The Color Of Her Panties (9 page)

“I suppose you're right,” she agreed.  She looked again at the picture.

“Is this what is happening right now, there?”

“I don't think so,” Che said.  “I understand that the Tapestry normally orients on events of the past, so this may have happened a few days ago.

But it is now night; it may be that the ogress is sleeping, so the Tapestry showed her a few hours ago, when she was active.”

“I wonder what's in that block?” Gwenny remarked.

“If we knew how to manage the Tapestry, we could change the orientation of the picture,” Che said.  “We are seeing the block from behind.  But it looks as if there is a person inside it.”

“How weird!” Gwenny exclaimed.

Then Electra reappeared, looking slightly disheveled but happy.  She was back in blue jeans.  “Thank you,” she said, going to the twins.

“Did he accept your apology?” Jenny asked.

“What?” Electra asked blankly.

Gwenny stifled a giggle.  “We thought maybe-but obviously we were wrong. The twins are fine.  Do you know their talents yet?”

“As a matter of fact, we do.  The Good Magician told us.  Dawn will be able to tell anything about any living thing, and Eve will be able to do the same for any inanimate thing.  He says those are both Magician-class talents.”

“Wow,” Gwenny said, awed.

“Well, it's not really coincidence.  Every one of Grandpa Bink's descendants has Magician-class talent.  I'm not sure why, but it has been true so far.  I was just lucky I married Dolph, so that my children are blessed.”

“That's great,” Jenny said.  “Those talents will be very useful, when they get old enough to use them.”

Electra picked up the bassinet and carried it away.

Sammy jumped down, losing interest.  Che went with Gwenny and Jenny to their room, where the girls changed into nighties and he lay down on the floor among cushions.  Sammy joined him.  Then Jenny sang a song, and soon they were all in the magic dream that formed.  There was a trick to sharing Jenny's dreams:  they had to divert their minds to something else first.  But they had learned how to do that, and so had Sammy.  So they found themselves sharing a dream of friendly dragons, unicorns, and centaurs in an orchard much like the one around Castle Roogna, with pleasant skies.  Then they lay down on the soft sward and fell asleep.

Somehow it was always more fun to go to sleep in a dream than it was in reality.

On the morrow they resumed their trek to the Good Magician's castle.

There was an enchanted path leading directly there, so they knew that that part would be easy.

But they also knew that getting into the castle would not be easy.  There were always three challenges, and if the querent succeeded in getting by them, she still had to perform a year's service for the Good Magician.

In short, frivolous Questions were discouraged.  Thus their mood was not light as they set out.

The air fuzzed before them, and the Demoness Metria formed.  “You must be really excited,” she said.

“Our anticipation knows no bounds,” Che agreed tersely.

“Especially considering that the Good Magician has arranged to hit you with the most intriguing possible challenge,” the demoness continued.  “I have never seen him use this one before in the century or so I have known him.”

She was of course trying to fluster them.  Che knew better than to let her succeed.  “No doubt the other challenges are even worse.”

“No, there is to be only one challenge this time.”

“But there are always three!  And we are three people, so we may have more.”

“Not so.  The Good Magician has made a freedom in your case.”

“A what?”

“Privilege, manumission, deliverance, emancipation, liberation-”

“Exception?

“Whatever,” she agreed crossly.

“But why?  We are just ordinary supplicants, not deserving of any special treatment.”

“True.  Therefore it is a mystery.  How I love a mystery!“

“Why don't you ask a Question of the Good Magician yourself, then?“

“Because it is his business to resolve mysteries, not to generate them. Anyway, Dana doesn't like me to get too close to him.”

“Who?”

“The Good Magician.  Who else?”

“I mean, who is Dana?”

“His wife.  I told you about that before.”

“Oh.” She hadn't told him, but probably had told someone and misremembered whom.  Her memory was like that.  Che had heard about the matter:  the Good Magician had had five and a half wives in the course of his life, and now they took turns being with him.  Dana must be the one who was a demoness.  So it seemed that one demoness could be jealous of another.  That was interesting.  They did have some human emotions.

Then he thought of a way to get rid of Metria, for a while.  “Why don't you go ahead and wait for us to arrive at the castle, instead of watching our boring walk there?”

“Are you trying to get rid of me?”

