the next twenty four hours, I’m gonna club you to death with your own tits.”
Real Cherry awoke again, and leapt to her feet. She had had enough. Her
lovely body, her beautiful face, had been hijacked by a couple of bickering
witches, and she was not going to stand for it. She seized the tin of white
paint, and swung it at her former perfect head with all her might.
Unfortunately, she had failed to take account of the fact that her might was
considerably less than it had been, now she was locked in an old woman’s
body, and Fake Cherry ducked under it with plenty of time to spare.
“What are you doing?” cried Real Halfshaft in alarm. “You’re trying to
smash your own face in!”
“I don’t care! If I can’t have it, no-one can.”
“But maybe we can get our bodies back again later.”
“No chance.” Real Cherry swung the tin at her former body again, shouting
in frustration as it side-stepped the blow. “You’re going down, Lady!” she
shouted.
A thought occurred to Halfshaft. “The clowns at the Circus. The wolves
and the clowns. They swapped bodies. That was you two, wasn’t it?”
His former body shrugged. “I’m not saying.”
Cherry swung the tin again, with the same outcome. Her adversary shrieked
with laughter. “This is fun. I’ll tell you what. Hit me twice, and you can have
your body back.”
“Really?”
“No!”
The four of them squared up to each other, as if they were about to have a
Michael Jackson-style dance off. It was going to take something major to
break the deadlock.
Something major happened, right on cue. Bastard lumbered out of the trees,
a half a dozen arrows protruding porcupine-like from his tough hide. He was
seething with pain and anger, and eager to find someone to take it out upon.
“We saved Buster,” Halfshaft called out to him in his thin witch’s voice, in
a rather optimistic effort to placate him. “We set him free. Spare us.”
The troll was not listening. He had been stung to buggery by Amazon
arrows, and someone was going to pay for it, come what may. He would kill
the wizard and his female companion, he would eat their flesh, using the
arrow shafts as kebab-sticks. He would suck the marrow from their bones.
And then he would devour the witches as well.
“We saved him!” Halfshaft wailed. “We saved Buster!”
Bastard lowered his head and charged. The wizard was as good as dead.
#
Cherry grabbed Halfshaft’s hand, and pulled him (or rather her) to one side
of the rock, planning to scale the boulder before the troll reached them. She
scrabbled at the rock-face in frustration. “What sort of body is this? It can’t
even climb!”
“Maybe we could cast a spell?” he replied. “To protect us?”
“We’re not real witches,” she reminded him. “They’ve still got all their
powers. We’ve just got their disgusting, lice-ridden old bodies.”
She started crying. It was the first time he had seen her so upset. He put his
bony witch’s arm around her, and told her that everything was all right, even
though he knew that it was anything but.
“All right? Have you seen me?” she shouted at him. “I must weigh about
twenty stone at the very least! How can everything possibly be all right when
I’m the size of a pregnant bloody haystack?”
He was just about to remind her that haystacks don’t actually get pregnant
(or even have sex, as far as he was aware) when he remembered something.
Whilst they were discussing the love-life of large bundles of straw, they were
just about to get eaten by a troll. He looked around in panic. But Bastard was
nowhere to be seen.
“He’s gone. Vanished. Why didn’t he kill us?”
She looked at him vaguely for a second or two, still too preoccupied by her
body mass index to give any thought to the question he had just asked. But
then the old decisive Cherry came back, just for a moment.
“It’s not us he’s after. It’s them. We threw stones at him by the river. He
wants to kill us first. But they look like us, so he’s gone after them instead.”
“We’re safe then?”
“Until he’s killed them. Then he’ll come after us.”
“But if he kills them, we’ll never get back into our own bodies!”
She started sobbing again. “I refuse to be huge for the rest of my short life!
I demand to be gorgeous again!”
“Then we’ve got to go after them. Maybe if we save them from the troll,
they’ll give us our bodies back as a thank-you.”
