I blink. I’m sure he’s many things. Clearly, he has mad skills in the sword-wielding department. But I was on the receiving end of that kiss. Charming? Not so much.
“Shall we marry at sunset?” he asks as if he already knows the answer.
Shall we…what? He squeezes my hand. Pain shoots through my finger and I yank free. Marry? For real? I’d rather swing a baseball bat…or a sword. And Charming does look tired. (I hear dragon-slaying is kind of stressful.)
After all this time, the spindle still sits in the corner of the room. I point to it.
“Can you bring me that?” I ask, all princess-y innocence. I should feel bad about this, but I don’t.
Charming only manages a step, spindle in hand, before he crashes to the floor, armor clanking loud enough to wake the dead. But they sleep on, and Charming’s snores blend with my cousins’. It’s a fairytale match, I think. They can fight over him once everyone wakes up.
I fashion a new notch in his belt, then I attach the scabbard and blade around my waist. I pull on my own boots and pick up his shield. It feels good in my hand. I tuck a pillow beneath Charming’s head and leave the room.
My finger no longer hurts.
In the master suite, I pause next to my mother. A serene smile lights her face. I tuck the comforter around her shoulders and whisper, “I’ll be back.”
After I’ve slain a few dragons.
EL AND AL VS. HIMMLER’S HORRENDOUS HORDE FROM HELL
Mike Resnick
The Gestapo headquarters at Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse 8 looked like a cross between a foreboding Gothic castle and another foreboding Gothic castle. In a secret subterranean chamber Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler thumbed through his grimmoires, searching for the proper spell. The United States had entered the war, the Führer seemed not to understand the importance of that, and Himmler realized that it was up to him to secure the Third Reich’s victory.
The Führer was interested in the supernatural, gave it lip service, and encouraged his underlings to learn what they could about it—but he didn’t really believe in it. At best, he admitted there might be something to it, and he funded research on it, but when push came to shove, he refused to trust in its power. That left it to Himmler, who did believe, who knew it worked, to unlock the awesome force of the supernatural and harness its use for the Fatherland.
And he knew he was under the gun, because word had reached him that America’s premier sorcerer had agreed to enter the fray against Germany. It galled him that the sorcerer was actually German by birth and now chose to battle against his homeland, but he knew how formidable the turncoat was.
Himmler thumbed through the texts, trying to find the single spell that would produce the results he required. When he thought he’d located it, he lit five black candles, and placed them on the five points of a pentagram that he had drawn on the floor.
“Dark Messiah,” he intoned, “I implore you to come to the aid of your most faithful servant. Give me the wherewithal to withstand this new enemy and its turncoat sorcerer, and I pledge that you shall be worshipped throughout the Third Reich for all eternity.”
He then uttered three complex spells, spells which had never been combined before.
Finally, he reached into a cage that he kept next to the grimmoires, pulled out a newt, walked to the center of the pentagram, withdrew a knife, and slit the little amphibian’s throat, placing the newt on the floor and watching its death throes.
When it expired, he uttered one more prayer, and concluded the obscene ritual with a cry of “Shemhamforash!”
AND AN OCEAN AWAY, the Allies’ greatest sorcerer climbed down the cellar stairs of his unimpressive frame house at 112 Mercer Street in Princeton, New Jersey. (Well, unimpressive but for the billboard in the empty lot next door, with an arrow pointing to his house and a huge photo of him accepting his Nobel Prize next to the statement in foot-high Tempo Bold letters that the World’s Greatest Genius lived here.) As for the World’s Greatest Genius himself, he never knew what the word “groupie” meant until the village of Princeton built the billboard. Now he had two sets of bodyguards, one to ward off Nazi and Japanese assassins, and the other to protect him from wildly passionate women. More than anyone else, he knew that his adopted country was up against not only the awesome might of Hitler’s armies, but also the corrupt evil power that the Führer’s mightiest sorcerer, Heinrich Himmler, had at his command.
Albert Einstein was soon pouring over his holy books, preparing his spells to appeal to Tekno, a deity totally unknown to his German counterpart.
