Kill the Farm Boy Read online

  “Is it foolish that I’m scared?” she asked him.

  “Everyone’s scared all the time,” he responded. “But that’s no reason not to keep on.”

  The rabbit girl gave him a real smile. “Thanks, Toby. I knew I could count on you.”

  Toby looked down, annoyed. “Don’t go counting on me. Dark Lords can’t be trusted.”

  Argabella punched him gently on the shoulder.

  “I told you: I always saw you as more crepuscular than dark.” With that, she hopped into the carriage, and Toby followed her.

  Inside, all was sumptuous and oddly shaped. The carriage was upholstered in aubergine velvet with lilac spots and billowing silky curtains. Grinda the Sand Witch sat on her own cushy bench, smiling and gracious and utterly dressed to the nines in a matching traveling costume of every shade of violet. Her hat, although very wide and chic, held the telltale point that let anyone know she was a witch, and a very wealthy one indeed. Unlike wizards, who boasted of the height and sturdiness of their towers, witches prided themselves on exhibiting only the perkiest cones.

  Grinda knocked on the roof of the carriage, which creaked into motion.

  “I trust you all had a marvelous night?” she asked, the height of fashion and grace.

  “Delightful,” Toby said, settling in directly across from her to establish his dominance.

  Grinda leaned back and crossed her legs, which Toby immediately mirrored. “I hear you enjoyed yourself in the Garden of Pellish Delights. Did you find my illusions satisfactory?”

  Toby swallowed hard. “Illusions?”

  “Those twin duchesses.” Grinda laughed, throwing back her head gaily. “They were too perfect, were they not?”

  “Too perfect,” he mumbled, racking his memory. What had their names been? And what exactly had they looked like? Blond, perhaps? Definitely in possession of hair. Also, legs. Maybe? His memory was shifty, shadowy, unclear.

  “Not bad for sand golems, I hope. One of my little pet projects.”

  Toby felt the color drain from his face. At least he understood now why his morning bath had been full of sand. “And the food was a treat.”

  “Ah, that was real.” Grinda’s grin gleamed like a tiger’s smile. “And now that you’ve ingested my Bloodhound Blood Pudding Pinwheels, I’ll always know where you are. Magic is wonderful, don’t you think?”

  “Wonderful.”

  Toby decided to be quiet for a while and immediately stopped aping her behavior, as it appeared to give him no strategic advantage.

  “And the rest of you. Were your lodgings satisfactory?”

  “Fantastic,” Fia said.

  “Rather pleasant if I do say so myself, even if a bit sandy, which one must expect at the beach considering the beach is made of sand,” Poltro said with a grin.

  “Functional,” Gustave said. “Could’ve done with more boots.”

  “Merely functional? We can’t have that.” Grinda withdrew a crystal wand from her cleavage, waved it, and shouted, “Brigan skokhaz!”

  An aged chukka boot appeared in a puff of sand and fell to the floor of the carriage, right in front of Gustave. He nudged it with his nose and cocked his head on the side. “Doeskin, worn for about a year, possibly lost in a swamp considering the slightly peaty odor.” He licked it and gave a baa of delight. “I take it back. You are truly the hostess with the mostess on this coastess.” For a few moments, the only noises in the carriage were Grinda’s teeth creaking in a pleased smile and Gustave nibbling the boot with little moans of caprine ecstasy. To Toby’s great disappointment, the wand had disappeared.

  He pulled a small notebook from one of the many pockets in his cloak and began scribbling. That shoe spell could come in handy sometime. And he would now train his focus entirely on Grinda’s cleavage with the aim of getting his hands on that crystal wand.

  “Uh uh,” the sand witch said, tapping her face. “Eyes up here, mister.”

  As the carriage rumbled along and Grinda made flawless small talk and repeatedly reminded him not to stare hungrily at her blouse, Toby let his gaze wander to Argabella. The rabbit woman was sitting as far away from the sand witch as possible and looked terribly uncomfortable, even more twitchy than usual. She tried several times to question Grinda, but the witch inevitably sidestepped the inquiries with her conversational legerdemain, leaving Argabella stuttering on the edge of a faux pas. With each mile, the rabbit girl looked more disgusted and queasy. When the carriage finally jolted to a stop, Argabella lurched forward with a gasp, upchucking a generous amount of carrot juice directly into Grinda’s violet-wrapped lap.

