Funny Fantasy

by Gail Carriger

  The blood-sprite on the screen wasn't thrown clear. Instead, it grinned toothily at us and doubled in size.

  "Crap," said Ndala.

  Hob glanced at the sensor readings. "We're covered in them. At least two dozen and more are coming."

  They began banging on the hull, which started to groan ominously.

  "Gonna fire the escape thrusters!" said Ndala, suddenly all business. "Everybody strapped in?" She hit another control. Nothing happened. "Oh, man."

  The temperature in the tank's cabin was climbing rapidly. We'd settled at the bottom of the blood river and had begun, terrifyingly, to sink into the muck below. The sprites banged on the tank's hull; they were close enough that we could hear their eerie, distorted chanting.

  There was a crunch and the lights went out. Somewhere I could hear liquid pouring in, and the cabin suddenly got much hotter.

  "Hull breach!" Ndala shouted as the emergency light came on. "Damn it! Escape pod, come on, get out, get out!"

  She dragged us into a narrow tube and hit the big red button. I curled all my tentacles around her and held on. The door closed, and then there was a lot of noise, jolts and terror as the pod rocketed out of the tank.

  "GET IT OFF ME!" Hob was shouting.

  "Ow," Ndala said. She kicked at the door twice until the explosive bolts caught and blasted it up and away from us. Light flooded in. We were alive and on land.

  "Damn it."

  "Get off!" Hob screeched.

  I realized that at some point I'd wrapped all my tentacles around his face. I lifted off and out of the blood-covered capsule. "Sorry."

  Ndala scrambled out after me, followed by a weary, disheveled Hob. I followed the two of them to the edge of the Gorge. There were little bubbles and a patch of oil where the doomed supertank had gone down.

  "So much for science," said Hob, not unkindly.

  "Yeah, well," said Ndala grouchily. "That was a dumb idea."

  "Uh," I said, scanning around. "Guys?"

  "It would have worked if not for those blood-sprites," continued Hob. "And at least we got to the other side."

  "True!" said Ndala brightly. Her face fell again. "Aw. That tank's gonna come out of my salary, I bet."

  "Guys!" I said, adding a note of urgency to my voice.

  "What's up, Ms. Clean?" asked Ndala, glancing back at me. Her eyes widened. "Oh."

  A horde of goblins surrounded us. They stretched as far as the eye could see, cackling and rubbing their furry little hands together in anticipation.

  "Hey, Hob?" asked Ndala as they turned and stood, hands raised.

  "Yeah?"

  "You still have those swords?"

  THEY TRUSSED US UP like turkeys, hung Ndala and Hob from poles, and trooped us off towards the looming castle of the Nightmare Duke. Me they weren't sure what to do with, so they put me in a cookpot and magically sealed the lid. That was fine. I didn't want to get out.

  I did clean the goo out of the bottom of the pot with the few tentacles I could wriggle free, though.

  We clanked along for hours until at last the lid came off the cookpot and I was dumped unceremoniously onto the cold stone floor of a vast outdoor amphitheater. Hob and Ndala, still tied up, were surrounded by goblins with big, nasty-looking axes and pikes. In every space of the amphitheater sat a screeching, cheering goblin.

  A hush fell over the crowd as a magnificent Fae wearing a swirling black cape descended from the sky. He was tall with skin nearly bleach-white, hair the color of gold, and finely pointed ears. His cruel features betrayed nothing remotely soft or welcoming.

  "Well then," he said, coming to rest directly in front of Hob. "Welcome back."

  Hob looked utterly wretched.

  "You're the Nightmare Duke," I said.

  "Yes, machine. It is I." He gestured to the goblins with the pikes. "Untie them."

  The goblins wiggled their fingers and the ropes fell away. More magic. I snapped a tentacle at one who got too close; he bonked me with his pike.

  As soon as she was free Ndala snarled, "You fucker! Wake up our crew!" and leapt for him, sidearm drawn. He yawned and flicked his wrist—Ndala went flying across the floor. Several goblins immediately surrounded her, keeping her pinned with the business end of the pikes.

  "Mortals," sighed the Nightmare Duke. "So easy, so easy. Ah, Iassando Showerrain. You came home."

  Hob glowered at him. "Dad."

