Fantasy Short Stories: Five Fantastic Tales

by Quincy J. Allen

  “It was my pleasure, ma’am.”

  “It’s Miss Stoneshield. Why don’t you stop by tomorrow afternoon? You can help me explain to Ironsoul that there’s no longer a problem. I might even have other work for you.”

  “I’d like that. Thanks.”

  As I opened the door, she said, “You said something about fairies and unicorns. What did you mean?”

  “I guess we’ll see.” I smiled and closed the door behind me.

  O O O

  Miss Stoneshield pointed me towards the patio and left me alone while she directed the movers to empty the house of the governor’s belongings.

  I sat in the afternoon sunshine, sipping a tall glass of iced tea as I lounged in a human-sized chair someone had thoughtfully placed on the patio. I stared out at the green acres rolling behind the white castle. The colors were still too bright, the bees still trundled, and another group of pixies drifted off towards the forest.

  “It’s still a load of crap,” I muttered.

  I heard the door open behind me but didn’t turn.

  “Capaldi!” Ironsoul shouted. “You’ll never believe it!”

  “The unicorn head disappeared, right? Replaced by something?”

  “Yes! A sandbag! How did you—?”

  As if on command, a redheaded lass astride a purple unicorn bounded over a nearby hill. I pointed, still not looking at him.

  “How did you—?”

  “Client privilege,” I injected.

  What I couldn’t tell Ironsoul is that the Godfairy had pulled the oldest game in either world: a switcheroo. The dust on the pillow was the clue. Pixies working for the Godfairy had made a sandbag look like a severed head. But fairy godmothers are still fairy godmothers. Once I reminded the Godfairy of that, Dancer showed up in the barn late that morning—undoubtedly the same way he’d disappeared.

  “Client privilege?” Ironsoul blurted.

  “I’m sorry.” I looked at him and smiled. “I can’t tell you anything.” I think I said it a bit too smugly, because his reply hit me hard.

  “Well, if there wasn’t a crime, any investigating you did doesn’t count. Which means you still owe me.”

  “Crap,” I said under my breath.

  “Come one, Capaldi. Off the record. Tell me what happened.”

  For a moment I considered spilling the beans. But I couldn’t. I’d made a deal with everyone, and I kept my word. “All I can say is, ‘Oh what a world it is that has fairy godmothers in it.’” I raised my glass to Ironsoul and closed my eyes to the brightness of Fairyland, thankful it had a dark underbelly.

  The End

  Fomorian Legacy

  “They’re coming for us, Colin. You know that, don’t you?” Bekka’s ancient voice was a tight thing full of gravel and distant memory. But that voice was muffled now by the power plant compartment of her latest mekanik, a fifteen-foot-tall suit of armor. Her legs dangled out of it, making it appear as if the belly of the thing had swallowed the upper half of her thin, wiry frame. Standing upon a rickety ladder, she poked her head up from under gleaming, bronze cowl and stared at Colin with a steely gaze that could stop even the village elders in their tracks when she raised an eyebrow like she was doing now. “Spanner,” she added as she reached out her arm. She wore a brown, leather coverall, and her spindly hand seemed to sprout out of a stained, woolen shirt like a dead twig from dry earth.

  Colin McLeer turned his green eyes away from Dian—short for Dian Cecht—perched on the windowsill and almost invisible against the dark night outside. Dian was Bekka’s giant raven—and confidant, some said—and had been with her as long as anyone could remember. Colin shaded his eyes from the bright, electric lights hanging from the ceiling as he spoke. They, like the rest of the lights in Geevagh, were powered by Bekka’s generator. “But Fian said that the discussions with the Zylet ambassador went well.” Colin handed her the spanner. He held her gaze, a thing he did often with her, which was one of the reasons she had chosen him as her apprentice… but certainly not the most important one. “He said that he was close to reaching an accord with them.” Colin’s intelligent, green eyes searched Bekka’s wrinkled, wizened gray ones, and Bekka had to hold back a smile. She adjusted the bright lamp attached to her goggles, lowered the magnifying lenses, and ducked beneath the cowl once again.

