by Jean Johnson
“Ah.” Marc frowned in thought. “But . . . if it’s a sheeplike thing . . . well, that inn’t very fierce, is it?”
“It’s big. And unusual in these parts. They like deserts, an’ we live in a lush foresht. Or something. Good rum.”
Marc grunted and offered the decanter again. “Good enough, it’s running out—hey!” He paused mid-pour and gestured, tilting the decanter up to keep from spilling the dregs of the amber liquid. “What’s your fiercest shape? We c’n call in th’ maid to fetch up ’nother bottle for the decanter, an’ you can scare her!”
Siona reminded herself this was an act. If she hadn’t been keeping an eye on the difference in how much he refilled each of their cups, she might have thought Marc was indeed inebriated beyond good sense. His tactic worked, though.
Baron Oger laughed heartily at the idea. Setting down his cup, he grabbed for the bell on the small, six-sided table set between their lounging chairs. Ringing it fiercely, Oger stood up, settled his shoulders, muttered the words of the spell, and transformed himself.
A few seconds later, the door to the parlor opened—and the middle-aged woman summoned by the bell screeched at the sight of the huge lion lurking just beyond the door. The lion roared, making her scream again, before shifting back into his normal, odious baron-self. Oger laughed heartily at her fright.
“Rum, woman!” Marc shouted, waving the decanter. “Rum! Fetch us more rum! And be quick about it!”
Trembling, the woman staggered back out onto the balcony, letting the door swing shut behind her. Still laughing, Oger stumbled back to his chair and plopped down onto it. “Priceless! That’ll put th’ fear a’ me into her. Bet you can’t do better’n that!”
“Oh, well, large forms are easy,” Marc dismissed, flipping his free hand airily. “The . . . um, whatsits. The conversion rate of magic to matter in the art of Anthromancy is forty to one! Any idiot can make hemshelf . . . himself . . . into something of a . . . a comparable size or even something larger. It takes a true spellshifter, an’ a great deal of power an’ control, to redushe your shize. If you really want to impress me . . . what’s the smallest animal you c’n shift into?”
Baron Oger scratched and belched, thinking about it.
“A rabbit?” Marc prompted. “A . . . rat?”
Oger smirked. “A shrew.”
Marc snorted. “Ha! I don’t believe you! You’re like . . . twice the size of me! All big . . . burly . . . muscles . . .” Having paused to top off both glasses, Marc lifted his to his lips. “Prove it. Prove you c’n turn into a shrew, and . . . and . . . I’ll do your taxes! For free! ’Cause I don’t think you can.”
“Ha!” Knocking back half his glass, Oger shoved to his feet. Siona tensed, watching and waiting. The baron set his glass on the table with a thunk, rubbed his large palms together, shrugged his shoulders, and muttered a new set of spellwords. With his back mostly to her, she quickly rolled from her side to her paws, crouching in anticipation. As soon as his body finished shrinking, his clothes shifting from blues and greens to a mottled gray and his nose lengthening into a long, slender snout, she sprang.
Leaping twice, once from cushion to floor, the second from floor to prey, she slammed into the little creature’s back with her paws and clamped her jaws down on his neck and head. A hard, fast shake snapped something—and the body swelled abruptly, letting her know she had succeeded. Knocking him unconscious wouldn’t have ended the spell; only death could have had that power. Jerking her teeth free, Siona scampered away from the dead baron, jaws gaping and throat yowling. The pendant translated her wordless distress.
“Gods in Heaven! Get it out of my mouuuuth! Disgusting disgusting disgusting, I’ve got his blood in my mouth! Ewwwww! Out! Out! Out! ”
Scrambling out of his chair, Marc grabbed for the water flask on the sideboard and a bowl of nuts near the flask. Dumping the nuts on the sideboard tray, he splashed water into the bowl and tucked it under her distress-wrinkled muzzle when she came near. Disgusted but grateful, Siona buried her head in the liquid, swishing her face. Pulling out, she sneezed twice while he dumped the water on the floor and gave her a fresh bowlful to swish in. The second time she pulled out, her wail of disgust turned to a choking yowl.
