Crewel Lye (28 page)

I went over. It was a bush covered with bright disks of glass, each disk slightly curved. They were too small for mirrors. I picked a disk and held it to my right eye to see it better--and it jumped out of my hand and plunked itself against my eyeball. Startled, I stepped back, but the glass hadn't harmed me; it just covered the front of my eyeball so that I had to look through it. The surprising thing was that my vision seemed clearer through that eye than through the other. The focus was sharper and the colors better defined. “It's a vision-improver!” I exclaimed.

“Oh, I've heard of them,” she said. “They're called contact lenses, because they make close contact. When your sight gets old and fuzzy, you wear a couple of these and they bring it up to snuff. We'll have to remember where this optical bush is; it's valuable.”

I pried the lens off my eyeball. “I guess it's all right, but I don't need it.”

Threnody peered over the bush. “What's that on the other side?” she asked.

I walked around the bush toward it. Threnody close on my heels. “Some sort of doll or figurine--”

The black doll flashed. And suddenly I was drifting out of my body, hovering and homing in on the brute, barbarian body beside me. I dropped into it, dizzy.

“The evil spell!” I cried with big, crude lips. “It was set here to intercept us--but we're already exchanged, so it just switched us back!”

Threnody patted herself, making sure. “So it did,” she said, pleased. Then she looked at me. “Now we don't need each other any more.”

I felt a sinking sensation. “You mean you're going to start running again?”

She considered. “You know, if I rode Peek, I could probably get home all right.”

During our underground odyssey, I had tended to forget that we were enemies. Now I perceived the kind of trap this could be. I acted instantly, my barbarian reflexes serving me well. “Pook! Peek!” I cried, running toward the grazing horses. My big male muscles gave me more speed than Threnody had now. “We've changed back! Don't do anything Threnody says!”

Pook looked at me uncertainly, and it was evident that Peek had no notion what I was talking about. “Remember how we met,” I said to Pook. “How you tried to scare me at night, and I circled around you and you thought I was still at my camp, and--”

Pook interrupted me with a neigh. He understood.

“Well, as long as we were in the wrong bodies. Threnody and I couldn't separate,” I said. “We had to cooperate, just to survive. But now we're back in our own bodies, and she can flee me. She wants to ride Peek back to her home. Don't take us anywhere but south, toward Castle Roogna. Can you tell Peek that, so she understands?”

Pook nodded. He would take care of it.

I relaxed. I had acted in time. I still did have my mission to complete, after all.

Threnody came up behind me. “Well, you certainly fixed that, barbarian!” she said severely. “You don't trust me at all, do you!”

“Barbarians are ignorant, not stupid,” I replied, stung.

It was getting dark now. She accompanied me to the fern bed we had fashioned in the radiating branches of a treehouse tree. “You will want to hold onto me again, to be sure I don't flee in the night.”

“I don't--”

“You can't afford to trust me, but I trust you.” And she curled up next to me, ready for sleep.

Somehow I didn't feel at ease, but I didn't seem to have much choice in the matter, so I comported myself for sleep.

This night was cooler than the others had been. “I've gotten used to your larger mass,” Threnody murmured. “I'm cold in this little body.”

“You can make it bigger,” I reminded her.

“That takes too long.”

“You can have my cloak,” I offered, removing my red toga and spreading it out. Now its color was wrong, as it was truly being used by a male; I'd fetch another in the morning.

“We'll share,” she decided. She removed her own garment, arranged the two togas as blankets, and nestled right up next to me.

I lay stiffly awake for some time, wondering exactly how smart I was. Did I even want to deliver her to Castle Roogna now, so another man could marry her? Naturally I had no interest in her myself...or did I? Why did things have to be so complicated with human beings? Why couldn't we, as Threnody had remarked, just sniff noses, rattle chains, and be satisfied?

Yet if we were not what we were, creatures with at least the awareness of purpose and honor, what would we be? Empty knights in armor, seeming so strong on the outside, yet hollow inside? Who was I to deny the human condition, with all its problems of awareness?

“If I weren't on a mission, you wouldn't be safe a moment!” I muttered at her soft, warm, shapely, breathing, sleeping body.

