She wasn’t startled to find me sitting on her coffee table, sucking on a cinnamon candy. She’d been a school teacher in her younger days. Not much surprised her anymore.
So, after brief introductions, Emma told me her story. “There aren’t any young people left in Sweetgrass. They all left to find jobs and excitement in the city. Oh, dearie me, I do miss them.” She heaved a tremendous sigh and dabbed at her eyes with a lace-trimmed hankie.
I missed them too. She ignored the sticky cinnamon stains on my linen.
“I haven’t had children in the school in nigh on twenty years. Now, those of us who are left in Sweetgrass are too old to have more children and too frail to properly work the farms. There is no money left to pay the taxes,” Emma finished her tale, slapping my sticky hands for wiping them on my overalls.
“But this is a nice town,” I protested. “No crime. No pollution. People ought to be fighting for the chance to live here. Surely we can find something to bring people back.” I sucked on my stinging knuckles, making sure I eliminated any left-over sugar.
“We did have some excitement once.” Emma’s mind drifted away.
I let her ramble. Sometimes the client’s memories are the key to making the trade.
“We had a plague of flying rats.”
“You mean bats.”
“No. Rats with wings. The creatures ate everything in sight, and oh, so vicious. They were filthy and carried diseases. We tried everything, traps and nets and guns, but the rats were too smart. They simply flew above or beyond our reach.”
“So how’d you get rid of the nasty little beasties?” I’d never met a flying rat in my wanderings. Didn’t think I’d want to, either.
But a memory nagged at me. Something sounded familiar. I just couldn’t put my sticky fingers on it.
“Our ordinary house cats sprouted wings.” Emma clapped her hands in delight. “They caught most of the rats. The rest flew away to someplace less dangerous to them. People came from miles around to see our winged cats. But now that there aren’t any flying rats, the cats don’t need to fly. Every last cat keeps its wings hidden.” She petted two purring balls of fur who shared her chair. A third jumped into her lap to get its share of affection. From the kitchen I heard two more playing a game of keep-away with a dust ball.
Emma scratched the cats’ ears and beneath their chins. The purrballs obligingly craned their necks and yawned, showing long teeth. “There is nothing exciting about our kitties now, except there do seem to be too many of them—no teenagers to chase them away with their pranks and loud music. Without wings to make them extraordinary, no one comes to see them. No one comes here at all. Except the tax collector.”
Who needed the menace of flying rats when you had tax collectors?
This situation required some research. With hasty excuses I popped out of Emma’s living room. I emerged with my hair tucked into a neat chignon at my nape, half-glasses perched on the end of my nose; ankle length A-line skirt in a deep rust color and creamy blouse. Very conservative, very respectable—you know, typical spinster librarian garb.
The card catalogue for complaints against over-zealous tax collectors took up an entire wing. Ironically, so did the complaints against governments that refused to fund various activities due to lack of funding. Emma’s problem came from not so obvious sources.
Flying rats stank of magic. As well as other things.
Acting on the surest of evidence, my gut instinct, I sought out reports of outlawed magic.
This card catalogue took up only one shelf in the arcane arts reference wing. I opened the drawer to the catalogue. Three moths, a tornado of dust, and a mouse flew out. I sneezed delicately into a clean hanky. Then I reached for the first item.
Usually I needed to hunt through hundreds of useless bits of information.
This time, the card latched onto my dusty palm before I could think about lifting it for closer examination. Something of the urgency of the problem leaked through the card.
I read the bold-faced type with care.
Former Sister Macadamia Knuckt
Banned from all contact with
Cats
Rats
&
Teenagers
Forever more.
Or until she repents.
Repent? Fat chance of my ex-comrade in arms against universal problems ever admitting she might have made a mistake. She kept coming back like a bad aftertaste.
The catalogue led me to a fat tome—also covered in dust—of judicial actions taken by the League of Fairy Godmothers. But I did not need to read the lengthy trial proceedings. I knew that Sister Macadamia had created the flying rats just so she could concoct a neat solution to them and thus earn extra gold stars in her file.
