The Chick Is In The Mail

my feet. 'You've poisoned him!'

The Evil Queen dug a slippered toe into her son's ribs. 'He's only sleeping,' she answered with a weary sigh. 'He thought it was just the apple, but everything on that table is enchanted-just in case he ever woke when I wasn't around.'

I protested. 'Why?'

She looked at me as if I were an addled schoolgirl. 'Didn't you feel it?' she said. 'Did you really want to fetch his slippers? Did you want to get his beer?' She shook her head, her eyes heavy with sadness. 'He has an affect on women. We do anything he says. It's a power, his charm, and he has no compunction against using it. He's raised every skirt in the kingdom.' She laughed bitterly, and with a startling display of strength, lifted him back into the coffin. 'He had this trick with a glass slipper; you wouldn't believe how many foolish young girls fell for it!'

She offered her hand. 'My name's Glenda,' she said. 'I so seldom have company.'

I took a step back, eyeing her with suspicion. 'You're an evil witch!' I said ungraciously. 'I saw the charred bones outside your walls!'

She shrugged. 'Peasants and torches,' she replied. 'They drink a little courage, storm the castle, start waving fire around. The local women went crazy the first time I put Bobo to sleep.'

I glanced at the coffin and the beautiful boy within. Bobo?

Glenda shrugged again. 'Okay, there was oil in the moat instead of water, but a woman alone has to protect herself. When Clarence ran off with that damned Blair Witch…'

I interrupted. 'Leonardo told me you murdered him!'

It was her turn to regard me suspiciously. 'His brother put you up to this?'

'No, I put her up to it!' Lord Parfum stepped through the clock, his face triumphant. His entourage of six soldiers followed with drawn swords. His lips curled in a snarl. 'Where's the Prince Charming?'

I drew my own sword and stood protectively before the coffin. No one seemed impressed by its dwarf light. But Glenda fled across the vast chamber, her cloak spreading out like birds' wings. She flung her arms across a previously unnoticed liquor cabinet. 'You'll never get it!' she challenged. A desperate fear filled her voice. 'I'll blast you into ashes if you try!'

Lord Parfum sent his men forward. 'You silly bat! We know the Blair babe stole, not only your man, but most of your power, too.' He gestured smugly at me. 'We only needed her to clear any traps in Clarence's so-called secret tunnel.'

I looked from Parfum to Glenda to Bobo, and jerked my gaze away from Bobo as I felt the urge to kiss him awake again. 'If you didn't want Leonardo's nephew,' I muttered, 'what the heck are you after?'

He chuckled. 'I told you over dinner; if you could bottle and sell whatever that brat has, you could make a fortune.' A glint of insanity shone suddenly in his rodent eyes. 'Bobo found a way to do that! He comes from a sorcerous family, after all. Locked in that cabinet over there is a whole case of the little stud's private brew-Old Prince Charming.' He laughed. 'Women will never resist me again!'

'You, or any man!' Glenda cried. 'Bobo's brew is too strong! If one bottle is uncorked, the fumes will turn women everywhere into subservient weaklings!'

Parfum nodded. 'Sounds good to me.' His men agreed as they flung Glenda aside and threw open the cabinet doors. Neatly racked, twenty-four glass bottles gleamed in the braziers' light.

It didn't sound so good to me. I ran at Parfum, my blade upraised, but the little skunk dodged and slashed at my ribs with a small dagger. I danced away, unhurt. Two of his men hurried to his defense. I engaged them both, fighting furiously, while by the liquor cabinet, another soldier withdrew a bottle.

A new player-the falconer!-ran out of the shadows. 'I'll take that!' he said, seizing the potion. He kicked the soldier away and positioned himself before the cabinet, his sword ready. He faced four opponents-I faced only three!

A bolt of lightning erupted from Glenda's outstretched hand. A pile of ashes smoked at the falconer's feet. Now he faced only three. 'Most, but not all my power!' she shouted.

Parfum turned pale. Blinded by the sudden flash, two of the falconer's opponents stumbled back; he ran them through as I dispatched one of my own. 'I hate it when a plan falls apart!' Parfum raged. His dagger whisked through the air, missing me by inches. His remaining two soldiers, on the other hand, knocked me flat as they retreated for the tunnel.

Parfum was not quite ready to give up. He seized the brandy bottle and flung that at the advancing falconer. Next, he grabbed up the apple Bobo had knocked from Glenda's hand. He prepared to hurl it.

But clearly his plan was ruined. With a growl, he ran to the tunnel's entrance at the old clock. There, he paused. 'You can't guard that stuff forever!' he shouted. 'There's no way to dispose of it! You'll hear from me again!' He flung the apple straight for the cabinet and the exposed bottles. Glenda shot out a hand, neatly intercepting it, as Parfum raced into the tunnel.

