Dragonelf and Friends (and Swords!): a Fantasy-Romance Saga, Part 2

Heather leaned against an enormous red-barked Devil Tree, sharpening her axe. Two yards behind her, the James Woods loomed, dark and ominous. The jagged branches of the Devil Trees seemed to reach toward the weary travelers, taunting, We won't hurt you...much.

Seamus sat on a flat boulder, basking in the moonlight, rubbing his blistered feet, complaining that his new suede boots weren't "walking shoes." The inn, where Seamus had slept and heard the voice of his beloved Dreamweaver before being rudely awaken by Heather (formerly known as Toucan Nose) and her axe, was no more than a small gray, smoke-puffing speck in the distance. The barbarians who wanted to behead Seamus were too drunk to walk in a straight line, but they'd still managed to sniff out the elf and young woman's trail, with much cursing and axe-clashing and singing off-key.

Less than a quarter-mile away, one of the barbarian women cried out, "Where'd my friggin' buffalo-skin britches go?!"

"They're getting closer. We've rested long enough," Heather said, stowing her axe in her moose-head purse. She gazed up at the Devil Trees flanking the rocky, weed-ridden path that led into the heart of Talking Tree territory, took two steps forward, and was swallowed in darkness.

Seamus dabbed his sweaty face on the corner of his cashmere cloak. He clambered off the boulder, gasping when his aching feet hit the uneven ground. "Heather! Wait up!" He limped to the small clearing between the Devil Trees, and stopped.

"I've heard the horror stories about the James Woods," he called, praying that Heather was still alive to hear him. "When elves survive to tell their stories, that is."

Heather stomped her foot. "I already explained this. The Talking Trees won't bother us as long as we've crossed the Bridge of Melancholy Grompers by tomorrow night. The barbarians won't follow us into the James Woods. If we stop and make camp anywhere else, you're gonna wake up without a head. Or, should I say, you won't wake up at all. So what's it gonna be, Seamus?" Smirking, she held out her dirty hand. "You can hold my hand if you like."

"I can't see your hand!" Seamus cried.

"Oh, for the love of Fozzy Meringue," Heather grumbled, backtracking a few steps. "Hurry up!"

"You do realize that the Melancholy Grompers drink elf blood, right?" Seamus said, taking her hand. Heather yanked him beneath the thick brown canopy formed 150 feet overhead by the Devil Trees' ogre-sized leaves.

Before he could say "Pewthergrimms!" (an ancient Elfese curse, roughly translated as "You ignorant prostitute!"), Seamus found himself traipsing deeper and deeper into the black soul of the James Woods. He looked longingly over his shoulder at the narrow, moonlight-drenched entrance to the forest. Even the fast-approaching torches and drunken catcalls of the barbarians weren't as frightening as the thick, eerily-silent blackness engulfing them.

"Just stay close to me," Heather whispered.

"Why are you whispering?" Seamus whispered back.

"In case the barbarians decide to follow us in."

"I thought you said they wouldn't follow us!" Seamus gasped.

"Well, normally they wouldn't. But they're pretty drunk. You never know."

"Pewthergrimms!"

"I don't have to help you, ya know," Heather said.

"Why are you helping me? How'd you find me at the inn in the first place?"

"Well, I heard you graduated from Howvard...barely." She snickered. "I knew you'd head home to Poshollow to show off your fancy diploma. That inn back there is the only inn within a hundred miles that has flushing toilets, so I knew you'd go there."

"Laugh all you like," Seamus said indignantly, "but Howvard was the best five years of my life. It sure beats running from barbarians and hanging out in the haunted James Woods."

A shrieking bat swooped down and snatched a pringleberry off a shrub inches from Seamus' pointed ear, ruffling his long golden-white hair. He stifled the scream in his throat, but still peed his pants just a teeny bit.

"So what have you been up to since high school?" Seamus asked with false cheer, gripping Heather's hand even tighter.

"Poshollow's gone all to hell since you left. Your mother never told you the truth in the letters she wrote you. She didn't wanna upset you because we all know how delicate you are," Heather said, rolling her eyes.

"Who called me 'delicate'?!" Seamus cried.

"Shhh!"

"But Poshollow's like a utopia in the woods, with flute-music and fairies that know how to party," Seamus declared. "What could possibly have gone wrong?"

