Cloudy With a Chance of Dropbears: A City Between Novellette (The City Between) Read online

  Cloudy With a Chance of Dropbears

  W.R. Gingell

  Cover by Yvonne Nikolova at Ammonia Book Covers

  Copyright © 2019 by W.R. Gingell

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  For all the fans of the City Between series—thank you! Your theories, suspicions, and ships have been delightful to read!

  I hope this will be just as delightful for you all to read…

  Contents

  1. Cloudy With a Chance of Dropbears

  Afterword

  Cloudy With a Chance of Dropbears

  They say Behind is dangerous and Between is chancy; that only the human world with its blind, bumbling occupants is a haven for the Fair Folk. Well, I’m not exactly one of the fair folk, and if Australia isn’t as dangerous as the most feared parts of Behind, I’ll eat my own wooden leg.

  Properly speaking, there’s Australia Behind and Australia Between, but when it comes to Behind and Between, it’s nearly the same thing no matter where in the human world it joins up. Go anywhere Behind and it’s the same Behind; all fae and vampires and selkies, that sort of thing. A few of us leprechauns, too. Behind is the place the human world doesn’t know exists. Even Between isn’t too different; it’s just the way it looks that’s different—depending on if you know how to look, if you get my drift.

  It’s not the same when it comes to travelling between places in the human world. I’ve been in civilized places like England and Canada, and it’s a world away from the nightmare land of red heat and deadly animals they call Australia. They don’t let you into Australia from Behind until you’ve passed your survival fitness exam, which should tell you something.

  I hadn’t passed that exam. I didn’t want to pass that exam. I would have gladly spent the rest of my life in a cubicle safely Behind the human world. And yet here I was, stuck headfirst in a tree on the human-world side of Australia, with my behind exposed to the elements and the dull thud of dropbears hitting the ground around me.

  Let me explain. I wasn’t planning on going to Australia that day—that day or ever. I’m a leprechaun, the closest thing you can get to a living calculator, and until that day I was perfectly happy crunching numbers in my cubicle. For us, it’s about the closest thing you can get to pure happiness unless you own your own private supply of gold coins to count every day. That rainbow with the promised gold at the end of it—that’s what a cubicle and something to count means to a leprechaun.

  I was ready for a big day. My wooden leg was hurting when I got up, and that means a day of either finding or losing huge amounts of money. And if you’re going to tell me a wooden leg can’t hurt, you can kick off out of here any time, because mine always hurts when there’s going to be big money, so there. I just didn’t know whether it was going to be a finding or losing day. Finding or losing doesn’t matter to me, mind you—I just find out where the money’s gone. If it was my money it would matter a lot more; but it’s not, and it doesn’t.

  I sat down in my chair at the office in an almost jovial frame of mind. I startled the coffee boy by grinning at him, scaring him so much that he spilled the coffee and had to go back for more. Serve him right, lanky-legged little lollygagger that he was. Grinning a bit wider, I logged onto my work portal and rubbed my hands together to see the first case waiting for me.

  “Never failed me yet!” I declared, slapping my wooden leg. The first case that popped up on my portal was the one I’d been working off and on for the last few months; something from a group called Allied Traders. They were a group that worked across Between to trade with the human world (coffee and other stuff that the humans do better than Behind) and on paper, things almost looked kosher. Almost.

  Then you went a bit deeper and found that the things you should have found a bit deeper weren’t there. Things like human resources—Allied Traders had warehouses on this side and the human side of Between for any resources from the human world—weren’t in the warehouse they were meant to be in. Actually, there wasn’t anything in the warehouses at all except a very sleepy fae guard once you got past the magical defences. Good thing leprechauns are so good at getting past anything magic, isn’t it?

  That’s what I thought, anyway, sitting there and grinning at my portal. I’d taken a trip yesterday, and last night I’d clued in my supervisor. If I did things right for the next twenty years or so, maybe I’d get promoted up the chain for this.

  I went and got my own coffee before the coffee boy got back, eager to sniff out more payments that had a suspicious lack of product to go with them. I put it down on my desk and settled myself to sit down, but something sharp and hot seared my leg where my Behind Identify Card should be. I yelped and pinched it out of my pocket. Behind magic is the good stuff, but there’s nothing that melts faster than an Identify Card, magic or no magic. Something about magic and the newer human manufactured substances doesn’t blend well.

  Now that I looked at the card, too, it was a lot blacker than it should be. Well, parts of it were blacker than they should be and it was still hot in my fingers, and now there was nothing burning in my pocket…

  I squinted down at it, irritated to find that my glasses weren’t around my neck, and reached for the desk where the missing glasses should have been.

  My desk wasn’t there. Actually, the office wasn’t there. No wonder the ground was so squishy beneath my peg—it was real grass, not the magic-fake they put in Behind offices.

  Great. Someone had relocated the office without telling me. I’d send off a pretty strong message as soon as I found where those goons in Location had parked it this time. I’m as security-conscious as the next leprechaun, but there was no way we’d been found so soon after the last move.

