Board Stiff (Xanth) (10 page)

They came to a circular depression. It seemed to be a spring from which a streamlet of water flowed. They skirted it, but Astrid’s dress flared out in a breeze and caught on a shrub. It pulled free in a quarter of a moment, but a sequin snagged. It ripped off and fell to the ground. It tumbled down the slope and splashed into the shallow spring.

“Oh, bleep!” Astrid swore as her dress became translucent.

“Your dress!” Tiara said, surprised.

“It happens when it loses a sequin,” Astrid said. “I need to replace it. But there’s a complication.”

“I’ll fetch the sequin,” Tiara said, stepping carefully down toward the spring.

“Wait!” Pewter said. “That may be the source of the lethe stream!”

“I suppose it is,” Tiara said. And paused again. “Oh, no!”

“We have a problem,” Pewter said.

The others agreed. They sat on the bank gazing at the sequin.

“Here is the problem,” Pewter said. “The sequin is just under the surface of the water. It will be easy to retrieve if this is ordinary water. But if it is lethe water, whoever touches it will forget what he’s doing, and perhaps a lot more. This is a risk that should be avoided.”

“It’s my fault,” Tiara said. “I shouldn’t have led you here. I’ll go fetch it, and if I forget, it’s not much of a loss. You can go on with your Quest.”

“This is reasonable,” Pewter agreed.

“The bleep it is!” Astrid exploded. “I’m a basilisk, but even I know that’s not the way to treat a girl who is helping us.”

Good for her! Kandy was positively coming to like Astrid. Actually, Tiara was showing sterling qualities too.

“Pewter is a machine,” Ease said. “He doesn’t care.”

“A machine?” Tiara asked.

“I guess we haven’t clarified that,” Pewter said. “I am Com Pewter, an electronic machine. I can change reality in my immediate vicinity.”

“You are odder folk than I knew,” Tiara said in wonder. “But I like you and want to help you. So--”

“Not that way,” Astrid said firmly.

“I’ll just fish it out with my board,” Ease said.

Astrid opened her mouth to protest, but paused. Kandy knew why. She didn’t want to blab the secret.

Kandy tried to formulate a mind-changing directive, but Ease acted with the assurance of a man to whom hard things could always be made easy. He leaned over the pool and swept the board down into it before Kandy could send her thought. The tip caught the sequin and heaved it out of the water to land on the bank.

Kandy discovered she was holding her wooden breath. Did she retain her memory? It seemed she did. At least she couldn’t think of anything she had forgotten. So maybe it wasn’t lethe water, or it didn’t affect wood.

Astrid was looking stricken. “Are—is—is the board all right?” she asked.

“Nothing wrong with the board,” Ease said. “Wood doesn’t have memory anyway.”

“Maybe not any more,” Astrid murmured, pained.

“I made a spell,” Pewter said. “Lethe nulled when touching board.”

“What a relief!”

So that was it, Kandy thought. Any lethe water that touched her had been nullified into ordinary water so that it didn’t affect her. Pewter might just have saved her memory, and thus her life. Too bad he hadn’t thought of that before, instead of wasting time discussing how they were going to get the sequin out.

“Who cares?” Ease asked. “It’s just a board.”

Kandy bridled. But she reminded herself for the umpteenth time: he didn’t know.

Astrid, who did know, reorganized. “I get foolishly attached to things. Forget it.”

“So do I,” Ease said, gazing fixedly at her dress. It remained translucent, and the outline of her panties showed.

“Outline fades,” Pewter said. The panties faded out. This meant that now Astrid’s bare-seeming bottom showed instead, but that was less magical. Indeed, Ease’s attention faltered.

“Let’s get that sequin back on,” Ease said.

“Not yet,” Pewter said. “For three reasons. First, the sequin will generate a new Event, and we don’t want that this late in the day. Second, we want to find that inn and get a good night’s rest. Third, we have not yet fathomed how Tiara’s hair relates, so must settle that before we depart.”

“I could use a good dinner and some shut-eye,” Ease agreed.

“I can use a night’s rest,” Astrid said.

“And I need to study that hair more thoroughly,” Pewter said.

“I just wish it would behave,” Tiara said. “I can’t even sleep well when it keeps trying to fly away.”

“Hair behaves,” Pewter said.

Immediately the hair relaxed, falling neatly into place.

“Oh, that’s wonderful!” Tiara said. “Thank you, Pewter.”

