Stork Naked (24 page)

Finn shut his mouth and the fire went out. “But you can't stay here forever. When you go, I'll be quenched again.”

She saw his point. But she had an answer. “You can look for another sparker while I look for the children.” Of course he could look without her company, so that wasn't much of an offer.

He considered. She smiled encouragingly and took a deeper breath. Men could be illogically influenced by such irrelevant things. She hadn't promised him anything, but the mere whiff of the hope of such a promise could work occasional miracles.

It did. His eyes connected to her chest and turned off his mind. “Agreed. How can I help you search?”

“What is the most likely distraction half-demon children would go for?”

He smiled, and his face became handsomer. “The Hell & Slimeballs Express. It's notorious. Children love it.”

That did sound apt. “Take me there.”

He lifted the counter of his booth out of the way and stepped out. “This way, Miss—?”

“Pyra.”

“Pyra,” he agreed. “Of course.”

He brought her to a little station marked HELL & SLIMEBALLS EXPRESS. A miniature train with several cars was rapidly filling with children. A man in an engineer costume sat on the little engine.

Then Pyra noticed another sign: ADMITTANCE—A PIECE OF SOUL. That set her back. “I don't want to lose any of my soul!” For that would make her smaller, as her body here was composed of soul stuff, and she would be missing it when she returned to Xanth.

“Readily solved,” Finn said. He went to the admittance booth. “Pyra and I will serve as guards.”

“Great!” the man said. He gave Finn two tickets.

Finn took Pyra's hand and led her to a front seat. The two of them barely fit; it was sized for children. In fact it was really two seats along the sides with their knees colliding in the center. “I happened to know they are short of guards. There have been a couple of accidents and folk aren't eager to serve. Don't let the children know.”

“It's dangerous?”

“Not normally. It's probably just an aberration. But until they're sure things are clear, they try to put a guard or two on every train.”

Pyra looked at her ticket. It said GUARD—FRIENDLY COURTEROUS SAFE. Then something occurred to her. “The ones I'm looking for aren't on this train. How can I check the others?”

“The trains pass each other along the way. You can look across to see whether your children are there.”

Pyra nodded. “That seems feasible.”

The last car filled and the engineer started the train moving. It chugged along, emitting cute balls of smoke from its little stack. The children screamed with anticipation. The occasional parents along looked resigned.

“Fasten your seat belts, kids,” Finn called. “It gets steep.”

“Awww!” they chorused in protest. But the parents insisted, and most of them did belt up. Pyra and Finn tried to set an example by fastening their own.

The track climbed a steep hill. The train handled it, rising at a daunting angle. The children screamed again, loving it. Some might have fallen out, without the seat belts. As it was, a number were leaning out over the edges of the cars, daring each other.

The train made it to the top of the hill. Now Pyra saw that this was actually a tall wooden structure, the height of a roller coaster. The train crested the ridge and accelerated down the other side. It was scary and the children screamed with due appreciation.

At the foot of the hill, when the train was going at breakneck speed, another set of tracks swerved close and another train passed, going the opposite way. Pyra nearly popped her eyeballs checking the children on it. None of them were Ted, Monica, or Woe Betide. She wasn't sure whether to be disappointed or relieved.

Now the train made a dangerously sharp turn and ran beside a meandering river. Huge sea monsters popped their heads from the water and plunged ugly toothy heads toward the train. The children screamed again, this time with more authority. But the gaping jaws snapped closed just shy of the train; no children were gobbled.

“The tracks are enchanted,” Finn explained conversationally. “The monsters are real, but they never seem to learn that they can't get at the morsels. It makes a fine show.”

“Except for accidents?” she asked.

He looked somber. “Best not to speak of those too loudly. We're pretty sure the enchantment remains tight.”

“Pretty sure?”

“Well, until we find out exactly what has gone wrong, we can't rule anything out. But the spell has tested perfect every time.”

Yet there was some sort of mischief they weren't openly talking about. Pyra didn't like that. Suppose the demon children got caught in an “accident”?

