The Mammoth Book of Comic Fantasy

by Mike Ashley

  “Make it one minute and I’ll take the bet,” said Charming.

  “Oh, you always drive a hard bargain! All right then, one minute. I still think I’ll win.”

  “Now, Your Highness, you must stand exactly here, on this very spot.” Rosa pointed with her wand to one of the flagstones outside Baron Hardup’s front door. The stone, along with two others, had been marked with a chalk arrow, and according to Rosa the choice would minimize the disorientation Charming would feel when Time came back. Charming was already feeling disorientated enough, largely because of a blackbird that hung fixed and motionless in mid-air only a few inches from his nose. The bird had been flying unsuspectingly past at the very moment when the three of them materialized and Time jolted to a halt, and now it was frozen in an endless moment, with its wings outspread and its lunch, in the form of a particularly fat and succulent worm, gripped in its beak.

  “Right, everyone!” Rosa clapped her hands. “Places, please! We all know what to do, n’est-ce pas?”

  Dandini, who now sported a topaz ring in addition to six others, smirked at Charming as he shuffled to his appointed spot. Rosa, too, had taken up her position, and she raised her wand. “All ready?” she trilled. “Good! Then one, and two, and THREE!”

  There was a noise like the buzzing of a bee the size of a carthorse, and Charming felt as if – it was the only way he could describe it to himself – his brain was being licked out of his skull by a gargantuan tongue. He seemed to swoop backwards, then upwards, then over and over in a series of dizzying somersaults, and as he tumbled helplessly the events of the past few months reversed at high speed through his mind. The banquet, other banquets before it, the fury of his father, the wedding night, the marriage ceremony, the unutterably giddy feeling of being totally and helplessly and passionately in love – it was all rushing and racing backwards, and as it went he found himself forgetting what had come before . . . or rather, later. Miss Rugosa had warned him about that. It had to happen, she had said, or the spell wouldn’t work; the rules of magic couldn’t allow him to have two separate sets of memories at once. That was the biggest danger: that, unable to recall what had actually happened, he would go and make the same mistake all over again. That was why she had altered the slipper. This time, it wouldn’t fit Rell.

  Then the one question that Charming had overlooked hit him like a punch on the jaw from a troll’s fist.

  If the slipper didn’t fit Rell . . . who would it fit?

  Panic nearly throttled him and he opened his mouth to yell, “STOP, WAIT, I THINK I MIGHT HAVE CHANGED MY MIND!” But even as he did so, there came a crack and a bang like stage thunder. One more stomach-churning somersault, and Charming opened his eyes to find himself sitting on the ground with his legs stuck out before him and his jaw hanging down as if he was trying to catch flies. Time came back with a crunch; the blackbird uttered an agitated squawk and zipped away into the trees. And Charming was convinced that there was something he ought to remember . . .

  “Get up, dear heart, do,” said Dandini, standing solicitously beside him. “I know how tired you must be, but I promise, this is the last house we’ll do today.” He smiled sympathetically. “We’ll find her, don’t you fret.”

  For some inexplicable reason Charming felt a stab of terror at those words, but he put it down to weariness and depression. He was so much in love. And the only clue he had to lead him back to the beautiful girl who had taken his heart was a glass slipper . . .

  “Come on,” said Dandini. He consulted a list. “There are three daughters in this household, I gather. That’s three chances, isn’t it?”

  He walked elegantly to the door and knocked. The knock was answered by a fresh-faced boy with a great many polished buttons on his uniform. Charming saw the way Dandini’s eyes lit up, but he didn’t comment, only followed him over the threshold. The third member of their party – a woman in a tailored gossamer suit – walked briskly after him on her pencil heels, and Charming wondered briefly who she was. He couldn’t recall bringing anyone else along, and though her face was vaguely familiar he couldn’t put a name to it. But there was no time to wonder about that, for Baron and Lady Hardup were welcoming them into the parlour, the boy with the buttons was bowing low while exchanging challengingly significant looks with Dandini, and two girls were rising from a chaise-longue and simpering towards them . . .

