Off to Seek a Wizard... -2- Tweet On You by Erin Halfelven

 
I went back to the lounge and sat down in one of those hard plastic seats. Then I got up again and looked, it felt like I was sitting on something squishy but there wasn't anything there, so I sat back down.

A guy sitting across from me, a real pudge monster, nodded at me about three times too many and said, yup, yup, yup, like some character from the Simpsons or something.

I sat there and fantasized about making him disappear, maybe in a puff of smoke while I dropped him through the stage into a piranha tank. #nomnomnom

I looked at the schedule clock and it still said our flight was delayed. Did you know that Kansas City is in Missouri? What were people thinking when they named the place? #4reals

I took a deck of readers out of my purse, yes, I carry a purse! Girls don't have pockets, 'cause if they did then they'd be kangaroos. #stuffmymomsays

So I was practicing, stacking and reading and seconds and palming when this other guy comes up and sits next to me. Not a pudge monster, he looks okay but like I care?

"What are you doing?" he asks and I'm all, leave me alone but I don't say that cause that would be rude and girls have to be polite because boys sure won't. #seelasttag

So instead I said, "Pick a card," and I forced the Jack of Hearts on him and I said, "Don't tell me what it is, just put it back in the deck," and I turned my head away but watched him in the corner of my eye.

So he stuffs the card into the middle of the pack and I turn back to him and shuffle the cards and -- no Jack of Hearts. "You didn't put it back," I said, annoyed cause he's ruining the trick on purpose.

And he reaches up and pulls a card out of my hair and turns it over and it's the Jack of Hearts. "This what you're looking for?" he says all smug.

"Oh," I said. "You must be George Marion." Cause that's the name of the boy who won the boy's part of the contest and he says, "I must." #whatajerk

Then he says, "You must be Stephanie Dale," and I said, "That's what my student I.D. says," cause I don't want to lie. Except professionally like when I tell someone, "Nothing up my sleeve" but I'm not wearing sleeves.

So we talked about magic and high school and I had to talk around a lot of that stuff cause he thinks I'm a girl and I don't want him to know that I'm not but he's kind of a nice guy and fun to talk to.

Then they call our flight and I have checked everything except for a small carryon and my purse but he offers to carry my bag for me and then I know -- he's been hitting on me the whole time! #thejerk

Off to Seek a Wizard... -3- Not-So-Great Planes by Erin Halfelven

 
We get on the plane and my seat is 12A and George's seat is 12B, right next to me and we're both in first class -- how cool is that? But it worries me a bit to think I'm going to be sitting with a boy who's trying to hit on me for almost 2000 miles. This could get crazy-making.

He offers me the window seat when he finds out I've never flown before and we trade. Somehow while trading my butt gets in the way and he apologizes for rubbing up against it. I just giggle because I have no idea how else to react.

I didn't just win the contest, go home and put on a dress and catch the plane. Mom and I spent two months practicing while she told me all about how I should react in public. But not a word on how to behave after I had rubbed my bottom on some boy's chest.

The worst thing about it was when I got seated and looked at him, he seemed to be enjoying himself. I could just die!

I'm slender and not that tall, five foot three and one hundred pounds, more or less. It's always been a problem for me growing up because I have what some consider a girlish face. Until I started learning magic from my dad, I got beat up more than anyone would really like to have that experience. And a lot of them told me right straight out, that they were beating on me cause I looked like a girl.

Actually I have a substantial nose and too much chin, but Mom says I make a very pretty girl and Daddy called me his princess. He also said I'm to call him Daddy whenever I'm Stephanie and not to forget or he'll take away my Barbie dolls.

I don't have any Barbies, by the way. Well, just one. She has a cute little mermaid costume and I've never taken her out of the package but every girl, even someone who's not a real girl should probably have a Barbie doll to be more authentic.

See, that's the secret of magic. It has to look authentic, unless you're doing a comedy act. A set of rings that don't look as if they are all made of solid steel isn't going to fool anyone when you thumb the secret catch and make them pass through one another.

Anyway, I started doing magic in the classroom and the bullies started leaving me alone. Maybe they were afraid I'd turn them into neuts. No, I didn't misspell that.

So we sat on the runway for a half hour more, while I thought about outwitting bullies and such. The tower still hadn't cleared us for takeoff, I guess and someone who claimed he was the captain of our plane came on the intercom and said something about windstorms over the Great Plains.

"I don't think this is such a Great Plane," I said aloud and George laughed.

We were flying Emerald Air which is headquartered in Seattle but flies all over the west and has a hub in Kansas City. The planes are a pretty shade of green that almost matches my eyes and Daddy said that's why I picked them for my first ever air plane flight but it isn't true.

I look out the window and we still aren't moving. I look back and I catch George looking at me. He smiles and pretends to be playing a game on his phone.

