The Mammoth Book of Comic Fantasy

by Mike Ashley

  So that when midnight came, and all the other patrons of the bar froze into freeze-frame rigidity, paralyzed in the middle of drinking or shouting or scratching or shoving, and Titania manifested herself in the radiant glory of her true form, nobody could have been more surprised than Barry.

  “My God!” he’d cried. “You really are—”

  “The Queen of the Fairies,” Titania said smugly. “You bet your buns, sweetie. I told you so, didn’t I?” She smiled radiantly, and then gave a ladylike hiccup. The Queen in her new form was so dazzlingly beautiful as to almost hurt the eye, but there was still a trace of rotgut whiskey on her breath. “And because you’ve been a most true and courteous knight to one from whom you thought to see no earthly gain, I’m going to grant you a wish. How about that, kiddo?” She beamed at him, then hiccuped again; whatever catabolic effect her transformation had had on her blood-alcohol level, she was obviously still slightly tipsy.

  Barry was flabbergasted. “I can’t believe it,” he muttered. “I come into a bar, on impulse, just by chance, and the very first person I sit down next to turns out to be—”

  Titania shrugged. “That’s the way it goes, sweetheart. It’s the Hidden Hand of Oberon, what you mortals call ‘synchronicity’. Who knows what’ll eventually come of this meeting – tragedy or comedy, events of little moment or of world-shaking weight and worth? Maybe even Oberon doesn’t know, the silly old fart. Now, about that wish—”

  Barry thought about it. What did he want? Well, he was a salesman, wasn’t he? New worlds to conquer . . .

  Even Titania had been startled. She looked at him in surprise and then said, “Honey, I’ve been dealing with mortals for a lot of years now, but nobody ever asked for that before . . .”

  Now he sat on cold stone in the heart of the Faërie town, and groaned, and cursed himself bitterly. If only he hadn’t been so ambitious! If only he’d asked for something safe, like a swimming pool or a Ferrari . . .

  Afterward, Barry was never sure how long he sat there on the lip of the fountain in a daze of despair – perhaps literally for weeks; it felt that long. Slowly, the smoky bronze disk of the Fairyland sun sank beneath the horizon, and it became night, a warm and velvety night whose very darkness seemed somehow luminous. The nixies had long since departed, leaving him alone in the little square with the night and the splashing waters of the fountain. The strange stars of Faërie swam into the sky, witchfire crystals so thick against the velvet blackness of the night that they looked like phosphorescent plankton sparkling in some midnight tropic sea. Barry watched the night sky for a long time, but he could find none of the familiar constellations he knew, and he shivered to think how far away from home he must be. The stars moved much more rapidly here than they did in the sky of Earth, crawling perceptibly across the black bowl of the night even as you watched, swinging in stately procession across the sky, wheeling and reforming with a kind of solemn awful grandeur, eddying and whirling, swirling into strange patterns and shapes and forms, spiral pinwheels of light. Pastel lanterns appeared among the houses on the hillsides as the night deepened, seeming to reflect the wheeling, blazing stars above.

  At last, urged by some restless tropism, he got slowly to his feet, instinctively picked up his sample cases, and set off aimlessly through the mysterious night streets of the Faërie town. Where was he going? Who knew? Did it matter anymore? He kept walking. Once or twice he heard faint, far snatches of fairy music – wild, sad, yearning melodies that pierced him like a knife, leaving him shaken and melancholy and strangely elated all at once – and saw lines of pastel lights bobbing away down the hillsides, but he stayed away from those streets, and did his best not to listen; he had been warned about the bewitching nature of fairy music, and had no desire to spend the next hundred or so years dancing in helpless enchantment within a fairy ring. Away from the street and squares filled with dancing pastel lights and ghostly will-o’-the-’wisps – which he avoided – the town seemed dark and silent. Occasionally, winged shapes swooped and flittered overhead, silhouetted against the huge mellow silver moon of Faërie, sometimes seeming to fly behind it for several wingbeats before flashing into sight again. Once he met a fellow pedestrian, a monstrous one-legged creature with an underslung jaw full of snaggle teeth and one baleful eye in the middle of its forehead that blazed like a warning beacon, and stood unnoticed in the shadows, shivering, until the fearsome apparition had hopped by. Not paying any attention to where he was going, Barry wandered blindly downhill. He couldn’t think at all – it was as if his brain had turned to ash. His feet stumbled over the cobblestones, and only by bone-deep instinct did he keep hold of the sample cases. The street ended in a long curving set of wooden stairs. Mechanically, dazedly, he followed them down. At the bottom of the stairs, a narrow path led under the footing of one of the gossamer bridges that looped like slender gray cobwebs between the fairy hills. It was cool and dark here, and almost peaceful . . .