She nodded, though she didn’t look too convinced. “Okay, we go after
them, like you said. And if they’re not already dead, we offer to help them
if they take their horrible old-lady’s bodies back. And if they don’t agree,
we bash their heads in with the tin of paint.”
“Sounds like a plan.” He gave her as encouraging a smile as he could on
his unfamiliar hag-face. Somehow or other, he had to keep her spirits up,
however grim things had become.
“Now all we’ve got to do is catch them. Aren’t we supposed to have brooms
or something? I can’t run through the Forest, that’s for sure. I’d never get
this big fat arse between the tree trunks!”
#
As they ran in the direction which they assumed the body-snatchers (and
pursuing murderous troll) had taken, Halfshaft had to admit that his
companion had been right. She did have a very large arse indeed. It wobbled
around like a spring-loaded jelly as she trundled along in front of him.
Before long, it actually started giving him motion sickness, and he took the
lead after that to give his stomach a rest.
They reached a clearing. There was a gentle slope leading uphill. He
recognised it. He had been here before. Crow Hill. Last time he had been
here, it had been as part of an army. And that hadn’t worked out very well
either.
Cherry went to dash uphill, as fast as her swollen old legs could carry her.
He seized her wrist, bringing her to a halt. “Not that way,” he said. “There
are creatures hiding in the ground. They pop out, grab you, and pull you
under the earth to have sex with you.”
“Crabs?” Cherry asked.
“Maybe even herpes,” he shrugged. “I didn’t think to ask.”
“Which way, then? Where do we go now?”
“You’re the boss,” the wizard said. “You’re the one who always makes the
decisions.”
“That was when I was slim and gorgeous,” she stropped. “How can I be
decisive when I look like a walrus on an eating binge?”
“Walrus?”
“Big tubby thing. Whiskers. Oh, never mind. Which way?”
He looked from left to right, trying to find some clue as to which direction
his old body had gone. He was not used to making decisions. He needed the
old Cherry back, so he could tag along behind her, do as he was told, and
run when the occasion demanded.
The occasion demanded sooner than he thought. There was movement to
his left, some distance away. He strained his eyes to try to make out what
was heading towards them. It looked like a white cloud, flowing across the
grass at speed. He shielded his old-lady’s eyes from the sun, and squinted
some more. The old bag had cataracts, which didn’t really help.
“What?” asked Cherry. “What are you looking at?”
He pointed. She followed his spindly index finger. She groaned.
“Trouble?” he enquired.
“Worse than trouble,” she told him. “Much worse. It’s a pack of clowns.”
#
They ran for all they were worth, but were slowed down by four rheumatic
knees, and a tin of white paint. They dived back into the trees, and headed
for the imagined safety of their overhanging rock, but the clowns were not
far behind them, and closing in with every step. It was only a matter of time
before they were clown-fodder.
The clowns started baying for blood. They sensed a kill.
“I can’t run anymore,” Cherry protested. “My thighs keep rubbing together,
and my arse is slowing me down.”
She came to a halt. He tried to coax her onwards, but she was having none
of it.
“We’ve got a minute at the most,” he shouted at her. “We’ve got to run!”
She shook her head. “What’s the point? We can’t outrun them. And there’s
nowhere to hide.”
“Well I’m not fighting them. You don’t fight clowns!”
She stopped to think. He fidgeted from foot to foot. There wasn’t time for
this. He could hear them crashing along the path, getting closer and closer.
Any second now, they would come into view along the pathway. He didn’t
want to die like this, ripped to pieces by circus entertainers. Surely there was
a more dignified way for him to go?
“I’ve got it!” she exclaimed, showing him/her the tin of paint. “Salvation!”
He groaned aloud. She had finally lost it. The strain of being ugly had
addled her brain. He groaned still louder when she started shedding her
clothes.
“What are you doing?” he gibbered. “Put your clothes back on. I really
don’t need to see that, thank you very much.”
“Come on,” she urged. “You get them off, too.”
