Cube Route (18 page)

    When evening came she retired for the night to her elaborate bedroom. But she didn't sleep. She donned conservative clothing, including a pair of the useful jeans, and left the house. She drove her car back to the hospital annex, and discovered that the room was now occupied by another patient. She hadn't thought of that; how was she to intersect Silhouette and change back?

    She decided that boldness was best. She breezed by the desk clerk and went directly to the room. She entered, and found an old woman there. “Hello, Grandma,” she said. “How are you doing?”

    The woman stared at her, obviously not recognizing her. “Who are you?”

    Cube hastily drew on Silhouette's memory of regulations. “They wouldn't let in anyone who wasn't a relative, so I became a relative. I'm actually a fellow patient. I was in this bed last night, in a coma.”

    “A coma!”

    “But I recovered and went home. Now I'm visiting. How are they treating you--” she glanced at the nameplate at the foot of the bed. “Irma?”

    “Wretchedly,” the woman said, and commenced a litany of complaints. “The food is awful. They don't have the right brand of caviar, and they wouldn't allow me any champagne. Just because of my lacerated ulcer, they claim. It's outrageous.”

    “Outrageous,” Cube agreed.

    The woman talked until she fell asleep. Cube waited until midnight, then stood by the bed. She felt something overlapping her body. Hello Silhouette, she thought. Check your memory. You have a new boyfriend and a new life. She hoped that was true. It would be if Silhouette went along with it.

    Then the presence was gone, and Cube was facing Demoness Metria.

Thanks

    Hello, Metria,“ she said. ”I'm back. How was it?"

    “Let's make sure. Pull someone out of the pouch.”

    “There's a problem?”

    “Silhouette couldn't do it. I want to be sure it's you.”

    “Diamond knows it's me.” Indeed, the dog was licking her hand and wagging her tail.

    “Diamond liked Silhouette too.”

    Cube shrugged and put her hand to the purse. “Ryver,” she said.

    The man caught her hand, then slid out. “Where are we?”

    “In a dull haunted inn,” Metria said, her dress abruptly covering anything interesting. “Go back in the pouch.”

    Ryver shrugged and put his foot to the pouch, then slid in. It seemed the demoness could turn it off as readily as she could turn it on, and she wasn't interested in fascinating any mortals at present.

    “Now you know it's really me,” Cube said. “What is going on?”

    “You would hardly believe it! That woman got into more trouble! I'm accustomed to making trouble, not preventing it. What a chore.”

    “I want to know all about it,” Cube said. “But can it wait until morning?”

    “Yes, now that you're back. How did it go in Mundania?”

    “I put her aunt in her place, fired her accountant, beat up her boyfriend, and set her up with a new one.”

    “Who?”

    “Philip, son of Filip the gardener. He's in love with her.”

    “Odd. She didn't advert him.”

    “Didn't what him?”

    “Allude, reference, touch on, bring up--”

    “Mention?”

    “Whatever,” the demoness agreed crossly. “How can he be her boyfriend?”

    “They were children together. He's a good man. She has execrable taste in men.”

    “Beautiful women do; it's in the Big Book of Rules.”

    “So I set her up with the one she needs. I just hope she has the wit to realize it.”

    “She was afraid you'd get raped.”

    Cube laughed. “Who'd ever rape me?”

    “In her body.”

    That did make the difference. “He tried.” Cube went to the bed and lay down. “Catch me up in the morning.” She closed her eyes.

    “You're a cool one.” The demoness must have faded out, because she was silent thereafter. Cube lay for a while, reviewing the events of the past day, hoping she had done the right thing. But she knew it would take time to be sure she had. If she had. She sank slowly to sleep without resolution.

    The mares brought her mixed dreams bordering good and bad without quite entering the territory of either. She woke in the night, thinking. Cube knew she had done things in Mundania she had never done in Xanth, and not just because she had wielded a beautiful body. Backing off Aunt Susan like that, putting pincers on the accountant, actually physically attacking boyfriend Yorick--this had been quite unlike Silhouette, but also unlike Cube herself. She had gumption to spare, but she had demonstrated more than that. It had bordered on cruelty. She had never been that way in real life.

    And there, perhaps, was the key: Mundania had not been really real to her. It had been an alternate existence, like a game, where consequences weren't completely personal. So she had acted boldly. But now, done with it, she was reflecting on right and wrong. It had not been her life there, but it was Silhouette's life. Had she had the right to change it so substantially?

