Potatoes, Come Forth! - fantasy novel

[Rhynedahll]

Available on Amazon, B&N, and Lulu for $3.99.

An excerpt:

As the early morning breeze blew the last of the fading mist from the open expanse of the field, Everett strode forth, slid back the frayed sleeves of his work shirt, and raised his rough hands to the cloud-laced sky. After a perfectly timed dramatic beat, he intoned the magic words in a clear, well-rehearsed commanding tone.
“Potatoes, come forth!”
The sounds carried, cutting through the warming air, and echoed faintly from the distant tree line.
And then…
Nothing happened.
Unimpressed, the gruff farmer hawked and spat, then rubbed his mouth with a grimed sleeve. Olin Ghemenson was a solid, practical man who worked the earth. He had confidence in it and the efficacy of a strong back, but in little else. “That’s all there is to it, is it? So when does it start workin’?”
“Most spells aren’t very complex,” Everett contended, somewhat defensively. “That does not diminish their power.”
“Sure. So where’re the potatoes?”
“Give it a minute, will you?”
Ghemenson shrugged, but his significant glance at the mule teams conveyed his meaning well enough. The middle buster plows would turn out the crop efficiently, but the ten acre field would take the four mule drivers most of a day. Everett had claimed to be able to magic them out of the ground in less than twenty minutes.
Everett had felt the magic coalesce and knew that the spell had actuated, but nevertheless, as always, the wait wracked his worn nerves. He could not escape the illogical fear that his spell would fail. None of his ever had, and there were only whispered rumors of suspicious provenance to suggest that such an occurrence was possible, but the anxiety still made his heart race and his hands tremble in persistent doubt. Grinding his teeth in annoyance, he crossed his arms to clamp the traitorous appendages in place, rocked back on one heel to proclaim his nonchalance, and started to count under his breath. The longest the spell had ever taken to evince was forty-seven seconds.
At thirty-nine seconds, the ground beneath his feet stirred, producing a feeble, almost imperceptible roll.
Ghemenson looked sideways at Everett. “Is that it?”
“No, that’s just the beginning. Perhaps you should brace yourself. Depending on the density of your soil, there may be some displacement.”
Ghemenson drew his lips into a thin line. “What does that mean?”
“Some shaking, normally. A minor earthquake on occasion.”
“Earthquake? If there’s damage to the barns, I’ll be deductin’ it from your fee.”
Everett’s heart raced faster. For all practical purposes penniless, he desperately needed this fee. Without it, he would once more go to bed hungry. “Oh, no, not that sort of quake, I assure you. Nothing to be concerned about at all.”
The ground heaved and Everett staggered to regain his balance. Ghemenson, weighing at least seventeen stone, did not budge, but his expression became disapproving.
The next shock was milder and immediately followed by a steady, low-key vibration of the earth. Across the hedge-bordered field, the dried potato vines, the hilled rows, and the cultivated soil between the rows began to stir.
“Any second now,” Everett promised the frowning Ghemenson.
The first red spheroid oozed from the shifting soil less than a chain from the dirt work lane on which Everett, the farmer, and his workers waited. The potato shook itself, somewhat dog-like, to shed the clinging sandy loam and rolled down the slope of its row into the furrow between. As the vibration increased slightly in intensity, another potato popped out two rows to the east of the first, then dozens began to appear, some wiggling forth like gophers from burrows, others leaping out of the ground like breaching fish. The potatoes trailed fragments of roots and those with rot or other wounds burst as they fought free, but even the smallest seemed fixedly determined to escape its subterranean existence to find a new destiny in the clear sunshine. As the activity increased, tiny geysers of potatoes, dried vines, and soil erupted in many places across the slightly rolling ground. Small clumps and then larger piles of potatoes formed as every spot of the field became involved in the desperate migration and a low noise of sliding earth, colliding potatoes, and rusting vines filled the air. Slowly, the collecting tubers began to roll and nudge themselves toward Everett, eventually coalescing into knee-high waves that washed over the rows, crushing the rare weed, as they swept with apparent inexorable force toward the waiting men.