  "How are you, my boy?" asked the Nightmare Duke.

  "Not well, since you banished my entire race from this part of Faerie," he said sulkily.

  "Well, you know how it is when your mother and I fight," the Nightmare Duke said with a lackadaisical shrug. "I expect I'll allow you back within the millennium."

  "Oh, so—" I started to say.

  "Nightmare Dude is Hobbsie's dad, and he's a real prick who is probably gonna kill all of us just to make some dumbass point," said Ndala from the ground. "Right? Get with the program, Ms. Clean."

  Both Hob and the Nightmare Duke looked impressed. "She's astute," said the Nightmare Duke.

  "You don't have to kill both of them," said Hob. "Maybe just the robot?"

  "That's hardly any fun," said the Nightmare Duke. He bared his sharp, silver teeth at us. "Especially when I can keep your crew asleep until they all die of starvation. Perhaps we can store our extra garbage there. I'd love to know what you're going to do about it. Hobbsie."

  "That's it!" cried Hob. He pulled a short dagger out of his belt. "I challenge you to—"

  The Nightmare Duke hit him in the chest with a bolt of lightning.

  Hob staggered, then spoke a few arcane words into the air. A crowbar appeared and started smacking the Nightmare Duke in the thigh.

  But the Nightmare Duke was too fast. He changed into a hawk and soared overhead, diving at Hob's head. The goblin crowd cheered.

  There was a sizzling blast of plasma from Ndala's direction. She'd rolled to her feet and fired her sidearm while the goblins were distracted. She missed the Nightmare Duke by millimeters, and the goblins tackled her.

  "Kick his ass, Hobbsie!" she cried as she went down.

  Hob turned into a tiger. He growled and leaped at the hawk, which turned around and shattered into a thousand pieces.

  "Never catch me this way!" crowed the teeny bits of the Nightmare Duke. "Any of us you catch, there will be a thousand more!"

  A zillion little Nightmare Dukes ran around on the stones of the amphitheater, just like bugs, while the horde of goblins cheered.

  I hate bugs. And when I see bugs, I do what I do best:

  I clean them up.

  I raced around at lightning quick speed, sucking up every one of the Nightmare Dukes I could see. He was so surprised that he forgot to change himself back—or, maybe once he lost some of his parts, he couldn't.

  I didn't care. In less time than it could take the goblins to react I'd finished my run, emitted some very pleasant water vapor, and stacked a neat pile of waste cubes there on the ground. Nothing else of the Nightmare Duke remained.

  The crowd of goblins gasped.

  "You… you killed him!" said Hob.

  "Science!" shouted Ndala, triumphantly pumping a fist in the air. "Woo!"

  The goblins roared, jumping up and down in fury. Suddenly the little guys with the pikes were all around us again, and they were not happy.

  "Crap," Hob said, quivering.

  "THAT WAS REALLY great, how you begged for our lives," I said to Hob as we picked our way through the piles of garbage leading to the portal. A phalanx of grumbling goblins escorted us.

  "I liked it when you cried," added Ndala.

  "Shut up, both of you," muttered Hob.

  "It was nice of them not to kill us," I said.

  "Wasn't it?" agreed Ndala brightly. "And all because Hob's the Nightmare Duke now!"

  "It doesn't work that way," Hob sighed. "The title goes to my second cousin, but I get a certain amount of influence and a time-limited claim on pieces of the title while I'm in Faerie.
It's… complicated."

  "Still, we're not dead," I said. "Just exiled forever."

  "Which is fine with me," said Ndala. "This place sucks! But Hob, you can return. Lucky."

  "I suppose," said Hob. He looked a lot glummer than I'd expected.

  We arrived at the portal and the goblins pointed me and Ndala at it with their pikes. I took one last longing look at the massive piles of garbage and zipped forward across the event horizon. Ndala and Hob were right behind me.

  "Well," said Ndala once we were on the other side. "I'm bushed. I'm gonna go take a nap."

  Hob looked back through the vortex. "This is going to require some explaining," he said. "I wonder. Maybe a ship like this isn't a good place for a Fae like me. Maybe I should learn to live in the world I'm from and acknowledge who I am. Or maybe I can be a bridge between worlds!" His eyes lit up. "Think of that! Real connections between Faerie and this world! Oh, just imagine how glorious it could be."