“I know,” she whispered, stretched electrically against me, and returned to sleep. A pox on women!

In the morning we donned new togas of the correct colors, foraged for more food, mounted, and rode south again. I knew we were getting reasonably close to Castle Roogna. I would be sorry to have this mission end. I hoped Threnody would never know how close she had come to diverting me from it. But if she had had occasion to comprehend the male viewpoint, I had similarly experienced the female position. I knew her body well; I had been in it, literally. I refused to take advantage of it.

Peek grew nervous as we progressed, and finally balked. I was riding Pook, and we stopped beside her. “What's the matter with her?” I asked, concerned. She was such a nice horse, and had been quite docile till now.

Pook whinnied at her, then listened to her reply. He tensed. “Some danger ahead?” I asked. “She knows this region?”

“A monster?” Threnody asked. “I can change form until she indicates that it matches whatever monster she's thinking of. That way we can identify it precisely.”

“At an hour a change?” I asked. “That could take forever!”

“Do you have a better way?”

“Yes.” And I proceeded to name monsters for the horses. Quickly we eliminated Dragon, Griffin, Sphinx, Tarasque, Goblin, Callicantzari, Sea Monster, and Harpy. I was beginning to fish for other notions, when Threnody put in one.

“Basilisk,” she said.

Peek nodded emphatically.

Further questioning turned up the news that it wasn't just one basilisk, whose gaze would kill people; it was a whole colony of them. This was, in fact, the Land of the Basks, where cockatrices, henatrices, and chickatrices congregated for regular staring tournaments. This was no safe region for any other creature.

“But we have to pass it to reach Castle Roogna!” I said. “Can we circle around the bask territory?”

It turned out that we couldn't; the mountains and sands combined to make this the only feasible route south. But there was a way to pass through it; at night the basks slept, and if the two horses galloped through then, they could clear the region by daybreak. Then it would be an easy ride to Castle Roogna.

“Good,” I said, relieved. “We'll rest here, then set off at nightfall.”

I set off foraging again, as this body liked to eat well.

I spied a spaghetti tree with the edible strands hanging down in tempting masses.

I grabbed a hank--and discovered hanging behind it a black eye-queue vine. “Oops,” I said, drawing hastily away.

But of course, I couldn't escape it. The vine flashed--and suddenly I was so stupid I could hardly figure out what I was doing.

I stumbled back to the camp, dragging the hank of spaghetti strands behind me...“What's the matter, Jordan?” Threnody asked, perceiving that something was wrong.

“Duh,” I replied.

“What?”

“Duh,” I repeated firmly.

I was stupid, but she was not. “Those bad spells--you mentioned one for idiocy! Did that one strike?”

I nodded stupidly.

Had I been smarter, I could have anticipated her thought processes. But I was dull. In fact, I was about as unintelligent as a barbarian gets, which is pretty dum.

“I think,” she said slowly, “that, considering your condition, it is now too dangerous to proceed south through bask territory. One of those cocks or hens might wake up and wipe us all out. Don't you agree, Jordan?”

“Yuh,” I said, happy to go along with superior reasoning.

Pook's ears flattened back. He was not stupid and he was not going to go along! Peek stood with him, following his lead.

“I think we should go north instead,” Threnody continued carefully. “It is so much safer traveling a familiar route.”

“Yuh,” I agreed. It was a good thing she was still smart.

“Then we can go around to the north, and avoid both the basks and the sands, and reach Castle Roogna safely,” she said. “This will take a little longer, but it's so much more certain. Don't you agree, Jordan?”

“Yuh,” I agreed again. It was so nice of her to consult me like this! Something nagged at my sodden brain, but I couldn't quite figure out what it was, so ignored it.

“We'll rest here tonight, and I'll take good care of you, and in the morning you'll just tell the horses to carry us north, won't you?” she asked persuasively.

“Yuh.”

Pook looked ready to kick someone, maybe me. I couldn't think why.

“Because that business about going south no-matter-what doesn't apply any more, does it? You know better now.”

“Yuh,” I said, a little uncertainly.

She smiled. She was awfully pretty when she did that. “You've been struck by the idiocy spell, so I realize it's a little hard for you to figure out right now. But we'll sleep on it, and I'm sure you'll be satisfied by morning.”

