The Mammoth Book of Comic Fantasy

by Mike Ashley

  This time Lady Badroulboudour did not come out of her room for a week, nor did she pick up the lamp. She lay on her bed, angry and speechless – and hungry – though the eunuchs fed all the cats. All but the black cat, who refused to eat till she did. The eighth eunuch, who was given to tippling and weeping late at night, threatened to call her daughters. And the second eunuch, who had no faults at all, save he stared with popped eyes and so always managed to look startled, threatened to call her father’s maiden aunt, and she, dear lady, was well into her nineties and had a voice like an angry camel. Still nothing worked until the thirteenth eunuch bent over to pick up the lamp. At that, Lady Badroulboudour screeched so loudly that they all left, slamming the door behind them.

  Then Lady Badroulboudour rose from her bed, scattering cats white and brown and gray, and looked at herself in her mirror. She drew yet another circle of kohl around her eyes, but left her cheeks white. She took off the dress the color of sand, took a long bath with many new oils, and put on a dress the color of fire – yellow and orange and red. She rearranged the diamond girdle, the necklace of pearl, the bracelets, and the red jewels in her ear. She placed a chain of gold on her left ankle. She was a woman in her prime.

  Then she picked up the lamp, thoughtfully rubbing it on both sides and vigorously down the middle.

  This time a strange opalescent smoke ascended from the spout, coalescing into a shape that was rounded and hairless and three times larger than any eunuch. It wafted fully five feet above the lamp.

  “No tricks,” said Lady Badroulboudour.

  “What one wish wouldst thou have?” asked the genie.

  “I assume you cannot bring me back Aladdin whole either?”

  The genie shook his head, though whether from dismay or from a passing breeze it was hard to say. “We cannot bring back what is no longer, mistress.”

  “And you have only men from the street or the taverns or the Antipodes to offer me?”

  “My brothers of the lamp are good and they are kind,” said the genie. “But I understand your reluctance, O princess, daughter of the mighty sultan, wife of the late great Aladdin, to take a lesser man.”

  Lady Badroulboudour nodded.

  “And my brothers of the lamp are young, both in their time in this copper prison and their magic,” said the genie. “I, on the other hand, can offer an exchange.”

  “An exchange?” Lady Badroulboudour asked. “Do you mean a trade? A swap? A bargain? Like camel merchants at a bazaar?”

  “I can make you a man out of a camel, mistress.”

  “To spit in my face?”

  “Or a bird . . .”

  “To peep and preen?”

  “Or a dog . . .”

  “To water my bedposts?”

  “Or . . .”

  Just then the black cat stretched and arched its back.

  “He must have luxurious black hair and beard and a deep, soothing voice,” said Lady Badroulboudour, as the black cat purred under her hand.

  “If those are the characteristics of the animal,” the genie said. He held up his opalescent hand. “This one wish, my mistress, and no other.”

  She gathered the black cat up from the bed, and held it out to the genie. “This cat, then.”

  “I ask again, my mistress, to be absolutely certain. And you must mind how you ask. What wouldst thou have?”

  A smile played about Lady Badroulboudour’s mouth. Two dimples which had not been seen since the death of her husband suddenly appeared in her cheeks. “I wish, genie, that this cat, this black cat that I hold in my arms . . .” and the cat purred loudly in a low, deep tremolo. “That this cat were exchanged into a man.”

  The genie nodded and moved his great hands above the cat. The cat stretched, yowled once, stretched again, and shook itself free of Lady Badroulboudour’s hands. As it touched the floor, its back legs lengthened and she could hear the creaking and groaning and unknotting of its bones.

  Closing her eyes contentedly and only listening to the sounds of her bargain being made, Lady Badroulboudour waited a moment or two longer than necessary. When she opened her eyes again, a handsome, dark-bearded man was kneeling before her, naked and unashamed.

  “My lady,” he said, his voice low and with a kind of deep, dark burr in it.

  Lady Badroulboudour looked at that face, at the green eyes staring up at her, at the curl of his dark beard. She looked down at his well-muscled shoulders and chest. She looked further down . . .

