The

FANTASY COLLECTIVE

by

PIERS ANTHONY

J.R. RAIN

Acclaim for J.R. Rain and Piers Anthony:

“Anthony’s most ambitious project to date. Well conceived and written from the heart.”

—Library Journal on Piers Anthony’s Isle of Woman

“Be prepared to lose sleep!”

—James Rollins, international bestselling author of The Doomsday Key

“Piers Anthony is a writer of passion. Volk is a masterpiece.”

—Brad Linaweaver, author of Moon of Ice

“Dark Horse is the best book I’ve read in a long time!”

—Gemma Halliday, award-winning author of Spying in High Heels

“Piers Anthony is one of the more colorful personalities in the SF world.”

—Science Fiction Chronicle on Piers Anthony’s Bio of an Ogre

“Moon Dance is a must read. If you like Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum, bounty hunter, be prepared to love J.R. Rain’s Samantha Moon, vampire private investigator.”

—Eve Paludan, author of Letters from David

THE FANTASY COLLECTIVE

Aladdin Relighted

Aladdin Sins Bad

Aladdin and the Flying Dutchman

Dragon Assassin

Jack and the Giants

Lavabull

The Worm Returns

Dolfin Tayle

The Journey

The Fantasy Collective

Published by Rain Press

Copyright © 2024 by Piers Anthony and J.R. Rain

All rights reserved.

Ebook Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Aladdin Relighted

Aladdin Sins Bad

Aladdin and the Flying Dutchman

Dragon Assassin

Jack and the Giants

Lavabull

The Worm Returns

Dolfin Tayle

The Journey

Author's Note

About the Authors

ALADDIN

RELIGHTED

The Aladdin Trilogy #1

Aladdin Relighted

Copyright © 2011 by Piers Anthony and J.R. Rain

All rights reserved.

Aladdin Relighted

Authors’ Preface

The Arabian Nights tales, supposedly told over the course of one thousand and one nights, constitute a huge and wonderful fantasy collection. Their framework is that a king, enraged by the infidelity of his wife, set up a policy of marrying a woman, spending a single night with her, then executing her in the morning so she would have no chance to be unfaithful. Thus a woman a night, indefinitely. But after a while there was coming to be a shortage of eligible maidens in the kingdom. Something had to be done. But who dared caution the king about his policy?

Finally the vizier’s daughter Shahrazad or Scheherazade, a lovely and savvy girl, volunteered to marry the king. She had a plan. She had her younger sister accompany her to the bridal suite, and after the king had fulfilled his conjugal duty, the sister begged Shahrazad to tell her a story. The king happened to be restless, so was amenable; stories are great entertainments the world over.

Shahrazad began her story, full of magic and wonder, but before she finished it the night was over and it was time to commence the day. In the story a demon was raising his sword to kill a merchant. The king was overcome by curiosity to know how that came out. So he spared Shahrazad for another night, so that she could tell the rest before she died. But she did not finish the story the second night, so the king granted another continuance. So it continued for almost three years, and Shahrazad had birthed more than one baby. The king finally realized that she was a fully worthy and faithful wife, and elected not to execute her. Thus the decimation of maidens was halted, and the kingdom prospered.

This was of course a convenient framework for the vast collection of Arabian folklore. Piers Anthony adapted one of those stories, Hasan, as a novel over 40 years ago, but there are many more. Thus “The Story of Aladdin and the Magic Lamp.” In that one a boy manages to acquire both a magic ring and a magic lamp, and the powers this gave him enabled him to win the king’s daughter and in due course inherit the throne itself.

One problem. It’s a fake. “Aladdin” was not one of the original tales. Shahrazad never told it to the king. It was written in Paris in the eighteenth century, translated to Arabic, and, taken for a legitimate tale, translated to English.

Thus the present story, Aladdin Relighted, is a kind of sequel to a fake. Purists may wonder why the characters are not shown bowing toward Mecca five times a day or honoring other Muslim conventions other than token references. Well, the original story was set in China, where Muslim conventions do not prevail and djinni do not circulate; that is perhaps another signal of its fakery. So we felt free to do it our own way. It is fantasy adventure with an Arabian Night’s flavor. We use the terms djinn, jinn, genie and ifrit interchangeably, though in Arabic lore there are sophisticated distinctions. We thought it would be fun to do the tale, relating to Aladdin’s later life, and it was. We trust that most readers will enjoy it as the light-hearted effort it is, and that Shahrazad herself would have found it worthy. We don’t want anyone executing us the morning after.

Chapter One

The Middle-East,

A Forgotten Desert

She was a fine beauty with almond-shaped eyes, high cheekbones and lips so full they could hardly close. She stepped into my tent and shook out her hair and slapped the trail dust from her overcoat.

I had been dozing lightly, one foot propped up on a heavy travel chest, when I heard a woman’s voice asking for me. With my foot still hanging over the ornately-engraved chest, I had turned my head with some interest and watched as a dark-haired woman had poked her head in my open tent. My tent was always open. After all, I was always open for business. Once confirming she had the right tent, she had strode in confidently.

And that’s when I sat up, blinking hard. It was not often that such a beauty entered my humble tent. Granted, there had been a time when I was surrounded by such beauties, but that seemed like a long, long time ago.

“Do you always sleep during the day?” she asked. As she spoke, she scanned my simple tent, wrinkling her nose. She stepped over to a low table and looked down at a carving of mine. She nodded to herself, as if she approved of my handiwork. She looked around my tent some more, and when she was done, she looked at me directly, perhaps challengingly.

“Only until the sun goes down.”

She had been looking at a pile of my dirty robes sitting in one corner of my tent. She snapped her head around. “I hope you’re joking.”

“And why would you hope that?”

“Because I will not hire a sluggard.”

She was a woman of considerable wealth, that much was for sure. She also did not act like any woman I had even seen, outside of the many courtyards and palaces I had once been accustomed to. She reminded me of all that was wrong with wealth and royalty and I immediately took a disliking to her, despite her great beauty.

Through my tent opening came the sounds of money being exchanged for any number of items. At the opening, swirling dust still hovered in the air from when she had entered. The dust caught some of the harsh sunlight, forming phantasmagorical shapes that looked vaguely familiar.

“And why would my lady need to hire a lazy wretch like me?” I asked. As I spoke I lifted my sandled foot off the chest and sat back with my elbows on my knees.

“Emir Farid said some satisfactory things about you. In particular, that you have proven to be somewhat reliable.”

“Emir Farid has always greatly admired me.”

She studied me closely. Her almond-shaped eyes didn’t miss much. Her long fingers, I saw, were heavy with jewels.

“Aren’t you going to offer me a seat?” she asked.

I motioned to the area in front of the chest. The area was covered in sand and didn’t look much different than the desert outside my tent.

I really ought to clean this place, I thought.

“Never mind,” she said. “I’ll stand.”

I shrugged and grinned. She fanned her face and looked around my tent some more. She didn’t seem pleased, but she also looked desperate. Desperate usually won out.

She said, “Despite your many flaws, according to Emir Farid, he says that you are particularly adept at...finding things.”

“I’m also adept at losing things, my lady, but funny how no one seems to want to hire me for that.”

Outside, a few tents down, an animal shrieked, followed by sounds of splashing, and I knew a goat had been slaughtered. A dry, hot wind found its way into my tent, swirling the dirt at her feet, and lifting her robe around her ankles.

Nice ankles.

She caught me looking at them and leveled a withering stare at me. I grinned some more.

“You make a lot of jokes,” she said. “This could be a problem.”

I moved to sit back in the position she had found me in. “Then I wish you luck in your quest to find whatever it is that’s missing. May I suggest you take a look around our grand market place. Perhaps this thing of which you seek is under your very nose.” I closed my eyes and folded my hands over my chest.

“Are you always like this?” she demanded.

“Lying down? Often.”

She made a small, frustrated noise. “Is there anyone else in this godforsaken outpost who can help me?”

“There’s a shepherd who’s been known to be fairly adept at finding lost goats—although, come to think of it, he did lose one last week—”

“Enough,” she snapped. “I don’t have much time and you will have to do, although you are older than I had hoped.”

“My lady is full of compliments. I am not sure if I should blush or sleep.”

“Neither, old man. Come, there’s much to do.”

I heard her step towards the open flap of my tent. I still hadn’t opened my eyes. I lifted my hand and rested it on the corner of the chest. I hunkered deeper on the padding that doubled as my bed. She stopped at the entrance.

“Well?” she asked impatiently.

“Well what?”

“Aren’t you coming?”

I turned my head and looked at her. She was standing with her hands on her hips, silhouetted in the streaming sunlight. God, she was beautiful. And irritating.

I said, “Not until I know what you want me for and we have discussed my price.”

She turned and faced the bustling marketplace just outside my tent. She wanted to leave. She wanted to run. But she needed my help, that much was obvious. I waited, smiling contentedly to myself.

She said, “If I tell you on the trail, I will double your asking price.”

Double was good. I jumped to my feet and grabbed a satchel and my chest. The rest could stay.

At the tent entrance, I nodded at her. “You have yourself a deal.”

Chapter Two

I followed her out, blinking in the bright sunlight. Even my brief pause put her ahead of me, as she was already moving purposefully down the street. I refused to be seen scrambling after her like a hungry mongrel, so I lengthened my stride and slowly caught up.

“Some details remain,” I said as I drew within range.

“They can wait.”

“Such as my fee. I want half in advance.”

She didn’t hesitate. She simply flipped something at me. I caught it. It was a gold piece. That would do.

“Such as your name.”

“I am Enees-el-Jenees, of a prominent family, but I prefer to be incognito for now.”

“I will abbreviate it to Jewel,” I agreed. “And I of course am Niddala, as you surely know.” It was my name spelled backwards. No one seemed to have caught on, which probably indicated disinterest rather than stupidity. I had fallen far since my heyday.

“Niddala the Thief,” she agreed.

“Niddala the specialist in locating hidden objects.”

“Have it your way.”

“Now tell me the nature of the mission. What, precisely, am I expected to find?”

“My young son.”

This set me back. “Normally mothers know the whereabouts of their offspring.”

“He was stolen from me. It’s a devious story.”

“Have it your way,” I agreed.

She shot me a wrathful glance. “I will tell it when we are more private.” She approached a small parked carriage. It was closed, with a buckboard for the driver, and two fine horses were hitched to it. “Get in.”

“This is an intercity transport,” I protested. “Where are we going?”

“I hired it for the occasion. Get in.”

“Where are we going?” I repeated, putting my two feet down with audible impacts, signaling my refusal to go further on faith.

“Samarkand.” She stepped impatiently to the coach herself, evidently tired of my dawdling.

Oh, camel dung! I hated that city, and not just because of its reputation for killing innocent travelers. But it would not be expedient to go into that with her at the moment. “You didn’t say we were going so far away.”

“You didn’t ask. Now help me in, making a pretense of masculinity, and join me inside. Time is brief.”

I made an interior sigh and put a firm hand to her elbow to steady her as she took the steep step up. Her ascent showed one ankle right up to the calf, putting me in mind of certain luscious slave girls I had known in my better days. But did I really want to do this?

I paused outside. I rubbed my brass ring in a certain way. Immediately there was an invisible presence beside me. “I am here, master.” This was El Fadl, the ifrit of the ring, not one of the top tier of the djinn, but a serviceable aide and companion. He was especially useful when a target object was highly guarded. In fact I owed much of my reputation as a location specialist—okay, thief—to his dexterous supernatural touch.

“Faddy,” I murmured. “She wants me to go to Samarkand.”

“Samarkand! Don’t you know better, master? Give her back her gold piece.”

“I need the money. But you had better do due diligence on her, and let me know soon, just in case I do need to give it back.”

“I hear and obey, Nid,” he agreed, and faded.

“Well?” Jewel called imperiously from within.

“On my way,” I called back, and climbed reluctantly into the coach.

It was tight within, with barely room for two facing each other if our knees interspliced. Actually that aspect was interesting; her knees felt firm and smooth. Who knew what divine flesh they attached to? I had barely gotten seated when the coach jerked into motion. We were on our way.

“This is the situation,” Jewel said briskly. “I was wrongly accused of conspiracy by my wicked ex-husband, and imprisoned for two years until I was released.”

“Released?” I asked dubiously.

“I finally seduced my captors and killed them when they were distracted. I recovered some of my assets my husband hadn’t known about, rendering them into these rings, as only what is on my person is safe. Now I am anonymous, but mean to recover my innocent son. I will do what it takes to accomplish my purpose.”

Hence her interest in hiring a nonentity. Had she gone about her mission openly, her husband’s spies would have been alerted, and killed her, or at least imprisoned her again.

“You seduced and killed them,” I repeated.

“A man isn’t expecting a knife in the gut when he is in the throes of fulfillment. That is when he is most vulnerable.”

“Is that a warning to me not to get ideas?”

“No. Your reputation is for thieving, not raping. If you have a problem about going to Samarkand, would a seduction alleviate it?”

“It might,” I agreed.

“You were supposed to angrily deny it!”

“I am a thief and a liar,” I said seriously. “But I do not steal from or lie to those who hire me. You have bought my loyalty for the mission. But I do have reason to avoid Samarkand, and your favors might indeed mitigate my aversion. I am not demanding them, merely answering your question.”

She gazed intently at me a moment. “You may be more of a man than I took you for.”

“And you may be more of a woman.”

She was silent, perhaps digesting that.

“Master,” Fadl’s voice came in my ear.

I cocked my head slightly, indicating that I was listening.

“The woman is being shadowed by armed men. She is not as anonymous as she may choose to believe. My guess is that if she goes to Samarkand, she will be killed. There are horsemen lurking nearby, maybe awaiting their chance to catch the coach out of sight of the authorities. You have only a few minutes to avoid them.”

I nodded. “Slow the carriage,” I murmured.

“I hear and obey.” Fadl faded.

“What did you say?” Jewel asked.

“I was muttering,” I said. “Jewel, you are in danger. We must get out of this coach in a hurry.”

“I paid a valuable jewel for this ride!” she protested. “I am not going to walk to Samarkand!”

“Trust me.”

She stared at me, obviously not trusting me.

The coach swerved and slowed as Fadl made his distraction, perhaps spooking the horses with a ghostly smell.

“What is happening?” Jewel asked, alarmed.

I leaned forward and grabbed the driver’s shoulder. He looked back, startled. He was an older Arab, with sharp eyes.

“There’s danger ahead, friend. We must abandon this carriage.”

His eyes narrowed, but before he could answer, Jewel screeched behind me, “What the devil are you talking about?”

I ignored her. “Come,” I said to him, “we don’t have much time!”

He shook his head. “I see no danger—”

Faddy whispered in my ear, “Go now!”

The carriage had slowed enough. I tossed my special lockbox out the side of the wagon. It landed in the sand and rolled. Next, I grabbed Jewel’s arm. “Jump out with me. Now!” I plunged out, hauling her along with me.

We landed and rolled in the sand. At another time I would really have noticed the way her soft body jammed against mine, but at the moment I was trying to see that she suffered no injury.

The driver got control of the horses, who seemed no longer distracted, and the coach accelerated. The driver looked back, no doubt wondering where his passengers had disappeared to.

“Of all the ridiculous stunts!” she expostulated as we got back on our feet. She remained beautiful even when disheveled, maybe even more so, as more of her body showed. “You didn’t need to do this to get me alone! We were alone in the coach.”

“Get under cover,” I said tersely, hauling her to a nearby copse. “And be silent.”

She obeyed with ill grace. We settled in the copse, looking out at the coach that was now leaving us well behind.

Nearby, I saw my valuable travel chest, resting in some scraggly brush. For now, I let it be.

Four horsemen converged on the vehicle. In moments they cut the coachman down and left him bleeding in the sand. Then they ripped open the coach doorway. Even from the distance their curses were audible as they discovered it was empty.

“Now I trust you,” Jewel said.

Chapter Three

“What do we do?” asked Jewel.

I brought my fingers to my lips, shushing her. The soldiers were examining the coach carefully. They ignored the bleeding driver, heedless of his misery. Thus far, we had not been spotted, but it would only be a matter of time. After all, there was a nice deep trail leading through the sand and directly towards us. The copse itself was small and offered little opportunity for concealment.

One of the men shouted at the moaning driver, no doubt demanding to know where we had gone. The driver, to his credit, appeared not to answer, although it was hard to tell from this distance. Or perhaps he was dead. The guard shouted again and drew his sword. He pointed it down at the driver’s neck.

“You there, Faddy?” I asked, subvocalizing my words.

“Always, master.”

“You can quit calling me master.”

“Do you really want to get into this now, master?”

“No,” I said. “Cause a distraction. Quick. I do not want to see this driver perish.”

“But the driver did not heed your warning.”

“Just do it.”

“As you wish,” said Faddy, followed a moment later by a barley audible, “Master.”

“Did you say something?” asked Jewel.

“No,” I said. “Did you?”

“No, but I thought I heard something—never mind. They’re going to kill Jabeer. I can’t look.”

“Hurry!” I whispered to Faddy.

As the guard raised his curved scimitar, its polished steel catching some of the intense afternoon sun, there came a loud shout from the distant mountains. The shout, amazingly, sounded much like me. Faddy never ceased to amaze. Another shout followed, one that sounded much like Jewel. Both voices echoed over the desert.

One of the soldiers pointed, and immediately the driver was forgotten. In haste, the soldiers mounted their horses, and turned toward the distant voices. They disappeared a moment later, kicking up a billowing cloud of dust as they cut through the desert and far away from us.

Jewel was staring at me. She had heard the voices, too, of course. My voice and her own voice.

“What the devil is going on?” she asked.

“I’ll explain later,” I said, reaching down for her hand. She took mine and I hauled her to her feet. Perhaps a little too roughly. She stumbled forward and into me. I held her briefly, my hand at the small of her back. I gave her a lopsided grin. “Come,” I said. “Your driver needs our help.”

I retrieved my wooden lockbox—which had survived the tumble unscathed, as I knew it would—and we made our way back up the sandy slope and to the road.

Without shade, the sun was merciless. Heatwaves rose up from the hard-packed road, and I had long ago broken out in a pouring sweat, which soaked through my tunic. I glanced over at Jewel. There might have been a slight gleam of sweat on her upper lip.

In the far distance, I could mark the soldier’s path from the rising dust plumes. They were much too far away to see us. And besides, every now and then, I could hear Faddy leading them further and further away. Allah bless Faddy.

As we approached the coach, I could hear the driver’s faint moans, which seemed to agitate the two powerful, Arabian horses. I picked up my pace and was soon by the driver’s side. I set aside my chest and examined the man’s wounds. Not good. My best guess was that he would die within a day. But he would not die alone in this heat.

As I examined him, his dazed eyes searched my face. He opened his mouth to speak and blood spilled out. “How...how did you know?” he asked.

“Don’t talk now, old man. You’re going to need your strength.”

“I should have—”

I winked at him. “Shush, and yes you should have.”

I tore off a long stretch of his dust-covered robe and did my best to dress his wound. Blood quickly soaked through the bandage, but it would have to do.

“You seem to have all the answers,” Jewel said to me, as she knelt down to examine the wounded man. As she did so, she laid her hand tenderly on his tear-streaked cheek, and he responded with a weak smile. “You will be fine, Jabeer,” she said to him.

He actually laughed, and as he did, more blood dribbled out of the corner of his mouth. “You are a fine liar, my lady.”

She looked at me sharply, her almond-shaped eyes dark and challenging, and about as beautiful as anything I had ever seen. That thought, of course, pulled at my heartstrings, and I immediately felt guilty. “So what do we do now, Mr. Answer Man?” she asked.

I did not need Faddy to tell me the main road to Samarkand was unsafe. Her ex-husband, whoever he was, was surely a powerful man with many available resources. As we stood there in the hot sun, as the horses whinnied and pawed at the ground, and as a man lay dying at my feet, I knew what we had to do, and I didn’t like it.

“We need to get off the main road. The soldiers will be back, especially once they realize they have been duped.”

“Duped? What the devil are you talking about? Wait, let me guess. You’ll explain later.”

I winked. “Now you’re catching on,” I said.

I unhitched the horses and spent some time securing what little valuables we had; or, rather, securing what little valuables we absolutely needed. Jewel protested over the exclusion of most of her wardrobe and accessories, but I ignored her protests, which seemed to infuriate her. Jabeer himself was absolutely adamant that his own small satchel be included, which included an elaborate bedroll. I was about to ignore him, too, but he became so insistent that I grudgingly acquiesced and found a spot for his belongings.

Once I had the horses ready for travel, Jewel and I carefully heaved the wounded man onto a horse. Once on, I leaped up behind him and held him in place. If the added wight bothered the great Arabian horse, he did not show it. Jewel followed suit on her own mount, and I led the way back down the steep sandy slope.

“Where are we going?” Jewel called out to me.

“There’s another way,” I said, “one that will lead us to Samarkand.”

Jabeer actually turned his head and looked back at me, fear in his dark eyes. “No,” he whispered.

He, of course, would have known of the road, which, for all intents and purposes, wasn’t much of a road at all. It was an ancient trail that led through the heart of what some claim were enchanted mountains. Enchanted, or cursed, depending on who you spoke with. Still, most people were in agreement of one thing: Only the most foolish ventured upon it. And those who did were seldom seen alive again. That is, of course, if you believed in such fantastical tales.

I didn’t. Besides, I had a few tricks up my own sleeve.

I patted Jabeer lightly on his stooped shoulder. “Don’t look so nervous, old man.”

“Please, this isn’t wise.”

“I would have to agree, master,” said Faddy in my ear.

“Is there another way?” I sub-vocalized.

The djinn paused before answering. “As of now, no.”

“Rest now, my friend. I may need you later.”

“Of that, I have no doubt, master.”

“And quit calling me master.”

“Yes, master.”

At the bottom of the slope, I turned my mount to the east, toward a great chain of shimmering mountains, and as as we cut across the sun-baked earth, two vultures slowly circled above.

I did my best to ignore them.

Chapter Four

The pace was slow, because the horses were overloaded and not trained for riding; they were carriage haulers. I knew that our chances of reaching the mountains before the raiders caught up to us were next to nil.

Jewel knew it too. “Those ruffians won’t be distracted long. Then they’ll orient on our trail and catch us within the hour.”

“They will,” I agreed grimly.

“You have planned for this contingency?”

“Naturally,” I agreed, cudgeling my balky mind for some viable plan. I knew the raiders would not be fooled by spot diversions again.

“Why is Jabeer so alarmed?”

“Must be delirium from the fever of his wounds.”

Jabeer, not completely out of it, made a weak chuckle. He knew he would soon be dead regardless, so he could be halfway objective. He was concerned about the risk to Jewel, not himself.

“It’s a good thing I have confidence in you, Niddala,” she said ironically.

I touched my ring. Faddy responded immediately, as was his wont. “Master.”

“Is there any cover we can reach within the hour?”

“Just a dried up oasis. No food or water there, just rocks and bones. Some think it’s haunted.”

“Is it?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Where?”

“East south east from here.”

“Thanks, Faddy. Begone.”

“Master, those haunts are weak. They won’t stop the raiders.”

“Are you getting deaf in your senility? I said Begone.”

“...and obey, master,” he said disapprovingly, and was gone.

“You have a djinn!” Jabeer said.

“Just a no-account ifrit, bottom tier. He can’t do much except spy and some illusion. But I like him.”

“He can’t stop the raiders.”

“He can’t stop the raiders,” I agreed. “But I have tricks of my own. Now stop wasting your energy talking to me.”

“I’m done for anyway.”

“Probably,” I agreed. “But if we make the mountains, there may be healing elixir.”

“Along with dragons, curses, and worse.”

I shrugged. “One has to take the ill with the good.”

“You’re an utter fool,” he said admiringly. “No wonder Jewel likes you.”

“She’d as soon gut me as kiss me.”

“True. But most men in her mind rate only the gutting. Still, don’t push your luck.”

“I’m hired help. I have no ideas about her.”

“And you’re a liar too. If you’re a man, you have ideas about her.”

“Oh? You too?”

“I served as her hired driver before her ass of a husband dumped her and framed her. She never noticed me, but I used to dream what it would be like with her in bed before she threatened to gut me. Might have been worth it.”

“Might be,” I agreed.

He sank into troubled slumber. It had been an interesting dialogue.

We reached the oasis. It was exactly as Faddy had described. Dead trees, deserted stone huts, a low spot where there had once been a spring, and bones.

“Rest yourself,” I told Jewel. “We’re bound to have company soon.” I dismounted and helped Jabeer half-fall off. I got him settled in the shade of a tumbled wall.

“I’ll tend to Jabeer,” she said.

“Be kind to him. He’s not long for the mortal realm.”

“I know.” She took the man’s hand and kissed it. “You have been a good and faithful servant,” she told him.

Jabeer was dying, but he seemed to glow. I liked her better for her consideration. She wasn’t all hell cat.

“Cover him and yourself,” I told her. “Stay out of sight. I will need to be unfettered.”

She glanced at me and nodded. She unrolled Jabeer’s blanket and spread it over him.

“No,” he protested weakly.

“Don’t argue with me or I’ll kiss more than your hand.”

“You don’t understand. That carpet—”

She knelt down and kissed his sallow cheek. He shut up. He might be heading for hell, but he was halfway to heaven at the moment. She was giving him a proper send-off.

I moved to another section and gathered a pile of stones, sticks, and bones. My pride was the thighbone of a camel, a really solid instrument. I know our chances were small, but if things worked out even halfway decently, I would get us through this crisis.

The horsemen did not keep us waiting long. “Master, they come,” Faddy whispered.

“Stay out of this,” I said. “They aren’t going to fall for any of your illusions this time. It’s purely up to me. If I get taken out, do what you can for Jewel and Jabeer.”

“Hear and obey,” he agreed sadly.

The raiders spotted me, which wasn’t surprising because I was standing up and waving to them. But they were professionally cautious, having been fooled before. My beckoning figure could be an illusion to cover our retreat. They spread out so as to check other parts of the oasis simultaneously, and one hung back so as to spot anyone who tried to sneak out. They knew what they were doing.

But they hadn’t come up against Aladdin before. They had a lesson coming.

My horseman charged in, scimitar lifted. I stood my ground. When he got within range, I hurled my first rock. It missed to the right. By Allah the Magnificent! I was out of practice. I cast the second stone. It missed to the left. Seeing that, the man let out a guffaw.

My third missile caught him on the chest. It surely stung, but did no real damage. Curse again! I had aimed for the neck, where it would crush his larynx and stop his breathing.

Now assured that I was little if any threat to him, he ran his horse directly at me, trying to knock me down. But I had had experience with horses. I stepped aside at the last instant, leaped up, and smacked him across his ugly face with the big solid leg bone. He toppled backward off his mount and landed hard on his scrawny little rear.

I was on him before he could get to his feet, bashing him again with the bone. I felt his skull crack as I laid into it. He was out before he even emitted a productive curse.

I picked up the fallen scimitar and hefted it. It was a good weapon, well balanced, with a sharp edge. Good enough.

“You did it!” Jewel called, evidently relieved.

“Stay clear, woman. It’s not yet over.”

Now two more raiders headed for me, having seen the fate of their companion. They aligned their steeds and came at me as a pair, spaced just far enough apart so that I could not swing my weapon at both together. I might get one, but the other would get me. Evidently they had had experience with armed pedestrians. They were not common ruffians, but trained warriors. But had they been trained enough?

Time for the second lesson. I showed no fear and made no effort to flee. I stood unmoving, holding my scimitar before me as if to ward them off. That stance should have suggested caution. Like fools, they did not heed it.

The two horses bore down on me like juggernauts, ready to knock me down and trample me without breaking stride. Just as they seemed about to strike me, I made a kind of hissing whistling sound.

Both horses reared back, throwing off their riders and galloping away, terrified.

I went for the nearer man, but he was already on his feet with his scimitar raised, and the other was close behind. Smite me for an infidel! I had hoped to see at least one incapacitated. Only a fool would take on two together.

“I have the second,” Jewel called, sweeping in to join the fray.

I opened my mouth, but it was too late to warn her back. She wanted to help me fight? Utter folly! The second man would not kill her outright; he would merely knock her out, bind her, and make his best effort to rape her to death. I had sought to spare her that.

But at the moment I had to focus on my own man. Our scimitars crossed, and I knew immediately that he was no amateur. He attacked me with precision, not leaving himself open to a countersweep.

But I had been trained by the best. I played dumb, backing off, barely fending off his cuts, seeming to tire. Then, just as he thought to finish me off, he got careless. There was my opening.

In a moment his head was rolling on the ground, his body still standing.

I turned immediately to tackle the second. But he was already down in a pool of blood. Jewel was putting her robe back on; I caught only a glimpse of phenomenal breasts. I realized that she had flung her robe off, bracing the man naked, stepping into him with seeming eagerness, and gutted him before he even knew she carried a knife. She had a body to die for, literally.

“Good job,” I told her gruffly.

“Thank you. You too. I did not know you were a swordsman.”

“You didn’t ask.”

“What made those horses spook?”

“Little trick I developed long ago. I emulated the whistle of an annoyed basilisk. Few men recognize it, as they are normally dead seconds after they hear it, but horses know it. They knew they would die if they stepped on it. They acted instinctively.”

She smiled. “I could get to like you, if I tried.”

“Same here. It’s a gut thing. But there’s one to go.”

But there wasn’t. The fourth rider, seeing the fate of the others, was racing away.

“Son of a leprous cur!” I swore. “He’ll carry the word back, and twice as many will be on our tail in hours.”

“So we had better get moving,” Jewel said. “Fortunately we now have three fine fresh horses, and the supplies they carry, like food and water.”

“Good point,” I agreed. “Let’s see to Jabeer.”

But Jabeer was now beyond hope of recovery. “You tried to warn me,” he gasped. “To save me. I want you to have my carpet.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t take your rug,” I protested.

“Take it! Use it! You must! It’s—” But he was unable to finish. He choked, shuddered, and died.

“We’ll have to bury him,” Jewel said sadly.

“Yes. What was he trying to say about his carpet? It looks nice enough, but surely he would prefer to have it with him in the afterlife. We should bury it with him.”

“I’m not sure of that,” she said. “There was something he said once. I thought he was joking, but maybe he wasn’t.”

“What did he say?”

“That it’s magic.”

“She’s right, Master,” Faddy murmured in my ear. “It is a flying carpet. I recognize the weave. This is a rare gift indeed.”

I stared at it. Could this be true?

Chapter Five

We buried Jabeer in a shallow grave, using the flat blades of the curved scimitars as shovels. Luckily, the sand was loose, which made burying easy. Unfortunately, it would also make excavating his body that much easier for the desert critters.

Hopefully, the three dead soldiers would keep such critters satiated, and leave Jabeer alone, although I did not hold out much hope for that.

Jewel wept for her old friend, but as soon as we were packed and mounted on the soldiers’ fine war horses, her cheeks were dry and her jaw was set determinedly.

The oasis wouldn’t be safe, not now. In fact, not much in this area would be safe. There were reports of fierce nomadic tribes that made sport of wayward travelers; that is, using their heads in wretched games. Or so people claimed. There were also reports that hidden within these foothills was a secret gateway to the land of djinn. A portal, as some called it, that led to a wondrous, fantastical, verdant land with all sorts of magical creatures. I had my doubts, although Faddy seemed to believe this account, too. As far as I knew, the ifrit had never seen such a land, having little memory of his existence prior to being bound to his ring since its creation eons ago. The very ring that now rested upon my right index finger. Nomadic warriors or not, magical lands or not, we needed to get away from the oasis and take our chances in the hills.

And so, with the sun setting beyond the western landscape, we followed a rocky path that sometimes appeared through the sandy dunes, a path that led toward the shimmering, distant foothills.

Once, in the far distance behind us, I saw a troop of soldiers appear. I immediately led the way around a rare rocky outcropping, but was pleased to see the soldiers take a different path, one that led back toward the outpost from which we had come.

I summoned Faddy immediately, suspecting the ifrit had had something to do with this. I expressed my suspicions, and the lesser djinn confirmed them, unable to lie to me.

“I erased your tracks, master, and, instead created a false trail, one that leads back to Al Bura.”

“I thought I told you to leave well enough alone,” I whispered to him.

“If you would like, I could remove the false trail and lead the soldiers back here.”

I sighed. I had made it a point long ago to use the djinn as little as possible. Often, not all went as planned, and sometimes the ifrit fouled up more than he helped. Besides, it was not good for a man to rely so heavily on such a creature. It made a man less sharp, less resourceful, and less a man.

“No, you did good, Faddy. Thank you.”

Faddy did not often physically appear, but when he did it was usually as a young man. He would not appear in this situation, as his existence would be difficult to explain to Jewel, and I rarely spoke of my djinn to anyone. After all, men would kill for such a helpful being. Or, as some would call him, a slave. I did not treat Faddy as a slave. All beings, magical or not, deserved fair treatment. I did not know what powerful magics kept him bound to the ring, but that did not mean I had to make his existence a miserable one. Faddy once confided to me that some of his masters had not been so considerate, and that he had done things he wished to forget.

“Since I have you here, Faddy,” I said, “could you confirm that we are on the right course to find the back road.”

“Your wish is my command.”

“Oh, please.”

“I shall return shortly, master.”

I gritted my teeth at being called master, but let it slide. I was not a master. I was just a man with a magic ring.

A man, of course, who had once been king.

I shook my head and let the thought go. The thought was a painful one, and it brought up emotions in me that I wanted to forget.

Behind me trailed three of the horses. They would need water as well. It would be best to leave behind such horses, true, but even I could not treat a creature so cruelly. I would not let a living creature die of thirst in such a wasteland, and the oasis we had just left would not support such creatures for very long. For better or for worse, they would trek with us until we found a suitable place to leave them behind.

Remarkably, Jewel took the lead, looking back often and urging me on. If the woman lacked anything, it was patience. I complied, not wishing to face her fury, snapping the reins of my fine mount, and pulling along the trailing pack horses.

Faddy returned shortly, appearing invisibly by my side. “Stay upon this rocky trail, and you will soon come upon a wider road, one that will lead through the mountains.”

“And eventually to Samarkand?”

“Yes, master.”

Samarkand had a reputation, one that I had not heeded, and for that I have suffered ever since. For it was there that my wife and child were killed. It was there that my life came crumbling down around me. It was there that everything changed, and not for the better.

It was there, after all, that I abandoned my kingdom, and my people.

We continued on, and as the sun dipped below the approaching foothills, I convinced Jewel that we must make camp, or risk breaking a horse’s ankle. The horse’s ankle did not seem to concern her much, until I reminded her that if we traveled on foot we would, more than likely, never make it out of the desert alive.

She didn’t like it, but she acquiesced.

We made camp under a sheltering rock overhang, at the base of the first of a series of foothills that would lead higher and higher until at last we were traveling through mountainous crags. For now, we found some comfort and protection from the cold wind that whipped to life with the setting of the sun.

I provided the horses with some of our valuable water, knowing full well that our supply of it would not last for long. I resisted the urge to ask Faddy to scout ahead. I would soon find out for myself what lay beyond.

As a moderate wind, alternately hot and cold, wound its way over the empty hillside, I made a small fire beneath the overhang, certain it would be shielded from curious eyes, although it was hard to imagine anyone else out here. At least, anyone sane.

The woman was proving to be more trouble than she was worth. A single gold coin hardly seemed worth attacks from heavily armed soldiers and risking one’s life in these empty quarters.

As I added fuel to the fire—dry desert grass and the occasional twigs—she watched me from the far recess of the overhang. I felt her eyes on me as I rummaged through the soldiers’ bag and found dried meats and dates. I handed some to her and she simply glanced at them, unconcerned.

“You should eat,” I said.

“No, I should be searching for my son.”

I thought about that, gnawing on what I assumed was dried beef. Then again, it could have been anything. My stomach didn’t seem to mind, either way.

“Your son is in Samarkand with his father, is he not?”

She nodded but did not look at me. Her fingers twitched and seemed about to reach for the food, but she seemed too troubled to eat. She would eat when she was hungry enough.

I said, “So he is safe then, no?”

Now she looked at me, turning her full gaze at me. Her flashing almond-shaped eyes caught the firelight and returned it to me a thousandfold. “He is most certainly not safe.” Her voice shook, and I saw her clawed hand scoop some loose desert sand.

“But he is with his fath—”

“His father has no concern for his safety. Trust me.”

The wind picked up. Sand sprinkled over me, and a low moan came from seemingly everywhere. The small hair on my neck stood on end. I knew the sound and I knew the feeling. There were old spirits here. Whether good or ill, remained to be seen.

I was now working on my first date. Still, she had not touched her food. The horses along the perimeter snorted. They would make for a good warning system. Faddy would, too, for that matter, if I commanded him to. For now, I would use the horses.

“Tell me about his father,” I said.

“I would rather not.”

I leaned back on an elbow near the fire. Jewel, I noticed, was about as far away from me as she could get. Did I smell that bad? I closed my eyes and listened to the fire crackle.

I know a thing or two about people. Ignore them long enough and it’s all you can do to shut them up later. I waited, exhausted, close to sleep, when she finally spoke.

“His father is the son of a sheik,” she said. “I was the daughter of an important amir, and our families agreed our union would be a good one.”

“So you did not marry for love?”

“Does anyone?”

I thought of my dead wife, a woman I had loved more than life itself, and said nothing on that score.

“Go on,” I said.

“We had a son and we had a good life. Money, servants, a beautiful home at the edge of a resplendent lake. We had the finest things but, apparently, it was not enough for my ex-husband.”

She explained further. Her husband, who had proven to be quite cruel, had always been inclined toward more and more power. Eventually his father was found dead, and her husband—Amir Ibrahim—had immediately assumed control of the vast tribe. But Jewel had always suspected her husband had murdered his own father to gain control. Now, of course, she was certain of it.

“But that does not explain why he would be a threat to his own son,” I said. I had sat up at this point. She was sitting forward, too, not quite as morose as before, but certainly not a woman with any joy in her heart.

She smiled bitterly. “My ex-husband, it seems, will stop at nothing to gain power.”

“What does that mean?”

“He has made a deal with the devil.”

“I don’t understand.”

“By this time tomorrow night, he will offer up his own son as a blood sacrifice.”

I sat straighter. I was not sure I had heard her correctly. “Did you say a sacrifice?”

But she was not looking at me. She had retreated deeper within herself and now I was beginning to sense the reason for her extreme haste.

She said, “I only found out about it days before, from one who had shown kindness to me during my imprisonment.”

“We are at least a three day’s ride to Samarkand,” I said, and then added, “My lady,” since I knew now she was of royalty.

“Don’t my lady me. Out here, I’m not a lady. I’m a mother, and one way or another we will reach my son in time.”

She sat back and closed her eyes, and as the desert wind whipped into something alive and angry, as our small fire danced in our protective shelter, I suddenly had no doubt that we would, indeed, reach Samarkand.

Except I didn’t have any clue how.

Chapter Six

Jewel stirred. “I’m turning in. You will get us there tomorrow.”

I nodded numbly. Unable to come up with a viable plan, I focused on a small thing: would she strip to wash herself with some of our limited water before she slept? Would she let me look?

No, she merely lay down on the sand and closed her eyes. I realized that her years in prison must have accustomed her to roughing it. She surely didn’t like sleeping dirty, but she could handle it.

Vaguely disappointed, I returned to thoughts of the mission. We had three days riding to accomplish in only one day. That was impossible without magic.

Magic. I didn’t like using it much more than Jewel liked roughing it, but I could afford such scruples no more than she could. I touched my ring.

“Master.”

“How can we travel three days in one?”

“Are you forgetting the flying carpet, master?”

The carpet! “That can do it?”

“No, master. The average carpet is little faster than a camel. You could travel continuously day and night, but it wouldn’t be enough.”

“Then what use is it?” I demanded petulantly.

“It will take you to the portal in the foothills.”

“Portal?”

“Master, are you teasing me by pretending to be stupid?”

“Who’s pretending?”

Faddy sighed. “The portal to Djinnland. Only there will you get the answers and power you need.”

“What answers and power?”

“The ones the Djinn of the Lamp will provide.”

“That djinn is nonfunctional. I haven’t been able to raise him in months.”

“Precisely, master. He must obey the call of the Lamp, just as I must obey the summons of the Ring. The fact that he no longer does indicates that he has been made captive in his own realm. You will have to go there and rescue him. Then he will be able to rescue you.”

“Me rescue the Djinn of the Lamp? He’s a hundred times as powerful as I ever dreamed of being.”

“More like a thousand times, master. He’s a king among ifrits, while I am but a peon. He must be in dire straits.”

“Even if such a feat were possible, we don’t have the time. We have only one day!”

“That’s why you need him, master. He can do heavy lifting I can’t even approach. He can get you to Samarkand almost instantly.”

This was ludicrous, but also intriguing. Faddy was not given to lying to me. He was right that the Djinn of the Lamp could solve my problems. But how could I ever hope to solve the Djinn’s problems? “I remain almost terminally ignorant. How can I take time off to try to rescue the djinn, when I don’t have time for my own mission?”

“That is no problem, master. Time is different in Djinnland. You could spend weeks there, and when you return here, no time will have passed here.”

“I’m having trouble believing this.”

“It gets worse, master. It’s the same way for the djinn. The time we spend in the mortal realm is as nothing in Djinnland. If I ever get to go home, after millennia here, I will arrive there the same time as I left.”

“Impossible!”

“No, merely relativistic, master.”

“I do not know this word.”

“Naturally not, master. It dates from a millennium in your future.”

“My future!”

“It would be complicated to explain, master.”

I cudgeled my balky brain to focus on immediacies. “So we go to this portal and into Djinnland and rescue Lamprey. Then he rescues us. Exactly how do we rescue him once we’re there?”

“That I can’t tell you, master. Only that there must be a way. There usually is.”

“Thanks a lot!”

He was immune to irony. “Welcome, master.”

“How is it you know so much about Djinnland, since you’ve never been there?”

“I have been there, master. I once lived there. You merely assumed I had not, and I did not correct you, as you had no need to know.”

Now I sighed. First things first. “So in the morning we take the flying carpet to the portal.”

“Exactly, master.”

“Begone.”

But at least now I had an approach, crazy as it might be in several ways. I sank into sleep.

Jewel was up before me in the morning, fixing our breakfast. “You didn’t try to join me in the night.”

“Should I have?”

“No. But I thought you might. Men do get ideas.”

“I don’t want to get gutted before I complete our mission.”

“Is that the whole truth?”

“No. But it will do. Your body does appeal to me. If you ever actually want my attention, you may come to me without your knife and beg me for it.”

She smiled, accepting that. I doubted she had ever begged a man for it, or ever would. She thought I feared her retaliation. Just as well, because her antipathy to intimacy was convenient for me. It enabled me to hide the fact that I probably couldn’t do anything with her even if she were willing. Because I was impotent, and had been since the death of my wife. I had tried often enough with some quite lovely young women, and succeeded only in embarrassing myself. I had also tried potions and spells, but none were effective. Until I had the cure, whatever it might be, I could do it only verbally. Meanwhile it was not something I cared to discuss with her.

“So how do we get to Samarkand today?” she asked as we finished eating.

“We ride the flying carpet to the portal in the haunted foothills, then enter a portal to Djinnland, where we will rescue a spirit who will get us to Samarkand on time.”

She gazed at me. “You believe this?” She had the grace not to add the word “nonsense” but it was hovering there.

“Trust me.”

“Do you know how to operate that carpet?”

“No. But it can’t be complicated.”

She realized she had no choice. “Let’s get on with it.”

I unrolled the carpet and sat on it. “Go,” I said.

Nothing happened.

“Forward,” I added.

The carpet took off so suddenly that it dumped me in the sand on my rear. Deprived of its rider, it looped in the air and dropped to the ground.

Jewel was plainly stifling her burgeoning mirth. “Perhaps I should try it.”

“Try it,” I agreed ungraciously. I did not add the appellation “she-dog,” but let it hover there beside her unvoiced word.

She fetched the carpet, spread it flat, sat on it, and spoke almost inaudibly. The carpet lifted, then moved slowly forward, carrying her. She glanced back at me. “Nothing to it.”

It turned out that there were a number of specific commands the carpet understood, but it tended to take them literally. When I had told it to go forward, I had not cautioned it to do so slowly. We practiced, and soon got the hang of it.

“What about the horses?” Jewel asked.

“There’s a bit of grazing here. We’ll try to send someone back for them.”

We sat together on the carpet, Jewel first, I with my spread thighs close behind her, clasping her hips. By Allah, her body was winsome! But the one part of my own body that might have taken advantage of that remained fallow. It was frustrating, even though I had no intention of trying anything anyway. I wanted her to think my abstinence was manly courtesy, rather than inability.

“You’re impotent,” she said.

She must have sat like this with a man before. What could I do but admit it? “Since I lost my wife.”

“You must have loved her deeply.”

“I did. And my son.”

“I know about losing a son. Save mine, and I will see what I can do for you.”

I couldn’t think of anything smart to say, so I remained silent. If she could actually cure my incapacity, our relationship would suffer a fundamental change. She was an imperious, violent, deadly woman, but I was coming to appreciate her qualities.

She murmured to the carpet, and it lifted and moved forward, slowly accelerating. Soon we were at treetop height and moving swiftly.

I touched my ring. “Guide us,” I murmured.

“What?” Jewel asked.

“You might as well know this too,” I said with resignation. “I have a minor ifrit named Faddy bound to my ring. He will guide us to the portal.”

“You continue to be a man of surprises.”

Flying was faster than riding the horses, partly because crags and ravines did not interfere. Before long we reached the site of the portal. There was a hut right where Faddy indicated the portal was. That was surely by no coincidence.

An old robed man stood before the hut as we glided in for a landing. “You are looking for the portal,” he said, seeming unsurprised by our appearance. “I am Abu Bakr. I am here to warn you away from it.”

We got off the carpet. “I am Niddala, and this is Jewel,” I said. “We have urgent need to pass through the portal.”

Bakr contemplated me with uncannily perceptive old eyes. I knew in that moment that he recognized me as the former king. Maybe he was a historian. “In that case, there are things you need to know, Niddala.”

Good, he was honoring my privacy. “We will appreciate learning them,” I said.

“Come in to my abode.”

We followed him in. It was much better kept inside than it looked from the outside. Bakr, also, was protecting his privacy.

“We are in a hurry,” Jewel said.

“Obviously,” Bakr agreed. “But you will get nowhere unless you are sufficiently prepared. Do you know anything about Djinnland?”

“No,” I said.

“It is in certain respects the reverse of the mortal realm. We are solid, while the jinn are gaseous. They can assume solidity when they concentrate, but it is not their natural state. In their realm they seem solid, but it is deceptive. Mortals who go there look the same, but are actually enormously denser. As a result, they tend to sink into the ground until they encounter bedrock, and they can not climb trees or ascend to second stories. They can however become diffuse if they focus on that, though they will revert to solidity when they stop focusing. They don’t change visibly, but dissipate most of their mass. The opposite of what the jinn do in the mortal realm to become solid. So this has disadvantages as well as advantages.”

“Advantages?” I asked.

“In that realm, you will be virtually invulnerable to any attack or weapons they mount against you. Their spears will bounce off you harmlessly. Only when you diffuse to their lesser density will you become vulnerable. They may be lurking to pounce at that moment.”

“So we’ll stay dense,” I said.

“Even then you are not completely safe. Just as King Solomon caught and bound many jinn, a good djinn sorcerer can catch and bind mortal souls in that realm.” He glanced at Jewel. “You would be subject to the whim of the possessor of the ring you got bound to, obliged to sate his lust perpetually, unable even to voice objection. You would have to seem to want it, lest you be cruelly punished.”

“But the jinni can assume any form they want to,” Jewel protested. “Their females are always ravishingly beautiful. Why would they care about my form?”

“Not so,” Bakr said. “Their forms are ordinary, and they change them only when they focus. They use illusion to enhance themselves. But the males can see through that illusion. Illusion is like clothing; without it they are naked. But your form is natural, requiring no enhancement by illusion. You would be an invaluable possession, once bound.”

Jewel nodded, appreciating the problem. But her determination was unchanged. “We’re going in.”

“We’ll try to stay clear of their sorcerers,” I said, though I felt a chill. This would be no picnic.

Chapter Seven

Before we departed, Bakr fed us a simple stew in his simple abode. His was a solitary life, and one I would not want. True, living at the portal probably offered some adventure; after all, who knew what ilk poured in and out of this magical land? Perhaps pour is too strong of a word. I suspected that travelers were rare to the portal. Bakr had seemed truly surprised to see us, and after listening to his alarming warning, I could see why. Human mortals, it seemed, did not fare well in Djinnland.

As Jewel sopped up the rest of her meal hungrily, wiping her bowl clean with a stale piece of bread, I found myself wondering why I was risking life and limb to help a woman I barely knew? True, her gold would come in handy, but hers was certainly not the only paying job. Her beauty was undeniable, but little good that did me. Her beauty, if anything, amplified my shortcomings.

Her son was missing, and that hit home with me. Worse, someone the son had trusted—his very father—was the source of his threat. A father, it seemed, who was not against using the darkest magic to wrest the very kingdom I had once ruled.

Perhaps it was time for me to come out of my self exile? Perhaps it was time for me to move on?

Perhaps.

When we were finished, Bakr provided us with some provisions, reiterated some of his most dire warnings, and pointed us to the portal, which, as it turned out, was a rock bridge that spanned a wide chasm. The bridge disappeared into roiling mist, and what awaited us beyond, I could only guess.

I thought we needed to travel light, so I left my incidental belongings, including the little chest, with Bakr. That chest contained the Lamp, which I felt would be useless in Djinnland. I had to trust the sage not to molest my things. If by some mischance I did not return, then maybe he would be a deserving inheritor of the Lamp.

“No, take it with you,” Jewel murmured.

She had caught on? She was almost too smart. I opened the chest, removed the lamp, fitted it in a pocket, and closed the chest again.

Bakr assured me that he would fetch our mounts and take care of them, as he could always use them to barter with future travelers. And with the sun high above and our bellies full, Jewel and I set out along a narrow rock path which led from his hut. I carried over my shoulder a satchel full of provisions, rolled up the magic carpet, and strapped it down to our bag. A thrill of excitement coursed through me. Perhaps I should have been wary. Perhaps I should have been overly cautious. But I was never one to run from danger, and I was never one to leave a woman without hope. Especially a beautiful woman who was already stirring curious emotions inside me. Emotions that I had thought were long dead.

Jewel and I soon crossed a wide section of desert, following a curiously raised rock trail that led directly to the arching bridge. At the foot bridge, I was suddenly a mixture of apprehension and excitement. A hot wind swept up from the chasm, thundering over us, hot enough to seemingly sear my eyebrows.

Next to me, Jewel peered over the edge of the cliff. Her hair whipped about her face crazily, and if she was afraid, she didn’t show it. I joined her at the edge and looked as well. More mist, roiling and churning far below. It would be a long, long drop. To where, I had no clue. Perhaps the djinn underworld, if there was such a place.

The world is full of magic, if one chooses to look. In my case, magic always seemed to find me.

I stepped back, suddenly dizzy. I rubbed my ring. “Will you guide us, Faddy, once we are in Djinnland?”

His voice came to me instantly, although it was nearly drowned out by the hot wind roaring up from below. “I should warn you, master, that I am not bound to you in this magical land.”

“Why is that?”

“This is my natural home, master. The magic is reversed.”

“So we could be bound to a powerful sorcerer, then.”

“Yes, Bakr spoke the truth.”

“Could we be bound to you?”

“I am not a powerful enough sorcerer, master.”

“Will you help us once we are there?”

“Will you someday free me?”

“I have always planned to someday free you.”

“Then I will see what I can do for you, master.”

“And, for the love of Allah, please stop calling me master.”

“In Djinnland, you will not be my master, master.”

I groaned.

“Are you speaking to your ifrit?” asked Jewel, joining me a few feet from the cliff’s edge. Her long, black hair had been blown in every which way. She looked as if she had spent a wild night making love. A pleasant if not disheartening thought. After all, it could never be me making love.

“Yes,” I said to her. “I’m seeking some last-minute guidance.” To Faddy, I asked, “How do we make ourselves ‘less dense’?”

“It is a state of mind, master. It is a matter of will power. Hold tight to an image of yourself floating, even if you find yourself sinking. Hold fast and do not let it go.”

“Sounds easy enough.”

“Unless you are distracted.”

“Then let’s pray for minor distractions.”

I relayed this information to Jewel and she merely nodded, as if this was something she already suspected she must do in Djinnland. To Faddy, I probed further, “How big is this land?”

“Massive. I have never seen the end of it.”

“And how do we find our trapped djinn?”

“Of this, I do not know. But perhaps I know someone who could help. An elder djinn.”

“Will you lead us to him?”

There was a slight pause. “Yes, master.”

“Thank you, Faddy. Be gone.”

“Are we ready?” asked Jewel.

“I think so.”

We stepped up onto the stone bridge, and almost immediately I knew something was different. The magical connection with Faddy was broken.

“El Fadl?” I called, but there was no response. My ifrit, for now, was free.

“He is gone?” asked Jewel, her sharp mind grasping the situation immediately.

I nodded, feeling oddly alone and vulnerable. I had forgotten just how much I had come to rely on my simple ifrit.

We continued onto the arching bridge, which angled up high and was far narrower than I had hoped. A hand rail would have been nice, too, but we had no such luck. I didn’t have a fear of heights, but walking over something like this wasn’t easy. And the bedeviled wind, which thundered over us like banshees escaping from the netherworld below, didn’t make things any easier.

But we plowed along, with myself in the lead. Despite her apparent fearlessness, Jewel reached forward and took my hand. I gave it to her willingly, pleased to be wanted in such an intimate way, and led the way up the curving strip of bridge. When we reached the apex of the stone structure, something strange began to happen.

Strange, but not unexpected, since we had been warned.

Each step grew more and more difficult. Our bodies were growing denser and it was a strange feeling, indeed. Jewel gripped my hand even tighter, and I saw her struggling as well. I reassured her as best as I could, but, for the most part, I shared her unease.

As we continued down the bridge, we came to a stretch that was riddled with holes wide enough for a man to fall through. The bridge, apparently, was falling apart. I halted and tested the surrounding stones. They seemed to hold, and just as I was about to navigate around the holes, Jewel yanked hard on my hand.

“We are growing heavier and heavier, as Bakr warned. Perhaps other adventurers did not receive such a warning.”

I looked again at the gaping voids in the bridge. “Or perhaps they didn’t heed his warnings.” I nearly attempted to summon Faddy but stopped myself. “I think, perhaps, we better think lighter thoughts.”

“But how? I do not feel so light now.”

I knew what she meant. With my legs trembling from the weight of my upper body, thinking light thoughts seemed a near impossibility. As I thought about how to approach the problem, I found myself gazing ahead at the swirling mist that awaited us in Djinnland. The wispy mist. Roiling. Churning. So light.

“Something’s happening,” said Jewel behind me.

I turned and found her staring at me open-mouthed. “What?”

She pointed. “You’re doing it, but how?”

“Doing what?”

“I can see through you, Niddala. But how? I feel as heavy as a birthing elephant.”

I held up my arms in wonder, staring at them. Indeed, I could see through them. Also, the sense of heaviness had abated, but now it was returning, and I soon felt the crushing weight.

The mist! I quickly told her about it, instructing her to hold the swirling fog front and center in her thoughts. She did so, as did I, and soon we could both see through the other. I found myself wishing I could see through her clothing, as well, but no such luck.

Holding her hand, I led the way safely down over the bridge, bypassing the gaping holes, and to the waiting mist below.

Djinnland.

Chapter Eight

Ahead of us the raised rock trail continued, curving into the mist. Where did it lead?

I rubbed my ring, but there was no response. That made me uncomfortable, though I knew Faddy did not have to respond, because he had said he would guide us. Was he reneging? I did not think so. Then why was he not here?

Jewel tested the path with her foot. “Seems solid,” she said. “But does it go where we need to go?”

“I don’t trust it,” I said. “It must go where the jinn want it to. That could be a trap for unwary visitors.”

“They can’t get many visitors. More likely they use it themselves. Ask your ifrit; he surely knows.”

“He’s not responding.”

“Then how do we know where we need to be?”

“It’s a problem,” I agreed.

“I have an ugly thought.”

“Faddy wouldn’t betray us. I’ve known him for years and he’s a good person, for an ifrit.”

“Not about Fatty.” She paused, but I did not correct her, knowing she was teasing me. “About whoever has captured your other ifrit.”

“I call him Lamprey. That’s not his name, but it serves.”

“Lamprey,” she agreed. “Whoever has him may actually be after you. This is his way of making you come to him.”

I whistled. “Could be! Bait for the trap. But why would a powerful jinn want me?”

“I don’t know, but he must have a reason.”

“None that I can fathom. It seems like way more effort than it’s worth.”

“Think of my ex husband.”

I did, getting her point. Jewel might be nothing in herself, but she had motive to rescue their son, and that made her a threat to the man’s demonic designs. So he watched her, and acted the moment she did. After the boy had been sacrificed Jewel could probably be ignored, but right now he was not stinting in his effort to keep her away.

Similarly, I might be a threat to the djinn leader, so he was acting to take me out. There would be no evidence if it happened in Djinnland. What threat was I to him? Well, I had been king, and might one day be again. Kings had power, as I well knew, and I did know how to use it, and would if I had reason. Maybe he needed to be certain I never recovered that power.

“Then I think we had better stay out of sight,” I said. “We may be up against things we have no inkling of.”

“Exactly.”

“It occurs to me that this could be why Faddy is not answering. He knows they are watching him, and want him to lead them to us. So he is staying away, lest he betray me simply by responding.”

“Couldn’t they find us as simply by watching the bridge?”

“You’d think so. Maybe there’s magic on it that conceals who crosses.”

“That mist.”

“That mist,” I agreed. “But we’ll be clear enough the moment we leave it.”

“So what do we do?”

I pondered and came up with a devious plan. “Time is static here. That is, no matter how long our mission takes, no time will pass for us in the mortal realm. So we don’t have to hurry. We can take a year if we need to.”

“A year!”

“Better to take that time, than walk into a trap.”

She nodded. “We do have time.”

“We can take the most devious unlikely route, where they won’t have spies out, then strike suddenly when we spy our objective.”

“Devious route to where?”

“We’ll just have to find Lamprey ourselves. We’ll look for the most impressive djinn estate and see if he’s there. Given sufficient time, we can do it.”

She eyed me slantwise. “Are you hoping to travel alone with me indefinitely?”

“That might be nice, but no. I want to rescue Lamprey, return to our own realm, rescue your son, then discover how well you like me when you’re grateful.”

She laughed. “You would like me very well. But first you have to accomplish those other things.”

“I will do my best.” Then I remembered something. “You made me bring the lamp with me. Why?”

“Lamprey must normally live inside the lamp, to be immediately at hand when you summon him.”

“True,” I agreed. I had not thought of that before. “He is bound magically to the lamp, unless I send him off.”

“And you sent him off?”

I thought of my dead wife and child. After their deaths years ago, I had abandoned everything. Yes, I had sent my genie off. I wanted solitude and peace, and I would have sent Faddy off, too, if I hadn’t forgotten about the ring. It had been months later into my self-exile that I had come upon the ring among my limited belongings. Turns out, Faddy makes for a halfway decent companion.

Jewel seemed about to ask why I had sent the genie off, but thought better of it. Perhaps she would ask at another time. Instead, she said, “So the lamp must be a safe place for him.”

“It must be,” I agreed. What was she getting at?

“He must be able to zero in on it at all times, so he doesn’t get lost when performing some foolish distant task you set him to.”

“Yes.” Again I had not thought of that.

“So maybe it also orients on him. Maybe you can use it to get a line on him.”

My stupid jaw dropped. “Maybe so,” I agreed.

I brought out the lamp. It was a dull brass, really rather ordinary. I touched its side.

The side was warm. Startled, I touched the other side. It was cool. “I’ll be an infidel’s grandson!” I swore. “It’s signaling his direction!”

“I thought it might. Now how are we going to get to him without being discovered? I don’t want to be caught and bound to a horny jinn stud forever.”

It was time for me to strategize. “First, concealment,” I said. “Are you claustrophobic?”

“What does that have to do with this?”

“Trust me.”

“No, I’m not claustrophobic.”

“Good. Because it will be close and dark where we’re going.”

“Where is that?”

“Underground.”

“I don’t understand.”

I was pleased to be leading her mind, instead of having her lead mine. “First, we revert to full solidity. That means we can’t be harmed by their weapons, which is good. It also means we have to walk on bedrock, because nothing else will sustain us.”

“And your point is?”

“Bedrock generally runs some distance below ordinary ground. You can’t see through ground. It’s excellent concealment.”

“How will we breathe?”

Good question. Maybe too good. “I’m betting that in our solid state, ordinary ground will be almost as tenuous as air, and there is air between the clods. I’m betting we can breathe. If not, I’ll think of something else.”

“How will we find any castles when we’re below ground?”

“Castles generally sit on bedrock.”

“If we locate Lamprey, how will we get him out of there?”

“We’ll bash out a wall and break his manacles and turn him loose. We don’t need to take him anywhere, just free him; I can summon him later with the lamp.”

She gazed at me with something that on a better day might almost be mistaken for approval. “You have a mind like a fox.”

“Thank you.” I really did appreciate her respect.

“But wouldn’t it be easier and safer simply to put him in the lamp? It’s as solid as we are, so should be protection against their efforts to recover him, as long as we protect it.”

Now I stared at her. “And you have the mind of a vixen.”

“Thank you.” Then we both smiled. I liked that.

We solidified, which was our natural state here, and waded off the raised path and into the slop that was the ground. Jewel did not seem to feel the dark closure, but I discovered it did bother me. Then my eyes adjusted, and I found there was very dim light that enabled me to see a short distance around me. It was like peering through extremely heavy fog. Mainly I saw the roots of trees reaching down from above, and the rough contours of the bedrock below, with some suspended blobs that were dislodged chunks of bedrock.

And I felt the small warmth of the side of the lamp. I headed that way, stepping carefully because I did not know how treacherous this nether terrain could be. Suppose there were a hole in the bedrock? How deep would it go? How bad could a long fall hurt?

Then the bedrock angled up. That was a relief. When it was near the surface, I signaled caution to Jewel, who was following close behind, and then poked my head carefully up through the surface tension of the ground.

I was amazed. We appeared to be in a rise in a field near a farmstead. What looked like herbivorous dragons were grazing on bright blue grass. The fences were sparkling silver. The house was a lovely tower with multicolored minarets.

“What a beautiful picture,” Jewel murmured beside me. Only her head was visible, like mine, above the blue turf. “It must be mostly illusion.”

“Illusion?” I asked blankly.

“It’s probably an ordinary ratty farm, enhanced to make it look splendid. That’s what I would do if I had illusion to spare.”

“Every peon becomes a prince,” I agreed, seeing it in more than one sense.

“What’s that?” Her hand poked out of the ground and pointed to a marked stone.

I looked.

On the surface of the stone was drawn a crude circle containing a crude tower. A line slanted through it. “That’s a no-signal,” I said. “Meaning stay away from there.”

“Why?”

I suffered a flash of brilliance. “Because that’s not where we’re going. Lamprey is not there. We must look elsewhere.”

“How can you tell it means that?”

“Because it has Faddy’s signature.” I pointed to the crude little fat man drawn below the circle. “He is on duty, informing us without ever leading the enemy to us. He knew we’d pass this way, so he left a message. When we find a signal that tells us to go there, we’ll know we’ve found it.”

“I am getting to like Faddy,” she said, this time pronouncing it correctly.

Chapter Nine

We had been traveling along the bedrock for some time, slogging through ethereal dirt and tree roots and even glowing subterranean worms that shivered when we passed through them. I shivered, too, fighting my revulsion.

It was hard to believe that just yesterday I had been lounging lazily in my tent, idly wondering if I would ever find work again. Well, I surely found work. And what strange work it was.

We continued for some time. Since it was easy to get lost down here, I kept the lamp in hand, touching it often, adjusting our direction based on the heat signature. Once, we came upon what appeared to be a deep ravine where the bedrock dropped steeply away. Standing on the edge of the bedrock cliff, we debated what to do. We could parallel the edge of the cliff, and search for a section that would ford the bedrock ravine. Or, as Jewel suggested, we could lighten our bodies enough so as not to drop down into the ravine, but not so much as to float entirely up to the surface.

We tried it. I seemed to have a better handle on easily lightening and weighing down my body—aw, men and their vivid imaginations. Jewel struggled a bit, sometimes sinking much deeper than me, or alternately rising much higher. Finally, I took her hand and together we crossed the open space in the bedrock. Shortly, we found ourselves on the dense rock, and we continued forward again, guided by the lamp.

“I’m hungry,” said Jewel, as we passed around a colony of long, furry creatures that lived in cozy burrows. I didn’t wish to disturb them, and so we skirted their labyrinthine tunnels as best we could.

I was hungry and thirsty, too. As her guide and escort, her hired hand, and as the male, I would be expected to find us food. But what would we eat in this world? We discussed this as we walked.

“Perhaps fruit,” said Jewel. I noticed that she often took my hand as we walked over the corrugated bedrock. She made it seem that she needed it to help keep her footing. I also noticed that she did not release it so readily. She held it tightly, and I found her touch reassuring as well. We were, after all, deep beneath a magical world so unlike our own.

“Would fruit nourish us?” I asked. “Wouldn’t it be like trying to eat smoke?”

“I would like to see you try to eat smoke,” said Jewel, and she swung our interlaced hands. “I could use a good laugh. It has been a long, long time since I laughed deeply. I do not think I can laugh again until I find my boy.”

I knew the feeling. I had not laughed deeply since I lost my boy.

I said, “If we raise ourselves to the density of the food, I suspect we can eat it.”

“And what happens if we lower our density later? Would the food disappear from our bellies?”

“There is only one way to find out.”

We traveled for what I believed were many more hours, although judging time was difficult for obvious reasons. In this respect, our hunger was our time piece, and judging by the way my own hunger gnawed at me, I concluded that a full day had passed since we first left Bakr and entered Djinnland.

By the time the bedrock sloped gently up, our stomachs were growling in unison. It might have been funny if it weren’t so uncomfortable. The air around us brightened as we approached the surface. I could only imagine the start we would give a person who saw two heads emerge from the ground. No different than the start spirits and demons gave humans in our physical world, flitting through doorways and walls.

My head appeared above ground first, and I saw that we were in the middle of what must surely pass for night in this world. The golden sky was replaced with a darker, silvery glow. The rocky incline we had been following formed a small, bare mound in the middle of what appeared to be woods. We were surrounded by narrow, translucent trees that pulsed with an inner light. On the ground near my face, presently my eye level, was an array of flat, multi-colored mushrooms. If anything, Djinnland was not lacking for color.

Near a particularly wide mushroom with a glowing purple cap, was Jewel’s head poking up through the earth. Her scanning eyes met mine. We were alone, wherever we were. I nodded, and we ascended onto the rocky hillock. As we went, I raised my vibration and lightened myself enough to gather some of the colorful mushrooms.

As we sat together on the hilltop in this strange world, with the silvery sky above and the translucent trees swaying nearby and the distant blasts of fire from what I assumed were more dragons, I probably should have felt fear or, in the least, apprehension. But I didn’t. I felt excitement. More excitement than I had ever felt before. I was in a strange and distant land, with a beautiful woman who needed help. What more could an adventurer want?

The air was cool, with a hint of something savory on it. Then again, perhaps anything at this point would seem savory. We both looked down at the mushrooms piled between us.

“Do you think they’re safe to eat?” I asked.

“There’s no way to know—wait, what’s that?”

She pointed to a patch of rock behind me. I turned and looked. It was more writing, written directly onto the stone surface. I stood immediately and moved to it, aware once again of the crushing weight that I brought with me. Already, my ankles felt swollen and the muscles along my legs and back ached.

“It’s from Faddy,” I reported. Like the first sign, this was a child-like drawing of a rotund man pointing forward. I looked in the direction he was pointing, squinting through the silvery night, and there, in the far distance, was the silhouette of a hulking fortress.

“We go that way,” I said motioning toward the fortress. “Lamprey’s in there. I’m sure of it.”

Indeed, I felt my lamp and it was glowing warmer. We were very, very close.

Jewel, who was standing next to me, pointed at the drawing. “Hey, look what’s in his other hand.”

I looked and I saw it, too. Jewel picked up a bluish mushroom and took a big bite.

“I guess these are okay, after all. You know, I might just need to get an ifrit of my own. Well, maybe not.”

“Why not?” I asked around a mouthful of the mushroom. Unfortunately, the bite didn’t last long. After just a few chews, the stuff disappeared in my mouth. I thought lighter thoughts and felt myself grow less dense. I tried another bite and this time I was able to chew it completely and swallow. I could even feel it sitting there in my appeased stomach. So far, so good.

I could see that Jewel had dissipated slightly, too. In fact, I could even see through her in parts. What a strange world this was.

Jewel continued after adjusting herself enough to accommodate the food. “Well, first of all, they are not easy to come by. And it seems that you not only have one, but two. You must surely be a remarkable man.”

I shrugged, grinning. Life has been both kind and painful for me.

“Don’t be too pleased, Niddala. Those people I have known who owned such ifrits or djinns, always were lazy and incapable of dealing with life on their own. They came to rely too much on their magical slaves.”

I nodded. I knew the temptation well. It was why I had sent Lamprey off, and why I did my best to use Faddy only when I needed him the most.

“Such men I find slothful and disgusting.”

“Do you find me slothful and disgusting?” I asked.

She finished off her latest fat mushroom. “So says the man with glowing mushroom remnants in his beard.” She grinned at me, letting me know that she was playing. She shrugged. “Slothful? Perhaps not. I have seen you in action, and you need little prodding. Now, how much you have used your ifrit on this journey, I do not know, but you seem like a man capable of making his own decisions and following his own heart. Disgusting? So far, no, but that remains to be seen.”

“You have been studying me.”

“I have had no choice.”

I enjoyed being ribbed by her. “Fair enough,” I said.

We gathered more of the mushroom, storing them, of all places, in Lamprey’s lamp. We stood together on the stony hillside and looked down on the distant fort. As we stood there, Jewel slipped her hand inside my arm and held on. She had needed no support this time. Indeed, she was holding me because she wanted to. I took in a little air. Her touch was heavenly.

“We can walk there above ground,” I said, “if we lighten up.”

“But then we risk exposing ourselves to potential threats in this world.”

“Unfortunately,” came a voice behind us. “You’ve already done that.”

Chapter Ten

Both of us whirled, startled.

There before the trees stood a swarthy jinn man wearing a scimitar and what appeared to be a coil of rope. I knew he was a jinn, because of the typical arrogant curve of his upper lip and a certain nebulosity of his countenance. Anyway, what else could he be, here in Djinnland? He seemed to be alone, but he looked dismayingly confident. I didn’t trust that. I needed to know why he was sure of himself, before I waded into what could be a treacherous encounter. That meant stalling.

“Run, Jewel!” I called. “Don’t let him ravish you!”

She caught on instantly. That was another thing I liked about her. “Spare him, honored sir!” she pleaded. “I’ll do anything you demand, only let him go unharmed.” She opened her shirt, revealing her marvelous frontal curvature.

The jinn paused, as any man of any type would, eying her phenomenal exposure. He recognized of course that her structure was real, not illusion.

“Don’t do it!” I cried. “Don’t trust him. He’ll ravish you then kill me anyway!”

“Forgive me, beloved; I’ve got to,” she said. “I can’t bear the thought of you suffering.” She stepped toward the jinn, opening her shirt further.

“Forget it, wench,” the jinn said. “My master would make me a eunuch if I touched a piece like you. He’ll be using you himself, I’m sure, until you wear out.” Then he drew not the scimitar but the rope. Was he going to try to tie her up?

Jewel paused in place, bare bosom heaving provocatively, waiting for the man to come to his senses. That was bound to happen soon. Once he embraced her he would be a dead jinn, but he did not know that. How could any man know that, dazzled by her splendor?

The jinn lifted the rope and whirled a loop over his head. What mad game was he playing?

Then he flung the loop not at Jewel, but at me. Surprised, I was slow to react. All I did was step back a pace. But Jewel acted; she leaped to get before me, and the loop settled over her head and shoulders. It wasn’t a garrote; it hung on her body loosely. What was the point?

Her expression changed, becoming devoid of fake passion. She looked completely passive. “Do with me what you wish,” she told the jinn. “Your will is my will.” She did not seem to be pretending. This was extremely odd.

“I don’t want you, wench!” the jinn snapped. “I want him.” He hauled her to him and yanked the rope off her. He stepped back and raised it for another whirl of the loop.

That was when I grabbed him from behind, hugging him hard and lifting him off his feet. Distracted for key moments, he had taken his eyes off me, and I had gotten close enough.

“Grab the rope!” I told Jewel. “Put the loop on him!”

She did so, efficiently.

The jinn ceased all resistance. He had been pacified by the loop.

Jewel closed her shirt. It had served its purpose.

Now we were in business. “Who are you?” I asked.

“I am Morabec, lowly vassal to Prince Zeyn, lord of this kingdom.”

“Well, Moron Beck,” I said. “Why did you come after me?”

“Prince Zeyn sent me to investigate your appearance by the sacred grove. I was supposed to capture you and bring you to him for interrogation.”

“What is Zeyn’s interest in me?”

“You are likely the possessor of the Lamp that commands the Ifrit Iften, second in power only to Zeyn himself. If so, you are a key mortal man who will enable Zeyn to take control of the mortal kingdom as well as Djinnland.”

“Ludicrous,” Jewel exclaimed.

But it wasn’t ludicrous. The jinn prince evidently knew my identity as the former king who could return at any time to resume power. Now I knew why he had captured Lampry, or maybe Iften. It was to get control of me, put me back on the throne, and use me to work his will in the mortal realm.

“Assuming this nonsense is true,” I said carefully, “Why does he think I would cooperate in betraying my own kingdom?”

“Once you are spelled, your cooperation will be involuntary. If there were any doubt, he could simply torture your paramour here to force your compliance. If that did not suffice, he could cut off your manhood an excruciating sliver at a time. No one says no to Prince Zeyn.” He smiled a trifle bitterly. “Not for long, anyway.”

Just so. “How did you sneak up on us unawares?”

“I used the magic conduit from the castle to the sacred grove, then stepped out from behind the trees.”

“This rope you have—what is it?”

“It is a magic lariat, that my master acquired from a future far western land. It compels any person roped to obey the will of its possessor without resistance or evasion.”

I nodded. That could be one useful rope.

“Where is the Ifit Iften imprisoned? In the deepest dungeon?”

“Not at all. Solidified mortals could readily reach that. He is in the topmost turret of the castle, where mortals can’t readily go, protected by all manner of traps.”

“So how can Iften be rescued?”

“That is beyond my expertise,” Morabec said.

“You have no idea?”

“I don’t think it can be done.”

Aladdin was curious how far the rope would make its captive go. “If you were assigned to do it, how would you proceed?”

“I would send in the lady to persuade Zeyn to let Iften go. But I doubt she could succeed.”

That was probably a true assessment. Was their mission doomed?

“What else do we need to know?” Jewel asked Morabec.

“That your time is brief. Soon Zeyn will realize that I am taking too long, and will investigate. Then you will be doomed.”

I looked at Jewel. “Do you want to give it up?”

“No! My life is over if I do not save my son.”

“Even though you risk sexual slavery if we continue?”

She shook her head. “If Zeyn puts that loop on me, I will be his slave. I have felt its power. He surely has other ways. If he puts the loop on you, you will serve him loyally, and betray the mortal realm.” She took a breath. “I will risk it if you will.”

It was one huge gamble. But not following up was probably almost as bad, because the jinn prince would track us down before we could escape Djinnland. “We’ll try it,” I said.

“You have a plan?”

“I have a plan,” I agreed, marshaling my lagging brain.

“That’s a relief. I would have gutted our captive.”

“Sometimes there are better uses for a man than gutting,” I said with the thought of a smile.

She responded with her own thought of a smile. “Oh? I am surprised to learn that.”

My cudgeled brain began to function. Desperation helped. “Morabec will take us in as captives.”

She stared at me. “That’s your plan?”

“All will not be quite as it appears,” I said. “The loop I wear will be a fake. Morabec will wear the real one, concealed. You of course will be bound by the threat to me, willing to do anything to spare me my fate.”

“And what do we do when we are hauled before Zeyn?”

“I haven’t worked out that detail yet.”

“Well, work it out!”

I drew her away from Morabec. “My suspicion circuit is working. This is too pat. I don’t fully trust that loop. It may work on mortals, but may not work on ifrits. If that is the case, Morabec will play along to get us into the castle, then betray us to his master. So when we get there, I want you to slip away while attention is on me, take the flying carpet and sail quietly up to the topmost turret, jam Lamprey into the Lamp, and take off for home. If you get in trouble, densify to the max and try to plow through to the exit.”

She nodded. “I suspect similar. But what about you?”

“I’ll manage one way or another. I can densify too.”

“Allah smite you for a liar! Even so, how would I manage without you?”

“You will have Lamprey. He obeys the holder of the Lamp. He will be all you need to rescue your son.”

Her mouth worked for a moment before anything came out. “You—you are sacrificing yourself to enable me to escape and rescue my son?”

“I am trying to enable you to complete your mission. I will take care of myself. Maybe my bluff will be effective, and I’ll escape Zeyn’s clutches. Meanwhile I’ll distract him so you can get the job done.”

“I could distract him better.”

“Surely so. But you need to be free to rescue your son.”

“Why are you doing this, you idiot?

“Because I’m an idiot, as you say.”

“Not because you’re smitten with me?”

“That too, maybe,” I agreed.

She bit her lip, then decided. “We’ll try it. If it works, and I rescue my son, I will return for you.”

“With luck you won’t need to. I’ll return on my own.”

“With luck,” she repeated. “How much luck have you had in the past year?”

“Not much. So I’m about due.”

“You’re impossible.” Suddenly she kissed me. It was amazing how potent she was able to make such a brief experience. “I will make it worth it, for you, if I have the chance.”

“Wrap the carpet about your body so it doesn’t show. Here is the Lamp.”

She wrapped, and took. We were almost ready.

We returned to the captive ifrit. Jewel examined the magic rope, then harvested some fibrous weeds and wove what appeared to be a similar rope. She fitted a loop of this around my waist. It looked authentic. Then she worked the genuine lariat loop under Morabec’s shirt so that it did not show. It seemed the ifrit might use illusion to enhance his appearance, but not for actual clothing; the shirt was real. We were ready.

“Act as you normally would, with prisoners,” I told Morabec. “Take us to your leader.”

“I must say, you have nerve,” the jinn said. “You’re doomed, but impressive in your folly.”

We went to the copse, and found the magic conduit. Morabec spoke the words, and we were suddenly swept across the landscape to the distant fort.

We were there. Now what?

Chapter Eleven

We were in a wide tunnel.

Torches flickered on the stone walls, mounted in small nooks. Behind us was a massive iron gate, and before us, perhaps a hundred feet away, was a heavy wooden door. Standing to either side of the door were heavily armed guards. All were watching us closely.

“You are to act naturally,” I commanded Morabec. “You are to act as if you really did capture us.”

He nodded. “As you wish.”

“Now, lead us as you would normally to your master, and do not give him any indication that things are not as they seem.”

He nodded again. “As you wish. And you’re sinking.”

So I was. The stone floor provided some support for my heavier mass, but not enough. It appeared that only true bedrock could support our bodies fully. Jewel and I adjusted our density levels to comfortably stand on the stone floor. Once done, the ifrit led us down the hall and to the guards.

“I have two prisoners for Lord Zeyn,” Morabec announced. I saw no indication of the ifrit doing anything other than his duty, but then again, I was wholly out of my element here. What did I know of magic and the ways of djinns? Not much, although certainly more than the average man, as I presently owned two. For all I knew, a silent message had been successfully passed from him to the guards. If so, I would surely find out soon enough.

But one of the guards simply nodded and stepped aside. The heavy door swung silently open on its own volition. More magic, surely. What chance did we have? Non-magical beings in a land of magic, about to face perhaps the most magical being of them all?

I didn’t know, but I wasn’t going down without a fight.

Famous last words, I thought.

Morabec entered first, leading me by the non-magical rope Jewel had fastened. I, of course, discreetly held the real magical lariat behind him. Whether the lariat did any good would be revealed soon enough, too. Jewel followed behind, gently holding on to the hem of my shirt. Even that slight touch was heavenly.

I am no better than a young boy with a silly crush.

We entered a grand throne room as befitted the wealthiest of kings. Apparently Zeyn was not only a great magician but a ruler, as well. Perhaps, then, this was nothing more than a heavily fortified palace. Indeed, ifrit guards lined the walls, all watching us, all heavily armed. We traversed the long room, crossing over a thick and ornate carpet.

We approached a raised platform and a beautiful throne. The thing sitting on the throne, however, was anything but beautiful. The powerful ifrit, Zeyn I assumed, was a monster of a man, spilling out of the great chair that would have sat two comfortably. A massive crystal chandelier lit the entire room in a reddish glow. Flying above us were small creatures with long, scaly necks and tales. Small dragons, perhaps. These creatures were largely ignored by everyone in the room. I noticed the creatures were coming into and out of the room through a window high above.

Zeyn was watching us closely. He was also sweating profusely. His red-eyed gaze settled on Jewel and he licked his thick lips. She stepped closer to me.

Zeyn turned his gaze onto me and for the first time in a long time I felt real fear. The man—or djinn—was a monster.

“You are afraid of me,” said Zeyn, licking his lips again. “I can sense fear.”

I sensed he fed on fear. I sensed that fear, perhaps, served him quite well. Fear gave him added strength, fear enhanced his magical gifts. How I knew this, I didn’t know, but I always trusted such feelings. Trusting these feelings have served me well.

I took in a lot of air and fought through my fear. I was King Aladdin, after all. I had ruled a mighty kingdom, and had done so quite well. I feared no man, or ifrit.

Zeyn cocked his head slightly. “The fear is gone. Just like that. Curious, curious.” He looked at Jewel. “You have no fear, either. Just loathing for me. You would do well to fear me, my dear, because I am going to be your worst nightmare.”

“You are a pig.”

One corner of his wide mouth lifted and I assumed this was a grin. A half-hearted attempt if I had ever seen one. Zeyn turned his attention back to me. “It is a pleasure to finally meet you, King Aladdin. It’s a shame it had to be under such regretful conditions.” He motioned toward the rope that allegedly bound me magically.

Next to me, Jewel gasped. “King Aladdin? What is he talking about, Niddala?”

Now the great magician threw back his mighty head and roared with laughter. Startled, the little dragons perched atop the chandelier took flight. They headed for the dark window above.

“Niddala, is it? How simple, yet clever.” He looked at Jewel, who still stood behind me. “Ah, my dear, did you not know that you’ve been in the presence of the great King Aladdin, protector of the innocent and defenseless, a once mighty ruler who gave up his throne because fortune did not smile down upon him?”

Jewel stepped back and took in a lot of air. I felt her eyes on me. But I did not take my own off the creature in front of me. If anything, I had learned to keep my eyes on my enemies. Never off. Perhaps at another time and place I would have been amused by her shock, but now was not the time.

Zeyn continued, “But your loss is my gain, my lord. Your absence has left a void in the kingdom, and as such there are many who desire to rule your rich lands. Your puppet king substitute, what’s his name, Huran, has little power to suppress them. You can count me as one of those.”

With Jewel’s eyes still on me, I spoke to the disgusting being in front of me. “What does an ifrit want with the lands of man?”

He grinned at me, and this time both corners of his mouth lifted so high that his ears wiggled. He then looked at Jewel and his grin turned into pure, unabashed lust. He licked his lips again. “The answer, my lord, is obvious, isn’t it?”

“To appease your lust?”

“Men have fought for far less, as you well know.”

Jewel found her voice. “You are not a man. You are something filthy and wretched.”

“Something filthy and wretched that you will come to know quite well, my dear. How your husband gave you up, I do not know. Perhaps he was tired of your mouth.”

He snapped his fat fingers and an ifrit appeared before us, materializing instantly. Zeyn was about to say something when Jewel spoke again, in shocked surprise.

“You!” she hissed.

The thin man, with hands folded before him and wearing a long colorful robe, smiled and bowed. “We meet again, Emira Jewel.”

“Who is he?” I asked, stunned that she would know anyone in this kingdom.

“It is because of him that I found you,” said Jewel.

“I do not understand,” I said.

“I was searching for help, asking around for someone who could be trusted, and this man appears as if from nowhere and gives me your name and how to find you.” She turned back to the ifrit who was smiling pleasantly at us. “But why?”

“I will answer that, my soon to be play thing,” said Zeyn. “He did so on my command. You see, I needed to lure your king into my realm, as I have big plans for him. One way to do that was capture his djinn and let fate do the rest. And fate is such a good friend of mine these days.”

“Why not just kidnap me?” I said. “Obviously you knew who I was and where to find me.”

“Indeed, for you have the djinn’s lamp, and the djinn is deeply connected to it. With just a little prodding and perhaps a lot of torture, the djinn gave up his secrets and led us to you. Unfortunately, my strength is not nearly as powerful in your world as it is in mine, and so I could not overpower you.”

“You are working with my ex-husband,” said Jewel.

“He thinks he is working with me,” said Zeyn. “He is proving very valuable and nearly as wicked as I am.”

“Then why did he send his men to stop us?” she demanded.

“Ah, because your simple ex-husband is not privy to all of my plans, Emira Jewel. He thought you posed an actual threat, which couldn’t have been further from the truth. But I trusted our wily king here to get you here safely, and he did just that.”

“So what now?” I asked. So far, the ifrit Morabec gave no indication that we had turned the tables on him. Perhaps the lasso did work on djinns after all.

“Now the real fun begins,” said Zeyn.

And as he motioned for his guards, I sprang forward, removing the dagger hidden inside my belt. Still holding the rope, I grabbed Morabec around the neck and held him fast.

“Go, Jewel. Now!” I pointed to the dark window high above. “There, up there!” She needed little prodding. Within moments she had removed the magic carpet.

“What is this?” bellowed Zeyn, rising to his trunk-like legs.

“This,” I said, “is when the fun begins.”

Chapter Twelve

I stood there holding my knife to Morabec’s throat, though that was mostly for show; it was the lariat loop that really pacified him. We watched as Jewel spread out the magic carpet, sat on it, and took off.

“Catch her!” Prince Zeyn shouted.

Guards converged on her, but Jewel, already airborne, sailed up out of their reach, barely eluding them. Barely was truly the word, because her skirt was flying up about her waist as the air caught it, exposing her lifted knees and thighs. Her shirt had somehow fallen open again, too, providing flashes of her breasts. That was when I realized that none of that exposure was accidental. She wanted all eyes to be locked on her instead of on me. She was giving me my best chance to solidify and escape.

The guards virtually froze in place, staring up at the parts of her that showed beyond the edges of the carpet. Even Zeyn was silent a moment, taking in that glorious scene. Jewel’s thighs flexed as her feet braced against the carpet, and her breasts shook with every dip and swoop as she spiraled ever higher. Her hair was loose and whipping about her head like a living thing. She certainly knew how to hold male attention.

Meanwhile I worked the loop off Morabec, one-handed. It was complicated, because we had concealed it under his clothing.

Zeyn finally shook off his stasis. “Shoot her down, idiots!” he bawled.

Several archers lifted their bows, nocked arrows, and reluctantly aimed. It was evident they did not want to kill such a gorgeous creature.

“She won’t be any good to you as a hostage or sex slave if you kill her!” I cried.

“That’s right,” Zeyn said. “Put the trackers on her while we fetch carpets.”

Trackers? What were they?

Meanwhile Jewel passed the chandelier, reached the ceiling and flew toward the high window the little dragons used. They oriented on her, but she waved a knife and that seemed to cow them.

Then a picture formed in the center of the chamber, below Jewel. It showed her on the carpet, her evocative parts flashing, but not as seen from below. It was as if the beholder was right up there beside her.

The dragons! This was what they were seeing. Somehow they could broadcast it as a three dimensional picture the rest of us could see. They were the trackers, the spy eyes. Many eyes, gazing from all around, so that every detail could be covered. One was evidently flying in front of her, looking back, seeing right up between her lifted legs.

I couldn’t blame the others for being mesmerized. At any other time I would have been too. But my life was at stake, so I allowed myself only the briefest glimpses as I continued to work on the lariat.

Jewel shot through the window and out of the castle. She could no longer be seen directly, but the spy picture continued as the dragons outside focused. We saw her emerge from the dome and make a broad circle around the fortress, still climbing. The dragons were following closely, but not attacking. This was their true purpose: to spy anything Zeyn needed to know about, whether it be an enemy formation or a lady washing in her boudoir. It was surely a significant asset in any undertaking.

Now that the direct view of the luscious creature was no longer available, men began to recover some individual purpose. Several were wrestling a large carpet out of a storage closet. That would be the pursuit craft, surely much faster than our little carpet. I had to stop that.

I wrenched the rope the rest of the way off Morabec. I leaped toward Zeyn. That was likely the last thing he thought I would do, instead of trying to flee. As his mouth opened to give an order, I used both hands to put the loop over his head and draw it snug about his shoulders. “Shut your mouth!” I whispered.

Captured and obedient, he shut it.

Now I had him. What was I to do with him? I cudgeled my lagging brain, but it seemed not to have completely caught up with events. I had no better plan than to stall, to give Jewel freedom and time to accomplish her purpose.

The men laid out the large carpet, and three got on it. They paused, awaiting further orders.

“Tell them to hold off,” I murmured in Zeyn’s ear. “To wait to see what the wench does.”

“Follow her, but don’t arrest her,” Zeyn said. “Wait and see what she’s up to.”

The men nodded. The carpet rose smoothly, flying up toward the window. Had I succeeded in giving Jewel enough time to reach the turret and fetch the ifrit?

“Now make it seem that you are interviewing me,” I said. “Allow no interruption while we talk.”

“Leave us while I question this cur,” Zeyn snapped.

The guards obeyed. Soon we were alone in the chamber.

Now what? “Why do you want to conquer the mortal realm?” I asked Zeyn. I just wanted to get him talking to see what I could learn, while Jewel got Lamprey and made her escape.

“Because it’s there, idiot,” he snapped. “Why should I settle for local power, when I can have more?”

This was not quite as submissive as I had hoped. “And you went to all that trouble to capture the Ifrit of the Lamp, just to get at me? Isn’t that like using a catapult to blast a gnat?”

“Ask not about what concerns you not, lest you learn what pleases you not.”

That was surely good advice, but there was something about his attitude that annoyed me. So I persisted. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“That would take years to clarify, you ignorant has-been. What do you want first?”

For some reason I remained dissatisfied. Either the lariat was not working on him, and he was stringing me along, or he was telling the truth. I considered the first prospect. Why would he pretend to be subject to my will, instead of simply summoning his men and making me truly prisoner on the spot?

Maybe because he was stalling for time, just as I was. But why? What possible advantage could he gain by faking captivity, whether for a minute or a year? When he already had me where he wanted me? What else could he want?

Jewel. She had shown herself to be a lovely and feisty woman, the kind any prince would love to capture and subdue. To bind and rape repeatedly while she screamed, until at last she lost her will to fight and accepted him. At which point he might throw her away, because it was her fighting spirit he desired as much as her body. But if he tried too soon, she might throw herself off the carpet and plunge to her death, rather than submit. He needed to give her time to get to a safe place. A place where he could fetch her without risking her death.

If on the other hand the lariat was working, he might be trying to fend me off with complexities, until his men caught on and rescued him. I needed to get at the relevant truth before that happened. So maybe it did not make much difference whether the lariat was working or he was faking it; he would give me similar answers.

“Jewel,” I said. “The woman. What does she need to know, that she doesn’t?”

Zeyn eyed me with what might just possibly be a faint smattering of dawning respect. “She’s flying into a trap.”

I didn’t like this at all. “What trap?” I could see in the animated picture, that was still running, that Jewel had not yet entered the tower. She was trying to pry a bar off the small window so she could squeeze in.

“She’s going for Ifrit Iften, right? In the topmost turret? Morabec may have omitted a detail about that.”

“What is it?”

“Iften is there; Morabec was unable to lie to you. But neither did he have to tell you the whole truth, unless you asked for it. Iften is guarded by the Queen.”

He was delivering it in bits and pieces. I had to keep zeroing in on the essence. “Your wife?”

Zeyn laughed thunderously. “Some wife! No, she’s Queen of the Hive. Quite fetching when she chooses to be; she has surely been giving Iften the romancing of his life. But she is not human. She merely assumes that form when it is convenient for her. When she gets serious, she reverts to her real form, complete with what you might think of as a stinger.”

I quailed inside. I had heard of this type of giant insect. “What has this to do with Jewel?”

“Well, the Queen can fornicate with a male only so long before she has to plant her eggs. For that she needs another female, species largely irrelevant. You have seen fit to deliver such a female to her.”

“Jewel!” I said in anguish.

“The same. I would really have liked to have taken her for myself, but this is better. Or worse, from your perspective. Our local women all know about the Queen, and will kill themselves rather than get near her. That’s another reason we keep her isolated, though if she managed to break out of the tower cell she would readily fly away and leave us alone. She doesn’t really like being captive, oddly.”

“What’s going to happen to Jewel?” Aladdin asked grimly.

“I thought you’d never ask! She will squeeze through the bars of the window and come to Iften. Whereupon the sultry woman with him will take hold of her, transform to her natural state, and apply her stinger in the ravishment of all time, depositing scores of fertile eggs. Jewel will swell up like a melon, and in due course will birth all those insects, if you could call it birthing.”

He was enjoying this entirely too much. “Why not call it that?”

“Because there may not be enough left of her to expel them through that channel, after they have gorged on her flesh from the inside. I understand it’s as disgusting, not to mention painful, a process as a briefly-living person can suffer. Fortunately she will not annoy us with her screams; they eat out the tongue and voice box first, as delicacies.”

He was probably pulling my chain. But I couldn’t risk it. “We’re going to spare her that.”

“Oh, I doubt it, hero,” he said with heavy irony. I know I wouldn’t have liked him even on a good day.

Jewel had succeeded in prying one bar out, and was working on the second. She would be inside soon.

“You have another flying carpet,” I said.

“What makes you think—”

“Get over to the closet and fetch it out,” I ordered, marching him in that direction.

He obeyed, as he had to, one way or another. Soon we had a second large carpet laid out. I put him on it, and got on behind him. “Guide us there, fast,” I said. “And know that this pressure on your fat back is the point of my dagger. If you even think of any tricks, I’ll stab first and deal with the mess after. Now get us moving.”

The carpet lifted smoothly and ascended to the window and out. We flew rapidly toward the topmost turret. Jewel was no longer in sight; she had finally made it into the dread chamber. I repressed a shudder.

“There is one thing you did not think to ask,” Zeyn remarked. There was a satisfied smirk in his voice.

“What, lest I learn what pleases me not?”

“Exactly.”

“So what is it?”

“It is this, you utter naïve fool. Prince Zeyn has been the subject of many assassination attempts, so he takes precautions. I am not Zeyn; I am a simulacrum in his image, employed to preside at boring functions. You never came close to control of him, your lariat notwithstanding.” He chuckled. “Now do with me what you wish; it will not save your wench, who is surely getting royally plumbed about now.”

I knew with sick certainty that he was finally telling the relevant truth.

Chapter Thirteen

Up we raced, scattering the little fire-belching dragons, who were, in fact, the eyes of the wizard.

Wherever he may be, I thought ruefully, wondering just where this vile creature was waiting and watching. But I had little time to concern myself with such matters. I thought idly of shoving the impostor off the carpet, but even I couldn’t watch a man plummet to his death. If a man he be, that is. Perhaps his inherent magical talents would save him, or perhaps not. I didn’t know, but for now I held on to the lariat. Perhaps the ifrit imposter would prove valuable. Or perhaps not. We would see.

For now, I continued holding in the back of my mind thoughts of levity, anything that would keep me from densifying and plummeting to the floor below.

Up we raced, as I commanded the Zeyn simulacrum to direct the magic carpet. Wind whipped my hair. I held on to a frayed edge of the carpet with one hand, riding low. Often, as we turned hard right or left, I was nearly thrown from the damn rug. Each time the ifrit grinned, and I cursed.

We shot up a flight of stone steps, lit with torches, and as we reached the landing and barreled around a right turn, I heard a blood-curdling scream.

“Faster!” I commanded.

Amazingly, the rug, surely built for speed and maneuverability, accelerated faster still. Wind screamed over my ears. Recessed doorways passed in a blur. This time I saw the left turn coming, and sensed the ifrit bracing himself. I braced, too, and we hit the turn at nearly ninety degrees. It was all I could do to hold on to the rug and not be thrown off. Indeed, if not for my sure grip, I would have been slammed into the hallway wall.

“There,” said the simulacrum, pointing.

I saw it, too. An open door at the far end of the hallway. Torchlight flickered within. Shadows crawled over the walls.

“We’re going through,” I said grimly.

“We cannot fit!”

“Then I suggest you command the carpet to angle in.”

He did so, commanding the thing with barely audible words, and almost instantly one side of the rug dropped down. We both hung from the thing as if clinging to the top of a brick wall, and we swooped into the massive chamber.

The carpet and we circled above, and what I saw below was both a relief and a pleasant surprise. What I saw was hardly worthy of such a desperate flight: two women in bed, one of whom was completely without clothing. She had long, strawberry-colored hair, a narrow waist and a full backside. The scene might have been something out of any man’s fantasy if not for the ghastly stinger protruding from the full backside.

The creature had mounted Jewel, who was currently bleeding profusely from cuts to her eyes and lips. Obviously she had done her best to fight off the creature, only to have finally succumbed to its undoubtedly great strength.

“We are too late,” said the ifrit with satisfaction. “She’s about to be implanted. Nothing can pry her loose.”

Jewel looked up and saw me. She was about to scream but held her tongue. Wise girl. As of yet, the Queen was too focused on her prey to notice us in the chamber.

“Not good enough,” I said. “Surely there is some way to unmount this creature.”

The ifrit shook his head, grinning from ear to ear. I hated him even more. “Sorry, hero. But once she has a female mounted, it is all but done. Look, already her stinger is preparing for insertion.”

Indeed, the long, curved apparatus was veritably quivering in anticipation. The creature struggled only with parting Jewel’s legs. The emira fought valiantly; indeed, she lashed out and landed a wonderful hooking punch that rocked the Queen. Enraged, the creature bellowed and began transforming before our very eyes into something that resembled a great hornet.

Jewel screamed and I didn’t blame her.

But I also saw my opportunity.

As the creature metamorphosed, its body elongating and taking on a horrific shape, it sat back slightly, releasing some of its weight.

“Go to her now,” I commanded. “And when we reach her you are to take her place.”

“Please, no!” But even as he begged me, the carpet shot down from the high ceiling, racing toward the great bed.

I held on grimly, bracing myself, saying nothing. I had been a ruler once. I had been forced to hand down harsh sentences. This ifrit who relished Jewel’s misery was no friend of mine. He was an enemy of the highest order.

He continued to beg and plead but I ignored his cries for mercy. There was no mercy here, not in this vile place. And not by me.

The creature was nearly metamorphosed, its smooth, elongated head the last to transform. Most important, some of its weight was off Jewel.

She saw us coming, and just as the giant insect was about to position itself on her again, she held up her hand and I grabbed it. And just as I commanded, the ifrit, very much against his will, leaped from the carpet. What happened next couldn’t have been better rehearsed if we tried. I pulled Jewel up onto the carpet, even while the simulacrum took her place. And as I released the rope, thus releasing my connection to him, he tried desperately to crawl away. Too late. The stinger came down viciously...and deeply. He cried out, cursing my name, but already Jewel and I were gaining some altitude.

“Lamprey!” shouted Jewel in my ear. She pointed to an ornate bureau in the far corner. “He’s already inside. I freed him just prior to that....that thing appearing.”

That thing bellowed in rage, having just now noticed it had been duped. It spun around, drawing out its stinger from deep within the simulacrum, who had reverted back to his original form—that of a balding, middle-aged man. He was quite dead. Apparently the creature’s stinger, which also acted as an egg depositor, killed males, while undoubtedly keeping females alive. Magic at its most deadliest. I felt nothing for the ifrit who, likewise, had felt nothing for Jewel’s own dire predicament.

The queen, easily twice my own size, flapped her wings impossibly fast and rose from the bed. I was still high above it, circling around to the lamp. The creature rose straight up, watching me closely, turning with me. Its thorax flexed and it brought up its great stinger, presently covered in a dark liquid—the ifrit’s blood, I assumed. The beast, I saw, could fly forward and sting at the same time.

Now we were over the lamp and I dove down, commanding the carpet with voice prompts and slight adjustments of the rug itself. Surely, there was a smoother way to fly these things, but I would have to make do.

The bureau approached rapidly. Too rapidly, I was going to crash. Jewel reached a calm hand, adjusted the carpet, stated her own command, and the magical contraption altered course. Unfortunately, so did the giant hornet above, which was now bearing down on us.

“Grab it!” she shouted.

And I did, swooping the polished lamp off the bureau, and ducking as the giant stinger swooshed over my head.

Merciful Allah, but that was close!

“Just hang on!” shouted Jewel. “I have a score to settle with this oversized dung beetle!”

And hang on I did. Jewel had proven herself to be much more adept at maneuvering the flying carpet, which was just as well. It was all I could to hang on to the lamp and the carpet at the same time.

We whipped out of the chamber and down the long hall. The demon hornet gave chase, proving to be just as mobile as the carpet, if not more so. And, apparently, faster.

It was gaining on us, buzzing down the hallway.

Jewel looked back once, and actually grinned. “Hold on tight, your highness,” she said, her words heavy with sarcasm, especially the last one.

Although we sat side by side, Jewel was positioned more in the middle, her arms spread wide, her hands gripping the carpet’s forward corners. Myself, I held only one lonely edge and sat low, cradling the lamp as best as I could, praying to Allah to spare me this one last time.

“You’re dragging us down, imbecile!” she shouted.

Indeed, my simple prayer had occupied that part of my mind previously reserved for thinking light thoughts. I quickly filled my thoughts with images of clouds and feathers and women’s undergarments, and soon we were picking up speed again. Jewel shook her head without comment.

“Get ready,” she said.

And now we plunged down the winding stairs, going round and round blindly, heedless of anyone or anything that might be in our way. I nearly closed my eyes. Nearly. Except heroes didn’t close their eyes. And a good thing, too.

“Look out!” I shouted.

She saw it, too, and not a moment too soon. An archway had appeared in our flightpath. I densified and she angled down and we just narrowly avoided disaster. We swept out the same upper story window and out into the throne room. I looked back. The demon hornet easily avoided the archway and burst out of the window like a cannon shot. It quickly gained on us.

The throne room, remarkably, was much different than when I had last seen it. The guards were nowhere to be found. Surely they would have returned by now after being dismissed earlier by the simulacrum, but no. The hallway so empty and quiet that I knew immediately something was wrong.

But there was no time to worry about that. The hornet was gaining. Jewel shouted a warning to me, and then turned hard, banking to port. We slewed through the air, briefly out of control, and then regained our magical traction again. The hornet made the turn easily and I was beginning to think it was only a matter of time—perhaps seconds—before the monster was upon us.

And I knew immediately what I had to do. It was me, of course, who was weighing us down. Me and my flighty thoughts of levity. I pointed to a far wall, where a great sword hung, crossed with another.

“Drop me off there!” I shouted, pointing to the floor beneath the swords.

Jewel looked at me slantwise, but did not question me. She knew I was the dead weight slowing us down. She leaned forward and we angled down. Behind us the flying beast angled with us. Its humming drone was louder as it got closer and closer. It didn’t sound happy.

The wall was upon us and if Jewel didn’t do something now, we were going to crash into it.

“Uh, Jewel.”

“Hang on!”

As the wall rose up before us, she threw her weight hard to the right, yanking her arms with her, and the carpet came to a nearly abrupt halt. I was dislodged immediately, tumbling head over tail, slamming hard into the wall.

She looked down at me, grinning. “I told you to hang on, your highness.”

The hornet was coming in fast and I urged her to go and she did so, snapping the carpet and giving a sharp order. She sped off as the flying creature banked hard, turning and following.

I next watched an aerial display the likes of which I had never seen before, nor would I expect to see again. With the extra weight off the carpet, woman and beast were nearly evenly matched. When Jewel looped, so did the creature. When she turned hard to starboard in ever tightening circles, the creature followed. And while they did this mid-air dance, I reached up and took hold of one of the curved scimitars, pulling it free from the wall. It was a good weapon, and felt natural in my hands

“Over here!” I shouted up to her. “Lure it over here!”

It was time to end this...and I would do this the only way I knew how, with the sword.

Jewel heard me and responded by heading directly at me. I watched her approach and fought the desire to duck, trusting her already. Indeed, at the last possible moment, she pulled up, and swung off the carpet and into my arms.

The hornet was directly behind, arching its thorax and lifting the stinger before it. It was going to impale one of us to the wall. My guess was me.

I wasn’t wrong. It was coming for me, and it was coming hard.

I raised the sword before me, visualizing the stinger as nothing more than a javelin held by a charging desert warrior. And as Jewel dove to one side, I swung the scimitar with all my strength, deflecting the stinger, and the hateful creature sailed to one side. Its stinger, surely as hard as any steel, drove deep into the fortress wall.

And what happened next surprised even me.

A great bellow erupted from seemingly everywhere at once. The walls of the fortress shook. The ornate throne toppled over and the crystal chandelier from above crashed to the floor. I lost my footing and fell into Jewel. She pointed to a far wall, where a massive face had appeared over the stones. I knew the ugly face immediately. It was Prince Zeyn.

The real Prince Zeyn.

Jewel pointed to the adjoining wall, and I saw it, too. His face was there as well. In fact, his face now covered every wall in the room, including the ceiling and floor, stretching from corner to corner.

As the demon hornet struggled to free itself from the wall, I saw that the face of Prince Zeyn, along the same wall as the beast, was in great pain.

He was in pain from the hornet sting.

“Get the carpet!” I yelled.

Jewel immediately complied, fetching the rug which lay in a heap at her feet. “What’s happening, my king?”

My king...those words sounded so nice coming from her, but I had little time to revel in them.

“The fortress is alive,” I said, as we sat together on the carpet. It lifted immediately. All around us more fixtures fell and crashed.

“I do not understand,” she cried out.

“Prince Zeyn is the fortress. He is everywhere at once.”

“But how?”

“It’s an illusion, of course. All of this. Now go, go!”

Chapter Fourteen

The carpet flew toward the main entry. But a portcullis appeared, looking an awful lot like huge teeth, and crunched down ahead of us. Had we been a trifle faster, it would have caught us and chewed us in half. As it was, we were merely trapped inside the main chamber.

“There’s got to be other exits,” I said.

The carpet spun about and zoomed across the room toward another entry. But this also sprouted teeth and snapped shut before we got there.

We swerved again, toward a third passage, but this too got bitten off.

“He’s playing with us,” Jewel said grimly.

“He wants to recapture us alive,” I agreed. “That’s probably bad news.”

“So he can flay you a sliver at a time,” she said. “And tie me down for the queen to screw.”

I looked across at the queen. She had almost succeeded in pulling her stinger loose. She would be very angry when she resumed the hunt. We had little remaining time to dither. “We’ve got to surprise him,” I said. “Do the unexpected.”

“He expects us to try to escape.”

“Ah, but the manner of it is what makes the difference.”

“Well, get your manner moving!”

“The turret,” I said. “Go back there.”

“Oho!” The carpet reoriented and shot across to the passage leading to the turret stairway. The change was so sudden that the teeth there did not have sufficient time to clamp. They formed as we squeezed through, and gnashed down just behind us, snagging the rear of the carpet. It abruptly halted, and we slid off the front.

I landed on my backside, and Jewel landed on me. At any other time I would really have noticed how her plush posterior mashed my groin, her slender torso fitted itself to mine, and her lustrous hair flung out to caress my face. But unfortunately I was too busy to appreciate any such things.

“We’ve got to stop meeting this way,” she murmured, and pried herself free.

I scrambled to my feet, grabbed the carpet, and yanked. But it remained caught on the teeth. Short of cutting it free, we couldn’t free it, and I was not at all sure it would work correctly if maimed in that manner. “At least it prevents the queen from following us,” I said.

“Praise Allah for small favors,” she said.

“Very small favors. She will surely be let through the moment she seeks passage.”

We turned and ran up the winding stairway. We were soon winded. Again, at any other time I would have noticed how Jewel’s bare chest was heaving, and how her disheveled tresses gave her a certain appealing wild-woman look, and especially how her bottom flexed as she preceded me up the steps. But it seemed to be my fate to be too distracted by events to take note of passing points of interest.

“I have to rest!” she gasped.

I understood. “We can’t afford this extra weight,” I said, regretfully divesting myself of my scimitar.

There was a sound behind us, as of something mounting the stairs.

I lurched forward, swept Jewel up into my arms, and charged up the steps. But soon I too was too fatigued to continue.

“Will this help?” Jewel inquired. She turned her face to mine and kissed me.

“You feel lighter!”

“I’m diffusing.”

Ah. That did make sense. “I had thought it was just the kiss.”

“That, too,” she agreed, smiling.

Recharged, I charged up two more loops of the spiraling stair. But soon even that energy gave out.

However, Jewel had had time to recover, and resumed climbing on her own. I followed, relieved of the pleasant burden of her weight. Also of much of my own weight, as I diffused myself. Both of us looked the same, but we were only half our normal density.

The ascent seemed interminable, but we made it. We burst into the highest turret chamber. There was the window with the bars bent outward from Jewel’s entry. Our escape!

Except for one detail. We no longer had a flying carpet.

We gazed out across the colorful landscape. We had undensified so as to be able to interact with this realm, but now a fall to the ground from this height would squash us flat. Were we trapped after all?

“If we densify,” Jewel said, “We’ll drop right through the fortress and go splat below.”

There was another sound behind us, suspiciously like huge insect wings flying up a steep incline. The queen must finally have gotten loose, and gotten the door teeth to let her through. Our time was getting strained.

“We can do the opposite!” I exclaimed. “Because we’re mortals, we can densify beyond the ability of the natives. We can also diffuse beyond their powers. We can make ourselves so light we’ll float!”

“I hardly trust this,” Jewel said. But she started diffusing further. So did I. What choice did we have?

“Now you are mine,” the queen said, appearing at the entry. She looked almost completely human at the moment, except for the huge stinger. She must have put away her wings, knowing we had nowhere to go.

“Go sting your own ass!” Jewel said. A stranger might have gotten the impression that she did not much like the queen.

The queen walked into the chamber, enjoying the moment. “First I’d better nullify the man, because I don’t like distractions while I’m seeding a female.” She turned to me, inhaling impressively. She was one amazing figure of a woman, in this form. “Aladdin, there are two ways we can do this. One is to have you make your effort to impregnate me in your human fashion, and I will merely touch you with my poison, just enough to make you passive. That way I can save you for future pleasures, until I finally tire of the novelty.”

And I lacked even a scimitar to deter her. I knew she could overpower me when she tried. Her luscious form was highly deceptive. Maybe it was illusion, covering her metallicly tough carapace.

“What’s the other way?” I asked. I was trying to stall for time so we could diffuse further.

“You can try to oppose me. Then I will have to sting you harder, stunning you and perhaps killing you. I fear you would not much like that.”

I glanced at Jewel. Had we diffused enough? I feared we hadn’t. How long would it take the queen to accommodate my, as she put it, effort? “I’ll try the first way.”

“Excellent.” She approached me, completely ignoring Jewel. That was a signal of her certainty, surely justified.

I put my arms around her. She felt exactly like a lovely woman. I kissed her. Her lips were invitingly soft. I felt her bottom. It was superlative. Taken as a whole, she was enough to make any normal man desperately desire her.

“You will prefer it on the bed,” she murmured. She disengaged and went to lie on her back on the bed. Her stinger disappeared, confirmation that her present form was illusion; she could make any part of it disappear.

I was careful not to look at Jewel. Even if I got stunned and could not escape, she could still get away. She had the lamp, which I hoped was losing density too; otherwise she would not be able to float away with it. More important, she knew exactly what I was doing: giving her time. Though it wouldn’t have hurt to see her evince just a trace of jealousy.

I joined the queen on the bed.

“You will do better without your clothing,” she murmured.

There was the problem. When I stripped she would see that I remained unready to make any “effort.” I suspected Jewel, knowing this, was privately amused.

What could I do? I stripped.

“I see we are not quite ready,” the queen said. “That should be readily handled.” Indeed, she reached out to handle it. Then she frowned. “What’s this?”

“I know your nature,” I said. “That you aren’t really the marvelous creature you appear. That you’re a big ugly insect. That’s a problem for me.” And that was true, though hardly the whole truth.

“Nature, smature,” she snapped. “You can get it up if you really want to.” She kneaded vigorously.

Too vigorously. Her fingers sank into my substance. Because, of course, I had continued diffusing.

“So that’s your game,” she said. “Well, I have a spell that will stop that.”

I lurched back to my feet. “Get out of here!” I said to Jewel, and plunged toward the window.

We both dived out and fell. But we were still diffusing. Our descent slowed, then stopped. We were floating.

Then the queen emerged from the window. She was now in her full insectoid splendor, and looked annoyed.

We had to get away. But how? We were floating like Chinese balloons, just waiting to be popped by the queen’s stinger.

I saw some mist rising from a small lake beyond the fortress. “Get into that!” I called. I stroked my arms as if swimming. Gratifyingly, it worked.

Our progress was dismayingly slow compared to the queen’s powered flight. But we managed to make it to the mist, which fortunately was thicker than it looked. Soon we were hidden in fog. I heard the queen zooming back and forth through it, searching for us. Our luck would not hold long.

“Now get down to the ground and densify,” I called.

We densified, and that brought us to a landing on the shore of the lake. But now the mist was clearing, and I knew that all too soon the queen would see us and attack. This time there would be no miss-nice-girl foolishness about her. I’d soon be dead and Jewel would be worse off.

“Keep densifying,” I said. “We have to find some bedrock to stand on.”

“Why not just go underground?”

“Because the queen will be tracking us, and Zeyn will bring the heavy catapults to bear, and blast us out of the ground. We need to deal with her now.”

She considered. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“To let her try to breed you, only you’ll be impenetrably dense.”

“A fitting finish,” she said with satisfaction.

We found an outcrop of bedrock and stood on it while we rapidly gained mass.

The queen emerged from the mist and spied us. She looped about and zoomed in close. “Prepare to meet your doom!” she cried.

We both did a marvelous imitation of fear and despair, which were surprisingly easy to emulate. We tried to flee, but Jewel managed to fall, landing on her back. The queen landed beside her and didn’t hesitate. She held Jewel down, oriented her stinger, and plunged it in.

“What’s this?” she demanded, exactly as before, with me.

“I’m dense,” Jewel explained helpfully. “You got only a little way in, and now you’re trapped. I am closing around you like stone.”

The queen tried to yank her stinger out, but the tip of it was indeed caught. All she succeeded in doing was to move Jewel’s body a little. Jewel now weighed far more than the queen did, apart from being imperviously hard.

“Oh, are you stuck?” Jewel inquired solicitously. “Let me help you with that.” Her knife appeared; somehow she had managed to keep that with her. She plunged it into the queen’s belly and carved. In moments she cut out the stinger by its softer base.

The queen was mortally wounded. She rolled on the ground, bleeding black ichor. I couldn’t help it; I felt slightly sorry for her. Jewel had effectively gutted her just as she did men who tried to rape her.

Jewel got to her feet, reached down to grab the dangling stinger, and yanked it out of her. She scornfully tossed it down beside the queen. Then she looked at me. “Where to, friend?”

“Now we need a new plan,” I said. “Zeyn will be waiting to ambush us at the bridge to the mortal realm. We have to find another way.”

“Maybe Lamprey will know of one.”

“Great idea!” I took the lamp from her and rubbed it.

Lamprey emerged in the form of a cloud of smoke. “I thought you’d never call,” he said gruffly. He also sounded weak. Normally he would have appeared as a bearded, healthy djinn, vaguely resembling a man, if a man had been nearly eight feet tall. The fact that Lamprey had only appeared in a half-state suggested he had been weakened considerably by Zeyn; no doubt, my djinn had endured much torture to ensure his cooperation.