A little later he catches me looking at him. I could just die.

Off to Seek a Wizard... -4- An Extra Mile in Her Shoes by Erin Halfelven

 
We finally take off almost three hours late. The bad weather has apparently blown itself out and we're on our way. I'm so excited I almost leaned over and hugged George but remembered in time that I'm not really a girl and he might get the wrong idea.

We climbed up out of the smog and we could see mountains! It's summer in Southern California so the hills are brown and only near the top are the mountains green. There's a tiny bit of snow left on the north side of Old Baldy.

George says it was probably artificial snow for the ski nuts who wanted to keep skiing as long as they could. I said there was entirely too much of it for it to all be artificial, you couldn't make enough off of a few fools with boards tied to their shoes to pay for that much fake snow.

He didn't have an answer to that so he just laughed. He has a nice laugh and I laughed too.

We flew over those mountains and then some desert and more mountains and the plane had to go higher. About that time my feet started hurting. My shoes are maryjanes with hardly any heel to them at all but they are patent leather and they don't have a lot of give to them.

"My shoes are getting too tight," I said to George.

"I doubt your shoes are shrinking," he said. "Your feet are probably swelling from the change in altitude."

"Ow, who are you, Mr. Science?" I said. "Ow. Are you saying I've got big feet?" I asked. It was the first thing he'd said that wasn't so nice.

"You could take them off," he suggested.

"I don't think so, I've had them all my life and that would make a bloody mess, don't you think?"

"I meant the shoes," he said. He grinned at me.

"Oh, I don't think I could," I said.

"If they've gotten so tight you're not sure you can get them off you better take them off for sure."

"No, I mean. What if... Uh, what if...." I couldn't say it.

"What if your feet smell bad?" Now he was down two. Boys should never talk about your feet, it's a lose-lose topic.

"Well, what if they do?" I said whimpering a little. "And what if I can't get them back on when we get where we're going?"

"Ask a flight attendant, they probably see problems like this all the time."

"I don't... They're... Oh!" I said.

"You should have worn comfortable shoes," he said. Strike three!

"You're not helping," I said.

He turned away and signaled to the flight attendant. "Miss," he called out.

I wanted to kick him but my feet might burst and the shrapnel would make a hole in the plane and we would all die. So I just pouted. Mom showed me how and I'm really good at it.

Flight attendants on Emerald Airlines, all women on this flight, wore a very smart skirt-suit in a brighter green than my dress and the cutest little hats that looked sort of military, if everyone in the military were a girly-girl.

One of them came over, her name tag said Sarah, and George told her what was wrong. I nearly did kick him.

"If they are really hurting, you can go to the lavatory and take them off. We can give you a little bag to put them in your carry-on. And we've got shower flops you can wear off the plane." She smiled.

"You do?" I said. "I never heard of airlines offering sandals to people." George got up to let me out and got my carry-on down and handed it to me. I followed Sarah down the aisle, carrying my purse, too.

She stopped at a cleverly hidden storage cabinet and used a key to open it and took our a clear plastic bag holding a pair of shower flops, green of course. "We're Emerald Airlines," she said. "We go the extra mile for you."

"Just as long as you stop at the end of the runway," I said but I said it under my breath.

Off to Seek a Wizard... -5- Somewhere... Over Colorado, Way Up High by Erin Halfelven

 
I went to the lavatory and took off my painful maryjanes. Then I dithered for a while on whether to take off my stockings. For one thing, it was cool enough in the cabin that having an extra layer on most of my legs was more comfortable, plus the added feeling of not being, you know, exposed. But the problem was that bunching up the stocking toes to fit the flops' between-toes what-do-you-call-that-part-a-post? looked excessively dorky.

Kind of like the music they played in the lavatory on the plane. Is it that annoying to discourage people from spending too much time in the bathroom? Show tunes from 1940s musicals on a lo-fi speaker, barf me out.

Eventually, I made the more girly decision and went with looks over comfort even though I grumbled about it in the privacy of the lavatory. One thing studying magic does is teach you that a successful illusion is created by attention to as many details as you can control. At least my toenails were painted to match my fingers in a nice glossy pearl white.

I stuffed my shoes and socks into the carry-on and spent some time with the mirror, touching up my makeup. Not that it needed much, but I guess I was a bit insecure about my looks with a hunky guy like George sitting next to me. Huh? George was a hunk? Well, yeah, compared to the original me, he was.

I flipped my hair and admired my little emerald earrings too. I was glad I had got my ears pierced and Daddy bought me the expensive earrings for my seventeenth birthday which was not for another few weeks. He said I could later sell them to help with college tuition when I went back to being Dale Steffani instead of Stephanie Dale.