“Of course.”

“That means you don't want me there.  You are trying to fake me out.”

“Of course.”

“Good idea.  I'll do it.” She vanished.

“You faked her out!” Jenny exclaimed.  “How did you manage it?“

“I locked her into an either-or mode,” Che explained, pleased.  “She thought she had to be either here or there, and chose there as more interesting.  It didn't occur to her that she could have done both.”

“You're smart!”

“I am a centaur,” he said modestly.

“Maybe by the time we get there, she'll have forgotten us,” Gwenny said.

“That is my hope.”

The path enabled them to travel rapidly.  Nevertheless it was more than a day's walk.  “Maybe we should look for a place to camp for the night,” Jenny said.

Sammy ran ahead of them.  As always, she followed, because the cat was almost as good at getting lost as he was at finding things.  Che and Gwenny followed her.

Sammy took a side path they wouldn't otherwise have noticed.  It led to a little park.  They found a nice umbrella tree, conveniently placed for just such travelers as themselves, with nearby fruit and nut trees and a big pillow bush.  So they dined on breadfruit with butternuts and drank vanilla milkweed pods, with candy canes for dessert.

“Do you think we'll stop liking such things, when we turn adult and join the Conspiracy against fun?” Gwenny asked.

“Oh, I hope not!” Jenny exclaimed.

“Yet somehow it seems that everything changes, when a person grows up,” Che said sadly.  “Look at Electra.”

“Actually, she's not so bad,” Gwenny said.  “She still wears blue jeans by day.  Maybe she didn't really join the Conspiracy.”

“She summoned the stork,” Che pointed out.

“Maybe it's possible to learn how to do that, without adopting the bad parts, like spinach,” Jenny said hopefully.

“Let's agree that we'll subscribe to only the good parts of the Conspiracy,” Che suggested.  “We'll be different, when we grow up.”

“Yes!” Gwenny agreed.  The three of them clasped hands, sharing the oath.

They settled down for the night, moving into a dream and then into sleep, as usual.

Che suffered a bellyache during the night.  He wished he hadn't eaten quite so many candy canes; they now had a distressing aftertaste.  He heard the girls tossing restlessly in their sleep, and knew that they had the same problem.  It was of course impossible that a person could ever get too much candy; still, there was something.

Maybe there had been a curse on some of them.

In the morning they marched the rest of the way to the Good Magician's castle.  None of them had been here before, so it was more daunting than Castle Roogna had been, despite being smaller and without the tree guardians.  Well, technically Jenny had been here, but only briefly; she had been allowed to inquire about the way back to the World of Two Moons, but then had changed her mind before getting the Answer.  She had decided that she wasn't ready to leave Xanth yet, to Che and Gwenny's relief.  But since the Good Magician's castle was different each time anyone visited it, that hardly counted.  Now it was just a somewhat dilapidated stone edifice surrounded by a small moat.  It seemed undefended:  there was no moat monster, and the drawbridge was down.  No person was in sight.

As they came closer, they saw that their first impression had been deceptive.  This was not an ordinary castle at all.

It was made of pastry and candy.  The walls were not stone, but fruitcake with large stonelike sections of fruit.  The roof seemed to be peanut brittle.  The drawbridge was gingerbread, and the moat fizzed like pop from Lake Tsoda Popka.

They managed to exchange a three-party glance.  “Why don't I trust this?” Gwenny inquired.

“Because it is not trustworthy,” Che replied.  “The Good Magician always knows when a querent is coming, and is always prepared.”

“Querent?”

“Supplicant, petitioner, beggar, moocher, sponge-”

“Oh, stop it!” Gwenny said, laughing.  “You mean folk like us, who come to ask a Question.”

“Whatever,” Che agreed, scowling.  But he couldn't hold it more than a moment, and had to smile.  At least it broke their tension, or dented it somewhat.

“There must be something we don't see,” Jenny said.

“Since I will ask the Question, so that I can do the year's service, I might as well lead the way.” She started toward the drawbridge.

“Wait!” Gwenny protested.  “There may be danger.  I should go first, even if I'm not going to actually ask the Question.

“No need to quarrel, girls,” Che said, putting on a superior smirk.

“First, we can be reasonably sure there's no danger, because the Good Magician wouldn't want to hurt us, and the winged monsters wouldn't allow it anyway.