She had of course been caught in the act and removed from the ranks of the sisterhood. She had been made—shudder—mortal and mundane. What worse fate for a Fairy Godsister than to become one of the victims we were created to rescue?
That could happen to me if I did not find a solution to Emma’s problem. Fast. My stomach growled. The number of gold stars in my file diminished rapidly with each passing moment. I really needed a scoop of cinnamon ice cream. No time. Not enough gold stars.
I popped back into Emma’s living room... er... parlor. She hadn’t even noticed my absence while she reminisced about cats and rats and the teenagers she had taught in school.
Just then, I heard a new set of tears from a whole group of people three towns to the north. Their compounded distress drew my attention away from Emma.
I interrupted her monologue with, “Would you be willing to trade all of your cats for some healthy teenagers?” There are always too many teenagers in this world.
Emma nodded, tears of tentative joy in her eyes.
“Would you love those teenagers with all your heart?”
She hugged the breath out of me and soaked the bib of my overalls with her tears.
“Let me see what I can do.” I closed the interview with Emma as fast as I could.
<<>>
“What’s up, Mr. Mayor?” I dropped into Greengrass City Hall, three towns north, wearing my favorite red-brown business suit. My bright auburn hair was tucked neatly away into a chignon again. Not nearly so severely as when I was a librarian, though.
Mayor Merritt stared at me like a fish drowning in air, mouth opening and closing uselessly, eyes bulging, face the same color as his over-stuffed, over-starched shirt. So I handed him my card.
He breathed a little easier and confided in me. That’s another trick we Fairy Godsisters do. We make it easy for people to talk to us. Can’t tell you how. Trade secret.
“Teenagers. Lazy. Ungrateful. Think the world owes them a living,” he babbled. “And their music! Loud, obnoxious, no melody at all. And who can understand the words? Enough to drive a parent crazier.”
“So, what else is new? They’re teenagers. That’s their job.”
“We try to teach them responsibility and the value of money. What do they do in return? They lie and they cheat. It’s worse than if they just stole the money from us!”
“Sounds a little more serious than a normal teen. How do they cheat you?” I made myself comfy on the edge of his desk and leaned over him solicitously.
“We pay our children to catch those nasty rats that fly through town in swarms. Pay them well, too. What do they do? They steal an already dead rat from the garbage heap and tell us they just killed it so we’ll keep paying them for the same rat carcass day after day and they don’t have to work for the money. If they hadn’t scared away all our cats with their music and nasty pranks, or if they weren’t so lazy and selfish, Greengrass would be free of rats. We have two plagues in this town now, flying rats and cheating teenagers.”
“I think I can help you, Mr. Mayor.” Excitement pounded in my chest. A trade. A big trade. Enough to fill my file with Gold Fairy Stars. Enough little stars to buy all the cream cheese and cinnamon bread I could eat. I popped a red cand
y into my mouth to tide me over, mindful to keep my fingers clean.
“Mr. Mayor, would you be willing to trade your lying teenagers for some flying cats to catch your swarming rats?”
“Yes, yes. A dozen times yes.”
“Would you love those cats with all your heart?”
“Sister Cinnamon, if they end the problem with the rats, we will worship those cats.”
I made the trade.
<<>>
Five years later I heard Mayor Merritt crying once more. A repeat client deletes gold stars from the files so quickly I’d become anorexic. I wanted to make him happy again. Fast. So fast I didn’t have time to change out of my bronze taffeta ball gown. Cinderella would just have to wait a moment.
“What ails you now?” I sipped at a glass of cinnamon iced tea. I was flustered and hot and anxious to solve this man’s problem before it became my problem.
Before I suffered the same fate as Sister Macadamia.
“The cats don’t fly anymore,” he wailed, pushing three of them off his desk. Two more brushed against my rustling skirts, trying to sneak beneath the petticoats.