When he was ready, he closed the books, dipped his forefinger in the holy ink, and began chanting. “The square of the hypotenuse equals the sum of the squares of the other two sides,” he intoned. “Pi, carried to five decimal figures, is 3.14159. A circle has 360 degrees.”
After another five minutes of chanting the spells, and a supplication to the Mathematical Trinity of Pythagoras, Euclid, and Fermat, he pulled a slide rule out of his pocket, held it over the books, and sacrificed it, breaking it and letting the two halves fall to the floor.
Then he uttered one last quadratic equation, and concluded the ritual with a triumphant cry of “Q.E.D.!”
“MEIN GOTT, YOU’RE BIG!” exclaimed Himmler as he looked at the army Satan had supplied.
There were thirteen of them, each blond and blue eyed, each armed with a magical scimitar (which is kind of like a curved lightsaber, but effective rather than pretty), each ten feet tall, each wearing naught but a leather kilt.
“Ow!” cried the nearest as his head bumped against the ceiling, an action and a cry that was repeated twelve more times up and down the line.
“Duck your heads, dummkopfs!” snapped Himmler.
“We bow to no one!” thundered one of them. “We’ll raise the ceiling!”
So saying, he lifted his magical scimitar and punched a hole in the ceiling.
“You see?” he said with a smile. “There is nothing to it.”
Well, he tried to say “There is nothing to it,” but somewhere between “There” and “is” a huge wooden desk fell through the hole and crashed onto his head. He collapsed beneath it, shoved it off to a side, and got groggily to his feet.
“Maybe I should have sacrificed two newts,” muttered Himmler.
The other twelve golden-haired warriors decided to lower their heads.
“Excuse me, Boss…” began one of them.
“That’s Herr Boss,” Himmler corrected him.
“Excuse me, Herr Boss. But why have you summoned us from the very depths of hell?”
“Not that we mind it,” added another quickly.
“Actually, it’s much more pleasant here,” said a third.
“A lot cooler as well,” noted a fourth.
“You are here to defeat the American armed forces,” said Himmler.
“What are they?” asked the first speaker, a contemptuous smile on his proud Aryan face. “Thirty or forty little men armed with rocks?”
“More like two million men, armed with the latest in aircraft, ships, cannons, automatic weapons, radar, and sonar.”
“Against thirteen of us—and none of us even wearing any pants?” said one incredulously.
“You’re Aryans!” bellowed Himmler. “Aryans triumph over everything!”
“Well, actually, my mother was half-Spanish,” said one of them.
“And my Uncle Saul was Jewish.”
“They always told me that George Washington Carver was a cousin.”
“I will hear no more of this!” screamed Himmler. “You are Aryans, and you will follow my orders and march to victory, or I will return you to the fiery pits!”
“Where’s Victory?” asked the last one in line. “I mean, if all we have to do is march there, I say we give it a try.”
“Idiots!” said Himmler.
“Hey,” said the last one, “we’re not the ones who are sending thirteen men in skirts with pituitary conditions off to fight a mechanized
army of two million.”
“You are invulnerable!” insisted Himmler.
“Then how come my head hurt when the desk fell on it?” asked the first one.
“Wait a minute,” said Himmler. He opened his grimmoire and thumbed through it. “Aha!” he said at last. “You are invulnerable to bullets, torpedoes, knives, swords, bombs, and certain social diseases that you’re most likely to pick up in France, or perhaps North Hollywood, California. But I neglected to cast a spell to make you invulnerable either to stupidity or heavy objects falling on your heads. I will correct that oversight shortly.”
“You’d better,” sniffed the nearest one, rubbing the top of his head tenderly.
“I’ll let you know the moment it’s done,” said Himmler. “What’s your name?”
The huge supernatural Aryan looked blank. “I don’t have one.”
“Everyone has a name,” insisted Himmler.
“Not me.”
“Or me,” said another.
“Me neither,” said a third.