The train turned and chugged into a thick forest. Now the monsters of the woods came out, looking vaguely like dinosaurs, with wetly glinting teeth. They made horrendous passes at the occupants of the train, but couldn't touch them. The children, encouraged, started making faces and calling “nyaa, nyaa!”

They came to a mountain, but this time did not climb it. The train plunged into a tunnel, and darkness closed in like a massive fist. Then the monsters of the subterranean realm appeared, with hugely glowing eyes and questing long noses. They couldn't get close either.

Light appeared: the glow of heated rock. Rivers of lava coursed along beside the tracks, and there was a sinister rumbling. The children had been getting cocky; now they held on a bit nervously. Where were they going?

“This is one good show,” Pyra murmured.

“It gets better.”

It did. Suddenly there was a jump in the tracks, and the train zoomed downward into a seeming abyss. The monsters could be seen in the high distance, looking balefully down; they didn't dare go into this dread depth. Weird shapes coiled around the tracks, forming a menacing kind of tunnel, but the train rushed heedlessly on. Pyra found herself hoping that this wasn't where any accidents were occurring.

The train slowed, and demons with pitchforks menaced the children, again with no success. Several buxom demonesses turned, hoisted their skirts, and made as if to flash their panties, but somehow something always got in the way so they were never quite visible. “This is an Adult Conspiracy-Approved tour,” Finn said.

“I thought there wasn't an Adult Conspiracy here.”

“Oh, are you from one of the Non-Conspiracy worlds? Here at Always Always Land we try to honor it, because many of our tourists are from Xanths where it counts.”

That was just as well, because several of the slightly older boys were watching rather too eagerly, prime candidates for freaking out. One of the crazy things about boys—and men—was that they never seemed to learn the danger of panties, and so got freaked out again and again. Or maybe that was more properly Always-Always.

“My home reality honors it,” she said.

“We draw from many realities, and many moons. We pride ourselves on being a major tourist attraction for children. Folk come here from most of the moons.”

A subway train station formed around them, with regular lights and platform. The train glided to a stop. They were at a banner saying welcome to hell.

“Rest stop,” the engineer called. “The station is safe, but don't go beyond it.”

The children piled out onto the platform. There were machines with every flavor of—slimeballs. They seemed to be big gooey globs of spun sugar. The children quickly grabbed all the balls they could hold and returned to the train, where they soon got into a slimeball-throwing contest.

The train resumed its course. In a moment another train passed it, and Pyra flexed her eyeballs again trying to check every child in it. None of the three she sought were there.

Now the train was climbing. Hell, it seemed, was deep underground. It forged to the base of a mighty chasm, passed into a tunnel on the opposite side, turned, crossed the canyon at a higher level, entered another tunnel, and came to a screeching halt.

“Trestle's unsafe,” the engineer said. “Lucky I saw it in time.”

“This is our call,” Finn said grimly, getting out.

Pyra followed him. They emerged from the tunnel and saw the trestle. It was a network of wooden timbers braced in triangles supporting the tracks. A section had been knocked out. The tracks were unbroken, but the weight of the train with its passengers would surely bear it down and dump them all into the abyss. The engineer had been right to call a halt.

“What do we do now?” Pyra asked worriedly.

“We fix it.”

She gazed nervously at the destruction. “That's our job?”

“Someone has to do it. You can return to the train if you wish. I'm going after fresh timbers.”

That shamed her. “No, I'll help, if I can.”

“Let's see what we'll need.” He walked to the track above the gap and peered down. “Tooth marks,” he said.

“Something bit through the trestles?”

“Something big.”

She saw the marks, and the damp ripped edges. Saliva? “I thought the spell protected the tracks.”

“The tracks, yes. Evidently it doesn't extend to the base of the trestles. The monsters must be getting smarter. They bit where they could reach, before the train got here.”

“A smart monster,” she said, chilled.

“Something you should know,” he said grimly. “We'll have to go down far enough to replace the fractured planks.”

“Yes, of course. We can rope ourselves to the tracks so we won't fall, and swing across.”