Looking in the mirror, I had to convince myself that I couldn't see even a trace of the boy I really was. I had to have the confidence to go out and be Stephanie to make this work. And in order to not be all mopey and paranoid, I had to enjoy being Stephanie. Well, why not? I'd already found out that no one holds doors open for a skinny boy or smiles as much as they do when they see a pretty girl. Being Stephanie was pretty cool, actually.

Finally, I put everything away in my purse and carry-on and left the lavatory to head back to my seat just as the fasten seat belt lights went on again. The flops made that sound they make as I hurried down the aisle and got buckled into 12B after squeezing past George without even thinking about the fact that I had had my butt probably right in his face. I stuffed the carry-on under my seat before I thought about what I had just done.

I had to not look at George and fight off an attack of the giggles just when the captain's voice came on the intercom and talked about turbulence and gaining a bit more altitude to get past the last of the storm clouds. What he didn't tell us was that there were still tornados from Colorado to Louisiana and points between and that we had flown a more northerly route to avoid them.

And what no one mentions is that when there are tornados, there is debris in the air, sometimes as high up as four miles or more. And at the time no one knew that a small church near where Colorado, Oklahoma and Kansas come together had been hit with a tornado and completely destroyed, fortunately with no one inside.

So it took everyone by surprise when the plane flying along at 26,000 feet got hit by a piano.

Off to Seek a Wizard... -6- Five Miles High And Falling Fast by Erin Halfelven

 
Most of what was left of a baby grand from the Cimmaron Congregation Church hit the plane high on the right side, in front of the wing, just above seat 12B. It was only the wooden box of the piano, the metal harp thingie and the keys and action having fallen out at a much lower altitude. Still, two hundred pounds of mahogany held together with steel rods and brass fittings made a sizable hole in the side of the plane...

...directly over my head.

I was sucked out in an instant since I wasn't buckled in yet. I didn't even know what had happened for the next thing that occurred was that I either fainted, perhaps from decompression shock, or got knocked out by hitting the fuselage.

When I came to, the plane was nowhere in sight --it couldn't very well stop to pick me up-- and I was surrounded by storm clouds lit by the eeriest sunset I had ever seen. Especially while falling from five miles high above the Kansas plains.

I shrieked. I screamed. I yelled and yelled and yelled. I flailed my arms and legs around. At one point, I must have assumed just the wrong position because as quick as the tablecloth trick, my dress went over my head and disappeared. I'd already lost my wig and flip flops and my purse in the original slurp so there I was falling to my death wearing nothing but a pair of lycra panties (padded), a size 32A/B bra (also padded), two emerald earrings and assorted bits of nail polish and makeup.

Stunned by the enormity of it, I continued to fall. I couldn't really do anything else unless I sprouted wings or learned some really good magic tricks quick-like.

Knowing my TV Tropes, I shouted, "It couldn't really get any worse!" Hoping against hope that a passing pterodactyl or other flying monster would happen by and grab me to take back to her nest where I might arrange some sort of escape before being gobbled up by the young'uns.

What actually happened was I fell into the top of a cloud. It got dark. It got cold. It got colder, coldest, coldester, even. Ice began to form on my fingers and hair. I rolled myself into as tight a ball as I could manage, trying not to freeze to death before impact with the ground could kill me. I know I cried because my tears froze on my cheeks before they could blow away.

I came out of the bottom of the cloud just as a point blank lightning flash and thunderstrike startled and confused me. The monkey grab reflex kicked in and I spread my arms and legs wide trying to reach something to pull myself to safety.

Rain and wind buffeted me from all sides. At least the rain was warmer than the inside of the cloud had been but I shivered and my teeth chattered like a cheap novelty skeleton jaw. I opened my eyes wide and tried to see something but it was dark everywhere I looked. I was falling spread-eagled, and I hoped, face up, though what difference that would make, I don't know. An open casket instead of a closed one?

I hit something. I said, "Oof!" and passed out again.

Off to Seek a Wizard... -7- Just a Crazy Ghost? by Erin Halfelven

 
Waking up is a surprising thing to do when you're convinced that you're dead.

I could hardly believe the sun shining in my face. I had fallen out of a plane, hadn't I? I should be dead, not stretched out on some grassy knoll somewhere. I lay there quietly watching fluffy clouds in a blue morning sky, trying to work out just what had happened.

I'd come back from the lavatory wearing flops that the flight attendant had given me. What was her name? I couldn't remember and just at that moment it seemed like the most important thing in the world. After a bit I gave up trying to remember it because the only thing I could think of was that it started with an S but my name starts with an S and so all I came up with was Stephanie and that wasn't right.

Back on the plane, I'd gotten to my seat, after almost rubbing my seat on George's face. How humiliating. Maybe I had ejected myself from the plane in sheer embarrassed funk. I tried harder to remember. I'd sat down and been reaching for the seat belt when there was a noise right above me. Before I could look up, something grabbed me and next thing I knew I was floating in mid air with no plane in sight. Floating? Falling? Flying?