A choked gurgle came from that blackness, a crunch, the sound of swallowing. A moment later, the old troll stepped from the dark, its stomach distended, a grin on its face. With one long fingernail, it picked its teeth. 'Oh, you won't be hearing from him,' he assured.

The falconer helped me to my feet, and the troll shielded its eyes while I sheathed my sword. Glenda, after closing the cabinet, crept uncertainly forward. I read her expression. 'You didn't know about the troll?'

'Clarence kept a lot of secrets.' Her ruby lips turned upward in a frown, but plainly it wasn't the troll that bothered her. 'I can't figure how they even knew about the Prince Charming.'

'My fault.' The falconer knelt at his queen's feet. 'Leonardo and Parfum hold my sister hostage. They forced me to spy on you. Had I known they plotted the subjugation of women, I would never have cooperated. Subservience is my role.'

The old troll gave a purr of interest, but I waved it sternly back. It responded with an injured look. 'I had no place else to go,' it explained unasked. 'This is home. Call me a prodigal!'

Glenda sighed and beckoned her falconer to rise. 'I can't punish you,' she said. His shoulders sagged. 'Not with your sister in danger.'

'I think I have my next case,' I said. 'And Leonardo's own gold will fund it.' I eyed the cabinet. 'But can you continue to guard that stuff alone?'

Her frown deepened. 'I can't dump it in the ground, can't pour it in the water supply, can't expose it to the air-it's too toxic!'

The troll performed a little tap dance and clapped its hands. 'Let me help!' it offered. 'Anybody who tries to open that cabinet is mine, and I'll clean up the bones, too!'

Glenda considered, then nodded. She really had little choice, and the troll had experience as a guard.

An hour later, with the falconer's belongings in a bag, we said a long good-bye at the front door. The sun was coming up, and I wanted a bath in the village before we hit the road again.

As Glenda and the troll waved behind us, the falconer whispered, 'Do you think they'll work out?'

'An evil queen and an old troll under the same roof?' I answered. 'What do you think?'

Incognito, Ergo Sum by Karen Everson

'Mistress Irene! Mistress Irene!' Andromeda charged into the stableyard, droplets of fresh blood spattering from the flapping skirts of her mail tunic. The Persian ambassador's entourage scattered like chickens as she plunged through them, waving her arms. 'The Empress just bit the head off a live goat!'

Irene waved back, then noticed that the Persian ambassador had quietly fainted into the clean straw on the stable floor. She sighed and handed the halter rope of the ambassador's Berber mare to the Hippolyta. 'Please revive the ambassador,' Irene said, 'and explain to him that the Empress, in this instance, is a griffin.' The real Empress, Irene thought as she hurried to meet her apprentice, would never bite the head off a goat-not when she had ambassadors and imperial officers available.

Irene reached and passed her blood-splashed apprentice without stopping, heading for the griffin's aerie. Andi managed a skidding about-face, adding a patina of dust to her bloody armor, and scrambled to reach Irene's side. Andi's legs were twice as long as Irene's-but it was almost always Andi trotting to keep up. 'Sorry about the ambassador, Mistress.'

'He'll be fine,' Irene said dismissively. 'He's new. You might want to try to remember to call the Golden Empress `Goldie,' though, just to avoid this sort of confusion.'

Andi colored. 'Should I go back and apologize?'

'Certainly not! We've a superfluity of Persian ambassadors, but only one griffin.'

Irene's pace carried them quickly through the small garden that buffered the Aerie and disguised the feeding pens. Irene shouldered through the antechamber door, Andi on her heels.

A half dozen goats cowered in the near corner of the aerie, too terrified even to bleat. Irene didn't blame them. Goldie's tawny feathers were crimson with blood. She gripped the corpse with one forefoot, probing the torn belly with her hooked beak.

'I brought her several goats to choose from,' Andi whispered, bending so that she was closer to Irene's ear, 'but she grabbed the Judas, the female in estrus I used to make the males more biddable.'

Suddenly the griffin stilled. She made a soft croaking sound, then lifted her head, a mass of pink flesh in her beak. As Andi and Irene watched anxiously, she choked down the organs, her twitching wings stretched to their full sixteen-foot span.

'What's that she's eating?' Andi whispered.

Irene squinted and whispered back. 'Ovaries. And a uterus, I think.' Irene thumped a fist against her thigh. 'The Fading is connected to a breeding cycle. Her humors are unbalanced!'

Goldie stood for a moment, eyes closed, making the same soft croaking. Her wings slowed and mantled, and she looked down at the dead beast beneath her talons as though surprised to see it there. After a moment, she settled to her haunches and began to feed normally.

'Good girl, oh, good, my beauty,' Irene murmured. Tears slid silently down her face. Six months ago, Goldie's amber plumage had been sleek and