“How can we get out of here without getting caught?”

“There is another route. But it’s awkward and dangerous.”

“We’ll risk it,” I said.

“You remain the foolish mortal I know.”

“I don’t need a lecture! Where is it?”

“It’s in the catacombs beneath Zeyn’s fortress. But beware: wiser men than you—and I say this with considerable euphemism—have fallen prey to their hazards. Very few ever emerge from them, and virtually none do so sane. There is, however, little danger of being permanently lost in the labyrinth, because the swimming monsters will find you and consume you.”

“Swimming monsters?”

“Did I forget to say? The catacombs were flooded eons ago. You must navigate them underwater.”

“Oh, great!”

“Will we be able to breathe there, in our dense form?” asked Jewel.

“Aye, lass. But you will not be able to remain dense throughout; there’s a bridge you must traverse.” The djinn paused. “PS, woman, thanks for rescuing me, in your fashion.”

“You’re welcome, I’m almost sure,” Jewel said. “I’ll be calling in the credit the moment we return to the mortal realm.”

“To be sure.”

She turned to me. “What are we waiting for?”

What, indeed. It was time for the dread catacombs.

Chapter Fifteen

We left the queen where she lay and followed Lamprey’s directions to a stone portal in the woods behind the fortress. Unfortunately, Lamprey only knew of the entrance into the catacombs but not the way through them. The ultimate destination was somewhere in our own world, wherever that might be.

We had diffused enough to walk comfortably over the soft earth, knowing we were vulnerable to attack. Lamprey had assured us that he felt Zeyn would be waiting for us at the bridge to the mortal realm, as no one in their right minds would have braved the catacombs. Lamprey had emphasized the words right minds, before slipping back into his lamp to rest and recover from the torture he had endured at the hands of Zeyn. I knew Lamprey to be a powerful wizard in his own right. I suspected that Zeyn was just that much more powerful; at least, mighty enough to overcome Lamprey and force his cooperation. Lamprey was bound to me in all aspects, even loyalty, and it would have taken a powerful spell—or a lot of pain—to break my djinn down.

And broken down he had; after all, Zeyn had found me, and had his man convince Jewel to hire me. For that, I might just be grateful to Zeyn.

With Lamprey recovering in the lamp, we were on our own. At the portal, we pushed aside some hanging vines and moss and strange, pinkish spider webs as thick as the heaviest of threads. I did not want to meet the maker of such webs.

The passage down into the catacombs was fraught with slippery moss and more spider webs. I pushed through the sticky stuff, cursing under my breath, until Jewel reminded me to densify, as she had already done. Indeed, she was passing through the webs and over the slippery stones as if neither had existed. Smite me for an infidel!

I densified and we continued on. The stone beneath was cut straight from the bowels of the earth, and it led ever deeper down. Lamprey couldn’t do much, but he did provide us with a flickering light that emerged from the lamp’s opening. I held the lamp before us as we descended ever deeper.

***

“Why did you give up the throne?” asked Jewel.

We had been descending for some time. The tunnel had long since narrowed considerably, and had we been less dense, I suspected the air would have been quite cold. As it was, we were comfortable enough.

It was a topic I dreaded, and one I had not spoken of in many years. After all, outside of Faddy and Lamprey, no one knew my true identity.

“My wife and son were killed. Assassins. I searched long and hard for the killer or killers, but they escaped. The killings ripped my heart out. It is difficult to mourn the loss of those you love and run a kingdom.”

She made sympathetic noises, and I knew she was no stranger to loss. After an acceptable period of silence had passed, she said, “Have you ever thought to consider that your family was killed to remove you from the throne.”

“The killer or killers couldn’t have known that.”

“Perhaps not, but there was a high probability of it happening. In the least, you might have done something foolish enough to lose the throne.”

“So you are saying I played right into their hands?”

“I am not saying anything, my king. I am only suggesting something that, in your grief, you might have overlooked.”

A very old and very deep wound seemed to have opened all over again. I set my jaw and led the way deeper into the dark depths. Jewel was wise enough to keep any further questions she might have had to herself.

We rounded a long bend in the tunnel and stopped abruptly. The tunnel dipped down into a pool of dark water. We stood at the water’s edge and considered our situation. Breathing underwater should be no different for us in our present dense state, a state that was impervious to the encompassing elements. Indeed, the surrounding world was presently nothing more than a ghostly representation of it.

I led the way forward into the water. Indeed, there was hardly a ripple. Jewel followed behind and I was pleased and relieved to see that the water had no effect on the lamp, which had densified right along with us, perhaps because we were holding it. Strange magic indeed in this world, but it did make some semblance of sense. It was an odd sight holding a flickering flame under water, one that I would not soon forget.

The water itself might as well have not been there at all. Less dense than the ground we had covered upon first entering Djinnland, the water offered no resistance.

We continued along the tunnel floor, which had widened considerably. The surface was now far above and we came upon glowing little fish with scaly wings. They saw us and darted away, flapping their wings. I could only wonder when we would meet the swimming monsters.

I did not have to wait long. One such creature appeared from the murky depths, a long sinewy, snake-like creature with the head and mane of a lion. It saw us and growled ferociously, its mouth opening impossibly wide.

We had no weapons, but I knew that in our current high-dense state, a creature of lesser density should pass through us, as the worms had done earlier.

Mercifully, I wasn’t wrong. Longer than a team of horses, the creature’s huge jaws snapped down on us...and through us. I shuddered and the sensation and the creature seemed perplexed as well. It tried again and again, and each time the result was the same.

Finally, it regarded us, lifting its great head. “You are not from this world,” it said, its voice deep, reverberating off the tunnel walls.

“What gave you that impression, devil fish?” snapped Jewel. Boy, she did not suffer fools lightly, even if they were fifty creatures of nightmares.

It glanced at her, rolling eyes as big as my head. “No matter. You will need to de-densify soon. And when you do, you will be mine. I merely have to wait. That is, of course, if you ever find the exit. Probably you won’t. In that case, I will have to wait longer for you to go mad, but either way, you will eventually de-densify and I will have myself a nice meal or two.”

The creature’s knowledge of our situation was shocking, until I realized we were surely not the first outsiders it had seen. Like the Queen, its knowledge of our language was another matter, entirely. I suspected, perhaps, that Djinnland was imbued with a magic that permitted many of the creatures to communicate.

Or not. Perhaps I was simply mad.

It was disconcerting at best to continue along and have such a monstrous creature follow in our wake. The beast seemed patient, and that would surely be our downfall. And as we took turn after turn in the maze-like tunnels, often ending up in places I was certain we had seen before, the creature simply chuckled behind us.

This continued for some time. We resorted to marking the tunnel walls, digging our nails deep into the stone, and often we came upon the same marking. In our high dense state we also grew fatigued much faster. We sat on a ledge and looked out into the depths and a deep sense of hopelessness settled over me. Jewel, too, because she reached out and took my hand and rested her head on my shoulder, and I wondered idly what it would feel like to be bitten in half or even swallowed whole.

And as we sat there quietly, I heard something curiously coming from the lionserpent. A slight whimper, perhaps. Sometimes, mixed with the whimper, came the sound of true agony.

“We understand that you will be killing us soon,” I said. “You do not need to mock us further.”

It swam a little closer, flicking its great muscular tail. “I am not mocking you, my future lunch. I am in great pain.”

And now it turned its face to one side and I saw the source of his pain. A great and rusted hook projected out from its cheek. A thick cord flapped in the currents.

“A fisherman tried his luck,” said the beast. “He was consumed quickly, of course, for he had not expected me to rise up from the depths. But his blasted hook has haunted me for eons.”

“Perhaps the fisherman had the last laugh after all,” snapped Jewel again. Oh, but I would hate to get on her wrong side!

Still, I saw an opportunity here.

“Do you know these catacombs well?” I asked.

“Know them well? I have been swimming them for countless centuries.”

“And so you know the way out?”

“Of course, foolish man.”

“Then I propose this: I will remove the hook from your cheek, since you have no hands. In turn you will guide us out safely and not eat us.”

It shook its massive head. “No deal. I am hungry. I have lived long enough with this great pain, I can live longer still.”

Jewel stepped forward. “We are but one meal, consumed quickly and forgotten. Your pain is eternal. Think on this, serpent.”

“I’m not a serpent, I’m a lion.”

I did not bother to argue semantics with the creature, but I saw that Jewel’s words had hit home. It must have run a tongue over the inside of the hook, that part which projected into its mouth. The lionserpent winced.

“How do you not know I will renege on our deal and eat you anyway?”

“I cannot know this,” I said. “I have only your word.”

“The word of a lion is sacred,” it said.

“And what about the word of a serpent?” challenged Jewel.

“I am no serpent,” it roared, clearly agitated. And when it was done roaring and contorting its face, it went back to whimpering like a kitten.

“You have a deal,” it said. “If you remove the blasted hook from my face, I will escort you to the portal to your own land.”

“And not eat us,” I clarified. “No consuming us and then defecating us at the portal.”

“There will be no consuming of any sort. Just please, for the love of all that which is holy, remove the blasted hook.”

And so I did. With hands it was quite easy. I sucked in some air, perhaps even drawing the oxygen from the surrounding water itself, and diffused enough to grab hold of the hook. The great creature opened its great jaws and I reached inside warily and removed the heavy hook, which was as big as my arm.

When finished, the creature roared loudly and swam happily in tight circles and told us to get on. We each took in great lungfuls of air, diffused, and soon found ourselves riding high on its scaly back. Not a serpent my arse.

The creature swam powerfully through the tunnels. It also swam near the boundary, breaking the surface often, allowing us to breathe, for in our present state we were soaked to the bone and in desperate need of air.

It swam quickly, scattering flying fish before it, and soon we were in a section of the catacombs I had not seen before. It raced along, narrowly missing smooth rock walls. Jewel held on behind me, and we both rode low. Myself, I held on to the creature’s thick mane.

Soon a great bridge appeared in the submerged tunnel, a ghostly shadow that spanned a depth so deep that I could not see the bottom. The lionserpent shot over this open space, and plunged back into another tunnel system, and when the creature broke the surface again, it stopped. We were in a small cavern.

“Continue along this tunnel, and you will find yourself in your own world,” it said, and I could still hear the joy in its voice. To be free of pain was truly a gift, even at the price of a meal or two.

We climbed off and stood at the water’s edge. The lionserpent regarded us, his magnificent head breaking the surface. From this position, it very much did look like a lion. Already, the wound in its cheek seemed to be healing.

“Thank you,” I said. “For not eating us.”

“Do not thank me yet, mortals. A great ogre guards the portal between worlds. And he’s not as nice as me.”

And with that, the lionserpent flicked its tail and disappeared.

Chapter Sixteen

We contemplated the tunnel. At least we were back on dry land, which was a relief, though we were able to handle the water. “The ogre must be a land-lubber,” I said.

“I don’t have much experience with ogres,” Jewel said. “I’m afraid that if I tried to seduce it to get close enough for a killing thrust, it would eat me first.”

“And it might be too big and tough to kill with a pinprick stab,” I agreed. “But you might try flashing it from a safe distance to distract it while I try to get close enough.”

“Why would an ogre have any romantic interest in my body?”

“If it’s humanoid and male,” I said gallantly, “it will have an interest, however unrealistic.”

She glanced sidelong at me as if aware that I was speaking for myself as much as for the ogre. “You don’t even have your scimitar.”

She had a point. When I got naked with the queen, then floated to the ground, I lost most of my hardware. “I’ll scout around for a weapon.”

“As if they’re going to be lying on the ground waiting for you,” she said sourly.

“The prior folk the ogre has eaten—what did he do with their weaponry?”

She reconsidered. “Could be lying on the ground.”

We started walking down the tunnel. Moss or lichen coated the walls, glowing faintly, which helped. In fact it was rather pretty. I reached out to touch a red flowerlike clump.

And wrenched back my stinging fingers. “Hoo!” I wailed.

Jewel had the grace not to mock my pain. “Let me see.” She took my hurting hand. “Yes, that looks like an acid burn. Those flowers are not meant to be picked. At least not by the likes of us. Better rinse it off.”

“And if the ogre throws us against the wall, we’ll feel more than the impact,” I said ruefully as I ran back to plunge my hand into the water. It helped, though I still had a burn.

We resumed walking down the tunnel. I was glad that the moss on the floor of it was not similarly acidic. Maybe that was so that victims could navigate it and reach the ogre. No point in letting him go hungry.

The tunnel opened out into a vast cave. On the far side there looked to be a gated portal. That would be our access to the mortal realm. It was about halfway up the cliff-like side, with a ramp leading to it. Not bedrock; we would have to traverse it diffused. That meant we would be ogre bait.

“Where is the ogre?” Jewel whispered.

“I suspect all we have to do to find him is venture into that cave. He’s probably sleeping between meals.”

“I think we need to plan our strategy before rousing him. What’s your plan?”

What, indeed! Her knife was the only weapon we had, and it was surely insufficient. But she expected me to know what to do.

I cudgeled my weary brain again. It surprised me by coming up with an idea. “That acid flower—that’s how the plant protects itself from being eaten by the ogre.”

She didn’t actually say “Duh,” but it was in her look. “And your point is?”

“If we could spread that acid on our bodies, we would become inedible.”

Jewel merely looked at me. She was right: the acid would kill us before the ogre did. As bright ideas went, it was a dullard.

But I thought I had hold of something that might somehow manage to work its way into a usable notion, if I gave it sufficient leeway. “Suppose there’s something we could put moss on? Without actually touching the moss ourselves? We could stab the ogre with that.”

“That’s better than nothing,” she agreed. “Not much better, but better.”

I looked around the giant cave. On a ledge nearby I saw a huge pile of bones and metal. That would be the refuse left by the ogre, tossed out of the way so he wouldn’t trip on it. There might be something useful there. But I knew if I went for it, the ogre would appear and grab me.

“Jewel, I hate to ask this of you, but—”

“Got it,” she said. “I’ll distract him while you fish for a spear. Assuming he is humanoid and male.”

“Yes, if you can safely do it.”

“That alcove I think should be out of his reach.” She gestured to an opening in the wall that led into a series of lesser caves. “I’ll pose there, and retreat as necessary.”

“Great!” I got down behind a boulder.

Jewel climbed up to the opening, checked out its recesses, then stood on the ledge overlooking the main cave. “Hey, snothead!” she called loudly. “Take a look at this.” She struck a pose that made me wish yet again that a) I had my manhood back, and b) she was willing.

There was a deep growl from the recesses. The ogre was stirring. Or was it an earthquake? The very floor of the cave was rising, giving off steam.

It was indeed the ogre. I had thought he would be typical of the breed, meaning twice a man’s height and, if an erstwhile court math man was to be believed, eight times a man’s mass. But this monster was bigger than that. His shaggy head alone seemed to be as tall as a man, and every ivory garbage-stained tooth a six inch dagger.

Stab him to death? Any spear I might wield would be no more than a toothpick!

“Take a look at me, poop brain,” Jewel blithely continued. She still thought I could find something to take out this behemoth?

The ogre’s great dull eyes blinked. I thought I almost heard a clang as the upper lids struck the base lids. He sat up and leaned toward her. He was so big that he could readily reach her sitting. His skin hung in armored folds like those of an African rhino I had seen once. His eyes seemed not to see at all well, but still well enough to place us, and probably he heard better than that. So he knew where we were.

Nevertheless, I got moving while the ogre wasn’t peering my way, and made it to the pile of refuse. It was a tangled mess, and it stank of not-quite-completely rotted flesh. But I did find a pike in it, significantly longer than I was and stoutly made, tapering to a point. Would that do it?

I looked back at the ogre. Who was I fooling? Assuming I could even maneuver the thing and thrust the pike at him, I would lack the power to dent his horny skin.

I delved further, and discovered a straight sword, the kind the barbarian Crusaders used. Clumsy thing, adorned with the infidel cross. Served the dope right to get eaten. But maybe this crude instrument would do. I pulled it out, admiring its rusty length.

“What do you think of this, vomit head?” Jewel asked the ogre. She was striking another pose, showing her torso off to such advantage that I had to avert my gaze lest I be stunned. The ogre put his disreputable puss close to get a better view, and I saw that his gross dirty eyeball was knee-high on her. At least he seemed to appreciate pulchritude when it was right in his ignorant face.

Meanwhile I took the sword and retreated to the mossy wall behind it. I pushed the sword into the brightest moss flowers I found, and saw the acid practically squirting onto the blade. With luck, the dirt and rust would hold more of it there.

Holding the dripping weapon out well away from my body, I made my way slowly back toward Jewel, who continued to distract the ogre. I saw the monster’s enormous tongue come out and slurp across his washboard lips. Was he thinking of sex—or food? I suspected the latter. One grab, and he would have his morsel. He would squish her into pulp, then lick up the juice.

And I got a wild idea. If the ogre wanted to grab, let him grab!

“Jewel!” I called. “Diffuse!”

The monster’s head turned slowly toward me, registering a second morsel. Did he understand me? I doubted it, but I didn’t care. I had the way to take out the monster. If it worked.

“So the thing can’t touch me?” she called back.

“Something like that.”

“But we won’t be able to push the portal gate open if we’re diffuse.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

Meanwhile I started densifying. I held on to the sword, taking it with me, or at least the hilt. I remained amazed by the ambition of my idea.

In due course Jewel joined me behind the boulder. She had diffused, and I had densified, so that when we touched our hands passed right through each other almost without resistance. “You’re not diffuse!” she exclaimed.

“Pay close attention,” I said. “I have soaked this old sword in mossflower acid. It should really sting Ogre-face if I can get close enough to strike a vulnerable part.”

“And make him mad enough to squish us both against the wall like paste,” she said.

“Maybe not. I think he understands you when you talk. Maybe not perfectly, but he listened and looked.”

“I should hope so, considering the show I put on.”

“It was some show,” I agreed. “But now I want you to put on another show. I want you to emulate the queen, with her stinger.”

“Maybe if I had a real stinger, that would make sense. But the ogre won’t fall for a fake one. He’ll just grab and squish and chomp.”

“Exactly.

“I’ll be dead!” she said severely.

“No. Not in your diffuse state. The ogre can’t touch you, literally.”

“And I can’t touch him. But that won’t take him out.”

“This will take him out,” I said, indicating the sword. “Once I get close enough to use it.”

“On that rhino hide? I am not following your reasoning.”

I clarified my reasoning. Her doubt converted to amazement. “That just might work!”

“It had better.”

“You have a mind like an insane genius.”

“Thank you.”

She kissed me on the forehead. Unfortunately I couldn’t feel it; she was cloud-like, while I was totally dense.

We organized and rehearsed, choreographing our words and motions. This had to be done right, or it would leave us unable to escape this realm. We had to escape, because Zeyn was surely searching for us with rape and torture on his evil mind.

When we were as ready as we could be, we did it. I stood up, and Jewel stood. Then she stepped into me. Our naked bodies overlapped, so that the two of us stood in the same place. It looked as if she were holding the sword, and as if I had breasts. What I wouldn’t have given to have tried to overlap her like this when we both were the same density! It might even have cured my impotence.

Then we stepped out from the cover of the boulder. “Hey feces face!” Jewel called. “I am going to drive you out of this cave!”

The gigantic shaggy head rotated so the tub-sized eyes could orient balefully on her.

“Know why? Because I’m the insect queen. See my stinger!” She raised her arm, and I raised mine with it, so that the sword seemed to be in her hand. ”Mess with me, and I’ll sting you so hard you’ll cry like a baby! Got that, bone butt?”

The ogre grimaced. Yes, he understood enough.

We stepped carefully out toward the exit ramp. It was important that the ogre make his move before we got there, because in our present state we couldn’t use it. Jewel would float through it, and I would densify through it, giving us away.

The cunning brute waited until we were too far clear of the boulder to run for cover. Then he swept his monstrous horny hand down to grab. Good!

His hamfingers closed around our body. They didn’t actually touch it, because of our densities, but just at the right time I jammed the tainted sword into the soft pad of his thumb. I hoped the tip remained close to normal density, and the acid with it. This was the acid test.

The ogre paused. A look of slow bewilderment labored to cross his dull puss. Then at last he got the message. “OOOOOWWOOO!!” he howled, yanking back his limb.

“I warned you, sick sack,” Jewel said. “I stung your filthy paw. One dose probably won’t kill you, because of your size, but I’ve got more where that came from. Want to try for another?” She lifted her arm high, and I followed, waving the sword.

The ogre considered for about fifteen seconds as his dull brain processed the invitation and its significance. Then he drew back farther and stuck his thumb in his mouth. Naturally that spread the acid to his tongue. After another fifteen seconds he caught on, spat out the thumb, and lumbered away, howling.

“You big baby!” Jewel called after him gleefully.

“We may not have much time,” I said. “You densify. I’ll diffuse. Then we’ll run up the ramp and out.”

“I’ll thicken, you thin,” she agreed. “But put that sword down before we get high on acid.”

Good point. I set down the infidel sword. It had served its purpose.

I started feeling odd. Then I realized that we were still overlapping. We were feeling each other’s bodies, and not in the normal sense. “I hate to say this, but I think we’d better separate, at least by enough to give us each our own space.”

“True. I don’t think I’d look good with a penis.” She half smiled. “Not a flaccid one, anyway.” She stepped out of me and stood gloriously separate.

“Or I with breasts,” I agreed. “Even such splendid ones as yours.”

We approached normal density and started up the ramp. Jewel still tended to float, and I tended to wade, but we were zeroing in on the proper range.

Now we saw that the portal was barred by a portcullis far too massive for us to move. We could not squeeze between the bars. We would have to change densities again to get by it.

Then the ogre returned. He must have realized that he was leaving perfectly good meat behind. This time he carried a wad of cloth to shield his hand from stings. He wasn’t totally stupid.

“Hurry!” Jewel said.

We ran up the rest of the ramp, gaining speed as we adjusted to its density. We reached the portal just as the ogre swung his hamfist at us. We threw ourselves to the sides as that massive club crashed into the portal gate.

And shoved it out of the way. The brute had unwittingly freed us.

He drew back his hand for another pass. We scrambled through and into a widening cave.

We were free. Maybe.

Chapter Seventeen

The cave turned into another tunnel, and at the far end of the tunnel we could see bright light. Glorious bright light.

We picked up our pace, wary for any other subterranean creatures, but, alas, the ogre was the last of them.

Shortly, the tunnel opened onto a sheer cliff. I pulled up short, gasping, and reaching back to stop Jewel from bumping into me, although, normally, such contact wouldn’t have been a bad thing. In this case, it could have been fatal.

“What is it?” she asked, and stepped cautiously next to me.

We both stood at the tunnel’s end, looking down into a misty void. What lay below was most certainly death, or something close to it. What lay before us was only hinted at: the broken remnants of a destroyed bridge. Unfortunately, between us and the end of the broken bridge was about fifty feet of nothing.

No, not quite nothing. Something screeched from below. I looked down, and up from the mist rose a spectacular winged creature, rising so quickly that I would have had my head bitten off by its long, scissor-like beak if not for Jewel yanking me back into the tunnel. The beast rushed past the cave opening in a blur of red and gold feathers, its bony beak snapping. Wind thundered over us, created by the creature’s powerful downdraft. If there was anything positive about facing a massive and horrific winged creature, it was that it was too massive for the cave itself. Instead, we caught glimpses of it circling outside, emerging in and out of view, and in and out of the swirling mist.

“By Alla, someone doesn’t want us to leave,” I said.

“Which is why Zeyn never expected us to take this route. And if we were foolish enough to do so, he would assume we could never survive.”

Seeing what lay before us, I was beginning to see the folly in this plan. Still, we were too far now to go back.

“What do you suggest?” I asked.

“Perhaps the winged creature has a hook in its beak, as well.”

I looked sideways at Jewel and saw the small smirk on her face. I reached out and took her by the waist and pulled her toward me. She went willingly. “You pick a fine time to jest.”

“And you pick a fine time to hold me close,” she countered, and she lay a long-fingered hand over my forearm. Her touch was blessedly warm and comforting.

We looked at each other for a long moment. Perhaps if we were in our mortal realm, we would have felt the pressure to find and save her son in time, but here, in Djinnland, we were out of time, so to speak.

And as her hand slid up my forearm, I was struck with an idea.

“We are still in Djinnland!” I said. Indeed, I could sense my heightened form weighing down on my knees and lower back.

She nodded. “No one ever said King Aladdin was a fool.”

“No, I mean, yes, but if we are Djinnland we can still diffuse.”

She narrowed her eyes, and then they widened again. “And perhaps diffuse so much that we float out over the gorge, safe from falling and the winged creature.”

“It is worth a try,” I said.

Her smile told me that I was onto something. And now she made her slowly moving hand reach up to the back of my head where her fingers ran through my hair. She pulled me in close with surprising strength and our mouths met in a deep and satisfying kiss.

When she pulled away, I was left gasping and mildly aroused. In fact, more than mildly. By Allah, there was hope for me yet. Jewel seemed to sense what she had done; indeed, she had no doubt felt what she had done. She smiled impishly.

“Shall we diffuse, my king?”

“After that kiss,” I said, shaking my head and tucking Lamprey’s lamp in my belt. “I shall have to work thrice as hard to diffuse now.”

She giggled and we spent the next few minutes focusing our thoughts on all things light and weightless. I found that my idiot thoughts were focused on Jewel and her body and her lips, and I saw that I was lagging behind. Jewel was already so diffused that I could see through her. Indeed, she veritably floated before me.

“Now, now, Niddala,” she said playfully. “Focus.”

And so I did. I tore my eyes away from her and focused on what had prompted me to diffuse back when we had first entered Djinnland: the mist. Soon, I felt my body lighten.

“More,” said Jewel. “Keep going.”

I watched the mist swirl and churn, doing my best to ignore the flying beast. I wondered what it would be like to be mist, to be free of a heavy mass entirely. Such freedom, indeed.

“Good, good. More.”

I saw myself as mist. I saw myself as nothing, in fact, and soon I felt unburdened completely. Soon I felt as light as the air itself.

“You have done it, my king. Shall we go?”

I led the way trepidly. But floating a few inches above a tunnel floor was a far cry different than floating above a bottomless canyon. To propel ourselves we made swimming motions with our arms and legs, and quickly we were out over the swirling mist. The great winged creature, who had been flying above us, saw us, spotted us, even in our diffused state, and tucked its wings in and dove down.

“Hang on,” I said.

“To what?”

Its long, snapping beak passed through us, just as the lionserpent’s jaws had. The sensation was an odd one at best, one that sent a shiver through me.

We continued flying while the great raptor continued attacking. It was all I could do to hold my thoughts on all things light, while swimming over certain death and with a blasted devil bird snapping its beak through me.

But we managed, and none too soon.

As the broken edge of the bridge drew closer, I felt myself densifying naturally. I was returning to my natural state in the mortal realm.

“Hurry!” I urged, swimming rapidly.

It was truly a race to the edge of the bridge before we had solidified so much that we no longer remained afloat. And the denser we became, the more we were prone to the creature’s attacks.

I felt myself dropping. Jewel dropped, as well, but not as much. I was heavier and denser naturally. I swam hard, pulling at the air with my hands, willing myself forward.

I heard thunderous flapping behind me. The creature was bearing down on me, on us. Surely we would soon be dense enough to be vulnerable.

We swam. The raptor flapped. The broken edge of the bridge appeared before us—

Jewel made it, alighting smoothly on the damaged edge, but I didn’t. Not quite.

As I dropped, as I felt my stomach rise up to the back of my throat, I reached out and just managed to grab the crumbling edge of the broken bridge.

“Look out!” screamed Jewel above me.

I raised my legs just as something massive and powerful swept below me, brushing past me so hard that I nearly lost my grip. The beast’s great beak and snapped shut so hard that it sounded as if its bony jaws had shattered. It screeched angrily below, banking to port and making its way back toward me.

A hand reached down from above. Jewel’s hand. Was she strong enough to hold me? I didn’t know, but I also didn’t have enough time to debate. I grabbed her hand and she pulled. I swung my legs up and over the shattered section of bridge.

We both flattened ourselves as the great bird passed overhead, and then we were running as fast as we could, through the broiling mist that hung over the bridge and to the mortal realm.

Chapter Eighteen

Suddenly the mist abated. We were emerging from a cave in the side of a mountain. Familiar trees and grass grew on the rocky hillside. We were back in the mortal realm!

I turned around to make sure there was no pursuit. But I saw nothing. We were on a vague little path that twisted up the mountain with no sign of any cave.

We both threw ourselves down and kissed the blessed turf. Then we sat up and kissed each other. She was soft and sweet and wholly divine.

“Do I take this to mean—” I started.

“Not until after you rescue my son.”

Oh. Yes. Of course. She was merely motivating me with the hint of how she could be once I completed my end of the deal. “After,” I agreed.

“But you know, when you return to your rightful place on the throne, you may not find me so interesting. I am no longer young, and I am well used. I gutted my rapists, but the damage was done.”

So it had been rape, not seduction. That made a difference. “I’m not interested in returning.”

“You have to return. You were a fair to middling king, but much better than what’s likely to take your place. King Huran, whom you appointed, lacks verve. He won’t last much longer.”

“I’d rather be with you.”

“You’re too foolishly romantic. What would it take to persuade you?”

“You as my queen. With your guidance I might well be more than a fair to middling king.”

That set her back. “That’s a steep price. I thought all you wanted was your manhood back.”

“That, too,” I agreed. “Originally.”

“Save my son, and I’ll give you that. In fact I’ll be your concubine, if you want. But I’m wary of marriage.”

Well, that was half a loaf. Best not to push too far, lest I lose my gains. “You have reason.” I looked around. “I’m not sure where we are, but it looks familiar.”

“The other side of Abu Bakr’s property.”

“You must have an excellent awareness of terrain!”

“Thank you.”

“We’d better get down to see him. Then—”

“Then on to Samarkand. We’re back in real time now, and that’s limited.”

“Yes. Let me check with Lamprey as we walk.” I set off down the path, and Jewel paced me. Maybe with luck there’d be narrow places, so I could do the gallant thing and let her precede me, and I could appreciate her backside in motion.

“Check first with Faddy. He’s a better companion.” An obscure expression crossed her features. “Compliment him. I think he can do more for you than he has before, if so inclined.”

“He’s an ifrit. He obeys my directives.”

That obscure expression still hovered close. “Ifrits may be a bit like women. They perform better when treated like people.”

What did she mean by that? “Why?”

“Even an animal does better when granted a modicum of respect and encouragement. Think of your experience with horses.”

Now she was making sense. A well trained, well treated horse was a vital asset. I rubbed my ring.

Faddy appeared, floating to my other side. He was no longer invisible, as he knew I was no longer concealing him from Jewel. He was a halfway handsome figure of a middle-aged male, with an ugly turban. “Thank you for a nice visit home, master.”

“You’re welcome. Your messages helped.”

“You understand that they were watching me.”

“Yes.” Then, heeding Jewel’s suggestion, I larded it on. “You behaved in a loyal, sensible manner.”

Faddy paused. I could tell he was significantly pleased. “Do you need me any more, now that you have recovered the Ifrit Iften?”

“I’ll always need you. You’re great company. Do you have any advice?”

Faddy glanced at Jewel. “You’re civilizing him already.”

“Civilized men are easier to handle,” Jewel said.

The ifrit’s lips quirked. “In contrast to civilized women.”

“Someone needs to do the handling.”

“Just so.” Faddy looked at me. “Iften’s depleted from the savaging by Prince Zeyn. He can still do a lot more than I can, but you should probably save him for when you really need him.”

That was surely good advice. I had figured on simply having Lamprey pop us to Samarkand, but chances were I needed his power also to deal with Jewel’s brute of a husband. No sense wasting him on small stuff. Jewel was right to have me encourage Faddy. “But we have to get to Samarkand swiftly. He can take us there.”

“But you can make it easier on him if you manage correctly.”

“How so?”

“Get in the lamp.”

I stared at him. “Come again?”

“Use it as a convenient transport vehicle. It will be much easier for Iften to carry the lamp there than two full-grown mortal people who need to be protected from extreme acceleration, atmospheric thinning, the chill of the heights, radiation, time dilation, and so on.”

I had no idea what he was talking about. “We just want to pop out here and pop in there, the way ifrits do.”

“But ifrits are immortal, largely impervious, and we can reconstitute our damaged substance. We can handle the rigors of rapid transit. You mortals are dangerously delicate.”

This quibbling was annoying me. “And how could we ever fit in the little lamp?”

“The same way Iften does. Diffuse and compact.”

“We’re not ifrits! We’re locked to our normal density here.”

“Normally, yes. But the lamp is special. Invoke the right spell, and it will take you in.”

“But I don’t want to be squished into that tight little space!”

“It won’t seem like that to you.”

“We’ll be squished together,” Jewel murmured.

I reconsidered. How bad could it be, jammed in close to her? “Okay, we’ll try the lamp. What else?”

“You will need a plan of attack. You will have time to work it out in the lamp, because it’s like Djinnland: no time passes outside it, for you, regardless how long you remain inside.”

Being squeezed up against Jewel for an indefinite period. The notion had its appeal. “What else?”

“One thing to be aware of is that the woman’s evil ex-husband has magical assistance. We have seen the power of his allies. They will be aware of any magic practiced in their vicinity, and will home in on it instantly. Then you’ll be finished.”

“But we’ll have Lamprey.”

“Iften at full power could handle it, yes. But Iften depleted will simply get himself captured again, and you may be sure Zeyn will be more careful next time to see that he never gets sprung. Your available force is limited; you need to manage it carefully. Otherwise you are courting disaster.”

“Excellent point,” Jewel said. “We came close enough to disaster in Djinnland. We don’t need any more of that.”

“All right,” I said impatiently to cover my nervousness. Disaster meant Jewel becoming a sex slave and me a monarch serving the nefarious purposes of Zeyn. We couldn’t risk that. “Jewel and I will discuss it while we’re in the lamp.”

Jewel took my hand and squeezed it affirmatively. She was managing me, but I rather liked it.

We were arriving at Abu Bakr’s house. Faddy faded out; he had become invisible. “Halloo!” I called.

The sage emerged, surprised to see us. “How is it you are returning from that direction? There is only the mountain there.”

“We took a roundabout route.” It seemed he did not know about the other access to Djinnland, or wasn’t telling. Maybe he knew of it, but also knew how dangerous it was.

He took stock, visibly. “Did you accomplish your mission?”

“Yes. Now we need to move on to Samarkand. Have you any advice before we go?”

“If you visited Djinnland and returned intact, you need no further advice from me. Do you wish to have your horses back?”

“Keep them. We won’t be using them.”

“May I offer you some food for your journey?”

“Yes,” Jewel said. “Make it to go.”

“Are you sure?”

Jewel merely inhaled. The sage froze in place, momentarily stunned.

“We could also use some clothing,” I said, remembering that we were naked. No wonder Jewel was impressing the man so. Even the oldest and wisest sage was not immune to that.

Soon we had modest clothing, a loaf of bread, and a jug of wine. We thanked the sage and departed afoot. If Abu Bakr was curious how we proposed to travel, he masked it well.

When we were alone and shielded from any observation, we organized for the journey. I rubbed the lamp.

Lamprey, or more properly Iften, emerged as a column of smoke that formed into his normal aspect. “What is your wish?”

“We want to take your place in the lamp and have you transport us to Samarkand,” I said briskly. “Can you do that?”

“Readily, when so directed. Where in Samarkand?”

I turned to Jewel. “Where?”

“I don’t know exactly. We’d better go to an inn while Faddy explores and locates my son.”

“I don’t have to take orders from you,” Faddy said.

Jewel smiled at him. “It’s that you have such ability and finesse that only you can do this job properly.”

The ifrit, swayed, glanced at me. What powers of persuasion the woman had!

“We need you,” I agreed.

“In that case, I’ll be glad to.”

“So be it,” Lamprey said.

Then Jewel and I were in a pleasant room girt with soft cushions and a bed mat. A set of dice lay in a corner. In a moment I realized that the chamber was in the shape of a lamp. Lamprey must entertain himself shooting dice while confined here. I was aware of no motion; if the lamp was traveling at high velocity it did not seem to affect the interior. This was, in short, a comfortable way to travel.

Jewel settled on the bed with the bread and wine. “Care to join me?” she inquired. Her lovely thighs showed under her skirt as she raised her knees. That could not have been accidental.

I joined her. What else could I do? “What do you have in mind?” I asked cautiously, sure it wasn’t romance.

“Our strategy, of course,” she said as she tore off a piece of bread and offered it to me. She was still showing me how she could be when pleased. “We are not going to be able to simply walk in and claim my son. In fact any approach will alert them. They may even be using my son as a lure to bring us in for capture. That may have been their plot from the beginning.”

That made unkind sense. “So what do we do?”

“That is for you to figure out, my lord.”

“Jewel, by now you know me well enough to know that I’m not all that smart. You’re going to have to help me.”

“You’re stupid like a fox in a grape yard. Now exert your native cunning.”

“Jewel—”

“Oh, all right, you beggar.” She moved close and kissed me. “Does that do it?”

“I meant some hint about where your son might be, and how I am to recognize him if I see him.”

“You mean I wasted a kiss I didn’t have to give?” she demanded severely. But then she smiled. “Here is my best hint: I told him long ago that if he were ever in a situation he did not trust, and perhaps feared for his life, to be wary of the food. They might use it to drug him, or as part of a ceremony.”

“Such as a ritual sacrifice?”

“That was not in my mind at the time, but yes, now it fits perfectly. Gods of any stripe are choosy about what they accept as sacrifices. The offerings have to be healthy and eager to participate.”

“Which means a good meal and the promise of life in paradise,” I said. “Only a child will not know that the paradise is not in the mortal realm.”

“Exactly. So I told him to demand something excruciatingly rare, such as yak’s milk cheese.”

“That’s not that rare. Merchants bring it from the eastern mountains. Expensive, but available.”

“With chocolate sauce.”

“With what?”

“Chocolate sauce. The jinni fetch it from the far, far west, I understand. It is said to be fabulously tasty.”

“That’s rare,” I agreed.

“Their sacrifice will not be valid without it.”

“Assuming your son does ask for it.”

“He’s a smart boy.”

Now my mind was percolating. “I know a cheese merchant who owes me a favor and can be trusted,” I said. “He will tell them he can get chocolate in a week, for a ridiculously high price.”

“They’ll need it tonight.”

“Precisely. Cowed by their offer of riches coupled with their threat of beheading him if he fails, he will reluctantly agree to have his eunuch deliver it before nightfall.”

“But that will set them up to sacrifice my son!”

“Ah, but I will be there with my lamp.”

“How can you be there when you don’t even know where?” Then she paused. “That eunuch—you!”

“The same,” I agreed. “I’ll put the boy in the lamp, and we’ll be off before they realize.”

“You devious genius!” This time her kiss was enough to make any thought of being a eunuch dissipate in steamy smoke.

Then suddenly we were standing in a private courtyard. Lamprey had completed the journey to Samarkand and rubbed the lamp to bring us out.

It was time for action.

Chapter Nineteen

Although it was mid-day and we were alone in the courtyard, a cold chill swept through me. I had trained myself to be wary of such chills. They were, in my experience, indication of dark magic.

“Faddy,” I called, rubbing my ring.

The ifrit appeared by my side in a puff of billowing smoke that quickly solidified into a man. “Yes, master.”

I rolled my eyes. “Please, for the love of Allah, stop calling me master.”

“As you wish. Is that why you summoned me?”

“Of course not,” I snapped. “Are we being watched?”

“I cannot know this until I have poked around.”

“Then poke away.”

“As you wish, master,” he said, disappearing, and I not-so-silently ground my teeth.

Jewel came up next to me and rested a long-fingered hand gently on my forearm, causing a shiver of pleasure to course through me. She said, “You do realize that he’s magically required to call you master?”

“He’s also magically required to do my bidding.”

“Then perhaps he enjoys toying with you. Remember, my lord, we need his help, which, I believe, could be considerable. So go lightly on him. After all, you are his master, as you are Lamprey’s. Some things are inevitable.”

Her words struck home, and I wondered if her speech had a deeper, perhaps more widespread meaning. Some things had been inevitable for me, like leading a kingdom, which I had readily given up in my grief and sorrow.

I said nothing; merely considered her words, and soon Faddy re-appeared invisibly next to my ear. “There’s a large contingent of men closing in on you. From what I gather, they were alerted by your sudden appearance. This city is heavily monitored by Zeyn and his forces. Very little magically can happen within Samarkand without his immediate knowledge, including my own appearances by your side.”

I shook my head. I always loathed this city, and this was further proof. I said, “So every time I summon you—”

“Zeyn can zero in on you immediately.”

“That could be problematic.”

“Perhaps, but you are wily old king. I am certain you can circumvent this using your fox-like cunning.”

“Don’t patronize me, ifrit. Begone.”

“As you wish, master,” he said, and although I couldn’t see him, I suspected Faddy had bowed deeply, grinning all the way down.

I took Jewel’s hand. “We need to go.”

“But where?”

“Anywhere but here. And no magic, or djinns.”

“So we are forced to live by your wits alone?” she asked, and I heard the mocking in her voice.

“My wits have gotten us this far,” I said, scanning the lush gardens. We were in the courtyard of a caravanserai, a roadside inn popular with passing caravans, and perhaps not so popular with traveling djinns; at least, not presently. I thought I heard voices coming from the east side of the garden. Indeed, there was a single portal—a pointed arched opening—that led to the streets and wide enough to give access to heavily laden beasts of burden. It was the only entrance into the open courtyard.

“Your wits and my breasts,” she snorted.

“We’ll talk about your breasts later,” I said, and pulled her along. The caravanserai was lined with smaller doors that would lead to the building’s many rooms.

I led the way across the brick yard, past stalls and niches and bays that would accommodate merchants and pack animals. We stepped around large piles of steaming camel dung and ducked into a doorway just as a troupe of armed guards stormed through the portal. The heavy wooden door was, mercifully, unbarred. I pushed it open and we eased inside just as the guards fanned out.

Inside, the room was absolutely stifling. It also smelled of hay and urine and dirty camel, a nauseating combination not uncommon for these parts.

“They’ll be looking for a man and a woman,” I said, going through the clothing in the room. Obviously, the renter was away at the moment, perhaps selling his wares in the market stalls that would be located just outside caravanserai.

I quickly went through the filthy, dust covered clothing, and selected some of the foulest and handed them to Jewel. She wrinkled her nose and turned her head away.

“They’re filthy!”

“We must look the part of road-weary, dust-covered travelers,” I said, grinning.

She snatched the clothing from my hand and put them over her own, as I did my own selection. I did not enjoy stealing from those less fortunate, even their filthy clothing, but our lives were more important. The best I could offer was a small prayer, blessing the traveling merchant’s wares, and wishing him a robust day of sales.

We both expertly wrapped turbans around our heads, and after tucking away some of Jewel’s stray strands, we eased out of the room and into a connecting hallway. Candles flickered and footsteps seemed to echo from everywhere. People were coming. Many people.

Soldiers, I thought grimly.

The hallway would wrap around the entire, perfectly square structure. Following it would be pointless. Eventually, we would run in to soldiers, and I wasn’t sure how well our disguises would hold up, filthy or otherwise.

There were, however, adjoining rooms, bigger rooms. Those set apart for the wealthiest of travelers. But these would not be left empty. In the least, these would be manned by servants.

Loud voices were coming from around a far corner, along with the sounds of running boots. What to do? Storm a wealthy merchant’s lavish quarters, or face a troop of soldiers?

It was times such as these that I realized how heavily I relied on Faddy. The ifrit could have pointed me to the safest room possible or perhaps find me another means of escape. As it was, I was on my own.

Now came the sounds of doors systematically opening and closing. The soldiers were checking all the rooms. I heard a woman scream, and a soldier grunt. He left her alone and I had an idea.

“Come,” I said to Jewel. “Back in the room.”

She did as she was told, although she frowned, clearly confused. Once in the room, I clicked shut the heavy door. I immediately began unbuckling the the belt that held up my trousers.

“Now get on your back and lift up your robe.”

“You’re mad!”

“Perhaps, but we are desperate. You must trust me.”

The sound of slamming doors drew closer, followed by the stomping of boots and the demands of soldiers. Jewel looked from the closed door, which would be yanked open at any minute, to a straw bed in the far corner of the room.

In the room next to ours, a door opened, and then slammed shut.

Jewel grimaced and then flung herself to the straw bed. I flung myself on top of her, with my trousers around my ankles. Boots stomped toward our shut door.

I worked my way between her strong but soft legs, pressing my flaccid member against a warmth greater than I had expected. I gasped, and so did Jewel.

And when the door slammed open with such force that it sent shockwaves through the stone floor and straw bed, I was pantomiming the motion of deep lovemaking. We were both mostly dressed in filthy traveling attire, and for all the world—especially to the two guards standing there watching us—we would have looked like a typical husband and wife finding some alone time after days and perhaps weeks of traveling.

Jewel screamed on cue and I grunted like a man lost in the throes of passion. One of the guards grinned and cocked his head and I saw a flash of whitish teeth.

“Carry on, good man,” he said, and the two soldiers left, shutting the door far gentler than I would have believed.

“You may get off me now,” said Jewel.

And I did, slowly. I hadn’t realized how deeply I was holding her in my arms. Surely my pantomime of lovemaking had been a convincing one to the soldiers. As I sat back, with her legs still spread open and her robe pushed up over her flat waist, I saw something shocking.

A mild erection.

Jewel had felt it and gave me a sly grin. “The king returns, after all,” she said, standing over me and straightening her robe. She held out her hand. “Now, let’s find this cheese merchant friend of yours.”

Chapter Twenty

“We’ll find the merchant at the bazaar,” I said.

“But that’s the most public place in the city!” she protested.

I smiled. “Where else would merchants be? We’ll have to hurry to reach him before your ex husband’s men do.”

She nodded. “That should be soon. They’ll be asking my son what he wants for his special meal, so they can fetch it by evening. My wretch of a husband, Amir Ibrahim, is very efficient.”

We closed dirty hoods about our faces and moved out. There was no sense in either of us risking recognition. The soldiers were still checking out rooms. “Soon they’ll realize that we have slipped the noose,” I murmured. “We must lose ourselves in the throng.”

We did. It was a nice day, and the streets were crowded with shoppers. For once I appreciated the hustle and pushing. Even if the soldiers caught on to our identity, they would have a hard time getting through the throng rapidly to reach us.

It was also oddly private, because no one was paying attention to anyone else; each person was intent on making his own purchases before the choicest items were sold elsewhere. “How do you know we can trust this cheese merchant of yours?” Jewel asked as we pushed along toward the bazaar.

“It’s a fair story.”

“It’s important!” she retorted.

So I told the story. “When I was king I was on a pleasure hunting excursion when we spied a mounted robber band. They knew better than to try to molest us, so behaved politely and we ignored them. There are so many rogues out there that we don’t bother with them unless they become obnoxious.”

“And the common man must look out for himself,” she said dryly.

I glanced at her. “What’s your point?”

She grimaced. “Go on with your story.”

“Then we came across a man on the ground. He had evidently been beaten and robbed of his horse. It happened that my son was along, as I was showing him the way of a royal hunt. He jumped off his horse and ran to succor the beaten man. That was his mother’s influence, making him feel for anyone’s hurts, a nuisance, but once he acted I had to support him so that it would seem that he had acted at my behest. I questioned the man. He turned out to be a merchant returning from the eastern mountain region with rare yak cheese and oriental spices. He had just been waylaid, his goods and horses stolen, and the bandits had abducted his wife and daughter. He begged me to at least save his family.

“‘Of course we will,’ my son said. Thus I was committed. I sent men after the bandits. We slew the robbers, rescued the woman and daughter, and recovered the horses and merchandise. We returned all of this to him, at my son’s insistence. I sent him on his way to town with a special guard so that no other ruffians would molest them. That pleased my son, which was the only reason I did it. We continued with the hunt. But before he left, the merchant swore an oath of gratitude. ‘If ever I can repay you in kind, Sire, let me know.’ I shrugged it off, but thereafter did business with him, and his gratitude remained.”

“You saved his wife and child,” Jewel said.

“And later lost my own, ironically. But that is the nature of fate.”

She nodded. “I believe he can be trusted to help you. I understand the way he feels.”

We were making progress. “The bazaar is up ahead,” I said. Then: “When we emulated sex, I began to, to—”

“No mystery there,” she said. “It’s not incapacity of sex that balks you, but the loss of love. When you recover love, you will recover sex.”

“I want to recover it with you. You are more woman than any I have encountered since I lost my wife.”

“But as I told you, I am not interested in remarrying. I love only my son.”

I saw a potentially useful parallel. “And if your son should come to like me, what then?”

She nodded again. “When your son acted, you had to support him. It would be the same with me.”

“And if he wanted you to marry me?”

“You cunning schemer! I could not say no to him. But he’s an independent cuss, like his father. I doubt he’ll have much use for you.” She paused. “But I will restore your virility if you save him. That’s all I will promise.”

Nevertheless, she had given me the key to her heart. It was her son. The kid might be a brat, but I could court him for the sake of his mother.

Now at last we reached the bazaar. I pointed out the yak cheese merchant, there with his daughter, now a comely girl. “You be a customer while I speak with him privately,” I murmured.

“Done.”

The booth was bedecked with cheeses and spices. The merchant’s girl smiled prettily at Jewel, who smiled back. Meanwhile I nudged close to the merchant. “I have a favor to reclaim,” I said.

“Who are you?” he asked sharply.

“Aladdin, incognito,” I said, opening my hood to show my face. “Do not react,” I added quickly. “I must remain anonymous.”

“I hear and obey, my liege,” he said recognizing me. “What favor?”

“I am taken with the woman there,” I said, flicking my eyes toward Jewel. “Perhaps she will be my new queen. But I must rescue her son from bandits before they sacrifice him to their foul god tonight. For his last meal he will demand yak cheese and chocolate sauce.”

“They will come here,” the merchant said, catching on. “Only three local merchants carry yak cheese, and the other two are sold out. But chocolate—that is beyond my means. Only the djinni can obtain it.”

“The djinni will,” I said. “They will bring it here. You must promise to deliver it by evening. You will send your eunuch with it just before the deadline.”

“I have no—” He broke off. “Do you mean—?”

“Yes. I will be the eunuch. Do you have a place for me to stay while we wait?”

“I have a shed behind my stall. From there you can overhear what transpires here. It isn’t much, but—”

“It will do. Just tell the messengers when they come, and do not give us away. Our lives would be forfeit.”

“I understand, Sire. It will be done.”

“My gratitude,” I said.

“None required, Sire. There is nothing more precious than a child.” The merchant signaled his daughter, who broke off and came to him. “These anonymous people will hide in our back shed. Make sure no one knows they are there.”

“Yes, father.” She turned to me. “If you will come with me, sir.”

Jewel and I followed the girl down the crowded street. She led us around the block, then in between buildings, until we came back to the bazaar from behind. No one else could have known where we were going. She indicated a humble shed where unsold goods were stacked. “Here.”

We could hear the sounds of the bazaar, but nothing was visible beyond the wall of stalls and goods. There was an aisle to the front, but the merchant had not had us use it lest we be seen.

We entered the shed, and the girl went back the way we had come. “She’s a marvel of discretion,” Jewel remarked. “I’m glad you saved her.”

“She doesn’t even remember me.”

“Oh, but she does. I saw her eyes glow when she recognized you. She doesn’t know why you are here, but she’s honored to assist you. She’d jump into bed with you if you wished it.”

“She’s only ten years old!”

“And your point is?”

I was of course being foolish. Some royals liked children, and the children were thrilled to serve, apart from the rich rewards their families got from such quiet trysts. It paid to please royalty, whatever the manner. But that was not my way.

We lay in the shed. It was hot, but not unbearably. “Now the chocolate,” Jewel murmured.

Oh, yes. “But if I rub the lamp here, they’ll find us.”

“True. So I will remain here and listen, while you get out a fair distance, talk with the lamp, and return.”

That made sense. I left her in the shed and made my way out to the far street, which fortunately was not crowded. I walked swiftly to another street where there were horses and wagons waiting. Then I rubbed the lamp. “Do not show yourself,” I said as I did.

“I am here,” Lamprey said.

“Fetch a small jug of chocolate sauce and take it to the merchant’s stall we just visited. Do not give any evidence of your nature, so that those who are tracking the invocation of the lamp are not alerted. Can you do that?” I figured a jug was not a complicated transport, so his powers would not be strained. Supernatural creatures abounded, so the soldiers would not be going after incidental ones, merely the ones I summoned.

“On my way,” the djinn said.

I returned to the shed, lingering just long enough to see the soldiers racing toward the spot where I had used the lamp. That gave me an idea how long it took to zero in on my magic. They were uncomfortably prompt.

I faded out of sight. I heard the horses neighing as soldiers charged among them. Soon there would be chaos as the soldiers searched for what was not there, and realized that their quarry had slipped the noose again and might even be deliberately teasing them. They might take it out on the horses, which would incite a near riot as furious wagoners retaliated. Still, it would be best if the chocolate were delivered promptly so we could get out of here.

“It has been delivered,” Jewel said.

“Already?” But of course time was as nothing to the djinn.

“Then my plan to rescue your son is on track,” I said, relieved.

We lay together, waiting for the next stage. “About your manhood,” Jewel said. “It may take time to restore it completely, but let’s see if we can advance it a stage.”

“I don’t know. That emulation we did may have been a fluke.”

“I think not. You are healing, my lord.” She reached into my trousers. Then, holding on, she kissed me. I felt a stirring such as I had not had in a long time. She knew what she was doing.

Now there were voices from the stall. “Yak cheese I have, honored sir. But chocolate? That would take me a week to obtain.”

“You will have it by midnight tonight, or your head will be ground up to take its place.”

“But sir! It’s impossible!”

“You will make it possible.”

“And how am I to pay my supplier for it? Genuine chocolate is fabulously expensive.”

“Will this help?” It had to be a huge amount of gold.

“I will have my eunuch deliver it tonight,” the merchant promised.

“Some other time,” Jewel said with seeming regret, putting my member away. “We have my son to rescue.”

Indeed we did. I almost wished it had taken the enemy longer to come to the merchant. Because I knew that rescuing the boy was unlikely to be as straightforward as I had presented it.

Chapter Twenty-one

As pleasurable as it was lying with Jewel in that hidden shed, there was little time to waste. After all, I had yak milk and chocolate to deliver. And a son to save.

The guards had further instructed the merchant to have his eunuch deliver the goods to the Temple of the Moon, a stone structure found at the bottom of a deep valley and carved directly into a cliff face. It was a structure that was known to me, and not one I was pleased to hear included. After all, Death is said to abide in that temple, one of his many earthly homes. The valley itself is found just outside of the city, perhaps less than a day’s ride by horse. Plenty of time to deliver the goods by midnight.

With the sun beginning its descent into the western sky, Jewel and I sat in the shade of an outdoor cafe with Sa’ood. Across the way, his daughter tended to their stall—and even from here I could hear the child expertly haggle with their many customers, all of whom were far older than she. The young girl drove a hard bargain. Obviously, she been taught by the best, Sa’ood himself.

“I am very proud of her,” said the merchant, sipping his hot tea and watching his daughter. “And she would not be here, if not for you, my liege.”

The truth was, of course, it had been my son’s bleeding heart who had led me to save Sa’ood and his family. Admittedly, I had been selfish in my youth, especially when I had found the lamp; indeed, it is easy to be self-serving when the world is at your fingertips. But witnessing my son’s compassion on a nearly daily basis had made me a better man.

Sa’ood turned his attention back to me. “You are aware that this temple is the legendary home of Death.”

I nodded, drinking my own bitter coffee. I kept a look-out for more soldiers, but it had been some time since I last rubbed the lamp. “One of his many homes,” I said. “Perhaps he is summering elsewhere.”

Sa’ood frowned at my flippancy. “There is another legend concerning the stone temple.”

“How many legends are there?” snorted Jewel.

“Samarkand is full of legends, my dear, some more pervasive than others. This next one is more of a prophecy, but it is one that is well known among Samarkanders.”

I nodded, suspecting what he had to say. “Not just in Samarkand,” I said. “But beyond. A great magician would emerge from the Temple of the Moon on the night of two moons.”

“A night of two moons?” said Jewel, frowning. “I do not understand.”

But I thought I understood, and did my best to explain. The Islamic calendar consisted of twelve full lunar cycles. In addition to those twelve cycles, each solar calendar year contained roughly eleven days more than the lunar year of twelve lunations. The extra days accumulate, and when they add up to roughly thirty days, which is about every three years, the Islamic calendar accounts for those days with “leap months”. It is in such months that an extra full moon occurs, once every three years.

“And we are in such a month,” I said. “With an extra full moon.”

“A month with two full moons,” said Jewel.

I nodded. “And tonight is the second full moon.”

“A night of two moons.”

I nodded again. “It appears tonight is of significance, perhaps in more ways than one.”

“So who is this magician?” asked Jewel.

“My guess would be Zeyn,” I said. “He’s certainly the greatest magician, or sorcerer, in Djinnland.”

“So we have even more reason to stop him,” said Jewel, “although saving my son would certainly be enough for me.”

The sun had dipped a little more, angling straight into our faces. The city of Samarkand appeared deceptively serene. Dark magic abounded, and a curse lay over the land, of that I was sure.

“So what is the plan?” asked Jewel.

“I will arrive on horseback with the requested items.”

“And where will I be?” asked Jewel.

“You will be here, with Sa’ood and his daughter, selling cheese. Perhaps you can pick up a new trade.”

Sa’ood chuckled, but Jewel threw me a furious look. “If you think for one minute that I will wait here and do nothing—”

“Oh, but you won’t be doing nothing,” I said easily. “You will be helping my good man sell his fine cheeses.”

“Aladdin—”

“Not so loud, my dear. I’m incognito, remember?”

“But perhaps I can travel with you, in Lamprey’s lamp, and once we arrive, you can summon me—”

I shook my head. “Even to get you in the lamp we would alert the guards, and to summon you again would alert them further.”

“Then what will you do once you arrive? You are but one man. Surely my ex-husband will have many soldiers with him, in addition to Zeyn’s magic.”

I sipped my bitter coffee and sat back, one arm draped over the back of the wooden chair. “Oh, I am certain I will think of something, my dear.”

She bit her tongue. For once, Jewel was without opinion or leverage. We finished our drinks in silence and then we loaded up my pack horse. With Sa’ood’s guidance, I had a firm understanding of the necessary route I would take to the valley temple, and as I stepped up into the saddle and swung my leg around, Jewel came to my side. There were tears in her eyes.

“Be careful, my lord,” she said.

“Oh, I plan on being careful, especially since I plan to return with your son and marry you.”

She gave me a sad smile. “I care only about my son and his safety, my lord.”

“I, too, care only about your son and his safety, my queen,” I said, and I lifted her face toward me gently and we kissed for a long, long time.

Chapter Twenty-two

Sa’ood’s daughter finished with her sale and turned to him. “This plan won’t work, father.”

Because the girl’s doubts echoed mine, I reluctantly separated myself from Jewel. What did the girl know?

“This is not your concern, Myrrh,” he snapped. I was interested to note that he had evidently named her after one of the precious condiments he carried along with his exotic cheeses and spices. Myrrh had a bitter scent, but was used in perfume, and was quite rare and valuable. It was surely a fitting name.

“Oh, but it is, father. They are lurking to capture, bind, and torture our liege, to make him do their bidding. He must not ride into their trap.”

Sa’ood focused on her. “I did not tell you his identity.”

“I knew it before he came to us, father.”

Sa’ood turned to me. “I must apologize for my daughter. She has second sight, sometimes.”

“Second sight?” I asked.

“She can see into the future. When she and my wife were abducted, she told her mother not to worry, because we would be rescued soon, at the behest of the king’s son. But it’s not reliable.”

“But that’s exactly what happened,” I said.

“Yes. But she also said she was going to marry the king’s son, who would be a great magician. Then—” He shrugged, not wanting to refer directly to the fate of my wife and son.

How well I understood. My son was dead.

“They tried to use the king’s son to gain power over the king,” Myrrh said. “But they botched it, and killed him and his mother instead.”

“That was part of the conspiracy?” I asked, appalled.

“Now they are trying again, more carefully,” Myrrh said. “You must not let them prevail, my liege.”

“So you see, sire, sometimes she is right, sometimes she is wrong,” Sa’ood said. “She’s probably guessing.”

“I am not wrong,” Myrrh said firmly. “It’s just that when it’s the far future, the details can be cloudy. I will still marry the king’s magician son, when we come of age. He must be rescued now.”

“It is my son we are rescuing,” Jewel said. “He is not the king’s son.”

“Not yet,” the girl replied succinctly.

Jewel and I exchanged a glance. If we rescued the boy, and Jewel married me, and I became king again, I would of course adopt the boy. He would become the king’s son.

“My son,” Jewel said, a new realization dawning. “I thought they meant to sacrifice him while he remained an innocent child, before his manhood came upon him.”

“That, too,” Myrrh said. “But mainly they do not want him to achieve his magician power, to rival theirs.”

Shaken, I turned to Sa’ood. “I think your daughter’s power is valid. We need her help.”

“We do,” Jewel agreed.

“But she’s a child!” the merchant protested. “She doesn’t know about the ugliness of adult politics.”

“Father, without the king’s intercession, I would today be a young temple whore, and mother an old one. Now without my intercession, the king’s second son and my future husband will die tonight.”

“So much for childish innocence,” Jewel murmured.

I faced Myrrh. “I have two djinn I can summon, but neither is at present strong enough to help significantly, and the act of summoning them will betray our presence to the enemy. So I must not use magic until the last possible moment. What do you recommend?”

“I must go with you, my liege, to clarify my vision of immediate events. I can take you there via a secret route that few know of, so that they do not see you coming.”

“But I must bring them the cheese and chocolate,” I said. “They are expecting the merchant’s eunuch to deliver them.”

“They know your ruse,” the girl said. “The real ruse is theirs, to bring you to them, since their other traps have failed.”

“But if I don’t bring the cheese and chocolate, I won’t get a chance to rescue the boy.”

Myrrh glanced impatiently at Jewel, as if to say “This idiot is my future father in law?” Then she faced me. “Let someone else deliver the goods, while you strike unexpectedly to free the boy.”

It occurred to me that this savvy girl would make a good daughter-in-law. “Who else would risk dealing with these dangerous men?”

“I will do it,” Sa’ood said. “It is my delivery to arrange.”

“But you have a business to run,” I said.

“Only because you saved my goods and my family from loss, my liege. This is simple enough to do.”

I glanced at Myrrh, but she did not protest. The man still felt he owed me.

Neither did Jewel. “I am coming with you too,” she said firmly. “My son knows me better than he knows you.”

What could I say? That I preferred to travel alone with an obliging girl child? I dismounted, returning the horse to Sa’ood.

Thus it fell into place. With strategy and sufficient fortune we would surprise Zeyn’s party and achieve our mission.

Sa’ood took the merchandise and mounted the horse. He set off down the street, making no secret of his presence. Meanwhile we rented horses of our own.

Myrrh led Jewel and me on a devious route through alleys and back streets, and then along a deserted trail into an abandoned wilderness region. I wore a scimitar the merchant had rummaged from his stores, relieved to be armed again. There was no telling what might lurk in a wasteland like this.

“That is a brave thing your father is doing, serving as decoy,” Jewel said to Myrrh.

“He is a brave man,” the girl agreed. “Fortunately he is not in danger. They will accept his explanation that his eunuch ran away in fear. They know the king will make an appearance before the boy is sacrificed.”

“They will have the boy hidden and under guard,” I said. “Can you locate him?”

“Yes.”

“Here is my plan,” I said. “I must reach the boy, persuade him that I represent his mother—”

“No problem there,” Jewel said. “I will be with you when you find him.”

“Then have us all be conjured into the lamp, so that Lamprey can conjure us to safety. The magic will alert them to our presence, but it will be too late to stop the rescue. Do you think that will work?” Because now I valued her precognition.

“Yes.”

There had to be a catch. “Are there any complications we need to be aware of?”

“Just one,” Myrrh said. “He is in a locked chamber, in the temple carved from stone, deep in the mountain, under armed guard. I know where he is, but I don’t know how to get safely into it. There is no back access to the temple itself.”

“I will figure out a way,” I said with false confidence.

Jewel gave me a glance that said “You had better.”

“This way,” Myrrh said. “Quickly.”

“But we have a clear trail ahead,” I protested.

“Don’t argue with her,” Jewel said. “She knows what she’s doing.”

So we deviated from the easy path and made our way up a tortuous detour that ended in a blank face on the slope of the mountain. “This is impassible,” I said, disgusted. Our mounts were clearly exhausted.

Jewel nudged me. I followed her look.

Down the ragged slope was the trail we had been following. A small creature was walking along it, going in the opposite direction to ours.

“That’s just a stray dog,” I said.

“Watch it closely,” Myrrh said.

Then I saw the patch of white foam on its muzzle. “Who happens to be rabid,” I concluded.

“No safe way to fight or stop that,” Jewel said. “We simply had to be where it isn’t.”

Now I understood. It was a persuasive demonstration of Myrrh’s ability. She had seen the cur coming, as it were, and taken evasive action.

We gave the dog time to clear, then made our way cautiously back down the path to the main trail. Our horses uneasily sniffed the trail; they knew what had passed there. Fortunately the animal had never been aware of us, so had not followed us up the slope. Probably its sense of smell was damaged by its malady, so it had missed us. Someone else would suffer that encounter.

We resumed our travel. I glanced nervously back, but Myrrh assured me that the animal was not coming back.

“That cur reminds me of my ex-husband,” Jewel murmured.

I had to laugh, knowing she meant in nature rather than appearance. Still, it was another suggestion of the kind of enemy we faced: madness might be easier to deal with. And what about this prophecy of a great magician emerging? I could handle a man with a scimitar, but magic was different. The thing about prophecies was that they always came true, though not necessarily in quite the way expected.

Then suddenly the barren landscape gave way to an awesome cliff overlooking the hidden valley. There across the way was the dread Temple of the Moon.

How could we ever get into that, unobserved? There was only the guarded front entrance, and maybe a servant’s access to the side. A narrow trail led down the face of the cliff to the valley floor, so we could get there, but then what?

Chapter Twenty-three

We considered our options, and it was Jewel who had the most convincing argument. “The sun is setting and they’re going to sacrifice my boy tonight. There’s not a thing we can do up here.”

And she set off, on her own, down the winding trail. She was a mother who would not be denied. I knew then that part of my challenge was not so much to save her son but to keep Jewel alive as well. She was clearly reckless and desperate, and I didn’t fault her for that at all.

I looked at Myrrh and the girl gave me a half smile. I did not need second sight to know that what was about to happen in our immediate future would be a delicate balance of luck and fate. Like with Faddy and Lamprey, one can come to rely too much on such talents. Sometimes, as Jewel had recklessly shown, it is time to act.

Myrrh and I angled our own mounts down the treacherously narrow trail. I have never had a fear of heights; indeed, flying high above the land on nothing more than a rug had been exhilarating. But my mount’s maddening tendency to walk on the far edge of the rocky path was having a strange effect on my testicles. With each loose pebble that spilled over the ledge, falling hundreds of feet straight down, and with each dubious step that seemed closer and closer to the edge, my testicles seemed to rise into my stomach to hide like frightened mice.

It would not be very heroic to shut my eyes and so I forced myself to stare at Jewel, who was still twenty or thirty lengths ahead of us. She had yet to look back, assuming we would follow. Little did she know that I would follow her to the ends of the earth.

To distract myself, I looked back at Myrrh. If the young girl had a fear of heights, she didn’t show it; indeed, if anything, she seemed lost in thought. No doubt lost in her own second sight. I was tempted to ask what she saw as our chances for survival, but declined. Some things were best unknown, and I knew the power of suggestion.

Instead, I said, “Your father mentioned that, in the past, your second sight was not very reliable. And yet, as far as I can tell, you have proven to be spot on. What has changed?”

She nudged her dust-covered horse a little closer to me. My horse moved to one side to make room, unfortunately, even closer to the far edge. I inadvertently gasped as the frightened mice sought refuge even higher up into my stomach.

Myrrh grinned. “Do not worry, my liege. You will not fall.”

The girl’s perceptive abilities were off the charts. I wondered if, also, she was telepathic or a mind reader. Often one with such abilities had many other abilities, too. Some of which they rarely admitted to.

The girl suddenly gave me a wry smile, and I suspected I was close in my assumption. She shrugged as if I had asked her a question, and I knew she was being coy.

You can hear my thoughts, young lady, can’t you? I thought.

Perhaps, came a small voice in the back of my mind that could have been my own, but I suspected otherwise.

You are a girl of many talents, I thought.

But this is not a talent I readily admit to, came a long string of words, and I knew now that the girl was speaking directly into my mind.

I can see why, I said. It is is better to have those around you not guard their thoughts.

A voice giggled in my head, and then said, As if they could. But, yes, mind reading has helped keep us alive, and has helped us sell a lot of cheese.

I laughed at this. Yes, indeed, knowing your customer’s set price beforehand would be invaluable.

Your secret is safe with me, I thought.

Good. This can be an invaluable service to you, as well, my lord.

Of that I had no doubt. I thought: But you have not answered my question.

It is true, came the sweetly innocent words. My talents and abilities have been spotty in the past, but they seem to be becoming more reliable. But it is like anything. On some days your swordplay might be razor sharp. On other days, you might be listless and dull. It also depends on the circumstances. In this particular case, saving Jewel’s son is of great importance to me, and so the second sight comes to me clearly and powerfully, although much remains to be seen, in more ways than one.

I thought about that, and I knew she could probably read my thoughts, but I also suspected that such mind reading was of great effort to her.

Right again, my liege. I have my own thoughts to think. There isn’t time enough in the day to constantly be aware of more than my own. And besides, I feel a particular affinity for you. You saved my family, and now you will save my future husband.

Aw, I thought, so we will be successful.

There are three likely outcomes that I can foresee, she thought. All have equal probability. Success will ultimately be determined, I believe, on your love for Jewel, your cunning, and your resourcefulness.

And perhaps you? I suggested.

Oh, I couldn’t hurt, she giggled.

We broke off our mental dialogue, and shortly, as the sun was now nearly hidden behind the western foothills, we mercifully reached the bottom. My frightened mice dropped back into their proper place.

Jewel was waiting impatiently for us in the shadows of an overhang. With her jaw set and her lips a thin line, she looked as fierce and determined as ever. I knew it was taking all of her control to wait and not to charge forward.

She was a desperate mother, but she was not foolish. From around the overhang, I saw that the narrow path opened into a wide valley floor that led directly to the Temple of the Moon. Guards were there. Many of them, in fact. Their armor and weapons gleamed in the last of the sunlight.

And high above, as if on cue, the full moon seemed to suddenly appear in the southern sky. What now?

“There’s only one way in for official visitors,” said Jewel. “And it’s heavily guarded.”

I glanced at Myrrh and I suspected she had read my thoughts, or, in the very least, surmised what I was about to ask. “I do not believe there is another entrance we can use.”

Good enough for me, but how would we get in?

Now I was certain she was reading my thoughts. Three words appeared in my mind: Wait for it.

I waited, and Jewel did so impatiently. I set a hand on her forearm and she flinched. “We will save him,” I said. “But we need patience.”

“For what?” she snapped.

And then we saw it or, rather, heard it. Coming from the valley floor to our right, heading toward the Temple of the Moon, was a group of riders on horseback. I didn’t need second sight to know who they were. Officials of some sort, here to participate in the ceremony. My anger bubbled over. They were here, of course, to witness the sacrifice of the boy. Who were these people, I did not know, obviously friends of Jewel’s ex-husband, those who hoped to share in his dark power and his supposed rise to the throne.

The party was coming around a bend, and not yet visible to the soldiers, but quite visible to us. The narrow path we had followed down was, in effect, the perfect ambush point. I secretly wondered if Myrrh had known this. I glanced at her but she was looking ahead, her eyes glazed, and I suspected her thoughts were elsewhere presently.

The ambush idea had me thinking. I was about to turn to Jewel when Myrrh’s hand snaked out and grabbed my arm. “Good idea; bad timing.”

“What are you talking about?” snapped Jewel, unaware that Myrrh and I had just communicated telepathically.

“I was just thinking out loud, Amira,” she said, addressing Jewel with her formal title. After all, if everything worked out, Jewel could very well be the girl’s mother-in-law.

Another thought for another time. I wasn’t sure whose words those were. Myrrh’s or mine.

“I sensed my lord’s desire to ambush this party and to take their place, but I sense great strength and much dark magic within this group. It would be better to wait.”

Jewel nodded suspiciously. The woman was, perhaps, more perceptive than I had given her credit for. Clearly she did not fully accept Myrrh’s explanation. When all this was said and done, I would see about convincing Myrrh to include Jewel into our small circle of telepathy.

Perhaps, came the single word.

And so we waited. The first group pushed on, while we hid in the shadows. A second group appeared. A smaller party. Indeed, there were only three of them.

This was our chance.

Chapter Twenty-four

I drew my scimitar. “Stay back,” I told Jewel and Myrrh grimly. “This may get messy.”

“Don’t,” Jewel said. “A fracas will attract attention from the guards at the temple, the last thing we want.”

“Those travelers are not going to yield their places voluntarily,” I pointed out. “This is an important event.”

“And how will we emulate them if we don’t know who they are?” Jewel asked. “The temple surely has a list.”

She had a point, unfortunately. “You have a better way?”

“I do,” Myrrh said. “I have powdered bhang my father uses for difficult negotiations. One sniff will put a man into a pleasant daze for a few minutes, during which time he will answer questions and be amenable to suggestions. We can learn what we need and be off before they realize.”

“And when they do realize, what then?” I asked dubiously. I knew of bhang, of course; it derived from hemp and had pacifying and hallucinogenic properties. It had been a palace staple when I was king, useful for making resistive maidens amenable, the beauty of it being that they seldom actually remembered what had transpired during the session. There had been the lovely chaste daughter of a visiting king from the infidel kingdom of France, fair game of course since they were not true believers, but they did have a barbarian hangup about virginity. News of my lust for her would have meant war. What a delight she had been for a night, thanks to bhang! If she remembered, she never told, and there was no war. Not something I’m proud of, and certainly not my finest hour. I had let my power and lust cloud my better judgment. My wife had not approved, obviously; true, rulers often did have a harem, and I was no different, but it had been politically dangerous, she said. She thought I should have confined my incidental passions to girls of the faith. She did have a point; infidels were socially unclean.

“By then we will be inside the temple,” Myrrh said. “The real party will be barred as impostors, since the listed envoy will already have been admitted.”

“But surely the temple authorities will be suspicious,” Jewel said.

“And admit they made a mistake?” I retorted. “Not likely. Guards who make mistakes may be required to publicly eat their own intestines.”

“Also, my father will arrive just after we do,” Myrrh said. “That will be a distraction.”

Jewel’s lips quirked. “I could get to like you, girl. You have a sensible mind.”

“That’s good,” Myrrh said. “We will have a long and close association, once the uncertainties of this night are resolved.”

“You don’t know that they will be resolved in our favor?”

“When there is the involvement of a powerful magician, I can’t be sure of anything. Reality changes in the vicinity of such men. But we have a fair chance.”

Meanwhile the party was getting close. “Get your powder ready,” I told Myrrh.

“Hail, stranger!” the leading figure called.

“Hail,” I agreed. “We must talk.” We rode toward them.

“It is a great event we anticipate,” the other said. “I am the vizier of Shams al-Din Muhammad from Egypt, come to swear fealty to the new magician-king on behalf of my lord.”

“Early subscribers will be richly rewarded,” I agreed, suppressing a surge of rage. The impostor was already accepting the fealty of my long-time allies?

Then Myrrh held up a little squeeze bag. “Hold your breath until it dissipates,” she murmured. Then she squeezed. A faint haze puffed out, wafting toward the other party. The girl had evidently made note of the breeze.

I unobtrusively held my breath, as did Jewel and Myrrh.

“They will indeed,” Shams said jovially. He took a breath. “I didn’t hear your name.” His hand rested not far from his scimitar.

Then his eyes became vague. So did those of his two companions.

I waited until the haze had passed on behind them. “Who are your companions?” I asked.

“My porter and body servant.” I saw that the porter’s horse was loaded with practical travel things like blankets and pots, and the servant’s steed carried items of tonsure and hygiene. They had probably traveled with a larger caravan most of the way, then peeled off for this private mission.

“Stay here,” I told him. That should keep this party here until the bhang wore off. Then to Jewel: “I will be the vizier from Egypt. You will be my porter, and Myrrh my body servant. Can you emulate a man?”

She brought out a handful of rouge and rubbed it across her chin so that she looked light-bearded. She tied back her hair so that it did not show. She assumed a sour look. That would do.

“Give me your vizier’s badge,” I told the man from Egypt. That would be our entry pass.

He handed it over without protest. Bhang was wonderful stuff.

We rode on toward the palace. The larger preceding party had just been processed in, and the guards were ready for us. Now I saw that they had a brace of trained dogs. That could be mischief.

One guard stepped forward to intercept us as we dismounted and turned our horses over to the waiting stablehands. “State your name, office, and identity of your companions.”

“I am the vizier of Shams al-Din Muhammad from Egypt, come to swear fealty to the new magician-king on behalf of my lord,” I said, repeating the line by rote. I could do that when I needed to; it came with having diplomatic experience. “These are my porter and body servant.” I held out my badge of authority.

The two dogs sniffed our robes. One made a little half whining sound.

Now the guard sniffed too. “Perfume!” he said. “There’s a woman nigh.”

And women were normally mere auxiliaries, not persons of power. Mischief indeed. “And what if there is?” I demanded.

“No woman enters by this gate,” the guard said. “Such lowly chattel enter only by the side door, for scullery, maid, or whore duties.”

That was the entry we had not been able to use, because any visitor approaching the servant’s door would attract unwelcome suspicion.

Jewel was swelling up, being no maid or whore. I had to defuse this in a hurry. “So my porters are women,” I said. “Also my cook and body servant. I trust no other with my personal business. They stay with me.”

But in my feigned indignation I had let my hood fall open. The guard stared at my face. “King Aladdin!”

Oh, camel crap! I would never be able to explain this away. They were of course alert for my arrival.

NO!

I recognized the mental voice. It was Myrrh.

The guard stood as if bemused. Then he blinked. His features clarified. “State your name, office, and identity of your companions.”

It was the opening challenge. I realized that Myrrh had discovered and invoked another magic ability: blotting out a thought. She had erased the guard’s recognition of me, and perhaps also the awareness of the gender of my two companions. We could do this over, correctly.

But we were running out of time, because now the party we had replaced was approaching. We had to get clear before they caught up and gave us the lie.

And another rider was coming from the other direction. That was Sa’ood, bringing the cheese and chocolate. I saw that the guard knew his mission and wanted to get clear of us. If we could just oblige him in time.

PASS, VIZIER OF EGYPT. That was Myrrh again, projecting a thought.

“Pass, vizier of Egypt,” the guard said formally, not questioning what he took to be his own thought.

We stepped forward, passing through the dread portal of the Temple of the Moon as the guards addressed the other arrivals.

Now it was time for the hard part of our mission. Before they caught on to our presence, and the dung hit the wall.

Chapter Twenty-five

We joined a long receiving line that wound slowly through a stunning stone temple carved from the face of the cliff.

I had little time to admire the marvelous feat of human engineering. Instead, I was alert for an opportunity to slip away. Behind us, I heard a small commotion, and I knew the real vizier of Egypt had arrived. It would only be a matter of moments before they would come looking for us; in the very least, to straighten out the confusion.

That guard had readily recognized me. He wouldn’t be the only one. Many here would have known me back in the day, which was why I kept my head down, permitting the headcloth I was wearing to partially obscure my features. Mercifully, the temple was mostly dark, lit only with flickering torches along the walls. Sounds echoed from seemingly everywhere, the result of the acoustics of the massive room. Amazingly, there seemed to be rooms within rooms. Perhaps the temple had been originally carved from a natural cavern and tunnel network, which made more sense, and would take less time.

The line, I saw, plunged through a pointed archway and into a brightly lit chamber. Firelight danced within. Smoke drifted through the room, stinging the eyes. People were scattered about here and there, talking amiably. Perhaps these folk had already greeted whoever was waiting at the end of the line. And I was beginning to suspect I knew who was waiting at the end of the line: Jewel’s ex-husband.

You would be correct, sire, came the words in my mind.

Have you been listening the whole time? I asked.

Your thoughts and mine, in this situation and at this time, are unusually connected. Perhaps because we are going to need each other if we are to survive this.

Fine, I thought. Do you sense where the boy is?

He is beyond, deeper in the tunnel system. My liege, I sense great magic here. More than I have ever felt before. There is something powerful in this temple.

Zeyn was here, of course. Hidden perhaps. Or with the boy.

I turned to Jewel, who was looking increasingly agitated. I didn’t blame her. The voices were growing louder behind us, as the real vizier had clearly lost his composure. Probably not a good idea to lose one’s cool in a secret blood ceremony of heads of state. Someone was going to get their own head chopped off, and it wasn’t going to be mine.

“Let’s go,” I said, and took Jewel’s arm.

We casually stepped out of line and worked our way over to where other officials were chatting quietly under a flickering torch. Although this was a ceremony of the darkest magic, which included a human sacrifice, it was also deeply political. No head of state would be here in any official capacity. Indeed, a ceremony like this would only attract those who wished to undermine the current rulers, those who wished to align themselves with a dark power, hoping to gain such power themselves. Perhaps there were some here who had no clue what was going on. Perhaps these would be sacrificed as well. I did not know, and could not, but I doubted that all was as it seemed.

You are closer than you think, my liege, came the words. Although I am young and do not fully understand the politics of man, I do know there are some here who are unaware of the full implications tonight will bring.

And what are those implications? I thought.

Tonight, a ruler will be named and a great magician revealed.

Unless we stop them, I thought.

But she said nothing, frowning. Perhaps even she was uncertain of her own prognostications. Finally her words appeared in my mind: We will see, my liege.

“Pretend we’re chatting casually,” I whispered, adopting a formal and relaxed demeanor.

“Of course, my liege,” said Jewel, trailing me slightly, as did Myrrh. To any and all concerned, we appeared as any other small group as we awaited the grand ceremony that would be starting soon. She added, “And what do you propose we do?”

“We need to find another way out of here.”

From behind us, the vizier raised his voice, demanding something or other. This was followed by a long, gurgling scream, and the vizier demanded no more.

Now guards pushed past us, running toward the entrance. It would be only a matter of minutes before they came looking for us. Even routine questioning would be catastrophic for our quest. No doubt I would be recognized instantly, and I was certain Myrrh’s mind-trick wouldn’t work on very many people at once.

You are correct, sire.

Someday, you are going to have to get out of my mind.

Someday, sire.

The guards, I saw, had abandoned their post in front of a narrow doorway. To where it led, I had no clue, but it was the only alternative we had to the reception line entering the main chamber, where, I assumed, the sacrifice would take place.

Quickly, I steered Jewel and Myrrh through the doorway and, with a discreet look around to verify we had gone unnoticed, into a very dark passageway. And since the girl had not protested, I assumed I had chosen the correct path. Either way, I trusted my instincts in such matters. Perhaps well-honed instincts were just as good as a powerful sixth sense.

Or perhaps, came her innocent words, they are one and the same.

At the far end of the dark tunnel there was a bright light. Behind us, through the tunnel opening, I heard muffled voices. Had we been seen entering through the doorway after all? I didn’t know, but I wasn’t going to wait to find out.

We hurried down the tunnel, moving blindly in the dark. Mercifully the passageway was smooth underfoot, with no irregularities or random overhangs to knock us unconscious. I also noted the absence of cobwebs. The tunnel had been used recently. For what purpose, I did not know.

And what was waiting for us at the far end, I did not know either. But we were about to find out.

Chapter Twenty-six

I paused, my natural caution coming into play. “Myrrh, can you fathom what’s ahead?”

The girl concentrated. “Just a matron, in charge of domestic arrangements for the boy. Food, bedding, waste disposal, and she alerts the authorities if anything unusual occurs. She’s really frustrated.”

“So my son is close,” Jewel said eagerly.

“Yes. But there are other guards at his chamber. We can’t just take out the matron and go to him.”

I zeroed in on something potentially useful. “Why is she frustrated? No virile man in her life?”

Myrrh exchanged a glance with Jewel. I needed no mind reading to understand it: why did men always think of sex? They never thought to ask the obvious corollary: why didn’t women? Then Myrrh answered. “No, sire. She’s frustrated that the fine hot meal she prepared is getting cold, because the cheese and chocolate are late arriving. She can’t even reheat it until she knows the cheese is there. She’s steaming; she could just about heat the food without fire.”

Jewel glanced at me. “She has reason. So what’s the plan, genius?”

It burst upon me. “You and I need to hide until we can reach your son unobserved. We need simple menial tasks to mask our real identities, since they are searching for us. That search is what’s messing up the delivery of the meal. So I will be the garbage disposal lout, you will be the food deliverer, and Myrrh the messenger girl.” I looked at Myrrh. “You can make the matron accept that as reasonable?”

“Yes. But I’d better be the deliverer. If Jewel tries to take the food in, those guards—well, they’re men. To them, serving wenches are for them to play with while they wait on the boy eating his meal.”

“I can handle men,” Jewel said grimly.

“But you won’t have any good place to dispose of the bodies, and when they don’t make their regular reports, the authorities will know and converge.”

Jewel nodded. “Point made. I’ll help heat the food. You deliver, and tell my son that his rescue is nigh.”

“I will try.”

“You can whisper so the guards don’t hear.”

“It’s not that. It’s that I have touched his mind. He has been—his mind has been clouded so he doesn’t know he’s a prisoner. If I try to tell him, he may alert the guards. Then I’ll become their diversion.”

That made Jewel pause. “Yes, of course they would lie to him. But can you communicate mentally, to tell him what really happened?”

“I can try, if I can make him pay attention to me.”

“Oh come on, Myrrh! You’re a woman.”

Now Myrrh nodded. “Or I will be soon. And he will soon be a man. Maybe I can put the thought of our future love in his mind, so he focuses properly on me.”

“Do it. If there’s one thing that can cut through a man’s clouds, it’s the suggestion of the favor of a woman. Put the hook in; lead him by the nose.” Her mouth quirked. “Or whatever.”

“As you have been leading Aladdin,” Myrrh agreed. “Now I see the way.”

I had to agree. I had picked up on Jewel’s sexual ambiance the moment I first saw her, and she had kept my close attention ever since. “Then we have our plan,” I said. “Except for one thing: how will we know when to strike, as we won’t be with Myrrh when she persuades your son?”

“I will connect your minds to mine,” Myrrh said. “I believe I can do that now, because I am coming to know you well. So you will both see and hear what I am perceiving, and will know when the time is right.”

Then she demonstrated by showing us ourselves through her eyes, standing there in the tunnel. I looked like a disreputable tramp and Jewel’s face was still smudged to make her look masculine. Myrrh could indeed do it.

Jewel and I both nodded. Our plan was complete.

Reminded of her appearance, Jewel found a cloth and wiped her face, becoming feminine again. “I’d rather be a woman anyway,” she murmured. “But you look perfect as a lout.”

“Thank you,” I said ironically.

We marched on into the light.

The matron looked up. “At last! The chocolate!”

“Not yet,” Jewel said. “Strangers crashed the gate, and the guards are searching for them, disrupting everything, and the schedule got messed up. But it’s on the way. We’re the service crew.”

“Well go back and get it!” the matron snapped.

“Go get it, girl,” Jewel told Myrrh.

“And you, wench, get the hearth fire blazing,” the matron said to Jewel. She turned to me. “And you haul off the refuse, lout.” The woman was evidently accustomed to handling desultory servants.

Myrrh obediently went back down the passage. I oriented on the refuse can, identifying it by the smell. Rotting food, urine, turds, and whatever else that was spoiling: a potent combination. No one would inspect me too closely, because of the stench. I picked it up and started carrying it toward the tunnel.

“Not that way, idiot!” the matron snapped. “Use the back passage to the service entrance.” She gestured to another tunnel.

I reversed course and entered the new tunnel. It was gloomy, but burning torches were spaced along it so I could see. This was exactly what I wanted: to explore the back passages we might need for escape, in case anything went wrong. Or, rather, when everything went wrong.

The images from Myrrh’s eyes had faded when she focused on the matron, to make sure the woman saw nothing wrong with our presence. Now they resumed, and though I still had my own vision, as I trudged slowly along the passage with my stinking load, I also saw a view of another passage. Myrrh was coming to the light of the main hall.

People were still running around in a kind of organized chaos, but now a guard was bringing in the cheese and chocolate. I could tell because Myrrh peeked at the mind of the guard to verify it. “I’ll take that,” she said briskly as he came up.

“But I am to deliver it only to—”

“Me,” she said, taking it. The guard looked perplexed, and faintly dazed, and I knew she had sent him a thought. That was marvelous power she had!

Myrrh carried the package back through the tunnel to the matron. “Let’s see it,” the matron said, having evidently learned never to take anything for granted. She checked, and saw that it was good yak cheese, with a vial of brown syrup. She broke off a fragment of cheese and tasted it, verifying its quality, and shook a drop of sauce onto her palm, touching her tongue to it. She was thorough, the kind of servant a king could trust. “It will do.”

Jewel had the fire going, and the main part of the meal was hot. The matron, responsive to a command she did not know she was receiving, prepared a platter with the several items upon it, and gave it to Myrrh. “Take it in to the brat, and see that he eats it.” She winked. “There’s a bit of bhang in the soup; he won’t be any trouble for the night’s event.”

Jewel and Myrrh must have kept straight faces, because the matron evinced no alarm. She had no notion how she was flirting with death in this temple of death. Jewel would gladly have gutted her, had she been able to do so with impunity. But I knew the woman was acting under orders. Just as bhang made a difficult maiden amenable in bed, it made a victim amenable to sacrifice, to a degree, depending on the dose. It was a prudent measure.

Myrrh walked on into the passage leading to the boy’s prison, carrying the covered platter. I continued hauling my garbage. I no longer saw Jewel, because Myrrh was no longer with her, but I knew she was busy being an obedient servant. She was doing what was necessary, biding her time until Myrrh gave the call. I knew she was seeing the same view I was seeing, as Myrrh progressed toward the chamber.

And there it was: a reasonably comfortable room with a bed, potty, dice and other games, a half-finished clay sculpture of a woman that looked rather like Jewel, two alert guards, and a sleeping boy. This was my first view of him. He was about eleven years old and fairly handsome.

What’s his name? Myrrh’s thought came.

Duban. That was Jewel’s answer, which I heard as Myrrh’s mind received it.

“Duban,” Myrrh called softly.

The boy woke. “Who are you?” he demanded irritably.

“I am the girl you will marry,” she said, still softly so that the guards would not overhear.

“When camels sprout wings,” he said. “What have you brought me? More piss and dung from the battleaxe?”

Myrrh brought the platter up and set it on the foot of the bed. “This is your last meal.”

“Very well. You delivered it. Not get your scrawny behind out of here.”

“You won’t find it scrawny when we marry. I am required to stay here and make sure you eat your meal, so you will be ready for the sacrifice.”

Duban focused on her. “Why are you saying these things? You’re just one more silly servant girl.”

Myrrh leaned close to him. “Your mother sent me.”

“You’re not even a good liar! What does that female dog want with me, after deserting me for two years?”

“She didn’t desert you. You were stolen from her, and she has not rested since. She has come to rescue you from the horror that awaits you.” Myrrh glanced at the sculpture. “And you have not forgotten her.”

“I’ve had enough of this nonsense.” He turned his face toward the guards, about to summon them.

Myrrh caught his head between her hands and kissed him firmly on the mouth. It was a long kiss, and she must have augmented it with a thought, because when she let him go, he looked flushed and dazed. The guards, seeing it happen, laughed. They evidently liked seeing a scullery maid tease the prisoner.

Soon Duban caught his breath. “Who are you?” he asked again, this time with genuine interest. Kisses could be potent persuaders, as I knew from Jewel.

Myrrh took his hand in hers. “I am Myrrh, your future wife. I can read minds. I know they plan to kill you tonight, a blood sacrifice for the ascension of the djinn Zeyn to mortal status so he can take over the throne. This is your last meal, and it is spiked with bhang. Don’t eat anything but the yak cheese and chocolate.”

“What do you know of yak cheese and chocolate?”

“You suspected their fell design. That’s why you asked for those rare foods. Your mother got the chocolate with the help of the djinn of the lamp. Now you must come with us into the lamp, so you can escape the dread fate they plan for you.”

Duban shook his head. “This is unbelievable, yet I am starting to believe you. But why do they want me dead? I am nobody important.”

“You are to be the son of a king,” she said persuasively. “And a great magician. I can feel that potential lurking in you. It needs only to be aroused and trained. They mean to kill you before that power manifests, so that there will be no possible competition for the usurper king.”

“I’m no magician!”

“Not yet. But close. You must have felt it in you, like a rising tide. I can help you achieve it.”

“I don’t believe it!” Then he paused. “You are in my mind! Doing something! Like uncovering a buried chamber. But I don’t want you messing in there. Stay out of my mind!”

Myrrh caught his face again and kissed him.

“You’re a sorceress!” he said weakly.

“No. Only a girl who can read minds, and some of the future. Look into my mind.” She continued holding his hand.

He gazed into her eyes. “I believe you,” he said. “You say my mother sent you?”

“Yes. To rescue you. She is here, and will come to you soon. But you must allow me to help you, because there is powerful evil magic here.”

“I—I—maybe I will. There is something about you.”

“It is my burgeoning love for you, coloring my mind when I touch yours. Let me see if I can rouse your own magical powers.”

“Yes,” Duban agreed faintly. It was evident that he was beginning to feel some similar emotion toward her, and wanted to be close to her. The girl had learned well from Jewel about managing men.

“I think not.”

Both children froze, then turned to face the new voice.

It was the djinn Zeyn, and he was glowering.

I reverted to my own awareness. We had to act immediately, or all was lost.

Chapter Twenty-seven

I rubbed my ring. “Faddy!”

There was no more hiding the fact we were here, and even if Zeyn had the ability to pinpoint the presence of another djinn, we would be on the move. At least, that was my plan, as feeble as it was.

A mist formed in front of me, and rapidly took on shape. My old friend and djinn appeared. He bowed slightly, although he had not fully materialized.

“I’ll dispense with the pleasantries,” said Faddy, “and tell you that you have just alerted Lord Zeyn of your exact location.”

“Lord Zeyn is busy with Duban and Myrrh.”

“Perhaps, master. But he is also a great magician, fully capable of wreaking havoc in more places than one. Rest assured he has already alerted Ibrahim’s soldiers.”

Ibrahim was, of course, Jewel’s ex-husband. “I’m aware that there is great danger at every turn, Faddy, which is why I have summoned you.”

“But my very presence is a beacon—”

“I am willing to take that chance. Find me the fastest and safest route to Jewel and the others.”

He bowed and immediately disappeared. I hastily set aside the can of refuse and drew my scimitar, listening, certain I had heard boots running from one of the side tunnels. I started back the way I had come when a voice appeared in my ear.

“Not that way, master. Guards are coming. There is a side tunnel that will get you there, albeit quite a good deal longer.”

I needed to get to Jewel and the others as soon as possible. “How many soldiers?”

“A half dozen. Too many for even you, master.”

“Could you cause a distraction?”

“I can do whatever is ordered of me.”

I shook my head angrily. Damn the ifrits and their literal translations. “Would a distraction work?”

“Hard to know, master. Sometimes you just have to try it and see.”

Good point. Nothing is written in stone, and it was high time I started trusting my own instincts. “Mimic my voice and the sounds of running feet down a side tunnel. Even if only half peel off, I’ll take my chances with three men.”

Faddy bowed and departed and I continued down the tunnel. As I ran, I searched for the faint second sight Myrrh had provided me for my benefit, but the mirage-like image was gone. Evidently, Myrrh was not a great magician and was incapable of doing two things at once, like fending off Zeyn, and providing Jewel and me a glimpse into her mind.

I heard men shouting and the sound of boots running on stone. The sounds faded away, and as I turned a corner I was faced with two heavily armed men. I could handle two men.

Without hesitation or thought, I lunged forward, aiming the point of my scimitar for the nearest guard’s throat. He parried, knocking my blade away...and directly into the chest of his fellow guard. The man screamed and dropped his weapon, grabbing at the blade. I kicked him away and pulled free the blood-soaked end of my sword. As I did so, the first guard was already swinging his own steel, I leaned back and took the point of his weapon across my cheek. Blood poured free and I knew the cut would be bad. For now, though, I could give a damn. Already leaning back, I dropped to a knee and thrust my own blade up hard. The equivalent of an uppercut. My sword struck home in his groin and carried up into his bowels and no doubt all the way to his heart. He was dead by the time I kicked him away and freed my blade.

I was running again down a lighted tunnel, the smell of blood already strong in the air. At another corner, I paused and listened. Already I was losing my bearings. There were shouts from somewhere, but nothing nearby. I wasn’t worried about getting lost. Faddy had his purposes, and once such purpose was to be my eyes and ears. With Faddy around, I was never truly lost.

I reached back and pulled around the satchel I had been carrying. I opened it and withdrew the magical lamp. Three rubs later and black smoke poured from the small opening. The black smoke never fully took place. Lamprey didn’t always take solid form and now that he was recovering the tortures he’d endured, it seemed less likely.

“I need your help, Lamprey.”

“I imagine you do.”

“Do you know the situation?”

“Have you forgotten that I was traveling along your back, master? I hear what you hear.”

“Then you know that Zeyn is here.”

“I would know that anyway. I feel him, as he now feels me. Even at this moment he is casting around, searching for me.”

“Can you shield yourself somehow?”

“I already have, but my appearance alone has alerted him.”

“Fine,” I said. Somewhere someone screamed. It sounded like a girl. But it was impossible to tell with all these blasted tunnels. “How powerful is Zeyn?”

“One of the most powerful djinns.”

“More powerful than you?”

“We have similar power, master. Except I am bound to you and he is bound to no one. Such freedom gives him more leverage, which is how he captured me.”

“He answers to no one.”

“Exactly. Whereas I must answer to you.”

“Then I command you to stop him. I command you to kill him.”

Now Lamprey solidified some more. The djinn, who was tall and gaunt, adopted a look of grave regret. “Perhaps if I was not weakened I could have carried out your command. Perhaps. With Zeyn there are no guarantees, as he is cunning and known for his use of powerful dark magicks.”

“How is it that such a being is in our world?”

“He was summoned by Ibrahim. Djinns cannot voluntarily operate in the mortal realms without a host. Little does Ibrahim know the powerful forces he’s dealing with.”

“In essence, we have one of Djinnland’s most powerful magicians loosed in our world.”

“In essence. But his presence is still limited to Ibrahim’s invocations.”

“So, although he’s not bound to Ibrahim, he can only manifest when invoked.”

“True.”

“Which is why he’s seeking a mortal body.”

“True again. With such a body, he will have free reign in your mortal realm, bound to no one, although he seeks to control you.”

I already knew much of this, but it was nice knowing what I was fully up against. I thought hard, even as a another wavering scream echoed down the hallway. In that moment, Myrrh’s second sight appeared in my thoughts, and I saw an image of Jewel being dragged off, bloodied and beaten. Myrrh and the boy were being led away, hauled along by brutish soldiers. Seeing Jewel bloodied and nearly unconscious—a mother fighting for the life of her child, and a woman I had come to have more feelings for than I ever thought possible—awakened a blinding rage within me. The image faded just as I saw Myrrh plunge through an arched opening...and into the main sanctuary. Men were everywhere, having formed a circle around a bloodied altar. Jewel fought again, and a man leveled a kick square into her side, sending her tumbling over the smooth stone floor.

And then the image wavered and disappeared. Myrrh had given me the best image she could, without her own fear and pain disrupting the transmission of it.

“Lamprey,” I growled, fighting to control myself. “Can you at least slow Zeyn down?”

He hesitated, and even through my anger I sensed the reason for his reluctance. I sensed I was putting him at great risk, and possibly even exposing him to death. But he was bound to me, ordered to do my bidding.

“I can do my best, master.”

“I do not want any harm to befall you, my friend,” I said. “But I need your help. I must insist on it.”

He seemed to take in some air, and then nodded. “Of course, master.”

“Begone,” I said. “And I wish you godspeed.”

And with that he was gone. I next ordered Faddy to guide me through the tunnels, and he did just that. Shortly, I was standing just inside a smaller archway, looking out into the main sanctuary. And what I saw made my blood boil.

The boy was being forced onto an altar, while an immaculately groomed man in an ornate robe watched icily from a raised stone platform. Ibrahim, I assumed. The boy’s own father. Jewel was on her knees nearby, bleeding and weeping, held down by two guards. She struggled against them, and I knew it was only a matter of time before they silenced her with a quick blade across her throat. Myrrh was nearby as well, restrained by a guard who had a fistful of her hair. And standing in the shadows behind Ibrahim was a massive figure. A figure who was looking increasingly pleased. It was Zeyn.

Where Lamprey had gone, I didn’t know. But I had just decided to blindly rush to the boy’s aid, when words appeared in mind.

Patience, my liege.

It was Myrrh.

I am out of patience, I thought desperately, and the boy has no time.

Your djinn is near.

As they began to strap the boy down and as Jewel let out a great wail, something caught my eye. Smoke from the torches seemed to be congealing in the air above the proceedings. Indeed, what had once been wispy black smoke now took on the shape of a man. No, not a man.

Lamprey.

No one seemed to notice. No one, that is, except for Zeyn. The massive djinn stepped out of the shadows, looking up.

I looked up, too, and saw that the image of Lamprey was gone, having been replaced by a swirling vortex of black smoke. The smoke soon took on another shape. A much larger and far different shape.

A moment later, a black dragon bellowed loudly, blasting fire, and all hell broke loose.

Chapter Twenty-eight

The sight of the black dragon terrified the assembled spectators, who fled madly toward the main exit, trampling each other. But the guards, more disciplined, held their positions. Realizing that they could not get out, the throng of people paused restlessly.

Zeyn glanced around, then beckoned Ibrahim, Jewel’s ex, and Duban’s father. The man came forward immediately.

The guards continued to push the boy to the altar. “Father!” he cried as Ibrahim approached. “Save me!”

“Prepare him,” Ibrahim said curtly to the guards.

“Father!” the boy repeated. “Don’t let them do this to me!”

“Stop being a brat and get on that altar,” the man snapped.

“Father!” Duban cried a third time. “Don’t you understand? They mean to kill me!”

So he was starting to see the light, thanks to what Myrrh had told him.

“It’s the necessary ritual sacrifice. We’ve been preparing for this event for years. Why do you think I brought you here? It’s a rare honor for you.”

The boy looked at his father with horror, crushed by this betrayal. He stopped resisting the guards as they tied him down on the altar.

Myrrh’s thought came: He thought his father loved him.

Meanwhile Zeyn was dissolving into smoke, which formed into another dragon. This one was bright red, with fire not only on its breath, but radiating from its torso and tail. It looked healthier than the black dragon, unfortunately.

I remained where I was, as no one had noticed me yet, and the sacrifice seemed not to be immediate. If Lamprey defeated Zeyn, that would change the picture. If not, I would make a desperate effort to save Duban from the knife.

The two dragons circled each other in the air. The chamber was so big that there was room for even such huge flying creatures to maneuver. The people below, realizing that the dragons were not hunting them, gazed up, watching. This was a spectacle seldom seen by mortals.

The black dragon lunged, sending a blast of fire at the red dragon’s tail. But the other whipped the tail clear, and sent a blast of its own that just missed Lamprey’s head. Stroke and counter-stroke, and the advantage seemed to be with Zeyn.

Now the red dragon fired another blast at Lamprey’s head. That seemed to be a tactical error, as Lamprey readily whipped his head out of the way. But then the red dragon shot forward, its jaws snapping at the black dragon’s momentarily exposed neck. I realized two things: this was a contest of maneuvering more than one of fire, with the more adroit tactician gaining the advantage, such as singeing the other. And that Zeyn had set up a two strike combination, with first the fire to make Lamprey react, then the teeth to catch him when he did. A chomp on the neck could sever vital nerves and finish the fight immediately.

But Lamprey was evidently no amateur in such duels. Not only did his neck avoid the closing jaws, the tip of his tail snapped forward with a whip-like crack across the red snout, just missing an eye. Lamprey had his own combinations. Had that whip scored, Zeyn would have been half blinded.

After that the red dragon was more cautious about fancy ploys, being evidently outmatched in that respect. It was looking better for Lamprey. So why had he hesitated about getting into this duel?

Then I saw that he was slowing. At full strength he might be the superior dragon, but he had been weakened, and now was running out of energy. Zeyn’s attacks were getting stronger, while Lamprey’s defenses were getting weaker. It was not after all a fair fight.

Now the red dragon made an all-out charge with fire and teeth. The black dragon could not fend it off. He would soon be vanquished, and then dead. Escape! I thought to him, knowing he remained attuned to my commands. Hide! Get out of here and save your hide any way you can!

Defeated, Lamprey turned tail literally and fled. He flew down the main passage and out the front gate, crashing through the barriers, the red dragon hot in pursuit. It was an ignominious rout. No one else knew that it was not fear, but my order, that brought it on.

The red dragon pursued the black dragon on out of the temple. The audience relaxed, for being this close to battling dragons was not the safest situation. Any missed blast of fire or falling body could wipe out many people.

It was not enough time, Myrrh’s thought came. Duban’s magician power is looming close, but he must rouse it himself. He isn’t trying. He doesn’t believe me and doesn’t care.

The guards were completing the tie-down of the sacrificial boy. “Resist!” Jewel called to him. “Fight them! Get off the altar!”

“Kill her!” Ibrahim screamed. One guard lifted his scimitar.

“No!” Duban cried, lifting his head so he could see her. “She’s my mother!” He might not think much of her, but he knew she did not deserve death.

Ibrahim’s lip curled. “She’s a has-been slut.”

Duban’s angry, knowing it’s a slur, but it’s not enough.

Two guards hauled the struggling Jewel to her feet and held her helpless for the attack by the third. It occurred to me that it must have been much the same way when the other guards raped her. No one or two men could have handled her, but three was too much for her to resist.

Suddenly I was in motion, heedless of the bleeding wound on my head. I charged across the hall to Jewel, swinging my own scimitar. I lopped off the head of the armed guard before he even saw me, and turned on the other. He was just drawing his weapon when I cut off his sword arm. He abruptly lost interest in combat. The third, coward that he was, was hastily backing off.

But now Ibrahim was striding across, drawing his own scimitar. “Beware!” Jewel hissed. “He’s an expert!”

Oh, was he? Then this should be fun. I whirled on him, my blade swinging viciously. I wanted to end it with the first cut.

I’m telling Duban that you are the king, come to rescue him and marry his mother. He accepts that, but doesn’t care.

Ibrahim met me coolly, effortlessly turning aside my blade. He was indeed expert. We fenced, and soon I recognized his style. He had been taught by a master. But like all styles, it had its liabilities. Few would ever live long enough to discover them, but I had been taught by a better master and already knew them.

Yet Duban, knowing now what his father did, hopes he’ll lose. The anger he felt when he thought his mother deserted him has transferred to his father, the true betrayer.

I fenced imperfectly, seeming to be not Ibrahim’s equal in skill. My ragged clothing and blood-soaked face surely contributed to the impression. He recognized his supposed superiority, and another sneer curled his lip. He thought he had an easy victory. Overconfidence can be deadly, especially when not justified. I made an error of form, laying myself open to the most devastating cut in the arsenal, and of course he took it, not even thinking about it; it was an automatic response. That was both an asset and liability: asset when speed counted most, liability when it was a trap.

You are not impressing Duban.

I lurched away, barely avoiding the slash, my weapon dropping low. He strode after me, eager to finish it. And the curve of my scimitar came up between his legs, hard, slicing into his groin from below.

He stood there a moment before he realized that he was finished. He had fallen for the ancient defeated-duffer ruse and was done for. Then he realized, and collapsed in blood. He would be dead before any surgeon could help.

“Good show!” Jewel cried. But more guards were converging. More than I could handle.

Then the red dragon returned, snorting fire. It was evident from his annoyance that he had not nailed his opponent, but lost him in the great outdoors. Probably Lamprey had changed form to an invisible gnat or desert toad and escaped detection. I was relieved.

The dragon dissolved into smoke, which coalesced into the djinn Zeyn. “Do not harm the man,” he said. “Immobilize him. He is King Aladdin, to be my puppet ruler after this night, lending legitimacy to my assumption of power.”

Duban doesn’t like that. He thought you were a good king.

Well, bless the boy! I was beginning to like him.

Guards piled on me. I did not resist, as it would be impossible to overwhelm them all; I needed to wait for a better time.

“What of the woman?” a guard asked.

“Save her too. She may become my puppet queen. Ibrahim had abysmal judgment in most things, but had a flash of taste when he married her. Then he reverted to form, and dumped her for a younger tease. She should make a fine bedmate, for a while, once she has been declawed.”

Duban really doesn’t like that. Now he knows his mother was the one who truly loved him.

Guards surrounded Jewel, and she submitted, guided by my example. She had been picking up Myrrh’s thoughts too.

“She’s my mother!” Duban protested.

“Fancy that.” Zeyn returned to the alter and drew the sacrificial knife. “Do you have any other foolish last words before I send you to Hades?”

Now Jewel struggled, but to no avail.

Myrrh, I thought. What do you have for us?

I am still trying to evoke Duban’s magic, but he doesn’t believe in it. He is also still a bit ambivalent about his mother. He feels betrayed and defeated; I can’t evoke his deeper passion.

Passion will do it?

Maybe. That or outrage. It’s the only chance.

Zeyn was lifting the knife, intoning the ritual for sacrifice. Duban was not trying to protest any more.

I suffered a flash of genius. Connect Duban to Jewel’s mind.

Why? He doesn’t fully believe she loves him. After his father’s betrayal, he hesitates to believe anyone can truly be trusted, regardless what they say.

Just do it. Now!

Zeyn continued the ritual. There was very little time left.

I became aware of the hall as seen through Jewel’s eyes. I saw Duban look up, surprised. The connection had been made.

“Jewel,” I called. “How do you feel about your son?”

Her surge of feeling was answer enough. “I love him.” That could no longer be doubted, because it was direct emotion. Now Duban knew.

That set up the real question. “What happened when Ibrahim’s men first took you captive?”

She did not answer; it was not something she cared to share with others. But her mind could not help focusing on it now that I had reminded her. Suddenly I saw her terrible memory, of being held by two guards while the third ripped away her clothing, then his own, revealing his hard erection. She screamed and fought, but they held her secure while he came at her and violently raped her. The outrage and pain of the violation suffused the memory of it. That was just the first rape, followed immediately by others as the guards swapped places, each hornier than the last, turned on as much by what they were seeing as by their own lust. I saw and felt it, for the connection included her savage emotion. No wonder she had later gutted those criminals!

And her son Duban saw and felt it all, in cruelly unsparing detail.

So close! Now he understands completely, and is outraged. His power is rising.

But was there time?

Zeyn finished his intonation and brought the knife to Duban’s throat.

There was what felt like an explosion. Zeyn, closest to the boy, was blown away, stunned. He landed on the floor on his back.

Duban sat up and flexed his arms. The stout cords binding him snapped. He flung out one arm in a theatrical gesture. There was a blinding flash of sheer power. The guards holding me and Jewel fell down as if clubbed, but we were untouched. This was magic indeed!

The boy ran to his mother, crying. She put her arms about him and held him close. He had erupted in outrage and found his power, but for the moment he was just a boy again.

That did it, Myrrh thought, satisfied.

The new Magician had finally been evoked.

Chapter Twenty-nine

I looked to where Zeyn had fallen, but the djinn was no where to be found. Had he died? Or had he departed back to Djinnland? I secretly hoped the foul djinn was meeting his maker; after all, djinns, like mankind, must account for their actions before Allah.

Seeing the ferocious power of the boy, I could see why Zeyn had sought to destroy him. And the djinn would have succeeded if not for the girl.

Sword in hand, I stepped over the fallen guards, most of whom still appeared to be alive. As I strode over to Jewel and Duban, I caught sight of many confused and shocked faces huddled along the far walls. Surely most of them had thought they were here only for their filthy blood ceremony, not the supernatural spectacle they had witnessed.

Myrrh broke free from the guard and dashed over to Jewel and Duban. As Jewel reached out and hugged the young girl, I soon found myself standing in the center of the chamber. Here, just moments earlier, two dragons had battled high in the air above. A sight I would not soon forget.

I paused in this sanctuary, not two feet from the altar where the boy’s blood would surely have been spilled in the name of some arcane dark god. What entity could bestow a physical body to Zeyn, I did not know, and I hoped I would never find out.

I had everyone’s attention, from Jewel and the kids, to the guards and the other attendees. A dark alliance was to be forged here tonight, of that I had no doubt, with Zeyn having designs to rule all. Everyone here had come to witness a human sacrifice, and for that my blood boiled.

Not everyone, my liege, came Myrrh’s words into my mind. As I scan their thoughts, there are some here who did not know what they were getting themselves into.

I nodded, suddenly aware that many had been duped tonight. Zeyn was a cunning enemy. He had successfully used Ibrahim’s influence to orchestrate tonight’s events. But little did Ibrahim know that Zeyn had no use for him and would have disposed of him if all had gone according to plan.

And he would have disposed of one other, my lord. King Huran is here himself.

Oh? I thought, suddenly very curious; after all, Huran had been my first in command, and I had known him to be a fair and just man, which is why I had entrusted my kingdom to him.

He still is, my lord. The king is being held prisoner very near where we found my future husband. In fact, King Huran is unaware of the recent events and is certain he is next to be sacrificed.

I rubbed my ring.

“Master?” Faddy words appeared instantly in my ear.

“King Huran is being held prisoner here,” I said quietly, sub-vocalizing my words. “Find him, free him, and bring him to me.”

“As you wish, master.”

With Faddy gone, I spun my sword once, twice, letting the torchlight play on its smooth, blood-stained surface. I turned in a small circle and took in the entire room. All eyes were on me; something I was accustomed to. I noticed some edging toward the exits, the guards included. The night, obviously, had not gone as planned.

“No one leaves,” I said loudly, my voice reverberating in the cavernous room. “Unless you wish to meet my dragon again.”

That stopped them. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen, but before anything did, I wanted King Huran by my side. I caught Jewel’s eye as she held her son close. Tears streamed down her face and I did not blame her. Her love for her son reminded me of my own loss, but I fought back my own pain.

He’s coming now, reported Myrrh.

Indeed, I could hear the echoing of running feet and a moment later my good friend and confidant appeared in the sanctuary. He blinked hard, taking in the scene. He looked the worse for wear; indeed, he too had suffered torture of one sort or another. He was bloodied and dressed in ragged clothing. Those standing in the shadows recognized him immediately. After all, he had been their king for many years while I had been in my self-exile. A murmur arose and then heads began to bow. Confused, Huran continued to scan the crowd. Surely he thought this was a prank, perhaps a final humiliation before he was sacrificed alongside the boy.

And then he spotted me. “Aladdin?” he asked, his voice weak.

“The one and only, my good friend.”

We moved toward each other and embraced warmly, aware that all eyes were still on us. Also from the shadows I saw another man moving, Sa’ood. I nodded toward him and he immediately dashed over to his daughter and hugged her tightly.

“They were going to kill me,” said Huran. “I presume you saved my hide.”

“Again,” I said.

He laughed, but there was little humor in the sound. I could only imagine what he must have endured as a prisoner. He continued scanning the crowd. “I recognize many,” he said. “Traitors, I presume.”

“Again, you presume correctly. Some, but not all.”

“So what is stopping them from killing us now?” asked the reigning king.

“They fear you and me...and perhaps some of the friends I brought along.”

“But I see no friends.”

“Ah, and those are scariest of all.”

“You speak in riddles, Aladdin.”

“I will explain all soon enough,” I said. “But, for now, we have work to do.”

“No, my old friend. I do not have work to do. You have work to do.”

“I do not understand....”