  “Genie . . .” she said, her voice suddenly stony.

  “I told you to mind what it was you asked for,” said the genie. And he was gone back into the spout.

  Lady Badroulboudour suddenly remembered what she should have remembered before. All the cats in her apartments – male and female – were neutered, some as kittens and some rather later on.

  “My lady,” the low, purring voice came again. She looked down into his handsome dark-bearded face.

  “Well, two out of three ain’t bad,” she said, affecting the language of the camel market. Then she lifted me up to clasp me in her arms.

  I took her eagerly, for the memory of my recent maleness was still upon me, she smelled deliciously of nepeta, and she was, after all, a lady still in her prime.

  AN EYE FOR AN EYE, A TOOTH FOR A TOOTH

  Lawrence Schimel

  Lawrence Schimel (b. 1971) is an American writer with a remarkable facility for producing short, sharp stories with refreshing twists on old ideas, and often with new ideas entirely. He has a most infuriatingly creative imagination (said without the slightest malice!) which I envy immensely. His first story collection, The Drag Queen of Elfland (1997), contains a quote by Marion Zimmer Bradley which echoes my feelings entirely: “I wish I knew Lawrence Schimel’s secret of getting so much character into so few words.” You’ll see what I mean in the following story, which is one of the examples of dark humour in this book.

  The alarm clock went off and I rolled over to slam down on it, hard. It stopped buzzing. I wanted to roll over and go back to sleep, but I knew I shouldn’t. I debated whether to get up or not, arm still outstretched to the clock since I was too tired to pull it back into bed. Finally, I opened my left eye to check the time. 6:47. I could snooze ten more minutes.

  I rolled over and pulled the covers up close, but I couldn’t fall asleep. There was something lumpy under my pillow. I tried to ignore it, but it wouldn’t go away. I couldn’t imagine what it was, and for an absurd moment I thought of the fairy tale, “The Princess and the Pea”. I knew I hadn’t been eating peas in bed; I hate vegetables.

  When I couldn’t stand it any more, I rolled onto my stomach and reached under my pillow, keeping my eyes shut so I could go back to sleep when I rolled over again. My fingers closed on something hard and cold and round. Coin? Quarter? No, more like one of those Susan B. Anthonys they pulled out of circulation because they were so much like quarters.

  I rolled over onto my back again and settled my head into the now comfortable pillow, wondering what the silver dollar was doing there. I hadn’t seen a Susan B. Anthony in years, not since I was a little kid. And even if I had accidentally gotten one with my change, what would it be doing under my pillow?

  My parents used to give me them whenever I lost a tooth, back when I still believed in the tooth fairy. Nervously, I felt around my mouth with my tongue to make sure I hadn’t lost a tooth during the night, just in case the tooth fairy really did exist and this was the exchange I’d gotten. But I couldn’t feel any gaps in my teeth.

  I wondered what the tooth fairy did with all those teeth, anyway. Or how it got a hold of the Susan B. Anthony dollars and why that was how much it paid for teeth.

  Stupid, I told myself. There’s no such thing as the tooth fairy.

  I nestled back into the pillow, ready to nap for a few more minutes, when I felt a weight land on my chest. Cracking my left eye open again I saw a little gnome-like creature sitting on my chest, with a million eyes all over its body. My heart pou
nding, I tried to sit up. I couldn’t, though, because he was pretty heavy. Lifting my head to get a better look, I tried to open my other eye, but it refused to open.

  I rubbed at my eyes with my hands. When my fingers pressed against the lid of my right eye I could feel that there wasn’t anything inside the socket. I started screaming. Or at least I tried to. The guy was really heavy and having him sitting on my chest didn’t make matters any easier. Not to mention the fact that he had clamped his hands over my mouth.

  Wondering what he was doing there and what he wanted, I stared at the gnome-like creature again with my left eye. He had eyes all over his body, like that Greek god, whatever his name was. Only they weren’t all human eyes. I could see a whole bunch of compound ones, like a fly’s, as well as perfectly round ones, slit-pupiled ones, and other variations. I thought it was disgusting, so I closed my eye, then thought better of it; I’d rather know what he was doing so I could maybe have a few seconds warning if he tried anything.

