CRACKED: An Anthology of Eggsellent Chicken Stories by J. Posthumus (read after txt) 📕

spells himself, he would talk other students into casting them for him. So, without his wand, up here on the moors, he was almost as unprotected as the Unwary.

Almost.

Gaius pulled his harmonica from his pocket. There were two types of spells that could be cast instantly or at least on the fly. The first was cantrips, such as the Word of Ending that he had used to release the hapless chickens from his paralysis hex. These were short words or phrases accompanied by hand gestures.

The second was enchantment, which included hexes, and, particularly, charms that altered the weather. Enchantments were music-based. If one tried to whistle or sing, the magical force moving through one’s body vibrated and tickled too much, making it impossible to maintain the correct tones, and the spell was disrupted. With an instrument, however, one could focus the magic and perform amazing feats. Luckily, the spell for dispelling fog was one of the first things they had been taught his freshman year.

Gaius put the harmonica to his lips and played the short tune. He was only a mediocre player, but luckily, one did not need to be a virtuoso to perform satisfactory enchantments.

To his delight, the fog began to lift almost immediately.

The mist vanished, and the snowy moors appeared. Northward, Bodmin Moor spread before him, brown hills and quaint rock formations, such as the Cheesewringer, a giant stone outcropping that resembled the layers of hand-made cheese. Eastward, the hillside sloped downward to reveal the town and, some forty miles away, the rolling hills of Dartmoor National Park. With a slight, wry smile, Gaius waved. His girlfriend lived over that way. He turned back to Bodmir Moor. To the south lay farmlands, including his family farm. Westward…

There, staring him in the face, was a gigantic black rooster.

Sh*t! Giant Chicken!

They stared eye to eye, the young man and the six-foot cock. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Gaius noted that the creature was an Ayam Ceman, a breed known for everything about them being black. Their feathers were black. Their cockscombs were black. Their eggs were black. Their fluffy chicks were black. Even their meat was black.

Then, Gaius screamed.

Startled, the giant rooster let out an ear-splitting Cock-a-doodle-do. Then, it spun and fled, strutting away with its great chicken legs, across the rocks of the rolling moors.

“Stone the crows!” Gaius gasped. “One peck and that thing could have murderized me!”

He pulled out his phone, his hand trembling. Then he just stared at it. Who in the world did he think he was going to call with this thing, even if he could get a signal up on the moors, which, frankly, he never had before?

Was he going to explain to the local dog warden that he had seen a six-foot rooster?

Should he ask for the humongous-barnyard-fowl warden?

He put the phone away.

Reaching under his sleeve, he touched the bracelet, a hoop of black metal, that he wore beneath his coat. With this, he could call a select group of other students who wore similar devices. Most of them could not help him as they lived on other continents. But his girlfriend was on this circuit, and she lived on Dartmoor, just over the horizon. She also knew an amazing amount of magical world trivia.

“Rachel, me beauty” Gaius began, falling into the Cornish way of greeting in his disoriented state. He was impressed with how calm his voice sounded. One almost could not tell that, moments ago, his whole body had been shaking. “You grew up with all this magic stuff. You know the local lore. Are there any legends about giant chickens?”

His girlfriend’s voice came over the bracelet, high and sweet. It sounded as if it were speaking just beside his ear. “On the moors, you mean? Here in Devonshire, there is. I don’t know about Cornwall.”

“Really? And what might that be?” he asked airily.

Rachel’s voice took on that tone she used when reciting from memory. “A few centuries ago, a local vicar, here in Devonshire, began dabbling in the dark arts. He possessed a large collection of forbidden books and manuscripts. Once, while he was conducting services, his servant Moorcock opened one of these tomes and, foolishly, began to read. Moorcock was not a learned man, so, of course, he read aloud.

“He had scarcely read a paragraph when the sky grew dark, and great winds began to shake the cottage. The door blew open, and in came a black hen. It was normal sized at first, but then it began to grow and grow, until it was as big as an ox.

“At that point, the vicar broke off his sermon and ran home. When he arrived, the hen’s head was brushing the ceiling. The vicar threw down some rice, and as the hen pecked at the grains, it returned to its original size.”

“What happened to the servant?” Gaius asked.

“Um… no idea. It’s not part of the legend.”

“Interesting,” he mused. “Thanks.”

“Always happy to help,” she replied cheerfully.

Staring off the way the rooster had gone, Gaius paused, torn. Should he ask Rachel to contact her father, who was an Agent of the Wisecraft? The Agents were part magical policemen and part supernatural animal control. This thing was right up their alley.

But then he thought of Tyach and of the doc. Agent Griffin was a nice man, but his loyalty was to the laws of the Wise, not to Gaius. Would he want to wipe the memory of everyone who might have encountered the monster bird?

That was not a price Gaius was willing to pay. He would have to solve this himself.

Gaius returned home one more time, where he grabbed a bag of chicken feed. He had no rice, but he hoped this would do. He considered asking his father for his wand again but knew that if he explained why he wanted it, the old man would not let him go. Instead, he grabbed the hunk of quartz he kept on the shelf above his bed. It