“But the winged monsters aren't watching at the moment,” Jenny said, looking around.

“Certainly they are,” he said, maintaining his superior smirk.

“Oh?  Where?”

Che pointed to a purple dragonfly perched on a nearby bush.  “There.”

She looked.  “But that's only a bug!”

“That's a winged monster.  He will report to the others if anything happens, or take care of it himself.”

“I don't believe it,” Jenny said.

“Ixnay,” Gwenny murmured warningly.

She was too late.  The dragonfly had taken umbrage.  It jetted into the air, leaving a trail of sparks and a contrail of vapor.  It zoomed away.

In a moment it returned, leading a phalanx of dragonflies.  Now the sound of their wings was audible.  They swung around in formation and oriented on Jenny Elf.

“Duck!” Che cried.  “It's a strafing run!”

The three of them threw themselves to the ground.  Little streaks of flame passed over them and burned the nearby foliage.  The dragonflies flew on out of sight.

They picked themselves up.  “They weren't shooting for effect,” Che said.  “If we hadn't ducked, they would have held their fire.  I think.”

“I guess they made their point,” Jenny said.  “I'm sorry I doubted.”

The purple dragonfly reappeared and perched on her shoulder.  “He accepts your apology,” Che said.

Gwenny laughed.  “But you don't have to kiss him.”

Jenny was serious.  “Still, they can't help us with the Good Magician's challenge.  It's not allowed.”

“Maybe Sammy can find a safe way in,” Che suggested.

Immediately the little cat bounded across the gingerbread drawbridge.

Jenny ran after him, as she always did.

“Wait for me, Sammy!” she cried.

Gwenny rolled her eyes.  “You're my two best friends, but sometimes I do wonder about both of you,” she said.

“You should know better than to suggest that Sammy find something, and she should know better than to dash madly into a strange castle.”

“We should,” Che agreed apologetically.  “But we don't.

“I just hope there's not a mean witch in there.”

They hurried after Jenny, who was by this time across the drawbridge and coming to the main entrance gate of the castle.  The drawbridge surface was slightly spongy, but solid.  The gate was open, and the cat was scampering on in.

They almost banged into Jenny, who had suddenly stopped just inside the gate.  She was staring up.

Che looked in that direction.  There was a giant.  More correctly, a giantess:  a huge human woman.

Sammy, no help in this crisis, had curled up for a snooze under the giant's chair.

“Come in, children,” the woman said, her voice boomingly dulcet.

“She doesn't I-look like a witch,” Gwenny said faintly.

“No, I am not a witch, dear,” the woman said.  “I am the archetypal Adult.  I am here to initiate you into the Adult Conspiracy.”

“No!” Gwenny cried, affrighted.

“We're too young,” Che protested in what he hoped was a reasonable tone.

“Two of you are on the verge, and one of you is of a culture that recognizes another standard,” the Adult said, gazing down at Che.

“But I'm with those of human derivation who honor the Conspiracy,” Che said.  “So I honor it too.”

“I have a question for each of you,” the Adult said.

“Each will answer in turn.  If any of you fail to answer, or answer incorrectly, none of you will be admitted to the presence of the Good Magician.  Is that clear?”

Che opened his mouth to protest that the rationale wasn't clear, but the Adult's gaze bore down on him with such severity that he was daunted.  He realized belatedly that it had been a rhetorical question:  one that allowed only the answer desired by the one who put the question.  He scuffled his front hooves.  “I guess so,” he said reluctantly.

The gaze moved across to the girls.  Then they too fidgeted and mumbled their agreements.

“You,” the Adult said, fixing imperiously on Gwenny.

“Identify yourself.”

'I-I'm Gwendolyn Goblin, from Goblin Mountain.  I'm here to-”

“That is quite enough.  Gwendolyn, what is the Adult Conspiracy?“

Gwenny was taken aback.  “That's my question?”

“No, dear.  That is my question ,to you.”

Che clenched his teeth.  This Adult was so adultish that it was painful.

They were always so sure of themselves, and so obnoxious about it.  But a child could never tell them that, because they always twisted it around to make it seem that the child was the obnoxious one.  It was impossible to reason with an adult, because the mind of any adult was set, like old cement.