  I looked down at my Identify card again, and it looked a bit red in the middle. Red in the middle, and if I squinted at it just right, there were words making a black scrawl in the centre of the red bit.

  Kill the kid and you can come back, it said.

  I snuffled a dry laugh down at it. Somebody was having a laugh. It was a bit stupid, though; kid was the word used for human children, and who was going to find a kid Behind? I looked a bit closer, and a sticky breeze swept across my forearms, raising goosebumps in spite of its warmth. That wasn’t just red behind the writing. It was Red. If somebody was having a laugh, why was my Identify Card marked Red for Deport? Deportation Red meant tried, executed, and deported. No return to Behind.

  That was stupid. Someone had to be having a laugh. I was still Behind…wasn’t I? But where in Behind was I? I looked around me, dazedly taking in the dark green foliage of trees and the playground, and the half tree that someone had turned into a house—wait. The playground? Fae don’t have playgrounds. And why was the heat so heavy today? Where in Behind had access to this kind of muggy heat? Muggy…muggy heat? There’s no muggy heat Behind; too many weather mages.

  “No,” I said numbly, sweat springing to my brow. “Because that means I’m—that means I’m in the human world.”

  Red for Deport. I was in the human world.

  “What did I do?” I demanded of the hollowed-out tree house, my voice high and panicked. “I paid my taxes. Found taxes. Gave my leg for the Fae Corp in the Third war!”

  I sat down in the grass and buried my head in
my hands. This was bad. The worst. I couldn’t survive in the human world. I wasn’t trained. I wasn’t ready. I didn’t even have a job! Who would keep me in gold if I had no job? And the humans—how was I supposed to communicate with them? I didn’t even know if you could communicate with them; it was bad enough trying to communicate with the milk cows that were brought over from the human world when ours died out.

  Something bit me beneath my trousers, and if the air around me was a muggy heat, this was a fiery heat. I yelled and shot to my feet, slapping at the spot, and pinched whatever the heck it was through the trousers and out into the open. It was an ant, squirming and dying, its broken legs flailing at me. With my Sight I could see the poison on its pincers, even if my normal sight wasn’t good enough to properly make out the pincers, and when I looked back down at my leg, horrified, I could see the same poison beginning to course through my veins from the point of the bite.

  But…but it was so small. How could it be so deadly?

  I threw the ant away from me and slapped my hand back over the bite, drawing out the poison in the same way I’d drawn out the ant. It came out reluctantly, as fast-spreading as it had been in my blood. I didn’t know if my legs were weak because of the poison, or the fact that I’d almost left it too late to treat comfortably. What was this place? What place had such tiny, deadly animals?

  And why was it so skin-meltingly hot, for all that was gold?

  I didn’t dare to sit on the ground again. At home the grass was green and plump and cool, free from murderous insects and good for recharging; here, now, I could see that it was teeming with deadly life. Gold only knew what kind of other venomous insects were waiting to kill me. There was a nice, sunny spot on the metal play equipment; it was bright and sunny as well, painted in yellow and orange, and I felt that at least there was a shining spot to the day thus far.

  I breathed out a sigh of relief, hopeful of soaking up a little energy from the sun, and sank down on the metal square.

  It burnt.

  For the second time in five minutes, I leaped to my feet with a howl, clutching my rear. Was it silver? Who makes human playgrounds out of silver? But there was no debilitating spread of malaise, no nausea; just a pained kind of after-burn that faded slowly but left me disinclined to sit down again right away.

  It was just hot. So gold-fired hot from the sun that it had burned me to sit down on it.

  I whimpered a bit. I didn’t really care where I was anymore; I just wanted to go back home. I picked a spot in the shady brown instead of the sunny brown, and sat down—this time very carefully—on something wooden and duck-shaped that wobbled beneath me but didn’t burn me. A sensation of coolness soothed my burnt backside, but I couldn’t feel anything energetic in the grass beneath my feet.

  I groaned into my hands. “Where can I even recharge in this place?”

  “Athelas likes to use the waterfall in Snug,” said a voice. “Zero prefers the sea. But if you want to use something nearby, there’s always the Huon river.”

  I looked up wildly. It was a kid. Standing there in front of me with its hands in its pockets. I don’t know if it was male or female—you can’t tell with humans; they’re all so ugly, and they don’t smell of anything. At least with Behinders you can tell who’s male and who’s female by smell. I didn’t know how long it had been there, either.

  I stared at it while the sweat trickled down my temple and made a prickling line right to my collar.

  Kill the kid and you can come back. That’s what the writing on my card said. Well, this was the only kid in the area; long-legged and long-haired, it had a hopeful sort of expression to its face. I mean, it was still ugly, but it was ugly in a nice sort of way. It looked like you could pat it on the head without being bitten. Not that I could reach, but still.

  “You appeared out of nowhere,” it said to me. It sounded thoughtful but not surprised. “I don’t know what kind you are.”

  I glared at it. It knew a bit too much for a human, didn’t it? Or was it just confused? I said, “Kind? What do you mean?”