Pook snorted with absolute disgust and stomped away. I heard him neighing something to Peek. They were trying to figure out what to do. Evidently Pook didn't want to listen to what I would be telling him in the morning. Strange animal!

Then Threnody took me by the hand and led me to our niche for the night, and she was so lovely that I knew she must be right.

We settled down in that bower, and she arranged the togas over us as blankets, and crooned a lovely little melody, and got very close to me. She was all sleek and soft and warm, the shape of man's desire. “In fact, I have an even better idea,” she murmured in my ear, her breath like a playful summer breezelet, ticklish and nice. “Let's go back to my house together.”

“Huh?” I asked, perplexed.

“You don't really want to turn me over to some Magician at Castle Roogna, do you?” she urged convincingly.

I didn't follow all her reasoning, but her bare body was so smooth and special against mine, and I realized how nice it would be to do whatever she had in mind. Some things do not require a great deal of intelligence. “Nuh,” I agreed.

She moved against me, and I hugged her to me, beginning to get a glimmer of what we could--

Then there was a fluttering in the forest, and something white showed. It came right up to us--a big, long-billed bird. In fact, it was a stork.

“A stork!” Threnody exclaimed, shaken. She drew away from me as if I had become a monster. “I hadn't thought of that!”

I reached for her again, but for some reason the sight of the stork had turned her off, and she shrank away from me. Women can be very funny about irrelevant things.

The stork landed beside us and closed its wings. “I'm looking for Jordan the Barbarian,” it said.

“For him?” Threnody squeaked. “You birds never bring your bundles to men!” Then she turned thoughtful. “Though it might be a good thing if you did. After all, fair is fair.”

The stork ignored her. Bureaucratic creatures seldom concern themselves with fairness. It turned to me. “Jordan?”

“Yuh,” I answered.

“I am investigating a recent event. It seems that one of our number was lost during a mission, and we are uncertain whether his bundle was properly delivered. You have been implicated. Do you care to testify?”

Something about that last word sounded dirty to me. “To what?”

“To clarify what happened just north of the--wherever it was.”

Oh. I was stupid, but I remembered the episode. “Ogre,” I said.

The stork lifted a free feather and perused its lines closely. “Yes, that was an Oct-ogre delivery. What happened to the stork?”

“Dragon,” I said. “Chomp. Injured wing--no fly more.”

The bird used the tip of his bill to make a mark on the feather. “That corroborates what we concluded. What happened to the bundle?”

I concentrated, and some of my wit returned. “Delivered,” I said.

The stork elevated one eyebrow. I hadn't realized before then that they had eyebrows. “You delivered it?”

“Yuh. Ogret.”

He made another note on the feather. “Highly irregular!”

“I'll say!” Threnody put in. “Whoever heard of a man delivering a baby!”

“Had to be done,” I said defensively.

The stork put away his feather. “To be sure. And what was the fate of the injured stork?”

“Eaten,” I said.

The bird straightened up and half spread his wings. “You what7”

“Not me. 'Nother dragon.”

“Oh.” The stork relaxed, making another note. “Unable to fly, fell prey to dragon.” He glanced up. “It is, after all, hazardous duty. We get flight pay. Just so long as the bundle was safely delivered.”

“Yuh.”

“Thank you. That will be all.” The stork spread his wings, then paused. “It is our policy to reward those who render useful service. Would you like a--”

“No!” Threnody cried, alarmed.

The stork made another note. “Reward of lucky feather declined,” he muttered, speaking to himself. Then he spread his wings again and took off.

“You cost me lucky feather!” I accused Threnody.

She ignored this. “You are on intimate terms with storks?” she demanded.

“Yuh.” It was too complicated to explain in detail. “Now you.” I reached for her.

She jerked away. “Don't you touch me!” she screeched.

“Huh?”

“Not while there are storks in the neighborhood!”

I didn't grasp her objection, but did grasp that she had changed her mind. Disappointed, I lay back. Women can be awfully hard to understand!

