Carnival Charlatan

by Skeeter Enright

  “I have thought on it since Son of Bob made the suggestion. I do think the kingdoms would have to return to peace.”

  “Then, the King would not need Amanda anymore?”

  Sham nodded. “But he might still choose to keep her close. Humans often die when they return to your world after taking food here. He does love her well.”

  “Amanda is only half human. She’d be okay, wouldn’t she?” Tom asked. “Why would she die?”

  “She hasn’t been here long. She’d probably survive.” I had to think about how to explain ectoplasmic disintegration of digested food on the atomic level. “Remember how the Trow blood changed and evaporated when we were back in our world?” At Tom’s nod, I continued. “The food she ate will evaporate like that, even the stuff digested and in her cells.” Now Tom looked alarmed. “Hopefully, her Fae blood will allow her to stay intact until her body replaces the evaporating stuff. We will need to feed her a lot and get her to drink a lot of water as soon as we get back to flush her system. If she can get most of the stuff out of her system before nightfall, she should be fine. If not, I’ll pop her back here until she is okay.”

  “There will be a feast tonight,” Sham interjected.

  “Then we better get busy,” I said. “Sham, will the pixies leave if the chains are cut?”

  “Of course. They will make themselves invisible and fly away.”

  “Good, can you get a message to the pixies? Tell them not to fear the crow who is my familiar.”

  He looks puzzled. “They will not fear a bird. In your world, sylphs are the bird herders who keep the flocks together and lead them as they migrate. I will tell them a bird is coming to help. Have the bird wear some of my scent, so they know it is safe and not some torture devised by the King or his minions.”

  I nodded, and he gave me a bit of cloth from under his tunic.

  “Hurry, and warn them,” I said.

  Sham stepped forward. I consciously tried not to flinch. He hugged me briefly and left without a question. I had read the Fae were touchy-feely. Maybe he will take the hint if I don’t hug back. I don’t care if he is my brother. I’m not hugging a fairy.

  “What are you going to do, Airy?” Tom looked hopeful.

  “I’m going to project my consciousness into Zach the crow, fly in there, and snip the pixies’ chains.”

  “You can do that?” There was awe in Tom’s voice.

  I could get used to people thinking I was a powerful witch. I sure wasn’t going to tell anyone what a low-level trick I was going to use to solve this problem.

  “Yeah. I’m going to make him invisible, too.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  A couple of candles, stuff from my pockets, and stone scrapings from the wall helped me brew up a potion. I used one of the ruby-studded gold cups from the buffet table. I wrapped the invisibility charm from the potion in the tiny bit of the cloth Sham gave me. It was a packet small enough for Zach to carry. I gave Tom instructions on how to attach it to Zach’s leg.

  I was getting awfully complacent about using magic these past couple of days. I guess even personal rules were made to be broken. I just didn’t see any other way to get us all out of here alive with all our body parts intact. Even though all this magic was for a good cause, I hoped it didn’t blow back on me anytime soon.

  Most low power invisibility charms had a limited range. They could hide something on a table or in your hand, but not much more. If you had a mirror, you could use it to camouflage yourself, but mobility would be limited. Big invisibility veils you could walk around in could be conjured, but the energy needed was enormous. That’s why there weren’t a lot of bank robber witches. Once I activated it, this charm would be enough to keep Zach out of sight for half an hour at the most.

  The next step was what I was dreading. Not that it’s difficult. The actual astral projection is easy. Getting back in my body is the hard part. Living with myself if Zach didn’t survive would be even harder.

  “If anybody comes, tell them I’m asleep. They won’t be able to tell the difference. If I’m not back in half an hour, call my name and smack me hard several times.” At Tom’s uncertain look, I said, “It will draw me back to my body.” I put my hand on Tom’s arm. “If you can’t wake me, you’re on your own. Cut your losses, and get out of Dodge. Sham might help you, but don’t count on it.” I handed him a pair of glasses from my coat. “If you wear them, you might be able to see the natural ways back to our world. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

  I lay down on the lounge nearest the window. I wished I could have taken a shower before I did this. I suspected I was sparking with residual magic, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.