“That is only a temporary solution, as you know,” Pewter said.

Ease’s attention focused on her. “You know, with your hair like that, you aren’t bad looking.” It was a typically clumsy male observation. The girl was almost excruciatingly pretty.

“Thank you,” she said, glancing at him speculatively.

Oh, foo, Kandy thought, disgusted. If he wasn’t eying panties, he was eying faces. And those with the panties and faces were responding. While Kandy remained a board.

“I will carry the sequin,” Pewter said, picking it up.

They moved on, Tiara leading the way, followed by Ease, then Astrid, then Pewter. That meant that Ease’s attention was on Tiara. Kandy was pleased to observe that Astrid looked slightly uncomfortable with that. But if Astrid had led the way, the man would probably have freaked out even without her panties showing.

They passed a tree with hanging streamers of cloth. Astrid considered it. “I could tear off one of those and wrap it around outside my dress, so that it wouldn’t be so distracting.”

“Don’t do that,” Tiara said. “That’s a tearable idea.”

“A terrible idea? Why?”

“That, too.”

“I don’t understand.” Neither did Ease, or Kandy.

“I know this tree. It grows tearable cloth that is terrible to wear, because it wraps around and tries to make a cocoon with the person inside.”

“Let me try it,” Ease said. “With my board.” He poked the board at one of the sections of cloth, then twisted so that the cloth wrapped around the board, making a tricky maneuver easy. Then he twitched his wrist, and the cloth was ripped off the tree. Immediately it constricted tightly around the board, completely covering it.

“See? Tearing it is dangerous.”

“Yeah. Now how do I get it off?” Because the cloth had indeed formed a firm cocoon and he didn’t want to touch it lest it wrap around
him.

“I’ll do it,” Astrid said. She put her face to the cloth and breathed on it. The cloth wrinkled and shriveled. Soon it dropped limply off.

Tiara was plainly impressed. “Maybe you could wear it, after all.”

“No. It would take longer, but it wouldn’t last. My body ambiance is not as intense as my breath or gaze, but it is there.”

Still, Kandy thought, it was a clear demonstration of the basilisk’s power.

They came to the shore. There was a small boat tied to a tree near the beach. Across a brief expanse of water was another island shrouded in mist: the Isle of Missed.

“We have a problem,” Pewter said.

Ease saw it. “Four people. Boat for two.”

“We girls will sit on your laps,” Tiara said brightly.

Worse and worse. Pewter would not be affected, but Ease would be disgustingly delighted.

Which was exactly the case. Astrid sat on Pewter, Tiara said on Ease. Ease was clearly on the lowest rung of heaven. Fortunately the boat was self propelled, and the trip was short. In a brief time minus a few moments they were there.

The inn turned out to be very good. They had a nice dinner, then retired to a two room suite, the girls in one room, the men in the other. Kandy had to give Ease a hard mental jolt to persuade him to decide on that arrangement.

When Ease slept, Kandy transformed. She moved his hand from her ankle to her waist and sat up. “Thank you for saving me,” she said to Pewter.

“It was necessary,” Pewter said. “Without you, Ease would be ungovernable.”

Oh. “That, too,” she agreed.

“Tiara’s hair will revert the moment she is out of my vicinity. She will not have a feasible reception by her sisters. We must find a solution, or take her with us.”

“Do we have a solution?”

“No.”

“What about merging the hair?”

“Aside from my ambiance keeping it tame, I am not aware of any relevance.”

“Is it possible that later in the Quest that relevance would appear?”

“It is possible.”

Kandy sighed. “Then I suppose we must take her with us. She does seem to be a good girl, even if she is too pretty for my taste.” She looked around. “There’s nothing here to interest me. Can you make me sleep?”

“No, your wakefulness at night is integral to the spell and I can’t override it without unkind consequences.”

“Unkind?”

“You might never wake again.”

That was persuasive. “Can you conjure some diversion?”

“Do you play chess?”

“No.”

A checkered board appeared with a number of carved figurines. “Learn.”

Kandy learned. It turned out to be quite a game. Pewter set his playing level at the lowest tier, and when she got good enough to beat that, he reset it at the next tier up. By the time the night was done, she had reached the third tier and was thoroughly conversant with the moves and strategies. “I like this game,” she concluded. “I think I will not be bored at night again.” She smiled. “Not a bored board.”

“You have a flair for it.”

