The Gods Must Clearly Smile

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Information

Additional Copyright Information

Dedication

The Gods Must Clearly Smile

About Aaron Christopher Drown

The Gods Must Clearly Smile

stories by

Aaron Christopher Drown

Copyright © 2022 by Aaron Christopher Drown

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be copied or transmitted in any form, electronic or otherwise, without express written consent of the publisher or author.

Cover Design: Aaron Christopher Drown

Miniature cottage model by Pedro Davila. Used by permission.

Cover art in this book copyright © 2022 Aaron Christopher Drown

Published by Seventh Star Press, LLC.

ISBN Number: 978-1-7368125-9-4

Seventh Star Press

www.seventhstarpress.com

[email protected]

Publisher’s Note:

The Gods Must Clearly Smile is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are the product of the author’s imagination, used in fictitious manner. Any resemblances to actual persons, places, locales, events, etc. are purely coincidental.

Printed in the United States of America

First Edition

Additional Copyright Information

The Battle originally appeared in Illuminata, published by Tyrannosaurus Press, October 2003. Winner, 2003 Illuminata Speculative Fiction Contest.

The Mean Man originally appeared in SHOTS! Magazine, March 2005.

The Prisoner originally appeared in Beacons of Tomorrow, published by Tyrannosaurus Press, Winter 2006.

The Show originally appeared in Tales of the Unanticipated Number 28, published by Totu Ink, Inc, Summer 2007.

The Swing originally appeared in Beacons of Tomorrow: Second Collection, published by Tyrannosaurus Press, Summer 2008.

An adapted version of Not So Tall Tale first appeared in A Mage of None Magic: The Heart of the Sisters, Book One, originally published by Tyrannosaurus Press, 2009; republished as a second edition by Seventh Star Press, 2014.

The Milkshake Story originally appeared in Sky-Tinted Waters, published by Sam’s Dot Publishing, Spring 2012. First Runner-up, 2012 Darrell Award for Best Short Story.

Path of an Arrow was originally released for Kindle, November 2010. Winner, 2012 Darrell Award for Best Novella.

The Gods Must Clearly Smile originally appeared in A Tall Ship, A Star, And Plunder, published by Dark Oak Press, January 2014.

They Called originally appeared in AlienSkin Magazine, October 2003. Honorable Mention, Flash Fiction Contest.

Dedication Header

He’s dead, Ellegon.

*My dear, dear, Andrea, that is entirely a matter of opinion.*

In memory of Joel Rosenberg—

friend, mentor, mensch.

The Gods Must Clearly Smile

The Battle

There was magic at work. The knight could feel it, dull and deep, rolling in his belly.

He watched motionless, taking in the inexplicably familiar scene. Gathered on the opposite side of the narrow valley, the enemy stood poised—legions of armored men and horses in grand, gleaming rows, banners and pennants of boastful crimson lifted high. An endless line of infantry comprised their front ranks, all clutching pole arms of varying and vicious makes, giving the impression of a single enormous beast bristling in anticipation of the savagery to come.

From the corner of either eye the knight could see his own forces—armaments equally deadly, equally dazzling in the brightness of midday, all draped in gallant, regal sapphire.

A breeze murmured across the ominous assembly, whistling through closed helmets, billowing countless standards and rustling the lush, ankle-deep green of the vast grassland on which they stood. Then it died away, leaving the air once again heavy and taut with the mutual hatred of the two camps. In the thick silence, every soldier and steed held at perfect attention as each group awaited the other to sound their charge.

The inescapable sense of having seen all of it before, like something from a dream, stole nothing from the magnificence of the display. As he squinted against the sunlight, though, a growing certainty that the scene was somehow only superficially complete left the knight unsettled. From the faint, far reaches of his mind the knight recalled a red brick house on a pleasant street. Beyond that memory, a small but blazing desert of towering dunes. Further back still, a dark glassy sea on whose shores crumbled a misshapen castle of loose earth and wood—all so strangely palpable, yet he had no idea what any of it meant.

So the explanation had to be magic; some sorcerer weaving an incantation to befuddle his mind and steal his ability to lead his troops. He scanned the back-most lines of the scarlet brigades, trying to make out anything or anyone that looked as if—

There. An old man with a short, grey beard, dressed in brown robes and his own otherworldly blue sword at the ready.

Disgust roiled up inside the knight, swelling his chest with rage at the notion of employing a magician to accomplish what any deserving warrior should be able to manage on his own.

The magician’s presence meant the strategy on which he’d settled would have to be set aside, since now there was but one course to follow. When the battle commenced, the knight would have to focus all his resources on the enemy wizard and hope to overwhelm his capacity to issue further ensorcellments. Otherwise, they might as well strip off their armor and fight naked using curses and sticks.

He turned to order his archers to light their arrows and make ready to loose a volley on the wizard’s position... but suddenly, astonishingly, he found he was too late.

The enemy was upon them.

There’d been neither horn nor cry from either side; nevertheless, with breathtaking swiftness the two rivals were crushed together as though each had been thrown toward the other by some unseen might.

