A Midwestern Yankee in King Ovin's Court (Prologue and Chapter 1)
-Pretext: Not to worry, folks, ‘The Big Tour’ will continue to be presented in this space, but only in conjunction with the uploads of the audiobook presentation. In the meantime, I fully intend to offer up some of my older commercial works, including the Kathy Potts novels, here on my Substack space.
And now, who’s up for some high fantasy?
-Joshua Calkins-Treworgy, March 7th, 2021
Copyright 2013 by Joshua Calkins-Treworgy, all rights reserved. No portion of this novel may be duplicated, transmitted, or stored in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.
Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and locations are fictitious or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or people is coincidental.
Prologue
The wave of sickly green flames roared like all the hounds of hell, tearing along after Gailuf, leaving every living thing they touched a smoking black husk. The grasses ahead crinkled and browned moments before being scorched, the acrid stench of burning destruction pervading the air. Gailuf, a proud centaur, charged along ahead of this doom, his lower horse's body already strained, sweat pouring down his humanoid forehead and bared chest.
He could see the humans and their buildings, their cars and streetlamps and trappings all ghostly, phantom-like images. Gailuf was running in the in-between, the realm that tethered the Mortal Plane to the Ether Plane, the two worlds tied together by a kind of thin place that took on aspects of both. The real trouble for Gailuf was that wyldfire could burn in both the Ether and the in-between. Coupled with the Faerie Law which forbade appearing instantly before humans, his options for escape were slim.
Up ahead, Gailuf spotted an alley mouth he felt certain he could angle himself down to get away from both the flames and human eyes. Passing through cars and people who could neither sense him nor make direct contact with him, the centaur warrior still shivered at the chilled, jelly-like feeling he always felt when passing through what should have been solid matter. He put on an extra burst of speed and tore around the corner into the alley.
Thankfully for him, there were no vagrants hanging about. With an effort of will Gailuf reached out with his hands and tore a ragged hole in the air, slipping through as fast as he could. He let the rift shut behind him with a zipping sound, and a moment later, ghostly green fire raged around and through him, passing harmlessly through the Mortal Plane as a phantasmal force that only the gifted or Awakened would sense, much less see.
Gailuf waited until five minutes had passed, then used his innate magic to create a much neater, cleaner rift a few feet ahead of him, one that slipped right through the in-between. He trotted through, back into the land of faerie. All around he saw the charred waste of the flatlands in this part of Ovin's kingdom, Amermidst. Piles of ashes and bones dotted the landscape, the sight of them causing the centaur's stomach to turn flops in his body. His gorge rose at the stench saturating the environment, but he choked it back with an effort.
In the near distance, just northwest of him, Gailuf spotted a rarity. It was a low, squat building with a shimmering golden aura, a place known as a twinning. These enchanted structures were the same in the Mortal Plane, the in-between and the Ether Plane, and each was watched over by Awakened humans called sages.
The glow around this one, however, was letting off random sparks and splashes of neon green and bright purple light. The wyldfire hadn't destroyed the twinning, but its power was enough to damage the aura severely. He had no idea what sort of effects such damage would cause. Gailuf began to approach the twinning. He would have to send word of this damage and the ritual he'd partially witnessed to someone with influence in Ovin's court. When he was fifty yards away, a primal roar, savage and bloodthirsty, boomed out from the south. The creature that had invoked the wyldfire was coming, and Gailuf was surely its prey.
Heart pounding, the centaur fled the area with all haste, the notion of reporting the damaged twinning forgotten in his sudden urge to save his own skin. In a way, it's good that he forgot. Otherwise, dear reader, this tale wouldn't need telling.
Chapter One
Meet Kathy
The alarm clock buzzed, buzzed, buzzed its mindless, soulless message. Wake up, it declared without words, rise and be counted among the living! A hateful thing, the alarm clock, surely an idea created in a particularly dry spell of imagination by the Marquis De Sade. These foggy thoughts and more, some even less charitable, ran through Kathy's mind as her eyes cracked open, sight falling blearily upon the device. Laying on her right side beneath a simple white sheet, she let her left hand drift of its own accord to the clock, clutching it tightly.
Usually, Kathy Potts was the very model of impulse control. Exceptions, however, like the little square red clock hurtling against the wall and breaking apart, had to be made now and then. The buzzing was gone, and as she groaned and began to sit up, Kathy wondered why she'd set the alarm to begin with. She was on vacation, so she had no need to be up yet.
Swinging her legs over the side of the bed, the curvy brunnette stretched and yawned. At the end of the bed, her gray and black turtleshell cat, Tigger, mimicked her perfectly, adding in his feline angling of butt high, body low. She gave him a wry grin.
"If I tried that, I'd break something. Probably my spine," she said, her voice husky and sensuous, like a lounge singer from a 30's or 40's noir film or speakeasy. "Come on, buddy boy," she said affectionately, reaching out for the cat. He rubbed his head against her hand, as was his way of saying 'hello'.
