by Daniel Fox
The Wizard, the Farmer, and the Very Petty Princess
by Daniel Fox
Published by Daniel Fox
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to persons, living or dead or somewhere in-between, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Violating this copyright may result in horrible creatures snatching your favourite uncle and carrying him away into the night, while leaving your mother in-law behind and entirely unharmed.
Copyright 2011 Daniel Fox
Cover illustration by J Caleb Clark ([email protected])
All rights reserved.
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For my parents,
Ta-da!
Before
There was a grim noise, an awful noise, crunching and clacking and chunking out there between the graves. The residents of the boneyard, those who had fought wars, battled illness, been savaged by animals and capitulated to time were having their well-deserved rest disturbed by some rather impolite soul. And at this time of night those noises could warn of only one thing – trouble.
The gravedigger lurched out of his shack, ready for battle. His face usually had as much expression as one of the old gravestones around him. In his many years he’d weathered grieving families and friends, smelled the rot of decaying bodies, and none of it had earned much more than a blink. But now there was someone out there in the night playing foul with his charges, his wards, and there was a fury in his face.
He smacked his axe-handle into his open hand and called out into the fog, challenging the intruders to have the courage to face one of the living. But the digging sounds went on. The old man’s voice was blanketed by the fog; the digging sounds seemed to come from all sides at once.
The gravedigger stepped and stepped again, waving his axe-handle in front of him like a blind man waves a cane. The wood clinked against the Morley gravestone (passed some fifty years ago, loving father and husband), scraped against Miller (over a hundred years gone, but will always be missed), but being too short to find the ground completely missed the open Blythe grave. The gravedigger yelped and in he went heels over head, to crash into the open casket below.
The gravedigger’s curses barely made it to the top of the grave before the fog smothered them. He scrambled about in a panic, rat-like, trying desperately to not disturb the remains of the dearly departed lady. He stopped; his flailing hands had found a ring. And a necklace, complete with locket. But no body. What kind of grave-robbers went to all the trouble of digging six feet down through hard-packed earth, cracked open a coffin, and then took the body but left behind the valuables?
The noises outside his own little grave had stopped. The gravedigger stood, eyes squeezed shut, all ears, listening. Nothing. Just his own breathing, just his own heartbeat. He got to his feet, jumped, pulled himself out and up.
The fog, having concealed the enemy, finally parted and rolled and folded away, letting the moon have its way with the scene. The gravedigger’s jaw dropped, he spun this way, then that, unable to lay eyes on enough at one time to convince himself that what he was seeing was true. The mysterious sounds hadn’t just been a trick of the fog, they hadn’t come from just one source; they had come from many sources, maybe hundreds. Impossible! said the gravedigger’s mind. But true! replied his eyes.
Every grave, every crypt, every tomb had been thrown open. Ransacked and robbed. Every single one. The thousands of final resting places violated and emptied, the bodies all stolen.
The dead were gone.
Chapter 1
If you were to ask Idwal the farmer if this story was about him he would tell you absolutely not. He would then take you gently by the elbow and escort you from the premises and then forever after do his very best to pretend he had never met you. Stories are about singularly exciting moments in the lives of singular exciting people. Exciting moments and exciting people were the two very things that Idwal tried hardest to avoid in life.
He certainly lived in the right place. Idwal's small neat farm lay on the outskirts of what is, to this very day, considered the most boring place ever created by man. More boring than your high school math class, even more boring than church, the place was just about as exciting as watching grass grow. And not the green grass that your parents make you mow every week. Oh no, we're talking that long stuff out in the wild you barely even see because you're so excited by the trees and the ants making away with your cookies. (It's been said that there were two places in the world created by nature, instead of man, that were more boring than this town, but it's hard to verify since nobody ever bothered marking them down on a map.)
Not to give you the wrong idea. It was a neat town, to be sure. Tidy. All the buildings were kept ship-shape, fences mended and windows washed. It was just that there was no color anywhere, no zip or zing - not on the walls or the gardens or even in the clothes that the town folk wore. And the food! Eating sawdust would have been more exciting. Less nutritious, but more exciting.
Idwal made his way into town one bright sunny morning, very much not whistling a jaunty tune, doffing his cap politely this way and that to his friends and neighbors. As he strode down the main street, doing his best to ignore the cheerful sun overhead and the charming birds which sang out their greetings, he heard a peculiar flapping overhead. Looking up, he saw that a banner had been strung out over the road, stretching from one building to another. The banner was made of a number of faded brown burlap sacks that had been split open and then sewn together. Across them had been written the words PLAIN AND SENSIBLE DAY in blocky whitewash letters. Originally the words had been followed by an exclamation point, but some sensible soul had painted over the stick part of the punctuation with beige paint, leaving only the period behind.
