The Wishstone and the Wonderworkers Read Free

unconsumed by carrion eaters) which has attracted the scavenger snake into the open air.
    No, the subject of our interest is the Princess Sabitha. Out on the night, out on the town, out on the prowl. Hoping (expecting!) to be seduced, seized and subjected to - well, let us leave the business of subjection to the imagination. At least for the moment. And while the imagination does its work, let us watch the Princess Sabitha, who steps out lively even though the night is hot enough for mosquitoes to be drowning in their own sweat.
    [I personally went to the trouble of obtaining fifty mosquitoes which I then placed within a sealed retort. Subjecting these vampiric reptiles to increasing degrees of heat in an effort to elicit an outflow of sweat secured at length their utter dehydration and their death yet failed to bring about any visible production of moisture. The necessary conclusion is therefore that the autodestruction of mosquitoes through the mechanism suggested by the Text is impossible, which implies that the Originator is here in error, or else is perpetrating a deliberate Untruth. Oris Baumgage, Fact Checker Minor.\
    What do we know of the Princess Sabitha, this gay young aristocrat?
    This we know: she was not born on the island of Untunchilamon. No, she was born far to the east in Yestron. To be precise, she was born in Ang. With more precision still, we can place her nativity in the city of Obooloo, in the very heart of the Izdimir Empire. Her full name was Sabitha Winolathon Taskinjathura. She was a descendant of the famous Ousompton Ling Ordway whose lineage has been dealt with at such length in Lady Jade’s Book of the Higher Aristocracy, and thus she could trace her ancestry back for at least some three thousand years.
    In due course, the dictates of fortune brought Sabitha to Untunchilamon. There, as befitted her royal station, she was domiciled in the palace of the Empress Justina. Unfortunately, thanks to the slapdash way the palace was organised, nobody has made the appropriate arrangements to supervise her amusements. In fact, far more care is taken of Justina’s grossly over-indulged albinotic ape Vazzy.
    In all the time the princess has been resident in the pink palace, nobody has seen fit to remedy this situation. Hence she is free to come and go as she pleases, without so much as a chaperone. Thus, on the night on which our history opens, here she is out on her own on the streets of Injiltaprajura.
    By daylight she looks every bit the young royal, preening herself for her admirers, delicately supping upon fresh fish or zabaglione, accepting (as of right) those compliments and courtesies which come her way. But now it is night, and she is out for action. She is hot, hot, there’s no doubting it. She walks with a strumpet’s roll, her xanthic eyes alight with a leam of lust as she quits Lak Street and ventures down Skindik Way. Swiftly she reaches the depraved depths of Lubos. There she does not vacillate, but recklessly plunges into the stews.
    One does not expect such things from the aristocracy. But there it is. The truth must be told, and the uneffaceable truth is that she is pursuing carnal satisfaction with no sense of aidos whatsoever, shamelessly strutting her stuff in the streets, ready (more than ready!) for the first male with the energy to take her.
    She has not gone far through the wagmoire of the waterfront slumlands when she encounters a virile young mariner. He is a sailor fresh off a ship, a mangy street-fighter who has but one ear. Hunk is his name, and he has sailed the waters of the Great Ocean from Yam to Manamalargo. He has seen the cruel cliffs of Odrum, the jungles of Quilth, the storm-torn shores of Wen Endex and the limpid waters of Parengarenga Harbour.
    He has tasted the exotic pleasures of a thousand ports, yet still is ready for more. Furthermore, the glamour of his pintle is alone sufficient to persuade the Princess Sabitha that he is the one. For when appetite goads the