Stork Naked (18 page)

“Typical human girl. But what's this about panties? Don't all girls wear them?”

“Yes, but boy's aren't supposed to see them. They freak boys out.”

“They do? How odd.”

Then Stymy remembered something. “There's no Adult Conspiracy here!”

“Conspiracy to do what?” she asked blankly.

“In my reality, it is known in full as the Adult Conspiracy to Keep Interesting Things from Children. Such as cuss words, and how to summon us storks to deliver babies.”

“How quaint. Why should this information be concealed?”

“To prevent children from doing it too soon. There needs to be a certain maturity to be responsible for babies, who need good care.”

“That is a point,” she agreed. “Xanth is really no better than Mundania in that respect.”

“It is in my reality. Children don't learn the secret until they are eighteen, or have a special need to learn it sooner. So they have mature, lasting relationships, and marriages never break up.”

“That is a change! Here couples have external affairs and marriages break up half the time, and children suffer.”

“That explains a lot,” Stymy said. “We were amazed to learn that Surprise and Umlaut are married to Epoxy Ogre and Benzine Brassie in this reality. They faked being with each other, and even sent out a summons together. That would never happen in our reality.”

“I think I am getting to like your reality. I wish I could deliver there instead of here. I would feel much better about the future of my deliveries.”

The idea of having her in his reality thrilled him. But of course that was irresponsible. So he focused on the subject. “The third child is about age five, Woe Betide. She's actually the—”

“The child aspect of the Demoness Metria,” she said.

“Metria is here?”

“Metria is everywhere, I think. That demoness really gets around. She fits right in with our culture.”

“I can imagine,” Stymy said, thinking of the way Metria tried endlessly to seduce any male of any species she encountered, not from any real passion but simply to make mischief.

There was a swirl of smoke. “Did I hear my nomenclature?”

“Your what?” Stymy asked.

“Character, denomination, appellation, designation, luminary, celebrity—”

“Name?”

“Whatsoever,” the smoke agreed crossly, forming into the most luscious imaginable human torso, with the head of a stork. “What are you odd birds up to?”

Was there any harm in telling her? “We're looking for three lost children.”

“Ha! Does one of them look like this?” The demoness fuzzed into mist and reformed as little Woe Betide.

“Yes!” Stymy said. “Have you seen her?”

The grown demoness reformed, this time as a stork's body with a human head. “Naturally not. She's my child aspect.”

“She's from a different reality. Not this one. So you can probably coexist.”

“Now that promises to be interesting. I can fission into halfway crazy D. Mentia and me, and we can interact, but Woe is too young to know how. I'd like to contest her.”

Stymy knew he shouldn't, but his beak was already opening. “To what her?”

“Confront, encounter, congregate, converge, adjoin, animal flesh—”

That would be meat. Or—“Meet?”

“Whatsoever! I'll help you look for her.”

Why not? She certainly had an interest in rescuing her other reality child self. “We think the Sorceress Morgan le Fey led them astray and is holding them hostage. We must find them to stop that.”

“Morgan! Even I dislike her, and that's hard to score.”

“Hard to what?”

“Accomplish,” Stymie said impatiently.

“Whatsoever,” the demoness agreed as crossly as ever.

“We'll fly low across the land, and descend to investigate any prospect,” Stymy said. “Oh—Metria, one of the children is your son Demon Ted.”

“I have a son?”

“In my reality you married a mortal man, got half a soul and conscience, and after sending about fifteen hundred signals managed to get a stork to pay attention.”

“My alternate did that? I'm sure I could have done it faster. She can't be very cogent.”

“Very what?”

“Sound, solid, satisfactory, telling, convincing—”

“Persuasive?”

“Whatsoever,” she agreed crossly. “Though it is true you storks have a canned ear for demon signals.”

“A tin ear?” Stymie asked.

“Whatso—hey, you skipped my litany.”

“Sorry about that,” Stymie said without apparent regret. “I just want to get on with the search.”

“For suitable prospects,” Stymy reminded her.

Metria became a full stork, a sexy one. “I'm a prospect. Investigate me.”

“Are you here to help or hinder?” Stymie demanded sharply.

“One or the other.” The demoness spread her wings and took off.

“She annoys me,” Stymie muttered.

