The Works of Nick Hayden

Old Man Vincilli had been old for a long time even before he moved out of the city into the hills. There, in his cabin, it was quiet and lonely. At night, he could even see the stars despite the light from the city.

The years passed. He walked the hills and ate simple meals and sat on his porch to listen to the birds and the clouds and the seasons. He was not happy, for a sadness had settled upon him before he moved from the city and age accustomed him to its weight. The world and he understood each other, though. He stayed upon his hill, in the narrow domain about his cabin, and the world strode back and forth across the earth and ignored him.

The years passed, and the nights, with slow swiftness, and Old Man Vincilli grew older still.

Then one night as he sat upon his porch, tired and yet not wanting to cede the day, a star, cold and bright in the darkness, began to fall. It slid down the heavens, its bright glow shining, its twinkle setting ablaze the atmosphere, a tail of incandescent diamonds trailing, a roar like wind rising, like waters surging, growing, growing, until it seemed to glow like day and the earth shook and a scream of sky tore past Old Man Vincilli and a ball of fire streaked down into the lake at the foot of the hill. Steam rose in great clouds.

Old Man Vincilli stared at the sight. With stiff movements he rose from his chair and followed the long winding path, step by step, down to the lake. Thick fog hung about the surface of water. He stood at the water’s edge and listened to the silence. He seemed to hear a cry from somewhere beyond sight. He waited, an emptiness in his soul, the hollow following such a vision. 

Out of the fog drifted a vessel of crystal, a half sphere of glass and moonlight, and in it lay a child whimpering softly.

He stared at the child. She was dark as the night sky, and her cries rang clear as a bell in a sanctuary. With trembling hands he lifted her up and waited, waited for some other to come and claim her. No one came.

They lived together after that, Old Man Vincilli and the child. She grew swiftly, like the remembrance of youth. She skipped before him on the trails and her laughter shook the leaves. She ran into the forest and gathered berries and roots and mushrooms. She concocted dishes of strange flavor and caught fish with her bare hands. She delighted in Old Man Vincilli’s small world. She drank it up and grew strong, and her eyes flashed with the cold, piercing light of midnight clarity.

At night she sat upon the porch at Old Man Vincilli’s feet. She looked up at the few stars, and unbidden came the words of a song without beginning or end. She sang it in a voice of crystal. The air shimmered and the woods drew near, and nature seemed to listen with hushed breath. As she sang, tears came to Old Man Vincilli’s eyes, and he did not know whether they were from joy or from sorrow. He knew only that he ached, that he ached, and that she could not have hurt him more if she had pierced him with a blade, and that he felt desiccated  when the song ended and she kissed him good night and fell asleep in her hammock.

Old Man Vincilli felt old the day he looked upon the girl and saw she was no longer a child. She gazed at him, her form straight and slender and dark, and she smiled innocently, but he saw that hesitation of self-consciousness, that terrible hint of self-knowing. 

“Will you go home?” he asked.

“It is not time,” she said, some emotion darkening her expression for a moment.

It was not many nights later, as she finished her song and the last strains echoed among the grass and trees and moon, that her gaze lowered to the dull, ugly lights of the city upon the horizon. She remained silent. Old Man Vincilli felt anger, old, old anger, rising within him. “Do not look down,” he spat. 

“Have they heard the song?” she asked.

“They can’t,” he answered. “There is noise, noise, noise. Honking, shouting, screaming, blaring, cursing, killing. They cannot hear it.”

He trembled and hot tears ran down the wrinkles of his face. She looked at him, and her tears sparkled beneath the moon.

“I will return,” she said.

Old Man Vincilli said nothing.

She left him. He sat day after day upon his porch. He did not enter the wood or walk along the lake. He brooded and he aged and he felt the millennia of the earth upon his shoulders. 

When she returned, his eyes were weak. He shivered beneath the cold winter sky. He saw her beauty in his memory, but she sat worn and tired beside him. She stooped. She looked old, as old as he felt. He could not look at her long, for he loved her memory too strongly to bear the sight of her thin and haggard form.

