True Love and Necromancy [Featured Story!]

Chapter XVII

ONCE UPON A TIME, in a squat little cottage with a blue shingled roof at the End of the World, there lived a necromancer.

The necromancer's name was Theodosius. He had a sarcastic, skeletal cat familiar, a disgustingly unwashed beard, and one purpose in life: to bring his beloved wife Tansy back to life.

It was all rather morbid and sad.

"I need a human being," Theo sighed, poking his quill into an inkwell and scraping vainly toward the bottom. Most of the ink had dried up. "The black market is fresh out of human-grade essence stones."

"Well, you're in luck," Elliott replied.

"A different human," the sorcerer said. "I can't very well steal my own soul. What a silly idea."

"Not a very good sorcerer, one who says 'can't,'" said the cat. "But that isn't what I meant."

"What? Her?" Theo gestured through the open door of his study. The gleaming corner of Tansy's tasteful glass coffin could be glimpsed standing in the other room. "Her soul is gone. I need the soul to bring back her soul. It's an exchange of power. The basic rule of magic."

Elliott had never wished to have eyelids again more fervently than he did in that moment. He would so have enjoyed blinking them derisively at Theo, especially now that he did not even require food or a clean litter pan and had absolutely no use for human companionship at all. Instead, he contented himself with flicking his tail in irritation, a motion that produced a satisfyingly eerie creaking sound as the bones of this feline appendage twitched against one another.

"Then what?" Theo asked, nonplussed.

Then there was a knock at the door.

Theo blanched. Elliott shook his head with a long-suffering sigh and laid it down on his dainty paws. "How you have survived this long with your abysmal hearing is a mystery," he grumbled. Then he promptly fell asleep.

Theo went to the door, racking his brain for an inventory of any recent orders he may have made by post, but there were none. He was well stocked on canned ravioli and magic supplies—except for the essence crystal he needed for Tansy's reanimation. And the woman who came to pick up Theo's wares to take them to the Sneezing Llama (a change in ownership had not affected Theo's business relationship with the tavern) was not due for another week.

"Wh-who is it?" he called, managing to sound like an elderly woman in a nightgown, a floral dressing gown, and curlers.

"Maple Leaf Scouts," called a cheerful child's voice. "I'm selling cookies."

Theo opened the door to reveal a girl. At first glance, her nut-brown skin and dark braid put Theo in mind of Tansy. She smiled with a flash of white teeth, bobbing up and down on her toes in a display of excitement that exhausted Theo immediately.

The girl wore a knee-length blue dress with a sash over her shoulder. A variety of badges pinned to the sash gleamed sunnily at Theo. Without his pince nez he could not read any of them, but he determined from the bright colors and his immediate impression of the small person who wore them that they advertised proficiency in a variety of pursuits involving giggling.

"May I help you?" he asked, stunned.

"Yes! You can buy some cookies," the girl said. She indicated a wooden wagon standing at her side. It was bulging with cloth bags that, Theo presumed, held cookies. "I'm Sweetbriar, a Junior Captain in the Maple Leaf Scouts, and we make all these cookies ourselves. The proceeds go to our dowries!"

"Dowries," Theo echoed.

"Yep! Beings as we're young women in a medieval-inspired world and our worth is roughly calculated based on our usefulness to men. We're more likely to land a good husband with a big honkin' dowry. We have three flavors. Chocolate chip, shortbread, and oatmeal raisin—for if you want to prank a friend. They look a lot like chocolate chip at first glance, you see."

"I have no friends," Theo said, trying in vain to determine if her comment about the dowry had been a joke.

The girl waited, blinking up at him in expectation. When he didn't laugh or otherwise diffuse the awkwardness of his comment, she smiled slowly and took a step back. "Okay, no friends. Well, you can eat them yourself, if you like raisins. Or, just be kind to yourself. Get the chocolate chip."

"How much?" Theo asked, realizing suddenly that the answer to his problem had just rolled a wagon of cookies up to his door step.

"Three pennies a bag, or four bags for ten pennies."

"Do come in." Theo turned from the door and shuffled back into the gloom of the cottage.

Sweetbriar stood at the door for a moment, looking around. She peered into the doorway. "Uh, I don't think I should come in, thanks," she called.

She waited. She waited. She waited some more. Theo failed to appear back at the door.

The light was beginning to fade. Sweetbriar had not had much success at the End of the World with her cookie sales. Slowly, she stepped into the cottage, leaving her cookie wagon outside. "Mister?"

The door slammed shut behind her. Sweetbriar squeaked and turned to see Theo standing there, looking evil and dangerous!

No, actually. He just looked worried.

But he was still scary to the little Maple Leaf Scout. She stumbled back away from him until her arm touched something smooth and cold. Turning, the girl saw the glass coffin with Tansy's withered corpse inside, and she shrieked.

"Don't be afraid!" Theo cried.

"Don't be afraid?" Sweetbriar screamed. "You have a dead person in your dining table! Let me go!"

She sped toward the door, but Theo stood blocking the way. He did not flinch (much) or back down, even as the little Maple Leaf Scout began to pound with her fists on every convenient squishy bit of him.

"You must stay here," Theo said, trying for a reasonable tone. "The ... uh ... the forest. It gets very dangerous at night. Stay here for one night, and go home in the morning. And ... I'll buy all of your cookies!"

Sweetbriar stopped in the process of landing a well-aimed kick to his shin. "All of them?"

"All of them," Theo said. He laughed nervously. "I, uh, I love cookies."

She completed the kick, but sort of as an afterthought.

"Ow," said Theo.

"Okay," said Sweetbriar, "but I'm not staying in the dead body room."

"That's my wife," the sorcerer appended.

Somehow, this clarification did not seem to help.