  Tom paced again. “You’re sure there is no other way?” He plopped into the chair opposite me and rubbed a hand over his eyes.

  “I can’t think of anything. This may not work anyway. If Zach’s beak can’t cut those chains, this is going to be a short trip.”

  Tom reached over and patted my arm. “I’ll watch the door, now. Good luck.”

  I closed my eyes and cleared my mind of everything except Zach. The connection I had made when I was a kid helped me find him. I peeked out through his eyes. He was sitting in one of the asparagus trees watching a bunch of Centaurs lying in a clearing. I slipped the rest of the way into him, and we ruffled our feathers to let me get the feel of being a bird. Then, we flew back to the castle. It was weird to see myself lying on the couch. I fluttered down to the table that held the invisibility charm. Tom was looking at us strangely.

  “Hello, Taa,” we said, since “m” sounds were hard when you don’t have lips.

  “Holy shit,” Tom said.

  I shifted in and out of Zach a few times for practice. It was easier than I thought it would be. Zach flinched every time I left. I don’t think it hurt him. At least he hadn’t tried to fly away. I picked up the invisibility charm in our beak and held up our leg.

  Tom attached the invisibility charm. I shifted back to my body one last time to activate the charm. I heard Tom gasp as Zach disappeared. I heard his feathers rustle, and he cawed once, but not too loudly.

  I slipped back into his body. We flew out the window, around the castle to the main hall. One of the trolls felt the wind from our wings. He shifted his stance, making a questioning noise, and looked around with his rheumy eyes.

  In the hall, I flew to the nearest pixie. She was a miniature beauty with dragonfly wings. She was no more than six inches tall, with a pink glow about her. She looked like a tiny Disney princess. Her eyes widened at the change in the air as we approached. She clapped her hands over her mouth to muffle her tiny squeak of alarm. I grabbed the chain about three inches from her, and it snapped easily. The tiny ping it made was lost in the sound of the music from below. The chain slithered from around her waist and dropped sixty feet to the floor. She soared upward and blinked out of existence.

  I scanned the room. None of the throng below had noticed anything. I flew around snapping the pixies chains. Most of them blinked away immediately, but some continued to flutter around, keeping the illusion they remained chained. Smart little buggers.

  Zach and I were both tired, and our beak was sore when we freed the final pixie. We swooped out of the entry arch and flapped wearily to the window of the round turret room. Tom listened by the door.

  My body was still on the lounge. We landed on my hip. I tried to shift back into my body. It didn’t work. We hopped to my head. We leaned our crow head right next to my human one. I tried again. No luck. I was getting a little scared. I tried again, and again. We let out a caw of frustration. Out of our left eye, we saw Tom look our way with a frown. My lonely body lay quietly, breathing slowly and regularly. We were so tired, our wings trembled. We hopped over and drank some water from the cup I’d poured earlier. We gobbled a couple of chunks of beef jerky and felt a little stronger. We used our beak to pull the invisibility charm from our leg, just in case it was causing the shifting problem.

&n
bsp; Back at my body, I tried to ease my consciousness back a little at a time rather than in one big, energy-draining jump. The sensation of duality was disorienting—two hearts beating at different rates and large lungs, small lungs, sounds arriving out of synch in two sets of ears. I slowly gleaned some of my big body’s energy and completed the shift. I felt Zach slump into a bundle of feathers. I sat up and gently cradled him. Tom came over as Zach’s eyes fluttered. He was shivering. His feathers had faded. He could hardly hold up his head.

  “Get me some water,” I said to Tom. Zach was barely alive. Poor little guy. He didn’t ask for this. My tears dripped onto his feathers.

  “Did you get it done?”

  “Yeah.” My hand shook as I gave Tom the invisibility amulet. “Rip this up and throw it out the window, will you.” At Tom’s quizzical look, I said, “They will smell the magic if it is in here.”

  I pulled a chocolate bar from my coat pocket and practically inhaled it. I was shaking, too. Tom handed me a water bottle. I poured some in the cap and drank the rest in big gulps. I trickled drops into Zach’s mouth. At first, he didn’t move. The water just ran out the other side of his beak.