“You brought us here,” said a fourth. “Probably you should be the one to name us.”
“That seems reasonable,” said Himmler. He walked up to the giant who was still rubbing his head. “You are Heinrich.”
“Heinrich,” repeated the Aryan. “Heinrich. Is there some reason for that?”
“It’s my favorite name,” answered Himmler. “It has a certain strength and nobility and just a touch of je ne sais quoi to it.”
“How about me?” asked the next giant in line.
“I will call you Heinrich,” said Himmler.
“But you’re calling him Heinrich,” protested the giant.
“You think there’s only one Heinrich in the world?” demanded Himmler. “There is enormous power and a certain gossamer gaiety to that name.”
He went up and down the line, and when he was done he had a supernatural army composed of twelve Heinrichs and an Adolf (just in case he ever had to present one to the Führer.)
“Okay,” said one of the Heinrichs. “We’re here and we’re named. Now what?”
“Now we wait to see what that scrawny little white-haired turncoat in America has planned for us, and then we meet his creatures in battle, cut out their hearts, tie them up with their own entrails, cut off their heads, spit down their necks, and—”
“Stop!” cried the nearest Heinrich, grabbing his stomach. “I’m going to be sick!”
Himmler sighed deeply. Maybe if he’d sacrificed an iguana…
“SO WHAT CAN YOUR GOVERNMENT do for you, Little Al?” said President Roosevelt, seated behind his desk in the Oval Office. “And make it snappy. I’ve got a war to fight.”
“I am here to warn you of a dire threat to our troops,” replied Einstein.
“What could be more dire than the German army?” said Roosevelt. “By the way, that’s a hell of a goiter on your hip. You’d better have it looked at.”
“Hips don’t have goiters,” answered Einstein, pulling a crystal ball out of his pocket and sitting it down on the desk in front of the President. “Take a look.”
Roosevelt leaned forward and stared. “There’s nothing there.”
“The square root of one is one!” intoned Einstein. “Now look at it.
“My God, that’s remarkable!” exclaimed Roosevelt.
“I thought you should see it,” said Einstein.
“How does she twirl them in both directions at the same time?”
Einstein bent over the desk. “Damn!” he said. “I forgot to adjust the channel. Algebra kadabra!”
“What’s this?” asked Roosevelt, frowning and staring into the crystal. “It looks like a men’s basketball team.”
“It’s thirteen invulnerable Aryan supermen, called up from the deepest pits of hell by none other than Heinrich Himmler,” answered Einstein. “Defeating the German army will be a hard enough chore for General Eisenhower. We must destroy these super-Aryans before he has to face them.”
“We?” said Roosevelt with a worried expression on his face. “You mean you and me?”
“No, sir,” said Einstein. “We need you at the helm of State. What I’ve come for is Big El.”
“Big El?”
“Your wife, Eleanor.”
“She’s yours, Little Al, and good luck to you,” said Roosevelt with an unconcerned shrug. “Now to business: what do you need to defeat Himmler’s horrendous hordes from hell?”
“I just told you.”
“You did?”
“Big El,” repeated Einstein.
“Oh,” said Roosevelt. “I thought you meant…never mind.” He paused. “Are you quite sure she’s what you need?”
“Absolutely,” said Einstein. “She’s spent the last few years fighting big business, and Southern bigots, and isolationists, and Republicans. She’s in better fighting shape than any other American.”
“But can she stand up to these super-Aryans?” persisted Roosevelt.
“If she and I together can’t do it, with my mystical powers and her indomitable spirit, then no one can.”
“What the hell,” said Roosevelt with a shrug. “If you feel she’s what you need…” He picked up the crystal ball and stared at it. “How do I bring back the original image?”
“The girl with the…uh…?”
“Yes.”
“Kadabra algebra,” chanted Einstein. “Nothing to it.” He walked to the door. “I’ll pick Eleanor up on my way out.”
“Fine,” said Roosevelt, staring at the crystal ball.
“We go now to save the world.”
“Good,” said Roosevelt without looking up. “Go.”