The banner seemed to indicate some kind of celebration. Idwal looked around, not quite sure what to expect. He'd never really been a part of a celebration before, at least not in the sense you and I would think of. In this part of the world when someone's birthday rolled around you gave them a useful present, a hoe or a pair of scissors, and you made darn sure that you presented it unwrapped to avoid any sort of surprise. Weddings usually involved someone shaking your hand and then baking you something like a loaf of bread, maybe throwing some rice at you after it had been boiled to make sure it was nice and soft. Funerals went pretty much the same way.
There was quite a lot going on, at least as measured by this particular town. Almost everybody had taken the day off work. Everybody was milling around the street in their Sunday plainest. Since there wasn't much to see in terms of decoration, the good townspeople instead saw each other, and you have to admit that perhaps that isn't such a horrible thing.
There were even a couple of stalls set up along the street, although they had no particular wares to be seen. Instead one vendor called out, "Booooring! Get your drab and your blah right here!"
A second vendor, his stall unpainted and smaller than the first spoke out in a quieter voice that there was, "Nothing to see here! Nothing at all!"
A third vendor, who didn't really have a stall at all, just a board lying across two barrels, se
emed to be selling, "Same ole same ole. Get it while you can, it's selling at a moderate pace." Or at least that's what Idwal thought the man was saying, he was really speaking far too quietly for Idwal to be sure.
Idwal made his way through the smatterings of town folk over to the General Store. There he waved hello to Jan, the General Store's proprietor, a gruff-faced elder if ever there was one. There were scars across Jan's face, trophies from the last of the human wars, many years ago. Jan was a focused gent, and all his considerable concentration was being put into a frightful scowl which was aimed at the banner above and all the people beneath it.
"A very fine day to you, young Master Idwal," said Jan, giving the farmer a businesslike nod. "How's the farm?"
"The same," said Idwal.
"Splendid."
"How's your Missus?"
"The same," said Jan.
"Wonderful. And the children?"
"Growing."
"Ah," said Idwal, shaking his head. "That's a shame."
"But otherwise the same."
"Oh good. So, I'm afraid the old homestead could use a lick of paint."
"What's your fancy?"
"I was thinking a robust beige with some faded grey highlights."
"Just a moment then," said Jan, heading inside, "let me check my stock." This is what passed for a joke in the town. Jan only had those two colours, it was a well known fact. Two great big pyramids made out of buckets of the stuff. The town blacksmith, Eire Tonely, had once made the mistake of enquiring about a faded pink to paint the walls of his young daughter's bedroom. Jan and the other elders had shunned him for a year.
While Idwal waited he snuck another peek along the main street. Something was different. To be more precise, someone was different, and new. There, in amongst all the greys and browns of the town folk was a woman, a very old woman, her brown skin weathered like an apple left in the sun. She was a baggy mess of skirts over skirts under blouses under shawls, all finished up with a pair of mismatched boots. And the colours! To say they were bright was a criminal understatement. It wasn't so much that you saw the colours of all her mismatched clothes as that the colours jumped out and poked their thumbs into your eyes. It was a drive-by rainbowing.
The crone was pacing back and forth under the banner, waving some kind of paper in the air and yelling, right at people mind you, that she was selling adventures. Adventures in dark forests, haunted castles, by lava-spewing volcanoes or roaring waterfalls. Adventures to face ghosts, slay ghouls, or to just generally right all sorts of wrongs. She yelled out that everyone should come get an adventure while they were hot, to step right up and take a quest that was guaranteed to change your life (said guarantee being void if a werewolf ate your face or an ogre used you to clean its ears).
A pocket of space had opened up around the old woman. She couldn't have been more avoided if she had been there trying to sell leprosy, the extra-oozy kind. And yet despite all of this, despite the noise and the colours and the sheer nonsense of what she was trying to sell, and very much despite the fact that Idwal was a respected member in good standing of this particular town, he couldn't quite bring himself to look away.
He gave a bit of a squeak and a jump as Jan thumped down the buckets of paint. As they settled Idwal's account the farmer pointed up at the banner. "What's all this then," he said. "The banner, the stalls? Why is everyone taking the day off?"
"You need to get in from your farm a bit more," replied Jan. "It's forty years of the peace don't ya know." Jan grew quiet for a moment. Idwal could see the elder travelling back to those times, to the wars. There was old remembered violence running in Jan's veins, ghosts of lost friends haunting his heart. Jan sighed and looked out at the people of his town. "If we have to celebrate, I suppose the peace is a good reason. Still," Idwal watched Jan deliberately pull the scowl back onto his face, "celebrating peace with a load of ruckus and tomfoolery… It's completely without sense, I tell you."
"Quite right," said Idwal.
"Could be worse," said Jan. "Imagine the nonsense going on elsewhere."
"Indeed." Idwal nodded his head in the just-so manner the elders used when they were disapproving of something, an occasion which occurred more often than not. "It's the noisy ones that cause all the trouble."