I could hear birdsong. Birds could fly so why, oh why, couldn't I? It was one, possible (?), explanation but I had never known I could fly before. Was it something I could only do when scared to death? Lots of luck recreating the necessary conditions for that experiment.

I tried to relive the terror of falling through the storm cloud, of nearly freezing to death on a rare day in June, but I couldn't. My mind kept veering away into inanities. Like I could swear I heard the snuffling and snorting of my Aunt Daisy's pet pug dog, Lowheezie off in the distance.

I wanted to ignore it but all that happened is that I began wondering if I had maybe broken every bone in my body in my landing. I didn't hurt anywhere but that could be shock or a broken neck or -- I imagined all kinds of things. The fact that I could feel my toes wiggle, feel grass blades tickling my sides and a mild but insistent pressure in my bladder meant nothing of course.

I could be imagining all those things, I could be imagining I was alive. Nothing was too improbable, maybe I was a ghost who would have to haunt the airways and jetstreams until my soul would be at rest. Maybe I was crazy. Maybe I was a crazy ghost.

Was that wheezing getting closer and louder?

I knew I shouldn't move in case of a broken spine but when the sound of the imagined pug dog seemed louder and closer and much, much bigger than even a bulldog or a mastiff, I lifted and turned my head to take a look.

And found myself nearly nose to nose with a mass of fur and halitosis that could only be a bear.

"Sarah," I thought. "The flight attendant's name was Sarah."

Then I screamed.

Off to Seek a Wizard... -8- Please Don't Eat the Mushrooms by Erin Halfelven

 
I screamed again. I yelled something sensible like, "Oh shit! A bear!" I tried to roll over, stand up and run away, all at once and not one at a time. It didn't work. I did manage to roll over and over, off of the hillock, in fact, and landed nose deep in a trickle of water and the mudhole that surrounded it.

Meanwhile, the bear had kiyoodled something awful and took off running the other way, with much greater efficiency.

I sat up in the mud puddle and looked around. No bear in sight.

Instead I realized I was sitting in a small glade in the most ginormous forest I had ever seen. Trees like skyscrapers as far as the eye could see. Bushes as big as football stadiums. A sunflower bending above my head as wide as a handicap parking space. A bird of some sort peering at me from a branch way over head; it looked like a chickadee the size of an ostrich.

When I say ginormous, I mean ginormous.

Ants as big as chihuahuas wrestling with some nasty piece of rotten flesh. A three-foot caterpillar with a face full of knives chewing and chewing and chewing on the stalk of some plant that belonged in a horror movie itself. Gnats as big as baseballs.

It made me doubt all my senses. Had it really been a bear that startled me? What had I seen?

Also, what had I heard? When the bear ran away it wasn't with an inarticulate, "Arggh!" He'd said something.

I closed my eyes. He couldn't have. Bears don't talk. Yeah, right. A girl doesn't get sucked out of airplanes and survive a fall of tens of thousands of feet and wake up in a forest where everything is ten times it's normal size, either. Even if she isn't exactly a girl.

"Curiouser and curiouser," I said. "I don't remember eating any mushrooms." I glared at the caterpillar just on general principles.

As a magician, I know several ways to make things look bigger than they really are. One of the neatest is forced perspective, which they use a lot in the movies. It involves choosing your angles and putting the smaller things closer but making it look like they are farther away. I didn't see how that would work here.

I stared up at the bird again, trying to figure out how it could be close and yet look far away. Anyway I could figure the angles, the bird had to be as ginormous as everything else. "That's a big chickadee," I said.

I thought a moment more about what I had heard the bear say. I'd actually heard it quite distinctly, despite my own screaming. He'd clearly said, "A bear! Where, where?" That confused me. Not just that the bear talked but that it seemed to be afraid of bears.

I looked down at myself, covered in big wads of sticky mud. I tried to pull myself out of the mudhole but the stuff stuck like glue. I knew I had mud inside my bra and in my panties, too. Disgusting. But, I couldn't get any traction to push away and kept slipping back into the mud until there wasn't a clean spot on me.

I heard snickering coming from the greenery where the bear -- or whatever it was -- had disappeared.

"If you're going to laugh at me, come and help me climb out of this mud!" I shouted.

The voice I heard before said, "You said there was a bear." It sounded like George talking.

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.

Off to Seek a Wizard... -10- Scary, Hairy, Fairy, Curse by Erin Halfelven

 
"There are fairies of the wood and fairies of the river and fairies of the mountain," said Charles Wood. "Are you a mud fairy?"

"No, I'm not," I said. This conversation was making me grumpy, not to mention loony. "I just fell into this mudhole and I can't get out."

"Are you sure you're a fairy?" asked the not-bear. I supposed I could call him Chuck, even though he still sounded like George.