  “She gets travel sick,” Fia said, helping Argabella stand and all but carrying her out of the door Milieu had just thrown open.

  “Indeed,” Grinda said through gritted teeth. “Destrugerie vamati.” One wave of the crystal wand and her lap was again clean. It was at that precise moment, the moment of miraculous vomit banishment, that Toby realized he had never wanted anything as much as he wanted to steal her wand; it was a need, really.

  Perhaps he was going about it the wrong way, staring too obviously. But Grinda cut such a dashing figure that it was hard to look away even when one didn’t want to reach down her shirt and steal the key to her power. Statuesque and lithe, she was the most radiant thing in the immediate vicinity, which included a scrubby field and a few rotting stumps. Toby straightened his robes and tried to look replete with arcane knowledge. And calculate how much those dwarvelish guards must cost Grinda to keep on staff. Such fighters were not cheap. He was growing insecure about the size of his tower.

  “If you need to pass gas, I’d go over there,” Gustave whispered. “Near the horses. They don’t mind.”

  “I do not need to do any such thing,” Toby snapped.

  “Well, then you might want to move the parts of your face around so you don’t look pained and constipated. Not a good look for humans, from what I’ve noticed.”

  Toby shook his head and put on a wise sort of smirk that wizards used to remind everyone how clever they were.

  “Oh, no. It got worse. Tell me what you ate,” Gustave said. “So I won’t eat it.”

  On the verge of the sort of rage that incited rain showers of garlic naan, Toby headed over to Argabella and Fia instead. Considering the look of nausea on Argabella’s face, no one would ask him about the idiosyncrasies of his own facial expressions.

  “What’s she doing?” Argabella asked. “And where is this Goblin Market?”

  Grinda was walking to and fro, peeking her head around as if she were trying to avoid angry hornets or possibly trying a new dance move that wasn’t going to catch on.

  Toby didn’t actually know what the sand witch was doing. That annoyed him, so he indulged in some self-soothing in the form of sharing his hard-won wisdom.

  “Goblin Markets only show up at dusk on a full moon, when their mysteries might remain hidden from the stark light of day,” he explained grandly.

  “Wrong,” Grinda said. “Here it is.” She grabbed a bit of air and pulled it back to reveal a completely other place. It was as if she’d found a door in nothing and opened it to reveal…something. Toby was painfully reminded of the elves’ magic in Morningwood, which had likewise left him feeling unmoored and unmanned.

  “Step right in,” Grinda urged them. “I can’t hold this all day.” Over by the carriage, something grunted, causing the dwarvelish guards to bellow bravely and draw their swords. Argabella’s foot stamped repeatedly before she could stop herself. Gustave ejected caution pellets, and even Toby felt his beard hairs curl protectively upward.

  “Go on, now,” Grinda said. “Hurry.”

  Gustave trotted in, followed by Argabella, still with Fia’s arm around her. Poltro slunk in as rogues do, while Toby waited to be last.

  “After you,” he said.

  “Oh, no,”
Grinda warbled. “After you.”

  “A gentleman never lets a lady go last.”

  “Unless you know how to fold time, you’d best hurry in.” She chucked her chin toward the commotion behind the carriage. “This clearing is guarded by a troll with very bad anger issues, and my guards can only detain him so long.”

  Toby had not yet met a troll, and although he had hoped they were jolly people with brightly colored hair, the fact that Grinda didn’t want to meet one suggested that Toby really didn’t want to meet one.

  “If you insist,” he said, hurrying through the hole in the middle of nothing.

  Stepping through was much like stepping through a door in the same way that falling face-first into a tar pit is like swimming. The air was thick with strange smells and raucous noises, none of them good. Toby’s party clustered together like scared baby ducks until Grinda urged them on.

  “Hurry, hurry,” she clucked. “Haven’t got all week.”

