from works of
Fantasy
by various authors

No sir, he just wasn’t cut out for petty larceny. It was worse than a sin—it was unprofitable, too. Bad enough to do the Devil’s work, but then to get such miserable pay on top of it!

“Oh, good heavens! Great elephantine, cloudy, adamant heavens full of thunder stones! Roger! You can’t be serious. Are you?”

Roger was looking around and drumming his forefinger against his teeth. “If I were serious I would never have become a wizard, would I? The fact that it’s been done before doesn’t stop it from happening again.”

“Man bein’ what he is,” I tell her, “he fights and kills his own kind. Well, now, just suppose he gets to be immortal. Why, ma’am, it would just be war forever, and no happiness anywhere. Way it is, mostly the ones who rule have done more harm than good, what with wars and conquest. If they couldn’t die off and give the human race a breathin’ spell now and then, it would just be stinkin’ awful, beggin’ your pardon.”

But you wouldn’t expect anybody who thinks twice about it to ask to be made immortal.

Reason is there’s nothing that rightly equals the lonesomeness of growin’ older after all your friends die off. Nobody to talk to, lessn it’s little tots, because the grown-ups don’t want to hear about the good old days, and they don’t want to take you with ’em social.

Now, beyond the Cyresians the suspicion grew that Merimna’s heroes were dead, and a plan was devised that a man should go by night and come close to the figures upon the ramparts and see whether they were Welleran, Soorenard, Mommolek, Rollory, Akanax, and young Irain. And all were agreed upon the plan, and many names were mentioned of those who should go, and the plan matured for many years. It was during these years that watchers clustered often at sunset upon the mountains, but came no nearer. Finally, a better plan was made, and it was decided that two men who had been by chance condemned to death should be given a pardon if they went down into the plain by night and discovered whether or not Merimna’s heroes lived. At first the two prisoners dared not go, but after a while one of them, Seejar, said to his companion, Sajar-Ho: “See now, when the King’s axeman smites a man upon the neck that man dies.”

And the other said that this was so. Then said Seejar: “And even though Welleran smite a man with his sword, no more befalleth him than death.”

Then Sajar-Ho thought for a while. Presently he said: “Yet the eye of the King’s axeman might err at the moment of his stroke or his arm fail him and the eye of Welleran hath never erred nor his arm failed. It were better to bide here.”

Then said Seejar: “Maybe that Welleran is dead and that some other holds his place upon the ramparts, or even a statue of stone.”

But Sajar-Ho made answer: “How can Welleran be dead when he escaped from two score horsemen with swords that were sworn to slay him and all sworn upon our country’s gods?”

And Seejar said: “This story his father told my grandfather concerning Welleran. On the day that the fight was lost on the plains of Kurlistan he saw a dying horse near to the river, and the horse looked piteously towards the water but could not reach it. And the father of my grandfather saw Welleran go down to the river’s brink and bring water from it with his own hand and give it to the horse. Now we are in as sore a plight as was that horse, and as near to death; it may be that Welleran will pity us, while the King’s axeman cannot, because of the commands of the King.”

I would say something—anything—and she would try to say something that rhymed with it. Then it would be her turn. [...]

I started off with “We’ll go home and eat our dinners.”

“An’ Lord have mercy on us sinners,” she cried. Then, “Let’s see you find a rhyme for ‘month’!”

“I bet I’ll do it . . . jutht thith onth,” I replied. “I guess I did it then, by cracky.”

“Course you did, but then you’re wacky. Top that, mister funny-lookin’!”

I pretended I couldn’t, mainly because I couldn’t, and she soundly kicked my shin as a penance.