“Then let me spell it out for you, King Aladdin. I’ve had enough of the job. The petty quarreling, the court politics, the backstabbing, the intrigue, the pomp and circumstance, the lies and jealousy.”

“Do not make it sound so glamorous,” I said, laughing lightly, although my eyes continued scanning the mostly submissive crowd.

“I am a warrior, Aladdin. A general. I long for the battlefield, not the ballrooms. I long to hold cold steel in my hand, not the proper silver spoon.”

I chuckled lightly, but now looked my friend straight in the eye. “What are you saying?”

“I am saying you can have your job back.”

And what King Huran did next surprised even me. He took my left hand in both of his and dropped to a knee, bowing his head, the common gesture of allegiance. There were more murmurings from those standing in the shadows. King Huran stood, clapped me on the shoulder and raised his voice loudly.

“Many of you would do well never to return to Agrabah, for you will surely meet a long and unfortunate end. I do not take kindly to traitors...nor does King Aladdin.” He paused, letting his words sink in, perhaps as much for my benefit as for any other. “Yes, King Aladdin is back, and pray to Allah for your souls.”

I was stunned. Too stunned for words. Not just two days ago I had been living contentedly in my simple tent, often moving from dusty village to village, taking on odd jobs and doing my best to forget the pain in my heart. But little had I known a plot had been conspired from afar, in lands I had only dreamed of, by beings I had not fully understood or cared to know. I had sworn off the throne, determined to live a simple life.

I glanced sharply to my left, catching movement. Jewel was walking slowly toward me, regal and beautiful despite her battering, her arm draped over the shoulders of her weeping boy, a boy who could not pull his eyes off his recently killed father. A man killed by my own hands.

Jewel. So beautiful. So determined. So passionate. She reminded me to live and to love, and had awakened in me something I had long ago thought I had lost forever.

She continued over to my side and slipped her hand in my hand. The gesture was simple but meaningful. She was mine and I was hers. Huran smiled at her and stepped away, bowing.

I had not sought to be king again, but the kingdom was mine. Again.

As I said, my liege, came Myrrh’s soft words in my head. Tonight, a ruler will be named and a great magician revealed.

No one likes a know-it-all, I thought, and grinned. Now begone from my thoughts, lass.

As you wish, King Aladdin.

And I felt a noticeable presence leave my forethoughts. The girl was indeed a powerful sorceress. She and the boy would make a formidable team—and a valuable aid to any ruler.

I took in a lot of air and surveyed the small group around me. I had been alone for so long, a lonely adventurer grieving for what had been lost. And now so much had been returned.

My scanning eyes settled on a dark-clad, hooded figure watching us from the shadows of one of the tunnels. A chill ran through me, for I knew I had seen Death. The man—or creature—turned and disappeared into the shadows.

Death had indeed made an appearance tonight, but not for me, and not for those I had already come to love.

***

A few choice words later and those who had proved to be less than faithful scuttled out of the great temple like the dung beetles they were. Each of their faces were forever seared into my memory, should any one of them return to my kingdom.

Now we were grouped outside the awesome temple as sunlight appeared in the east, rising over the lip of the canyon walls. It had been a long night. Medics had staunched the flow of blood on my face and made me look halfway presentable, servants had washed off the taint of the garbage I had handled and gotten me fresh clothing, and I felt much better.

I had summoned Lamprey and soon discovered that the powerful ifrit, although heavily weakened and badly wounded, had indeed survived. Apparently, he had changed form into a black ant, safe under a rock until I had summoned him again. Now he was resting comfortably in his lamp, which was strapped securely to my riding horse. He assured us that he did not have the strength to transport us all back to Agrabah, my kingdom.

Just as well, I thought, there were a few of us eager to get to know each other a little better.

And court politics could always wait.

As we headed out into the rising sun, kicking up dust and riding steadily, General Huran rode over to my side, nodding to Jewel who had been riding next to me. Young Duban was sitting in front of her. I did not think Jewel would let the lad out of her sight ever again.

“My liege,” said Huran. “Prior to my getting falsely arrested and kidnapped, a curious sailor appeared before me.”

“Who was this sailor?”

“He called himself Sinbad and he was seeking sponsorship for a voyage.”

“A voyage where?”

“To a strange island inhabited by rocs and cyclops and mountains of gold.”

I laughed heartily. “Allah bless the dreamers! And what did you tell him?”

“I told him I would get back to him.”

I laughed again. “Then surely he is still waiting. Perhaps I will speak to this Sinbad.”

“As you wish, sire.”

Huran slipped away again and Jewel closed in next to me. She reached out a hand, and I reached out mine, and we rode like that into the morning sun.

The End

To be continued in:

Aladdin Sins Bad

Return to the Table of Contents

ALADDIN

SINS BAD

The Aladdin Trilogy #2

Aladdin Sins Bad

Copyright © 2011 by Piers Anthony and J.R. Rain

All rights reserved.

Aladdin Sins Bad

Author’s Note: This novel was suggested by the adventures of Sinbad the Sailor in the Arabian Nights. I (Piers Anthony) have six translations of those adventures, which are summarized by Sinbad in Chapter One. Sinbad’s wife died of natural causes and was placed in the underground tomb, along with her surviving husband, Sinbad, as was the custom in that culture. He managed to find his way out and returned home. But suppose she was not really dead, but only enchanted by some fell nemesis who used this as a device to lure our heroes into a trap? We went on from there, as you have seen.

We are indebted to Rudy Reyes, who proofread the manuscript and found a score of errors I had overlooked. Or, as I like to put it, typos grow on the page after the proofreading. They didn’t know there would be a second proofing to catch them. It was a trap, see...

—Piers Anthony

Aladdin Sins Bad

Chapter One

“You’re what?” I demanded, stunned.

“I am with child,” Jewel replied. “I knew I shouldn’t have cured your impotence. That led to nothing but mischief.”

Suddenly it made sense: she was pregnant! That was great news in a couple of respects. First it meant I would have a blood-heir again. Second it explained her recent difficult strangeness. She had taken to eating odd things, and her moods had become perplexing. “That’s great,” I said weakly.

“Naturally I will not be catering to you in bed for the duration,” she said. “I need to protect the baby. You will have to be satisfied with concubines.”

“But I’m impotent with concubines!” I protested. “You’re the only one I can make it with.” I had been impotent following the deaths of my original wife and son, until Jewel took me in hand, as it were. It was love I had needed.

“I’m sure you can make do if you really try.”

I loved her, but she was at times the daughter of a dog. She knew I could not be unfaithful to her, even with alternates she approved.

A courtier approached. “Sire, the sailor is back.”

“Sailor?” asked Jewel. “What sailor?”

“Sinbad the sailor, your highness.”

Her eyes widened with pleasure, a look normally reserved for me in the royal bedroom. I frowned at her reaction, but hers was a common one. Sinbad was famous far and wide for his travels and, from what I understood, had garnered quite a reputation with the ladies. I was instantly jealous, but I bit my tongue.

“He is here, then?” she asked, and actually waved her face with her hand.

I bit down a little harder.

The courier, looking slightly perplexed, since he had come to see me, after all, said, “Yes, your highness. Here to see King Aladdin about a business proposal.”

Jewel turned to me. “Then we are done here, my husband. Go attend to your guest.”

Her eyes flared brightly again, then she gave me a peck on the cheek and departed.

As if I didn’t have enough on my mind already. Sinbad the Sailor had been petitioning for an audience for months. I had put him off without an audience because I knew what he wanted: a ship to go adventuring in. Ships were expensive, and the man had already lost several. He was not a good risk. Sure, he would promise to deliver half the fortune he made to the kingdom. But if he lost the ship, as he probably would, that would come to nothing.

And my wife’s obvious interest in the man didn’t help his cause.

What the Hades. It was time to put an end to this nonsense. I would make a suitable pretense of kingly fairness, hear the man out, then explain courteously why it was impossible to oblige his request and send him away forever. It was better than being constantly pestered. So he wouldn’t take no from a subordinate? He’d take it from the king, or lose his head, literally.

Then I had a notion. “Fetch Duban.”

The courtier bowed. “I will summon the Crown Prince,” he agreed.

Duban was Jewel’s son, now rising onto age twelve, whom I had officially adopted when I married her. He was a good boy, and a truly potent magician. Both were problems: a nice boy would have trouble doing the necessary as king, and his magic had not been much in evidence lately. He needed discipline, and it was my job to provide it. His doting mother wouldn’t.

In moments Duban was there before me. “Sire,” he said formally.

“Come with me,” I said curtly. “I have a situation to deal with, and you need to learn how it’s done if you’re going to be an effective king some day.”

“I don’t want to be any kind of king,” he said. “I’m not the kind. I lack hard-minded discipline.”

At least he was realistic. “You will learn it. Even if you’re not king, it will do you good to know how to deal with people.”

“Can’t I leave that to my woman, as you do?”

Ouch! It was true that Jewel provided the backbone for handling routine that I sometimes lacked. “A man needs to be able to do it himself. Then he can leave it to others if he wishes. I’m sure Myrrh will help you when the time comes.”

“She can read my mind!” he wailed.

Which was true. Myrrh, now eleven years old, was a truly talented girl who had helped rescue Duban from evil captivity. She was a mind reader who could sometimes see the future. That was why we banned her from the royal chambers at night. I could see how it could be awkward for a boy verging on manhood, even if he was bound to marry her when adult.

“You know,” I said, “I suspect that you and I might do well to go away somewhere for a while, get to know each other better. Away from the women.”

“Yes,” he agreed thoughtfully. “I love Mother, but sometimes she smothers me.”

“I’ll keep it in mind. Maybe I can find a spot mission where women aren’t welcome.”

“Maybe then I could work on my magic.”

We arrived at the audience chamber. There was a somewhat scruffy man I knew immediately was Sinbad the Sailor. “Sire,” he said, bowing low.

I took my throne, and Duban took a chair, dispensing with further formalities. “Yes, I am Aladdin, and this is Crown Prince Duban. What’s on your mind, sailor?”

He came right to the point. “Sire, I want a ship.”

I frowned. “Ships do not grow on trees. Why do you want a ship?”

“To garner fabulous riches, all of which you may take for the kingdom.”

“Why should I risk a valuable ship for a mere half of the take?” Then I paused, frowning. “How much did you say?”

“You can have it all, Sire. I care not for riches.”

This was not following the script. “You’ve always amassed riches before. What’s different this time?”

“I want to rescue my wife.”

Both Duban and I stiffened. If this was a personal motive, it was difficult to disparage. “I did not know you were married.”

“That’s because I wasn’t, or so I thought. I thought my wife was dead. But recently I received information that she lives, but is captive. I must gather great riches to redeem her.”

Duban picked up on this. “So the voyage is to give riches to someone else, not this kingdom.”

Sinbad actually fidgeted. “There should be enough for both. I know where great treasures are.”

“Where?” I asked, thinking he would balk.

Instead he launched into a summary of his several prior voyages. “When I first sailed, we landed on an isle that turned out to be a great fish, and I got dumped in the water and barely survived. Now I know that fish was a whale, from which we could get valuable ambergris. On my second, we encountered great roc birds and huge serpents, but also fabulous diamonds. On my third, a cyclops who surely had obscene treasure hidden away. On my fourth I met and married my wife, a treasure beyond reckoning. On my fifth, a wretched old man who sought to ride me to death, as he had others; there should be valuables hidden there, from those who died. On my sixth, I found myself in a cave with rubies, and later found emeralds and pearls. On my seventh, an elephant graveyard where there are great quantities of ivory. All I need is a ship to gather them. After I redeem my wife, I can return to fetch similar treasures to take back to Samarkand.”

This was a wild story, surely exaggerated, surely not worth believing, let alone risking a ship for. But my eye caught Duban’s eye. This just might be a pretext to get away from the women for a while, and maybe see some interesting sights along the way.

Except for one thing: I always got horribly seasick on a ship. Did I want to get away that much?

Chapter Two

I nearly ordered Sinbad away. Nearly.

Instead, I told him to return on the morrow and I would give him my final decision. He bowed graciously, his robust beard just scraping the polished tile of the greeting room. He exited the hall quickly, clearly knowing when not to push his luck, which showed a rare level of awareness and common sense. At least, rare in my experience. The stories of Sinbad had reached even me, and it is a wonder the man is alive; that is, if his tales could be believed. After all, he often returned alone from his fantastic voyages, so there was little corroborative evidence. Still, I always fancied myself a good judge of men—indeed, I was due to preside over the royal court shortly—and something told me that Sinbad was an honest-enough ruffian.

“Did he say cyclops, Faddy?” I whispered.

I felt an invisible presence manifest next to me, a surge of energy that made the hair rise on my arms, and in an instant my ifrit was by my side.

“Indeed he did, master.” The voice was spoken lightly, directly into my ear. Despite being surrounded by guards, courtesans and general palace staff, his presence was known only to me.

“Have you ever seen such a creature?”

“They are legendary, even in Djinnland. Then again, so is Sinbad. It is a rare honor to meet such an acclaimed adventurer.”

I bristled, mildly irked. I felt a wave of rare jealousy. “You mean acclaimed wrecker of ships,” I said, grumbling. “He is just as famous for coming home empty-handed, and how do we know his tales are even true?”

“There is but one way to find out,” said Faddy.

I knew what he was getting at. Indeed, already all signs were pointing for a fantastic voyage, but I was hesitant. Leaving for the high seas while a wife is newly with child is not a decision I would make lightly, or even one I looked forward discussing with a wife who lately was moody and temperamental at best.

“Sire,” said Faddy. “Have you given thought to my request?”

“Your request is highly unusual, ifrit,” I said.

I sensed him fading away and had a brief, mental image of the tall being bowing low. “Yes, sire. Thank you for your consider—”

“Wait, El Fadl,” I said, using the ifrit’s formal name. “I have given thought to your most unusual request, and I have decided...to release you.”

“Master?”

“You’re a free man. Or djinn.”

And in that instant, the tall ifrit appeared by my side, to the shock of those around us, most of who gasped, although one or two screamed. One guard actually fainted, slumping forward and just missing impalement by his own spear.

Faddy bowed low again, and when he looked up at me, there were tears of joy on his strangely handsome face. I say strangely, because it was obvious the ifrit was not of this world. His chin was too pointy, as were his ears. But the joy on his face was universal.

“Thank you, master.”

“I am not your master, Faddy.”

“Thank you, sire. I cannot express to you the joy I feel. What made you change your mind? Any king would want his own ifrit.”

Indeed. Faddy had come in handy in more ways than one. As a secret spy, he was irreplaceable, but I also prided myself on being a fair and equal ruler, and to have a being bound to me against his will did not set well with me. He had asked for his freedom, having had a taste of such freedom on a recent adventure to Djinnland, and now Faddy was not to be denied, as I suspected would be the case. He hungered for freedom, as he had expressed to me days ago, and I would not deny my ifrit his heart’s desires.

“What will you do with yourself, Fadl?” I asked. “Now that you are free to do as you wish.”

The tall being stood straight and wiped away his tears. Others in the court continued staring at him. Despite rumors of my magical lamp, the sudden appearance of a magical being was not commonplace in Agrabah, my kingdom.

“I seek a mate, sire.”

“A female djinn?”

“Of course. I have no interest in humans.” Faddy actually made a face.

I chuckled. “I was unaware of the existence of female djinns.”

“They exist, or so I have heard. I shall devote my life to finding a mate.”

“Then I bid thee well, my friend. Do not be a stranger.”

Faddy smiled, bowed again, and faded away. The guard nearby, who had just recovered enough to push himself up to his knees, caught sight of the disappearing djinn, and promptly pitched forward again.

***

“She is a witch!” hissed a young woman. “I have seen her turn staffs into snakes.”

“I see,” I said. “Did anyone else see this staff turn into a snake?”

“Yes!” shouted the four accusers in unison, but when questioned separately, they all described the snake differently. I was beginning to have my doubts.

The accused stood before me, her head bowed, listening to the accusations leveled against her. She was quite old, with back bowed. She had yet to speak, even as her four accusers presented wild tales of witchcraft.

“Esteemed woman,” I said when I had heard enough, “what say you for yourself?”

She looked up at me now for the first time. “I am not a witch, my lord, but I do see things.”

“What kind of things?”

“Future things. Visions.”

“You see, my lord!” screamed one of her accusers. “Who but a witch sees future things? Only Allah knows the future!”

“Quiet!” I said, raising my voice only slightly. Had I raised my voice another octave, the man who spoke out of turn would have been dragged from my court. I looked back at the elderly woman. “These visions you have, have any of them come to pass?”

“All of them, my liege. Every one of them.”

“Do any of them concern me?”

“Ah, the ego of kings. Yes, my liege, one does concern you, and it is the reason why I’m here today.”

“You are here today because you have been accused of witchcraft.”

“No, my lord. I am here today because I was not granted an audience with you.”

“I do not understand.”

“Twice I have come to see you, my liege, and twice I have been turned away.”

I blinked, feeling my anger rising. “So your accusers do not think you a witch?”

“Oh they do, my lord.”

I glanced at her four accusers, who ranged from young to old, three men and one woman. They looked as perplexed as I felt.

The old woman said, “I have a bit of a reputation, my lord, and so when I was turned away by your guards, I spread stories about me, stories about staffs turning into snakes, and well water turning to blood.”

“And none of this is true?”

She gave me a small grin. “Of course not, my lord.”

“And so you did all of this to gain an audience with me?”

“Yes, my lord.”

I sat back and studied her. “You have gone to great lengths to speak to me.”

“Yes.”

I motioned to those in attendance who were chattering excitedly to each other. “You have turned my court into a farce.”

“That was not my intent, my lord.”

“And what is your intent?”

“To save your life, my lord.”

“To save it how?”

“By begging you not to go on this sea voyage.”

I sat forward. “What sea voyage?”

“The sea voyage you have been pondering.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but words failed me. If she indeed had the Sight, it would do little to question her about how she came to know of the voyage. Instead, I ordered her into my private chamber, and when we were alone, I said, “Tell me more about your vision.”

“It is a trap, my Lord.”

“A trap how?”

“The one who seeks your kingdom has gone to great lengths to destroy you.”

“Who?” I asked, although I had a fair idea who this might be.

She shook her head. “All is not revealed to me, my lord, but I do know that if you continue with this adventure, you will perish and your kingdom will be in ruins, but—”

“But what?”

“No, I should not speak it.”

“Speak, woman. I command it.”

“Yes, my lord. There is, however, a small chance of success.”

I frowned. “Just a small chance?”

She nodded. “I have also seen you return triumphantly, your enemy forever vanquished, surrounded in more jewels and gold than any man could ever dream. But this outcome is highly unlikely, sire. More than likely, you will meet a fate worse than death.”

I thanked her for her time and dismissed her. And as I sat alone in my chamber, silently brooding on this usual turn of events, I came to a decision.

Allah, help me, but I came to a decision.

Chapter Three

“Are you out of what little mind you have?” Jewel demanded. “Only an utter idiot with a brain clot would pull a stunt like that!”

I merely looked at her.

She had to smile. “I walked into that one, didn’t I? I described you all too well. Well, if I can’t stop you, I might as well wish you well. At least you’ll have Faddy along to guide you. It will give Duban some practice learning how to run a kingdom.”

“I freed Faddy. I’m taking Duban with me. It will be a coming-of-age experience for him.”

Her prior blowout had been like a fierce wind storm. Now it was as if a volcano erupted in the palace, trying to blow the roof off. I waited, trusting that it would pass in time. Finally she vented most of her steam, and a certain dark canniness manifested. That made me nervous. She was up to something.

“Well, let’s see what my son has to say about this,” she said with faux calm.

“Duban,” I said, just loudly enough for him to hear me in the adjacent chamber. He had of course been near, and stayed clear; he knew his mother as well as I did.

He came to join me. “I want to do it, Mother.”

“I can’t possibly let you risk your royal posterior on such a mad venture. It’s too dangerous.”

“I have encountered danger before, Mother.” That was the understatement of the year. An evil demon had sought to make him a human sacrifice, and nearly succeeded.

“Well, not this time. I forbid it.”

“I answer to the king.”

She stared at him, astonished. “Are you defying me, Duban?”

Duban made a placating gesture. “Why Mother, I would never do that. But someone needs to help see to the safety of the king, who as we know is an utter idiot with a brain clot, and perhaps I can serve. It will also enable me to practice my independence and my magic.”

The emotions of fury and pride warred openly on her face: anger at me, pride in her son, who was showing some gumption. She could say no to me, having little or no respect for my status as king of Agrabah, but not to her son. She knew, on some deep secret level, that a mother’s boy would not make the best king.

She tried another tack. “I wonder what Myrrh thinks of this?”

Myrrh appeared as if summoned, as she surely had been, mentally. She was an increasingly pretty girl of eleven, with dark eyes and lustrous long dark hair, on the verge of nubility. She could make Duban do anything she wanted, but had the grace not to show it in public. “I think they’re both crazy. A seer predicted that it would be a disaster.”

“You have some sighting ability yourself,” I said to Myrrh. Now for the clincher. Phrasing was everything. “Tell us: which way is disaster more likely: if I go alone, or with Duban?” Not whether I went or stayed home, which would have wiped out my prospects.

She had to answer, however reluctantly. “If you go alone, sire.”

“Traitor,” Jewel muttered. But her heart was no longer in it; she realized she had been outmaneuvered. “We’d better roust up some seasick medicine for our heroes. A cartload of ginger should do.”

And so we won the seeming approval of the ladies, and made plans for our voyage of adventure. As a safety precaution we assumed aliases: Niddala for me, Nabud for him, our names backwards. There would be no announcement of the king’s departure; as far as the kingdom knew, the king and crown prince remained in Samarkand, issuing orders the queen dutifully relayed. Were truth known, Jewel rather liked the prospect of ruling the kingdom for a while without having to handle the middleman. What had that middleman accomplished, after all, other than getting her pregnant?

Meanwhile Sinbad, granted a half-share of the enterprise by royal dispensation, soon lined up several minor local merchants to finance the other half. Among these was Niddala and his twelve year old nephew. Our interest was in ambergris, and we accepted Sinbad’s assurance that he knew where to find it. It would be the ship’s very first call.

First we had to get to the coast. We got fit horses and rode south with a caravan several days. That gave Duban nice travel experience, which he liked. He was becoming an accomplished rider. Sinbad and I just wanted to get there, but Duban enjoyed the ride itself.

The ship was a small old merchanter named the Stout Prospect, more familiarly by the crew as Fat Chance. She was a distinctly unassuming vessel, a single-masted lateen-rigged dhow, obviously nothing a king would board. But she was tight, her hold was capacious, and her small crew was competent. It really wasn’t her fault that newer, larger ships had absconded with most of the trade, leaving her to have to resort to renting out for less desirable missions.

Our cabin was tiny; there was barely room for the two of us under the high poop deck. I gulped down some of the seasick glop the moment we boarded, but still felt green under the chin. Duban, fortunately, did not have a problem.

We set sail at dawn. The captain shouted orders, the yardarm lifted, and the triangular sail was hauled into place. They angled it to catch the wind and we were off. I managed not to throw up too often. I could see that the other merchants held me in contempt, so I did not try to socialize with them at meals. I wasn’t hungry anyway. What kind of a merchant got seasick? Surely a poor one.

Then a merchant approached me. He was portly and evinced no sign of sickness, cursed be his solid posterior. “Niddala, eh? I have heard that name before.”

Oh, no! Had he caught on to my identity as the king? “I’ve been around,” I said cautiously.

“Now I’ve got it! A spook-for-hire in the western region. I wondered what happened to him.”

What a relief! “Now I am a merchant,” I said.

“I heard some fancy beautiful woman hired him, and they disappeared.”

“I’m still working for her,” I said.

“That figures. I’d risk sickness too, for a creature like that.”

“She wants ambergris.”

He shook his head. “It’s a fool’s mission.”

“She’s even prettier nude.”

“Ah. Of course.” He moved on, understanding. Any man was a fool for a lovely woman. Especially one who adorned her demands with favors.

Duban had the wit to make no comment.

A century or two later, or so it seemed, we furled the sail beside a small island. Duban and I went to see what was going on. Why were we not proceeding toward our destination?

“Do not set foot on that isle,” Sinbad said with a smile. “It will not remain there long.”

Then there was a plume of vapor from one end of the isle, and it sank under the water. It was a whale! We had arrived!

I had of course boned up on ambergris. It was black waxy stuff with a bad smell. It was formed in the intestines of sperm whales, probably a product of their indigestion. There was a rarer harder gray variant that was far more precious, but was generally locked inside the whale, almost impossible to get out. Naturally women liked to put the stuff on their faces. “There will be blobs of it floating in the water,” I said with authority. “Or washed ashore. We have merely to find them.”

But there were no blobs. An old mariner knew why: “The natives have discovered its value. They patrol constantly and salvage any they find. You will need to purchase it from them. Unfortunately they know they have a captive market; perfumeries and medicant makers are desperate for ambergris. They charge high.”

That annoyed Sinbad. “We’ll not do business with legalized robbers. We’ll find our own.”

“I wish you success,” the mariner said with heavy irony.

“Let’s go ashore and ask around,” I suggested to Duban. “We might learn something.”

“Of course, Uncle,” he agreed. He knew that I just wanted to get off the pitching ship for a while, to settle my roiling stomach.

Sinbad obligingly furnished a lifeboat and joined us in the tiny craft. He and I rowed while Duban steered.

Ashore we soon learned what we were up against. The locals garnered only about half the ambergris. The rest was sucked away by a whirlpool that formed when the tide went out. All manner of floating refuse entered it, including much ambergris, and sometimes even a whale, but none came out. The whirlpool led to some subterranean chamber that did not like to disgorge its acquisitions.

“There is surely a fortune in ambergris in that underwater cave,” Sinbad said. “If only we could get it out.”

“We can probably reach it,” I said. “All we need is to guide our little craft into the whirlpool when it forms, and it will take us there.”

Both Sinbad and Duban looked at me, not sharing the joke. If we rode the whirlpool down, we would come to look much like blobs of ambergris ourselves.

“Maybe if we build a capsule,” I suggested. “That would float on the water, and be drawn in by the whirlpool. We could ride in it, buffered by pillows, and open it when it comes to rest. That’s bound to be where the ambergris is.”

“Assuming we make it safely in,” Sinbad said. “How do we get out again? The whirlpool is one-way.”

I pondered. “I’m working on the details,” I said.

We rowed back to the ship. “You know, Nabud, a little magic here might help,” I said. “How are you at reversing whirlpools?”

“I have no idea.”

“Well, work on it. You need to get your magic in shape anyway.”

“When it’s a life and death matter, my magic comes unbidden. But at other times I can’t seem to evoke it.”

“Well, you need to learn to evoke it at will.”

“Yes I do,” he agreed. “I will keep trying.”

“Let me get some more advice.” I rubbed my brass ring before remembering that Faddy no longer worked for me.

To my surprise, the ifrit appeared. Rather, his voice sounded in my ear. “Master.”

“What are you doing here?” I asked quietly. “I freed you. Did you forget?

“Maybe I miss your company, mortal. You get into such entertaining scrapes.”

He probably wouldn’t help, but as long as he was here, why not try? “We need to get safely into and out of a whirlpool. Got any ideas?”

“Many.”

I bit off my irritation; the ifrit was toying with me. “Will you vouchsafe one to me?”

“Maybe.”

“What are you after, you solidified cloud of smoke?”

“I no longer have to do your bidding, mortal. It behooves you to ask me politely.”

Oh. He wanted respect. That griped me, but I bit the metal and made an effort. “Please, El Fadl sir, honor me with your informed opinion.”

“That’s better,” Faddy agreed. “I will scout about and see what I come up with.” His presence faded.

“Thank you,” I murmured, knowing he could still hear me. Then, to the others: “I should have a notion soon.”

Assuming Faddy played along.

Chapter Four

I consumed more of the ginger seasickness glop, making a face and wondering what was worse: the glop going down, or the upchuck coming up.

Sinbad, Duban and myself were sitting together in my cramped cabin. Above deck I could hear the workers laughing and drinking and enjoying the downtime as Sinbad and I decided our next move. Duban was with me, as I wanted the lad to learn the matters of men, and how we hash out courses of action. That is, with thought and foresight, and not with fists and yelling. The way of a ruler is not how loud one can raise his voice, but how well one can control his emotions.

Not to mention, I didn’t want to expose the lad to the rascals above deck; after all, it was coming on evening and the drinking would soon give way to gambling or worse. Perhaps talk of loose women and exploits I would rather my son not be exposed to. At least, not yet. Besides, his mother would skin me alive if her son came back talking like a sailor.

“So how do you propose we build this vessel, my lord?” asked Sinbad. So far on this trip, Sinbad had mostly kept to himself, lost in his worry and grief. I had some inkling to what the man was going through, having lost my own wife and child years ago to a nefarious plot. And if the old seer had been even half correct, the same evil creature who had taken so much from me, had now embroiled Sinbad in a similar plot, one that threatened his own wife and that of my kingdom.

But despite his obvious pain and concern for his wife, Sinbad had a spirited sparkle to his eye that promised adventure, mischief and rare cunning. He made for a fine companion.

Now music broke out from above, string instruments and flutes, followed by whoops and claps and the pounding boots. My son’s waning attention shifted from us to the raucous sounds above, as his own booted foot kept beat to the music. My stepson, I knew, had an ear for music. In fact, the best musicians in all of Samarkand had given him private lessons to the point where there was nothing left for him to learn.

Before I could answer Sinbad’s question, my stepson spoke, “Father, may I go topside to...view the stars?”

“Just the stars and no more?”

He looked away. “Yes, father.”

“And you do not wish to stay here and take part in our discussions?”

“I would like some fresh air, father.”

“I see, and the music above has nothing to do with this decision?”

“Please, father.”

“Begone, lad, and if I find you gambling you will answer to your mother.”

He turned momentarily green, and not from seasickness. The threat of his mother’s wrath was enough to turn anyone’s insides into water. He nodded to myself and Sinbad and dashed up the short ladder and out of sight.

“Your son is a special boy,” said Sinbad.

“You have no idea.”

“Ah, but I do know. He has the gift.”

“What gift is that, sailor?”

“I can see the magic around him, sire. It is like a soft light, glowing around him like a halo, sometimes flaring and sparking when he is excited, like it did just now.”

“How do you know this?”

“Because I have it, too. But just a hint of it, truth be known, but certainly enough to recognize another, and your son...your son has rare gifts, of that you can be sure.”

“You are full of surprises, sailor,” I said.

“My surprises are what keep me alive. Like I said, I have enough gifts to get by. Perhaps a small distraction here, or a minor illusion there. Just enough for me to escape or attack or buy some time. The magic is not strong in me, but it has proven invaluable at times, although I rarely speak of it.”

“And you speak of it now because of my son?”

“Your son, as I’m sure you are well aware, has a rare gift. The magic that surrounds him, should he learn to harness it, could move mountains. Literally. But for now, I suspect you have a different problem.”

“What do you mean?”

“His love for music is greater than his love for magic...or even ruling kingdoms.”

“No son of mine will be a musician,” I barked.

Sinbad simply shrugged, and there was a spark in his eye. Merriment, perhaps, suggesting that he knew best. I was about to bark another retort when Faddy appeared by my side.

“Master,” said the whispery voice.

Sinbad suddenly sat upright, pointing to me from across the small cabin. “You have an ifrit.”

“You can see him?” I asked, surprised.

“Most certainly. It is one of my gifts, to see into the spirit world, including that of the djinn.”

“Well, sailor, you are only half right. I had an ifrit.” I turned my attention to Faddy. “You might as well show yourself, Smoke Face, there are no secrets here.”

Bowing slightly, the ifrit appeared by my side, partially wedged between a cushion and the slanted cabin wall. In fact, part of him was inside the wall, a disconcerting sight at best.

“Honorable Sinbad, your exploits have reached even me.”

Sinbad grinned broadly, his first real grin since our voyage began. “It is a pleasure, my ifrit friend.”

Next to me, Faddy veritably beamed, which rankled me to no end. Had I not had my own adventures that would rival any of Sinbad’s? I pushed aside the childish feeling. “What have you discovered, ifrit?”

“Discovered? What do you mean?” asked Sinbad, sitting forward.

“I gave my ex-ifrit an assignment, one that he certainly was not compelled to undertake, but which he chose to undertake anyway, for reasons that I still do not understand.”

“You amuse me, Master, as I have said.”

His reasoning still did not add up to me. Unless compelled, I have never heard of a case where a djinn willingly helped his human counterpart. I let it go for now.

Sinbad took all of this in with a jovial smile. His thick beard and mustache seemed particularly expressive, rising and falling easily with the smallest of grins. “And what is this assignment, if I may ask?”

The boat rocked gently in the currents. Above, I heard a change in music. One that seemed particularly skilled and melodious. I frowned at that. I said, “He was given the task to figure out how we might escape the whirlpool.”

“I see!” said Sinbad, clapping. “And pray tell, my good djinn, what have you come up with?”

Above, the music picked up in tempo. There were more hoots and hollering, whistles and stomping of the feet. I think men were dancing. I frowned some more, knowing my son was up there.

“I’m afraid your king, the venerable Aladdin, has not been entirely forthcoming with you,” said Faddy. “He has yet another djinn, one far more powerful than I. In fact, some claim perhaps the most powerful of all.”

“Prince Zeyn might have something to say about that,” I said, mentioning the cruel djinn who had destroyed my family so long ago, and who might also be behind Sinbad’s own troubles.

“And where is this djinn that you speak of?” asked Sinbad.

“The djinn that I speak of is in a safe place,” I said, frowning at Faddy. Lamprey, my nickname for the powerful djinn who had been in my care all these years, was my closely guarded secret. Or, had been my secret. “What’s gotten into you, ifrit?”

“You asked for my help, my liege, and I’m giving it.”

“I did not ask you to give away my secrets. If you do so again, your presence will not be welcome.”

“Understood, master.”

“I’m most certainly not your master,” I said. “And if you continue giving away my secrets, you will no longer be a friend either. Got it, Smoke Face?”

“As you wish, my master.”

“Your djinn,” said Sinbad wildly. “He can help rescue my wife!”

“Perhaps,” I said, “but first we need more information.”

“But if your djinn is as powerful as you say, then you can just command him to rescue my wife!”

Faddy said, “Allow me, master. Aladdin’s djinn and the mighty Prince Zeyn are of near equal strength. If Prince Zeyn is behind your wife’s disappearance, there will be dark magic surrounding her indeed. Magic that Lamprey cannot easily undo.”

“This Lamprey, can he then help us recover treasure?”

“He would,” I said, “if I would allow it.”

“And you will not allow it?”

“And let a djinn live my life?” I bellowed, slapping the sailor heartily on the shoulder. “Where is the adventure in that, man?”

“I don’t want adventure, my liege. I want my wife.”

Except I didn’t believe it. I saw the fire erupt behind Sinbad’s eyes. He was indeed a man of action.

Faddy continued, “There is more. One old man claimed that the whirlpool led to a land of the walking dead.”

“I do not understand,” I said.

Sinbad nodded, “Aye. I have heard such a tale, but I did not know it was here. The isle of the damned.” He turned to Faddy. “So it is here, beneath the whirlpool?”

Faddy nodded gravely, although I caught a hint of a smirk on his narrow lips. Already he was beginning to fade. “You have with you two great magicians, my liege. I suggest, once you have located the ambergris, you utilize one of them and make haste. They say those who journey to the land of the damned never return.”

“Begone!” I said irritably. Faddy, of late, was becoming an irritant. I should never have freed him, or permitted his return.

The music above hit a high note, followed by much clapping, and I moved quickly out of the cabin and up the rickety ladder. There, encircled by mostly drunken sailors, was my son playing a lyre. Men of all shapes and sizes and sobriety danced around him. Clapping and keeping beat to the beautiful music that issued from his instrument.

My anger abated when I saw the joy on my stepson’s face.

I knew then that he would never be king.

I slipped below deck again, where Sinbad and I made plans for our covered vessel...and our journey to the land of the dead.

Chapter Five

“Here are the rules of the road,” I told Sinbad firmly. “No special magic unless it’s absolutely unavoidable. I believe that anything magic can accomplish can also be accomplished without magic, albeit it maybe less conveniently. It’s no good to depend on magic; it makes a man grow fat and useless.”

Sinbad shook his head. “The main reason I haven’t used magic is that I have not had enough of it to use. How are we going to deal with walking dead if we don’t use magic? I have heard that they long to consume living human flesh, thinking it will make them live again.”

I had heard similar. Also that they could not be killed, being already dead. It was said that the only way to stop a zombie from attacking was to hack it into fragments too small to move effectively, and even then the fragments would strive to reform into zombies and resume the attack. I did not have a formal list of things I did not want to do, but fighting zombies hand to hand was surely near the top of it.

But we needed to fetch the ambergris. That meant dealing with the zombies. “There must be a way.”

Sinbad gazed at me cannily. He was not a foolish man, and he already knew better than to try to thwart my notions openly. “Maybe this compromise: no magic until such time as we are about to be chomped to death and become zombies ourselves.”

I hesitated, not enamored of any loophole. Who was to judge how close to chomping we might be?

“What would your wife the queen say if your son got chomped when you could have prevented it?”

“Camel turds!” I swore. “All right, I accept the compromise.” Because even my becoming a walking dead zombie would scarcely dissuade Jewel from wreaking vengeance on me.

However, thereafter my mind focused. “A boat on a boat,” I said. “Top one upside down, sealed tight to make a waterproof capsule with only holes for the oars, and plenty of grease to stop leakage there. We’ll ride the whirlpool down, and lift the top boat when we come safely to rest.”

“That may do, one-way,” Sinbad said. “But what of the return?”

“It’s a tidal whirlpool, existing only when the tide goes out. There is surely a similar whirlpool on the other side, existing only when the tide comes in. We’ll ride that out, in due course.”

“That’s so utterly crazy it just might work!”

“Thank you.”

“And what about the zombies?”

“I’m working on that. Meanwhile we can assemble the boats.”

We assembled the boats: two matched landing craft, precisely fitted together and sealed with tar. We cut a window in the top one and put in a translucent slab of mica. It wasn’t great, but at least we’d have half a notion what was outside. We braced the boats with timbers so they couldn’t be crushed inward. It looked good. So why were my knees feeling like cooked noodles? Maybe it was that I still hadn’t figured out what to do about the zombies.

We had the submersible boat ready in time for the next whirlpool. The upper boat was fastened in place with hinges on one side and removable ties on the other. It was crude but it would do. We had a small supply of food; we did not expect to be away long.

Sinbad gave orders for the ship to wait upon our return. If we didn’t appear within a week, then it should sail to the home port for some other mission. Then the three of us climbed in, sat on the seats, shipped the oars, swung down the upper boat, and tied it in place. It was dark inside, but some wan light filtered in through the window. A hoist on the Fat Chance lowered us into the water with a splash. We were on our way.

Sinbad and I took the oars and rowed, guiding the craft toward the forming whirlpool. Once that current caught us we relaxed, physically; it would do the rest.

“I’m thinking this is not a good idea,” Sinbad said.

Duban and I both laughed, treating it as a joke, and thus it became one. It was of course too late to change our minds. Nevertheless, thoughts of Jewel coursed through my mind, lying nude on the bed, invitingly. She had truly restored me to potency, and I loved her for it. Or maybe it was the other way around. Then my thoughts morphed into an image of my beloved first wife. Perhaps I was about to join her in death.

The current caught us. We shipped the oars again and touched up the tar seal. So far no water was leaking in, but we were still floating high enough so that there was only splashing. I felt the craft accelerating as the current carried it around the circuit.

Duban peered through the mica window. “We’re getting there,” he reported.

“We never would have known,” Sinbad muttered with sour irony. If I hadn’t known better I might have thought he was looking a bit seasick himself. Probably it was a trick of the shadow.

Then he retched. Fortunately he managed to hold it in. We certainly didn’t need the smell of vomit in our close confinement.

Now the craft accelerated. “Sit down, hold on,” I told Duban. He was happy to obey.

“Oh, you’re going to get it now, master.” It was Faddy, of course, reveling in our discomfort.

“You are referring to the ambergris, of course,” I told him.

“That too,” he agreed with a sinister smile. “Wait until you meet the maidens.”

He was obviously teasing us. I did not deign to rise to the bait.

The craft swung around in an ever-tighter circle, moving at incredible velocity. I closed my eyes and hung on. Was the contraption sturdy enough? Or would it fly apart and cast us into the rushing water?

Then we were at the center, spinning madly. That continued for a brief eternity. Then, abruptly, it ceased.

“And we are there,” Faddy announced. “Good luck with the zombies, master.” He faded out.

We pried open the craft. Light washed in. We were grounded on a beach. It looked almost pleasant. Palm trees lined its inner edge.

“Where’s the ambergris?” Sinbad asked.

We got out and looked around. There was no sign of ambergris, or anything else. The beach was clear.

Then there was a cry. “Men!”

We whirled. There, passing the palms, were women, dozens of them, each more nude and shapely than the others. They were charging toward us, their flesh bouncing in fascinating ways.

Before we could properly react, they were upon us. One flung her arms around me and put her face to mine. She sought to kiss me. That was when I realized that she had no face. Her head was a blob of what seemed like solidified cloud stuff, shaped about right, but with only sockets for the eyes and a mound for the nose. Her hair consisted of streamers of vapor. Her body was similar, with mounds in the right places and shapely thighs, but all white cloud.

Whatever she was, she was not exactly human.

Now I’m not particularly prejudiced, particularly when it comes to bare women. But this was not my style. “Get away from me,” I said.

“No, no, I love you!” she responded, the words issuing from the vent that was her mouth. She pressed her pelvis against me. Trying to push her away, I moved my hands across her back and found her bottom. It felt interesting, but it was more cloud stuff. I suspected it would be possible to, well, penetrate her, as a man does a woman, but inside her would merely be more cloud.

Assuming I would be potent with her regardless, which was highly dubious. So it was easy for me to do the right thing. “I am a married man. I will not tarry with the likes of you. Now give over, hussy, before I treat you unkindly.”

“No no, I love you!” she repeated. It seemed that her head was filled with cloud stuff also.

I tried to pull her arms off me, but where I gripped her turned to vapor and I had no purchase. So I walked to the edge of the sea, and into it. Soon I was waist deep.

As I thought, her cloud stuff couldn’t handle water. It floated, separating her substance from me. Her arms still clung, but I ducked down below the surface, and was free.

I came up and looked around. Sinbad and Duban were still entangled in cloud stuff. “Get in the water!” I called.

They heard me and lurched into the sea, carrying cloud maidens with them. In moments they too were wet but free. The ghostly girls stood at the edge, frustrated.

“That was interesting,” Sinbad said. “In other circumstances I might like to learn more of clouds.”

“It was appalling,” Duban said. “She was all over me.”

I exchanged a glance with Sinbad, and did not argue the case. It would not be long before the boy got interested in shapely bare female figures. No need to rush him.

“I think there is nothing here for us,” I said. “Let’s get back in the boat and row to the other island.” Because now I saw a nearby isle, and it looked as though the carcass of a whale was there. We had merely landed on the wrong one.

We hauled the boat off the beach and clambered in, straight-arming affectionate maidens. Dunking made them let go without otherwise hurting them. They weren’t afraid of the water; they simply couldn’t handle it. We were soaked but otherwise unharmed.

We oriented on the other island, and were delighted to see that the massive lump on the beach was a whale; as we approached, the stink of it smote my nostrils.

“Ooops,” Sinbad said. “The walking dead.”

Now I saw them, coming from the nearby palms. Dozens of zombies, with rotting flesh galore. They had spied us with their deteriorating eyeballs. They looked hungry. They did not venture into the water; evidently that was impassible for them, as it was for the cloud maidens.

“I could be wrong,” Duban said. “But I don’t think they’re going to let us search for ambergris unscathed.”

Sinbad shuddered. “They want a piece of us, just as the cloud maidens do. Just not the same piece.”

I got an idea. “A causeway!” I exclaimed.

Sinbad and Duban looked at me.

“We can make a causeway by dredging sand from the shallow sea floor,” I said. “A ramp between the isles.”

Duban caught on first. He was a smart boy. “The maidens will cross!”

Then Sinbad did. “And seek to make love to the zombies.”

“And will not be dissuaded,” I concluded. “While we, ignored, fetch and load the ambergris.”

The others nodded. We now had a feasible plan of attack. Assuming that nothing went wrong.

Chapter Six

“One problem,” said Sinbad. “How do we build the causeway?”

I bit my lip, perhaps harder than I intended. With a taste of salty blood filling my mouth, I realized that my plan was brilliant...if we had the proper time.

As I thought about this, hard, I was more than aware of the walking dead approaching. Where did they come from? And where, exactly, were we? My best guess was a spirit realm. I had heard a mystic once discuss parallel realms that overlapped our own. A fascinating concept, but one that hurt my head. The whirlpool had brought us down to the nether regions, wherever this was, where the dead walked again, and fair maidens were nothing but exciting puffs of cloud-like shapes.

“Father, if I may,” said Duban, his little face looking nervously from me to the approaching corpses, some of which clawed their way toward us on nothing more than hands, their legs long since gone. A horrific sight if I had ever seen one. To the boy’s credit, he handled it all with a calm that I certainly wasn’t feeling.

“Out with it, boy,” I said.

“I can handle this,” he said. “I’m sure of it. My control over the elements is strengthening.”

I thought about it, even as the walking dead continued pouring through the shrubs and trees, bearing down on us inevitably. On the far isle, I could see the fair, cloud-like maidens watching all of this with obvious interest. How often did sailors end up on these shores? And how did the undead know of our arrival? What had alerted them?

The stink of the whale filled my nostrils, so strong that bile rose up in the back of my throat. Another stink soon mixed with that of the massive beast: the undead, their rotting flesh, soil and decaying garments wafting to us so strong that this time I did turn and wretch.

The ambergris was here, waiting. All we needed was time.

And now the first of the undead was upon Sinbad. I drew my own scimitar, but Sinbad was faster. His own flashed brilliantly, catching whatever was the source of light in these dull skies, and promptly hacked off the foul creature’s rotting head. It landed in the sand, its jaw still napping. Headless, the creature lumbered past us, stumbling in the lapping currents, and then finally pitching forward.

I realized that a convergence of corpses, with a taste for human brain, qualified as an emergency to use magic, even though it galled me to think I had given in so quickly.

“Fine,” I said. “But be quick about it.”

Duban grinned, and as more and more of the walking dead approached, my son, who had been prophesied to be a powerful wizard, so powerful that greatest wizard in Djinnland had conspired to destroy him at a young age, stepped forward and raised his hands. The sand around him erupted in hundreds of dervishes, swirling around the undead, clearly disorientating them.

Duban, who had closed his eyes, opened them now and grinned. He was truly a powerful young wizard. He kept one hand up, and with his other he motioned toward the narrow channel that separated the two islands. A great wind appeared to erupt, although I felt no such wind. The water, clearly agitated, began lapping and churning...and parting.

Amazingly, the young man cleared a path through the water, revealing dry land, and now the waif-like puffs of nubile female figures crossed rapidly, seeing their opening. They disappeared behind the haze of churning sand, and as my stepson stood there, holding at bay both the elements, Sinbad slapped my shoulder hard, jarring me into action.

With the sounds of unnatural love making going on behind the storm of sand, mercifully blocking my son’s view, Sinbad and I worked quickly.

It was messy work, indeed. We used our scimitars to gut the mighty creature, working our way towards its epic intestines. Once there we waded through muck and filth and slime, hacking and cutting, until we came upon the massive lumps of fetid ambergris, found deep within its stomach. To my shock, a great beak was embedded in one of the lumps...and I saw the practical use of ambergris for the great whale...to help ease such sharp, bony protrusions through its digestive tract.

Shortly, Sinbad and I had loaded the boat with our foul-smelling cargo, a cargo that was a treasure indeed, for it would be used later, once dried, as a valuable additive in perfumery. Some claimed it to be an aphrodisiac...which got me thinking.

But those thoughts were quickly quelled when a great, piercing screech erupted above the sounds of undead love making, churning sand, and rushing water.

I looked up, gasping. High above, was a massive bird. No, not just any bird. A giant roc, so enormous that it could easily crush our little submersible with its powerful talons. I stared, stunned. Will wonders never cease?

It circled once, then tucked its wings in and dived toward us.

Chapter Seven

Faddy appeared. “You mortals have a problem,” he said with seeming satisfaction.

“If you’re not going to help, smug ifrit, begone!” I snapped.

He sighed. “Very well, I will help. Consider the nature of rocs.”

“They’re big birds!” I said, frustrated.

But Sinbad caught on. “Despite their size, they’re timid birds, fearful of sons of Adam, who they know have fearsome things like crossbows. We can scare it off.” He jumped and waved his arms.

But the roc was still coming.

I got smart. “I bet it doesn’t eat zombies. They’re rotten, and they bite.”

“Or cloud maidens,” Duban said. “They have no real flesh.”

Then the roc was upon us, talons extended, its huge beak gaping wide. I whipped out my scimitar and sliced viciously at that beak.

The bird sheered off. In a moment it was past us and sailing back into the sky.

“I scared it off!” I exclaimed, gratified.

“Or it took me for a zombie,” Sinbad said. Now I saw that he was holding up his tattered shirt, which did resemble zombie apparel.

“Or a cloud maiden,” Duban said. He was standing with his hands inside his shirt, poking it out like a formidable bosom. He was small, beardless, and fair: obviously a maiden.

“So we used our wits and prevailed,” I said. “Good job, all.”

“You missed the point, dull mortals,” Faddy said.

“Oh?” I said, annoyed. “And what was your point, brilliant immortal?”

“I told you to consider the nature of rocs. Where do they reside?”

Sinbad clapped a hand to his head. “By the Isle of Diamonds and Serpents! That’s a far sail from here, our next stop. What would a roc want with zombies? It shouldn’t be here.”

“But it is here,” I pointed out.

“Precisely,” Faddy said, looking at me as if I were stupid. That’s bad enough when Jewel does it, worse when my former slave does it. I’d hate to think it was justified. But I certainly didn’t get his point.

“It’s not here,” Duban said, catching on. “It’s an illusion. I wondered why there was no big downdraft of air as it passed. Because it had no substance.”

“Smart lad,” Faddy said approvingly.

“Posted here to scare away anyone who is not a zombie or cloud maiden,” Sinbad said. “So that no one will steal the ambergris.”

“Smart man,” Faddy agreed.

“Who posted it here?” I asked. “Not the zombies or cloud maidens.”

“There is the question,” Faddy agreed, fading out.

Disconcerted, I changed the subject. “We have a return whirlpool to catch.”

“Maybe first we should let the cloud maidens go home,” Duban said. If I didn’t know better, I might have thought that he was a bit taken with these affectionate female forms.

I looked at the zombies. Most were finally extricating themselves from the embraces of the maidens, who seemed to be tiring of getting rejected. Both groups were probably ready to go home.

The avenue between the isles had filled in with water once Duban ceased focusing on it. Now he whistled, getting the attention of the maidens, who evidently liked to be whistled at. “Go home!” he called, and made his gesture. The waters parted and the path resumed. The maidens hastily disengaged and ran across it, some of them waving at Duban, who waved back.

It occurred to me that the boy might be growing up sooner than we expected. He knew that there was no future with these maidens, but what about when he encountered real ones?

When the last maiden was across, Duban relaxed and the sea filled in again. The two isles were now safely separated.

Several cloud maidens stood at the verge and gestured imploringly to Duban. They had evidently figured him for an easier mark. It seemed that the cloud stuff in their heads was not entirely dense.

“Maybe I was too hasty,” he said musingly. “They seem like nice folk.”

“We have work to do,” Sinbad said.

“We do,” I agreed immediately. But I wondered exactly why the maidens were so eager to make it with mortal men. Could it be that they might thereby obtain a bit of mortal substance that would replace an equivalent amount of cloud stuff and take them a tiny step closer to the living state? Were a mortal man to remain with them long enough, the maidens might thus slowly approach mortality themselves. In that manner they would become ever more desirable.

If I ever got deposed as king and given the chance to choose my mode of execution, I might ask to be put in a sealed boat and fed into the whirlpool. My enemies would be sure that meant violent extinction. Instead I would settle down with Cloudia and in time make a real woman of her.

“Are you sure your mind is on our mission?” Sinbad asked.

“Now it is,” I said regretfully.

We rowed the boat around Zombie Isle, searching for the whirlpool. The zombies saw us but couldn’t reach us, as they did not venture into the water. So they trudged back the way they had come, which happened to be the same way we were going. On the far side of the isle we saw what had to be Zombie City, with decrepit buildings. Here there were zombie females—I would not go so far as to call them maidens, as they plainly had been roughly used and were by no means fresh—some of whom gestured to us the way the cloud maidens had.

“If I had to choose, I’d choose clouds,” Sinbad said gruffly. I couldn’t have said it better myself. The zombies would bite our heads off, literally. Not so, the cloud maidens. There were worse fates for a man than to be marooned among such creatures, as I had already concluded.

The tide was going out. Where could it go, but back to our own realm? We just might have solved the mystery of where the waters of the seas went, every day and every night. When the tide receded, all that water had to go somewhere. Not that anyone would believe us.

And there was the forming whirlpool. We rowed madly to intercept it. Then, as the outer swirl caught us, we shipped oars and battened down the hatch.

We were on our way back to the ship, mission accomplished. I hoped our other stops would be as easy.

Chapter Eight

When the spinning stopped and we were adrift again, we unhatched the upper half of our vessel and I promptly retched over the railing.

I had managed not to vomit going down, but coming up was far longer and rougher and the spinning had seemed endless. Even the great Sinbad, sailor extraordinaire, looked a little green. I was secretly pleased at this, knowing that my jealousy of the man was unwarranted.

We spotted our vessel rising and falling on the swells. As we each picked up an oar and headed toward it, I considered the source of my jealousy of the man. Was I not a king? Was I not married to perhaps the most beautiful woman in all the realm? Had I not previously been married to another rare beauty? Yes, to all of the above.

Ah, but I did not have a great reputation for adventures. Sure, I had recently had an epic quest that would rival anything Sinbad had allegedly done, but my adventures had yet to garner songs of praise or poems of worship.

Who needs it? I spat.

Running a kingdom was challenging enough. And was I not adding to my own adventurous legacy?

No, I thought. You are only adding to Sinbad’s.

I sighed. Sometimes you just couldn’t win.

I looked at Duban and felt gratified to spend time with this most unusual boy. He was not my on, not of my blood, but I felt a kinship to him that knew no bloodlines. My own son had been cruelly murdered, and after many years of mourning, Jewel and Duban had later filled the void.

Filled it and then some.

Where the last few years of my life I had been left wandering and alone, confused and lost, these past few months I had found myself again.

And yet...I still longed for adventure.

Perhaps I was not as famous as Sinbad, but I had something even greater: the love of a good woman, and the devotion of a boy with whom I could do no wrong.

As I rowed toward the rising and falling ship, I looked again at Sinbad, and saw the grim determination on his face. He cared not for his reputation or the women who swooned after him and his legendary exploits. He cared only for the one who was stolen from him. His own wife.

Quick-witted and fearless, already Sinbad had proven to be a capable companion. Admittedly, it was hard not to like the guy.

Camel dung.

Shortly, we were aboard, and the ambergris safely stored below decks, where it would continue its long process of transformation: from whale gunk to valuable treasure.

For our success, the captain poured us all a draught of excellent wine...and cool water for my son. As evening approached, the musical instruments appeared, and my son asked if we would mind so much if he played. In good spirits, I told him to show them how it was done. Duban grinned, grabbed the lyre, and soon struck up a merry tune, in which the other ramshackle musicians struggled to keep pace with. Sinbad, in rare good spirits—after all, we were now one step closer to rescuing his wife—leaped to his feet and kicked up his boots and stomped a traditional jig. He even grabbed the captain and spun the bearded man around like a lithe maiden. The crew, myself included, guffawed and clapped, and this was how we spent the next few hours of light.

Come morning, with my head feeling as if it had been cracked open and feasted upon by zombies, I climbed above deck to find Sinbad and the captain engaged in an urgent dialogue.

“Ho,” I said, stepping over bodies still sprawled out from last night’s drinking.

“How’ goes it, Niddala?” said Sinbad, keeping to our public ruse.

“If I felt any worse,” I said, “I would be dead.”

Sinbad laughed heartily and slapped my back. “We are deciding our next course, Niddala, perhaps you would like to weigh in.”

His words rubbed me the wrong way. No one asked the king if “perhaps” he would like to weigh in. Indeed, I was used to those waiting on baited breath for my directives.

But I wasn’t the king. Not out here. Here, I was another sailor. Another adventurer. I thought about Sinbad’s situation. “It seems to me,” I said. “That the fastest way to redeem your wife is gather the greatest amount of riches. As valuable as ambergris is, it cannot replace that of diamonds and rubies and emeralds.”

“And gold!” hissed the captain, slapping his hands together, and for the first time I caught a wicked glint in his eye, and my old instincts kicked in. Something told me that perhaps the hardened sailor might not be trustworthy.

“Yes,” I said guardedly. “And gold.”

“Hang on!” cried the captain, and he scurried past me and grabbed a young sailor by the shoulder. He hauled the bucktoothed lad over to us. “Tell him what you told me a fortnight ago, and be quick about it.”

“Captain?”

The captain promptly clapped the youth behind his ear. “Out with it!”

The young man looked nervously from me to Sinbad, and then to the captain, and then he began his tale. Two weeks ago, while sailing on a vessel similar to this, he had heard singing. Beautiful singing that made him weep. The singing had reached his ears from the fog-filled night, clear and sharp and so hauntingly beautiful that he had felt love for the first time in his short, bitter life. The youth had dashed over to the wheel, where he had fought with the captain, begging the man to turn the vessel around. But the captain had been savvy and had known of the enchanted singing. He had plugged his ears with cotton and wax, blocking out the enchanted Siren calls, whose beautiful voices made it all but impossible to turn back away from rocks hidden just below the surface. The boy, who had been so possessed by the Siren’s song, had to be chained below decks to keep him away from the steering helm.

“A strange story indeed, but what does this have to do with our mission,” I asked the captain.

But Sinbad was already nodding. “The Sirens guard a grand treasure. Some claim the biggest treasure of all.”

“I do not understand. If they guard a treasure, then why sing about it?”

“Because their voices are a trap,” said the lad. “Never have I heard such beauty. Never. I weep at night when I think of them—”

The captain clapped the boy again, so hard he stumbled forward. “Oh give it a rest, lad.”

“They were lucky to escape,” said Sinbad. “Most ships would have been destroyed against the rocks, and the treasure would have been safe.” He looked at the boy. “Your captain was indeed a savvy man. He saved his ship and your life.” He turned to the boy. “And you know where this region of the sea is located?”

The boy nodded dreamily. “It is forever seared into my memory, Sinbad.”

“Good, then you will lead us back?”

“And my ship?” said the captain.

Sinbad looked at me, then at the captain. “Let us worry about your ship.”

Chapter Nine

The captain did not look entirely sanguine about that, but since we had hired his ship and he would get a share of what wealth we garnered, he did not object.

Actually I was not sanguine either. Those Sirens were evidently dangerous. We needed to plan carefully, or our ambergris would merely be added to their treasure, and we would be literally sunk.

We set sail for Siren Island. I steeped myself with ginger glop to stifle my sickness and got together privately with Sinbad and Duban. “How do we deal with the Sirens?”

“We plug our ears, of course,” Sinbad said confidently.

I glanced at Duban, encouraging him to weigh in. He did. “Plugging our ears may save the ship, but then how can we get the sirens’ treasure? Surely it is well hidden, and only they know where.”

“Excellent question,” I said. “Do we have an answer?” I glanced significantly at Sinbad.

“I hadn’t thought of that,” the man admitted, to my satisfaction. He might be a great adventurer, but he had missed the obvious. Of course I had missed it too, but had played the scene well. “One of us will have to listen.”

“And be ensorceled by the sound, as that young sailor was? That one won’t be much help to the others.”

“Maybe I can help,” Duban said. “I like music and appreciate its power. Music and magic interconnect strongly. I think I can devise a spell that will make us immune to the lure. That is, we can hear it, but won’t be overcome.”

“Brilliant,” Sinbad agreed. “We can anchor the ship beyond the Sirens’ range and go in on a small boat to negotiate.”

“Negotiate?” I asked skeptically. “What with? All they want is to wreck our ship and take whatever it has. All we want is their treasure, surely composed of all the treasures of all the ships they have lured, wrecked, and pillaged before. This isn’t a dialog between friends; this is war.”

“Ah, but if we are immune to their devastating song,” Sinbad said cannily, “then we will be in a position to kill them and take their treasure regardless.”

“Assuming we can find it,” I said sourly.

“Then we can negotiate after all,” Duban said. “We will threaten to kill all of them, but will spare any who lead us to their treasure.”

Sinbad nodded. “You will make a fine king, in due course. You have the essence.”

Duban did not respond, but I knew he was stifling a retort that he never intended to be any kind of king. But he would have years to change his mind.

“Then let’s get to the magic,” I said. “But let’s also keep it to ourselves. I don’t trust that captain.”

Both Sinbad and Duban nodded. They had picked up on the captain’s shifty look.

“This spell will make us tone deaf for several days,” Duban said. “Until it wears off.” Then he played some eerie music on the lyre. At first it was lovely, then it went flat, losing its appeal. Had the boy lost his touch? Then I realized that his fingers were still plucking the strings, but all the notes had become the same. Or rather, we heard them as all the same. We had become tone deaf.

Then I became aware of something else. I no longer felt queasy. My sea sickness had abated. Somehow the spell had changed that too. I understood from somewhere that something in the ears related to balance and thus to sea sickness, so changing what they heard must have done it.

We sailed on, and in three days my sickness returned. I could hear music again. “Um, Duban—” I said.

He smiled. “Gladly, Father.” He played the theme again, and my queasiness abated.

“Thank you, son.” I was really getting to like that boy.

In due course we approached the area the sailor had told us about. “Soon we’ll hear the Siren song,” he said eagerly. “I can almost hear it now.” He cocked his head.

“Drop anchor!” Sinbad told the captain.

“But we’re still just out of range,” the sailor protested.

“Precisely,” Sinbad said.

The three of us huddled privately so that Duban could give us a good dose of magic music. I knew it was effective because my seasickness was gone. We rehearsed our strategy for dealing with the Sirens one last time. Then we made sure of our weapons and went to our rowboat. Sinbad directed the captain to remain here until we returned, as before.

“Wait!” the young sailor cried. “I want to go too!”

“Camel dung!” Sinbad muttered. “He’ll be a nuisance.”

“I can lead you right to them!” the man insisted. “Otherwise you could cast about for hours looking!”

“We’ll follow the song,” Sinbad said.

But I caught his eye: we could no longer hear the song as such. The others didn’t know that, but we could indeed cast about blindly.

Sinbad decided to be magnanimous. “Very well, sailor, you may come. But I will not be responsible for the likely doom you are bringing on yourself.”

“Oh thank you, sir!” the sailor cried, jumping into the boat. I made a mental note: the Siren song lured men even when they knew it could kill them.

“Make yourself useful,” Sinbad said. “Take an oar.”

The sailor gladly agreed. Soon the sailor and I were rowing, while Sinbad and Duban faced the other way, peering into the forming mists.

“You’re in for something special,” a voice murmured in my ear. It was the ifrit Faddy. “Those fishfolk are something to behold. But don’t trust them farther than you can kiss them.”

“Thanks for the advice,” I said. But I felt to make sure I had the magic lamp on me, just in case we needed to be bailed out. Lamprey still served me, though I never called him unless the need was dire.

“I hear them!” the sailor said as he rowed. “Don’t you?”

“Of course we do,” Sinbad said gruffly. “But we are resisting the lure.”

The truth was all we heard was a monotonous ululation. I realized that the sailor was proving to be more useful than we had thought, because the Sirens would assume that all of us were as fascinated as he was. But I wondered: just what did the Sirens do with the men of the ships that wrecked? Because as far as I knew, no sailor had ever returned from any ship caught by the Sirens. I was glad I had my scimitar handy.

The ululation increased in intensity. It sounded like nothing so much as dismal wailing. This caused captains to wreck their ships?

“I’m coming!” the sailor said. “I love you!”

I was almost sorry I couldn’t hear the tune. It must be quite compelling. “Remember,” I said. “Our best bet is to treat them with contempt. Get them riled so they don’t think straight.”

Then a head appeared by the boat. We saw the lovely face and bosom of a swimming mermaid. The sailor and I stopped rowing. We were evidently there.

“Here to meee,” the Siren sang.

The sailor leaped out of the boat to join her. So much for contempt. She threw her arms about him, kissed him, and drew him under the surface of the sea. Just like that they were gone.

“Did I mention how we appreciate your magic?” I asked Duban.

He didn’t answer. He was staring at the next mermaid. She was a truly luscious creature, with flowing blond hair, a face like the fabled Helen of Troy, and a torso that wavered tantalizingly in the ripples of the water. “Come to meeee,” she sang to him.

“I think not,” Duban said. “But you certainly are pretty.”

Pretty? That was the understatement of the year.

The mermaid frowned, as well she might. She did not realize that both Duban’s magic and his youth prevented him from being instantly enraptured by her voice and aspect. “Not?”

I interposed. “We are here to negotiate, fishtail.”

She looked at me, plainly annoyed. “Why are you not already in the water seeking my embrace?”

“Well, we don’t care to get wet. Why don’t you come aboard and we’ll talk.”

Her mouth worked for a moment without making a sound. She simply did not know what to make of this impudence.

More Sirens appeared around the boat. “Come to meee,” they chorused.

“We have come to negotiate with the Sirens,” Sinbad said. “But a Siren is part woman and part bird. You look like routine mermaids to me. We’ll not join you.”

The creatures exchanged frustrated glances. Then their evident leader spoke. She was a black haired beauty whose imposing breasts needed no song enhancement to make them fascinating. “There are different species of Sirens. We are sea dwellers. Why are you not hopelessly fascinated by our song?”

“I’m sure it’s a nice song,” I said in the manner of an adult complimenting a child. “But my son Duban plays a better melody on the lyre.” I frowned. “Now let’s get down to business. We are here to take your treasure. We will spare any who lead us to it. The others we will slay.” I touched the hilt of my scimitar.

The head Siren swelled up until her bosom threatened to float right out of the water. “We will overturn your boat, dump you in the water, and drown you, you disreputable oaf!”

I made a beckoning gesture. “Welcome to try, honey. We’ll lop the arms off any who try to grab this boat. Now are you going to come here and sit your pert posterior on my lap, so we can talk while I fondle your doubtlessly adequate body?”

I thought she was going to rise the rest of the way out of the water, so steamed was her expression. Then she changed her approach. “Perhaps that would be nice.” She put her arms up to me so that I could catch hold and draw her up onto me.

I hesitated. Would she really do it, or was this a ploy to try to kill me?

One way to find out. I knew Sinbad and Duban were on guard. I caught her arms and lifted her. She wriggled her tail to boost herself, and flopped up against me. As her tail left the water it shimmered and shifted, becoming a truly fine pair of legs. Indeed, her body was marvelously fit throughout. Gloriously nude, she sat on my lap. She wasn’t even wet. She brought her face close to mine, puckered for a kiss.

“You do realize, of course,” I said calmly, “that if you try to bite me I will promptly cut your silly head off?”

“I realize,” she said, and delivered a wonderfully sweet kiss. “Now shall we talk before or after I seduce you?”

For perhaps the first time in my life, I was glad for my impotence with strange women. It had become a secret weapon. “Before.”

“Before,” she agreed. “Now what’s this about your taking our treasure?”

Now our dialogue should get interesting.

Chapter Ten

Duban was looking at me with darkened eyes.

I didn’t need to be a seer to know what he was thinking: he didn’t approve of me cavorting with any woman other than his mother. And, quite, frankly, he probably didn’t approve of me cavorting with his mother either. If I wasn’t careful, my negotiating skills might be misconstrued as something less than honorable. Although I was a sovereign king and had access to concubines and mistresses, and fathers veritably shoved their daughters onto me, I had had no such interest in pursuing such dalliances. Jewel was truly the woman for me, not to mention the only woman who awakened a passion that had lain dormant for so many years. For that I was grateful...and faithful.

Truly, I loved Jewel, and I loved our physical relationship. I would not want to lose that under any circumstances.

All of which led me to physically remove the buxom young Siren from my lap. Her curves were soft and her flesh taut and any other man on earth would have been tempted beyond reason.

The Siren was clearly not used to this. “Have I fallen already out of favor?” she asked, pouting.

I caught Duban’s approving gaze. How much access the powerful young man had to my thoughts, I did not know, but he surely knew the depth of my love for his mother.

“Of course not,” I said. “I was finding negotiation, ah, difficult with such a fine creature sitting on my lap.”

She nodded, approving of my response. That she was sitting nude in front of two men and a half, she cared not. With each breath, her large breasts reflected the setting sun in ways that I would never, ever forget.

“So tell me, handsome mortal, how are you not affected by our beautiful voices? This has never happened before.”

I opened my mouth to speak but Sinbad jumped in. “We are tone deaf, fair maiden.”

“Tone deaf? What does this mean?”

“It means your music is lost on us,” I said.

She looked carefully at each of us, lingering longer on Duban. Her eyes narrowed slightly, as did his. I wondered if a psychic connection had been made, of the sort I was not privy to.

“And all of you suffer from this unfortunate malady?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said irritably. Her perfect flesh was damn distracting and we had a treasure to find, not to mention Duban’s spell would be wearing off soon. “Now where is—”

“And this has nothing to do with this intriguing young man?” she asked leaning forward, studying Duban.

“Nonsense,” I said, gripping my scimitar. To end such a lovely creature’s life was a crime, until I realized that her beauty could all be an illusion. Or not. Either way, I would not die out here, on this simple boat, at the hands of psychotic immortal vixens.

She leaned back again, although her gaze lingered on Duban. “A most unusual young man.”

“Enough,” I said, raising my voice and pointing my sword. “Now take us to your treasure our lose your beautiful head.”

“Nonsense,” she said, “you will not harm me.”

“Why wouldn’t I harm you?” I asked, blinking.

“You need me to take you to our treasure.”

“There are others here who will take me, or they will all be slain—”

“And if they are all slain, then who will take you?”

“I am certain one or two will wish to be spared?”

“And if not, mortal? What if they choose to follow their leader in death?”

“You are their leader?” I asked.

She turned her full gaze onto me and I swallowed hard. By Allah, she was a beautiful woman. Duban was looking at me again, and I focused my thoughts.

“Of course,” she said. “As I have been for eons.”

“Then you have certainly led many a sailor to his death.”

She returned her gaze to me. Something close to pleasure crossed her fine features. “Oh, not all deaths have been catastrophic.”

“What does that mean?”

She grinned again and now Faddy appeared next to me, invisible to everyone but me. And perhaps Duban. I truly did not know the extent of the boy’s considerable power. “They’re using our young sailor as a sex slave, master.”

I merely nodded, not risking speaking, or even sub-vocalizing. I also did not know the extent of the Siren’s powers.

Faddy continued. “He’s being used over and over, draining him of fluid and life. He will be dead soon.”

I could not imagine a better way to go. But I had other problems to focus on. Primarily, our leverage seemed to have been nullified. If the Sirens would risk death rather than forfeit their vast treasure, I had to use another angle.

“What use is the treasure to you, Sea Hag?” I said.

“It is beautiful to look at.”

“And you would risk your life...immortality, before giving up beauty?”

“Perhaps, but you would be foolish to find out first hand.”

We were getting nowhere. “Out with it, Sea Hag. What is that you want?”

She looked at me coolly, her features beautiful and timeless. Her age was nearly impossible to gauge. Then she looked from me to Duban. “The boy.”

I stiffened. “What about the boy?”

“I want him. He seems...amusing.”

“Never—”

“It is okay, Niddala,” said Duban calmly. “They can have me if they so desire.”

“Never!”

And that’s when I felt a calming presence surround me. Months ago, I had experienced powerful telepathy. This feeling was similar, as if someone had nestled close to me. So close that they were, in fact, in my mind. Duban, as far as I was aware, did not have such abilities. Still, he was able to radiate a feeling towards me. A peaceful feeling. I glanced at him sharply and he smiled serenely and the feeling intensified.

Duban might be young in years but he was wise for his age. For any age. He was letting me know that everything was okay, that perhaps he even had a plan.

“Camel dung,” I mumbled under my breath. “Fine. You may have the boy.”

“My lord—er, Nidalla, are you sure?” asked Sinbad, grabbing my arm.

I looked again at Duban and he nodded once. “Yes,” I said weakly, although never had I felt less sure about anything. “I’m sure.”

The wicked sea creature leaped from the boat. “Then come! The water is fine.” She cackled with laughter. “Your treasure awaits. Follow me.”

“But we cannot follow you into the ocean, Sea Witch,” I hissed.

“Oh, it is not very deep at all, mortal. Follow me if you dare. And don’t forget the boy.”

She grinned again, revealing long, curved teeth that I had not seen before. She turned, flashed her backside, and disappeared beneath the waves.

Chapter Eleven

What the Hades.

We hastily stripped off our clothing and dived after her, stroking on the surface. Duban and I weren’t great swimmers, being landlubbers, but Sinbad was fair. She showed up before us, a far better swimmer than we were, and she wasn’t even using her tail. She was swimming right in front of me and I could see her legs flashing together and apart.

The she-dog! She was deliberately vamping us with her nether flesh. “Remember the boy!” I called to her angrily.

“Ooops,” she agreed ruefully, and her tail reformed. Had she really forgotten? I did not fully trust the nature of her interest in Duban. “Now down.” Her flukes flashed as she dived.

We pursued her as well as we were able. Not far below the surface was the entrance to an underwater cave in the bank leading to an island. We followed her into it. Inside it angled upward and there was air. That was a relief; I could not hold my breath long.

And what a cave it was! I had seen geodes in my treasury, stones cracked open to reveal colorful crystals inside. This entire cave was a huge geode with highly reflective facets. A beam of sunlight angled down through a hole above, and the crystals coruscated where it struck, reflecting a range of colors from the glassy prisms. It was absolutely beautiful, and surely precious beyond description.

“Don’t dawdle,” the Siren chided us. “This is merely the entryway. Onward.” Her flukes flashed again as she dived.

We followed, this time going deeper to a hole in the cave floor, trusting that this too led to a chamber with air. It did, though this one was darker. There was a muted glow from the walls, as of illuminated plants, so that we could see, but that was all. The other sirens were already here, ranged alongside their mistress. We would have trouble fighting them off, if it came to that, because we had foolishly left our weapons in the boat.

When we reached the bank there was another surprise. This chamber was huge, and filled to bursting with gold, silver, diamonds, rubies, emeralds, pearls, and works of art: carved jade statuettes, teak and mahogany reliefs, intricate sandalwood boxes, ivory figurines, and ornate alabaster lamps. Even bottles of rare wines, and papyrus scrolls that were surely rarer books. The treasures of countless wrecked ships. A tiny fraction of it would fill the hold of the Fat Chance and make the ship sluggish in the water from the weight.

“What do you think?” the Siren asked with a toothy smile as we clambered onto the dry cave floor.

Duban caught on first. “Your cave is full! You need to clear some of it out to have room for more valuable items hereafter.”

“Exactly,” she agreed. “We will give you one shipload for your mission, and on your return, if you wish, another shipload for your merchants. It will be a profitable venture for all concerned.”

“What do you know of our venture?” Sinbad asked suspiciously.

“As much as we care to, Sinbad. It is a noble thing you attempt.”

“You know my name!”

“And the names of your companions, King Aladdin and Magician Duban. Welcome to our humble abode.”

We stared at her. “How—?” I asked.

“Word gets around. We track all ships of the region, so as to know what they contain. Yours is hardly worth harvesting, just some immature ambergris, and we already have more than enough of that. So we left it alone.”

“You saw us coming!” Sinbad said.

“Literally and figuratively,” she agreed.

“Then why—?”

“We wanted the boy, so we let you bring him to us. Why else? It isn’t as though we need more stud service, not that Aladdin can provide that anyway.”

The vixen knew too much. “Then why?” I echoed Sinbad, embarrassed.

“Why threaten to seduce you? It’s a challenge. Ordinary sailors are no challenge at all, but you are. It would be fun to prove that the queen is not unique in that respect.”

Way too much!

“You want me for what?” Duban asked grimly. He now seemed less certain that all was well.

She laughed. “Not that. We have no need to prey on the young. It is your potent magic we want.”

“My magic is not for the likes of you.”

She gave him a steady gaze. “Are you sure?”

And, surprisingly, Duban backed down. “No.”

“You have a notion what we want,” the Siren continued. “You know that the deal we proffer is fair. That’s why you agreed to come here.”

“That is not the whole of it,” Duban said tightly.

“Then it is time to present the whole of it. Duban, we are strong in our domain, but there are potential enemies who are stronger. We face serious mischief that we will be powerless to prevent. We don’t know when or what, just that the danger lurks. But with a magician of your caliber on our side, we can perhaps fend it off. So we want an alliance with you. Since you will not betray your father, we must make an alliance with him too.”

“An alliance!” I exclaimed. “Why should I want to have anything to do with you?”

“Because you are sailing into a deadly trap, Aladdin. We can help you. But we want a fair exchange.”

I had received similar warnings before. “A shipload of treasure won’t help me much if I die in a trap.”

“Exactly,” the Siren agreed. “The treasure is merely a pretext. We are trading that for the alliance with Duban. We are trading information for the alliance with you.”

“What trap?” I demanded.

“We do not know the details of it, only that it relates to the woman, Sinbad’s wife. When you ransom her, it will spring. You must be prepared or you are lost. You may be lost anyway.” She turned to face Sinbad. “Your safest course is to give up your quest. We can provide you with a woman as lovely and obliging as your wife, if you wish.”

“Never!” Sinbad said.

“Precisely. We do value loyalty.” She turned back to Duban. “Do we have a deal?”

Duban nodded. “I will help you to the extent I can, when you need it. How will I know when that is?”

“Sylvie will accompany you.” The Siren gestured, and one of the other mermaids swam forward, slender yet voluptuous as they all were.

“I don’t want a girl with me!”

The Siren smiled. “Be not concerned. She will make an oath not to seduce you for three years. Then she will negotiate with Myrrh for an extension if you still don’t want a concubine. You will not be molested.”

Duban was obviously set back. “But to have such a creature with me—others will misunderstand.”

“Not if she accompanies you in the form of a silver ring on your finger.”

“You can do transformations?”

“Not of that magnitude; tail to legs is about our limit. But you can. All you need is guidance.”

“Guidance?”

“Approach him, Sylvie,” the Siren said. The mermaid did. “Take her hand, Duban.” Duban reluctantly did. “Now concentrate of the image of the ring, Duban. Make her change, stage by stage. Be guided by the protocol in my mind.” She knew Duban could read her mind, and was using that.

And, slowly, the mermaid changed form, first bending forward to catch her own toes with her free hand, forming a large ring in the water, part of which touched Duban’s hand. Then it became smaller, until at last it was ring sized, and nestled securely on his left little finger.

“Free her to swim once a day, for her health,” the siren said. “Otherwise she will be no trouble to you. You will be able to commune with her mentally, as you are in close contact, and if we need you, we will signal her.”

Duban stared at what he had wrought, fascinated. A silvery ring on his finger, that I now saw had faint contours of a curled woman. Sylvie. The Siren had known how to direct Duban in using his formidable magic for this purpose. In the process she had amplified his power by showing him how it could be directed. She must have learned such tricks in the course of her centuries of life.

I exchanged a glance with Sinbad. We both knew that we would be better off allied with the Sirens than opposed to them. We did not want them as enemies.

Still, there were questions. “If you were this savvy about our nature and motives, why did you bother with the business in the boat?”

The Siren smiled. “We do enjoy a little flirtation on occasion.”

“Flirtation! I threatened to cut off your head!”

“But you didn’t mean it, any more than we meant to drown you. We simply had roles to play, until we could get private. The very fish have ears, out there.”

I elected not to argue the case. For one thing, I feared she was smarter than I. Truly savvy women make me nervous.

“The young sailor,” Sinbad said. “You took him.”

I nodded. How would she explain away that evidence of bad intention?

“You may have him back, if he wants to rejoin you. Observe.” The Siren touched a wall of the cave and a porthole opened.

Sinbad and I peered through it; Duban remained distracted by the ring. There was the sailor embracing a siren so closely it was hard to be sure whether she was wearing legs or tail. He was madly kissing her, and that was surely only the aspect that showed. Several other sirens were waiting nearby.

“Sailor!” Sinbad called. “We are about to return to the ship. Are you coming?”

“In a moment!” he gasped. Then he paused. “Oh, the ship. No, I’m happy here.”

“You’re wearing yourself out,” Sinbad said. “It’s not healthy.”

“They’ve got pep pills. I can keep going indefinitely.” Indeed, he finished with the one mermaid, who rolled out from under him, and another took her place. He clasped her, though he was starting to look gaunt.

It was apparent that the sailor was in his kind of heaven and did not want to give it up even for a moment, though he destroy himself. He was drugged on performance.

I sighed. We needed to get out of here before the tone deaf magic wore off, so that we did not get similarly overcome. “We have a deal,” I said shortly.

“Wonderful.” The Siren came and kissed me with such finesse that I did have to wonder whether she would be able to seduce me if given time. I suspected she could, despite my awareness that she was far, far older than she looked.

“Time to go,” Sinbad said.

It was more than time.

Chapter Twelve

The three of us were then given free rein of the underwater cavern, told to hand-pick our treasures.

Sinbad, in dire need of a hefty payment to negotiate for his wife, picked out the most valuable jewels and gold coins. He bypassed silver entirely. Duban had an eye for mystical relics: a fabulous crystal ball, golden idols and chunky jewelry that veritably screamed enchantment. All of which he scooped up with glee, and I suspected that a ship or two transporting powerful wizards had met their end on these very rocks.

How many lives had the Sirens ended? I didn’t know, but I figured in the hundreds, if not thousands. What possessed them? What drove them? Was it all for the valuable cargo? Cargo they had no use of other than to bask in its beauty?

I hadn’t a clue, but I knew we needed to be moving. I wasn’t sure how much longer Duban’s spell would keep the Sirens’ singing at bay. Indeed, I could hear their singing constantly in the background. Although many were here with us in the caverns, I suspected a few were always on the rock, singing, luring, destroying, killing.

I shook my head as I went through the treasure, picking out what I thought Jewel would like, and relics that would look nice in my palace. I felt like a woman out shopping in the market with her sisters. Except in this case, the market consisted of only treasure, and my “sisters” were none other than Sinbad and a powerful young wizard, who only seemed to be getting more powerful by the minute.

I picked out some portraits that were breathtaking, and jewel-encrusted bowls, goblets and something that could have been a wand. I’d probably give that to Duban. As I pointed to items, beautiful maidens collected them and deposited them in clear containers that I, for the life of me, could not fathom their composition. It appeared to be glass, but very fine and lightweight. Perhaps it was an enchanted material, known only to these vile vixens.

Sinbad’s treasure of gold and jewels filled the majority of the boxes, which was fine. My kingdom was thriving and I, like the Sirens, had little use for gold and jewels, other to look at.

Perhaps I am not much different than the vixens, I thought, but then tossed the idea immediately. I did not make it a habit to lure and destroy and plunder.

“And how do we get this treasure to the ship?” I asked the beautiful leader, who was watching all of this from a high rock. I noted the perch gave her a view of the entire cavern, from where she could indeed sit and admire her priceless collection.

“We will take it out to you, of course. We have done this sort of thing before, although in reverse.” She cackled at her own wicked joke.

As we were preparing to set out again, something else caught my eye. A rug, rolled tightly and leaning against the cave wall. A loose thread was blowing in the wind...except there was no wind down here. Having already owned such a magic carpet, I suspected what this was immediately. I pointed to it, and it, too, was added to our valuable cargo.

With our treasure selected, we were led out of the cavern the same way we had come. Duban, I noted, appeared relaxed and comfortable during the entire swim, while Sinbad and I swam with panicked desperation. And with my lungs near to bursting, we broke the surface of the ocean, near our simple rowboat, which had not strayed very far. The boy only smiled as Sinbad and I gasped, sucking great lungfuls of air.

Enchantment, I thought. Wizards always have it easy.

The next few hours were eventful as our horde of treasure, towed by a row of beautiful Sirens appeared next to the ship. The lads on board nearly fell into the water with them. They didn’t need enchanted songs to lure them to their deaths. A healthy pair of floating breasts appeared to be all that was necessary.

There was a collective groan from the men, when the Sirens lifted their tails in unison, flashed the men, and dove under the surface. It was a good thing we were out of range of the cursed rock. No doubt the ship would have turned and followed right behind them.

With our treasure stowed aboard and the merchant vessel sitting low on the water, I knew we had reached its maximum capacity.

Later, Sinbad and I were sitting with the captain in his slightly less cramped quarters. Duban and the men were singing and dancing and stomping above deck, celebrating our epic haul of treasure.

Sinbad, I noted, appeared anxious.

He saw my concern and explained, “Every day that my wife is held captive is another day for her to be raped and tortured.”

“Surely this is enough treasure to ransom your wife,” I said.

At the mention of giving up the treasure, the ship captain looked stricken and a brief darkness clouded his features. He composed himself quickly. “It’s enough to buy a small kingdom.” And now the captain looked wistful, and I wondered what he had in mind.

“We can only see,” said Sinbad. “But I think it’s time to find out.”

“And where is your wife being held captive?” I asked.

“Cloudland,” said Sinbad grimly.

“I have never heard of this land,” I said.

Sinbad smiled and I saw the old gleam of adventure return. “Because few have seen it, and fewer yet have returned.”

“It seems,” I said dryly, “that we have been hearing that a lot.”

Sinbad chuckled lightly. “You are good luck, my King, as I suspected you would be. Anyone aided by such a powerful djinn must surely have luck on his side. In the past, my visits to the land of the dead or the caverns of the Sirens, would have ended very poorly for me. Sure, I might have come out of it alive, but my crew would have been long gone, and I might have suffered greatly. But with you here, yes, Allah is surely looking favorably upon us. So, indeed, few have seen these places, and fewer yet make it back alive, which is why I have high hope that we will survive yet again, and this time with my precious wife.”

I was embarrassed by praise of luck, although a case could certainly be made for it. I prefer to think I lived by my wits and strength and cunning, but maybe my success was due to nothing more than good fortune and the grace of Allah.

I said, “Tell me more of this Cloudland.”

“Ah, it needs to be seen to be believed,” began Sinbad, and once again his dark eyes had that far-off look of a man who is forever restless, who forever craves adventures and a rolling deck beneath his feet.

Sinbad went on to describe Cloudland, a fantastical place that sat high in the clouds above an island a week’s journey from here. The trees here grew to incomprehensible heights, reaching high into the clouds themselves. There a city was built, in the treetops, connected by precarious bridges and walkways, a city perpetually filled with roiling mist, thunderstorms and lighting. “Here, where the sun never shines, a great wizard lives.”

“And this is where your wife is held captive?”

“Close,” said Sinbad. “The great trees reach as high as the highest peak upon the mountain. It is within a cave, high above, and guarded by a serpent large enough to swallow two camels whole.”

Duban turned green. I think my own heart might have fluttered. It was tempting to wish Sinbad luck and turn back with our treasure, but I had come to like the man, and his love for his wife was admirable. Not to mention, I did not want our hero’s tale to say that King Aladdin fled at the first sign of insurmountable odds. Or seemingly insurmountable odds.

I nodded and clapped Sinbad heartily on his shoulder. “Then I suggest we set sail for Cloudland immediately.”

The relief on his face was unmistakable. The frown on the captain’s face was worrisome. In due course, we set sail for the isle of the giant trees.

And giant serpents, too, apparently.

Chapter Thirteen

“Don’t sleep by day, master,” Faddy told me. “It’s not healthy.”

“I’ll do what I please, ifrit,” I retorted. “Begone.”

He went. That spook could really annoy me, because now he appeared when he chose, rather than when I chose. He was trying to direct my schedule?

The sea was calm, with moderate winds of the right direction: ideal sailing weather. After two days we were frankly bored. Duban kept me from being seasick by moderate doses of the tone-deaf spell, which I really appreciated. We played at dice for worthless pebbles, just for the diversion and to show Duban this aspect of male existence; all men gambled foolishly. We ate a good meal provided by the ship’s galley, and drank a bit too much spiced sherbet. Sherbets required ice, and there was precious little of that aboard ship, because it didn’t store well, so it was a special treat. Maybe the captain wasn’t such a bad sort after all. Even Duban sampled the drink, learning another aspect of being a man, though I wouldn’t let him over-indulge lest I had to answer to his mother. Really good drinks sometimes contained alcohol, which was of course forbidden to loyal followers of Allah. Naturally we pretended not to notice the tang. Then we slept.

I woke in darkness, which was odd because it had been midday when we napped. Then I realized that I was not in our cramped compartment, but in a boat. A closed boat. In fact it was our double boat that we had used to ride the whirlpools. What was I doing here?

In a moment I felt around and found Sinbad and Duban on either side of me, both still sound asleep. This was really weird. How had we come here without waking?

“I told you, master. But you dismissed me unkindly.”

For once I was glad to hear from Faddy. “I apologize for disrespecting you,” I said contritely. “Now will you explain the situation?”

“Gladly, master. The wicked captain put bhang in your sherbet, such a dose that if an elephant sniffed it, it would sleep from week to week. Naturally you conked out. Then he hauled the three of you into the boats, closed them over you, and had his men lower you over the side to the water and cast you adrift. The men did not know the craft was occupied. They thought it was merely making room on the deck for future treasure.”

My mind was slowly clearing. Bhang had never had great effect on me, which explained why I recovered first, though probably Faddy was exaggerating about the elephant. “This is a dastardly plot by the captain? I never did much like the look of the man.”

“Even so, master. I tried to warn you.”

“So you said,” I agreed. Sometimes Faddy’s communications lacked complete clarity, but this was not the time to argue that case. “So the captain is stranding us so he can abscond with the treasure?”

“Even so, master. No one else knows you are even gone. I think he means to take it all for himself and any henchmen who support him.”

“Let’s get the lid off,” I said, sitting up and heaving at it. It swung up and the light of early afternoon poured in.

I looked around. There was no sign of the ship. With a fair wind it had obviously made good progress away from here, and we would never be able to catch it even if we were all in good rowing shape, which we weren’t. There was no land either. We were stranded on the high seas, and for all the captain knew, would soon die of hunger and exposure here on the open water. It was one sinisterly neat ploy.

However, there were things the captain did not know about us, such as our identities, or my magic lamp, or Duban’s growing ability as a magician. The crew knew him as as innocent young musician, that was all. We had resources, and this was not as serious a matter as it might have been.

I felt for the chest that held the Lamp. It wasn’t there. Oops—it had been left behind, on the ship, as a thing of little value. Our situation had just become a notch more serious. But there still might be a remedy. “Faddy, would you care to zip off to the ship and fetch me the Lamp?”

“You’re turning to that djinn instead of to me?” he demanded, offended.

I realized it would not be politic to point out that as ifrits went, Lamprey was like a mighty king compared to Faddy’s lowly peasant, and could do proportionally more for me. “I have to,” I said. “Lamprey remains bound to me. You don’t. I freed you, remember?”

“Still,” he said, only moderately mollified.

“But of course you are an ifrit, and surely could provide supernatural help if you chose to. That would make you as useful as Lamprey.”

“Are you managing me?” he asked suspiciously.

“I wouldn’t think of it,” I lied. “Merely clarifying that you could be of great service in my desperate hour of need, if you felt so generously inclined.”

“So you want me to fetch the lamp.”

Hades! He’d never do it now. “You’re too smart for me,” I confessed ruefully.

“Obviously,” he agreed, mellowing.

Sinbad stirred. “What?” he asked groggily.

“We got dosed and dumped,” I explained. “Plot by the captain to steal the treasure.”

Suddenly he was wide awake. “But I need that treasure to ransom my wife!”

“The man is a gas-bloated donkey’s anal sphincter,” I remarked. “He thinks he has a better use for the treasure than wasting it on a mere captive woman.”

“I will tie him to the mast and flay off all his skin!”

“An admirable ambition,” I agreed. “First we need to un-maroon ourselves.

Now Duban stirred. He had taken least of the doped drink, but was not hardened to alcohol or bhang. “Why do I feel as if I just vomited?” he asked.

“There was bhang in the sherbet,” I told him. “We didn’t know. The captain plotted to strand us and abscond with the treasure before we could spend it on a ransom.”

“The Assyrians impaled people for less than that,” he said, annoyed. Impalement in those old days had been a matter of sitting men on vertical pointed posts so their their own weight gradually bore them down until their ruptured guts killed them. It was one of those punishments like crucifixion that was best avoided.

“So what do we do now?” Sinbad asked, being a practical person.

I got a genius of an idea. “Duban, you still wear the silver ring?”

“Yes.” He looked embarrassed. “Every so often she squeezes me, almost as if it is some other part of me she surrounds.”

“She can’t help it; she’s a Siren. Squeezing is as natural to them as singing. But I believe we can use her, if she’s willing.”

Duban focused, and the ring expanded until Sylvie had joined us in the boat, lusciously naked and fully aware of it. “I’m willing,” she said. “I swore an oath not to seduce Duban, but that doesn’t count for the other two of you. So yes, I can divert you while you wait to die of exposure.”

So she could hear and understand us while in ring form. I would keep that in mind. “I need to get a lamp from our cabin in the Fat Chance. Can you swim fast enough to catch up to the ship?”

“Certainly; a siren can outrace any ship. But you don’t need lamp light; it’s daytime. Even at night, we can do it by feel. If you fumble, I can guide you.”

It seemed that Sirens were somewhat single minded about the interests of men, perhaps not without reason. “We’re not interested in seduction at the moment,” I said. “I just need that lamp.”

“Oh, poo,” she pouted. “I’ll do it if Duban asks me to. I’m bound to him for the duration.”

Duban knew about the lamp, of course. “Do it,” he said.

“Immediately.” She paused. “But you know I’m not conversant with the insides of ships. They’re generally in bad shape by the time we get them. I could use some guidance along the way.”

“We can’t swim the way you can,” I said.

“You won’t need to. Just have Duban transform one of you into a ring, now that he knows how to do it.”

We gazed at each other in wild surprise. She was right: she should have guidance, and we could do it. But who? “Me,” I said before I thought. The others did not argue.

Thus it was that Duban took my hand and transformed me into a brass ring, after I stripped so as not to mess up my clothes. The process wasn’t painful, merely weird, though I would have preferred to merit gold instead of brass. Sylvie put me on her middle finger, as I would have been loose on a smaller one. Then she dived into the water, her legs becoming her tail.

It was interesting the way she swam. She did not stroke with her arms, but merely held them out before her to break the water while she threshed with her powerful tail. She moved faster than any ordinary person could dream of; the spume fairly flew from her de facto prow. She wasn’t even breathless from the effort; she talked to me in a normal voice.

“The Mistress likes you. She said to keep you safe as well as the boy, if I could. Our alliance would not be worth much if you died. So I’m helping you survive.”

I squeezed her finger once, meaning agreement.

“You know, it would serve that nasty captain right if someone dosed him with bhang and marooned him,” she continued. “I could do it if you approve.”

Now that was a notion! I squeezed once again.

“I hated seeing the captain plot against you,” she continued. “I suspected him, and tried to warn Duban, but he misunderstood my squeeze.”

So that was the meaning of her communication. She had been trying to help him, not seduce him. She did not seem like a bad sort, as Sirens went.

But then she countered my thought. “You’re a halfway handsome lout. Are you sure you wouldn’t like me to seduce you? I could do it with my song, now that the tone-deaf spell has worn off, but Mistress said not to do it unless you actually want it.”

I did not respond, though I did wonder whether her song could do it. After seeing the non-stop passion of the sailor, I was not about to bet that it couldn’t.

The ship hove into view ahead. We had made amazing progress.

I anticipated a problem: Sylvie would surely be seen, and a lovely naked woman would attract immediate attention. How could we abate that?

“Good question,” she said. That was when I realized that she could read my thoughts; I didn’t have to be limited to squeezing. But then why hadn’t she had Duban read her thoughts about the captain?

“His mind was closed to me,” she said sadly. “He doesn’t quite trust me.”

I decided not to pursue that aspect, because I did not quite trust her either. Find clothing, I thought. Avoid showing yourself before that.

“I will try,” she said.

She came to the ship, found a trailing rope, put on legs, and climbed nimbly up it. She was one strong healthy creature, a lot tougher than she looked.

“Thank you.”

I stifled further thoughts.

Soon we were on the deck. We were in luck; no one was looking our way. I directed Sylvie to a storage bin where we found discarded old tattered men’s clothing. She donned that, then bound back her luxurious hair. Now she looked almost like a small sailor.

We headed for our cabin. And there was a sailor pawing through our stuff. No, it was the captain himself, the one who knew (he thought) that we would not be returning. How could we get the lamp without alerting him to our presence, and to its importance?

He heard us. He looked up. He opened his mouth.

Sylvie stepped into him and closed his mouth with a kiss. I could feel his sheer amazement.

But what would happen when the kiss ended?

Chapter Fourteen

The captain, clearly surprised at having been kissed by what surely appeared to be a smallish male sailor, obviously got over his shock by returning the kiss vigorously.

As the Siren continued her embrace, I saw—or rather felt—what she was up to. With her hands entwined behind the captain’s back, the cunning sea nymph began working me free from her finger.

Once the ring was free, the spell was immediately nullified and I landed hard on the wooden floor, still curled and clutching my bare toes. Hardly a position worthy of a king!

But the captain, apparently not completely lost in the luscious creature’s embrace, immediately spun about at the crashing thud behind him.

“You!” he shouted, his voice rising slightly with confusion and shock. He promptly threw the sea maiden off him. She didn’t go willingly and I saw the lust in her eyes. Apparently, any man would do.

I leaped to my feet—all too aware that I stood as naked as the day I was born—and faced a fully armed, battle-hardened captain. And, apparently, thief. My member, I couldn’t help but notice, had all but shriveled up and disappeared. Maybe that was always its response to an inevitable fight. Disappearing from action to save itself. If so, I agreed with the instinctive action.

“How did you get back here?” he demanded, drawing his narrow scimitar, which, I suspected, he wielded expertly. “Where is Sinbad?”

My mind worked frantically. “He’s here, on board, gathering the men. He’s a hero to them. Much more than you, dung-face. Your ridiculous plan failed.”

He cocked an ear, listening. “I hear of no activity above deck.”

He was in such a position to see up through the hatch, where a short flight of stairs led to the deck. Even I could see a sailor lounging not too far away, enjoying the sun, oblivious.

He turned back to us, holding his sword steady. “I think you lie.”

“We would have given you a hefty share of the profit,” I said.

“Why take a share, when you can have the whole lot?”

“Spoken,” I said, “like a true snake.”

He pointed the tip of his sword toward Sylvie. “And where did you find this fine creature?”

I was backed up against a wall. The simple wooden box containing the magic lamp was under my cot. I could see the corner of it and so far the captain hadn’t gotten his grubby hands on it.

The captain seemed intent on the Siren, for good reason. After throwing her off him, her felt hat and oversized clothing had become partially undone. Some of her female anatomy was partially spilling out. But the captain wasn’t completely enchanted. He advanced toward me, for a snake such as he would first do away with me before pouncing on her.

True, he might not be fully enchanted by her, but I knew of a way he would be, and I decided I had to risk it.

“Sylvie, I want you to sing for him,” I said grimly.

The captain barked with laughter. “Oh, she will sing for me soon enough—and if she values her life, she will do anything else I ask of her.”

Sylvie ignored him and steadily looked at me. She knew full well the effects her voice would have on a mortal man. “Are you sure, sire?”

I nodded. “Once done, return immediately to Duban and Sinbad and lead them here.”

As the captain adjusted his grip and prepared to impale me, Sylvie opened her mouth...and the most beautiful, rapturous voice I had ever heard came pouring out. Love gripped my heart. Love and lust and joy, and all thought of anything else escaped me completely. I needed the woman desperately, and never had I seen such a beautiful creature in all my existence. By Allah, I had to have her. All thoughts of Jewel fled as surely as shadows do before the light. All that filled my thoughts and heart was the beauty of this incredible creature. The longing was so great within me that I wept nearly uncontrollably.

The effect on the captain was the same, and still the Siren sang. Her voice seemed to grow louder, stronger, richer, sweeter. My entire body reacted to her, craved her, hungered for her. She was my soulmate. I was sure of it. She was my greatest heart’s desire. Of that I was certain.

The captain dropped his sword. Instead he reached out with both hands open. The look on his face pure bliss. He looked how I felt. There was no jealousy. There was only her.

As she sang she backed away from us, her angelic voice vibrating the very walls of this little cabin. Now she turned and climbed the stairs, still singing.

Where was she going? Why was she leaving us?

The captain and I nearly fell over ourselves as we clambered up the stairs behind her. His hate for me, his wicked ways, my desire to thwart his nefarious plan and to help my good friend Sinbad, were all abandoned.

We knew only her song, as did now everyone else aboard, for her strong voice carried far and wide, and now the entire crew moved toward her, stupefied, filled with love and lust.

At the ship railing, she blew me a kiss—I was certain it had been for me—and she fell over backward into the water. The crew and myself all rushed to the starboard side, peering over, crying out to her. There, I saw only a flash of white as her perfect form slipped beneath the waves.

The captain immediately turned to us all. “We must find her at all costs, men!”

A great cheer arose, and my voice was perhaps the loudest of all. And we immediately set sail in the direction she had disappeared, heedless of where we were going or of our ultimate fate.

***

It was sometime later, with the sun setting and the ship making lackluster progress on a weak wind, that another, smaller vessel arrived. It appeared to be moving quickly, as if by magic, and I immediately recognized all aboard.

It was, of course, Duban and Sinbad. The young wizard appeared to be using an energy spell of some sort to move the small boat quickly over the waves. Once it pulled up along side, Duban appeared exhausted. Performing magic, I suspected, took great concentration.

Their arrival was met with little reaction from those on ship, myself included. We sought only the Siren, and she alone, for she filled our hearts with a longing that was stronger than anything I had ever felt in all my life.

Sinbad boarded expertly, drawing himself up a length of rope. He drew his sword, looking about confusedly. Then he saw me, standing near the single mast, holding it longingly, gazing out to sea with no doubt a very wistful look. The others on deck, I knew, had similar expression, and I only peripherally saw Sinbad look at the young man knowingly.

The sailor said to the boy, “They have been enchanted by the Siren’s song. They are lost to us.”

“No!” cried Duban. The boy appeared before me, tugging at the hem of my tunic. “Father! Aladdin! King Aladdin! Look at me!”

But I couldn’t risk taking my eyes off the sea. What if the beautiful creature appeared and I missed her? Oh, the horror! Never will I take my eyes off the sea again until I’m in the arms of my great love.

The boy took my hand, and I felt a great rippling of energy creep over me, and just for the smallest moment, I felt love again, but this time for Jewel. I looked down at Duban, and he smiled, relieved. But then the moment wore off, and I once again snapped my head forward, horrified that I had looked away from the sea.

By Allah, what if she had made an appearance and I missed her!

“It’s too strong,” said Duban. “I cannot reverse the effects.”

I heard him speaking but, really, I wasn’t paying attention.

Sinbad stood before me, hands on hips. He had returned his scimitar, seeing that there was no threat here. “The Lamp,” he said. “Fetch me the lamp.”

Duban nodded and headed off below deck. Still, I scanned the horizon. So far there was nothing. But she was near. I was sure of it. I could feel her.

The boy came back carrying the box with my lamp, but I gave it only a cursory glance. Lamps had no meaning for me. Nothing had meaning except my deep love for my creature of the deep.

Sinbad opened the box and removed the beautiful lamp. No one else on board gave us any notice; indeed, like myself, all eyes were directed forward, out to sea, searching.

“The djinn is surely powerful enough to reverse the effects of the spell,” said Duban. “Except it is bound only to him.”

“What do you mean, boy?” demanded Sinbad.

“It means only Aladdin can summon it and make a request of it.”

Sinbad bit his lip and thought hard. I cared little for what he thought or what he did, only that they not stand in my field of vision.

Where was she? Was she safe? By Allah, I loved her....

Sinbad said, “Ask her if she can reverse the spell.”

Duban shook his head. “She’s keeping her distance for now, remember? She can’t risk coming too close.”

“Camel dung,” muttered Sinbad.

And just then a great cry arose from the boat. “There!” someone shouted. “She’s there!”

I rushed to the railing and saw what appeared to be a common dolphin playfully swimming alongside the ship.

“Fool!” shouted the captain.

Duban suddenly spoke up, “When I tried to reverse the spell, my father came back to us for just a few seconds.”

Sinbad apparently caught on to whatever nonsense the boy was talking about. If thy weren’t talking about my lovely sea maiden, then I cared little for their conversation. “Perhaps he can return to us long enough to summon the djinn and make his request.”

Duban nodded. “I will increase the potency, although I am already exhausted from the energy spell to get us here.”

“It is worth a try,” said Sinbad.

Next I felt a familiar tingle rise up my arm, and as it did so, an image of Jewel appeared in my thoughts, and I suddenly felt a wave of guilt for loving another.

“He’s back!” said Duban. “Father, take the lamp. Quickly. Summon Lamprey and reverse the Siren’s spell.”

Although confused and disoriented, as if being awakened from the sweetest of dreams—a dream I longed to return to—I absently rubbed the map as instructed and immediately the handsome djinn appeared before me, riding a cloud of smoke and hovering high above us.

“Your wish is my command,” he said.

“Shove it, smoke face,” said Duban. “Now wish it, father.”

“Wish what?”

“To reverse the Siren’s spell.”

“Why would I want to do that?”

“Because you love mother.”

“I do?”

“Yes, father. You do.” And the boy grabbed my arm and sent another charge of energy up it, and my head cleared a little more. I immediately made the wish and Lamprey, now looking robust and healthy after last year’s months of being tortured by another of his kind, bowed and snapped his fingers.

The spell was lifted. The fog was removed and I saw clearly where I was, although a small longing in my heart remained for the beautiful sea creature.

“You’re back, father,” said Duban, swinging my hand gleefully.

I was, although I felt a pang of loss for the sea creature.

“He’s back,” said Lamprey. “But he will always feel the effects of the Siren’s call. Deep in his heart he will love her and want her, although he will not feel compelled to search for her. It will merely be a longing that can never be answered, by anyone.”

“I can live with that,” I said. “I think.” I surveyed the deck and saw the other sailors looking yearningly out to sea. How many had turned on us? I didn’t know.

Lamprey saw my look. “The Siren’s magic is too powerful for me to save everyone, master. I have reached my limit for now. Remember, I am still recovering from my time spent with Prince Zeyn. I am still not at full capacity.”

“Thank you, Lamprey,” I said. “Begone.”

The djinn bowed and disappeared; I returned the lamp to its wooden box.

“What should we do with the others?” asked Sinbad.

The others were as good as dead. After all, they would forever search for their Siren, now that they had heard her beautiful call. I spied the two rowboats tied to the hull.

“Duban,” I said, “is it possible for you to determine who was in on the captain’s plot?”

“I think so, father.”

“Do so now.”

The boy closed his eyes and turned in a small circle. “All but three, master.”

“Fetch the innocent ones.”

He did, and soon they stood next to me, each looking helplessly out to sea.

Sinbad and I went to work gathering the others into the two boats and setting them on a course for Siren Rock. At least, they would die happy, which was more than they deserved. The remaining three, although worthless now, could be saved later with Lamprey’s help.

Now, with the ship riding low and heavy with treasure, I looked at Sinbad. “Welcome to your new ship, captain.”

Chapter Fifteen

“We need to get moving,” Sinbad said. “But I don’t actually know how to handle a ship. That’s the captain’s job, and the crew’s.”

“I don’t either,” I said. “But maybe I can get some good advice.” I rubbed my brass ring.

Faddy appeared. “You know I don’t have to answer your summons, mortal,” he said huffily. “But if you really need advice...”

“We are incapable of sailing this ship ourselves, or of properly directing what remains of the crew,” I said. “I suppose that would be too much of a challenge for you, too.”

“You are managing me!” he snapped.

I put on my biggest, obviously fakest, mask of innocence. “How could I possibly do that, when you’re so much smarter than I am?”

“All right!” he glowered. ”I’ll tell you how. Simply have your Siren beckon the remaining sailors toward Cloudland. Then they will do their utmost. It might even be sufficient.”

“But her song will enchant us too,” I protested.

“If you are too stupid to use the tone deaf magic.”

I whacked the side of my head to knock the dottle out. “By Allah, Faddy, you really have figured it out!”

“Naturally, mortal,” he agreed, trying to suppress his inordinate surge of pride. What he wanted most was respect, and in this instance we all knew he had earned it.

“Sylvie!” I called across the water.

In a moment she was there, beautifully bare in the water. “Have you suppressed my spell, Aladdin? I didn’t dare return too soon, lest you dive into the water to pursue me.”

“Suppressed it, mostly, yes,” I agreed. “And I want to thank you for handling those sailors, Sylvie, and for helping us recover the ship.”

“You’re welcome,” she said. “I am trying to be of service in what ways I can. Of course if you wish to take that more literally—”

It was wickedly tempting, thanks to the lingering suppressed longing of her song. But I couldn’t afford it, as it would mess up our quest and might compromise my relationship with Jewel. Because I might actually make it with the Siren, which was not Jewel’s intention when she referred me to a concubine. Besides, Duban was watching. “Um, no, thanks; I’d never accomplish my mission. Look, we are going to invoke the tone deaf spell again. Then please sing to the three remaining sailors. We want them to do their best to steer this ship toward Cloudland. Will you do that?”

“Gladly. Then I will need to rest; exerting my magic too long tires me.”

“You will be welcome to ring my finger and rest.”

She smiled, appreciating the double entendre. “That will be a pleasure for us both.” More entendre. Sirens really did like to flirt.

“Give us a few minutes, then sing.”

Duban was already taking up his lyre, frowning. He didn’t like to see me teasing the Siren, who was definitely not any ordinary concubine, though he understood that I was managing her just as I was Faddy. A significant part of his growing up would be learning to handle the necessary compromises of life.

Soon the three of us were tone deaf. I waved to Sylvie though I could no longer see her. The song started, faintly, sounding to me like a mere moaning. What a change!

Immediately the three sailors perked up. “What’s that?” one asked.

“That is the Siren,” I informed them. “Singing again. I think she likes you.”

We didn’t have to do anything more. The three sailors worked diligently to get the sails oriented so that the ship moved toward the sound. Even when it faded, they continued, thinking that they were not keeping pace. They were not as good as a full crew would have been, but they managed.

Now that we were nearing our destination, I thought of something I should have checked before. “Sinbad, exactly how do you know your wife is here?”

“I received a message a seer assured me was authentic. This is it.” He brought out a parchment.

I took it and read its brief message. SINBAD STOP YOUR WIFE SURVIVES STOP WE HAVE HER CAPTIVE STOP BRING A SUFFICIENT FORTUNE TO CLOUDLAND STOP HEREIN FAIL NOT OR SHE WILL SUFFER GRIEVOUSLY END

Bemused, I handed it to Duban. “What do you make of this?”

Duban, surprisingly, was impressed. “This thing reeks of potent magic. It is either authentic or a remarkable emulation.”

“Should we trust it?”

“No. It is devious beyond my fathoming. But neither should we dismiss it. Something powerful and I fear evil is operating here.”

I sighed. I was getting a bit tired of harbingers of doom. “I don’t much like powerful mysteries.” I returned the notice to Sinbad.

Then we saw a cloud on the horizon. Was a storm forming?

“That’s Cloudland,” Sylvie said behind me.

I jumped, and she laughed. “We’re there!” I said, gratified.

“Soon I’ll ransom my wife,” Sinbad said.

“Ring me,” Sylvie said to Duban.

The boy was grumpy. “Why?”

She smiled at him. “You know it is not meet for such as you to see a naked women. You might get unboyish ideas.”

“Maybe you should turn her over to me for the duration,” I said. “So you can avoid those ideas.”

He couldn’t argue, though it was clear that he secretly wished he could do exactly that. Sylvie took my hand, Duban invoked the magic, and she curled around, diminished, and wound up around my little finger. She squeezed it suggestively, already flirting.

And I could read her mind. But it was not focused on seduction at the moment. I don’t like this, Aladdin. Mistress was right: there is great danger here for you. I can feel it.

“Nothing my scimitar can’t handle, I trust,” I murmured, as much to bolster my own confidence as hers.

Yes, your scimitar can’t handle it. I don’t know what it is, but it’s awful. Aladdin, you really should turn about and go home. There is nothing for you here but doom.

But I couldn’t do that. We had to save Sinbad’s wife. Then we could go home.

Sylvie sighed and went to sleep, recuperating. She had done a lot of singing. I saw that this time she had curled herself backwards so that her perfect face and breasts showed clearly in miniature. She as flirting even in her sleep. Nevertheless my eyes lingered guiltily on that lovely little torso.

As we sailed on, the cloud seemed to lift and expand. It became a fog atop a mountain on a large island whose base was a green jungle. There was a town there, with a harbor. Our destination.

“It seems we didn’t catch the Siren, this time,” Sinbad said to the sailors. “But she is surely in the area. When we dock you may rest or take shore liberty, as you choose.”

They elected to rest. Now that the siren was silent, they were aware of their extreme fatigue.

We tied up at a pier. The portly harbormaster was there to greet us. “Who are you, and what be your cargo?” he inquired.

“I am Sinbad, here to ransom my beloved wife. These are my companions Niddala and Nabud, who helped me gather the treasure.”

“Welcome, Sinbad and company. We have been expecting you. This way, please.”

This was entirely too easy. But what could we do? We followed the man off the pier and to a stately administration building. In its central chamber was what appeared to be an ornate metal coffin with a glass lid.

“This is an image of your wife,” the harbormaster said. “She is not here, but in the cloud above. This is merely to allow you to verify that she lives, and will be delivered to you when the ransom is paid.”

We went to the coffin and looked in. And I went rigid.

The sleeping woman inside was lovely beyond belief. And she was my own beloved wife, lost many years ago along with our son.

“Yes!” Sinbad said. “That is she!”

She was his lost wife too? How could that be?

“Mortal, this is mischief,” Faddy murmured in my ear. He of course recognized my wife, having seen her many times in the past.

Mischief? This was disaster!

Chapter Sixteen

The woman in the glass casket was both my ex-wife and Sinbad’s current wife? How could this be? Indeed, I suspected sorcery. Powerful sorcery. I thought about, and wondered of what mischief Faddy had been speaking of.

“Faddy,” I said to the lesser djinn, sub-vocalizing my words so only he could hear my words. “Who, exactly, do you see here?”

“Why, a beautiful djinn maiden, of course.”

I nodded and raised my voice. “Nabud, who do you see here?”

My stepson came over and looked into the glass coffin. His little jaw dropped in disbelief. “Myrrh? I don’t understand!”

Just as I suspected. Magic of the strongest type. We were all seeing those women who had had the most meaning for us. For me, the woman in the glass casket could have just as easily been Jewel. Was the illusion only confined to the glass case, or was the woman herself shrouded in such magic? If so, who was she then? Was it truly Sinbad’s wife? A mirage? Or something far more devious?

Sinbad had not heard any of this, so lost was he at the sight of his wife. He was touching the glass absently and whispering words only he could hear.

I motioned for the young wizard to follow me to the far side of the room, noting that the harbor master was watching us suspiciously. “It is dark magic, I said. “It’s not really an image of Myrrh, or an image of my own dying wife.”

“I do not understand,” he said.

I explained to him my theory behind the image and what I had seen and what Sinbad was obviously seeing. Duban nodded. “It makes sense. What creature could invoke such magic?”

“My guess is the same creature who tried to destroy both of us,” I said.

Duban set his jaw. “Prince Zeyn. I am not afraid of him.”

“Good,” I said. “I’m not either.” Although I wasn’t exactly sure of that. Heavens, on some level, even my stepson made me a little nervous. No doubt this was a common reaction to any non-magician to folk as powerful as Duban and Prince Zeyn.