"No, I"m not sure." I snapped. I'd been called that often enough, all the way back to kindergarten and I hadn't much liked it at any time.

"How can you not be sure?" he asked, sounding reasonable. "Just look at you! Besides the mud, I mean. Oh," he nodded, "you're definitely a fairy. I think."

He came closer and I looked at his teeth again. Not threatening in the least, for all their size. If he weren't almost two feet taller than me --or me two inches shorter than him-- he would have looked a lot like a child's plush toy, some Muppetish cartoony creature with an adorable name.

"I'm just not. And it's not very polite to call someone a fairy unless they tell you, that yes, they are one. Now are you going to help me out of this mudhole? I only fell in because you scared me." Asking for a favor always gets a better response with a little guilt for sauce. Well, maybe not, but nearly everyone does it that way.

"I scared you?" he seemed astonished.

"Yes, you came up and I turned and there you were just as big and hairy as all daylight! I thought you were a bear."

He looked up as if examining the daylight for hirsuteness. Something 'as all daylight' was another of my grandfather's sayings, I don't know why they pop out at the oddest times.

"Just come over and pull me out, please?" I begged when Chuck hadn't moved closer in a reasonable time.

He ambled toward me. He looked nervous, but I couldn't understand why. It's not as if I had teeth the size of a tall latte sticking out of my face. "I don't see why you don't just fly out of there."

I rolled my eyes. "My wings are all muddy, I can't get any lift!" I said. "Please, please, please help me?" I hated to ask for help from J. Random Rodent but I wasn't going anywhere without a little assistance.

The marmot reached the mud puddle and with one fastidious paw --if he had had a pinkie, it would have been raised-- and hardly any effort, he simply reached in and scooped me onto the dry grass. I gasped. He shook a bit of mud off his claw.

"You're so strong," I gushed.

"What does that mean?" he asked, nervously. "Does helping you out of the mud count as a rescue?"

"Oh yes," I said. "Thank you." I tugged at some grass blades, all of which were three or four inches across, but none of them would break. So I just sat there and used some of the taller ones to wipe as much mud off me as I could. My bra and panties were encrusted with the stuff and where was I going to find a laundry for them? And what would I be wearing while they went spinny in the dryer?

Chuck continued to hover while I tried to clean myself off. "I can't stand waiting!" he exclaimed. "Boon or bane?"

"Pardon?" I said. All I could think of was the frontiersman in that song or the guy in the Batman comic.

He jittered from paw to paw then sat up and covered his face. "Everyone knows that if you rescue a fairy she will grant you either boon or bane," he said from behind his hands. "So which is it? Am I cursed? Oh, I don't want to be cursed, I'm sure my family doesn't want me to be cursed. My brothers and sisters and my poor sweet mother, it would just break her heart. Oh, please, Princess Stephanie, don't turn me into a frog! I don't want to croak!"

I stood there with my mouth hanging open and stared at him.

Off to Seek a Wizard... -11- Lost? by Erin Halfelven

 
"This is like the ending to Lost, isn't it? I've been dead all the time?" I asked Chuck Wood, the marmot.

"I don't know what you're talking about but you're scaring me!" said the rodent, his big soft eyes looking at me sideways.

I giggled. Perhaps incipient hysteria, I thought, so I clamped down on the urge to laugh. "No, I mean... I'm not sure what I mean."

"You still didn't tell me, boon or bane? I rescued you from the mud and... And...." He trailed off with a hiccough.

The poor thing really was scared of me!

"Oh, boon, boon!" I said. "You'll always be stronger than anyone thinks you are." A bell rang somewhere, a single note like a big clock on the far side of town striking one.

Chuck's eyes got enormous and he looked pleased with himself. Though to be honest, it was sort of hard to read a lot of expression into such a hairy face. "Oh, thank you, Princess Stephanie!"

"I...." Well, what harm would it do to let him think I was a fairy princess? "Could I ask another favor? Is there some clean water nearby where I can wash off this mud?"

"Oh, sure," said Chuck. "There's little springs all over this dale."

I blinked. Of course I knew that my other name meant small valley but I had never heard it used that way outside of a song or the Bible.

Chuck started into the thickest part of the greenery and I had to follow closely or be overwhelmed by the shrubbery springing back to block me. Again, his strength impressed me, he simply bulled his way through where even the slenderest twigs seemed much stronger to me than I would have thought just to look at them. Of course, Chuck's legs were as thick as my whole body, so I guess it wasn't too surprising.

He kept calling, "This way," and "Right through here," and a couple of times he waited for me as we crossed tiny clearings. I would have gotten lost if he hadn't made it easy to follow him. We saw a few other animals, something I took for a field mouse, and numerous insects, and there were always birds overhead but nothing else spoke to me. I felt thankful for small favors.