    Yet Silhouette had been trying to commit suicide. Left to herself, she would have, literally, no life. Cube had acted to make it possible for her to have not only a life, but a good life. If she failed, the woman was no worse off than she had been. If she succeeded, Silhouette could forge on and perhaps accomplish worthwhile things. And make a good young man very happy.

    Mostly satisfied, Cube returned to sleep. This time the mares brought her good dreams. Some daymares must have been moonlighting, because nightmares never brought good dreams.

    In the morning Cube organized for the resumption of her trip. She saw that the thread now led out of the room. She must have accomplished her Mundane mission, apart from her personal satisfaction. She hoped so. She liked Silhouette despite her phenomenal beauty, and wanted her to succeed in life.

    The innkeeper intercepted her, fidgeting and shifty with his eyes. “There's more pots to scrub. You owe me.”

    “I have paid you,” Cube said evenly. She had had recent experience dealing with dishonest folk.

    “How?” he demanded.

    “I abolished your ghost.”

    “How can I believe that?” Naturally he, being untrustworthy, did not take the word of others.

    “Go check the room. She's gone, and I don't think she'll return.”

    He lumbered off to check the room. Cube followed the thread out of the inn. Then it set off down a minor path into the deepest forest. Diamond followed it, evidently remembering the way.

    “That's where Silhouette went,” Metria said, appearing beside her.

    “That's right: you were going to tell me how her day went. How did it go?”

    “Mixed. First she didn't really believe this was a magic land. She wanted to see real live magic, and there wasn't any at the inn. She wasn't satisfied with my changes of form; she said I could be the only demon in an otherwise ordinary land. She wanted me to show her some real magic. So I guided her to the petrified forest.”

    “But she was already frightened enough.”

    “It's the forest that's frightened, not the person. I showed her some puns. And I kept an eye out for dragons; one of those would have impressed her.”

    They continued along the thread-marked path. “But she had all of my memory to draw on. She should have known Xanth is magic.”

    “She said it could be another hallucinogenic dream. In fact she wasn't sure she wasn't still in Mundania, with the pills she had eaten zonking out her mind.”

    “She must have been determined not to believe.”

    “Or afraid to believe. I'm a demon; I don't have many mortal emotions. But I was sorry for her.”

    “The thread led me into her life,” Cube said. “I tried to clean it up by getting rid of the vultures. I must have done what was needed, because now the thread is moving on.”

    “But it's just showing you the way to Counter Xanth. Why should it care about Mundania?”

    Cube wondered about that too. “It must be more than a line. There must be things I have to do or learn along the way, so it is making me do and learn them.”

    “What could you learn in Mundania?”

    Cube considered. “That beauty is not necessarily enough, by itself. Silhouette could attract men, but she didn't have the judgment to go with the right one or the strength to get rid of the wrong one.” Cube had the judgment and strength, but of course lacked the beauty to make it count, here in real life.

    “I tried to tell you that at the outset.”

    “I suppose I had to experience it myself before I could believe it.” But now she wondered: she had thought the thread had been distorted because she had too many Companions, but now it seemed more sophisticated than that. Was it distorted at all, or merely devious? Reaching Counter Xanth seemed to be more than just a physical route.

    A gentle wind ruffled Cube's dull hair. She thought of how attractively Silhouette's lustrous hair would flow with that wind. Yet the woman had been ready to die. Yes, beauty alone was not enough. But the lack of it was an overwhelming problem.

    They came to a man with a bow. He was loosing arrows, but seemed to have no target. Some flew high, some flew low, and some disappeared into the forest. Diamond went to stand behind a tree, wary of this wild aim.

    Cube paused. “What are you doing?”

    He glanced at her. “I told you yesterday.”

    Of course he didn't know that was Silhouette. “Tell me again.” She could surely research it from her body's memory, but lacked the patience at the moment.

    “Just shooting the breeze.”

    This mystified her. “What is the point?”

    “It passes the time.”

    Cube wasn't sure how much extra time she had to pass, so she moved on. “Silhouette laughed when he told her that,” Metria confided. “She said it was the first real laugh she'd had in a long time.”

    “What's funny about trying to hurt the wind? It can't be done, but if it could be, it wouldn't be nice.”

    “Maybe she finds painful things amusing.” But the demoness was stifling most of a smirk. Cube concealed her annoyance. She had probably missed something that would have made Karia Centaur groan.

    They came to a woman with an odd head. It seemed to be empty. Her hair framed eyebrows and mouth, but the skull was hollow. “Hello,” Cube said uncertainly.

    “That's fine,” the woman said airily and went on by her.

    “She's an air-head,” Metria said. “Silhouette laughed when she met her, too.”

    “I see nothing funny about it. It's not nice to make fun of folk who are different from ourselves.”