Then Ease woke. She reverted and the chessboard faded out.

“My dream woman plays chess,” Ease remarked. “I don’t know how I know, but I have this vision of her sitting up nude and moving the pieces.”

“Your dreams are foolish,” Pewter said.

“Why would she play chess when she was nude with you?” Astrid asked.

“Beats me,” Ease admitted. “I wasn’t watching the board anyway.”

That was what he thought.

Pewter oriented on Tiara. “Your hair will revert to wildness the instant we depart.”

“I know,” Tiara said sadly. “I will be so sorry to see you go. But I know you must complete your quest.”

“Come with us,” Ease said.

“Oh, you wouldn’t want an innocent girl like me along.” Yet she was plainly tempted, and perhaps not entirely because of how it would help her hair.

“You are now of age to abate your innocence,” Astrid said. “We would be glad to have you.”

“Are you sure?” She was almost pathetic in her eagerness. Kandy knew why: they accepted her, regardless of her hair.

“Yes,” Pewter said.

“Well, then, all right. Thank you.” She tried to stifle a tear, unsuccessfully.

Just like that it was decided. They wrapped up whatever business they had and departed the nice inn. When they had a suitably private place, Pewter brought out the sequin and pinned it to Astrid’s dress. And the scene changed.

Chapter 5:

Virus

They stood at the edge of a flowery meadow. People were coming from a nearby village, including a man and a horse. He was not riding the horse, he was walking beside it. He wore a hair shirt but seemed cheerful.

“Hello, friends!” the man called jovially. “Have you come to join the party?”

“Party?” Ease asked blankly.

“We are about to celebrate the Pun,” the man said. “Let’s introduce ourselves. I am Mitch, the master of ceremonies. This is the mare of Punic Curse, so called because there are more puns here than anywhere else. It was considered a curse, until we got the bright idea to make something of it and convert it to a blessing. But we don’t want to change the name of the village. So the mare authorized it and I am implementing it, and everybody is welcome to a punderful time.”

“Hello Mitch,” Ease said, slightly uneasily. “Hello, mare. I am Ease, and this is Astrid. And Pewter. And Tiara. We’re on a Quest. So its just coincidence that we landed here. I think.”

“You think?”

“Well, we’re trying to save the puns from the plague.”

“Plague?”

“It evidently has not yet reached here. It’s a virus that destroys puns. We are searching for an anti-virus to stop it.”

“Surely you jest!” Mitch said. “Nothing can stop puns. We depend on that.”

A glance circled around, starting with Ease, glancing off Astrid and Tiara, and landing on Pewter. The events were supposed to be relevant, so there should be a reason they were here. But the folk of Punic Curse were oblivious. There seemed to be no point in bothering them about something that, with luck, would never happen here.

“We hope you are correct,” Pewter said. “We shall be glad to participate in your festivities, until we find whatever it is we are looking for here.”

“Excellent!” Mitch moved on, organizing the party.

Many more villagers were gathering. Soon there was music, as they played huge ear-shaped drums, a trio of ugly bird-women played harps, and odd-shaped horns tooted. Kandy diverted herself by checking off the puns: ear drums, harp-Ps, insti-toots. Parrots played really dirty stringed instruments, (poll-lutes), violent-looking men rang bells, (reb-bells), reading from sheets hung on a line in front of them, (sheet music). Women pounded out rolls with rocks in their hands, (rock and roll). A man whose shirt identified him as Trom beat out the rhythm with a bone (Trom-bone). Another man identified as Nick whistled a tune, (Tune-Nick). Beside him an alien creature shaped like a gourd strummed on strings stretched across its belly, (ukul-alien). Several others were playing so hard they were sweating, a sweat-band. Others were blowing into their shoes, (shoe-horns). Nearby were a number of musical bars: soap, salad, sand, gold, candy. There were tuning forks, knives, spoons, plates, and glasses.

Before long the villagers were dancing, some decorated with buns, (abun-dance), cords, (ac-cord dance), while some seemed to ignore their partners (avoid-dance). A man in armor danced with several women (Dance Knight).

“Oh, let’s do it!” Tiara said. “I haven’t danced with a partner in so long, and never with an adult!”

“I don’t know how to dance,” Astrid protested.

“These days that doesn’t matter,” Tiara said. “You just get out there and bounce your body around. I’ll show you.” She tugged Astrid onto the dance floor and started jiggling her body.