We had climbed a slope for most of the way, then we went down a step bank and were in another little glade like the first one. But the little stream was much bigger here and the pool was lines with stones, so no mud. A second stream emptied the little pool and flowed away down the slope in a kind of gully.

"This is Kendall Spring, the cleanest water on the hill," said Chuck. He trotted right over and lapped up a mouthful like a dog or a cat. "Good stuff," he said.

"It's pretty!" I said, surprised. Pink flowers with blooms as big as my head lined one side of the pond while the side we came up on had grass right down to the stones.

"Thank you," someone said, a voice that was neither Chuck's nor George's.

I turned to look and saw a man standing near the opening of a sort of a burrow. He looked tall, I would have judged him to be over six foot if I were still my original five foot three. He had smooth brown hair and bright blue eyes and a smile with dimples. While his skin looked ordinary flesh color, the joints of his shoulders made me think of a robot, with a visible ball and a tube that turned into his upper arm.

I looked lower and he looked even more like a flesh-colored robot the lower I looked. More visible ball sockets for his hips and nothing at all between his legs except smooth plastic. My gaze jumped back to his face.

He was still smiling and now he looked more familiar. "Oh," I said. "Not Kendall Spring, Ken Doll Spring."

Off to Seek a Wizard... -12- Uncanny Valley by Erin Halfelven

 

"Put on some clothes!" I suddenly shrieked. I know, it surprised me, too.

Ken, I might as well call him that, turned and dived head first into the burrow I had noticed and Chuck the Marmot followed. Ken was babbling, something about not expecting company, and Chuck was whistling like a teakettle and at the same time yelping, "I'll help, I'll help!"

I stood there, the mud on my body nearly dry and beginning to itch. I felt a sense of wonder, I had scared both of them with my noise. Realizing that caused the onset of a bad case of the giggles. I kept brushing at the drying mud while making snorting noises. Finally, I simply burst out Laughing Out Loud, though I didn't Roll on the Floor of the forest since I was already filthy enough.

I examined the pool when I had got control of my breathing. The exit end seemed to be best for my purpose since the water flowing out would carry away the mud and grit I intended to wash off. Before climbing into the natural bathtub made by the rocks, though, I decided I would try to scape even more of the dried stuff off my hide and looked around for an appropriate shaped stick.

Seeing a flat board about a foot long and two inches wide, I thought it might do even if it was a bit big. I bent to pick this object up when a sudden noise and a whoosh of wind caused me to sit down suddenly. One of the local giant birds had landed right in front of me, one foot on my chosen board.

"Mine!" said the bird in a very loud and bird-like voice.

I tried to creep backward because the bird was taller than I was. It had a black beak more than a foot long, a black head and neck, a white belly and shoulders and dark royal green wings and other parts. It looked at me with one eye and then the other and repeated. "Mine, it is!"

"Okay, okay," I said. "You can have it!" I kept backing up, using hands and heels to propel me while I scooted on my butt.

The bird picked up the board and examined it the way it had looked at me, first one eye then the other. Then it held the piece of wood toward me and said, "Trade, will you?"

"I don't have anything to trade!" I squealed. The bird was seriously freaking me out, I hadn't noticed before but the board came to a kind of point at one end; the end toward me, of course. As if a six-foot bird with a foot-long beak wasn't scary enough.

The bird turned the wood around in its mouth and examined it again, one eye at a time then dropped it next to the pond. "Yours, then, it's junk," it said and with a whoosh of fuss and feathers, it disappeared upward.

"I almost crapped on myself," I whispered.

About that time, after the bird had already left, Ken came rushing out of the burrow, carrying of all things, a speargun! He brandished this weapon upward and yelled, "Get out of here, Maggie, we don't want any of your trades!"

Then he looked at me and both his blue eyes and his dimple twinkled. "Are you all right, Princess?"

"Only my daddy calls me Princess," I said crossly. "What the heck are you wearing now?" I asked.

"It's all I could find that would fit me," he said apologetically. "Pretend it's a kilt." What it was was a woman's plaid business skirt, entirely too slim and short to pass as any sort of kilt. Also, it was pink, black and electric green, but at least it covered up the Uncanny Valley of Ken's crotch.

Chuck came out of the burrow behind Ken. He had a gaudy gold necklace with an oversize ankh charm around his thick neck and a pink Dodgers baseball hat perched on his wide flat head. "Is this okay, Your Highness?" he asked.

He looked like the furriest pimp you ever have seen and I lost it. I really did Roll on the Floor Laughing My Ass Off and almost immediately fell into the pond which was full of the coldest water east of Half Moon Bay.

Off to Seek a Wizard... -13- Teller of Tales by Erin Halfelven

 

Chuck's furry face didn't have much expression and Ken's plastic likeness had an eternal dimpled smile, but their body language communicated their unhappiness at my hilarity. Besides, when I fell into the pond I inhaled a gob of water and thought I was going to drown.