  “AAAARRRRGGHHHHH!”

  Something enormous leaped out from the gloom, and enveloped him in a single, scaly green hand. The fingers were a good three feet long each, and their grip was as cold and hard as iron. The hand lifted him easily into the air, while he squirmed and kicked futilely.

  Barry stared up into the creature’s face. “Yop!” he said. A double row of yellowing fangs lined a frog-mouth large enough to swallow him up in one gulp. The blazing eyes bulged ferociously, and the nose was a flat smear. The head was topped off by a fringe of hair like red worms, and a curving pair of ram’s horns.

  “Pay up for the use a my bridge,” the creature roared, “or by Oberon’s dirty socks, I’ll crunch you whole!”

  It never ends, Barry thought. Aloud, he demanded in frustration. “What bridge?”

  “A wise guy!” the monster sneered. “That bridge, whadda ya think?” He gestured upward scornfully. “The bridge over us, dummy! The Bridge a Morrig the Fearsome! My bridge. I got a royal commission says I gotta right ta collect toll from every creature that sets foot on it, and you better believe that means you, buddy. I got you dead to rights. So cough up!” He shook Barry until the salesman’s teeth rattled. “Or else!”

  “But I haven’t set foot on it!” Barry wailed. “I just walked under it!”

  “Oh,” the monster said. He looked blank for a moment, scratching his knobby head with his free hand, and then his face sagged. “Oh,” he said again, disappointedly. “Yeah. I guess you’re right. Crap.” Morrig the Fearsome sighed, a vast noisome displacement of air. Then he released the salesman. “Jeez, buddy, I’m sorry,” Morrig said, crestfallen. “I shouldn’t’a’oughta have jerked ya around like that. I guess I got overanxious or sumpthin. Jeez, mac, you know how it is. Tryin’ to make a buck. The old grind. It gets me down.”

  Morrig sat down, discouraged, and wrapped his immensely long and muscular arms around his knobby green knees. He brooded for a moment, then jerked his thumb up at the bridge. “That bridge’s my only source a income, see?” He sighed gloomily. “When I come down from Utgard and set up this scam, I think I’m gonna get rich. Got the royal commission, all nice an’ legal, everybody gotta pay me, right? Gonna clean up, right?” He shook his head glumly. “Wrong. I ain’t making a lousy dime. All the locals got wings. Don’t use the bridge at all.” He spat noisily. “They’re cheap little snots, these fairyfolk are.”

  “Amen, brother,” Barry said, with feeling. “I know just what you mean.”

  “Hey!” Morrig said, brightening. “You care for a snort? I got a jug a hootch right here.”

  “Well, actually . . .” Barry said reluctantly. But the troll had already reached into the gloom with one long, triple-jointed arm, and pulled out a stone crock. He pried off the top and took a long swig. Several gallons of liquid gurgled down his throat. “Ahhhh!” He wiped his thin lips. “That hits the spot, all right.” He thrust the crock into Barry’s lap. “Have a belt.”

  When Barry hesitated, the troll rumbled, “Ah, go ahead, pal. Good for what ails ya. You
got troubles too, aintcha, just like me – I can tell. It’s the lot a the workin’ man, brother. Drink up. Put hair on your chest even if you ain’t got no dough in your pocket.” While Barry drank, Morrig studied him cannily. “You’re a mortal, aintcha, bud?”

  Barry half-lowered the jug and nodded uneasily.

  Morrig made an expansive gesture. “Don’t worry, pal. I don’t care. I figure all a us workin’ folks gotta stick together, regardless a racè or creed, or the bastards’ll grind us all down. Right?” He leered, showing his huge, snaggly, yellowing fangs in what Barry assumed was supposed to be a reassuring grin. “But, say, buddy, if you’re a mortal, how come you got a funny nose like that, and a tail?”