  “Heh!” she snorted from inside the metal beast. “When you’ve been around as long as I have, you know when your enemy is biding time … which is exactly what that two-faced, tome-thumper is doing with young Fian.” Colin smiled at her use of the word young to describe Fian. While it was true that Fian was the youngest of the village Elders, he was in his sixties and as silver-haired as the rest.

  “But, Bekka—”

  “What did the Zylet’s do to Clan Kilney and their keep down south?” she shot with venom from within the metal beast.

  “They burned half of—” Colin started.

  “And what did they do to Gooding’s Hold and his people in the east?” Bekka’s voice was calm but held within it a barely contained combination of rage and disgust.

  “Their mekaniks leveled most of—”

  “Exactly!” she shouted. Colin heard her grunting as she tightened a bolt deep within the power plant.

  “But we’ve got three times the number of soldiers here in Geevagh than Gooding did, plus we have a half-dozen of your mekaniks. Fian says they wouldn’t dare attack us.”

  “I have no doubt the Kilneys and Gooding said the same thing. All it bought them is burned homes and shallow graves. All in the name of a god that wasn’t theirs. I said as much to Fian, but the arrogant fool just shook his head and smiled at me… at ME.”

  Nearly everyone in the village treated Bekka with deep respect, for she had been old when the elders were children. However, the resentment between her and Fian was well known, for she had found him wanting when he tried to become her apprentice as a boy. Rumor had it that she had been silver when the Elders were children. Rumors also abounded about how old she was, but no one ever had the courage to ask her, not even Colin at his most brazen.

  In truth, everyone was more afraid of the answer than they were curious about discovering the truth.

  Bekka extricated herself from beneath the cowl and stood up straight, perched like a crow atop the ladder. She leaned back, a bit dangerously for Colin’s comfort, and gazed up at the gleaming, bronze face of her creation. A satisfied, almost wicked grin split her ancient face as she took in the details she had carved into the molten metal when she created the helm.

  Her other mekaniks had been simple suits of armor, powered by steam and aether, each capable of carrying a man within and carrying semi-automatic canons on each arm that could wreak havoc with foot soldiers, cavalry and other mekaniks. This one had originally been a standard design, nothing more than an addition to their defense forces. But something in Bekka had changed when the Zylet Ambassador arrived in Geevagh two weeks before. As was her privilege, she’d sat in on the Elder meeting with the Ambassador. Upon returning to her shop, she immediately began working on modifications to the great machine, telling Colin only that this one needed to be something different… something special.

  “Get up there and slip into the cockpit,” Bekka ordered. She turned to Colin and motioned with her head for him to climb up the back of the beast. Colin stared up and examined the face of the metal monster. The face was a grimace of fury, much more detailed in design than the plain, metal helms of Bekka’s other mekaniks. The face snarled around a mouth full of golden fangs, and rather than the pair of eyes like the others, this one had a large, single lens of dull crimson. Flaring out from the temples were two great horns that spiraled back in long curves.

  “Is it ready for a test drive?” he asked. Colin had taken the past three mekaniks out for their maiden runs, ever since he’d become her apprentice.

  “Drive?” she asked. “No. Not yet. This one is different. Its power source is neither steam nor aether. Now get up there.” She gave him t
he smile that meant discussion was over.

  Colin raised an eyebrow, wondering what would power the great machine, but he’d been with Bekka long enough to know when she would not answer any more questions. He nodded his head and moved around the floor of the workshop to the mounting steps, careful to avoid tripping over the various gears, plates of steel and bronze, and other equipment that littered Bekka’s otherwise spartan workshop. He also had to step over Dagda and Ogma, Bekka’s two giant, Irish wolfhounds who habitually slept at their master’s feet, no matter where she might be working.

  He clambered up the steps and grabbed the steel crossbar mounted across the shoulders, which allowed a driver to lift his legs and slide into the dark, interior of the machine. He grunted once, pulled up and then slid his legs inside. As they slid in, Colin noticed immediately that the fit was snug against his tanned leather pants, not tight, but close enough to his body to make him wonder. The other mekaniks had been a loose fit, designed for the burly soldiers who normally drove them. Additionally, the normal levers for controlling the machine were gone. He assumed that Bekka simply had not yet installed them.