  As they walked, Grinda talked with equal briskness. “The Goblin Market is the finest way to shop, provided you touch nothing, talk to no one, and under no circumstances accept gifts from strangers.” She slapped Poltro’s hand as the rogue attempted to snatch an unrealistically flawless peach from a pile of likewise unrealistically flawless peaches. “Also, no stealing. They’ll cut off your pinkie finger.”

  “S’not so bad,” Poltro said.

  “But they throw away everything that isn’t the finger.”

  Poltro gulped. “Point taken.”

  As they walked, Toby was amazed, but mostly at how wrong he’d been about Goblin Markets. It wasn’t an outdoor collection of colorful stalls and wagons lit by glowing lanterns and helmed by friendly sprites. No, it was all indoors, two grim and stodgy stories of connected shops helmed by hideous and annoying goblins. The architecture was dull and unimaginative, and the goblins themselves were likewise a disappointment. No wings, no glitter, no smiles. Just twisted creatures like gray, hairless monkeys, most of whom wanted to sell him magical hair curlers and high-priced bedsheets. Several of them followed the group, demanding that they take various surveys.

  “No thank you,” Argabella kept saying, which only seemed to make the goblins more passionate in their hectoring.

  “Just ignore them,” Grinda said.

  “But that’s rude.”

  “You can’t outrude rude people. Now ignore them and keep up before they catch you with those curlers. Your nose hairs will never be the same.”

  They passed shop after shop, all of which looked fascinating and also slightly predatory. Finally, Grinda led them into a storefront with the words GLAMOR SHOTTES scrawled over the door in what looked like fresh blood. A wizened goblin in a vibrant orange wig met them just inside.

  “My Lady Grinda, what a pleasure,” the goblin said, although it sounded somewhat like she was gargling. “Are you here for another injection of—”

  “No, my dear,” Grinda interrupted. “My friends and I are traveling to Songlen, capital city of Pell, and they must look the part. Hair, makeup, wardrobe, toenails. And whatever a goat needs. Put it on my tab.”

  The goblin bowed low, her wig falling off and forgotten. “As you wish, my lady.” Rising back up, the goblin clapped her hands, and out ran at least thirty more goblins, all clad in aprons and carrying pincushions and yet more of the dastardly hair curlers. Soon Toby found himself sitting in a chair, being attended to by five goblins. One buffed his nails, one trimmed his eyebrows and nose hairs, and one styled his hair into the tangled, curly mass that was currently so au courant for the wizardly set. He was most pleased with the beard extensions, and as a goblin painstakingly attached artificial hairs to his chin, he looked around for his friends.

  Fia barely fit in the chair and seemed deeply uncomfortable with the way the goblins were waxing off her excess hair and oiling her muscles. Poltro was rocking a smoky eye and looked deeply suspicious in the all-black costume the goblins had practically sewn her into; her last outfit, once Toby’s pride and joy, had been rendered filthy by repeated tussles with farm animals and tussocks of grass, not to mention a marination in lemon juice and giant mucus. Gustave had been unceremoniously dumped into a large copper tub and scrubbed within an inch of his life, and he was now standing on a small pedestal surrounded by rage pellets while a trio of goblins curled his silky black fur. He was hating every minute of it, and it was all Toby could do not to burst out laughing.

  Poor Argabella, however, looked sodden and miserable. Her fur had been washed and fluffed, but no matter what the frantic goblins did, it fell right back down, limp and scraggly. Her ears flopped down to frame her face, and her watery eyes rejected every attempt at cosmetics as if the manufacturers had simply not bothered to test their products on animals. Sitting in the chair, quaking, she looked like she was in her own personal rainstorm. And perhaps she was, emotionally. Her eyes couldn’t rest on one spot, and Toby had to assume she was hunting for Grinda, who had disappeared in all the hubbub.

  “Crunch break!” the head goblin called. “Best get out before the store closes!”

  “Or what?” Poltro asked.

  “Or you get crunched.”

