Having a Ball!

by Misty Simon

  And still nothing happened. Oh, my GOD!

  I tried to clear my mind and start again. I pulled up those fluffy white sheep by the tail and sent them trotting along. I envisioned the spell and said each word precisely and succinctly.

  Which was kind of hard, considering the troll was now actively stalking me and had dropped Phoebe into a chair a few feet back. At least she was out of harm’s way.

  “Call and deliver the way to me, the being is soft and in need, turn the tide from slime to stone, let me give Jehosaphat a new home. As I will, so mote it be!”

  And would you believe it actually worked this time? I think I’d said “the being is loft” the first two times, for some reason. But before my very eyes, the troll began reforming. His feet became stone first, stopping him in his tracks a whopping five feet from me. He doubled over, crouching over on the grass. His calves solidified, and then his thighs. His chest became pure solid stone, and right before his head changed, he yelled that I would pay for this.

  So unoriginal, as far as exit lines went.

  ****

  “I told you there was a way to take care of things without putting the burden of a curse on yourself,” Marinda said as she walked next to me, helping me pull the wagon while Phoebe and Toby pushed from behind.

  “I just about had a heart attack when it wasn’t working, though.” I pulled with all my might, but it wasn’t easy hauling this chunk of stone down to the park.

  “Can you please make the ride a little smoother?” Arrol asked politely from the wagon. He and his friend, a real honest-to-goodness dwarf, were seated on the troll’s head.

  “He actually said ‘please.’ ” Marinda sounded downright shocked.

  “Listen, I need to know how to uncurse the gnome.”

  “You’re probably right. That is one thing I meant to do. Cursing is not really worth it in the end. Though this altering his existence is done without cursing,” she rushed to assure me. She must have seen the look of horror on my face.

  “But if it wasn’t worth it, then why did you wait so long to come back and get Arrol? He was in that wall for years.”

  She sighed. “I wanted to teach Arrol a lesson. And then I couldn’t find him when I left the house.” She lowered her voice. “Truthfully, I think Arrol may have locked himself into that door by accident. I never meant for him to be there forever, but the time had come for me to move on. More people were realizing that I wasn’t aging, and that’s when I have to go.”

  “He calls me ‘woman.’ ” I wanted to get that out even though it probably had nothing to do with the central issue of this conversation.

  “Really?” Now she definitely sounded astounded. “Wow. After two hundred years, I still hadn’t managed to get him to call me anything but ‘human’ or ‘witch,’ and he didn’t mean that in a nice way.”

  “I think he’s learning.”

  But further conversation was nixed because we came to the park. Now it was time for the dwarf to do what he did best.

  Ten minutes into his task, he looked over to Arrol. “Did you want the mistress to assist?”

  Arrol nodded and moved to my side. He pulled my pants leg.

  “What’s up?” I asked, looking down.

  “I want you to try something for me.”

  Wow, that almost sounded like a request. “Is it going to hurt?”

  The smile was still there, but now it looked genuine. “No, I promise.”

  “Um, okay.” I stepped out from under Toby’s arm and away from Marinda.

  Arrol put a strange little hammer and chisel in my hand and led me over to his friend. “He needs your help to make this happen. Will you help?”

  That actually was a request. The world might have just stopped. “Okay, but I’ve told you how much I suck at all this kind of stuff.”

  Phoebe snorted behind me. She was none the worse for wear after her little adventure. Apparently the troll had kept her well fed, but he’d made her watch twenty-four episodes of Bay Watch with him in the hovel apartment he’d been renting on the other side of town. She was running back to her husband as soon as we were finished here. She’d found out that she didn’t really have it that bad. And she had even admitted that perhaps she had gone a little overboard when she’d left while Jared begged her to stay.

  By this time, I’d made it over to the dwarf (I could see the distinction between the two races now) and crouched down next to him. “What do you want me to do?”

  The next sixty minutes passed in absolute bliss. It was after two o’clock in the morning and I was actually chiseling stone and doing a freaking good job at it. The dwarf had even stepped aside about twenty minutes ago and let me have it by myself because he was impressed with my skill.

  And then it was done. Before me, cemented into the ground in the center of the kids’ play equipment was a damn fine elephant, complete with saddle and waiting for any number of small children to ride his back and have a blast. I felt really good. I was pretty sure I’d just found my artistic medium. Woo-hooo!