“I know we’ve only got a minute or two left to live, but I refuse to spend
my last moments of life having lesbian sex with a fat old witch. No offence.”
“You wouldn’t have complained if I’d have been in my old body,” she
pouted (or as near to pouting as it was possible for her elderly wrinkled face
to manage). “Now get out of those robes, or I’ll rip them off your scrawny
little body myself.”
Halfshaft reluctantly undressed. He could hear the clowns getting closer
and closer, making more and more noise as they closed in for the kill. He
had thought that the worst thing in the world would be to be eaten alive by
a pack of feral clowns, but he had changed his mind. The worst thing was
actually to be eaten alive by a pack of feral clowns whilst trapped in the body
of an ancient naked witch.
He stood there in someone else’s birthday suit, regarding his companion’s
folds of unsightly flab with distaste. It was ironic. He would earlier have
given anything to see her naked, but this was not quite what he had had in
mind. Now, all he wanted was for her to get dressed again as soon as she
possibly could, and put the whole sorry incident behind them.
She wrenched the lid off the tin of paint, and sloshed it over him.
“What the - ?” he exclaimed, not unreasonably in the circumstances.
She smeared it over him with her hands. In spite of himself, he quite liked
it. Indeed, if she had still been her old self, he would have paid good money
for the experience.
Just as the clowns came into view further along the pathway, she tipped the
remaining paint over her own body, and started rubbing it into herself. It was
not a sight he would ever forget. At times, her hands were completely
submerged in rolls of blubber. And when she was smearing the paint “down
under”, he came very close to losing what little food was left in his stomach.
It was the squelching sound that really freaked him out.
The clowns approached at speed. Halfshaft turned to run. Cherry
commanded him to stay where he was. He obeyed out of habit. He shook
with fear as the rabid clowns bore down upon them.
They stood on the pathway, two naked white-washed witches, the thinner
one visibly trembling. The lead clown arrived. The others formed a circle
around the two elderly ladies, snapping and snarling, but keeping their
distance.
The lead clown approached Halfshaft. He sniffed him. He sniffed Cherry.
He returned his attention to Halfshaft, circling him twice in puzzlement. The
wizard attempted to face the front as the clown walked round him, its red
nose twitching the whole while.
The clown came to a halt in front of him. It leaned forward, peering deep
into his witch’s eyes, sizing him up. Halfshaft dropped his gaze submissively
to the ground. The clown sniffed him again.
And then the pack was off again, bounding along the pathway, leaving the
two shaken old ladies behind them.
He watched them leave in astonishment. He turned to Cherry. She was
chuckling away to herself like a mad-woman. “I have three questions,” he
said. “Firstly, what just happened there?”
“They thought we were clowns,” she told him. “We were white, like them.
The lack of red noses nearly gave the game away, but we got away with it
all the same.”
“Secondly, how did you know it would work?”
“I didn’t. The paint must have been for something, though. I took a guess.
I was expecting them to rip us to buggery, if I’m honest, but I thought it was
worth a try.”
He nodded. He had expected much the same thing himself.
“What’s your third question?” she enquired.
“Can we put our clothes back on now? There’s only so much nakey-witch
I can cope with in one day.”
#
They tried to wash the paint off in a stream, but it refused to budge. They
tried peeling it off when it dried, but that didn’t work either. Eventually,
Cherry declared that they would have to leave it on. At least it would afford
them some sort of protection if they chanced upon the clowns again.
They made their way back to their rock. Cherry seemed keen for him to
sleep, as if she had other business in hand. The more anxious she was for
him to nod off, the less inclined he was to oblige. It was still only mid-
afternoon in any case.
“I’m not tired,” he whinged. “I want to stay up until late.”
“You’ll go to bed when I tell you to go to bed,” the fat witch retorted. “Now
go on, go to sleep, or you won’t get a bed-time story tomorrow.”
Eventually, he nodded off. He was mentally exhausted. He was used to
danger after his previous adventures, but this time it was relentless. And this
time, he had not even been given the luxury of tackling his assailants in his
own body. Maybe a short sleep was in order after all.