"Everything. The fairies fled two years ago; they were sick of picking ticks and lice off the elderly elves. Nobody plays their flutes anymore. All the elves stopped caring for their gardens; there're weeds everywhere. All the humans moved to the Algernon Mountains, where there are more boars and wild sheep, and acai berries galore. You've heard about the amazing weight-loss juice of the acai berry, right?"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa. Slow down." Seamus thought his delicate head would explode. Too much information! "My mom said my bedroom is just the way I left it. Did the gnome servants touch my tennis trophies?"

"I don't know! Who cares! Our hometown is on the brink of extinction, and all you're worried about are your tennis trophies!" Heather dropped his hand in disgust, and stalked away.

"Heather! Toucan Nose, c'mon. I can't keep up. My heels are covered in blisters."

"Some of us have had to work these last five years, Seamus Dragonelf! I had to put myself through Sorcery School. My dad's been unemployed since the troll-monks stopped paying their bourbon-tasters. My mom's allergic to acai berry bushes, and keeps getting bad asthma attacks in the Algernon Mountains. The last attack almost killed her. So don't you dare say another word about your blisters or your trophies, or, so help me, I will tie you to a tree and leave you there with a note around your neck that says 'Bon Appétit'! The Talking Trees and Melancholy Grompers can fight over who gets to eat your heart."

Seamus caught up with her. His heels hurt so bad, tears stung his sparkling sapphire eyes. "Have you forgotten I'm the prince of the lower west side of Poshollow?"

"I didn't even tell you the worst part, Seamus," Heather said, turning her guilt-stricken face away from him.

"What? Something worse than the fairies leaving?"

"Your mother was kidnapped last week. Slugbongles from Wunderfricken broke into her tree house at two in the morning and carried her off. She never even woke up."

"Mum always was a sound sleeper," Seamus mused.

"They left a ransom note, written in toxic orange-snail blood. I have it here in my bag. And they've put a 600-silvercockle bounty on your head. The Manhattan barbarians were the first to hear about it, but I'm sure they're not the only ones eager to cut off your head and claim the reward."

"But," Seamus sputtered, "if the note's toxic, I don't want to touch it...Only 600 silvercockles for my head? That can't be right!"

"600 is quite a bit, actually. So don't mess with me," Heather said with a sarcastic snort. "I cast a spell on the note. It's harmless now." She fished through her humongous moose-head purse. "One of your gnome servants got his fingers burnt off when he first found it, though."

"Which one? Muckbrains or Johnny?"

"Mmm, I think it was Johnny. I have trouble telling them apart, though."

"Tell me about it. I once called Muckbrains 'Johnny,' and woke up with a hot Scarpathian wolf turd in my hand."

"Here it is." Heather unfolded the ransom note and handed it to Seamus.

"Can't you conjure a bit of light so I can read the thing?"

"No. I'm not a full-fledged sorceress yet. I still have two years to go before I can apply for my license."

"That sucks."

"Aren't elves supposed to have superior night vision?" Heather teased.

Seamus shrugged. "Maybe if I ate more carrots."

"Well," Heather said, "I read the note when I put the spell on it to neutralize the poison. It says, 'Bring us 5 million gold coins by the next full moon, or else we drain her blood and sell it to the Melancholy Grompers.' They didn't say it as well as that; there were a lot of misspellings and grammatical errors, and some misplaced commas, but what do you expect from Wunderfricken Slugbongles."

Seamus gritted his perfect teeth. "How dare they! Why couldn't they have kidnapped old Gertrude Plowhorn instead?"

"Gertrude's only half-elf. The Slugbongles are targeting purebred elves."

"What's her other half? Hobbit?"

"I don't know. She's not that short. She never talks about her parents; she probably can't remember that far back. She just turned 800 last June."

"I wish my father were here. He'd know what to do," Seamus said, stubbing his toe on a tree root and yelping in pain.

"Well, at least you have Dreamweaver, his sword," Heather said.

Seamus buried his face in his hands and wailed, "No I don't! I lost Dreamweaver. Freshman year at Howvard."

"That's terrible! What happened?"

"I wanted to pledge Delta Phi Alpha Zeta Tau because Dad and Grandpa were both Deltaphialphazetataus. So these guys were all like, 'Yeah, sure, of course you can join our fraternity. All we need to see is your father's sword so we can verify you're elf royalty.' So I showed them Dreamweaver...And when I woke up, I was naked on my dorm room bed with toothpaste and shaving cream smeared all over my face and...other parts, and Dreamweaver was gone. I went back to the frat house and demanded to speak with the head elf, but they all threw fairy-dust on me-the kind that makes you impotent for a month...the longest month of my life-and ran me off the premises."

