author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

Notes from the author:

Early on in Diane Duane’s So You Want to Be a Wizard (Book 1 of the Young Wizards series), our protagonists consult with senior wizards Carl Romeo and Tom Swale for the first time. Wizards have to hold down day jobs, just like everyone else; Carl’s day job involves selling commercial time for local broadcast. But because he is a wizard, he also sells regular time on the side. Would you like to buy a piece of next Thursday?

Now, while I was in my home town of Metairie, Louisiana over the winter holidays, I caught sight of a red truck parked on North Hullen Street just south of West Esplanade Avenue. It said ARNOULT LAND COMPANY in big black letters on a big white rectangle. And I wouldn’t have thought twice about it except for Carl Romeo.

Weird thing is, “Arnoult Land Company” appears to be completely un-Google-able.

“Ma, we got dragons,” said the kid.

Kid said all sorts of things like that, time to time, so Ma weren’t flustered none. “Well, you know what to do about that,” she said. “And it’s ‘we’ve.’ We’ve got dragons.”

“No, we really do,” said the kid. “Come see.”

Ma sighed. Dishes was overflowing. She’d been putting ‘em off. Why they was always her job didn’t bear thinking about, not if she didn’t want to sit down and cry. And dishes don’t get done that way. So she just did them. Besides, it felt so good to have the kitchen clean. Everything went all a-sparkle, and it was all down to her what done it. Made her feel like she could outrace horses, looking back at what she done.

Still, she might as well put them off a titch longer. “Coming.”

The kid led her back to the garage, and Ma started to get a little heated about that. Kid weren’t supposed play around in the garage. She knew it, too. There was things in there Ma didn’t want her getting into: tools Ma needed in good order, other tools what hadn’t been touched for years, the car that rattled like a noisy death trap when she drove it and sat around like a quiet death trap when she didn’t. The storage portal, too—that was a big no-no for the kid to play with. Kid was in for a right hiding, she been playing around in the garage. Must be a real emergency got the kid confessing to it.

Sure was an emergency. There was dragons in the garage. If that weren’t no emergency, Ma dearly wanted to know what was.

“They came outta the wall,” the kid said. “Right outta the wall, where the storage portal goes. I watched it happen....”

This has been an excerpt from the Friday Fictionette for January 22, 2016. Subscribers can download the full-length fictionette (905 words) from Patreon in PDF or MP3 format depending on their pledge tier.

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