A Fairy Tail and Out of the Bag Read online

A Fairy Tail and Out Of The Bag

  by Xina Marie Uhl

  Copyright 2014 Xina Marie Uhl

  Published by XC Publishing

  ISBN-10: 1930805225

  ISBN-13: 978-1-930805-22-4

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without prior written permission of the author/publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews. All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation to anyone bearing the same name or names. Any resemblance to individuals known or unknown to the author are purely coincidental.

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  Table of Contents

  A Fairy Tail

  Out of the Bag

  Excerpt - A Cat's Guide to Human Behavior

  About the Author

  Other books by Xina Marie Uhl

  A Fairy Tail

  Eyes wild and teeth gnawing together in time with his throbbing heart, Sir Craig de Collincourt crouched in the bushes outside the keep of Shelet, watching his beloved pick flowers from the garden. Both her shining golden hair and voluptuous curves were hidden by the gauze hanging off her giant pointy hat-thing . . . what was that called? He never could remember. All he knew was it annoyed him. He barely restrained the urge to spring forth and rip the stupid thing off her head.

  His beloved laughed as her little white dog nipped at honey bees settling on the flowers, oblivious to his fevered gaze. Just this morning he had tried with all the ardent desire in his heart to warn her about her danger. She refused to listen. In fact, in a fit of uncharacteristic pique for one so sweet, she even ordered him to go jump off the barbican.

  “Gregoria . . .” he murmured, lust pulsing through his appendages. “I will have you if it’s the last thing I do.”

  “It may well be,” said a pleasant voice from immediately behind him.

  Sir Craig started so violently that he banged his head on the low hanging tree branch above him. Everything went black for a moment, but when the haze of pain cleared from his eyes he turned to see Boots, his hated adversary.

  Boots was lounging negligently against the bole of the tree, chewing on a piece of grass. He grinned infuriatingly. His attire was as brazen as his personality–no shoes, a loose white shirt unbuttoned to show his furry blond chest, and brown breeches too tight in the crotch and shredded just above his knees.

  “You, again,” Craig snarled.

  “Did you think you could escape me so easily?”

  The first time he encountered Boots, Craig was hanging by his fingernails from the edge of the Pit of Destruction. When he’d entered the room in the huge underground maze where Gregoria’s father had hidden her dowry and then challenged her suitors to find it, it had looked like one of countless others he’d just passed. Then the floor opened up and he found himself dangling over a reservoir of snakes, tarantulas, and cockroaches.

  Weighed down by armor and a fifty-pound broadsword, he felt his fingers slip. His memory flashed to sweet Gregoria and the thought of her lush red lips and plump, round bottom gave him renewed vigor.

  He managed to get one elbow hooked on the ledge when he heard whistling in the corridor beyond. A moment later a man strolled in and peered over the edge of the pit. He was ragged and half-naked and his odor–a cross between manure and a wet dog–preceded him.

  The man grinned widely to display what looked like a chunk of alfalfa lodged between his two front teeth.

  Cheerfully, he said, “Greetings, friend! My name is Boots. Need some help?”

  Craig hated cheerful people.

  “No, I enjoy teetering an inch and a half from certain death,” he replied sarcastically.

  Boots shrugged. “If you say so.”

  He promptly shapechanged into a shaggy white unicorn with black feet and galloped away.

  “Wait!” Craig warbled.

  A few moments later it became apparent that Boots was not coming back. Rage at this abrupt departure gave him the strength to spring up to the ledge of the pit and after the freakish half-man, half-beast.

  On the way he leaped over at the decaying body of a comrade whose head had been ripped off, shimmied across a two-inch-wide ledge along a cavern at least 8,000 feet deep, and fought off two harpies that flew out of a hole in the ceiling and defecated on him while shouting obscenities.

  Boots was navigating his way across a bed of burning coals when Craig caught up to him. His rage petered out when he realized that beyond the burning coals lay the third and final level of the maze. He needed to get past the Door of Death, an enchanted portal that turned to stone everyone who managed to get this far. Gregoria's father had promised his daughter’s hand to whoever brought back a cache of gold and jewels hidden within.

