Stork Naked (19 page)

“Finished. Done. Ended.” She let him go and stepped back.

“T H R O U G H,” he spelled as her feet landed back on the ground. Then he looked around, surprised. “What did you do?”

“What did I dew?”

“D O! We aren't where we were.”

“Oh, that. I moved you to safety before the B's could sting you to death.”

“B apostrophe S?” That didn't make sense, what else was there? She must have used the correct word.

“That weigh,” she said, pointing with a wing.

“W A Y,” he agreed, looking. “But that's a monstrous hive in the shape of a ship! It must have thousands of B's.”

“Exactly. You were about to walk into it. That would have annoyed the scholars something awful. I had to get you away from it before they noticed.”

“Scholars?” He couldn't think of a homonym, but it didn't seem to make sense as it stood.

“That's an Ark-hive,” she explained patiently. “Where scholarly B's research new types of honey and sting-venom. One of several arks. They don't like to be disturbed.”

Stymy thought about blundering into such an ark. Indeed, he would have gotten badly stung. But Mentia had intercepted him and floated him to safety before the B's noticed. “You're right,” he admitted. “I do need your protection.”

“I garble words, not dangers,” she said, satisfied.

They resumed their search, avoiding the hives. Only to be intercepted by several green toothy reptiles in vests. They looked like allegories or allegations or worse. “We'd better flee,” he whispered.

“Flea? There are no fleas on me.”

She had trouble both ways with homonyms. “F L E E,” he said urgently. “Before those monsters chomp us.”

“Oh, those aren't dangerous,” she said. “They're invest-i-gators. All we have to do is answer their questions.”

The lead gator approached. “Inspector Al here,” he said, flashing a badge. “What's this about a blundering bird being stung to death?”

“I caught him before he struck the ark,” Mentia said. “So he escaped.”

The gator made a note on a pad. “Very good, citizen. We don't like a ruckus.” The gators departed.

Soon they encountered another young woman. “Do you birds need a memory repressed?” she inquired. “I am Summer; my talent is to repress a single memory in someone.”

“No thank you,” Stymy said. “We are looking for three lost children.”

“Sorry; I haven't seen them,” Summer said, and went on.

Belatedly, he wondered whether Summer's talent ever bounced back at her. Could she have seen the children and repressed the memory? Probably not, he hoped.

“I don't want to be negative,” Mentia said. “But I don't think the children are in this area. No one has seen them.”

“Let's ask one more person,” Stymy said, suspecting she was right.

They saw a man resting by a tree. Stymy introduced himself, and asked.

The man shook his head. “I've been here all day, and not seen them. I'm Scott; I can dematerialize atoms. But then they get upset and fuss, and revert the moment I stop concentrating. It's a nuisance. I'd trade for your problem.”

Stymy tried to think of some way Scott's talent could help them find the children, but couldn't. “Thank you.”

“Let's keep looking,” Mentia said encouragingly.

They quested through the forest, but found no children. “We had better rejoin the others,” Stymy said.

They found an avenue to the sky and flew up. In two and a half moments they found the others.

“And what did you accomplish down there?” Metria inquired with a wry twist to her beak.

“We flu around, but found no children,” Mentia said. “We saw a gate or ark, nothing else.”

“F L E W,” Stymy spelled. “G A T O R.”

Neither Metria nor Stymie seemed to believe that, but didn't make an issue.

The day was fading. “No children here,” Metria concluded. “We'd better be on our ponderosity.”

“Your what?” Stymy asked.

“Way,” Mentia said, getting the wrong word almost right.

The two storks did not fly away. They simply dissolved into smoke. “So how long did it take to seduce him?” one asked the other.

“No thyme at awl,” the other responded. They faded out, leaving nothing behind but Stymie's glare.

What could he say that she would believe?

But she rescued him. “Those demonesses never tell the truth, they just make mischief. So I know she didn't get anywhere with you.”

“Nowhere,” he agreed, relieved.

“Let's make a bower.”

He stared at her. “But we hardly know each other.”

“I think we do. Well enough.” She clicked his beak again. “Soon you will depart and I'll never see you again. So anything we do together must be done now.”

Stymy was beyond resistance. No real female had ever liked him, let alone offered to make a bower with him. She had offered to help him search for the children, so that the lost time would be made up, and had done so. She had shown real interest in him. She understood what it was like to be a virtual outcast among storks. He liked her more than he would have imagined before this day. How could he refuse?