"And you let 'em get away with it?!" Heather cried, slicing a giant firefly in half with her axe.

Seamus groaned. "Next time, warn me, okay? You got glowing firefly guts on my boots."

"At least we know where Dreamweaver is," Heather said, wiping her dripping axe blade on a leaf.

"Not exactly," Seamus murmured. "Two years ago some Pigeontoed Dwarves broke into the Deltaphialphazetataus' basement and stole Dreamweaver. She hasn't been seen since."

"Was your precious Howvard education worth it, Seamus? To have lost Dreamweaver and your mother, while Poshollow fell into ruin? What did you major in, anyway?"

"Creative writing," Seamus answered proudly.

"Oh, fabulous," Heather laughed. "Let's see you write your way out of this Fozzy Meringue-forsaken mess, then. Maybe a sonnet can save us! Or a flippin' essay about all the women whose hearts you've broken!"

"I'll have you know I got a B-plus on that essay!"

"I don't know what to say. You don't care about anything or anyone but yourself, do you?" Heather said, plopping down on a tree stump. "Let's pitch a fire and smoke some bubbleweed."

Seamus gasped. "I'm ashamed of you, Heather!"

"Everybody's doing it," she said, reaching into her bearskin-and-chainmail bra, and retrieving a small leather pouch.

"That stuff'll turn your teeth yellow and your lungs black," Seamus preached, sitting down next to her.

"I'm a sorceress. I can whiten my teeth and clean my lungs whenever I want."

"Can you do the same for me?"

"I dunno if I want to. What a royal screw-up you've turned into. And you had such potential." Heather sighed, and dropped a pinch of bubbleweed into a pipe. "Why don't you make us a fire while I try to figure out how we're gonna to save your mom," she said, lighting the pipe with a spark from her finger.

"I don't appreciate your snide tone," Seamus said haughtily.

He began gathering twigs and dry brush just to get away from her. Heather didn't understand how hard it was, living in the shadow of the most highly regarded elf king to ever grace the forests of Poshollow. Even the Talking Trees had pledged their allegiance to Aidan Dragonelf. But that was centuries ago, back when Seamus had been but a boy. His father's glorious, peaceful kingdom, which had once extended all the way to the Bay of Futile Arrows, had been reduced to a few hundred acres of idyllic woods.

The elves, humans, dwarves, trolls, fairies, gnomes, and occasional Hobbit trespassers in Poshollow deserved a strong leader (which was not to say that Reya Buglebreath-Raccoonwishelf-Dragonelf, his mother, hadn't done her best as elf queen after his father's death). Seamus knew, deep down, he wasn't the right elf for the job, despite his royal ancestry. He had learned at a young age to rely on his sex-appeal to get what he needed. Inheriting his father's bone structure and his mother's fair coloring and flawless skin, spending years upon years weightlifting and swimming laps in the enchanted Springs of Ardour, Seamus had earned his ranking as "Sexiest Elf Alive" for 258 out of the last 259 years (he'd tried a controversial, mullet hairstyle the year he lost to Gregory Elfchuck). Heather had been alive for only 22 of those years. Perhaps she needed to be reminded of his supreme sexual prowess.

Heather exhaled fragrant smoke and bubbles. Her eyes were drawn to Seamus' tight rear end as he bent to build the fire. Countering the soothing, hallucinogenic side effects of the bubbleweed, the curves of Seamus' flaming-hot butt sent her heart skittering and her nerves tingling. She knew it was too dark for him to see her ogling him, so she ogled away (without her enormous "toucan" nose in the way, she could focus on faraway objects much easier). She caught a glimpse of movement-a flash of light-in the bushes behind Seamus, and reached for her axe.

"There's something behind you, Seamus. Or someone," Heather said calmly.

Seamus shot up like an electrocuted cat.

The bushes rustled again, and there was another brief flash of light. Then a low rumbling sound. The bushes opened wide, and out popped a fur-trimmed hood and two blinking eyes.

Seamus screamed.

( Part 3, "A Fellowship of Freaks," is continued here. If you missed Part 1, "Barbarian Surprise," click here .)