CRACKED: An Anthology of Eggsellent Chicken Stories

by J. F. Posthumus

  She'd demanded that he redesign the entire thing or she'd have chocolate grasshopper for dessert. He'd hopped the first owl out of the Urals, then decided that since he'd built the house, he ought to have it.

  Aaron asked more questions, the kind that make more sense in a Mundane Fortune-500 Corporation than a Faerie Enchanted Shack, but Dung answered as well as he could, with me translating and explaining as needed. That's me, the great educator. Grace leaned back with her rosary beads and let me run the show. She was glad to be out of it for once.

  Finally, however, Aaron asked her a question. “Sister, does your magical knowledge extend to potions?”

  She sat forward. “It's limited. My talent is more toward channeling the power of God. What do you need to know?”

  He didn't even blink at the casual way she said that. You know, a few years and a few pounds, and he might be all right in a courtroom after all. He pulled up a file on his computer. “It's just that we have this legend about how tea can restore some of Baba Yaga's lost youth… ”

  The next day, Grace, I, Jiminy Byatledung, and Aaron Percival stepped through the portal that took us to Baba Yaga's home.

  Aaron shook off the shock of his first real experience with magic and strode up to the blank front wall. “Turn your back to the forest and your front to us!” he called out.

  The house did a lovely pirouette en pointe, then crouched before us with a deafening groan.

  Baba Yaga's face appeared in the open door. “What do you want?”

  “Madam, I am Aaron Percival, Attorney at Law. I wish to offer my services in negotiating a settlement between you and Byatledung the Pixie.”

  “Are you going to ask me a lot of questions?”

  He held up a large bag full of Grace's special mint-and-rose tea. “Certainly not! I thought we might discuss the matter over drinks.”

  I would not have believed it, but the old crone actually cocked her shoulder and gave him a wink. “You sly man! Come in. Bring the bug.”

  He took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and followed.

  The door closed on her cackling.

  I turned to Grace. “This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

  The End

  About the Author

  Written by Vern

  Karina Fabian writes science fiction and fantasy. More importantly, she writes all my adventures. I’m Vern, a Faerie dragon who was brought low by St. George and pressed into serving sapient beings. Right now, that means living in the Mundane world and solving mysteries that involve the clash of magic and tech. It’s an interesting gig, and you can read more about it at fabianspace.com

  Barn Wars

  The Rise of Brooster Motherclucker

  Richard Paolinelli

  Barn Wars

  Richard Paolinelli

  “I tell you, boy,” Brooster Motherclucker proclaimed as he scratched at the dirt in disgust. “There’s something downright diabolical goin’ on around this here barnyard. It’s high, I say, it’s high time we do something about it.”

  “Well, I think,” Durass Backra grumbled, shaking his green head at the leghorn chicken.

  “Now, look here, son,” Brooster replied to the mallard. “I’ll do the thinkin’ around here. And I’m a thinkin’ that old farmer, John MacDonald, is a dadgum Dark Lord in service of the Four-Legged Empire.”

  “You’re not off on another one of your tangents again, are you?” Ace Bawchh gobbled as he trotted by. Despite being a young turkey, it seemed to Brooster that Ace was starting to feel his oats around the barnyard.

  “When was the last time you saw your brother Tom?” Brooster added a harrumph for good measure. “Last November, wasn’t it? He went out back of the barn with the Dark Lord, and we ain’t seen hide nor feather of him since, have we?”

  “Well…” Ace waved a wing dismissively as he continued on his way. “Tom was always losing his head over some hen. He probably trotted off to another barnyard while the farmer wasn’t looking.”

  “I like that boy,” Brooster said as an aside to Durass as he watched the turkey trot away. “But he’s about as sharp as a ball of yarn.”

  “Look, Brooster.” Durass took advantage of a rare break in the monologue. “Aside from Tom’s disappearance, I really don’t see why you think the farmer is a Dark Lord, much less in service to the four-legged animals here.”