“I suppose we do have time, this one time,” he said, wishing that this didn't have to be the end of it.

“And I will keep your secret mission secret forever,” she reminded him. “I hope your side wins. I wish I could have helped more.”

“You helped a great deal. I'm sorry the demonesses got in the way.”

“It's their nature.” They laughed together, understanding perfectly.

They made a bower together. Then they entered it and sent the signal that Summoned the Man.

The peeve flew to its sector, determined to find the children if they were there. It wasn't that it really liked the children; it didn't like anyone or anything. But they got along well enough, with their shared propensity for mischief. Mainly it was that Grundy and Rapunzel Golem provided the peeve a good home, which was a considerable improvement on its residence in Hell, as it had told Surprise, and it didn't want that messed up. So it would do its best.

And the baby Prize liked the peeve. That infused the peeve with a weirdly unfamiliar and sloppy emotion that for want of a better explanation suggested that the peeve liked the baby back. Nothing like that had ever happened before. No emotion other than irritation had ever motivated the peeve before. Oh, there was the guarded mutual respect it shared with a few, such as the Gorgon, Hannah Barbarian, and Grundy Golem, but this wasn't the same. It would take some getting used to, but there it was. If Surprise lost the baby, there would be nothing. Now that the peeve had discovered that tiny bit of like, it didn't want to lose it.

The peeve flew down to the edge of its search territory. It expected to do an efficient job, crisscrossing the land in a lattice pattern so that nothing would escape its notice. If the children were here, the peeve would find them.

Almost immediately it spied a doll-like girl walking nervously along a forest trail. She wasn't one of the children, but maybe she had seen them. “Hey, dollface, have you seen three children around here?”

The girl paused in place, standing in her own tracks, which was what folk normally did. She was extremely well formed, as dolls could be, with a large bosom, small waist, and long legs. “A talking bird!”

“A talking doll!” the peeve mimicked. “Are you too stupid to answer my question?”

For some reason the girl frowned. “You've got a foul beak on you, bird.”

“Thank you. You've got an overstuffed shirt on you, and not enough stuffing in your skull. Now are you going to answer, or is that beyond your meager powers of focus?”

She frowned worse. “Who are you, bird?”

“I am a pet peeve. Couldn't you tell?”

She burst out laughing. “A pun! What a stinker.”

“Thank you.” The peeve always thanked folk for true observations, mainly because that tended to annoy them.

“I am Barbie Que,” the girl said. “My talent is to cook raw food instantly by touch. It's another pun.”

“Ha,” the peeve said sourly. “Ha. Ha. There: I have laughed. It was an effort. Now can you compress the air in your head enough to answer my question?”

“No, I haven't seen any children. Only an awful ram or wolf with ten tongues who I fear wants to devour me.”

The peeve's sympathy was limited. But she had finally answered its question, so it dallied a moment and a half more. “Come on, sister: is it a ram or a wolf? The one won't eat you; the other will.”

“I think it's a crossbreed. It has big horns and huge sharp teeth. I don't want to get gored or chomped.”

“Idiot, you have no need to be afraid of it,” the peeve said. “It should be afraid of you.”

“I don't understand.”

“Of course you don't, doll-brain. Here it is: consider it raw food, and touch it. That will cook its goose.”

Barbie's pretty mouth fell open. “I never thought of that! You're right.” Her cute little chin firmed. “I'll tell it to begone if it doesn't want to be roasted.”

“No time like the present, D-cup. There he is.”

Barbie's manicured hair swirled as she spun around. “Oh!” she cried with maidenly distress.

“Hey, dog-snoot!” the peeve called, using Barbie's voice. “I dare you to try to devour me!”

The crossbreed monster was taken aback. He curled several of his tongues around to form words. “I don't want to eat you. I want to be your friend. I was hoping you are as lonely as I am.”

“My friend!” Barbie exclaimed with maidenly shock. “But what big teeth you have, wolf!”

“Wolfram Tungsten,” he said. “Two names for the same element. So I'm part wolf, part ram, and have tongues ten. It's a burden.”

“You're a pun too!” Barbie exclaimed.

“Yes. Half the folk I meet don't get it, and half sneer at it. That doesn't leave many to befriend. I thought maybe a creature like you would understand.”

