Like, I remember my second year of college when I was living in an off-campus apartment with my sister and a tall man named Valentine she’d met at a Pride March. He was into kink and had a very active sex life, partially owing to his involvement in the local burlesque scene, where he’d perform either as a man named Peter Pangs or a drag queen named May Bee Later. He wore, on occasion, leather underwear.
I can remember him telling me that if you wear leather underwear, you want to have as few hairs as possible down there or else the leather can tug at them. At the same time you don’t want to be freshly shaved, because if you’re too smooth the underwear will adhere to you like a bandage, and of course we all know how exhilarating it is to pull off a bandage.
“Why are you telling me this?” Fridu asked. We were in a clothing store that was exactly like I’d have envisioned a clothing store in the fifteenth century, except instead of having wallets and socks as impulse buys, there were magic potions and a wide assortment of daggers.
Beyond these oddities and the penchant for leather, the store felt fundamentally normal, except that the clerk had the head of a giant sparrow, which I’ve never encountered anywhere before in my life, not even at Wal-Mart. And while I say that we were in a clothing store, we were more precisely in a dressing room.
I told Fridu, “I’m telling you about my old roommate because I’m nervous. And because I don’t know why you had to come into the dressing room with me.”
“She has a keen eye for fashion,” Molly answered.
“I don’t know why you’re in here, either,” I told Molly.
“Because she likes watching naked men squirm,” Fridu said.
“Yeah,” Molly agreed. “You really do squirm, Josh.”
“Why’s it have to be leather underwear?” I asked, walking back and forth in the small confines of the dressing room. I wanted to reach into my shorts and adjust myself, but there were two women in the room and my decorum was at stake.
“Because you have to dress like a native if you’re going to be in Goncourt with us,” Fridu said. “You can’t look like you normally do.”
“Zero level dweeb,” Molly added in helpful fashion.
“Besides,” Fridu said. “These underwear are a lot better quality than you’ll ever find back where you live. That’s giant mouse underwear. Soft, right?”
“I’m wearing a giant mouse pelt on my dick?”
“Essentially, yes. Feels good, right?”
I had to admit it wasn’t bad. Once I grew accustomed to the feel, the underwear were comfortable. I tried not to think of the fact that it was mouse leather. The only giant mouse I’d ever encountered in my past was when I’d posed with Mickey for a picture at Disneyworld.
Twenty minutes later my old clothes were stuffed into one of Fridu’s pouches and I was dressed in an assortment of fine handmade clothes, including leather boots and a travelling cloak. I had a wide belt of alligator leather, complete with a pouch and a dangerous-looking dagger dangling from loops.
Fridu paid the sparrow-headed clerk an assortment of shiny coins and patted his human-looking hands in a gesture of familiarity. The clerk’s voice sounded normal, albeit with a trilling accent.
“Want to see the world, now?” Fridu asked, looking up with her head at the level of my lower ribs. The dwarf had that beauty that a stout woman can so easily attain, but it was a condensed beauty, like a not-unpleasant funhouse mirror version of a taller woman. She had reddish-blonde hair worn in a thick ponytail reaching to her waist, clipped to the side of a wide belt so that it would stay out of her way.
She wore what resembled aviator goggles slid back into her hair. Her patched tan pants were tucked into boots sturdy enough for hiking in hurricanes. She had a wrapped blue tunic, cinched at her waist by the wide belt with its incredibly array of pouches.
Bits of leather armor had been added to the mix, chiefly around her shoulders. She had copious rings, bracelets, and necklaces, along with stickpins on the back of her cloak, like bumper stickers on a car. There were sigils tattooed all along her arms and she smelled like wet rocks.
When I’d first met Fridu, stepping impossibly through the doorway from my old bedroom into the world of Goncourt, she’d helped us heave the carcasses of the giant beetles out from my living room and into the meadow.
From the vantage of that meadow, the doorway appeared as a faintly shimmering outline, but I couldn’t see back into my apartment. I tried to cement the location in my mind, because if you find yourself traveling down the road to insanity, it’s imperative to remember the way back.