He woke up to find there was someone sitting on him. He kept his eyes
shut, hoping she would leave of her own accord if he played dead, but she
stayed stubbornly put. He groaned aloud. “Leave me alone, Succubus. I’ve
not got the right equipment for you now.”
“Prepare to die, Witch!”
He knew that voice. He opened his eyes. He was being straddled by a
blonde Amazon, with a rock in her hand (no doubt one of Ditherer’s, that he
had lobbed into the long grass when he had last been accosted in his sleep).
“Takina!”
She viewed him through narrowed eyes. “How do you know me, witch?”
“It’s me. Halfshaft.”
She raised the rock above her head, ready to dash his skull to pieces.
“It is! I know I look different, but it’s me! I’m not a witch. I’m a crap
wizard!”
He looked round for Cherry, hoping to seek corroboration, but she was
nowhere to be seen. The only saving grace was that there was no sign of
Selene either. Had she been there, he would most likely have been dead
already.
“Show me a spell. Halfshaft can make fire with his fingers. Show me that.”
“I can’t in this body.”
She raised the rock.
“Wait. Ask me anything, Anything at all. It’s me. Go on.”
“Where was I, the last time we were together. Before we came here?”
“Crow Hill. Fighting Ragnar.”
She looked at him suspiciously. She seemed far from convinced.
“Who is Rana?”
“Queen of the Amazons. Back in the village you were born in. I’ve seen
her recently.”
Takina threatened him with the rock again.
“She’s dead, she’s dead, I know that!” he protested. “That was kind of why
I saw her.”
“One more thing,” she said. “Tell me one more thing, that only you would
know.”
He thought long and hard, and then he thought some more. “I once tried to
take a dump on a dead body in a trunk, whilst we were locked in the bedroom
of a deaf troll-cross. That’s hardly something anyone would guess at, is it?”
It was enough. She hugged him. He hugged her back. It felt good. It was
the nearest thing to joy he had experienced for a very long time.
She helped him (or rather her, as she was now) to her feet.
“Why are you a witch?”
“Body-swap,” he muttered angrily. “Horrible old hags stole me when my
guard was down.”
“And why are you covered in white?”
“Cherry made me take all my clothes off so she could paint me.”
He thought he detected just a flicker of jealousy in her eyes, but was not
certain. He might have just seen what he wanted to see.
“It passes the time, I suppose.”
He looked around. “Where’s everyone else?”
“Selene is hunting Halfshaft. Hunting you, I mean. And the girl. The pretty
one.”
“She’s not that pretty, not compared to you,” he replied gallantly.
“A little too obvious, maybe,” Takina agreed. “And her breasts are far too
large. They must make it hard for her to hunt.”
“Where is Cherry? Have you seen her? She keeps wandering off every time
I go to sleep.”
“Maybe she is looking for more paint,” Takina suggested, with a glint in
her eye. “So you can give each other another coat tomorrow morning.”
There was something he needed to ask her, but he hesitated. He was
worried that he might not like the answer. But he was a white-washed witch
being hunted by a murderous troll and a merciless Amazon Queen. How
much worse could things get?
“Takina,” he ventured cautiously. “I need to know – I need to know – why
did you run away yesterday?”
“I wanted to escape.”
“Yes,” he snapped, more irritably than he intended. “I’d worked that one
out for myself. But why did you escape without me?”
“I thought they would catch me, and kill me. You were better off staying
at the Circus.”
“How could I be better off? Everyone’s trying to kill me, in case you hadn’t
noticed. Even you were trying to kill me, just now. I’ve become a skinny old
lady, with chilblains. I’ve got no way of aiming when I need the toilet. What
could be worse than that?”
“I thought that if I was gone, then they would not let Selene enter the
Games on her own. It did not occur to me that they had replacements for us.
Without Selene here, all you had to do was defeat the trolls and you would
survive. None of the others would have a chance against you.”
“They wouldn’t?”
