby once more, his mind circling awkwardly around the words that had pushed it into action. Awareness had fired into life in his mind; there was something there, something important in what had just been said, he was sure of it.

  “I don’t know,” he replied, trying to limit his words to simplicity so as not to disturb the ponderings of his brain. “It’s just…”

  He felt Flirt’s gaze intensify, the grin fading as her eyes fixed upon him from beneath the shadow of her curly hair. The Ring stilled in her grasp.

  “What?” she asked softly.

  Fodder shook his head. “I don’t know,” he repeated quietly. “There was something about what you were saying. It felt…important. But I’m not sure why!”

  “We can try and talk it through.” All levity had vanished from Flirt’s tone. “Maybe that’ll help.”

  “I don’t know,” Fodder said again. “It’s the Ring. It’s something about…” He shook his head once more. “It’s just odd, you know? That it can be the all-powerful saviour of worlds in one place and just a piece of costume jewellery in another. What makes the difference? What makes the magic work?”

  Leaves crinkled as Flirt shuffled closer, peering at Fodder’s down-turned face curiously. “Well, The Narrative does,” she offered with a half-shrug. “Everyone knows it’s The Narrative that makes the magic work. Magus and Bumpkin don’t go around casting spells except when they’re up to their ears in The Narrative. I saw Magus try to summon a tankard once when he was really drunk but he couldn’t do diddly with it and everyone knew he couldn’t bec
ause the power doesn’t come from him, does it? It’s The Narrative’s.”

  Fodder gritted his teeth. There was something, something to be known here, and it was hovering right there on the edge of his thoughts.…

  “But how does The Narrative make it work?” he muttered almost to himself.

  Flirt gave him an incredulous look. “How does The Narrative make anything work? It works because it’s The Narrative.”

  “But it’s not The Narrative that does the magic.” It was so close, so tantalisingly close. “It’s the objects or the people. But the objects and the people don’t have the magic when The Narrative’s gone.”

  Flirt was frowning. “Because The Narrative puts it there, doesn’t it?”

  Fodder puffed out a sigh. “But…it’s not just The Narrative that does that. We aren’t puppets when The Narrative takes us—it pushes us and directs us and makes it much easier to obey than not, but it only gives ideas and lets us shape the characters ourselves. I mean, if you think about it, the best characters In Narrative are the ones we get to help make. The ones that are only Narrative tools are always so… wooden. It’s like…like…like The Narrative needs us to help bring things to life somehow. And to work properly, it needs us to do it willingly.…”

  He stared up at Flirt. She was watching him with no little confusion.

  “Are you saying…you think that we have something to do with making the magic?” she asked finally.

  “Yes!” Fodder stabbed the air with a finger.

  “But how?”

  “No idea.” Fodder deflated almost immediately. The tantalising scrap of idea fled abruptly from his mind. “But it might be worth bearing in mind. Especially since we’ve got that thing.”

  He gestured to the Ring. Flirt raised an eyebrow with a small smile. “I’d better keep this safe then,” she declared, depositing the Ring firmly back into the velvet purse around her neck. “Maybe you’ll find some way to make it leap into life and spirit us to safety!”