  “You know—Behindkind.” It tilted its head. “I know you are one, just can’t tell what kind. You’re not tall enough for fae or pouty enough to be a vampire. Are you a troll?”

  “Who do you think you’re calling a troll!” I demanded, sitting up straight in outrage. The wooden duck wobbled and threatened to dump me in the brown, crackly grass.

  “Oh, sorry,” it said. “Didn’t mean to offend you. I know a troll and she’s really nice.”

  “That’s because they’re eager-to-please little nubkinses!” I snarled, clinging with both hands to the wobbling duck’s wooden handles. “They should just accept that they’re ugly and no one loves them.”

  “Oh,” said the kid. It didn’t try to say anything else; just sat there as if it was waiting for me to notice something.

  I ignored it. “Red for Deport,” I muttered to myself. “Who has that clout and who would do it? Who am I? Just a little government lep’ looking for his next pay stream. No need to mark me Red for Deport, was there? Who’s the sorry beetle that sent me off into the human world without a trial?”

  “I don’t know about that,” said the kid, “but I don’t think we’re actually in the human world.”

  “’Course we are,” I said, without paying too much attention. “Where else would we be? You’re a human. The place feels human—gives me a nasty shiver.”

  “Ye-es,” said the kid uneasily. “But—”

  “And I’m a leprechaun. Don’t go calling me a troll.”

  That distracted it. “Oh. There are leprechauns Behind! What’s your name?”

  “Five-Four-One.”

  The kid giggled. “Really?”

  I scowled at it. “That’s my batch number. What else would it be? Wipe that smirk off your face.”

  “Sorry,” the kid said, but it was still grinning. “But around here there’s a saying that goes I’d rather have a number than a name like that, and you’ve already got a number, so—!”

  Maybe this one wasn’t as intelligent as I’d thought it was. At least it wasn’t as stupid as the human cows had been.

  It was clever enough to notice my scowl growing. It managed to smother its grin a bit, and asked, “Why are you here, anyway?”

  “Curious, aren’t you?” I said sourly. I sneaked a peek at my card, but it was still red and black, the writing still jumping out at me. Kill the kid and you can come back. That was all well and good, but why should I? Who was this mysterious kidnapper to tell me to kill someone for them? Even a human kid. That’s the sort of thing I don’t approve of.

  But if I didn’t, how would I get home? I couldn’t live here. I needed my gold. I needed a place to recharge. Without those things, I would die even sooner than a human in this part of the world.

  I looked at the kid meditatively, which seemed to make it nervous. “What?” it asked.

  “You,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

  “Same as you,” it said, a bit more cheerfully.

  “What?” Did it have a card, too? Death matches were illegal Behind, but the governing powers could be stretchy when it came to applying Behind laws to Behindkind in the human world.

  “I just appeared, like you,” said the kid. “Well, I think so, anyway. Right in the middle of making dinner, too. They’re gonna be annoyed—’s’pecially JinYeong. Stuff always happens when I’m cooking his choice.”

  “Cooking?” I glared at it. “What the everlasting gold are you chuntering about? Nobody cares about whether or not your dinner gets cooked.”

  “Yeah, but that’s the thing,” the kid argued. “JinYeong cares, and that means he’s gonna be stroppy as all heck when he finds me.”

  “I don’t care if JinYeong is stroppy as all heck!” I snapped. I didn’t even know what stroppy as all heck meant. “What is this place, and why have you dragged me here? You’ve no business marking me Red for Deport!”

  The kid looked indignant. “I just
said! I didn’t have anything to do with it; I was in the kitchen and then I was here. I mean, I think I know where I am, but when I tried to start walking home I couldn’t get out.”

  “Out?”

  “Yeah. It’s weird; I can usually get in and out of Between without any problems, but whenever I try to walk past the picnic table to go home, I find myself walking back past the treehouse again.”

  “This isn’t Between,” I said, very slowly and loudly. “It’s the human world.” For all that was gold! It was a human! Why didn’t it know its own world?

  The kid looked like it was trying not to grin again. “Yeah,” it said. “But you try walking out and see how you go.”

  I didn’t like the way it was grinning, but I had to try now. I stumped toward the picnic table, my wooden leg sinking too deeply into the brown grass, and found myself walking past the treehouse instead.

  “Flamin’ weird, isn’t it?” said the kid, in a chummy sort of way. “What d’you reckon’s happened?”

  I glared at it. Was it stupid or senseless? No one in their right mind should be that comfortable and trusting when they had been thrown into a closed circle with someone who, for all they knew, could have been ordered to kill them.

  “Maybe we should see if we can get over it,” the kid suggested. “I reckon its fae magic, and fae don’t think about loopholes as much as I thought they would. Well, not when it comes to humans, anyway. They think we’re as dumb as cows over here, so they don’t usually make things too hard for us.”

  I coughed and tapped my wooden leg against the ground. “That right?”

  The kid grinned again. “Yeah. Oi. If you give me a leg up, I reckon I can climb over the top of whatever spell they’re using.”

  “A leg up?” Was that meant to be a joke?

  “Or I’ll give you one, if you like, but I reckon I might be lighter than you.”