“Oh, I do!” she exclaimed, thrilled. “Now that I know your nature.” She kissed the wolf on a ram horn. “You really don't want to ram me or wolf me down?”

“Not as a meal,” the peeve said, picking up a couple of marvelously naughty unintended interpretations. “Ha-ha-ha!”

Both maiden and monster glared at it. “Let's leave this birdbrain,” Wolfram said.

“Delighted,” Barbie agreed. The two newfound friends departed together.

Well, it had been fun while it lasted. The peeve had gotten off a couple of decent insults and a snide observation before the subjects caught on. It resumed the search.

Soon the peeve located something not by sight but by smell. It was a boy hiding invisibly in a gnarly crevice of an old beer-barrel tree. “What are you up to, twerp?”

“Oh, you found me,” the boy said, disappointed.

“Of course I found you, brat. I'm sniffing out children.”

“But I'm Hidey. I can hide from anything.”

“Visually maybe. Not from a good nose.”

“Oh, I forgot!” Then Hidey faded out, losing his smell.

“Did you see any other children, gamin?” the peeve called.

“None, hummingbird!” the boy's voice replied from midair. He really was good at hiding, and he had gotten off a good insult: the peeve was small, but not that small. That had to be respected.

There was yet another irrelevant person, this time a lonely-looking young woman sitting on a stone. The peeve perched on a low branch before her. “What's bothering you, airhead?”

She looked up. “My name's Lydia, not Airhead.”

She had missed most of the insult. That was annoying. “You didn't answer my question.”

Lydia sighed. “I have a good talent, I'm sure of it. But no one is interested. I can interpret dreams, but most folk can't even remember their dreams. I wish I could find somewhere where dreams are remembered. But I have traveled all around Xanth, and there's nothing.”

The peeve was about to launch another cutting insult. But then Lydia looked at it and spoke again. “Oh, one of your pretty green feathers is ruffled. Let me straighten it.” She reached out and set the feather in order. For some reason that stifled the insult.

“Maybe I can come up with something,” the peeve said, hating the sudden foolish irrational wish to be helpful. “I'll ponder it.”

“Oh thank you, lovely creature!” she exclaimed.

The peeve returned to the quest. There really was nothing significant. Just ordinary stupid pedestrians who hadn't seen any children, and routine monsters like tangle trees and nickelpedes. Certainly no lost children.

Then the peeve spied a vine bearing a gourd. It was a large one, and yes, it was a hypno-gourd, an entry to the dream realm. Could the children have gotten into that? There were no bodies lying with their eyes glued to the peepholes, but they could be hidden by a spell by the Sorceress Morgan le Fey. That would be a fine way to hide the children for an indefinite period. Their bodies would be absolutely still and silent, while their minds were locked into the horrors of the dream realm. They could be anywhere in there.

Well, there was one way to find them: by their minds. If they were in the dream realm, they'd be happily making mischief in the bad dream sets, not invisible at all. The disruption should be considerable. They shouldn't be hard to locate.

But it wouldn't do to look into the peephole and freeze the way others did, because there was no easy way to escape the trance. The peeve knew it needed to be in full control. Well, for a bird who had had experience with Hell, there was a way. The peeve flew toward the gourd, closed its wings, and plunged through the peephole. It had entered physically.

It found itself in the standard opening setting: a creepy haunted house in a scary forest. Everything was in thick shadow, and there was a faint background of eerie music. Ideal for giving innocent folk the queasies.

But this was not a social visit. The peeve flew rapidly around to the side and into a broken upstairs window, bypassing the ghosts and pitfalls of the main drag. It found itself in a bedroom with a creaky bed festooned with cobwebs. A skeleton lay under the covers, awaiting the approach of a frightened victim. Then it would groan and stir—the peeve wasn't sure how fleshless skeletons could groan, but they did when they needed to—and with luck frighten the victim into jumping right out the window in mid-scream.

But this was no time for fun. The peeve flew to the bed and perched on the bare skull. “Wake up, hollow-head. Have you seen any children here?”

The skeleton jumped, startled in the manner normally reserved for human victims. “Whooo?” it asked, dazed.

“Ted and Monica Demon, and Woe Betide. Ages ten, ten, and five.”

The skeleton began to get organized. “I meant, whoo are you?”

“I asked first, bonehead. Answer before I poop on your pate.”

