Legally Dead - Part Four

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3


"Uncle Tas!" I shouted. "What are you doing here?"

And do you know what he said? He said, "EEEEEEAAAAAWWWWWWW!" I just about messed my britches. I yanked off those spectacles and there before me stood that mule that had busted up the auction.

"You wait right here," I said to him. "I'll go get somebody. I'll find Palin. He'll know what to do. They're selling all your stuff on account of you're dead and all."

I found Palin up near the front. They were getting ready to start the bidding on the magical stuff. I pulled on the hem of his wizard's robe.

"What is it, Ruell?" he said. 

"Come on. I need to show you something," I said.

"Can't it wait? I want to bid on a wand."

"No, come on," I said. I tugged and pulled until he finally gave up and followed me. He was a lot older than me and he was a wizard, but he was still young enough to listen to a kid and not turn him into a frog or something. I took him over to the tree where Uncle Tas was tied up. "There," I said.

Palin took one at the mule and said, "Reull," in the most disappointed voice I've ever heard come out of a person's mouth who was not my Mama.

"Here, look at him through these spectacles," I said. He heaved out a big, heavy sigh and took the spectacles and held them up to his eyes. Then he dropped them, he was so surprised.

Uncle Tas said, "EEEEEEEAAAAAAWWWWWWW!" and commenced to bucking and kicking.

"It's a good thing I've got the right spell memorized," Palin said. He pushed back his sleeves and went to work. Magic has always been a wonder to me, and seeing him cast that spell just about stood my hair on end. But when he was done and the smoke had cleared, there stood Uncle Tas with a rope around his neck and a bit in his mouth. He spit the bit out on the ground.

"Can you speak?" Palin asked him.

"I'm almost afraid to try," Uncle Tas said.

Well, I can't begin to describe the uproar when Uncle Tas pushed his way through the crowd, jumped up on a table, and snatched a magic bowl his widow's hand. Caramon Majere took one look at him and fainted dead away. The Widow Burrfoot screamed, grabbed the till, and ran off. That gnome, he just kept right on auctioneering like nothing had happened and they had to pull him down and stuff a rag in his mouth just to shut him up.

Seems when Uncle Tas had set out for Mt. Nevermind, he met up with a wizard just outside of Solace. He said he should have been suspicious from the start, because the wizard actually acted like he needed a traveling companion. Uncle Tas said there was something about him that seemed familiar, but he couldn't 'put the beard on the dwarf' and every time he tried he got a headache and a compulsion to think of something else.

They made camp that night and went to sleep by the fire, and when Uncle Tas woke up the next morning he was a mule. The wizard put a stall on his head and led him to the nearest farm, where he traded him for a bag of apples and a rusty bucket with a hole in it.

"And never have I spent a more miserable three years," Uncle Tas said. "After you've pulled a plow in the hot sun all day long, a mule isn't quite as grand a thing to be as you might imagine."

The Widow Burrfoot had hired the wizard to charm Tas into marrying her and then to get rid of him so she could sell his stuff. Though nobody remembered it, she had visited Solace about six months before and seen the musuem and how valuable it was and how Uncle Tas was practically giving his things away. After she took over, business got so bad (because she was such a greedy skinflint) she decided to auction it off instead, but to do that she had to wait three years to declare her husband legally dead and take full control of his estate.

A lot of folks wanted to know if they had to return the stuff they had bought, but Uncle Tas was only too glad to get rid of it, as it freed up space in his museum for the acquiring of new things. He let me keep those magic spectacles. Nobody ever saw the Widow Burrfoot again, and three years to the day of the auction, Uncle Tas had her declared legally dead. 



© 2009 Jeff Crook


Disclaimer - This story is not part of the official Dragonlance canon and was never intended to be so. It is fan fiction. The author has not been contracted or compensated for writing it. Yadda, yadda, yaday.