The water behaved oddly, as if it came in little easily torn plastic balloons. Imagine getting a water balloon stuck in your windpipe and you know how I felt. Terrorized is not an understatement. Both Ken and Chuck rushed to help me but I waved them back, being too close to Chuck's claws or Ken's speargun did not appeal to me.

Fortunately, one hard cough dislodged the obstruction and another dozen reflex coughs after I came up for air kept my breathing free. The behavior of the water would have fascinated me if I hadn't been scared so bad by it.

I stood up and grabbed for my bra and panties; they were slipping off only in my mind though. I glared at the two men in my life, well, if Ken counts as male and if either of them counted as men.

"You have to watch out for Maggie, she's a thief," said Ken. He still had the speargun which I now saw was just a solid piece, not a working item at all, despite being green and silver and black. "I brought this," he waved the fake weapon, "to trade for you with her if we had to."

That distracted me for a moment then it took me a moment more to remember that he must mean the bird that had grabbed my wooden stick then abandoned it.

"Maggie?" I said. Okay, I sounded stupid but I really am blond.

"The bird," said Chuck. "Margaret Pyewacket, she's a magpie."

"No, I'm not," came a voice from high above. "It's just paint. I'm a dove, I am."

"She's a liar, too," said Ken, shaking his head with a swiveling motion that made him look like bad clay animation. He brandished the fake speargun, again, too, in a spastic move that made me glad it was only plastic.

"Oh, that's a fib, it is," said the voice of the bird. "I'm a simple teller of tall tales, not a liar."

"What's the difference?" asked Ken, finally turning his head at an impossible angle to look up. I swallowed hard and looked up also just so I couldn't see Ken's apparently broken neck. I couldn't spot Maggie at all, though, she must have been lost in the greenery above, her parti-colored feathers blending with light and shadow.

"A liar expects and needs to be believed," said Maggie the bird. "A teller of tall tales is just doing it for the pleasure of the thing, she is. World of difference."

"Whatever," said Ken. "She didn't hurt you, did she, Princess?" Ken asked.

I took it that he was asking me, so I shook my head.

"I never," said Maggie from above. "What am I? An owl? A hawk? I never hurt a living thing. Well, bugs, I suppose."

I tried to imagine an owl or a hawk in proportion to Ken, who if he was like other Ken dolls was about a foot tall -- that would make a bird bigger than Maggie but with talons and a scimitar beak. I nearly fainted. I've got a good imagination.

Panicked, I snatched up the pointed piece of wood Maggie had tried to trade with me, and I held it close in such a way that it would have been no use at all against an attacker, just then noticing that it had something written on it: Haagen-Dazs. I was preparing to stab a giant owl with an ice cream stick.

"Why is she making those squeaking noises," asked Chuck.

"I think it may be she's saying something in the Fair Tongue," said Ken. There was something about his voice, too, something I kept noticing but had no time to think about, especially not right then.

I forced myself to be calm. I had to keep the respect of these two if I were ever going to get out of this mess I was in. How I would do that, I had no idea at the moment but something might come up. Turning into a quivering, whimpering mess at the idea of a bird more than twice as big as me would not do my reputation as a fairy princess any good.

I knelt in the water to keep from falling down, this made it about chest deep. "You guys..." I began but I had to start over. "You guys turn your backs, I'm going to take a bath."

I waved the stick like a scepter. But son-of-a-gun, they both turned their backs.

Off to Seek a Wizard... -14- Neat, Sweet, Petite by Erin Halfelven

 

Wearing damp undies seemed to be the least of my troubles but they were a bit uncomfortable, especially since the slight padding held more than a little water. Amazingly, the mud and dirt had washed right out of them in the pond and off of my own skin as well. I worried about my hair since there didn't seem to be any hope of finding shampoo. What did animals use to clean their fur? Spit? Ick.

I didn't need the ice cream stick I'd found to scrape myself off after all, so I stuck it point down between two rocks for safekeeping.

Next problem.

"Ken," I said. "Don't turn around just yet," I was wringing out my bra, "but do you have more clothing in that cave of yours?"

"Sure," he said, in that tantalizingly almost familiar voice. Who did he sound like? Someone famous?

"Do you think you could find me something to wear?" I asked. Ihad more to worry about than whose voice he reminded me of.

He nodded, still with his back turned. "Most of it is Barbie stuff but there are some outfits for Skipper, too, since you're -- uh, petite. I'll go take a look." He hurried toward the burrow, still carrying the fake speargun, and Chuck followed, muttering something again about helping.

Petite? If I'm really a couple inches shorter than a Ken doll, I'm not petite, I'm downright tiny. How could this happen?