The knight tried to shout through the abrupt, metallic chaos of the surge, to order his soldiers to somehow regroup so they might mount a proper counteroffensive. But in the din of clattering steel he went unheard. He attempted to draw his sword, but in a moment of dread discovered himself all but helpless, his arms pinned to his sides by the mad tide of soldiers and steel.

Yet that was not the worst of it. Not by far.

In all the wars he’d seen, in all the battles he’d helped wage, never had the knight been unwilling to peer into the face of a foe—honor was a simple matter, and demanded no less. Neither had he ever shied from the knowledge that victory meant leaving the field with the blood of his fellow man on his blade, on his hands and face, and that by his actions the world would be encumbered by many fewer souls.

But this day he could barely bring himself to gaze too long lest his heart stop cold, for the warriors clamoring about him were anything but fellow men. He was horrified by this army, terrified by the creatures before him—hordes of mangled, maimed, red-clad monsters marauding past. Though few possessed all four limbs, they marched forth, unyielding—a gory, nightmarish river of disfigured features and twisted frames.

As the knight fought to extricate himself from both his fear and the clawing, hell-sent masses, he collided with the form of a giant who blindly wielded a halberd even larger than himself. Blindly, because the giant had no head. Sheer reflex made the knight lean aside, barely in time, allowing the giant’s wild blade to cleave only the plumage from atop his helmet instead of his own head from atop his shoulders.

There came a sudden break in the throng, and instinctively the knight flung himself against his decapitated assailant, felling him like a great oak onto several nearby combatants. All tried to scramble back to their feet, but others quickly piled on, burying the knight beneath the metal wreckage of untold bodies. He struggled to free himself, but the weight of those above pressed down, trapping him, collapsing his armor until there was barely room to draw air.

Blackness closed in around him.

Just then, the voice of some unseen goddess thundered from the heavens.

Billy! Dinner!

It wasn’t the first time he’d heard that sound—again, dreamlike and vague like distant memory, but nonetheless welcome as it brought the battle to a swift and merciful halt.

He lay there, unable to move in the unnatural silence. No cries of agony emerged from the wounded, no groans came from the dying. Also absent were the customary smells of war—charred flesh, fresh blood, the soilings of the freshly butchered.

Soon the pressure eased from the knight’s chest, and brightness from a place he couldn’t distinguish flooded his eyes. He felt himself roll over from his stomach—or rather, felt himself being rolled. He glanced up into the late afternoon, at the cottony ceiling punctuated by gaps of resplendent amber-violet. It gave him some small ease to simply lie and consider the beauty of it, in what he could easily imagine were his final moments—provided he wasn’t dead already.

Without warning, and bringing a cold terror purer than even the army of monsters had, a colossal hand reached down from that tranquil sky and scooped the knight from the pile.

Panic gnashed away at his reason. He wanted to scream, but the rush of wind across his face denied him sufficient breath. Upward he soared, to what could only be an unthinkable height. Then the hand stopped.

And dropped him.

The knight plummeted, tumbling into what—to his ultimate dismay—looked like an immense cloth bag, half-filled with the tangled shapes of comrade and enemy alike. He crashed into the heap of fellow captives within, sliding a short ways down one side before coming to rest, again, on his back.

As before, the silence was thick. The knight watched as the serene, cherubic face of a young god eclipsed the evening sky, lulling with an affectionate smile all who beheld him, crimson and sapphire alike. Slowly, the god drew the mouth of the bag closed, consigning those inside to darkness.

There was no pain, and fear ebbed away altogether as once more the knight became certain of magic at work. Dull and deep.

When the dark finally took full claim of him, that, too, seemed inexplicably familiar.

The Mean Man

Victory won’t come to me unless I go to it.

He’d liked the line since hearing it in high school—read to the class by a self-righteous prude of an English teacher he’d long imagined as ferocious in bed, from a book of poetry by someone whose name he couldn’t recall. He’d always been better with faces than names anyhow. He was pretty sure the writer’s name started with an M.

Repeating it every so often for the last few hundred miles had kept a smirk on his own face as he and his dusty, dented convertible rumbled along the empty desert two-lane. Well, not his convertible. But close enough.

Victory won’t come to me...

Zero squinted into the amber morning sun. With a practiced, nimble economy of motion he flipped a cigarette from his coat’s inside breast pocket, caught it between his lips, lit it quickly with the flick of a Zippo, then snapped the lighter shut before the rushing air could kill the flame. He took a hard drag, and with a long sigh breathed twin plumes of bluish smoke from his nostrils.

Over the next rise was the diner, and he was still ahead of schedule. He’d score the last of his points, collect the trophies, then head for the Home Office.

Not for the first time during his drive Zero’s smirk grew to a broad smile—in large part at himself, at the giddy anticipation steadily creeping in. Something he hadn’t felt since he first started, since his days as an amateur.

Giddiness hardly complemented his reputation, but he just couldn’t help it. And he just didn’t care.

This year he was finally, finally going to win.

