This week, I’ve got a short story—really, a sketch of a speculative scene—to share. Unpolished, but hopefully entertaining. I’ve been playing around with some settings and characters and themes and, well, let me know what you think.
Fashioned with Sparkles was one of the best-selling drinks on the menu.
“It’ll be our flagship drink, soon as folks stop comin’ for the Jumpin’ Jackalope Juice,” Jambalin had said, throwing one of those upsetting grins that revealed only his bottom fangs. “So you listen: Get me all the uni-tail hairs you find. I always got more coin for those golden threads.”
Jambalin knew why folks bought his Fashioned with Sparkles. And it wasn’t the rail whiskey he insisted was integral to the recipe, some sickly brown liquor called “Goblin’s Oak.”
It was the unicorn hair. Obviously. People came to SideQuest Bar & Grill and tolerated Jambalin’s probing questions for the unicorn hair.
To be precise, unicorn tail hair. That was the key to Fashioned with Sparkles just like Jackalope zest was the key to the Jumpin’ Juice. (Where’s the zest come from? Grind down just a bit of the antlers, enough to cover a dime.) And the list goes on—but you have to risk pulling up a curiously sticky stool and getting some green gunk on your trousers if you wanna see the whole menu. Better bring your glasses, too, and one of those tiny flashlights—the place is not well lit.
Well, that’s if you want to see the bar menu. The restaurant’s a classy establishment. They got candles and lamps and roaring fires—mostly in fireplaces, too. It’s nice.
“I got you,” Zayn had said—always said. The guy knew nothing of humility. He had emerald eyes and great hair and thirty-seven years of people saying he was going places. Plus, he’d never seen a mythical creature he couldn’t snatch something tasty from.
Not in a weird way of course. Zayn was a vegetarian, and he didn’t have time (really, interest) to read the actual rules of foraging and poaching in the Land Between. So, he wasn’t bringing back meat and certainly not live animals. He snatched strands of hair and clipped nails and ground down parts of antlers—that sort of thing. Made the cocktails sparkle; made the entrees practically come back to life.
Totally above board. Totally legal. Totally not frowned upon by the Department of Health.
It’s magic, right? (That’s what Ms. TinTan said to the restaurant’s backers.) It’s not going to hurt you. Turn you yellow? Sure. Grow a (temporary) third eye? Yeah, of course—that’s to be expected.
And there was that one guy who—for some reason—thought he was entitled to a refund because his piss turned black. Jambalin set him straight: one, crisp slap across the face and suddenly that guy was tipping with gusto—thirty-five-percent! Unheard of!
“I ain’t your urologist,” Jambalin had bellowed, those fangs suddenly looking quite sharp.
Zayn had just been surprised Jambalin knew what a urologist was, that the old barkeep could even say the word. Zayn hadn’t yet figured out what sort of species Jambalin was—he kept wanting to say vampire, but he didn’t want to give undue emphasis to those fangs—but the barman definitely had a hard time with his ‘r’s.
Anyway, there is nothing more thrilling than stumbling upon a wild unicorn.
That solitary horn reflecting soft sunlight like a lighthouse guiding lost sailors home. Beautiful. Just earning a glimpse of such a rare creature in its natural habitat adds five years to a person’s life. And if that majestic being catches your eye, you can see your own soul reflected back to you—your deepest secrets, your most intimate passions, those hopes you’ve only dared whisper into the cold side of your pillow.
So say the legends, at least.
Those were in the same pile of reading material as the bylaws on foraging and poaching in the Land Between. Obviously, Zayn hadn’t read them, but word got round. He was looking forward to enjoying those bonus decades he’d certainly earned—what with all the wild unicorn spottings—and he definitely didn’t want to know any more about his soul, his secrets, his passions or his hopes than was absolutely necessary to get by in the day.
Anyway—the unicorn: all rainbow mane and soft white hair. Delicate eyelashes that fluttered with every slow, steady chomp of the tall green grass. This unicorn was an elder. Zayn could see even from where he was, crouched down in a nearby bush, how many spirals that horn contained. Every spiral meant ten years—and there were at least twelve on that thing.
Now to trim some of that tail…
Zayn’s eyes were good—he could measure a unicorn horn from a whole field away and he didn’t need a flashlight to read the bar menu at SideQuest (though, to be fair, he’d long ago committed it to memory). But even better than his eyes—and perhaps even better than his good looks—were his instincts, and something was setting them off at that precise moment.
