My Hero

by Tom Holt

  For a moment, and then letters began to appear. They were persistent buggers, because she could still see them with her eyes closed.

  DON’T WORRY ABOUT IT, YOU’LL HAVE FORGOTTEN ALL ABOUT IT IN TEN MINUTES OR SO. LOOK, SORRY ABOUT ALL THIS, YOU’LL NEED TO FIND YOURSELF A NEW HERO. PROBABLY JUST AS WELL. I WAS STARTING TO GET A BIT BLOODY PREDICTABLE.

  SKINNER GOT BACK SAFELY, IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING. UNDER THE NEW REGIME HE WRITES SOPPY STUFF ABOUT BETSY BUNNY AND SARAH SQUIRREL. HE’S BETTER AT THAT THAN COWBOYS, BUT EVEN SO I DON’T THINK HE NEEDS TO START MAKING ROOM ON HIS MANTELPIECE FOR THE PULITZER PRIZE JUST YET.

  WHAT ELSE? OH YES, HAMLET’S COME TO A BAD END.THAT IS, HE’S SORT OF PERMANENTLY STUCK IN REALITY, EXCEPT THAT HE’S BECOME SOME KIND OF DISEMBODIED THINGY. ACTUALLY IT’S GOOD STEADY WORK, THERE’S ALWAYS A CALL FOR SPOOKS AND STUFF WITH A SPECIES AS DEPRESSINGLY SUPERSTITIOUS AS YOURS. MICKEY MOUSE IS HAMLET NOW. IN FACT THEY’RE RECASTING THE WHOLE BLOODY THING. I HEAR TOM AND JERRY HAVE GOT ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN AND THE GHOST IS NOW MR MAGOO. PROBABLY BE AN IMPROVEMENT.

  HEY JANE, IT WAS GREAT FUN BUT LET’S NOT DO IT AGAIN, OKAY?

  CHEERIO FOR NOW.

  The screen went blank.

  Jane began to snore.

  Regalian woke up.

  It was cold, and dark. The only light was the afterglow of the green sky. He was alone.

  ‘I see,’ he said aloud. ‘Right, fair enough. I didn’t expect gratitude anyway, so I’m not disappointed. A souvenir would have been nice, a printed T-shirt or something, but what the hell.’

  His voice sounded strangely hollow, almost artificial, or at least a long way off. There was sand under his feet. He checked to make sure he was wearing suitable shoes. He was. Good.

  He tried to remember, but the last thing that he could bring to mind was Claudia’s face, a Ralph Steadman caricature of rage and hatred, yelling, ‘You bastard, you’ll never work in this business again!’ Well, fine. Nobody loves a smartarse, and you’re only as good as your last job.Who needs a hero who forgets to reload his gun before the final shoot-out?

  And there are no happy endings for characters; because at the end of all things, after the shoot-out, after the hero folds the heroine in his arms and the background music swells to a crescendo, the lights go off and then come up, everyone takes off their make-up and puts their costume back on the rack and goes home to wait for the phone to ring with a new job. And quite frequently it doesn’t. And then you’re here. Stuck. For ever.

  ‘Excuse me.’

  He looked down. Just under his left foot, which he’d been on the point of putting down on the ground, was a small brown scorpion. He wobbled frantically and staggered sideways.

  ‘Excuse me, but are you Regalian?’

  He blinked. ‘’Fraid so,’ he replied. ‘Or I was, anyway. It’s a bit complicated.’

  The scorpion waggled its tail. ‘I just wanted to say,’ it continued, ‘how much I liked your last book. Well, not the last one, actually, I didn’t think that was all that special, it’s the one before that I was thinking of. I really liked that one.’

  ‘Gosh. Um. Thanks.’

  ‘Particularly,’ the scorpion went on, ‘that bit where you’re fighting the six spectral warriors who jump up out of the ground where the wicked grand vizier has just emptied his teapot. I thought that was really great, how you ducked down behind the stone and then jumped out and bashed them over the head.’

  ‘Did I? Oh yes, rather. Well, er, yes. Thanks very much. Glad you liked it.’

  ‘And another bit I liked,’ went on the scorpion, ‘was that bit a few chapters later where you’re trapped in the burning temple and you swing out through the stained-glass window on the bell-rope just in time to save the girl from the merciless desert nomads. I thought that bit was dead good, too.’

  ‘That wasn’t me, actually,’ Regalian said. ‘In fact, that was the, er, baddie, and he wasn’t so much rescuing her as kidnapping—’

  ‘Oh.’ The scorpion twitched slightly. ‘Anyway, it was dead good.’

  ‘Great.’

  ‘One other thing I wanted to ask,’ the scorpion said. ‘You don’t mind me asking, do you?’

  ‘No, no, you go right ahead.’

  ‘Thanks.’ The scorpion waggled its front legs. ‘What I want to know is, where exactly do you get your ideas from? I mean, do you just sit down and think them up, or do they just come to you? Because—’

  ‘In actual fact,’ said Regalian gently, ‘that’s not me, that’s the writer. She thinks of all the things to do and then I just do them.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh. Who’s she, then?’

  Regalian stifled a sigh. ‘Her name’s Jane Armitage,’ he said. ‘She’s terribly nice, actually. I’ve met her and—’

  ‘And so all that stuff was really her idea?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh. Well, it was nice meeting you anyway. Um, would you just sign my shell for me, please? To Jonathan.’

  ‘Sure.’ Regalian groped in his pocket, found a pen and stooped down. As soon as he’d finished signing his name, the scorpion stung him.

  ‘Thanks a lot,’ it said. ‘Well, must rush. Bye.’

  Regalian tried to wave at the small, scuttling form as it disappeared among the dunes; however, since he was lying on his face, paralysed from the neck down, he couldn’t quite manage it.

  He died.

  It wasn’t nearly so bad this time; because when he woke up he wasn’t in the desert any more. He was sitting on a horse, wearing a buckskin shirt and cowboy boots, riding across a green landscape at a pleasant ambling pace.

  ‘Hi,’ said a voice at his side.

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ he said, without looking down. ‘You’re a Smith and Wesson Scholfield model, and you used to belong to . . .’

  ‘Don’t insult me, please,’ replied the voice; and Regalian noticed that it was female, quite soft and pleasant. ‘I’m a Colt. A proper cowboy gun, none of your gimmicky rubbish. My name’s Cindy.’

  ‘That’s an unusual name for a gun, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’m only for show. Come on, it is a musical. And by the way, why aren’t you singing?’

  ‘Should I be?’

  ‘Yes. Oh, what a beautiful mornin’. Forgotten it already? I’ll hum it for you.’

  Regalian nearly fell off his horse. ‘Oklahoma!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘No,’ said the gun, ‘that comes later, right now it’s Oh, what a beautiful mornin’.’ It paused. ‘Hang about,’ it said. ‘You’re not the usual guy, are you?’

  Regalian grinned. Well, why not? A hero is a hero, after all.

  ‘Depends,’ he said.