  “Bekka, are you sure you got the measurements, right? It’s tight in here,” he called from within. He stared out through the narrow, forward port and could see the top of Bekka’s head below him. He heard Bekka’s dry, laughter.

  “Then I got the measurements right, young apprentice,” she cackled. “This one is for you.”

  “Me?” Colin asked, bewildered. His voice sounded hollow and nervous inside the cockpit.

  “That’s right. If things go the way I think they will, then you’re the only one I can trust with this.”

  Colin suddenly felt giddy and nervous all at once. He’d never been good at soldiering. He was small for his seventeen years, and thin, prone more to scholarly studies than combat. He’d been a good student to Bekka over the years, learning everything there was to know about their history. He’d studied everything from the Tuatha Dé Danann of the ancient past through the first and second ages of man. He’d learned from her of the great blight that wiped out most of humanity, and the wars that followed, and of two hundred years of peace as what was left of humankind reverted back to smaller clusters of villages, towns, and a more agrarian style of living.

  Bekka had always said that he was her best student, and he could to recite back to her the names, dates, and places of every significant historical event for the past six thousand years of man’s history. She’d told him that his knowledge of the Celts was approaching her own, and that she was starting to forget some of what she had learned over the decades.

  “Does Fian know what you’re planning with this mekanik?” Colin asked.

  “Fian is a fool, and he’s going to get us all killed if we don’t do something about it,” Bekka said flatly. “Does the cockpit fit?”

  “Yes, Bekka. It does, but I don’t understand.”

  “That’s okay. You will. We may make a soldier out of you yet,” Bekka added, and she started laughing quietly as Colin heard her start scrambling up the front of the machine.

  “Soldier?” Colin yelped. “You haven’t even mounted the canons on the arms yet!”

  “Don’t you worry about that. When the time comes, you’ll find that it won’t be a problem. Now hop on out of there. I have a task for you.”

  Colin climbed out and carefully made his way down the steps. As he looked up he saw Bekka fiddling with a catch at the neck of the machine. With a final twist, the beast’s head split across the top, and with a hissing sound, a small, spherical housing the size of a man’s head rose out of the compartment on rigid, brass pistons. Bekka reached up and pulled out the spherical casing.

  “Catch!” she said and dropped it down to Colin. He barely caught it in time, straining with the heavy metal casing. The brass was cold to the touch, colder than it should have been, as if it had been set out on a wintry day. It had brackets beneath that would allow it to fit snugly in its housing, and there were sockets in the bottom that would plug into power couplings. It also had an iris built into the front that appeared to have a mechanical actuator in the side.

  “What is it?” Colin asked, having never seen anything like it.

  “It will hold the heart of the machine. See that latch on the back?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Press it.”

  Colin did, and the rear half of the casing opened like metal mouth. “There’s nothing inside,” he said, more confused than before.

  “Exactly. That’s your task. It will be dangerous, and you’ll have to dive deeper than you ever have before.”

  “Dive?”

  “The power source is at the bottom of Loch na Súil.”

  “Loch na Súil?” Colin blurted, his mouth dropping open and his eyes going wide. “But that’s supposed to be where—”

  “Exactly. And we’re going to harness it… you and I… to defeat an enemy of the Celts. Ironic, don’t you think?”

  “Is that possible? I thought it was all just legend… mythos.” Colin knew the legend well. Bekka had hammered into him the tales of the Tuatha Dé Danann more than any other part of history. The old Celtic legends were the foundation of how the people of Geevagh lived. After the Great Blight tore through humanity and the aftermath of violence that further depleted its numbers, many of the survivors of Sligo County had gathered and rebuilt life without the influences of the Hebrew god, his son, his prophets, and the greed and the violence that seemed to all-too-frequently go hand-in-hand with them.