  He ignored Boots altogether and dashed across the coals in three seconds flat. Just as he arrived on the other side, a flash of movement caught his eye. There, across the great Hall of Hell, in front of the Door of Death, stood Baron von Krouper.

  The phosphorescent blue glow of magical wards surrounded him, reflecting off von Krouper’s shiny bald head and emphasizing the rolling mounds of fat at his stomach. Craig could never let his fair Gregoria be ravaged by that slobbering fiend, who was said to spend his off hours raping nuns and devouring babies.

  Craig flung himself forward, dodging the stone statues that had once been men standing frozen all around him.

  “No!” he howled.

  He was too late. Von Krouper traced sigils in the air and the magic around the door evaporated with a hiss. Laughing demonically, he shoved the key in the lock and thrust the Door of Death open. Craig made a last desperate reach, but von Krouper executed a downward motion with his hand and a giant ball of blasting heat whizzed through the air and exploded against Craig’s chest, knocking him backward against the wall.

  He didn’t even know that his hair was on fire until Boots began beating at it with a moldy, rolled-up cloak from one of the statues.

  By the time he struggled to his feet, von Krouper was long gone, sealed impenetrably behind the Door of Death. Craig beat, kicked, and banged his head against the door in grief at losing his fair Gregoria. At last, his agony subsided and he collapsed against the door, spent. Boots leaned against the legs of a stone statue, snacking on worms from the moist soil.

  “What are you staring at?” Craig asked, annoyed.

  “The show.”

  Craig thought about getting up and killing him, but he couldn’t seem to summon the energy.

  “Now that you’re finished, we should leave.”

  “We?”

  “I don’t like being alone, except when I’m shedding. You’re not as pretty as Gregoria, but you’ll do.”

  Craig would have preferred sliding naked down a three-mile-long razor blade to Boots’s company, but paused a moment before saying this aloud. The beast-man just might be of assistance in leaving the maze. All the annoyance would be worth it if he could turn into a fire-breathing dragon that next time they ran into a monster.

  So, Craig endured Boots’s company and went along when Boots claimed that he knew an easy way out. The way was somewhat easier, except for the earthquakes, poisonous gases, vampires, telemarketers, and other assorted creatures of darkness/acts of destruction.

  The scariest thing Boots turned into was a water buffalo, which didn’t do a lot of good when they were fighting that nest of three-headed hydras. Though Boots did manage to trample on
e of the hydra’s heads while stampeding away in terror.

  When at last Craig emerged from the fight, staggering from exhaustion and bleeding from a half-dozen wounds, he found Boots drinking calmly from a river just outside the cavern entrance.

  Boots turned back into a man upon seeing Craig and greeted him happily. In disgust, Craig pushed Boots in the river and fled, determined to convince Gregoria of von Krouper’s evil intentions now that he was free of the maze. That was the last he had seen of the beast-man until today.

  “What are you doing here?” Craig asked.

  “I want to be with Gregoria. She feeds me apples when I graze in her father’s pasture. I like that.”

  Gregoria would be kind to someone–or something–like Boots. She was like that. Kind and sweet and with such luscious, delectable curves . . . .

  Sweating suddenly, Craig said in a strangled voice, “Go away before I slay you.”

  Boots inspected his fingernails nonchalantly. “Are you sure you don’t want me to stay? I could be a big help to you.”

  “Like you were in the maze?” he muttered.

  “Have you considered that von Krouper probably has Gregoria enchanted?”

  “Yeah,” Craig said warily, alarmed at the sudden spark of intelligence from Boots.

  “So we get into the castle, bang Van Krouper on the head, and rescue Gregoria.”

  Craig thought it had to be more complicated than that. But at that moment, von Krouper rode out of the forest, followed by a retinue of noblemen, hunting dogs, and servants, one of whom led a horse with a stag draped over the back. Von Krouper hoisted his stout body from his frothing horse and threw his arms around Gregoria, planting a slavering kiss on her tender lips. The fiend! Rage suffused Craig’s vision for such a long moment that he wondered if he was having a fit of apoplexy.

  “Very well,” he heard himself snarling through a fog of anger. “We’ll work together to defeat von Krouper and let Gregoria choose which of us she wants.”

  The bargain seemed safe enough. What maiden in her right mind would choose Boots as her husband?