“I sang for them,” she said.

“Did they listen?”

“I don’t know. But I sang. That is what I needed to do.” She touched his wrinkled hand and squeezed it.

“Sing for me,” he said. “I will listen.”

So she sang once more, and in her voice was not just beauty and longing but sorrow, and the sorrow made the words ache and blossom and shine more brightly with the hope it held. 

Old Man Vincilli closed his eyes. He felt old, so very, very old. She held his hand firmly.

“Is it time to go home?” he murmured.

“Yes, Father. Yes. Let us go home.”

“You want to do it now?”

“Why not?”

One reason: With Christmas approaching, the halls of Oakdale Mall were teeming with happy shoppers carrying full wallets. But today’s shoppers were fickle. Any sort of disturbance would drive them online. They would probably never return.

The person in front of Assistant Manager Tony Nelson was another reason. Eugene C. Kilgore, self-proclaimed paranormal professional, was even more unappealing in person than his Facebook profile had suggested. Crumbs flecked his mountain man beard. His thick, square glasses magnified his beady eyes into black pits. As he spoke, he sniffed and wiped his sleeve across his mass of a nose. The sleeve was crusted over in several places, the knees of his khakis were worn thin, and a strange, sickly-sweet aroma hung over him. No one wanted to be packed into a tight space with him.

Mr. Kilgore coughed abruptly, sucked in a deep breath through his mucus-filled nose, and then repeated bluntly, “Why not?”

“You can get rid of the…presence?”

“If I can’t, you’ll need a priest.” He belched a staccato laugh.

“Wouldn’t afterhours be more convenient?”

“It causes the most problems at peak hours, you said. That’s when I need to engage it.”

Nelson hesitated. 

Eugene snorted. “Never mind. Find someone else.”

“Okay, I’ll show you the place.”

“Good.”

Nelson, in his crisp suit, led Mr. Kilgore out of the office and into the halls of the mall. It was Saturday afternoon. The air buzzed with conversation, restling bags, teenage laughter. Mr. Kilgore walked beside him, and the shoppers maneuvered around them like grade schoolers around vomit on the gym floor.

The location of the trouble was at the other end of the building, near the food court. They walked in silence. There was nothing to say to a man like Mr. Kilgore. What would you talk about with him? His favorite gas station hot pocket?

Nelson tried anyway. “Do you perform such..removals…often?”

Mr. Kilgore answered gruffly. “No. Most ghosts don’t make a fuss. Just sit there quiet-like. No one notices.”

They finally arrived at the bench in question. Most of the other seating in the area was occupied, a woman and her child on one seat, a couple eating soft pretzels on another, shoppers pausing with bags at others. This one no one approached.

Nelson felt uneasy. He had never experienced anything here, but he had read the complaints.  Invisible hands gripping, pulling; a weight on the shoulder; gravity increasing, dragging you in; a deep silence like being buried alive; and so on.

Mr. Kilgore touched the bench gingerly. He pulled a device from somewhere in his torn flannel. (Nelson could imagine the smell.) He waved it around, checking readings now and then. “Not a poltergeist. Trickier.” He knelt down, examined the surface minutely, licked it. He muttered and circled the bench on his knees. Nelson looked around. Surely everyone watching would think some homeless loon had snuck in past security.

“Mr. Kilg–”

“No,” the man barked. He lay down on the bench and closed his eyes. Nelson waited. Five minutes passed.

“Mr–”

“This will take time. Go away.”

Nelson decided he would not. He had hired this ridiculous hobo, and he was going to wait. He settled on a bench across the hall and watched. If the man fell asleep, Nelson would refuse to pay him.

A half hour passed. The crowd flowed around him. Nelson watched the shoppers. It had been a long time since he had just sat out here, observing. Each person was a snapshot of a life flitting by, a few frames of a spinning reel. Humanity, swarming in ones and twos, as families and friends, as wanderers and walkers and women on a mission. One could get lost in the procession, stop perceiving one’s own life and simply absorb the activity.

