Free The Monsters of Stephen Enchanter by D.J. Natelson

you—but now I wonder.”
     
    “I was falsely accused!  And not of bedazzlement either—of glamour and fairy magic . . . which goes to show how much the justice system knows about enchanting.”
     
    Tinkerfingers looked doubtful and that doubt, to Stephen’s surprise, stung.  He had been relying too heavily on Tinkerfingers’s good opinion—he had too much enjoyed having someone to talk to who didn’t dislike him for his profession.  He knew better.
     
    “I don’t know,” said Youngster.  “It was worth it, to see Miss Ironfist’s face.  I’ve never seen her bow to anyone’s will—except maybe the Jolly Executioner’s.”
     
    “Bedazzlement,” said Tinkerfingers, “is never worth it.”
     
    “Luckily,” said Stephen, “I didn’t bedazzle her with anything but the force of my brilliant personality.  There was no magic involved whatsoever—except, I admit, in the snowball—and that was just to get people’s attention.  A party trick, filling something so full of magic it explodes—and harmless, if you do it with something like snow.” 
     
    “Personality,” said Tinkerfingers.
     
    “Yes—like the Jolly Executioner does.  He speaks, you obey.”
     
    “That’s not because of personality,” said Youngster, “it’s because we’re under an obligation, and because the king—”
     
    “Youngster!”
     
    “What?  He might as well know.”
     
    “It’s not our place to tell.”
     
    “Besides,” said Stephen bitterly, “I might be bedazzling you into telling.”
     
    “I don’t think so,” said Youngster.  “You don’t look impressive anymore.  Don’t you want to know?”
     
    He did.
     
    “Then there’s no reason I shouldn’t tell you.  Don’t interrupt, Tink, he should know.”
     
    “Be careful.”
     
    “Right.  The king appointed the Jolly Executioner—or the J.E. volunteered—for this mission, which means that we ultimately answer to the king, not to the J.E.  That vague enough for you, Tink?”
     
    “Don’t call me that.”
     
    Tinkerfingers and Youngster fell into bickering, and neither mentioned bedazzlement again.  Stephen himself had no desire to bring up the conversation.  He concentrated on building snowmen.
     
    Stephen was soon deeply immersed in his work, and lost all track of time, and of his surroundings.  It wasn’t until someone laughed particularly loudly that he remembered the company around him, and that he wasn’t laboring alone.  It took him a moment to focus upon the scene, and when he did, it couldn’t have surprised him more.  He had been working silently, away from the others; they had, at some point, become a jovial group, designing snowmen together, giving them details and artistic flurries and useless little additions.  The companions remained productive—there must have been nearly a hundred snowmen already done—but they were lighter and happier than Stephen had seen them.
     
    It occurred to him that this was what the company was like when under the eyes of neither the Jolly Executioner nor his pet enchanter. 
     
    Stephen turned hurriedly back to his work, lest the others notice him and become solemn and argumentative once more.
     
    The company worked until it had grown too dark and too cold to do anything but huddle by the fire and sip hot drinks.  In the intervening hours, nearly two hundred snowmen had been packed and stood waiting, spread out over a radius of a sixth of a mile.  Stephen had not enchanted a single one of them.  Eleven hours remained and, although it was barely seven in the evening, Stephen lay down and went to sleep.
     
    When Stephen awoke, the waning moon was high in the sky.  Stephen nodded to Craggy, who was on watch, and began the arduous task of temporarily enchanting two hundred snowmen.  “I hope the monster isn’t far from here,” Stephen told one of them as he worked on it.  “I don’t know how far you can hop without falling apart, and I don’t have the energy