He nodded. “Good idea. You're smarter than the average tourist.”

“Thank you,” she said, flattered.

“But that wasn't my point. Where do you think the monster is?”

Now she got it with a vengeance. “Lurking. Waiting for us to get within its reach.”

“Exactly. So maybe you had better return to the train after all.”

“So you can get chomped alone? That won't get the job done.”

He gazed at her, his eyes narrowing in assessment. “This is serious. I can't afford to have an uncertain assistant. If you have any doubts at all, go back now.”

She was shamed again, though she knew he wasn't trying to. He naturally assumed she was a weak woman. She had been able to intrigue him before with her womanly charms, but now he was serious about his manly nature. “I can take care of myself. I can't lift heavy planks, but I can fend off the monster.”

“Can you?”

She let her fire show. “Yes. I can burn anything. You handle the repairs; I'll keep the monster clear.”

He nodded. “So you're not a fraud, like me. You really have magic fire.”

“You're not a fraud! You just don't have a magic spark.” As she spoke she realized it was true. When the need came, this man was proving to be brave and capable. He had character rather than magic.

Finn shrugged. “I will fetch planks. They are stored nearby near the tunnel. You reassure the children and be ready to use your fire when I get to work below the tracks.”

She did that. “There is a break in the trestle,” she explained to the children and parents. “We are repairing it. Stay with the train until the job is done.”

The engineer got up. “You'll need help.”

“You know the nature of the work,” she said, keeping her voice calm. She was warning him.

“Yes.”

Several parents stood: a daddy and three mommies. “We'll help too.”

“I don't think—” Pyra started, taken aback.

A mother gave her a direct look. “You can protect us, fire woman?”

She understood, and had caught on to Pyra's talent. “Yes, I think so. But it may be uncomfortable.” She flared her body, radiating heat. “If I have to burn—something.”

“We'll risk it,” the woman said.

“In that case, the men could use another man to carry and hammer. I could use some good eyes to spot danger early.”

“You'll have them.”

Soon there was a pile of fresh planks and several coils of rope. Then men anchored themselves to the tracks and swung down to use crowbars and hammers to remove bad planks. When they had the region clear, the women tied ropes around planks and carefully lowered them down to the hanging men. They were all sensible folk, and the work was proceeding far more rapidly than it would have with only one or two.

They swung the first plank into place and hammered it to the base of the tracks. They placed the second, forming a triangle. At this rate it would not take long to shore up the trestle.

There was a horrendous roar. “Monster ahoy!” a lookout woman called.

“Stay well clear of it,” Pyra said. “I may have to use a lot of power.”

The three men had no time to climb to the tracks. They hung in place, looking grim. They feared they were about to die. Strictly speaking they couldn't die; they would merely lose their soul bodies and return to their larger or smaller soul bodies on their home moons. But that would be an unpleasant and inconvenient process, and death seemed rather real.

The monster appeared: a dinosaur so big that it walked along the bottom of the chasm, its head reaching almost to the tracks. It had to have been the one that had bitten off the trestle. It opened its mouth below the three men, big enough to take them all in, in one gulp.

Pyra pumped up her heat. She focused on the monster's head, and projected her fire there. A glowing sheet formed at the toothy nose, and its surface scales crackled as if being roasted.

It rocked back, howling. The men applauded; they knew good magic when they saw it. Then they got back to work on the timbers.

“It's reconsidering,” the lookout woman said.

So it was. A sore was developing on the monster's nose, but that was a tiny wound on such a large surface. The creature was coming in again, this time more cautiously.

Pyra projected another panel of fire, but the monster ducked beneath it, came up beyond it, turned about, and gaped its giant jaws toward the men.

Pyra sent out another panel of flame. This one singed the surfaces of the bared teeth and bored in toward the nerves. The dinosaur snapped its mouth closed and ducked down. “Mmmmm!” it groaned as its roasting teeth continued to hurt.

The men placed another plank. Soon they would be done.

“Coming back,” the woman said.

The thing was determined! Pyra readied another panel of fire. She could keep this up as long as it could.