Off to Seek a Wizard... -9- Who Are You Calling A... by Erin Halfelven

 
"I thought you were a bear!" What was I saying? And why did the voice I had heard sound like George?

A furry head appeared in the greenery. "Really?" The voice definitely came from the head. But the teeth that were showing were large tombstones, not stalactites or stalagmites. "I'm not a bear," said George's voice. "I'm sorry for laughing at you."

I waved away the apology, I wasn't really offended. "Well, if you aren't a bear, who or what are you?" If he said he was George Marion, I was going to scream again. Then the nice nursies would come and give me a shot.

The animal stepped out of the shrubbery and looked around carefully. He had the big buck teeth of a squirrel and the round body of a teddy bear. No tail, little round ears, and bright, beady eyes that looked at me cautiously. "I'm Charles Wood, a varmint by trade," he said politely.

"A varmint?" I said, images of Yosemite Sam snorting in my mind.

"A marmot," he said. I probably misheard him the first time.

"Oh," I said. "That's different? Isn't it?"

"Yes, ma'am," he said. He called me ma'am, I almost corrected him but didn't know exactly what I was going to say so I kept quiet. He continued, "I know fairies never give their right names but what should I call you?"

"What did you call me?" I squawked.

The beady eyes looked left and right, nervously. "That's what I'm asking? What should I call you, Ms. Fairy?"

"Well, don't call me that!" I said.

"I'm sorry, sorry, Your Highness. I didn't mean to be familiar."

"You're not familiar at all, except your voice, and don't call me that either!"

"Don't call you which?" said the not-bear, looking a bit cross-eyed.

"That's right," I said. "I'm not a witch, I'm a magician."

He looked left, then right as if checking to see if a bus would hit him if he stepped off the curb. "Can we start over?" he asked meekly. "Hi, I'm Charles Wood, a marmot; I eat nuts and berries and I hide what I don't eat in holes that I dig."

"Uh, you can call me, uh, uh, Stephanie." Damn it, I'd meant to say Steffani, with the accent on the middle syllable. With my wig gone and covered in mud head to toe, it might be time to drop my disguise. Or was it? Charlie had called me ma'am and Ms, so he thought I was female.

"All right," said the marmot. What the heck was a marmot? I thought a marmot was a monkey. He looked more like some kind of rodent in the hamster family. A really big hamster since he seemed to stand a foot or more taller than me. Or, and this occurred to me for the first time right then, was he a big rodent or had I somehow gotten smaller? It wasn't that outlandish a thought in the circumstance, after all, I was having this conversation with a talking rodent after falling five miles without getting hurt!

Of course, Occam's Razor suggested that I was crazy but it would take a lot of Skintastic Gel to shave this varmint.

He took a few steps closer, not getting any smaller as he did so. But somehow, I wasn't scared of him any longer. The teeth sticking out gave him a goofy, harmless expression, like the not-too-bright cousin who always shows up at family gatherings. "Stephanie," he said. "That's a pretty name. All of you fairies always have such pretty names, usually flowers. What kind of flower is a Stephanie?"

"The kind you get for winning a contest," I said. Stephanie means a reward, I looked it up. Well, not just then, earlier before I went insane.