Mr. Kilgore was talking. He still lay on his back, but he gestured with his hands and the tone of his voice intermingled with the background noise. Then he fell silent for a long time, seldom speaking, just a few words here and there. He seemed to be listening intently. 

Nelson watched him. Kilgore looked lost and not completely there, like an old man wandering the streets. But the longer Nelson watched, the more he began to ask questions of Kilgore. What was his family like? Did he have friends? Was he happy?

It had been nearly three hours when Mr. Kilgore finally sat up. His beady eyes shone, and he nodded to himself. Nelson walked over to him.

“Well? Is it fixed?”

“Fixed?” Mr. Kilgore inhaled deeply. “No, but he’s gone.”

“We’ll have to verify that before paying you.”

“I’m hungry,” Mr. Kilgore said. “I’m going to go eat.”

“Wait. What did you do? Exorcise it? You hardly did anything.”

Mr. Kilgore wiped his nose. “It’s not like that. He was just–look, sometimes they just want noticed. You don’t force them out. You listen to them. So I listen. Just because they’re invisible, doesn’t mean you don’t listen.”

Mr. Kilgore turned abruptly and walked into the food court, trying all the samples from the Chinese restaurants twice before settling on Taco Bell.

Jared had called the main office about the woman in his apartment three times, but it insisted that it was not the corporation’s problem. The PhaseCyclers^(TM) had been certified by the government (federal and state), and the last inspection two months ago recorded all readings at optimal levels. Also, as the voice on the other end mentioned several times, there had been no other complaints.

Conclusion: it was all in his head.

Except it wasn’t. Jared knew what he saw–or, rather, what he almost saw. If he stood near his mini-fridge in the corner, and tilted his head, he caught her shadow. No, not shadow, exactly. A shadow of her presence, like the aftermath of a flash. She sat at the shelf that acted as a table. 

And it was a woman, definitely. It wasn’t the outline that told him. (There wasn’t really an outline, just the smeared residue of an outline.) It was the otherness. The echo of her presence was like a line of sunlight piercing dark curtains and shining on the living room carpet. He knew maleness. This, whatever it was, was not that. Not a thing in Jared’s spartan apartment felt less than utilitarian, but the non-shadow at the edge of perception, that was like an artistic flourish at the end of a tax document.

She bothered him, whomever she was. Jared’s whole apartment complex was phase-shifted so that every room was rented out to two different renters who moved in different cycles of reality. A brilliant business scheme: twice the capacity squeezed out of the already claustrophobic living arrangements. Jared didn’t complain. It kept rent low enough he could actually afford it without regularly donating blood.

He didn’t know why she bothered him. He couldn’t really see her, and he kept busy enough that he wouldn’t have noticed her much even if she had actually lived with him. But it was the principle of the thing. It was his room. It was his private domain on a planet teeming with grasping humans. This was his space. (Even if it was, technically, hers as well.)

He tried to ignore her.

She showed up on the couch next. For a whole weekend, whenever he looked up from his mattress in the corner, he thought he sensed her on the small, off-white couch. All day. What was she doing, watching some of…whatever she watched? He wasn’t sure what she might watch. His own streaming services only suggested shows they knew he would like, and he rarely talked to anyone outside his cultivated social media circles and his clients via VR. He knew some people lived entirely different virtual lives, and that some even still spent large chunks of time in crowded, communal streets of a city bursting at the seams. Maybe she was one of them.

Then one night he woke suddenly from some dream–a vivid one which he forgot upon waking even as the danger that had aroused him still throbbed through his veins. As he lay there, disoriented, he sensed, like a phantom, like an intuition, the woman there beside him, nearly pressed against him. He felt nothing, but the sensation of another in the room with him, in the bed with him, hovered close, covered him. He remained motionless and tried to still his breathing. He could not see her, even out of the corner of his eye, but she was there, like a spirit, a memory, a pressure. She did not go away. There was no flesh, but there was a weight upon him, like the expectation of bad news.

Jared waited. Nothing happened. She slept or she waited there, like him, trying to find the corner she might tug to pull back the veil between them, pull away the fabric of reality that separated them. 