In the morning the horses were gone. Pook had left the bag with the remaining spells, so I knew he wasn't coming back. Stupid as I was, I still understood why: because he knew I was going to ask him and Peek to take us north. I couldn't figure out why it was so bad to go north, since Threnody had explained the reason so sensibly. But Pook wouldn't go that way, so he had left. Therefore we couldn't go north, either. He had been free to leave us anytime, but had chosen this time because of our irreconcilable difference of opinion about direction. I was really sorry to lose him, yet couldn't blame him. Sometimes the best thing a friend can do is to refuse to help a friend-gone-wrong. Not that I had gone wrong, but--well, anyway, it was too bad.

Then I had a notion. “Spells!” I exclaimed.

“But they don't work right,” Threnody said, evidently nervous about another foul-up like the exchange of identities.

“Maybe help anyway,” I said with foolish eagerness. I pawed through the mostly empty bag and fished out the little white skull. “Life!” I said.

“Life? You mean it--it restores someone who has died? You don't need that.”

I wasn't smart, but my memory remained good. “Mixed up. This not life.”

“Oh--you mean it has to be some other spell--one that may help us travel?”

“Yuh.” Then, before I could become confused, I said:

“Invoke.”

The skull glowed--and expanded. A ridge appeared that circled around the staring face. This projected out until it formed a full-sized shield, while the face flattened into a picture of itself on the surface of that shield. The back of the skull became the apparatus by which the shield could be comfortably supported on the left arm.

“Say!” I exclaimed, pleased. “Nice shield!”

“If we had needed a shield,” Threnody said curtly, “we could have taken the Knight's shield. How does this help us travel?”

But I remained delighted with this acquisition. I had never had a shield of my own before, because barbarians are too primitive to understand a shield's proper use. However, my experiences with flame-shooting dragons and lance-bearing Knights had provided me with an inkling. Sometimes defense was a good thing, even for a barbarian. Or so I supposed, now that I was stupid.

I put the shield on my arm and postured with it, slicing the air with my sword. We now had two swords, since we had recovered my own from near the dead tree, as well as saving the Knight's. “Take that!” I exclaimed, striking at an imaginary foe. “And that!” Then I lifted the shield, as if warding off an enemy blow. “Nyaa! Nyaa! You can't get me!”

“Some toy!” Threnody muttered, disgusted. Women don't understand about war games. But they sure are fun for the young-of-brain.

In due course I settled down, and we came to grips with the problem of traveling. “I suppose we'll have to walk,” Threnody said, unthrilled. “But it will take us a couple of days, and I'll be footsore. Damn those horses!”

“Yuh,” I agreed amicably.

She focused on me. “You won't stay stupid forever,” she said. “These spells wear off after a few days, don't they?”

“Yuh,” I said. “Some do.”

“A man does have his uses,” she said to herself. “As long as I'm single, I'm vulnerable on one level or another. The only way to finish this nuisance for good is to marry an amiable man, not too bright...” Then she looked up, as if becoming aware of me. “Very well--I'll carry you. At least that will get us there.”

“Huh?”

“I'll change into a dollarpede,” she decided. “That's a hundred times the size of a centipede, but not vicious like the nickel or dimepedes, because it doesn't have any metal pincers. A dollarpede has no metal backbone, so it has been losing strength for decades. It's a helpless form, subject to the whims of whoever handles it; you'll have to protect me with your sword and shield.”

“Helpless?”

“Dollarpedes just seem to keep getting devalued by everything else they encounter,” she said. “Until finally they look as big as ever, but they're hardly worth anything at all. Maybe that's because they're made mostly of paper.”

“Paper?” I was stupid, but even to me that sounded funny.

“Some of them have silver support,” she said. “Those ones are stronger, but they're very rare. I'll become one of that kind.”

“Yuh,” I agreed, reassured.

Of course it took time. First she changed her form, after cautioning me to keep a sharp eye out for predators, as she was most vulnerable while changing. “Everybody grabs for dollarpedes!” Had I been smarter, I would have realized that that was the main reason she needed me right now. If she had been able to change safely when alone in the jungle, she could have deserted me and headed directly for home. So she had to take me along. My brain wasn't worth much now, but my body and sword and shield were. But of course she didn't tell me that; she told me she liked me and wanted my companionship. It's an old ploy women use on men. And I, being stupid, believed her.