  Charming’s heart sank into his deerskin boots. If these two weren’t quite the ugliest females in the kingdom, they were certainly up among the prizes. The elder was half a head taller than he was, thin as the proverbial rake, with dyed black hair and the most enormous nose he had ever seen in his worst nightmares. While the younger, who came no higher than his chest even with her brassy hair piled up like a hayrick on top of her head, was a perfect enough replica of a boisterous bacon pig to delight the eye of any farmer.

  Charming said, “Er . . .” He looked for help to Dandini, but Dandini and the buttons-boy were whispering and giggling together by the door. Then the woman in the gossamer suit stepped forward.

  “Dear Baron and Baroness!” With a mannered fluttering of her fingers that made Charming wonder fleetingly if she might have been a receptionist in her time, she oozed between Charming and the two girls, who were both eyeing him as ferrets might eye a rabbit. “Such lovely girls! Charmante; très, très charmante! I’m sure that we have found the right house at last!”

  Charming opened his mouth to say that they had done no such thing, but she jabbed his ankle with one of her lethal heels and he was so astounded that it silenced him.

  Lady Hardup, more than a little bemused, started to proffer tea, but Rosa waved the idea away. “So kind, dear Baroness, but we are here for a purpose, n’est-ce pas? Young ladies, young ladies; sit down, do! We cannot try the slipper unless we are seated, can we? Not if we wish to retain our grace and elegance!”

  Charming hissed, “Dandini!” but to no avail; in fact, Dandini and the boy had disappeared altogether by this time. Feeling as if he was being carried along by a horrible nightmare over which he had no control, he watched as the two girls plonked themselves back on the chaise, and the pretentious, dreadful woman (who was she? He still couldn’t remember!) produced the glass slipper. She handed it to him, kicking him again when he seemed reluctant to take it, and he steeled himself to do what he must.

  Kneel down, proffer the cushion, look up at the elder daughter. (Smile, damn it; it won’t kill you!) A foot appeared from under a froth of petticoats and thrust itself at the glass slipper. Charming could have yelled aloud with relief as, with six inches of heel still hanging over at the back, Arabella’s big toe jammed against the shoe’s tip.

  “Oh dear!” said Rosa, dripping regret like honeydew from an aphid-infested tree. “How very sad . . . But perhaps your sister . . . ?”

  Araminta all but rolled Arabella off the seat in her haste to take her turn. Her foot was short enough, certainly, but its width was another matter, and after three minutes of grunting and straining and sweating she was forced to admit defeat.

  “Such a pity!” Rosa sympathized. “But there; so many beautiful girls in the kingdom, and all but one must be disappointed! Well, we have taken up enough of your valuable time, dear Baron and Baroness – we shall take our leave, and bid you all à bientôt!”

  She grasped Charming’s arm and started to pull him upright. But Charming abruptly remembered something Dandini had said.

  “Just a moment.” He shook Rosa’s hand off irritably. “Will you kindly stop pawing me, madam!” And, turning to Baron Hardup, said, “According to my list, Baron, you have three daughters. Where is the third?”

  Lady Hardup’s face turned very red, and the baron humphed and ha-harrhed as though in embarrassment. “I think there – ah – must be some mistake, Your Highness. We’ve only the two girls; Bella and Minta; yes, just the two, you know.”

  “And who should know better than their own father?” said Rosa, taking hold of Charming’s arm again and pulling e
ven harder. “Come, Your dear Highness, we mustn’t waste—”

  “Be quiet!” Charming snapped. “Answer me truthfully, Baron. Is there a third girl in this house?”

  Rosa was saying, “Well really, how unchivalrous,” but no one took any notice of her. Baron Hardup had begun to perspire.

  Then, from the door, a new voice said clearly, “Yes, Your Highness. There is Cinderella.”

  The boy had reappeared. His hair was tousled and most of his buttons had come undone, but there was a look of heroic truth in his eyes.

  “They are ashamed of her, Your Highness,” he said, “and so they keep her in the kitchen, hidden from sight. But I have told her of your visit. And she is here, now, to try on the glass slipper!”