He spoke: “Are you there?”

She was not. He was alone in the room, alone in a city with one billion people, alone on a planet where billions lived and billions of corpses decayed.

He called and complained again in the morning. He did not want her there, even if they did share the same space. 

It was his space.

I understand in that moment. She isn’t a monster. That is a lie from the gods, a deception initiated by Hera. Medusa is no monster. She is a woman trapped in the webs of those who envy her beauty. For the gods prize beauty above justice or mercy, and it must be theirs.

It only takes a single glance to perceive what they wish to hide, to pierce the veil that they have cast about her. To the one who really sees, snakes do not writhe upon her head, hissing and biting; there is no venomous mass slithering upon her scalp. No, they are golden strands woven into a tapestry of braids. They rise as she turns her head toward you, just as the lashes of her eyes lift to look upon you. They are not baleful eyes, full of malice and cunning. They are not the red orbs of a beast. The long lashes draw up like clouds illuminated by the dawn, and the sun of her visage blazes upon you, shedding light and warmth upon your face; and despite the deep brilliance of her gaze you cannot turn away, for the fire there sets aflame the soul. She sees you and appraises you, and if you are worthy, as you must be if you see her truly, she smiles. 

Upon me she must smile. Those others who gather around her like tombs, like judgments, fade from my vision like times of tedium before the celebration. Not all are worthy, that is true. Not all who undertake trials succeed, and not all who love are requited. But she smiles at me with lips as red as apples plucked in the freshness of the world; and behind them her teeth gleam like snow-capped Olympus in its glory; and there is a moment when all the cruelty of gods and capriciousness of Fate dwindle to insignificance; and the glory of man’s existence and of his infinite capacity and ambition and of his love and his will to have what he wills consumes Time and Space. With our eyes alone She and I commune and satisfy one another. She is no monster, and I am no mere mortal. She is Desire, and I am a Hero among men.

And after that moment, forever, wearing away beneath wind and rain, my eyes unable to weep, my heart turned to stone, I understand also that it was all only for a moment.

Simon Alexander was the sort of man who left the library with a volume of Pushkin, Churchill’s The Gathering Storm, Ultimate Spider-Man Vol. 10, A Brief History of Time, and “G” is for Gumshoe, and returned them a week later, each read cover to cover. The library could not keep up with his voracious appetite.

He learned calculus online and Photoshop as well. He took piano lessons and Russian lessons and etiquette lessons. He read the dictionary and old encyclopedias and church cookbooks. He tore apart cars and clothes to see what held them together. He studied the Bible and Der Ring des Nibelungen and on vacation wandered through the Louvre for a week.

Sometimes he stopped along the sidewalk and picked a weed and wondered what its name was and how it grew and where it originated and whether you could eat it. At night he would look at a star and wonder at its course and its size and how he could learn to use a sextant. 

He grew in wisdom, delighted with knowledge and the hidden threads that connected the Black Death to the creation of pubs and California drought to the start of the X Games.

He was delighted but unhappy. If he read Tang Dynasty poetry, he had no more time for French existential plays. If he visited a nearby town looking for some U.S. Geological Survey benchmarks, his ignorance of local housing ordinances continued.

Books only got him so far. To read was to open a box, but the box was bottomless and filled with facsimiles, with cunningly wrought miniatures of the real thing. But to look up from a book was to drown. When Simon Alexander stepped outside his house, the avalanche buried him.

That’s why he built the time machine.

The trick with time machines is that they take as much skill at carpentry as at quantum mechanics, and nearly as much Art Deco as Brutalism. Simon possessed just the right concoction of philosophical nuance and dime novel moralism to fold space-time and just enough historical knowledge of the past and science fiction fear of the future to keep it in a box. It was a long, thin box when he finished, with a lid that lifted and just enough room for him to lie down and shut himself in.

In an instance, he fell through time–to the French Revolution, of course, and to ancient Egypt; to the beginnings of Babylon and of Beatlemania. He spent a quiet night in Nepal and a stormy noon in New Zealand. He floated amid endless ocean and trekked through deserted urban landscapes. Back and forth he went through time and space, like a kid in a candy store, like a man searching for his lost child, like an old man’s words recounting the old days.