The collar translated that, too, projecting her distress as, “Oh, Gods, I’m going to be sick—hairball! Hairbaaaall!”
Her husband had the temerity to laugh at her, proving he was at least somewhat drunk. Not completely, but somewhat. Recovering enough to stroke her back while she coughed up the contents of her stomach, he offered her a third, fresh round of water to clear the new nasty taste from her mouth.
“There, there, puss . . . You’ll have to stay Boots a little while longer, to wait for the baron’s magics to fade,” he reminded her. “Given how strong he is, or was, that could take up to a week. But it’s over. You did it. You were very brave and skillful, my dear.”
Muzzle wet, gut still cramped, Siona leaned into him as he scooped her up for a post-battle cuddle.
At that moment, the parlor maid returned with the bottle of rum. She opened the door cautiously this time, peering warily around the edge. The moment she spotted the bloodied, mangled body on the floor, she gasped.
Staggering to his feet, Marc stepped over Oger’s unmoving form and held out his hand. “Ah, the rum. Thank you! You have perfect timing. I would like to apologize for egging him on like that and thus scaring you. I’m terribly sorry, but I hope you can take some comfort in the fact that it was necessary at the time.”
“But . . . the baron . . .” she stammered, glancing between him and the corpse on the floor.
“Ah, yes. It seems he not only insisted upon scaring you as a lion, he foolishly went on to transform himself into a shrew, ignoring the fact that there was a cat in the room,” Marc dismissed airily. “And, cats being cats, with their instincts written into their bones by the Gods Themselves, well . . . every mage is cautioned that such things can happen, and warned over and over in their spellshifting classes to be alert for such possible dangers.
“But he went and did it anyway, so only the baron himself is to blame for his timely . . . pardon me, terribly sorry, his untimely demise.” Patting her on the shoulder, he took the bottle of rum from her. “Be a dear and call up some manservants to carry the body out to the chapel for consecration and preparation, will you? I’m sure Oger’s family will want it spell-preserved and transported back to his family plot, too.
“Don’t you worry,” he added as the woman gave him a doubtful look. “The rightful heir to Calabas will be returning shortly, and everything will get back to normal very soon. Or at least a reasonable facsimile of it. Come along, Boots. We’re still on our honeymoon, and I’m in the mood to celebrate!”
Bottle of rum tucked in the crook of one arm and slightly damp wife-cat cuddled in the other, the Marquis of Calabas strolled out of the downstairs parlor, leaving the poor, befuddled maid behind.
The King Who Heard a Joke
Author’s Note: This is one of those fairy tales that has several variations. Some say it was a king, others a farmer, others a fisherman, so on and so forth. And normally—being a rabid equalist—I would balk at the medieval mind-set prompting the “moral” behind the original tale. But this being the modern world, there is plenty of room for mutually consenting activities of, shall we say, a kinkier than average nature? Plus, in the version I’ve chosen to tell, there is a message worthy of being gleaned. With all of that in mind, I decided that my own version would make for an acceptably interesting story. Here’s hoping you’ll enjoy it, too.
JACK King couldn’t breathe. As fast as he tried to gasp in air, it spasmed right back out again, until his face was a reddened rictus from being scrunched. If he hadn’t been seated on the milking stool, he might have fallen to the ground and injured himself; as it was, he slumped to the ground, wheezing and panting and heeheehee-ing as though his very life depended on it.
His wife, coming back for the second milk pa
il, stopped in the doorway and gaped at her suffering husband. Hitching up her skirts, she rushed the rest of the way into the barn. “Jack! Jack, dearest! Whatever on earth is so funny?”
That sobered him up. Somewhat. Shaking his head quickly, he struggled to breathe instead of guffaw. The sight of one of the barn cats flicking her ear and swishing her tail only made him laugh hard once again. Tears leaking from his eyes, he heard his wife exclaim in disgust. She tried to help him up, and when that failed, she pulled the milk pail out of reach, just in case it got knocked over.