“Understandable,” Stymy said, privately pleased by her interest. He didn't care to admit that Metria in saucy stork form was quite interesting. It helped him understand why human men tended to have eyes for more women than they ever hoped to accommodate.

They flew to the next glade. There was a group of several pink vaguely storklike birds. “You check farther ahead,” Stymy called. “I'll ask these if they have seen the children.”

He descended. The birds were not only pink, their beaks were spoons. They were roseate spoonbills.

He landed and approached them. “Hello. I am Stymy Stork.” Introductions were always better, first.

“We're sposeate roonbills,” the nearest one replied. “We panstrose sinitial ounds.”

Stymy digested that. After a long moment and a short instant he figured it out: they were transposing initial sounds. That was their talent, or curse. “So I gather.”

“We dish we widn't,” another spoonbill said.

Stymy remembered now: such switches were called spoonerisms. Naturally the spoon-beaked birds practiced them.

Still, maybe they could help. “Have you seen three lost children?”

The spoonbills considered. “Yes, we taw swo,” one said. “In the fext nield.”

Two? Maybe the third wasn't in sight at the moment. “Yank thew!” Stymy called as he took off. Oops.

The next field did have two children. But not the right ones. Unless the Sorceress had somehow changed their appearance. One was an athletic looking girl of about almost fourteen, holding the other, a boy of about almost one and a half.

He landed before them and got right to business. “Hello. I am Stymy Stork. Who are you?”

“A talking stork!” the girl said, amazed. The little boy clung to her more closely.

“Yes, storks can talk, when we need to. I'm looking for two ten-year-old children and a five-year-old girl. Their names are Ted, Monica, and Woe Betide.”

The girl shook her head. “I am Sophia Isadora, an acrobat from—from—”

“Mundania,” Stymy said, catching on. Sometimes folk came to Xanth involuntarily, and it was best not to inquire the details.

“Mundania,” she agreed uncertainly. “This is Devin McClane Kowalick, also from there. We're hopelessly lost.”

Stymy had to do something to help them, but had no time to spare. “Go to the next field. The spoonbills are nice birds; they will surely help you find your way to a human village. They talk oddly, but they mean well.”

“Thank you,” Sophia said politely. She took Devin's hand and led him toward the next field.

Stymy spread his wings and took off. He hoped there was a suitable human village nearby. It usually took involuntary visitors a while to get their bearings. But in time they would come to like Xanth, and even develop magic talents of their own.

They landed in the next glade, spying two figures there. But these were not the children. One was a lovely young woman with almost transparent skin. In fact she was translucent throughout, her body an appealing pink. Beside her was a similarly translucent man, gray throughout, looking surly.

“Hello, people,” Stymy said. “I am Stymy Stork, and this is Stymie. We're looking for three lost children.”

“You lost your deliveries!” the woman said sympathetically. “You poor things.”

“No no,” Stymy said quickly. “These are three older children, ages ten, ten, and five. Have you seen them?”

“Not at all, I'm sorry to say,” the woman said. “I am Rose Quartz. My talent is to soothe troubled hearts. I can't help you find your children, but I can ease your heartache about the loss. All I need to do is embrace you.”

“The bleep you will,” the man said hotly. “You're entirely too friendly with strangers.”

“It's my nature,” Rose said. Then, to the storks: “This is my boyfriend Smoky Quartz. He's constantly heated up about something. That's his nature.”

The third stork fuzzed into smoke, then reformed as a luscious translucent blue human woman. She approached Smoky. “Well hello, hot, hard, and handsome. I'm Crystalline Quarts, and—”

“Crystalline what?” Smoky asked.

“Milky, Brown, Yellow, Citrine, Amethyst—”

“Quartz,” Rose said, her color deepening almost to red.

“Whatever,” the demoness agreed crossly. “Lets go and make beautiful inclusions together, Smoky.”

“Do that, and I'll bash you into rock crystal,” Rose said, not at all soothing at the moment.

“Now don't get fractured, Quartzite,” Smoky said, backing away from the demoness. He had evidently caught on to what was real and what wasn't. The two translucents moved away.

“If that's the way you're going to help us search, we don't need it,” Stymie said severely.