  Ndala looked at me, and then back at him.

  Then she shoved him back through the vortex. It obligingly shut an instant later.

  "Nice work," I said. Shouts of alarm and irritation echoed from all over the ship, followed by high-pitched shrieking. The crew of the Zinnia was waking up and getting down to the business of slaughtering whatever goblins remained.

  "Fairies on a spaceship are a bad fucking idea," said Ndala.

  "Agreed," I said, and began to clean.

  This story originally appeared in Apex, 2015.

  Susan Jane Bigelow is a fiction writer, political columnist, and librarian. She mainly writes science fiction and fantasy novels. Her short fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons, Apex Magazine, and Lightspeed Magazine's "Queers Destroy Science Fiction" issue, among others. Her Extrahuman Union series is being republished by Book Smugglers Publishing in 2016. She lives with her wife in northern Connecticut, and is probably currently at the bottom of a pile of cats.

  Suede This Time

  Jean Rabe

  PRINCE WASN'T CHARMING.

  Not as far as I was concerned.

  He stood in the middle of the castle drawbridge, his wheat-blond hair a mass of tangles, his jowls sagging, and his vacuous black eyes fixed unblinkingly on me. As I returned his stare, a thick strand of drool spilled over his lower lip and stretched down to pool between his front paws. A threatening growl rumbled up from his barrel-shaped chest, and he tipped his snout to display his sharp teeth.

  No, Prince wasn't charming at all.

  Though I was several yards away, on the far bank of the moat, I could smell him. The early morning breeze pummeled me with the redolence of whatever long-dead thing he'd found to roll in. I could well imagine he had fleas—a burgeoning colony of them—as when he wasn't watching me, he was usually scratching at himself with his hind legs or vigorously rubbing his rump against a post. He probably had mange, too.

  It was my master who named the wretch "Prince," just three weeks past—the day he spied the grubby mongrel looking so apparently hungry and forlorn and whimpering so damn theatrically.

  How my master could find this creature even remotely "adorable and oh-so-cute" was a mystery.

  How he could take this insidious cur into our magnificent castle . . .

  How he could let this filthy animal sleep at the foot of his bed . . .

  How he could feed this . . . thing . . . choice bits from the table . . .

  And how he could fashion a collar of the finest leather and the most exquisite sapphires for the beast's thick neck (the jewels being the only princely aspect of the fiend) . . .

  . . . was well and truly beyond the scope of my considerable intelligence to grasp.

  The worst of it—Prince wasn't even a dog.

  Oh, he certainly looked like a dog, even to my keenly perceptive eyes, a wavy-coated retriever of some sort or an overgrown water spaniel with a fanciful plumy tail. He could bark with the best of them, shake "hands," roll over, even play "fetch" when the mood struck him. And he was quite practiced at passing wind under the dining room table when guests were present, and hiking his leg against the castle's walls when none of the guards were watching.

  But to call him a dog would be an insult to lowly canines everywhere.

  "Prince" was an ogre.

  I accidentally discovered his dark secret late last night. And mere minutes later—before I could reveal him for the monster he is—he chased me out of the castle just as the drawbridge was rising, forcing me to spend the night beyond the moat on this chill, damp ground. When the bridge was lowered just an hour ago to greet the dawn, he immediately sidled out, no doubt to keep me from getting back in and warning my master about him. You see, I can speak the human tongue when I've a mind to. And the moment I tell my master the truth about his dear "Prince," he will order the ogre captured and slain.

  I would attend to the killing myself. Unfortunately, "Prince" is a tad smarter than his departed brother was. I dealt with that particular ogre a few years ago.

  I suppose I should explain.

  I am Minew Milakye, a chartreux of some distinction. For those of you regrettably unknowledgeable about the finer points of cats, the chartreux is an ancient and esteemed breed that originated in France and was raised into numbers by a sect of Carthusian monks. All of my kind are known for our splendid and wooly slate-blue coats, bright orange eyes, even temperaments, and sharp wits. My wit is sharper than most.

  It was my dear mother who named me Minew.