  I wondered for a brief moment how much chunks of rock cost, but then dismissed the thought. I could sell all my other supplies or donate them. Finally let go of all the things I’d held on to for all this time.

  We walked back to the house about two hours before dawn. Phoebe got in her car and tooted her horn on her way back home.

  I actually looked forward to the next time she came to visit. Just as long as it was at least two to four months from now.

  The dwarf went back to wherever he had come from. I didn’t ask and wasn’t told, but apparently he would be back next week to answer any questions I had and to bring me some of his specialized tools.

  Everything was turning out perfectly. Now all I had to do was get Marinda to de-smile Arrol.

  We entered Toby’s apartment with his arm still over my shoulders. It felt comfortable there, and yet a part of me still wished I was going straight up to my own apartment. I might have been able to do just that if it hadn’t been for Marinda and Arrol and Toby himself. So many new people in my life, when all I’d wanted was to have a nice quiet life.

  I did have an artistic medium, though, and that just tickled me. I couldn’t get over it. I also couldn’t wait to call my mom and share.

  Once inside Toby’s house, we all claimed chairs. I bumped Arrol up onto the couch with me. He sat on my lap and patted Larry, who sat next to him.

  Marinda got the conversation rolling before I did. “So do you still want Arrol to be released from the curse?” She leaned back in her chair and cocked an eyebrow at me.

  “Yes,” I said without hesitating a beat.

  Arrol squeezed my finger.

  “You know that this will not do anything to his attitude. It will only change his ability to scowl at you and frown.”

  “I’m aware of that.”

  “And you’re prepared to take him on for the rest of your life?”

  Why did I feel like we were in the middle of some sort of long-term commitment ritual, like a wedding or an adoption?

  “I have one question before we do all this.” Arrol turned to look at me, but I avoided his gaze. “He’s fiending for sex all the time. When will that stop?”

  “Not for another fifty years or so. Don’t get him a fairy, though. He needs a gnome, or nothing”—she waved her hand at his crotch—“will work the way he wants it to.”

  Oh, that wouldn’t be good for anyone. Arrol drew his brows down. “That’s not true!”

  “Yes, Arrol, it is, and you know it.”

  He harrumphed. “I just wanted to fool around a little bit.”

  “That’s not going to work for you.” She folded her hands on her lap, closed her eyes, and seemed to wait.

  “I don’t understand why not. Danner seems to be able to do it.”

  Be still my beating heart. The gnome had just called me by my first name.

  But I was distracted by the way Toby slanted a glare at me. Ack! This was not the time to be worrying a
bout our relationship or lack thereof. This was about Arrol and his perma-smile.

  “Very well, it’s done.” Miranda rose from her chair and walked over to Arrol where he still sat on my lap. “You’re free, gnome.”

  Arrol twitched his mouth muscles, making every kind of face I’d ever seen in my entire life and some I had never witnessed except in horror movies. But then he did the most shocking thing. He climbed to his little feet, beckoned me closer, and pulled my head to his face. I thought he was going to kiss me and didn’t know how I should respond, but he rubbed noses with me and thanked me with his first real, genuine quirk of his lips, just at the corners.

  “I don’t promise that my attitude or behavior will change,” he said.

  I laughed. “No, I didn’t expect it would.” I rubbed his nose back.

  He straightened, tucking his thumbs into his tool belt. “Okay, that’s about enough of that. I have enough time to get in an hour of television before I go stone for the day. I will see you tomorrow evening.” He even sent a little wave to Marinda on his way out the door and into Toby’s room. The TV came on a minute later. About thirty seconds after that, I felt a tentative brush on my mind and sat up straight on the sofa.

  “Hey, Danner, do you think maybe you could bring me a beer?”

  I looked around for Arrol. He must have come back out into the room. I heard his voice loud and clear, after all, and Toby’s bedroom door was shut.

  “No, I’m still in the room. I just thought I’d show you that you can send me messages every once in a while. But don’t take undue advantage of it.” He was probably wagging his finger at me right now.

  That was the Arrol I knew and, yes, loved.

  Now if only I was that sure of Toby.

  “Danner, can I see you in the kitchen before I go?” Marinda asked.

  I hoped this wasn’t going to be bad news. I had to go in and get Arrol a beer anyway, since he’d asked so nicely.

  Marinda trailed after me as I went to the refrigerator. “What do you want, Danner?”