“Jack . . . Jack!” she snapped, giving him a disapproving look. “Stop laughing! Dandelion still needs milking, and you’re getting your shirt and breeches all dirty. And what in heaven’s name is so terribly hilarious?”
He shook his head, struggling for sobriety. He couldn’t tell her; he honestly could not tell a single soul. As much as he wanted to, he couldn’t. Pushing upright, he dusted himself off, struggling against the occasional stray chuckle.
“Honestly!” Ellen scoffed, dusting off his backside with practical whisks of her palms. She lingered a little over his buttocks before brushing the bits of straw from the backs of his thighs, then whapped off one last bit of chaff. “Now, what was so funny that you couldn’t breathe?”
Avoiding even looking in the direction of the barn cat, Jack drew in a deep breath and let it out.
“Nothing. Nothing, my dearest.” Turning, he caught her hands and kissed them. Ellen was beautiful, smart, and talented at homemaking. She could have been a governess, but had chosen to marry him and take up her share of the work required to make King’s Farm one of the best dairies in western Massachusetts. “Thank you for your help. I shall finish the milking, freshen their feed and water, and be in shortly after that to break my fast. Go on. Go make those drop biscuits I love, and the salt-pork sauce with onions.”
“All right—but I expect to hear whatever this jest was,” she warned him, waggling her finger.
“It was nothing, my dear. Just a stray thought, long since fled.” Judging from the look she gave him, she didn’t believe him, but he just kissed her on the cheek and sent her on her way with the freshly filled bucket. Claiming the one she had brought, Jack resettled the stool next to the patiently waiting heifer. A glance over his shoulder reassured him he was alone once more. Turning, he mock-glared at the cat and hissed, “That was very dangerous of you! You should have waited until she’d brought back the third round of goat-milk pails and gone back in to finish breakfast.”
The barn cat flicked her ears and her tail, and mrrrred. Whiskers forward, she took a couple steps toward him. Or rather, the milk pail.
“I don’t know why I should, considering you almost killed me,” the farmer muttered. “But . . . a bet is a bet,” he sighed, before chuckling to himself. “And that was the funniest thing I’ve ever heard. Come on, then—I know you didn’t get it, Dandelion,” he added as he carefully squeezed milk from one of her teats into his palm, before lowering his hand and offering the creamy liquid to the cat. “But a cat’s sense of humor is quite different from a cow’s.”
Dandelion huffed and returned to chewing her cud. In the pen next to her stall, two of the nanny goats bleated, reminding him he hadn’t milked them yet. Nodding, he waited until the cat finished lapping up her treat, then focused on squeeze-pulling the rest of Dandelion’s milk into the new pail.
He had five dairy cattle, three with heifer calves—the bull calves having already been sold to a neighbor—six nannies with kids and a billy goat, and the two horses who pulled his plow and his wagon with equal aplomb. The horses and the billy didn’t need milking, but they would need feeding. Jack had always made a point of feeding them before himself every morning and evening meal. It was something they appreciated, and something which made it that much easier to manage them. But then there was a reason why King’s Farm was the best, if smallest, dairy around, and why he trusted no one but himself to be kind to his animals.
Your family has always been good to us, Jack King, the Wee Man had whispered in his ear twelve years ago. And so the King of the Tor has chosen to grant you this gift, to help you to prosper as you make your way to the New Land. You will hear and understand the speech of all the animals that walk on the land or fly through the air, which will make you a great farmer . . . up to a point. But to have this gift at all, you must be willing to pay a terrible price.
You must never tell a single human being that you can hear and speak with the animals. At that moment, if you should ever give in to the temptation to tell another human soul, the price of this gift will be forfeit. Should you ever do so, Jack King, you shall turn to solid stone the moment your tale is through . . .
It was a good thing the Wee Man had given him this gift when Jack was one-and-twenty years of age, old enough to understand the value of self-control. And he had kept it all this time, despite the temptations over the years to let others know that he knew far more than a mortal man should. Hardest of all, however, was not telling his beloved wife.