Having proved himself agreeably disapproving, Idwal picked up his two buckets of paint and started up the road toward his home. However he got only a few steps along before the door of the town's only inn, the Pale Pony, was opened, and from it stepped the young maiden of Idwal's heart's desire, Gretal. She was quite a pretty young woman, despite her efforts to the contrary. Her white-blonde hair was pulled back into a bun so severe that it looked like a form of punishment. Her clothes were neat, tidy, but unflattering to what very well have been a fine womanly figure underneath. Or perhaps the figure wasn't all that fine. Nobody really knew. Gretal was, in Idwal's earnest opinion, the very epitome of the deliberately dull town.
She greeted him with a smile and they began to walk together. "You haven't been to the fair?" she said.
"Oh no, not me," said Idwal. He hefted the buckets of paint. "Just scampered in for a bit of business, that's all. It's straight back to the farm for me."
"Good," said Gretal, and she favoured him with another smile.
"I've just had a thought," said Idwal, and it was true, this idea really had just come to him in the moment. "It occurs to me that you and I get along rather well."
"That's true," said Gretal.
"Well-" said Idwal, but then a brochure was thrust into his face by a grimy brown hand. He turned and found the colourful old woman standing next to him, bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet.
"Adventure, young sir?" she said in her rough crow's voice.
Gretal pushed the brochure out of the way. "Certainly not," she said, and took Idwal by the arm to lead him away. "You were saying?"
"Right, well," Idwal cleared his throat. "We've known each other since we were children, so it's highly unlikely that there's anything about us that we could surprise the other with. You have your inn, I have my farm, and that's just the way we'd like things to continue on. I think it's fair to say that we're both of moderate ambitions and cautious accomplishments."
"True."
"So I can't help but wonder-" Another brochure shot up in front of Idwal's face.
"If not an adventure," said the old woman, "how about a quest?"
"No," said Idwal, gently pushing the old woman's hand aside. "Thanks awfully though." He turned to Gretal. "Where was I?"
"Cautious accomplishments."
"Right. Well. So those are all the reasons why I think we should probably get married. What do you think?"
It didn't take Gretal very long to decide. She stopped walking and stared at the sky, weighing the pros and cons. She chewed on her lower lip a moment more, then shrugged and gave Idwal another smile. "I don't see why not." And that was that.
This proposal was, by the way, to be ever after considered the third-most romantic occurrence to ever take place in the town. Second place was generally acknowledged as the time, some ten years back, when Branwen Farley had been out for a walk and had come across the farmer Tadwell trapped under a cow he had been milking. There was no real malice in the cow, it just seemed that after all that teat-yanking she'd needed a bit of a breather, so down she went. Branwen had been unable to get said cow to budge be it by honey or by vinegar, so she had made the trip back home to fetch her older brother Stil who was respected as being somewhat of an authority in the bovine species. Stil had returned with Branwen to the farm, sized up the situation, slipped on a glove, and plunged his arm into the cow's behind right up to his shoulder. To say that the cow moved would be an understatement. The farmer Tadwell was saved.
If this story had originated in any other place, you could rightfully expect to hear that Tadwell and Branwen had made some sort of romantic connection - gazing into each other's eyes, sighing at the very thought of the other's wonderfulnes
s, that sort of thing. But not so in this town; here, that was as far as the tale went. Tadwell and Branwen never actually connected after that; still, it had been nice of Branwen to make all that effort.
The top-most romantic story of the town revolved around how Stil Farley managed to retrieve his glove from the cow's rear end.
Idwal and Gretal, having given the nod to the whole marriage idea, leaned their heads together to plan the event out. There was much talk of not having decorations or too fancy a cake, how twigs were under-rated as floral arrangements, how they would have beautiful babies but not too beautiful, ha ha.
"A daring deed maybe?" The old woman was at them again, a new note of desperation in her voice. "Look!" she said before either of the young couple could cut her off. She shuffled out her pack of brochures. "I've got a good one here. Let's you cut the head right off of a virgin-eating dragon."
"A virgin-eating dragon?" Gretal sniffed. "You mean out there?" She waved a dismissive hand around, indicating the world at large. "Poor creature must have gone and starved to death by now. Ta-ta." She grabbed Idwal's arm again and marched him away.
But as Gretal went on planning their bland upcoming affair Idwal couldn't help looking back over his shoulder. The old woman stood all alone in the middle of the road, all slumped and sad. A body couldn't help but feel a little bit sorry for her. Was it more outlandish to talk to the old woman, or to make believe she didn't exist? Talking to people was an every day thing; the idea that the old woman wasn't there was absurd. And absurdity was an enemy of normality. So…
Idwal gently detached himself from Gretal. He gave an embarrassed nod to each and every one of her objections even as he made his way back to the crone.
"Any sales?"
"Not a one," sad the old woman sadly. "I just can't understand it. Look at my brochures here! I made them all by hand! Drew every dragon scale, laboured by candlelight to fill all these foreign landscapes with enchantment and wonder. I even enlarged all the heaving bosoms." She flipped up one particular brochure that promised the damsel you rescued to be extremely grateful. Said bosoms were indeed of the heaving variety. Idwal was suspicious; a woman able to stand upright with such endowments seemed more mythical than the manticore than was rearing over her.