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CarlHoliday
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It was an unsettled day on the bench where the sorcerer’s cottage stood on the side of the mountain. They were all in attendance: Gregor the Sorcerer; his mate Edwina or Timothy; their three children, Beatrice, Trudy, and Ben, eight months past their birth, but looking and acting more like four-year-olds; Rubiette the dwarf midwife who stayed on; Margo the wet nurse and now nanny; Harold the raven ghost; Exetor the pixie; Percy the dragon and his prospective mate Deirdre, who was naked. Everyone
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Percy the dragon had an idea. It was the kind of idea that came to mind and then refused to go away no matter how hard you tried. It was right there in front of him every time he saw Deirdre. Basically, he saw the beauty in her and knew only one thing could satisfy him. He had to become a man. When he approached the sorcerer’s cottage he saw the great oak and knew he was in for trouble unless the sorcerer came out to help him. Great oaks definitely didn’t like dragons and this one had pixies
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She wasn’t like any of the other maidens left for him to devour. For one thing, she spoke to him and he understood. Then she told him to find her some clothes and she would become his maidservant. He didn’t know what a maidservant was, but she was so insistent that he did it, especially after she climbed up the cliff naked. It was so steep and so tall that he was bushed after climbing, but she just did it as if she was born to it. “I’ll need some wood, too,” she said before he left. “It’s col
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The dragon looked down into the deepest part of his cavern at all the gold, silver, and gems he’d stolen from unlikely travelers throughout his existence, which was a very long time indeed. He couldn’t understand why dragons liked those baubles, but his mother had taught him to collect them at every chance, so he did. Now, they sat in nearly a foot of cold water and the dragon stayed away because of the darkness down there. All winter he’d been trying to restart his fire. He thought he rememb
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Pink’s journey to the end of the kingdom was fraught with jeers and derision, for in all the land he was the shortest, pinkest, Daisy-est knight. Yet, he’d grown up the butt of all the jokes about the Daisys because where in the entire world could one find a pink daisy. He was a rarity, an oddity, and short, too. The one thing he’d gotten out of the deal was a thick skin. He just didn’t hear the laughter anymore. Once he crossed the great river and into the Hinterlands, Pink finally relaxed a
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As a dragon, he was a pitiful creature. His fire had been reduced to not much more than a glow ages ago leaving his cavern cold and damp even on the hottest summer day. He coughed, belched, and all he got was warm putrid air. His claws were worn down to practically nothing from scraping down a passageway full of crusty rocks. He still remembered how to fly, but had always been afraid of the dark, which was pretty pitiful for a dragon, so only flew with a full moon on cloudless nights. Living whe
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An unhappy dragon receives the unlikeliest of gifts and wishes the impossible dream. A powerful sorcerer wants more trouble than he needs, encounters a dragon, finds he’s stronger than he thought, and comes up with a solution to a couple of tricky problems. To complete the mix, we’ll throw in the shortest knight in the kingdom who desires to go on a quest for fame and fortune.
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A few days later, the hut, which was looking more like a small cottage, was slowly putting itself together with rocks from the rubble of the castle, while Gregor went down in the valley looking for a tree to supply lumber for the house. Since he hadn’t actually built a hut or cottage before, he was leaving the details up to the magic, which he figured knew a lot more about building things than he did. There were lots of trees in the forest, but none of them seemed willing to give their lives
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Gregor stood just outside the garden door watching Roger picking weeds out from among a row of carrots. It was a very substantial garden, bigger than any back in his village, which seemed kind of strange from what he’d seen when looking out his window. Down here at ground level, there were lots of rows of vegetables extending in all directions, practically an orchard of fruit trees, and in the middle of the garden stood a mighty oak, its huge branches extending out over the entire garden as if t
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Gregor woke again, later, after unknowingly falling back asleep. He felt unclean and wanted a bath, but there was no hot water. Or was there? By the time he rolled out of the bed and stood at his table, he saw a large wooden bowl full of hot water placed on top. There was soap and a rag, too. It wasn’t the same as bathing in a river or pond, but it would have to do until he discovered more of the castle’s facilities. “Good morning, Gregor,” Harold said. “Good morning, Harold, have a goo
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Breakfast was similar to supper only this time Gregor didn’t speak his wish. A simple thought of two eggs, four thick slices of bacon, and a slab of warm bread covered with sweet honey made them appear on the tin plate. He tried to fill the tankard with ale, but got fresh milk instead, which set him to thinking again about this place full of magic and, yet, so much evil also. As he ate he wondered what being a pantry boy was. Was it as Roger said? Was he to go down to where the young men were ki
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The ageless, crumbling, cut stone castle stood on a high, rocky crag overlooking a forest filled broad valley once filled eons ago with a massive glacier. There were no people down there and very few creatures one might expect in such a forest. There were no people within a hundred leagues of the castle. Yet those who lived nearest feared what was inside the castle more than anything in their tiny corner of the world. “There’s a monster in that castle,” any one of them would say to a traveler
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Once upon a time a young man named Gregor was sent on a long journey across the mountains to be apprenticed to be a butcher. He came to the proverbial fork in the road neither of which were good choices. Gregor chooses the short, easy route, a choice he may live to regret.