Einstein opened the door. The last thing he heard before closing it behind him was the President musing wistfully: “I wonder if she’s got a phone number?”
“I’M NOT GOING to do it!”
Eleanor Roosevelt was standing in Einstein’s book-lined basement, some twenty feet away from him.
“But you’re the only one who can, Big El,” he said.
“Never!”
“I’ll protect you,” promised Einstein. “I’ve got a spell that even Fermat couldn’t solve. I’ll invoke Isaac Newton himself.”
“No!”
“But why not?” he asked, mystified. “You are potentially the greatest warrior woman who ever lived.”
“I’m not wearing that skimpy little warrior princess outfit until I lose thirty-five pounds and get a dye job.”
Einstein lowered his head and put his prodigious brain to work, finally looking up at her. “You’ve got it all wrong, Big El,” he said soothingly. “You don’t want to lose an ounce. If anything, you should gain some weight.”
She looked at him as if he was crazy.
“Think about it,” he urged her. “You’re not trying to dazzle them with your beauty, but to terrify them with your muscle and your demeanor. The more formidable you look, the better.”
“I’m a woman in her fifties,” protested Eleanor. “I can’t go around with a bare midriff and bare thighs and bare shoulders and…”
“We’ll compromise,” offered Einstein. “You can cover your left shoulder.”
“And what are Himmler’s horrendous hordes wearing?” she asked.
“In my most recent visualization of the Cosmic All, they were wearing leather skirts and nothing else.”
“Nothing else?” she repeated, arching an eyebrow.
“That’s right.”
“Skirts,” she repeated. “Are they…you know?”
“They’re ten-foot-tall killers,” answered Einstein. “Does it make a difference what they do in their spare time?”
“I just want to know if they’re sizing me up for the battle to come or ogling me.”
Einstein stared at her thoughtfully for a long moment. “I don’t think there’s any doubt which they’re doing,” he said.
“All right,” she said at last. “If my country needs me that badly, I’ll do it. But along with the rest of the ou
tfit, I have to have boots.”
“You won’t be traveling through rough terrain,” he assured her. “We’re just going to Gestapo headquarters.”
“It’s not that,” said Eleanor. “I have varicose veins, and I want them covered up. Otherwise the battle’s off.”
He nodded his agreement. “Now let’s talk about weapons.”
“Right,” she agreed. “I want a .44 Magnum, six hand grenades, and a repeating rifle.”
“You’ll have a sword.”
“That’s all?” she demanded.
“It will be an enchanted one.” He pulled a kitchen knife out of his pocket, whispered “Archimedes” over it, and it instantly morphed into a wicked-looking sword, which he handed to her.
She looked at it briefly, and then said, “And these Aryans will all be armed with enchanted submachine guns, I presume?”
Einstein shrugged. “Who knows?”
“Well, I’d like to know,” said Eleanor. “You’re not going out there half-naked and armed with only a sword to face thirteen blond giants.”
“I’ll be there sharing the danger with you, Big El.”
“Side by side?” she asked, relaxing visibly.
“Well, in the same city, anyway,” he said. “While you’re taking care of the horrendous horde, I’ll be engaged in a duel of spells with Himmler himself.”
“You’re going to have a spelling bee while I’m fighting thirteen hate-filled barbarian Aryan giants?”
“Try not to understand me so fast,” said Einstein. “If I don’t subdue Himmler while you are occupying his fearless, merciless, invulnerable, incredibly strong warriors, he might conjure up fifty more.”
Eleanor considered the situation. “I have a suggestion, Little Al,” she said. “Why don’t I handle Himmler while you take on his hideous horde?”
“That’s his horrendous horde,” Einstein corrected her.
“What’s the difference?”
“One you have to fight single-handedly, and the other doesn’t exist.”
She merely glared at him.
Einstein fidgeted uncomfortably until she finally turned away from him. Then he spoke again: “You’d better get into your warrior princess outfit. In the interest of decorum (and possibly self-preservation) I’ll turn my back while you change.”
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