  Rosa said a hair-singeing word, and Baron Hardup spluttered something about a week’s wages in lieu of notice. But Buttons paid no heed. He stepped aside – and there, framed on the threshold, was the loveliest girl that Charming had ever seen. The rags she wore could not disguise the slender grace of her figure. The smuts of the kitchen that marred her face and her long, golden hair could not hide the beauty that shone from her like a summer sunrise. She stood trembling, gazing at Charming with huge blue eyes.

  And Charming fell head over heels in love.

  “My lady!” He dropped to one knee, sweeping his hat from his head and returning her gaze with rapt adoration. “Will you honour me by trying on the glass slipper?”

  She didn’t speak. She only came forward, slowly, hesitantly, and sat down in the chair he indicated with a courtly gesture. The room was utterly silent as Charming cupped her foot in one hand, resisted with difficulty the urge to cover it in kisses, and slipped the glass shoe over her slender toes.

  Or tried to. But the glass slipper did not fit.

  Charming stared at it in disbelief. Then he looked up at the girl, his beloved, his darling, the sole and only joy of his heart. She in her turn looked back at him. Her exquisite lips parted . . .

  And Rell said, in a voice that could have cut sheet metal, “Oh, buggering hell!”

  Quite how they got out of the house Charming didn’t know, but he suspected that it was the woman in the tailored suit who had somehow dragged Dandini away from his preoccupations, made vague farewell noises in the Hardup family’s general direction and hastened them away down the drive. Now, looking hot and cross against the background of some towering rhododendron bushes, she waited until Charming stopped sobbing enough to listen, then said, “Your Highness, the slipper simply didn’t fit, and that’s all there is to it! Anyway she can’t possibly be the same girl you met at the ball! Oh, she’s pretty, one can’t deny that, but her personality . . . uff!” She shuddered fastidiously, while Dandini nodded agreement and looked wistfully back at the house.

  With a vast effort Charming forced himself to come to his senses. She – whoever she was, and he still couldn’t remember – was right. For all her beauty, the girl back there in the house was not a possible choice for a royal bride. If his father met her, he would have an apoplexy. And when she had started to tell that joke about the deaf centaur . . .

  He sighed a sigh in which all the cares of the world seemed to be gathered and coagulated, and replied, “How can I argue with you? It’s true.”

  “Vraiment.” She tapped his arm with a wand, which he hadn’t noticed before. “There, now. All better? Would you like my hankie?”

  “No, thank you.” He could smell the hankie from here, and he didn’t like Otto of Roses. He sniffed. “But . . . the slipper must fit someone. And if I don’t find her soon, I think I shall die!”

  “Well, now, as to that . . .” Rosa’s voice was suddenly full of import. “I think – just think, mind you – that I might have the answer to your little problem!”

  His head came up sharply. “You might?”

  “Mais oui! Dandini, my sweet – might I trouble you for the slipper? Just for a teeny moment?”

  Dandini handed it to her, looking down his nose, and she took it with a little flourish. “Well now,” she said again. “Let’s see, shall we?”

  The smile she gave Charming then was the practised smile of a trained receptionist, but with just the slightest hint of fairy godmother. It was only cheating a weeny bit, after all; and needs must, et cetera. She needed a job, and there wasn’t the demand for godmothering these days; certainly not enough to pay the bills, even with the pumpkin-growing as a sideline. And, when one thought about it, she was doing Charming and the royal household a positive favour. Thanks to her magic, Charming might have forgotten about it, but she knew perfectly well what had happened the first time around. That dreadful girl . . . if she hadn’t made her natural mother a deathbed promise, Rosa reflected, she would never have got involved in the first place. But then, Rell’s mother had always had ideas above her station. And the cloud she caused had a silver lining after all.

  She took off her pencil-heeled shoes. Dandini realized belatedly what was about to happen, but Rosa silenced him with a look that promised an extremely nasty piece of magic if he dared utter a word. She lowered the glass slipper. She placed her foot delicately inside it.

  It fitted as though it had been made for her. Which, albeit belatedly, it had.

  Charming stared at Rosa Rugosa in speechless astonishment. “It fits . . .” he said in a weak, disbelieving and faintly horrified voice.