“So what do we do, Father?” asked Duban.

I am always surprised when he seeks my counsel, for he is such a wise boy. But then I remind myself just that: he is just a boy, in the end, his experience and wisdom only minimal.

“Let’s keep this to ourselves,” I said. “It does him no harm thinking that this is his wife. And for all we know, it really is. Or she is still nearby.”

“I suspect a trap,” said Duban.

“So do I.”

“But if we play along,” said Duban. “Won’t we be stepping right into it?”

“Only if we were unsuspecting,” I said. “We will be ever vigilant.”

I had just spoken the words when the harbor master stepped forward. “Now that you have seen her, my friends, perhaps it is time to negotiate a payment.”

“I want to see her in person,” said Sinbad, rising regretfully from the image. “I want to see her live.”

“This is not possible,” said the harbormaster.

Sinbad spun on the man, fists clenched. “And why is that?”

The harbormaster merely blinked. “Because you are all under arrest.”

He clicked his fingers and men poured through the two doorways into the room, swords drawn. Instinctively, Sinbad and I drew our own weapons as the guards surrounded us.

Or, rather, tried to surround us.

Duban raised his little arms and closed his eyes and said, “Duck, Father.”

I did, pulling Sinbad down with me, as a mighty shockwave rocked the air above us, bursting from Duban’s hands. The men were all thrown from their feet, hurled across the room and into the far walls. And, in some cases, through the walls.

I loved my stepson!

I grabbed his hand and pulled him along, as Sinbad and I moved quickly through the downed men, who were not killed, merely stunned. As we raced through the wooden structure, I heard the harbormaster shouting orders for our pursuit.

Outside, I saw something that shouldn’t have surprised me. Our ship was being unloaded and our three Siren-song shiphands had been slaughtered, their corpses tossed into the harbor. At least they would never again be haunted by the sweet, sweet Siren song, whose memory still haunted my thoughts.

“Where to, Aladdin?” asked Sinbad, jolting me from my reverie.

But our answer was obvious. “To Cloudland,” I said.

“But how?”

I thought of the rug I had procured from the Siren’s cavern, the magic carpet. “Follow me!”

And they did, and soon we had descended down upon the harbor, where most of our vast treasure, including the ambergris, had been unloaded. The treasure was lost, no doubt. And I was beginning to suspect the payment was to the harbormaster all along, while Prince Zeyn had no use for human treasure. His true prize was control. Control of the human race, perhaps.

It was just three of us, but we were a mighty three. Sinbad and I hacked and fought our way to the ship, moving through armed men who were nowhere near as skilled with the sword. Duban played his part as well, causing havoc and confusion with his magic, and soon we were upon our vast treasure.

Seeing it all here, especially the gifts I had selected for Jewel, made my heart heavy, but there was no time for such reflections. More men were pouring down into the harbor, and I saw the concerned looks on Sinbad’s and Duban’s faces. After all, they did not know what magic I had up my sleeve, if any at all.

There! Amid the golden cups and priceless jewels, was the rolled up carpet, which I quickly fetched and unrolled.

“A carpet?” blinked Sinbad. “You had us risk life and limb for a carpet?”

“Not just any carpet,” I said. Having already mastered such magical flight, I sat in the center of it and soon it was hovering a few feet off the ground. “Climb aboard,” I said. “And I suggest you two hurry.”

They did, each finding their own corner, and I gave the silent command, and soon we were soaring just above the heads and outstretched swords of the pursuing guards.

I soon angled the carpet up.

Up to Cloudland.

Chapter Seventeen

And what a flight it was!

Sinbad had described it, but the reality was far more impressive. The base of the island was a normal tropical jungle, but close inland the mountains rose steeply toward the great capping cloud. Too steep for trees; there was only clinging brush and bare rock. But then it angled less sharply, and trees resumed. These were larger, and the higher the slope rose, the bigger the trees became, until they were giants such as I had never before seen. It almost seemed that the island must sink into the sea from the sheer weight of these monsters.

We had escaped the men, flying beyond arrow range. They had not anticipated a magic carpet. But more mischief was coming. “Look!” Duban cried.

I looked where he pointed. A huge shape was flying toward us. It was a roc bird! We could not get beyond its range.

“Maybe it’s illusion,” Sinbad said. “Like the one at Zombie Isle.”

“That one was out of its natural territory,” I said tightly. “This one isn’t.”

Faddy appeared. “Right, Aladdin. This one’s real. They use them to ferry men and goods to Cloudland.”

“Do you have a suggestion how we can deal with it?”

“If all three of you jump off the carpet, the roc may have time to catch only one or two. You’re bird food.”

“Begone, spook!” I snapped. He faded out with a chuckle.

Meanwhile the big bird was zooming close. “I’ll jump first,” Sinbad volunteered with a smile that was more like a grimace. “Maybe you can loop down to catch me before I splat on the slope.”

That wasn’t much help either. I thought fast. “How are you at illusion, Duban?”

“I haven’t tried it.”

“Try it. See if you can make us look like something uninteresting, like a flying log.”

Duban didn’t argue. He focused, gestured, and a giant book appeared between us and the roc.

“He meant a tree log, not a ship’s log book,” Sinbad said with a slightly better smile.

“I thought that was what I was conjuring,” Duban said, disgruntled. “I told you, I haven’t tried this before.”

But it seemed the book would do. It drifted away from us, then began to fall. The roc swerved to intercept it, forgetting us for the moment. It would surely catch on soon enough, but this did give us a reprieve from immediate attack.

Now our ascent had to become vertical, because it was the tops of the trees we wanted. Their huge trunks rose into the cloud above and disappeared. It was almost as if they grew in white water, upside down, their circular cross sections plunging into the base of the level cloud.

We ascended toward that foggy layer. We hovered close beneath it.

“We’ll be blind when we enter that,” Duban said grimly.

“Maybe there’s an avenue between cloud-banks,” I said without much hope.

“The bird’s back,” Sinbad said. “It looks annoyed.”

“Illusion books don’t taste very good,” Duban said, almost smiling.

“Enough with the gallows humor,” I said. “We’ve got a problem.”

Indeed, the roc was zooming toward us from below, rising like a Chinese rocket, its eyes blazing, its beak open. It was big enough to take us all in one gulp.

“If we can’t see in there, neither can it,” Sinbad said, looking up at the cloud-line.

I angled the carpet precipitously and shot upward into the cloud. It looked like an impending crash, but it was only mist. We were hidden. But I didn’t take a chance; I veered to the side within the fog.

Sure enough, a huge shape blasted past us, the draft almost tipping us over. The roc had gone for the place we disappeared.

We all had the wit to keep silent. I steadied the carpet, and we hovered, hardly breathing.

Nothing happened. The roc had evidently lost us and flown on.

But now we were lost ourselves, having no idea where we were or where to go.

Something loomed nearby. Was it the roc? No, it was the wall-like trunk of a tree. We could vaguely see it from up close.

Well, that was a guide. “Going up,” I murmured, keeping my voice low so the big bird would not orient on it.

We rose, carefully. We came to a huge branch, and guided around it. Then another, and a third. Now the fog thinned somewhat, and we could see neighboring trunks. Their lateral branches formed an increasingly thick lattice as they interwove, making a firm framework.

And here within the cloud was a city! Houses with their foundations anchored to the lattice, rising parallel to the diminishing trunks. Little light diffused here, and no direct sunlight. The walls seemed to be of translucent glass, showing vague outlines of the occupants. I could not tell whether they were human or avian or a combination. But the city itself was phenomenal, the houses connected by precarious bridges and walkways through the roiling mist. There were occasional flashes of lightning reflecting from the walls, brightening the city in the manner of a faceted diamond, followed by muted booms of thunder, and light rain fell. Now I saw that some of the buildings had adjacent gardens, with foliage hardy enough to prosper even in perpetual twilight; those plants still needed water.

“Interesting,” I said. “But we’re not tourists. They’ll be after us soon. Where’s the woman?” I carefully did not identify her, as we did not know which woman she was.

“In a cave in the highest peak of the mountain,” Duban said. He evidently had a good memory for detail. “Guarded by a serpent large enough to swallow two camels whole.”

“Which explains why the roc doesn’t frequent this area,” I said. “That serpent would not be easy prey.” I was trying for a bit of humor myself, but it wasn’t working well.

“And there it is!” Sinbad said, pointing.

There beyond the forest of trees and buildings was the top of the mountain, and there was a ledge around it where a serpent could slither, and the dark mouth of a cave.

Too pat, Sylvie thought. I had forgotten that I now wore her on my finger.

Thus prompted, my suspicion circuit came on. “We know this whole business is a trap,” I said. “We’ve seen the perfidy of the natives below. Now we are seeing no one, not even the serpent. Our access to the cave is clear. What can it be except the teeth of the trap? We go there at our peril.”

Sinbad looked at me, nodding. “What do you recommend?”

“That we look for the maiden elsewhere. Maybe they have her on display as a trophy. Maybe she’s the plaything of the great wizard this lofty city serves. We can surprise them. They won’t expect us to strike away from the cave. Maybe we can find her and carry her away before they realize.”

“Maybe,” Sinbad agreed uncertainly.

I steered the carpet away from the cave. At that point huge fangs appeared and the cave collapsed. It was the monstrous mouth of the serpent! We had almost flown right into it.

“I think I had better work on my repulsion magic,” Duban said. “So that a mouth will not be able to crush us like mice.”

“You do that,” Sinbad said shakily.

I guided the carpet rapidly around the city, weaving between trunks and buildings. And there suddenly was a palace edifice, larger than the other buildings, its walls not translucent but transparent. Within it was a beautiful nude young woman. My lost wife.

“My wife!” Sinbad breathed.

“Myrrh,” Duban said.

Just so. This was the origin of the woman we had seen below, whoever she really was. They had not hidden her in the fake cave. We had to fetch her and get her out of Cloudland. Only then could we properly question her and ascertain her true nature. After that maybe we would know what to do next.

The woman was standing before the wall, peering out. She looked unutterably sad, as if struggling not to be resigned to her fate. Obviously she could not go far, even if she escaped the palace, because of her nudity. Not that she had anything to be ashamed of there; she was as lovely a creature as had ever graced the mortal world.

Well... Sylvie thought.

“Next to you,” I murmured, rubbing a finger over the ring.

She inhaled. Or at least her breasts seemed to become larger. I quickly removed my finger. She seemed to be satisfied, regardless.

Then I saw a robed man walking along a transparent hall. He was coming toward the room where the woman was confined. The evil wizard!

I did not pause to think. “Cover your faces!” I yelled. “Hang on!” I propelled the carpet at the glass wall, bracing for the impact.

The glass shattered, shards flying everywhere, but we were not cut. I landed the carpet before the woman. “Come with us!” I told her.

“Aladdin!” she cried gladly.

“Yes, Rosebud!” I agreed as gladly. For her name was Buddir al-Buddoor, and I had called her by her pet name

But even as I spoke, so did Sinbad and Duban.

“Yes, Vania,” Sinbad was saying.

“Yes, Myrrh,” Duban said.

Not only did she look like each of our first loves, she sounded like them, and knew our names. This would take some sorting out.

“Aladdin, beloved,” Rosebud said urgently. “Do not touch me! It’s a trap! I am horribly enchanted. Fly away from here before the Wizard binds you with webs of sinister magic.”

But we were already crowding around her as the glass door opened and the Wizard entered. “Halt!” he shouted, raising his hands to cast a spell.

We put our arms around the woman protectively.

And suddenly we were elsewhere. We stood embracing her in a land with odd vegetation. I recognized it instantly. “Djinnland!”

“They enchanted me as a portal between the realms, just as the serpent was,” Rosebud said sadly. “Now you are truly trapped. I would have spared you this if I could. I am so very, very sorry, my love.”

She was hardly the only one.

Chapter Eighteen

“What is this place?” asked Sinbad, stunned.

Duban’s mouth also dropped open in amazement. We seemed to be in a clearing, surrounded by trees with purple trunks. Large, lumbering bees buzzed by us, their stingers long enough to poke one’s eye out.

I told them both of Djinnland, where humans were so dense that we tended to sink into the ground, where marvelous creatures such as flying dragons lived, and where magic was commonplace.

“But we are not sinking now,” said Duban.

“That’s because we are standing on bedrock. But don’t be fooled. The moment you step onto softer ground, you will sink as surely as a stone would in the ocean.”

“But how do we move if we’re trapped in the earth?” asked Sinbad with a note of panic in voice. I did not blame him. For a seafaring man, this would surely be his worst nightmare.

“Not trapped,” I said, and explained that since we were far heavier than the surrounding landscape we would be able to move easily through the earth itself, but only along the solid bedrock below.

“So we travel with the worms and other foul creatures?” asked Duban.

“It serves a purpose for concealment,” I said. “But there is another way.” I next told them of the technique Jewel and I had devised, wherein we held thoughts of lightness—images of mist or clouds or even of the air itself—to buoy our own bodies.

“And this technique worked?” asked Sinbad skeptically.

“More often than not.”

“Gentleman,” said my deceased wife, Rosebud. “Need I remind you that the three of you have fallen victim to a devious trap. I strongly suggest we get moving.”

“But where to, my love,” said Sinbad, immediately taking my deceased wife’s hand. Of course, he was seeing his once missing wife, as Duban was seeing his own first love.

An odd jealousy rose up within me, one that bypassed my logical mind and went straight for the heart. How dare Sinbad take my wife’s hand!

“Snap out of it, human,” whispered Faddy in my ear. “Remember, she is part of a devious plot to destroy you and take over your kingdom.”

“But I miss her so much.”

“Of course you do, simpleton. Tread carefully, lest you be stung.”

I looked away from the image of Sinbad holding my deceased wife’s hand. “I think I liked you better when you called me master,” I said, grumbling.

Faddy laughed, and not pleasantly. “You have been warned.”

“Warning heeded,” I said, as a question occurred to me. “Can you tell me why Prince Zeyn didn’t transport us into his dungeon? Why here?”

“How do you know Prince Zeyn is behind this mischief?”

“Is it someone else?”

“Of course not, buffoon! Who else but Prince Zeyn could lure you here?”

“You’re wasting my time,” I growled under my breath.

“And time is something you most certainly do not have. To answer your question: Although the dark prince has the means to transport you here, he has no control where you will ultimately appear. Those bees you saw earlier? Those are his eyes and ears.”

“So he knows where we are?”

“Oh, yes, he and his men will be here shortly.”

“Don’t sound so pleased,” I grumbled.

“The only pleasure I receive is watching your simple mind work. Case in point, Prince Zeyn isn’t the only djinn around who could transport you here.”

“Lamprey!” I said, realizing my fatal error. “Oh, camel dung!”

“Ah, so you’re only now realizing that you left your precious djinn back on the ship with the other treasure. Treasure that even now is being sorted through by Prince Zeyn’s men.”

“I’m a horrible master!”

“Indeed, Aladdin. It appears your Lamprey will once again find himself imprisoned. That is, if he’s not saved in time. Help, after all, is on its way.”

“What do you mean? Will you help fetch Lamprey?”

“You are even more simple than I thought.”

Yes, I could see now my error: was Faddy too jealous of the powerful djinn to help him? “Out with it, Smoke Face.”

“Your wife is on the way.”

“Jewel?”

“She is your wife, is she not?”

“I do not understand.”

“Of course not, dog, so let me explain it to you clearly. The queen has been using me as a spy, and with great pleasure I have been reporting your roguery and dalliances.”

“No wonder why you were so willing to come around, despite having been freed. You were spying! Why, you two-faced—”

“Now, now, my lord. She is just a concerned wife. And lucky for you. She is, even now, arranging to rescue the lamp and, in turn, you.”

“Alone?”

“Of course not. She will be traveling with an intrepid thief who hails from Baghdad.”

“The Thief of Baghdad!”

“Yes, as he’s commonly called. Quite a handsome and dashing fellow from what I understand. He was recently arrested and presented to court. From what I gather, Jewel was quite smitten with him, as were all the women. Anyway, it appears that he’s agreed to help fetch your magic lamp in return for his freedom.”

I felt the heat rise to my face. How much of what Faddy said was true, I didn’t know, as the ifrit seemed inclined toward mischief of late. Still, I had to believe that Jewel was on her way to Cloudland in search of the magic lamp. And she was traveling with the notorious Thief of Baghdad.

“Begone,” I said irritably to Faddy, whose presence faded away with a chuckle. Perhaps I should never have freed him.

“You were speaking with your ifrit,” said Rosebud, moving over to me. Sinbad trailed close behind.

“Er, he’s not my ifrit. Not anymore.”

“Then why does he still report to you?”

“Never mind that,” I snapped, facing her, my anger rising. Whoever she was, she meant us harm. But my ire abated immediately upon looking into my wife’s beautiful, almond-shaped eyes. Eyes I had not seen in many, many years. I looked away. “We have to get moving.”

“Indeed,” said Sinbad, taking his wife’s hand protectively. “We need to escape this land. But how?”

How indeed? How should I tell Sinbad that he had most certainly not taken the hand of his wife, that she was no doubt Prince Zeyn’s prisoner here in Djinnland, if she was alive at all.

I didn’t know, but as I looked into the far distance, I saw a great cloud forming in the sky, a cloud that looked suspiciously like the face of Prince Zeyn.

And it—or he—was approaching quickly.

We had to run. But to where?

Chapter Nineteen

“Better think of something soon,” Sinbad said. Duban remained distracted by the mystery woman. Naturally it was up to me to rescue us all. Somehow it generally seemed to be that way.

And I had no idea. My mind was a blank wet blanket. That, too, was typical.

Aladdin.

It was Sylvie Siren, wrapped around my finger. “You can help?” I asked without real hope.

Restore me. I will sing my song and lead your nemesis away while you escape.

“And what will happen to you when the foul lord catches you?” I asked. “He will not be kind to you.”

That’s not the point. I want to help you, and this is the only way I know.

“Forget it,” I said. “I don’t want to send you into ugly slavery and doom.” If I had had time to examine my motives, I might have discovered that it was the lingering fascination of her song that made me loath to hurt her. Fortunately I lacked that time.

Meanwhile the cloud loomed closer. It was definitely Zeyn.

My eye fell on the mystery maiden. She had conjured us here, but obviously not by her choice. She had tried to warn us away, and expressed her regret. So she was not our enemy. But who was she?

Let me touch her, Sylvie thought. I will fathom her identity.

I put out my hand and grasped the maiden’s arm, the ring touching her flesh. She stiffened, aware of the touch.

Got it, Sylvie thought. She is Nydea Nymph, of the tribe of Nubile Nymphs. They are cousins of ours, only their point in existence is to make men happy without harming them, in contrast to our way. They are nicer than we are. Their inherent magic is to resemble any man’s most beloved image, to better serve his need. She was lured to Prince Zeyn’s castle on the promise of excellent prospects for marriage, as only by marriage to a mortal can a Nubile Nymph achieve mortality herself, her fondest wish. But it was a ruse; she was captured and then enchanted to spring the trap. She is horribly grieved. It is not her nature to harm any mortal man.

Nydea turned to me. “You have a captive siren!” she said.

“Not captive,” I said. “She associates with us by choice. She says you’re a victim too.”

Now the cloud was almost upon us. “Can you fight him off?” Sinbad asked Duban.

“In the mortal realm, yes,” the boy answered. “But here in his realm he is stronger than I am. It is me he really wants to capture and kill.”

“I am a victim too,” Nydea agreed sadly, on our separate dialog.

But her people live here in Djinnland,” Sylvie thought. They have a refuge safe from the evil prince. That’s why he doesn’t like them, and abuses them when he can.

A refuge! Suddenly my lagging brain functioned. “Take us to your leader!” I told Nydea.

“But there is no time,” she protested. “The monster is about to grab us all.”

“Not if we dive underground.”

“I can’t do that! I’m not mortal.”

“You’re a cousin species to the Sirens,” I said persuasively. “Can you change form?”

“No. Only my aspect, as men gaze at me. That’s appearance rather than reality.”

But I had an answer. “Duban!” I snapped. “Change this woman into a ring.”

He stared at me. “But—”

“Now!”

Bemused, he obeyed. In moments Nydea was another ring, on my finger adjacent to Sylvie, still looking like my beloved. I had to keep my eye off her, lest I be overcome by nostalgia. “Which way?” I asked.

That way, she thought, mentally indicating a direction. She, too, was bemused by the transformation.

“Follow me!” I cried, changing in that direction as the vile cloud descended on us.

We ran off the surface bedrock and into the softer ground. I could see that both Sinbad and Duban were amazed, but I didn’t have time to explain it further. Soon we were in over our heads, forging along the buried bedrock.

Above the ground the cloud raged, powerless to catch us. We had escaped, for the moment.

I hoped the way to Nubile Refuge would remain underground throughout. Because I knew the angry cloud was following us. Our density protected us from Zeyn at the moment, but the instant we surfaced he would be on us, and woe betide us then!

While I ran I pondered. If we were so firmly trapped in Djinnland, why was Prince Zeyn so eager to get hold of us? Why wasn’t he going after the Lamp, which was surely more of a threat to him? Then I remembered what Duban had said: he was the one Zeyn was really after. In the mortal realm Duban was, when aroused, stronger than Zeyn. But in Djinnland he wasn’t. But maybe he could become so, if given time. So he needed to be dispatched immediately. No good to secure the Lamp if the Boy was developing dangerous power here. That explained our predicament, and suggested that we might have a winning cast of the dice if we could just survive the moment.

And while we distracted Zeyn, Jewel was on her way to recover the Lamp. But there was a problem there: we had sailed at least a week’s distance from our port, the same one she would have to use. It would take her a week to get there. That was far too much time.

Perhaps not, Sylvie thought. She’s with the Thief of Baghdad. We know of that scoundrel. Last year he secretly plugged his ears, faked fascination, and stole an invaluable high-speed magic carpet from us. He surely has it now, and that will enable them to reach the ship within a day.

We know of him too, Nydea thought. He thieves hearts, too. He is to be trusted only as a betrayer.

And this wretch was traveling with my wife.

But first things first. We had to save our hides, or the Thief would be the least of our concerns.

“Your home. Refuge,” I said to Nydea. “It really is safe from the wrath of Prince Zeyn?”

Yes. But the moment we leave it, he can stalk us and sometimes capture us. So we have very little effective power.

“And you know the sirens? How is this, if you reside in Djinnland and they reside in the mortal realm?”

We have portals to other realms we can use. Like the one between your realm and this one, that Zeyn forced me to use. So we associate with the sirens, with whom we get along well.

We do, Sylvie agreed.

Aha. “So you could connect us to our ship?”

It is not that easy. We don’t make portals, we use them. Zeyn made the one he fastened me to. And while the portals may be safe for us to use, that would not be true for mortals. There are nasty beasties along the way.

I had had some experience with the type. Still, it started devious plans stirring in my brain. “Is there a portal to Hades?”

There is, but Aladdin, beloved, you must not venture near that one! There is no return!

Precisely. “And can you emulate a man?”

Both ring maidens were shocked. Aladdin, your passion is not for a man! Sylvie protested.

“Indeed not,” I agreed. “But could you?”

If a man truly desired another man, we could reflect that, Nydea agreed reluctantly. At least our queen Nylon could. She has better control over our nature, and more, um guts. She was a nice girl and did not like to use the crude term.

“Zeyn’s passion right now is Duban. He wants to capture and kill him. Could you emulate Duban when Zeyn pounces?”

I think so. But such a deception could not fool Zeyn long.

“And could your emulation of Duban stand astride the portal to Hades?”

Aladdin, you are frightening us, Sylvie thought.

But it is a good fright, Nydea thought.

“I want to send Zeyn to Hades. Then all the rest will become academic.”

Academic, Sylvie thought. You must have attended some academy!

Now we came to a broad passage underground, leading to a shimmering portal. My beloved Rosebud stood guard there, with truly shapely legs. “Who are you?” she demanded as we emerged into that passage.

I removed the Nydea ring. She reformed. Now there were two Rosebuds. “Queen Nylon! He is Aladdin!” she said. “He and his friends are here as refugees from Zeyn!”

“So that’s what stirred up that evil ifrit! Of course we’ll succor them.” It seemed the queen was nice too.

More nymphs appeared. One took Duban’s hand, and I knew she looked to him just like Myrrh. Nydea took Sinbad’s hand, and she was his beloved wife. And Queen Rosebud, I mean Nylon, took mine. Her hand felt exactly like that of my lost beloved.

Speechless, we passed though the portal and entered the Refuge.

Chapter Twenty

We were in what appeared to be the inside of a great mountain.

Surrounding us on all sides were great, sloping cliffs that came together high above. Glowing lanterns hovered in the sky, illuminating the interior.

We followed a path from the portal, down a rocky trail, and through dense jungle. Like green snakes, curious vines dropped down from branches around us. Some vines curled playfully around our arms and wrists. Although playful now, I suspected these vines could just as easily strangle or trip or even tear apart a man.

Nylon saw my amazement as one such vine playfully caressed my cheek. “Yes, our land is alive in every sense of the word. Here we call it The Refuge, but in the mortal realms, it is sometime referred to as Eden, for you are not the first humans to visit.”

Sylvie, who was still on my finger, giggled as one such vine entwined through my fingers...and around her.

We continued through the forest, which parted before our large party, and then just as quickly closed behind us. Soon the dense foliage opened up to a grassy clearing, where there were many simple wooden structures. Beautiful nymphs were everywhere, tending gardens, bathing nude in steaming pools, or coming and going from the huts. I realized, with some fascination and concern, that all of them resembled my departed wife. No doubt they all resembled Sinbad’s missing wife and Duban’s first love, too.

Once in the village, Nydea led Sinbad off to a hut, and the sailor willingly followed. I was about to call after them when the village leader stopped them. “Leave them be, Aladdin.”

“Where is she taking him?”

“To mate with him.”

I think my jaw dropped open. “But he is a married man!” I protested.

“No,” said Queen Nylon. “He’s not.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Come, then let me explain.”

She led me to an official-looking building, bigger than the others and made of stone. A central fire blazed inside and everywhere there were beautiful replicas of my Rosebud.

We sat next to the fire, on cushions made of straw and hides. Immediately food appeared by other nymphs, all of them identical to my lost wife. And array of meats and vegetables were offered to us. Now this felt more like home, where I, as king, was waited on hand and foot.

“So explain,” I said to the nymph queen. “But first, is there a way to turn your magic off, so that you don’t all look like my beloved?”

She shook her sadly. “We have little direct control over how you view us.”

“Fine,” I said, tearing meat off a leg bone of what I assumed was something of the size and shape of a chicken. Duban ate hungrily next to me.

“Sinbad’s wife was killed not too long ago, attempting to escape Prince Zeyn.”

My heart sank for my friend. “You speak the truth?”

The Queen looked stricken by my question. Sylvie came to my rescue, squeezing my finger gently. She cannot lie, my king. She has been created to please man, and lying would never please a man.

I understood.

“Nydea was captured once Sinbad’s wife was killed. We believe accidentally, but with Zeyn one never knows. His evil knows no limit.”

I nodded, catching on. “So Nydea, being enchanted, would appear to be his wife,” I said, tossing aside the greasy bone. A fiery creature, shaped vaguely like a dog, appeared from the flames, snatched the bone in mid-air, and returned to the pit, where creature and bone disappeared. I stared briefly in disbelief.

The queen nodded sadly. “A magical replacement. Nydea was no doubt treated terribly, subjected to all sorts of torture and rape, only to be used as a pawn for the evil djinn.” The queen absently reached out toward the fire, and the hellhound’s head appeared from the flames. She scratched between its fiery ears with no ill effects. Nymphs, of course, were immortal, and apparently fire did not harm them. She went on, “And all Nydea wanted to do was look for a mate. Do you see where I’m going with this, Aladdin?”

I cudgeled my balky brain but, alas, her words were lost on me.

“Think, father,” said Duban, shaking his head pathetically at his old man. “Sinbad lost his wife and Nydea was looking for a husband...”

I slapped my own forehead. “By Allah, it’s a devious plan!”

“Is it?” asked Queen Nylon. “Now Sinbad will never, ever lose his wife, who will age gracefully with him, who will absorb all of his own memories of his wife, who will naturally take on the mannerisms, memory and personality of his wife. In every way, she will become his lost wife and she will never be happier. Sinbad, too, will never be happier. For remember, nymphs are created to please their man in every way imaginable.”

I nearly covered Duban’s ears, but already the boy had lost interest. Instead, he was playing with the hellhound, which was making me nervous. But Duban, although not quite as powerful in Djinnland as he was in the mortal realm, seemed to have created a spell to protect his hands. A fiery tail wagged happily.

“So there is no harm, and Sinbad will never know the difference. Nydea will have her dream to mate with a mortal, and Sinbad will have the love of his life.”

Sylvie squeezed my finger. Unless you prefer to tell Sinbad that his real wife was killed by the prince and crush him for the rest of his mortal life.

I saw the benefit of not telling, and I even saw the tragic beauty of the plan. It was obvious how much the sailor loved his wife. And seeing Rosebud now conjured feelings in me that had long since lain dormant. But I had the benefit of knowing that the queen and her court were illusions.

I nodded. “I shall keep the secret, as will Duban.”

The queen looked greatly relieved. “I think it is best, too. In time, her magical charm will wear off, and others, too, will see her only as Sinbad’s wife.”

“There is only, then, the matter of dealing with Prince Zeyn.”

“A dangerous task,” said the queen, “and one that many here in Djinnland have set out to do, but to only fail. Many bodies line his castle walls, where he displays the corpses for all Djinnland to see.”

Next drinks were served and I quite enjoyed the spicy punch. Duban ran off to play in the woods with another nymph, whom I was assured would act appropriately for a child his age.

Nydea next arrived without Sinbad who, she claimed, was sleeping contentedly. With her hair askew, I had no doubt the exhausted sailor was sleeping deeply, completely spent and exhausted. That Nydea looked like Rosebud should have triggered feelings of jealously, but already I was getting used to the notion of the nymphs appearing to be my first true love.

With Duban playing in the woods and Nydea swimming in a natural pool with other naked nymphs, Queen Nylon sat a little closer to me and rested her hand on my thigh. “But you are safe here, King Aladdin, for as long as you wish to stay. Do you not find me satisfying?”

“You are an illusion. Truth be known, I have no clue what you look like.”

“Oh, on our own we are natural beauties, my king. Our flesh is soft and our hips are curved and our breasts are wonders to behold.”

I swallowed hard and slipped from under her arm. “True, you do look like my first love. But I have another love. A second great love, and she is not you, and you will never be her.”

“Oh?”

And suddenly Rosebud seemed to undulate, as if under water, and the Queen who once appeared to be Rosebud now looked exactly like Jewel. “I’m not the queen for nothing, Aladdin. Unlike my maidens, I can take on other forms as I see fit.”

I swallowed hard. Jewel now stood before me. Or the illusion of Jewel. My wife was a stunningly beautiful woman. The queen now dropped her robe and Jewel was standing before me completely naked, her round breasts reflecting the central fire.

I had been away at sea for a long, long time.

My body reacted instantly to the naked nymph who looked like my present wife. Who appeared exactly like my beloved wife.

“I see I got your attention, King Aladdin.”

And now the Queen Nylon reached over and cupped me gently. I had just reached for her hand to push her away, when she lowered her soft mouth onto mine. And despite myself, despite the knowledge that I was kissing an illusion, I reacted passionately, loving, excitedly to the naked woman who now wrapped herself around me in the most loving embrace I had ever experienced.

And that’s when I heard a gasp from a doorway, and it took all my will power to tear my lips away from Jewel’s—or Queen Nylon. Standing there, face twisted with jealousy and a sword in his hand, was Sinbad.

The sailor charged me, growling with fury.

Chapter Twenty-one

Nylon glanced at the enraged sailor without alarm. “I will handle this,” she murmured. “Keep your gaze on me, not on him; do not waver.” I was so badly out of sorts that I froze in place, not wanting either to fight my friend or disabuse him of the status of his wife. It was not easy to keep looking at my simulated wife when we were being attacked, but I managed it.

As Sinbad came up to us, scimitar swinging, Nylon smiled at him. I watched peripherally, nervously. “What can I do for you, my good man?”

And I believe Sinbad’s mouth dropped open as his sword lowered. “I—I thought you were someone else. My apology.”

“Obviously,” Nylon agreed. “We Nubile Nymphs do tend to get mistaken for others. But as you can see, I am not your love, who would never betray you with another man. You know that, don’t you? You will find her back where she was.”

“Yes.” Sinbad backed off, then turned and strode rapidly away, obviously embarrassed. Now I was free to look directly. I saw a Nymph hurrying to intercept him; Nydea must have misjudged how long he would sleep. She surely would not do that again.

“What did you do?” I asked.

“I showed him Jewel, as I am showing you. When two men gaze at me simultaneously, I can choose whose beloved to emulate. As I said, I am not Queen for nothing.”

“That’s why you told me to keep looking at you,” I said, belatedly catching on. “Had I looked away—”

“I would have been helpless to avoid the aspect of his beloved. Then it might have become complicated.”

Complicated indeed! I would have had to fight my friend, and though I was satisfied I could best him at swords, I did not want to do that. Neither did I want to kill him or allow him to kill me. Queen Nylon had spared me that dreadful choice. I shook my head, bemused. “You are some woman!”

“Indeed. Shall we resume where we left off?”

But the interruption had restored some of my senses to me. “No. You look like Jewel, but I know you are not. I know she is alive. It would be cheating to make out with you.”

“Ah, but you are royal. Surely you have concubines. They are not considered cheating.”

“You are no concubine!”

She shrugged. “I will take that as a compliment. A concubine is a lesser creature, there purely for your passing pleasure. I am a queen, a person of stature, so you can not be casual with me. Still, if you should change your mind, I remain interested. It is of course my nature to be interested, and I have not encountered a man of your caliber in some time.”

“Thank you,” I said awkwardly. I did remain interested; that was the problem. Her beauty, her power, and her flattery were all too conducive. So I changed the subject. “I have not encountered your name before. What is its origin?”

She smiled, relaxing. Unfortunately that was just as sexy as when she was coming on to me, maybe by no accident. She was a creature in search of mortal love, however rational her manner. She probably had not given up on me.

You bet, Sylvie thought. Never trust a woman.

Should I trust you?

Of course not! she thought indignantly. I believe I have a prior application for seducing you, and will do so when the occasion permits.

I shook my head, uncertain how to respond to that.

“If you are quite through conversing with your captive Siren,” Nylon said, “I will answer your question.”

I’m not captive!

She’s teasing you.

“Of course I am,” Nylon agreed. “We cousin-species Nymphs have a certain competitive camaraderie. As you know, we are immortal, and desire above all else to become mortal, normally by marrying a mortal and acquiring part of his soul.”

“And that’s another question,” I said. “Why would anyone sacrifice immortality?”

“Because we are blank. We lack the extraordinary passions of mortality. We do not fear pain or loss or humiliation or even death. We are as empty shells.” She grimaced prettily, her face now a cross between Rosebud and Jewel. “In fact we are bored as Hades. What good is immortality without love, hate, fear, hope, or joy? Our existence is interminably dull, and there is no escape from it. Except to interact briefly with mortals, borrowing their emotions, striving to make them our own, at least for the instant that is their sojourn in life.”

This was interesting. “So when you seek sex with a man, you don’t have lust of your own. It is all about evoking his passion so you can share a bit of the feeling.”

“Exactly.” She eyed me again. “Understanding that, will you now have mercy on me and let me evoke yours? I have the longing of centuries to slake.”

I shook my head. “I can’t. You make me feel guilty, but I can’t.”

“Guilt is another emotion I would gladly share with you.” She sighed. “But I must answer your question. Immortality extends into the past as far as the mind can compass. It also extends into the future. Some centuries hence there will come a new material, underived from sheep or plants or flesh; it is magically processed from the inanimate substance of the ground, and spun into fine strands that can make exquisite and strong threads and textiles. Young women will wear tight stockings made of this material, enhancing their legs phenomenally, as you can see.” She lifted her legs, parted toward me so that I could see every part of them from feet to juncture. They had a remarkable smoothness and luster, and of course strongly excited my masculinity yet again. “I am wearing nylon, and I take my name from it, appreciating its quality.”

I appreciated it too. “I wish I could get stockings like that for my wife. She would absolutely adore them.”

“I will give you these. Just let me get them off.” She set about unrolling the material from her luscious legs, making sure I got to see every portion of her marvelous nether architecture. In due course she had the sheer material off, and my manhood gave scant evidence it had ever been limp. She handed the stockings to me.

They were curiously slight, weighing next to nothing. I could squeeze them into a tiny ball. Amazing how such small things could enhance such shapely limbs! I put them in a pocket. “Thank you.”

“For the nylons?”

“That, too,” I said, finally wrenching my gaze from her inviting cleft.

She knew she had me ready to topple. “Then let’s—”

Sinbad returned, this time with Nydea. “I am taking my wife home,” he said.

So his denial was complete. He had to know she was really a Nubile Nymph, but his desire for his wife was so great that he chose belief over knowledge. As Queen Nylon had pointed out, this was surely best for him.

But Nylon, surprisingly, had a caveat. “Make Refuge your home, Sinbad. You can be safe here.”

“With every Nymph imitating my love? I think not. I want to be alone with my true love.”

Now Duban spoke; I had not noticed when he reappeared. “It is not safe out there. Zeyn lurks. We must wait until he tires of watching.”

“He wants you, not me,” Sinbad said. “I mean to find a portal and return to the ship. The treasure may be gone, but I have all the treasure I need.” He put his arm around Nydea, who of course did not argue. She had become Sinbad’s wife, to the extent feasible, and supported him in all things.

I exchanged a frustrated glance with Nylon. What could we do in the face of this delusion?

“Maybe if we show ourselves at one portal, distracting Zeyn, they can escape by another,” Duban said uncertainly.

“That would be risky for both parties,” Nylon said. “Zeyn may have traps by the portals.”

“And maybe he doesn’t,” Sinbad said. “We’re going.” He set off along the path that had brought us here, and Nydea went with him.

“This is catastrophe,” I muttered.

“I had no idea he was so headstrong,” Duban said.

“He is in love,” Duban’s companion said. In my distraction I had not noticed her either.

“It’s an adult folly, Myrrh,” Duban said.

She merely squeezed his arm agreeably. I wondered what the real Myrrh would think of this. Did the Nymph intend to remain with him until the two of them met?

She remains with him until the issue of his relationship with the real one is settled, Sylvie thought. The real one could die, and then the Nymph could painlessly take her place. In the interim she has the pleasure of his company.

So it seemed. Meanwhile Sinbad was marching resolutely toward likely disaster.

We had to do something to stop this idiocy. But what? As usual, my mind was freezing up.

Chapter Twenty-two

They moved quickly together through the living forests, whose branches and vines parted obligingly. Still, a livid Sinbad brushed them away angrily when one or two curious vines reached out to him.

Soon he was at the stone path, having ignored me the entire way. The man was headstrong and foolish, and I was beginning to see why he often came back empty-handed, having lost ship, treasures and his men. He was truly lucky to be alive.

At the portal he turned to me, holding out his sword. “Do not follow me, King Aladdin. I thank you for your companionship and courage. The goal was always to save my wife, and I have done so. I only want to be far away from these enchanted vixens.”

“And where will you go, friend?” I said calmly.

He gripped his Nydea’s hand possessively. Nydea, of course, looked exactly like my departed wife. My head hurt. Sinbad said, “Another land. Another ship. Just far, far away.”

“So this is it, then?” I said. “This is where our adventure ends?”

“It was never an adventure for me, King Aladdin. It was a rescue.”

Nydea held Sinbad’s hand tightly. That she would play the role of his wife admirably, I had no doubt, but something felt off here. Perhaps it was the knowledge that Sinbad was being deceived.

Do not be too hard on yourself, my lord, came Sylvie’s faint voice in my thoughts. On some level, Sinbad is aware of the deception and chooses to permit it. As admirable as her imitation is, Nydea has not yet mastered his wife’s nuances. Sinbad’s confusion over this is also driving his hostility and recklessness.

So what do you suggest I do? I thought. And how do you know this about Sinbad? You only have access to my thoughts.

I have not lived this long for nothing, my lord. I know the ways of man, especially men in love. For we of the Sirens prey on such vulnerabilities, whereas the Nymphs exploit them.

I must admit, their way of exploitation is preferable to yours.

Oh? Do you not remember your sailor friend? He did not appear to be complaining.

Despite myself, I nearly laughed.

And to answer your question, my lord. Leave him be. He is his own man, free to love whom he chooses.

I nodded, seeing the wisdom of her words. I reached out a hand and Sinbad clasped it.

“I wish you calm seas and safe passage, my friend,” I said.

He smiled and nodded. “As well you, my king. My advice is to return to your kingdom with your boy. Leave this madness behind.”

“I will keep that in mind, Sailor,” I said. First, of course, I would seek Jewel and Lamprey.

Recalling our own harrowing escape from Djinnland, I asked Sinbad how he and Nydea planned to return to the mortal realm. I was, of course, careful to use his wife’s name, Vania, lest I wanted another quarrel with the sailor.

Instead, Nydea answered, sounding exactly as my deceased wife would have sounded. “There is a nearby enchanted cave, known only to us Nymphs. From there, we Nymphs can pass into the mortal realm with ease, although, once there, we generally appear as invisible. It is only when we have found true love—or through dark sorcery, as you have seen—that we become truly physical beings...and ultimately mortal, our fondest wish.”

“And you can return my good friend with you?” I asked.

She nodded and looked up at Sinbad. “If we have found love,” she said, and he squeezed her hand with obvious adoration.

I saw the Nymph’s dilemma. They appeared as invisible in the mortal realm, and it seemed highly unlikely that a mortal would find their hidden realm. Indeed, it appeared Sinbad’s and Nydea’s union was a match ordained by Allah himself.

“I bid thee well, my friend. Godspeed.” I clapped Sinbad on the shoulder and he gave me a final, bittersweet smile, and told me to look out for my boy, that he was a good lad and would make a fine musician. I noted that he didn’t say ruler or magician.

Holding hands, they stepped together through the shimmering portal and into the broad passage that appeared dug from the earth itself. They were still far underground, too far for even Prince Zeyn to reach.

As they moved further down the tunnel, I was about to turn back to Nylon, who was waiting behind me, when I felt a great rumbling.

An earthquake?

Rock and other debris shook free from the slope, rattling past me. Through the shimmering portal, I saw Sinbad and Nydea pause as well, clearly confused.

I was just about to wave them back through the portal, when a great beast burst through the tunnel wall.

By Allah, it was a massive earthworm, bigger than even the lion-serpent we had encountered some time ago. The great worm opened its black maw, swallowed Sinbad and Nydea whole, and continued through the opposite wall, the great expanse of its body following, as the ground shook harder than ever, and it was all I could do to keep my footing on the rocky slope.

The rumbling faded, and I stood there in stunned silence, when Nylon ran forward, screaming. She was about to dash through the shimmering portal but stopped herself. A good idea; she was safe on this side.

Furious, she turned to me and said, “That was no worm!”

I nodded, my stunned brain finally kicking into gear. I had seen the dark prince’s handiwork when he had morphed into a giant castle and a dragon. I wondered how Sinbad and Nydea were faring in the bowels of the great worm.

“Prince Zeyn,” I said.

I noticed Duban and his Nymph were at the foot of the rocky path. He was out of breath. Evidently the boy had felt the rumbling and had come running.

“It could be none other.” She clenched her fists, still, looking and now acting, like Jewel. “I swear this, he will never again harm another of my daughters.”

“Where would he take them?” I asked.

“His castle,” said Nylon.

“A real castle or an illusion?” I asked, recalling the magical illusion that had been Zeyn’s castle last year.

“As real as they get. And as horrific.”

I looked at her sharply. “What does that mean?”

“His castle is not only lined with the corpses of those who have opposed him, but embedded within the very walls themselves is an army of demons.”

“I do not under—”

“Demons and other foul creatures lie dormant within his walls, appearing only as stone statues until called upon by Prince Zeyn.” She looked at me and took my hand. “They also act as his eyes and ears, so no one can get close to Prince Zeyn without their knowledge. No one.”

I set my jaw and looked back through the shimmering portal. “And this is where he took my friend?”

“And my daughter,” she said. “He must be destroyed.”

I couldn’t have agreed more.

Chapter Twenty-three

My mind was blank again, so I turned to Duban. “We have here a man-sized challenge,” I told him. “To rescue our foolish companion. Do you have any feasible ideas?”

“Yes.”

“Because this is the occasion to really wrack our brains in the faint hope of just barely possibly coming up with something that might diminish our hopelessness in the face of—” I paused. “What did you say?”

“He said yes, Aladdin,” the Nymph with Duban answered. “He’s very smart. I mean to marry him some day.”

Of course she wasn’t fooling Duban, any more than Nylon was fooling me. But their semblances were a pleasant interim fiction, and they did mean well, so I played along. “And what do you believe his idea is, Myrrh? Maybe you can read his mind.” I hoped I wasn’t being unkind; the real Myrrh could have done that, but not this one.

“I have asked Myrrh to stay out of my mind for the duration,” Duban said. “I prefer to maintain my privacy, and she honors that.”

The Nymph squeezed his arm affectionately, appreciating the way he covered for her. It occurred to me that at such time as Duban achieved his majority, he might elect to have a concubine, and the Nymph would be ideal. She would emulate his love without the awkwardness of reading his mind.

But at the moment we had a formidable task to accomplish. “And that idea is?”

“To give ourselves up to Prince Zeyn.”

“Duban, have you lost your mind?” the emulation of Jewel, his mother, demanded, sounding just like her.

Duban looked startled, and I knew Nylon was showing him Jewel, enabled by my gaze on her. “I hope not,” he said. “I am thinking that we should offer to exchange ourselves for Sinbad and Nydea/Vania. Only when Zeyn releases them do we enter his castle.”

“Oh, he would certainly make that exchange,” Nylon agreed. “He wants Aladdin for vengeance, and you for the security of his kingdom. He hardly cares about Sinbad, who is a mere pawn in this game of power.” She frowned. “He wants you both dead.”

“Yes, of course,” Duban agreed. “And we would prefer to have Zeyn dead, or as close to it as an immortal could come. So we understand each other.”

“Better than you and I understand each other,” I said. “How can you even consider walking into that dragon trap?”

Duban almost smiled. “It’s worse. We need Jewel Nymph there too.”

“Me!” Nylon squealed, so much like Jewel that I almost laughed. “If Zeyn ever got me into his castle he would bind me naked on a table with my legs wide apart and my mouth blocked open and put his minions into continuous rape duty before he plucked out my eyeballs and cut out my heart with a trowel. Then he would ponder ways to torture me.”

Duban was perplexed. “Why would he prop your mouth open? So you could better scream?”

“So I couldn’t bite.”

“But if you were tied down, you couldn’t get at anyone to bite.”

“Oh, I could, and would. The moment one of them—”

“Never mind,” I said, not wanting to expose my son to the detail of the adult activity to which she referred. Then I had my own question: “You have a heart?”

“Only an emulation of one, while I remain immortal. But he would dig into my flesh for the sake of the mutilation. To make me ugly, and thus humiliate me. He could not hurt me physically, of course, as my gouged organs would quickly regenerate, but the indignity would be appalling. It would become burdensome in the course of centuries.”

Centuries of torture. Just so. “So why do you want her there too?” I asked Duban.

“So she could emulate me while standing athwart the portal to Hades.”

“How do you know of that?” Nylon demanded.

Now Duban squeezed Myrrh’s arm. “My girlfriend would do anything to please me. She pleases me by providing information. Even some she shouldn’t. She can’t help herself, when I really want it.” He looked at me, as Myrrh looked suitably guilty. “The portal is just within the castle, unknown to Prince Zeyn. We need to get safely into the castle to gain access to it.”

So he was using the Myrrh Nymph for his own purposes. He did have a cunning mind. He had picked up on my idea to have a Nubile Nymph emulate him by such a portal. I realized that the ploy just might work. If Zeyn thought we were escaping, and he caught us, he would pounce on Duban without much caution. But this was fraught with dangerous complications. “Exactly where inside the castle?” I asked. “How could it be there, and Zeyn not find it?”

“Where Zeyn never thought to look,” Nylon replied. “In the servant’s privy. It is ill-kept and it smells, but they have no choice but to use it. They have no idea of its significance, as the portal is invisible and inoperative until invoked. Only we know of it, and that information has been useless to us. Even if we were captive in that ill castle and wanted to escape, we would not indulge in a one-way trip to Hades. No one would.”

“But if Zeyn were to pounce into it, unknowing...” I said, considering the ramifications with growing interest.

“He would be gone, and we would be safe,” Duban concluded. “His minions might be annoyed, but I could handle them, in the absence of Zeyn. That evens up the odds.”

“It does indeed,” I agreed. “But you know, there’s many a slip twist the chalice and the lip. This is so chancy that only a fool would even consider it.”

“Or someone desperate to save a friend, however unworthy that friend might be.”

“What do you think?” I asked Nylon. “Would you care to risk such an insane venture?”

“Well, it would not be boring,” she said. That was her way of saying yes. She had explained to us how boring immortality was. But was that her only motive?

That made me think: suppose Jewel and Myrrh, trying to recover the Lamp, fell into evil clutches and died? What would there be for Duban and me? Myrrh Nymph and Jewel Nymph. We might find it necessary to go the way Sinbad had, into denial leading to a new reality. The Nymphs would see to it that we never regretted that choice.

And, of course, Nylon did want to save her daughter. So it did all add up. I was sure we could trust her, regardless; I just liked to be certain things made sense.

The Nymphs’ motive was not hostile, and we did need their help. So it was best not to look this gift camel too closely in the mouth.

“Then it seems we are decided,” I said more briskly than I felt. “We will proffer a trade of hostages. But how can we be sure Zeyn will honor his side of the deal?”

“That is the beauty of integrity,” Nylon said. “He must release them first. Then we will go to his castle. He is dishonest as the day is long, and days can be extremely long in Djinnland, but he knows you will honor your part of the deal. So we don’t need to trust him; he will trust you.”

“But I’ve often lied,” I protested. “Sometimes it’s good business practice.”

“But have you ever reneged on a formal commitment?”

“No, of course not.”

“And only the broad agreement will be formal,” she continued. “Let Sinbad go; you and Duban will report to his front gate. All else is vague. He will be so eager he won’t even consider that it might be a counter-trap.”

“But I thought you were coming too.”

“I am. My daughter is, too.”

I shook my head, confused.

“As rings,” she explained gently. “No need to inform Zeyn of that minor detail. Not that he would object; he would welcome the chance to capture two more Nubile Nymphs for his entertainment.”

Entertainment: centuries of rape and torture of beautiful women. I shuddered.

Duban was nodding as she spoke. He had known it all along. Once again I was the dull one out.

Still, I had more objections. “Suppose he beheads us right there? Or chains us, or locks us in a steel chest?”

“He may,” Duban said. “My magical powers do not match his, here in Djinnland, but they are not inconsequential. I will conjure us elsewhere in the castle. So we will have honored our commitment, but will still be free to act. He will have to run us down, which he should enjoy, cat and mouse.”

“And we will head for the privy,” Nylon said. “Where you will remove your rings and we’ll assume the likenesses of what Zeyn most desires to see: you and Duban, ripe for capture and execution.”

“Hiding in the servant’s stinking privy,” Duban continued. “Where he will wrinkle his nose and pounce without thinking.”

“And go to Hades,” Myrrh Nymph concluded.

Thus catching Zeyn in the same kind of trap that he had caught us in, portaling us to Djinnland. It seemed almost too pat. Things were bound to go wrong. They always did. But what else was there?

“We’ll do it,” I said more gamely than I felt.

Chapter Twenty-four

We waited only a short while before a messenger appeared at the portal.

Prior to that, I had been nervously lounging with Nymph Jewel in her spacious lodge, while Duban practiced his magic with one of the elder Nymphs. Through a window, I watched him quickly master what I could only imagine were very intricate spells. Glowing dragons appeared and disappeared. The elder Nymph herself grew suddenly to a great height, and then shrank so small that Duban held her upon the flat of his hand. They both laughed.

“Your son is powerful,” said Nymph Jewel, looking out the window. “I can see why Prince Zeyn fears him.”

I nodded absently, too nervous to think of anything other than my friend. I paced before the great hearth, as the hellbeast snapped playfully at my heels.

“Relax, my king,” said Nylon. “We will hear from Zeyn soon. He has no need to keep your friend and my daughter longer than need be.”

“Which is what makes me nervous. What if he kills them?”

“Zeyn has never been one to kill anyone too quickly. And besides, they are of more use to him alive than dead.”

A young Nymph suddenly appeared in the doorway of the lodge. “My Queen, a messenger has arrived at the portal. He is alone and unarmed. He brings word from Prince Zeyn.”

“Show him in.”

Moments later, a young djinn manifested in the lodge. He smiled pleasantly and bowed deeply to both the queen and to myself. “My King and Queen, Prince Zeyn sends his deepest regrets to the senseless attack on your daughter, Nydea, and on your friend, Sinbad. The rogue worm has, of course, been captured and slaughtered and Nydea and Sinbad have been mercifully saved. For now, they are residing comfortably in Prince Zeyn’s castle—”

“Out with it, demon,” snapped Queen Nylon. “We do not have all day.”

Immediately, the pleasant-looking djinn turned into something rather nasty. Now, a misshapen creature with an elongated head and glowing red eyes stood before us.

“Yesss,” hissed the foul creature. “They are in the prince’s castle where they are no doubt being tortured at thisss very moment.”

“And what does the Prince want in exchange for their lives?”

“It isss easy enough, my queen. He simply requiresss an exchange.”

“What kind of exchange?”

“The king and the boy, and you will have your fair daughter again, and the worthless sssailor. They appear to be in love, after all.” And the demon actually spat the word love.

Nylon and I had already gone over this moment, and she put on a wonderful show of being infuriated with the demands of Prince Zeyn. The demon only watched her with eager, round eyes, dripping its foul poison. Finally, in accordance with our rehearsed plan, I reached out a hand and took her arm.

“Duban and I will do it,” I said.

“No, my king. I cannot allow—”

“We will do it.” And here I looked at the demon. “For true love.”

The demon actually seemed to fight an urge to vomit. When the creature got control of itself, it finally said, “Good, good. The Prince will be very pleasssed.”

“On one condition,” I said.

The demon turned its full—and frightening—gaze on to me. I did my best not to look too deeply into its red eyes. “And what isss that, King Aladdin?”

“That he releases Sinbad and Nydea first.”

“Oh, I don’t think my massster will be pleased with that at all.”

“It is my only condition. He can accept it or shove it up his fat ass.”

The demon sized me up, its deformed head swiveling slightly on its long neck. “And what guarantee doesss the Prince have that King Aladdin will follow through on hisss end of the deal?”

“Because,” I said, and this time I did look the vile creature full in the face, “King Aladdin never reneges on his word.”

The demon continued staring at me, and I could not help but notice that the red in his eyes could have been actual fire, burning just behind its pupils.

Finally the demon began to nod. “Thisss is acceptable to the prince.”

The demon obviously had been authorized to accept such a deal, as I doubted the creature could be in contact with the Prince in the Nymph’s safe haven.

“Good,” I said. “When my friends are here, safe and sound, my son and I will present ourselves outside the castle walls.”

“Thisss, too, is acceptable.”

Nymph Jewel stood suddenly. “Then begone, foul creature.”

It bowed and disappeared into a puff of black smoke. I had barely returned to Nymph Jewel’s side, when the same young Nymph appeared again in the doorway.

“My Queen, Sinbad the Sailor and Nydea are at the portal.”

***

We were all gathered around the central fire of the lodge. Sinbad hated our plan, but I reminded him that I had given the Prince my word.

“Your word, be damned, King Aladdin. The man is a devil. He was all set to torture us. In fact, I had already been stretched over a heavily scarred table stained with blood. Next to me was all manner of torture devices, all stained with fresh blood.” Sinbad stepped in front of me, his wild eyes aflame. “This camel turd does not deserve respect or any man’s word.”

“We have a plan,” said Queen Nylon.

“With all due respect, your plan is foolish, my queen. Perhaps the most foolish I have ever heard.”

The Queen cocked an eyebrow. “Oh? More foolish than venturing deep into the Siren’s enchanted cavern?”

“Well, that was a different—”

I clapped a hand on Sinbad’s shoulder. “My friend,” I said, “if I have learned anything from my time as king it is that sometimes there is a time to fight. And now is such a time. Prince Zeyn is determined to not only destroy me, but my son. If he succeeds he will usher in, from all appearance, a reign of terror the likes of which our world has never seen before.”

“And so your great plan to stop him is to simply give yourselves up?”

“I never said it was great. But it is a plan.”

“I’m coming with you.”

“No—”

“You will need a second sword, Aladdin. I have seen the inside of his palace and it is frightening to behold. The very walls themselves are embedded with an army of stone demons.”

Duban spoke up. “I can just as easily turn him into a ring, Father.”

“I’m running out of fingers,” I grumbled. But I appeared to be outnumbered. Nylon had no opinion in the matter, apparently, and who was I to keep my adventurous friend from helping me? “Fine. Then let’s get on with it.”

“My Queen,” said the same young Nymph. “The demon awaits at the portal to transport King Aladdin and Prince Duban.”

Nymph Jewel nodded. “Indeed. Let’s get on with it. Duban, work your magic.”

My stepson did just that, quickly turning Nymph Jewel, Nymph Myrrh and Sindbad the Sailor into golden rings, all of which I placed on various fingers. I remembered how when I had become a ring, it was mere brass. Not that I was jealous, exactly, merely off put.

I turned to the young Nymph. “Now, take us to the demon.”

Chapter Twenty-five

All too soon we were at the portal, then in the underground passage, rejoining the demon, who grinned horrendously and ushered us into his carriage. What was odd was that it appeared to be a very nice carriage, with plush upholstery, tasteful curtains to shield us from dust, and soft cushions on the bench. We were quite comfortable.

The demon then became a four legged beast that stepped into a harness and hauled the carriage forward. Right out of the passage and into the ground, for all of it was of mortal density, making the ground seem like fog. Zeyn had had time to prepare for our density. We cruised on along the bedrock and upward toward the surface.

By mutual consent we did not discuss our strategy, but kept our words innocuous. We were able to converse freely in the carriage. “Prince Zeyn is being a remarkably gracious host,” I remarked.

“I’m sure he can be that, when he chooses,” Duban said, grimacing. He shrugged. “Possibly we have misjudged the Prince.”

I forced a straight face. “Possibly, though my prior encounter with him might be construed as a bit negative.”

“Maybe he happened to be in a bad mood that day,” Duban said, quirking a smile. After all, he had had his own negative experience with Zeyn, who had sought to sacrifice him on an altar.

We drew up to the surface. Then the carriage sprouted wings and flew off the ground and into the sky. That was impressive, considering our phenomenal density.

The high turrets of the dread castle came into view. The thing was amazingly aesthetic, resembling a storybook residence. I was surprised.

“Illusion,” Duban murmured.

Oh. Of course. Very little here in Djinnland needed to be as it appeared.

I thought of something else. “We are mortally dense. How can any of us go above the bedrock level of the castle?”

“Prince Zeyn surely thought of that detail,” Duban said. “The castle must be enchanted to handle mortal density. Sinbad did not have any trouble.”

That was true. Outside the castle our density counted, but inside it we might very well seem normal. Just as we did here in the carriage.

We landed in a central courtyard. Two pretty maidens were there to welcome us, each more comely than the other. They were tastefully clothed in light robes and sashes that did nothing to conceal their shapeliness. “Welcome, honored guests!” the loveliest one exclaimed, stepping forward to give me a kiss, while the other bussed Duban. I managed not to stiffen in alarm. “I am Desiree, and my companion is Demona, both of us dedicated to serve you.” She smiled and made a little flirt of her hips and long loose dark hair. “In any manner you may desire, pun intended.”

I got it: Desiree, desire.

What theater, Nylon thought, disgusted.

She’s really a warty pig? I inquired.

No, her physical appearance is accurate, and I’m sure she is more than ready to oblige your manly passion, having densified so that she can. But she’s a demoness who would consume you if allowed.

I saw nothing like this before, Sinbad grumped, now having access to my thoughts, as well.

Just so. Since it was not incidental demonesses we were after, I had to play along. Only when Zeyn showed up to make his move would we make our break. We needed to have him chasing us, so that we could lead him into the trap.

“This way, please, King Aladdin,” Desiree said, taking my hand while Demona took Duban’s hand. They conducted us to an elaborate suite replete with fountains and works of art. Stone statues lined the walls. Demonic statues, all armed with stone swords. Zeyn’s army. There was a great golden throne that sat empty nearby. I had a strong feeling this was where Zeyn was entertained. Were we to be his entertainment? I shivered.

Demona spoke next, “You must be tired and worn after your journey, not to mention suffering the nefarious attentions of the Nasty Nymphs. We will be happy to help you bathe and change.”

What was going on here? We had been braced for attack and torture. Zeyn had no need to coddle us. “We can handle such details ourselves,” I said gruffly.

“Of course, King Aladdin,” she agreed immediately. “Make yourselves comfortable. We will bring you your repast.”

Did they plan to drug us with bhang in the food? Again, why should Zeyn bother? We were already in his power. This simply was not making much sense.

I am baffled too, Nylon thought.

They brought a veritable banquet, which they served us piece by piece. Nylon and Sylvie, who evidently knew something about poison, assured me that the food was safe and of excellent quality. This was strange, as djinn and demons did not really need to eat. Zeyn maintained a kitchen to serve mortals?

“Prince Zeyn has provided also for your entertainment,” Desiree said. Before I could protest that Duban did not need a woman, and I would not indulge in his presence regardless, she gestured. The wall facing us changed color, becoming what seemed to be a window. We saw through it to a harbor with a ship. “A window to the mortal realm.”

In fact it was the harbor at Cloudland Island, and the Fat Chance. And there aboard it were three people: a handsome man, a lovely woman, and a pretty girl.

“Mother!” Duban breathed. “Myrrh!”

“And surely the Thief of Baghdad,” I concluded somewhat sourly. “So they made it to the ship. But did they get the Lamp?”

“Mother is carrying it,” Duban said.

So she was, in a little handbag. So they had arrived in time, while Zeyn was distracted with us. “But I think they need to get away from there,” I muttered. “Soon.”

“Also, she got new shoes,” Duban said distastefully. “The Thief must have gotten them for her.”

“They are pretty slippers,” I agreed. Trust my wife to keep her eye out for shoes, even amidst serious business. She also had fancy gloves. I shook my head with fond bemusement.

But before they could board the Thief’s carpet, three men arrived. “Aladdin!” Jewel exclaimed. “You got free!” She ran to gladly embrace him.

But of course it was not Aladdin. I was right here in Zeyn’s castle, watching this travesty. The others looked like Sinbad and Duban, and I was pretty sure they weren’t authentic either.

“We did,” the impostor agreed. “It is quite a story, which we will tell at another time. Prince Zeyn is hot on our trail, breathing fire. Your carpet won’t hold six people. We need Ifrit Iften. Give me the Lamp.”

“Don’t do it!” I protested, but of course she couldn’t hear me. The magic window enabled us to hear them, but not vice versa. I was coming to appreciate the nature of Zeyn’s torture of us: to see disaster happening and be powerless to prevent it.

“Of course, dear,” Jewel said. She brought the lamp out and proffered it. Ouch!

Zeyn—for it had to be he—snatched it from her hand. He held it up and rubbed its side. “Come forth, O Iften!” he intoned. “Now you are mine, ifrit, and must serve me!”

Purple smoke issued from the Lamp. Also, evidently, a vile odor. Zeyn and his companions coughed and squinched their tearing eyes shut.

If I didn’t know better, Nylon thought, I’d figure that to be a stink bomb.

It is a stink bomb! Sylvie Siren thought. The Thief stole several from our treasure. It emits a truly putrid stench admixed with mustard gas, a substance from the foul future.

“Then she saw him coming!” I said, gratified as well as amused. “But then why did she hug him?”

She planted something on him, Sylvie thought. It looked like another stolen artifact, a homing signal.

“So she will know him wherever he goes, whatever form he assumes,” I said. “That’s my girl.”

Duban looked at me. “There is something?”

Quickly I explained the dialogue with the rings. He smiled. “That’s mother,” he agreed. “Myrrh would have anticipated this ploy when she read the future, and then read his mind, so they were never fooled.”

“But they’re still in deadly danger,” I said. “They need to get out of there now.”

Indeed, they were doing so. While Zeyn and his henchmen coughed, choked, and rubbed their stinging eyes, Jewel, Myrrh, and the Thief were retreating to their magic carpet. They got on it and took off.

But then Zeyn’s two minions transformed to winged monsters and flew to intercept the trio. Their eyes no longer flowed; in this form they were immune. In fact they were probably made from stink bomb ingredients. Meanwhile Zeyn also shed his mortal mask and stood revealed as himself, no longer coughing. “Fetch them back here,” he ordered.

The two monsters took hold of the carpet, and it was helpless against their strength. They dragged it back down before Zeyn. The ploy had failed.

“You will pay for this little trick, wench,” Zeyn said grimly. “But I will spare you if you give me the real Lamp. Where is it?”

“I’ll never tell,” Jewel said.

“You will tell,” he told her. “Because I have your husband hostage in my castle, and I will torture him in your presence until his screams make you yield. You can save him some pain by producing the Lamp now.”

“Never!” she said bravely. “And you’ll never find it!”

A crocodile would have admired his smile. “I hoped you would say that, strumpet. Now I have an excellent pretext to torture him and the boy, and of course part of it will be them seeming me rape you and the girl child, before I turn you over to my lustful minions. I will of course still recover the Lamp after our frolics. This will surely be a wonderful occasion.”

“You monster!” she said fervently, and Myrrh looked horrified.

“Indeed,” he agreed equably.

I shook my head. They had after all walked into the trap. Now Prince Zeyn had us all, and he would be merciless.

Yet if Myrrh could read minds and see the future, how could this have happened?

“They’re up to something,” Duban murmured.

They certainly are, Nylon thought.

They’re women, Sylvie agreed. The girl faked horror very nicely.

They mean to rescue their beloveds, Nydea Nymph thought. The Lamp was just a pretext.

I hoped they were right, because I couldn’t see any chance. I worried they had underestimated Zeyn’s power in his home castle. I feared we were all doomed.

Chapter Twenty-six

I watched in horror as Zeyn’s minions surrounded Jewel, Myrrh and the Thief. Zeyn then turned and looked directly at us. A shiver ran through me. Even Duban gasped. Zeyn’s dark eyes flared briefly with amusement, then turned sinister as his eyebrows drew together. He raised his hands and snapped his fingers, and the wall before us went blank, replaced now by bricks and tapestries.

Duban took my hand. “They’re here, Father.”

“Who?” I said.

“Myrrh and mother. The thief, too.” Duban closed his eyes. “Myrrh’s reaching out to me...they’re in a dungeon, deep below the castle.”

That’s where he had me strapped to the torture table, came Sinbad’s thoughts.

Sinbad’s words had just appeared in my thoughts when a brilliant flash of light appeared in the great hall. The air in the room seemed to drop many degrees. When my seared eyes could focus again, I was not too surprised to see the hulking figure of Prince Zeyn slouching on the golden throne.

Coldness radiated from the prince. Indeed, as he breathed, small puffs of condensation billowed around him. What manner of foul creature was he?

The foulest, thought Nylon, squeezing my finger. In Djinnland, cold of heart also translates into cold of flesh. He is the prodigy of two powerful magicians. His father was a great mortal wizard and his mother the most powerful of djinn sorceresses. Zeyn, of course, destroyed them both as soon as he grew powerful enough. Now, he forever longs to rule both worlds.

“So we meet again, boy,” said Zeyn. He motioned with his hand and sexy female slaves appeared instantly by his side. Whether they were djinn, mortals or demons, I had no idea.

Kidnapped mortals, thought Sylvie. Their memories have been erased. They serve only to pleasure the prince. When he is tired of them, they will be given to others who have shown Zeyn loyalty. Generally, they live only as long as their beauty holds.

Zeyn was sounding worse and worse. Then again, what else did I expect? The world is full of a long list of rulers who abused their power. Apparently, Djinnland was no different. I hoped to break the cycle.

Duban stepped bravely forward. Bravely, because I could see his small shoulders shaking. “You have my mother. I want her released. Additionally, I want all of us released or you will be destroyed. This is your only warning.”

Zeyn, who had been absently patting the behind of a dark-haired slave girl, threw back his head and laughed. The slaves all laughed nervously. Their faces, I saw were completely blank. Mere shells.

“We are not in the mortal realm, boy,” said Zeyn, resuming his patting. “Your magic is insufficient here. Ah, but I admire your spirit, which, of course, I shall break soon enough.”

Desiree stepped forward and bowed, and only then did I see something sticking down below her tunic. A forked tale that seemed to have a mind of its own, as it slithered and curled in mid-air. “Sire,” she said. “King Aladdin has with him two Nymphs, a Siren and Sinbad the Sailor. I knew this the moment I took his hand.”

“Oh, how is this so?” His scanning eyes, which sat behind thick folds of fat, spotted the rings. “Ah, you are a fashionable king, I see.”

He snapped his fingers and instantly all four rings sprang from my fingers. The rings shot through the air, to land lightly within his open palm. He looked at them curiously, then started nodding.

“A fine bit of magic,” he said, then began placing each ring onto his own hands. The rings, I saw, magically fit the size of any fingers, since his were easily twice as thick as my own. “There. Now I can be fashionable, too. And also safeguard myself against any mischief you might have had in mind, King Aladdin. Wherever I go, these rings go with me.”

My heart sank. This was surely not going to plan. “Release them,” I said. “You have no need for them.”

“No need for three sexy vixens...and a mortal male who bleeds so readily? Surely you jest!” Zeyn rubbed the rings salaciously, then threw his head back and guffawed. “I see our friend Sinbad has quite the salty mouth on him. Well, we will see how much fight he has in him soon enough.”

Zeyn waved his hand and two of the stone creatures directly behind us stepped away from the wall. As they did so, I looked at Duban. “Now.”

Just as I felt a heavy hand drop onto my shoulder, the boy snapped his own fingers and suddenly we were elsewhere.

Behind me still stood the stone demon, but now we were alone in a dank hallway, surrounded by metal doors and bars, and the cries and screams of those in deep agony.

The stone demon raised its sword and I acted instinctively, unleashing a punch straight to the foul creature’s turgid face. The pain in my hand was nearly unbearable. I recoiled, crying out. Duban stepped forward, raising both his hands, and the stone stature crumbled in a heap of broken rock.

My step-son looked up at me sadly. “Really, father? Punching a stone statue?”

I held my punched hand against me, certain I had broken a knuckle or two. From the torches, the screaming and the steady sounds of dripping water, I knew we were in the dungeon.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said.

Duban pointed behind me. “Myrrh’s telling me they’re that way.”

“Then let’s go,” I said, and we moved quickly through the twisting corridors, past closed doors, where pale faces and hands appeared in small windows, all beseeching us to help them. As difficult as it was to ignore those in need, we pushed forward. As a ruler, I was, of course not immune to dungeons. After all, below my very palace was such a bleak place. But I saw myself as a fair king and I did not enjoy torture for the sake of torture. Only the most hardened criminals found themselves in my dungeons, and even then they were treated far better than they deserved.

We passed a room with a sloping floor that led to a black water pit. Where the pit led off to, I didn’t know, but I logged it away. Perhaps it would be a means of escape.

We rounded a corner and Duban pointed at another door. “They’re in there,” he said.

Indeed, as we drew close a welcomed sight appeared in the small window. Jewel’s lovely face. My heart rammed in my chest, but as I moved toward her another face appeared—that of the handsome thief. He gave me a crooked, swarthy smile. I hated him already.

“King Aladdin,” he said, nodding slightly. “If you’re here to rescue us, you’re going to need a fair bit of magic. These dungeon doors are enchanted. Even I can’t break free.”

“Stand back, father,” said Duban. I noted that he did not tell the Thief of Baghdad to step back.

Duban raised his hands and intoned something just under his breath. Within moments the door sprang open.

Jewel dashed out and threw herself into my arms, as did little Myrrh into Duban’s arms. The Thief of Baghdad watched all of us with a bemused smile.

“Now, who do I get to hug?” he asked jovially.

“Never mind that,” I said, perhaps sharper than I should have, and I caught them all up to date.

“So what do we do next?” asked Jewel.

“We have a plan to destroy Zeyn once and for all.”

“Except the pieces of your plan are currently wrapped around that fat bastard’s fingers,” said the Thief. “Myrrh read your mind as it happened, and told us the bad news.”

He had a point. Myrrh looked at all of us. “I have an idea,” she said.

Chapter Twenty-seven

I heard the heavy tramping of approaching feet. “It better be a good one,” I said grimly. “Because that sounds like Prince Zeyn coming to collect us.”

“It is that Jewel should invoke the lyre,” Myrrh said. “For Duban to play for the monsters and demons.”

Jewel nodded, smiling wickedly. “That will do,” she said.

“Mother, you know how I love music,” Duban said. “But I would not care to entertain the deadly minions of this fell castle. In any event, we have serious business afoot, such as saving our lives.”

Prince Zeyn rounded a corner, leading a small army of horrendously ugly creatures. “I could hardly have put it better myself. But let’s humor the lady. Where is this musical instrument? I see none on her.”

“Because you haven’t looked closely dirt-face,” Jewel said. She lifted her left knee high enough to provide me a compelling glimpse of her thigh and buttock, and removed her slipper. “lyre, restore.”

The slipper expanded. In a moment it was a beautiful translucent, jewel-encrusted lyre, surely another valuable item the Thief had stolen from the cache of the Sirens. She handed it to Duban.

Duban took it, though his mouth was opening for another protest. Then he paused, fondling it as he glanced at Myrrh. She was evidently telling him something mentally. “Oh, my! It’s magic!”

“Oh, my indeed,” Zeyn said. “I recognize that device. It is the infamous Lucent Lyre, reputed to glow when expertly played, and to be a favorite of monsters and demons. It has been out of circulation for several centuries; interesting that it should turn up now. Surely an excellent choice, if you have the talent. But it will burn the fingers of anyone who attempts to play it inexpertly.” His lips twitched cruelly. “Play it, boy; we’ll wait on your performance.”

I stifled my anger. Zeyn thought Duban was a novice. He had a surprise coming.

“Thank you,” Duban said. His fingers stroked the strings. Then he played.

The music was lovely. The lyre did glow, brightening as the boy got into the melody. There was no sign of fingers burning as the music spread out to fill the dungeon.

Then there was another sound. A kind of thudding, as of many feet striking the stone floor simultaneously. It came from behind Zeyn. I looked.

The monsters were dancing. All of them, in unison, their feet striking the floor in intricate patterns governed by the music. It was weird, because they were hardly the dancing type. They clearly were not good at it, but were compelled by the music.

“So it’s true!” Zeyn said, amazed. “It does make monsters dance! I thought that an exaggeration. I am impressed; you do have musical talent, boy.” He frowned. “Now desist; we need to talk.”

“We have nothing to talk about,” Duban said. “Your monsters can not serve you as long as I am playing. The ones in the walls, too; they will dance until they shake the castle down. I suggest you vacate the premises before the walls start collapsing.”

Indeed, the whole castle seemed to be vibrating with increasing force. I am not normally claustrophobic, but this made me uneasy. We could all be crushed by falling rock.

“Desist, or I will punish your associates,” Zeyn said. “Beginning with your friend, Sinbad the Sailor, who is now in my power.” He touched the Sinbad ring.

Duban paused, focusing. The monsters halted their dancing, abruptly frozen in place. Then he played an odd chord.

Zeyn grimaced. “The rings are burning!” he exclaimed. He wrenched them off his fingers.

All four rings dropped to the floor, reverting to their original forms as they did. Suddenly there stood Sinbad the Sailor, Sylvie Siren, Queen Nylon Nymph and Nydea Nymph. They quickly stepped away from Zeyn.

“I am not an entire idiot about magic,” Duban said. “I made those rings; I control them regardless who wears them. I’m surprised you forgot that detail.”

“I merely misjudged your power to perform such magic in my castle,” Zeyn said thoughtfully. “You have grown, Duban.”

“I have an issue to settle with you,” Duban said. “You tried to murder me last year. Did you think I would enter your stronghold unprepared? Your magic may still be stronger than mine, here in Djinnland, but you have allowed me to bypass your defenses and cut off your allies. Just as a maiden may kill a warrior, if she catches him unaware, I have seized the advantage over you in this spot locale. Do you care to try my strength now?” His fingers quivered over the lyre, which continued to glow though it was not being played at the moment. It seemed to be responding to the power of the one who held it.

“Not at the moment,” Zeyn said. He did not look cowed or even nervous. That made me nervous. “As I said, it is time to talk.”

“What could you possibly have to say that any of us would want to hear?” Sinbad demanded. “We want you dead and forgotten.”

“Hear me out,” Zeyn said. “I have an offer to make to you, severally and individually.”

“Don’t listen to him,” the Thief said. “He’s a bigger thief than I am, because he has no conscience.”

Zeyn turned to him. “You have a talent I can use. Swear fealty to me and I will give you Desiree Demoness to be your slave, mistress, or wife.” He gestured and Desiree appeared, phenomenally lovely in an exposive gown, smiling at the Thief. She inhaled, and I could see that the Thief was mightily impressed. The demoness fairly radiated sex appeal.

Zeyn turned to Duban. “I will give you the key to Musica, the land of music, where every instrument is magic. It is the origin of the Lucent Lyre. Every instrument there is similarly magical, capable of marvelously lovely music and magic. It is a land of peace; the inhabitants have no interest other than perfecting their music. With your talent you could make music such as you never could in the mortal realm. You can take Myrrh and she can learn an instrument too. You can find fulfillment there.”

Duban’s expression softened. This interested him.

“Ridiculous!” Jewel said sharply. “Only a fool would even consider such nonsense.”

Zeyn focused on her. “You are a truly beautiful and spirited woman, well fit to be a queen. Why settle for an indifferent character like Aladdin, who achieved his crown mainly because he had the luck to get hold of the Lamp, when you could become queen of Djinnland and the mortal realm? Marry me, and you will be that.”

Jewel’s mouth worked for a moment before she could speak. “What unearthly arrogance makes you think I would ever touch you, you fell monster?”

Zeyn smiled. “Why, I don’t know. Perhaps it was that flash of thigh you showed when you produced the Lyre. Your leg is as lovely as the rest of you, numbing my more sensible nature. It makes me desire you passionately.”

“I’m pregnant!” she snapped.

“For the moment,” he agreed.

What griped me was that she was proffering a reason for him not to want her, rather than hurling his offer back in his face. Was the evil lord making an impression on her? “And what of me?” I asked.

“Give me the Lamp, and you can marry queen Nylon and be rapturously happy while governing a kingdom consisting of nothing but lovely Nubile Nymphs.”

“As if he would ever consider that,” Sinbad said.

Zeyn turned to him. “You have no real business here. Return to the mortal realm with your wife, whom you purchased with the shipload of treasure. She will make you unspeakably happy.”

Thus Zeyn was dealing with every one of us, in his fashion. But why was he bothering, knowing that none of us were likely to accept? For one thing, he wasn’t trustworthy; even if the deals were good, we could not trust him to honor them.

I came to a preliminary conclusion: he was stalling for time. Duban had him with his scimitar down, and he needed to summon reinforcements. We could not afford to let them arrive.

Chapter Twenty-eight

Myrrh, I thought, can you read Prince Zeyn’s mind?

Myrrh nodded and closed her eyes. Meanwhile, Duban had stopped playing and the demons had stopped dancing. From having fought battles before, I sensed the enemy surrounding us on both sides. We were not in a good position.

No, my king, came the girl’s words. He has shielded his mind.

Now I sensed movement behind me, and I could see now what Zeyn had been stalling for. It was another army, but this one was different. Oddly lumbering. Dripping water, their clothing in tatters, I vaguely recognized some of them from the whirpool islands. Zombies. I didn’t have the all the facts, but I suspected they emerged from the water pit we had seen earlier, a sinkhole that somehow magically connected to Zombie Island.

“I believe you’ve met my friends,” said Prince Zeyn. “And as luck would have it, they’re also immune to the magic of the lyre. Unfortunately for you, they have a hunger for human brain. Why a zombie needs brains is beyond me, but I don’t make the rules. On second thought, Aladdin, I withdraw my offer.”

The undead continued toward us, many dragging badly damaged limbs, and some even pulling their legless, decomposed bodies with bony hands. The clickety-clack of bone striking the stone floor filled the tunnel, as did the zombies themselves. There were hundreds of them, if not thousands, stretching as far down the tunnel as the wavering torchlight would reveal.

Myrrh whimpered next to me. I didn’t blame her. I put an arm around her.

“I guess we might need these,” said Jewel, and she raised her hands and both gloves turned into swords. The swords glowed with an inner light. Magical swords, perhaps impervious to breaking. No doubt stolen by the Thief.

She tossed one to the scoundrel, who caught it easily, swiped it expertly in the air and held it out before him. Sinbad next drew his scimitar, as wooden staffs appeared in the hands of the Nymphs. Sylvie the Siren lifted her own hand and a blazing pitchfork appeared.

So this was it. Demons on one side and zombies on the other, and we had, what, three swords, two staffs and a pitchfork?

We were doomed.

I’d been in some tough scraps before, some of which appeared nearly hopeless. But this clearly topped them all. For the first time in my storied life, I was truly without hope and without ideas.

It was time to fight to the bitter end.

“I shall take that,” said Zeyn, and he snapped his fingers and Duban’s lyre flew from his hands to crumple against the far wall.

And that’s when the demons charged on one side, and the zombies from the other. Our little group formed a circle, our backs to each other, our weapons out, the children in the middle, and as the horde from Hades bore down on us, my wife did a most curious thing.

She raised her foot and removed her final slipper.

Which, in turned, formed into a golden lamp. It had been hidden on her all along. Cunning woman!

“Lamprey!” I yelled.

Just then Duban stepped forward and raised his hands as something sparked off of an invisible barrier—no doubt the prince’s attempt to summon the lamp. The boy had protected us. I seized the lamp and rubbed it quickly.

Smoke billowed out, and soon Lamprey’s tall, ethereal form appeared in the air before us. He bowed toward me.

“Help us, Lamprey!” I cried.

“Your wish is my—”

“Just do it!”

He bowed again and in an instant the demons were blown off their feet. Likewise, the zombies were hurled backward. Prince Zeyn shrieked with rage and grew rapidly in size. Now standing in his place was a massive minotaur, with the body of a man and the head of a bull. Its nostrils flared and steam issued out as it charged our group. Lamprey instantly transformed as well, in like size and shape, and met the charging minotaur head-on. There was thunderous clash of horns. Both minotaurs rebounded, stunned.

“C’mon!” yelled the Thief of Baghdad, and he dashed off through the tunnel, now lined with fallen demons. And like the true scoundrel that he was, he never bothered to look back. Whether we followed or not was obviously no concern of his. I took Duban’s hand and Jewel took Myrrh’s, and together the rest of us followed behind a charred path of toasted demons.

We soon found a curving flight of stairs and headed up, and shortly we were in the castle proper. Here, many gaping holes revealed where the demons had stepped forth. The floor shook as thunderous explosions issued up from the subterranean tunnels where the two powerful djinni locked horns.

“Where to now?” asked Jewel.

The Thief of Baghdad was nowhere to be found. The worthless dog had no doubt fled the castle. To where, I hadn’t a clue, and I gave the man no further thought. Meanwhile, the very castle itself continued to shake and rattle as the beastly minotaurs continued bashing heads down below.

“They will battle to the end, and one will die,” said Nylon, who had now reverted to looking like my dead wife. I saw the reason why: Jewel herself was here. What good was a replica when the real deal was nearby? As she spoke, Nylon touched my arm in an overly familiar way. Jewel caught the Nymph’s intimate gesture and raised an eyebrow. I shrugged Nylon’s hand off me and idly wondered how the Nymph Queen appeared to Jewel. No doubt her magical charm was lost on the females of our race.

Still, I understood Nylon’s meaning. Now fully recovered, Lamprey was surely as powerful as Prince Zeyn, but there was no guarantee that my djinn would come out of this victorious.

“But I have no control over my djinn,” I said. “I commanded his help, but he could have just as easily refused. We are in the land of djinn, after all, where my authority over him is moot.”

Nylon was shaking her head. “Their battle goes beyond you, King Aladdin. Last year, Zeyn had gained the upper hand by trapping Ifrit Iften when your djinn had been in your service, and thus at a disadvantage. But now released, they will settle an old grudge.”

“But I do not want Lamprey to perish.”

“He may not. He may very well destroy the foul prince once and for all.”

“Or not,” I said.

“Or not,” agreed Nylon. “Unless...”

“Unless what?”

“You call out for his help, and thus summon him away from Zeyn.”

“I can do that,” I agreed. “But what’s the point, if my summoning distracts and weakens Lamprey?”

“Zeyn will give chase, and instead will find me, resembling young Duban. But I can only hold the deception for a short period.”

I nodded, recalling our plan. “And you yourself will be standing at the portal to Hades?”

“Where that fat bastard will rot for all eternity.”

“Now that,” I said, “sounds like a plan.”

Chapter Twenty-nine

I rubbed the lamp again. “Lamprey!” I called. “I need you!” Would he respond? We were counting on it.

He did, appearing in human form. “Aladdin, I am busy at the moment,” he said urgently.

“I know it! But we have our own plan to deal with Zeyn. Hide yourself, and if our plan doesn’t work out, then you can take him on again.”

He shook his head as if bemused by dealing with foolish mortals. “I hardly think—”

“Humor me.”

He sighed and faded out.

We forged on through the residential section of the castle, heading for the servants’ quarters, and the servants’ privy. But the castle was huge, and we soon got lost in its labyrinth. The demons were coming after us, and we had to chop at them constantly, cutting off limbs and snouts to keep them at bay.

Then the demons retreated. Apparently we had entered a section where they were were forbidden. What could it be?

We found ourselves in an apparent cul-de-sac, a storage area where an assortment of treasure items was piled. Gold, silver, diamonds, pearls, elaborate weapons, fancy clothing, bound dancing girls—all the usual.

And there was the Thief of Baghdad, busy sorting through it all, looking for the best things to steal. He hadn’t even waited for the battle to finish.

Jewel was disgusted. “The man has his uses, but he’s too damned shallow.”

Then we heard the heavy tromping of hooves. “The minotaur!” Myrrh said. “Looking for Lamprey.”

“Yes,” Jewel agreed. “I’m tracking him by the sensor I planted on him.”

I drew my scimitar. “Hide!” I told the others. “I’ll take him on.”

“You foolish man,” Jewel said, almost fondly. “You can’t hope to match his magic power.”

“Let me handle this,” Nylon said. “Hide, but keep your eyes locked on me.” She glanced at Myrrh. “I will need your help. Keep your mind in touch.” Myrrh nodded.

I wasn’t sure what Nylon had in mind, but there wasn’t time to argue. She needed me to watch her so she could emulate Jewel, my beloved, for others. Jewel and I hastily buried ourselves under invaluable embroidered carpets and peeked out to watch Nylon. Duban and Myrrh hid nearby. Sinbad and Nydea found their own hideout. I wasn’t sure where Sylvie was. Only the Thief remained visible, oblivious to all but the treasures before him.

The minotaur appeared, snorting steam. Nylon, in the form of Jewel, spun about, as if discovering him unexpectedly. “Oh!” she cried, horrified.

“Haa!” he said. It seemed he could talk in this form if he chose to. “Come here, mortal tidbit!”

“Never!” She turned to flee.

He strode to catch her by her trailing hair. “Where is the fell ifrit? Tell me and I won’t ravish you.”

“Never!” she cried, struggling ineffectively. She lacked the sword Jewel had, not that it would have done her much good.

I kept my eyes locked on her, so that the illusion would not be broken.

He threw her down on the floor, holding her there by her hair. “I am not partial to this word ‘never,’ strumpet. Tell me!”

“I-I must not,” she said, whimpering.

With his free hand he ripped off the front of her gown, exposing her torso from breasts to belly. “Last chance, slut. Tell me!”

I felt the real Jewel’s hand clench in mine. This was too close to what she had experienced in the past.

Her resistance collapsed. “He—he’s hiding in the servant’s quarters, where he thinks you won’t look.”

“Excellent.” The monster lowered his body onto hers.

“But you said you would not ravish me!” she protested tearfully.

“I lied.” He thrust so savagely that her whole body slid along the floor. She screamed piercingly, from pain or outrage, but he did not relent. In a moment he had done it. “I doubt you are pregnant any more, after that plumbing, she-dog.” Then he got up and forged on, leaving her sobbing on the floor.

“He thought that was me,” Jewel murmured as we emerged from our hiding places. “That would have happened to me.”

“Yes,” I said tightly. “If he caught you alone.”

Nylon got to her feet. “Of course he did not hurt me,” she said, brushing herself off as her gown re-formed, intact. “I am invulnerable.” She twitched a smile. “And not pregnant.”

Jewel was clearly shaken. “I owe you one.”

“Not yet,” Nylon said. “We still need to eliminate Zeyn.” She walked rapidly in the direction Zeyn had gone.

“She has to get to the portal before he does,” Myrrh explained. She faced Jewel. “I had to tell her about the way you were raped in the past, so she could play the part. Now Zeyn is on his way to the servants’ quarters, thanks to her.”

“I really owe her,” Jewel said.

“I need to get over there,” Myrrh said. “To help her emulate Duban.”

“I can fight my own battles!” Duban protested.

“If this works, you won’t have to.”

“But—”

She leaned forward quickly and kissed him. That completely shut him up. Then she hurried off.

“Women are like that,” I advised him. “They run the show. But if our ploy fails, we will really be in for it, and you will need all your magic.”

“We had better get over there,” Duban said.

We hurried in the direction the others had gone. Soon we found the servant’s quarters. Then Zeyn found us.

“I don’t see Iften,” he said. “Who should I torture next?”

“Me, you bag of garbage,” Duban said. “If you have the gumption.”

“Gumption!” Zeyn said outraged, and charged, horns down. But Duban was already moving out of the way. He ran into the next chamber, closely pursued by the minotaur.

We followed immediately after, uncertain what else to do. This seemed to be as much farce as combat. “We’ve got to stop that boy from getting himself killed,” Jewel said.

There was the privy chamber. Duban was standing by the seat, balked by the walls of the enclosure. There was no escape.

“Tell me where Iften is,” Zeyn said. “And maybe I won’t turn you into a sausage and eat you.”

“Eat your own foul guts!” Duban said. He raised his hands in a magical gesture.

Zeyn dived for him. And through him. The prince was gone without even a scream. He had of course never seen the trap coming, or he would have avoided it.

Duban’s form wavered, becoming Queen Nylon, for a moment in her own form of a regal queen. “Got him,” she said with satisfaction. “Thanks to Myrrh, who maintained her focus on me.” Which had enabled her to emulate Myrrh’s beloved, Duban.

Myrrh appeared. She hugged the Queen, who became a second Myrrh as Duban gazed at them.

“Thanks to you!” Jewel said. She hugged Nylon too, and they became two Jewels as I gazed at them.

“Thanks to us all,” I said, highly gratified. Suddenly I was overcome with an emotion borne of relief. My vision clouded. No, of course I wasn’t crying.

Jewel took my hand in hers. “Thanks mainly to your cunning plan,” she said. “To trick him into that portal.”

“Oh, Jewel, I’m so glad you weren’t—”

She silenced me with a kiss. Then she led me to an adjacent chamber and pulled the curtain closed. She brought me to the bed and kissed me again, and pressed her wonderful body close to mine.

My passion for her exploded. Still, I demurred. “Jewel, you’re—”

She kissed me again as she shrugged out of her gown. “One time won’t hurt, beloved. As long as it’s not too violent.” She grimaced prettily, evidently thinking of the rape we had witnessed.

“No violence!” I agreed eagerly. With her I had no fear of impotence.

Soon we were in the throes of lovemaking. It was absolutely wonderful. “Oh, Jewel,” I said as we relaxed. “I love you so much.”

“There is something I should tell you,” she said.

“Anything is fine with me, as long as I’m with you.”

“It is not in my nature to deny you. But I’m not Jewel.”

I stared at her. “I don’t understand.” But an awful notion was percolating through the thick mush of my brain. The two women had hugged, looking identical for a moment. Had I somehow gotten hold of the wrong one?

The curtain was pulled aside. “Aladdin, what are you up to?” the real Jewel demanded.

My world came crashing down around my shoulders. I had just cheated on my wife with the Queen of the Nubile Nymphs!

“You just couldn’t wait to get into her pantaloons, could you!” Jewel said angrily. Not that Nylon had been wearing any such clothing. “The moment my back was turned! How could you!”

And what could I say in my defense? I had sinned badly.

Jewel came to touch Nylon, who still looked just like her. “And I’ll bet he didn’t give you any chance to get away. He just barreled in before you could explain.”

“Well, not exactly. I was hardly unwilling.”

Duban appeared. “You were cheating on Mother?” he asked grimly.

“Well, not intentionally,” I demurred. “I thought—”

The boy seemed to swell dangerously. “I knew you weren’t good enough for her! After all she’s done for you. I ought to turn you into a salamander and hurl you into the fire!”

Unfortunately, he surely had the power to do exactly that. How could I explain?

Jewel got up and approached him. “Duban, dear, don’t do anything rash. I don’t think he even knew.”

“Well, he should have known!”

She took his hand, placating him somewhat against his will. “Oh? Prince Zeyn didn’t know. And did you?”

The boy looked confused. “Know what?”

“That I am Queen Nylon.”

She must have changed for him, though she still looked exactly like Jewel to me. “Oh, no!” Duban blushed, then turned and hurried away. She had truly stifled his righteous rage.

And there back on the bed was the real Jewel, who had never left it. “She did have you going, Aladdin, didn’t she?”

I had trouble finding words, knowing this was treacherous territory. So I took the safest course. I apologized abjectly. “I’m so sorry, Jewel. Can you ever forgive me?”

She frowned, considering the matter. Then she laughed, facing Nylon. “Debt paid?”

“Paid in full,” Nylon said, making a little curtsy.

“So it’s true, then. You appear exactly as I do?”

“To him, yes. Because of his great love for you.”

That seemed to calm my wife down. At this point I could not be sure how much of her anger was an act. She said, “But to me you look nothing like me.”

“It is because my magic has no power over you.”

I shook my head, trying to make sense of this. Jewel had said she owed Nylon, for sparing her the brutal rape, but this—

“I would like to get to know you better,” Jewel said to Nylon. “Why don’t you come with us and be his leading concubine? Or is that beneath your dignity as queen?”

“Not at all,” Nylon said. “He’s mortal.”

“We can bring Sylvie Siren along too,” Jewel continued. “To sing him to sleep.” They both laughed.

It seemed I was being teased. But I liked it. “Yes, bring them both,” I agreed. “At least while you’re pregnant.”

Jewel frowned, then called my bluff. “Done.”

Was she serious? At this point, I hoped so. For one thing, it would make an honest man of me, because concubines were within bounds. And a concubine who looked exactly like my wife would not only solve my impotence, but was hardly a threat to Jewel.

“Now,” said Lamprey, appearing before us in a puff of smoke, “we need to decide what to do with this castle.”

Chapter Thirty

We were in the great throne room.

Here sat a massive ivory throne on one end, now empty. The ivories were of creatures I had never seen before...and hoped I never would. Here and there were bits of ceiling, which had broken loose during the minotaurs’ epic battle down below. The stone walls were still pocked with holes where Zeyn’s stone army had broken away. Little dragons, no bigger than crows, flitted in the air above us. Some of them belched fire, but for the most part they were as harmless as birds in the sky.

The Thief of Baghdad had rejoined our group, looking very much like the sphinx who ate the swallow. Duban whispered in my ear that the thief had used a minimalizing spell to shrink much of the castle’s treasure, which now lined his many hidden pockets. I only shook my head, bemused, unsure of what to do with the dastard. That he had helped my wife find her way to me was certainly something in his favor. But I did not take well to thieves in my kingdom. No doubt I would send him along his merry way with a warning to never return.

I thought it better that Queen Nylon return to my finger. I had already made one mistake in my wife’s presence. I wasn’t about to make another one. At least not here. Nymph Myrrh, with a bow and a small puff of smoke, returned to her magical refuge. Sylvie Siren returned to my finger, where she would remain an invaluable ally. For some reason Jewel had not wanted the alluring mermaid to reside on Duban’s finger, and Myrrh had concurred. We would, of course, come to the Sirens’ aid when requested, holding up our end of the deal with the beautiful sea nymphs. I would never forget Sylvie’s haunting song, which would live in me forever.

Nymph Nydea stood by Sinbad’s side, holding his hand tightly. He held hers in return and I sensed great love between the two. Whether Nydea faked her love or not wasn’t a concern of mine. That Sinbad felt her love and was satisfied, was enough. Interestingly, as they held each other, the less she looked like Jewel and the more she looked like another very pretty young lady.

She’s taking on Sinbad’s wife’s features, came Nylon’s voice in my head. Soon she will appear exactly as Sinbad’s deceased wife.

And does Sinbad know his wife is deceased? I asked, frowning.

On some level, yes. On another, he is in denial. Better denial than a world of hurt.

So say you, I thought, not convinced, but who was I to tell another man how to run his life?

Well, you are king, giggled the Nymph. But in this case, I believe you are correct to step aside. Sinbad has his wife, and Nydea has her mortality and thus her chance to truly feel alive.

I had just wondered where Lamprey had gone off to, when the tall ifrit appeared before me in a swirl of black smoke. He bowed deeply.

“Master,” he said. “I was down below, ridding the castle of the zombies and stone demons. All have been banished from whence they had come.”

“You are a powerful djinn,” I said, impressed.

The tall being merely nodded.

Queen Nylon’s words next appeared in my thoughts. He is, after all, the rightful heir to the throne, my king.

What do you mean?

Prince Zeyn, millennia ago, seized the throne and banished Ifrit Iften. He has been residing in the magical lamp ever since. He was a good and fair ruler, and much beloved. Our land prospered under his rule and never once did he take djinn slaves or kidnap mortal females.

This is true? I thought, surprised.

Oh, yes. But he’s still bound to you, despite the freedom he presently enjoys here in Djinnland. The moment you return to the mortal realm, he will once again be at your service. Such is the curse of the Lamp.

How do we break the curse?

Only his present master can break the curse. All his previous masters were too greedy to do such a thing.

I thought about it. Her words were true. It was, indeed, a painful decision to release such a powerful secret weapon.

But let me remind you, King Aladdin, came Nylon’s words again. He may be a powerful weapon, but he would be an even more powerful ally.

I saw the wisdom of her words. I could keep the djinn for myself and deprive him of his freedom and of his rightful place as ruler. Or I could do the right thing.

How do I free him? I asked.

Destroy the lamp.

I had tied the lamp securely to my sash, as was my habit. Now, I untied it and held it before me. Lamprey nodded solemnly, apparently accepting his fate, unaware of my intentions. Instead, I set the lamp on the flagstone floor before me and drew my sword. I didn’t know how else to destroy a magical lamp, but I thought this was as good a way as any.

The Thief of Baghdad suddenly stepped forward. “King Aladdin, but what are you doing? You will destroy it.”

“Exactly.”

As Sinbad reached out and pulled the confused thief back, I swung my scimitar down as hard as I could. The blade struck the lamp and there was a great flash of light. I half expected the scimitar to shatter in my hands but it didn’t. Instead, the lamp was gone and Lamprey took a great breath.

The breath of freedom, no doubt.

Next, he raised his hands toward the heavens and two dazzling lightning bolts shot forth from them. The lightning rebounded off the ceiling and zig-zagged crazily through the room, and where there had once been pocked-marked holes in the walls, where the demon statues had stood, there were now beautiful stone columns. And from the depths of the castle, there erupted a chorus of shouts. Shortly, men and women appeared in the throne room, all dressed in tattered clothing and blinking hard. They were an odd mix of djinn and mortal.

Lamprey turned to me and bowed grandly. I couldn’t help but notice that he was floating several feet above the floor. “I am indebted to you, King Aladdin. But of my own free will. I will never forget this act of kindness, and you will always have a friend in Djinnland.”

I felt Nylon squeeze my finger tenderly, and I felt a swell of emotions.

The little dragons buzzed playfully around the new king of Djinnland, erupting fire. Lamprey laughed heartily at his little friends, as more and more servants appeared in the throne room. Most looked worn-down and wasted, but upon seeing Ifrit Iften, their faces lifted with hope, and soon there was much dancing and celebrating in the great hall.

Amid the celebration, Jewel took my hand. “You did good, my husband.”

“I did the right thing,” I said.

“Not always an easy choice, but it’s one of the reasons why I love you.”

I squeezed her hand as a familiar face appeared in the dancing crowd. It was Faddy, my one-time personal djinn of considerably lesser power. He was magically juggling balls of fire, as the other servants and slaves and prisoners cleared a path for him. I watched in amazement as Faddy performed a merry routine as a magical horned instrument trumped loudly in the air next to him.

Faddy spied me and nodded briefly, before snatching one of his fireballs hurling it back into the air. He twirled once as Lamprey laughed heartily.

Nylon sensed my surprise. “Yes, my King. Your personal ifrit, El Fadl, was once the court jester until he was banned from the castle by Prince Zeyn.”

“Banned why?”

“Well, rumor has it that he accidentally lit the Prince’s toes on fire.”

I laughed and shook my head. I always knew there was something peculiar about my ifrit. He continued to juggle and dance, and things went on like this for some time to come.

***

It was later when Lamprey pulled Sinbad and me aside.

We were in his private quarters, which, in a single wave of his hand, he had returned to its previous state, no doubt the state it had been millennia ago. Gone were the darker images and sculptures left behind by Prince Zeyn, to be replaced by fabulous works of art and beauty.

“There are many human captives that need to go home,” said Lamprey solemnly. “Unfortunately, Prince Zeyn had a taste for human flesh, in more ways than one.”

I shuddered at the thought. Surely the prince deserved the fire of Hades, where I hoped he’d stay.

Lamprey continued, “But I have a proposition for you.” Now he looked at Sinbad. “I’ve received word that there lies a ship in one of our harbors, a ship from the mortal realm. A ship that needs a captain.”

“I’m interested,” said Sinbad. “But how did it end up here?”

Lamprey smiled. “It is, of course, a magical ship. A flying ship.”

Sinbad gasped. “The Flying Dutchman?”

“But of course. It’s crewed by ghosts, but it is in need of a captain.” He studied Sinbad. “Are you interested?”

The sailor bowed deeply. “Would be my honor, my liege.”

Lamprey nodded. “I have but one request: that you return the mortals to their homes. I will, of course, fill the holds with gold and jewels, with the hope that you will give a little to each of them. I just ask that you keep an eye on that scamp of a thief.”

I said we would, and the next day, after a restful night’s sleep in the arms of my pregnant beloved, I found myself boarding a majestic Dutch man-of-war, tethered to a dock and floating high above the calm water.

When the human captives had all boarded, aided by the ghostly crew, Lamprey advised Sinbad to fly the ship toward the sun, which was, in fact, the portal to the mortal realm. It would lead to the bridge between worlds and to home.

My silver ring warmed. Sylvie Siren had something on her mind. What is it? I asked silently.

You do plan to honor our alliance? To come to the Sirens’ aid when we need it?

Of course. Anytime. I was paying only peripheral attention, being distracted by the marvelous ship.

That’s good, because that time is now. I just received the news. The Siren stronghold is under siege by a horrible menace only you can hope to abate.

Suddenly I was paying full attention. “Now?”

“Of course not,” Jewel responded gently. “Go quietly below-decks with your concubine.” Because in my amazement I had spoken aloud.

“Dear, there’s something you should know,” I said, glancing at the silver ring.

She looked at me, catching on. “The Sirens?”

I nodded.

“Well, one destination is as good as another. Tell Sinbad where to guide the ship.” That readily she accepted it. Maybe she preferred more adventure to a dull season at home.

We’ll be there, I told Sylvie.

Thank you.

Once the marvelous vessel was untethered, it quickly rose up into the sky. As Sinbad turned the great wheel, frowning until he got a feel for the enchanted ship, Duban pulled out his lyre and struck up a merry tune. I gave them that carefree moment as I pondered what to say about our abrupt change in plans. They deserved at least a brief reprieve.

And so I took Jewel’s hand and we joined the merriment, dancing together as the flying ship sailed off into the setting sun.

The End

Aladdin returns in:

Aladdin and the Flying Dutchman

Return to the Table of Contents

ALADDIN AND THE FLYING DUTCHMAN

The Aladdin Trilogy #3

Aladdin and the Flying Dutchman

Copyright © 2012 by J.R. Rain and Piers Anthony

All rights reserved.

Acknowledgments

A special thank you to Rudy Reyes and Sandy Johnston.

Aladdin and the Flying Dutchman

Chapter One

We sailed high above Djinnland.

From up here, I had a new appreciation for this magical landscape, which was far more beautiful than I had realized. Perhaps the removal of the cancer, Prince Zeyn, had something to do with it. Indeed, the land almost seemed to grow more beautiful, more colorful, more alive as we continued to traverse over it.

Sinbad the Sailor was, apparently, a master of all vessels, even magical ones. Granted, he had a ghostly crew to aid him, but he surely seemed comfortable behind the great wheel as he sailed us toward the ball of light in the sky. The ball of light was, of course, the portal into the mortal realms.

The ship itself seemed impervious to the density of Djinnland, or perhaps it just magically made adjustments to it. Either way, we moved swiftly through clouds and past flocks of tiny, fire-breathing dragons.

As the wind hit our faces and the music played on, with my beautiful—and pregnant—wife Jewel cradled in my arms, I got another frantic message from Sylvie the Siren, the sexy sea nymph who was currently in the form of a ring around my index finger.

My lord, we must hurry...my sisters cannot hold the beast back for long.

Her words, as usual, appeared directly in my thoughts, as if spoken just inside my inner ear. Truly, she was a magical creature.

The beast? I asked, framing my question as a thought. I was well accustomed to such communication by now. What manner of beast?

Sire, it is unlike anything we’ve ever seen before.

Although I didn’t approve of the mischief caused by the Sirens and their ways—namely, luring sailors and ships to their ultimate demise—I did like Sylvie the Siren, who had proven to be a valuable friend and ally.

Mischief, perhaps, said Sylvie, picking up on my thoughts, which I had not bothered to shield. But we are also guardians of something of great importance.

And what is that?

It is a relic, my lord. Obtained from a merchant’s ship long ago. We recognized it immediately for what it was and have been guarding it ever since. Perhaps too zealously.

And this relic is why you and your kind lure ships and men to their untimely death?

Partly, my lord. We also love to sing. We cannot help if our voices are accursed.

I knew something of their accursed voices. In fact, I had heard Sylvie herself sing, and it was a haunting sound that I would not soon forget, perhaps never. A part of me always longed to hear it again. But to do so, I knew, meant to forever fall under its spell. I was the rare mortal who was able to break the spell, and that was with the help of my stepson, Duban, a powerful young wizard who preferred to play the flute and lyre.

Fine, I thought. And what is this relic?

The Key to Hades, sire.

I grunted. I’d heard about the key, of course, which supposedly unlocked the Gates of Hades, thus giving the owner dominion over not only all demons of hell, but all manner of foul beings locked away for all eternity, as well. The key could literally unleash hell on earth.

And what do you know of this key, Queen Nylon? I asked, addressing the other magical ring on my hand. Yes, two magical rings and two beautiful nymphs. A man should be so cursed.

We are well aware of the key, sire, and the role the Sirens have played in protecting it. In the wrong hands, the world as we know it would cease to exist.

Below, an undulating hillside swept as far as the eye could see, dotted with plump cow-like creatures and stunted trees that blossomed golden leaves that reflected the sun brightly. Or whatever passed for a sun in this world.

Very well, I said. I shall do my best. I am but one man.

With a magical ship, said Queen Nylon. Captained by none other than Sinbad the Sailor.

“You look concerned, my love?” said Jewel, running her long fingers through my hair the way she did, sending a shivery thrill through me.

I caught her up to date with my conversation with Sylvie and Queen Nylon.

“And this monster is seeking the key to Hell?”

“That I do not know,” I said.

“There’s never a dull moment with Aladdin of the Lamp.” Jewel rubbed her growing belly. “Here’s hoping our little one grows up to be a scholar.”

“Or a baker,” I said, grinning.

I next informed Sinbad of our change in plans. The handsome man, who stood at the helm of the magical ship like a natural, took the news in stride. Indeed, he was an adventurer through and through.

“I have dealt with my share of sea monsters, my friend. Tell the Sirens to fear not, for Sinbad and Aladdin are on their way.”

“Or rather,” I said good-naturedly, “Aladdin and Sinbad.”

“As you wish, sire,” he said giving me a mock bow.

Truth was, had my own wife not found the roguish sailor so damn intriguing, I might have let my jealousy go. But, for now, it remained just below the surface, gnawing at me.

Soon a line of rocky crags appeared on the horizon. I pointed to a gap in the rock wall, directly beneath the sun. The ship seemed to be gaining speed. Our hair and clothing whipped about. Then we plunged through the gap, and found ourselves sailing safely over the arching, crumbling bridge that connected the two worlds. And just as we reached the midway point over the bridge—no doubt the point that magically separated the two worlds—the ship lurched slightly, adjusting to the lesser gravitational force of the mortal realms. A magical ship, indeed!

Sinbad nodded to our fellow shipmates, those we had saved from Prince Zeyn’s dungeons. They were a merry group, reveling in their freedom, dancing and playing music with my gifted stepson, Duban.

“And what do we do with them, my lord? We can’t very well offer them freedom one moment and then thrust them into a dangerous situation the next.”

I pondered. According to Sylvie, the Sirens did not have much time. Landing and releasing the freed prisoners would take time. As I thought about it, I saw something curious hanging just below the railing of the ship. Small dhows. Life rafts. Even more curious, they appeared to magically hover along the ship’s hull, with no straps or ropes. In fact, there was nothing holding them in place. I pointed them out.

“Aye, my liege,” said Sinbad. “Magical dhows. This could be our answer.”

With no time to spare, I gathered the others together and warned them of the imminent danger. All those who wanted to escape now with their lives, were free to do so on the magical dhows. All those who wished to stay and fight were more than welcome to do so.

I was more than pleased when many of the men chose to fight. I did not fault the others. Perhaps most surprising was that the Thief of Baghdad chose to stay. I secretly wondered what the famed rascal was angling at.

At any rate, the others we collected in the magical dhows, along with their share of the treasure in the hold. Shortly, the smaller vessels pealed away from the ship’s hull, and sped quickly to the land far below. I wished them well.

Soon, the rolling land turned to choppy swells, and when we were many leagues out to sea, the magical dhows returned to us, empty, and reattached themselves to the hull.

Shortly, my talented stepson, Duban, came to my side at the ship’s railing. His dark hair was mussed and his chubby cheeks were red, no doubt, from the wind. “We are in grave danger, father.”

“And when are we not?” I asked, chuckling.

“She is very powerful.”

“The great beast?”

“No, father. She who controls the great beast.”

“And who is that?”

Duban shook his head grimly, his brown eyes reflecting the blue sea and skies beyond. “Her magic is too great for me to penetrate.”

Too great for Duban? A lad who had been prophesied to be the next great wizard? My lightheartedness abated in an instant. What manner of creature awaited us?

The seas turned choppy again, and I soon saw the reason why: a great creature churned the water, a creature unlike anything I had ever seen. It was the size of a small land mass, with many great tentacles that seemed to reach everywhere at once. Never had I seen anything like it before.

At the ship’s wheel, Sinbad stared in amazement. Indeed, all of us stared in amazement. No doubt those who had decided to stay and fight were now regretting their decision.

Hell, I was regretting my decision.

Cursing under my breath, I next saw a merchant’s ship not too far away, rocking on the churning sea. A lone figure stood on the deck, calmly watching the horrific scene.

Sinbad soon joined me at the railing. “It is as I feared,” he said. “The only other creature that could foreseeably threaten the Siren stronghold.”

“What is it?” I asked, staring down at the monstrosity that appeared to be part octopus, part squid, all nightmare.

“A kraken. The greatest of all monsters, on sea or on land. We are in for a rough time of it, my liege.”

Queen Nylon’s words appeared urgently in my thoughts: My lord, a kraken can only be commanded to attack. Normally they are peaceful creatures who exist in the deepest oceans. Unless they are called forth to do evil.

I nodded and looked again at the figure standing calmly on the merchant ship. Was this the person responsible for the attack?

Sylvie’s words next appeared: My lord, my sisters are dying. Please, we must hurry!

Indeed, I could see the other Sirens now, circling the great creature, looking minuscule in comparison. Great tentacles splashed down, no doubt killing the Sirens in an instant.

I gripped the ship’s railing. We had to do something.

But what?

Chapter Two

As I stood there with my mind locking up, as it sometimes does when I’m under tension, I suffered a frustratingly irrelevant recent memory. I tried to banish it, as it was only interfering with the present issue.

No, let it flow, Nylon thought.

But we can’t afford to waste time on foolishness, I protested.

Trust me. I have a notion how men’s foolish minds work. There may be something here.

She was kind to put it that way. But since I had nothing better to offer at the moment, I indulged her. I let the memory flow. Fortunately it was a brief one. It concerned our exploration of the Flying Dutchman’s hold while the ship was at bay in Djinnland. It seemed that while the main hold was filled with gold, at least until the crewmen left, there was a smaller hold that retained some of the original cargo. Jewel had explored it, and discovered what appeared to be a bottle of perfume. She had brought it to me. “May I take this?” she inquired in a tone that suggested that I could give only one answer.

“Let me see it,” I said, curious myself. I took the bottle and held it up to the light. It seemed almost to glow with an inner urgency.

Beware, Sylvie warned. She was on the hand that held the bottle. There’s a curse on it.

“A curse?” I repeated somewhat stupidly.

“What are you muttering about?” Jewel demanded. “That’s a perfectly good bottle of Lovers’ Desperation perfume, a wonderfully rare vintage. It must have been there for a long time. Who else on this ship would have a use for it?”

“Sylvie says it’s cursed.”

It is, Sylvie thought. We sirens know a good curse when we smell one. Ask Nylon.

I moved the bottle to the other hand. “Queen Nylon,” I said aloud so Jewel could participate. “Sylvie says this is cursed.”

She’s right, Nylon agreed immediately. That hold must have been missed when the ship was decontaminated, so the original curse remains on its artifacts. Do not open it.

“She confirms the curse,” I told Jewel. “You should not use this stuff.”

“I think the concubines are just jealous because they have no use for quality perfume,” Jewel said, taking the bottle from my hand. “I have no superstitious fear of old worn-out curses.”

“These are not mere concubines,” I reminded her. “They are supernatural creatures who know something about magic. I think we had best proceed with caution. Maybe Duban can nullify the curse.”

“Pshaw,” she snorted. Then, before I could protest further, she popped the ancient cork, inverted the bottle, and let a single viscous drop of substance land on her hand. She recorked the bottle and touched the perfume behind either ear. “This will truly bring out the real me,” she said, satisfied. “I’ll make a phenomenal impression on every man in range.” As if she needed to impress anyone except me. But I knew better than to speak that thought aloud.

You’re learning, Nylon thought, amused.

For a moment it was like a frozen tableau as we waited for anything to happen. Nothing did. So maybe it wasn’t much of a curse. But then there came a whiff of the stench of rotten eggs soaked in septic sewage and allowed to ripen beyond their time. Jewel wrinkled her nose.

“Must be the smell of the monster,” I said, looking around.

But no one else seemed to notice it. Until a gust of wind passed us. Then the sailors downwind suddenly gasped and coughed, turning slightly green.

“Uh-oh,” I murmured.

It’s the perfume, Sylvie thought, picking up the stink from my nostrils.

The cursed perfume, Nylon agreed.

“Uh, Jewel—” I started.

But she was already sniffing the air around her. “Ugh!” She ran to a bucket of slops, the closest available liquid, and dipped out gobs to splash behind her ears. But it seemed only to enhance the effect.

Mortals don’t listen well, Nylon noted with a faint aura of I-told-you-so.

That’s their curse, Sylvie agreed with just the hint of a mental smirk.