  Voice shrill with outrage, Barry told his story, pausing only to hit the stone jug.

  “Yeah, buddy,” Morrig said sympathetically. “They really worked you over, didn’t they?” He sneered angrily. “Them bums! Just like them little snots to gang up on a guy who’s just tryin’ ta make an honest buck. Whadda they care about the problems a the workin’ man? Buncha booshwa snobs! Screw ’em all!”

  They passed the seemingly bottomless stone jug back and forth again. “Too bad I can’t do none a that magic stuff,” Morrig said sadly, “or I’d fix ya right up. What a shame.” Wordlessly, they passed the jug again. Barry sighed. Morrig sighed too. They sat in gloomy silence for a couple of minutes, and then Morrig roused himself and said, “What kinda scam is it you’re tryin’ ta run? I ain’t never heard a it before. Lemme see the merchandise.”

  “What’s the point—?”

  “C’mon,” Morrig said impatiently. “I wantcha ta show me the goods. Maybe I can figure out a way ta move the stuff.”

  Listlessly, Barry snapped open a case. Morrig leaned forward to study the console with interest. “Kinda pretty,” the troll said; he sniffed at it. “Don’t smell too bad, either. Maybe make a nice planter, or sumpthin.”

  “Planter?” Barry cried; he could hear his voice cracking in outrage. “I’ll have you know this is a piece of high technology! Precision machinery!”

  Morrig shrugged. “Okay, bub, make it march.”

  “Ah,” Barry said. “I need someplace to plug it in . . .”

  Morrig picked up the plug and inserted it in his ear. The computer’s CRT screen lit up. “Okay,” Morrig said. “Gimme the pitch. What’s it do?”

  “Well,” Barry said slowly, “let’s suppose that you had a bond portfolio worth $2,147 invested at 8¾ percent compounded daily, over eighteen months, and you wanted to calculate—”

  “Two thousand four hundred forty three dollars and sixty-eight and seven-tenths cents,” said the troll.

  “Hah?”

  “That’s what it works out to, pal. Two hundred ninety-six dollars and change in compound interest.”

  With a sinking sensation, Barry punched through the figures and let the system work. Alphanumerics flickered on the CRT: $296.687.

  “Can everybody in Faërie do that kind of mental calculation?” Barry asked.

  “Yeah,” the troll said. “But so what? No big deal. Who cares about crap like that anyway?” He stared incredulously at Barry. “Is that all that thing does?”

  There was a heavy silence.

  “Maybe you oughta reconsider that idea about the planters . . .” Morrig said.

  Barry stood up again, a trifle unsteady from all the hootch he’d taken aboard. “Well, that’s really it, then,” he said. “I might just as well chuck my samples in the river – I’ll never sell in this territory. Nobody needs my product.”

  Morrig shrugged. “What do you care how they use ’em? You oughta sell ’em first, and then let the customers find a use for ’em afterward. That’s logic.”

  Fairy logic, perhaps, Barry thought. “But how can you sell something without first convincing the customer that it’s useful?”

  “Here.” Morrig tossed off a final drink, gave a bone-rattling belch, and then lurched ponderously to his feet, scooping up both sample cases in one hand. “Lemme show you. Ya just gotta be forceful.”

  The troll started off at a brisk pace, Barry practically having to run to keep up with his enormous strides. They climbed back up the curving wooden steps, and then Morrig somehow retraced Barry’s wandering route through the streets of Faërie town, leading them unerringly back to the home of the short-tempered, pinocchio-nosed fairy who had cast the first spell on Barry – the Hag of Blackwater, according to Morrig.

  Morrig pounded thunderously on the Hag’s door, making the whole house shake. The Hag snatched the door open angrily, snarling, “What’s to – GACK!” as Morrig suddenly grabbed her up in one enormous hand, yanked her out of the house, and lifted her up to face level.

  “Good evenin’, ma’am,” Morrig said pleasantly.

  “A murrain on you, lummox!” she shrieked. “Curst vile rogue! Release me at once! At once, you foul scoundrel! I’ll – BLURK.” Her voice was cut off abruptly as Morrig tightened his grip, squeezing the breath out of her. Her face turned blood-red, and her eyes bulged from her head until Barry was afraid that she was going to pop like an overripe grape.