  When I reopened my eye I noticed he was wearing a T-shirt. There wasn’t much of it left – he’d cut holes into it for all the eyes – but I still could make out a few letters. There was an “L” followed by an “X”, then an “AL”, and at the end was an “S”. I had no idea what it meant.

  I felt something moving around on the bed near my feet, and I risked looking away from the thing on my chest to see what it was. It was another gnome, like the one on my chest, but all teeth instead of eyes. He was wearing a T-shirt as well, and his was readable. It said: LEX TALIONIS.

  “Hi!” the thing at the foot of the bed croaked. Its voice was really deep and scratchy. “I’m the tooth fairy. And this here’s my brother.”

  I turned my head to look back at the thing on my chest, but it was too late; his hand was in my face. I could feel him pop my eye out of the socket and was surprised that it didn’t hurt. It felt hot, like a water bottle when you’re sick, but that was it, no pain or anything.

  I reached out to grab him, but he was suddenly off me. I kicked around, but couldn’t feel the thing at the foot of the bed either.

  “My brother’s always jealous,” the deep, scratchy voice said. “I mean, who ever loses an eye and leaves it for him under their pillow?”

  So this was his revenge. I expected I would be angrier, but I merely wondered if they would at least leave me another Susan B. Anthony. A moment later, something cool was placed on the space my left eye had formerly occupied. I flailed around near my head, but aside from banging my hand against the bed boards couldn’t grab whichever one of them had put it there.

  As I was wondering why they had put the coin over my eye, I heard a thumping, like the pounding of blood in my ears. It’s like the pennies to pay Charon, I realized, and my heart nearly froze. The pounding grew louder, thump-thump, thump-thump, and suddenly the deep, scratchy voice of the tooth fairy said from right beside my left ear, “And this is my other brother.”

  QUEEN OF THE GREEN SUN

  Jack Sharkey

  Earlier I mentioned that Ron Goulart was pretty much a lone voice amongst humorous sf and fantasy in the 1950s. By the 1960s a few new voices were joining the chorus, including Jack Sharkey (1931–92). For about six years, from 1959 to 1965, Sharkey was a prolific contributor of sf and fantasy to the specialist magazines, always with exciting and clever stories. Amongst them was a comic fantasy novel, “It’s Magic You Dope”, serialized in Fantastic in 1962 but never published in book form, perhaps because it was too ahead of its time. He was really a short-story specialist, producing very few novels, although he did write a novelization of The Addams Family in 1965. After 1965 Sharkey turned to the theatre, writing over eighty stage plays and musicals, so fantasy’s loss was the theatre’s gain. The following story is one of Sharkey’s earliest.

  Once there was a queen, in the Land of the Green Sun, who arose from the Royal Bed in the morning, looked into the Royal Mirror, and saw a stalk of celery growing out of the top of her head. Whether or not she screamed at the sight is still open to conjecture; as a queen, she had a certain reputation for savoir-faire to maintain, and a terrified bellow would have been far beneath her Royal Dignity. Besides, in the Land of the Green Sun, the appearance of celery atop one’s head was not a sight to evoke terror, but rather, a contented delight, for the bearer of the Sacred Celery was considered the chosen of the gods. The persons fortunate enough to find the stalk sprouting upon them – it happened once every thousand apexes – were the beloved of the land. For one solid year, it was their privilege to live in the Royal Palace, as though they were royalty themselves, and to wine and dine and whoop it up with abandon, with no – well, hardly any – thought of tomorrow. At the end of the year, the person thus endowed would be taken in solemn procession to the top of Mahogany Mountain, and the stalk of Sacred Celery (along with the top of the person’s head) would be removed, and ensconced in the Emerald Temple for the adulation and awe of posterity. It had been argued by some of the former celery-bearers that the loss of their craniums was going a bit too far, but it was pointed out to them (on their way to the top of Mahogany Mountain) that this was the only way in which they could be certain the Sacred Roots would not be damaged in the process. And so, in the Land of the Green Sun, each day on arising, the citizenry, male, female, young and old, would rush to their mirrors to see if they were the lucky ones. After a careful, and fruitless examination of their respective scalps, they would sit back with a sigh of bitter regret. (Some said that the sigh was more of relief, but that is undoubtedly a vicious rumor circulated by the Camps of the Carrot-Eaters, to the south.)