  “Oh, ya don’t, do ya? Haven’t you noticed that he collects all of the chicken, duck, and geese eggs every day? And the only time we see a new bird around these here parts is shortly after an old one ups and goes missing?”

  “Well, now…”

  “‘Well now’ nothing, son,” Brooster interrupted. “You don’t see any of those shenanigans going on with them four-legged critters, do ya, boy? Nope, not at all. And what exactly goes on inside that barn when he takes the cows, horses and sheep in there anyway? I tell ya it’s something downright unholy, that’s what.”

  “Now, to be fair,” Durass quickly slipped in. “The sheep look a lot different when they come back out of the barn.”

  “Precisely my point, son,” Brooster answered. “Downright unholy things go on around this barnyard and that there Dark Lord is behind all of it with them four-legged critters’ blessing.”

  “What do you propose to do about it, Brooster,” Qin Gon Juin, the eldest goose of the flock, waddled up from behind. “Or have you forgotten about Ded Hartvar?”

  “He always does,” agreed Aria Lagone, Brooster’s twin sister, strutting beside Qin.

  “That mangy hound don’t bother me none,” Brooster scoffed. “The real problem is what are we gonna do about that Dark Lord? We need to form an alliance of all the fowls in this here barnyard and run off that evil empire right now!”

  “Until you fare better against Hartvar,” Qin replied with a shrug as he waddled off with the others in tow, “we are going to do nothing at all. I suggest you do the same.”

  “He’s a nice boy,” Brooster remarked as he watched his friends wander off. “But if he keeps his mouth open like that the local airport is gonna use it as an emergency landing strip.”

  Brooster pecked around the yard for a bit, not bothering to hide his disappointment when none of the other fowls would listen to him. He made quick work of a plump, juicy worm that picked the wrong moment to poke its head up out of the ground. With a final scratch of disgust, Brooster started off in the direction of the water hole.

  “They are quite correct, you know,” a booming voice called out. “Until you have defeated Ded Hartvar, they will never follow you. Your alliance will never form, and you will never defeat the Dark Lord nor his four-legged minions.”

  “What in tarnation?” Brooster exclaimed as he spun about, looking in vain for the source of the voice. “Who said that? Who’s a talkin’ to me? I’m startin’ to get as batty as my Aunt Urbe, and that woman was so batty we called her a walkin’ belfry.”

  “I’m up here, Brooster,” the voice called out. “Near the top corner of the fence.”

  Brooster peered at the location, taking a cautious step forward. He spotted a spider’s web and at its center, a large black spider.

  “That’s it, Brooster, right here.” The spider waved a single, thin leg while another stroked its tiny goatee. “My name is Naebi Obiwonk, and I overheard everything you said to your fellow fowls.”

  “Well, stuff me with cornbread and serve me for dinner,” Brooster exclaimed. “So, what makes a tiny little critter like you so sure I can’t beat that Dark Lord and his empire all by myself?”

  “Because he serves the dark side of the Great Web,” Naebi explained. “It promises great power to those who give into its temptations. But it is so evil that it destroys all that it touches, such as the Ded Hartvar himself. He was not always the terrible hound that you have come to know, Brooster. Once, he served the light side of the Great Web and was a great follower of the Araneae Order.

  “Then he encountered the Dark Lord,” Naebi continued. “My
greatest pupil slowly turned away from me, the Order, and the light side of the Great Web. Now, Brooster, you must face him if you ever hope to free the barnyard from the Dark Lord Old MacDonald’s grip.”

  “The what order?” Brooster shook his head in confusion. “What kind of mumbo jumbo are you trying to slip past me here?”

  “The Araneae Order,” Naebi repeated with a sigh. “We were once great guardians of the light side. We brought order and harmony everywhere we went. Then, just before you were hatched, a great darkness began to spread until it engulfed all that it encountered. Many of my brothers and sisters fell to it until, now, I alone remain as the last of our order.

  “I can train you in the ways of the light side, Brooster,” the arachnid explained. “And when you are ready you will defeat Hartvar and the Dark Lord and set us all free.”

  “I just don’t know, I tell ya, I just don’t know.”