Zayn put one hand to the soft ground beneath him, waiting. He felt the ground move, a slight vibration and then a steady rumble. The branches on the bush were trembling like they’d been caught in some act of scandal. Zayn pursed his lips together, slowly—slowly!—looking over his left shoulder at the lowlands behind him.
There were plenty of the short, spotty shrubs, the same kind he currently huddled behind. There was a meandering river, taking its good old time flowing southward. There was Zayn’s own milibeast, the small reptilian horse that Zayn often used to traverse the strange and wonderful terrain of the Land Between.
And there was a herd of—well, Zayn wasn’t at all sure what it was a herd of. Husky creatures, cow-like in some ways, but way too fast. Long, orange hair tumbling down broad backs. And horns! Goodness gracious—those horns were wicked in all their twisted, sharpened, definitely-could-impale-an-unwanted-stranger glory.
Zayn frowned. He had far too many unicorn-inspired decades left to live to lose it all here under the feet of some magical bovines.
He turned back to the unicorn, moving steadily ahead while maintaining a low crouch. Unfortunately, the unicorn had also detected the arrival of the cow-things. It didn’t seem pleased. But instead of running away, it was pawing at the ground, its horn lowered like it was going to charge and—
It’s charging at me! Zayn realized just a second before he would’ve earned the business end of that majestic horn straight through his pelvis. It scraped his side instead: Blood and glitter and loose fabric flying this way and that.
Zayn stumbled, turned, slashing at the creature’s tail with his short sword. Missed.
The unicorn came around for a second pass because, really, this wasn’t Zayn’s day. He whistled for his milibeast, Silverwing, hoping for a quick exit, but ol’ Silver was already well on her way toward the clearing, what with the stampeding cow creatures. Turned out she didn’t fancy being run over either.
“Hold,” Zayn said, one hand outstretched toward the frantic, charging Silverwing, the other pointing the blade toward the unicorn. “Hold!”
Neither listened. Both kept charging ahead.
But Zayn—confident, cool and possessing really just the one skill, that being a dogged determination to succeed at procuring mystical ingredients for reasonably priced cocktails—lowered his shoulder, deflecting the unicorn’s horn toward Silverwing, all while turning swiftly with the blade to slice a handful of unicorn tail.
Success.
Minus the cows and the now-angrier unicorn and the milibeast that was in quite a state of disarray. But Zayn kept his wits about him and—
“Listen ‘ere, boy: I’ve paid you for the bounty. If more coin will buy me your zipped lips, then here.” Jambalin tossed a satchel full of oddly shaped golden nuggets.
Zayn caught them with the hand that wasn’t pressing an icepack to his head, grinned despite the swollen nature of his lower lip.
“And stop bleedin’ on the floor, boy!”
“But this is the best part! Don’t you wanna hear about the cows?”
“Only if I can grill ‘em,” Mr. Charc said, pushing a crate of only-the-gods-knew-what through the bar and into the kitchen.
“Maybe!” Zayn called after. “I’ll map their migration next time—”
“The man’s gone, boy,” Jambalin growled. “Plus, we all know you don’t have your papers. Last thing any of us need is you earning yourself an arrest in the Land Between. Now patch yourself up or get out.” The barkeep paused, turned. “Scratch that—just get out. You’ve done your work. No one’s paying you for patches.”
“But I don’t think you appreciate—”
“Aye, I appreciate what you brought me.” Jambalin had already ground up the hairs into a fine, sparkling powder. He held the tiny bottle up, his hand shaking ever so slightly. “And I’ll be sure you get your tips.” The barman spooned a bit of unicorn powder into an empty glass, reached for the “Goblin’s Oak.”
“No!” Zayn lunged across the counter, snatched the brown liquor from the maybe-vampire’s hands. “The good stuff,” Zayn growled. His whole body ached, and now there was a sickly combination of blood and glitter on the counter. “It’s worth the good stuff.”
Jambalin laughed, a deep frightening sound. He reached up for a higher bottle, toasting Zayn with it. The liquid it held was only slightly less brown, but it glistened something magical. For his part, Zayn sat back, took a swig from the bottle now in his hand, grimaced.
It burned all the way down. But at least it distracted him from—well, everything else. From the barkeep who’d already dismissed him, from his wounded body and (don’t tell anyone) wounded ego, from the (recently) empty bed he would have to go home to eventually and from those thirty-seven-years of people telling him he was going places, and, well, from where that place turned out to be: SideQuest Bar & Grill.
Magic only got you so far. “Goblin’s Oak” would get him the rest of the way.
Definitely an entertaining scene, I liked the combinations of themes/tropes
I have liked all of your writings, but I did not like the short story It felt forced.