  Thanking them profusely and spraying them with clouds of putrid perfume, the goblins finally bowed the group out of their shop. As soon as they stepped back into the dreary stone of the market, Grinda appeared, eating a large pretzel. The lines on her face, if possible, were even more blurry. When she chewed, it looked like melting taffy smeared with lipstick. There were limits, Toby realized, to what magic could do.

  “You all look fabulous,” she enthused. “Now, supplies. We’ll be going to Nardstromp’s, one of the biggest shops in the entire market. As such, it’s of vast importance that you stay close to me.”

  “But Grinda—”

  The witch kept talking, ignoring Argabella completely. “As I’m a longtime customer, the goblins wouldn’t dare defy me, but as mere visitors, your treatment may be more…”

  “Disappointing?”

  “Transformative, if you’re not careful. So, again: Touch nothing. Take nothing. And most especially, lick nothing.” She pointed at Gustave with a perfect purple nail. The goat slurped down the last of the silk ribbon the goblins had tied around his neck.

  “Who, me?” he said, then burped.

  “Now come along.”

  Before Argabella could push her with further questioning, Grinda swept majestically down the thoroughfare, leaving the party jogging to keep up with her expansive stride. Toby was the last of them, hanging back to take a closer look at the shops along the way, many of which he longed to enter. He saw a shop of nothing but candles, then one of hats, then one of candles poured into hats. And then came Master Hornswoggle’s Cheese Emporium, which passed by all too quickly.

  But every now and then something would make him do a double take, and he felt certain his eyes were playing tricks on him. In one shop, the mannequins were momentarily screaming human children, and the next moment they were simply forms of carved wood sporting brightly colored lederhosen. In another shop, a selection of shirts were scrawled with phrases like DEATH TO ALL HUMANS and MY OTHER CARRIAGE IS A HEARSE FULL OF YOUR BONES and I DARE YOU TO LICK ME. Yet another shop blared horrible music, and as Toby glanced inside, he briefly saw an exhausted woman in a ragged red dress and broken shoes dancing like a puppet on strings. He blinked once, and he recognized it as a billowing red curtain behind a display of crystal slippers.

  “Toby!”

  A hand on his shoulder pulled him backward. He’d nearly stepped into the store with the crystal slippers, but Fia had yanked him back out. “You’re into women’s shoes?” she asked.

  “I…I thought that curtain might go nicely in my banquet hall,” he offered blithely.

  “What curtain?”

  Because, oddly, the red curtain was gone. Three goblins stared at him with
too-bright eyes among the horrible T-shirts and racks of terrible mugs as he backed out of the doorway and hurried with Fia to catch up with their party. Nardstromp’s loomed ahead, looking about as inviting as a cemetery at midnight. The rusted metal gate slowly creaked up as a goblin in a spiked helmet awaited them.

  “Who goes there?” Grinda held out a card, which the goblin inspected. “And these…people…are your guests, my lady?”

  “They are.”

  “They know the rules?”

  Grinda glared a warning at them, hands on hips. “They do.”

  “Then welcome to Nardstromp’s. Might I add we’re having a splendid sale on sultan’s pillows, main floor. Just take the stairs on your right.”

  Once inside, Toby was taken aback by the hugeness of the shop. It seemed to go on forever in all directions, a sea of clothes ranging from tiny sprite sizes up to robes for giants roughly the size of Ol’ Faktri. A pair of men’s underpants big enough to use as a shelter for their entire group hung from a clothes hanger like a trapeze, promising exciting new Y-front technology.

  Something caught Toby’s eye, and he stopped in place.

  WIZARDS ONLY, a sign read, right over an enticing sort of heavy curtain festooned with silver moons and stars. Toby watched his group following Grinda toward a display of rucksacks before turning to investigate. He had always considered himself to have the potential of a powerful wizard, and he had never before had the opportunity to shop a selection of items curated just for his needs. Perhaps he could procure a crystal wand like Grinda’s or secure a beard spell that would make his extensions permanent and thereby boost his powers. In any case, there was no harm in perusing the goods. With a smirk, he ducked through the curtains, appreciating the wizardly scent of sage and patchouli indelibly drenching the fabric.