  “Come on, Zach. Try.” After a bit, his mouth moved, and he drank the water. His eyes became brighter, and he tried to right himself. “Take it easy, little buddy.” I stroked his head. I wrapped him in one of the tablecloths and set him upright. I mashed up a piece of sugar cube, dissolved it in the water, and he gulped a tiny bit.

  “Is he going to be all right?” Tom asked from the door.

  “I hope so. It’s hard to tell. We’re both pretty whipped.” My overwhelming urge was to curl up on the couch and sleep for a week. I wolfed down two more chocolate bars and a high-energy protein bar. I hoped we had twenty minutes for the sugar to hit my system before the next pile hit the fan, but no such luck.

  We could hear a commotion from the great hall and the courtyard. Shouts and roars mingled with a banshee’s keening, which caused us both to cover our ears. The keening stopped abruptly at the sound of a loud crash.

  “Sounds like the pixies have been missed. I bet we will have company soon,” Tom said.

  I ate another chocolate bar. I really needed my strength. Zach drank the sugar water. I put him on the sideboard and arranged him in the folds of a tablecloth so he was out of sight. I was still worried, because he didn’t try to get out of his wrapping. As a rule, Zach didn’t allow anyone to handle him.

  Tom gathered our belongings. He was stuffing things into his coat pockets when an explosive thump shook the building. “Is the war starting?” He pulled his sword and started for the door.

  “Wait, Tom. We need to let things settle down before we can find out what’s going on.” I opened a way in case we needed to leave quickly.

  Tom saw the faint shimmer. “I’m not going without Amanda. She is so close. We might not get another chance.”

  “We may have to regroup.” I replied.

  The door burst open, and four elves strode in, followed by Sham in his malodorous Merrow visage.

  “What is going on?” I demanded. “Has the war started?”

  “You know full well what has happened, Mage. You have released the King’s sylphs,” the tallest elf warbled. No matter how dangerous they were, I would never get over the need to giggle when I heard elves speak. The lead elf started toward me. He moved fast with no weapons out, but I knew he was strong enough to rip out my throat with his bare hands. I didn’t have time for anything offensive so, with a thought, I put energy into my defensive belt. The belt with its concave Conchos only deflected energy. Most magic, more or less, followed the laws of physics. In this case, action equals equal and opposite reaction, and the belt would deflect whatever came at me with equal force and in the opposite direction from me. Good old Newton. The spell had taken months to prepare. I never used it for anything except warding off drunks during a brawl. It worked perfectly on the elf. He got within six inches of me, his hand reaching for my throat. He must have had a huge amount of momentum. His reaching hand flew back, and the rest of him followed in a somersault. I heard the satisfying sound of a bone cracking as his arm hit the floor and his body catapulted over it.

  Tom had pulled his second sword and stood balanced and ready.

  “I have done nothing. How dare you attack me? The King guaranteed our safety,” I said to the next elf in line.

  The floored elf got to his feet and stood back with his fellows, his arm hanging at an awkward angle, his triangular teeth bared. His glare should have melted me where I stood.

  “Son of Bob and I have been in this room since our last audience with the King. Had we done as you say, would we still be here? You can see I have a way back to my world and could have left as we heard your approach.” I could only hope they did not sense the magic I had done with Zach.

  One of the elves strode to the way and stuck his head through. He was so arrogant, I had half a mind to close the way and cut him in two. I restrained myself. I like to think it was because I was civilized, but I think it really was because I did not want to see the mess.

  “It is as she said,” he trilled, returning to his spot by the door.

  Sham shuffled forward. “The Mage and her minion have not left the room since I brought them here an hour since. I have watched, as I was asked.”

  “See that they remain here.” The elf quartet did a choreographed turn and strode out, slamming the heavy door behind them.

  We all waited, not moving. The sound of the marching elves faded in the distance. We waited some more, listening to the commotion outside.