  The queen, however, could not be truly said to be overjoyed by this sign of honor. After all, she lived like royalty anyhow, and rather than having a reward offered to her, she had nothing but the prospect of sudden curtailment of her normal activities in a year, and the mental image of her cranium, mounted upon a pedestal in the Emerald Temple with her glorious red-and-black-striped hair dangling in soft waves to the floor, brought tears to her Royal Eyes. And so, while it is uncertain as to whether or not she screamed, it is a fact that she did something, else why should her handmaidens all be rushing down the winding corridors of the palace toward the Royal Bedroom, with their wooden toeclips clacking frenziedly upon the glossy floor?

  By the time they arrived, however, the queen had had enough presence of mind to wind her head (and the Sacred Celery) with a large orange turban, hiding her secret from prying eyes. She would not admit to having screamed, and the handmaiden who had been first to voice such a suggestion had had her back-scratching privileges suspended for a week. The queen, after the weeping girl had slunk miserably from the Royal Presence, commanded the handmaidens to fly quickly to the far end of the palace, and to arouse Havler Grem from his slumbers in his decadently comfortable feather-pit.

  If anyone could help her, the queen reasoned, it was Havler.

  Havler Grem was the Royal Minister of Interstate Commerce, and, since there was only one state in the Land of the Green Sun, some of the people thought that he had a pretty soft job. Be that as it may, Havler arrived in due time at the queen’s bedroom, bowed solemnly to his Monarch, and remained in that subservient stance until the last of the handmaidens had fluttered away to have – at the queen’s suggestion – a picnic in the Royal Gardens.

  No sooner had the door closed behind the last of them, than the queen, with a brave, tragic smile, whipped aside her orange turban, and let Havler’s eyes, as he straightened up from his bow, fall upon the pale green stalk atop her head. Havler, after a momentary uprising of his bushy eyebrows and the faint suggestion of a cynical smile curling the corners of his thin-lipped mouth, pointed out to the queen, with a certain sarcasm, how fortunate she was to be amongst the elite of the kingdom, a chosen one of the gods. There is no record of the queen’s reply to Havler Grem, but the residents of the palace talk of the unaccountable rise in temperature that day for the space of a quarter of an hour. Havler, when the queen had finished replying, asked her what
she intended to do about the celery: would she publish the news at once, or would she wait until the height of her birthday celebration, due to begin that very night?

  The queen replied, with some frigid dignity, that she intended to get rid of the (the adjective here used has been thus far unable to be translated by historians delving into this period; from its context, they can only assume it was a rather nasty one) celery stalk, and the sooner the better. There were, she intimated, books on the subject, were there not? There were, of course, but all such books, dealing with the removal of Sacred Celery (the possession of which was such an honor) had naturally been banned from the kingdom, and the penalty for being caught with one of them was far worse than – as the townsfolk put it – being caught with the celery.

  Havler, of course, had read all the books. And the queen knew it, and he knew that she knew, so there was little use beating around the bush any longer. What the queen wanted to know was how to divest herself of her unwonted (and unwanted) vegetation, and she wanted to know at once, or she might be tempted to adulterate the feathers in Havler’s pit with a bushel of thorns, and confine him therein with nothing but slime lizards for company. Havler decided the wisest course – besides, he’d had his fun for the morning – was to tell the queen how to go about it.

  Together (the queen having first replaced the turban) they hurried down the corridor to Havler Grem’s room, to consult one of the forbidden books. The queen kept urging Havler to hurry; at any time, she felt, the palace residents would begin to ask questions about that turban – especially the Royal Hairdresser, who had that morning, for the first time since her employment, been told her services were not necessary, as the queen had decided to let her hair alone for a change, and there was the even worse – though remote – possibility that the celery would start going to seed (a turban can be wound only so hugely without inciting talk).