Kathy's bedroom was a veritable shrine to all things fairy-related. A poster for the first computer-animated Tinkerbell movie hung on the wall over her bed in a faux gilt frame, her windowsill was lined with tiny figurines inspired by the art of Brian Froud, and the top shelf of her three-level bookcase against the right wall as one entered was lined with books on faerie mythology, legends and folklore. She even had an aging copy of the tales of the Brothers Grimm jammed in there, a valuable leatherbound tome she'd gotten from her brother Jack on her 21st birthday.
Kathy hummed a meaningless tune as she gathered some clothes for the lovely late spring day ahead. A simple white blouse with floral print, beige capris, and a pair of black Iowa Hawkeyes flip-flops in hand, she headed into the bathroom for a morning shower. Even in here her love of faerie and magical creatures showed. Her soap dish was a cute little baby dragon sitting in a cracked egg shell, its arms out to hold the soap. A pair of gnome figurines held up her toothbrush and razor.
These were not gnomes like one would see in a garden, though. These little guys were chubby, yellowish-skinned men with bushy white beards and medieval peasant's garb.
Kathy ran the shower, scrubbing away night sweat and her last vestiges of sleep. Freshly washed and clothed, she grabbed a bowl of cereal and sat in the small kitchen of her one-bedroom apartment in downtown Minneapolis. Her laptop, still open on the small two-seater table, came to life with a click of the spacebar, and she headed onto her Facebook account.
Kathy skimmed through her news feed, making a couple of sarcastic comments on some of her friends' posts. An ad on the right side of her screen caught her attention as she was finishing her breakfast. It was an ad for something called 'Magical Things'. Curious, she clicked on the link. She was transferred to a new tab and a website front page which read, 'Welcome, Kathy!' Kathy figured the site used her profile information to produce its greetings.
She began by clicking on a tab marked 'In Store Now'. Instantly, dozens of photos of figurines, wall scrolls, replica weapons and armor popped up on screen. She scrolled through, each item more enticing than the last. The prices weren't unreasonable, either.
Best of all, however, was the location. A quick Googlemaps search informed Kathy that Magical Things was only a fifteen minute drive away from her apartment. Tigger, purring and rubbing against Kathy's leg, looked up at her as Kathy petted him. "Well, Tig, I know what we're doing today," she said, baby-talking the feline. He seemed quite happy to receive his just attention.
A grabbing of her wallet and purse later, Kathy was out the door and on her way to start her vacation from work. That day would bring more than one beginning, but she knew nothing of that just yet. She did wonder if anyone would mention on the radio the strange wave of heat that washed over the region two days ago, but that seemed unlikely. Nobody else she'd talked to at the group home she worked at as a councilor noticed anything out of the ordinary, and the only coworker who commented on it was her supervisor, Cheryl.
"That heat was the fire under your ass to have your vacation," Cheryl said with a laugh. Kathy thought back on that and giggled as she climbed behind the wheel of her Mitsubishi Galante. Off she went then, to begin a chain of events that would never be forgotten, by anyone involved.
Driving through any part of Minneapolis, Kathy could tell anyone who asked, was an exercise in anger management and risk taking. Most drivers in the Twin Cities, from her perspective, operated on the presumption that so long as there was no explicit sign telling them not to do something, they could do it. This included such charming activities as making a left turn from the far right lane, suddenly slamming on one's brakes for no clear reason, and charging across three lanes of traffic just to pass a single car and cut all the way back over to make their exit ramp.
Kathy's response to these behaviors was usually, like that day, to scream at the other drivers, flip them off, and parrot their actions to demonstrate how annoying they were. She drove along cautiously, thinking the whole while, Welcome to Minnesota, where road rage isn't a problem, it's a philosophy. She swerved around a suddenly slowing van and continued on her way.
By the time Kathy got off the busier streets and into the quiet little neighborhood housing 'Magical Things' her knuckles were white, her heart rate was up, and her temper frayed. She slowed her car, nicknamed Duchess, to a near crawl as her phone's GPS robotically instructed her that her destination was just ahead on the left.
Kathy spotted the small building, turning into its parking lot a minute later. The lot was enormous, and it had no neighboring buildings for nearly a hundred yards to the west and south. It was more than a corner lot; in urban terms, it was a veritable estate.
Kathy parked Duchess in an empty space in the middle of the lot, taking note of the lone other vehicle present, a beat-up old Ford Ranger. She could see various boondoggles hanging from the truck's rearview mirror, and a pair of arcane symbols painted on the tailgate told her it belonged to the owner/proprietor.
As Kathy approached the store, she began to feel slightly light-headed, as if she'd been out in the sun for hours instead of moments. A shimmering corona of heat waved of of the store's exterior, giving off a peculiar burnt scent. "What the hell is that," she asked aloud.
Kathy Potts stepped closer to the building and saw flitting lights of green and purple jumping off of it. She reached cautiously for the doorknob, and watched as a golden light flowed out of the door and up onto her arm. "Wha," she managed before a bolt of purple energy, electricity she thought, blasted down into her hand.
Pain filled Kathy's body for a god ten seconds before the darkness dragged her down out of the waking world.