  Before Naebi could formulate a reply, the Dark Lord walked out of his house, down the six-step stairs that connected the porch to the ground, and strode across the barnyard. He snatched up one of the chickens pecking at the seeded ground. With a firm grip on the squawking fowl’s neck, the Dark Lord entered the barn and closed the door behind him.

  The squawking rose to a frenetic pitch.

  Then, suddenly, there was nothing but silence.

  A few minutes later, the Dark Lord exited the barn empty handed. Brooster watched him leave through slitted eyes, fluffed his feathers, and turned to Naebi.

  “When do we start?” Brooster asked.

  For the next two weeks, the last Araneae put the rooster through his paces. Each morning, training began before Brooster could even finish crowing in the new day and didn’t finish until the sun had long set.

  “To defeat Hartvar, you must be swift and cunning,” Naebi counseled as Brooster hauled him around the yard on his back. “You must use his darkness against him without you yourself falling into its trap.”

  “And how do I do that?” Brooster huffed, hopping over a couple of small rails lying unused on the ground.

  “You must use the vigor, Brooster.”

  “Use the what?!”

  “The vigor,” Naebi explained as Brooster ducked between two tree branches without breaking stride. He continued, “This is the power behind the light side of the Great Web. With it there is nothing you cannot do. But you must master it and yourself… or fall to the dark side you will, as Hartvar did.”

  “So I use the vigor to throw things at him and make him see thing that aren’t there, right?”

  “No, you overgrown peacock.” Naebi smacked Brooster on top of his head. “You use your head for something other than shoulder ballast. You outthink him.”

  “Oh, sorry.” Brooster grumbled around a mouthful of rope, a rock Naebi had him crossing the yard with tied off at the other end. “And just how do I go about that?”

  Naebi sighed a long-suffering sigh. “Try figuring out when the best time to attack him would be?”

  “Say, that’s not bad. I like that,” Brooster crowed. “We can’t do a thing to him at night. All that mutt does is run around and growl at anything that moves. Hard to get a wink of sleep with all that ruckus goin’ on.”

  “Yes,” Naebi agreed. “And what does he do most of the day?”

  “That lazy hound just lays around his doghouse,” Brooster replied. “I bet he doesn’t wander more than ten feet from it, especially with that big ol’ chain latched around his neck.”

  Naebi rested his head on a folded limb, tapped another softly on Brooster’s neck and just waited.

  “Say,” Brooster exclaimed. “That gives me a jim dandy idea!”

  “I thought it might.” Naebi smiled.

  Hartvar napped outside his doghouse in the warm afternoon sun. The large black Labrador hound, it was said, was a champion napper by day. No one ever said that to his face. What was said about his nocturnal activities was even less polite. The hound heard all of it anyway, of course, and didn’t care. A fly buzzed above his head but he gave it little thought. A flick of one ear to chase off the intruder every few seconds was about all the energy he had to devote to the pest.

  At the next ear flick, Hartvar cracked open an eye. Passing across his narrow field of vision was that mouthy rooster, alternating between whistling and singing the words, “doo-dah” as he strutted across the barnyard. In one wing, the infuriating fowl tossed a red ball up and down. That red ball belonged to Hartvar and it was his favorite ball!

  With a bellowing howl, Hartvar leapt to his feet and hurtled toward the offending rooster. The white bird, seeing his approaching doom, bolted for the opposite side of the yard. The hound closed the distance fast and spread his jaws open wide in anticipation of a mouthful of tailfeathers. But his jaws snapped shut on empty air as he ran out of slack in the chain hooked to his collar. His forward momentum halted immediately and all of the energy was transmitted to slamming his body to the ground. He lay there, stunned, as the rooster calmly walked up to his fallen foe.

  Brooster took his time, enjoying every second of his victory as he strode right up to the hound. “Y’know, son,” Brooster clucked as he discarded the ball. “For a dog you’re alright. But you’re about as bright as an unplugged Christmas tree. Let’s see here. Now, where should we begin?”