***

The Whinin’ Diner looked typical of any last-chance greasy spoon alongside any lost stretch of abandoned highway. Not much bigger than a large bus, a single aisle segregated counter dwellers from booth squatters. An antique metal fan hummed on a shelf up in a far corner, beside which a radio crackled some nasal country tune. Red and chrome had once been the decor, though most of the benches and bolted-down barstools were patched many times over with gummy grey duct tape, and the ribbed, art-deco edges on the counter and tables bore so many scratches they barely reflected light.

Inside, only a handful of people. Behind the counter stood a stubbly cook in his stained wife-beater t-shirt. Next to him, a stocky too-blonde waitress sported a chewed pencil behind her ear and massive cud of bubblegum crammed in her mouth. At the end of the bar, studying want ads, a young woman in an ill-fitting blouse and skirt clearly meant to be business-like but were easily a decade out of style. Next to her, a daughter no more than four. Brassy-blonde curls bobbed with each stroke of her arm as she mashed blunted Crayolas into the pages of her coloring book, her tongue poking from the corner of her mouth in concentration like a Peanuts character. To the little girl’s right, a porcelain cereal bowl and a spoon.

And in a booth, by himself, sat Arthur Feishal. The person he’d come to see.

The waitress acknowledged Zero’s entrance with arched eyebrows.

Coffee, he said.

She blew a bubble, then turned to the pair of steaming pots behind her.

Arthur was a small man with an eruption of curly reddish hair surrounding a bald spot yet to go completely barren; a few sprigs still staked defiant claim to its center-most territories. In modest compensation, an untidy thicket of mustache flourished beneath a stubby nose pinched by wire-framed spectacles. On his forearm, a large blood-soaked bandage that should have been changed a couple days ago.

Pen in hand, eyes narrowed, he pored over scattered charts, graphs, and a steno pad crowded with scrawled handwriting—chemical formulae, equations and the like.

Arthur Feishal? Zero said as he approached the booth.

Arthur started at the sound of his name. He looked up, then left and right, then back at Zero. Yes?

Zero smiled. I’m sorry to interrupt, but I have something important you need to know. Something I’m afraid you’re not going to like. He pointed at the vacant bench across from him. May I sit?

Taken aback, as though for a moment he’d forgotten where he was, Arthur glanced down at his notes. All right, he said. Sure. He gathered up the few papers that had strayed to the opposite side of the table.

Thanks. As Zero sat, the waitress trundled up and set his coffee down too hard, making the spoon rattle loudly on the saucer. She slapped his ticket to the table and left.

Do I know you? Arthur asked. His voice was higher than Zero had expected. Almost girlish.

Zero gingerly turned the hot cup with his fingertips so the handle faced away from him. No, actually. You don’t. My name’s Zerofsky. Mike Zerofsky. My colleagues call me Zero.

Arthur frowned. If I don’t know you, how do you know me?

You could say I follow your work.

True, if only in the most technical sense. Zero hadn’t actually been following Arthur’s work, but rather him. And only for the past ten days. However, the notion seemed to strike a chord. Feishal’s momentary befuddlement dissipated as he soberly drew up straight in his seat.

What is it you have to tell me? he asked.

Zero fished three cigarettes and his lighter from his inside breast pocket. He flipped one into his mouth, then set the other two beside the saucer in parallel to one another and the edge of the table. Well, the thing is, Arthur, I’m here to kill you. Pass the sugar?

The range of responses he’d received over the years to that statement varied as widely as the folks to whom he’d offered it. Most often, the person scoffed in disbelief. Some, on the other hand, went instantly silent and ashen. Others trembled and grew teary, but only after lashing out in indignation as if their gold card had just been declined.

However, Arthur’s reaction was relatively novel. My, he said with a subtle, crooked smile, I’d certainly say that qualifies as important.

Zero raised an eyebrow. Feishal didn’t seem the rare sort to attack at the first sign of threat. Nevertheless, best to nip even that tiny possibility in the bud.

I think so, too, Zero said. So important, in fact, that I’d like you to be very clear about something else. There’s a little girl at the end of the counter there. You cause a scene, and before I kill you, I’ll blow the Fruit Loops in her stomach all over mommy’s nice clean shirt.

Without looking over to the counter, Arthur smiled again and nodded.

Then he passed the sugar.

Do you mind if I ask how long I have? Arthur asked as he carefully laced his fingers in front of him. Or am I allowed to know?

Zero held Arthur’s eyes as he poured the sugar into his coffee. I don’t mind at all. An hour or so. Unless you’re in a hurry.

A shrug. Not particularly. And please, call me Arty.

All right, then. Arty.

To what or whom do I owe the distinction of falling in your sites, as it were?

Zero took a sip from his cup. Well, to put it in terms a scientist might appreciate, let’s call it random chance.

Arty shook his head. The universe is too well put together to support so chaotic a phenomenon. There is no such thing as chance, only the misperceived appearance of such caused by observation from too remote a vantage.

"You be judge. I belong to a small group of, shall we say, enthusiasts. We play a game put on by a very wealthy, very anonymous sponsor. We call him our Supervisor. Every few years, the players are assembled and given lists.