by Eric Vall
When we were about six feet away from the ground, the carpet stuttered and suddenly stopped moving forward. Then it dropped out from beneath our bodies and gear, and we fell. Despite my best efforts to steer the carpet away from brush, we seemed to have come to a stop directly over a giant thorn bush, and we landed in a tangled, painful heap of bodies, weapons, and whatever items Jessamine hadn’t already thrown over the side.
“Ow,” the princess moaned, and I crawled over to her, since I was worried she’d been seriously injured in the fall. However, the pragmatic woman was already sitting up, and I watched her pick thorns out of her tan arm with a grimace on her face.
“You’re so brave, Jessamine,” I said, and despite the blood and bruises, she responded with a smile.
“Joe, I have suffered worse in battle,” the fierce beauty replied. “Don’t worry about me.”
I surveyed the landscape in all directions, and I was happy to see we appeared to be alone. Now, we would have to decide what we could keep on the remaining legs of our journey and what we would have to leave behind. Weapons and armor were an obvious choice, as was food. I was slightly dismayed to see how much water we’d drank so far, but the journey had been incredibly hot, and we’d needed to keep our strength up.
I was happy to see Jessamine had included a couple of silk bags in the crates that we could use as backpacks, and I quickly loaded them up with food and other supplies. Then the princess and I put on our armor, and she looked more ferocious and beautiful than ever in the shining chainmail.
However, there was one large thing we needed to figure out how to carry.
“Your Highness,” I began, “you mentioned the carpet only has a few hours of flight time?”
“I’m not absolutely certain,” she replied as she tapped her lip in thought. “I think it gets weaker the farther we get from the palace, or it might just be so much time during the day. We may be able to use it to fly short distances in the future.”
It didn’t seem wise to leave such a valuable possession behind, so I surveyed the rug, which now laid in a dusty heap. It had to weigh thirty or forty pounds, so I had no desire to lug it for miles over my shoulder.
“Shit, Jessamine,” I sighed. “I know we need to bring this carpet, but it’s really fucking heavy. I don’t think we’re going to be able to carry it for long.”
“Hold on, I have an idea,” the gorgeous princess said with a new light in her eyes. “I now remember that I have seen the carpet transported before, and it’s not in the way you might think.”
I looked on as the princess waved a golden-skinned hand across the rug.
“Jessamine, what are you--” I started, but got interrupted.
“Hold on, I think I can do this,” she said as she held up her hand for me to be quiet. “I saw Ali do it several years back, and I’m going to do it again now.”
I sat back and watched as the princess waved her hand again.
“Do you need anything?” I asked her a moment later, since nothing seemed to be happening.
“I don’t think it’s working,” Princess Jessamine said with a furrowed brow.
I put my hand on her shoulder, and I saw with amazement the rug now appeared to be wavering in the light as if it were a mirage.
And slowly, as I watched, the rug began to shrink. It grew smaller and smaller, and more and more translucent, until it was nothing more than a scarf. The gauzy scarf had the same rich colors as the rug, but now it fit easily into Jessamine’s hand.
“Holy shit,” I breathed. “What did you just do?”
“Oh, Joe,” the princess stated matter-of-factly, and she waved my compliment away, “it’s just some old magic I saw at the palace many years ago. I think it runs in my family. It’s not really a big deal. But… it was easier when you touched me. That’s strange, but maybe it is because of your great hero magic?”
“Uhhhh… Your magic seems way more powerful than any kind of magic I might have.” I shrugged. It seemed like a huge deal to me, since the beautiful woman had not only just solved our biggest logistical issue but performed the most incredible trick I’d ever seen, but I decided to let it go for the moment. We still had a long trip ahead of us, and I wanted to start walking soon.
Jessamine tucked the colorful scarf into her pack and stood up. The bag looked heavy on her small frame, but she smiled bravely.
“Are you ready to go, Your Highness?” I asked her.
“Ready as ever,” the beautiful woman told me.
We began to walk, and I was grateful for the boots I wore on my feet. Jessamine still wore a pair of elaborate sandals with flat soles that laced up her calves, and they couldn’t have been comfortable, but she didn’t complain.
“So, Joe, my hero, you must have had a large harem of women back wherever you came from,” the princess cleared her throat. “Do you miss them?”
“Uhhhh, I didn’t have a harem… ” I chuckled.
“That seems strange,” the dark-haired beauty sighed. “You are very handsome, honorable, and you have great magic. Why wouldn’t women want to be yours? They should be eager to become your wives and bear you strong children.”
“Well… ” I cleared my throat. “Uhhh… It was hard to meet women in my line of work. I went to a lot of hot girls’ houses to fix stuff, but I don’t think they saw me as a love interest in that uniform.”
“Ahh, yes,” Jessamine laughed. “You seem very good at solving problems. I forgot to mention that earlier. Still, you haven’t quite answered my question.”
“Guess I was just too busy being a hero,” I snickered. “And women from my world just didn’t seem interested.”
“Well, I thought you were very handsome in your blue suit,” the beautiful woman said with a frown. “Any woman who would not realize your greatness is surely foolish.”