  “Um, a beer?”

  Her penetrating eyes stared me down. “No, what do you really want?” She had the ball in her hand and was rolling it back and forth between her palms.

  I had a brief thought about how Larry wasn’t going to like the bubbles, but there wasn’t much I could do at this point. I’d just have to apologize later. “What do I really want?”

  I thought about the fact that I now had an artistic medium and my job didn’t seem quite so boring after the mass adventure I’d just had. I was actually looking forward to getting back to doing paychecks and taxes after all this hoopla.

  I thought about how important family had turned out to be and how I would make more of an effort to get to know my parents. It wasn’t only them who needed to be trying to bridge the gap there. And if I was a real adult, then I would let go of the old stuff and embrace the new.

  I peeked around the corner of the refrigerator and zeroed right in on Toby. “I want to know I’m not going to get hurt.” And there it was in all its glory. The reason I hid so often.

  Marinda handed the ball to me. “You don’t want eternal life or riches?”

  I shook my head. “All I want is Toby and reassurance.”

  She shook her head with me. “That’s the only thing I can’t do. There are no guarantees, sweets.”

  And for once she sounded nice and normal. Why did that kind of answer have to be on my one most important question? “Can’t I conjure something up?”

  Toby rested his head on the back of the couch, and I watched his throat as he swallowed. He’d been so wonderful through this whole thing. He’d stood by me and hadn’t interfered when I’d asked him to back off. I could be independent with him and still need him. Couldn’t I? And I had made a lot of progress with the whole thing about letting other people in. Hadn’t I?

  I wasn’t perfect, by any means, so how could I expect everyone around me to be?

  “Are you getting it?” Marinda took a beer for herself and twisted the cap off.

  “Yeah, I think I am.” I cradled the ball, turned it, turned it back, and asked, “Will I make Toby happy, Larry?”

  THAT’S A QUESTION ONLY YOU AND HE CAN ANSWER.

  And that was good enough for me.

  Epilogue

  “I’m going to the store. Do you need anything?” I ran down the interior steps between the two floors in the house. We’d just opened them up last week, and it was good to have one house after the last couple of weeks.

  Arrol and his lady love were holed up in their part of the house, being stone together while the sun traveled across the sky. They’d be awake again tonight and probably going at it again, but at least with the extra insulation Toby had put into their bedroom I couldn’t hear it anymore.

  “Nope, I’ll be fine, Danner. See you in a couple of hours?” Toby stepped out from the newly remodeled dining room.

  I forced myself to not jump right on him and ride him to the floor. Daytime was our normal fooling around time, since it was the only way we didn’t have to be interrupted by gnomes. I swear it was worse than having children. But I wouldn’t change it for the world.

  “I’m picking up Caro this evening and going to my mom’s for dinner before the show. You’ll be ready at eight, right?” Yeah, I was having a first showing. My new dwarf friend had come over a couple times and helped me but then told me I had far surpassed him. My mom’s gallery had asked to see some of my stone creations and made an offer for a showing right then and there. Woo-hoo! My dream was fulfilled.

  Toby came around the counter and pulled me into his arms like he hadn’t seen me in a million years. We kissed with a passion I thought would always make my heart pound. When I came up for breath, I said, “Tell you what. I’m going to go to the store a little bit later and have my wicked way with you right now.”

  “Sounds good to me. Marinda can wait until later to talk to you about her taxes, right?” He kissed his way down my neck and into the V of my blouse, making my head spin.

  “I’m pretty sure she can do without me for an hour or so.”

  “Good, because I have some plans for you, madam sculptress.”

  Oh, I liked the sound of that. I grabbed the ball on the way to the bedroom. I asked it one last quick question before I got thrown onto the bed. The answer was a resounding YES. I couldn’t argue with that. In fact, I very much didn’t want to, because that meant this was just the beginning of all kinds of fun and love. I was finally ready for it.

  A word about the author…

  Misty Simon loves a good story and decided one day that she would try her hand at it. Eventually she got it right. There’s nothing better in the world than making someone laugh, and she hopes everyone at least snickers in the right places when reading her books.

  She lives with her husband, daughter, and three insane dogs in Central Pennsylvania, where she is hard at work on her next novel or three. She loves to hear from readers, so drop her a line at:

  misty@mistysimon.com

  www.mistysimon.com

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