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Ben sat under the great oak playing with a dried twig that had fallen to the ground and a small granite pebble he’d found near the privy. It was an unremarkable pebble, one of many broken from the mountain above. He guided the pebble around on the hard soil not paying attention to anything. To him, now, his world consisted of whatever was in front of him at the moment be it a stick and a pebble, his plate and cup at the table, his Papa’s lap during story time, or late at night when he stared up
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Percy and Karn stood in the visitor’s chamber where Gregor had invited the dwarfs to join him on the rescue mission. In one corner, huddled in a jumble of pillows and cushions a mere shadow of Gregor trembled within a strange green, ethereal light. There was a slight quavering, low hum in the air. The image of the sorcerer was so airily transparent it almost seemed he was fading away. “What do you make of it?” Percy asked as he moved closer. “The magic’s leaving him,” Karn said, “and, unfo
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Two figures lay in the huge bed snuggled into one heap of satiated flesh. The taller and larger of the two couldn’t imagine his luck in finding two welcome humans so willing to couple with him. His was an aberration, a fluke, a freak! He became a Mountain Ranger for that very reason. Oh, yes, there were a few, but not husband and wife. And, what a wife! Not only was she, in the purest and truest sense of the word, a wife, but with a bit of magic he still couldn’t grasp, she became a husband with
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Gregor slumped in his rocking chair with ancient vellum scrolls strewn about. The last one he’d read, in a flowing script of silvery ink said a lot about gnomes, none of it good. All of the scrolls said the same thing, if Ben crossed the veil as the little boy who left, there was a good chance, if he came back alive, he’d not the same as the little boy he was before. There was the growth potion the gnomic poison instilled which caused the human body and muscles to grow at an astonishing rate.
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“We just can’t walk in there and take him back,” Karn said. They were in a small hollowed out chamber in one of the dwarf’s unused drifts. There were thick rugs and pillows to sit on and refreshments, as dwarfs were rather big on refreshments. “They won’t release him unless we have someone or something to trade.” “I can’t ask anyone to take Ben’s place,” Gregor said. The negotiations for the dwarfs assistance was going longer than he hoped. Karn, the superintendant of the local mine, seemed t
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The day started much like any day on the bench of rock hanging on the side of a massive granite mountain. The morning chubby birds chirped, welcoming the dawn. The rooster proudly strode atop the coop and crowed. The littlest pixies ran around the yard and garden picking up slugs and snails that hadn’t fled to their hiding places. Harold the ghost raven flew down from the loft where the children slept and stood on the back of Gregor the Sorcerer’s chair while Margo, the children’s nanny and cook
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A tale about a little boy, who has a lesson about little boys, is stolen by a troll, and enslaved by gnomic magic; and, a sorcerer who thinks he has failed is given the secret of magic.
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2007 Anthology
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One - Cowards Two naked, young men on the cusp of adulthood sit close to one another in an open, seven meter fishing boat on a quiet sea waiting for a school of beslars to swim into their net. They’d settle for a school of grummies, but beslar patties fetch the best price on the market. Plus, grummies have a nasty habit of biting with razor sharp teeth even after hanging in the net for untold hours in the sun warmed water. Although they have been friends since they can remember, their futur
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This can be considered to be a prequel to The Last Watcher, my story in the Summer Anthology, but, as required, it stands on its own as a short story.
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A straggly mist hung low over the meadow as Gerrold trudged down the path toward his quiet spot near the healing spring. There was still a little snow high up on the granite peaks around the valley, even quite a bit on the sunny side. It’d been a cool spring and, now, a full month into summer, cool, drizzly rains continued to put a damper on outdoor activities, especially the children’s, who expected every summer to be filled with sunny days. He’d been born on Marigold 3, but Gerrold didn’t f
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2007 Anthology
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