“And what about you, Princess Jessamine?” I asked, since it seemed like as good a time to bring it up as any. “You mentioned you used to be married. Did you have children? Have you loved anyone since then?”
“No children,” she said. “Ali was a wonderful man, and one of the great loves of my life, but perhaps in some ways he was like you and wanted too much adventure.”
“Huh,” I said, since I couldn’t quite figure out why anyone would want to deny making babies with Jessamine.
“I used to think he was the only love I would ever have, and I felt lost for the first couple of years after he died, but in recent times, I have been getting more eager for male companionship. Even a princess gets lonely from time to time.”
She blushed and looked away from me as if she’d said too much.
“You never have to be embarrassed in front of me, Your Highness,” I reassured her. “We all get lonely.”
“There have been other suitors over the past couple of years,” she went on, and she had a faraway look on her face. “Royalty from distant lands, of course, and even the odd guard has dared to approach me with a proposition from time to time. But I have never accepted. I have never felt the situation has been right. The royalty has always seemed disappointing, and the guards, well, it seemed odd to form a romance with someone who served me. It is the woman’s job to serve her husband, not the other way around… ”
The princess trailed off, and I was relieved to hear she didn’t seem to be particularly attached to any man. I wanted to say the perfect thing, but I was struck almost speechless.
“J-Jessamine,” I stuttered, “you are the most incredible woman I have ever seen. It hurts me to think you have been alone, and I would do anything in my power to comfort you… ”
I didn’t quite know what else to say, but Jessamine turned to me and clasped my hands. Then she looked up into my face and smiled at me.
“Joe, would you really do anything?” she began as she stared up at me with those giant dark eyes. “Would you complete the rites the genie spoke of?”
“Uhhh, I need to know a bit more about them, but if you--”
“We have been fighting th
e war against Chernabog,” she continued, “and Jamar’s awful troops, for many years now. We have won battles, and we have lost battles. This cycle of pain has been going on for a very long time, and I have seen many awful things. But the one thing I have never seen before is Jamar turn around and retreat the way he did when you shot that fire at him. You are an incredible warrior, because you use not only strength, but strategy. You are the hero I wished for, and I am so incredibly grateful you have come here.”
The beautiful woman reached up to caress my shoulder, and I started to grow hard in my pants.
I wished we could stay there and talk for the rest of our lives, but I knew we needed to keep moving forward if we wanted to find somewhere safe to spend the night.
“W-well, I appreciate the compliment,” I stammered, “but I think we need to find a place to camp now.”
“You’re right.” Jessamine nodded with a smile. “It will be night soon.”
We proceeded to plod along, and it seemed like we were going to have to walk forever. Falcons soared overhead in the fading sunlight, and I could tell the princess had started to grow tired. It was getting chillier, and she pulled a thick fur cloak from her pack and draped it around her narrow shoulders.
“Joe, do we have any water left?” she asked me, and she even sounded weak.
I pulled out the flask from my pack and handed it to her, but I could tell from its weight that it was empty. She managed to squeeze out a couple drops, but I could see she was losing hope.
“We are going to get through this, Princess,” I told her resolutely. I wanted to reassure the beautiful woman, but, in reality, I had no idea how long we had left to travel. Pebbles crunched under my boots, and I thought I could hear a wild animal howl in the distance. It wouldn’t be safe to continue to travel after dark, and I lit one of the oil lamps we carried.
“Yes, of course,” she said as she smiled at me. “I trust you completely, Joe.”
I didn’t want to say anything yet, but the trees were starting to thicken around us, and I’d started to feel a little more hopeful. Tall date palms stretched up into the sky, and we began to approach a thicket of what I thought were juniper trees.
“Just a little farther, Princess Jessamine,” I promised as we started to climb a large dune. It wasn’t easy to walk in sand under the best of conditions, and I was sure the princess was struggling in her sandals. When I glanced in the beautiful woman’s direction, I saw tears well up in her eyes, and I prayed my instincts were right. Then I bravely reached out to clasp her hand in my own.
When we reached the crest of the hill, I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Amidst the trees, I could spy some sort of square on the ground that appeared to be made of sandstone.
And in the middle of that square stood a pump.
The princess squealed and ran down the hill toward the mechanism. In a decidedly un-royal manner, she stuck her head under the tap and pumped the handle, but nothing came out.
“Joe, the water isn’t working,” Princess Jessamine pouted and looked at me.
“Stand back.” I smiled and patted my pack, where I had thankfully kept my plumber’s tools. “I’ll take it from here. If there’s one thing I know how to do well, it’s how to fix water pipes.”
Chapter 5
“Let me take a look at this machine,” I told the princess as I grabbed my large wrench and walked across the sandy plaza toward the pump. It was clearly very old, since large areas of the copper piping had turned bright green with age and corrosion.
“Oh, Joe, I hope this works,” the princess moaned. “I’m so thirsty!”
“I don’t mean to brag, but I’m a pretty good plumber.”
The handle still appeared to be operational, so I pumped it several times, but to no avail. I thought the mechanism might be jammed somehow, so I decided to try to unscrew it at the base where it met the ground. I fit the wrench around the ancient coupling, but the metal was so corroded I couldn’t get a good fit.