I went to help Jewel wash, keeping my mouth shut for more than one reason. Soon we were in our cabin and she was in a tub as I doused her with buckets of sea water. In due course she was bedraggled but odor-free, while the tub, to put it politely, stank to the lofty welkin. We got Jewel into new clothing and locked the cabin door, sealing off the festering tubful. What a putrid mess! We took a new cabin, as it might be weeks before the old one was sanitary.

I said nothing further, knowing what was good for me. The stoppered bottle was returned to the hold. That was the end of it. After that, we had begun our journey home.

Until this moment, as the memory ran its course. “So what has this to do with the price of beans in Bohemia?” I subvocally asked Queen Nylon. Because I was still on the spot to deal with the monstrous kraken, and still unable to think of anything. If I didn’t come up with something fast it would be bad for my reputation, not to mention my body, as the tentacles discovered the ship.

Silly, that’s the answer, she responded. The kraken has a very fine sense of smell, or more properly, taste.

“So?” I saw no connection.

She had mercy on me. Give the monster a taste of perfume.

Then it burst upon me. The curse! If that stuff tasted as bad to the kraken as it smelled to us, it would be like a mythical stench bomb.

“I think the kraken is a lady,” I said aloud. “We should honor her with a libation.”

“What are you mumbling nonsensically about now?” Jewel asked with her usual appreciation for my powers of intellect.

“It’s a water predator,” I explained condescendingly. “It tastes the water to zero in on its prey. It must be pretty sensitive to locate quarry thousands of leagues away.”

“So?” She saw no connection.

“We shall give the kraken a taste of cursed perfume. That may prove to be a distraction.”

“Perfume!” Then it came to her. “The vilest stench!”

“The same,” I agreed pleasantly. “Starting with the more dilute version, which we need to dispose of anyway.” I turned to the nearest sailors. “Men, haul the tub out of the cabin.” I signaled Sinbad. “Take the ship right up beside the kraken.”

“Beside the monster?” Sinbad exclaimed. “This is suicide!”

“No, it is honoring a lady,” Jewel said.

Sinbad gave her a look that said “So?” but did not admit that he made no sense of this.

The crewmen grumbled between choking fits, but got the roiling tub out on deck. Sinbad also grumbled, but guided the ship out over the shallow edge of the monster. They all seemed to feel that I had lost my idiotic mind, but I was the one in charge, so my folly had to be indulged.

Tentacles were reaching up the sides of the ship, seeking holds.

Then I had the crewmen dump the tub onto the back of the kraken. We could see the foul liquid bubbling as it spread across the flesh. “Now move off,” I called to Sinbad. “Quickly.”

He was more than glad to oblige. The ship broke free of the grasping tentacles and sluiced away from the monster.

The kraken seemed to have a problem. UGH! it honked, just as if it smelled something bad. Its myriad tentacles churned the surrounding water. But that seemed only to spread the stink further. It seemed that the cursed perfume was marvelously intense, so that diluting it merely amplified the taste.

We watched. Jewel was actually smiling.

The kraken sounded. It descended in the water so rapidly that a whirlpool formed above it. That vortex caught the ship and sought to drag it into the swirling center. That was mischief.

But I knew what to do. “Duban,” I said. “If you happen to have a wind spell handy...”

Duban worked his magic. A stiff breeze came up, blowing away from the whirlpool. Sinbad quickly accommodated the ship, and soon it was riding before the wind, escaping the whirlpool. We were safe.

“Good thinking, dad,” Duban said. “Wind is easy; it was the monster that was beyond me.”

“Of course, son,” I agreed patronizingly. “That’s why I stepped in.”

Jewel shot me a look of mixed disgust and admiration. She knew I had lucked out, this time, and surely suspected that I had done so with the help of the women I had wrapped around my fingers.

We’ll never tell, Nylon thought, amused again.

Women do this sort of thing for men all the time, Sylvie agreed. But I felt her quickly turn somber.

You are concerned for your sister sirens? I subvocalized and thought to her.

Yes, sire. My sisters need my help. We have suffered much loss today.

Go to them. Hurry.

Thank you, sire!

And with that, she rapidly uncurled from my finger and transformed to her proper size and shape. Now naked and jaw-droppingly beautiful, she bowed to me slightly, then leaped over the railing. Once in the water, her feet instantly transformed into a tail. She thrust once, twice, and soon disappeared from sight. Indeed, there was a great wailing from the ocean, but these were not the haunting Sirens’ call. These were songs of mourning, and I felt for the magical creatures.

“What of the other ship?” Sinbad said to me when Sylvie was gone.

The merchanter! I had quite forgotten it in my need to deal with the kraken. It had been blown clear of the whirlpool by the same wind that saved us. Now it was within hailing distance, and the person remained on its deck.

As I squinted to make it out, I saw that the figure was female, and quite attractive, especially with the wind blowing against her garment and drawing on her long hair. Who was she, and why had she seemed so unafraid of the doom that had threatened her? Or was my first thought accurate, that she might actually have brought the monster here? In that case she might be dangerous. How could we know?

“Hail the ship,” I told Sinbad. “We need to learn more about it, before we join the sirens.” As if this were a routine interaction.

“She’s beautiful,” Jewel said. “Unfortunately you don’t need another concubine.”

Amen to that, Nylon agreed. A man sees a shapely outline, and whatever common sense he might have dissipates into lust.

She was in a position to know. Sometimes there seemed to be too many women surrounding me. It hampered my style.

Chapter Three

Just as Sinbad turned the great wheel in preparation for contact with the errant ship, a dense fog rolled in. So dense and so sudden, that I sensed sorcery.

The small merchant ship was immediately enshrouded in fog. So much so, that it disappeared from sight.

“Duban,” I murmured.

The boy twitched his fingers, and the fog thinned. Routine minor magic, for him, like practicing his scales. The ship dimly reappeared.

In that instant, Sylvie Siren leaped from the sea, transformed in mid-air, and landed on the deck with human feet. Truly a remarkable magical feat.

“It is gone, Aladdin,” she cried out.

“What is gone?”

“The Key to Hades.”

“But I don’t understand, we stopped the kraken—”

“Which only served as a diversion. The thief had struck even while the great beast attacked my sister sirens. Three are dead.”

“Blast. But who could pull off such an outrageous—”

And it struck me. Of course, I knew of a thief skilled enough; indeed, the one thief who had already penetrated the bowels of the Sirens’ lair.

The Thief of Baghdad.

As Sylvie returned to my finger, I ordered Sinbad and the others to search for the thief, but the wretch, of course, was nowhere to be found. Cursing, I next turned my attention to the nearby merchant vessel, which was clarifying as we approached it, and soon grappling lines were sent out, latching the merchanter to our own. Sinbad and a handful of men boarded the smaller ship. To my surprise, the young woman, who only looked more beautiful the closer we got, threw herself into the stunned sailor’s arms.

Shortly, she was led aboard the Dutchman and over to me, where I stood with my wife, Duban, and Nydea Nymph, who was presently betrothed to Sinbad. Our newest passenger, the girl, explained that she was to be fed to the kraken, as a reward for its services. Indeed, nine others, equally young and fair, had already been consumed by the great beast.

“I was the last, my lord. The final, choice meal. I had watched in horror as the previous nine were rendered in half and shoved into the monster’s hideous maw.”

I shuddered. Now I understood why she had thrown herself into Sinbad’s arms! She must have been frozen in horror, watching the kraken, rather than nonchalant. “And who did this to you?” I asked. “Who submitted you to such brutality?”

“We never saw him,” she said, shuddering. “But he was surely a consummately evil man, with power we could not deny.”

Beware, Nylon thought. It is too easy to blame an anonymous male. Be polite, but do not trust her yet.

Good advice. “Feed this girl,” I said to one of the human crew. “And make sure she has clean clothing and a warm bed.”

“Aye, my lord.”

But instead of going with them, she threw herself at my feet, in the process revealing new aspects of her body, especially her full bosom. “Thank you, my lord! You are wonderful!”

That view is deliberate, Nylon thought. She’s a pro.

As a ruler, I am not unfamiliar with having someone throw themselves at my feet. Generally, though, I know the reason. Here, I was as stunned as anyone. “Get back on your feet,” I said, stalling for a bit of time.

She got slowly and gracefully to her feet, her limber body displaying itself even more impressively as she did.

A pro, Nylon repeated.

My wife’s initial assessment was true: the woman was indeed beautiful. But now that I was close-up, I could appreciate just how beautiful: long, dark hair, almond-shaped eyes, slender neck and full lips. Her lashes, I noted, were impossibly long. Perhaps the longest I’d ever seen.

“What’s your name?” I asked, finding speaking suddenly difficult. Jewel, I noted, was watching my reaction very carefully, curiously. She sensed something was amiss, obviously. Behind me, the other men on board gathered, like seabirds around entrails.

Men, said Nylon. So predictable.

“I am called Dea.” She smiled shyly and held my gaze long enough for me to eventually look away. I suddenly felt like a young ruffian with his first crush.

The men all quickly agreed that this was the most beautiful name they had ever heard. Sinbad, too. Even Duban nodded along. A pro indeed!

“Oh, brother,” said Jewel. Evidently, the maiden’s charms were lost on my wife—and the women on board.

I said to the woman, “From which port do you hail? We shall return you to your home.”

“I do not know, master.”

“You don’t know?”

“I have been a slave all my life. At sea all my life.”

“A slave?” I asked, surprised. She did not have the appearance of a slave. If anything—

“A sex slave, master,” she said, confirming my suspicions. “A prized sex slave.”

That I could believe. I swallowed hard and suddenly found speaking difficult again. Not that I approved of sex slaves; in fact, slavery of any type was something I was working hard to abolish from my kingdom. But Dea actually sounded as if she...enjoyed being used by the crew. The men around me sensed it as well, and now there was a great chattering behind me, sounding much like the monkeys in my royal zoo.

I found my tongue again, which seemed to have gotten stuck to the roof of my mouth. I cleared my throat with difficulty. “I’m sorry to hear that, Dea. You’re safe here.”

“You are my hero.” She turned and looked at the surrounding, stupefied men. “All of you.”

The men beamed and puffed out their chests, and my wife had evidently seen enough. She banished all of them, shaking her head. “Pathetic,” she said, as the men reluctantly moved off. She turned to Dea. “I believe you to be a witch.”

“That is a hurtful thing to say, mistress. I am but a simple slave.”

“Yes, a sex slave. You’ve made that abundantly clear.” My wife next leaned into me and spoke into my ear: “It’s not becoming for a king to drool over himself.”

Then she took the girl’s hand and led her away. Nydea Nymph followed, and I heard my wife tell the girl they would give her a bath and clean her up.

“She is a healthy one,” said Sinbad, as we watched the trio depart.

“Aye.”

“So where to now, Aladdin?”

As I considered our options, Sylvie spoke up. Sire, we sirens could use the cursed perfume, should we cross paths again with the kraken. It proved more than effective. We have, of course the original, uncursed perfume.

Would be a nice gesture for Jewel, said Nylon. Seeing that you ticked her off.

Will I ever do anything right? I asked.

Are you a male? asked Sylvie, and she giggled.

“A barter, then,” I said aloud, in which case Sinbad looked at me curiously, then went back to the helm. He was getting used to such strange outbursts from me, knowing I was guided by the two nymphs.

Shortly, the exchange was made, with Sylvie acting as the go-between, and soon I was presented with an elegant bottle of what appeared to be the exact perfume. I unstoppered the bottle and gave it a sniff. Heavenly.

Jewel will be pleased, said Nylon. Unless, of course, you fail to keep your hands off the new slave.

The Siren queen has a message for you, Aladdin, said Sylvie.

And what is that?

To find the key at all costs.

I thought you might say that. Does she have a suggestion as to where to begin?

The key is undoubtedly on its way to its final destination.

How is this possible? I said, perplexed. Where could the key have gone? We are the only ship out here.

Look again, my lord.

I did look, and I saw what she was referring to. The small merchanter, once tethered to the Dutchman, was gone.

But how?

A cloaking spell, no doubt.

Fine, I said, grumbling. And where does the queen suggest we look for the key?

The Gates of Hades are located in the Hinterland.

The Hinterland? And where is that?

It is a forbidden mountain range deep in the heart of the Sahara.

So be it. I turned to Sinbad. “Plot us a course due west.”

“Due west?”

I told him about my conversation with Sylvie Siren, and Sinbad, always on the lookout for a good adventure, grinned broadly. “West it is!”

He next gave the order and the ghostly crew responded instantly, many appearing as if from thin air, their bodies nearly invisible in the bright sunshine. Sails were hoisted, lines were drawn, and soon the ship was cutting sharply through the water, faster than any other ship.

Supernaturally fast, I knew.

Soon the rocky coast of the African continent appeared and Sinbad gave another order and the ship majestically rose out of the sea, and into the blue sky.

And over the Dark Continent.

Chapter Four

It was fine, for a while. I gazed at the mountains and valleys below, lost in the wonder of the landscape. I had not been to the Dark Continent before, and this was a superlative view.

Duban and his fiancee Myrrh came to join me. Well, technically she was only his girlfriend, as he was thirteen and she twelve and I did not support child marriages, and Duban had not made an official arrangement with her, but she would marry him in due course. She had foreseen it, and she had some future vision along with her telepathy. Regardless, she was a fine and pretty girl, slender, dark-eyed, and with long lustrous black hair. I could not have selected a better match for my son.

Thank you, Aladdin.

I almost jumped, while Sylvie and Nylon laughed. Forget she could read your mind? Nylon teased me.

I was mainly relieved that I hadn’t been thinking anything bad about Myrrh, given that I might as well have been speaking my mind aloud. Not that there was anything bad to think of.

“Thank you,” Myrrh repeated aloud with the hint of a smile.

Though sometimes maybe she deserved to be spanked.

Nu-uh, Nylon thought. You may spank my plush bare bottom when I resume full natural form, but she’s too young for such attention.

“Not by much,” Myrrh murmured, looking straight ahead.

Oops. Now it was Nylon’s turn to be embarrassed. Myrrh could read her mind too, and, thanks to her telepathy, was well familiar with the dubious joys of adult interaction.

“What is much?” Duban asked. He had been left out of this dialogue, fortunately.

“I was thinking Myrrh is too young to be so pretty,” I said quickly. “She read my mind. But she doesn’t like to be patronized. And she’s right: she is almost a woman.”

“And I’m still a child?” he asked, annoyed.

How sensitive could you get? “You are almost a man.”

“And I don’t like to be patronized either,” he retorted.

Myrrh took his hand. “Aladdin means well,” she said.

I could see Duban melting. Myrrh could handle him without even trying.

“Kings do,” Duban agreed reluctantly. He still had not completely accepted my relationship with his mother, though that was what made him a prince.

“We came to you for another purpose,” Myrrh said to me. “It’s about Dea.”

“The slave girl,” I agreed noncommittally, seeing a mental picture of her considerable physical charms. Jewel said I didn’t need another concubine, but really, could a man ever have too many concubines? She would be a tempting addition.

“She is more than a slave girl,” Duban said. “There is an aura of power about her that I can’t fathom. I distrust that.”

“And I can’t read her mind,” Myrrh said. “It is as if there is a patch of fog about her that shrouds her thoughts. I don’t trust that.”

“We believe you should stay away from her,” Duban said.

“So does your mother,” I said. “But really, what would be the harm? It isn’t as if a man needs to appreciate a woman’s mind. She’s a sex slave!”

“She’s dangerous,” Myrrh said. “Until we know more about her, you should remain clear.”

I sighed. Jewel had a slightly jealous nature, even during her pregnancy, but Duban and Myrrh were genuinely trying to help me. Their warning had to be taken seriously. “I will remain clear,” I said with regret.

Then we focused on the landscape below the ship. I noticed something new. There was a kind of rough channel through the mountains, many of which were volcanoes, extending from horizon to horizon. It was almost as if the very rock had cracked to form a chasm. Was I imagining a pattern where none existed?

Some day they will call it the Rift Valley, Nylon thought. Where some nether demon pushed the mountains apart. Those demons are constantly playing their games, showing their power.

“Oh, thank you,” I said. I would not have credited it, but Nylon had been around the past and the future, and could be right.

We flew on to a great desert. The Sahara, Nylon thought. Once there were rivers there, but there came a drought.

It must have been some dry spell! The desert extended as far as I could see.

Then there came an adverse wind, a hot draft blowing from the desert, trying to push us back the way we came. “We’ll have to tack,” Sinbad called. “Slanting into the wind, back and forth. That will slow progress.”

I knew about tacking. Winds were capricious, and this was a sailing ship, even if it was airborne at the moment. It was propelled by the wind. “So be it,” I agreed.

Another person approached us. It was Dea, looking remarkably sexy as the wind hauled at her hair and flattened her clothing against her body. I thought nothing could be more impressive than bare breasts, but somehow her wind-pressed bosom was more so. “Lord Aladdin!” she called. “I fear the wind will blow me away. You must hold me.”

She couldn’t think of a better line than that? Nylon thought, disgusted.

“Don’t do it,” Duban and Myrrh said almost together.

“We’ll all go to our cabins,” I said, avoiding the issue.

“I must be with you!” Dea said.

“You will be safer with the women,” I said, realizing that could be taken more than one way. I retreated hastily to my own cabin, leaving her behind though I would have much preferred holding her as she wished. Was greater sacrifice ever required of a man?

The winds buffeted us as the ship tacked into them. Sinbad knew what he was doing, but this was really rough weather. We might do better to land and anchor until the storm passed.

No, we’d be buried in brush, Nylon thought. Would you like me to emulate your wife and distract you for an hour?

That was tempting, but this buffeting was making me too nervous. “Some other time,” I muttered.

Then it got worse. I peered out, and got smote by a face full of flying sand. What was happening?

Sandstorm, Nylon thought. They happen in the desert.

“A storm made of sand?” I asked, bemused.

Yes, in essence. The winds pick up the sand and blow it about. It’s a perfectly natural occurrence.

Natural! Not in my experience. But of course I had not been to Africa before.

Wor-sand-worse, Sylvie thought, mentally spelling it out to be sure my dull mind would get the pun.

“We can’t fight it,” Sinbad called. “We’ll have to ride with it.”

Oh? What had we been doing up till now? I was beginning to feel sea sick.

Maybe you should eat a sand witch, Nylon thought mischievously.

Eat? That did it. I barely grabbed a bucket in time to catch my heave.

Your sandy humor sickens him, Sylvie thought.

Forget Myrrh. Both these nymphs needed spanking.

Both caught that thought, and sent out pictures of their shapely bare backsides, inviting me to have at them. Knowing I was too sick at the moment to do anything even if I had the chance. They were consummate teases.

But soon the ship straightened out and flew with the wind. That enabled me to recover.

We went out on deck. The wind remained strong, but now the sand storm was harmlessly behind us. We were cruising over the Rift Valley, as Nylon called it.

Legend has it that the Garden of Eden is in this vicinity, Nylon thought. After Adam and Eve were booted, Allah filled it in with water so there could be no return.

“What legend is this?” I demanded truculently. The Nymph was taking this whole business far too lightly.

Oh, just a tidbit I picked up from here or there.

Jewel, Dea, Duban, and Myrrh emerged from their cabins. Dea headed for me, but Duban and Myrrh blocked her off. “Is this the way to the Hinterland?” Jewel asked.

“Sinbad shifted course to avoid the sand storm,” I explained.

“But we have left that far behind. Why are we still going south?”

Good question. “Time to change course?” I called to Sinbad.

“I’m trying to!” Sinbad called back. “The ship’s not responding.” Indeed, the ghost sailors were hard at work, but their efforts were having no apparent effect.

Something was moving the ship south against our wishes. I did not like the feel of this.

Then a body of water came into sight. It was a great lake. The Dutchman sailed down toward it, and splashed into the water. We had arrived—somewhere.

“Why, it’s Eden!” Dea exclaimed, surprised.

“Looks more like a lake to me,” Jewel said sourly.

“It’s a lake now,” Dea said. “But in early times it was the Garden.”

“How do you know this?”

“Oh, everyone knows,” Dea said. “Allah knew mankind would return to easy living if he had a chance, so he made sure there was no chance. So now it’s Lake Defeatia, showing the defeat of foolish Adam.”

She’s right, Nylon thought. Perhaps Dea has been around a while.

“I’ve got it!” Duban exclaimed. “The Flying Dutchman is an enchanted water ship. It can fly when directed, but prefers water, because flying takes a lot more energy. So when it spies water it naturally goes to it, especially when it’s tired. It saw this lake, and went to it. Once it is rested, it will fly again.”

“How do you know this?” Dea asked him.

Duban almost smiled. “Everyone knows the legends. I just had to remember the right one for the occasion.”

Dea nodded slowly. It was almost as if she remembered this legend too, but did not care to say so. The woman had been around. More than she wanted us to know.

All things considered, it seemed best to rest on the lake for a day or so, letting the ship recover. That sand storm must have worn it out.

Chapter Five

Sinbad appeared with one of the ship’s original crew.

The ghost rose and fell on ethereal currents as he held the faint wisps of his hands together nervously. Who knew a ghost could be nervous? There was the faint remains of a wound just under his jaw. Surely a fatal wound which directly led to his current departed state.

“Aladdin, this specter wishes to speak with you.”

“Ghosts can speak?” I asked, surprised.

It was coming on evening, and the ghosts were slightly easier to see in the dimming light. Their ectoplasmic forms seemed to glow from within, lighting up their immediate vicinity with an unearthly light that, quite frankly, I don’t think I would ever get used to.

Sinbad shrugged. “Judge for yourself, Aladdin.”

The skittish, translucent spirit stepped forward, “Master,” he said; or, rather, I think he said. His raspy, whispery voice could have just as easily been the desert wind moaning over the deck. I strained to listen as he continued: “The ship is experiencing unexpected difficulties.”

“What difficulties?” I asked, realizing that this was perhaps the first time in my life that I’d addressed a ghost directly. By Allah, I live a strange life!

“We are experiencing an unaccounted drag upon the ship.”

“Has this ever happened before?”

“Once, when the ship was bewitched.”

“Duban,” I said, turning to my son. “Do you sense any bewitchment upon this ship?”

The boy nodded and closed his eyes. A moment later, he looked up at me and shook his head. “No, Father. But I do sense...something.”

“What?”

“Another,” he said guardedly.

“Another what?” I asked.

But the the boy only shook his head. “I do not know, Father, but I sense there’s more to this than we can see.”

I had an idea. “Myrrh?”

“Yes, my liege?”

“Cast your thoughts about the ship. Look for the one known as the Thief of Baghdad.”

She nodded. “Aye, sire,” she said, already picking up on the ship lingo. She, too, closed her eyes as she turned in a small circle. She nodded. “Yes, sire. He is here.”

My jaw dropped. So did Sinbad’s. I reached for my scimitar, as did he his own. “Where is that wretch?”

She shook her head. “I only sense his thoughts, sire. I cannot pinpoint.”

“Perhaps his thoughts will give him away,” said Sinbad. Like me, Sinbad never liked the rascal. Sinbad, like me, saw through his greasy charms.

But Myrrh only shook her head again. “His thoughts are guarded, master Sinbad. Perhaps by magic. I cannot gain entry. I only sense his mind is near.”

I looked again at the ghost captain, who was waiting for me patiently, nervously wringing his hands and rising and falling on mysterious winds. I said, “What, then, must we do to accommodate the drag?”

“We can wait until the ship has fully recovered, master.”

“And how long will that take?”

“Perhaps another four or five days.”

Too long, said Sylvie, speaking urgently. The Gates of Hades will be opened by then.

Unless the key is with us, said Queen Nylon. You heard the young telepath. The thief is near, somehow.

Unless he gave the key to another, countered Sylvie. There’s more than one way to get to the Hinterlands. Perhaps another had a magic carpet. Or a trained roc. Or a—

“Quiet,” I commanded, sub-vocalizing the word. “Give me a chance to think. Sometimes I think I’m going crazy with you two in my head.”

“What about me?” asked Myrrh, teasingly.

I growled under my breath and turned back to the ghost who was still patiently waiting. “Is there any other option?”

“Yes, master,” he said eagerly, nodding his ghostly head. “There is indeed another way.”

He explained that magic was limitless, and the Flying Dutchman was no different. To keep it aloft required, apparently, an astronomical amount of magic. Magic that needed to be restored periodically. Our flight from Djinnland and now the flight over the desert—with the sandstorm and now this additional, unknown drag—had depleted the ship’s supernatural resources.

“I understand,” I said. “What do you propose?”

“An outside energy source would be suitable, master.”

“What kind of outside energy source?”

“Anything powerful enough to fuel the ship, master.”

I rubbed my face, ran my fingers through my thick hair. All eyes were on me, ghostly and humanly alike. What did I know of such enchantments? I didn’t, and, out of habit, nearly called upon Lamprey. Surely my powerful djinn could have fueled a hundred such sky ships.

The problem was obvious: how to search for an energy source while presently trapped on a lake? I sensed Sylvie’s growing anxiety. The longer we waited, the more likely the devil key was on its way to the Gates of Hades.

To my surprise, Dea the slave girl stepped forward. “Sire, let me remind you that we are presently floating over what some think was once the Garden of Eden.”

Sinbad grunted. “A legend only, woman.”

“But one that might be true,” she persisted.

“And if the legends are true,” I said. “What of it?”

She walked over to me and nearly laid a hand on me but, seeing the glare in Jewel’s eyes, obviously thought better of it. “The Garden of Eden contains the Tree of Life.”

“Again, enlighten me, slave,” I said.

“There are a great many power sources on the earth,” she said. “Some are natural and others are man-made. A great ring of rock on the emerald isle, pyramids on both sides of the earth, sacred stones and sacred forests. Do you see where I’m going with this, my king?”

“You are saying the Tree of Life is such a power source?”

“No,” she said, grinning seductively. “I’m saying that it is, perhaps, the most powerful. And it’s directly beneath us.”

“But the lake is flooded,” countered Sinbad.

She spun on him. “Not all of it. The tree is too valuable, too necessary.”

“And you know this how?” asked Jewel.

“As a slave, you hear things, especially if your master is particularly powerful.”

I thought about this, chewing my lip, noticing that the desert wind had picked up again. The great ship rocked noticeably upon the lake.

As much as it grates me to admit it, said Queen Nylon, I think the slave might be right. Most of my kind are aware of the Tree of Life and its reputed power. In fact, some say that it’s the source of all life on earth.

Then we must go to it at once, said Sylvie urgently. I can help guide us to it.

I thought about this some more, drumming my fingers on a nearby railing. All eyes were still on me. A decision must be made.

“Duban,” I said finally.

“Yes, father?”

“Can you fashion a breathing device for myself and two others?”

“Of course, father.”

I nodded. “Then we will find the Tree of Life, and return with a suitable power source.”

Sylvie squeezed my finger; Dea smiled broadly, almost wickedly. At least two people were happy with my decision.

Chapter Six

Soon Duban had conjured the swimming equipment, which consisted of masks resembling pig snouts—that really bothered me, because pigs are unclean, but I suppressed my aversion, knowing it was misplaced—that covered our mouths and noses, with hoses that entered packs on our backs. I gathered that those packs contained a lot of squeezed air. There were also fishlike fins that we could don as gloves for our hands and slippers for our feet. I knew that these would really help; suddenly I would be able to swim much better than ever before.

“Use some of this,” Jewel said, anointing each of us with a drop of fluid. “It will protect you from predators.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“Cursed perfume. I saved a little, just in case.”

Now I smelled it. It was awful. Maybe she was having revenge for her own humiliation. But she was right: it should drive away hostile creatures.

The three of us splashed into the water. Sylvie detached from my finger and resumed her natural form, swimming ahead of us. I could see Sinbad’s eyes goggling as he looked at her flexing bare legs, and Duban’s too; I wish she could have worn pantaloons or something. But I suspected that my own eyes were goggling too.

Three crocodiles headed for us—and sheared away before getting close enough to bite. The perfume was working.

Then Sylvie changed her legs into a tail and dived. She had of course been teasing us by leaving her feet on so her legs could flex apart. She angled down into the dark water and disappeared. That was worse; how could we follow her if we could not see her?

I glanced at Duban. He nodded. Then a dim glow appeared, enough to enable us to see in the shadowed recesses. The siren was still descending. We followed. The fins really helped and, of course, this would be impossible without the breathing masks. The hoses must be bringing air in from somewhere else; the backpacks were not big enough to hold the amount we were breathing. But who cared, as long as they worked?

We reached the bottom, which really wasn’t far down. It was covered in what resembled seaweed, forming a dark green mat.

And there in the distance before us was a hill, not high enough to become an island, but it had its own colored foliage. It looked a lot like an island, as maybe it once had been. In the center was a mighty tree. That must be the Tree of Life, not bothered by the surrounding water.

A merman with a flaming sword appeared. “Begone, sons of Adam!” he cried. “Your kind is forbidden in these demesnes!”

How did he call out aloud, under water? And why wasn’t that sword promptly quenched?

We paused, dismayed. Then I realized. We had forgotten that Allah had posted an angel with a flaming sword to prevent men from returning to the Garden of Eden. The magical blade hardly cared about the water, or the stench of cursed perfume, but was surely quite capable of dismembering us. Did we really want to invoke the wrath of Allah?

Sylvie swam back to me and touched my flippered hand. I’ll handle this, she thought. Wait your chance.

“But that’s God’s angel!” I protested sub-vocally.

He’s male. Don’t listen. Then she let go and swam away from me.

Don’t listen? Don’t listen to what? To the wrathful angel? It wasn’t his words I feared, but his sword. However, I signaled the others to hold back.

Sylvie swam close to the angel. He raised his sword threateningly. “That applies to you too, infernal nymph.” Then he paused, listening. I heard the faintest trace of a devastatingly familiar song. The siren was singing to him! Faintly, so as not to catch the three of us, but definitely singing. Could this possibly work?

I clapped my flippers to my ears to block off the sound, and Sinbad and Duban copied my motion. They understood the siren’s eerie power.

The angel sheathed his sword and ran after her. Then he spread his arms in a swimming motion and lifted off the ground. It looked as if he were flying. As he was, in effect.

Sylvie continued her song as she swam just out of his reach. I saw that she had reverted her tail to legs, flashing him as she had us. That was less efficient for swimming, but considerably more efficient for luring. And, compelled by the eerie, potent song, he was going for it. He was indeed male, and it seemed no male could resist the siren’s compelling call. He had probably been on solitary duty for millennia, and really missed the pleasures of female company.

I shook myself out of my reverie. “Forward!” I tried to shout, but only blew off my breathing mask. Water rushed in, and I choked and coughed before I got it back in place. But Sinbad and Duban got my message, knowing that Sylvie had cleared the way for us. Allah might not be pleased at such time as he found out, but maybe he would understand that we were on a vital mission.

We swam on toward the island, I mean hill. Soon we reached it, and closed in on the tree. It was a widely spreading, handsome thing, with lovely, thick foliage.

Then a giant serpent appeared, slithering out of a hole in the ground. “Begone, sons of Adam!” he shouted. “Before I chomp you to death!”

A serpent speaking in human language? But he certainly looked big enough to do the job. We paused again.

Then I remembered how a serpent had spoken to Eve, and tempted her with the forbidden fruit. This must be part of that serpent’s punishment: to guard the tree forever, in case someone bypassed the water and the angel with the flaming sword. Allah evidently did not believe in half measures.

“Ah, I see you are surprised I speak your language,” the serpent said. “But I was educated in your country, in Bagdad.”

Bagdad? Not Baghdad? He was faking it, and had made a foolish error. But he was still big enough to eat us all.

I will handle him, Nylon thought. Then she slid off my finger, formed into a truly voluptuous lady serpent, and slithered by the male serpent with a come-hither wriggle that even I found evocative. Something about the way she disported her curves.

Mesmerized, the serpent followed her. What else could he do? She was emulating his ideal mate. This was her area of expertise, and there was none to match her in this respect.

We swam on to the tree and checked through the foliage. It had only one fruit on it, of an unfamiliar type, but it looked absolutely delicious. Yet I knew we couldn’t eat it; we needed it for the ship. I swam up and plucked it with my flippers, and put it in my backpack with the spare air. Then we swam hastily away, uncertain just how long Nylon could distract the serpent.

The return was routine. We simply swam to the surface and waved to the ship. The Flying Dutchman sailed to us, and in moments we were hauled back on deck. Soon Sylvie and Nylon reappeared, having completed their diversions, and I wrapped them around my fingers. Best of all, the swim had washed off the stink of the cursed perfume and we were approachable again.

Next question: how did we feed this fruit to the ship, since it didn’t eat? It was amazing how such an obvious challenge had never occurred to us beforehand.

“Feed the figurehead,” Jewel suggested.

Maybe that was it. The figurehead was the bust of a merman with a noble brow and piercing gaze, surely a Dutchman, whatever that was.

We squeezed the fruit and caught the juice in a cup. Then I held on to the prow of the ship, swung around before the figurehead, and put the cup to the Dutchman’s mouth. I tipped it. Much of it spilled down off his chin, but some soaked into the cracks around the mouth. Then the mouth opened, and more went in. The figurehead was animating!

“Well done, King Aladdin!” the head said. “Now get out of my face.”

I was so surprised I almost fell into the sea. I scrambled back to the deck. How had this wooden thing not only come to life, but known my name?

The figure turned his head around and gazed at all of us. “What’s this I see arrayed before me? Several idiotic oafs and some fair maidens, so at least it’s not a total loss.”

“Now wait a minute!” I protested stupidly. “We’re not idiots!”

The figure focused on me. “Oh yes you are,” he said with infinite scorn. “And fools to boot. You wasted your entire effort.”

That began to get to me. “How can you say that? You’re just an old wooden carving. What do you know?”

“I know everything,” he replied. “Because I have just tasted of the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge.”

“The tree of—?” I began, stunned.

“Yes, you utter dope! You sought the Tree of Life, but you got the wrong tree! You were too dull to get the hint when you encountered the Serpent associated with it. Instead of recharging your ship, you bequeathed the knowledge of the universe to its figurehead. You are simply too stupid to live.”

I exchanged a glance of sheer dismay with the others. I was indeed an idiot.

Chapter Seven

Jewel came to my rescue. “Knowledge or not, Aladdin is still the master of this ship, and you must do his bidding.”

The figurehead, once a wooden statue but now animated supernaturally, laughed. He tried to throw back his head, but was limited in his range. He settled for a curt nod. “Foolish woman. I know everything, including the nature of the curse that binds this ship and those who serve upon it.” It now closed its eyes and mumbled something incomprehensible. “There. The curse has been properly reversed. I am my own captain and I have freed those who were forced to serve on board.”

Indeed, before our very eyes, the many ghostly sailors that populated the ship began disappearing.

“Then how will you steer your ship without a crew?” demanded Sinbad, stepping forward.

“Fool! I am the ship.”

And with that, the main sails sprang open. I saw the ship’s wheel turn rapidly on its own volition, and the great ship began moving with the wind.

“And thanks to your foolish king, I have been revivified, too. As they say, two birds with one stone.”

“Where are you taking us?” I asked, as the ship began picking up speed, cutting across the wide lake.

“Here is a riddle for you, King Aladdin: if one possesses all of the knowledge of the universe, what is left to learn?”

I blinked, stumped, aware that, in my haste to procure the sacred fruit, I might have inadvertently doomed the entire earth. As the hot desert air blasted over me, as the distant shore sped rapidly past, I could think of no answer other than, “Nothing is left to learn.”

“Precisely.”

“But that does not answer my question: where are you taking us?”

“He’s taking us to the one being who can still teach us something,” said Duban, stepping forward.

I blinked at the lad, always surprised to hear the deep wisdom that came from his innocent face.

“He is right, of course. From the mouths of babes and all that,” said the figurehead, grinning. “The earth no longer holds much interest for me. And certainly there is nothing left to gain from humans.” He suddenly raised his once-wooden arms, and as he did so the ship lifted from the lake and took to the air.

“But I don’t understand,” I said. “What being? Where are we going?”

And then it hit me as we rapidly rose into the sky, higher than we ever had before.

“Allah,” I said.

“Allah, God, the Creator, the Source, whatever you want to call him, for he goes by many names,” said the figurehead, shouting above the wind. “We’re going to Him, and I know just where he resides.”

***

We moved away from the figurehead and gathered near the bow as the ship continued steering itself. Booms swung and sails trimmed. All on their own accord. Somehow, I found this more frightening than when the ghosts had performed the same duties. Below, the hot desert sand quickly fell away. Now whole mountain ranges came into view. We were higher than we had ever been before, and only going higher. The air up here seemed far more difficult to breathe. Indeed, I saw Sinbad taking deep, futile breaths.

Queen Nylon and Sylvie Siren both sprang from my fingers, transformed in mid-air, and landed deftly on bare feet.

“The air is indeed thinner up here, Aladdin,” said Queen Nylon, responding to my thoughts. “Soon, none of us will be able to breathe. Although Sylvie and I are immortal, we cannot survive long without the elements of earth. In this case, what is known as oxygen.”

“Where is it taking us?” said Jewel. Her neck was beginning to strain with the effort of breathing.

“I read its mind,” said Myrrh. “A scary mind. Full of wild notions. But one notion stood out above the others. He’s taking us to a hole in the sky. He calls it a wormhole. He believes it will take us to another dimension, as he calls the place where Allah resides.”

“We are familiar with such portals,” said Sylvie Siren. “And I assure you, that humans aboard a flying ship will not survive. In fact, it is doubtful that Queen Nylon, Nydea and I will survive.”

The air was getting noticeably colder—and stronger. And even as the wind thundered over us, it seemed deprived of this crucial oxygen, of which Queen Nylon spoke. Apparently, this element was necessary for thinking straight, because my brain seemed even more stubborn than normal.

But one thought did surface and I turned to my son immediately. “Duban, can you fashion more breathing devices?”

The boy nodded and tried—but apparently his magic also needed this precious oxygen. My mind raced, and seemed only to be growing foggier and foggier. Wind and clothing billowed as we all began shivering. Below, the mountain range looked like nothing more than a crack in the dirt. The desert itself was just great swatches of yellows and browns. On the far horizon, I could see the great sea appearing.

How much time did we have before all the oxygen in the air was gone, or before we all froze to death? I didn’t know, but I gathered it would be soon. My brain seemed to be shutting down.

“I have a suggestion,” said my blessed wife suddenly.

“Hurry!” I gasped.

“The ship claims to have all knowledge of the universe...” she paused, gasping for air. “And now seeks the presence of Allah, the source of all knowledge.”

“Go on,” I urged.

“Then let’s tell him a story,” she said, and I could see the cords standing out on her neck as she struggled for air. “A story in which he does not know the ending.”

“I don’t understand—”

“Yes!” shouted Myrrh, catching on immediately. “He might be all-knowing but he cannot possibly know how our story would end.”

“And to hear the ending, he must abandon his journey to Allah,” said Duban.

Perhaps I was the dullest and thickest of them all, but it surely seemed like all had caught on to the idea faster than I. But when my wife’s wisdom finally blossomed in my oxygen-deprived brain, I saw the beauty of it.

“A story without end!” I shouted. “But who among us is the greatest storyteller?”

“I will do it,” said Jewel. “I’ve been telling Duban stories since the day he was born.”

With that settled we all appeared at the ship’s figurehead, who turned and looked at us scornfully. “Enjoy your precious few minutes alive, humans and nymphs. One way or another, you will meet your maker.” It faced forward again and closed it eyes.

“Perhaps,” I said.

“There is no perhaps,” said the figurehead, this time not even bothering to turn toward me. “You have nothing that I want, and there’s nothing that you know, that I don’t know.”

“Except one thing,” I said.

Now I had its attention. It turned toward me and seemed amused. “And what is that, King Aladdin?”

“The conclusion to our story.”

“I know all stories,” it said dismissively.

“But not this story,” said Jewel, stepping forward.

Chapter Eight

I wondered what kind of story Jewel would tell. She was a woman of many qualities, but I had not heard her do this before. I hoped it would not be some soft, dull femalish narrative.

“Once upon a time, there was a sweet girl named Idris,” she began.

Oh, Hades! But we were stuck with it. All we could do was listen, and hope the arrogant figurehead found it interesting. Because otherwise we were all doomed.

***

Idris Ifrit was one of the djinn kind, of which there were many in the old days. She was a carefree creature, floating about the landscape, a playful adventurous spirit with more than a hint of mischief. Since she could assume any likeness she chose, she was outstandingly pretty when in human form. She especially liked to tease mortal men by pretending to be one of their kind until they tried to hold her and kiss her; then she dissipated in smoke and laughter, leaving them aroused without satisfaction. What a joke on them!

One day she happened upon a mortal king as he went his way, traveling from one city to another with his retinue. She had heard of him; he was Solomon, reputed to be very wise. She could not resist testing that; was he smart enough to handle an alert air spirit? She assumed solid form, bypassed his guards, entered his tent, and flashed him with her outstanding young body.

“And who are you, fair maiden?” he inquired, interested. Mortal men of any age were interested; it was their nature, just as it was her nature to tease them.

“I am Idris,” she said, letting her garment slide down to reveal an increasing amount of her ripe torso. “Idris Ifrit.”

He did not seem surprised. “So you are one of the djinn kind.”

“What of it?” she asked, dropping her garment to her waist. In a moment he would be under her spell, as any mortal man would be.

“You are banned from my kingdom.”

“Really?” She let it drop the rest of the way. “And what are you going to do about it?” She took a breath that was likely to make his mortal eyes pop out. She so loved teasing pompous men!

“This,” he said, catching her arm with his hand. Then, before she could dissipate into smoke, he crammed her into a tiny green bottle. She had not known he could do that; no other mortal could. By the time she turned around inside it, he had put in the stopper and sealed it with his royal seal. She was unable to push out; the seal was powerful magic. She was caught.

This was a lesson she would not soon forget. This king had the power to enforce his edicts. “All right,” she said. “I will leave your kingdom. Now let me out.”

But she discovered to her horror that he was not even paying attention to her. He simply tossed the bottle into a bin with hundreds of other bottles and went to sleep. No amount of hammering against the green glass sufficed; he didn’t care.

The bottles contained other djinni, male and female, no more able to escape than she was. She could see them struggling with growing despair. What a monster this Solomon was! He certainly had no sense of humor about a little innocent teasing.

In a few days the bin of bottles was unceremoniously carried in a wagon to a ship in the harbor. The ship took the collection out to sea. There, far from land, it was dumped into the choppy waters. The bottles were all made of heavy glass; they slowly sank. Some were swallowed by fish; some disappeared into the gloom below. Hers was caught by a wayward current and borne swiftly away from any possible land.

She was helpless. She prayed to Allah, the glorious, the beneficent, the compassionate creator of the three worlds to free her, but there was no response. All she could do was settle down for a long nap. Until, somehow, Allah grant that she be released.

Between sleeps she pondered, and it occurred to her that she had been somewhat irresponsible in her treatment of mortal men, and perhaps deserved a rebuke. She resolved to mend her ways, and to treat all people, even mortals, as fairly and kindly as she could. That did not win her a release, but she held on to that resolution, for it seemed apt.

She had no notion of how much time had passed when her bottle washed up on a distant foreign beach, but suspected it was many centuries. She was of course immortal; time hardly mattered, except that she was bored. She peered out through the glass, hoping for the best.

And there came walking along the beach a Daughter of Eve, a living girl, maybe thirteen mortal years of age. Hope flared; would she see the bottle? Would she pick it up? Would she break the seal and uncork it?

The girl paused. Idris signaled wildly inside the bottle, trying to catch her attention. And it worked! The girl spied the bottle and picked it up. She peered into the glass and saw Idris. She smiled.

That was awkward, because now Idris saw that though the girl’s body was typical of her kind and age, on the verge of nubile, her face was not. It was misformed, with the features present but in the wrong proportions. In fact she was ugly.

Then the girl applied her teeth to the cork and pulled it and the seal off the bottle. Idris poured out, puffing into smoke, then forming into her natural shape. Oh, it was good to stretch, after all this time confined!

But business before pleasure. There was a protocol. “Young miss, I thank you for releasing me,” she said. Of course she spoke in the girl’s tongue, because ifrits could do that without even trying. “I am Idris Ifrit, cruelly imprisoned by King Solomon long ago. In return for the favor you have done me, I must do you a similarly significant favor. What do you ask of me?”

Surprisingly, the girl did not demand a mountain of gold or the man of her dreams or a kingdom to rule. All she said was: “I am Idrin. I’d like a doll.”

“Idrin? That’s close to my name!” Idris realized then that there could have been a magic tow, drawing her bottle close to one who almost matched her name, so that it was not coincidence. But that hardly mattered. “A doll? You’re too old for a doll.”

Idrin sighed. “I will never attract a nice man, or any man. I’m too ugly. So I might as well remain a child forever. I’d like to have a doll as pretty as you. Then I could love her forever.”

Idris opened her mouth to protest again, but realized that the girl was being realistic. Mortal men were notoriously fickle; about the only thing they valued more than a pretty face was a pretty bosom or bottom. Still, a doll?

“I’ll see what I can do,” Idris said at last.

“Don’t steal it!” Idrin said quickly. “I’m not a thief.”

“I will find it or make it myself,” Idris agreed. Then she dissipated and searched the area for a lost doll. But there turned out to be nothing suitable; the only thrown-away dolls were broken or malformed. She returned empty-handed.

“I have not found a doll,” she said. “So I will make you one.” She shrank into a doll-sized image of herself. “Will this do?”

“But that’s you!” Idrin said. “I didn’t mean to imprison you again. You need to be free.”

Idris had never cared much about any mortal person, but there was something about this girl that appealed to her. “I can stay this way until we find a real doll for you. I was in the bottle hundreds of years; I can be a doll for a few days.”

“Oh thank you!” Idrin exclaimed. She picked up the doll and hugged and kissed her.

Idris found that she liked that attention. The girl’s feeling encompassed her. Mortals had more intense emotions than immortals. Idris was satisfied to remain near her, bathing in that joy.

Idrin walked toward her home, carrying the doll, singing a little song of joy. It was amazing how little it took to make her happy.

Then a boy crossed her path. “Oh, that’s Bull,” Idrin muttered. “He’s trouble.”

That was another accurate assessment. “Hey, foulface!” Bull called. “What you got there? I bet you stole it.”

“Did not,” Idrin responded, trying to avoid him.

“Yeah? Give it here!” he snatched it out of her grasp.

“Don’t hurt him!” Idrin said. That set Idris back. She had been about to stun the bully with an electric eel charge.

Bull laughed coarsely, misunderstanding. “This here’s a girl doll, not a boy doll, and I’ll hurt her if I want.” He put a hand on each of the doll’s arms and made as if to pull her apart.

Oh? Idris got ready to turn into flame and scorch his hands.

“No!” Idrin cried. She was just too much of a pacifist!

“Yes!” Bull retorted, again misunderstanding. He wanted to torture Idrin before actually dismembering the doll, not knowing that was impossible.

Idris thought fast. How could she stop this implacable bully without hurting him? Then she got a notion. She was in direct physical contact with him, so this was easy magic. She reversed his emotional polarity.

Bull paused, taking a moment to reassess. He had never experienced anything like this before.

Then he returned the doll to Idrin. “I’m sorry; I was only teasing. I would never hurt your doll.” He took a breath. “Or you.”

Idris stared at him, confused. The bully was making nice? But Idris clarified it for her. “I reversed him,” she whispered. “I made him want to help you instead of hurt you.”

“Idrin,” Bull said. “Please—may I kiss you?”

Now both girl and ifrit paused in shock. Idris was the first to figure it out. “I’m rusty. I have been too long out of practice. I overdid it. I put him into love with you.”

“But no one loves me,” Idrin murmured.

“Please,” Bull said. “I’m not good at this. I want to hold you and kiss you. Please let me.” Such was the power of the magic, he was asking instead of taking. He wanted her return interest.

Girl and doll gazed at him. What were they to do? It would be chancy to change him again; magic seldom reversed cleanly, especially when wielded by a rusty practitioner. But Idris knew, if Idrin did not, that Bull was about to ask for more than a hold or kiss.

They were in trouble.

***

Jewel paused in her narration. The ship had drifted lower as the figurehead listened, providing them all better air to breathe. The story was working. I was amazed that such a soft, gentle tale would interest the knowledgeable figurehead, whose heart, let’s face it, was wooden. It seemed that Jewel knew what she was doing after all.

But would it be enough to prevent the figurehead from resuming his quest for Allah? I did not know, and feared to ask.

Chapter Nine

“Why did you stop?” asked the figurehead, turning its massive head to regard Jewel.

The entity, which had once been a carved wooden statue projecting from the prow of the ship, now appeared to be a combination of living and inanimate. Its face was still lined with wood grains, but now it was very much alive, and expressive enough to show his arrogance and now his irritation.

What manner of being he was, I didn’t know, but just as the thought crossed my mind, Sylvie’s words appeared: He is the Flying Dutchman’s original captain, sire. Forever cursed to remain on his ship. Indeed, cursed to forever inhabit the ship.

An unbreakable curse, I thought. Which is why he was unable to free himself.

Yes, sire. Only the gods can save him now.

There's something else, Myrrh thought. That figurehead knows but is not telling you: only you, as master of the ship, can free him from the ship, by officially granting him release. He knows you won't, so hides that information. He has nullified much of the curse, but must remain with the ship, regardless where he takes it. Unless he can indirectly kill you and plead to Allah for release.

That was interesting. I still had some power. I was about to ask why he had been so cursed when Jewel spoke. Her weariness did not feel feigned, although I suspected it might have been. “I stopped because I have grown tired.”

“Nonsense.”

“I’m short of breath, as you can see. We are much too high for me to continue the story.”

“Never mind that, then, woman. We shall proceed.”

And with that, the ship veritably lurched forward, surging through the heavens, toward this reported wormhole that I suspected would be our doom. I leaped forward, struggling for my own breath, for we were indeed very, very high. No doubt this valuable oxygen was quite low up here.

“But wait,” I said. “You do not know the ending to the story.”

“It is just a story. A fair one, mind you, but a made-up tale nonetheless. Unimportant in the grand scheme of things. Indeed, it is time to meet Allah.”

And the ship surged forward.

I cudgeled my oxygen-deprived brain and continued with the logic I had started, “Unimportant or not, it is something you do not know. It is knowledge that’s unknown.”

“What are you getting at, mortal?”

“You would be approaching Allah under false pretenses. You claim to know all, but you don’t. You don’t know the ending to Jewel’s story.”

“I can guess the ending. I am aware of all stories now, thanks to your epic blunder. Most stories are not so different.”

“Guessing is not the same as knowing,” said Myrrh, stepping in. “You ate from the Tree of Knowledge. Not the Tree of Guessing.”

The one-time captain looked from Myrrh to me, then threw back his head as far as it would go. “Damnation!”

Our forward momentum stopped so suddenly that many of us were thrown into railing or into each other. Once we had regained our balance, I saw that the great vessel was now adrift in the heavens. Below, the earth was nothing more than splotches of color. Browns and tans where the earth lay, blue where the ocean rested. White patches of clouds drifted everywhere. All of us were gasping for breath. Little Duban was looking green. We needed to reverse course immediately.

“What do you propose, mortal?” growled the figurehead.

“Jewel will finish the story as she sees fit,” I replied. “After all, such stories cannot be rushed.”

“You are toying with me, mortal.”

“We are striking a bargain. You get your story and we get what we need.”

“Your lives.”

“More than that,” I said. “We get the services of your magnificent ship.”

“And if I refuse?”

Jewel stepped forward, leaning heavily on me. “You will never know the ending to Idrin’s tale.”

“Damnation and ruin! Fine, mortal, you have yourself a deal. And when, pray tell, will I hear the next installment of the story?”

“Tomorrow night,” said Jewel. “When I have properly rested.”

The wooden figurehead swore, then threw his head to the right, and the ship turned to starboard, and soon we were speeding rapidly down through the heavens. Below, the earth quickly took on more and more details, and as we plunged down through the clouds, we all took a deep and blessed breath.

“Where to now?” growled the figurehead, when the ship had leveled out many hundreds of feet above the desert sands.

“The Hinterlands,” I said.

Now the figurehead grinned mischievously. “To stop those who seek to unlock the Gates of Hades, I suppose.”

“Yes, of course.” It suddenly occurred to me that if the ex-captain had knowledge of all things, then he certainly knew where the key was.

His disdainful laugh seemed to support my line of thinking. “And do you not realize that the Key to Hades is actually—”

And in that moment, Dea the Slave, who had been standing nearby, rushed forward and pointed across the bow. “Dragons!”

Whatever the figurehead was about to say had been lost, for the moment. He snapped his head around, as did I. Sure enough, swooping from high above were three black dragons, each more hideous than the next, and all sporting massive, leathery wings and long necks.

Sensing what was about to come, I used my sash to strap myself to the nearest railing and ordered the others to do the same. What happened next was a testament to the ship’s construction, although I suspected it was now held together by magical means. At any rate, the ship veered away from the dragons so sharply, that I thought my neck might snap. The aerial maneuvers that followed were enough for all of us to heave whatever was left in our stomachs. And when we were not heaving, I watched in amazement as the great ship, easily two or three times the size of the dragons, always just managed to avoid the black beasts.

When one dragon lunged, belching a great stream of crackling fire, the ship would turn sharply to starboard or port, or dive and plunge. Each time the fire would just miss us, always leaving a burning black trail in the sky where we had once been.

Our bodies twisted and turned and strained against belts and sashes and rope—anything that we had found to secure us in place. At one point, the ship plunged deftly, just as two of the magical creatures slammed full board into each other. I turned my head and watched as they spun wildly from the sky.

From where had the creatures come, and why? Only once had I seen such foul beasts in the land of man, and they had been the work of powerful djinns. Such creatures, I knew were commonplace in Djinnland. So why were they here now? Who had summoned them?

The final dragon screeched in fury and beat its powerful wings and soon closed in on the starboard side. The side I just happened to be on. I had a good look at the beast’s pure black eye, an eye that revealed nothing. Its snout was as long as three horses and its nostrils impossibly wide. From them, black steam issued forth, and I suspected I knew what that meant.

As it had just turned its head, I could see the smoldering fire from within ignite. By Allah, it was going to torch me alive! I think the figurehead realized that, too, and perhaps realized he might never hear the end of the story, for just as the beast threw back its head to let loose with a great blast, something else blasted.

Cannon fire.

The ship rocked with the percussion, and so did the dragon. Its great black eyes bulged, and the fire winked out. It massive wings went limp, and now I could see the great, bloody hole in its side.

It fell from the sky, quite dead.

The Flying Dutchman leveled out and I saw that the figurehead looked eminently pleased with himself.

I unfastened myself from the railing and checked on the others. They were fine, but bruised. Duban had a bloody bump on his head, where he had knocked it against a mast.

I headed straight for the figurehead.

“You know who sent the dragons,” I said.

“Of course,” it said smugly. “I know everything. Just as I know where the key presently is.”

“Tell me,” I said eagerly. “Who sent the dragons? Where’s the key?”

Now the figurehead threw back its head, just narrowly missing the wooden hull. “And where would the fun in that be, King Aladdin? You are not the only one who can play games.”

And with that the figurehead faced forward again, and the ship turned slightly to port, racing over the shifting desert sands and into the setting sun.

Chapter Ten

Jewel retired for the evening and night, for she really was tired, unsurprisingly. I joined her, of course. “Do you have a good continuation of the story?” I asked.

“Why would I tell you, with the ship listening?” she retorted. “The story must remain untold, until I tell it to Captain Figurehead.”

Good point. “In that case—”

“What part of ‘I am worn out’ do you not understand?” she demanded sharply. “Besides, there’s the baby.”

She was on to me. I sighed. This was going to be a long nine months.

“Oh, don’t be like that,” she said. “Find a concubine. That’s what they’re for.”

That was an idea. “Maybe that new girl, Dea,” I suggested.

“Don’t touch her! She’s dangerous.”

“But you know I can’t be potent with just any woman who isn’t you. She has to be special.”

“That is your problem,” she said unsympathetically. Women can be like that. “Now let me sleep.”

Ahem, Queen Nylon coughed mentally.

I had for the moment forgotten that she was on concubine duty. She would certainly do. “Good night, Jewel,” I said, and left her presence. Fortunately we had a spare cabin.

Nylon unwrapped herself from my finger and assumed the form of Jewel. She kissed me. “Let me show you what I would do with you if I weren’t with child,” she murmured.

She showed me, because of course she was not with child. It was quite a night. The only way I would have known she wasn’t Jewel was that she lacked the cutting verbal edges Jewel evinced when annoyed. Nothing I did annoyed Nylon; she seemed genuinely delighted to accommodate anything I could imagine. There is something to be said for interacting with a woman with centuries of experience and a hunger for renewed passion.

Next day the ship was back over the desert and flying west. It did not seem to be moving as rapidly as before. “Is there a problem?” I asked Captain Figurehead.

“I’m tired, dolt,” he said. “I need a story to refresh me.”

So he was dawdling, to make sure we did not arrive at the Hinterland before the story was finished. If we wanted to arrive there in time to prevent the Key from being used, we would have to get on with the narrative.

Fortunately Jewel was now up for it. Maybe she had literally dreamed up the continuation during the night. She settled herself in a deck chair near the figurehead and began talking. The rest of us joined her there, hoping for the best.

“It has reached me, O auspicious Captain,” she said formally, “that when Idris Ifrit invoked a spell to reverse the bully’s emotional polarity, she got it slightly off-center and instead of merely feeling helpful, he had fallen in love with Idrin. This was awkward...”

***

Idris snapped her fingers, freezing the bully in place, unaware that he was being paused for their convenience. It was minor magic, but useful in a situation like this.

“Oh, what am I to do?” Idrin whispered to Idris. “I can’t kiss him. I don’t even like him. Besides, I’m too young for that sort of thing.”

Idris knew that in many locales girls were considered marriageable at ten years of age, and Idrin was three years beyond that. But it was her duty, as part of her return favor for being released from the bottle, to see that the girl was satisfied with the outcome. So if romance was not what she wanted at this time, so be it. The bully had to be turned off.

But how? Messing again with his emotional settings was not advisable, lest it lead to even more difficult complications. Yet what else was there? Idrin didn’t want him hurt, and that blocked off whole avenues of actions.

Then she remembered a standard ploy utilized by attractive women to stave off suitors without actually rejecting them. “Tell him that if he wants to kiss you, he must perform three heroic feats in your honor, like single-handidly defeating an army using no more than the jawbone of an ass, or taming a rogue dragon.”

“That’s cheating,” Idrin objected. “I have to play fair. There should be only one demand, a relevant one, and it should be feasible to accomplish with reasonable dispatch.”

Idris took a breath and counted to twelve, so she wouldn’t explode into a roiling cloud of acrid smoke. This child was frustratingly fair-minded. In fact she would be an excellent partner for any man, regardless of her appearance. But that was the rub: men did not care much about excellence of character, only appearance. Men could be such dolts that it was remarkable that any woman ever chose one to marry. Except that the Sons of Adam in some locales had gotten around that by depriving woman of all rights, so that they were not in a position to choose.

And therein lay the clue. Give the bully a task that contributed to Idrin’s appearance, making her beautiful. Then she would be able to choose any man she wanted, when the time came. And if the bully did not accomplish that task, then he got no kiss. Win-win, either way.

“Demand a pot of beauty cream,” Idris told the girl. “The magical kind that makes any girl’s face lovely.”

“Does such a thing exist?” Idrin asked skeptically.

“Yes, because I am about to make some. I will hide it under a stump. If he finds it, you will use it and it will make your face beautiful. The rest of your body will fill out nicely in the next year or so, so you will need no more than the facial.”

“But suppose he doesn’t find it?”

“Then you don’t have to kiss him.”

“But what if he finds it?”

Idris counted mentally to thirteen. “Then you will have to kiss him. You can do that much. If he wants more, he will have to perform another task, one more challenging. By the time he accomplishes that, who knows—you might even begin to like him a little.”

“Never!” Idrin said with dismaying certainty. But she seemed taken by the idea of challenges. “I’ll do it.”

Idris snapped her fingers, reanimating the bully as she converted herself to a jar of cream and hid under a nearby stump.

“Please,” the bully said. “Anything for a kiss.”

“Anything?” Idrin asked.

“Anything.”

“Then fetch me a jar of beauty cream. Then you may have one kiss.”

“But I have no idea where such a thing would be,” he protested.

“There’s one in this vicinity. Maybe you can find it.”

“Stay right here,” he said. “I will find it.”

Idrin would have preferred to go home, but she waited. It was just barely possible that she was intrigued by the idea of becoming beautiful, and possibly even by the prospect of submitting to a kiss. One never could be certain of the content of a girl’s mind or heart.

The bully looked diligently, propelled by his desire for the kiss. He turned out to be a fairly efficient searcher. He crisscrossed the area, checking every clump of weeds and around every tree, shaking the foliage. And in due course he kicked over the old stump and found it. “Haa!” he exclaimed as if he had found something as precious as gold, and actually, he had.

He brought the jar back to Idrin. “Here it is. Now my kiss.”

“Not yet,” she said. “I must make certain it’s the real product.” She opened the jar, dipped out some cream, and smeared it on her face. Then she brought out her pocket mirror and looked.

The smear of cream crossed from her left eyebrow to her right ear. Most of her face was ugly, as before, but where the smear was, her face was lovely. The cream really was magic, as Idris had formed it from her own magical substance.

The bully stared, amazed.

Idrin quickly smeared the cream across the rest of her face, and in that moment she became beautiful, as her mirror verified. The cream had filled out the cavities and smoothed out the lumps and left matchless skin covering perfectly formed features.

Well, he had delivered. Idrin knew she was stuck for it. “Now you may kiss me,” she said, nerving herself for the ordeal. She had never kissed a boy before.

The bully gazed at her. Then he shook his head. “Those are no longer the features I love. I don’t want the kiss any more.” And he turned about and walked away.

Idrin stared after him, relieved but also, if truth be told, just a bit annoyed. She had been rejected because of her beauty?

Idris Ifrit re-formed as the doll. “My spell made him love you exactly as you were at that moment,” she explained. “He still loves that face, but you no longer have it. If you want him back, you will have to wipe off the cream quickly before it sets.”

But the girl hesitated. “Let’s not be hasty,” she said. She realized that if she left the cream on, and it set, she would be lovely for the rest of her life. She would be able to attract any man she wanted. That counted for something.

So she walked on to her home village, carrying the doll. Soon another boy spied her. He was handsome, one she liked. “Who are you, fair miss?” he inquired.

“He does not recognize you, because of the change,” Idris murmured.

“I am—visiting my friend Idrin,” Idrin said.

“Let me show you the way,” the boy said. “In exchange for a kiss.”

Oops. Idrin liked the attention, but she remained too young for what she suspected a kiss would lead to, and wanted to take it slowly. So she temporized. “Maybe after you do me a significant service.”

“And what is that?” the boy asked eagerly.

“Uh—” She stalled.

Idris had to rescue her. “Make him fetch you a wonderful ship upon which you can travel the world in luxury and leisure.”

Flustered, Idrin repeated the request almost verbatim. Had she had time to think about it, she would have pared it down closer to a rowboat.

“Immediately,” the boy said. “But where can I find such a ship?”

Idrin listened to Idris’ whisper. “Well, Noah’s Ark might be nice. I understand it still sits stranded in the Mountain of Ararat, not far north of Baghdad. It might need a few repairs, but it is the world’s premium ship.”

“Immediately,” the boy agreed, and set off forthwith. Little did he know what he was undertaking. Boys were like that.

“I think I won’t be needing the doll after all,” Idrin said. “You have given me more than enough, Idris, and I thank you.”

“In that case, I’ll go help the boy with the Ark,” Idris said, regretting that she had sent him on what might be an impossible mission. “That should prove to be an interesting quest, regardless of the outcome.”

***

“Thus concludes the tale of Idris and Idrin,” Jewel said. “Idrin was destined to grow up, marry, and live happily the rest of her life. But the tale of the boy’s quest for the lost Ark is even more wonderful, filled with rare adventure, foul tragedy, and fair maidens. But I am tired, and must rest until the morrow.”

“This is a cheat!” Captain Figurehead said angrily. “You are starting another tale without giving me a chance to digest the first one.”

“And you don’t know the outcome. What a pity,” Jewel said without pity. “Carry on, Captain.”

I saw that she had the figurehead snared. She would keep telling tales until we got where we were going and did what we were doing.

Now all we had to do was get to the Hinterland in time to accomplish our mission, assuming that we’d be able to do it despite the somewhat surly cooperation of the figurehead. I feared the boy of the tale would have an easier time finding and renovating the Ark.

Chapter Eleven

As the days passed, as we headed deeper and deeper into an empty wasteland filled with endless rolling sand dunes, Jewel regaled the ship and crew with her tale of the boy’s epic search for Noah’s Ark.

I marveled again at my wife’s cleverness. After all, a search for one great ship as told to another ship of equal greatness was sheer genius, although I questioned the wisdom of her need to constantly remind the accursed captain that Noah’s Ark was, indeed, the greatest of all ships. But my wife spared no fools, least of all me. The ship, although knowledgeable of all things, seemed predisposed to surliness and haughtiness, proving again that great knowledge did not equate to great wisdom.

Lucky for us, Captain Figurehead seemed enraptured by the tale of the boy and his search for Noah’s Ark, and so for now we continued sailing over desert dunes, the occasional oasis, and the even rarer caravan.

On this evening of the third day of our journey, as we ate cheeses and breads and fruits and nuts, Jewel cut short the latest installment of her tale, this time leaving the boy stranded in a catacomb of tunnels deep within Mount Ararat. The captain was clearly frustrated. Even I felt mildly annoyed at having to wait another day to hear of the boy’s fate. I sensed we were reaching the end of the captain’s patience. What would happen after that, I didn’t know. But it might be a battle of wills.

Others on board listened to the story; in particular, Dea the slave girl, who seemed particularly enchanted by the tale.

Now, as the sun began to set, Duban brought out his lyre and struck up a somber tune. Although he was now the heir to my throne, I doubted that he would take the job. He was more minstrel than monarch, despite being one of the more powerful conjurers of magic I had ever seen.

He is the last of his kind, said Queen Nylon in my ear, no doubt following the trail of my thoughts.

“What do you mean?” I asked, sub-vocalizing my words.

The prophecy, my lord. Your stepson was prophesied to be the last of the great magicians, following a long line of great magicians. With him, the bloodline will die. It is why Prince Zeyn was so determined to hurry the process up.

“You make it seem like he won’t see his next birthday,” I said, perhaps a little louder than I had intended. Jewel shot me a curious look, raising her eyebrows, but I did not elaborate. Already Jewel was getting used to me speaking seemingly random gibberish to my nymph counsel.

Queen Nylon, however, had grown curiously silent, and I did not feel the need to press the matter. Instead, I watched the boy play on happily, tapping his foot, smiling at the others who had joined him. I had grown found of him, and the thought of him dying prematurely was a devastating one. I could only hope Queen Nylon was wrong.

***

I had been dozing lightly on deck as Duban played on, when I felt a small tug on my sleeve. It was Jewel. “Look,” she said, pointing. “It appears the slave has made a new friend.”

I followed her pointing finger and, although it was now late evening, could easily make out the form of Dea speaking urgently to the Captain Figurehead. The captain tilted its massive head toward her, clearly listening.

I sat up, curiously alarmed. “How long have they been talking?”

“I don’t know. I only just noticed them.”

What business did a slave girl have with speaking to the accursed captain? I didn’t know, but I called Duban and Myrrh over. He quit playing and they came over together. I spoke telepathically to Myrrh to shield my thoughts, asking her to relay them to Duban, which she did.

Can you fashion a listening device? I asked my son.

Duban nodded once the message had been relayed. Of course, father.

I explained further what I needed, and he nodded again and slipped his lyre inside his robe where it promptly disappeared. He next held both hands over his ears and closed his eyes. Jewel gasped first, followed by me. After all, a hairy, wolf-shaped ear now appeared where the boy’s once roundish ear had been. The wolf-ear perked up and promptly pointed toward the figurehead and slave girl.

Duban listened a moment, then reported: They’re striking a deal, father.

What kind of deal?

He listened some more. It’s an exchange of some sort. His services for...he trailed off, listening again. His services for freedom from the curse.

That surprised me. I had been expecting to hear something else. “Sylvie,” I said, sub-vocalizing the word.

Yes, sire?

“I thought you said only a god could reverse his curse.”

Indeed. His was one of the most powerful, placed upon him by yet another god. You were given power over the ship, by one with equivalent power, so if you did it you would be acting on a god's authority.

“Then how could a simple slave girl free him of it?”

A good question, sire. Perhaps she’s more than a simple slave girl.

I thought about that as Dea nodded toward the figurehead, and slipped back into the shadows.

***

Curiously, the next evening, after spending the whole day speeding along at a much faster clip, the accursed ship captain did not request Jewel’s presence to continue the story. Clearly, the captain had abandoned his desire to see Allah. His deal with Dea had something to do with that.

Jewel and Myrrh came to my side, where I stood with Sinbad at the ship’s helm. Jewel was sweating profusely and holding her stomach.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, coming to her.

“She needs rest, sire,” said Myrrh, looking at my wife with obvious concern. “I’m worried for her.”

“It’s nothing, really—” but her words were cut short with a gasp of pain.

Surely, a journey to the Gates of Hades was no trip for a pregnant woman—or any person with an ounce of sanity. Now, as my wife did her best to push through the pain, I came to a decision. I rounded up the remaining passengers—all those who had so willingly volunteered to help. I explained to them that I could no longer risk their lives and, despite their protests, ordered them to board the smaller dhows.

Once all were aboard, I kissed my wife and rubbed her growing belly—luckily, her pain was subsiding. Duban hugged Myrrh tightly, and Sinbad held Nydea. Shortly, the smaller boats peeled away and shot down through the sky. We would remain in contact through Nydea, who was always magically connected to Queen Nylon. A good thing, since we would have had no other way of finding them.

Now the three of us watched as the two dhows, filled with the remaining crew, raced downward until they finally disappeared from view.

Now it was just myself, Sinbad, Duban and the two nymphs on my hand. A motley crew, but a battle-tested one. Whatever the hell was going on here, we would find out. And whoever sought to open the Gates of Hades, we would stop.

One way or another.

Sinbad suddenly pointed across the bow. “The Hinterlands, Aladdin.”

I turned my head and saw them, too. Great, rocky crags jutting up from the desert floor, rising high into the sky. Buzzards circled above, wings outstretched. The ship seemingly picked up speed.

“And what of the Gates of Hades?” I asked.

“It is rumored to be deep within a cave, beyond a fiendish underground river.”

The River Styx, my lord, said Queen Nylon. Or the river of hate. It separates the world of the living from the world of the dead and is guarded by the dog-beast, Cerberus.

“And ferried by Charon,” I sub-vocalized. “Yes, I know my Greek mythology.”

Sinbad turned to me. “Things are about to get very interesting.”

Chapter Twelve

We sailed slowly beside the mountain range, looking for caves. The curvature of the Hinterland terrain was intricate and bleak, with many false avenues. Beyond it was nothing but trackless burning desert. “I wonder how anyone gets here,” Sinbad said, “without a flying ship?”

“I suspect most of them are dead,” I said. “So they can navigate the desert without suffering ills of the flesh.”

“Or they are magically drawn in by Hades and don’t need to look,” Duban said. “We are approaching by an alternate route that should be rarely used.”

Good point; there were not too many flying ships in these parts. If all dead folk had to go to Hades, why would it be made difficult for them to find? It was living folk like us it wanted to discourage.

“There,” the figurehead said, nosing the prow toward the forbidding recess of a dark cave that resembled nothing so much as a cavity in one of the tooth-like mountains.

We looked. He was surely correct. We would have to verify it.

That brought something else to my mind. What about the Flying Dutchman? Could we afford to leave the ship while we explored the cave? I did not trust that, but did not want to discuss it aloud with the figurehead listening. He had behaved okay recently, but that might be a pose to get us to depart peacefully. I did not trust him. The ship was bound to me, but Figurehead was the ship and might be able to override the binding and go his own way. If I were not there to tell him no. Magical strictures can be devious.

Sinbad seemed to read my thought. “Let’s draw lots for the privilege of rear-guard duty,” he suggested. “In case something unkind is on our trail.”

Instead of lots, we cast dice, which were more convenient. High throw would stay on the ship. Sinbad won it, and no, I’m pretty sure the dice weren’t loaded. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I am familiar with loaded dice. I wasn’t certain whether Sinbad was disappointed or relieved to be left behind, but concluded that he felt more at home on the ship. Besides, I thought Duban and I were the best team to handle this particular chore, partly because I carried the ringed nymphs.

Yes, we make you halfway competent, Nylon agreed.

No man is sufficient without the guidance of a woman, Sylvie added.

That was not precisely the way I would have put it, but I decided not to argue the case. They were probably teasing me anyway.

And you like being teased by pretty women, Nylon thought smugly. She had me there, though the type of teasing I preferred related to “accidental” exposure of private parts rather than disparagement of my nature.

We’ll keep that in mind, Sylvie thought. As if she hadn’t been well aware of it all along.

“I’ll circle around and keep an eye on the area,” Sinbad said.

Duban and I took a dhow and glided down to the cave. The Dutchman moved on, but we knew it would return when needed.

It was a black hole. I was nervous about entering it blind, but Duban came to my rescue by snapping his fingers. Then a glow appeared, emanating from the walls and floor, making the path clear enough for us to proceed.

The back of the cave narrowed into a passage just about big enough for me to walk comfortably. It twisted on into the mountain, until the light of the entrance was no longer visible. So far, so good.

Then I heard a weird howl. It sounded like a trio of sick wolves. “What’s in there?” I asked nervously.

“Cerberus,” Duban said succinctly.

Now I remembered: the dog with three heads. “Um, I wonder,” I said. “Do we really have to face that?”

“We do if we want to reach Hades.”

“Do we actually have to reach Hades? There’s nothing in there that we want. What we want is to see that the Thief of Baghdad, or whoever else has the Key, doesn’t get there. We can intercept him out here.”

“Maybe, father,” Duban agreed. “But suppose there is more than one access to the Gates?”

He’s got a point, Nylon thought.

Smart lad, Sylvie agreed. I’ll be his mistress some day.

“Oh, fudge,” I said, borrowing one of Jewel’s expressions. “There could be a dozen routes. We can’t guard them all. We’ll have to guard the Gates themselves.”

“That was my thought,” Duban said.

“Which means we have to deal with that dog.”

“I can stun him, and you can cut off the heads one by one.”

I had another thought. “If I do, won’t that alert the proprietors of Hades that something is amiss? They might not take kindly to someone mistreating their guard dog. I prefer this mission to be quiet.”

I can do it, Nylon thought. She unwrapped from my finger and dropped to the floor. “I will need to see Cerberus, and for him to see me,” she said.

I had confidence in her ability. We moved on toward the sound. Soon we came to the cavern where the monster canine lurked. He was the size of a pony, and each head was uglier than the others, with sharper canines and more lather. The noise of their howling was horrendous, this close. The smell was worse.

Cerberus spied us and charged, all three heads slavering hungrily as sparks flaked off their gnashing teeth. I couldn’t help quailing. Fight this monster? Without Duban’s stasis spell I’d be lucky to lop off one head before the others chomped me to mush.

Nylon formed into a three-headed female dog. She howled in her bitchiest harmony. Since her nature was to perfectly emulate any male’s fondest desire, she got Cerberus’ attention immediately. He changed course to orient on her. But she immediately moved into a side passage, one head looking back coyly. He followed eagerly. She was a pro, all right. But I couldn’t help wondering whether she led me on similarly, and for similar reason: to distract me from whatever else I might have on my limited mind.

Of course she does, Sylvie reassured me. Men have to be managed, for their own good.

I let that pass. What else could I do?

We were alone. We moved on.

We came to the River Styx. It was a dark thread of water coursing through the cavern, broad and sinister. There was a musky odor to it, not unpleasant.

“Charon must be around somewhere,” Duban said. “I think the river entirely circles Hades, or at least the entrance to it. Charon could be anywhere in that loop.”

“Do we really need Charon?” I asked. “I don’t see why he would ferry us across, considering we’re not dead. Maybe we’d be better off swimming across it on our own.”

“Don’t do that!” a voice called.

We turned. There was a cloaked figure approaching us from the tunnel we had just left. Then she threw the cloak open. It was the slave-girl Dea! “What are you doing here?” I demanded. “I sent you away for your own safety.”

“I appreciate that,” she said breathlessly. Oh what an effect her violent breathing had on her low decolletage! “But I had to warn you. Something I remembered, belatedly, too late to tell you.”

I was still on a prior track. “How did you get here?”

“I took a dhow. We had an extra. Now about that memory...”

“How did you even know where we were?”

“Your dhow was parked outside. But this thing I remembered—”

“Remembered?”

“About the River Styx. It’s poisonous, and the River Lethe is a tributary. So if you try to swim in it, if you don’t die of poison, you will slowly forget why you came here, and then who you are. Souls that try to escape run afoul of the water and lose their identities and drift around helplessly. That’s why there are no escapes from Hades.”

“No escapes,” I echoed thoughtfully.

“And even the fumes of its surface will have a similar effect, only slower. That’s why Cerberus stays clear. I was afraid you would try something stupid, like swimming or rafting across it, and be doomed. So I came to warn you.”

Smart girl, Sylvie thought.

And I had been about to do exactly that. Her warning was well taken. “But Charon is not likely to ferry us across,” I said. “I suspect he has a thing against living folk.”

“He does,” she agreed. Her breathing had slowed to normal, but somehow the curvature of her forward architecture was more visible than ever. I remained considerably intrigued. “But Charon also has magic to nullify the fumes so that the ferry passengers don’t lose their minds as well as their lives. You need his help to cross.”

Ouch. “Let me consider,” I said. Then I asked Sylvie, mentally: Does this make sense to you?

Actually, it does, she agreed. But I don’t trust her. That frontal exposure is no accident. She’s flashing you. She may just have wanted to get you alone, so made up a pretext. That’s a female device.

A female device. The siren should know. I didn’t trust Dea either; there were surely holes in her story. On the other hand, she was one superlatively winsome creature, and I needed practice getting potent with concubines who weren’t the image of Jewel. If Dea was as intrigued by me as I was by her...

Don’t touch her, Sylvie warned. I’ll tell Jewel.

So now the siren was the guardian of my morals.

Well, its a dirty job, but someone has to do it.

I sighed. I’ll keep my hands off her, I thought. This is not the ideal place, anyway.

Besides which, Nylon may return at any moment and catch you.

That, too. Nylon had become just as proprietary as Jewel. I had to return to legitimate business.

“So what does your siren doxy say?” Dea asked knowingly.

Doxy? Sylvie raged. I’ve got half a mind to reassemble and tear out some of her hair.

“Don’t do that!” I said.

“Oh? Just let her try it,” Dea said, evidently making a shrewd guess. “She’d be a fish out of water.”

Oh, is that so? Well—

Was I about to have a nasty cat-fight on my hands? “Please, ladies! This is no place to argue. We need to figure out the best course.”

“Exactly,” Dea agreed, adjusting her shirt to be less confining.

We can’t cross anyway without Nylon, Sylvie reminded me.

Dea glanced at my hands. “Where’s your fairy queen slut?”

WHAT?! Sylvie thought, outraged by the affront to her friend.

I had to get things back on track. “What do you recommend?” I asked Dea.

Chapter Thirteen

The River Styx, although black as night and hidden deep within the mountain, glowed softly. I saw why: glowing spirits circled the river, flying or walking or even sitting on the many boulders that clustered near the river’s bank.

They were not given proper burials, said Sylvie, and must now roam the river’s bank for one hundred years.

I shuddered at the thought of roaming this bleak landscape for so long, when Dea spoke: “My lord, we need to gain access to Charon’s ship, of course.”

“‘We?’” I said. “You’re not going anywhere. This is far too dangerous for you.”

Dea turned on me, bristling. “But you are willing to risk bringing a boy to the Gates of Hades?”

I considered the absurdity of the situation. At any other time, a slave girl would have bowed before me without daring to look up until commanded to do so. Now, one was questioning me. Such talk would have landed her in a dungeon—or, with a less forgiving king, the loss of her tongue or even her life.

You are a long way from your palace, Aladdin, said Sylvie. Although I do think the slave girl does need to be reminded of her place.

I sighed. Rank and stature had no place when one was standing on the banks of the River Styx, with a three-headed beast running free in the tunnels, and the Gates of Hades nearby. Instead, I put aside my ego and said, “Duban has special...skills. He is of use to me.”

“As do I, my lord,” said Dea, and all challenge left her, to be replaced by something far more...seductive. She took a deep breath and her chest lifted and fell and somehow her lips seemed to grow even fuller. My mouth went dry.

She’s a pro, said Sylvie.

She’s beautiful.

Oh, brother.

As three distinct howls reverberated from one of the tunnels, Dea turned suddenly and marched off toward the river, where, to my surprise, a man appeared out of the gloom. He was guiding a simple wooden ferry, poling it with practiced, efficient strokes. Charon had a long, gray beard and a bent back, and white skin that seemed to glow. He was obviously a very old man.

Not a man, my lord, said Sylvie. He is a lesser god. A demigod, to be exact. The son of Nyx and Erebus.

Duly noted, I thought, and realized I was seeing my first god. I’d certainly seen my share of djinns and nymphs, but never a god. Other than pushing the ferry along with obvious grace and skill, he looked no different than any other aged man.

Except he’s been ferrying the dead for eons, Sylvie reminded me.

God or not, that didn’t stop Dea from boldly approaching the river’s edge. Charon, who had been leaning heavily on the pole, snapped his head around when he caught sight of Dea approaching. He quit pushing the ferry along and now he drifted in the center of the gently-flowing river. As he drifted closer, I could see that he was not alone. Three or four souls were huddled together on one end.

Dea boldly waved him over. In the process, she somehow managed to look both intoxicating and vulnerable. She was also showing a lot of flesh, and I wondered just how often Charon saw live women. Judging by the proliferation of spirits along the river—and the few souls on his ferry—I didn’t think very many times. Perhaps the lesser god did have a weakness for living flesh. If so, the luscious Dea would surely push him over the edge.

Oh, brother, said Sylvie, clearly picking up on my thoughts.

“She’s a threat to you,” I sub-vocalized, “and therefore you don’t like her.”

I don’t trust her, said Sylvie. She paused, then added, And I don’t like her.

I chuckled lightly, despite the seriousness of the situation, and now watched in stunned amazement as Charon guided the ferry away from the center of the black river and toward her along the bank.

She’s doing it, I thought.

Men are all the same, thought Sylvie. Gods and mortals alike.

I chuckled again as the ferry pulled up along the bank. Water lapped over rocks...and hissed. Truly accursed waters. There was a short exchange. Dea giggled. A soft, whispery voice responded, and to my shock, the ferryman to the Underworld actually smiled. A moment later, Dea rejoined our group.

“He will ferry us,” she said.

“For what in return?” I asked.

Dea slipped next to me and nearly laid a hand on my chest. Instead, she stood on tip-toes and whispered into my ear: “You just let me worry about that, sire.”

No doubt she struck a sordid deal, my lord, said Sylvie contemptuously.

I swallowed and nodded, and suddenly found myself envious of the ancient ferryman. I could only imagine the pleasures that awaited him. It was the way she had whispered into my ear. Her hot breath. It had sent a shiver coursing through me that did not readily abate.

Get hold of yourself, sire. We’ve got serious business to attend to.

“Yes, of course,” I whispered. “But what about Queen Nylon?”

The queen can take care of herself, sire. Cerberus is not the first beast to be smitten by her charms. If I know the nymph queen, she’s got that puppy wrapped around her finger, panting somewhere.

And for the third time, I chuckled as we followed Dea to the ferry, and boarded along with her under the watchful eye of Charon. Shortly, he pushed off and soon we were adrift on a mostly calm river. Huddled near the prow of the ferry were three souls, two of which I immediately recognized. They had, after all, been ghostly sailors aboard the Flying Dutchman. Now released from the curse, they were heading to their rightful place in the Underworld.

Duban kept close to me. For all his talents, he was still a little boy—and a frightened one at that. I rested a hand on his head and he moved closer to me still.

A cold breeze moved over us. Glowing spirits were seemingly everywhere, lighting the way eerily. Charon methodically poled us forward, occasionally stealing glances at Dea. We appeared to be approaching a dark tunnel. I shuddered to imagine what lay beyond the tunnel.

Sylvie’s words appeared in my thoughts. Sire, do you see anything different about the slave girl?

Her name is Dea.

Either way, do you notice something different?

Dea stood apart from us, staring forward, seemingly lost in her own thoughts. She gripped her hands behind her back, playing with various rings on her fingers.

What about her? I asked.

Her rings, sire.

What about her rings?

Sylvie sighed heavily. Are men oblivious to everything?

“Out with it, nymph,” I growled under my voice. “What about her rings?”

They were not there before, sire.

“You’re certain?”

I’m certain.

The rings were thick and golden and looked remarkably similar to the ring presently on my finger, the ring that was, of course, Sylvie.

“Magical rings?” I asked, sub-vocalizing the words.

Undoubtedly, sire. Of course, there’s one way to know for certain.

“How?”

Touch her. I can learn a lot by touching someone. Just as I know all of your deep, dark secrets, my lord.

As we neared the black tunnel—a tunnel where the waiting spirits appeared not to venture—I stepped over to the slave girl and lifted a hand to rest on the girl’s shoulder.

Not that hand, Sylvie chastised, sounding remarkably like Jewel. Your other hand. The one with me on it.

“Oh, right.”

I lifted my other hand and placed it on Dea’s shoulder. The slave girl flinched and spun around. When she saw me, her almond-shaped eyes widened with pleasure.

“Hello, my king. To what do I owe this pleasure?”

As I was about to open my mouth, Sylvie gasped in my mind. So much so, that I was immediately disoriented. I gave Dea a faltering smile.

“I wanted to thank you for your help,” I said, stumbling slightly over the words.

“Anything for you, sire,” said Dea, bowing her head slightly.

I smiled again and backed away, just as the ferry plunged into the dark tunnel. A light flared from nearby, and I saw that Duban was holding a magical ball of light before him. Allah bless the boy.

“Now,” I said to Sylvie, just under my breath. “What was that all about? What did you learn?”

She is no slave girl, my lord.

“Oh, who is she?”

You have just met your second god. She is Medea, the goddess of desire and lust, and the two rings on her finger are none other than The Thief of Baghdad and Sinbad. Both, I suspect, are now under her complete control.

“Control how?”

Sex slaves, sire. Perhaps for all eternity. And if my guess is right, she desires you next.

Sinbad! But what could have happened? I didn’t know, but I wondered if my friend had been ambushed on the ship.

And one other thing, sire, thought Sylvie. She wears the Key to Hades around her neck.

Chapter Fourteen

I knew I was in trouble.

If the Sorceress Medea had made a deal with the Dutchman Figurehead, and seduced and ringed both the Thief of Baghdad and Sinbad, she was bound to be too much for me. I remembered her from mythology, the wife of Jason of the Golden Fleece. When he deserted her, she butchered their children. She was a completely cynical and ruthless creature, now bent on further mischief. No wonder she had seemed unalarmed about the kraken; she must have summoned it to harass the sirens while the Thief of Baghdad stole the Key to Hades. As I saw it, I had only one advantage, if you could call it that: she did not know I knew about her.

And you have me, Sylvie thought. We sirens do have powers, though not in the same league as the sorceress.

“Powers?” I sub-vocalized.

We can swim well, she reminded me. We can enchant men. And I can shore you up against being seduced by her.

“Even if I think she’s the sexiest creature on two legs?” Because I did. “Even if I really would like to be seduced by her?” Because I would. “Even though I know better?” Because when did knowledge that it was dangerous ever stop a man from desiring a beautiful woman?

Yes. I can run interference to prevent her from seducing you by force, as she must have done with Sinbad. I can sing the anti-summons song, the reverse of our normal lure, to make you averse to such seduction. But there is one thing I can’t do.

I knew there would be a catch. There always was. “What is that?”

I can’t stop you from sending me away, if that’s what you decide to do. I occupy your finger by your sufferance. You have to want me here, or at least tolerate me.

“I do want you here! How could you think otherwise?”

Aladdin, she thought seriously. If she persuades you to send me away, I will have to go. Then I will not be able to protect you. I must not leave your finger, even for an instant, because then she will strike and you will be lost.

I appreciated the warning, uncomplimentary as it was to my defensive ability, which echoed my own concern. Medea was more than any mere mortal man could handle alone. “I will not let her persuade me,” I promised.

I sincerely hope that is the case, for both of our sakes. I dare not swim in the River Styx.

“Neither dare I,” I agreed.

One more caution.

“Another?” I asked, dismayed. “Isn’t our situation bad enough already? I know I must not do what I would so dearly like to do.”

Indeed. But you have to appreciate that seduction is more than sexual.

“It is?” I asked, surprised.

It is. You think it’s like making out with a harem girl, for physical gratification without any larger commitment. But the more dangerous form is emotional. You can be lost without having any sexual connection. Don’t let her seduce you emotionally. Don’t fall in love with her.

“Love!” I echoed, appalled.

Dea—that is, Medea—turned to face me. “Love?” she inquired. “Did I hear you correctly, sire?”

Oops. In my excitement I had forgotten the sub in sub-vocalize and spoken aloud. “I doubt it,” I said. “I suffered an uncomfortable belch I was unable to suppress.” Not that there was anything wrong with a good belch after a meal. It was the nether belch, the breaking of wind, that was such a serious social blunder that men had been known to flee the region, humiliated, after letting one slip out audibly in public. A proper belch was a compliment to the server of a good meal. But it was all I could come up with at the moment.

“It certainly sounded like love,” she said smoothly, taking my hand.

Sylvie shot out what felt like a jag of lightning. Dea withdrew her hand, shocked. Literally. She did not seem pleased.

“No, it was more like gas,” I said, embarrassed. I had not known the siren could do that.

“If you have indigestion, I’m sure I can help,” Dea said, oozing concern. “I have a potion.”

Don’t take that potion!

I was not about to. “Thank you, but I’m sure it will clear,” I said. Then, to Sylvie I subvocalized “I will take Duban’s hand. When we have contact, you update him on what we have discovered.”

I will.

Duban was of course standing beside me. I took his hand.

“Isn’t that sweet,” Dea said with mixed sympathy and irony. “He comforts his son.”

Dea had not been with us long. With luck she would not realize just how powerful a magician Duban was. That could be another secret weapon. Once he knew the score.

Done. He says thank you for the secret weapon compliment.

Oops. She must have relayed my ongoing thoughts along with the background. At least now Duban had been updated. I hoped he could match the sorceress, forewarned. But I feared what her seductive powers could do to him, inexperienced as he was in this respect. Medea was doubly dangerous.

“I hope the siren slut doesn’t shock him, too,” Dea murmured.

I’ll let that pass, Sylvie thought. She’s trying to make me get so mad I’ll unwind from your finger and tackle her physically. She would then make short work of me—I’m no sorceress or goddess—and then make shorter work of you.

Surely so. “Stay with me,” I told Sylvie. “And if you remain in touch with your home base, you should inform them of our situation.”

I will, she agreed. But sirens are sea creatures; this region is inaccessible to them. They have to be carried, as I am with you.

Then I had another thought. “The women!” I subvocalized. “Jewel, Myrrh, Nydea. What has happened to them?”

Bad news, Sylvie agreed. They would not have simply let the sorceress take over. She must have done something with them.

The three were by no means helpless. Nydea was a Nubile Nymph like Nylon, Myrrh was telepathic, and Jewel was very much her own woman at all times. But they had not known they were up against a sorceress. I had to find out. Would Dea tell me? Well, maybe I could use some subtle male persuasion. “How’s my wife doing?” I asked her.

“She is—resting,” Dea said. “As are the others.”

“Resting? Surely not the whole time.” Then, to cover my knowledge of Medea’s identity and nature, I added “I prefer to think that my wife is unable to relax during my absence.”

She smiled beguilingly, her eyes infinitely more appealing than almonds, and her lustrous hair seemed to ripple like a flowing river. “Surely she dreams of you, you handsome hunk. What woman wouldn’t?”

Yuck! Sylvie thought, using an expression new to me, but I caught her meaning. Dea was laying it on too thickly, figuring me for the dolt I often am.

Still, the architecture of her upper torso, now so close under my nose, was compelling. As long as she was playing the role of a sex slave girl, maybe it would be safe to—

Stop it!

I sighed again. Sylvie was right, of course, unfortunately.

“We can’t do much while under the watchful eye of the ferryman,” Dea murmured. “But a kiss or two shouldn’t hurt, if you can muzzle that bitch of a fishtailed ring for a while. It would be a shame to waste slack time.” She inhaled, and I swear her luscious mounds increased one or two sizes. “In fact, we could dance.” She turned into me, and my hand fell naturally to her marvelously slick silk-covered posterior. My hand couldn’t help it; such an artifact was designed to be appreciatively stroked. She moved against me, and I felt an evocatively warm caress wherever her alluring body touched mine.

This time the zap was so strong there was a crackle as sparks jumped. I did not feel it, but it was evident that Dea did. I almost thought I saw tiny curls of smoke rising from her breasts and bottom.

“But I think you will have to remove the ring for the time being,” Dea said, not showing her discomfort. “Just put it in your pocket if you don’t care to drop it in the river.”

Don’t do it!

“I can’t do that,” I said, with not entirely faked regret. “I promised to take care of the siren while she is in my charge.”

Dea shrugged as if the matter were of little moment, though I knew she was seething. She was a consummate actress. “Then perhaps another way.” She lifted on her lovely toes and kissed me.

I was amazed by several things. One was the compelling power of the contact; it was as though a piece of heaven was touching my mouth. Another was the response the siren made. I heard a truly eerie song, and felt the current of a lightning bolt passing between our lips, magnetizing them. Sylvie was shocking Dea, and this time the sorceress was fighting back with her own current. The battlefield was my mouth. I felt as if my very skull was glowing, radiating light.

Medea was trying to seduce me by force, right there standing on the raft on the River Styx, and Sylvie was fighting it. I was almost a spectator. But I felt the rising compulsion of passion. I was being drawn into hopeless love with the sorceress. I tried to resist, but it was like opposing an elephant with a single finger. It was plain that I was vastly over-matched, as Sinbad must have been. This creature had centuries of experience taming rebellious men.

For eternal moments the combat continued. The sorceress was strong, very strong. But the siren had the home field, as it were, and my cooperation; I was on her side, for what little that was worth. It was an impasse.

Then Dea broke the kiss. “Or maybe not yet,” she said. “But soon, I think.”

She’s not fooling, Sylvie thought, and it felt as if she were gasping. I can’t take much more of that. She’s too strong.

So the contest had been defined. Medea intended to seduce and conquer me, and had the power to do exactly that, and Sylvie could not stand against her indefinitely. I needed to think of some other way to protect myself, or we’d all be lost.

Now the raft was emerging from the tunnel and coming to the inner shore. I was pretty sure that the closer we got to the Gates of Hades, the weaker our position would be. We needed to do something to turn the tide. But what?

Chapter Fifteen

I am Queen Nylon, ruler of the Nubile Nymphs in Djinnland, and bound to King Aladdin of Agrabah. Although I am ruler in another realm, I do not wish to see destruction befall earth. After all, many of my nymph sisters—including the mischievous Sirens—live in this physical plane. Not to mention I desire to one day live life as a mortal.

To this end, I will stop at nothing to save the earth from those who seek to destroy it or subjugate it with unspeakable horrors and evils. I may not be as powerful as the gods or goddesses, as the sorcerers and sorceresses, but I do possess some skills.

And I will use them freely and willingly.

Now, after leading the great three-headed beast away from the others and deeper into the labyrinth of tunnels, I suddenly came to a dead end. The tunnel was narrow—just wide enough for me to turn and face the beast as it wildly rounded the corner.

As is often the case for me, I had assumed the form of the female desired by a nearby male. I don’t transform automatically. Meaning, the transformation is always a choice—and I’ve spent the greater part of my life embodying some very interesting females. Admittedly, a three-headed bitch was one of the more interesting incarnations.

Cerberus filled the narrow tunnel, each head hunched low and dripping foam. Muscles rippled along his powerful shoulders and flanks, muscles that I immediately felt a strong attraction for. As is always the case, whenever I embody another woman or creature—if I allow the embodiment—I always feel a powerful sexual attraction to the male desiring me. Now was no different. Three heads suddenly seemed like a brilliant idea—the better to admire my mate. The powerful, sleek, muscular body, with claws big enough to disembowel an elephant—looked majestic, and exciting.

Cerberus came closer still. His three heads swayed a little, sniffing the air. Foam dripped from his three muzzles. Never had I seen a more powerful creature in all my life. And I found it so very exciting.

He paused before me and one of his three heads tilted to one side as its ears perked up. The other two heads watched me closely, still growling just under its breath. Its center head was doing the thinking, while the other two remained on guard. Indeed, I closely associated with my own center head. The other two seemed almost independent, although I was aware of everything they were seeing and sensing. A strange sensation, at best.

But I wasn’t putting much thought into the strangeness of having three heads. In fact, I wasn’t putting much thought into anything at the moment. I was focused on the creature before me. The powerfully perfect canine approaching me, whose deep-throated growls filled the small space.

He came closer still, his body tense, ready to pounce. I knew my magic was such that I was his ideal female, his greatest love, if possible. Would that be enough to spare my life? I didn’t know, and so I waited.

His claws clicked on the dust-covered floor. His growling turned into chuffing and snorting. And then the center head dipped forward and his thick ears folded back.

And Cerberus, the great guardian to the Underworld, nuzzled me affectionately.

***

The nuzzling didn’t last long.

Cerberus reared back, growling deeply from his three throats. Words next appeared in my mind, which did not surprise me. Many of the magical and supernatural entities who inhabit the earth and Djinnland alike speak telepathically.

You are a nymph.

Indeed I am, Great Cerberus.

You lured me from my post.

I did.

Why?

Admittedly, I was having trouble focusing. I was fully invested in this incarnation, and the powerful site of Cerberus was making thinking and speaking difficult.

There are those who seek to unlock the Gates of Hades, I thought. We are here to stop them.

Fool! It is my job to stop them. No one gets past me unless I leave my post. And thanks to you, I have.

Heady thoughts of amour quickly dissipated from my thoughts. So much so, that I returned to my regular form. What do you mean?

The head to my left closed its eyes and the beast grew silent. They are crossing now. I can see them now. Damnation.

Yes, I quickly thought. My friends are indeed crossing. To guard the gate—

One of you is very much not a friend. One of you is not who she claims to be. One of you is a god. You have been used and manipulated, and I was just foolish enough to fall for your shapely tail. The three heads growled deeply.

I did not know—

Of course not, nymph. Mortals and even immortals should never play in the realms of the gods. Now, climb on my back and let’s go.

I did as I was told, and soon we were racing back through the tunnels, twisting and winding, and I was suddenly thankful to be riding high upon the great guardian, for I was certain I might have been endlessly lost.

Cerberus picked up on my thoughts. A good thing for you, too, since the Minotaur that roams these tunnels is not nearly as forgiving as myself.

Soon, we were back in the massive cavern, where we could just make out the form of a ferry laden with both human and non-human passengers. Cerberus raced along the river bank, following the ferry, but already it was moving further and further out, heading directly toward a dark tunnel in the cavern wall. The river sounds swallowed the great beast’s thunderous barks.

Cerberus next sent out a powerful telepathic message that blasted through my own skull, but the old man continued to pole the ferry steadily, ignoring the three-headed guardian.

Damnation. He’s been enchanted.

I dismounted, frustrated. By who—

And then I saw her. Dea was standing near the others, looking forward, hands clutched behind her back. She seemed to be playing with a ring.

Cerberus read my thoughts. Except her name isn’t Dea. She’s Medea, goddess of lust and temptation. And those aren’t rings. Those are mortals, whom she has enchanted.

Can we swim to them?

The water is cursed and will quickly drive us insane. My master, Hades, does not appreciate the living entering the realm of the dead. Master will not be pleased. I have failed him.

We watched from the river’s bank as the ferry moved further out onto the black water, growing smaller and smaller. A cool wind swept over us, except it wasn’t really a wind. It was the many souls waiting impatiently for their time to cross into the Underworld.

Not all was lost. Not with Aladdin and Sinbad around. Yes, Aladdin played the part of the simpleton wonderfully. In truth, he was a surprisingly resourceful hero, one whose exploits would be sung and written about for years to come. Sinbad was no slouch either, and they had Duban, too. They were a formidable trio.

Perhaps, thought Cerberus. Except the boy is no match for a goddess and Sinbad has fallen under the spell of Medea.

Damnation indeed! I suddenly thought of the magical dhow, and just as the image of the flying lifeboat came to me, one of Cerberus’s thick heads began nodding.

Interesting, he thought. We can’t swim across the water, but we could fly across.

There were dhows on the Flying Dutchman, but I had no clue where the ship might have anchored, or even if Captain Figurehead would give me permission to board, which I doubted.

Perhaps the dhows that had transported the women and passengers were still available. They had not returned, which was not surprising. After all, if we never returned for the others, Jewel and company could use the magical vessels to escape the desert, perhaps hopping from one oasis to the next.

With the river surging nearby, I cast my thoughts out to my sister nymph, Nydea, but got no response. I tried again and again but got nothing.

Cerberus, who was the offspring of gods himself, turned to me. Or, rather, his center head turned to me. I sense a sleeping spell, nymph. But they are not far. I suggest you climb on and we go to them. At once.

I did, and soon we were plunging back through the tunnels—and out into the bright sunshine and the heat of the desert sun.

Chapter Sixteen

I blinked in the glaring light, getting my vision back.

I saw that Cerberus was doing the same; all three heads were facing away from the sun and squinting their eyes. Soon all four of our heads cleared and we were able to look around the landscape.

The dhows were gone, both the one we had used and the one Medea must have used; they had naturally returned to their father ship when no longer occupied. We had only to go to the Flying Dutchman to get one of those life craft.

On my way, Cerberus agreed, and started running. He knew where the ship was because of his telepathy.

Or did he? There should be no one aboard the Dutchman now; the girls had been sent away by dhow for their safety, and the rest of us had then entered the cave. But I didn’t question the big dog’s direction; that would soon clarify one way or another.

We rounded a foothill and the ship came into sight, floating about treetop height above the level sand of the desert. Cerberus ran toward it.

“Wait!” I protested belatedly. “That’s the ship. We want the women.” I realized that Captain Figurehead was unlikely to give us a dhow to go to the women; Medea would have told him no.

They are there, the big dog responded. Verify it yourself.

I checked mentally for my sister nymph Nydea. She remained asleep, but there was no doubt: she was aboard the ship. How could that be?

I worked it out: Medea had been with Jewel, Myrrh, and Nydea. She must have enchanted them with her sleep spell, then piloted the dhow to the Dutchman. The figurehead would have taken them aboard, having made a deal with the sorceress. Then she had enchanted unsuspecting Sinbad, putting him on her finger beside the Thief. Nothing like keeping your captives close.

There had remained only Aladdin, Duban, and the other two nymphs: Sylvie Siren and me. Medea had evidently nullified some of them, too, or was in the process. I had escaped mainly by accident. But at least now I could rescue the three sleepers.

We came to a stop immediately below the ship, and I dismounted. “Ahoy!” I called. “Descend so we can board.”

Captain Figurehead peered down at us. “I don’t answer to you, slut,” he called back. “Or to any three-faced cur. Begone.” The ship remained well out of reach, bobbing gently on some invisible tide.

Just so. “I was afraid of that,” I murmured to Cerberus. “He answers to Aladdin, or maybe now to Medea.”

And your allies are asleep, the dog agreed. I had not anticipated this pass.

“None of us did,” I said. “But we need to find a way, or the Gates of Hades will be unlocked and opened, and that will not be good for the world.” That was a considerable understatement. I tried not to show my desperation, but of course he knew it.

I know something of your kind, Cerberus thought. You assume the aspect of any male’s fondest desire, as you did with me.

“A three-headed bitch,” I agreed. “I regret that I could not be your mate in reality. I did not mean to disappoint you.”

You have not disappointed me. You are granting me my fondest desire.

“Not at the moment,” I said ruefully.

Yes, at the moment. I want a bitch of my own kind, yes. But I am also centuries lonely for responsive companionship. You are the first to talk to me as a person, to treat me as an equal without being terrified or repulsed.

“You are a person, and an equal,” I said, surprised. “You surely know that.”

I do know that. But nobody else does. Except you.

Now I saw it. Cerberus was a figure of fear and horror, deliberately, so as to be able to be the most effective of guardians. But that was indeed a lonely mission. I needed his help, yes, but I also had a fundamental respect for his nature. As he understood by reading my mind.

Yes.

“And if you could become a mortal dog and live an ordinary mortal life guarding some minor prince’s property, you would gladly retire to that,” I said. “Just as I would retire to being a mortal concubine, giving up my position as the immortal Queen of the Nubile Nymphs. Immortality gets dull after a few centuries.”

Yes.

“So we do understand each other.” I took a breath. “I am glad to have encountered you, Cerberus. But now we have to find a way to board that ship.”

I was getting to that, before we drifted. You can be all things to all males.

“I can, to a fair extent,” I agreed. “But they have to be within reach.”

Including an animated figurehead?

I paused in place, physically and figuratively. The figurehead was not really a living thing, but he had been given a magic elixir that had brought him partly to life. He had once been a living captain. Could I charm him?

He must be lonely too. There are very few animated figureheads, and I doubt they get to commune together often.

“Excellent point,” I agreed. “I’ll try it. He will know what I’m doing, because he knows almost everything, but males are foolish that way. He may not be able to resist.”

Males are foolish, Cerberus agreed.

I walked out so as to stand in front of the ship, facing the figurehead. “Captain!” I called.

“Oh, don’t try your wiles on me,” the figurehead said impatiently. “I know what you are, trollop.”

“Indeed you do, Captain,” I said, assuming the form of a female figurehead mounted on the prow of a lady ship. “But don’t you get just a bit jealous to see all my attention wasted on other males, ignoring you? When you know more than all the rest of them combined? Is it fair that you be ignored merely because you are cursed to be forever glued to your ship?”

“It’s not fair, harlot,” he said bitterly. “Now stop trying to play me. I know what you are up to.”

“Of course you do, Captain,” I agreed. “But you also know that you are unlikely ever to get another chance to be kissed by any fair female of any type. Certainly not Medea, who you know will use you and discard you. Only a nymph of my kind will actually deliver. So come down and let us board, and I will give you a kiss to remember forever. This is paid love, but isn’t it worth it?”

“Damn you, whore!” he swore. “I shouldn’t even listen to you!”

I spread my arms wide and pursed my lips. I kissed the air. “You curse me with foul epithets because you resent that I am not giving my love to you. But you can have a token share of it, for a price. Paid love delivers,” I repeated.

Furious with himself for being tempted, he drifted lower. He was male, and this was his fatal weakness.

True, Cerberus thought. It is what gives females their power.

I kissed the air again. Figurehead came down another notch, as if drawn on a line. I inhaled, and his descent accelerated. All the knowledge in the world did not matter in the face of his foolish desire. “What I offer is at least honest,” I said persuasively. “A fair exchange, both of us understanding its nature.”

Finally he landed. Cerberus quietly circled behind, ready to board the ship. Meanwhile I stepped into the figurehead, embraced him, pressed my luscious body against his carved one, and kissed him with an ardor he knew was false but that still transported him. Ever thus, with man and woman. The irony was that because his body was still mostly wood, he could not actually do anything with me beyond the kiss. All he could do was dream.

“You’re such a manly figure,” I murmured, supporting his pretense. It was a lie, and he knew it was a lie, but he couldn’t help appreciating it. Men and women both live for such lies.

“I would give up everything else, just to have this be real,” he said.

“Of course you would,” I agreed, stroking his hair. “Look at it this way: you are real to the extent that you are male. A non-male would not care about my touch. Maybe Medea will lift your curse and enable you to be mortal again.”

“Maybe,” he agreed longingly.

“Now please allow me to board your vessel.”

Now he was canny. “Why should I do that? I already have your kiss.”

“You know the answer to that, Captain. It is because when we leave your ship, I will kiss you again, in appreciation.”

“I do know that,” he agreed. “It’s a cheat, but I can’t help it.”

“True.” I disengaged, then walked to the side, caught hold of a rope ladder dangling there, and climbed up to the deck.

Cerberus was there, having bounded up with one powerful leap. They are locked in their cabins.

“Then we shall release them, in more than one sense,” I said.

The cabins could be barred from inside or outside. I removed the outer bar to Jewel’s cabin and entered. There she was, on her bunk, sleeping like the enchanted queen she was. “Jewel,” I said.

There was no response. Darn! I needed a magical key to unlock the magical spell. Then I remembered the traditional way to break such a spell. I leaned down and kissed her on the lips.

Nothing happened. Darn again; that garment was torn.

Then I remembered: it normally required a male king or prince to perform the kiss. I was royal, but of the wrong gender.

Then I got a notion. “Cerberus,” I said. “Do you have any royal lineage?”

Of course I do, he agreed. Somewhere a millennium or so back there was a royal hound who just couldn’t resist my ancestral bitch. His bloodline carries through.

“Then kiss the queen.”

He was pleased. Well now! I have never done that particular magic before. He came up and gave Jewel a good lick on the face.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, abruptly sitting up. “What’s all this slobber on me?”

“I’ll explain in a moment,” I said. “You were under a sleep spell. A prince kissed you awake. Now we must wake the others.”

Soon enough we similarly broke the spells on Myrrh and Nydea, and I introduced Cerberus to them and explained his key role in their release. After a certain initial hesitancy—it would not be politic to call it revulsion—they concluded that they appreciated this. In fact they rather liked the huge canine, and he liked them. There was just something about girls and small-horse-sized dogs. It did not hurt that Myrrh was telepathic, and thus had a strong connection to the mighty carnivore. Nydea was my kind, and able to assume bitch form when she chose, so she also understood.

Then we gathered in a larger cabin for a council of war, sitting cross-legged on the deck, with a single dog’s head blissfully on the lap of each maiden, Jewel abstaining because she was at the moment the least virginal of us. I explained as I stroked the master head how the slave girl had turned out to be the Sorceress Medea, and the danger Aladdin and Duban were in. Now we needed to rescue them, with Cerberus’ help. He would know the best route. We could take a dhow and portage through the narrowest sections of the cave, then float above and across the River Styx. Getting there was not the problem.

But what would we do once we arrived and encountered the sorceress? We needed to work that out before the event. Or else.

Chapter Seventeen

The ferry moved steadily over the black water.

Medea of Colchis, daughter of King Aeëtes, niece of Circe, granddaughter of the sun god Helios, and one-time wife to the hero Jason, stood at the prow, hands clasped behind her back, deep in thought.

So far, her plan had worked perfectly.

Too perfectly. True, she had not counted on the arrival of the Flying Dutchman, but upon casting her thoughts over the ship, she had quickly discovered a rather interesting fact. Not only was the King of Aragah on board, King Aladdin, but the legendary sailor, Sinbad, and the clever Thief of Baghdad.

Quite an interesting trio.

With the mighty—and stupid—kraken being cleverly dispatched by a smell potion, of all things, Medea had reached out telepathically, as gods and demigods are wont to do, and made contact with the Thief. The man had been more than accommodating and easily swayed. Promises of fame and riches, along with many nights alone with her, had been enough to get him moving.

Although the monstrous kraken had been thwarted, the beast had caused enough havoc to distract the Sirens long enough for the Thief to gain entrance. The thief who had once before stolen from these very sirens.

Yes, a clever thief indeed.

The invisibility spell that had attached the merchant trader to the hull of the Flying Dutchman itself had been one of her more inspired ideas...and it had worked. The invisible ship had effectively hidden the Thief of Baghdad—and the key to Hades.

Of course, things seemed almost too easy for Medea. That is, until Aladdin’s nearly catastrophic mistake. Giving the figurehead the wrong sap from the Tree of Knowledge had nearly ruined everything, especially when the ship sought Allah in the heavens. Only Aladdin’s quick thinking with the never-ending story had saved the day. The King of Agrabah was proving to be both a hero—and a royal dolt.

Medea had been forced to strike a deal with the flying ship’s accursed captain. She had sensed a coming impasse: with the ship refusing to continue on and Queen Jewel refusing to continue the story.

Medea couldn’t have that. She needed the flying ship to both enter the Hinterlands—and to safely escape it. So a deal had been struck with the Captain Figurehead. A deal Medea was bound to. For now. An all-knowledgeable being would have to eventually be disposed of. Such a being would prove problematic in the wrong hands.

For now, though, she needed the ship. That meant getting a quit-claim from Aladdin, as his technical mastery of the ship had not been abated. Only then could she claim its full allegiance.

Behind her, she heard Aladdin mumbling just under his breath, no doubt consulting with the whorish Siren presently residing on his finger as a ring. The ring idea had been a good one, and she was quick to utilize it herself. Now, the famous thief and captain were bound to her, unless the spell was broken. Few would know of the spell, although the young wizard boy might possess such innate knowledge. Yes, the young wizard boy would have to be done away with, too.

She nodded slightly as Charon poled the flat vessel forward, deeper into the dark tunnel. To her right she heard the sounds of another river, this one moving a little faster. This would be the River Acheron, which converged with the River Styx, all of which led, inevitably, to the Gates of the Underworld.

Charon kept the small vessel steady, expertly poling it over the now slightly-rougher currents of the converging rivers. The tunnel also opened up, and Medea saw they were in another cavern. This one smaller than the other, but with no river bank. Instead, the black water rode up high along the slick, stone walls.

Medea was a woman scorned. She was also a woman betrayed by the man she had loved most, Jason of the Argonauts. Just thinking his name now brought fresh pain to her heart, so much so that she inhaled sharply, breathing in the cool air that swirled above the black waters. She clenched her hands into fists.

She had loved Jason with all her heart, and given him two sons.

And at the thought of her two lost sons, Medea nearly sobbed. But she fought through it. Yes, her sons—murdered by her own hands for reasons that even she didn’t fully understand. Medea had gone on an unholy tirade after hearing of her husband’s betrayal. She had killed the object of her husband’s new love, along with her father. Fearing her own sons would be enslaved for life as punishment for her crimes...Medea had done the unthinkable.

And now she did whimper, so lightly that she was certain no one heard her.

Great gods, had I really killed them? Had I really suffocated my two precious boys?

She had, and there wasn’t a day over the many centuries that she hadn’t regretted it, hadn’t hated herself, hadn’t hated Jason all over again for driving her insane with rage.

The ferry picked up speed, and Charon only occasionally poled it forward. Mostly the old ferryman used his long staff to keep the ferry in the center of the river.

But I will not weep another day, she thought. No, never again.

Indeed, her plan was genius, and if it worked, Medea would have everything again: her boys and her man. And, with some luck, the entire planet.

The Key to Hades was, in fact, the key. With it, she could see her boys again—and give Jason one last chance at love. And, of course, free the greatest—and most hideous—army the earth had ever seen.

Just as she smiled at that thought, she felt the ferry shift slightly. They were heading toward a rocky shore.

They had reached the Underworld.

Chapter Eighteen

They stood on the deck behind the Figurehead, ready to proceed.

“Then we are decided,” Nylon said. “We four—” She glanced at Cerberus. “We five will proceed in haste to the Gates of Hades and brace Medea before she can actually use the Key to open them. She should not be able to dispatch us when we’re all together and fully alert. Duban will throw a devastating stasis spell at her while Cerberus pounces and Aladdin grabs the Key from her neck. Once we have that, she should be relatively powerless.”

“‘Relatively’ remains highly dangerous,” Nydea said. “We know of Medea from history. She dates from more than fifteen hundred years ago, and is as cunning and unscrupulous as they come. We may take losses.”

“Not nearly as great as the losses we will take if those Gates are thrown open,” Jewel said. “It’s a risk we have to tolerate. We know that.”

The others looked at Myrrh, the youngest by a fair margin. She had been silent. They needed her agreement, so they would know they were unified. She understood this, but had been careful about being too assertive; it was not her place. But now she had to commit openly.