“You have defeated Warlocks, and trolls, and wolves. You have wielded
powerful magic, powerful enough to defeat whole armies. How could any
of the others have hoped to compete against you?”
“That’s true,” he nodded, beaming with satisfaction. “I hadn’t thought of
that. But not Selene, though? You didn’t think I could defeat Selene if she
was here?”
“She is a woman,” Takina shrugged. “An Amazon. That would have been
a different matter entirely.”
“I’m a woman now,” Halfshaft pointed out. “And I don’t think it’s all it’s
cracked up to be. My hormones are all over the place, and I can’t read maps
anymore.”
She laughed. He laughed too. He was very happy to see her, especially now
she had explained why she had attempted to escape without him. And she
had thought him capable of winning the Games single-handedly (well,
possibly with a little help from Cherry). She had faith in him. That almost
made up for the fact that he now had to go to the toilet squatting down.
“It is very strange, you being a woman,” Takina commented. “How are you
going to get your body back?”
He hung his head, suddenly sad again. “I don’t think I can. They won’t
swap back.”
“You could threaten to kill them,” suggested Takina, ever the warrior.
“Smash their heads in with a rock if they refuse. You can use this one, if you
like.”
“That would sort of defeat the object, don’t you think? There’s no point
having my body back, if it’s dead. Besides, I don’t even know where they
are.”
“Selene says they are camped on the far side of Crow Hill. The troll could
not catch them. He is too slow and too stupid.” She suddenly looked worried.
“Oh.”
“Oh?”
“Oh.”
“What is it? What’s the matter?”
“Selene. She knows where they are. Where your body is. She has gone to
kill you. Kill them; the witches. You know what I mean. Your body may
well be dead by now.”
He felt his jaw quiver. There were tears coming.
“You mean I might be stuck in this body forever?”
“Not really. When she finds out that I have not killed you, she will finish
you off herself. Unless I can save you, you will be dead by tomorrow as
well.”
Halfshaft let the tears flow. He should have been pleased; it was looking
more and more likely that Takina and her Queen would win the Games, and
be granted their freedom. But fear was a terrible thing, and he had more
than his fair share of it right now. He didn’t want to die. And he certainly
didn’t want to die in a dress, with his bosoms covered in congealed white
paint.
#
Takina had left by the time Cherry returned to the rock. She had hurried off
to intercept Selene, to put off the inevitable moment when her Queen would
discover that the “witches” were still alive. The two Amazons would return
to their own camp, and Takina would do everything she could to keep her
wizard friend alive for one more day. That was the longest stay of execution
he could hope for.
“What time of night do you call this?” asked Halfshaft, his arms tightly
crossed on his bony witch chest, as Cherry/Fat Dora waddled back towards
their boulder. “I’ve been worried sick.”
Cherry was not in the mood for a dressing-down. She was fuming, as if
fresh back from an argument. “What? Am I on some sort of curfew now?”
“The Amazons were here. Well, one of them, anyway.”
“Selene?” she asked, suddenly concerned. “Selene was here?”
“Takina.”
She relaxed. “That old tart.”
“She’s not old (and that’s fine coming from you, in that body). And she
most certainly isn’t a tart.”
“Whatever.”
Halfshaft fumed. His partner was infuriating enough as it was, but now she
was an obese witch he found she was more irritating than ever. He was
uncertain whether this was because she had become more snappy since she
had lost her looks, or whether it was because he was more ready to make
allowances for her when she was attractive. He supposed it didn’t really
matter. Either way, she was a real pain in the arse since she had swapped
bodies with a hag.
He decided to be irritating back; give her some of her own medicine.
“I know where our bodies are.”
“Where?”
“I’m not telling.”
She gave him an impatient look, but he held firm. She followed it up with
four different types of tut, but all to no avail. He was good at being annoying
when the occasion demanded.
“Oh, for Goodness sake! Where are they?”
“I’m not saying.”
“I’ll show you my arse when we get our bodies back.”
“You g