  Brooster produced a bucket and brush and swiftly painted a pair of white stripes down the dog’s back. “Folks around these here parts think you’re a bit of a skunk, boy,” Brooster said as he admired his handiwork. “You may as well look the part, son. And smell it too.”

  Brooster pried open the dog’s mouth and tossed in a ball of limburger cheese, liberated from the Dark Lord’s lunch earlier in the day. Slamming the dog’s mouth shut, Brooster held on tight until the dog swallowed the smelly cheese. Hartvar’s eyes watered as the smelly cheese made its way down his gullet, causing him to cough and gag. Brooster grabbed the stricken hound by the tail and raised its rear as high as he could as he drew back one large leg.

  “Aw, shaddup!” he crowed as he booted the hound, sending the canine flying back toward the doghouse. “No matter how often I lay my eyes on him, that boy’s departin’ always brightens up my day.”

  The dog one-hopped the doghouse and quickly scrambled inside, curling up in a ball in the back and refusing to come out even when the Dark Lord called out for him hours later. Brooster turned on his claw and strutted triumphantly back toward Naebi while the other fowl cheered their new hero’s victory.

  The first skirmish in the rebellion had been fought and Brooster’s fowl alliance had been born.

  “Knocking Hartvar off his perch was small potatoes, Brooster,” Naebi cautioned. “You’ve still got to deal with the Dark Lord. To get to him, you’ve got to get through the cows, horses, sheep and that fat pig, Jubbah Atehut, in the southwest corner.”

  “The bug is right,” Qin Gon Juin honked. “They might not be as tough as Hartvar, but they’ve got the numbers.”

  “Pishaw,” Brooster dismissed. “At the first sign of trouble, Jubbah will sink to the bottom of that mud pit so fast you’d think something in the ground swallowed him whole. Furkin Halfwit? That old draft horse will bolt away and take the rest of the nags with him. And I doubt, I say, I doubt Fat Ebbto and his flock will stop grazing on the grass long enough to notice anything. When’s the last time you saw him looking in any other direction than down?”

  “What about Moopero Trots and his herd?” Ace asked.

  “Those cows?” Brooster scoffed. “That bunch of black and white bovines are more of a menace to themselves than us. Remember that cow chip fight last summer? Not a one of them hit anything they shot at. Why, I doubt that bunch could hit the broad side of a barn from two feet away.”

  The fowls exchanged glances. A few muttered asides to one another. They’d seen how easily Brooster had dispatched Hartvar. Could he do the same to the rest of the evil empire? As Brooster laid out his plan of attack, their confidence grew. By the time he finished, the
y were ready to follow him wherever he wanted to lead them.

  Yet there was one last detail.

  “What about the Dark Lord?” Durass asked.

  “Once we’ve stampeded his minions, he’ll come running out to see what all the hubbub is about,” Brooster explained. “That’s when he walks right into our trap. All we need to close it up tight is to find someone fast enough to drop our final surprise on him. He can’t have enough time to see it coming and react.”

  “I don’t think we have anyone that fast,” Aria pointed out.

  “I am,” a Peregrine Falcon called out as it swooped in from above. “The name’s Las Hoon, and you won’t find anything faster than me.”

  “You’re kind of scruffy-looking,” Aria scoffed. “What’s makes you think you’re so fast?”

  “Scruffy-looking? Now see here, princess. You’re looking at the only falcon to make the Esskel Run in less than twelve parsecs.”

  No one said a word.

  “What?” the falcon demanded when the silence grew too long.

  “What’s a parsec, son?” Brooster asked.

  “It’s a…” Las paused. “Well, you see, a parsec is… Oh, for crying out loud, I’m faster than anything you’ve ever seen around this dump. Trust me.”

  “You’d better be, son.” Brooster looked skeptical. “Because when the Dark Lord steps outside we’re only gonna have a second to drop all those eggs we’re fixin’ to steal back right on his pointy little head. Now, y’all gather around, so we can go over everything one more time. I don’t want any foul-ups. Otherwise, we’re all gonna be cooked gooses.”