  It was my master who drolly and fondly dubbed me Puss, as in 'Puss 'N Boots.' My good friend Charles Perrault reasonably accurately penned the story of how I came into my master's company—a far better telling, I might say, than he rendered of the sagas of that cinder girl and the child who looked quite silly in the vermilion ridinghood.

  The curtailed version of my story: I 'belonged' to a miller who died. The miller's will made provisions for his eldest son to receive the mill, his middle son to acquire the donkey, and his youngest son to be given me.

  The youngest son struck off, saddened by his lot and unappreciative of my company until I revealed that I could speak his simple language. I took pity on him, and so I promised that I would make him rich—if he would buy me a fine cloak, a velvet hat, a small bag, and a pair of shiny black leather boots for my back paws (on occasion I enjoy walking on two legs). He was reasonably quick to attend to my requests, and I was quick about my schemes.

  Decked out quite nicely, I presented the nearest king with various sundries, claiming them all to be gifts from my master the handsome and noble Marquis de Carabas. (What a grandiose title I created for the lad!) When the King's curiosity was suitably piqued, and when he began toying with the notion of arranging a marriage between his beautiful daughter and the mysterious Marquis de Carabas, I invited the royal family to visit my master in his castle.

  Now my master didn't have a castle, but I'd heard tell of an ogre who owned a magnificent one. All I had to do was take the castle away from the brute. So I paid a visit to the ogre, a quite magical if dim-witted creature, and I told him that I'd heard he had great arcane powers.

  "Yep, I sure do," the ogre replied. "I can change into things . . . a lion . . . an elephant . . . ya know, things."

  "That's wonderful!" I played along. "But you're so tall! I bet you can't turn into something tiny." I furrowed my brow. "Say . . . a blackbird. Or even more difficult . . . a mouse. That would be impossible even for one of your magical talent, wouldn't it?"

  "Nope. Not impossible," he shot back. "I can do a mouse. Watch this."

  On the spot the fool cast a spell and transformed himself into a little gray one, which I snapped up, chomped its head off, and swallowed.

  Before the hapless beast had a chance to give me indigestion, the "Marquis" had a magnificent castle to show off to the King and the Princess. And, soon after, the "Marquis" had a beautiful royal wife, and was able to attract a staff of servants and two dozen well-armed and armored guards.

  It looked like
the lot of us would live happily ever after.

  That is until three weeks past when my master brought "Prince" into the castle, and until late last night when I accidentally caught "Prince" prowling through the kitchen for a late-night snack. "Prince" was walking on two olive-tinged legs the size of tree-trunks and had shed all of his doggy-hair in favor of his natural warty ogre hide. No wonder the dog had smelled odd, not like other canines I'd been downwind of. Unfortunately, "Prince" spotted me, and because of that I'm standing here on this chill, damp ground rather than lounging on a pillow high in the castle waiting for breakfast to be served.

  How was I to know the ogre whose head I bit off had a brother?

  How was I to anticipate that said brother would use magic to show up at the castle looking like some overgrown, sad-eyed water spaniel? And that he would be standing guard on the drawbridge at this very moment, turning the pool of drool at his feet into a veritable lake?

  How was I to know?

  Quick-witted though I am, do not expect me to be omniscient. So of course I couldn't have known about "Prince." Still, I felt some responsibility to warn the Marquis about the detestable creature. I had put the Marquis de Carabas in the castle after all.

  I glided closer to the drawbridge, trying to gauge whether I might be able to race past "Prince" and into the castle proper before he could catch me. The beast's eyes lost their empty look and glimmered darkly.

  "Ya ain't comin' in, cat," he whispered just loud enough for me to hear. His voice sounded like bits of gravel jostling around inside a bucket. "I heard whatcha did to my brother. Word gets 'round ya know. So ya ain't never comin' back in. This's my castle now." He punctuated the sentiment with a loud dog-belch that added to the evil smells assaulting me.

  "Your castle?"

  "Yeah. I inherited it. From my brother who you killed."

  "Inherited. Big word for an ogre."

  He growled and scratched at a plank.

  "Fine. Your castle," I hissed. "Then I suppose I have no alternative but to leave." I turned tail and sauntered into the bushes. To myself, I added: "But it is not your castle. There is no way you're claiming the place with the Marquis, his royal wife, and all those guards traipsing around. Ogres are powerful. But not powerful enough to deal with that many people."