As we’d heaved the dead beetles out from the impossible doorway, the deer-headed wolves had switched from grazing on the grass to grazing on the beetles, which was perhaps the grossest thing I’d ever seen or heard, because they sounded like they were slurping on ice cream and cracking walnuts at the same time. Even Molly thought it was awful, so we’d moved some five hundred feet away and then Molly had tapped her strange marble on Fridu, causing words to appear above the dwarven woman.
Fridu of Stone Wood
Class: Witch Level: 9 Health points: 71
Race: Dwarven Alignment: Neutral
Strength: 12 Intelligence: 17 Dexterity: 11
Charisma: 13 Constitution: 16
Languages: Dwarven, Elven, English, Witch’s Cant
Special Abilities: +2 to all spells outdoors, +2 to all defense
outdoors, Befriend Animals (3 times a day), Plant Lore,
+3/-3 to all rolls (in Fridu’s favor) vs. sentient plants
Magic Items: Wand of Stone, +1 ring, Cloak of Rain, Blank Slate
I’d put forth a few questions, like where and what was Stone Wood, what exactly could a “Cloak of Rain” do, and what a “Blank Slate” was for. Stone Wood, I was told, was a vast forest within an even more vast cavern. An ancient, petrified forest, in this case, where the trees had turned to stone millions of years in the past, and many of them had since toppled like the remnants of marble columns in a Greek ruin. Fridu’s Cloak of Rain could apparently make it rain, fiercely, once a day.
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And if she showed someone her Blank Slate, Fridu could make that person believe her slate was showing whatever she wanted to be shown, a magic she explained was frequently useful for fooling someone into thinking she had the required authority to gain admittance into such places as the Royal Botanical Archives or the sanctified shower rooms of the Stalwart Brotherhood.
I’d been just getting to one of my most pertinent questions, namely if I’d be able to go back through the strange doorway and return to the increasingly questionable sanity of the world I knew, but our conversation had been cut short as we topped a rise and found ourselves on a scenic overlook with a city of some ten thousand people in the near distance, only two or three miles away.
“That’s Whitewater,” Molly said, gesturing to the spires rising from the great walled city, which was like a city from the Middle Ages, although like the cities in movies rather than how I suspect they’d been in real life. Lines of smoke rose from hundreds of chimneys and from various encampments surrounding the city, some of them temporary while others more permanent.
Boats of many sizes traveled languidly along a wide river that cut through the city and its wall. I strained for more details, but much of the city was blocked by the walls that ranged between twenty and fifty feet tall. I could just make out the thin windows where archers could rain arrows from above.
Soldiers, from our vantage point, appeared as moving dots patrolling the walls. An array of wooden structures had been built atop the walls, perhaps guardhouses, and then also extensive bases for catapults, trebuchets, or ballistae, those weapons that resemble monstrous crossbows.
“Big walls,” I said.
“Traditionally to keep out any raiders,” Fridu said. “But just as handy for keeping thieves inside. Whitewater’s a den of thieves.”
“And courtesans,” Molly added in a complementary tone, as if praising the city for a job well done.
“Fighters and rogues, along with exceedingly vulgar bards and sorcerers with malignant intent,” Fridu said, fairly singing the words.
“And witches of ill repute,” Molly told me, putting a hand on Fridu’s shoulder. “Such as our Fridu, here.” The two laughed, and then Molly added, “There’s also thousands of zero level fart-jars like you, Josh, so you’ll feel right at home.”
I tried to think of a sharp retort, but failed until too much time had passed, meaning even the wittiest of replies would make me seem like a dying fish flopping about.
We hiked in silence from the meadow’s rise to the hard packed dirt road leading to Whitewater. In some ways, I enjoyed it. The smell of fresh air. The feel of the breeze. The sight of the distant mountains.
There were animals everywhere. I saw several more herds of those peculiar wolf-deer. There were always multiple flocks of birds in the air, and foxes darting past. The grass was alive with an incredible range of insects, including dragonflies flitting about or even occasionally landing on us, which Fridu seemed to love but clearly made Molly uncomfortable.
Soon enough, we’d hailed a passing farmer on his way to market, and the three of us rode nestled atop his wagon amidst various crates of fruits and a shabby looking mongrel that stared at the three of us as if we were assassins.
By the end of the ride he was slumped happily against Fridu’s legs, but continued glaring at me, openly planning how many times he’d bite me.