He had met the blue-eyed, black-haired beauty on a trip to Boston shortly after news reached him that the war had ended. Unlike himself, who had been born an Englishman before emigrating to the New World prior to their second war with England, she had been born and raised a colonial. And unlike most women—thanks to the damnable war—she hadn’t shunned him just because he had once been “one of them.”
Her father hadn’t entirely approved, being a schoolmaster and expecting a better match for her than a mere farmer, but Jack had persevered. Ellen was bright, kind, beautiful, and strong-willed, raised with an almost libertine attitude toward her education. Thanks to her father’s generosity, she had the wits and the inner fire to match Jack’s own. He had learned too much over the years of listening to his animals talk to believe a woman was second-class to anyone, and he had not wanted to see her strength of will and character subdued by some overbearing suitor, the kind who would treat a marriage to her like a business proposal, a transaction, and treat her like a mere commodity. Like an animal.
Jack loved her, and he wanted to be with her for the rest of his life. The happiest day had been the day she told him she loved him deeply, with the second happiest being the day he took her as his wife. Third happiest had been the day her father had finally consented to the match, even if Jack had been born an Englishman. The days of their months-long marriage were a close fourth to all of that, a little slice of Heaven on earth. She was his wife, and she completed him.
He just couldn’t tell her certain things, for fear it would end their happiness. Namely in a man-shaped monument for his grave.
THE more he told her it was nothing, the more his dismissal exasperated Ellen. This wasn’t the first time, either. There were other times when she had caught him laughing or smiling unexpectedly, and times when he had gone quite still and intent, his gaze on one of the animals of his farm, before taking some action. Often the action was something that helped those animals; she was proud of his skill as a herdsman, his conscientious care of his animals, but sometimes . . . Well, sometimes he just went about it in a rather strange manner.
Still, he was quite smart, and when all their chores were done each evening, he spared no expense in keeping a few extra candles lit after supper so they could share reading passages with each other from beloved books. It didn’t matter the topic, either; he enjoyed discussing the philosophies of the likes of Calvin, and Hobbes, and the fairy tales collected by Michael Alexander Nenasheff, though Jack’s French was worse than hers and they sometimes stumbled their way through the tales with a healthy sense of good humor.
With any other husband, she might not have been allowed such a thing. Ellen knew she would have been expected to tend to her husband’s needs first and her own desires second. Jack was different, however; he was a man with a liberated mind. Other women might have looked down upon him for being a mere dairy farmer, but he was so much more to her.
Which, I suppose, is why his reticence
on certain subjects is so vexing. Glaring at him over the supper table, three days after hearing his shouts and his guffaws, his giggles and wheezes, she could not help but continue to press the matter. “I don’t understand, Jack. Why can’t you tell me what made you laugh? It had to have been the most spectacular jest in the world to have made you laugh so hard. And don’t tell me you don’t remember it. Everyone remembers what made them laugh the hardest!”
“I told you. It was just a passing thought, long since forgotten,” he repeated patiently, gesturing with his fork. He used to eat left-handed like an Englishman, but in the effort to seem more American, he had managed to make the switch. The original war for independence was long over, as well as the second war with England, which had ended a few years ago, but it didn’t pay to advertise one’s foreign origins too closely even now.
She set down her own fork. “Well, I cannot believe it. I refuse to! Dearest, as much as I love you, some of the things you do are just . . . utterly inexplicable! And to keep denying that you laughed over something so cunningly funny . . . I feel like I’m being ignored. Like I’m being shut out of your life as . . . as someone unimportant.”
Jack winced at that. Ellen knew she was pressing hard by putting it so, but she really did feel that way. One of the things he had sworn to her was that he would always take her thoughts and feelings as seriously as his own. She didn’t want to say it, but she felt like she had to say it.
Reaching across the table toward his hand, she gave him a helpless look. “Jack, my darling . . . I feel as if you’re treating me like a silly female, without a thought in my head capable of comprehending whatever made you laugh. You know I can!”
“I am not trying to slight your intelligence, darling,” he replied, setting down his fork long enough to cover her outstretched hand, “but I cannot tell you what made me laugh. So please, for my sake, stop asking.”