  “What is happening?” I asked finally. I went over to check on Zach. He was breathing steadily. He opened his eyes and took a deep breath. I dripped a bit more sugar water into his beak, and he swallowed with more energy than he had before.

  Sham remained absolutely still, like a statue. A milky ooze dripped slowly onto the floor. I don’t think he was even breathing, though it was hard to tell with all his slimy Merrow appendages. He might be listening. I wished I wasn’t breathing. Sham was really starting to smell in the enclosed room.

  After several minutes, he re-animated. “The King was dangerously angry when he found the sylphs were gone. He blasted several of his minions. He destroyed part of the wall of the great hall. I was lucky he ordered me to stay and watch your door. I am not one of his favorites. I would have felt his wrath.” He became still again for almost a minute. “It sounds like the King is finally calming down.”

  “Where is Amanda?” Tom rounded on Sham.

  Startled, Sham dropped his glamor. “I think she is in the King’s chambers.” The stench faded. “She was not in the hall when I left.” At Tom’s alarmed look, he added, “The King could not hurt his child.”

  “Wouldn’t this be a good time to go get her, so we can get the hell out of this nut house?” Tom bounced on the balls of his feet and fingered the hilt of his sword. Give him a sweater vest, and he would look like Mister Rogers getting ready for a rumble.

  “Tom, we don’t want to start a fight. We are so outgunned. The King blew out a stone wall, for Pete’s sake.”

  “You blew the roof off the barn.”

  “I had to sleep for hours afterward. I used most of what I had to free the pixies today. I don’t have the juice to blast minions, too. Trust me. Everybody in this building is so far out of my league, it isn’t funny. Remember me, the one trick pony?”

  “What if the King’s so mad that he hurts her?” Tom almost sobbed.

  Sham took our exchange in silently. When we stopped, he interjected, “If his daughter disappears, the King will soon miss her. It will be an insult. The King is not forgiving, nor is he stupid. He will know who took her. He will come for her.”

  “If he does, we are screwed,” I said. Sham looked puzzled. “We will be in big trouble,” I clarified.

  Tom swiped food and goblets off the buffet with a clatter. He slammed both hands flat on the table, his back to us, head hanging. �
�We have to get her.”

  Sham put his hand on Tom’s shoulder. “I see your pain, but we have to wait for the right moment.” His head snapped up, and he looked at the door. His merrow disguise reappeared. Tom whirled around. The door slammed open, crashing against the wall. The King and six elf guards strode in. Sham backed away, bowing deeply. I shot Tom a glare in warning. My staff was still leaning against the table six feet away. There was no way I could get it that wouldn’t look like a threat. I put some thought into my defensive belt and stepped in front of Tom to give him some protection.

  “Mage, what did you do with my sylphs?” the Kings deep voice reverberated in the small chamber.

  I felt like putting my hands over my ears. The authority in his voice made me want to drop to my knees and confess. A faint whimper came from Tom. I fought the psychic blast by doing fractions in my head, one-half, one-eighth, one-sixteenth… By one-two hundred and fifty-sixth, I had regained my control enough to evade the question.

  “I do not know where your sylphs are, my Lord.” I was not lying. I had no idea where the pixies had gone.

  “You set them free.” His scowl could melt glass.

  “I lay on this couch the past two hours, my Lord. I rose just before the commotion outside startled me.” Again…no lie. I was getting the hang of this fairy pseudo-prevarication.

  An elf who was missing an ear and had a scar from his hairline to the point of his jaw, marched over to the couch, leaned over, and sniffed. Thank goodness I’d moved Zach over to the table. Oh, Zach. Please don’t make any noise right now. If the elves saw him…game over!

  “The couch was left only lately, my Lord,” the tough looking elf warbled. His nasally tenor was more irritating than the other elves I had heard. “There is no scent of magic, save for the way, which was manifest when we were last here.”

  I had to unravel the statement for a second before I said, “Had we been responsible for your misfortune, would we not have fled?”

  The King glared at me. Tom looked like he wanted to punch somebody but was holding his comments. Sham stood against the wall, still dripping watery ooze. The elves with their cold eyes waited expectantly. They were a hair away from violence.