Ghemenson took a step back. “My yield is better than two thousand pounds an acre. That’s a good ten tons of potatoes, there, Magicker. You sure you’ve got ‘em under control?”
“It’s not actually a question of control, so to speak, Monsieur Ghemenson. I don’t direct the potatoes. The spell simply requires them to gather at a focal point, or locus.”
“I see. And where might this ‘focal point’ be?”
“Well, generally, it’s about where I'm standing when I cast the spell.”
“Hmm, then unless you have a spell that will let you breathe potato, I’d think you’d better move.” Taking his own advice, the farmer headed back at a quick trot along the track toward his farm buildings, waving the mule teams ahead of him.
Everett, indecisive, stood his ground for a moment as the crests of the potato waves climbed higher. The highest wave was already over four feet, with a churning froth of smaller spuds at the top. Prior to this, he had only cast the spell on small garden plots and the harvest had been no more than a few wheelbarrows of potatoes that had piled themselves in front of him in a more or less orderly fashion. He had not considered the problems that scale might bring.
The leading potatoes thudded against his boots and subsided as their magical impetuous faded, then were shoved aside as more potatoes rolled in. Yet more crowded close within seconds, jostling their fellows, overtopping his boots, and thudding insistently against his ankles. When the first of the waves was only a few yards distant, Everett decided to abandon his post. He did not run to join the waiting men, but his pace was faster than the casual stroll he would have liked. It had been difficult to convince Ghemenson, given the generally impoverished state of his appearance, that he was indeed a Journeyman Magicker. As he hoped to entice Ghemenson to recommend his services to the farmer’s neighbors, failing to display confidence in his own magic now would certainly be counterproductive. He was careful not to glance back as the roar of the gathering harvest intensified.
Everett nodded casually to the four stocky, weather-beaten men and turned, taking care to appear unhurried, to view what his magic had wrought. A mound had formed across the work lane, landslides of potatoes tumbling to fill the low ditches to either side. The mound grew rapidly to a small, irregular hill as much as ten feet high, and then, abruptly, the noise, the earth, and the potatoes became still. A hovering dust lingered over the field and an aromatic starchy hint wafted on the wind, but otherwise the spell seemed complete.
Ghemenson gave the field a once over, then turned and gave Everett a curt nod. “I’ll say this, for you, Magicker,” the farmer conceded. “You did get the crop out of the ground in under twenty minutes.”
Everett inclined his head serenely. “It is magic, after all.”
“I don’t suppose you’d have a ‘Spirit the potatoes all into their bins spell’, would you?”
Everett hesitated, instinctively if irrationally reluctant to acknowledge his magical shortcomings, then begrudged, “I’m afraid not.”
“Thought so. That’s the way it is with magic. Never quite finishes the job, if you know what I mean. Well, next time, maybe we can get them closer to the cellars.”
Ghemenson turned to his men. “Jack, Charlie, Tim, go fetch the wagons and we’ll get started.” He looked back at Everett, gave half a smile, and made a rumbling noise that was probably a chuckle.
“Did you bring a cart, Magicker?”
Everett felt suddenly uncomfortable. “Sorry, cart?”
“Your fee of two hundred pounds of potatoes weighs two hundred pounds. You’re a good sized fellow, but I doubt that you can carry that much very far at all.”
“Oh! No, I, uhm, hadn’t thought of that.” Mentally, Everett kicked himself.
“Well, I’ve got an old homemade wheel barrow that I can let you have, but you might want to think about getting your own, if you intend to deal in potatoes much.”

[carpetmojo]

Smashwords please ?

[Rhynedahll]

Originally Posted by carpetmojo

Smashwords please ?

I'll see what I can do.

Smashwords' conversion process generally destroys formatting. If I can get something acceptable out of it, I'll put it up.


Edit: Okay, I've put it up on SW as .epub, Sony, and Palm. A cursory look indicates that it's not mangled, but no guarantees.