Myrrh took a deep breath. “I am close to Duban,” she said. “I can commune mentally with him because he likes me. I can also commune with Aladdin, because he lets me. I will let them know the roles we plan for them, and gain their acquiescence. But the Sorceress Medea is something else; she has blocked her mind to me throughout. I don’t believe she is telepathic herself, but she understands it, and can shield her mind from it. I wish I could know what she is thinking, so she is less of an unknown danger. Without some insight into her thoughts I fear we are on a fool’s errand.” She smiled weakly. “But yes, I am in, and will do my part.”

“You are all fools,” the figurehead said scornfully. “You have virtually no idea what you are getting into. But I must admit I have to admire your desperate courage.”

“Thank you,” Nylon said. “Now I will kiss you farewell.” She went forward to do that, while the others boarded a dhow.

“And when we return, I will tell you more tales,” Jewel said.

“I will hold you to that, woman.”

Nylon delivered her kiss, then joined them in the dhow. “I don’t suppose you care to tell us how this will come out?” she called to the figurehead.

“I can’t do that.”

“Why not, if you know?”

“Because telling you will cause you to change your plan, and then the outcome will also change. It’s a paradox. That is the problem with the future; it’s fungible.”

They ignored that, as none of them knew exactly what the word meant. But Myrrh understood how knowledge of the future could change it, because she had some foretelling ability herself and had run afoul of the effect.

Cerberus was really too big for the dhow, so he elected to run along before it, showing the way.

“Possibly significant point,” Nylon said. “The figurehead refused to tell us how our venture would come out, but he did indicate that Jewel would be returning to tell him more tales. That suggests success.”

“Not necessarily,” Jewel said. “It could mean that I’m the lone survivor.”

“Or some other compromise,” Nydea said. “The sorceress could enchant you and hold you hostage against Aladdin’s cooperation.”

“Or that the figurehead was faking it, as he does not know the future,” Myrrh said. “If he really knew the future, he’d know how Jewel’s stories turn out, and not need her to tell them.”

The others nodded soberly. They had no indication at all.

Nylon glanced at Myrrh. “Time for you to tune us out and tune Aladdin and Duban in. We’ll shut up and let you focus while we travel.”

“Thank you.” Myrrh had privately dreaded this moment, because she feared what she would learn. Suppose the situation was already hopeless?

She reached out for Duban. She loved him, and knew he loved her, but they both muted that because the adults thought children were incapable of real love. That made communication at a distance feasible. But some of the thoughts they exchanged would freak out those naive adults.

She connected immediately. You’re awake! Duban thought.

Awake and well, Myrrh agreed. Medea put a sleep spell on us, but Queen Nylon returned with Cerberus and woke us.

But a sleep spell can’t be broken with a mere snap of the fingers, he protested. Medea would not be so careless.

Cerberus helped, she explained. Nylon tamed him, and now he is one of us. He has royal ancestry. We are coming to rescue you, but we fear the power of the sorceress.

I have prepared a mental blast, he thought. But I am not sure when to use it.

We are counting on that. We will converge on her as she seeks to use the Key to unlock the Gates of Hades. That should be a fair distraction. Strike then.

I will, he agreed, relieved by the decision.

Now I must contact Aladdin, so he can grab the Key right then.

Duban hesitated. Myrrh, if things don’t work out—

I love you too, she thought, and sent him a kiss and hug of such nature she could feel his mental blush. Boys were easy to manage, even powerful Magician boys. It would only get easier as she matured physically. Then she moved on to Aladdin. This was more difficult, because he liked her without loving her, a less committed association.

Aladdin, it’s Myrrh! Sylvie Siren thought, the first to catch her presence. I’ll enhance the signal.

Bless the Siren! That would really help.

Myrrh! he thought gladly. We feared you were—in trouble. When Medea came—

She put us to sleep. Nylon and Cerberus rescued us.

Cerberus! The Hound of Hades? Nylon diverted him so we could pass.

He is one of us now. Nylon tamed him. We are coming to help you. When Medea tries to use the Key on the Gates, we will attack her in a group, and Duban will blast her mentally. You must grab the Key at that moment, when she is disoriented.

Got it. Thanks. He too was relieved to have a coherent plan of action.

Then on a whim she tried Medea. She had never been able to get into the Sorceress’s mind, but if the woman was distracted by her plan to use the Key, she might be careless and Myrrh might be able to sneak in. Anything she learned could be invaluable.

And there she was! The woman was reviewing her life history, as if fearing that it was soon to end. Myrrh tuned in, hiding her presence, because if Medea were to catch on there would be a savage counter-strike. It was as though Myrrh were a fly perched on the woman’s head, seeing and hearing without participating.

***

It started, really, with the Golden Fleece.

Two royal Greek children were in danger from their stepmother, who wanted to clear the way for her own child to inherit the kingdom. The children’s mother prayed to the god Mercury for assistance, and Mercury sent the winged ram Chrysomallus to carry them to safety. The ram was a wonder to behold, as his fleece was pure gold. He took the children on his back and flew high. But the little girl, Helle, lost her grip, fell off, and drowned in the sea below. Thereafter it was named after her, the Sea of Helle, or the Hellespont. The boy kept his grip and the golden ram carried him to the kingdom of Kolchis, on the Black Sea, ruled by King Aeetes. The king welcomed them, seeing an opportunity here, and so did the king’s daughter, Medea, who now had a playmate and a fine pet. But then the boy, in gratitude, sacrificed the ram and gave the Golden Fleece to the king. Medea, mourning the wonderful ram, would have nothing further to do with the boy, and was quietly alienated from her father, who should have prevented the prince from making such a senseless gesture. The ram had performed wonderfully, and been cruelly murdered in return. That was the beginning of Medea’s cynicism. Virtue was not necessarily rewarded. She resolved to protect herself by studying sorcery. It turned out that she had a talent for it, and without her father’s knowledge she became quite proficient.

Later, when Medea was grown, there came a ship, the Argo, with fifty heroes. The most impressive was the leader, Jason, and because of the intervention of the Goddess Hera she fell in love with him at first sight. She didn’t really mind, because she was without a boyfriend and Jason was a truly handsome man. When it turned out that he had come to take the Golden Fleece she saw her chance to accomplish several things at once: punish her father for letting the ram die, win Jason for her own, and keep the fleece close by her so that it could be properly venerated. So when King Aeetes made impossible demands for Jason’s possession of the fleece, such as yoking two fire-breathing bulls to plow the field and sow the teeth of a dragon there, which would lead to mischief as the teeth sprouted into warriors who would slay him, Medea met with Jason and helped him. She was of course well familiar with the magic her father was loosing, and knew how to counter it, just in case it would ever be set against her. She gave Jason a charm to sprinkle on his body and weapons to make him and them invincible. In return he promised to take her with him when he departed with the fleece, marry her and always love her. She had not at that time learned how to fascinate men without doing favors for them; that would come later.

It worked out exactly as she anticipated. Jason overcame the bulls, yoked them, plowed the field, sowed the dragon’s teeth, then following her advice threw a pebble among the resulting warriors. They immediately fell to fighting each other for the worthless bit of stone, and Jason was able to dispatch the few wounded survivors. She also sang to the dragon who guarded the fleece, pacifying it so that Jason could get safely by.

That was just the beginning. Jason did take her with him, did marry her, and had much joy of her magically beautiful body, siring two sons. But complications of politics—doing Jason’s bidding she arranged the death of a royal person—they had had to move to Corinth, where Jason deserted her and married the pretty-if-you-like-that-type daughter of the king of Corinth. It seemed there was just something about younger, more virginal princesses that appealed to him. That was when Medea lost it. She sent a poisoned robe to the bride, killing her. Then, fearing that her sons would be vulnerable to retaliation, she reluctantly killed them. Jason, angry for some reason, tried to kill her, and she had to flee to Athens, where, still in her madness, she influenced the king to try to kill the young hero Theseus, the king not knowing that the hero was his son who would inherit what Medea coveted. But the plot was exposed, and Medea had to flee again, this time to Asia, where the land of Media was named after her. But her love for Jason remained, though he was now long dead, and she longed to return to him and perhaps win him back. Thus her present mission to unlock the Gates of Hades. If she could just find Jason there, and reason with him, maybe she could at last achieve the happiness that had eluded her for more than a thousand years. It was the abiding hope that motivated her.

***

Myrrh tuned out, realizing that this so-convenient history meant that the sorceress had known of her intrusion and presented it in an effort to make her case. The irony was that it was effective; Myrrh now understood what motivated Medea, and sympathized. The woman was not evil, merely cruelly battered by fate. She had had to become supremely tough to survive. Why she thought the faithless Jason would make her happy at this late date was a mystery of the foolishness of women. So he was handsome...

Myrrh sighed. Men chose women by their appearance, hardly caring about the content of their character; why not women choosing men similarly? Was Myrrh herself any better? Duban was not bad looking, and he had phenomenal powers of magic, and he was a prince. All good qualifications for an aspiring girl. His music might be considered a waste of time, but she rather liked that too. None of these things reflected firmly on his character. So how could she fault Medea? It was not a question she could answer.

Chapter Nineteen

The ferry lurched slightly as it came to a halt at the river’s edge.

Water lapped against the rocks along the banks. I had to admit: I didn’t want to get off. I didn’t want to face what lay beyond. I wanted to be in my palace, in bed with Jewel, and making deep passionate love. Anywhere but on the banks of the Acheron, the last river into Hades.

Be strong, my liege, whispered Sylvie into my thoughts.

But why has the job of saving the world from the demons of hell fallen upon my shoulders? Surely there is someone more worthy than I. Someone better equipped.

Perhaps, said Sylvie. Or perhaps not. You have proven yourself uncannily resilient in times of crisis. You are a leader of men. You have perhaps humanity’s greatest young wizard on your side. Two of the world’s greatest adventurers. A telepathic girl unlike any I have ever seen. And, of course, two nubile nymphs to bring it all together.

What about Jewel?

She might be our greatest asset.

Why?

Because of your love for her.

I don’t understand.

Great love inspires greatness. We are going to need greatness to survive this ordeal, my liege. So please pull it together and get us all out of here.

The nymph’s words gave me pause. Put that way, I was ideally equipped to handle the crisis. But how? What match were we against an angry god?

We shall see, came Sylvie’s reply.

The air was colder here, and would have been devoid of light if not for the torch that flickered near a rocky path. The path led off into a darkness so black that I initially quailed. Anything could be in the darkness.

Not just anything, I thought. Hades.

I, of course, came from a different school of thought. One that didn’t necessarily believe in Hades, but in a heaven and hell.

Remember, my liege, this is merely a stopover for departed souls, where their lives are reviewed. Those found worthy will go to your idea of heaven. Those found neither good or bad, will end up in a neutral place. And those found lacking will continue on.

Continue on?

Deeper into Hades, my lord. Into what you think of as hell.

I shivered, then thought: But how does Medea plan to bypass the judges?

As a goddess, I suspect she knows more about this realm than either of us. We shall have to wait and see.

The three spirits who had been huddled together on the far side of the ferry now drifted past us. One looked back at me, and looked as confused as I felt. I prayed Allah had mercy on his soul. Soon, they had moved past the torch light and faded from view. What lay beyond the darkness, I hadn’t a clue.

Medea had gone back to Charon and whispered something into his ear. The ferryman of the dead grinned like a school boy. Medea swept past me and leaped off the ferry to land lithely on the rocks beyond. She held out her hand.

“Come, my lord. Don’t look so nervous. We have a dastardly plot to thwart.”

Despite myself, I took her hand and was amazed by her strength as she helped me onto the rocky shore. Duban leaped lightly and landed smoothly. Almost instantly, the ferry behind us moved away, and I turned back to watch the old man ease the vessel out onto the swirling black water, leaving us stranded on the bleak shore.

Never had I felt so bereft of hope. I took Duban’s hand.

The flickering torch, I saw, wasn’t a torch at all. The fire hung suspended in the air. Medea waved her hand and the flame moved before us, lighting the way.

Apparently, the goddess was dispensing with her slave charade. Only a goddess—or one with knowledge of the Underworld—would have known what to do with that flame.

Indeed, sire, said Sylvie. The child telepath, Myrrh, has informed that Medea had given her access to her thoughts and memories.

But why?

By revealing sympathetic and, quite frankly, gut-wrenching memories, Myrrh believes the goddess is trying to gain favor with us.

Or gain allies, I thought. But why go about it like this?

I suspect she sensed the child telepath poking around, and saw an opportunity. After all, I see no one else here to stop her. Just us.

And if she can win us over...

Nothing will stop her.

I thought about all of this as we moved forward over a smooth, stone trail and through a blackness so deep that it could have been tangible. At any rate, it was oppressive as hell and it played upon old childhood fears of the dark. And why wouldn’t it? We were following the very path into the Underworld.

At that moment, I felt a rippling calm course through me, so much so that I immediately suspected the source.

Was that you, Sylvie?

Of course, my liege. We need you calm and alert, not dealing with childhood demons.

Better I deal with real demons, eh? I thought, feeling a euphoria rarely felt outside of a healthy dose of bhang. But how...

Easy, my lord. We Sirens have spent an eternity understanding the ways of man. We know the pleasure centers of the brain and how to trigger them gently.

I nearly laughed. In fact, I did. Medea snapped her head around and looked me, her eyes narrowing.

Oops, came Sylvie’s words. A little too much stimulation.

She corrected her dosage, so to speak, and I soon felt like my old self, minus any fear.

We continued on with Medea leading the way. The flame provided us just enough light to see our feet moving over the flat, smooth path. What lay beyond the light, I hadn’t a clue. Maybe demons. Maybe nothing at all. Maybe it was just an eternal darkness, and should one wander off the path, they would forever be lost in darkness. That thought alone would have sent me into a near panic, but now I simply thought and...let it go.

Duban kept close to me, holding my hand tightly, and I realized all over again what a horrible parent I was. Who leads their child into the Underworld?

A parent tasked with saving the world, thought Sylvie.

I nodded at the Siren’s words of encouragement, knowing that the Stygian darkness was bringing every old and new fear to the surface of my thoughts.

We continued on, deeper into the darkness, further and further away from the land of the living. To where, I did not know. But I suspected I was about to find out.

“There, father,” said Duban, after a short time. Then again, perhaps it had been a very long time. I was only aware of my breathing. And of the flame. And of Medea’s perfect backside. And of the darkness. Always the darkness.

I saw it now, too. A light on the far horizon. Or perhaps it was the close horizon. Or perhaps there was no horizon. I’d lost all grasp of self. Of depth. Of the physical world.

Never had I been so grateful to see light.

We continued toward it, over the smooth stone and through the oppressive darkness. Toward the light. The blessed light.

***

It was another torch.

This time it hovered at head height within a stone cavern with four black tunnels. Where the tunnels led off to, I didn’t know, but I could guess.

“The tunnel on the left,” said Medea, “leads to the forecourt of the Palace of Hades where the three judges sit, and which newly departed souls must venture.” She pointed to the next tunnel. “This tunnel leads to a realm the Christians call Purgatory, but which we call the Fields of Asphodel.” She pointed to the next tunnel. “This tunnel here leads to blessed peace—realms of untold beauty and joy.”

“And the final tunnel?”

She looked at me. “Hell, of course. Come.” And she stepped forward. Into the final tunnel.

The tunnel to hell.

Chapter Twenty

What could I do but follow her?

Some mean-spirited critic inside me suggested that the sight of Medea’s supremely evocative rear revived my foolish desire to capture her interest in dalliance. But she was carrying the Key to the Gates of Hades and would use it unless we stopped her. So I had to follow her, didn’t I? Anyway, how could we have a grand showdown at the Gates unless we went there?

Both reasons are true, Sylvie thought. We do need to stop her, and you are foolishly hot for her flesh. Your problem is that you want to accomplish both, and be justified. I don’t think that’s possible.

“So we have to go to the Gates,” I sub-vocalized.

Well, you could simply try grabbing the key from her neck. That might even work.

No it wouldn’t, Myrrh’s thought came. She would stun you the moment you touched her. Stick to the plan.

“Unless I stunned her first, with a kiss,” I retorted. “I just might get both key and body, saving us all much grief.”

Medea paused, so that I almost collided with her. Too bad my automatic reflexes averted that. She turned to face me. “But it would be so much fun to try it out,” she said.

“What?” I asked, unwilling to believe that she could have read my thoughts.

“I will even give you the Key first,” she said, proffering it to me on its chain about her neck. “Kiss me, Aladdin.” Somehow her shirt had fallen open under my nose.

Don’t do it! both Sylvie and Myrrh cried mentally.

Stay out of this, Medea shot back at them, mentally.

Oh, doom! Myrrh thought. I thought she was not completely telepathic. I was wrong.

“You were wrong,” the sorceress agreed both audibly and mentally. “You are a supremely talented child, but a child nevertheless, lacking experience. I have been on to your plan throughout.” She smiled, projecting the image of the expression to Myrrh. “But we have no need to oppose each other. All I want is to recover my beloved Jason from Hades. None of you should object to that. You can become useful allies.”

Duban spoke, surprising me. “That is a lie, sorceress. Or at least a mere cover story. You know Jason is not worth your time. He is and always was a shallow cad, deserving only of eternal torment. You want to loose the fiends of Hades on the world, wreaking vengeance on it for making you suffer so long.”

Medea took visible stock, appraising the boy. “You are not the mere stripling I took you for. Some day, if you survive, you will be a man to be reckoned with. But as yet you are not. You are young and naive, like Myrrh. Your magic bolt will not stun me; I am shielded against it. You are not prepared for my return thrust. I suggest that you turn around and walk back to the river, where your mother will intercept you and take you home. That will at least save your life, for the time being.”

“You can’t talk to him that way!” I said angrily. “I’ll—”

She turned on me a nonchalant glance that nevertheless invoked my passion full blast. “You will what? Kiss me?”

Don’t do it! Sylvie and Myrrh chorused again.

“Why not?” Medea asked them. “I would be satisfied to be Aladdin’s mistress.”

She would? Now I was really interested.

Fool! Sylvie thought. She means mistress as in the one who rules, the master, not as in girlfriend. She would be your mistress indeed.

“Yes, but he would enjoy it, in both senses,” Medea said. “At least, for a while.” Then she addressed me again. “Take the Key.”

I actually started to reach for it, where it hovered on its chain between her superlatively contoured breasts, unable to reach her chest because of the magnitude of the slopes below. But something in her very readiness made me pause. I may be a fool about women, but I also have a certain sense of danger, and I felt it now. “What else does this action imply?”

“Oh, nothing much. Merely that you are freely trading me your authority over the Flying Dutchman for the Key. We will celebrate the exchange with a phenomenal union. You will like that.”

So that was it. She was trying to seduce the Dutchman from me, so she could use it to escape once the demons of Hades had been loosed.

“But how can they be loosed if you have the Key?” Medea asked reasonably.

Don’t trust her! Sylvie warned.

“But if I have the Key—”

“Don’t do it, father,” Duban said. “She is more cunning than all of us combined. She has something in mind.”

I sighed. They were surely correct. “Some other time,” I said, exercising more sheer willpower than I ever could have mustered had my wife’s son not been watching me. Of course I loved my wife. Of course I wanted to set a good example for the boy. But had I been alone with this fascinating creature I might have temporarily forgotten these things. Men do.

Men do, Sylvie agreed, relieved.

Medea turned about with a flair of her skirt and resumed her walk down the tunnel. My eyes resumed their analysis of her flexing posterior; they couldn’t help it. The skirt seemed translucent. Such a work of erotic art has seldom been crafted in the mortal realm.

“Never been crafted,” Medea said, annoyed by the slight. She had a case.

The tunnel expanded, becoming a grand gallery. Soon we reached the Gates of Hades. They were impressive. They were set in the wall of the cave, huge ornate curling metallic bars backed by blue screening with the words ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE. In the center was a small access with a keyhole.

Medea turned again to face me. The very cave seemed to pulse for a moment with her beauty, and for a moment I almost lost my balance, as if I had moved without walking. “One more time, Aladdin,” she said. “Will you make the trade?”

Give up the ship? I wished there could be some other way. “I don’t think so.”

“Then it is time for the showdown.” Medea took the Key and stepped toward the keyhole.

Then hell, if you will excuse the expression, broke loose. The huge dog Cerberus appeared bounding down the hall, three heads slavering, with a woman riding at the base of each stout neck, and a fourth on the back. They all dropped off and ran toward the sorceress separately, while the dog leaped high into the air, orienting directly on Medea, who paused to face them all.

“Ah, I forgot about the cur,” she said, seeming annoyed rather than afraid. “His telepathy cleverly masked their approach. This may be more complicated.”

Then Duban loosed his bolt. It was not directed at me, but it felt like an elephant crashing through a stand of bamboo as it passed. It hurtled toward Medea, seeming unstoppable in its horrendous power.

And bounced. It struck Cerberus and hurled him back. It struck the four women and froze them in place. It shoved me like a rogue wave, but I managed to keep my footing. And a back-draft struck Medea and pushed her into the Gate. “Stronger than I thought,” she gasped, surprised.

Then the Gate disappeared. It was illusion. Behind it was a gulf, a precipice leading to a drop-off of unfathomable depth. The sorceress had deceived us all. But why?

“The real gate is over here,” Medea said, walking back along the gallery. Sure enough, there was a far more modest gate with its own keyhole. It had been covered over by the illusion of a blank wall. The sorceress extended the key toward it, and paused again. “Aladdin, are you sure you won’t make the trade? This is your last chance.”

She was still willing to give up her mission in order to obtain the flying ship? This did not make complete sense to me. I could not answer immediately.

“No it isn’t!” Duban said as he charged toward her. He tackled her around the waist. Both went down in a tangle, and the key flew wide. Toward the gulf.

I leaped toward it. But Jewel was there ahead of me. Only her balance was uncertain, probably from the recent blast, and she was about to go over the edge into the chasm. I was in range to catch the Key or my wife. Not both.

I went for Jewel. I caught her about the waist and hauled her back onto the firm cave floor. As I did so I saw, mostly peripherally, Cerberus going for the Key. One head caught it. And inadvertently swallowed it. Then the big dog’s inertia carried him on over the brink, and he dropped out of sight. Oh, no!

I’m all right, Cerberus thought. I can handle drops. But it will take me a while to climb out of this pit, and longer to get the Key out.

“You should have let me go,” Jewel said. “I could have handled the drop too.”

“No!” I said, horrified by the thought.

Then her features changed. “Because I’m not your wife. I’m Nylon. I assumed her likeness in case the sorceress tried to kill her so as to put pressure on you. Put me on your finger and go to Jewel.” She shrank as she spoke, and in a moment was back on my finger.

“And of course you are too late,” Medea said, extricating herself from Duban’s grasp. “I made sure of that. I unlocked the real Gate before showing you the fake, so I could have more time to tempt you with the Key. Now it’s show time.” She flung open the smaller Gate.

I charged her and Duban grabbed for her. We met in a tangle of arms, legs, and torsos that crashed though the Gate. But I kept my focus on what counted: I reached out and slammed the Gate shut behind us. That would keep the demons confined.

Good show, Sylvie thought. Now how do we get out, without the Key?

Then I realized: I had shut the gate behind us, locking us in. “Good question,” I said as I unstuck my face from a remarkable bosom and Duban escaped the scissor grip of a marvelous pair of legs. “I will get back to you on that.”

“We have a more immediate problem,” Medea said, putting herself back together. “The fiends of Hades have arrived. I think we have become accidental allies.”

We looked up. What appeared to be a storm of sheer awfulness was about to engulf us. We did indeed have a problem.

Chapter Twenty-one

Is there a way to fight back, Nylon? I asked, even as the dense cloud of awfulness coalesced into many hundreds of winged demons. No, many thousands. Each had flat faces, black eyes, clawed talons and wings like dragons.

We are in their realm, Aladdin. Here, demons have free rein. Here, there is no hope. Perhaps for all eternity. We are beyond even mortal prayers to the gods.

And yet, we had one such god in our presence. A demigod, granted, but a god nonetheless. Medea, of course, was picking up my thoughts. She said, “Hades delights in torturing my kind as surely as he does your kind. We are doomed. We were supposed to free the demons of hell, Aladdin, not get locked inside with them.”

Don’t listen to her, my liege, came Myrrh’s faint but urgent voice in my head. She was shielding her thoughts, directing them only at me, in a way I never fully understood but seemed to be second nature to her. She’s hatching a nefarious plan.

What kind of plan?

Myrrh paused, even as the demons continued to gather above us. Now they were swirling slowly. As they did, I scanned our surroundings for the first time. Before us, black rock stretched as far as the eye could see, glowing intermittently. It turned out that all the childhood stories I’d heard of the place were true, and I had no doubt that the glowing rocks were, in fact, tunnels that led to the fires of hell.

I’m doing my best to poke around without her knowledge. Luckily, she’s distracted by the demons and fears for her own immortal soul. But I think I have a handle on her plan.

Which is?

She plans to use Sinbad and the Thief in exchange for her husband, Jason.

What about her two sons?

Her sons are not in hell. They are in Purgatory. At least, that’s what she believes. Myrrh paused again, and I knew she was probing the demigod’s mind. She’s aware that her plan may not work. Apparently, Hades is unpredictable at best, and the supreme ruler of the Underworld. Obviously, he makes the rules. Not a lesser god.

Does she have plans for me?

For now, she desires to return to the mortal world with you.

What about Jason?

With both of you. She is, after all, the goddess of lust, Aladdin. She can more than accommodate the two of you.

Her plans for me were not important. At least, not at the moment. Escaping with Duban, Sinbad, the Thief and the nymphs was my primary objective.

I sensed Queen Nylon and Sylvie closely following my train of thoughts. I also sensed something else from the two bound nymphs: fear. I didn’t blame them.

From above a demon screeched, and now they all screeched, their mouths stretching wide, showing long teeth. My bowels instantly turned to water.

Allah be with me, I thought.

Just then a winged creature dropped from the sky, landing directly in front of us with such force that the rocky earth shook. The creature straightened slowly and its black wings folded in on themselves smoothly.

The demon was tall and thin and looked very different than the demon I had seen in Djinnland. Perhaps that demon had been native to that world. Or perhaps there were varying degrees of hideousness. I could imagine no creature looking more foul than the one moving towards us now.

“Seven unexpected arrivals,” it said, and although the entity spoke in a whisper, its voice carried easily. “Master will be pleased.”

Above, the demons continued to circle and swirl. Sometimes they dipped closer, hissing and flapping their wings. Mostly, they seemed to be waiting and watching.

Medea stepped boldly forward. “Tell Lord Hades that Medea is here to see him and to offer him a trade.”

The entity came closer, its clawed feet clicking over the smooth stone. Its black flesh undulated with the motion, the long strips of muscle flexing. I shivered. Duban hugged my leg tightly. He was, after all, still a boy. And I was still the worst father ever.

“A trade?” whispered the demon. “The master does not trade. The master takes what he wants.”

“I understand that,” said Medea, folding her arms under her ample bosom. “But he might be pleased to know that Medea, Goddess of Lust, is here.”

The demon turned its flat face to the side, so much so that I thought its head would twist off. “Yes, I imagine master will be very pleased to have the...goddess of lust as his eternal slave.”

Medea clearly didn’t like the sound of that. She had been about to speak, but paused instead. However, she quickly collected herself. “Obviously, Lord Hades takes what he wants, when he wants here in his realm. I am only asking for an audience.”

“Master doesn’t take audience with the damned.”

“Technically,” said Medea, clearly thinking fast, “we are not damned. We are of the living, and should, therefore, be given a special audience with Hades.”

“Ah, yes. The living,” said the creature, and now he stepped closer still and dipped his flat face down toward me and studied me with his round, black eyes. My bladder threatened to spill. Never had I seen something so hideous at such close proximity. “Well, we have ways of taking care of the living here.”

“I have no doubt,” said Medea. “But first an audience with Hades. Then do what you must.”

The demon paused in his examination of me to look back at Medea. “You are a persistent wench. Very well, I shall inquire if master will see you. It’s not often we see the living in our realm. He might have some special, ah, plans for you. Plans for your deaths no doubt.”

The demon then flicked his hand once and three more demons descended from the sky, each grabbing one of us under the arms and lifting us into the air.

Aladdin! came Myrrh’s frantic voice. No doubt she had seen all of this through my eyes. What do we do?

Her voice growing fainter as we climbed higher into the black sky. Duban hung from the demon’s claws next to me, as did Medea.

Just get the key and be ready to unlock the gate.

What about you? she asked, although her words were only mere whispers in my thoughts.

I’m going to figure a way out of this mess, I thought, but wondered if my words had reached the girl. After all, we had finished climbing and were now speeding rapidly through the empty skies above Hell, and toward a palace that sat high upon a steep rocky hill.

This should get interesting.

Chapter Twenty-two

The scenery below changed.

Now I saw a golden river coursing between snow-capped mountains, with people disporting themselves along its banks. How could such a nice scene be here in hell? I could see that Duban and Medea were similarly curious.

“Show them,” the lead demon said.

The minions descended until we were flying close enough to get a better view. It was horrible. The river was not golden so much as a coursing flow of fire, liquid lava from some volcano, burning everything it touched. The men were not enjoying themselves so much as trying to cross that flow, burning their toes. Why? Because on the other side were clusters of luscious nude damsels eagerly beckoning them.

“They are wracked with thirst,” the demon explained helpfully. “So they eat of the snow of the mountains, freezing their faces. But when it finally melts, it is not water but lust-inciting wine that makes them utterly desperate for the company of obliging maidens. But first they must cross the river of fire. They are already dead, so it can’t kill them, but it does make them hurt as much as it would mortal folk. That makes crossing difficult.”

“What a sublime torture!” Medea said appreciatively. “Men deserve it.”

“It works on women too, cute buns,” the demon said. “They become as charged as the men. But they too must cross the fire, and suffer similarly. And of course when they do navigate the river and reach the handsome beckoning men, the men change their minds and ignore them. They are of course mere demons emulating human folk.”

Medea frowned. Evidently she did not find that as amusing.

We flew on, seeing other torture settings of all kinds, ranging from standard torture chambers to innovative vivisection. It was like looking at a crowded city from above; each section had its own specialty, but the suffering was universal. Hell was not a nice place.

We came to a giant castle girt with flying flags. But closer up we saw that the flags were not cloth, but impaled people struggling desperately to get free but only making their condition worse. Some were men, some were women, and some were children. The din of their screaming was uncomfortable.

“Everybody suffers,” the demon said with satisfaction. “Including the spectators.”

We swooped into the main access and through the long passages. There were murals depicting further tortures. Then I realized that these were not paintings, but condensed scenes of actual events; the victims were moaning and bleeding.

Then we were in the main audience hall, standing, the minions gone. There was Lord Hades, seated on a throne carved from a giant skull. “Welcome to Hades,” he said. “King Aladdin, Magician Duban, Sorceress Medea, and four others on your fingers. We seldom are visited by mortals who remain alive. To what do I owe the dubious pleasure of this visit?”

Sylvie and Nylon, on my fingers, were silent, not wishing to call any avoidable attention to themselves. I suspected the same was true of Sinbad and the Thief, on Medea’s fingers.

“I came to proffer a deal,” Medea said.

Hades eyed her. I saw her clothing become transparent wherever his gaze progressed. Had any of her assets been false, as is the case with some women, they would have been exposed. “I am more than surfeit with experienced women.”

“But not with mortal ones,” Medea said. “All your whores are long since dead, however they may appear.”

“True. I long for mortality and inexperience. There is precious little naivete here, and that is highly perishable.” He seemed sad for a moment. “But let me hear you out, sorceress. What is the deal you propose?”

“I will trade Sinbad the Sailor and the Thief of Baghdad for my beloved Jason. It is a good deal for you, as both are mortal while Jason is not.”

I saw the rings on her fingers twitch: the two named men were objecting. Not that she cared.

“I am intrigued,” Hades said. I had the feeling that he was playing cat and mouse with her, one of the very few males who could. What was he up to?

“And I want to take Aladdin back with me, as my second love slave,” Medea said.

Hades glanced at me. “Is Aladdin not married, and with a competent concubine he wraps around his finger?”

Ouch.

“What of it?”

Ouch again. Neither of those two gave half a rotten fig for our sentiments.

Hades smiled. “You might after all be fun to play with, sorceress. But I am jaded. It will be more entertaining to douse you in honey and chain you out for the ants to eat. After the first century I will think of something else to do with you.”

“Then consider my second offer. You like virginal mortals? These days no girl over thirteen will qualify, nor would she come to you if she did. But there is one who would.”

I felt an ugly chill. Where was Medea going with this?

“Who? Speak, woman, while you still have a tongue.”

“Her name is Myrrh. Not only is she young, pretty, and physically innocent, she is telepathic. You would find her completely delightful.”

“No!” Duban and I said almost together before Medea even completed her speech, and there was a surge of outrage from Myrrh herself. I had thought she was now out of range, but maybe not quite.

“Unfortunately that particular mortal girl was caught on the wrong side of the Gate,” Hades said. “I could not summon her, regardless, as I lack power over the mortal realm, and she would not come to me voluntarily. She is not yours to bargain with.”

“You have but to threaten to torture Duban, here, and she will make the deal immediately to spare him.”

Hades considered. “True?” he asked Myrrh.

“No!” Duban said.

I felt the horror and the tears as Myrrh answered. True. She was young, but she truly loved Duban.

And of course the Lord of Hades would do it, in his utter cynicism, to win his innocent mortal victim. Myrrh would do it to save Duban. Medea knew this, and so did Hades. Now we knew why the sorceress had communed with Myrrh: to get her measure.

“Perhaps we do have a deal,” Hades said. “But there remain some trifling details.” He snapped his fingers. “Jason.”

Jason appeared. He was a handsome man in Greek attire. “Master.”

“Your ex-wife Medea wishes to take you with her to the mortal realm. Do you care to go?”

“She killed my beloved!” Jason said. “And my children. Bring her here so I can torture her myself.”

Hades glanced at Medea, amused. “It seems he spurns you again, sorceress.”

“Bind him to me,” Medea said evenly. “I don’t want him as an independent man; I want him as my obedient love slave. The same way I want Aladdin. They can both curse me as long as they satisfy my lust.”

“I wouldn’t touch you, granddaughter of a dog!” Jason swore. “Except to whip your sorry hide.”

“There may be whipping, yes,” the sorceress murmured. “But not of that nature.” She licked her lips.

Now I knew the nature of Medea’s interest in me. It was a turnoff, quite apart from my loyalty to Jewel and Nylon.

Thank you, Nylon thought.

“Since the group of you entered my domain voluntarily, you are in my power,” Hades said. “So it seems the deal is mine to make. The three of you and the two female rings will be freed unharmed, Jason the Greek will be bound to Medea, and the girl Myrrh will meet you at the gate and enter in your place.” He glanced at Medea. “Satisfactory, canine granddaughter?”

Medea opened her mouth, but I spoke first. “No!”

Hades glanced at me with mild curiosity. “You are under the impression that you have some say in this matter?”

“I demand that we settle this in another manner,” I said. “As is the right of kings.”

“And this manner is?”

“Trial by personal combat, me versus you, with scimitars.”

“Now this is really interesting,” Hades said, not at all fazed. “A good individual combat for high stakes is always entertaining. The minions of hell will enjoy the spectacle. But we will need two things.”

“Seconds,” I said immediately. “To make sure the sides are fair and there is no cheating. Duban will be mine.”

“Of course. I will take as my second—” He paused. “Medea.”

The sorceress was startled. “We are not on the same side!”

“We don’t need to be, granddaughter. You just need to do the best job you can.”

She considered. “I—suppose so. There is precedent.”

“What is the other thing?” I asked suspiciously.

“We need to redefine the terms. If you win, all of you go free and Medea gets Jason too. If I win, I get Myrrh—and Medea. As my love slaves.”

“How can I second you when I don’t want to be your love slave?” Medea demanded.

Hades stroked his beard. “I suppose that is a problem. Also, the sides would be unfair, as you have considerably more experience in sorcery than the boy does. But there is a simple fix for both problems.”

I really did not trust this. “What fix?”

“We will exchange seconds. Medea will support you, and the boy will second me. He is honest, so will do his best in that temporary role. That will make the sides approximately even. Agreed?”

I opened my mouth to protest, but could not think of anything effective to say.

“Agreed,” Medea said.

Agreed, Myrrh thought.

“Agreed,” Duban said. That last surprised me most.

A circular arena formed around us. A huge audience of demons and damned souls was already in place. It seemed the fight was on.

Chapter Twenty-three

“However,” Hades said, “You neglected a detail. You, as the challenger, have the right to combat. I, as the challenged, have the right to select the weapons.”

He was right. I nodded, grimly.

“And I may elect to take more than the two mistresses. To the victor belong the spoils, as someone will sometime say.”

I did not answer. This was his domain. He could cheat if he wanted to. But that meant that I could in turn modify a term or two of the deal if I discovered a way to do it. Small comfort at the moment, but it just might make a difference.

Hades summoned one of his lesser demons.

At least, I assumed it was lesser since it was a good deal shorter than the winged monstrosities who flew us to Hades’ palace. It approached Hades cautiously, and I soon saw why: in a blink of an eye, a fiery sword appeared in the god’s hand. The sword flashed and the head of the demon promptly fell free. Hades caught it neatly and dropped it into a sack that next magically appeared in his hand. He casually tied it off as other demons dragged the headless body away. I couldn’t help but notice that the head in the bag was cursing and spitting and trying its best to use its horns to gouge the hand that held it.

“Our ball,” said Hades, flipping the sack up and catching it.

I was aware of running contests, archery contests, wrestling contests and mock battle contests, but never one that involved a “ball.” Balls, usually made up of rubber from trees and imported into my kingdom, were for kids to play with. To roll around and kick. Not for adult games.

“What do you propose?” I asked, as the “ball” continued snapping and snarling inside the bag.

Hades motioned to a stone hoop hanging vertically from inside the arena. “The rule is simple, King Aladdin. The ball must travel through the hoop five times. The first to do so wins.”

“You are a powerful god,” I said. “I hardly see how this is fair.”

“I’m not known for fairness, but I do have, let’s say, a competitive streak. Very well, the arena will be magic-free.” Just as Hades spoke these words, Duban and Medea disappeared. When I blinked and looked again, they had reappeared opposite each other just outside of the arena. Hades continued, “Only our seconds can perform magic on our behalf. Your son for me. Medea for you.”

“And if I win?”

“You won’t, but if, by some strange fluke, that you do, then I will grant you your freedom. Oh, and let’s relieve you of your nymphs, too.” He snapped his fingers and the rings disappeared from my hand, to reappear as Sylvie and Nylon standing next to Medea.

With the removal of the nymphs, my telepathy also disappeared, and for the first time in a long, long time, I felt truly alone.

Not entirely alone, came Myrrh’s words. I’m still here. Hades has no control over me. At least, not yet.

I understood the implication in her words. It was up to me...and perhaps Medea, to somehow defeat the ruler of the Underworld in a game I was unfamiliar with, while opposing my own highly gifted son.

I will do my best, Myrrh, I thought back. Or die trying.

She seemed touched by my sentiments. She paused, collected herself, then added: And if need be, my liege, I can relay Nylon’s, Sylvie’s or even Jewel’s thoughts.

I nodded. That could be helpful, but I suspected that I was going to have to rely on my own wiles and athleticism here, limited as they might be. Despite what my wife might think of me, I had always been a fleet-footed scamp, well before my days of discovering the magical lamp. Back when I had to rely on my street smarts and quick feet.

Hades next dropped the snarling ball in the dirt and ordered us to march off twenty steps. Demons of all shapes and sizes swirled around the arena, flitting between the humans who were chained together. All watching the spectacle below. All watching me take on the God of the Underworld.

Hades was still a head taller than me—and nearly twice as wide. A formidable foe by any right. And as the chanting began in the crowd—a combination of hissing and shrieks—Hades gave me a wicked grin, then dashed forward. Toward the demon head. The ball.

The game had begun.

***

“It’s begun,” Myrrh reported to the others. She was leaning against the gate, her forehead pressed into the cold iron. She was seeing through Aladdin’s eyes, and it wasn’t pretty. “It’s a ball game to five, and Aladdin is already down two to nothing.”

“Oh, camel dung,” said Jewel. “And what of Duban?”

“He’s secretly being controlled by Hades. The god of the Underworld is far too clever. Or thinks he is. He’s taken over Duban’s will, forcing him to fight against his father. Worse, he’s tapped into Duban’s latent talents, and is utilizing them in ways that Duban never thought possible. In effect, he just turned our boy into a world-class wizard, of the likes few have ever seen.”

Jewel paced before the great iron gate, running her hand through her hair. She was having trouble wrapping her brain around the fact that her only son was currently in hell, being manipulated by Hades himself, in a fight—if not to the death, then for all eternity.

“Aladdin has been sitting on the throne for far too many years to outplay Hades,” she said. “We’re going to have to bring in some reinforcements.”

“But who?” Myrrh was presently too distracted by the demented ball game to telepathically see where Jewel was going with this.

For an answer, Jewel stopped pacing and removed an amulet from around her neck. To most, it appeared to be just another royal emerald of spectacular size and shape. But Jewel knew differently.

When they departed the magical Kingdom of Djinnland, King Lamprey—the djinn who was once trapped in Aladdin’s lamp—had presented her with the gift...and instructions.

She recalled the instructions now, and rubbed the massive amulet three times. To her shock, although she really shouldn’t have been shocked, a deep male voice suddenly spoke from behind her.

“Queen Jewel, it’s a pleasure seeing you again.”

She gasped and turned, and so did Myrrh. “Lamprey!” said Jewel. “You came.”

Lamprey bowed slightly. “Of course, my lady. Aladdin gave me back my kingdom. I am bound to him now through the heart.” Next the powerful djinn took in his surroundings. “Aw, I see our favorite king has found a way to get himself into even more mischief. May I presume he’s behind this gate to hell?”

“Yes, playing a ballgame with Hades himself.”

“And let me guess: his immortal soul is at stake?”

“Yes. His among many others.”

The djinn looked over at the girl. “And what’s the score, Myrrh?”

“It’s presently three to nothing. Aladdin is taking a beating.”

Lamprey nodded. “And who has the key to the gate?”

“It’s with Cerberus. One of the heads swallowed it.”

“Of course,” said Lamprey, laughing. “And where is that old dog?”

“Down here, my lord,” barked the beast, his telepathy carrying the meaning.

Lamprey leaned over the edge and chuckled to himself, then looked back at Jewel. “It appears that you summoned me just in time,” he said. “Besides, I have an old score to settle with the god of the Underworld.”

“An old score?”

“The old devil caused much mischief in Djinnland, a land where he was not welcome. Now, let’s fetch this key and save Aladdin.”

Chapter Twenty-four

“But is this legitimate?” Jewel asked. “Isn’t it supposed to be just the two of them as prizes, Myrrh and Medea?”

“It was, but Hades modified the rules,” Lamprey said. “That, by the divine order of things, is a tort, and Aladdin now may similarly modify them. Technically he needs to request my support.” He glanced at Myrrh, who closed her eyes, focusing.

“A what?” Jewel asked. “I am not familiar with this tortoise.”

“A tort. A wrongful act apart from breach of contract,” Lamprey explained. “Such as a pie maker not being allowed to pee in the pie even if the customer did not think to request that it be pure.”

Jewel nodded appreciatively. “Hades peed in Aladdin’s pie by changing the stakes of the contest. It was supposed to be just Myrrh and Medea as mistresses, not the whole lot of us.”

“Exactly. The Lord of Hades has gotten away with arrogance for too long there in his subterranean kingdom, and thinks he can ignore the fundamental rules of honor combat. We shall re-educate him.”

“I have informed Aladdin,” Myrrh reported. “He formally requests your support.”

“That will do,” Lamprey said. “The background conventions have been honored.” He flew down into the gulf, picked up huge Cerberus with no seeming effort, and carried him back to the upper level. The dog seemed satisfied to be carried; obviously the two had met before, and respected each other.

“But the key won’t come out for days,” Jewel said, eyeing the big body.

“With your permission, friend,” Lamprey said to the dog.

Cerberus opened the mouth of the head that had swallowed the Key. Lamprey put a hand in, and reached on down inside the dog’s throat, all the way to his stomach. In a moment he pulled it out again, holding the Key. It dripped with digestive juices, but was intact. Lamprey tapped the nearby wall, a jet of clear water came out, and he rinsed the Key and handed it to Jewel with a small flourish. The little fountain ceased.

“Thank you,” she said, pretending this was routine. “So now we can get in. What then? I doubt we can reach Aladdin fast enough to save him.”

“We won’t save him,” Lamprey said. “We won’t even be on the scene. He will save himself. We have but to be inside Hades so that we are in the same venue. The demons will not be paying attention. It will be a picnic.” He smiled. “Complete with sandwiches.”

“With what?”

“They may not have been invented in this period. But who’s counting?” A big hamper appeared in his hands, overflowing with choice morsels and beverages.

Jewel did not argue the case. She put the Key to the lock, turned it, and the Gate opened. They entered as a group: Lamprey, Jewel, Myrrh, Cerberus, and Nydea.

Inside was a rather pleasant landscape. They were in a clearing in a forest, the ground covered by very short thick grass. “The default state,” Lamprey explained. “When the demons are not focusing on making it horrible. They wile away the dull hours by playing golf. It provides them practice with their vilest language.”

“Playing in the gulf?”

“Golf. A decadent western sport, not yet invented, that men love, consisting of using sticks to knock little balls into holes.”

“Isn’t that like sex?” Nydea asked, smiling.

“Close enough. Now have your picnic while I focus on Aladdin. He is behind four to nothing, so it is time. Myrrh, get back in touch. Time is brief.”

“Do that,” Jewel agreed as she and Nydea unpacked the hamper. Cerberus joyfully went to pay homage to the nice tree trunks.

***

I was behind four to nothing. One more point and I would be done for. I had no idea what to do, as I was hopelessly clumsy at this crazy game.

Aladdin. It was Myrrh’s thought, much stronger and clearer than before. You must do a conversion. Open your mind to me so I can channel it.

I did not argue. I trusted her. I opened my mind.

Something poured in. Not information, but technique. The conversion was from scimitar wielding, which I well knew how to do, to basketball, which was hopelessly strange. I was amazed.

I had the ball, which was still cursing and snapping. It was a rule of this game that the side that scored had to give the ball to the other side, at least for a while. I had been wary of the ball’s vicious teeth, but now I simply smacked it on the mouth, hard enough to shut it up. Then I advanced on the high basket, bouncing the ball repeatedly on the floor by boxing its ears. This was akin to approaching my opponent with my sword ready. The ball was so stunned it dribbled.

Hades intercepted me, reaching out to take the ball from me as he had readily done before. I parried, not by clanging my blade against his blade, but by shielding the ball with my shoulder so that his hand smacked me instead of the ball, knocking me down.

“Foul!” the referee called. Hades looked surprised; hitherto the fouls had all been mine, giving him free shots at the hoop. This time the free throw was mine.

I stood before the hoop, which looked impossibly high above my head, and casually flung the ball toward it, translating a demonstration scimitar thrust. It sailed up high, then dropped neatly through the hoop. I did know how to thrust.

“Lucky foul,” Hades said. “Lucky shot.”

I did not argue the case. The longer he overlooked my sudden proficiency, the better for me.

Now he had the ball again, and I had to intercept him. He bounced the ball toward the hoop, disdaining even to guard against me, such was the contempt in which he held me. The ball was bouncing so hard that its dribbling was worse; spit fairly flew. I thrust my point right toward Hades’ gut, only translating it to my hand sweeping rapidly inside to catch the ball just before it reached his hand. In effect I had disarmed him, forcing the scimitar from his grip. I bounced it to the side, keeping up with it. I ran around him as he stood amazed, circled, and dribbled up to the hoop. I flung the ball up in another scimitar flourish, and it passed through the hoop for my second score. Four to Two.

Hades took the ball and charged me. Good; I had made him mad. I stepped back as if to get out of his way, then suddenly dived at his huge legs, catching the ball on the way. Hades grabbed for me, but I was already passing under his body, bouncing the ball. I came out behind him, turned, and flung the ball far down toward the basket. Such was my skill with the scimitar that even from that long distance it scored, glancing off the stone before passing through. Four to Three.

Hades’ complexion darkened. He took the ball, but this time focused on me. Something flicked toward me—and bounced in a splay of light.

Hades whirled, furious, looking to the side. There was Medea, her own hand raised in a magic gesture. “Magic is forbidden,” she called. “As Aladdin’s second, I blocked your bolt. Try it again and you’re disqualified.”

Hades looked ready to explode. But his own second, Duban, nodded. “Do not disqualify yourself,” he called. “Lest you forfeit the match. Calm yourself and play conservatively. You still have the advantage.”

What could he do? His second was giving him excellent advice. Hades focused on the ball and charged forward again.

And I dodged aside and let him pass, evading his scimitar. Only to sneak my hand in as he passed and push the ball to the far side, never touching his flesh. Then I scooted around, caught the ball, and made another marvelous fling to the hoop. Swish, and it passed through. Four to Four.

Hades took the ball. “I don’t know how you so suddenly became adept,” he said. “But now I have seen your tricks and I will not be falling for them again. I am going to score.” And he dribbled determinedly forward.

I knew I could not match him in straight skill. He had reach and power, and now that he was alert, he would not be careless. What was I to do?

Chapter Twenty-five

I stood beneath the stone vertical hoop as Hades bore down on me. He lowered his shoulder and kept the demon head ball near his hip, shielded from me. There was no stealing the ball this time.

What to do? In battle, I would normally use an enemy opponent’s weight against him—first parrying a sword strike, then dropping a shoulder and heaving him over me.

I knew such an act would result in a foul, and give the god a free shot at the hoop.

He continued toward me, simultaneously grinning and grimacing. He knew how to play this game. He knew he had me. One shot and it was over. For all eternity.

Be still, Aladdin, came Myrrh’s words.

Be still? I thought. He’ll run me over!

Precisely.

I was suddenly certain the familiar single word that appeared in my thoughts hadn’t been from Myrrh. In fact, I was suddenly certain it was from—no, was it possible?

Anything is possible, my good friend, came Lamprey’s words, relayed from Myrrh.

Lamprey!

But of course—

But how?

Nevermind that now. Be still, Aladdin.

I don’t understand.

You will.

But as Hades continued to bear down on me, I suddenly saw the logic. This was a game. Not hand-to-hand combat. And in a game, I doubted one’s opponent could simply run another opponent over. It would be a foul. One was given the right to stand one’s ground. And Hades, I was certain, was assuming I would leap out of his way, or foul him going for the ball. I doubted he would expect me to stand my ground.

And so that’s exactly what I did. Both feet planted shoulder width. Hades dropped his shoulder still, and came at me even faster. He sought to intimidate me. I was intimidated, trust me. Who wanted such a Goliath of a being to run over them? Not me.

Be strong, Aladdin.

I held my ground and a moment later, Hades drove his shoulder into my chest, leveling me and knocking the wind out of me. I caught his expression just as contact was made: one of utter surprise.

“Foul!” he cried.

“Precisely,” said the referee. “Aladdin of Agrabah is awarded one free shot.”

I took my position at the appropriate free shot line. Above and around me, demons hissed. Hades glared at me. I swallowed, wishing like hell that this ball was, instead, a bow and arrow and I was aiming instead at a bullseye. From here, the vertical loop seemed impossibly small, but I knew no magic could help.

The snapping ball didn’t help. I hefted it in my hands, getting a feel for the weight. It was now or never.

I raised the demon-head ball, took aim.

The ground began to shake. A thundering sound appeared to my right. I turned. Something massive was bearing down on me. A beast of some kind with a thick horn protruding from between its eyes and a smaller one beneath. It was covered in body armor and it was moving mind-bogglingly fast.

From the outside of the arena, I saw Duban with his eyes closed and hands raised. The creature had been summoned by him. My own stepson.

Unlike Hades, there was no surviving this charge. I was about to be flattened—that is, until a massive hole appeared in the dirt of the arena, and the charging beast promptly dropped from sight.

I was just breathing a sigh of relief when a shadow passed overhead. No, not a winged demon. Something bigger. I looked up as a dragon bore down on me. Black talons extended. Hades chuckled nearby. In the next moment, another creature appeared behind the first, descending fast. Another dragon—but bigger. The two winged creatures battled in mid-air, exchanging blasts of fire that seared the air just above my head and obliterated a whole section of shrieking demons.

Now the dragons were locked talon to talon, circling in the air, where they disappeared with a thunderous crash beyond the arena.

Shoot the ball, Aladdin, came Lamprey’s words. Now.

I nodded and swallowed and had just turned back to the vertical stone rim when I heard something hissing nearby. It was a snake. I was sure of it, and it was bearing down on me.

Focus, Aladdin.

Except I wasn’t sure whose words those were. Maybe my own. I did focus, doing my best to blot out the slithering form that was rapidly appearing in my peripheral vision, and shot the ball—

It sailed up and toward the hoop.

My shot looked good. The ball had a nice arc to it. I had lined it up nicely. Perhaps my eternal soul would be saved after all...

And as the ball approached the rim, I saw something that made me blink hard. The basket shifted slightly to the left. Just slightly. The demon-head ball clanked off the stone and fell with a thud. No one could have noticed it but me.

“And me,” said Lamprey, but now the powerful djinn wasn’t in my head. He was by my side. And with a swipe of his hand, the massive snake, surely big enough to swallow me whole, exploded into tens of thousands of earth worms, which quickly burrowed into the dirt of the stadium. The djinn turned to Hades. “No magic, old friend. You are disqualified.”

Hades, perhaps for the first time since I had set eyes on the god of the Underworld, looked truly surprised. “I should have known Aladdin would bring his pet djinn.”

“I’m quite a pet,” said Lamprey, and raised his hands and an explosion unlike anything I had ever heard rocked the arena and sent the god of the Underworld hurling back. Lamprey next turned to me. “Aladdin, I suggest you run. Take your boy and nymphs and leave. I have an old score to settle here, and it will not be pretty—or safe—for you to hang around.”

Can you teleport all of them back to the gate? asked Myrrh frantically, her words appearing in my mind and no doubt Lamprey’s.

“No,” came Lamprey’s verbal reply, as he turned to face Hades who was just now picking himself up. “It takes far too much concentration—and I’m a little distracted right now.”

Demons erupted everywhere, filling the sky, shrieking and swooping. Damned humans scattered in every direction, many breaking free of their chains. The round arena began collapsing, but I wondered just how real it was. Medea was gone. Where she had gone off to, I hadn’t a clue. Duban and the nymphs were soon at my side.

Duban threw his arms around my waist. “Father, it wasn’t me—”

“I know—”

In that moment, an explosion from Hades rocked us, hurling us off our feet. As I sat up, I saw that Lamprey had protected us with something that looked very much like a shield of light. Hades moved toward us determinedly. Many of his most powerful demons had stopped swooping and appeared behind him or at his side, each more hideous-looking than the next. And all that stood between them and us was Lamprey, King of Djinnland.

To my surprise, Lamprey called the boy over and spoke to him quietly, although he kept his eyes on the approaching horde from hell. My stepson nodded solemnly. “Now go,” said Lamprey. “Hurry.”

“What about you?” I asked. There was no way in hell—literally—I was going to leave my friend alone.

“I’ll be fine, my friend. Trust me. I’ve been waiting for this moment for a long, long time.”

Just then, more beings appeared around Lamprey, at first dozens of them...and then hundreds, thousands. Djinns. All of them. Lamprey’s army.

Now Lamprey looked back at me and winked. “Remember, Aladdin, trust the boy.”

I took Duban’s hand and summoned the nymphs to my fingers. Soon, we were dashing away, back through the crumbling arena and out into an open field—and then plunging into a dense forest.

Chapter Twenty-six

We hardly got into the forest before we encountered Medea. “Beware,” Duban said. “She is no longer your second.”

Excellent advice, Nylon thought, and Sylvie agreed. They did not much like the sorceress.

“No longer,” Medea agreed. “Nor are you Hades’ second, Duban. But we retain a common interest: to get out of Hades. I want to establish a truce until we accomplish that.”

I pondered quickly. Medea had been an excellent second during my combat with Hades, and she could surely help us escape this dangerous realm.

Also, you still want to get into her pantaloons, Nylon thought.

I turned to Duban. “What do you think?”

The boy appraised the woman with the attitude of someone who no longer feared her power. Knowing Duban, I suspected that was justified; he had evidently learned a lot of magic in a hurry. “If she commits to a truce, she will keep it,” Duban said. “It is better to have her with us than against us.”

Oh, fish dung! Sylvie thought. You will get into her pants.

There’s no accounting for a man’s tastes, Nylon agreed.

I did not argue that case. “Truce,” I agreed.

Medea stepped forward and kissed me. This time it was not an attempt to sexually enslave me, but more of a promise to be honored in due course. I was quite pleased to have it.

“As your ally in truce,” Medea said, “I must warn you: do not proceed farther into this forest. I came out here to explore the way back to the Gates, and ascertained that this is the Lost Forest. No one who enters it can find his way out of it, until summoned by the ruler of Hades. It is where souls are parked until Hades decides how best to torture them. It is not unpleasant, but it is a prison. We must find another route.”

Duban nodded. “I am verifying this.”

That was good enough for me. I turned and walked back to the edge of the forest.

A howling horde of demons spotted me and charged. It seemed that not all of them were engaged in the big battle. I stepped hastily back. “We have a problem.”

“We do,” Medea agreed. “Duban and I might hold off the demons, but that would not get us back to the Gate, and would attract attention. We do not know the outcome of the conflict of titans, but dare not presume its outcome. We need to get out of here on our own, swiftly.”

It seemed I had another choice to make. “We’ll brave the forest.”

“Fool,” Medea said, almost fondly.

Fool, Nylon and Nydea echoed, similarly.

Duban looked doubtful, but did not speak. He knew it was a difficult decision.

“If there’s a way in, there must be a way out,” I said, plunging ahead.

The path opened out, becoming a beautiful trail girt by foliage and flowers. It led to a pleasant glade.

And there, amazingly, were Jewel, Myrrh, and Nydea, together with Cerberus. Were they real, or illusions?

“How did you get here?” I asked.

“We were having a picnic,” Jewel answered. “Then thought to take a walk in the pleasant grove. But we could not find our way out of it.”

“All paths in the Lost Forest lead to the center,” Medea said. “None lead out.”

Then I was kissing Jewel, and Duban was hugging Myrrh. We were glad to be reunited. But we remained in a bad situation.

I oriented on Medea. “There has to be a way out. You would not have entered with us if you knew there was no escape.”

“There may be,” Medea said. “But it is complicated, and I do not know the route.”

“But you know how to find it,” Duban said.

“Perhaps. But that is not part of the truce.”

She’s bargaining, Nylon thought.

“What do you want?” I asked Medea impatiently.

“A deal for the real world outside Hades, at such time as we get there.”

“What deal?”

Medea sighed. “You are not much for subtlety.”

“I’m a man.”

That certainly covers it, Nylon thought.

“You surely are. That is part of the point.”

I was getting annoyed, but stifled it. “What deal?”

“I want to be your mistress.”

“The Hades!” Jewel snapped.

“One of your concubines, then.”

“What about Jason?” Jewel asked.

“He spurns me. My loyalty to him was foolish. I see that now. I want a man who is loyal to his wife.”

That seemed nonsensical, but I saw Jewel considering. A man who was loyal to his wife should also be loyal to his concubines, so it did actually make sense. “What do you offer in return?”

“I believe I know of a person who can find a way out of the forest. Make the deal and I will summon her.”

“Yet another concubine?” Jewel asked sharply. I could see that her patience with this sort of thing was limited.

“Not at all. Her interest is not of that nature.”

“Done,” Jewel said reluctantly. I knew she was desperate to get out of Hades and back home so she could have her baby in peace and comfort.

“Not yet,” I said tersely. “Release my friend Sinbad. You can keep the Thief.”

Medea looked regretful. “I was hoping you wouldn't think of that.” She touched the ring on her hand. It dropped to the ground, unwinding, and landed as Sinbad.

“Beloved!” he cried, spying Nydea.

The two came together, kissing. Love had been restored.

Jewel caught my eye, nodding approval. I had managed to do something she appreciated.

“Now it's a deal,” I said.

Medea turned to Cerberus. “Fetch Idrin. You can locate her telepathically. She will not be far away. No one is, here in the Lost Forest.”

Cerberus bounded off, glad to be of service. Somehow the women had tamed him, and he evidently liked being treated like a pet.

“Who is Idrin?” I asked. “I have heard that name before.”

“Indeed. So it seems you did not sleep entirely through your wife’s narrations for the figurehead.”

“The girl in my story!” Jewel exclaimed. “The one Idris Ifrit befriended. How can she be here?”

“This is the place of future folk as well as past folk. I knew she would be here.”

Future folk? This was a fiction folk. Did it matter?

Cerberus bounded back. Astride two of his necks were two lovely young women. They dismounted and stood before us.

“We are so glad to meet you at last,” the sultry one said to Jewel. “I am Idris Ifrit.”

“I am Idrin,” the other said, more shyly. “Thank you so much for creating me.”

“But you’re just a character in a story!” Jewel protested.

“I am so much more than that, thanks to you,” Idrin said. “I owe you everything.”

Jewel shook her head, not fully accepting this. So it was up to me to get to the point. “Can you show us the way out of here, Idrin?”

“Yes, but it is dangerous. It might be easier just to remain here.”

“No,” Jewel said firmly.

I knew that was that. My wife’s firmness was another person’s hard rock. “Can we trust her?” I asked Myrrh, whose telepathy was good for things like this.

“With your life,” Myrrh said emphatically.

Was I missing something? This was a fictional person, animated here in Hades; she couldn’t have much depth of character. Yet I trusted Myrrh’s judgment. “Do it,” I told Idrin.

The girl and the ifrit walked ahead of us, showing the way. They had similar figures, yet somehow the ifrit oozed sex appeal while the girl was merely a nice girl. Curious contrast.

Belatedly, I also noticed that we were not following a path, but rather were winding through crevices in the foliage. No path led out of the forest, but it seemed that there was after all a way.

We reached a kind of alley through the trees, where the ground was pressed flat and nothing grew. We paused.

“Here there be dragons,” Idris said. “They threaten to consume any souls who venture this way.”

Cerberus strode forward. “No, they have fire,” Sinbad warned. “You can't get close enough to chomp them.”

The big dog paused, accepting the caution.

“Duban?” I said. “Medea?”

Both of them stepped forward into the alley. Immediately the dragons charged from either direction, jetting fire. Duban held up his left hand, and the dragon on the left crashed into an invisible wall, painfully compacting its hot snoot. Medea held up her right hand and the dragon on the right encountered a scintillating curtain that electrified it; in fact for a moment its entire skeleton showed as a glowing internal framework. That was some shock!

We walked between the two defunct monsters and continued on our way as if nothing had happened. In due course we came to another alley. This one was patrolled by a giant ogre. It saw us and bared its yellow meat-chopper teeth. The women held Cerberus back. Duban and Medea stepped forth again, the ogre reached down, and received two water bombs in its ears. Or rather, acid bombs, because in moments its head melted. Disconcerted, the monster lumbered away, headless. Ogres were not smart; it would take it time to discover its loss.

“We work well together,” Medea remarked to Duban. “Perhaps some day we will have more of a relationship.”

“The Hades!” Jewel and Myrrh said together.

Medea merely smiled knowingly. I gritted my teeth.

Eventually we emerged from the forest and arrived at the outer wall. “How is it you knew the way out, when there is supposed to be no way out?” Jewel asked Idrin.

“No path out,” Idris said.

“I’d rather not say,” the girl said. “It’s awkward.”

“Oh, come on,” Jewel said. “If you don’t tell us, we shall have to find some way to repay you for your service to us.”

“Oh, no, no need for that,” the girl protested. “I would do anything for you. Anything at all. I owe everything to you.”

I was curious too, so I let Jewel proceed in her relentless way. What was the mystery of this invented girl?

“I have greater freedom than other souls,” Idrin finally explained, “because if I did not find the way out, there would be a paradox.”

“Paradox!” Jewel said. “How can such a simple thing be that?”

“Because you are destined to continue your life in joy and fulfillment as Queen for a long time to come,” Idrin said. “You could not do that if you did not escape Hades.”

“Yes, of course. But how does this relate to you, when you’re not even real?”

“I will become fully real in a few months, beyond Hades,” Idrin said.

“A few months?”

The girl blushed. “When you birth me. I don’t want to be born in Hades.”

Jewel stared at her, speechless. That very seldom happened to my wife.

“Yes,” Myrrh said softly. “Idrin is your daughter-to-be. That’s why she is doing her utmost to help you.”

Still wordless, Jewel hugged her, tears flowing. That, too, seldom happened to her.

Then Idrin disengaged and turned to me. I hugged her too, wordless and tearful. Beyond her I saw Medea, and I realized she had known. Instead of using it against me, she had honored our deal and used it on our behalf. It seemed she truly wanted our acceptance, apart from escape from Hades, just as Cerberus did.

“Mother, I must take the Key,” Duban said. “It is a rare and potent artifact that could be dangerous near a baby. Lamprey is trusting me to safeguard it for him.”

So that was what Lamprey had said to Duban. The boy was now a full magician, and could surely handle the dangerous artifact. Jewel handed over the Key.

Duban unlocked the Gate and we passed through. As we did, Idrin and Idris faded out. They were no longer in Hades. I wondered whether the ifrit would reappear after Idrin was born. I rather thought she would. After all, Jewel had made her too.

Somehow I knew already that Duban would now have the power to govern the Figurehead, and that we would have a safe sail home. I did not know whether Lamprey would defeat Hades, but was sure that Duban would find out when the time was appropriate.

I looked forward to being a father again. I liked Idrin already. As for Idris—I suspected she would be interested in being somebody’s royal concubine. Things were looking very promising.

The End

Thank you for reading the Aladdin Trilogy.