Now, since I'm a magician it maybe should be obvious to me that it's magic. But because I am a magician, I know that magic is all about illusion. And I just could not see anyway to maintain an illusion that I was only ten inches tall through everything that had happened. Running through the forest, falling in a pond that I now realized was smaller than a lot of bathroom sinks; that is, if Ken really was a twelve-inch tall plastic avatar of sanitized masculinity.

I had to suppress another giggle just then.

And what about Chuck and Maggie? Chuck was some kind of magnified rodent and he talked. Maggie was a two-tone crow bigger than a condor, in comparison to me. And she talked too, though she sounded rather more like a bird might actually sound than like the very human voices of Ken and Chuck.

Was I dreaming? Hallucinating? Just plain crazy? Those were all more acceptable than the idea that I might be experiencing real -- uh, call it sorcery to avoid the M-word.

I didn't think I was dreaming in the usual sense because it has been my experience that once you realize or even think that you are dreaming -- you wake up. And I couldn't seem to wake myself up.

But I could be in a hospital bed somewhere tripping out on some nice legal drugs, safe between two white sheets with Mom and Dad hovering over me. Horrid as that thought might be, it had a certain amount of comfort in it. I sniffed a bit, imagining my parents all worried. This, so far, seemed my most likely explanation.

I didn't think I'd gone crazy, going crazy is a way to deal with terrible stress and honest, the stress in my life was really modest. Worrying about tests, getting beat up, catching a plane, going to see the Wizard....

...going to see the Wizard...?

Oh, come on now!

I'm flying Emerald Air, to Kansas, to see a man known as The Wizard, how obvious could it be? I meet a talking animal, a semi-mechanical humanoid, and, and.... Where was the scarecrow?

At just that moment, Maggie flew down and landed nearby in the same mess of wind and feathers she had left in. "Boo!" she said. "Did I scare you?"

Those must be some drugs they're giving me in that hospital.

Off to Seek a Wizard... -15- The Plain, The Plain! by Erin Halfelven

 

Knowing that the world is just a drug-induced hallucination is not actually much practical use. For instance, it didn't keep my damp skin from feeling cold in the slight breeze. It didn't help me straighten out the pads in my bra so I could hold my head up high and not worry about a lumpy bosom. And it didn't help me deal with Maggie Pyewacket.

"If you're a fairy princess, where are your wings, where are they?" asked Maggie, cocking her head one way then the other.

"I left them back on the plane," I said.

"The plain? The plain what? You don't mean the Plain of Nails, do you?" she asked. "That where you come from, is it?"

"Uh, " I stalled. "The Plain of Nails?"

"No, the Plain of Nells, I said." She rustled her wings and ruffled her feathers, making a sound like sheet metal banging together in a soft wind.

I still didn't have it right but I didn't know that yet. "Where everyone is named Nell?" I guessed.

"No! How can you be one of the Wise and Fair? You don't know anything, do you?" And with that, she hopped completely over me, opened her wings for a moment and glided to a landing in a bush the size of an apartment building on the opposite side of the pond.

I glared at her and tried to put my bra back on. I was still standing in nearly chest deep water at this time but things felt a little tender and vulnerable there and I don't think I ever wanted some clothes quite so much just then. The cold cloth had a peculiar effect on my nipples too, making me more aware of them than I think I ever had been. Reaching behind me, I finally got the bra fastened the way Mom had taught me. "There's a word, " she'd said, "for girls who fasten their bra in front then turn it around to put their arms through. The word is fat."

I giggled remembering Mom's eight week crash course in how to be a young lady even if you're really a boy. We'd actually had a lot of fun at it, laughing at all the silly differences between what society expects of boys and girls.

I'd left my panties floating in the pond and now I picked them up and tried wringing them out, too. These had two round pads in back and an oval pad on each side to give me a girlier shape. It was embarrassing to wear them but it was also embarrassing to think of not wearing them, especially now. The pads didn't need wringing out though since unlike the padded bra, these were made of silicone. I kept forgetting about them when I sat down and thinking I had sat on something squishy.

I found I just couldn't wring the panties out with the pads in place. Besides, I was still standing in the water, how would I put them back on? And they would get wet again when I did put them on because I didn't have a towel to dry off with. I sighed. I should have sent Ken and Chuck for a towel first thing.

Sighing again, I climbed up on the stony bank and sat with my back to the opening of the burrow. I removed the pads carefully and put them on the stone beside me so I could wring the panties out. I reminded myself to drink only from the creek flowing into the pond and resolved to sit there in the sun and let my body dry off a bit before putting my panties back on.

Suddenly, Maggie Pyewacket flipped her wings and swooped the length of the pond. She passed so close to me I felt her feathers on my skin. "Watch out, you crazy bird brain!" I yelled.

"Mine, mine, mine," called Maggie as she flew away.

I gasped. Checking the stone beside me I realized it was true. That blasted bird had stolen my butt cheeks!