The skeleton grabbed with bone fingers, but the peeve was already in the air and hovering. It had had decades of experience avoiding angry folk. It dropped a small blip on the skull's polished pate. “That's just a warning, vacuum-head. Next one will be poop du jour.”

The skeleton had very little wit in its hollow head, but that was enough for it to know when it was overmatched. “No children here.”

“Thanks for nothing.” The peeve flew to the closed door and scrambled under the sill.

Now it was in the upstairs hall. A female ghost was lurking, facing the stairway, expecting a victim to ascend.

“Take off, empty skirt,” the peeve said loudly right behind her.

The ghost did. She sailed up and passed halfway through the ceiling before recovering. She drew herself back and floated down, looking nervously around. She was accustomed to being the spooker, not the spookee.

“Good thing you don't have anything to see down here,” the peeve remarked from under her full bell-shaped dress.

“EEeee!” she screamed, capitalizing the first two e's in her dismay as she sailed up again, pulling her skirt close about her invisible ankles.

“You might at least have the courtesy to wear ghost-white panties,” the bird peeved.

“Get out of here, you dirty little snoop!” she cried angrily. “You're messing up the set.” She huffed up her top section like a forbidding matron.

“Just tell me whether you have seen three children here, balloon-bra.”

The ghost pulled her décolletage tight as her face went grimly white. “No children, you nasty little beak.”

“Thank you, paleface.”

The peeve flew on down the stairs, passing an empty pair of walking shoes that were tramping down the steps, making a clattering calculated to freak out any visitor already shaken by the apparitions downstairs. Accordingly, it dropped a small smelly offering in one shoe as it passed. “Courtesy of the trade, footfalls.”

Both shoes froze for fully half an instant, then leaped up and turned over to dump out the dottle. Naturally it stuck in place. The shoes knocked their heels together, finally dislodging the gooey gob. They made violent kicking motions. The peeve nodded, satisfied; one might almost get the impression they were annoyed.

There were no children in the house, and no evidence of the disruption of their passage. But they could have entered the dream realm via another site, especially if they had visited it before; it generally held the place of each visitor, so no one could avoid anything by waking and returning another time. All settings would have to be checked, until the children were found. That was apt to be a big job, but easier if any of the denizens of the dream realm had news of them.

The peeve flew out the back, rapidly checking the zombie graves; the children wouldn't be underground, being alive. It reached the edge of the horror set, which was a wall painted realistically with further gloomy trees, graves, and suggestions of dark monsters going bump in the night.

There was room to scramble under the wall where the ground dipped. The peeve scrambled, and emerged in the next set: a halfway pleasant scene with a village in a valley, not far below a massive cracked dam that looked about to burst asunder. Beyond it loomed deep dark storm clouds threatening torrential rain. This stage would be to craft dreams for folk concerned about flash flooding; it was probably quite a sight when that dam let go.

The peeve flew through the village, searching for signs of mischievous children. There were none. In fact the village seemed unoccupied. This was either the off season, or there was no current call for a bad flood dream.

It came to a slope beset with caves; those could hide a lot, if they were extensive.

A dull-looking man sat before one cave. The peeve approached. “Hey, dullard—any children here?”

“Who wants to know?”

“I, the pet peeve.”

“I'm Dennis. This here's the cave complex of Denver, where all the denizens live when they're not working on sets.”

That would be the spot dream sets, which required a lot of design, manufacture and assembly before they could be used in bad dreams. “Children work on the sets?”

“Sure, many. Which ones you want?”

Uh-oh. That could mean multiple dream children. “Live human ones, part demon or even full demon. Ages ten, ten, and five.”

“Live children?” Dennis asked. “None of that kind here, just dream children. I thought that's what you meant.”

So much for that. The peeve flew on, looking for the edge of the scene. It didn't want to fly into a realistically painted wall.

There was a swirl of smoke that paced it. “What are you up to, bitty bird?”

“What wants to know, smoke-face?”

The smoke formed into a human head, neck, and part of a splendid set of breasts seemingly molded from stone. “I'm a buffet.”

“You're a what?”

“Slap, smack, cuff, box, spank—”

“Bust?”

“Whatsoever,” the head agreed crossly. “The top section of a statue.”

“You expect me to call you statuesque.”

“Certainly. Do it.” More stone flowed to fill out the burgeoning bosom.