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

up. Relying on his dueling instincts, he gauged where the speaker was and, with a thought, fired off one of his stored paralysis hexes, and not a partial one, either.

He waited a moment. When the voice said nothing else, he pulled his head out of the bag. A rain of seeds fell from his hair as he rose, scattering everywhere. Seeds trickled down his neck and clung to his nose.

Great. First, stuck as a Sultan. Now, this.

What a humiliating day.

But he forgot his dismay when he saw the ugly hag—for that must be what she was, literally—caught mid-cackle, as frozen as a statue.

Grinning, he stalked forward and stared the old woman in the face. “No. I am not going to turn you back so you can babble about your tragic backstory and what led you to this.” He gestured at the giant black rooster, which was still able to move only its head. “You can save that for the Agents. Turning humans into chickens! You’re sick!”

He started to turn away and then spun back toward her again. “And I am not an emmet! Born and breed Cornishman ‘ere.”

Returning to the food dispenser, Gaius pushed the red lever and caught a few of the grains of rice that fell. These, he tossed into the giant rooster’s mouth—which was why he had left its head unfrozen. There would have been no way to get it to swallow had he frozen the whole creature. The black Ayam Ceman shrank to the size of a normal chicken.

Then, Gaius stomped around the enclosure performing the Word of Ending cantrip over and over.

As he had suspected, the little Frizzle was the missing boy from Four Clover Farms. The Norfolk Grey turned out to be Mrs. Fiddock, the butcher’s wife, who had gone missing last summer. She seemed heartily glad to be back in her proper form and kept bursting into tears and clutching Gaius’s arm in gratitude. There were other humans as well, including the black rooster, who turned out to be a fisherman from Padstow who seemed to believe he had been suffering a nightmare. Gaius kept going, casting the cantrip on each and every bird. There were fifteen humans in all among the livestock.

But the emu was just an emu.

Gaius guided the locals, including the poor fisherman, out onto the moors, leaving those who were tourists from other places still in the enclosure. He called his girlfriend and asked if her father could send a few Agents to clean up the mess. Then he escorted the butcher’s wife and Farmer Angove’s grandson home.

Returning to his father’s farm, he was greeted as a hero. He could not tell the farmhands what had happened, except to say that the threat had been eliminated, and the little boy had been returned. However, he told his father the whole story when the older man came to see him in the chicken yard. The taciturn old farmer listened to him without comment. Then he nodded once and wordlessly held out Gaius’s wand.

Gaius stared at the length of teak and brass, so familiar and dear to him. Then, he smiled and shook his head.

“It’s all right, Father. You keep it till I’m ready to go back to school. I think this learning to get by without it is doing me some good.”

“At least, you won’t be freezing any more chickens,” his father replied, sticking the wand in his coat pocket.

“No, of course, not,” Gaius replied airily.

The moment the old farmer walked away, Gaius pulled out the harmonica he had been holding behind him.

“Okay, chickens, listen up!”

The End

About the Author

L. Jagi Lamplighter is the author of the YA fantasy series: The Books of Unexpected Enlightenment, the third book of which was nominated for the YA Dragon Award in 2017 and the fourth book of which won the first YA Ribbit Award. She is also the author of the Prospero’s Children series: Prospero Lost, Prospero In Hell, and Prospero Regained.

She has published numerous articles and short stories. She also has an anthology of her own works: In the Lamplight. She also edits for Superversive Press and teaches The Art and Craft of Writing.

When not writing, she switches to her secret identity as wife and stay-home mom in Centreville, VA, where she lives with her dashing husband, author John C. Wright, and their four darling children, Orville, Ping-Ping Eve, Roland Wilbur, and Justinian Oberon. For more information visit: https://www.superversivesf.com/fantasticschools/

Spacer Williams’ Chicken

Joshua M. Young

Spacer Williams’ Chicken Joshua M. Young

Spacer Third Class Williams had caused disaster on shore leave before and was rightfully leery of causing another. The incident on Capella IV had started from a one-night stand, and what was shore leave for if not for brief, torrid romantic encounters? Just because things had gone off the rails—well, that should have been his problem, not the fleet’s. But no. The Capellans had to go and make a big deal out of it— anyways. Different story. The Lister Protocol, unlike many Merchant Scout regulations, was clear, concise, and easy to understand. “Thou shalt not bring animals aboard the ship.” It didn’t apply to the science team, of course, but Williams was a Loadmaster’s Mate, not a scientist. He looked long and hard at the chicken and tried to ignore the impulse to pick it up.

Well, he thought it was a chicken. It was big, maybe three feet tall, and while it was chicken-shaped, it was more beautifully colored than any chicken he’d ever seen. Bright red tail plumes nestled in a body covered in iridescent, shiny black feathers. The creature’s head was a deep russet that made him think of fall; the eyes big and wide in a way that reminded him of those stupid cartoons Vance was always watching late at night. It looked at him in a way that could only be called imploring.

Williams felt like an idiot. He had been an Iowan farm boy before