literature

The Magical World of Emma Milligan

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Emma was eating her Weetabix when she felt the warm glow against her chest.  She dropped her spoon, and said, 'Oh, for God's sake!'

'Oh, what is it now, Emma?' asked her mother.

Her father peered over the top of his newspaper and said, 'Don't make such a row at the breakfast table, Emma.'

As always, Emma was tempted to point out that her father only ever came out from behind his newspaper when he had something negative to say, and as always, she kept it to herself.  She got down from her chair, swung her school bag over her shoulder and said, 'I have to go.'

She hurried to the front door, ignoring her parents' threats and protests, and made her way to the cemetery across the road.  As she was walking, she grabbed the cord around her neck and hoisted up the dragon tooth from beneath her school shirt.  She was tempted to rip the thing off and drop it down the next drain she came to, but she decided against it, at least for the time being.

In her secret lair beneath the small mausoleum of somebody who had died rich, Ignitia was lying with her tail curled round a clutch of eggs, tapping her claws impatiently on the stony floor.

'What is it this time?' asked Emma.  Then, as her eyes adjusted to the light and she caught sight of the eggs, 'Where on earth did you find someone to fertilise those?'

'Never you mind,' said Ignitia.  'Baltazar Fortescue is after them.  I need you to stop him.'

'Oh, not him again!'

'Evil does not rest, little one.'

'I have to go to school,' said Emma.  'Why can't you stop him yourself?'

'I'm busy.'

'No you're not.  I'm busy.  All you ever do is sit here… or go and meet your boyfriend, apparently… somehow.  Anyway, if Fortescue's after your eggs, who's in a better position to protect them, me or -?'

'You must go, Emma.  It is written in the stars.'

'You can't even see the stars.'

'Emma…'

'All right, all right.  God!'

Emma slid her school bag off her shoulder, rummaged inside it and pulled out a small green orb.  This she held to her chest, and said, 'Orb of Beings, take me to Baltazar Fortescue.'

Fortescue was in the depths of his mansion, sitting at his mahogany desk, wearing a red velvet dressing gown and writing something with a peacock feather pen.  When Emma materialised, he looked up in surprise.

'Well, well, well,' he said, putting down his pen and leaning back in his leather chair.  'Emma Milligan.  What a pleasant surprise.  You must have missed a turn, my dear.  Are you not on your way to school?'

'No.  That bloody dragon gave me another mission.'

'Did she indeed?  And which plan can I expect to be thwarted this time?'

'I'm not doing it,' said Emma.  Crouching down by her school bag, she began pulling out more glass orbs and letting them roll around on the floor alongside the green one: blue, purple, orange, yellow and, finally, red.  'If I was going to stop you, I wouldn't have come straight here.  I want to sell you my Orbs.'

Baltazar Fortescue raised a smooth, black eyebrow.  'You want to what?'

'You heard me.  Now pay attention, okay?  We have the Orb of Being, the Orb of Object, the Orb of Place, the Orb of Time, the Orb of Truth and the Orb of Spirit.  You can talk to ghosts with that one.'

'Ah.  That explains one or two things.'

'I'll give you the lot for, say… a million pounds?  You won't miss that, will you?'

'Not in the slightest,' said Fortescue.  'Indeed, it would be a bargain, if only I had the power to work the Orbs.'

Emma stared him.  'You mean you can't…?'

'The power comes from you, Emma.  What good is a piano at the fingertips of a man who has not the skill to play it?  But your proposal is intriguing nonetheless.  Why don't we discuss it over a game of chess?'

Emma had once come second in a school chess tournament, but even the boy that beat her would have been no match for Fortescue.  She knew this, but she agreed to play anyway, because he had such a gorgeous chess set.

Fortescue played badly on purpose, drawing the game out, while he sipped on vintage wine and she on a can of 7-Up.

'So, Emma,' he said, as his serpentine fingers closed over the beautifully sculpted black queen.  'The dragon's taking you for granted, is she?'

'I'll say.  Could you use her tooth?'  Emma pulled the tooth out from beneath her shirt once again.  'Make me an offer.'

'You are becoming mercenary.'

'Maybe I am.  In a couple of years I'll be able to leave school, and I thought if I got rich quick, I could leave home straightaway.'

'Ah.  Parents getting a bit much, are they?'

'They've never even tried to help me through the whole magic thing, or anything else for that matter.  And,' Emma added, sliding a detailed model castle across the board, 'I want a chess set like yours.  You may be evil, Fortescue, but at least you're happy.'

'Baltazar, please,' said Fortescue, eyeing the board, perhaps wondering how much longer to draw out the game.  'So you really do enjoy chess, then?  Would you like to learn to play as well as I do?'

'Yes, I would rather.'

'And I should certainly like to make use of those magnificent Orbs you have brought me.  Perhaps, Emma, you and I can do each other… favours.  Would you like another 7-Up?'

'Thanks,' said Emma.  'Put me in checkmate too, and we can have another game.  So, what about Ignitia's eggs?  They're magic, right?'

'Oh yes.'

'Would you like me to try and nick some for you?'

'Oh yes.'

As he passed the can of 7-Up across the table, their eyes met, and the smiled.
FFM Day 15.

Another challenge day. This is 'Subversion Week', we are told. Today, we were asked to write a story that involved two tropes (new word to ignorant little me; apparently it means a stereotype applied to stories): a Magical Girl and a Magnificent Bastard. One of these had to be played straight, and the other inverted. Do you follow? :evileye:

I was actually pretty excited about this challenge, because I love both those types of character. Then I started to get upset when I realised that inverting one of them would be hard. I didn't want a Magical Boy or a Magnificent Bitch; nor did I want a Magnificent Nice Guy, but an evil Magical Girl? Yeah, maybe. :plotting: (Anything subtler and cleverer than that I couldn't think of.)

You can, I hope, imagine the kinds of adventures these two characters have had up to this point. They'd be just the kind of thing I enjoy reading, actually. I thought up the situation, and then realised it was all too likely that an adolescent girl battling an evil genius under the orders of a layabout dragon would soon reach the end of her tether, especially if her parents were jerks (and the evil guy kind of wasn't). So, here are Emma and Baltazar, whom I had terrific fun creating. Thank you, *Flash-Fic-Month, and I mean that most sincerely.

Word count: 997
© 2012 - 2024 ThornyEnglishRose
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wyldhoney's avatar
I agree with =Amriah, there's a great realism in the protagonists behaviour! :lol: I love stories/ characters that don't go "by the book"! Great work!