  “Now, now, lady,” Morrig said in a gently chiding tone. “Let’s keep the party polite, okay? You know your magic’s too weak to use on me. And you shouldn’t’a’oughta use no hard language. We’re just two workin’ stiffs tryin’ ta make a honest buck, see? You give us the bad mouth, and, say, it just might make me sore.” Morrig began shaking her, up and down, back and forth, his fist moving with blinding speed, shaking her in his enormous hand as if she were a pair of dice he was about to shoot in a crap game. “AND YOU WOULDN’T WANT TA MAKE ME SORE, NOW, WOULD YOU, LADY?” Morrig bellowed. “WOULD YOU?”

  The Hag was being shaken so hard that all you could see of her was a blur of motion. “Givors!” she said in a faint little voice. “Givors, I pray you!”

  Morrig stopped shaking her. She lay gasping and disheveled in his grasp, her eyes unfocused. “There!” Morrig said jovially, beaming down at her. “That’s better, ain’t it? Now I’m just gonna start all over again.” He paused for a second, and then said brightly, “ ’Evenin’, ma’am! I’m sellin’ . . . uh . . .” He scratched his head, looking baffled, then brightened. “. . . compukers!” He held up a sample case to show her; she stared dazedly at it. “Now I could go on and on about how swell these compukers are, but I can see you’re already anxious ta buy, so there ain’t no need ta waste yer valuable time like that. Ain’t that right?” When she didn’t answer, he frowned and gave her a little shake. “Ain’t that right?”

  “A-aye,” she gibbered. “Aye!”

  Morrig set her down, keeping only a light grip on her shoulder, and Barry broke out the sales forms. While she was scribbling frantically in the indicated blanks, Morrig rumbled, “And, say, now that we’re all gettin’ along so good, how’s about takin’ your spell offa my friend’s nose, just as a gesture a good will? You’ll do that little thing for me, won’tcha?”

  With ill-grace, the Hag obliged. There was a pop, and Barry exulted as he felt his nose shrink down to its original size. Part of the way home, anyway! He collected the sales forms and returned the receipts. “You can let go of her now,” he told Morrig.

  Sullenly, the Hag stalked back into her house, slamming the door behind her. The door vanished, leaving only an expanse of blank wood. With a freight-train rumble, the whole house sank into the ground and disappeared from sight. Grass sprang up on the spot where the house had been, and started growing furiously.

  Morrig chuckled. Before they could move on, another fairy woman darted out from an adjacent door. “What bought the Hag of Blackwater, so precious that straight she hastens to hide herself away with it from prying eyes?” the other fairy asked. “Must indeed be something wondrous rare, to make her cloister herself with such dispatch, like a mouse to its hole, and then pull the very hole in after her! Aye, she knew I’d be watching, I doubt not, the selfish old bitch! Ever has she been jealous of my Art. Fain am I to know what the
Hag would keep from my sight. Let me see your wares.”

  It was then that Barry had his master-stroke. “I’m sorry,” he said in his snidest voice, “but I’m afraid that I can’t show it to you. We’re selling these computers by exclusive license of the Queen, and of course we can’t sell them to just anyone. I’m afraid that we certainly couldn’t sell you one, so—”

  “What!” the fairy spluttered. “No one is better connected at Court than I! You must let me buy! And you do not, the Queen’s majesty shall hear of this!”

  “Well,” said Barry doubtfully, “I don’t know . . .”

  Barry and Morrig made a great team. They were soon surrounded by a swarm of customers. The demand became so great that they had no trouble talking Snailface into taking his spell off Barry as part of the price of purchase. In fact, Snailface became so enthusiastic about computers, that he bought six of them. Morrig had been right. Who cared what they used them for, so long as they bought them? That was their problem, wasn’t it?

  In the end, they only quit because they had run out of sales forms.

  Morrig had a new profession, and Barry returned to Earth a happy man.

  Soon Barry had (with a little help from Morrig, who was still hard at work, back in Faërie) broken all previous company sales records, many times over. Barry had convinced the company that the floodtide of new orders was really coming from heretofore untouched backwoods regions of West Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee, and everyone agreed that it was simply amazing how many hillbillies out there in the Ozarks had suddenly decided that they wanted home-computer systems. Business was booming. So, when, months later, the company opened a new branch office with great pomp and ceremony, Barry was there, in a place of honor.