    This time the demoness managed to stifle less of the smirk. “That reminds me of the next one we'll see, if she's still on this route.”

    “Maybe the thread was trying to cheer Silhouette up.”

    The next woman passed them. Her body was ordinary, but her head was that of a cat. A very severe looking one. Diamond gave her a wide berth.

    “A sour puss,” the demoness explained.

    “And that is supposed to be funny?”

    “Maybe you have to have the mind for it.”

    Metria was definitely amused about something, but it would be useless to inquire. Cube didn't like being on the outside of something others found amusing. Maybe her time in Mundania had made her too serious.

    They came to a different kind of forest. The trees appeared to be frozen in positions of fear. Their trunks leaned away from the path as if trying to escape, and their branches were convoluted as if trying to protect the trees from attack. Cube had never before seen such frightened vegetation.

    Then she caught on. “This is the petrified forest.”

    “Silhouette laughed so hard she cried. She said that forest was just like her. That mystifies me; she doesn't look anything like a tree, let alone a forest.”

    “At the time, she looked like me,” Cube reminded her. “But I think I understand. She was girt about by fears. The vultures could never have picked at her bones if she hadn't been so weak. Every which way she turned, there was another horror. Just like this forest.”

    “What's so eccentric about that?”

    “So what?”

    “Bizarre, freakish, weird, quirky, idiosyncratic--”

    “Funny?”

    “Whatever,” the demoness agreed crossly.

    “It's not funny hee-hee, but funny realization. Silhouette saw an analogy of herself. That amused her.”

    “I don't see what's funny about that. Not one of these trees slipped on a banana peel or got a pie in the face.”

    “Maybe you have to have the mind for it,” Cube said smugly.

    The thread led on through the frightened forest and back to more natural vegetation. Here there was a man with a collection of wood fragments. He was putting his hands on them and concentrating so hard that little clouds were forming and dissipating over his head.

    Diamond went up to him, wagging her tail. “Hi, Di,” he said, smiling.

    So Silhouette had met this man too, and must have learned what he was doing. This time Cube did what she should have done before, and checked her memory. For whatever the woman had experienced was in Cube's memory, just as her day in Mundania was in Silhouette's memory. “Hello, Mike. Still changing regular wood into reverse wood?”

    “Still doing it,” he agreed. “There's a lot of demand.”

    Evidently so. They moved on. “So did that make Silhouette laugh?” Cube asked.

    “No. She didn't know what reverse wood was.”

    “But it's in my memory.”

    “She didn't think to look there, and I didn't tell her. I just explained that it reversed magic in what it touched. Since she still wasn't sure she believed in magic, she didn't react.”

    “Maybe that was just as well.”

    The forest opened into a large glade. Here there was a class of some kind in progress. Children were walking carefully, sometimes losing their balance and falling. “What--?” Cube started, then remembered to check her own memory. “They're walking on air!” For the children's feet were not quite touching the ground.

    “They're happy children,” Metria agreed. “Their folks don't want them to get hurt, so they're learning how to do it right.”

    “That must have interested Silhouette.”

    “Yes. She finally believed that there is magic here. She was sorry she couldn't walk on air herself, but was pleased that Diamond managed it.”

    “But she's a Mundane dog. She couldn't--” Cube broke off, because there was Diamond with the children, walking on air. She wasn't good at it, and occasionally a foot slipped through to the ground, but she was definitely doing it. “Then again, maybe she can.”

    “It's not a talent so much as a state of mind,” Metria said. “Children do it naturally, but adults usually forget how.”

    “Adults get serious about life,” Cube agreed.

    “Next stop is a sad Magician.”

    Cube decided not to check her memory, preferring to be surprised. They intersected an enchanted path and followed it a short distance to its end.

    Its end? How could an enchanted path have an end? They all went to important places.

    There was an old man there, facing the brush ahead. He looked tired. “Oh, hello Diamond,” he said as the dog joined him. “I'm sorry I haven't finished this section yet. I can't do it as fast as I used to in youth.”

    Cube decided to check her memory after all. There it was: this was Patxi, the Magician who made the enchanted paths. Silhouette had talked with him for some time, learning that he labored continually because of a curse. She had sympathy, regarding herself as being cursed in another manner. They had, in their fashion, hit it off. And Metria had been totally bored, fading out as much as possible until evening came and it was time for Silhouette to return to the inn, lest she miss the return rendezvous. But the woman had, in her fashion, enjoyed the day. “I wish I could stay here, or at least visit when not a ghost,” she said sadly. “But of course I can't.”