  “Everything is possible, Colin. Never forget that. It’s merely an application of time, knowledge, and endeavor. With those three, everything is possible. Now go, gather supplies and your biggest backpack,” she ordered. “And don’t let anyone get the idea you’re leaving. I’ll gather the gear and meet you at the crossing just north of town.”

  “Yes, Bekka.” Colin set the casing on the workbench, turned, and picked his way across the cluttered floor towards the door. He was startled as it burst open.

  “Bekka!” Captain Braden Byrne shouted as he rushed in. Captain Byrne led the squad of mekaniks and had been Bekka’s apprentice before joining the guard. Like Colin, he placed his allegiance with Bekka above nearly all other things. He stepped past Colin, giving the boy a curt, respectful nod. Like the other men of the mekanik squad, Byrne stood over two meters tall, muscle stretched taught over his soldier’s frame. He wore the gray leather and brass-plated armor of the squad, with the silver wolf pack insignia gleaming on his chest. At his hip he carried a sidearm of Bekka’s design that harnessed aether to magnetically accelerate copper slugs to a high velocity.

  “What is it, Braden?” Bekka’s tone was worried, but the look in her eyes belied a suspicion of what the news had to be. She began making her way down the ladder, and Braden rushed to her, helping her down from the ladder. “A rider just came in from Leitrim!” he blurted. “He said that the Zylet army was on the move and heading this way.”

  “I want you to tell me everything,” Bekka said quietly. Turning her gaze to Colin, she said, “Go and do as I said. It seems we have less time than I thought.”

  Colin nodded and stepped out into the cool night air.

  “And Colin,” Bekka called. He stopped and turned in the doorway. “It may be an hour or more before I can meet you at the crossroads.”

  He nodded once again, closed the door quietly behind him and started jogging through the cobbled streets of Geevagh. His guts churned with worry over the news Captain Byrne carried. The streets were empty and his way awash in the bright light of a full moon hanging low in the sky, for the village turned down the electric streetlamps during the late hours of the night to conserve energy.

  As Colin made his way through the village, he wondered if the wooden homes and shops of Geevagh would suffer the same fate as those of Clan Kilney and Gooding Hold. He passed a pair of soldiers as they made their rounds through town, nodding to each, although they paid him little attention. Colin
and Byrne shared a sense of camaraderie, but the rest of the village treated Bekka’s latest apprentice with as much distance as they had the others over the years.

  As he passed the barracks in the middle of town, he spotted six mekaniks lined up outside the building, their golden hulls gleaming in the pale moonlight. A prayer to Nuada passed Colin’s lips, hoping for strength and victory in battle against the Zylets, if it came to that.

  He reached his home, opening the iron gate, and moving as quietly as he could around the back. Removing his shoes, he crept up the back stairs that led to his small room built into the attic of his adoptive parent’s small cottage. It took him only a few minutes to change out of his dusty workshop clothes and into his leather breeches and shirt. The leather felt cool against his body but would protect him against the chill air of the forests and glens between Geevagh and Loch na Súil.

  He quickly gathered his backpack, water skin, and a long dirk that slipped easily into the back of his belt. Then, with a quick look around to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything, he quietly went back down the steps and entered the house through the back door. In the kitchen, he grabbed a loaf of the bread his mother had made that morning and slipped that into the pack. The pack went over his shoulders, and he went out the back.

  He came around the corner of the house and spotted a full squad of soldiers jogging down the street in their glinting brass armor and leather uniforms, heading south in a tight group. Colin ducked back into the darkness and watched them go by. Full squads marching through the streets was unusual in Geevagh, and Colin suspected that the word had already gone out for the Geevagh regulars to muster at the barracks. Colin moved back behind the house, making his way from alley to alley as stealthily as he could, moving northwest towards the crossroads. It took him thirty minutes to reach the edge of town, and he was certain no one had seen him. Another ten minutes found him at the crossroads where he settled in amidst a cluster of bushes beneath a large oak tree. He pulled out the loaf and pulled off a chunk, nibbling it slowly to assuage his hunger. As he waited, he pondered what might happen to Geevagh and the people there, fighting to keep his eyes open as fatigue took him.