After about the fifth time of trying to turn the damn thing, I decided to employ the age-old method of fixing things, so I took my wrench, and I started to beat the shit out of the pump like it was a vending machine that hadn’t released a snack. Water didn’t come out, but I felt slightly better.
And speaking of snacks, I would kill for a Coke and a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos right about now. My stomach grumbled, and I looked with dismay at the darkening sky.
Suddenly, the ground beneath us started to rumble and shake.
“What the hell?” I muttered as the sandy ground began shifting under my feet.
“Joe!” Jessamine tried to run over to me, but the earth was too shaky, and she wobbled and fell to the ground.
I couldn’t believe it. As a California boy, we had practiced what to do in an earthquake several times a year in drills at school, but I’d never actually experienced one.
“Drop! Cover! Hold on!” I yelled to the princess, though I wasn’t sure she’d be able to hear me, let alone understand what I was talking about. She was still on the ground and had put her arms over her head, though, which seemed to be along the lines of my instructions anyway.
The shaking went on and on, so this had to be a big one. I decided to follow the princess’ lead, and I dropped to the ground and covered my head with my hands. Out here in the open, there wasn’t much to fall on us other than fruit from the trees, so there didn’t seem to be much to do but stay calm and wait for the shaking to stop.
Then I started to notice an even louder rumbling sound coming from the ground nearby, and I prayed the earth wasn’t about to split open. To my surprise, the shaking had gotten even stronger, so this wasn’t like any earthquake I’d ever heard of before.
“Joe, what is happening?” Princess Jessamine shouted, and the sound of terror was unmistakable in her voice. “I have never felt anything like this in my life!”
“I don’t know, Your Highness!” I screamed back at her. “Just hold on!”
As quickly as it had begun, though, the shaking stopped, and it was quiet again other than the sound of birds chirping in the trees.
I attempted to stand on shaky legs, but I couldn’t seem to rise to my feet. So, I decided to try to crawl over to Jessamine, and my knees stung from the rocky pebbles below.
“Princess Jessamine, are you okay?” I asked, but again, I was amazed at the beautiful woman’s resilience, because she easily appeared to shrug off my question.
“Sure, Joe, I’m fine,” the princess sighed and smiled at me. “You seem to underestimate my strength, which is dangerous.”
Other than a scrape or two and streaks of dirt on the princess’ cheeks, she didn’t seem to be any worse for wear.
“I’ll be sure not to make the same mistake again.” I grinned at her.
I managed to pull myself to a standing position, and I reached out for Jessamine’s hand. She grabbed onto my wrist, and we both were on our feet.
“Um, Joe, I think you need to see this.” The princess gestured, and I turned to see what she’d pointed at.
“What the fuck?” I mumbled as I now stared at a large hole that had opened up in the ground several yards away.
But it wasn’t a giant crack in the earth like I imagined an earthquake would cause. It appeared that a giant panel of the ground had somehow slid open and exposed a room underneath.
A secret chamber? This had gotten way more exciting than fixing a pump.
I quickly rushed over to the edge of the new chasm and peered below to see a flame already burned within the room and illuminated it from within. I wasn’t sure if the burning torch was a natural phenomenon or some sort of magic again, but I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
“I’m going to drop down and check it out,” I said.
“Please be careful,” the princess warned me.
I nodded and then slid on my ass to the side of the broken ground. It was only about a seven-foot fall, so I easily dropped down and absorbed the impact with my knees. Then
I glanced around the cavern. Its ceiling was about a foot above my head, but the fire gave it a cozy feel. It seemed strange that a torch would burn eternally in this underground space, but I supposed there could have been some kind of natural gas source.
And, to my relief, the wall under the pump appeared to be moist with fresh water from some sort of underground spring. Droplets ran down the wall and splashed lightly into a small, clear pool of water below, surrounded by rocks, and I grinned.
“Jessamine, come quick!” I jumped up to poke my head out of the underground chamber and beckoned to the princess. “I found water!”
“Joe, you are truly wonderful,” she gushed as she peered over the edge into the room below. “But are you sure it’s safe to come down there?”
I looked around the chamber at the torch and the spring, and everything seemed cool for the time being.
“I think it’s fine. Come on down, there’s light and something to drink.”
The princess sat at the edge of the precipice, and I grabbed her narrow waist to swing her down into the room. I could smell her intoxicating scent, and I was excited at the thought of spending the night alone with her down here in this intimate space.
Princess Jessamine immediately went over to the spring and cupped her hands to gather water. Then she drank heartily, and when she was done, she splashed more on her dusty cheeks.
“Joe, what do you think is over there?” The princess pointed to a shadowy corner, where I now noticed a small door was set into the stone where the underground chamber extended beyond the first room.
“Hmm… I don’t know,” I responded as I walked over to examine the door. It had symbols carved into it I didn’t recognize, which gave me an ominous feeling, but I wasn’t sure if it was a warning, like in the movies, or just your standard graffiti. The door looked quite heavy, but I gave it a gentle push to test it out and was surprised when it started to open.
Jessamine came over to stand next to me, and she nudged me playfully.