“Do they need to fly?” Hardly. A red-brown one jumped from the top of the bookcase to the desk to my arms so fast I dropped the tea glass. It shattered on the floor and three more cats appeared to slurp up the sweet drink before it stained my gown. I shooed them away from broken glass, but six more cats replaced them. Easier to dissolve the glass into sand than keep the cats away from it.
“Well, no, the cats don’t need to fly,” Mayor Merritt replied. “The flying rats are gone. Then we had a tourist boom when word got out about our flying cats. We made so much money we didn’t miss the teenagers at all. People don’t come to see the cats without wings and business has fallen off. We’re in a recession. But does that keep the cats from eating and breeding? No. We have so many cats, people go hungry trying to feed them.”
His belly was now flatter than mine. I believed his tale of woe.
“We have so many cats people can’t afford to have more children to grow into teenagers who will scare them away with their music and their pranks. There isn’t enough food in this town for both people and cats.”
I noticed.
“I’d trade all of these cats for one teenager,” he moaned.
“Let me see what I can do.”
I checked back with Emma and the three strapping young men who worked her now prosperous farm. Five years ago, they had been Mayor Merritt’s sons.
“Do any of the young people in this town want to return to Greengrass?” I asked sweetly. “I’ll trade the town some cats.”
“No thanks,” the young men replied in unison.
“Why not?” This was sounding serious. Hunger awoke in my belly just then, reminding me how fast the little gold stars were draining away. How close I came to joining their ranks.
“No one in Greengrass really loved us,” the eldest Merritt boy, now a handsome young man of twenty-one, explained. “They just wanted to use us and when that didn’t work, they blamed us for all of their problems.”
“Isn’t that what teenagers are for?” Hey, give me a break, I said I was a Fairy Godsister, not a Fairy Godmother.
“That’s what we used to think,” Emma replied, petting the cat I still held. “Now we know better. Teens are still our children. We loved them through messy diapers, whooping cough, and tying cats’ tails together. Why can’t we love them through rebellion, loud music, and the need to test boundaries? Though I do miss having a purring kitty in my lap on a cold winter evening.” The cat I carried began to purr loudly. I shoved it into Emma’s arms.
“Other people’s kids are angels; our own are useless,” I commented. The rule of the ages.
“No cats, Emma!” the boys proclaimed.
“Just one little kitty? He’ll keep the mice in the barn under control,” Emma pleaded.
“Maybe one.” The youngest boy petted the cat in Emma’s arms. A loud purr threatened to drown out our conversation.
“Fix the cat first,” the eldest reminded them all.
“So what am I supposed to do about the plague of cats over in Greengrass? I’ve got to make a trade, fast.” My tummy ached with emptiness.
“Where’d the flying rats go?” Emma cooed at the cat.
“As soon as I find out, I’m back in business.” For a long, long time. If I followed the migration of the rats with a passel of cats to trade, and spread the rebellious kids around to new families who were so desperate for children, they’d even take a teenager, music and all....
Since people never know what they love most until they lose it, I’d be doing them favors trading in endless circles. “Sister Macadamia, I love you!” I proclaimed to the Universe at large.
Visions of promotion to Fairy Godmother danced in my head—promotion guaranteed a maintenance budget of gold stars.
So, as long as rats are a menace, cats breed, and teenagers rebel, I foresee an endless supply of gold stars and rich food. “Don’t suppose you boys have any cinnamon ice cream in the house? Just a little to keep me going.” I may not be a Fairy Godmother yet, but I know who rules the refrigerator in the house.
Stars forbid! Does being a Fairy Godmother mean I actually have to have teenagers of my own?
~THE END~
Lady’s Choice
Now for something a bit different. This story is part of a much larger compendium about Katya, Lady Assassin from the offices of Story Portals. www.storyportals.com edited by Larry Segriff. I don’t often get to play in other people’s worlds. It was fun. But also a lot of hard work making sure certain elements of my story and my depiction of Katya remained true to the other stories and novels about her.