We hoped you enjoyed it.

~~~~~

The Fantasy Collective continues in:

Dragon Assassin

Return to the Table of Contents

DRAGON ASSASSIN

A Fantasy Collective Novel

by

PIERS ANTHONY

J.R. RAIN

DRAGON ASSASSIN

Copyright © 2013 by J.R. Rain and Piers Anthony

All rights reserved.

Dragon Assassin

Chapter One

It was another unproductive day.

I don’t like unproductive days, especially as a self-employed private investigator living and working in the city of Los Angeles. Unproductive days meant I don’t eat, pay my rent or pay my alimony. Hell, I hadn’t had a haircut in months. I made it a new manly style, but the truth was I couldn’t afford regular cuts. Unproductive days meant creditors would come knocking, and I hated when creditors came knocking.

Most important, unproductive days meant I didn’t get to drink myself into oblivion, which is exactly what I’d been doing these past few months.

I was in my office, alone, my feet up on my old desk.

It wasn’t much of an office—or a desk, for that matter. The office was just a small room with stained carpet, a couch on the far wall, where I had napped one too many times. The often-broken ceiling fan did little to disperse the hot air. A water cooler occasionally gurgled by a sink and faucet, where I kept my booze. An old TV sat on a bookshelf that was filled with novels I’d always meant to get to, but haven’t found the time yet.

Not much of an office...and not much of a life, either. When I was working, I was usually tailing cheating wives, one or two of which I ended up cheating with myself.

Now, as the ceiling fan wobbled above, as the drone of traffic reached me from nearby Sunset Boulevard, I idly wondered how I could drum up more business. Perhaps start a Facebook account? Or even Twitter? Maybe both? Maybe now was a good time to see what, exactly, a Twitter was.

I hadn’t a clue.

Truth was, I could barely use those new-fangled cell phones. You know, the ones that are practically a computer. Hell, I had a hard enough time with my laptop, let alone a computer the size of my palm.

I shook my head, and absently longed for the days when people actually used a land line. When a phone sounded like a phone, and not the latest Lady Gaga song.

I’d always suspected I was a man born out of time. As a kid, I often wore a cowboy hat and toy six-shooters to school—back when they allowed kids to bring toy guns to school. I longed to be a cowboy—hell, I still did. Now that was the life. No computers, no smart phones, no Twitter. Just me, my horse and the open range...

I awoke with a start.

How long I had been asleep, I didn’t know. I’d been dreaming of the Wild West, of the Great Plains, of beautiful showgirls, and of whiskey. Mostly, I had dreamed briefly of long rides on my trusted horse, of its hooves pounding hard through the hot desert sand, kicking up dust a mile long behind me.

Oddly enough, as I sat up and rubbed my eyes, I was hearing just that: the sound of hooves.

“What the hell?” I mumbled.

I knew the sound of horse hooves well. Although I didn’t have much, I always made a point of keeping a horse at a nearby stable, just outside of LA. Whenever I could, I took this horse out—and longed for simpler times.

The sound came again. Yes, hooves. In fact, many hooves.

“What the hell?” I said again, a little louder.

And just as I slid my cowboy boots off the desk and stood, I heard another strange sound: heavy boots approaching my office door. I’ll admit, I briefly considered going for my gun located in the top right drawer, a gun I now kept nearby since an incident with a client’s husband. Long story.

And so I stood there, undecided. I mean, was there really a horse just outside my door? Or had I imagined that? After all, wasn’t I just dreaming of horses?

I nearly laughed. Of course, that was it.

I’d dreamed of the horses.

Maybe. I certainly wasn’t dreaming of the approaching boots, which grew louder and louder. I considered again the gun in my drawer, and was just reaching for it when my office door opened.

All thoughts of my gun disappeared when I got a load of the man standing there in my office.

A man out of time, indeed.

***

The stranger was short, no more than an inch or two over five feet, and was wearing clothing that I was certain I’d never seen outside of the Renaissance fair. And even then, the clothes still seemed off. Just damn unusual. The man’s shirt had a ruffled collar and wide stitching down the front. It appeared hand-stitched, and of a rough material that I was certain I’d never seen before.

Oh, and he wore a cape. Yes, a cape. As in Superman, minus the giant “S”. It hung from his shoulder and nearly touched the ground and was embroidered with a material that looked, to my eye at least, like actual gold.

“What the hell?” I whispered yet again. Admittedly, my day had taken a dramatic turn to the weird.

Strangest of all, was the sword that hung from a scabbard at the man’s right hip. Strange because it was an actual sword. A sword. Here in my office. And a highly unusual one at that. A bejeweled pommel poked up from the scabbard, a jewel unlike anything I’d ever seen before. Mostly because it seemed to be...

Glowing?

I shook my head. Surely, I was dreaming.

I was about to ask what the devil was going on when the stranger opened his mouth and...began to sing? And beautifully too...except he sang in a language I was certain I had never heard before.

And then it hit me—a singing telegram!

An old-fashioned special message. I nearly clapped, and was briefly relieved. After all, I’d been about to question my sanity. Yes, times have been rough of late. I was beginning to suspect too rough, that I’d finally lost it.

But, yes. A singing telegram.

And the guy sang beautifully...albeit in another language. Hungarian maybe?

I laughed and clapped and sat on the corner of my desk and enjoyed the show. One of my buddies had obviously set me up. Granted, I didn’t have many buddies these days—and most were fellow private investigators. And, as I knew all too well, private investigators often had a lot of free time on their hands.

The man sang and sweated, and when he was done, I clapped again and offered him some water.

The little man frowned, scratched his head, then finally nodded. He next removed something from his pants pocket. It was a small pouch, held together with strips of colorful leather. The little man pulled open the pouch and proceeded to tap out something onto his open palm.

A white powder. Cocaine?

Next, the man did something highly unexpected. He raised his open palm to his face—and blew hard. The dust exploded out and quickly filled my small office.

“Hey,” I said. “Why the hell did you do that?”

“I did it,” said the man after a moment, “so that we might communicate. Can you understand me now?”

“Of course I can understand you,” I muttered, coughing.

“The spell worked, I see. Very good. It’s one of my own creations, in fact. The princess will be pleased.”

“Spell? Princess?” I said, admittedly confused as hell. “Oh, I see, you’re still in character. So, what are you, like a magician or something?”

“A wizard, in fact.”

“Like Harry Potter and all that?”

“Harry Potter—” the man paused, cocked his head slightly. “Ah, you are referencing something in your popular culture. Yes, I suppose I am a little like Harry Potter and his gang of adventurers. There is, of course, one big difference.”

“And what’s that?”

“I’m a real wizard.”

I grinned. “Of course you are.”

“I see by your smile and easy agreement that you are using sarcasm. You are humoring me. You don’t really believe me.”

“I believe that you’re quite a showman.”

“In more ways than one, my good man.”

“Now that I believe.”

The man frowned slightly. It was almost as if he was, in fact, trying to understand me, or the intentions of my words. This day, certainly, could not have gotten any weirder.

He said, “Well, kind sir. My name is DubiGadlumthakathi—but you may call me Dubi—and I have no doubt that you will believe soon enough. You are Roan Quigley?”

I nodded, still grinning through all this madness.

He continued. “You are something called a private investigator?”

“Yes.”

“And we are presently in the city of Los Angeles in the third dimensional physical realm of the planet Earth?”

I was about to grin again, but something suddenly stood out: the man sounded so...sincere. And so odd. I still could not place his accent. And had he really ridden up on an actual horse?

“Very good, then,” said the man and reached inside another pocket. He extracted another pouch, this one clearly heavier than the first. I was certain I’d heard the clink of metal. And not just any metal. Gold? “We are here to hire you, Mr. Quigley.”

I was momentarily caught off guard. “Hire me?”

“Of course. You do assist those in need, correct?”

“Yes, of course,” I said, knowing that my grin was faltering a little.

“Well, Mr. Quigley, the Realm is very much in need of your expert services.”

“The Realm?”

“Yes, Mr. Quigley. The Realm, from which we hail.”

“Of course, right. And who’s we?”

“Myself and the princess.”

“Princess?”

“Yes, she’s right outside your door. Would you care to meet her?”

“Er, I’m really quite busy—”

“I understand, which is why I’ve brought this.”

And with that, the little man emptied onto his palm a dozen or so golden nuggets that looked, at least to my untrained eye, very real. Dubi said, “I trust this will be enough to retain your expert services?”

“Is that...?”

“Gold? Yes, Mr. Quigley, and there’s more where that came from.”

My mouth, inexplicably went dry, because I was certain—dead certain—that it was real gold. Real, honest-to-God gold. And tens of thousands of dollars worth of it.

“Sweet Jesus,” I muttered.

“Your realm’s deity, I assume?” asked Dubi.

“You assume correctly,” I said, and did my best to get a handle on the situation. I sat back and crossed my arms over my chest. “So who set you up? Rick? My brother maybe?”

“Neither ‘set me up,’ or directed me to be here. I am here by the princess’s directive only.”

“Princess,” I said. “Who’s right outside the door?”

“Yes, with the others.”

I stared at Dubi. He stared at me, smiling politely. I stared at the gold in his open palm. Then I pushed myself off the desk, and marched past the little man, who turned and followed me.

I stepped outside...and was not entirely prepared for what I saw...

***

The summer sun was high in the sky, baking the mostly empty parking lot. Mostly empty, since it was presently filled with six massive horses and four riders. Three men and one woman. Three heavily armed men, with broadswords that reached well below their boots. Even more weapons hung from various scabbards along the saddles.

They all regarded me curiously, especially the woman. I blinked in the bright light, trying my damnedest to comprehend what I was seeing, but I couldn’t. For the life of me, I couldn’t get a handle on what I was seeing: six horses, three warriors and a woman. Here in the middle of LA. On horseback.

And not just any woman, either. A stunning beauty who took my breath away—and who regarded me shyly.

I realized my mouth had dropped open, but I didn’t care.

I was dreaming, of course. Or this was a seriously elaborate joke. Or I had lost my mind.

“I can see you’re confused, my good man,” said Dubi, coming up behind me. “I do not doubt that you are. Truth be known, this is a new experience for us all, too.”

“What’s going on?” I asked, still staring at the horses, at the weapons, at the stunningly beautiful woman sitting high above me.

“We’re here to hire you, Mr. Quigley.”

A very troubling thought suddenly occurred to me, one that made me doubt my sanity and to immediately swear off another drink: this is real.

“What, exactly, do you need me to do?” I heard myself ask.

“We need you to help us find a killer. An assassin, actually.”

“An assassin?”

“Yes.”

“And who did he assassinate?”

“The king, of course.”

“Of course,” I said. “The king. That makes perfect sense. And the young lady...?”

“Is his daughter.”

I nodded, trying my damnedest to wrap my brain around what was happening to me...and couldn’t.

“So why me?” I asked.

“We can explain that on the way,” said the little man. “Really, we don’t have much time to lose. The killer is getting away as we speak.”

I felt dizzy. “I need to sit.”

“We have provided you a horse, Mr. Quigley. We understand you are an expert rider.”

“I...I feel sick.”

“I am an expert at curing ailments, my good man. Please. We must hurry. We have a killer to catch. Will you help us?”

I looked at him, and looked at the horses—the beautiful horses. I longed to be astride such a beautiful creature. And then I looked at the princess. I sensed her sadness, her grief. Had her father actually been murdered? Assassinated?

And then she did something that warmed my heart and caused all doubt and confusion to melt away. She smiled at me.

“Yes,” I said, barely able to believe the words that were coming from my mouth. “I will help you. I think.”

“Very good!” said Dubi, clapping me on the shoulder and striding past me. “Then we must hurry. We haven’t a moment to lose. Your mount awaits.”

Chapter Two

“Uh, one moment,” I said. “I need something from the office.”

“There is no time,” Dubi protested. “We have food, clothing, swords, anything you’ll need.”

“This is special,” I said, and dodged into the office before he could extend his protests. I went to the desk, grabbed my gun, a box of ammunition, and an underarm holster. I jammed them in place, then was about to head outside when I decided to grab my jacket, too, from the closet. After all, it might be hot here in LA; who knew what the weather was like in the Realm.

My steed was waiting by the door. At least the Wizard had had the sense to bring him up, and a fine horse he was. I mounted with dispatch and took the reins.

“Caution,” Dubi warned. “That mount can be frisky with a strange rider.”

I had already become aware of that. I nudged the stallion competently with my knees, letting him know that I knew what I was doing. A third party can’t see the communication between a rider and his horse, but it is constantly there. He got the message and relaxed. I have a certain way with animals, especially horses. I respect them, but I take no guff from them. I could tell that this one was highly trained. We would get along.

We fell in the middle, with two guards riding ahead, one behind, and wizard, princess, and me grouped in the middle. The horses knew their formation.

The posse set off at a swift trot. I noticed with surprise that now they trotted in step with each other, as they had not when they came. This was a really elite unit. But what would the good citizens of LA think of such a weird costumed group of mounted riders?

“I have cast an obscurity spell,” Dubi said, answering my thought. “They don’t notice us, or they see us as mechanical vehicles.”

“Cars,” I said.

“They are interesting,” the princess said. “We have none in the Realm. They are more colorful than horses, but I think less personal.”

“The Realm must be a fascinating place,” I said, glancing at her, hoping to draw her out. I’m good at judging people; I have to be in my line of work. But the princess was largely a mystery as yet. She was riding lithely in the saddle, her bosom bouncing slightly, her hair flinging gently back. Perfection in motion!

“You are younger than we anticipated,” the princess said. “The record indicated thirty years experience.”

I laughed. “Your record is out of date. You are thinking of my father, who went by the same name. But he died last year under suspicious circumstances, and I took over.”

“You have only one year experience?” Dubi asked, alarmed.

“Well, I did help Dad on occasion, learning the ropes from him. But yes, if you hired me for my thirty years in the trade, you’d better take your gold back, because I’m hardly the man Dad was.”

Dubi made a face as if he was about ready to do that, but the princess cut in. “You lost your father!”

“As you lost yours,” I agreed. “Hurts, doesn’t it?”

“Oh, yes,” she said, clouding up.

I hated that. “I’m sorry. I guess I was insensitive.”

“No, it’s that you understand.”

“Oh, yes,” I agreed, echoing her. Just like that, we had a bond.

“I don’t have much experience governing, either,” she said. “I was a protected child, especially after my mother was poisoned.”

The Realm evidently practiced hard-fisted politics. Now she had been rudely thrust into the cruel world of command. “My mother too. Breast cancer. I had to grow up in a hurry.”

Dubi made another face, but didn’t talk. I knew why: he had thought to hire a seasoned professional, and instead blundered into a novice with personal pains like those of the princess. He couldn’t reverse course because he saw that the princess liked me, or at least liked my appreciation of her position. He was screwed.

The princess caught my eye. Tearfully, she smiled again. I returned the smile, my own vision blurring. What a pair we were!

“The access is in Griffin Park,” Dubi said gruffly

“That’s Griffith Park,” I corrected him. “One of a number that enhance our fair city. It is known for its famous observatory and zoo.”

He merely smiled obscurely. Then we came to the park, and I swear the sign said GRIFFIN PARK. It looked different, too. I was becoming more impressed with his magic.

We rode into the center. There was a kind of wavering in the air and ground, and I felt slightly ill, as I had before. Now I recognized it as a side effect of magic. As with sailing on a heaving ship, a landlubber gets motion sick at first. I was not accustomed to a magic environment.

The princess reached across and touched my arm. “The transition can feel awkward,” she said. “I felt it when entering your Lost Angels realm. It will pass.”

My queasiness fled at her touch. I don’t know if that was medical, magical, or simply my thrill of contact with such a creature. “Thanks,” I said. “It’s passing already.”

“Now you will meet my pet dragon,” she said as we emerged to a phenomenal change of scenery. We were no longer in the city, but in an alien forest.

“Pet dragon?” I asked dumbly.

“Father gave her to me after my dear nanny died, to help protect me. She’s warm.”

Happiness was a warm dragon, I thought. “Okay.” It seemed ironic that the dragon had not been on hand to protect the king from assassination. But there was surely more to this situation than met the (private) eye. Dragons, I was sure, were not the cuddly pets normally given to children.

And there it was, blocking the path ahead. Think of a twelve foot long (snout to tail) alligator with wings, fiery breath, and attitude.

The horses halted, unbidden. They clearly were not afraid of the dragon, probably because it was a member of the party, but they respected it.

“You must meet her yourself, alone, the first time,” the princess said. “So that she knows you, as she knows Dubi and the horses. Do not be concerned; she knows you are joining the party.”

Like a guard dog sniffing the hand of a new person, I thought, zeroing him in as someone to be tolerated. I could handle that.

I dismounted and walked to meet the dragon. Her copious lip curled in an expression of contempt as she saw me. Oh, yeah? I thought, my own lip curling. As I mentioned, I don’t take guff from animals.

I stood before her. Her eyes were on the sides of her head, but able to focus forward. Our gazes met.

The dragon faded, to be replaced by a six foot tall warrior woman, a virtual Amazon wearing scale armor. “Hurt my mistress and I will hurt you,” she said.

Now this was really interesting! The animal was telepathic, and could project an illusion image that could talk. That was a nice device for communication. However, as a friendly introduction it lacked somewhat.

I’m normally a reasonably easygoing guy, not looking for trouble. But I get riled when threatened. So I reacted a bit sharply. I kept my mouth shut and responded mentally, so that only the dragon could hear me. “Do you know what a gun is, bitch?”

“No. Is it like the elastic candy my mistress chews?”

Chewy candy? Then I got it: she heard gun as gum. “No. It’s a weapon. Trust me, hothead, you don’t want to encounter it.”

She was unfazed. “Can it strike beyond flame range?”

I made a quick calculation of the likely range of a jet of flame: maybe her body length. “Oh, yes.”

She considered. She had to know from our mental contact that I was not bluffing and not afraid. I had a weapon to match hers, and knew how to use it. That had to be respected. I remembered another saying, that an armed society was a polite society. This interchange would pass for politeness. “We’ll get along,” she decided.

“Not so fast, tailpipe. We’re both on the same side. We have two ways to do this. We can tolerate each other, staying clear when possible. Or we can work together for the benefit of the princess, who is not my mistress.”

She caught the mental nuance. She laughed, with smoke coming out of her mouth, nose, and ears. That was nice imagery. “Not yet.”

Along about that point I began to like her. “We’ll get along,” I agreed. “What’s your name?”

“I am called Fiera, to my friends.”

“And I am Roan, to my friends.”

“I greet you, Roan.”

“I greet you, Fiera.”

Then the Amazon dissipated and the flying alligator was back. But we had our understanding, and the mental rapport was maintained. I could now talk to Fiera anytime, mentally. That was likely to be useful when things got tough, as they were likely to when dealing with the assassin. I turned about and returned to my mount, while the dragon spread her huge wings and took off into the sky.

“Now she knows you,” the princess said as the march resumed. “She won’t scorch you.”

“We came to an understanding,” I agreed. “We respect each other, and I like her.”

“You talked to her!” she said, surprised.

“To Fiera,” I agreed. “I thought that was the point of our meeting.”

She lowered her voice confidentially. “Please, only Dubi and I know. Don’t tell.”

That the dragon was intelligent and telepathic? I gathered that not all dragons were that way. Fiera was special, and probably ten times as effective as a guardian because of it. “My lips are sealed,” I agreed.

Now it was time to get down to business. “I gather you are on the trail of the assassin—the man who assassinated your father the king,” I said. “I am trained to search out clues, but this magic realm is not my usual bailiwick. Can you give me some more information?”

“I will do that, in due course,” Dubi said. “We can spare the princess the ugly details.”

“That’s fine,” I agreed. At the moment I didn’t see how my gumshoe expertise could help trace a criminal who used magic. But I really wanted to help the princess if I could.

Chapter Three

We rode on.

The Realm was everything I had ever dreamed of as a boy and, admittedly, as an adult, too. Far blue mountains, mist-shrouded forests, trails that could lead, quite possibly, to anywhere. All enjoyed while riding high on a horse, and with a beautiful companion.

Granted, that beautiful companion had a few companions of her own: three warriors and a wizard. Yes, not exactly how I dreamed it, but who was complaining?

I was far away from the drudgery of my simple life, of dealing with my often-angry ex-wife, and of following yet another cheating spouse.

I hated following cheating spouses.

Fiera scouted above us, often flying many hundreds of feet ahead, and then circling back. On one such occasion, I tested the limits of my new-found telepathy with the creature.

Can you hear me, Fiera? Now that she was no longer generating the Amazon image, it was straight thought, not a seeming voice.

Of course, Roan.

How far must you be before you cannot hear me?

Fifty clacks.

What’s fifty clacks?

I heard a deep chuckling inside my head, an odd experience at best. Very far, Roan.

Once or twice the princess looked back at me, only to smile shyly and then look forward again. I smiled, too, but often too late. Her glances were only fleeting at best. The princess was an expert rider, and her hips, I noted, moved well with the motion of the horse.

My divorce had been nasty—and scarring. I hadn’t dated or wanted to date since that travesty. Instead, I had thrown myself into building a budding agency, following in my father’s footsteps, applying everything he’d learned.

Unfortunately, my father was from the old guard. His business had been built on good work, good relationships and good people. He hadn’t had to deal with the proliferation of internet web sites that did a lot of my work for me. He never had to advertise on Google or Facebook. He never had to figure out what a Twitter was. All of which seemed necessary to make it in today’s world.

Not this world, I thought.

Excuse me, Roan? asked the flying dragon, glancing over its scaly shoulder. It was, perhaps, a few hundred feet before us. Or maybe a clack or two, whatever the hell those were.

Er, sorry, I thought. That was intended for me.

Then you need to learn how to shield your thoughts, human. I am not the only entity who can read thoughts. Indeed, there are many who can, and some who are not as nice as me.

Shielding thoughts is possible?

Of course.

And she proceeded to tell me how, a process that involved creating a sort of mental wall around myself, a wall that was created by intention.

Intention?

Indeed, Roan. Intention is always the first step to reality.

Perhaps in this world, I thought. In my world, the first step to making anything a reality is hard work.

I prefer our world, my new friend. Yours sounds like too much work.

Nothing wrong with too much work.

Perhaps not, Roan. Then again, you might think a little differently after some time in our own.

I tested shielding my thoughts, and it seemed to work. I called out once or twice to the flying dragon and was subsequently ignored. Unless, of course, the flying beast had tricked me into thinking my thoughts had been shielded.

All of which, of course, was giving me a big headache.

We continued on as a light rain began to fall. There wasn’t much in the way of animals along the wide trail. Once or twice I saw something large and hairy dart through the forest, but the horses didn’t seem alarmed, and so I wasn’t either. I kept my weapon concealed under my jacket. I didn’t know much about magical realms, but I figured if Dubi’s magic worked in our world, then my gun should work here.

The rain increased. The princess, whose name I had not yet been given, pulled up her hood. I noted the massive ring on her right hand. Did such a ring imply marriage? Or that she was of royalty? Or, perhaps, had a penchant for nice things?

Fiera, I thought, lowering my mental wall. Can I ask you a question about the princess?

The dragon was now only a mere dot in the sky. Certainly many clacks from me now.

You can ask me any question you like, human. Whether I answer is something else.

Fair enough. Is the princess married?

You mean, does she have a life mate?

Yes. A life mate.

There was a slight pause before the dragon’s voice filled my thoughts: There is one who seeks her hand in such a union.

Ah, I thought, more disappointed than I thought I would be. So she is taken?

I did not say taken, human. She is being pursued. The union could prove beneficial to the realm.

Then why not get married? I asked.

From what I understand about my mistress, although I do not pry very deeply into her personal life, is that she does not love her pursuer.

Love is important to her? I asked.

Very much, Roan. And I can sense your excitement. My advice is to let it go. The princess can only enter into a union with royalty. It is written.

I see, I thought, and once again shielded my thoughts.

We were now on a dark forest trail, with interlocking branches forming a sort of tunnel around us. True, we were shielded from the rain, but not the bigger drops of water. The warriors seemed to be tense in here. In fact, I even saw one of them unconsciously reach for his weapon.

Dubi pulled on his reins and slipped back to me, riding by my side.

“The road to the kingdom is fraught with challenges, Detective Roan.”

“You can just call me Roan.”

“So be it.”

“What kind of challenges?” I asked.

“Of the human kind, bandits.”

I didn’t like where this was going. “And of the inhuman kind?”

“Orcs.”

“What, exactly, is an orc?”

“Blood-thirsty beasts. Humanoid but not human. They thrive on death and destruction. Not very pleasant creatures.”

I shifted my gun handle a little, for easier access. The orcs didn’t sound pleasant at all. I sat a little straighter in my saddle, and scanned the surroundings.

“Don’t fear, Roan,” said Dubi. “The horses will alert us first to the orcs. It’s the bandits we have to fear most.”

I nodded and decided that the kingdom was suddenly decidedly less enchanting than I had first thought. You take the good with the bad, I supposed.

“Why do you need my help, Dubi? I’m not even of your world.”

“It was seen that you would help us, Roan.”

“Seen by who?”

He glanced at me. “By me.”

“Except you actually saw my father, and ended up with me.”

“Perhaps.”

“Trust me, I’m not even half as good as my father...” I trailed off. It was still hard talking about my father.

“Perhaps we are not looking for a good man,” said Roan.

“I don’t understand.”

“Perhaps we are looking for the right man.”

I frowned, puzzling through his words, realizing that I might very well be in way over my head—and wondering just how I might get back home. I hadn’t thought about that. I had been so eager to get away, that I never stopped to think how I might get back.

I was just about to ask that very question, when something that looked remarkably like an arrow shaft suddenly appeared in the back of the guard directly in front of the princess.

“Bandits!” someone shouted.

Chapter Four

The wounded guard fell off his horse, obviously dead. The two remaining guards whirled on their steeds, drawing their swords and they lifted their small shields. Dubi’s horse lurched closer to mine. “Stay close,” he snapped. “I have a shield.”

Indeed, more arrows were already flying, and veering off as they were about to strike us. It was as though there were an invisible metal cone around us that deflected the shafts. Unfortunately the bandits were also invisible, effectively hidden in the foliage. How many arrows could the shield stop? We were sitting ducks.

“The princess!” I said. For she was sitting on her horse, a little apart, making no effort to hide or escape.

“She has her own shield,” Dubi said. “Anyway, they won’t try to kill her.”

“Why not?” I asked as my eyes scanned the network of foliage around us, trying to spot the attacking bandits.

“She’s worth more in ransom than all the rest of us together. They mean to kill us and take her.”

Now I had the picture. “I need to get out of your shield.”

“You may be ignorant, but you’re not crazy. Stay put.”

“If the shield stops arrows, it may also stop bullets. I can’t shoot through it.”

“If a bullet is like an arrow, that is true. However you are safe here. Let the guards handle it. They are competent.”

“One’s already dead. I have to help.”

“Do not risk yourself unnecessarily.”

But I was already dismounting and forging forward, escaping the shield as I drew my gun. Fiera!

I can’t get there in time. The branches balk me from reaching you, and I could not fly in that restricted place anyway. It is a cunning ambush.

Yes, the bandits had chosen well, to nullify the princess’ primary defense. They must have shielded their thoughts so the dragon was not alerted to their presence as we approached. But my siege mentality was already operating. Strafe the foliage from above. Set it on fire.

She was dubious. This will not halt the attack.

Don’t debate it! I snapped. Do it!

I felt her circling, orienting. Then I saw fire in the treetops, blasting down between the branches, scorching the leaves, setting the twigs afire. The tunnel of our path was becoming a tube of flames. Good. Now land ahead and come back here afoot.

She did not argue, perceiving what was in my mind. Meanwhile the fire spread.

“Yow!” a man cried as he got burned.

That identified his location. I shot him. He groaned and dropped to the ground, not knowing what else had hit him.

“Hey!” I fired at that sound too, and he groaned and fell. How many are there? I asked Fiera.

Six.

So there were four to go. I saw a figure move, avoiding the flame, and shot him too. Three down.

Now the guards, a bit slow on the uptake, advanced on the flames, swords ready.

I am impressed with your gun, Fiera thought.

Job’s not finished. I scanned the flames for the others.

A guard returned to stand beside me. He thought it was all over?

Something flashed from a low tangle. I realized that it was another bandit, this one with a crossbow, so I hadn’t seen any motion of drawing an arrow. I whirled to plug him, and knew I got him, but the bolt was already on the way. It was too late even to duck.

The guard beside me extended the flat of his sword in a lightning motion. The bolt smacked into it, emitting a cracking sound and a spark before dropping to the ground. Right in front of my face.

I stared at the fallen bolt, then at the guard. He had acted with precision, the moment it was required, intercepting the bolt in mid air. He had known exactly what he was doing.

“You boys didn’t even need my help,” I said. “Reflexes like that—”

He merely turned away.

The last two bandits are fleeing. They have seen your weapon in action. The numbers are no longer in their favor.

Oh, shit! Can you point me to a bandit?

Why? We have won this engagement. There is no longer danger from them.

Just do it, please.

Then through the brush and diminishing flames I saw a figure, hunching down, running clumsily away. Thanks! I launched myself into pursuit.

I think the bandit might have outrun me, but it never occurred to him that I would be reversing the attack. By the time he saw me I was close enough to tackle him. I brought him down hard, then wrestled one of his arms behind in a hammerlock. “Stop struggling,” I told him.

Realizing that I had the advantage, not to mention the pain hold, he obeyed. I let him go and stepped back, holding the gun on him. “Make my day,” I said.

He might not know the reference, but he was pretty sure I could hurt him if he gave me reason. Certainly the two guards could. He stood up, facing me, silent.

Dubi and the princess came up. “Kill him,” Dubi said. “He’s dangerous. He will strike the moment he gets the chance.”

“Not yet,” I said. “I’m waiting for the dragon.”

Fiera was already approaching. Kill him. He’s a treacherous knave.

I spoke to the bandit. “What’s your name?”

He paused briefly, then answered. “Boffo.”

True. But that’s about all he’ll tell you.

“Boffo, I need to know who sent you here, and why.”

He gazed at me with something like a sneer hovering in the vicinity of his ugly face. He was concluding that I was an ignoramus who could be fooled. “You’re obviously wealthy travelers with gold to steal and a pretty wench to rape. So we went after you. It’s what we do for a living.”

He’s lying.

“Now Boffo, there are two ways we can do this,” I said seriously. “You can answer my questions as fully and honestly as possible, and I will let you go unharmed. Or you can be balky, or try to lie to me, and I will have the dragon roast you alive. It will take you a while to die in utter agony with your skin fried; you wouldn’t like it. You have three chances. You have used up one. I ask you again: who sent you, and why?”

“I already answered you, idiot!”

“That’s two.” I glanced at the dragon, who obligingly puffed out a little cloud of smoke. “Final time: who?”

Now the bandit realized that he was done. “We were ordered to intercept you here. To kill the men and take the princess captive, for ransom.”

True.

“That’s better. Who ordered you?”

“I don’t know,” he said, alarmed. “I swear! I’m just a lowly bandit; our leader got the order. He’s gone.”

True.

I considered. So I had gotten the wrong man. It had hardly been worth it. All I had done was confirm what we pretty well knew already: they were after the princess.

I sighed. “Okay. I gave my word. Take off.”

But Boffo just stood there. “I can’t.”

This was curious. “Why not?”

“Because now I’ve squealed, I’ll be marked for death. You might as well kill me. Only not by burning alive. Make it fast and clean.”

True.

I sighed again. That would teach me to give my word ignorantly. Well, I would have to work it out. “We now have a spare horse. We’ll take you to where you aren’t known, and let you go there. Will that do?”

He eyed me cannily. “Sure. But they’ll track me down regardless.”

I thought fast. “Okay. We’ll garb you like the dead guard, and you’ll take his place. We’ll put your clothes on his body and scorch it so it’s unrecognizable. Then they’ll figure you’re dead and won’t look for you. You’ll be free and safe as long as you stay well clear of your former associates.”

Boffo nodded. “That might work.”

He takes you for a fool for keeping your word. He’ll back-stab you when he has the chance and make a run for it. He’s a complete rogue; he can’t be trusted.

Damn. Why had I ever messed in with this business? I just kept getting in deeper.

The princess stepped forward. “I will handle it.”

I was surprised. “You will handle this rogue? How?”

“I will kiss him. Then he will behave.”

“You can’t trust him!” I protested. “He’d as soon rape you as look at you!”

“You got that right, rube,” Boffo muttered. “She’s a looker.”

The princess went to the bandit. She took his head between her hands, held it in place, and kissed him on the lips. I simply stared, appalled by her naivete.

Then Boffo dropped to his knees. “Lady!” he cried. “I worship you! Command me.”

“Just do as Sir Roan says.” She turned away from him. “He is now my love slave,” she told me. “He will not harm me or betray me in any way. The effect will last about three days. That should be time enough.”

True.

“I’ll be dipped in spit,” I breathed. I had just learned something astonishing about the princess. She was not at all defenseless. In fact, no member of this party was any pushover. Then it hit me: Sir Roan?

She gave you a title to facilitate your work. That is her prerogative.

Oh. We made the exchange, while the princess discreetly faced away, laying the dead guard in the path in the bandit’s clothes and scorching him enough. The others we left where they had fallen. The surviving bandits would discover them in due course and perhaps take warning.

“We shall have to notify the guard’s kin that he died honorably,” I said. “But that we could not recover his body.”

“It shall be done,” Dubi said. “These men are accustomed to hardship and death. His kin will be well taken care of.”

“They shall be,” the princess agreed.

Boffo was now in the guard’s clothing and armor, girt with his weapons. It was a reasonable fit, considering he was not as large or muscular as the guard. “I had hoped to take this outfit as booty,” he said. “Now I don’t care, as long as I can serve the princess.”

Then we all mounted and resumed our trek. “I think we found the right man,” Dubi said.

“No way! I fouled everything up and had to be bailed out by the princess.”

“You did not lose your wits in a crisis,” he said. “You acted with dispatch, organizing an effective counterattack. You used your weapon to excellent effect. You obtained necessary information. You worked out a feasible continuation when there was a problem. This is the kind of assistance we require. Neither the princess nor I are good organizers or fighters. You will do.”

“I just did what I had to do. If I’d had more time, I would have figured out something better. As it was, it was ragged.” And I had needed to be saved by a guard.

“Cease debating, or the princess will kiss you.”

I glanced at the princess, and she met my gaze and smiled faintly. She didn’t need to kiss me to wipe out my individual volition; she was well on the way to doing that already. I shut up.

I realized that when Fiera had teased me about the princess becoming my mistress, she had meant it in the same way as Boffo. My absolute ruler. She had literal magic.

True.

And what other significant things did I have to learn about the Realm? I feared I was in way over my head. Yet such was the inherent magic of the situation, I did not mind. Much of what I had daydreamed about before, was actually coming to pass, in its weird fashion.

I noticed that Boffo, riding in the guard’s place just ahead of us, was scowling. I moved up to talk to him. “You look angry. What’s the problem? Haven’t I treated you fairly?”

“I don’t have to talk to you, pisshead!” he said gruffly. I was intrigued by the way the language translation spell handled insults. “We made a deal. That’s all.”

“A deal in the interest of protecting the princess,” I reminded him. “I’m still learning about this Realm.”

“I love her, not you.”

He was starting to get to me. “I am working for her. She would be dismayed if you balked my helping her.”

He was rebelliously silent. I glanced back to catch the eye of the princess. She cleared her throat loud enough to be heard.

Boffo melted. “What do you want? I’ve told you what little I know.”

“I want to know why you were scowling.”

“That’s relevant?”

“It could be.”

“It’s not you,” he said. “I am not your friend. You’re a foreign simpleton, but you kept your word. I’m not mad at you.”

So he was being honest. “Who, then?”

“At the traitor who gave us the assignment. We were set up.”

“You were set up?”

“Sent to ambush a party with masked Class A Warriors. Might as well ambush a dragon with a toothpick. We weren’t supposed to succeed. We got wiped out just to make a stupid point. We’d never have taken the mission if we had known.”

This is interesting. I am reading his thoughts as they come to the surface.

I found it interesting too, remembering the almost casual way the guard had saved my life. Those were inhuman reflexes. A Class A Warrior? I had sudden respect. The bandit didn’t even know about the mental powers of the dragon, and I was not about to tell him. This was a truly high-powered party. “Why, then?”

“That’s what I’m figuring out now. The only thing I can think of is as a warning to the princess: she faces real danger if she persists in trying to be independent.”

“And what about me?”

“What about you? Why did they make a risky trip to pick up a doofus like you? They certainly didn’t need you to defend them, even with your deadly alien weapon. There’s something else going on.”

Exactly my conclusion. Too bad it had required a scoundrel bandit to reason out the obvious. I suspected it would be pointless to ask either Dubi or the princess. Especially if I, too, were being set up in some way.

Those guards had been slow to react, letting me take the lead. Why? Because they were under orders to let me do my stuff, as long as I didn’t hurt myself. So I had performed, like a seal at a water show, and it seemed Dubi and the princess were satisfied. Did they really need a foreign private eye? That seemed unlikely. But that left the mystery of why they had gone to the trouble of fetching me from L.A., and why the princess was being nice to me.

Are you in on this, Fiera?

No. I share your confusion. They clearly need you for something, but not for what we thought.

That was vaguely reassuring. The others might have secrets, but the dragon was being straight with me.

True.

“You’re catching on,” Boffo said. “You’re another patsy, like me.”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

“No? At least I know my love for the princess is magic, and will wear off. The irony is that I don’t even want it to; I want to grovel at her hem forever. But she didn’t kiss you. What’s your excuse?”

“You asshole!” I muttered.

He merely looked knowingly at me.

I left him and fell back to rejoin the princess, saying nothing about anything. What would be the point?

Chapter Five

We continued on.

Admittedly, I wasn’t sure what the hell was going on. In fact, I wasn’t even entirely sure I hadn’t completely lost my mind back there in my office in Los Angeles. Maybe I had. But if riding high upon a powerful horse, with a telepathic dragon flying above and a beautiful princess before me meant that I was going crazy...well, sign me up.

If this is crazy, I don’t want to be sane.

True, I may not know what the hell was going on, and, yes, I might currently be babbling incoherently in some insane asylum, but the one thing I was sure of was this: I had been hired to do a job. I had been hired to track down a killer. An assassin.

Insane or not, I was damn well going to finish the job—and collect that pouch of gold, too.

As I was idly wondering just how I would actually deposit a pouch of gold over at my bank, the forest trail opened onto a grassy meadow and, in the far distance, I could see an actual castle.

We soon came upon all manner of dwellings, from small thatched homes, to bigger stone structures. All who saw us bowed deeply, many smiling at the princess. I noted the guards closed ranks around her, although she didn’t notice. She smiled back and even waved.

So she was a kind ruler, well-loved by those in the Realm. Although I was not surprised, this greatly relieved me. I would have questioned my judgment had I discovered I was smitten by someone cruel and reviled. And the one thing an investigator can never do is question his judgment or assessment of people. Sometimes that was the only thing we had.

The grassy meadow soon turned into a cobblestone road and now we were in a bustling village. Everywhere we went, people bowed and smiled, but if they got too close the guards gently pushed them aside.

Fiera, I noted, had briefly disappeared.

Where are you? I asked the dragon.

Nearby. The villagers tend to panic when they see me or my shadow.

But you are a good dragon.

Not always. I’m a protective dragon, which means I will burn you to a crisp, too, if I think you are a threat to my mistress.

Understood, I thought, and shivered a little.

Few looked at me or the ruffian, although I did garner a stare or two. As we entered the open market, which was filled stalls selling everything from meats to weapons to clothing, I noticed one man in particular watching me.

Every good investigator is alert for a tail, and this guy was definitely tailing us. We’d picked him up at the entrance into the village, where I’d first spotted him lounging against a bale of hay.

Now, he was plodding along on an old nag of a horse, and  keeping pace at a safe distance. Maybe I shouldn’t be too surprised. Perhaps the princess making an appearance in the village was a rarity. Maybe it was common for people to follow along.

No, not necessarily. Most smiled and waved at their princess, while she smiled and nodded back—and then returned to their work.

I kept my eye on him—a short man with a long, blond beard—but never so long that I gave away that I knew we were being followed. As far as I was aware, none of the guards had noticed him, and Dubi seemed to almost be asleep in the saddle.

We came upon a stall selling freshly-baked breads, and the princess held up her hand, and her two remaining guards—and one faithful—if briefly enchanted—scoundrel, instantly stopped. As the princess slid out of her saddle to survey the breads, I tugged on Dubi’s robe. “I’ll be back,” I said.

The wizard snorted and nearly fell out of his saddle. Son-of-a-bitch, he had been asleep. “Where are you going, Roan?”

“Business,” I said, kicking my heels and pulling on the reins.

“What kind of business?”

“The kind you hired me for,” I said, and shot through an opening between the stalls, scattering something that might have been chickens but looked like winged furry balls.

Once out of the busy market and behind the milling crowds, I saw the bearded man. He’d been keeping pace with us. But now he saw me, too, charging at him. His mouth dropped comically—and he heeled his mount, slapping its flank, but the old nag barely got faster than a light trot. He quickly gave up and leaped from his saddle, rolling twice, and found his feet. He stumbled and dashed off through the high grass.

I bore down on him. My own mount was a true war horse. Massive, powerful, fast. And, above else, fearless. It charged through the high grass. It snorted and almost seemed to take delight in the chase.

Of course, human, came a deeper thought. This wasn’t Fiera. I love nothing more than to engage in battle.

Who said that?

Who do you think?

I tore my gaze off the fleeing little man. Had the horse spoken telepathically to me?

Would be the more likely answer, would it not?

The fleeing man looked over his shoulder, tripped, rolled once or twice and was back on his feet. We were getting ever closer. In fact, the horse even seemed to pick up speed.

Of course, I’m picking up speed. We’re going to lose him.

I saw what the horse meant. The little man was making a mad dash for a row of buildings.

Hurry!

My pleasure, human.

And the horse hit another gear, pounding faster through the grass than I had ever ridden before. Yes, a war horse indeed!

Still, as fast as we covered the ground, the little man was just too far ahead. He hung a sharp right and darted between two buildings. The horse slowed on its own volition, and I dismounted, too, stumbling but not falling. Soon, I was dashing down the same narrow alley—and quickly found myself on another bustling street. A very different kind of street. Cops would have called this the red light district. Women of questionable morals loitered on street corners. Taverns everywhere. Two men fighting across the street. One man vomiting just to my right. Nowhere to be seen was the little, bearded man who had been following us. I frowned, frustrated, then headed back to the horse.

Can all animals read thoughts? I asked the horse.

I do not know, human. I’m only a horse.

Another voice appeared in my thoughts. It was Fiera. His answer is a valid one, Sir Roan. As I scan his thoughts I can see he has never connected to another human.

I see, I thought. I think. Is it common for horses to connect with their riders?

As far as I’m aware, no, came the dragon’s reply.

Then why me? I asked.

I think it would be best to have the Magician Dubi answer your question.

Am I going crazy, Fiera? I suddenly asked.

You appear to be of sound mind, Sir Roan.

Which is exactly what a hallucination would tell a deranged mind.

Fiera chuckled. Be easy on yourself, human.

Fine, I thought. Who was the man following us?

I did not have time to orientate on his mind, but I did catch that he was reporting to someone on our travels.

Any idea who?

Sadly, no.

I frowned and headed back to the market, where the princess was just wrapping up her purchases. She seemed unaware that I had been gone. Dubi scanned me quickly, and I wondered if he, too, could read my thoughts. Once we continued on, the magician rode up next to me. “You have made contact with your mount, I see.”

“Er, yes. Is that a problem?”

“Not a problem at all. But very interesting.”

“Interesting, why?”

Dubi didn’t immediately answer; in fact, he seemed to be debating something. We left the market behind us, and soon found ourselves on a cobbled path that led, I suspected, to the castle high above. After a few minutes, Dubi answered, “Only royal blood have such connections.”

I laughed. “Royal blood? You’re saying I’m of royal blood?”

“Trust me, I’m as confused as you are.”

“But aren’t you like a master magician? Don’t you know everything?”

Now Dubi laughed. “Hardly, Sir Roan. I am only the royal family’s personal magician.”

“Kind of like Merlin,” I said.

“Merlin, yes. A good friend of mine, but that’s another story. But, yes, I act in a similar capacity, giving counsel to the royal family as they see fit, and sometimes...”

“Sometimes as you see fit,” I finished.

“Well, yes. They trust my judgment.”

“Why am I really here, Dubi? Your Class A guards are surely competent enough to sniff-out the assassin. Why drag me here all the way from my world?”

Dubi’s blue eyes sparkled. “If I recall, Sir Roan, you came willing enough.”

“Well, yes. In some ways, your appearance answered a call within me.”

“A call for what, my friend?”

“For something more in life, something different. Something magical. Something adventurous. I have dreamed of quests all my life.”

The magician nodded. “In a way, we have heard your call, I suspect. In a way, I think your yearning was in response to us here in the Realm.”

“What do you mean?”

“You were meant to be here, Sir Roan.”

“I don’t understand.”

Roan reached out and placed a warm hand on my forearm. “You inherited your love of horses from your father, true?”

“Yes. He was an avid rider.”

“Did your father ever speak much of his past?”

I thought about that. “No, not always. He was an orphan without a past. He didn’t know his parents.”

Dubi’s eyes softened, and I caught the meaning behind him. “No...” I began, knowing my mouth had dropped open.

“Yes, my friend.”

“My father...”

“Your father was in grave danger, and so the decision was made to keep him safe.” He held my gaze. “He was taken to your world.”

“But...why?”

“It is a long story—”

“Then cut it short,” I snapped, then softened my tone. “Please. I need to know. I’m kind of freaking out here.”

“The king had an affair with a woman who gave birth to a son...” he let his voice trail off.

“My father,” I said, my voice so faint I almost couldn’t hear it.

“Indeed. He was safe for a time.”

I grabbed Dubi’s wrist, the gesture was enough to nearly pull the old wizard from his saddle. “My father was killed, Dubi. Under, I believe, suspicions circumstances.”

The wizard didn’t struggle. Instead, he looked at me sadly. “Not suspicious, my friend. Your father was murdered, as well.”

Something tore through me. Pain and anger. “I...” I struggled for words but couldn’t find them.

Dubi laid a gentle palm on my hand. “Someone is systematically assassinating royal blood. You were going to be next. And so was...”

I looked at the princess, my mouth dropping again.

“Yes,” answered the magician. “The princess, too.”

My spinning brain did the genealogical calculations. “That would make the princess my father’s half sister...my aunt.”

“In theory. But she is not of royal blood.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The king was a very old man when he was assassinated, my friend. The princess came to him late in life.”

“Came to him? She is adopted?”

“Yes.”

I thought I might get dizzy. Although I was still holding tightly onto the wizard’s wrist, I was fairly certain it was he who was keeping me from losing my balance upon the mount.

“A lot to comprehend at one time, I know, my friend,” he said gently. “But better now than later.”

I nodded, and released his arm. My father had been murdered. The princess was adopted. My father was of royal blood. I was of royal blood. Someone was systematically assassinating the royal family. I was next, and so was the princess.

Yes, a lot to comprehend. Perhaps even too much. I thought of my father. We hadn’t been close these past two years. I had always thought he and I would rekindle our relationship. His premature death removed that option.

Not death, I thought. His murder.

“And you do not know who killed my father or my...”

“Your grandfather? No, I do not. The assassin is unknown to me.”

“So you need my help after all.”

“Indeed.”

I set my jaw and leaned forward a little in the saddle. “I want you to show me where my grandfather was killed.” I didn’t know much, but I knew how to solve a crime.

“Very well, Sir Roan,” said the old wizard, nodding, and we continued up to the castle.

Chapter Six

Then I got an idea. I rode over to join Boffo. “That spy I chased—did you recognize him?”

“You figure one criminal should know another?” he inquired caustically.

“I figure he might. That man was obviously spying on the princess.”

“Oh, unicorn turds!” he swore. He didn’t like me, but he had to help the princess. “Yes. He ’s a low-level skulker who does work for Lord Mephisto.”

Bulls-eye! “And why would Lord Mephisto be tracking the princess?”

“He’s a rival claimant to the throne. Distant lineage, no chance unless all royals are gone.” Then he did a double-take. “That’s why we were sent after the princess. Not for hostage, but for Mephisto to marry, so he could claim the throne. If by some freak mischance we killed the Warriors and actually captured her.”

“You don’t approve?”

“It’d have been fine with me. Until she kissed me. Now I want to cut his balls off and stuff them up his rump before I start torturing him.”

What a difference love made! “Thank you,” I said unnecessarily, and rejoined Dubi. “That spy I chased—he works for Lord Mephisto.”

“Who is number one on my suspicion list,” Dubi said darkly. “But we can’t prove it.”

And couldn’t risk an accusation without solid evidence. Ever thus. They did need my services.

We came to the castle. It was a fine fortress in itself, with a moat formed by a divided river, massive outer walls, and lofty turrets. The drawbridge cranked down and clanked into place so we could ride across. I saw crossbows lining the crenelated wall immediately ahead; no unwanted intruders would pass.

But once we passed the exterior battlements, the castle was surprisingly gracious. Tapestries were hung on the walls, and ornamental plants decorated the courtyard where we dismounted. Grooms came to take the horses.

“We will rejoin you soon, princess,” Dubi said. Then he led me down a side hall, through winding passages, and up a spiral staircase to a crowded chamber about five stories up. It was lined with books and dolls.

“I am not making much sense of this,” I said.

“The king and his last mistress shared this suite, before she died,” Dubi explained. “It reflects their tastes.”

“That mistress—would that be the nanny who took care of the princess?”

“The same. The king and his daughter both adored her.”

Albeit for different reasons, I thought. “She evidently liked dolls.”

“So it was mooted. Actually the dolls were his, the books hers.”

“He played with dolls?”

“Not exactly. Royals tend to have magic. These are what you would call doovoo dolls.”

“Voodoo,” I said.

“Voodoo,” he agreed getting it right. “Every key person in the kingdom was represented here by his or her doll. When they did not properly honor the rules of the kingdom, he could make them uncomfortable. They soon fell in line.”

“I can imagine,” I said. Voodoo dolls were said to transmit whatever they experienced to the people they emulated. Heat a doll’s feet, and the relevant person would find himself walking on coals, though none showed. There would be nothing he could directly do about it.

I considered the dolls with new interest. Surely one was Lord Mephisto. Some were rather pretty females. “What of these?”

“When the king got a hankering for the close company of a comely young lady, he would start removing her doll’s clothing and stroking its body. She would soon get the message, and report for bed duty.”

“And if she was not inclined?”

“She might be annoyed, but she would obey. The dolls can kill, if handled roughly enough. No woman was ever disinclined to the king’s face.”

“But some might be angry enough to kill,” I said.

“Unlikely. It was an honor to be favored by the king, so most were quite willing, and the others accepted it as the price of an excellent castle employment.”

No real motive there, then. “Yet someone killed him.”

“Yes. Here is the site.” He showed me out to a balcony. Here the chill wind swept smartly by, and the ground was far below. The wizard did not venture out onto the balcony, pointing instead. “He was out here when an arrow appeared, killing him instantly.”

“But the ground is far away,” I protested. “How could an archer loose an arrow across the moat and to a target this high, to this effect?” Then I paused. “Could a Class A Warrior have done it?”

“Yes, with difficulty. It would be a lucky shot, considering the ramparts and the wind, especially at night. But none would. All Warriors are totally loyal.”

So they believed. “The arrow,” I said. “Naturally you examined it. Especially for some kind of magic assist.”

“Naturally,” he agreed. “It was a standard issue type, effectively anonymous. There was undefined magic associated with it, perhaps to guide it, possibly to lend it extra power. Nothing I could identify with any certainty.”

“Could the assassin have been closer?” I asked. “Riding a dragon or something?”

Dubi choked. “Dragons are not steeds! They haul meat into the air only to carry it to their nests for more leisurely devouring. In any event, their flight is uneven. It would be extremely difficult to make an accurate shot.”

True, Fiera’s thought came. I didn’t see her, but she was evidently close by. She picked up that thought. I am invisible. The archers defending the castle are nervous about flying dragons.

So she stayed out of their sight. That made sense. “Then some other mechanism,” I said to Dubi. “A balloon, or magically floating platform.”

“That might be,” he said thoughtfully. “In the confusion of the moment I did not think to search for any such artifact, and by the time things settled, it was too late.”

“So it could have been a normal archer, supported by a rogue wizard,” I said.

“It could have been,” he agreed. “Or a rogue noble with a bound wizard.”

“Like Lord Mephisto.”

“Like Lord Mephisto,” he echoed grimly.

But I suspected it would not be as simple as that. The obvious suspect is not always the real culprit.

“The princess,” I said, now that I had him alone. “Why did the king adopt her?”

“I have pondered that myself,” he said. “I conjecture that he was becoming isolated, by the assassinations and his own choice, and wanted someone to sustain him in his old age, as a mistress would not.”

“He wanted to be loved,” I said.

“Yes. Not for his power, not to curry favor, but for himself. So he started with a child, a baby, and did everything for her. Also—” He faded out thoughtfully.

“There was something about her,” I prompted.

“There was indeed. She was a remarkably pretty baby, and grew into a beautiful woman, as you may have noticed.”

“I noticed.”

“But it was also the magic. The magic of royals tends to be personal, sometimes subtle. Her kiss—”

“Even as a baby?”

“Even as a baby, it was remarkably evocative. He saw her, picked her up, she kissed him, and he took her home and adopted her. That kiss established that there was royalty somewhere in her ancestry, making her legitimate.”

I had an ugly thought, but it had to be explored. “So she seduced him, in her way, making him love her.”

“Yes. She was always a remarkable comfort to the king.”

“Could she have been planted?”

Evidently the translation spell took that literally. “People do not grow like trees.”

“I mean, could she have been placed in the king’s way by some other party, so that he would see her and be smitten by her, and thus that other person would have an unwitting agent close to the king? Perhaps to assume the throne?”

He shook his head. “I do not like this thought at all. But it never occurred to me. This is perhaps one reason we need you: to think in ways we have not. Yet the princess is absolutely loyal. I can’t believe that she would ever betray the interests of the king, or the kingdom. She worshiped him, and reflected his interest in good governance. She is also a fine person in her own right.”

I did not like this line of speculation either, and was glad to know the princess was as nice as she seemed. But I had a job to do. “She would not betray him consciously,” I said. “But if there were some avenue to her mind, planted, I mean set up in her infancy, that another person could use, he might cause her to think that his directives were her own thoughts. She could become the unconscious agent of a foreign power.”

“This is sickening! But must be considered. Yet why try to assassinate her, if this were the case?”

“To make it look as if she is another potential victim. So that no one would suspect her. Eliminate all the legitimate claimants to the throne, so that she alone remains, then use her to govern the kingdom as the regent of an unknown master.”

He looked at me. “I hate this. The princess never kissed me, but I do love her. Such a thing would be an utter horror.”

I knew how that was. “I don’t like the notion much either. But I have to consider it. It’s my job.”

“It is a necessary job,” he said distastefully. “Like cleaning out the piss-pot. What else do you require?”

“Who took care of the princess when she was young? Before the nanny? There must have been a woman. She may know something.”

“The Matron,” he agreed. “I shall summon her now.”

“What’s her name?”

“She surely has one, but it’s been lost in time. She is simply Matron.” He snapped his fingers, and a stout middle-aged woman appeared. “This is Roan, whom we fetched from Earthside. He is investigating the king’s demise. Cooperate.” Dubi departed.

Matron oriented on me, her glower developing. She was evidently cooperating under duress. “We don’t like snoops here.”

I fixed her with my gaze. “I am here to find out who assassinated the king, so that we can bring that person to justice. I have learned that he was slain by an arrow on the balcony. Do you know anything about that?”

“Who did it? No. But I was the first to reach him. I was cleaning up here when I heard him groan and went to him. I was surprised, of course, as the king has a fear of heights. Almost never did he venture onto the balcony.”

“Then why was he there at the time of his death?”

“I suppose that is for you to find out, snoop. Anyway, it was only a minute or so, but already too late. He had been pierced through the heart. I summoned the guards immediately, but they found nothing. The assassin had gotten away.”

“Naturally you saved his clothing, and the arrow.”

“Naturally. I did not clean them, lest I obliterate some evidence of the source of the attack.”

“That was wise. Did you see anything outside?”

“It was dark.”

Was that an evasion? “Was there anything? A light, an odor, a sound?”

“Nothing. I have no idea where that arrow came from. It was as if it had been magicked out of thin air.”

“That is possible,” I agreed. “That would eliminate the need for a bowman nearby.”

“Are we done here?” she asked, plainly resenting my intrusion.

“Not quite. You took care of the princess?”

“Leave her out of this,” she snapped. “Her grief is bad enough without being stirred by outsiders.”

“It is just barely possible that she is part of the plot against the king,” I said evenly.

“Never!” she flared. “You’re an ass and a scoundrel to even think it! She was always the perfect child and the perfect young woman, and she adored the king. Now get out of here before I lose my temper.”

Her attitude was starting to get to me. I reacted as I tend to, with similar ire. “Not until my job here is done. I think you know something.”

“You accuse me?” she demanded, furious.

“No. I simply want to know what you know, so I can do my job. What aren’t you telling me?”

“Nothing.” She turned to go.

I stepped quickly to cut her off. I stared her hard in the face, assuming my best interrogative manner. “Tell me.”

Her mouth opened in the beginning of a snarl. Then it froze. Then it transmuted to wonder. Then something else. “Gods of Hell!” she swore softly.

“What?” I asked, annoyed.

“My Lord! You’ve got it!”

“Got what?”

“You’re royal!”

I remembered Dubi’s narration of my father’s origin. “By a bastard route, maybe. But that’s not relevant to this investigation.”

“You’re in line to be king! Oh my lord, I apologize for doubting you.”

“What are you talking about?”

Matron recovered some of her equilibrium. “You don’t know, do you!”

“You are being clear as mud.”

“The royals—they all have magic. Mostly subtle, but devastatingly effective when they choose to use it. The princess can reduce a man to jelly by kissing him. Your power is similar, only it’s in your eyes. You have the love stare.”

“The what?”

“You can look into a woman’s eyes and seduce her. You must have had your sudden conquests, back where you came from. That’s your magic.”

I thought about the cheating wives I had tailed, and wound up cheating with myself. It had seemed natural at the time, but now I wondered: had I unconsciously compelled them with my stare? Magic did work on Earth, when brought there, as I had seen. That would explain a lot. She was probably right about me. “I didn’t know,” I said somewhat lamely.

“You thought it was your personal charm? You’re charming as an angry scorpion! But you’ve got the power. I’d get into bed with you now, if you asked.” She shuddered. “Please don’t ask.”

“I—won’t ask,” I said. “I apologize for using my—my power on you. I thought I was interrogating you.” As I had interrogated women in the past. When they got really friendly I had supposed that maybe they were trying to distract me from awkward questions. Now I realized that it was more than that.

“Don’t let the princess kiss you,” she said. “That’s what I wasn’t telling you before.” She didn’t realize that I already knew that detail before I talked with her. “But be fair: don’t compel her with your gaze. Keep it muted. Then maybe the two of you can work together to find the assassin.” It was obvious that she no longer questioned my legitimacy.

“Fair enough,” I said. I had a lot to process.

I left her and made my way down to the ground floor, where Dubi was waiting to intercept me. “You learned something!” he said, seeing my face.

“I learned something,” I agreed. “But not what I expected.”

Chapter Seven

I next asked to see the princess.

Dubi obliged, summoning her magically. I waited in what Dubi called the Dragon Room. Tapestries of the creatures hung from the walls, many of them depicting a beautiful creature flying high above the ground. This creature did not look like Fiera. Bigger, more fierce. More images of dragons were in the many of the room’s stained glass windows. The Dragon Room indeed.

The princess came in a moment later as I was gazing up at another such tapestry. This one depicted a massive beast flying low over a castle, and belching a long plume of fire.

The princess came to me, her eyes cast down, her hands folded in front of her. I said, “Thank you for coming.”

“Dubi asked me to cooperate with you.”

“I’m here to help,” I said. “To the best of my abilities.”

“And what are your abilities?” She continued looking down.

“Finding bad guys.”

“You are an investigator, I’m told.”

“It’s a living,” I said.

“Investigating crimes is what you do for a living?”

“Not always crimes,” I said. “Sometimes I’m hired to gather information for my clients.”

“I see,” she said, and stepped over to me, and gazed up at the tapestry. “You snoop for a living.”

“I’m a helluva good snoop.”

“So you say,” she said, and I sensed she was being playful. “Why have you summoned me, Sir Roan?”

“I have questions for you.”

She turned her head to look at me, but I shifted my gaze lower, to her slender neck, her bared shoulders, to the way her embroidered blouse fit her snugly.

“So ask them?” she said.

Admittedly, I found myself distracted by the curves of her body; in particular, her rounded chest. I had not realized that the beautiful princess also possessed a beautiful body.

I swallowed and reminded myself that she was, in fact, my adopted aunt, even though I knew that was a stretch. After all, I had no idea that I had another family in the Realm. And, perhaps more importantly, she wasn’t blood related.

She’s still your dad’s stepsister, I thought.

That was, of course, assuming that I hadn’t lost my mind completely, which I suspected I had. Or, more likely, in the middle of the world’s most vivid dream.

“How old were you when you were adopted by the king?”

“I was three and a half.”

“Do you have any memory of your parents?”

“I only have a memory of a great fire and screaming and weeping, and, finally, the smell of burned flesh. It is, in fact, my first memory.”

Jesus, I thought. I nearly asked Fiera to verify her claim for me, until I remembered the dragon was loyal to the princess first and foremost.

True, came Fiera’s thought.

And then it occurred to me that Fiera had, undoubtedly, reported to the princess on the validity of my own thoughts and intentions.

Indeed, Sir Roan. She is aware that you find her highly desirable, and that you have a newfound awareness on your personal magic. I have warned her to avert her eyes from yours.

But she just looked at me—

I warned her, true, but she wanted to see for herself. I remind you again, human, to treat my mistress with respect. Any manipulation on your part will end tragically for you.

Jesus, I thought.

I doubt your deity will intervene. The princess also knows that your father was the bastard child of the king, her adopted father. She is aware of your internal struggle.

Is anything private? I asked, exasperated.

Not between me and the princess, human.

Enough. I decided to close my thoughts for the moment. I needed to know my thoughts were safe—and all my own.

“What’s your name?” I asked, realizing I’d only been calling her “the princess.”

“Rose,” she said. She’d gone back to gazing up at the tapestry.

“Princess Rose,” I said. “Very beautiful.”

“Thank you, Sir Roan.”

I swallowed. Her voice had a musical lilt to it. I remembered Dubi’s own voice back before he’d used the translation spell. He had sounded as if he were singing. I detected some of that now in the princess’s voice.

So beautiful, I thought.

“Where did you live prior to being adopted by the king?”

“An orphanage. It was terrible.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, and couldn’t imagine the conditions of a medieval-type of orphanage.

I saw her nod. She reached out and touched the frayed hem of the tapestry. She had long and slender fingers. She wore a silver ring on her thumb...a ring with a carved image of a dragon.

“It wasn’t so bad. A man came to visit me often. He was kind to me.”

Bingo, I thought. “What else do you remember about him?”

“He taught me magic, and would often sit with me for long periods teaching me various illusions.”

I was about to ask what kind of illusions, when a flame appeared before my eyes. It danced briefly, then disappeared in a puff of smoke.

She giggled shyly next to me and bumped me with her hip, which sent a shiver of pleasure through me. She said, “That was my first trick.”

“So you are a witch, too?” I asked.

“Potentially, but that is not the path I have found myself on. I am first a royal.”

“I see. Do you have any other memories of this man? What is his name?”

“He never told me his name. I called him uncle.”

“What did he look like?”

“A long beard. Piercing blue eyes. A smile always on his lips. He was so kind to me.”

“Have you ever seen him again?”

She released the hem of the tapestry and sighed deeply. “Yes and no.”

“What do you mean?”

“I dream of him often.”

“Tell me about your dreams.”

“He comes to me often and apologizes. Always apologizing.”

“For what?”

“I do not know.”

“You miss him,” I said. It wasn’t a question. I heard it in her voice.

“Often.”

“Do you have any other memories of him?”

“Only good memories. Kind memories.”

“And that was when the king came for you?”

“Yes.”

I was tempted to put my arm around her and console her, as I felt her sadness. But I didn’t know what was acceptable protocol when dealing with a royal. More important, I didn’t want an instant tan from Fiera.

Instead, I pointed to the tapestry, and the image of the dragon setting fire to a castle. “Some dragons are cruel?”

She giggled. “Perhaps, but this is the Dragon King.”

I blinked. “Dragon King?”

“The Dragon King is a bedtime story we tell our kids here in the Realm, although many believe it is more than a bedtime story.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Well, according to our legends, the Dragon King will descend upon high—a mountain some believe—and lay waste to our enemies. It is said that he will come when the land most needs him. There are some who hold out hope for him, especially now.”

“And do you, too?” I asked. “Hold out hope?”

She looked away. “Yes.”

“Well, that’s quite a bedtime story indeed,” I said, and pointed to the burning castle. “And this here...”

“Would be our enemy.”

I nodded, and looked at her—but not into her eyes. No, not yet. And perhaps never again. Instead, I focused on her full lips, especially the fatter lower lip that was presently gleaming wet. I swallowed.

“Where were you on the night of your father’s assassination?”

“Am I a suspect, Sir Roan?”

“I don’t want you to be—but everyone, at this point, is a suspect.”

Those lips smiled. Those magically delicious lips. I suddenly wanted her to kiss me, badly. I wanted to feel those lips on my own. I could do it, too. I needed only to look into her—

Down boy, I thought. Today is not a good day to die.

She said, “I was asleep in my bedroom.”

“Was, ah, anyone with you?”

“Do I have an alibi, you mean?”

“Er, yes.”

“And you ask if I was with, perhaps, a lover?”

I felt myself blushing mightily. Not common for me. As an investigator, I have asked far more intimate questions. But here, now, with a beautiful princess, I felt my face burning with embarrassment.

What’s come over you? I asked myself. “Yes, I suppose,” I managed to say.

Her lips curled up mischievously. “No, Sir Roan, Master Investigator. I was alone. I am, of course, a virgin.”

The embarrassment turned into sweats, and I might as well have been a silly school boy with his first crush. ‘I, um, see...” My voice trailed off.

She giggled some more. “You are cute, Sir Roan. Never have I seen a man blush so brightly.”

“I, um, maybe I’m coming down with something.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not.”

I needed to change the subject before I completely fell apart here. “Do you recall anything suspicious on the day of your father’s assassination?”

“Suspicious how?”

“Anything out of the norm? Anything that struck you as odd?”

“No...except—” She stopped.

“Except what?”

“It’s really nothing.”

“Please, it might be important.”

“It was just a dream.”

“A dream?”

She nodded. “Just a silly dream I had the night before his death.”

“Did you mention the dream to Dubi? To anyone?”

“No, of course not. It was just a silly dream.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I dreamed of a fleeing figure.”

“Who was he?”

“I do not know.”

“Where was he fleeing to?”

She took my hand and led me across the room and pushed open a window. She pointed beyond the castle. Below, a dense forest surrounded the castle and spread as far as the eye could see.

“Into the forest?” I asked.

She shook her head, and now I followed her pointing finger to what appeared to be a distant, conical mountain that belched steam. It was, by all appearances, an active volcano. “He fled to the mountain?” I asked.

“The Mountain of Fire, yes.”

“Was the fleeing figure your father’s assassin?”

“I do not know.”

I stared at the smoking, distant mountain. “Does anyone live there?”

“Indeed.”

“Let me guess,” I said. “Lord Mephisto.”

“Why, Sir Roan, you are an ace detective.”

“When was your father killed?”

“Two nights ago.”

“How long is the journey to the Mountain of Fire?”

“Four or five days on horseback—surely, you aren’t giving much weight to my dream, Sir Roan.”

I was, admittedly, torn. Any good investigator wouldn’t give any consideration to a dream. Then again, most detectives didn’t find themselves magically transplanted into a magical land.

Having studied the scene of the crime, I was certain that only an archer who was magically held aloft could have committed the crime. A lone archer, no doubt. The bolt held some evidence of being magically tampered with, as well. So, was there perhaps two of them? Wizard and assassin? Or were they one and the same? Or had the wizard stayed behind, while the assassin fled?

I didn’t know, but I was beginning to think that there might be something to Princess Rose’s dream. A dream she’d never divulged until now. In this business, I’ve learned to trust my hunches. And my hunch told me now to follow-up on the princess’s dream.

Fiera, I thought, opening up my thoughts once again. Find me Dubi.

Found him. He’s on the way.

A moment later, the old wizard stepped into the Dragon Room, and I told them my plan.

Chapter Eight

“There are two stages of my plan, such as it is,” I told them. “First we four go to the forest nearest the turret where the king was killed, because there is likely to be evidence of someone recently there. A bowman or a mage, or both. Ground support. That evidence will implicate Lord Mephisto. Then I will go see Lord Mephisto for a candid dialogue.”

Princess and Wizard both stared at me as if I had lost what little wit I had. “Surely you jest,” Dubi said after a moment.

“Not at all,” I assured them.

What a ploy! Fiera thought. I had forgotten to shield my mind. I hastily remedied that. You can come too, I thought to her. You’re one of the four.

“How can you know what we’ll find, before we check?” Rose asked.

“And if Lord Mephisto is guilty, it would be absolute folly to place yourself in his hands with any such charge,” added Dubi.

I eyed them both. “You hired me for a job. Are you going to let me do it?”

Rose and Dubi exchanged a weary glance. “We can at least check the forest,” the princess said.

“But we had best summon the guards,” Dubi said.

“No. Too many people will likely mess up the evidence. Just us.”

Dubi winced, but let it be. “At least we’ll have Fiera.”

More than sufficient, the dragon thought smugly.

We went to the forest. It was larger from the ground than it had looked from above. The trees reached up in stately columns, with branches spreading out to intercept most of the sunlight before it had a chance to warm the forest floor. There were only a few straggling bushes, most of them starved out by the gloom. Even so, it was not safe for Fiera to fully spread her wings. She would be ground-bound here.

“What are we looking for?” Dubi asked.

“Scuff marks,” I said. “Dropped items. Anything that someone might have inadvertently lost in the darkness.”

“There’s a lot of ground to cover,” Rose said. “Maybe we should separate and each of us check sections.”

“No,” Dubi said immediately. “Separation in the field is dangerous.”

“Then make two parties,” Rose said. “I will go with Roan. You go with Fiera.”

Dubi glanced at the dragon, who made a rippling shrug, going along with it. That was interesting, as she was bound to the princess. We separated, moving left and right along the edge of the forest.

Soon we were out of sight of the other two. “Exactly why are we here?” Rose asked me, stepping enticingly close.

“Well, it’s called crime scene investigation. Sometimes the smallest things can have enormous significance.”

“That’s interesting,” she said. Her lovely face was only inches from mine.

“But we have to examine the ground and the tree trunks,” I said. “Not each other.”

Then she kissed me. It caught me entirely off guard. Suddenly her soft lips were pressing into mine, paradise in my face.

I jerked away. “What are you doing? I don’t want to be your love slave!”

She laughed. “Silly, I don’t have to enslave every man I kiss, any more than you have to compel every woman you look at. Sometimes a kiss is just a kiss. That one was just for fun. You are not my love slave.”

“That’s what you think,” I muttered. “You don’t need to use magic on me to do it.”

“I’m sorry,” she said contritely. “I just wanted to get you alone so I could have my little way with you.”

Little way? So she had maneuvered to make the separate parties. Never underestimate the cunning of a woman!

You’re not the only one with devious plans, Fiera thought, amused. Now I understood why the dragon had agreed to separate from the princess; she had been in on that one.

“Why?” I demanded as my feelings circled for a landing that I feared would be more like a crash.

“Because I like you. Do I need any other reason?”

“Yes! You’re the princess. You can’t afford to waste yourself on just any man.”

“Indeed, and I do not. But it is becoming apparent that you are not just any man,” she said evenly. “You have as much of a claim to the throne as I do.”

“I’m the son of a bastard!” I protested.

“And I’m adopted. So both bloodlines are compromised. We might conclude that it is better to merge them and eliminate any question of legitimacy.”

“Merge the lines? As in marriage? What about love?”

She stared at me blankly. “How does love relate?”

It seemed that we had a cultural difference here. “Where I come from, folk marry for love, not lineage. Generally.”

Rose shook her head. “This is not the rule with royals. Marriage is a tool to secure advantage and lineage. The sex can be fun, too, before he gets too many concubines. It does help if the participants come to like each other, in time. But that is hardly the point.”

I was appalled. “Princess! This is not—”

I couldn’t finish, because she cut me off with another kiss. This one had just enough more oomph so that I knew she was applying a touch of her magic. This time I didn’t jerk away; I couldn’t. I wanted to remain this way forever. She was a complete dream.

She finally let me loose. “Now that we have established that, let’s see what else we can find,” she said, smiling.

I was satisfied to agree. I couldn’t withstand any more of her kisses, even if they supposedly lacked magic. If she meant to establish who was to be the dominant member of this association, she had accomplished it. But it bothered me to think she was merely being practical. That the burgeoning emotion she stirred in me was only a ploy to make me behave.

Rose continued the search, smiling obscurely.

Then again, maybe she was looking for love with a qualified man, rather than endure the arranged marriage that otherwise threatened. That put a more positive face on it.

Found something, Fiera’s thought came.

We hurried to rejoin the others. There was a swatch of torn cloth hung up on a thorny bush. There was part of a monogram on it: EPH.

“Mephisto,” I said.

“You knew we would find it,” Dubi said.

“I thought it likely.” But this was so obvious it was clumsy. Someone evidently took me for a fool.

“Now with this proof of his guilt you want to brace him in his den?” Rose asked.

“Making yourself the perfect target?” Dubi added.

“Of course,” I agreed.

Rose looked at Dubi. “Should I kiss him?” Meaning to subjugate me so that I could no longer contemplate going against her preference.

“We do not enjoy feeling stupid,” Dubi said. “Please explain your reasoning. Why were you so sure this evidence would be found here, and why are you determined to put your head in the noose? Fiera thinks you do have reason.”

“Just this,” I said. “Mephisto is not our man. He is being crudely framed, in the hope that we will go after him and either kill him or get killed ourselves. The real assassin is trying to trick the good guys into knocking each other off. That will make it that much easier to take over the kingdom with apparently clean hands.”

“Framed,” Dubi said thoughtfully. “You have more indication of this?”

“Yes. When we were ambushed by the bandits, they had been set up. We took one prisoner, and he was the one who recognized the spy as one of Lord Mephisto’s minions. That was entirely too coincidental and convenient, and not because of any artifice on Boffo’s part; he would not deceive the princess. Some one else must have set that spy on us, possibly with a fake message to the spy that it was Mephisto’s directive. Knowing that Boffo would recognize him, and if we happened to catch him, he would implicate Mephisto. Then I learned from you that Mephisto was already your leading suspect. There must have been other things you picked up on that implicated him. Again, suspiciously convenient. It is possible that he is the one, but I think more likely that he is not. That’s why I have to talk to him directly. If he is innocent, he will not be pleased about the frame.”

“And if he is guilty?”

“He is unlikely to off me in his own castle. That would confirm his guilt. So I am probably safer there than elsewhere. In any event, it should be an interesting interview that will tell me more than his words do.”

“More?” Dubi asked.

I glanced at Rose. “It is possible that Lord Mephisto is your apologetic uncle, who visited you first personally, then in your dreams. That he knows you are a target for assassination, and feels guilty for allowing you to be out there alone, as it were, but he can’t make his case without alerting the true assassin to the suspicion. That he loves you and wants to protect you, but is largely unable.”

“Uncle!” she said, amazed.

“This is too much of a risk,” Dubi said. “You are a claimant to the throne yourself. If he is guilty, he may not be able to resist assassinating you. That would leave just one other to remove.”

“Does anyone besides you, Rose, and Fiera know about my claim?”

“We think not,” Dubi said.

“So to Mephisto I should be a snooping hireling not worth eliminating.”

Once more the wizard and the princess exchanged glances. Neither of them was comfortable with this.

Neither am I, Fiera thought. A telepath could have snooped on your unguarded mind.

“But if we do nothing, we may be sure that the assassin, whoever he is, will not be idle. He’ll be coming after one or more of us on his own schedule. Better to keep moving, keep him off-guard. So now please let me do what you hired me for. I need to interview Mephisto.”

“There is a certain twisted logic there,” Dubi said reluctantly. “I can’t go there; there are wards against wizards. But you could.”

Rose sighed. “In that case, go, Sir Roan. I will go with you.”

“No!” Dubi and I said almost together, and I felt Fiera’s mental flare.

“You like logic?” Rose said defiantly. “Then assimilate this: if Mephisto is ’Uncle,’ only I will be able to fathom his illusion and recognize him. And if he should threaten me or you, I can kiss him. But I think he won’t. As you say, assassinating me in his own castle would advertise his guilt and rouse the entire kingdom against him. I should be as safe there as you. And if he is innocent, there’s no danger anyway, and we may gain a powerful ally.”

Got you there, the dragon thought. I can’t go either, because of the dragon wards.

I was not completely pleased, but her logic, based on mine, was as good as mine. “Then it is time to go see Lord Mephisto,” I said. “How do we get there pronto?”

Dubi looked as if he had swallowed a rotten egg. “I have a method.”

“Good enough. Let’s be on our way.”

Chapter Nine

Dubi showed us into another room.

This one was down a long flight of stairs and through a narrow tunnel, where we stepped into what I figured was Dubi’s personal voodoo room. Or whatever he called it. I saw caged birds and animals of all shapes and sizes. What he did with these animals, I didn’t know, but I hoped nothing too nefarious.

There was an actual cauldron that sat near a fire. I stepped over to it and peered inside, hoping like crazy not to see something too traumatizing. The smell that wafted out of it was...heavenly. Dubi walked up next to me, and patted my back. I jumped, despite myself.

“Dinner,” he said, smiling. He used a ladle to mix in a colorful array of vegetables and what appeared to be chunks of red meat. “The equivalent of your beef stew.”

I nodded, relieved. What a high-level wizard did in his private chambers was enough to make my imagination run wild. Too wild.

“Looks good,” I said.

“You must be famished.”

I thought about that, and had no clue when I might have eaten last. I agreed, and soon bowls and spoons were produced and the three of us spent a few quiet moments talking amicably and feasting on what turned out to be something utterly delicious.

“This meat...” I started, but Dubi shook his head.

“Not meat, my friend. We here in the Realm do not approve of the killing and eating of our animals. The meat is a magical mixture of plant proteins.”

“Like soy,” I said.

He cocked his head a little. Undoubtedly, his magical translation spell was doing its best to translate my word into the realm’s equivalent. Finally, he nodded. “Indeed. Like soy.”

Once finished, tankards of something that could have been beer—but was much sweeter, mead, perhaps—was produced. I had two.

Next, Dubi led us over to a stone archway that led...into a stone wall. “The portal,” he said, and seemed proud.

“It’s a wall,” I said, and caught Princess Rose smiling next to me.

“In appearance only, Detective Roan. From this portal, I can send you anywhere in the realm. Well, anywhere within a few hundred clacks.”

“It’s not exact?”

“Heavens, no,” he said jovially.

A sudden, alarming thought occurred to me. “What if we arrive, say, in a tree? Or within a mountain?”

“Then that would be most unfortunate,” said the older wizard, grinning. He and the princess exchanged another grin.

Then he closed his eyes, waved his hand, and the stone wall shimmered...and disappeared entirely. Beyond lay a forest path, and beyond that, rising high above the forest, was another castle. This one appeared darker and more formidable than the castle I presently found myself in. Black smoke belched from a nearby volcano. The Mountain of Fire.

Dubi studied the portal, then shrugged. “Sadly, this is as close as I can get you. As you can see, you will not appear in a tree or a mountain or even a river. You are much more likely to come across one of Lord Mephisto’s many patrols, than cutthroats and thieves.”

With that, we were given provisions, satchels filled with cheese, bread and water skins. I took the princess’s hand, and together stepped through the archway...and found ourselves on a forest trail.

I turned back, and could only see a winding trail disappearing into the thick foliage. There was no portal, or even Dubi. Powerful magic indeed!

We followed the path that led in the direction of the castle, I re-loaded my pistol. The princess watched me curiously. “A deadly weapon,” she said.

“Too deadly. It causes much strife in my world.”

“I can imagine. May I hold it?”

I frowned at that, and gently handed it over to her, advising her how to hold it as I did so. She took the Smith & Wesson carefully enough, turning it over and getting a feel for it. Then she aimed it a nearby tree and pulled the trigger.

The sound was deafening, and would surely alert any of Mephisto’s nearby patrols. I was about to ask her why she’d acted so carelessly when something heavy fell from the tree. It was a man, and, from all indications, he had been shot in the heart. A crossbow clattered next to him.

Princess Rose walked up to him. The look on her face “A common thief,” she said. “Not our assassin.”

“Holy shit,” I said, finally finding words. “How...how did you know?”

“When you grow up in the forests of the Realm, Detective Roan, you learn to look into the trees.”

She handed me the pistol and moved on. I looked again at the dead man at my feet, at the perfectly placed shot over his heart, and found myself unable to make any sense of it. The bandit being right here where we jumped to the path, and the princess making such a shot.

Worse, was her attitude toward the dead man. Her apparent disdain for life.

She looked back and saw me standing over the alleged thief. “Make no mistake, Roan. He would have killed us without a second thought.”

I considered the irony in her words as I caught up to her. I also considered the case of my father’s own strange death. My father, Roan Senior, had been quite fit and healthy for his age. In fact, he was the picture of health. Which was why when he had been found dead in his Los Angeles home, all had been surprised. None more than me.

An autopsy had been performed, confirming initial suspicions: he’d died of a stroke. The evidence of a stroke wasn’t conclusive, but it seemed the most likely. There had been no sign of foul play, and no signs of an accident. Maybe I was paranoid to remember how there were drugs that could enter the system and induce something like a stroke. A form of poisoning. It was a stock in trade in certain circles.

He’d been found by his cleaning lady. Who’d reported, interestingly enough, seeing a woman at my father’s house just the night before. A young woman. A beautiful woman. My father had been fit for his age...and single. I was aware that he’d often dated well below his age group. After all, he was handsome and successful and well-off. Highly desirable traits to some women.

So the fact that a woman had been seen the night before his death had been curious, but not unlikely. The police never did locate her for questioning, which had always been frustrating to me, and undoubtedly so for the police themselves.

What occurred to me now was the housecleaner’s eye witness statement. The woman had been tall with flowing strawberry blond hair. She’d also had, of all things, a pet lizard sitting on her shoulder. An iguana, undoubtedly. A curious fact that always puzzled the police. Hell, puzzled me, as well.

But as I followed the the princess along the narrow trail, I was  suddenly well aware of her long legs and lightly tinted hair. The princess didn’t have an iguana sitting on her shoulder.

But she certainly had a pet dragon.

We continued along in silence, and it wasn’t long before we attracted the attention of a regiment of guards who escorted us rather rudely up to the ominous castle.

Where Lord Mephisto awaited.

Chapter Ten

The castle was smaller than the late king’s residence, but similarly comfortable inside. The guards escorted us to an elaborate reception hall with ornate carved ivory chairs. Ivory? Those had to be huge elephants to provide tusks big enough to be carved into such furniture. More likely it was fake ivory designed to be impressive. Lord Mephisto wanted us to be daunted. And how would he himself appear? Like the wonderful wizard of Oz?

A man stepped forward to greet us as the guards retreated. He was middle aged, portly, with receding hair and slightly uneven teeth. His clothing was not impressive either; there was a button missing from his jacket, and his trousers had thin worn spots. “Good to meet you at last, Princess Rose,” he said. “And you too, Roan Quigley.” He took Rose’s hand to kiss, then held out his hand to shake mine.

This was the formidable rival claimant to the throne? I took it in stride. “Lord Mephisto, I presume,” I said as I shook his hand.

“Indeed.” His fingers were somewhat flaccid; I was not impressed. Until I realized that he must be trying to fake us out. He wanted to come across as a pushover, when he was anything but. This was not his real appearance or manner. “Please be suitably seated,” he said, gesturing to the chairs.

We obeyed, sitting beside each other, facing him. Rose crossed her legs, showing a fair length of thigh. She was trying to work her magic on him, but he seemed unaffected.

“We come on business,” I said. “May we speak candidly?”

“Candor is a rare and precious quality,” he said. “You may employ it, but I prefer caution.” He snapped his fingers, and a uniformed maid appeared. “Serve our guests refreshments as we hold our dialogue.”

The maid curtsied and departed. In a moment she returned with a large glass tray supporting goblets and sweetbreads.

“Thank you, but I think I am not hungry,” Rose said somewhat tightly.

“Oh, my dear, do not be afraid to sample my wares,” Mephisto said, looking pained. “If I meant you ill, I would hardly need to drug you. Believe me, I have nothing but the best of intentions toward you.” He took a goblet and sipped, demonstrating its safety.

Well, might as well find out. I took a goblet and sipped similarly. The beverage tasted like sparkling burgundy. I have had some experience with knockout drops, and this seemed innocent. Of course it was impossible to tell by taste alone.

Rose relented and took her own goblet, then a sweetbread. She glanced at me.

I set myself and launched into it. “As you surely know, there is a problem with assassinations. Possible claimants to the throne are being systematically eliminated. The king himself died recently, and I have been hired to help find his killer and bring him to justice. You are a suspect.”

“Of course I am,” Mephisto agreed equably.

“We found evidence implicating you.”

“Naturally. Yet you came here.”

“Because it looks to me like a frame,” I said. “I suspect that someone is trying to set claimants against each other, in the hope that they will do the assassin’s dirty work for him. I think we may be natural allies. Do you agree?”

Mephisto made a gesture of indifference. “We all have somewhat clouded claims. We may be natural rivals.”

He was arguing the other case? What was his game? “If the assassin is none of us,” I continued doggedly, “we need to make common cause to discover him, and deal with him.”

“Why do you assume the assassin is male?” he asked. “It may have been a female who took out your father.”

If he was trying to set us back, he was succeeding. Rose quickly stood up as if discovering a tack in her chair, and I felt a clutch in my gut that wasn’t from the food. “What do you know of this?”

“I have a certain interest,” Mephisto said. “Because I am also a target. My retainers were against admitting the two of you to my presence, but I felt it was best to be direct. I have researched each and every assassination, including that of your father. I do not know whom the assassin may be, but merely point out that the evidence is inconclusive. That person was clearly trying to frame the princess herself.”

“Me!” Rose exclaimed, stepping close to him.

Mephisto eyed her speculatively. “I gather you were not informed about that detail, my dear. The woman who took out mister Quigley looked very much like you, and so you also are a suspect.”

“Me!” she repeated, reddening in anger.

“We spoke of candor,” he reminded her.

She dived at him. It was not an attack, exactly. Instead she kissed him fast and hard. I would have cautioned her, but it had not occurred to me that she would do this at this stage. Now the fat was in the fire, maybe. She had delivered the love-slave kiss.

Rose drew back. “And what do you say now?” she asked.

Mephisto smiled. Then he reached out, caught her about the middle, drew her down so that she was across his knees, and spanked her smartly on the bottom. “Bad girl,” he said.

My jaw literally dropped. Bemused, I could only watch as she scrambled back to her feet, glaring at Lord Mephisto. “How dare you! I am the princess!”

He laughed. “As you can see, your magic did not affect me. It couldn’t.”

“That’s impossible,” she spluttered. “How could you resist it?”

Then I caught on. “Because he is your father,” I said.

She was astonished. “You can’t be!”

“Perhaps you should assume your natural form now,” I told Mephisto.

“Perhaps I should,” he agreed. He shimmered, and became a lean man with piercing blue eyes and a long beard.

“Uncle!” she exclaimed.

“Father,” he corrected. “Now that the secret is out.” He glanced at me. “You are sharper than I anticipated. I had not meant to reveal that aspect.”

“It’s my business,” I said gruffly. Then, to Rose: “You can’t enchant him with magic he taught you, and even if you could, it would make no difference, because he is already your love slave—a very different kind of love, a father’s love—and has been since your birth. He is not the assassin.”

Evidently bemused, she focused on a detail. “Then what are you apologetic about?” she asked him. “You come to me in my dreams.”

Mephisto looked away briefly. “I prefer to avoid that particular issue.”

“No!” she said furiously. “You have humiliated me and I demand satisfaction.”

“It’s a fair case,” I said, almost amused.

He sighed. “So it is. It is because your mother was the queen. You are a bastard, and I can never forgive myself for inflicting that status on you.”

“The queen,” she echoed, stunned. “Bastard?”

“There is more illicit sex than royalty likes to admit,” Mephisto said. “The king had affairs, and so did the queen. With me, in fact...and perhaps others. We generally don’t talk about such things, but we do keep track of the royal lines.”

“My father was the child of the king’s mistress,” I added. “Sent to Earth for his supposed safety.” I looked at Mephisto. “You are of his generation; why did you stay here?”

“I was not threatened at the time.”

“Until the assassin caught on that you were the king’s son by yet another mistress,” I said, taking a calculated guess.

He nodded. “True. But by then I was able to protect myself.”

“But then you had an affair with the king’s young second wife. Your father’s young second wife, in fact.”

He looked away. “It was more complicated than that. She was my girlfriend first; I wanted to marry her. But the king had an eye for her, and she was flattered and went to him. Then it turned out she was already pregnant, and she died in childbirth soon after becoming queen. The baby was spirited away, to avoid embarrassment—Princess Rose, in fact—and I did what I could to help my daughter, unable to admit my true relationship to my little girl. Later the king got lonely and adopted her, knowing her origin, and of course I did not protest. She had a better life than I could give her. But I always loved her and sought to protect her in what indirect ways I could.”

Rose resumed her seat. “My father,” she whispered to herself, “was, in fact, my grandfather. I...I never knew.”

“We all felt it best that you remain innocent,” Mephisto said.

“All?” I asked alertly. “How many people were in on the secret?”

“Four. The king and I, Dubi, and Matron. All dedicated to the welfare of Princess Rose, the most likely heir to the throne.” He glanced at me. “I do not want the throne. I want my daughter to have it. You will not find the assassin among us.”

“What of the princess herself?” I asked. It was cruel, but I had to clear this. I wanted to believe in her innocence, but that business with my father had to be cleaned up.

“Never!” Rose snapped.

“You were not there with my father?” I asked her directly.

“I was not!” she said.

“Will you look me in the eye and repeat that?”

She was at a loss. “If I do that—”

“I will have power over you,” I said. “But I will know.”

She came to a decision. “I will do it. Then I will kiss you. Then we will have power over each other.”

“Whenever you’re ready,” I said evenly, though I knew this was a crisis point. Yet that woman with my father...yes, I had to be sure.

She came to stand before me. She gazed into my face. I gave her the love stare. Or tried to. I still wasn’t entirely sure how to do it, exactly. She blanched. Then she leaned down and kissed me on the mouth, and I felt our lips fairly crackle with magic energy. She was giving it her all, and it was potent as heaven and hell.

“There are other matters,” Lord Mephisto said, and I realized that I had briefly lost consciousness. Rose was now sitting on my lap, her arm around my neck. We were both hopelessly in the thrall of love. But now I knew one thing: she was not the assassin. I had seen into her core and fathomed her innocence. She had seen into mine similarly. Love might have been a heavy price to pay, except that we had been heading there anyway.

“Other matters?” Rose asked, lifting her head.

“Three, in fact,” Mephisto said. “First, as we know, we need to get serious about discovering the real identity of the assassin. Second, there is the dragon, Fiera.”

“What about her?” Rose asked.

“Did you think she came from nowhere? That she’s a natural dragon? She is a transformed sorceress the king arranged to protect you. She surely knows far more than she has told you, and it is time to learn what it is, because your life may depend on it.”

Rose was silent, taken aback.

“And the third thing?” I asked.

“I have a certain magic sense.” He smiled briefly. “It does run in the family. I know, to an extent, when a given person is alive or dead, particularly a friend or relative, even if I am not with him at the moment.”

He had interpersonal magic, not a kiss or a stare, but an awareness. I could believe it. “Who is alive or dead?” I asked.

He paused briefly, then said, “The king. I should have felt it when he died; he is, after all, my father. I have not felt it. I suspect that he is still alive.”

Rose and I stared at him. “But I saw his body,” she said.

“You saw a body. Remember, he is the master of the dolls. It could have been a life-sized doll in his image. Those things can be made accurate even to internal organs. Dubi would have kept the secret. So would Matron.”

“But why?” she asked.

“I think I can answer that,” I said. “The king had—has—the same priorities we do. Mainly, to find the assassin. If in two generations the assassin remains active, it is obvious that more needs to be done. So maybe the king arranged to seem to die, thus removing himself from the picture and putting the issue of the inheritance of the throne at the forefront. The assassin has to act quickly now, or he will forfeit the throne by default. This should smoke him out. It is one bold play.”

Mephisto nodded. “That is the way I see it. But I still have no idea who the assassin is.”

“And you think Fiera the dragon might know?” I asked.

“She is thoroughly telepathic, and absolutely devoted to Rose,” Mephisto said. “She knows the king and his situation. She might have been one of his mistresses before transforming. She might have information that she herself is unaware of, that we could interpret to identify the assassin. It’s a weak path, but perhaps the best we have at the moment.”

“It’s a lead,” I agreed. “And it’s time to get on it, before the assassin strikes again.”

“It is time,” Rose agreed grimly. Then she glanced smokily at me and half smiled. “Dear.”

And that was another situation that needed to be worked out, one way or another. Love was one thing, but as she had said, there’s a lot more to royalty than that. For one thing, what good was love, if one or both of us died?

Chapter Eleven

Mephisto had a portal similar to Dubi.

“There are a few such portals in the Realm,” he explained, as he led us to a room in a turret high above. Or maybe it was a castle keep. What the hell did I know? I was just a private dick from Los Angeles.

Anyway, there was another such archway—similar to the one in Dubi’s potion room. Also in this room were paintings, and these were of Mephisto himself, many of them showing his hunting prowess. In one, he was standing over what might have been a bear, an arrow projecting from its heart region. There was also another painting of the great dragon, what Rose had described as the Dragon King. In this image, the great dragon was laying waste to a great army. Dragon King indeed.

The room also appeared to be another potion room, of sorts. Although not as profuse as Dubi’s, it was clear that Mephisto was no slouch. The man must certainly practice his share of magic, whatever that meant, since I wasn’t exactly sure how magic worked.

“Many of the castles and fortresses are built over the portals,” added Mephisto. “It makes transportation easier for royals and nobility alike, not to mention escape when and if the castle is under attack.”

With that, the once-solid wall beyond the archway dissolved into an open grass field. Beyond, I recognized what was the princess’s less foreboding castle.

Princess Rose gave her father a final, curious look. Curious, at least to me. Was that regret in her eyes? Sadness? Or a silent signal?

Either way, both nodded subtly, and together we slipped through the portal.

We might as well have walked through a normal doorway—and not a magical one. With a simple step we were through the portal and standing in the field. I turned quickly, but saw only an endless expanse of gently blowing grass...and a quickly descending dragon from above. I gasped.

It’s just me, human, thought Fiera.

Indeed, Princess Rose clapped once and rose up on her tip-toes, holding her hands out to the rapidly descending dragon. They shared a private exchange, and I was reminded again of how much my world had been changed, when I watched a woman I cared for—heck, loved—nestle with a flying serpent.

I’m not in Kansas anymore, I thought. Or Los Angeles.

Once girl and dragon had been re-united, and greetings warmly expressed, I asked Fiera if we could ask her a few questions. The dragon looked at me sharply, snapping its triangular head up from where it had been nuzzling the princess, reminding me very much of a horse and her girl.

The dragon paused and I knew it was scanning my thoughts rapidly. I kept them open for now.

Its great head seemed to nod once. I guess the cat is out of the bag, she said, and I nearly smiled at the use of the popular American idiom, recognizing that it was Dubi’s translation magic at work.

You were once human, I said.

It nodded again, a very human gesture, then lowered its long neck. “Climb aboard, and I will tell you about it on the flight back.”

“Climb aboard?” I asked, but Princess Rose was already throwing a leg over the dragon’s narrow neck.

“Sit behind me, love,” she said, patting the spot directly behind her.

I worked up some nerve, reminded myself that I was a fearless detective, and swung a leg over the dragon’s slender neck. Slender, yes, but incredibly strong. I felt it tense beneath me as the creature lifted its head.

“Hang on!” shouted Princess Rose, and I did, wrapping my arms tightly around her narrow waist—and trying to ignore just how perfect her body felt—even as she curled her own arms around the dragon’s scaly neck.

With that, the great beast ran forward on lumbering, slightly awkward legs, then beat its wings once, twice, and soon we were air born. But not by much. We flew low to the ground at first, brushing the tall grass, as Fiera, I suspected, adjusted to the added weight. Then with the flapping of her mighty wings we gained altitude. A good thing, too, as the surrounding forest was rapidly approaching.

I instinctively raised my legs as we just clipped the tallest trees and soon we were racing into the sky. The nearly-hysterical laughter I heard was my own, as this was thrilling beyond anything I could have ever imagined. I was flying, flying. Just a few days ago—or was it earlier today—worried about my alimony payment, and now...

Now I was flying.

And holding tightly to a woman that I now loved more than I had ever loved another woman. Yes, it was the enchantment at work, certainly, but the feeling was already there. The enchantment only flamed it to life.

Below, the ground sped by. Vibrant green forests, open meadows, rolling hills. A river snaked below, and also a winding road that cut through the countryside...all leading to the castle which rose up before us, far ahead.

I was a sorceress once, said Fiera, her words appearing in my head. She had waited, I suspected, for my own thoughts to calm down from the rush of flying. They surely hadn’t calmed by much, but certainly enough to listen to her.

When? I asked. I suspected Fiera was relaying my own thoughts to Princess Rose, so that we could listen in to the telepathic conversation.

Just prior to Rose’s birth. Lord Mephisto was right in one sense, but wrong in another. I was a mistress, yes, but not of the king.

Who then? I asked, feeling as if I were prying. Then again, that’s exactly what private eyes do: they pry, asking the uncomfortable questions. But I knew the answer just as I asked it. Lord Mephisto, I said.

Very good, Detective Roan of Earth.

I was confused. He thought you were most likely the mistress to the king.

He thought wrong.

Then why would he suggest such a thing if, in fact, you had once been his mistress?

A good question to ask Lord Mephisto.

Surely he knows we would learn the truth, that you were, in fact, his mistress...and not the king.

Not necessarily, said Fiera.

She flapped her wings hard and we shot up through a low hanging cloud and burst above it. The dragon’s wings flapped calmly, smoothly, powerfully. Below, the Realm disappeared beneath a sea of foamy clouds.

Help me understand, I said, wondering what Princess Rose was making of this.

I’m as confused as you, came Rose’s reply.

Apparently, Fiera’s open line of communication was working on many levels.

Let me explain, the dragon responded. Yes, I was Mephisto’s lover. One of his many lovers, in fact. I taught him the magic that he uses to this day. I loved him, but he did not love me. He had love for only one other.

The queen, I thought.

The dragon nodded. Indeed. She wasn’t yet queen yet. She was a royalty, yes, the equivalent of your duchesses. She wasn’t the queen until the king married her.

When the king stole her from Lord Mephisto, I thought.

Indeed. The king was not aware, of course, that his prized young queen was already with child.

With Princess Rose, I thought.

Correct. He was, of course, furious when she showed early signs, proof that the young babe was not his. He banished her from the kingdom...and that proved fatal to our young queen.

I heard Princess Rose gasp, for we were, after all, speaking of her mother...her deceased mother. I squeezed her comfortingly.

The young queen was beyond the care of the realm’s finest physicians—and even Dubi could not reach her in time. When her birth came, unexpectedly early, she perished. The babe lived, of course.

The babe had grown into a beautiful woman, I knew. A woman presently in my arms. Rose was silent, and I respected that.

Lord Mephisto’s anger knew no bounds. His hatred for the king was nearly overwhelming, and that’s when he enchanted me, to not only watch over the babe, but to watch over the king himself. And the Realm.

And report back to him, I added.

Indeed, Detective Roan.

Which is why he felt confident that you would give us any information he wanted you to relay to us, thinking you worked for him.

He was confident of this, yes.

I didn’t know much about magic, but I was getting the hang of this. I thought: Lord Mephisto is unaware that you have broken the spell.

Recently broken, Fiera corrected. Lord Mephisto had hoped to mislead you.

Why? I asked, but suddenly knew the answer. I nodded. Because he killed the king.

Or thought he had, added Princess Rose, her soft thoughts joining the conversation for the first time.

Indeed, said the dragon. And he searches for the king to this day, hoping to finally avenge the death of his one true love. I was, in effect, his eyes and ears within the Realm—and over the Realm. And let me assure you, Lord Mephisto is planning a great assault. The ultimate act of revenge.

Then why kill my father? I thought.

He was afraid of your father.

I don’t understand, I thought.

He thought your father was the Dragon King. He was mistaken.

But a woman was last seen with my father.

Do you not recall that Lord Mephisto is a master of disguises? I was with him when your father was poisoned. I regret my participation greatly.

You were coerced, I heard myself say, although the words mostly faded away. My father had been poisoned. I clenched my fists and took a very deep breath. There was going to be hell to pay.

Princess Rose touched my shoulder and I felt her great love and empathy. We had both lost much in our lives—the shocking news of which we’d only recently learned.

After a moment, as the clouds cleared and the castle came into view—and after I had collected myself—I asked the dragon: You are choosing to remain a dragon?

I can, of course, shape-change at will. There are some of us who have this natural talent. Lord Mephisto saw the possibilities within me, which is why he chose me to watch over the princess and the Realm.

But you were his prisoner, his slave, said Princess Rose, her thoughts filled with grief.

His familiar, as he chose to put it. But I am a prisoner no more.

We began our decent, heading toward the castle’s upper ramparts. Wind thundered over my ears and I held the princess closely. Perhaps a little too closely. Her warm body pushed back against my own. Uh oh. Below, the dragon’s massive shadow caused a fair bit of panic as villagers looked up—then scattered. I would have thought they would be used to seeing Fiera by this point, until I recalled she mostly stayed invisible—which undoubtedly served Lord Mephisto’s plans well.

As we glided down, we swept past the king’s wide balcony—only just a few dozen feet away, in fact. Surely close enough to have gotten a shot off for an expert huntsman such as Lord Mephisto, I figured, thinking back to his hunting portraits.

You were compelled to carry Lord Mephisto, I said to Fiera, when he killed the king—or thought he had killed the king.

The dragon didn’t say anything at first, and as Princess Rose and I scrambled off the creature’s back, Fiera turned and looked back, her round, golden eyes regarding me silently. Finally, she nodded. It was then that I made the decision to finally break the spell—it would be the last act the bastard compelled me to do. But first I needed help to break the spell.

From Dubi? I asked.

She shook her head. Dubi was unaware of my enchantment. Dragons can pair-bond with a human, especially royalty. And since I had no free will of my own, I could not speak in my defense. Indeed, I was a true prisoner in my own body, as the princess suggested.

Then where did you find help? I asked.

From another. One of my own, in fact. Once I made telepathic contact with him, I found the courage—and the strength.

A fellow dragon? I asked, confused

She nodded. It takes a dragon to know a dragon, although he is unaware of his great potential.

Then he is a shape-shifter, too?

Of the highest order.

Princess Rose gasped. You speak of the Dragon King!

Perhaps, said Fiera, although claiming his birthright will be up to him. Lord Mephisto thought he had killed the Dragon King on earth. But his information was wrong. His calculations were wrong. He wanted, in fact, the son.

Both dragon and princess turned and looked at me.

Chapter Twelve

“You can’t be implying—” I said aloud.

Both continued to gaze at me.

“But it’s impossible! I’m from the real world. I mean, Earth, where magic and dragons don’t exist. I was born there, lived there all my life.”

“Your father was born here,” Rose said. “He carried the royal blood. The Dragon King may have skipped his generation and manifested in his son, and now shown up there on Earth because, as you say, there is no magic there. It seemed like a safe refuge. But now you are here.”

“That doesn’t mean there’s a dragon in me!”

“Not in you,” she said patiently. “It would be you, transformed to human form. Hiding, waiting for the need to manifest. The need that we think now exists.”

“I just can’t believe—”

“Do I need to kiss you?”

That stopped me. There was hardly anything that would have pleased me more than her kiss, but this was not the time for it. “I’ll think about it,” I said. “Give me time.”

She exchanged a glance with Fiera. “One night and day. We do have an assassin to deal with.”

“Okay.” At the moment I just wanted to get them both off my case.

Fiera faded out, and Princess Rose guided me into the castle. My mind was whirling, so that I was barely aware of where we went. It was as if I blinked, then found myself in a very nice room. “This will be yours. You will want to refresh yourself,” Rose said. “I will fetch you for the evening banquet in one hour.” She walked away, her hips swaying gracefully.

Damn! They had hit me with an impossible concept. I had one day to come to terms with it, so that I could focus on my business here: to locate the king’s assassin. Assuming the king was dead. No, wait—the assassin was Lord Mephisto! Or was it? I had only Fiera’s word on that, and at this point I wasn’t sure how far I could trust her. Her change of sides was a bit too facile for my taste. At least I had the wit to keep a tight clamp on my mind so that she could not read this doubt.

I stripped away my clothing and stepped into the shower, deliberately leaving the water cold. The shock of that clarified my mind acutely. One thought came to the fore: this whole thing was too pat. The way I had been fetched from Earth, introduced to the alluring princess, then the telepathic dragon, thrown into battle with the ambushing bandits, where Rose demonstrated her ability to kiss a man into love slavery, and Matron told me I had the Love Stare, meaning I was of royal descent, and meanwhile Boffo the love slave recognized a stalker as a minion of Lord Mephisto, who then turned out to be Rose’s father, and the dragon was a transformed sorceress who claimed I was the Dragon King. All this was entirely too convenient, and it rang false. My training and inclination as a private eye readily saw the error of it, once shocked into action. It was more likely a complicated play performed for my dubious benefit. Was I a patsy, being set up to do something phenomenally foolish? Like claiming to be the Dragon King?

But what would be the point? Why would they waste time and put themselves at risk to journey to Earth to collect an ignorant private dick? Especially if the king wasn’t really dead? That implied that I really was the Dragon King, or at least royal. Only they hadn’t known that; the princess’s surprise when the dragon said that was manifest.

I needed an objective opinion. And I knew where to get it.

I stepped out of the shower, dried on the plush towel provided, quickly got into the fresh clothing I found laid out for me, and sent out a limited thought. Fiera!

Yes, Roan, her answer came immediately.

I need to talk with Boffo Bandit. Privately. Where is he?

She did not question this. Follow the red line.

I looked. There before me was a red line on the floor. It went to the door. I followed out into the hall, down three flights of stone steps, and along a dusky back passage, where it ended. I stopped, not sure what to make of this. Then a castle servant walked across the hall, following an intersecting passage, without seeing me. After she passed, the line extended through that intersection. You did say privately, Fiera reminded me. So she had kept me out of sight.

Thanks, I thought, and resumed motion, my thoughts shielded again. The route led down two more flights into a network of cellars. I never would have found my way through this labyrinth on my own.

The line stopped outside a barred chamber. The gate was not locked. I pushed it open and entered. There was Boffo, sitting on a plank-board bench. “What in hades do you want, jerkoff?” he asked politely.

“You don’t care whether I live or die,” I said. “With a slight preference for die, right?”

“Right,” he agreed. “And the princess isn’t here to cough, so I don’t have to cater to you at all. So smirk at my lodgings and move on, turd brain.”

“So you can be completely objective about my situation,” I said. “Because you don’t care.”

“What is your moronic point?”

“She kissed me too. I need your advice.”

He burst into laughter. “And you thought you were special. Now you know.”

“Now I am in deep doubt,” I said. Then I launched into a summary of my situation, concluding “So it’s too pat. I fear I’m a fool. What do you recommend?” I had the distinct impression that he had already been familiar with my situation, which tended to confirm my suspicion that all this was an act.

“She thinks you’re the Dragon King?” he asked, managing to suppress his mirth at the very notion. “First you better find out if it’s true.”

Which was actually a fair answer. “How?” Would he help, or evade?

“Well, maybe go see Mave.”

“Who?”

“She’s the scullery maid who sneaks me decent food from the kitchen. I’d screw her if I wasn’t besotted with the princess at the moment; she’s pretty enough. I’ll be sorry as hades once the spell wears off and I’m out of here, knowing I could’ve had Mave. She’s got the magic you need.”

“The magic?” I asked blankly.

“She evokes dragons, dullard. That’s her magic.”

She evoked dragons! That was exactly what I needed. If she could not evoke mine, then that was false, and at least I’d know. He had, after all, given me good advice. “Thanks,” I said. “What can I do for you in return?”

“You already saved my life, knot-head. What more do you want?”

So the bandit did have some minimal gratitude. “Maybe I can speak to the princess and get you better lodging.”

“Don’t bother. This is my style.” Then he looked at me cannily. “But keep in mind that Mave will have her price, which you can’t pay.”

Her price? I decided not to follow up on that, as he obviously wanted to bait me further. He was enjoying this for some obscure reason. “We’ll see.” I departed.

The red line reappeared. Fiera knew where I was going next. Sure enough, it led to the kitchen. There in an alcove was a pretty girl touching up pastries on a table. She looked up, surprised, as I joined her. “Mave?”

“Yes, sir,” she said, smiling. She had a cute face, flowing red hair and perfect teeth. Boffo was right: I would have liked to get to know her better, too, were I not already smitten by the princess.

“I am told I may be a dragon,” I told her pointedly. “Can you evoke it? I promise not to toast or eat you if you do.”

“Let me see, Sir Roan,” she said. So she knew who I was. Word certainly got around within a castle. She stood, came to me, and put her hands on my head. The position put her nicely-filled decolletage under my nose so that I could see pretty near down through to Australia. “Oh, my!”

“There is something?” I asked, bemused.

“Oh, yes!” She took a truly impressive deep breath. “You are a dragon, all right, Sir Roan. But the spell is the most powerful I have encountered. I am normally a small dragon girl. This...this—”

“Is the Dragon King?” I prompted.

“It could be,” she agreed, plainly awed. “It would exhaust me to evoke it, but I would do my utmost, if...”

Boffo had mentioned her price. “If what?”

“If you married me.”

“What?”

“I am just a poor ignoble scullery girl,” she said. “But I’d love to be a princess or a queen. The only way I’ll ever be that is if I marry a prince or king. Then my peon lineage wouldn’t matter. And if I got a child, it would be royal. That would be my dream realized.”

I gazed at her, uncertain how to handle this.

“I promise I would not be a jealous wife,” she continued. “You could have any other women you wanted, once you got me pregnant. I would stay out of your way so as not to embarrass you by my lowly origin. It would be no trouble at all for you. And if you liked me, I would do anything in bed that you wanted, no matter how bizarre. I would just be so grateful.”

I sighed inwardly. Two days ago this would have been a fabulous offer. “I’m sorry, Mave,” I said. “I can’t marry you. The princess kissed me.”

“Oh, darn!” she swore, tears of frustration flowing.

“But anything else you might want, in exchange for invoking my dragon—”

“Nothing else,” she said sadly.

“So you won’t do it?”

“I won’t,” she agreed. “I named my price.”

One I could not pay, as Boffo had foreseen, enjoying my coming frustration.

I left her weeping in the kitchen, feeling like a heel. At least now I knew.

Or did I? This sequence, too, was suspiciously convenient. Was it also part of the play?

Fiera’s red line led me back to my suite just in time for Princess Rose to collect me. She was resplendent in a bejeweled evening gown, the loveliest woman I had ever seen. “You shouldn’t have teased Mave like that,” she reproved me. “She’s a good girl.”

What kind of communications did this castle have? Did everybody know everything the instant it happened? “I didn’t realize I was teasing her,” I said. “I just wanted to know about the dragon.”

“I’m sure a little persuasion would change her mind about evoking it only in exchange for marriage. You don’t need to be concerned about that.”

“Persuasion?”

“Our local torture chamber is small but well equipped. I suspect that just the threat of having her nipples ripped out would be effective. No actual messy disfiguring torture would be required.”

I stared at her, horrified. “You’re not joking,” I breathed.

“I never joke about serious matters. That dragon needs to be evoked.”

This was the woman I loved? I couldn’t tolerate it. “Don’t. Even. Threaten,” I said grimly.

She glanced at me, surprised. “Oh, I keep forgetting that you’re not from the Realm. You have different sensitivities.”

“True. Leave her alone.”

She shrugged, leaving me my foibles. I was still learning things about the Realm, and not all of them were comfortable. If this was Rose’s notion of dark humor, I was not amused.

We arrived at the banquet hall, where soft music played. It was well named; the banquet was sumptuous, with every kind of meat, vegetable, bread, and beverage. Mave herself served the pastries. “Thank you, sir,” she murmured as she passed me. She knew!

Lovely scant-skirted dancing girls entertained us as we concluded the meal. “If you would like one of those for the night,” Rose said, “Just point her out. She will be glad to oblige.”

“Thanks, no,” I demurred, suppressing another surge of cultural shock. Was she testing me for interest in any woman other than her?

“Or Mave. She would be happy to demonstrate what she could offer you in the marriage bed.”

This was getting downright uncomfortable. “I’d rather have you.”

“You would find me frustrating, as I must retain my virginity until marriage. Fortunately none of these are virgins.”

I concluded that she was serious. “Thanks, I’ll pass,” I said.

“I shouldn’t have kissed you yet. But you did insist on staring at me.”

“My fault,” I agreed. She might love me, as I loved her, but evidently had no problem with a man’s incidental entertainments, quite apart from the callous requirements of royal union. Then I thought of something else. “You expect to have an arranged marriage.”

Rose grimaced prettily. “Yes. I can get out of it only by marrying a man with better prospects.” She glanced at me sidelong.

“Who is he?”

“Prince Obelisk, of a far kingdom, whose member is said to resemble his name. He is a warrior, quite skilled.” Her mouth twitched. “And no, he is no more eager to do it than I am. He has his own girlfriend, apart from his harem. But it was arranged long ago by our families, and it would be perilous to go against it.”

“Sorry to hear it,” I said.

“It is the way. We do not rail against the inevitable.”

It was late by the time it all finished. Rose escorted me to my room, but did not offer to join me there. Instead she kissed me chastely and departed. She was being true to her virginity.

I lay awake for some time, pondering imponderables, as I had before, with no better resolution. I loved Princess Rose, but was suspicious of her facility with my gun, considering that theoretically she had never seen such a weapon before. She was one tough-minded woman, as her threat about Mave showed. I had thought her to be shy, but that was evidently out of context; she was worldly in ways I was not, and in some aspects she was definitely not my type. Talk of arranged marriages—what about arranged love? I should have avoided it if humanly possible. So did we really love each other, or was she faking susceptibility to my stare? Was I psychologically overwhelmed by the presumed impact of her kiss? Would that impact fade in three days? My rational self advised me to give this time to sort itself out. I still didn’t like the seeming coincidence of the ambushing bandit in the tree along a path no one should have known we would take, leading to Lord Mephisto’s castle. Had Rose known he would be there?

And the dragon theme. Fiera was challenge enough, but that was hardly the half of it. They claimed I was a transformed dragon, but the confirmation of this had been way too easy. A dragon-evoker right here in the castle? My PI instinct railed against such coincidence. Certainly they wanted me to believe I was the Dragon King, but was that really the case? Until this adventure I had never even believed in dragons.

And those assassinations, including my father, and the king (maybe)—those weren’t all recent events. They had been going on for generations. There were some royals who did not seem to be in immediate peril, like Prince Obelisk. Why?

But mainly it was that I had no handle on reality here. It was like one of those newspaper cryptic quote puzzles, where every letter given was false, and the challenge was to figure out the correct letters and thus the original quote, like “No man is an island,” etc. Only here I could not even be sure that everything was false. I would hate to think that Princess Rose was a lying schemer, or that my very presence here was a sham. I needed to find the key to make sense of this wild array of confusion.

The old king, Rose’s adopted father, had had a good notion: get out of the picture for a while and see what the other players did. I wished I could do the same, but that wasn’t feasible. I wished I could talk to him. Which made me wonder: why had Mephisto told me about the king’s survival, instead of quietly finishing the job himself? And the question brought the answer: so that the gumshoe ignoramus from Earth would ferret out the hiding king, to question him—and thus lead the king’s enemy right to him so he could be killed for good. That was the reason Mephisto had told me. What a colossal fool he figured me for! Almost successfully.

Then I suffered a blinding flash of understanding. The assassinations—they were not to eliminate prospective heirs to the throne, but to eliminate the hidden Dragon King! Because the Dragon would destroy any usurper, unless the Dragon were first eliminated himself. They did not know in whose body the Dragon hid, and were doubtless frustrated that they could never be sure the Dragon had been dealt with. Unless they located him, evoked him, and killed him. Then the throne would truly be open for usurping. So they needed to verify me as the Dragon King—and kill me. Because the Dragon had to be dead, and if I were not the Dragon I was of no use to them anyway and could be thrown away. By “them” I meant the anonymous assassin (who might or might not be Mephisto) and his minions, not Princess Rose and her loyal friends. But Rose might have been tricked into fetching me from Earth, and the assassin was watching closely. I was in the same danger as the king, for much the same reason.

I was in doubt whether I was the Dragon King, and there was a problem making the proof of that. The assassin was in doubt too, and wanted very much to know, one way or the other, so he could act. That was surely why Dubi and Rose had somehow been given the notion to bring me here: to find out. I would be best advised to see that this doubt remained indefinitely, or at least until I located the assassin and took him out. My life surely depended on it.

I drifted off into a troubled sleep, still not knowing my wisest course. What new horrors would the morrow bring?

Chapter Thirteen

I slept fitfully and awakened the next morning perhaps more tired than when I’d gone to sleep. I hated when that happened.

My guest suite was indeed fit for a king. Plush, four-poster bed. Ornate furniture. Thick animal hides. I used a nearby water basin to wash my face and a wash cloth to scrub my teeth. A clean detective is an effective detective. Although I knew very little of medieval architecture, this palace seemed surprisingly modern. I had no reason to believe the technical advances in the Realm coincided with advances on Earth; indeed, I knew so very little about the Realm. Were both worlds evolving at their own natural pace? Or was one influencing another? A lot to figure out, surely. Perhaps more than a common detective needed to worry about.

Especially a common detective who had been hired to find a killer.

I patted the pouch of gold in my front pocket. One way or another, I was getting this gold back to earth.

But first, a job to do.

That is, of course, if I wasn’t being set up, which is what this was all beginning to feel like. If so, who was setting me up and why? What advantage would they gain by misleading me, an outsider? Yes, the clues had thus far fallen naturally (and easily) into place. But clues were clues, and facts were facts. Hard to argue with either.

“Except you don’t have any real facts, do you, Mr. Detective?” I said to myself as I splashed more water on my face.

Indeed, only hearsay.

One of which was that the king was, in fact, still alive. I was here to find the king’s assassin. If the king wasn’t dead, well, my job would be complete. I could return home with my little pouch of gold—and another just like it, if Dubi and company upheld their end of the bargain—and try to forget any of this had ever happened.

Except, of course, if someone from the Realm had murdered my father.

If so, that would be another matter altogether.

For now, my goal was to look into Mephisto’s allegations that the king had faked his death. After all, it was hard to investigate a murder if the victim was alive and well.

Once confirmed, this case was over. And if they wanted to hire me to find the would-be assassin, well, it would cost them more gold.

“One case at a time,” I whispered, and headed down for breakfast.

***

I had buttered pastries on a wide balcony that overlooked much of what must have been the eastern Realm, if rising sun was any indicator. That was, of course, if the Realm was a parallel of earth as Dubi had suggested.

The princess was still asleep, which was just as well. When finished breaking my fast, as they called it here, I telepathically asked Fiera to summon Dubi for me. The invisible dragon, who was standing guard somewhere nearby, complied with a mental nod.

A moment later, the short wizard appeared at the balcony, blinking into the morning sun. I waved him over and he came hesitantly, looking warily over the ledge of the balcony.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Just not a fan of heights.”

This surprised me, although I wasn’t sure why. In his defense, the castle was situated high upon a craggy tor—and the balcony soared many hundreds of feet above the sprawling city far below.

“I see,” I said. “Would you prefer we talk inside?”

“No, no. I’ll be fine.” He swallowed hard. “How is your investigation coming along, Detective Roan?”

“It’s why I called you up,” I said, although I regretted doing so now. “Lord Mephisto made a wild claim.”

“As Lord Mephisto is wont to do,” said the wizard, some humor returning to his voice.

“Be that as it may, he asserted that the king had not been assassinated. That the the king is very much alive.”

The wizard blinked and some of the color returned to his cheeks. “Oh, really?”

“Yes. Further, he claims that you and the Matron would have knowledge of this. Is this true?”

“Is what true?”

“Is the king alive and do you have knowledge of this?”

“Lord Mephisto speaks with conviction for a man who has been banned from the castle. And for a man who, by all accounts, has been actively seeking to control the Realm.”

I nodded and listened, noting with interest that the wizard had effectively evaded my question. I also watched his body language and listened closely to his tone of voice. Yes, some of the nuances were undoubtedly lost in translation, but what I was seeing was classic evasion. His eyes shifted. He lifted his hand to rub his chin. Averting the eyes and hiding the mouth were classic lying “tells.”

“Perhaps,” I said. “But does he speak the truth?”

Dubi turned away, looking out toward the rising sun. “The king is dead.”

“Thank you, Dubi. I do not want to keep you up here longer than necessary.”

He nodded sadly, took in some air, and left the balcony much faster than when he’d arrived.

When he was gone, I had Fiera summon the Matron. The dragon obliged, and shortly the stout woman who sported a permanent grimace came out onto the balcony.

“You summoned me, Sir Roan.”

“Indeed,” I said, still getting used to the formal title. Up until a day ago, the only ‘sir’ I heard was usually from an exasperated bill collector.

I asked the Matron to sit across from me, which she did. She declined a pastry and so I got to it, asking her what she knew of the possibility that the king had survived the attack.

“Nonsense,” she said.

No hand covering her mouth. No looking away. In fact, she didn’t move or even blink, as far as I could see.

“It seems that Lord Mephisto’s claim should be explored.”

“Explore if you must, but let me assure you that I saw the king’s body.”

“On the balcony,” I said.

“Of course.”

“Was he alone?”

“Yes.”

“One arrow or two?”

“One.”

“And this occurred at night?”

“Yes, I already told you all this.”

I ignored her irritation. Investigators make a living by asking the same questions, to see if we get the same answers. “What were you doing just prior to hearing the king cry out?”

“I was making my rounds.”

“What do your rounds consist of?”

“Checking on rooms, bathrooms, supplies.”

“Did you check on the princess that night?”

“Yes.”

“Before the king was attacked?”

“I think so, yes.”

“You think so?”

“Yes, I’m sure of it. Just before.”

“And she will attest to your claim?”

“I don’t see why not. I thought I answered all of these questions be—”

“Do my questions make you uncomfortable?”

“Of course not.”

“Very well,” I said. “Was the king dead when you found him?”

“Yes.”

“What position was he in?”

“Sitting up, propped against the door.”

“The door into the bedroom?”

“Yes.”

I visualized the king’s balcony again. In fact, it wasn’t very different from the one we were on now. The king could have taken the arrow...and stumbled back into the door, dying before he could go inside.

“Do you have any knowledge of the king faking his death?”

“None.”

Is she telling the truth, Fiera?

Her mind is closed, Sir Roan.

Is it common for her mind to be closed?

I have never dipped into her mind before.

Then how would she know to close it?

She didn’t, came Fiera’s reply. Until she was coached by Dubi just moments before you summoned her.

Dubi?

I thought about that, and then thanked the Matron for her time. She nodded curtly and left.

***

I was alone in the castle, absently wandering the halls, feeling a bit lost but not worried about it. I always thought best when I was walking. I solved more cases by walking the streets of Los Angeles.

I came across more than one tapestry of the Dragon King. Standing guards, armed with short and long swords, dotted the palace and watched me suspiciously, but none stopped me. Apparently, I had been given permission to wander through the castle.

Dubi had seemed evasive. The Matron less so, although she just might be a better liar. Dubi had coached her to close her mind. Why? I thought about that as I walked. Obviously there was something there that he didn’t want Fiera to ferret out. And, as the dragon admitted, it had never occurred to her dip into the Matron’s mind before.

So what were Dubi and the Matron hiding?

The answer seemed obvious. If Lord Mephisto’s hypothesis (and magic) was correct, they were hiding information regarding the death of the king.

I thought about this long and hard...and decided that I wouldn’t know the truth until I truly found the king—and it looked like I wasn’t going to get much help from the court wizard or the head of staff.

There was, however, one person who would be of help to me.

The princess herself.

***

I found her in her bedroom, sitting before a glass mirror and applying make-up.

“You have been very active this morning, according to Fiera,” she said, glancing at me in the mirror. I stood behind her, marveling at the smoothness of her shoulders, the perfect sweep of her slender neck, the thickness of her fair hair. Yeah, that love spell had done a number on me. The perfection of her neck? Never had such a thought occurred to me...and yet...her neck looked so very perfect. And so very kissable.

I somehow managed to control myself. “You didn’t hire me to sleep.”

She nodded, running a comb slowly through her lustrous hair. “Am I still a suspect to my own father’s murder? I thought you confirmed my innocence?”

“I had, but I’m here to follow up on the possibility that your father might—”

“Still be alive? Oh, rubbish!” said Rose, slamming her comb down. “Lord Mephisto is clearly lying.”

“What does he gain by lying?”

“Who knows? Maybe to deflect blame.”

“And why wait twenty or so years to exact his revenge?”

“You will have to ask him that.”

“I did,” I said evenly. “And he assured me that he did not kill the king. I believe him.”

“He is a liar and you are a fool to believe him.”

“He is also your father.”

“My real father was murdered, and Lord Mephisto is going to pay.”

She resumed brushing her hair, and I decided to approach this from another angle, an angle that had occurred to me while walking the castle passageways. “Did your father have a fear of heights?”

She nodded almost instantly. “Deathly.”

“Were your father and Dubi good friends?”

She frowned and glanced at me in the mirror. “Of course. Dubi is the royal wizard, trusted for decades.”

“Did he actually say he trusted Dubi?”

“On many occasions. We all do.”

I paused before asking my next question, then plunged forward. “Did you ever, in fact, see your father and Dubi together?”

She stopped brushing again. “What do you mean?”

“Did you ever see your father and the wizard together in the same room, side by side?”

“Of course. What a ridiculous—”

“Think back,” I urged.

“Of course...” she began, but then closed her mouth. She opened it to speak again, but then promptly closed it again. Next, the brush clattered to the floor. “What are you implying?”

Fiera, I said, send for Dubi.

I already have, Sir Roan.

A moment later, the door to the bedroom suite opened and Dubi strode in.

“Two summons in one morning,” said the wizard jovially enough. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Dubi,” said Princess Rose, rising. “Sir Roan might need some medical aid.”

“Oh?” said the wizard, raising a bushy eyebrow. “What ails you, detective?”

“He’s obviously suffered a head injury because he’s not thinking straight. Sir Roan thinks that you are the king.”

The wizard’s eyes widened briefly, and he turned his back to us and faced the open balcony door.

“Tell him he’s crazy, Dubi,” she said. I heard the tremble in her voice, and didn’t blame her. “Please.”

“I can’t tell him that,” said the wizard, turning. “Because he’s not.”

Princess Rose gasped. I might have gasped, too. It was one thing to have a hunch, but quite another to be right.

It was then that the princess fainted.

She might have hit the floor hard if not for a wispy, billowy cushion appearing beneath her. She landed softly, where she lay unharmed, and quite unconscious. I went immediately to her side and checked her vitals. She was breathing, just out cold.

Dubi swept to her side as well, and passed a hand just over her body. He patted her cheek tenderly, then stood. “She will be fine,” said Dubi. “I’m afraid she’s suffered one too many shocks over the past few days.”

I picked her up carefully and laid her on the bed. “Two fathers,” I said. “In two days.”

“Enough to make any one faint.” He looked at me. “How did you know?” In that moment, he shimmered and appeared before me as another man entirely. A handsome man, actually. A man who looked strikingly like my father.

The thought nearly overwhelmed me. He was, of course, my grandfather. My father’s father.

I’m going crazy, I thought. In fact, I suddenly felt lightheaded. Dubi guided me to a nearby stool. “Easy, old boy,” he said.

He stood over me while I collected my thoughts. Finally, I said, “You share a fear of heights.”

“Very good,” he said. “But many have such a fear. Surely there was more to lead you to believe I was the king.”

“That, and you and the king were never in the same room. Undoubtedly you worked double time concealing your identity as Dubi.”

“It was a challenge and oft-times I confused the roles.”

“But why a wizard?” I asked.

The handsome older man regarded me with my father’s eyes. “I was a king by birth, but a wizard by choice.”

“I don’t understand.”

“As you are aware, royalty have the potential for magic. The potential within me was great. Too great for me to ignore.”

“And so you created Dubi the Magician.”

“He has served me well. I can watch over my kingdom and watch over my daughter.”

I stood and paced before the bed where the princess still lay resting. “But why summon me from earth?” I asked. “If it was all a charade?”

“Oh, it wasn’t as much of a charade as you might think, Detective. My guards and I had been well aware that there was a plot afoot to assassinate me. However, try as we might, we were unable to locate the source of the attack.”

“Lord Mephisto?”

“Is harmless. Yes, he bore a grudge against me for stealing his girlfriend—Rose’s mother, in fact. But no one loved her more than I, although my time with her was comparatively brief. No, Lord Mephisto does not have it in him for treason against his country and king.”

“Then who?”

“It is why I brought you here, Detective Roan. Or, should I say, one of the reasons.”

“I don’t understand.”

“There is a great army amassing in the north. Bigger than, I’m afraid, we can defend against.”

We were silent. Princess Rose made a small sound in her sleep. She stirred slightly. She would be, I suspected, awakening soon. “You need the Dragon King,” I said after a while.

“Now more than ever.”

Chapter Fourteen

Princess Rose opened her eyes and found herself in disarray. Her hair was messed up, her full bodice was slightly askew, and her pleated skirt was flopped up over her lovely knees. She spied me watching. “Do you see anything interesting, Sir Roan?” she inquired archly.

“Absolutely fascinating, and I can’t wait to get my hands on it,” I said candidly. “But at the moment I am more concerned with the state of your outlook. You fainted when you learned that your father survives. Can you accept it now?”

“I can,” she said. “Beneath this frilly exterior there lies a moderately smart realist. But it was a shock.”

I looked at Dubi. I knew him now for the king, but I still thought of him as the wizard. “One thing bothers me. Your secret has now been exposed. It seems that everyone in this castle knows about the latest gossip almost before it happens. You are surely in danger again.”

“I surely am,” Dubi agreed. “But that army to the north is virtually ready to strike, so my guiding hand is needed here. Rose is not versed in military defense. I had hoped to cause the assassin to reveal himself, but now perforce I must govern.”

“And there is still an assassin,” I said. “Even if you’re not dead. So my job continues.”

“I’m an absolute mess, and confused by recent revelations,” Rose said. “So if you worthy men will get out of my room, I will put myself in order.” She lifted her legs and swung them off the bed, providing me with a near-paralyzing flash, as she surely realized.

“Even as a confused mess, you remain prettier than any other woman I know,” I said honestly.

“You don’t count. I kissed you.”

“Touche,” I agreed.

“Perhaps we should adjourn to the balcony,” Dubi said.

I stifled a double-take. He wanted to go out where his fear of heights would constrict him? There had to be excellent reason. “As you wish.”

Dubi reverted to his familiar Wizard form as we departed the bedroom.

“There is something on your mind?” I asked when we reached the balcony.

“It’s about the castle network. You have noted how news gets rapidly about, but you don’t seem to understand precisely how.”

“That’s true.” I realized now that this was a bad gap in my information.

“It is a telepathic ambiance that can develop in well-used castles. They seem to tune in on their inhabitants, sharing their thoughts as it were, or at least their voices. Anything you say can be overheard by other parties who are interested enough to pay close attention. It is especially acute when the listener is the subject of a dialogue.”

That explained a lot. “So when I talked to Mave, Rose overheard. And when I talked to Rose, Mave heard.”

“Exactly. Both are quite taken with you, so tend to listen in on your dialogues with the other. But they are not the only ones interested in you. As a newcomer, and an investigator, and perhaps royal, and possibly even the Dragon King, you are the current main person of interest.”

“But that means that this conversation is being heard,” I said. “We have no secrets.”

“Not so. Did it occur to you to wonder why I chose to have my death out here, despite my nervousness about the exposure?”

Then I caught on. “Because you needed privacy! Otherwise everyone would know it was fake.”

“Exactly.”

“And that is why we are talking here now. So that we can’t be overheard by the castle. You must have something really important to tell me.”

“Not so,” he repeated.

For a moment I was baffled. “Not?”

“It is to prevent you from saying anything that might prejudice your mission.”

I assimilated that. “Sir, I wish I could tell you I had a lead on the assassin, but I don’t.”

“But you will find that lead. I have observed you at work. You have the mind for it.”

“I hope you’re right. But it seems I can’t investigate anyone here without everyone knowing. That crimps my style.”

“Not necessarily. You can make the network work for you.”

“I can?”

“Allow me to demonstrate. We shall reenter the castle. Focus on listening for references to yourself. Do not speak aloud.”

“I will do that,” I agreed dubiously.

We went back inside. I stood there beside Dubi, listening. And I started to hear voices, first whisper-faint, then as it attuned, louder and clearer.

‘Don’t touch that sweetbread. It is reserved for Sir Roan.’

‘Ellie, you will clean Sir Roan’s room today.’ ‘Yes ma’am.’ ‘Say, Ellie, wouldn’t it be funny if you ripped off the sheets with your usual carelessness, and he was still in the bed! He sleeps naked, you know.’ ‘I’d be so embarrassed!’ ‘You’d have to take off your own clothes and jump in with him!’ ‘No!’ ‘You’re blushing, Ellie.’

There was more, but I’d had enough. I could indeed do some research this way, without ever leaving my room. Unless shy Ellie came. I wondered what she looked like. I also wondered how they knew I slept naked. Maybe the last cleanup maid had not found any pajamas with the sheets.

We returned to the balcony. “This is amazing. Thank you, sir, for acquainting me with it. I will be very careful about anything I say within the castle.”

“Much of interest can be overheard,” Dubi said. “It is a prime pastime among the servants, and perhaps the royals too. Needless to say, illicit sexual liaisons are performed in utter silence, unless the participants don’t mind advertising. Any maid who got in bed with you would want to advertise.”

“Thanks for the warning.”

“You are free to do what you wish at night, but Rose will know.”

I appreciated that warning too. “She told me I could have any dancer for the night. She did not seem jealous.”

“Yes, of course. Rose knows better than to try to restrict a man’s pleasures. But do not say anything private during such a liaison.”

“Such as my thoughts about the identity of the assassin?”

“Exactly. Some men can become careless at such times.”

Right on. “Thank you again, sir. I will not be careless.”

“I did not mean to suggest that you would be.” He was the soul of diplomacy. The more I got to know the king, the better I liked him. “Are there any other private matters you wish to mention before we go public again?” He glanced nervously at the ledge, and I realized that he was making a sacrifice to educate me privately.

“Um, how soon do you think that army to the north will attack?” I asked.

“It can occur at any moment. It has been massing for the past month.”

“Exactly how could the Dragon King deal with it?”

“That we do not know. Only that it will be effective.”

“Assuming, of course, that I am that Dragon. I have no certainty of that.”

“We sincerely hope that you are the Dragon, because otherwise we are lost.”

“I hope so too,” I said humbly.

“One more caution: a dragon, when first evoked, is not fully functional at the outset. Like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon, it requires time to consolidate its various powers. The Dragon King has been quiescent for a considerable period. So you will want to do it in as much privacy as you can manage.”

“And the assassin will be watching,” I added. “In or outside the castle. Ready to strike the moment he is sure of the Dragon’s identity. Because he can’t afford to let the Dragon achieve those powers.”

Dubi nodded soberly. “You have a marvelous grasp of the situation.”

And that’s when I told him my plan. Dubi listened quietly, occasionally raising his eyebrows and nodding. When I was finished, he said, “A marvelous plan, Sir Roan. I will need only a little time on my end. See me an hour before noon tomorrow, and we shall put your plan into motion. Now I will leave you to your own devices. I have a kingdom to run.”

He certainly did, and I sincerely appreciated the time he had taken with me.

What was I to do now? Assuming I was the Dragon King—which I feared was an uncomfortably long shot—I could not be safely invoked without considerably more privacy than this castle offered. I would not be safe away from the castle either, unless I could spirit Mave away to Lord Mephisto’s castle to do the deed. That threatened to be more complicated than I could manage. What I really needed to do was locate and eliminate the anonymous assassin. Then the rest should fall into place reasonably readily.

I went to my room and lay down to think. And wouldn’t you know it, that was when the chamber maid came to clean it up. I sat up as she entered, and she really was pretty. “Ellie, I presume?”

“Oh!” she said, and wavered on her feet as if about to faint.

I hurried to stabilize her. “I knew you were coming,” I said. “I couldn’t resist teasing you. I’ll get out of here and let you work in peace.”

“Thank you sir,” she said faintly.

I departed the room and headed for the kitchen to pick up my sweetbread. The castle personnel had zeroed in on my tastes with telepathic speed. Too bad I couldn’t zero in similarly on the assassin.

Then I felt it coming like a storm on the horizon. It was an idea how to locate the assassin. I didn’t have it yet, but it was on the way. I opened my mind to it—and it fizzed out. All I could think of was how I had learned to play chess as a kid, and a more experienced player had got me four times in succession with the Fool’s Mate. What a humiliation! Later I spied in a magazine a counter trap to reverse the case when someone tried the Fool’s Mate, but I never got to use it. Ever thus, like the perfect retort to an insult. Now if I could just reverse the case with the assassin...

Then it hit me. That was the key! To lay myself open for the assassin, then nab him when he struck. He’d never suspect a counter-trap.

I went to Princess Rose’s room and knocked on her door. She opened it, standing there fully prettied up. I wished I could enfold her, but I had a different agenda at the moment. “I have a plan,” I said.

She let me in. “You can’t have my virginity until marriage.”

I liked her humor. “Not that plan. It’s to get Mave to evoke my dragon. I’ll need to spend the night with her. One night should do it.”

“You’re going to Stare her!” she exclaimed admiringly.

I frowned in mock distaste. “That would be unfair.”

“All’s fair in love and war, especially when they merge.”

“Obviously all I really want from her is sex. I’ll have to offer her a face-saving deal, like being First Concubine after I marry you, and siring a Royal Bastard. It’s not much, but I think it is doable.”

“I like the way your devious mind works. By morning you’ll have her eating out of your hand, or whatever.” Her gaze flicked down to my belt or thereabouts. “She’ll do anything you want.”

“And what I want is for her to evoke my dragon at noon tomorrow. In front of everyone in the castle, so that the assassin won’t dare to strike.”

She clapped her hands in girlish glee. “We’ll all be there.”

I frowned. “Aren’t you even a little bit jealous?”

“Oh, yes. I’ll envy her that night. But it’s a chore you have to do.”

Some chore. I let it pass, just as she had let my mention of marriage pass. “I’m going to get some daytime sleep. I want to be alert for the chore.”

“By all means.” She stepped forward and delivered one of her chaste kisses. “I still think torture might be a safer bet, but we’ll play it your way. We need that dragon.”

I returned to my room. Ellie was just finishing up. “That looks great,” I said.

“Thank you, sir,” she simpered.

“Tell Mave I want her with me tonight.”

She froze briefly, then recovered. “I will, sir.”

I realized that I had been needlessly cruel. “Your turn will come, Ellie. I met her before I met you, so she’s ahead in line. Protocol.”

She blushed scarlet and departed, pleased.

I lay down on the freshly made bed. I did need rest and sleep, because I suspected it was going to be a difficult night, albeit not for the reason the gossip listeners expected.

The day passed routinely, though I was conscious of the attention of the staff. They all knew that I wanted raw sex, and that Mave wanted a commitment, and were even placing bets (I did a snooping listen) on the outcome. Would I persuade her to evoke my dragon without marriage, or would her phenomenal sex appeal win me over? Or would it be a draw: no marriage, no Dragon?

Mave arrived promptly as I turned in for the night. She was breathtakingly beautiful in a harem girl outfit, and scented with what I suspected was an erotic perfume. “I know we should spend some token time getting to know each other better,” I told her. “But I can’t wait. Join me in the shower.”

She disrobed in something like half a second and joined me in the shower without protest. Evidently she had some experience with kinky male tastes. I put my arms around her in the blasting water and whispered in her ear. Her jaw dropped, then she nodded. She would play along, at least for now.

