by HL Fullerton
“Would you like to hunt?” Carl asked and the gremlin perked up. Two more gremlins crowded close.
“You call Hunt?” one of the newcomers whispered, clasping their hands in excitement.
“What Hunt? What Hunt?” the other asked.
The trouble was, Carl wanted to call a Hunt, but he didn’t know the etiquette of calling a Hunt. He looked for the closest tree (that wasn’t a birch) and placed his palm against its trunk. He thought it was a maple. “Wake up,” he said. “Wake up, please.”
His palm warmed and a being stepped from the trunk, yawned, blinked, then blinked again. Carl introduced himself. “I’m Carl,” he said.
“Hello, Carl,” the being said, and Carl heard the confident voice of a somewhat tired oak. Carl leaned in and whispered what he needed to know in what he assumed to be the oak’s ear.
The oak frowned. “I’m afraid—” The oak paused, leaned down and reached a hand into the ground, all the way up to the elbow, enough to get to the root of the problem. “Oh,” the Quercus said. “Oh.” And then the oak taught Carl how to name his quarry and call a Hunt.
Carl did this as speedily as he could, since he wasn’t sure how much longer Evangeline could stand against a fairy horde.
Glee-struck gremlins frenzied at Carl’s invite, at their first Hunt! And since gremlins, as the trees had informed Carl, were everywhere, always, countless numbers descended upon the Erlking. They, in gremlin parlance, fizzited him good. The Erlking put forth a valiant effort and crushed more than a few gremlins, gored more, but the Erlking was right about gremlins being analogous to ants and, like ants, they had battalions to heap upon the Erlking’s single general.
Carl intended to find Evangeline and lead her to safety, but he was entranced by the violence of the hunt he’d called, and she ended up finding her way to him. “Gotcha,” she said, linking her arm through his. Bloodied, battered and bruised, she smiled at him.
“May I have this dance?” Carl said, embarrassed at his uninjured state. He might have bruises on both knees, and his ankle, where it had caught on the root, might be swelling, but he refrained from mentioning his minor cuts and scrapes.
“Ass,” Evangeline said. “Help me to the car.” She winced at a high-pitched cry of a dying gremlin. “How’d you get them to hunt?”
“I invited them.”
“So…” Evangeline side-eyed him. “…that mean you’re the new Erlking? Erlking’s dead, long live the Erlking?”
Carl shook his head. “I’m not a fairy. I’m a boy. With antlers.” Who might be the next Erlking. He wasn’t sure. The oak had been in deep hibernation and hadn’t been quite coherent. Carl wasn’t going to worry about that just yet. He was more preoccupied by what he should get Evangeline for Christmas. It needed to be extra special since she went to war for him, and he’d near run off on her.
Evangeline sighed. “I don’t get it. If the gremlins can soldier, how come they couldn’t hunt? They seemed so disappointed that they weren’t allowed to kill you.”
“Uh? Thanks?”
“You know what I mean. They’re, like, supremely good at it. Why wouldn’t the Erlking want them on his team?”
Carl had another concern: What was it that the gremlins had imprisoned? Tinker, tailor, soldier, gaoler. What, he wondered, would a fearsome thing like the Erlking fear? What type of creature did the gremlins have locked up? “Your guess is as good as mine,” he said.
About the Author
HL Fullerton writes fiction—mostly speculative, occasionally about fairies and forests—which can be found in more than 50 anthologies and magazines, some located on an Internet near you (amazon.com/author/fullerton).
On Twitter as @ByHLFullerton.
About the Publisher
Annorlunda Books is a small press that publishes books to inform, entertain, and make you think. We publish short writing (novella length or shorter), fiction or non-fiction. Our publication criteria are simple: if we like it and it taught us something new or made us think, we’ll publish it.
Find more information about us and our books online at annorlundaenterprises.com/books/, on Facebook at facebook.com/annorlundabooks/, or on Twitter at @AnnorlundaInc.
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Other Titles from Annorlunda Books
Original Short eBooks and Collections
The Inconvenient God,by Francesca Forrest, is a fantasy novelette about a government official tasked with retiring a god who isn’t quite ready to leave.
The Lilies of Dawn, by Vanessa Fogg, is a fantasy novelette about love, duty, family, and one young woman’s coming of age.
Water into Wine, by Joyce Chng, is a sci-fi novella set in a space-traveling future. The protagonist inherits a vineyard on a distant planet, and moves there to build a life, but an interstellar war intervenes and threatens everything.
Tattoo, by Michelle Renee, is a novella about an unlikely band of people who find themselves drawn to protect a mysterious young woman who appears in a cynical age.
Caresaway, by DJ Cockburn, is a near future “inside your head” thriller about a scientist who discovers a cure for depression, but finds that it comes at a terrible cost.
The Burning, by J.P. Seewald, is a novella set in the coal country of Pennsylvania, about a family struggling to cope as a slow-moving catastrophe threatens everything they have.
Both Sides of My Skin, by Elizabeth Trach, is a collection of short stories about pregnancy and early motherhood.
The Dodo Knight, by Michelle Renee, is a novella about the friendship between Lewis Carroll and Alice Liddell, the muse for Alice in Wonderland.
Okay, So Look, by Micah Edwards, is a humorous, yet accurate and thought-provoking, retelling of The Book of Genesis.
Here’s the Deal, by Micah Edwards, is the “TL;DR” retelling of The Book of Exodus.
Don’t Call It Bollywood, by Margaret E. Redlich, is an introduction to the world of Hindi film, in which film history and analysis are interwoven with the author’s personal stories of coming to love the art form.
Navigating the Path to Industry, by M.R. Nelson, is a hiring manager’s advice on how to run a successful non-academic job search.
Academaze, by Sydney Phlox, is an original collection of essays and cartoons about life in academia.
Unspotted, by Justin Fox, is the story of the Cape Mountain Leopard, the scientist dedicated to saving these rare and elusive big cats, and the author’s own journey to try to see one.
Arctic Adagio, by DJ Cockburn, a mystery novelette set in an all-too-believable near future in which the super rich have bought their way free of the law.
Taster Flights
Hemmed In is a collection of classic short stories about women’s lives.
Love and Other Happy Endings is a collection of classic short stories that all end on a high note.
Missed Chances is another collection of classic stories about love. In each of its five stories, there is a hint of “the one that got away.”
Small and Spooky is a collection of classic ghost stories that feature a child. These stories are spooky with a hint of sweet.
Copyright
Copyright © 2019 HL Fullerton.
Cover design by Meredith Dillman.
All Rights Reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced without express permission from the publisher or the author, except in the case of brief quotations.
This ebook is provided without Digital Rights Management software (DRM). You are free to read it on all of your devices. However, it is for your personal use only. Further distribution of this ebook is prohibited, except by libraries using this ebook in their lending systems.
Copyright infringement is against the law. If you have any questions about what is permitted, or if you believe you are reading a copy of this ebook that infringes on the author’s copyright, please contact the publisher at [email protected].
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nbsp; Published in the United States by Annorlunda Books.
Queries: [email protected].
First edition.
ISBN: 978-1-944354-52-7