<<>>
The blue faience bead braided into Katya’s dark hair at her temple began vibrating. She touched each of the seven beads entwined with that braid. Only the blue one sent magical tingles through her fingertips.
Pleased that the spell worked, it had certainly cost her enough for the magically charged decoration and the secret cantrip to activate it, she casually paused to examine some camel’s hair blankets at the market stall to her left. As she fingered the coarse weave she kept her body half turned toward the flow of people crowding the bizarre on this fine autumnal morning. The usual assortment of householders and small shop keepers searching for their daily foodstuffs, a few wealthy ladies accompanied by their servants. She identified three important men, surrounded by a bevy of underlings, who passed her by.
None of them drew her attention more than any other.
The bead continued to pulse, faster with more urgency. Whoever followed her was still close enough to do her harm.
Katya abandoned the main thoroughfare of the bizarre at the next right-hand alley, away from her destination.
Left, right, then another quick right. She withdrew into the shadow of a towering dwelling, five apartments piled on top of each other in a teetering and mismatched puzzlebox of sagging wood. Only a fool, or the desperately poor, came to this sector.
And there she waited. Then waited some more. All of the denizens of this district seemed to be away from home today. All the shoppers and shopkeepers were in the bizarre. Not a single person, suspicious or otherwise, passed her hiding place.
After about ten minutes, the blue bead quieted. Had it burned through its charge, or had she eluded danger?
Only one way to find out. She loosened the sharpened hair sticks that held part of the abundant waves atop her head. Then with one hand on the dagger grip hidden within the folds of her striped robe, and the other hand fingering a throwing star, Katya eased away from the dimness of the alley. Full noon sunshine beat down upon her veiled head. She moved slowly, letting her eyes adapt to the increasing brightness with each step.
Knowing a confident demeanor deterred more violence than a brazen show of weapons—which really only challenged bullies—Katya strode down the alley as if she owned it, head high and shoulders back, arms swinging free. With ea
ch pass of her hands she brushed the folds of her robe, touching each of her weapons. The leather grip of her dagger reassured her. Her sensitive fingertips met the wooden handle of the tiny knife up her sleeve, the sharp edge of the throwing star, the silken knots of the garrote, and the smooth glass containing a magical poison that penetrated the skin within seconds and killed within moments.
Ten minutes later Katya pushed aside a curtain made of bead strands. She murmured the three words of a quiet spell. The wood and pottery beads touched each other without noise. She entered the storeroom behind the Unicorn’s Horn. She found a full face mask of a white and red minor imp in an inside pocket of her robe and hid her face behind it.
Galt, the bartender, and owner of the inn, called to her from the heart of the building. “We are alone, you are safe.” He always knew when Katya came to call. She didn’t know how he knew. He was a warrior trained. He sensed things, like the presence of strangers, the movement of an unseen weapon, the smell of nervousness on the skin of an enemy, without any magic. Or maybe he had a blue faience bead hidden on his person.
She pushed aside another beaded curtain and bowed low in respect to the former warrior. A big man, he hadn’t let his muscle mass go to fat. His bald head gleamed in the dim light from the open front of the tavern. Today he shaved his head, other times he let his hair grow to shoulder length. He returned her bow of respect, one warrior to another, though she fought her enemies in more secret ways than he. His smile lit his entire face with joy, stopping short only at the black patch over his right eye and the paralyzing scar that reached from beneath the patch to his temple.
“I come seeking news,” she said, as she did every time her shadow crossed his doorway.
“No news today,” he replied.
Slightly disappointed, Katya slid into a tiny room to her right, the doorway one more shadow within the darkened space. She sought a sealed basket just inside the opening. The elaborate knots and counted twists securing the top to the base seemed undisturbed. When she shook the cube the size of three fists on each side, nothing rattled within.
Fantastical Ramblings Page 4