Then, one day, his long, narrow, black box landed upon the moon. He sat up and looked upon the Earth in her majesty and despaired. He envied the men and women down there, the ones who fathered and mothered, who fought and healed, who tilled and taught, those who spent their few years on bees or organ repair or cataloging railway routes. Simon Alexander knew they did not know what they did not know, but he knew also that they knew what they knew and were happy–and he was not. He was famished, bitter, cynical, and sad.

It was then, as he beheld the world and everything in it, that the answer came to him. Simon knew that the universe expanded, that time moved ever forward, that after page one came page two and page twenty-two million. But there was a page one.

He lay back in his metal box and dialed it back to the beginning, from which all things flowed and from whence came all knowledge.

His box rattled and shook and fell silent. Out of the darkness he emerged into light, into air that shone and land that blazed green, and he looked, and there he saw an apple, and he saw that it was pleasing to the eye and desirable for gaining wisdom. And so he took it and he ate it.

There was a second sun once, a pale sister who mused quietly over the earth when her older sister sank into her bed. You see the evening star there? It’s about the only one you can see anymore, unless you drive for miles and hike deep into the wilderness that still exists on the margins of man’s unending fire. This sun was far brighter. There are other pinpricks up there in that black expanse, too, millions of them, and she presided over them, magnificent in her size and detachment. From there she peered down at us, turning away in her slow survey of the earth and then again unveiling her mild light upon a torched world.

She floated there, the Sister-Sun, never speaking, lovely to lovers, monstrous to monsters, the cause of fits and dreams and delicious melancholy. By her the seas rose and kissed the land, adorning the beaches with shell and seaweed. When she turned away, you still felt her presence, like a shadow in the closet. Lonely, chaste, shy, she gazed upon generations of men, gilding the darkness with silver sheen. By her sister, the Sun, men woke and slept, driven to their daily destinies, but by her, the Moon, they numbered the seasons and years, planned their feasts and festivals, her eye steady and sage among the race of hurried men.

We touched her face, great men in tin cans landing upon her ancient surface, but like Gulliver upon the Brobdingnagian lady, we were too small and too close and her beauty was but barrenness. 

Ours is a planet of emerald and sapphire, leaf and raindrop, and from her face we see our own, lying brilliant upon a black cloth. 

But the bombs were there, upon that white-shrouded disc, that thriving, fecund globe. And they must go. It was decided. But where to put them, that they would be out of reach, or nearly out of reach? Where else?

I was young when it happened. You can read the histories to untangle the whos and hows and whys. The result is the same. I saw its round face split in two in a silence of fire, then crack into a dozen pieces, then a million, as flames overcame her. It was a delicate destruction, all in seeming slow motion, with the TV chattering about insurance discounts inside and cars honking down the road and me in the yard staring up at the deconstruction of half the light of man.

The bombs are gone now, so much radioactive dust floating in space. Peace, some say, as if man has forgotten how to be himself. But her luminous smile is gone, too, and the rhythm of her being and her wet embrace of this miracle rock. 

The only light in the dark now is our own.

I used to open the fortune cookies at Chinese restaurants just like everyone else. You know, you read the fortune, if it even is a fortune anymore and not just some pithy bit of half-wisdom. “You will succeed in business,” you know, that’s how fortunes used to read, and you didn’t really believe it. I never knew anyone who did, but it made you feel better, gave you a sort of buzz. Everything’s going to be okay. I don’t know why. I don’t think anyone really believes those things, not really, but we like them. Never met anyone who didn’t like them. Well, no, one time there was a guy at a business meeting. He was a Christian and said he thought the fortunes were superstitious and he didn’t much care for them. I thought that was real funny. Back then I did.

I don’t open fortune cookies anymore.