And then we were in Whitewater, riding through an immense gate in the towering walls and into streets that seemed a combination of Victorian and Old Dutch architecture, with a bit of hobbit thrown into the mix.
The streets themselves were a blend of cobblestones and packed dirt, lined with trees I didn’t recognize, but that Fridu spoke of warmly, telling me, “Those are Ocadia trees. And, oh, a Bantamsinger. You don’t see those much outside of the Culling Woods.” I kept silent, staring in wonder at the strange town.
The farmer let us off at an outdoor market in a place called Palisade Square, where the market shared space with a festival. The thick crowd was full of people who seemed to be either hurrying or dawdling, with nothing in between.
They were carrying ice creams and pastries and warm breads with meats, trinkets of a hundred natures, books from booksellers, and so much more. There was plentiful music and laughter, and curiously loud calls from several crows.
“The crows are pissed off about the festival,” Fridu told me. She gave a knowing nod and added, “Not invited, you know.” I returned her knowing nod, though right then I felt as if I didn’t know anything. I was just amazed at the crowd.
There were hundreds of people, and my definition of “people” was being considerably stretched. There were other elves like Molly, and dwarves like Fridu. But there were also what amounted to giants among the crowd. Seven feet tall, or even eight, and one man who was even taller, carefully making his way through the multitudes, taking care not to trample anyone, his eyes flickering between those around him and the roasted pig he was eating from a skewer the size of a fence post.
And there were others who definitely weren’t human. People covered in fur. One woman with extra arms. A man slithered past us with the lower body of a snake. Nobody but me stared at these people. It was evident that, to everyone else, this world was normal.
In fact, the one who’d stood out the most was… me.
“Because of your clothes,” Fridu had explained. “They’re bizarre. Well, bizarre for this world.” I looked down to my blue jeans and ZZ Top concert shirt even as Molly took my hand and pulled me into the clothing store.
When we’d emerged a half hour later, nobody gave me so much as a second glance, allowing me to more fully take in the sights and the sounds of the festival. And the smells as well.
There was a coconut odor coming from a fruit-seller, although the fruit she was splitting open for her customers was nothing like any coconut I’d ever seen, because when the shells were cracked something like an egg yolk bubbled out from within.
And there was the odor of sweat from all around in the festival, and the smells from the bakers with their breads and pastries. Roasting meat. Sugary confections. The perfumes of three women dancing to the music of another woman playing on a pair of copper drums.
There were jugglers and fire-eaters, people performing fake magic tricks, and others performing what I’m fairly certain was real magic, forming coils of smoke into the likenesses of strange animals. The air hung so heavy with coal and wood smoke that I could feel it sticking to the roof of my mouth.
I walked among the delighted shouts of children and the gasps from those watching a huge lizard performing tricks at its master’s command. The reptile had six legs and a bull-like head, leaping through hoops and breathing fire.
“What the hell is all this?” I asked, gesturing around.
“A normal day in Whitewater,” Fridu answered. Molly was a few steps away, flirting with the three women who’d been dancing. One of the women had cat-like eyes and a long tail that brushed, perhaps accidentally, against Molly’s face, causing both women to smile.
“I don’t belong here,” I told Fridu, staring as two men walked past. One of the men was, for lack of better definition, a ghost, a creature of fluttering red mist. He left behind a chill in the air and a trail of frost on the cobblestones. The two men were arguing about whose turn it was to babysit their child. The ghost’s voice was hollow and echoing.
“We’ll make you belong here,” Fridu said, taking my hand, leading me through the crowd. It was ridiculous that someone so short was better at navigating the festival, but she moved with such confidence that most people simply stepped out of her way, and those that didn’t got jabbed with the wand she was carrying.
She said, “We’re going there,” gesturing past the festival crowds to what looked like a well-decorated barn.
“The Leaky Centaur,” Fridu said.
“Excuse me?”
“A tavern. Rather a rough place. Hopefully you’ll be able to take care of yourself for a bit? I need to meet someone.”
“Of course I can take care of myself,” I said, unable to mask the lack of conviction. I sounded like a five-year-old child proclaiming his independence.
“We’ll bring Molly along,” Fridu said, patting my hand.
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