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    Jaunts Afar and Beyond
    Jaunts Afar and Beyond
    Jaunts Afar and Beyond
    Ebook90 pages1 hour

    Jaunts Afar and Beyond

    By Rosemary Jones

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    About this ebook

    A collection of fantasy short stories inspired by fairy tales, murder ballads, and memory houses. Four guaranteed happy endings, one ambiguous, and one grim indeed. Take six jaunts into places afar and beyond in this anthology. "Pure entertainment... Jones takes stereotypes and turns them on their ear."- Fantasy Debut about author Rosemary Jones, whose novels have appeared in Forgotten Realms line and, coming in 2021, Arkham Horror.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLostLoves Books
    Release dateSep 8, 2020
    ISBN9781393465522
    Jaunts Afar and Beyond
    Author

    Rosemary Jones

    Rosemary Jones writes fantasy and collects children's books. Her latest collection of fantasy short stories can be found in Jaunts Afar and Beyond. Coming later in 2020 will be Stars Afar and Planets Beyond, a collection of science fiction tales. In 2021, look for Mask of Silver, part of Aconyte's Arkham Horror line. Her titles for Forgotten Realms include City of the Dead, Crypt of the Moaning Diamond, and Cold Steel & Secrets.

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      Book preview

      Jaunts Afar and Beyond - Rosemary Jones

      Goblin Name Game

      GEORGE! THE GOBLIN exploded as he stormed back into his house, hopping from one foot to the other in front of his magic mirror. Do I look like a George? How could any human be so stupid as to call him George! George the Goblin, like any self-respecting mother would label her son with such a name.

      The mirror did not respond. It rarely spoke, and certainly not when asked rhetorical questions, not since the royal misunderstanding a few years back. The goblin had bought it cheap from some dwarves, when they sold off some odds and ends prior to moving out of their cottage and into a bigger home.

      In fact, their good fortune gave him the idea in the first place. After adopting a stray human, they received years of cheap labor from the girl: cleaning, cooking, sock washing, all those pesky chores that the goblin hated. Then, just when she was growing a bit too large for their cottage and expensive to feed, she’d married a prince. And bought the dwarves a much larger house, with seven separate bedrooms, closer to town.

      Chores done, and even a reward later on. Personally, the goblin, whose name wasn’t George, thought it sounded like an excellent deal, better than a fairy’s wishes (fairies being tricksy things and quite liable to cheat you by the third wish). He decided to get a human of his own.

      Which turned out to be a bit harder than he expected.

      For the first few months after he conceived his brilliant plan, the goblin simply left the door to his cottage unlocked whenever he went out. Each evening, he returned expecting to find the place swept clean, supper bubbling away in the pot, and some useful human taking up residence in the cupboard under the stairs. It never happened. Instead the dust piled up, the pot stayed empty until he filled it, and he finally came home one night to find his house taken over by three bears.

      True, the bears apologized, saying that they assumed the place was abandoned, being unlocked, unswept, and generally unkempt. He quickly disabused them of that notion and suggested that they look elsewhere for a home.

      As for their story that some nasty young human forced them out of their house by being quite destructive to the furniture and their breakfast cereal, he paid it very little heed. After the bears left, grumbling about the inhospitality of goblins (a racial slur if ever he’d heard one), the goblin did wonder about the advisability of adopting just any stray child. Apparently some came with certain bad habits, like breaking the chairs, and he was an old goblin and not sure that he wanted to spend his time on housebreaking a human.

      So he visited his nearest neighbor, the West Wind’s mother, in her cave at the top of the mountain and asked her opinion.

      Go for breeding, the hag cackled as she stirred her pot, dropping in extra pepper to make her soup spicy enough for her harum-scarum son. You want to find one of the ones from royal bloodlines. They’ve been bred specially to have good manners. You won’t find them breaking your chairs or gobbling your porridge without a please or thank you.

      Really? he said, sipping gingerly at the bowl that she’d handed him. He preferred his food a little blander. Pepper tended to upset his stomach and leave him hopping up and down all night long. I’ve heard that kings and queens were quite difficult to deal with, always marching around in armor or ordering people poisoned. I know some dwarves had quite a bit of trouble with one queen.

      That’s when they get older. Nothing good comes of an old royal, better to put them down before they go mad and start chewing at the neighbors, the hag said. But they’re sweet when they’re young. Do anything you say to them. Tell a girl that she needs to put on a pair of iron-soled shoes and march for days to find her beau, and she’ll just curtsy and say ‘thank you, ma’am’ in a nicest way. Although that one might not have been royal, now that I come to think of it. It’s a bit hard to tell if they’re not wearing their crowns.

      Still, the younger, the better?

      She nodded emphatically, causing the wart at the end of her nose to bobble in a disconcerting way. Just never pick the youngest one in a large litter. Or the third born.

      Why ever not?

      They tend to be roamers, no matter how hard you try to keep them in. Oh, the stories that my blustery boy tells about those ones. Go for the first-born or even the second. But avoid the third down the line or the youngest of twelve. Either one will prove troublesome.

      He finished up his soup with a polite slurp, even though he knew that he would regret it later that night, and walked home tugging his whiskers to help his cogitation.

      Obviously, waiting around for some stray to stumble through his door wouldn’t get his house clean by spring. And he most definitely didn’t want just any young human bumbling about his home and eating all his provisions. The purer the blueblood, the better, according to the hag. Sensible advice, as far as he could tell, but where did you find that sort?

      At midnight, as he bounced from foot to foot to ease his churning stomach, he suddenly realized where he could find the right type of human: a castle or a palace. That’s where they bred royals. Why wait until one happened to stumble outside and into the woods? It would be much more efficient to go straight to the source!

      In the morning, rather late in the morning because he’d overslept, the goblin clapped his traveling cap on his head and bade his magic mirror a polite good-bye. It didn’t say a word, which made him once again doubt prior claims as to its talkative wisdom.

      After carefully locking his cottage door against ursine home invasions, the goblin whirled three times widdershins and stamped his right foot six times and his left foot seven times. Take me to a castle! he cried.

      Exploding into the middle of a prickly stack of straw, he

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