It’s stupid, I know. I’m a sophisticated guy. If you knew who I am, dug a bit on the Internet, you’d figure out I’m no slouch. I’ve made a lot of money, I’ve been all over the world, I’ve got some famous people’s numbers in my phone. You’d recognize their names if I mentioned them. So I’m busy. Addison’s busy, too, always was. She’s independent. We used to share each other’s electronic calendars. She can tell you everything I’m saying is true. I wouldn’t make this stuff up.

The first time–the first time I noticed, at least–was about two years ago, September 24. I know the date because it’s still in my calendar, 1:32 pm on September 24. It said “Dip tie in coffee.” Sitting there just like it was a meeting or a video conference. I saw it that morning, probably around 6:30, when I was looking over my schedule. I stared at it. I thought maybe Google was testing something, or maybe it was one of those weird celebrations or obscure events they’re always making a big deal of. I don’t know. It irked me, but I had to get moving, traffic was worse than ever with the end-of-season construction, and Addison insisted on trying to talk to me. I forgot about it.

Later that day, guess what? Boom. Idiot move, somehow the end of my tie dropped into my coffee. It’s never happened before or since. I didn’t even make the connection at first, I was so mad at myself. I didn’t verify the time, but I’m sure it was 1:32. I’m sure it was.

Then it just started happening. Not all the time, just enough. 7:37 am – Answer wrong number. 6:19 pm – Finish fifth coffee. 1:51 am – Get up to relieve yourself. 2:20 pm – Open umbrella before downpour begins.

They were all like that, idiot things, like telling me when I’d get a papercut or that some guy would honk at me or that my computer would reboot for an update. Stupid stuff, stuff no one cares about, stuff you don’t bother telling anyone about because it just doesn’t matter.

It freaked me out.

I thought at first it might build to some horrifying revelation, like a car crash or cancer or downsizing. Even when Addison and I started going through major stuff, nothing. That I’d fumble my keys at 7:01 when unlocking my door, yes, but not that she’d left to stay at her mom’s for the weekend.

What is it that knows the most mundane events of my life? I keep trying to figure that out. Maybe it’s some glitch in the Matrix, maybe it’s A.I. and the surveillance state…I don’t know. It makes no sense. Maybe a future version of myself is leaving me coded messages. If so, future me is way smarter than current me. 

I think about these things at night. A lot. More than I want to admit. What madness would possess a man–a being–to fixate on such useless, worthless details? Why am I being stalked? Is God watching my every move?

There is one fortune cookie message I remember. You never remember them, really, do you? They just blur together. But it was a Thursday, at the Chinese buffet down on Jackson. I remember because it was the first date we took after our honeymoon. Addison had General Tso’s, like she always does, and she laughed when she opened her fortune. She handed it to me. You’ll be lucky in love.

“Guess I am,” she said, grinning.

 I don’t remember what we talked about or when the buffet went out of business or even why exactly we stopped listening to each other, but I remember that stupid fortune, and I remember it was 12:43 at night the first time she arrived home after a business trip, and I remember that she beat me by 105 points at Scrabble one time. Her old phone would stay at 3% battery for more than an hour, and then die. There was a way she jangled her keys I could pick out in a crowd. 

At some point, I stopped noticing these things. I stopped paying attention. It’s just what happens, sometimes, right? Things happen.

But that’s what really gets me, I think, what keeps me up at night. I think deep down, I don’t really worry where the messages come from. 

I worry that someday I’ll open the fortune cookie, and it’ll be empty.

This story was written from a prompt from my daughter Serenity. She drew a picture of Princess Piggob, the half-pig half-goblin princess of Dill Pickleville and asked people to write a story about her. Here’s mine.

His name was Galumf, and he was a hunter. He hunted any kind of creature–chimeras, manticores, unicorns, sphinxes, faeries, mermaids, horse-fairies, mermaid fairies, narwhals, you name it. He hunted them, he killed them, sometimes for a price, sometimes just for fun. 

Galumf was not a nice guy.