  “Yes!” Rosa wished that the board of directors at the Ogre’s Castle Country Hotel and Conference Centre could be here to see the moment of her triumph. Redundant, indeed . . . They had sacked her, she knew, because they were jealous. Obviously they had recognized a talent greater than their own, and they feared it. Another year and she would have been on the board herself, no doubt of it, and then they would have seen some improvements! Still, she had a far more challenging project ahead of her now. Princess Rosa. In time, Queen Rosa. Everyone would love her. With her sure and cultured sense of taste, how could they not?

  Charming was still staring at her. “Then the girl at the ball . . . it was . . .”

  Rosa fluttered her eyelashes. It was only a little white lie, was it not? Petite, a mere soupçon. She smiled at her bridegroom-to-be, and, with affected genteelness, touched one hand to her heart.

  “Yes, my dearest,” she said, in a low, tremulous voice. “It was . . . moi.”

  THE DISTRESSING DAMSEL

  David Langford

  When I was researching the stories for this book I was surprised at how often I encountered the Frog Prince motif, sometimes in serious stories, but usually in satires and spoofs. Some of them were amusing but relied heavily on the basic idea and a clever punch-line. The following story was one of the few that took the idea further. David Langford (b. 1953), whose first story, “Heatwave”, appeared in 1975, enjoys spoofs. He caused something of a stir with An Account of a Meeting with Denizens of Another World, 1871 (1979), a purported account of a Victorian close encounter recorded by William Robert Loosley, which ufologists zealously leaped on as further proof. He has written a humorous science-fiction novel, The Leaky Establishment (1984), drawing on his own experiences as a physicist, and compiled The Unseen University Challenge (1996), based on Terry Pratchett’s Discworld. He has won many Hugo Awards for his writings in science-fiction fan magazines and for his own news and gossip magazine, Ansible. Some of his fan writings have been collected as The Dragonhiker’s Guide to Battlefield Covenant at Dune’s Edge: Odyssey Two (1988) and The Silence of the Langford (1996) – need I say more?

  Once upon a time, in a far-off land, there lived a princess who developed an unfortunate social problem.

  The kingdom of Altrund extended over more square leagues of fertile land than the Court Mathematician could compute. So its King would occasionally boast, delaying as long as possible the admission that his Court Mathematician (a retarded youth of fourteen) had never yet fathomed the intricacies of numbers after VIII.

  The Mathematician, who also bore the titles of Palace Swineherd and Master of the Buckhound, w
as the only child of the peasant classes – both members of which seemed discouraged by their first experiment in being ancestors. King Fardel periodically worried that his peasant classes might at any moment die out altogether; and likewise the kingdom’s upper middle class, consisting of a decrepit imbiber called Grommet (Grand Vizier, Chancellor of the Palace Exchequer, Wizard Pro-Tem, Steward of the Royal Cellars, Scullion, Seeker of the King’s Treasury, et cetera). Even the King’s own dynasty showed every sign of decay. Twenty years ago he had looked forward to the sedate begetting of three sons, two of whom would do tremendously well in the world while the youngest would somehow contrive to outdo them both and be extraordinary virtuous in addition. Alas, Queen Kate was a woman of sadly independent mind and womb, and had called a halt to the dynasty after the inconvenience of producing the Princess Fiona. Fardel could only resign himself to the passive role of devising tests, ready to assess the worthiness of the princes who (in threes) must inevitably arrive to seek the hand of his daughter. The King’s first thought had been to avoid the formalities of quests and dragons by, quite simply, asking each suitor how old he was: the virtues of the youngest prince in any representative trio were well known. Later it occurred to Fardel that this was too well known, and that all but the youngest would undoubtedly lie about their age.

  His next experiment had been to station a hideous dwarf on the one road into the valley of Altrund. Only the most morally sound princes would have a kind word for this creature, and thus virtue would be revealed. It failed, however, to be revealed in the dwarf, who took to supplementing his weekly pittance by severely beating and robbing passers-by – including, the King was sure, at least one incognito prince. The dwarf had had to be discharged, just as Fiona came to marriageable age with enough princess-like beauty to make the King study his plump Queen with wonder and suspicion. After considering and rejecting a version of the ancient shell game which involved caskets of gold, of silver, and of lead, King Fardel sighed and arranged for the construction of a traditional golden road.