Crystalline morphed back into stork form. “I just couldn't resist. It's my nature. When I saw how hot and smoky he was I just had to have a piece of him.”

Another cloud of smoke appeared. “A peace of what?” it demanded.

What was this? Stymy knew it couldn't be Metria, because here she was in stork form. “How do you spell that?” he asked the cloud.

“T H A T, of course,” the cloud responded.

“I mean the other word you used.”

“W H A T,” the cloud replied.

“Could it be PIECE?” Stymie asked.

“Whatsoever,” the cloud agreed irritably as it formed into a fourth stork. That stork eyed Stymy speculatively, fluffing out her wings in an appealing manner.

“What are you doing here, Mentia?” Metria asked.

“Something interesting was happening, so naturally I came to sea what was up.”

“To do what?” Stymy asked before he thought.

“See.” Stymie said impatiently.

“Whatsoever,” the Demoness Mentia agreed irritably.

“This is the Demoness Mentia, my altar ego,” Metria said.

“Your what ego?” Stymy asked.

“Mound, platform, structure, edifice, sacrificial stand—”

“Alter, as in change,” Stymie snapped, her beak clicking sharply. “And we are Stymy and Stymie Stork, searching for lost children.”

“So pleased to meat you,” Mentia said, stepping closer to Stymy.

“To what me?” Stymy asked, unable to curb his tongue in time. “I mean, how is that M-word spelled?”

“Spelled M E E T,” Stymie said.

“Whatsoever,” Mentia agreed irritably.

“Now that's interesting,” Stymy said. “In my reality, Mentia is a little crazy, but doesn't garble words.”

“Some folk call her synonym and me homonym,” Mentia said. She now stood quite close to Stymy.

“We both garble words,” Metria agreed, stepping closer herself. “Only in slightly different ways.”

“But if you are alter egos, how can you exist apart?” Stymy asked.

“We fusion,” Metria said.

“You mean fishing,” Mentia said.

“Fission,” Stymie said crossly and irritably. “Why don't you two egos get back together and help us find those children?”

“Maybe we should,” Mentia agreed.

The two storks marched toward each other, collided, and fused into one stork. “Now I am hole,” she said. “I mean holo.”

“Whole,” Stymie said. “But still half-reared.”

The stork exploded into smoke, which swirled around and formed back into two storks. “We fragment,” one said.

“We're too internally conflicted,” the other agreed.

Stymy realized that two additional searchers were probably better than one. “Let's look for the children.”

They took wing again. Two things occurred to Stymy: one was that if they checked only the glades, they could miss children lost in the forest sections. The other was that Stymie had reacted much as Rose had, when a demoness came too winsomely close to him. Was she jealous of the attention other females paid him? He hoped so.

“It occurs to me that we need to check the forest too,” he said. “The children could be caught there.”

“What a grate idea,” Mentia said. “I'll go into the deep dark forest with you.”

Once again he couldn't stop his tongue in time, despite knowing he was playing her game. “What kind of idea?”

“G R E A T,” Stymie called. “Great.”

“I'm glad you agree,” Mentia said smugly. “Stymy and I will check the forest.”

Stymie looked as if she had swallowed a stinkworm. But she had inadvertently agreed, so had to let them do it.

They flew down into a thinnet, which was of course a thinned thicket. “I had better stay quite close to you,” Mentia said, “to protect you from the frights of the forest.” She suited action to word, her silky left wing touching his right wing.

Did she really want to help find the children? She was probably just as mischievous as Metria, being of the same substance, as it were. “No need,” he said gruffly. “I can take care of myself.”

“Really?”

What was with her? “Really.”

She stepped in front of him, spread her wings and enfolded him before he could react. “Stay still as a steak.”

Stymy froze, mainly because he had no idea what else to do. He had never before encountered romantic aggression like this. It was not entirely objectionable; she was a very soft and pretty stork, even if he knew she was really a demoness. “As a what? Spelled how?”

“It's a big stiff pole,” she said, keeping him closely clasped. Her embrace was so tight that his feet were off the ground. In fact he was floating.

“S T A K E,” he spelled uneasily. “Now if you will kindly let me go—”

“Not yet,” she murmured. “We're not threw yet.”

That was what he was afraid of. But he seemed to have no fair way out. “Not what-spelling yet?”