His client desired stealth, so Galumf waited outside Dill Pickleville until the sun set and the gate closed. No one saw him as he climbed the wall. If they saw him, they would remember him: he was seven feet tall, with one large eye planted moon-like smack dab in the center of his face, and he had just one rope-like hair on top of his bald head that no blade could cut. If they saw him, they would remember him, and he couldn’t have that. He stalked carefully through the streets of Dill Pickleville, as silently as a glare, toward the castle of Princess Piggob. Tonight would be her last night.

Galumf was not one of those mercenaries who took the coin and asked no questions. That led to accidents and decapitations. Galumf, instead, had carefully designed a twelve-page questionnaire his clients filled out. That is how he knew exactly why Mulg, King of Cucumburg, hated Princess Piggob.

Reason 1: Piggob was the daughter of Mulg’s archnemesis, who was also his younger brother. That story was long and complicated, and had been described in detail on extra pages attached to the “What Do You Want Me To Kill?” packet section of the questionnaire. Basically, the two brothers had discovered a dragon egg as kids. Mulg, then princelet of Cucumburg, had wanted to raise a ferocious fire-breathing beast of war. His brother had been rather peckish. An omelet was made, a rivalry sparked.

Reason 2: Mulg considered Princess Piggob an unnatural creature, an abomination among men. Sure, she was half-pig and half-goblin. (Her mother, interestingly, was full pig-goblin.) It was worse than that though. Princess Piggob also preferred her toast plain. Without jelly or jam. Without butter even. Burnt as black as sin. This infuriated Mulg beyond all reason. Piggob must die.

Reason 3: Mulg desired Princess Piggob’s head on a platter (the method of delivery specified in Question 17 of Section 3) because his son had fallen in love with Princess Piggob, and no son of his was going to bring home a lovely, charming, funny half-pig half-goblin heir to a throne and enormous wealth if he had any say in it.

Regardless, Galumf was happy to comply. This hunt would take little effort. Whatever risks there were (Princess Piggob had a fanatically devoted maid and some small, fanciful magic) were negligible, especially when all her guards and friends were sound asleep and he stood over her, sword in hand. 

So Galumf slid through the shadows like an enchanted arrow through dragon scales. He passed the sentries like an ill-boding wind past the window of an inn common room. He ascended the winding stairs like the flatulence of a swamp slug. He entered the Royal Rooms and Adjoining Areas of Princess Piggob. She snored. He approached. Her lustrous hair shimmered in the moonlight shining through the open balcony door. With a soft sssh he unsheathed his short, shiny sword. He raised it over his head…he brought it down….

Princess Piggob rolled to her side to a better position. The sword sliced through quilt and mattress, sending feathers flying. One of those feathers fell upon Princess Piggob’s snout. It twitched, tickled. She murmured but did not wake.

Galumf, raising his sword again, paused. Princess Piggob was muttering something. He stooped down to listen.

“In calm, not windy weather, drift we few light as a feather….”

Galumf’s heavy body lifted into the air. By some small, fanciful magic, he was floating. It didn’t matter. He could still strike. This time he lunged, hoping to skewer the pig-goblin princess. The move was rather awkward; he had no leverage. The sword pierced the large stuffed bear the princess slept with. In his frustration, he flapped his limbs, stirring up a lone feather. It fell again upon the Princess Piggob’s snout. The snout twitched. She sneezed.

Now, as you perhaps know, sneezes are one of the three great natural defenses provided the pig-goblin, alongside unbreakable teeth and an ability to bear even the most unpleasant aromas. This sneeze came with great force and a volume of phlegm. Galumf, floating above the princess, felt the blast full force. He went hurtling out beyond the balcony and above the Bitter Forest beyond Dill Pickleville, dripping mucus.

In the morning, Princess Piggob woke and complained greatly of the tears in her bed and the hole in her bear. “What happened?” she asked her maid, the blindly loyal Hildagast Hildebrand.

“Blessed if I know, Princess. Another assassination attempt, I don’t wonder.”

Princess Piggob sighed. “That’s the third this month. Oh well. I won’t figure anything out on an empty stomach. Breakfast?”

“Two slices of toast, just as you like ‘em, Princess.”

She crunched into the first, charcoal crumbs splattering the sheets.