“I’d love to have at you,” I whispered. “As you can see from the arousal of my body. But this is business. There is an army massing on the kingdom’s north border, and soon it will invade and wipe us out. Only the Dragon King can stop it. I need you to evoke it now, so that it has the night to consolidate and come into its proper power. Otherwise the assassin will destroy it at the outset, tomorrow at noon, and all will be lost. I appeal to your patriotism. You know the terms I proffer, and I will honor them and be truly grateful for your help. Without you I can’t do it.”

She turned her face and whispered her response in my ear. “The princess’s kisses don’t last more than a few days. Then you won’t be her love slave any more. If something happens to mess up your marriage with her, will you marry me instead?”

“Provided that nothing bad happens to the princess, so that it is her choice to void the marriage, then yes, I will marry you. But I see little likelihood of that happening.”

“Then I will be First Concubine with a Royal Bastard,” she said. “It is a fair deal, and we will save the kingdom.”

“Oh, thank you!” I said, hugely grateful. I held her and kissed her passionately.

“No sex at this time,” she said regretfully. “You will need that energy to fill out the dragon.” Then she put her hands on my head and exerted her power.

It was magnificent. Maybe our nakedness and emotion contributed, or maybe it was simply the hot water, but I felt a massive arousal in my body and mind. The Dragon was stirring, preparing to come out.

And did it ever. I swelled into a mass of flesh too big for the shower. My coils filled the bathroom, my tail extending into the bedroom. My head became a toothy giant, my arms and legs scaly, my digits clawed. Still she stayed with me, her hands on my head, keeping the evocation going. She knew what she was doing.

Then I was complete, filling all available space, coiled three layers deep. But I was weak, hardly able to support my own enormous weight.

“It will take a while for your strength to come,” she said. “But you should be able to transform back to human shape now.”

I concentrated, and it worked. I resumed my human form. But I was abysmally weak.

Mave turned off the shower and led me to the bed. She laid me down on it, then joined me, putting her hands back on my head. I felt the healing power, and knew that the conversion was still happening, this time internally. Without her strength I would have been completely lost. She was right about skipping the sex; I needed every bit of that energy for the evocation.

Then she did something that surprised and pleased me immeasurably: she faked sex. I was too washed out to do it, but didn’t need to. “What, so soon again?” she asked with seeming surprise. “After all those times in the shower? Well, I’m game if you can do it.” She was briefly silent, then she started moaning as if in ascending pleasure, culminating in an urgent simulated climax. “Oh, you did,” she said. “What a performance!” The performance, of course, was hers; she was a born actress.

Meanwhile she kept her hands on my head, channeling the evocation, and I felt the strength rising as my inner organs fell into place. My muscles were hardening, and my belly was generating literal fire. But that was only part of it. I was discovering that the Dragon King was more mental than physical, and that alien mind had power I had never dreamed of. Telepathy, of course, but also teleportation, clairvoyance, and other abilities that were fearsome in their potential. Destroy an army? This mind could make that army lie down and die without fighting, or flee in terror from a mouse. Truly, I was the Dragon King, and this dragon was the salvation of the kingdom.

“Again?” Mave asked. “I don’t know whether I can—oooh, do that again!” And she went into another slow simulation.

Then later in the night she said something else. “And you didn’t even Stare me. You are conquering me without the Stare.” That was technically true, but she was making it sound far more significant.

Finally I spoke, partly to be sure I could do it. “It is my logic I want you to heed.”

“That, too,” she sighed ecstatically. “Sir Roan, you have won me. I have never had a night like this. I will perform the evocation at noon, as you direct.”

As morning came I knew the dragon was as yet incomplete, but so great was its potential that even this partial fulfillment was more than I had seen in Fiera, and my magic was more than I had seen in the Wizard. I was ready to take on any likely assassin. Now all I needed was for that assassin to attack me at noon, thinking me vulnerable, thus betraying his identity at last.

As dawn cracked the sky, Mave went into one more enactment, panting her desperate fulfillment. “Oh Sir Roan!” she gasped. “It will take me weeks to recover from the force of your plumbing, and years to stop dreaming of it!” Then she got up and limped away.

I loved Princess Rose, but now I also loved Mave. What a woman!

I dropped off to sleep at last, knowing the dragon strength was still growing. Mave had gotten it fairly started, and now it could continue on its own.

An hour before noon, I awoke. No one had disturbed me. Mave must have told them to stay clear, bless her again. I changed smoothly into dragon form, then back to human. I was ready.

I first went down and met with Dubi. Once finished, I went to the central courtyard. I had said aloud that I thought I would be protected because I would be evoked in a public place with many spectators. That was deliberately naïve. I knew the assassin would strike regardless, contemptuous of all except the weak nascent Dragon. A crowd had gathered for the event. Mave was there, looking slightly disheveled as if unable to recover completely from her sexual workout. Marvelous!

Wordlessly I stepped out with her, the princess, Dubi and a handful of heavily armed guards. On with the show!

Chapter Fifteen

It was a glorious day for an evocation, words that I never thought I would say. Or think. But here I was, with the sun shining high above, standing within a castle courtyard, a heaving, excited crowd waiting for me to transform into, of all things, a savior dragon.

Life is weird, I thought, as I looked out over the growing crowd. Word had gotten out that the Dragon King would be making his first public appearance. I likened this to be similar the Second Coming in my own world. Except, of course, I was no son of God.

Just a dragon, apparently. I shook my head at the craziness of it all. Last week I was following cheating spouses. Today I was the Dragon King.

Maybe, I thought. But I was still hired to do a job. To find the assassin. Yes, the king wasn’t dead. But my father was dead. And his death, I was certain, was linked to all of this.

They killed him, I suspected, because they thought he had been the Dragon King. They were wrong, of course. The dubious honor fell to me.

Undoubtedly, the assassin had realized his or her error. The Dragon King hadn’t been the king himself, nor my father—both of whom the assassin had killed, or so he or she thought in the case of the king.

Now, of course, the assassin was after me.

Yes, I thought, let the games begin.

I kept my mind closed from the telepathic dragon, just as I had commanded Mave to do. No one must know the plan. Rose was by my side, smiling. Dubi was nearby as well, hands behind his back, looking uncomfortable. Guards stood guard everywhere, keeping the rowdy crowd back. But it wasn’t the crowd I feared.

No. It was one lone assassin.

He—or she—was out there somewhere, biding their time, waiting to put an arrow in me.

Princess Rose reached out and squeezed my hand. I squeezed back. She smiled at me and frowned a little. I quickly released her hand, lest she become suspicious and blow my cover.

Now Mave reached up and put her hands on my head. My heart raced. For the first time, I felt nervous. What if I had miscalculated? What if the assassin wasn’t here?

He had to be. Or she had to be. My every instinct told me he or she would be. The assassin would stop the evocation at all costs. He or she would stop the Dragon King’s manifestation. Something would happen. Something would happen now, before the evocation. I was sure of it.

The crowd cheered, heaved, a sea of excited humanity. My heart raced, too. I felt Mave’s warm hands on my head. Time seemed to stop. I held my breath.

“Wait!” shouted a voice.

I turned my head at the voice. A familiar voice. It had come, of course, from Princess Rose herself. She was pointing a crossbow at my chest.

“Rose,” I said, but that’s as far as I got.

The bolt was loosed, plunging deep into my heart. The pain was intense, but mercifully brief, and I crumpled to the ground, one hand on the bolt, one hand reaching for the princess. I looked up for a moment or two. I looked deep into Rose’s eyes. She was not the Rose I knew and loved. She was hard, cold, bitter. Indeed, she nearly looked like another persona altogether.

And then my heart collapsed, and my eyes shut, and I breathed my last.

***

The courtyard was thrown into pandemonium.

I watched all of this from above, as spirits are wont to do. The guards, confused, were ordered by Dubi to fetch the princess, which they dutifully did. Guards, princess, Mave, Dubi and my lifeless body were all swept into the castle throne room, where the massive doors were thrown shut and sealed.

I drifted into the court room, as well, high above, watching all.

Outside, the crowd was in a wild panic, and I didn’t blame them. Their Dragon King had been killed before their eyes. Undoubtedly they knew that an army was waiting in the north, an army that would now descend upon them, perhaps killing all.

Yes, I had surely flushed out the killer, but I had not expected it to be my sweet Rose, whose love spell still clung to my dead heart.

Princess Rose was dragged through the courtroom, where she was deposited unceremoniously at the feet of Dubi the magician, the king, her father. Thus far, only she and myself, and perhaps Matron, knew of Dubi’s disguise. Still, Dubi could not hide the disappointment and regret in his voice.

“Why, Rose?” he asked, his voice full of anguish. “Why did you do it?”

She said nothing, not at first. I watched from above, curious.

“What did you hope to gain, my daughter?” he asked, and at that he transformed into the king. The guards gasped. One or two stumbled back. The king held up his hands. “Be still, my guards. Yes, your king is alive and well. All will be explained soon enough. For now, we have a traitor of the Realm to contend with. My own daughter.”

Outside, the crowd still shouted. I might have smelled smoke. They were getting rowdy.

The king stood over his daughter, his face clouded with disappoint, confusion and shame. “So it was you? It was you who put an arrow in my heart. Have I not been good to you?”

Still, Rose did not speak. She was trembling now. A great shadow swept past the throne room’s window. Fiera. She was circling the castle, and would, I knew, do all she could to come to the princess’s aid. I watched as Mave slipped out of the room, and up a side flight of stairs. Good idea. Things were about to get very ugly, I suspected.

“What do you have to say for yourself, my daughter?” demanded the king.

“Do not be too hard on her, my old friend,” said a deep voice from the shadows.

Like everyone else in the throne room, I snapped my head around. It was Lord Mephisto, of course. Two of the guards, recognizing him, instantly loosed two bolts in his direction. Mephisto casually waved his hand, and the projectiles clattered harmlessly to the floor.

The flying dragon, I realized, hadn’t been so much as circling the castle, watching over her mistress, as depositing Lord Mephisto here, in the castle, thus bypassing the magical wards that kept the enemy away.

“And why shouldn’t I be hard on my traitor daughter?” asked the king. He strode carefully out into the throne room. Guards all trained their weapons on the intruder wizard, but all present knew such weapons would have little impact.

Mephisto now stood before the king in the center of the throne room. Princess Rose watched from the far end, still on her hands and knees. She was weeping. Most importantly, the coldness in her eyes was gone. The Rose I knew had returned.

From the rafter high above, I finally spoke. “Your daughter was under a spell, my liege. As she had been for some time. Perhaps ever since her father—her real father, Lord Mephisto—first visited her in the orphanage.”

All heads looked up, including Rose, who gasped. It was she who spoke first. “Sir Roan? You are not dead?”

The king grinned. He had been, of course, privy to my ruse, since it had been one of his magic dolls that had been cast into my likeness. And not just my likeness. With the king’s considerable magic I had been able to animate the doll from afar. I could feel what it felt. Hear what it heard. It was a remarkable feat of magic that had exhausted the king, and would only last a short time.

Lord Mephisto, no fool, caught on instantly. “A fake, of course. Very clever, my king.”

“Your plan to kill off the Dragon King has failed, Mephisto,” said the king. “Give up now or die.”

Rose’s real father grinned. The guards trained their weapons on him. The shadow of the dragon passed by the window again. It was circling the castle.

“You would like that, my liege,” said Lord Mephisto. “You would like having me give up so readily, when I have worked so hard to steal all that you love, just as you stole all that I loved.”

The king said nothing, only regarded the tall man before him sadly. Rose was now on her feet. She was looking up at me. I saw the pain in her eyes, the sorrow. I winked at her. Mave appeared on the upstairs rafters, panting slightly, and looking beautiful. Yes, she had definitely stolen some of my heart last night.

“There is an army amassing in the north,” said Mephisto. “An army that I have painstakingly aligned with—”

“The Shadow Stealers,” said the king, nodding. Both men were now circling each other. “You sold your soul and kingdom. For what? Petty revenge?”

“Much more than that, my liege,” said Mephisto, and with that a great crack of lightning erupted from the man’s hand. “They have taught me the dark arts, as you can see. They only asked for one thing in return.”

“Destroy the Dragon King,” said the king.

Mephisto grinned wickedly and looked up at me. “And I see that I have failed, which is a problem.”

“Because you have already informed the Shadow Stealers that the Dragon King is dead.”

“You are smarter than you look, my liege. Now, I must finish the job!”

And as he spoke these words, something exploded through the Throne Room’s stained-glass windows. It was the dragon, Fiera, and she was coming straight for me.

It was then that I realized the dragon had never been fully free of Mephisto’s command. I had been fooled.

I turned to Mave. “Invoke the dragon. Hurry!”

Chapter Sixteen

Mave reached precariously for me on the rafter, ready to put on the show. She knew I was already the Dragon King and didn’t need her help at this point, but she was adept at playing the role I had assigned her.

Too late. Fiera reached me first, her jaws opening wide to take me in. Trapped on the rafter, I could not escape her. She would hold me with her teeth, and breathe out just enough fire to roast me without further harming the castle furnishings. Obviously Mephisto did not want the castle damaged more than necessary, as he expected to govern it, with Rose as his puppet princess.

I did not even try. I let the dragon’s teeth close on my flesh. There they halted, encountering my invulnerable skin. She could not hurt me. Her eyes widened in amazement.

You have the power already! she thought.

“Indeed,” I answered her verbally. “You are in my power. If you doubt it, try to open your mouth.”

She tried, but it was locked in place. She had been trapped by her own eagerness to dispatch me. I am caught, she confessed.

“Now yield to me.”

I serve another, she thought with regret.

I drew my gun. “Now I could plug you through the brain,” I said conversationally. “But you have been helpful to me in the past, and I’d like to have your loyalty in the future. Yield to me now, quietly, and I will spare you.”

I cannot. Now she was hurting, and aspects of her pain were leaking out telepathically. The geis on her was too great. She was magically bound by a power beyond that of any ordinary dragon.

I considered briefly. I didn’t want to kill her; Rose would be saddened. “Then I must do it the hard way,” I said with my own regret. And without pause I blasted her with my Dragon King powered telepathy, which was a magnitude greater than hers. It bashed away her mental defense like straw and ripped open her mind. In seconds she would die if I did not ease off.

Then I paused. Her mind was laid out before me like the entrails of a split-open carcass and I saw something that amazed me. I grasped it instantly, though it covered years.

The attack on my father had not been by a person emulating Princess Rose. It had been by Rose herself, under the same spell that had just caused her to shoot my doll emulation. She was in the thrall not merely of Lord Mephisto, but of the sinister mind of the ruler of the Shadow Stealers that governed him. The deal Mephisto had made with the Shadow King was no recent thing; it dated back decades, and now at last was coming to its dreadful fruition.

But it was more than that. The princess, posing as a distressed client, took my father’s own gun from the desk drawer and fired it at him. He had never anticipated such a thing from a seemingly innocent and lovely young woman. Her aim was imperfect (that would change thereafter) and the bullet did not kill him; it lodged in his ribcage. But the wound was enough to fell him, and he dropped to the floor, bleeding copiously. Her job done, the princess quickly departed, with no memory of the event.

But it did not end there. Mephisto appeared, carrying what I recognized as one of the king’s life sized voodoo dolls. It was made in the image of my father, except that it bore no bullet wound; it looked as if it had been mysteriously poisoned, or perhaps even had died naturally. Mephisto lifted my father’s body telekinetically, making it float, and laid the doll in its place as the blood evaporated. Then he and the body vanished.

Still it did not end. Fiera knew, and therefore so did I, now, that my father was transported to the Northern Kingdom of the Realm, where he was magically healed. He was told that the princess was on the way to usurping the throne of the Middle Kingdom (no relation to any ancient Chinese empire on Earth) and would in due course murder her adopted father and take over. Roan Quigley Senior, my father, had been targeted because he was the bastard son of the king, in line to inherit the throne if no fully legitimate heir was available. Now he was needed to take back the Middle Kingdom when the evil princess finally made her move. To that end he trained as a leader, and came to command a great northern army. He could not strike as long as the legitimate king was in place, but when the treacherous adopted princess took over, it would be time. That was projected to be about a month from now.

To ensure victory, Mephisto had enlisted the aid of the Shadow Stealers. These were largely invisible, unknowable entities who dwelt in an alternate dimension. They had no physical presence, but could take over the bodies of physical folk by first inhabiting their shadows, then gradually infiltrating the body. This took time, and was not done indiscriminately, because if the subject caught on too soon he could readily banish the intruder with a simple exorcism spell. Princess Rose’s shadow had been occupied when she was but a child. She was a creature of the Shadow Stealers, but did not know it, and normally they left her to her own devices. So she was herself except when there was an emergency; then she was a foreign agent with deadly intentions, who could, I realized, heartlessly utilize torture or brutally kill. Contrary to what my father was told, the real Rose was not a schemer and not the enemy, and she had not killed anyone of her own volition. She, like Fiera, was governed as convenient by the Shadow Stealers.

Mephisto intended to put Rose in power, as the puppet. But Mephisto himself was a puppet of his supposed allies, the Shadow Stealers. It was a devious, decades-long project. Fiera knew all about it, but could not tell anyone, though she had her misgivings. Her job was to protect the physical princess, not the mental one, and at times that really griped her.

Then the king, suspecting something, had made a genius ploy and faked his own death. That had prompted immediate action, and the princess had come to collect the next likely heir, me. Because my father had turned out not to be the Dragon King, I was, by default, the best remaining prospect. The true target being the Dragon King, as I had surmised, because nothing less could stop the Shadow King from taking over, now that his time had come.

All this I read in an instant, while the ongoing action seemed to freeze around us. Now it was time to act. I banished the Shadow presence from Fiera’s mind with a flick of my will, and put her back together. “Now you serve me,” I told her with certainty. “Go guard the princess.”

But she remains in thrall to the Shadow.

“Don’t tell her you know.” I could banish her Shadow, but at the moment I had a more dangerous enemy to deal with, and delay might be costly.

She reoriented and glided down to join Princess Rose. I saw that Boffo Bandit had made his way to her also. She would be well protected.

Mave had paused. “They know you’re the Dragon King already,” she said. She had a certain sense about such things, unsurprisingly.

“That’s right. No need to continue our act. I do appreciate your readiness, however. Our deal remains: First Concubine, Royal Bastard. Climb back down to the floor.”

She looked down. “I’m not sure I can.” I knew her problem: she had climbed up in a fit of urgency to help me. Climbing down was another matter.

I smiled. “I will help you. Relax.” I reached out and lifted her with my mind, floating her gently down to the floor. I saw several men looking up, admiring her shapely legs under the flaring skirt as she descended.

“Thank you, sir,” Mave called as she landed. Then she glared around at the peeking men who had taken advantage of her situation.

Meanwhile, I oriented on Mephisto. I took hold of his mind and banished the Shadow presence there, as I had with Fiera. In the process I saw that he had in effect framed himself, planting the clues we had followed to identify him as a leading suspect. He had wanted to be suspected, then vindicated as I saw the shallowness of the evidence. Nice counter-intelligence, really.

He staggered, dazed. “What have I done!” He should be all right, freed of the Shadow.

I considered things as I sat on the rafter. I had set the immediate situation mostly to rights. But yet again, it seemed too easy. What was I missing? Things had worked out before because the enemy presence had been subtly manipulating them, shaping up the larger situation for the masked takeover. We had all been chess pieces playing into the Fool’s Mate. The real enemy remained: the Shadow Stealers. They had no tangible presence, only their minions when they occupied human beings. How could I address them? My job was not finished until I did.

Be not concerned, reptile. I am here. You have done more than enough mischief.

I heard him in my mind, but saw nothing. Only maybe the faintest flicker of warmth in the air. It was the Shadow King.

I see you tricked my minions by evoking half a day ahead of your schedule, just as the king did by pretending death. But I am beyond such trickery. You may have power over mortal creatures, but it will be some time before you are my equal.

I felt the awesome power of his mind, and knew immediately that I was over-matched. He was correct: maybe in a few more hours I might be able to fight him, but at present I could not. My ploy had sufficed to defeat the mortal entities I had known about, but this was an immortal with centuries of experience.

The Shadow King had arranged to evoke the Dragon King so he could finally identify and destroy him. I, not understanding the full nature of the trap, had walked right into it. That was likely not only to end my life, but to hurt my professional pride. I did not much like being played for a fool.

He did not mind speak again. Instead he laid siege to my mind, enclosing it in a sphere of dreadful dissolution. I defended myself, of course, fending him off, but that could only slow, not halt, the incursion. He would squeeze me like a ball of snow, leaving only a dribble of melt-water.

I bolted, escaping his deadly clutch. But he followed, playing with me like a cat with a mouse, knowing he could finish me at his whim. His emotions were obscure, because he was not human, but I knew he was enjoying this. He did not want it to be over too soon.

What could I do? It had never occurred to me that I would be the victim, once I became the Dragon King. Now I had to prevail, or die, and the fate of the kingdom, indeed, of the Realm, would follow mine. Without the Dragon King to defend it, the mortal scheme would succumb to the immortal evil spirit that was the Shadow Stealer. All the individuals I had rescued would be readily re-possessed, and the kingdom doomed.

Then I got a notion. My father, the senior Roan Quigley, survived. Apart from my gladness of the moment, I had always valued his advice. Maybe he would have some for me now. At least I could see him again.

I teleported north. At some other time I would have enjoyed the experience of exercising my phenomenal new abilities, but this was business. When I saw the army, I focused on my father’s mind trace, then jumped to his presence.

He was just finishing a military meal, looking exactly as I remembered him. “Hello, son,” he said laconically, as if this were routine.

“Hi, dad.” Then I couldn’t help myself: I hugged him. “Glad you’re alive. I was a mite concerned for a while.”

“I got shot, but I got over it. Didn’t have time to say farewell.”

“How you doing, dad?” This seemed pedestrian and stupid, but at the moment I couldn’t come up with anything better.

“Doing well enough, considering, son. I didn’t feel so good when your mother died, but now I got me a new gal, and she’s some creature, let me tell you. She’s away most of the time, on business, but makes it really count when she gets together with me. Her other form is a dragon.”

My jaw almost banged my collar bone on the way down. “Fiera!”

“You know her? Small Realm.”

“I know her,” I agreed, glad I had spared the dragon. “As a matter of fact, I’m a dragon myself. You’ve heard of the Dragon King?”

“Oh, yeah. The one the foul princess came to kill, only it wasn’t me.”

“I’m going to marry that princess.”

He looked at me. “Now I’m not one to mess with your preference, son, you know that. I never said a word when you married that bitch who alimonied you. But this time you’d be better off with a scorpion.”

“I love her.”

He shook his head. “She must be really special in bed.”

“She’s a virgin. I haven’t touched her.”

He grimaced at my folly. “She’s pretty; I’ll give you that. But she’ll kill you, son. I’m in a position to know.”

“She was possessed by a Shadow. I’ll banish that.”

“Can’t be. The Shadows are our friends.”

This was going nowhere, and my time was limited. “Dad, I’m going to give you a mind full, telepathically. You need to trust me.”

“I always trusted you, son, ’cept for your judgment of women. Let me have it.”

I let him have it. In an instant he knew what I did.

“Phew! I’ve been hoodwinked. How can I help you, son?” He was always one for quick assessments and realism, able to turn on a dime when necessary. I liked to think that I had inherited some of that.

“Tell me how to defeat the Shadow King, who is even now teasing me by letting me talk with you. He’ll abolish us both when he tires of playing with his food. I need a workable strategy right now.”

He considered. “I’m not much for telepathic battle strategies. All I can think of is Hannibal and the Romans.”

“Hannibal?” I asked blankly.

“I guess they didn’t have ancient history in your school. I didn’t pay much attention to it myself. But what I vaguely remember is that Hannibal was the general of the army of Carthage, in one of the Punic wars. He was really good, and the Romans couldn’t touch him. He even invaded Italy, with his elephants, and for fifteen years ravaged the countryside, and they couldn’t stop him. He teased them something awful. Once when he was in the area where the Roman general lived, he made sure to ravage all the land except what belonged to the general, making it look as if he’d been paid off.”

“Good joke on the Romans,” I agreed. “But dad, is there a point to this history?”

“I’m getting there, son. The Romans finally got smart. They figured that if they couldn’t get Hannibal in their own land, maybe they could bring him to bay in his homeland, where he couldn’t sneak away. So they laid siege to Carthage, really making it hard for the city. And Hannibal had to come back to defend his home. And they were ready for him, once he couldn’t avoid them. I think he didn’t have time to get his full army back, so was weakened. They destroyed him. By making him play their game, instead of his game.”

I considered that. “You’re saying I might do better in Shadowland?”

“You always were a bright lad,” he said approvingly.

I wasn’t sure of that, but played along. “Do you happen to know where Shadowland is, dad?”

“I do happen to know, because I’ve seen the minions going there for refresher courses or whatever. There’s a hidden access right over that mountain pass.” He pointed to a nearby mountain range.

Well, any notion was better than none. “Thanks, dad,” I said, and teleported to the pass. I materialized just shy of it, turned dragon form, and winged on across. Would this work?

There was a flicker, and suddenly I was in a realm of perpetual gloom. That figured; this was the home of the Shadows, so it was all shadow. Now what would mess them up so badly that the Shadow King would have to come back to stop it?

Readily answered: light. Enough to banish all shadows. So I inflated, then breathed out a sheet of flame sufficient to make the sun pale in comparison. There was dry tinder on the valley floor, and it burst into flame, enhancing the effect. And I heard or sensed a faint wailing, as of things getting wiped out by all that intolerable light. Too bad for them. I kept blow-torching, covering as much area as I could. This was fun, in its destructive way. Maybe like the fun the Shadow King had when toying with me.

And he was there before me. What are you doing?

“Isn’t it obvious?” I replied sweetly, knowing it was my mind rather than my words that he heard. My dragon words weren’t very clear anyway, muffled by smoke. “I’m making a bonfire. Do you have any marshmallows?”

No! he thought in mixed rage and pain. Then, beset by the discomfort of the moment, he did something stupid: he tried to attack me physically, attempting to smother me in his ambiance. He was playing my game.

I directed a stream of fire right through the heart of his invisible cloud. Oh, that hurt; I could feel his agony. I had caught him with a sucker punch. But I didn’t rest on my laurels; I kept firing, burning up the very air around and through him.

That was hardly the end of it, but now I had seized the advantage, and I never let up. I kept going until there was nothing left of the king and Shadowland but ashes.

The Shadow King was gone; I could feel it. I had defeated him, thanks to my father’s advice. The menace of the Shadow Stealers had dissipated.

***

It took a few days to organize the chaos, such as abolishing any remaining Shadows, but we were all glad to do it. Dad, and Fiera in woman form, attended the wedding. Then Princess Rose and I set off on our honeymoon. Where? In Lost Angels, of course, and Mouse House, and all the theme parks. She had never had an experience like this, by day or night, when we made love. Meanwhile, I knew that First Concubine Mave and Second Concubine Ellie were preparing the castle for our return, when I would do my duty by them. I expected to enjoy my sojourn there.

So what about the Dragon King? He wasn’t much for incidental daytime activities. He receded into the depths of my being, there to wait quiescently until the next crisis, which I hoped would not be in my lifetime. With luck he wouldn’t have to manifest again until the time of our grandchildren, if then.

Given a choice between the two worlds, I chose the Realm. Back on earth, I was still divorced and still in debt. Imagine the surprise of my ex-wife when she discovered that a small fortune in gold—enough to pay 100 years of alimony—had been deposited into her bank account.

I might be the Dragon King...but I’m still a gumshoe at heart. Dragon King, P.I.

I like the ring of it.

The End

The Fantasy Collective continues in:

Jack and the Giants

Return to the Table of Contents

JACK AND THE GIANTS

A Fantasy Collective Novel

by

PIERS ANTHONY

J.R. RAIN

Jack and the Giants

Published by Rain Press

Copyright © 2014 by J.R. Rain and Piers Anthony

All rights reserved.

Jack and the Giants

ChapterOne

Dream

Now that it was too late, I regretted standing up for myself. I should have remembered that I was Jack the Lowly Employee, not Jack the Giant Killer.

I had reluctantly done the job the boss’s way, and when that went sour the boss had claimed I had done it wrong, sticking me with the blame. Another black mark on my record. It had happened before; my performance reviews had suffered for exactly that reason, as had the reviews of others. We were all being slowly washed out by the bully who could not admit his own frequent errors. That was the straw that stiffened the camel’s spine. I had told the boss exactly what was what, refusing to be bullied any more—and gotten fired on the spot. The others in the office had sent me covert looks of sympathy, but none dared support me openly lest they too prove to be expendable. I had become an example, a warning to others. It was over.

How could I have been so stupid? I had been the smallest cog in a machine that was a giant of the industry. Giants took little if any notice of cogs; if one squealed it was summarily replaced. There was no such thing as justice; cogs did best when they were not noticed. Anonymity was the key to survival. I had known that. In fact, just about the only reason I had hung on as long as I had was the pretty receptionist at the front desk, the one with the discreet cleavage. I had thought that just maybe she was beginning to think about possibly noticing me. Now of course any prospect there was gone; I would be a pariah, untouchable, no matter how much others might privately applaud my stance. I would be replaced in days, maybe hours, by some other innocent mark.

So I made a supper of leftover bean curd. I hated it, because beans gave me gas, and bad dreams, but they were what I could afford at the end of the month. Then I finished off the rancid wine—again, all I had—in an effort to get drunk. It didn’t work; I just got stupid, and sleepy, and passed out on the bed, clothed. It was the sad end of a wretched day. Tomorrow I would have to tackle the daunting challenge of finding another job in a depressed economy. With a bad work record. O, joy.

Sure enough, I suffered a spectacularly crazy dream. I had a cash cow, of what nature wasn’t clear, and traded it to a farmer for a handful of beans. Beans! As if I didn’t hate them enough already! But the farmer claimed they were magic, and in my inebriated state I had believed it. Disgusted as I sobered, even in my dream, I threw them out the window and went to sleep. And woke a few hours later to find a monstrous bean stalk growing outside my window.

Ludicrous! I went back to sleep.

I woke in the dreary morning with a hangover that wasn’t too bad, considering. I got up, pissed, pooped, considered puking but didn’t have the gumption, splashed water on my face, and decided to leave shaving for another time. After all, I didn’t need to dress up for work: I no longer had a job. Small comfort.

I turned on the battered antique radio, all I had after pawning my TV set, and was rewarded by nice harp music. I pictured the shapely receptionist playing the harp, nude, her breasts nudging the strings. That made me feel better.

There was one egg left in the carton, and one stale bread crust left in the loaf. Too bad it wasn’t a golden egg, and silver bread. I would have to go grocery shopping, if I had any money to do it with. I had been unable to save on the peon wages I got, what with ever-increasing expenses and bad luck. So I had a fried egg and some burned toast for breakfast, and the last souring dregs of milk. At least the power was still on, for now. I put the dishes in the sink on top of the week’s pile. Was this what human existence was all about? It had never been exactly great, and now it was worse.

I happened to look out the window. My meager apartment was on the fifth floor, and had a nice view of the dingy city street below. Only this morning there was something blocking it: a sort of greenish column. Was someone dangling a green towel down from the window above? If so, why?

I opened the window and reached out to touch the column. It wasn’t hanging cloth; it was some sort of live stem. In fact it was a growing green tree trunk, where there had been none before, complete with large leaves. It extended all the way down to the pavement below, and all the way up into the sky. It resembled nothing so much as a giant bean stalk. Impossible! For one thing, since when did anything grow through pavement? As high as the sky? For another, I could see the moving specks that were the heads of people below walking right past it, and even through it, without noticing. If there was anything there, only I could see or touch it. What kind of sense did that make?

Then I caught on. My dream hadn’t ended. I had merely dreamed of sleeping and waking up, a bean-inspired fantasy for a has-bean, ha ha. The magic beans I had thrown out the window had landed, sprouted, and reached rapidly for the sky. Why not? In a foolish dream anything was possible. The folk on the street were awake, so didn’t share the vision. Now I was caught in a lucid dream, where I knew I was dreaming and could change it to suit myself. What the hell. Might as well enjoy it while it lasted. I quickly donned a straw hat, sneakers, gloves, and my cell phone, not that I had anyone to call. Not that any of it mattered in a dream. Then I climbed carefully out the window and onto the jolly green giant stalk. Let’s see where this fantasy leads.

Climbing it turned out to be as easy as only a dream could make it. The leaves were conveniently placed so that I could set my feet in the crevices where the leaves joined the stem, while my hands gripped higher leaves without faltering or slipping. I ascended rapidly, and soon was above the building. Just so long as a storm didn’t come!

I looked down, and felt dizzy; I was way above the city. I couldn’t afford to lose my focus, lest the dream become a falling nightmare. So I fixed my gaze on the stem and leaves, and continued climbing.

A wisp of mist brushed by me. I looked up, carefully, and saw that the stalk was rising up through a cloud. Okay, that would restrict my vision so I couldn’t look dangerously down. I kept climbing.

The fog closed in tightly, feeling thicker than natural; I was almost afraid I would suffocate. Now all I could see was the stem and my own limbs, nothing beyond. How big a cloud was it? The beanstalk was thinning precariously; would it end with me stuck in the cloud? Somehow I had expected more than that. Why have a fantastic dream if it went nowhere?

Then my head poked up out of the top of the cloud. I blinked, amazed.

I seemed to be in a hole on a green hillside that sloped to a pleasant valley with a river flowing through it. Trees dotted the slope, and they were huge. I was no proper judge of such things, but my guess was that the nearest tree was a thousand feet tall, and it was not the largest. How could it exist, here on top of a cloud?

I climbed out of the hole and squatted to touch the ground. It felt solid, not misty, and it smelled of dirt and rotting leaves. That was oddly realistic.

Beyond the river the land rose again, up to a majestic and remarkably large castle. If the trees were a thousand feet tall, the castle was half a mile high. Again, what could possibly support such a mass, perched on the vapor of a cloud?

Then I remembered: the dream. All things were possible, no matter how unlikely.

Yet somehow it no longer felt like a dream. Still, what else could it be?

Chapter Two

Slave

I pinched myself...and yelped.

Then again, maybe I only dreamed that I had pinched myself and yelped. There was, in fact, no way I could definitively prove that I was either asleep or awake. No one could. The mind could conjure the greatest magic of all: imagination. Anything was possible in dreams, even the illusion of reality.

And so I could pinch myself all I wanted, and yelp all I wanted. I could have just as easily been pinching myself in my sleep, and presently yelping in my bed.

So, I stopped pinching myself and did the only thing I could think of...I headed down a wide dirt road. Granted, I could have just as easily gone back down the beanstalk, and back to my bleak apartment, where I could wait patiently for myself to awaken.

If I was, in fact, asleep.

And surely I was.

There was no other explanation. Magical beanstalks only existed in fairy tales, or in dreams. Yes, I’d heard of the Jack and the Beanstalk story. Everyone had. And, sure, maybe I had once or twice day-dreamed about climbing up and up and up and leaving this world behind. Which was probably why my subconscious brain had concocted this story in the first place: to escape the doldrums of my life.

But why here, exactly, I didn’t know.

After all, my subconscious mind could have taken me anywhere...to a ship on the high seas, or a palace full of beautiful maidens.

I looked again at the giant structure set atop the far hill. There was indeed a palace. But was it full of fair maidens? I doubted it. Especially since the original tale of Jack and the Beanstalk spoke of giant women and an ogre who enjoyed consuming children.

I shook my head at the insanity of it all, and set off down the deeply rutted path. The day was bright, and all thought that I might be walking on a cloud had long since left my mind. There was no way this was a cloud. There was also no way that any of this was real. So, if my depressed mind had decided to conjure me here, to this place, the least I could do was humor it and go along for the ride.

After all, I could surely wake up at any point, right?

I hoped so. Especially if there were children-eating ogres nearby.

The dirt road appeared to meander toward the great castle, and I meandered with it, walking and whistling, and admiring the great beauty. Just happy to be outside—not sulking alone in my dark apartment, and growing more and more depressed.

After all, it was hard to stay down when up here, wherever here was. In the clouds, I supposed. Or deep in my imagination. Either way, the sun was bright and the wind was cool and the birdsong was beautiful.

I lifted my face and smiled, reveling in the tranquility—

A twig snapped from somewhere nearby, jolting me out of my reverie. I turned my head just as the ground seemingly erupted around me. Something surrounded me, rising up through the twigs and leaves and dirt. Something webbed. It lifted me off my feet. One moment I had been walking, and the next I was dangling a dozen or so feet above the ground.

Trapped in a net.

***

I spun slowly even as I struggled to free myself from the thick rope and even thicker knots. But escape was futile. Heck, there was barely an opening big enough for my hand.

As I spun I commanded myself to awaken.

Now, I thought. Wake up now, dammit. This is not fun anymore. Hell, I’d rather be at the office, working for that jerk of a boss.

But still I spun and swung lightly. From above, I heard the creak of the rope rubbing against a tree branch. I had never felt so trapped and vulnerable in my life. Except, well, when I worked in my office cubicle. But then I would often catch sight of the pretty receptionist.

But there was no receptionist here. Just a filthy, mud-covered rope.

It was then that I heard it.

A crash, as if something heavy had fallen in the forest. As if a tree itself had fallen. Then I heard it again, and again. No, not a tree falling over. They were...footsteps.

Something was coming. Something huge.

I made a sound that didn’t sound very heroic as I peeked through the net. What I saw made me pray all over again to a God I wasn’t sure I believed in. At least I wished like crazy that I would just awaken from this nightmare.

After all, what appeared through the trees was indeed the thing of nightmares.

It was a giant.

***

“Fee-fi-fo-fum,” said the giant, sniffing the air. He was easily twenty feet tall. Maybe taller. Never had I seen anything so big. Not even the elephants at the zoo. Or even the giraffes. “I smell the blood of a human.”

Then he caught sight of me, danging in the net, and I might have squeaked.

“Ah,” he said, the word rumbling so low and deep that I felt it vibrate in my own chest. “Look what we have here.”

“Wake up, wake up, wake up,” I commanded. But my subconscious mind was having none of it. I silently cursed my subconscious mind.

Now the giant was moving toward me. As he did so, he crushed any plants in his way, and soon he was blocking out the sun itself. His round, silhouetted face, for the moment, was darkened by shadows. I dangled about chest high to the giant.

He sniffed again, so loudly that I could hear the air whistling down his nasal passages. He paused, then reached out and spun the net around, catching sight of me from all directions. “You smell different, human. And look different, too.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but couldn’t find the words, although I did manage a helluva squeak.

“But you sound like a mouse. Never mind. You all taste the same to me.”

He next grabbed the net by the knotted top, produced a knife that was as long as a lance, and cut me down. He then held me up before him and studied me some more, squinting at me with one open eye. An eye that was as big as a softball. The pupil shrank a little, and his whole eyeball rotated up and down and all around as he studied me some more.

“What’s your name, human?”

I swallowed hard, gripping the net as it swung wildly. “Jack,” I said, or think I said. My voice sounded strangled even to my ears.

“Jack, you say?”

“Yes. Please, please let me down—”

“From where do you hail, Jack?”

“New-New York,” I stammered.

“New New York? Never heard of it. Tell me, human, when did you escape from this New New York?”

“Escape?”

He shook the net angrily. “Don’t play stupid with me, Jack of New New York. I’ll eat you right now, never mind the reward.”

I barely held onto the wildly swinging net. “Reward? I-I don’t understand.”

He stopped shaking the net and peered at me again, this time with both eyes. He made various grunting noises, and when he spoke again, his breath was so rancid that I fought the urge to vomit. Then again, maybe I was suffering from motion sickness with all the swinging.

As he studied me, he rubbed his thick jawline with his free hand and spoke quietly to himself, just loud enough for me to make out his words. “Well, the tasty little morsel is dressed kind of funny. Perhaps there is some truth to what he is saying.”

Other than the distressing fact that he had referred to me as a ‘tasty little morsel,’ I was greatly relieved that he seemed to believe me.

“Yes,” I said, speaking up, pushing my face through the net. “I do speak the truth. I am from another land. Far, far away from here.”

The giant studied me some more and I thought for just a moment he was going to set me free. Instead, he said, “Then you are in for a rude awakening, Jack from New New York, for here in Giantland, humans serve only two purposes: some as slaves and others as...” He paused, and a slow smile spread over his wide face. He actually licked his lips when he finished with: “...food.”

“Wait, no! I shouldn’t be here.”

“You can say that again, human. Now, enough chitchat. I have work to do. Escaped humans to find. Like I said, some I eat, and some I return for my reward. And I’m very, very hungry, Jack from New New York. You would do well to remain quiet.”

With that, he plucked me out of the net and deposited me into a satchel at his hip. Once inside, I watched his big hands pull a drawstring tight...and all went dark.

Alas, I was not alone. No, there were others in here with me.

Other humans. I think.

Chapter Three

Fool

At least there seemed to be a human leg jamming into my midriff. I fumbled in the darkness, putting both hands on it and squeezing. Yes, there was definitely a knee, enclosed in a jean. Male or female? I groped my way upward along the thickening thigh and came to its juncture with its companion leg. Female.

A hand slapped my face. “Let go of me, you lecher!” an irate feminine voice said.

I let go instantly. It was a woman! I had just royally goosed her. “I, uh, didn’t see you,” I mumbled, embarrassed.

“Well, you certainly felt me, you pervert!”

“I’m—I’m sorry. I just got captured by a giant and dumped in here, and I wanted to be sure I wasn’t in with a hungry tiger or something. I never would have done it if I’d known.” That was the truth but in this context it sounded unutterably stupid.

There was a pause. Then she spoke again, faintly. “Jack?”

What? Had I misheard? How could she possibly know me? “That is my name,” I said. “But I’ve never been here before. In fact I’m not sure I’m even awake.”

“You’re not, I think. I’m Harriet. The receptionist at Jutemill Industries. You know—the redhead?”

“Harriet!” I exclaimed. “How can you be here?”

“It’s simple story,” she said. “I’m a simple girl. By day I work for that slave driver, the only job I could get. I know I qualified only because I have a pretty face, nice hair, and a cleavage to impress visitors who lean over my desk. I hate that, but without that job I’ll starve, so I smile and flash it all day, hoping that none of the visiting men’s drool soils me. By night I dream of glory, maybe as a musician. I once aspired to be a professional harpist in a huge orchestra. But I couldn’t afford a real harp, and anyway I wasn’t that good. Only in my dreams. So I dream a lot. This time I was in a really huge forest, on a path going somewhere, maybe somewhere nice. Only something went wrong, and my dream became a nightmare, and here I am, bagged by a giant who means to cook me and eat me. He—he said I have nice fat thighs like frogs’ legs. I tried to wake up, but I can’t. It’s horrible! I don’t know what to do!” She dissolved into tears.

I found her shoulders and put my arm around them. “I guess it is a dream. A communal dream. I climbed a beanstalk to Giantland, then got caught in a snare and dumped in here. I agree it’s awful, but less so now that I’m with you. Maybe I can figure something out.”

“Can you?” she asked eagerly. “I feel better too, now that I’m no longer alone.”

“Well, I like to think of myself as a wit. Of course you know what they say about that.”

“What do they say?”

“That a man who fancies himself a wit is half right.”

She laughed. “Oh, that’s funny!”

“I’m thinking that here in Giantland, everything is about four times its real size, so maybe our abilities are similarly larger. That’s probably nonsense.”

“No, go on,” she said.

“So maybe I really can be more clever here than I am in real life. And maybe you can play the harp as well as you want to.”

“Maybe,” she said dubiously. “But how will that get us out of the giant’s satchel without getting dumped into his cookpot?”

“We’ll tell him that you can be a good slave, playing beautiful music.”

“But what about you? What do you aspire to do?”

“Well, once I thought I’d like to be an Irish jig dancer. You know, like Michael Flatley in Lord of the Dance. But it turned out I couldn’t even break dance without breaking my bones. I came across more like a fool. That’s not so good.”

“But maybe it is, Jack,” she said. “If the giants like music, maybe they’ll like dancing too. Maybe you can do it.”

I laughed without humor. “No, my dancing is a joke. In fact in school I made it as a class clown.”

“That’s the thing! Be a dancing fool! The old kings always had jokers to entertain them. I could play music and you could dance to it, your way.”

I began to see it. “Maybe it’s worth a try. At least until we can escape.”

“It’s better than getting cooked for our legs.” I could feel her frowning. “Frogs’ legs indeed!”

“That’s certainly true,” I agreed. But I feared it was an uncomfortably long shot. It would be better simply to wake up and be clear of this whole business.

Then I wondered: if they dumped us in boiling water, would the pain make us wake? Was that our most likely escape? Assuming that we really were asleep.

And suppose we weren’t?

Suddenly the satchel, which had been bouncing more or less comfortably as the giant walked, swung wildly. The drawstring loosened, and Harriet and I tumbled out to land in a tangle on a straw mat in a giant baby pen. We scrambled to get to our feet.

There was the giant peering down at us. Beside him was a monstrous woman, evidently his wife.

“They look delicious,” the giantess said. “I’ll heat the pot.”

It was show time. “Wait!” I cried. “We’ll make better slaves than meals! We’re talented. We can entertain you. So you won’t be bored.”

That got their interest. Evidently a giant’s life was sort of boring.

“What can you do?” the giant asked.

“She’s a harpist,” I said.

“A harpy!” the giantess said. “We haven’t seen one of those in a long time.”

“Not a harpy,” I said. “A harpist. She plays the harp, beautifully.”

But the giantess was locked onto her confusion. She was evidently not phenomenally smart. “Harpies have breasts. Let’s see.” Before either of us could protest, she reached down and picked Harriet up by the scruff of her blouse. Harriet had the sense not to scream; any fuss we made was likely to nudge us closer to the pot. The giantess reached out with huge fingers and pinched the front of Harriet’s blouse. She ripped it away, along with the bra, exposing the breasts. “Sure enough,” she said, satisfied. “A harpy.”

“She’s not a harpy!” I protested. “She’s a human being.”

“Harpies have tails,” the giantess said.

“She has no tail!” I said, before realizing that this could be worse mischief.

She pondered. “Let’s see.” She hooked a sword-like fingernail into the top of Harriet’s jeans and ripped them apart. In a moment both jeans and panties dropped to the mat. The giantess inspected Harriet’s bare bottom. “No tail. Not a harpy.” Annoyed, she dropped Harriet back on the mat.

The giant squinted at the spread bare legs. “Nice little body.”

“Oh no you don’t!” the giantess snapped. “Into the pot with her!” She was not a complete idiot.

“She’s a harpist!” I repeated. “Fetch her a harp! She’ll show you her beautiful music!”

Now the giantess listened. “Let me check the toy box.” She went across the monstrous room to rummage in a big box.

“We save things from prior tidbits,” the giant explained. “Sometimes they come in handy.”

And lo: the giantess returned with a large standing harp. She set it into the pen. “Play.” It was a command, on pain of the pot.

“You can do it,” I whispered encouragingly to Harriet. My dream of the nude harpist was about to come true, amazingly.

“I’ll have to,” she agreed nervously. She set herself on the built-in seat, extended her hands, and strummed.

A foul discordance assaulted their ears. I winced. Harriet was way out of practice. “It needs tuning,” she said.

But the giants applauded. “Lovely!” the giantess said.

“Yeah,” the giant agreed.

She smacked him hard across the mouth. “The music, idiot!”

“Yeah, sure, that’s what I meant, dear,” he agreed.

Then the giantess focused on me. “And what can you do, morsel?”

Show time, again. I had pulled it off for Harriet, but I still needed to rescue myself. “I’m a dancer,” I said.

The giants exchanged a large glance. “He’ll do,” the giant said.

“Right,” the giantess agreed. “It’s the pot for him.”

“But I said I could dance!” I cried desperately.

“Yeah,” the giant agreed. “We don’t care about dancing. Tromping is better.”

Oops. The giantess was already heading for the pot.

“I mean I’m a joke dancer!” I cried. If they liked dissonance, they should like crazy dancing, right? “A dancing fool!”

The giant was uncertain. “Show me.”

I glanced at Harriet. “Start the music.”

She strummed again, this time getting more of a semblance of a tune, though it was impossible to tell which one.

I went into my class clown routine, flinging my arms wildly about, jerking like a marionette. There was absolutely nothing artistic about it, or even coordinated.

And the giants loved it. The giantess put away the pot, saving it for another day. They dumped some food into our pen. Harriet hugged me. She was, of course, still naked.

I had saved my donkey. But for how long?

Chapter Four

Escape

The giant leaned his round face into the playpen. “You live for now, morsel. That is, until I tire of your dancing, wonderful as it might be. And as for you,” he said to Harriet, lowering his voice. “I’ve got big plans for you. Or, better yet, small plans.” I saw the hungry, filthy lust in his eyes. “You might be small...but not too small.”

“You can piss off!” shouted Harriet, and gave the big oaf the finger.

Although I admired her spunk, I was worried that her defiant gesture just might be her last gesture. The giant’s face reddened so fast, that I literally saw the capillaries beneath his skin explode. He was about to reach for her—and I had just jumped before his mighty paw to stand in front of her—when a massive hand clapped the big guy across his ear.

“Leave the food alone,” grunted the giantess. “Now, help me with this damnable itch I have. It’s been bothering me all day.”

The giant gave us one last poisonous glare, then reluctantly turned to his wife, and the two slipped out of the kitchen and into the far corner of the open house, which was filled with oversized furniture. Well, oversized to me. Just right, no doubt, for them.

“There?” asked the giant.

“No, lower.”

“There?”

“No, you big oaf. Lower.”

They did this for some time, when I felt a gentle touch on my shoulder. I turned to find a very naked Harriet looking at me with the kind of look in her eye that, well, I had always dreamed she would look at me with.

“Thank you, Jack.”

“For what? I didn’t do—”

“For trying to protect me.”

“I was just...well, I couldn’t let him hurt you.”

She stood on her tiptoes and kissed me lightly on the cheek. And if I were to die soon—cooked up by these wretched beasts—at least I would die happy.

Except, of course, I wasn’t ready to die yet. No way. I liked Harriet’s kiss. I wanted more such kisses. And for that to happen, I most certainly couldn’t end up in a giant soup bowl.

“We have to get out of here,” I said.

She smiled at me, a smile I had seen many times as she greeted me each morning. A smile I had come to love...and the rest of her, too. “You think?” she said sarcastically.

“Yes, I do think. After all, the big buffoon might actually find her itch...and I don’t want to still be here when they come looking for something else to do...or eat.”

“So what’s your plan, Mr. Hero?”

“I’m no hero.”

She looked at me sideways with that same smile. “I’m not so sure about that.”

I felt myself blushing. I looked away and swallowed. She was, of course, still naked. Gloriously naked. “My plan is simple: we look for a way out of this playpen. And fast. But first—” I pulled my tee-shirt off and handed it to her. “Wear this.”

She took it without protest, and when she had it on, it mostly hid her nudity. Most, but not all. Some of her cheeks hung beneath the hem. Dammit, if the tee-shirt didn’t have the effect of making her look even more sexy.

Now we searched the play pen, checking each wooden pole, which were as wide as Corinthian columns to a plantation mansion. Sadly, they were spaced so close together that neither of us could squeeze through.

The giants, I saw, were now busy picking sticks and debris out from each others’ toes. The sight of it was nauseating, but encouraging as well. After all, there was a lot of junk and debris under their nails.

I paused before the massive wooden pylons, which might as well have been made out of steel. I was growing frustrated. The damnable playpen was airtight.

I wrapped my arms around one of the posts...maybe I could shimmy up. No good. I couldn’t wrap my arms all the way around. I studied the height of the wooden pole. I judged it to be maybe ten feet high. Too high to jump up and grab the top—

That was it. I literally snapped my fingers.

Too loudly. The giants quit picking at their feet and looked in our direction. Harriet squeaked, and I might have too. The giantess moved to get up, but then spotted something big under her middle toe and got distracted.

“What was that all about?” whispered Harriet into my ear.

I turned to her, and briefly admired my old tee shirt on her slim figure. “If everything is four times as big here, and our skills are four times as strong--”

“I don’t know about that, Jack. My harp playing was rusty at best, and I think I’ve seen better dancing from a wounded grizzly.”

“Ouch,” I said. “All I can say is, you should have seen me before.”

“Even worse?”

“So much worse.”

She thought about that. “Well, I guess my harp playing was coming around rather quickly, near the end of the song.”

“Faster than it should have been?” I asked.

“Yeah, probably. I’m sure I would have needed four or five tries at the song to get as good as that one try.”

“You see?” I said. “Four times better.”

“But how does that help us now, Jack? We can’t dance our way out of here.”

“No,” I said. “But we can jump our way out of here.”

“What do you mean? We can’t jump—”

She paused, and studied the top of the crib. “We can jump four times higher.”

“I think so,” I said. “All we can do is try.”

Which is exactly what we did. When both giants seemed suitably distracted, I jumped first—and surprised myself by just how high I could jump. Easily a foot or so higher than what I was used to. Harriet tried it, too, and seemed to jump higher yet. We jumped again and again, until we each had managed to grab to the wooden crossbar. We both dangled briefly, and then used what I suspected was four times our strength to scramble up and over the top of the pen. There, we sat briefly. I was surprised to discover we were holding hands.

“I think we have to jump,” I said.

“Aim for her slippers,” said Harriet, pointing.

We did, each landing in one of them. The drop to the floor should have hurt both of us. In the least we should have been hobbled with turned ankles. But we both came up rolling and running.

Which was a good thing. Because the giantess had just looked up from her disgusting feet, and saw us on the floor.

“They’re escaping, you big oaf. Get them, get them!”

The giant snorted and roared and Harriet and I were running across the wooden floor. We stumbled as the giant’s footsteps shook the floorboards beneath us.

Somehow, I was still holding Harriet’s hand, and pulled her toward the kitchen door, whose iron handle was also at least ten feet high. Higher than a basketball rim surely.

As we neared it—and as the floor shook harder and harder—I leaped as high as I could, and caught hold of the flat iron handle. I kicked and swung my feet, until the handle pulled down...and the door clicked open.

I dropped down, and together Harriet and I pulled the door open...and dashed out into the sunshine as the giant bellowed behind us.

Birds erupted from the surrounding trees. Giant birds—all as big as eagles. And still we kept running.

Chapter Five

Henrietta

One of the birds swooped down to inspect us. It didn’t look aggressive despite its size. Its breast was red, and it looked like nothing so much as a monstrous robin.

I knocked the heel of my hand against my head, figuratively. Of course it was a robin! With everything quadruple normal size, a ten inch long robin would be forty inches eagle-sized, and sixty-four times the mass, because of the cubing entailed. So it was big, but robins were not predators of mammals. Bugs maybe, or seeds, possibly worms, but that was the limit.

Harriet saw the bird and screamed in terror.

“It’s a robin!” I cried. “A big one! Harmless!” I hoped.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, realizing it was true.

Indeed, the robin flew on by, satisfied that we weren’t bugs or seeds or worms. The other birds ignored us. It was a great relief.

The giants burst out of the house. “Hide behind a tree!” I cried.

We headed for the nearest tree as the giants spied us. We got there first and cowered behind its massive trunk as the two giants circled it on either side—and crashed into each other just beyond us. Obviously they weren’t the smartest hunters. It would have been funny, if our peril were not so great.

We scooted back around the trunk while they cussed each other out, then we ran for another tree, as the giants picked themselves up, caught their breaths, and came after us again. But this time they didn’t know which tree we had reached. They had to check each one, clumsily.

I got a bright idea. I knew where the giants would never think to look for us. I really was getting smarter here, though why the giants weren’t similarly smart I couldn’t say. Maybe all their extra power went into just being large. I pointed wordlessly to the house.

Harriet nodded, understanding; she was smarter too. We ran for the house and got past the door before the giants had checked more than three or four trees. They continued checking trees, never looking our way; it never dawned on the them that we would re-enter their lair.

“You’re so smart!” Harriet said, hugging me.

“Just lucky,” I said modestly. But I was of course quite pleased. “It should be a while before they give up the chase and return home. Maybe we can find something worthwhile, like knives and camping supplies, so we can rough it in the forest.”

“And insect repellant,” she agreed. “In case there are giant spiders, wasps or scorpions.”

We had a plan of action. But I couldn’t help wondering: if we escaped this dangerous realm and found our way home, whether physically or by waking up, what was there for us? Poverty and oppression? I wasn’t sure I really wanted to return. At least, not yet.

We checked another room. There in a suspended cage was a regular size yellow chicken. “Well hello, hen,” I said, talking to it the way I do sometimes.

“Hello, man,” the hen replied in a rather squawky tone. “Have you come to rescue me from my cruel captivity at long last?”

Bemused, I simply stood there, staring. A talking chicken!

Harriet recovered before I did. “We’ll try,” she said. “We’re escaped captives ourselves. The giants were going to eat us.”

“They do,” the hen agreed. “I am pleased to make your acquaintance. I am Henrietta.”

“How can you talk?” I asked, curious. “Where I come from, animals don’t talk, at least not in the human manner.”

“This is not where you come from,” the hen reminded me. “This is more like a dreamland. Things are different here. Animals can talk, if they want to. I didn’t have much use for it, before, but now with you here, I do.”

“Why are you caged in the house, instead of out in the barnyard?” Harriet asked.

“Because I’m not an ordinary chicken. Well, back home I’m an ordinary fowl, but I dreamed of laying gold eggs, and here in this realm I can. But the giants captured me, and caged me so I couldn’t escape, and now I have to lay a gold egg a day or they’ll make chicken soup out of me. It’s awful!”

Gold eggs! Now I remembered that aspect of the Jack and the Beanstalk legend. The Hen that Laid the Gold Eggs.

“I’m Harriet,” Harriet said, completing the introductions. “And this is Jack.”

“Jack the giant killer?” the hen asked eagerly.

“No, Jack the has-bean,” I said quickly. “I came up on a bean stalk.”

“Come on, Jack,” Harriet said urgently. “We have to rescue Henrietta before the giants return. Think of something!”

I gazed at the cage. It was about twelve feet above the floor, well clear of the walls. An isolation cell. “Maybe I could reach it in a jump.”

“No,” Harriet said. “You’d just catch it and break its cord so everything crashed to the floor and maybe kill Henrietta.”

“Don’t do that!” the hen squawked, alarmed.

I focused my (I hoped) superior brain. “A rope!” I said. “That we can throw up there and climb up to unlock the cage.”

“If we just had a rope,” Harriet agreed.

“There’s some tie-string in the waste basket,” the hen said helpfully.

We found it. What was string to a giant was light rope to us. I quickly looped it into several crude knots, then threw it up to catch the bottom of the cage. It missed, but I tried again, and again.

“We’ll get you out soon,” Harriet promised. I hoped she was right.

“Before you rescue me, I have a confession to make,” the hen said. “I can’t lay gold eggs in the real world, only here. So if it’s wealth you want, I can’t help you.”

“You can’t talk there either,” Harriet said. “But this is not about that. This is about saving your life and freedom, and ours too. We’ll work together.”

“I really appreciate that.” The hen paused, then said: “However, I know where the giants keep the eggs. Those should remain gold wherever they are.”

That was a smart bird. She had first verified our good will, then told us how to get the gold.

“I’m broke,” I said, still trying to snag the cage. “I could really use some gold.”

“So could I,” Harriet said. “Would it be unethical to take those eggs?”

“From the giants? They’re trying to enslave or eat us,” I said. “I regard it as the spoils of war.”

“The giants stole them from me,” Henrietta said. “I hereby make a gift of them to the two of you. There are a dozen gold eggs in a bag in the cupboard over the counter.”

Harriet checked and found the small bag. “Oh, it’s heavy!”

“Gold weighs a lot,” I said.

“It does,” she agreed, and put the bag in her purse. “We’ll share, evenly, when we get back.” That seemed good to me. At this point I wanted to share more than gold with her.

A knot finally caught, and I climbed the rope, putting my feet on the knots. The cage tilted crazily, but held. When I got there I reached up to unlatch the cage door. It swung open and the hen leaped out. She spread her wings and glided to the floor. She was free. “Glorious!” she cackled.

Harriet joyfully hugged me as I dropped to the floor. “I knew you could do it!” she said, and kissed my cheek. I loved it when she did that. I wrapped my arms about her, but hesitated when my fingers fell below the base of the tee-shirt and caught her pert bare bottom. Fortunately she didn’t notice. I think.

Before we could celebrate further, we heard a noise at the door. The giants were returning, and by the sound of their stomping they were not pleased. Their prey had escaped them. “We have to get out of here!” I said.

“Use the dog door,” Henrietta said. “It’s always open. This way.”

She knew the layout. That helped. We followed her to the rear of the house as the giants stomped outside.

The dog door was huge, about twelve feet high. But it was on horizontal hinges and swung freely. We could push our way out through it. That was, of course, what it was designed for.

“Only one thing,” Henrietta said.

“Can it wait?” I asked, conscious of the tromping of the giants in the next room. “We’ve got to get out of here now.”

“I don’t think so,” Henrietta said.

Exasperated, I paused with my hand on the swinging door. “What?”

Then we heard it: a loud angry growl outside. The dog had returned, and was about to use the dog door to enter.

“Get back!” the hen cried. “Fido will eat us all!”

We retreated from the dog door just as the giants entered the house from the human door. Then the dog door smashed upward as the beast leaped through. The canine was a true monster, almost twelve feet tall at the shoulder and ugly in proportion.

He winded us and growled menacingly. Slaver dripped from his muzzle.

The two giants spied us. “Get them!” they shouted together.

We were caught between the two terrors, each of which seemed worse than the other. What could we do?

Chapter Six

Lightning

“Jack...what do we do?”

Harriet was behind me, holding my shoulder. Fat lot of good it did getting behind me, since the two menaces were coming from two different directions.

We were back in the kitchen. The house wasn’t much, although gigantic to humans. Just a kitchen, a living room, and a couple of bedrooms. A hundred ideas occurred to me, almost instantly. Yes, I was getting smarter and my brain sharper. Unfortunately, all the ideas that occurred to me would result in our deaths. At least, that’s what I quickly deduced.

We couldn’t dance for them or play for them. We certainly had no where to run or hide. We couldn’t outrun the dog. And the kitchen itself was bare, with nary a cupboard to hide within. The floor itself was wood, and sloppily laid out. Surely there was a seam or a groove between the planks, or maybe a knot within the wood....

Except we didn’t have much time to look. Or, rather, any time at all.

They continued closing in. Now the giant leaned down, and sniffed. “You stole my hen and you stole my gold eggs, too. I am going to cook you slowly.”

I realized then that his eyesight wasn’t very good. In fact, he seemed to rely often on his nose, which seemed to be his superior sense. I wondered if all giants were the same. I considered our chances of bolting forward, through the giant’s legs. The dog would surely follow, and mayhem would ensue. Except, of course, I didn’t want to trust our lives to mayhem.

“I want the girl,” said the giantess. “Raw. Eat her slowly.”

“Jack...” whispered Harriet, her breath hot on my neck.

“Jack...” squawked the hen in my arms.

I cursed my balky brain. Superior or not, it wasn’t giving me much to work with, and our time was nearly out. If only I were as big as the giants, or as strong, or...something? What else was I potentially four times stronger than that could save our hides? There was something here. I was sure of it.

“Or,” said the Giant, “we can let Fido have his way with them.”

“But not the hen!” cried the giantess. “I loves my gold.”

“Aye, so do I.”

They paused briefly, making an effort to think.

“Well, then,” said the giant, reaching for me, “me thinks it’s time to eat—”

I had it. Yes, I was four times as small as the giant, but I was also four times as strong as normal. Which put me at the same level as the giant. In fact, other than his size advantage, our strength should be about equal.

I didn’t have time to analyze my hypothesis, although my superior brain told me it was sound. His hand was reaching for me...reaching for my neck in fact. His meaty paw was easily as big as my pillow at home...and far filthier. As his hand opened, I grabbed the closest finger to me, his index finger. I grabbed it and twisted with all my strength, and the resulting crack was music to my ears.

“The blasted morsel broke me finger,” screamed the giant.

Back home, back on earth, I was no stranger to the gym or working out. That is, until my gym membership ran out and I couldn’t afford to renew it. Indeed, my four times the strength might, in fact, actually be greater than the giant’s.

The giant stomped his boots, howling. By my estimates, his boots were as big as my dining room table—certainly big enough to do some serious damage, if not permanent damage.

I grabbed Harriet’s hand and pulled her toward the closest bedroom. Fido, who had been momentarily distracted by the howling and stomping giant, kicked into gear. I heard his massive claws trying to find purchase on the wooden floor—but not having much luck. Good for us. His scrambling, sliding paws, bought us just enough time to dash into the bedroom.

“Oh, no. Not here again,” bemoaned Henrietta.

Indeed, we were back in the same room where we had found the hen. In fact, the knotted string I had used to climb up to her was still hanging from the cage.

“Quit complaining,” I said to the hen. “Now, you were in here for a long time. Is there any escape from this room? And hurry!”

“Oh, I suppose you could try the window. But they usually leave it shut tight.”

I rose up on my tiptoes. Indeed, it was shut tight, and now Fido appeared in the room, barking nonstop, drool hanging from his jowls, bearing down on us.

Yes, I was four times stronger here, but that dog was menacing and huge...and it was going to get ugly, and bloody. “Stay back,” I told Harriet.

“No,” said the woman of my dreams, shouldering past me. “You stay back.”

She marched in front of me, raising both her hands, and what happened next surprised the heck out of me...and this coming from a guy who had just climbed a magical beanstalk into a land of giants. Zigzagging bolts of lighting appeared from her, and fried the nose and paws of the charging dog. He nearly did a backflip, and I almost felt bad for the brute. Almost.

I smelled singed hair as Harriet lowered her hands and turned back to me, grinning.

“What was that?” I asked, knowing we didn’t have too much time for idle chitchat.

“I’ve always been mildly telekinetic.”

“Tele-what?”

“I can move things with my mind, back on earth. Nothing too remarkable. I can make a feather float, or even bend a spoon on good days. And so I figured—”

“Your tele-something-or-other would be four times stronger,” I finished. “Wait, I saw you levitating a pencil once!”

“Yes, I did that often when I was bored.”

“I thought I was going crazy.”

“No, not crazy. And it’s called telekinesis.”

“Well, let’s telekinesis our butts out of here.”

“It doesn’t work that way.”

“How does it work?” I asked. “And show me quick. They’re coming. All three of them. And they don’t sound happy.”

She turned and raised her hands and concentrated, and more jagged bolts of lightning appeared...and shattered the nearby window. “It works like that,” she said.

“Well, I may not know how it works,” I said, grabbing her suddenly superheated hand, and pulling her toward the shattered window. “But I like it.”

I helped her up onto the sill first, then tossed up the hen, who squawked loudly. I scrambled up behind her, and then we were both through the window, careful of the sharp fragments. We leaped from there and landed in the long grass...and were running again. This time, the giants didn’t give chase.

We were free. For now.

Chapter Seven

Talents

We holed up in an old giant squirrel’s nest high in a tree, where Fido would not be able to reach us, and the giants would not think to look, we hoped. We relaxed, the three of us, unwinding. We would be moving on soon enough. We had agreed to wait until night, then make our way back to my beanstalk, and descend. This might all be a communal dream, but it seemed safer to be dreaming in my house than up here in Giantland. I would make a place for a hen’s roost, and—dare I hope?—Harriet might share my bed.

“I don’t want to seem ungrateful,” Henrietta said. “I really appreciate your rescuing me. So please don’t take this the wrong way.”

“Take what?” Harriet asked. She was curled nested in my embrace, a position I loved. The gentle heaving of her bosom under the tee-shirt appealed to me, too.

“Some honest comment.”

Now I was curious. What was on her poultry mind? “Let’s have it.”

“You folk are not phenomenally smart.”

I felt Harriet tighten. A chicken was calling humans stupid? But her voice was deceptively quiet. Women, I think, were good at deception. “How so, Henrietta?”

“You didn’t have to toss me up to the window. You’ve seen me fly.”

Oh. “Sorry,” I said. “I forgot.

“And what you demonstrated, Harriet, was not telekinesis. It was electricity.”

Harriet tensed, then relaxed. “You’re right! I didn’t move anything with my mind. I zapped the dog and window with lightning bolts.”

“But I saw you levitate a pencil,” I protested.

Harriet worked it out. “I guess it wasn’t exactly what I thought it was. Maybe I used static electricity to levitate the pencil and the feather. But here in Giantland with much stronger power, I didn’t bother with lifting light things. I simply let loose with the charge. In the tension of the moment I never realized that it was a different phenomenon.”

“It certainly worked,” I said appreciatively. “I wonder whether I have any similar talent, here on the Cloud?” The word “cloud” had assumed a new meaning recently.

“Maybe you’re the one with telekinesis.”

I laughed. “If I’d had that, I never would have had to face down the bully straw boss at the office. I’d have given him a hotfoot instead.”

“That’s not telekinesis either,” Henrietta said. “That’s pyrotechnics. Fire projection.”

“Or maybe goosed him with a loose umbrella,” I said, embarrassed. “But it’s academic. I never had any psionic talent.”

It was Harriet’s turn to be curious. “Maybe it was too weak to show in the real world. But here on the Cloud it can be strong enough to make a difference. Telekinesis, teleportation, levitation, whatever. We should find out what it is, because we may need it to get out of here.”

The prospect appealed. “It would be nice if I could simply fly away from danger, or conjure myself to a safe place. How do I find out what talent I might have?”

“Try them in order,” Harriet suggested. “Find out what works.”

“Like jumping out of this tree and seeing if I can fly? That’s chancy.”

She nodded. “Maybe it should wait for a better time.”

“So let’s catch a nap now, so we’ll be alert tonight,” I said.

We settled down to sleep. It was a little slice of heaven to have Harriet reposing in my arms, the top of her head near my face. I couldn’t resist kissing her soft red hair, hoping she wouldn’t notice.

“I felt that,” she murmured sleepily.

Oops. “Sorry.”

“Do it again.”

Oh. I happily buried my face in her curls, and drifted off to dreamland. Then woke just enough to wonder: if this was all one big dream, how could we sleep in it? But of course I had slept after seeing the beanstalk by my window, so maybe it was possible. It was as easy to dream of sleeping as it was to dream of giants or magic talents, and maybe more sensible.

As night closed, we carefully descended to the ground and separated briefly for natural functions. Did functions exist in dreams? They must, because we ate in this dream. Fortunately it wasn’t cold, so Harriet’s scanty attire sufficed for now. In fact I rather liked it; she had very nice legs, and that wasn’t all.

Now there was a problem: I wasn’t sure exactly where the beanstalk was. I had been carried some distance by the giant, in the satchel, and he could have gone in any direction. I would know the general lay of the land if I saw it, there with the river and the castle, but how close to that were we? Also, would I know it by night?

I halted, struck by a realization: we had not been in that castle. The giants’ home was a hovel in comparison. So who lived in the castle?

“What?” Harriet asked.

“When I arrived here, it was near a valley, a river, and a castle. But that’s not where we were.”

“Of course it’s not,” Henrietta said. “The giant is a lowly serf, working for the Lord of the Castle when there is need.”

“How do you know that?” I asked.

“I heard them talking. The giants don’t like their boss, but have no choice. They make their meager living by getting rewards for interesting things they find, like magic hens or little folk like you. When they found me they should have delivered me to the Lord, but got back at him by secretly keeping me. I would have been better off at the castle, I’m sure.”

I exchanged a glance with Harriet, there in the gloom. “Maybe we should go there,” Harriet said.

“Not safe,” Henrietta said. “By their account, the Lord is a piece of manure.”

I had to smile, briefly. “Chickenshit,” I murmured. “Or a turd.”

“Well, you don’t have to be vulgar,” Henrietta grumped.

“Sorry. I guess you’re right. We’d better stay away from the castle.”

“At least now we have something to orient on,” Harriet said. “The castle should be easy to find. When we do, we’ll know we’re close to the beanstalk.”

“That makes sense,” I agreed.

We looked around. Now that it was dark, I saw that many of the low plants glowed faintly, illuminating the ground. The gloom was solid up in the trees, but we could see where we were going, being land-bound. If only we knew where to go.

“I wonder whether the castle is lighted at night?” Harriet asked. “If so, Henrietta could fly up and spy it above the trees. That would give us a direction.”

“I don’t much like to fly at night,” the hen said. “But it does make sense.” She taxied to a clear aisle, then ran along the ground, treating it as a runway. When she achieved flight velocity she spread her wings and took off. We saw her flying low to the lighted land, then ascending when she came to an open section. She was a heavy bird, needing space.

“We’ll wait here for your return,” Harriet called. That made sense, because how would the hen find us if we moved away in the gloom?

But it meant we had time to waste. “Now that we’re alone,” I murmured.

“I thought you’d never ask.” She came into my embrace and kissed me. “I don’t know what I’d ever have done without you, Jack; you saved me from getting cooked or worse.”

I knew what she meant. The way the giant had looked at her was trouble. She was way too small for him to touch in that way, but he was bound to try, no matter if it killed her, which it well could. If the jealous giantess didn’t drop her into the pot first.

Our kiss seemed like only a heavenly moment, but then there was the sound of the hen coming in for a landing. We must have spent some time obliviously embraced.

Henrietta skidded to a halt at the near end of her runway and folded her wings. “The castle’s lighted!” she squawked exuberantly. “I know where it is!”

“Great!” I said.

“I hope you folk weren’t too bored waiting.”

“We managed,” Harriet said with what I was sure was an obscure smile. Women were good at obscurity too.

We walked briskly in the direction Henrietta indicated. I carried her, as she was tired from her effort. Hens normally don’t fly much, and she had been caged; she wasn’t in condition. But she had done us a signal service.

Before long we emerged from the forest. There was the valley, illuminated by its ground cover. There was the river, faintly glowing with its own colors. And there beyond was the lighted castle, splendid in the night.

I assessed the landscape. “The beanstalk should be in that general vicinity,” I said, pointing up the slope.

“Wonderful,” Harriet said. “We can climb down to your house, and now that we have these gold eggs, we won’t need stultifying jobs. We can live free.”

I loved the way she said “we.”

Then there was a sound. Tromping, as of a giant. And there was a swinging light, as of a lamp. The giant was out looking for us! And Fido was with him. Damn!

The dog winded us. He bayed. The chase was on. We were caught out in the open, with no trees to hide behind. They would surely show us no mercy. What could we do?

The monstrous canine bounded toward us, knowing exactly where we were. I focused desperately, feeling something emerging from my being.

A small ball of fire appeared between us and the dog. Fido pulled up short, lest he get singed. Great break for us—but how had it happened so conveniently?

“Your talent,” Henrietta squawked. “Pyrotechnics!”

“Generating fire,” Harriet said, awed. “Wonderful, Jack!” She kissed my ear.

But Fido was only momentarily halted. He ranged to the side, circling the burn.

I did not look this gift horse in the mouth. I focused again. Another burst of fire formed beside the first, brushing the dog back again. Then a third.

A wind came up. It fanned the flames, which blazed up and headed toward the giant and his dog. That was a really lucky break!

“Enough,” Harriet said. “Let’s get the heck out of here while they are distracted.”

We did, making our way on toward where I thought the beanstalk poked through the ground. And there it was! Our escape was at hand.

A figure rose up between us and the beanstalk. “Not quite so fast, humans,” a dulcet voice said. “I knew that if I waited, you would return to this spot, your access to the nether realm. Your discovered talents will not enable you to get past me. You will not be departing quite yet.”

We paused in place. There, outlined against the assorted glows of the ground cover, was the silhouette of a female giant. And what an outline! Flaring hair, hourglass torso, the works. This was surely the shapeliest creature extant, quite apart from her size. I was tongue-tied with more than surprise.

It was Harriet who spoke for us. “Who are you? What do you want with us?”

“I am the Sorceress Sydelle, versed in magic and related arts. I mean you no harm. We need to talk.”

I hesitated. I did not want to fall into the power of any giant, not even one as lovely as this. But she was between us and the beanstalk, and her confidence was persuasive. This was no stupid entity. But whatever she had to say, could we afford to trust her?

Did we have a choice?

Chapter Eight

Sydelle

“No,” said the Sorceress Sydelle. “You don’t.”

I opened my mouth to speak, then closed it again. I turned to Harriet, frowning. “Did I just say something right now?”

Harriet flicked her gaze at me, then flicked it back at the giantess. “You asked if we had a choice.”

“I’m confident I didn’t ask that.”

“Does it matter, Jack? We kind of have a situation here.”

I held my ground. “It does.” I looked up at the giant sorceress. “You read my mind.”

I did, human. As you two are reading mine.

“Wait,” I said. “Um, what?”

And then it hit me. The sorceress wasn’t speaking. At least, I didn’t think she was. Her lips, I was certain, hadn’t moved. But it was hard to tell at night.

You are correct, Jack. May I call you Jack?

“Sure,” I said. At least, I think I said it. I was getting confused as to when I was speaking and when I was thinking.

You will get used to it, Jack of New York.

But as I listened a little more carefully, I realized that, yes, her voice was appearing just inside my ear. Inside my head.

Very good, human.

“But I don’t understand,” I said, making it a point to use my mouth. “How can I hear your thoughts? And you mine?”

“I know!” said Harriet.

“Finally, someone comes to their senses,” said Henrietta the hen.

At least, I think she said. I hoped like crazy that I wasn’t also hearing the thoughts of a talking hen, too.

“What do you know?” I asked. “And make it quick. I’m afraid I’m very, very close to going insane.”

“Don’t be so dramatic,” said Harriet. “One of our gifts must be telepathy.”

“But I’ve never once thought I could read other people’s minds.”

“I bet you were better at it than you thought. How often did you just know that Mr. Periwinkle was in a bad mood?”

“But he was always in a bad mood. Hell, it was his job to be in a bad mood and make the rest of us miserable.”

“But didn’t you just know?”

“M-Maybe. Did you?”

“Usually. Except when he looked down my blouse. That was worse.”

“But he’s just one man—”

“I’m sure if you thought back hard enough, you would find plenty of examples of catching thoughts from people here and there...but you wrote it off as your imagination...or perhaps as one of your own thoughts.”

“I think I want to wake up now.”

“There will be no waking up, Jack of New York. At least, not yet, and perhaps never.” It was simply easier to pick up Sydelle’s thoughts as regular speech.

“I’m not sure I like the sound of that.”

“Then I suggest you come with me. There is, after all, a reason why I brought you up here.”

“You brought us up here?”

The voluptuous sorceress smiled...and I happened to finally catch perhaps her one and only flaw: she was missing an upper tooth. Still, it did little to take away from her oversized sexiness—

“Hey!” said Harriet, elbowing me.

“Simple humans,” mumbled the hen.

“Quiet!” I snapped at the bird. But she was right. Apparently, my thoughts were now wide open for all to hear. I would have to be careful with that.

“I will show both of you simple techniques to guard your thoughts. But first, you must come with me.”

“We want to go home,” I said, standing my ground, looking up, up, up at the perhaps the most curvacious—

I stopped my thoughts right there.

“Good, boy,” murmured Harriet next to me.

“I understand your desire to go home—and perhaps that can be arranged at a later date—but, remember, each of you made the choice to come here on your own free will.”

That was true. Except—

“Not quite,” I said. “We dreamed we came here. One can hardly be responsible for what one does in a dream.”

The sorceress squatted down before me, spreading her legs slightly. She was wearing a long skirt, but flashed me enough inner thigh to fuel my fantasies for years to come. The elbow in my side was sharp and piercing. I gasped.

Before me, the sorceress smiled, her mostly even white teeth catching some of the ambient light that radiated up from the phosphorus plants themselves. She was beautiful, but nowhere near as beautiful as Harriet. At least, not for my taste.

“Better,” said my new partner.

“True, you are currently in a form of lucid dreaming. Indeed, your bodies are back in your home realms, sleeping mostly contentedly, although I would bet also restlessly too. But the rest of you is very much here.”

“But...what else is left?” I asked. “Aren’t we, you know, mostly our bodies?”

“Mostly,” said the sorceress. “But you are much more than a physical body, Jack.”

“My head is hurting.”

“Then come with me, and let me explain further, for there is a reason why you are here, and why others like you are here, too.”

I looked at Harriet. She looked at me. We both shrugged. When we looked back at the sorceress, she was gone. In her place was a massive oak tree with what appeared to be a door set within its thick trunk. Indeed, the door swung slowly open. Warm light issued out.

“I guess we go in here,” I said.

“Good guess, lunkhead,” said the hen, and led the way in.

Chapter Nine

Mission

The interior was, of course, considerably larger than the exterior. We stood in what seemed to be a living room, with giant-sized furniture. Harriet and I scrambled up onto a four foot high cushioned footstool, the best seating we could manage. Sydelle did not live in the tree; this was merely an access. I was sure she could make her front door open anywhere in Giantland, as convenient.

“Yes, of course,” she agreed.

Telepathy was convenient, but I was getting increasingly antsy to learn how to shield my thoughts, if not to control them outright. Some reactions were involuntary, but nevertheless embarrassing if openly expressed. When the giantess had squatted...

“No, don’t elbow me again!” I exclaimed to Harriet. “My side can’t take any more bruising.”

She relented. “I suppose I am coming across as a jealous bitch.”

Yes she was. Then I stifled that thought, too late; some leaked out, earning me a glare.

“Before we get into the substance, the reason for our being here,” Harriet said a trifle grimly as she changed the subject, “I’d like to know more about you, Sydelle. Who are you, among the giants? Do you have a boyfriend?” A boyfriend would make the sorceress safer in one sense. Sydelle sat down opposite us, her skirt rising dangerously close to her shapely knees. “Yes, of course. I live in a local village. To my neighbors I’m just another nubile village girl. None of them know about my special powers; I learned early on to keep them secret, lest I be marked for extinction by the King, who tolerates no potential competition. He alone has magic, along with his most trusted minions. I do have a boyfriend, but he knows nothing. His interest is only in my body, not my mind. If he knew I had a mind, he’d be gone in an instant.” She sighed. “I’d love to be with a man, any man, who truly understands me, without resentment, if only briefly. But that’s not feasible with my own kind.” She glanced at me, her knees beginning to part. “I could make myself seem to be your size, for an hour or a night, if—”

“No way!” Harriet snapped.

They all laughed, and the hen cackled. It was teasing humor, of course. But as with much humor, it skirted a treacherous territory. Even the mere thought of peeking up under that huge skirt electrified me; I couldn’t help it. I really needed to be able to shield my errant thoughts.

“You’re not the only one,” Harriet said darkly. “I know you can’t help it, but your reaction lights a fuse to a bomb in my gizzard I can’t banish. I’d much rather come across as a tolerant, understanding friend.”

She really was jealous; that was what annoyed her. But, actually, I rather liked having her feel that way.

“Oh you do, do you!” she snapped.

“There do seem to be advantages to mental privacy,” I said, embarrassed.

“Yes there are,” she agreed. “It enables us to appear far more civilized than our reptile brain core allows.”

“Here is how you achieve it,” Sydelle said. “Picture an impenetrable wall, or a shell, that surrounds your emotional core. It can’t get out, and no one can see in.”

“But that’s just imaginary,” Harriet protested.

“So are your thoughts: imagination. The wall is made of the same stuff.”

“So it is,” Harriet agreed, impressed.

I focused on wall building. I pictured it going up brick by brick, surrounding my inner sanctum, until I was entirely walled in. I knew Harriet was doing the same.

“But how do we see out?” I asked belatedly.

“Make a window with one-way glass.”

Oh. Of course. I made the window. Then I lined the wall with lead, and added steel bands for additional structural support. It seemed secure.

“Now shall we test it?” Sydelle inquired.

“Test it?” I asked from my shielded turret.

She stretched prodigiously so that her huge breasts swelled under her blouse. She lifted her separated knees so that for a moment her entire nether landscape flashed before me, pink panties and all.

My wicked appreciation exploded. It splatted against the wall, almost blowing it apart. But the fortress held, thanks to the steel bands.

“Only a little smoke,” Harriet said.

I glanced around. A small cloud of smoke was dissipating over my head; it must have leaked out around my neck. There was also a bit of steam floating away from Harriet. Her jealously had been contained.

“Naturally I saw nothing of interest,” I lied.

“And I had no concern,” she said with a straight face.

We all laughed again, this time with relief.

“Practice it in off moments, shielding different kinds of thoughts,” Sydelle said, becoming more decorous. “You have the essence. In time you should be able to mask the very presence of the shield, so that a mind reader thinks you are being completely open. That can be invaluable. You will also want to practice penetrating the shields of others, without seeming to. There’s an art.”

“Thank you,” I said with real gratitude. We all knew how I had reacted to the sight of that body, but now we could pretend that I had been a gentleman all the way to my core, and that Harriet had similarly been a lady. That was much more comfortable. It also helped that I was now able to hide my suspicion that the giantess rather enjoyed teasing me with peeks. Could she really make herself seem to be my size? Did she maybe see me as a potential playmate? Ludicrous! Yet I wondered.

Harriet was watching me, suspecting what she could no longer read.

“Now to business,” Sydelle said seriously. “There are several aspects, and you will have an important decision to make.”

“Why you brought us here,” Harriet said. I was glad she had answered, because I just might have thought of another decision to wrestle with.

“Yes. First some background: the realm of the Cloud is governed by a cruel king. He’s not an impostor, he’s legitimate, but power has corrupted him so that now all he wants is more of it, at the expense of the rights and welfare of the rest of us. He takes the produce of the farmers, leaving barely enough for them to survive, and any who protest are killed and their lands given to his cronies. He takes the cloth the women weave so that they can hardly clothe their families, and any who protest are chained naked in the central square to be publicly ravished by the guards. He takes the nubile girls for his transient pleasure, and they dare not protest lest they get tortured and thrown in the dungeon for the use of the degraded trolls that run it. I have escaped so far, but my turn is surely incipient, lending urgency to my quest. He has become a merciless tyrant. Everyone knows this, but no one protests, because he actually likes to make them suffer. He has telepathy but doesn’t bother to shield it; he thrives on the pain of others. Anyone who crosses him in any minor way soon regrets it. He knows their thoughts, because he can read their minds.”

She paused, grimacing. “I learned young. When he passed our house he carelessly stepped on my favorite flower, crushing it, and though I did not speak I winced mentally. He read that wince, picked me up by the scruff, and whacked me hard on the bottom. I screamed in shock and pain. He smiled, not forgiving me but appreciating my pain. Then he dropped me, literally, and moved on. Only when he was gone did my mother dare come to comfort me. I realized then that not only was the king a monster, but that no one would help me oppose him, not even my family. And I resolved to make an end of him, when I could. But first I taught myself to shield my thoughts.” She glanced at me. “Now you know why. It was a trifling incident, surely long since forgotten by the king, and never even noticed by others, but it was my point of decision. Now I mean to foster a revolt and overthrow the evil king, and replace him with someone with far more decency, compassion, and fairness.”

“Which would be you?” I asked cynically. I might be smitten by her sex appeal, but I had experience with tyrants and knew that their words hardly defined them. Her mind was shielded; she could be lying.

“Yes.” No evasion there.

“How can we know that you would not become a worse tyrant, whatever your stated motive now?” Harriet asked, just as cynically. She too knew about petty tyrants.

“Two things,” the Sorceress replied. “First there is a prophecy that you can verify that suggests that only by replacing the bad king with a good woman will the kingdom be saved. It doesn’t specify the woman, but I fit the gender and I hope the description.”

“And the other thing?” I asked.

“This. I have been reading your minds throughout, up until you learned to shield them, and you are conflicted but honest people, and I trust your discretion in this respect. I understand why you do not trust me. So here I am.” And she laid her mind completely open to us both. It was immediately clear that in such a case, deception was impossible.

There was a lot there, ranging from petty embarrassments to intricate techniques of magic to frustrated emotional longing, things that few folk would care to have exposed to view. But what was uppermost was the sheer authenticity of her desire. She wanted to become queen because she honestly believed that she was best qualified to fulfill the role. She did not desire power for its own sake, but for the good it could accomplish if appropriately wielded.

She might be corruptible in time, but she certainly wasn’t corrupted now. She did seem to be the best bet to reform the governance of the Cloud.

I exchanged guarded glances with Harriet and Henrietta, both of whom nodded. “Close it up,” I said. “We support you.”

Her shields returned. “Thank you. I would rather be bound naked for public ridicule, but this I had to do. Still, you are not ready to commit to my project.”

“We aren’t?” Harriet asked, surprised.

“You have merely verified my commitment. Now you need to understand my plan, so that you can judge its competence, and decide whether it is worthwhile for you. Commitment is a highly personal thing.”

She was right. “What is your plan?” I asked. It had surely been there in her open mind, but that had been like looking at flowers in a garden: way too many to grasp in one glimpse.

“I do not yet know the whole of it. I am locating and gathering the most promising humans I can find in the mortal realm, those with the most potential magic and wit, in the hope of recruiting them and organizing them into a force that can accomplish my purpose. I will heed their judgment. That is why the three of you are here: each of you has at least two magic abilities, and I believe we will need much magic. I hope that you and the others we find are able to devise a plan of attack that can succeed.” She fixed us with a serious glance. “Because you need to understand that if we try, and fail, we will all most likely be tortured and killed in short order. If you are killed here in your waking dream state, you will die in your sleeping state below. This is deadly serious business. I have no perfect way to judge the future, but my estimate is that the chances of success or failure are even, and of course there could be success but also the death of one or more of us.”

“The others?” I asked.

“I have been using my magic to orient on prospects. There are a number. We can orient the beanstalk to descend to their vicinities, so that you can go down to persuade them. That may be a considerable challenge. But letting them find their own way here is risky; the three of you got captured by one of the king’s lowly minions and I had to find a way to get together with you without showing my hand. We need a better way.”

I nodded. The potential recruits would certainly be highly skeptical. “What’s in it for us if we succeed? I mean, apart from doing a good thing and helping many giants.”

“We can allocate a section of the Cloud for you little folk to reside in, which can be shaped to resemble your paradise, a completely pleasant place. Only your imagination will limit it. You could not have governing power, as giants would not heed little folk, but apart from that you could have everything you might want.”

I considered that. Crafting our own little paradise, or as close as we could come to it. It did have its appeal. But something nagged me. “What of our mortal bodies?” I asked. “They can’t sleep forever.”

“You will have to wake periodically to maintain them,” Sydelle said. “Food, exercise, elimination. It will be a chore, but a necessary one. Perhaps you can hire discreet help to maintain the premises and prevent disturbance during your slumbers.”

“And if we elect not to join your revolution?” Harriet asked grimly.

“Then you may return to your full waking state below and resume your normal activities without prejudice. I can and will arrange to provide a source of income for you so that you no longer need to be chained to jobs you detest. You can marry each other and make a supportive home for Henrietta.”

Somehow that was not completely appealing. Not after glimpsing the prospects of the Cloud. Even the best of mundane lives now seemed dull compared to adventure in a magic realm. “Where’s the catch?” I asked.

“It is that your experience here will slowly fade, like the dream it is, until at last you have little or no memory of it. You will never know what it is you gave up.”

That made me wince. But it was Harriet who came up with another aspect: “You said we had at least two magic abilities. Telepathy for each of us, and pyrotechnic for him, electricity for me, and transmuting base materials into gold for Henrietta. There may be others?”

“Yes. But the third is in each case more subtle and powerful than the others, and will take longer to discover and learn to use. Maybe years. There is no shortcut.”

“And if we opt out,” I said, “We’ll never discover what those other talents are.”

“Yes. I’m sorry.”

“Paradise lost,” Harriet said.

It was time to decide.

Except that Henrietta had a question. “Your missing tooth,” she said. “What happened? Did someone try to chop your head off?”

Who cared about such a detail? But sometimes seemingly minor things were more relevant than they first appeared. At least this provided us more time to consider our decisions.

Chapter Ten

Beheading

Then it hit me.

Henrietta wasn’t just asking a random question. The hen had somehow known the correct question to ask. I considered again; indeed, the bird had not shown a proficiency for telepathy. That might be just as well. More than likely, I would not want access to a bird brain. Perhaps their functionality was too foreign to follow coherently. Rather, the bird’s second gift—apart from transmuting base materials into gold—was the gift of “second sight.” That is, the power to perceive things that are not present to the five senses. But “second sight,” I was certain, had more to do with future events, not the past. I was stumped.

“Yes,” said Sydelle, looking away and rubbing her neck. “Very good, Henrietta. Obviously we are seeing evidence of your second gift.”

“What gift is that?” asked Harriet a second before I could.

“My guess would be retrocognition,” said Sydelle. “The ability to see past events. Am I correct, Henrietta?”

“I’m thinking, yes,” said the hen. “The longer I’m standing here, the more the images are coming.”

“Or did she just see into your thoughts like we did?” asked Harriet. “And she simply picked up on the near-beheading among the many thousands of other images that flashes through our minds.”

I knew this answer. “She doesn’t have the gift of telepathy.”

“No,” said Henrietta. “And I wouldn’t want it either. We hens have pure thoughts, simple thoughts. I think if I had access to your own human thoughts, I might just go mad.”

Then again, I thought, and didn’t bother to shield my thoughts, I might already be mad. After all, I’m talking to a hen that lays gold eggs.

Here, here, came Harriet’s answering thought.

Do you feel like you’re going crazy? asked Sydelle, her words appearing just inside my ear. I suspected Harriett heard the same question, too.

No, I thought. For some damn reason this all seems perfectly normal.

Which might be further evidence that I have seriously gone off the deep end, added Harriet.

I can assure you both that your minds are healthy. Here on the Cloud, as you sometimes refer to it, dreamscape and reality sometimes blur.

I thought about that, realizing there was something to her words, something that tugged at me, something that I suspected had to do with our latent third gift. I shelved it for now.

“Well,” said Henrietta, rather rudely. “Are you going to tell them what happened to your tooth, or should I?”

“No,” said Sydelle, “I will. I rather hoped that the two of you would have seen the scene play out when I revealed my deepest secrets to you, but I see it was missed. But first, would you like something to eat?”

We all agreed we did. Soon, we were seated at an oversized table. Harriet and I shared a wooden chair, while Henrietta pecked at some extra large corn kernels, squawking and cursing, as she broke the grains down into more edible sizes. Harriet and I slurped from the smallest bowls Sydelle could find. The “soup” seemed to be a concoction of something sweet and something hearty. As we slurped, the sorceress told us her tale.

“Do you remember that prophecy I told you about?”

“The one that foretells a woman taking the throne,” said Harriet, not missing a beat.

“Aye,” said Sydelle.

She was was sitting with us at the table, taking up her own chair in a normal fashion. She was sipping on her own sweet/hearty bowl of soup. She held the bowl in both of her hands. It took four of our hands, Harriet and I working together, to lift our own. Even then, I twice nearly took a tumble inside the bowl.

“The prophecy states that only a woman can save the kingdom...and only a woman who has been,” she paused and set the bowl down.

“Go on,” said Henrietta from the floor below. “Tell them.”

“Yes, of course,” said Sydelle. She glanced over at us with her big, round, beautiful eyes. My assessment of her eyes was, of course, firmly contained within my wall. “Part of the prophecy states that the woman who would be king must first be resurrected.”

“From the dead?” said Harriet.

“Yes, I’m afraid so,” said Sydelle. “You see, the hen was only partly right. Someone didn’t just ‘try’ to cut off my head.” Now she reached up and pulled down the collar of her tunic, revealing what had to be one of the nastiest scars I had ever seen. “They succeeded in cutting off my head.”

Harriet and I collectively lost our appetites and set the oversized bowl down. Below, the hen resumed pecking and cursing, seemingly unaffected.

“But...I don’t understand,” said Harriet.

“A dark day in my life, for sure.”

And with that, she gave us a glimpse into her thoughts again, this time focused on the events surrounding her beheading. We watched her get dragged out of her simple home—one that looked far different than the one we were currently in. The men who dragged her off wore official-looking armor. The king’s men, I suspected. She was hauled kicking and screaming through town, while her mother had to be held back by neighbors, kicking and screaming herself, no doubt risking her own death but not giving a damn.

Sydelle was dragged to a chopping block in the center of the village, a block that was already coated with blood and gore. Apparently, the king’s men had been making their rounds that day. There was much wailing in the village.

The young sorceress was dragged up to the block, and now I caught something else in her memory: she could have fought back with her magic. In fact, she was far more powerful than she had let on. But she had always known—or suspected—that she would be queen, that day by day, she was fulfilling the prophecy. A prophecy that stated that the queen would return from the dead.

And so she permitted the king’s men to roughly place her on the block, to force her to look up as the ax was raised high. And as it flashed down, Harriet screamed, and the memory mercifully stopped.

“Not my best day,” said Sydelle.

I looked at Sydelle’s clothing again, and noted something I had previously missed: dried blood just inside the collar. She was wearing the same clothing.

“You’ve only recently come back to life,” I said.

“Very good, Jack. Yesterday, in fact. Just prior to summoning you to Giantland.”

“But how?”

“I honestly don’t know,” she said. “I woke up in my family’s tomb, my head reattached.”

Harriet and I were silent for many minutes. The hen wasn’t so silent as she pecked and pecked.

Finally, Harriet said, “You risked death for your kingdom.”

“Yes,” said Sydelle.

“Then I would be honored to help you.”

Tears sprang to the young sorceress’s eyes. She glanced at me. “And you, Jack of New York?”

I bowed at her bravery, my admiration for her flowing over. “I’m with you to the end...my queen.”

Chapter Eleven

Bankrupt

“Let’s get the details straight,” Henrietta said. “Blank spots are awkward.”

“Blank spots?” Harriet asked.

I caught on. “Like who took the body to the tomb, and reattached the head. Someone must have known that it was important to save Sydelle.”

“I’m not sure about that,” Henrietta said. “I came to the Cloud before the two of you.”

“You were my first attempt,” Sydelle agreed. “I messed it up by losing track of you at the outset. So I concentrated on getting it right next time. But my execution intervened.”

“Yes,” the hen agreed. “I heard the giants talking about the slaughter. How several suspects had been executed, including one shapely wench, and the bodies left to their families as a public example. All the victims were quickly removed.”

“And then to bring her back to life,” I said, resuming the main thread. “Do we have another sorcerer on our side?”

“I know of none,” Sydelle said. “I have been quietly reading minds, and while some villagers have magic, they suppress it, and none have magic of that caliber.”

“But could some have telepathy, and see you coming, as it were?” Harriet said. “In fact, who betrayed you to the king’s minions, so you got beheaded?”

Sydelle’s mouth opened in surprise and dismay. “I never thought of that. I thought it was just a routine sweep.”

“Without first raping you?” Harriet asked. “They just threw away your fine body, unmolested? No brutal degradation before the end? That’s not SOP. They wouldn’t waste a creature like you without good reason.”

“And that good reason would be that you were too dangerous to let live one moment longer,” I said. “Once they knew what was in your mind,”

“You’re right,” the sorceress agreed, chagrined. “The king’s men lusted after me. I could read that in their brutish minds from far away. They were just waiting their opportunity. The moment I got in trouble, however minor, and got chained naked in the public square, they would be there. They dreamed of it. And if I didn’t get in trouble, the king would soon have taken me as his plaything; that was in his mind too. Yet none of that happened. I was simply beheaded.” She smiled grimly. “I think after that my body was less appealing.”

“So you were betrayed,” I concluded. “And not by a lustful minion. So they made short work of you. Still, that doesn’t reveal your betrayer.”

“Or how you were restored to life,” Harriet added. “We do need to explain these mysteries, lest we get betrayed again, and this time with no recovery.”

Sydelle shook her head. “What you say makes sense. Someone might have read my mind without my knowing it, and told the king. But returning me to life—I know of no one with that level of magic, not even the king. That is an art I think I dabbled in, but no one else approaches that level.”

“You think you dabbled?” I asked. “Don’t you know?”

“My memory is foggy. But it’s coming back now. Yes, I was studying reanimation.”

“How could you forget a thing like that?” Harriet asked.

The sorceress concentrated. “I—I think I wanted to.”

“Wanted to? You’re not making much sense.”

I got an idea. “Let’s explore exactly what happened when you were beheaded. Maybe there are hints there.” I turned to the hen. “Start from the beginning. That is, from before the king’s thugs came for her. Was there any hint that she knew what was coming?”

Now Henrietta concentrated. “Yes. She called aside her younger sister, Selle, a sweet girl. The two of them were always close. Selle has magic ability herself, but knew to keep it completely hidden. Sydelle gave her something to keep safe. It was—a tooth.”

“Your missing tooth!” I said to Sydelle. “You took it out beforehand.”

“I—I did,” the sorceress agreed. “But not exactly.”

“Either you did or you didn’t,” I said. “And Henrietta says you did.”

The hen shook her head. “No. Now that I look more closely, I see that it looked like a tooth but was something else. I can’t tell what. There’s magic shrouding the memory.”

“The farther we go,” Harriet said, “the murkier this becomes.”

“Let’s get back to that later,” I said. I was still on the trail of my suspicion. “What happened next, Henrietta?”

The hen focused on the memory. “The king’s men came and hauled her away. They didn’t pause to rape her; they killed her immediately, and left the body lying in the dirt. There was not actually a lot of bleeding from the neck, oddly. Then her mother came to gather up the remains, using a small cart to transport the body and the detached head to the tomb. She cleaned off the blood and fitted the head back in place so that at least her daughter looked whole. Then, weeping, she departed, closing the tomb after her.”

“Now comes the resurrection,” Harriet said tensely. “Who did it?”

“No one did it,” the hen said. “The body lay there a while, then suddenly animated. It came back to life by itself.”

“But how could it?” Harriet asked. “It was dead!”

“I do not know how, only what,” the hen insisted.

I bore down. “You were studying life restoration, Sydelle. Then you were restored yourself. How did you do it? How did the tooth relate? Why did you want to forget?”

“Because I couldn’t let the king read it in my mind!” Sydelle flared. “Now I remember! My only safety was in forgetting.”

Progress at last. “Forgetting what?”

“That—that I had found a way to avoid death, by indirection. To make myself seem more dead than I was.”

“Indirection!” Harriet said. “But you didn’t avoid it!”

The sorceress concentrated, working it out as her memory returned. “I—I found a way to do it. It was like a kind of sleight of hand, where not everything is as it appears.”

“They cut off your head!” Harriet said.

“No, actually they didn’t. I did that myself.”

We all stared at her, speechless: man, woman, hen.

“That was the secret I had to hide, even from mind readers,” Sydelle continued slowly. “Using an intricate obscure formula I was able to remove a loose tooth, and make it resemble the rest of my head. I could even animate it by remote control with my thoughts. Then I removed my head—this was a very special spell—and made it resemble the tooth. Then I put the animated tooth on my neck in place of the head, and gave the miniaturized head to my little sister for safekeeping. It remains with her, guiding the pretend head I am wearing now.”

We gazed at that head. It certainly looked real.

“It is real,” Sydelle said. “It is of my body. But it is my tooth. Should anything happen to my real head, I would instantly die. My magic caused my blood to remain in my body; indeed, my body never died. Had my mother not quickly removed it, that soon would have become apparent.”

“Your mother suspected,” I said wisely.

“As does my sister,” she agreed. “But they both stifled the awareness, so as not to betray me.”

“Betrayal!” I exclaimed. “Your sister betrayed you! At least to that extent. Only because you told her to.”

“I had to go through the awful process,” Sydelle agreed. “We knew that.”

“And you can’t replace the missing tooth,” Harriet said, working it out, “because there’s no tooth to replace. It’s already there.”

“Yes. But if I can recover my real head, I could put it in place of my tooth, and then it would all be there. I need to do that before too long. Having my real head operating at a distance slows my reactions somewhat.”

“But to recover your real head,” I said, “You would need to get together with your sister. And you can’t do that without letting everyone know you’re not really dead.”

“Yes. I must remain officially dead, at least for now. My family will remain in mourning for me. But their grief is not total.”

I shook my head as if to clear it of debris. “You play a remarkable game, sorceress.”

“I have to. My alternative would have been to become the king’s plaything, and then likely as not get killed anyway. As it is, I’m no longer a concern to the king.”

“So now that we know the score,” I said, “Let’s get on with the project. You have other prospects for recruitment from the waking world?”

“Yes. The best is a man with multiple talents, potentially. But there’s a problem.”

“Isn’t there always,” Harriet said.

“He is in financial difficulty in that ugly realm beyond the Cloud. He is about to be imprisoned for fraud, unless he repays a fair sum of money. He is innocent; he was framed by the one who actually took the money. But he will not be able to exonerate himself from prison. He needs to repay the money from his own pocket, and of course he can’t. I can in time arrange for a regular income for him, but this crisis is immediate, and I don’t have the money now.”

“Henrietta’s eggs!” I said. “That gold should be enough.”

“It should,” Sydelle agreed, surprised. “I didn’t think of that.”

“We have them,” I said. “Harriet put them in her purse.”

“Yes, I have them right here,” Harriet said, delving into her purse. “Oh, no!”

“No?” I echoed, feeling a cold chill.

“There’s a hole in my purse. It must have gotten ripped somewhere along the way, and the pouch with the eggs dropped out. I don’t have it.”

“It could be anywhere in the forest,” Henrietta said. “Or found by a lout who won’t give it back.”

“Damn!” I said. “That means we’re bankrupt.”

“Bankrupt,” Harriet agreed, a tear in her eye.

“I can lay more,” Henrietta said. “In time.”

“I fear we don’t have that much time,” Sydelle said sadly.

The four of us exchanged a look of anguish. What could we do?

Chapter Twelve

Joe

I snapped my fingers with what I had thought was a logical solution. “If he’s asleep when he comes here,” I said, “do we really need to worry about his financial situation? I mean, he could just as easily journey to the Cloud from his prison bunk as from his bed at home?”

Harriet reached over and patted my face. “It’s a good thing we don’t need you for your brain, Jack.”

“We need his fire, not his brains,” cackled the hen.

I was beginning to not like that hen, although it was certainly hard to hate anything that magically produced gold. Then it came to me, and I realized once again that I should have kept my mouth shut and thought it through first. I nodded. “Because he would be periodically awakened by the guards.”

“Or worse,” said Harriet, and I caught her not-so-subtle thought: Periodically awakened by inmates too.

Yikes!

“Although time here is not the same as on Earth—one week here is the equivalent of one earth hour—I do not need any of you to awaken before the tasks are done,” said Sydelle.

I did the math. One night’s sleep on earth would be the equivalent of...two months here in Giantland. I’d been here roughly two days...which would be only minutes back on earth. I hadn’t known about the time discrepancies between the two worlds. I chalked it up to Sydelle not operating at maximum efficiency, due to her head, in fact, being her tooth.

My life is weird, I thought.

Tell me about it, echoed Harriet. And her tooth is only simulating her head. Her real head is still being used, just from long distance.

That doesn’t make it any less weird, I thought.

“If you two are quite done,” cackled the hen, “we need to come up with a solution. I would do it myself, except I’m only a hen.”

“Although ornery,” said Sydelle, “the hen has a point. And real ideas will need to come from you two. My brain is sluggish at best, and it’s difficult to relay complicated concepts from a great distance. So, any ideas?”

I suggested that we needed more info, and Sydelle gave us further access to her thoughts. Within them, we caught sight of the man who would join our merry band of giant killers. Except, of course, he didn’t know it. Like me, he had no idea that Sydelle had designs for him. Like me, he was currently stressed about life back on earth. Unlike me, he lived in luxury, although I suspected not for long.

His name was Joe West, and he looked like a million bucks: nice penthouse suite, expensive clothes, perfect haircut, a beautiful young wife. But it was all just a charade. He was, in fact, a con man. Sydelle gave us glimpses of the man at work, bilking millions from unsuspecting retirees in a classic Ponzi scheme: paying returns to his investors with new money from other investors. No money was ever invested, and the scheme could only last as long as new investors were convinced to give up their savings. Or until the con artist was caught.

In this case, Joe West was about to be caught. But not yet. Sydelle gave us a glimpse of the man sweating it out in his office, running his fingers through his thinning hair, gold rings glistening.

“Let him go to jail,” said Harriet. “He stole millions, destroyed lives. He deserves to rot in jail.”

“I agree,” said Sydelle. “He is a criminal, but he’s also something else.”

I knew what she was getting at. “An evil genius.”

“Yes,” said Harriet. “We need his cunning mind to help take down the cunning king.”

“And he would help us?” I asked.

“He would,” said Sydelle, “or face jail time.”

“But he hasn’t been caught yet,” said Harriet.

“No,” said Sydelle. “But the authorities are closing in. He has but one way to escape capture and imminent jail time.”

Even I knew the answer to this: “Pay off all his investors.”

Sydelle nodded, although there was a slight lag to her response. I said, “Any idea how much he owes?”

Sydelle nodded again after a moment. “Ten billion earth dollars.”

My mouth dropped open. So did Harriet’s. The hen, not so much. She was, after all, a bird.

“So,” said Sydelle, “any ideas?”

I found myself looking at the hen who laid the gold eggs. “I have only one,” I said.

Henrietta squawked, flapping her wings. Feathers floated free and drifted in the air around us. “I can only lay a gold egg a week, at most. And even then, it’s dicey. Sometimes they come out quite normal.”

“We would need dozens of gold eggs to reach ten billion,” said Harriet. “That would be many, many months.”

“We don’t have many months,” said Sydelle. “The prophecy states that I would need to regain the throne in seven days.”

My head hurt. It literally hurt. Yes, I was not cut out for this. Truly, we needed a master schemer...and that master schemer was about to face jail time.

“Other than his cunning, what other trait does Joe West provide us?” I asked.

“He’s a shape-shifter,” said Sydelle. “Of course, he doesn’t know it yet.”

“And what does he shift into?”

“A dragon, of course.”

“Of course,” I said, and rubbed my temples. Then I had an idea. I looked again at the hen. “Who says that you can only turn eggs into gold?”

“No one, I suppose.”

“If you put your mind to it, could you transmute other objects into gold? Your talent, after all, is transmutation.”

I knew I was grasping at straws. I also knew this was a highly magical land, where talents expressed themselves in ways that many of us had yet to fully explore or realize.

“It’s worth a shot,” said Harriet.

Sydelle agreed, and set a wooden bowl next to the hen. “Try it on this?”

“Try what on this?” said the hen.

“Turning it into gold. Go on, try it.”

The hen did her equivalent of a sigh, puffing out her chest, and then turned her attention to the bowl. Nothing happened. It was still a wooden bowl.

“Try harder,” I said. “Or we eat well tonight.”

The hen clucked and flapped her wings. “Well, I never—”

“Go on,” I said. “Do it.”

She returned her attention to the wooden bowl...and then it happened. The wooden bowl was no longer wooden. It was gold. Pure gold.

I picked it up, or tried to. It was far too heavy for me to lift. “You did it!”

“Of course I did,” said the hen. “I didn’t want to end up inside the bowl, after all.”

After that, the hen proceeded to turn silverware and cups and mugs and even firewood into gold, all small enough for us to lift and carry back with us.

“So what’s next?” I asked.

“Now, you meet Joe West.”

Chapter Thirteen

Payoff

“Just like that?” I asked. “Will we have to go to the waking world?”

“Of course not,” Harriet said severely. She had changed somewhere along the way and now wore a petite blouse and skirt. I liked her outfit, but of course I would have liked anything she wore, or, for that matter, didn’t wear. “If we woke up, we’d be separate. We’d have to get together physically, then go to intercept the man. Assuming we did it efficiently, that’s he’s not flying to Singapore at the moment, and contacted him within a day, twenty four hours, that would be half a year on the Cloud and it would all be academic. It has to be in the dream.”

Sometimes I felt like a real dullard. “Yes, of course,” I agreed quickly. “In the dream.”

“He is sleeping at the moment,” Sydelle said. “I have reached his mind. That’s why he’s accessible. He just had a session with his young wife and slept. I am planting a beanstalk. The trick is to get him to climb it. He may not want to.”

“No problem,” I said. “We’ll slide down it, and meet him in his home. We’ll talk him into coming to the Cloud.”

“I’m not sure he will be easy to persuade. He’s no dummy; he’s an independent cuss, suspicious because he’s a swindler himself.”

I put my mind to work. “Okay: he’s a creature of money. He needs a lot of it right now. We can buy him by paying off his debt. Can we do that from the Cloud?”

“I hope so,” Sydelle said. “I am not conversant with the intricacies of the global financial system.”

“That’s no problem,” Henrietta said. “Ask Joe West. He’s the expert.”

And there it was. We could make the presentation, and if he signed up with us, we’d give him the gold to cash in. We’d be buying him, but let’s face it: he was for sale.

Sydelle nodded. “Yes, I think that can work. Now I’m too big to descend the beanstalk or fit in his suite, so you will have to do it.”

“You can’t make yourself seem small enough?” I asked her, dodging Harriet’s glare.

“Seeming is not sufficient for this. A house is not impressionable the way a man is. I would have to be small enough.”

Henrietta had another relevant question. “We will have sufficient gold. Where do we put it so that Joe West can fence it in the real world?”

“We can drop it beside the beanstalk to his place,” I said. “Once we make the deal.”

“Henrietta had better go with you,” Sydelle said. “So she can demonstrate her ability. Seeing may not be believing, for him, but I fear that nothing less will suffice.”

“Then let’s go,” I said. “Where is the beanstalk?”

“Here,” Sydelle said, indicating what I had taken to be a potted plant. The pot was a facade; the stem went down through a manhole in the floor.

“Look out below!” I cried, taking hold of the stalk, which rapidly thickened as it descended. It was like a firehouse pole with leaves. It was much easier going down than it had been climbing up; I simply used the leaves to guide and slow my descent.

Harriet came next. I looked up and saw her skirt flair out as she dropped, showing her marvelous legs to rare advantage. I decided to be a gentleman and not say a word, though not too much of a gentleman not to look. There were limits.

Then Henrietta flew down to perch on a leaf beside me. She looked up. “Do human women normally wear skirts to climb beanstalks? She’s showing a lot of leg.”

Damn. I hoped Harriet hadn’t heard. “Remember, she was nude when she played the harp,” I said.

“So I was,” Harriet said as she reached our level. “I just thought you could use a reminder, after the way you gawked at Sydelle.”

I didn’t answer, as that would only get me in more trouble. I dropped down another level.

In this manner we soon reached the lighted city below, orienting on the skyscraper, and on the fancy penthouse at its top. The stalk passed conveniently close to an open window, and we climbed inside.

And found ourselves face to face with a handsome middle-aged man and a lovely young woman, both in pajamas. “Who are you and what are you doing here?” the man demanded. “And what’s that beanstalk doing outside our window?”

This was part of their dream too? “Joe West, I presume?” I said.

“And his wife?” Harriet added.

“Yes and yes. Now answer my question.”

“I am Jack, formerly of Jutemill Industries. This is Harriet, and Henrietta. We have business to discuss with you.”

“Discuss it in the morning, in my office.”

“This can’t wait. We—we have come to pay off your debt.”

“Your ten billion dollar debt,” Harriet said.

His expression didn’t change, but I fancied I could see a sea change in the mind behind it. “You have funds or credit?”

“We have gold.”

“How much?”

“Pounds of it.”

Now something did flicker across his face, but it looked oddly like contempt. “Come be seated and we’ll discuss this. Emma, fetch these folk a drink.”

Soon we were comfortably seated with drinks in hand, plus some chickenfeed for Henrietta. Joe was a good host. Or an efficient dreamer.

“Let me do a bit of math for you,” Joe said. “Gold is presently worth about thirteen hundred dollars an ounce. Never mind that its troy weight ounces are not the same as grocery store ounces; we’ll use the latter for your benefit.” Indeed, I could hear the written out figure, rather than numeric; he was talking our language. He was good at his kind of persuasion, practicing the nuances. “Sixteen ounces would make a pound, which would be about twenty thousand, eight hundred dollars. To make ten billion dollars would require approximately four thousand tons of gold. Do you have that much?”

I looked at Harriet and Henrietta with dismay. Of course we didn’t have that much! And if we could get it, how would we deliver it? We’d need a forklift. That would be awkward, on the beanstalk. We had been terminally naïve.

Joe nodded, needing no verbal answer. “Now let’s start over, shall we? What is your real purpose here?”

“You may find it hard to believe.”

“Try me.”

I decided to spell it out directly. “We are in a dream, all of us here. We need you to help us engineer a regime change in a realm we call the Cloud, where giants live and magic is real.”

Joe nodded. “I do find that hard to believe. Persuade me.” He seemed to be taking us seriously, though that was surely deceptive; the man’s stock in trade was convincing people of his own seriousness. Maybe he was simply stalling until the police he thought he had signaled got here, not knowing that they would not be coming. At any rate, he was politely telling us to put up or shut up.

I rose to the occasion. “First maybe we should prove what we say about magic. Henrietta here is the hen who lays the golden eggs. Only that’s too slow, and she can transmute other things. That’s the source of our gold. Bring us something you don’t value, and we’ll demonstrate.”

Joe turned to his trophy wife. “Emma?”

Emma rose and walked to an old fashioned lamp. “This is fake antique, almost worthless.” They were calling our bluff, they thought.

I turned to the hen. “Henrietta?”

The hen went to the lamp and touched it with her wing. It changed color, becoming a deep yellow.

Emma went to pick it up. “Ooof!” she exclaimed. “It’s heavy!”

“Gold is heavy,” I agreed.

She braced herself and heaved it up. “This really is gold!” she exclaimed excitedly. “Every part of it! Even the wick.”

“My wife knows gold,” Joe said. “I call her my gold digger.”

“Not to my face,” Emma gasped, setting down the lamp before him.

Joe inspected it. “That’s gold, all right. So this may be a dream or a delusion. Show me it’s a dream.”

I drew a brief blank. How can one person prove to another they are dreaming, when he couldn’t prove it to himself?

Harriet rescued me. “Let’s go to your bedroom, folks, where you’re sleeping.”

We went there. There were Joe and Emma in bed, holding hands, sound asleep. They must have made love and drifted off. When Sydelle put Joe into the dream, Emma was brought along too, because she was in contact.

That’s correct, Sydelle thought, her words appearing through time and space and everything in-between. She was an accident.

The two animate ones exchanged a startled glance. Then Joe recovered his mental footing. “This is persuasive. But if we are only dreaming of a gold lamp, how can we transfer it to our waking realm?”

Now I needed Sydelle’s input. Tell Emma to hold the lamp, then wake herself. She will wake holding it.

I relayed that message. Emma clasped the lamp and went to touch her sleeping self.

“Oh, one other thing,” I said, and Emma paused. “Time is different in the two realms. One hour of real time is a week of Cloud time.”

“A week is 168 hours,” Joe said, evidently good at mental math, as maybe a con man had to be. “So a minute is a scant three hours. Time will seem to crawl for us.”

“So should I wake?” Emma asked.

“In a moment, dear.” He turned to me. “That chicken can make more gold?”

“Yes,” I said. “She can transmute anything you have here. But it won’t come to four thousand tons.”

“It doesn’t need to.” He turned back to his wife. “Dear, wake, and if the gold is real, get up and contact my CFO. Tell him that we have a venture capitalist investor who is marketing solid gold artifacts, who will use the gold to buy into our operation. Give him the lamp. Then return for more gold, which the chicken will be transmuting.” He glanced at me. “She can return to sleep to reload?”

“Yes,” I agreed as Sydelle prompted me. “When she touches you she will sleep again. As long as you remain asleep.”

“But what about you, dear?” Emma asked Joe.

“If the gold is real, just let me sleep. In minutes there will be a pile of gold beside me. The CFO will know what to do with it. In a few hours I will wake, my business with these people completed.”

She nodded. “This could save us some mischief.” Evidently she knew the nature of his operation, and the trouble they were in.

“It could bail us out,” he agreed. “If it transfers.”

“I love you, dear.”

“And I love you.” They kissed. Then Emma held the lamp in one arm, and reached down to pinch her sleeping self’s arm. “Wake, trophy girl!”

The sleeping woman’s eyelids slowly fluttered. The dream Emma vanished.

We stood and watched for ten minutes as the woman slowly opened her eyes, saw the gold lamp, and opened her mouth. Three seconds, her time. In another ten minutes she had verified the reality of the gold.

Meanwhile we talked. “What’s a CFO?” Harriet asked.

“Chief Financial Officer. Invaluable to my operation.”

“What is venture capitalists?” I asked.

“Folk who invest good money in chancy new ventures in the hope that they will pan out and return many times their original investment.”

“But we can’t deliver four thousands ton of gold to this suite,” I said. “It would crush the building below.”

“A few hundred pounds will suffice to make the initial buy-in. Leverage will do the rest. You don’t need to pay off the whole operation; just provide a sufficient continuing investment to enable it to function. It’s like gaining a superior line of credit.”

“Uh, sure,” I said uncertainly. This was over my head.

By the time Joe was satisfied that the gold transfer was real, we were satisfied that he knew what he was doing financially. We were financial amateurs, never having had any extra money to play with, but he was a pro. The gold would shore up his operation, creditors would get paid, and he would not be arrested. That would take months to play out on the Cloud. Plenty of time for Joe to tackle our problem.

Henrietta converted several more household items to gold, to give Emma West plenty to work on without our needing to be present.

It was time to take him up the beanstalk.

Chapter Fourteen

Leader

“I’m not going,” he said. “This is a risk that even I’m not willing to take.”

“But you agreed—”

“I made no such agreement. I simply asked for you to show me proof, and now your bird has done so. I think I will wake up now. Off with you, go on. And thank you for all the gold.”

“You know,” said Harriet, stepping forward. “I didn’t think I would like you...now I know I don’t like you.”

“Oh, yeah?” said Joe. “Join the club. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I plan on waking myself up, and staying awake for the next 48 hours or so. That would be 48 weeks in your Cloud land, no? Yes, I think so. Long enough for you to either figure out your own problems, or, well, I guess we’ll see. By then I should be home clear, and on to my next venture.”

“You mean your next scam,” I said.

“It’s all a scam, Jack. Open your eyes.”

“They are open, and I’m seeing a sleazeball standing in front of me.”

“Ouch. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be waking myself up.”

He went to step around us, except Harriet was having none of it. She raised her hands and a zigzagging blast of electricity appeared from seemingly the center of her palms. Harriet directed the light at Joe’s feet, and might have missed a little. A true hot foot. He yelped and grabbed his smoking feet. He hopped on one foot. His little toe, I saw, was nearly black.

“My toe! Look what you did to my toe! You bitch!”

“Oops,” she said, and then re-directed her energy to form what appeared to be a shimmering, pulsating battering ram. And ram it did, pushing the con man back through the fancy suite, and all the way over to the far window, where the beanstalk awaited.

“I suggest you climb,” I said, grinning. His toe, I noted, was already healing. Not completely, but definitely four times as fast. “I think she just might shove you out the window if you don’t.”

Joe West looked at me, then at Harriet, then at the hen, who had flown up into my hands. Finally he looked out the window and at the giant beanstalk. He was about to protest, when Harriet gave him one last blast that sent him stumbling through the window, where he just managed to grab hold of one of the thick branches.

“Start climbing, Mister,” she said.

And he did, bad toe and all.

***

The con man proved quite the climber. Of course, he had Harriet just beneath him, who zapped him every time he paused. I think she was enjoying his discomfort far too much.

My grandmother was taken advantage of by someone like him, she thought, as I hadn’t bothered shielding my thoughts. We were now high above the highest skyscraper. The view from here was seemingly limitless. She lost everything.

I’m sorry, I thought, and now understood her deep animosity toward Joe West. Henrietta was perched on my shoulder as I climbed. She clucked in my ear and flapped her wings every now and then. I just prayed she didn’t turn me into a golden statue!

Soon we found ourselves in the clouds high above, where we climbed blindly. I could barely see the branch above me, let alone Harriet or Joe high above. Shortly after that, my reaching hand didn’t find the next branch, but rather the edge of a wooden opening. Perhaps less gracefully than I had hoped, I spilled from the stalk and onto Sydelle’s wooden floor, where the others were already on their feet.

Joe West dusted himself off. “I demand to be returned at—” Except he didn’t finish his sentence when he got an eyeful of the giant sorceress. In fact, he stood there motionless, mouth open, seemingly frozen.

While the conman gawked, Sydelle led us to another section of the house, and another opening in the floor. This time our assignment was a little easier. We fetched an ex-NFL star who had fallen on hard times. His name was Carl Cruise, and he had been a star running back from the New York Giants nearly a decade ago.

Bored and nearly destitute, he was more than game for a little adventure. Once we returned with Carl, the five us—myself, Harriet, Henrietta, Joe and Carl—found ourselves standing before the giant sorceress, who looked pleased.

“There,” she said, “this should do it.”

“Just the five of us?” asked Joe. He had an unpleasant way of sneering when he spoke. He reminded me of a classic villain in, say, a Disney movie. Except he was supposedly on our side, and we supposedly needed his brain.

“Five is plenty,” said Sydelle. “Each of you possess qualities necessary to achieve the task at hand.”

“To overthrow the present king?” said Carl. He was a big, black man with a deep voice and an easy smile—and the biggest hands I’d ever seen in my life. He seemed right at home here on the Cloud.

“Yes, exactly,” said Sydelle. She grew somber and looked at us each in turn. “There is no guarantee that any of us will survive this.”

“But this is just a dream, right?” asked Joe West. The sneer in his voice was gone, replaced by something high-pitched and scared.

“Yes and no. You have heard of people who have died in their sleep, correct?”

“Yes, but—”

“Death here will mean death in your sleep, usually in the form of a massive heart attack.”

“Oh, God.”

Carl grinned and clapped Joe’s shoulder. “Where’s your sense of adventure?”

“In bed with my wife.”

Carl laughed, and as he did so, one thing became apparent to me. All the others had obvious traits that could help overthrow a kingdom: strength, beauty, wealth and cunning. None of which I added to.

Not true, thought Sydelle, directing her thoughts only to me.

What do you mean? I asked, guarding my thoughts from the others, as she had done.

They need a leader.

But I’m not—

No buts, Jack from New York. You are their leader.

Harriet gave me a quizzical look. I returned it with a weak smile. I knew in my heart that I was no leader. Sure, I might be headstrong...but all that did was make me unemployable.

Carl clapped those big hands together and said, “So what’s the plan?”

For some reason, everyone looked at me.

Show time.

Chapter Fifteen

Movement

I had no plan, no idea, no nothing. Yet I had to come up with something.

Then I thought of a way to finesse it, at least for a while. “We can’t act until we know what we have,” I said. “So let’s take stock. We’re dealing with giants, any one of which could pick us up and throw us away. Some of them would rather eat us than look at us. We’re all on the same Cloud in that respect.” I glanced at Joe, hoping he got the message. “Force is not on our side. Sydelle summoned us here because we each have one or more special magical talents. We will need to fit them into a cohesive campaign strategy. I, for example, am pyrotechnic: I can make fires at a distance. Harriet is electric; she can build up a charge and zap things or levitate them with static repulsion. Henrietta can transmute base materials into gold, and also has retrocognition: she can see past events. Sometimes we can’t really understand a situation until we know how it came about. Joe—”

“I don’t have any magic,” Joe West said quickly. “I don’t even believe in it. This is just a dream.”

“You have it,” I said.

“Yeah? What is it, wise guy?”

“Shape changing. Your other form is a dragon.”

“You should get a job as a stand-up comedian, joker.”

“I suppose we had better verify it,” I said. “Let’s go out on the patio, in case we need more space.”

“This way,” Sydelle said. She led us out to an open section beyond the house.

Joe West might have protested, but he was too distracted watching Sydelle walk. Her legs under her skirt were well formed, but it was evidently their size that got to him: quadruple the ordinary, and a lot was visible from our knee-high vantage. It was like looking at a regular woman from low down and inches away, maybe with an upskirt camera. He was clearly a lady’s man, his taste not limited to his trophy wife, and the size of a woman’s parts impressed him. When she walked by him I saw him get a glimpse well up inside her thighs. I knew the power of that glimpse. He was transfixed.

Harriet caught my eye. She didn’t mind seeing someone else stunned, as long as it wasn’t me. That was a relief.

“Now let’s find out just what kind of a dragon you are,” I told Joe. “Large, small, medium. Ground-borne, flying, breathing fire, steam, smoke. It’s bound to make a difference.”

“I’m no kind of dragon at all,” he snapped. Sydelle was no longer walking, so he was back to his usual snotty self.

“Focus,” I said. “Try to shape change.”

“I’ll do no such thing!”

Sydelle squatted low before him, leaning forward. That put her head a little above his, and her bosom slightly below his face level. She cleared her long hair back out of the way. He had a bird’s-eye view of the Grand Canyon. “Please,” she murmured throatily. “Try.” She took a deep breath.

I thought Joe was going to faint. He wavered, and almost fell into the Canyon before catching himself. “I will try,” he agreed dazedly.

“Thank you. That’s all we ask.” She shifted her squatting position slightly, and her skirt hiked up over her knees. Now that I was no longer the target I saw that nothing she showed was accidental. She was playing him, having caught on to his weakness. More power to her!

Joe focused, and something happened. His height and girth increased, stretching his clothing. He was changing!

“Let’s not ruin your outfit,” Sydelle said as Joe’s effort abated and he shrank back to normal size. She reached out and helped him remove his jacket, shirt, and then his trousers. His eyes remained fixed on her torso, and he did not resist. In moments he stood in his underwear.

“Now try again,” Sydelle said, breathing deeply.

What could the poor man do? He focused.

This time the change was faster. He grew rapidly into a scaly ten foot long winged dragon. He snorted, and a wisp of fire came out.

“Fly!” I called.

He spread his wings, ran along the pavement, and leaped into the air. He pumped, and was airborne. In moments he was high in the sky.

Oops—would we see him again? But where would he go? He was locked into the dream.

Sure enough, he soon looped back and glided to a landing on the patio. He bumped and skidded to a halt, as yet inexpert, but that would improve with practice. He changed back to manform, flushed. “It’s true! In this dream I am a dragon!” Then he realized he was naked and tried to cover himself with his hands. His underwear had been shredded during the prior change.

“Do not be concerned,” Sydelle said. “You are handsome in your natural state.” He was no such thing, but Harriet and I kept our mouths shut, and Henrietta didn’t care; she wore no clothing anyway.

“I am?” I could practically see the thoughts forming in his head, even without telepathy. The telepathy confirmed it: rutting billy goats were rampant.

“Do you know I could appear to be your size?” Sydelle said.

“You could?” That prospect excited him.

“And I will, in due course, if you behave and give us your best effort.”

That promise bid fair to transform his attitude. Evidently fidelity to his wife was not part of his makeup. “I will do my best.”

“I’m sure you will.”

Harriet nodded. She was more than satisfied to have the sorceress’ seductive attention directed Joe’s way instead of mine.

I was satisfied too. Whatever worked. Especially since the sorceress was supporting my supposed leadership.

Sydelle tossed Joe’s clothing to him, and he donned it, minus the lost underwear. One down.

“Now you, Carl,” I said briskly.

“Me,” Carl Cruise agreed. He had been intrigued and diverted by Sydelle’s little (big?) show and by the manifestation of the dragon; Harriet and I had been reading his unshielded mind. “I’ve got magic too?”

“Yes you do,” I said. “We just have to find out what it is.”

Joe West made a mental shrug. I read his mind: he wasn’t partial to blacks, not because of racial prejudice, but because few of them outside of show business had his kind of money. He knew that Carl had once made real money, but then allowed corrupt handlers to dissipate it, and he viewed that with contempt. He would have preferred to be the corrupt handler to siphon off that money, instead of letting it go to waste.

“It relates to motion,” Sydelle said. “It’s extremely powerful. That’s all I was able to glean.”

“Well, I was a running back,” Carl agreed. “I could move my body pretty good. But that wasn’t magic.”

“Your magic may be an enhancement of that,” I said. “How well can you move here?”

“I dunno. My joints ain’t the same anymore.” He tried a short sprint, and exclaimed in amazement. “They’re better! I can move like I used to! This is great!”

“But not magic,” I said. “It’s just the normal enhancement of the dream.”

“Joe, what are your thoughts?” Sydelle asked.

Thus prompted, Joe had to put his mind to it. He wanted the sorceress’ continuing favor, for other than monetary reason, an unusual state for him. “What about real motion?” he asked. “Like seven league boots or teleportation?”

I pounced on that. “Teleportation! Conjuring yourself elsewhere with just the force of your mind. Can you do that, Carl?”

“I dunno,” Carl repeated. “How is it done?”

“Let’s start simple,” I said. “Can you jump across the patio?”

“How?”

“Just wish you were there,” Harriet suggested.

“Okay, sure.” He vanished.

Startled, we all peered at the spot where he had stood. Had he turned invisible?

“Over here,” Carl called from behind us.

He was standing across the patio.

“Very good, Carl,” Sydelle said, smiling as if this were routine. “Now can you return?”

“I guess,” Carl said from his original location. There had been no implosion or explosion of air coming or going; he simply reappeared. That was quality magic.

“Okay,” I said, taking my cue from Sydelle and playing it cool. “You can teleport. Let’s explore the parameters. Can you go any distance, or is it limited to short range?”

“I know that,” Carl said. “When I ran, I knew to watch my feet, ’cause a misstep could break a leg. When I jumped, you know, ported, I went where I could see. If I didn’t I might wind up in a rock or a tree, and that’d be messy. I gotta know where I’m going.”

“That makes sense,” I agreed. “Same way you wouldn’t dive into a pool without knowing how deep the water was.”

“Yeah.”

“Can you go somewhere out of sight?” Joe asked. “If you know where it is?”

“Sure. I can close my eyes and go back where I was.” Carl did so.

“So it’s not seeing it,” Joe said. “It’s knowing it.”

“Yeah.”

“But if you go to one place first, the old fashioned way, by foot,” I said, “then later you could return there, even if it was far away?”

“I think so. That feels right.”

“So if we sneaked into the king’s castle, and were caught, you could zip back here?”

“Yeah.”

“Next question,” Joe said. “Can you take anyone else with you?”

That was a sharp question. Joe was coming through, now.

“Maybe. I dunno.”

“Take me,” Harriet said, stepping up to him.

He was slightly taken aback. “You sure, lady?”

“No,” she confessed. “But it’s important that we know.”

“Okay, I’ll try.” Carl put a hand on her arm. Both vanished.

We turned and looked. There they were, across the patio.

“Well, now,” I said. “We may have instant transportation.”

We experimented, and discovered that Carl could convey anyone who was touching him when he jumped, as he put it. Even Sydelle. Even the whole group of us. There did not seem to be a mass limit. The experience was a bit disorienting, we agreed; one moment we were standing in one place, then the next instant we were standing in another. No motion sickness. It was like stepping through an invisible door and seeing the scenery change.

“I think we’ve got our talents,” I said. “Now let’s plan our campaign. I’m thinking of sneaking into the king’s castle, as I mentioned, abducting the king, and bringing him back here to be dealt with. All we need to do is get Carl close to him. The dicey part will be doing that. Any feedback?”

They looked at me, considering.

Chapter Sixteen

Castle

It was late.

We were all eating a magically prepared dinner, thanks to Sydelle’s considerable talents. Now, as we sat around her oversized wooden table—at least, oversized to us—and feasted on corn on the cob the size of fireplace logs, Joe spoke up. “If you can come to us in our dreams, and bring us to this God-forsaken place, create this delicious meal, and even shrink down to our size...” he trailed off after that, raising his eyes hopefully, “then why on earth did you need to bring four puny humans and a chicken to your land?”

Crudely and rudely stated, but the man had a point.

The sorceress gave the two newest members of our party the rundown on her “condition.” Her condition being, of course, that she only had a simulation of a head. The real deal was elsewhere, awaiting a return to her body when all was safe.

“Unfortunately,” she said, summing up, “it’s not safe to do so now. Fetching my head would put my sister at great risk. Not to mention, the restoration of my head takes intricate and meticulous magic. One false step and...”

“You would be dead for real,” I finished.

“Exactly. My magic is limited. What you have seen now is only a portion of what I can do.”

“You are some woman,” said Joe, eyeing her appreciatively from over his massive cob of corn. It was evident that it wasn’t her head that was his primary interest.

She ignored him. “I am operating at only a fraction of my normal self. Thus, I am a liability. My reflexes are off, and that would prove fatal in a life-or-death situation. Of course, I’ve known all along that for me to fulfill the prophecy, I would have to ‘die’. Or simulate death.”

“But why us?” Joe said, dropping the corn with a clatter. He reached for an oversized wooden spoon and proceeded to struggle with some mashed potatoes. Carl reached over and scooped the spuds out with one hand, splattering them on the con man’s plate. “I mean look at us. And look at you.” And he did look at her, for a long moment or two. “Surely there were others in this land who could help you. Others more suitable. What gives?”

More good questions. Joe obviously saw things from every angle. He was used to making deals, deals that were in his favor. Obviously, he didn’t like the deal he’d found himself in the middle of. Still, his questions were relevant, and had occurred to me as well. I just hadn’t had time to stop and ponder them. This dinner was as good a time as any, especially as we had decided to storm the castle at night, and had a few hours to kill.

Sydelle nodded, acknowledging his concerns. I noted that she hadn’t eaten, and I suspected I knew why: she didn’t have a head. At least, not a real head. I wondered how she derived her nourishment. Perhaps through magic?

“The reason is simple. Many in this kingdom do not posses magical qualities. Some do, but it’s rare. The king does, which is why he rules. Sadly, he misuses his gifts.”

“But you have magic, too,” said Harriet.

Sydelle nodded her fake head, after only the smallest delay. I was reminded of a slow computer. Or perhaps a keyboard with a delay; You press the keys, then after a half second the word appears on the screen. Such was the case with Sydelle. She was truly relaying information from her real head to this fake one.

My life is weird, I thought, shaking my own head as I hefted a biscuit the size of a pillow. I lathered butter and jam on it, and took a healthy bite. Delicious.

“So we are...special?” asked Carl.

“Very special,” said Sydelle, after a moment’s delay. “I wouldn’t have brought you here if you weren’t.”

“Even the damn chicken?” said Joe. He pushed aside his plate and unbuttoned his pants and rubbed his slightly rotund belly.

“I’m a hen,” said Henrietta hotly. “There’s a difference.”

“There is?”

“Yes. And I have already proven my worth. I got your weaselly behind here, didn’t I?”

“True,” said Joe, and rubbed his chin thoughtfully, eying the invaluable hen. “So what’s the difference?”

“A chicken,” said Henrietta haughtily, “can be male or female. A hen is only an adult female.”

“Well, excuse me.” He laughed and eyed the hen some more, and I knew we would have to keep an eye on him.

Don’t worry, came Sydelle’s words, for us, not Joe. I won’t let him hurt or take Henrietta.

That was a relief. Although Henrietta was cantankerous at times, I didn’t want to see the hen fall into his hands. Surely he would abuse her for his own gain. I hated that thought.

After dinner, we all settled into various corners of the big home, whose secret entrance was within an oak tree. Sydelle, Carl and Joe sat together, as she gave the newcomers further instruction on the history of the land and our roles here. Then Carl went off to sleep on a pillow, leaving Joe with Sydelle, who, I realized by his gaze and manner, now appeared to him to be his size. She was paying him off for his cooperation. Henrietta pecked for crumbs around the table. That left Harriet and me to lounge on a straw-filled cushion along the far side of the big room.

She held my hand and snuggled next to me. I didn’t want to move from this spot. I most certainly didn’t want to take down an evil king, and risk all of our lives.

We gave her our word, thought Harriet, as my own sleepy thoughts weren’t hidden. She needs our help.

True.

And remember, once we fulfill our obligation, we can live here, in peace, in something close to heaven on earth. Now she looked at me, her eyes bright and round in the muted firelight. Once this is over, I will be yours. All of me.

Okay, now that was a dream come true.

Now I just needed to figure out a way for us to stay alive long enough to realize that dream. I hugged her tighter and thought long and hard about what we must do.

Chapter Seventeen

Rats!

Night fell all too rapidly for my taste. Both my bladder and my gut were uncomfortably full. I rolled off the cushion and stood. Where was the—?

Sydelle caught my eye across the room and nodded toward another corner. She knew what I needed, of course, though I was shielding my thoughts. Harriet and I went there, and found a giant chamber with a smaller annex: privy seats of our size. How thoughtful of the sorceress! I let Harriet go first while I faced away; then she did the same for me. This was not a flush toilet, merely a board with a hole in it, over a slanting floor leading somewhere I did not want to go. Regardless, it sufficed; soon my bloat was gone.

Now all I needed was a genius notion how to infiltrate the king’s castle without being seen or heard. Nobody had told me that being a leader was so hard on the brain. There was no load off my mind.

And I got a flash of inspiration. I knew how to get into the castle!

“I know that look,” Harriet said. “You got an idea.”

“I got the poop,” I agreed.

“Just so long as it doesn’t stink.”

We returned to Sydelle and the others. “Are we ready for our mission?” I asked them.

“Enlighten us, O exalted leader,” Joe said sarcastically. His marvelous afternoon with the sorceress had not reformed his attitude toward the rest of us.

I might have been annoyed, but I knew that what I said next would set him back. “We need a way to enter the castle without being spied. The regular routes won’t do; there will be guards at the front and side entrances, and watching the sky, even at night. Maybe dogs, too, to sniff us out. We don’t want to mess with guards or dogs.”

I paused. They waited. They knew I hadn’t really said anything yet.

“So we’ll use the back door. The one nobody will be checking.”

They still waited.

“The sanitary facility,” I explained. “In other words, the sewer system.”

Now I got a reaction. “Oh, shit!” Carl said, appropriately.

“That stinks!” Joe said, wrinkling his nose.

“Exactly,” I agreed, pretending to be oblivious to their aversion. “Nobody goes near the poop by choice. Only the sewer personnel, who are surely pariahs to the regular gentry. They probably check it once a week and stay clear the rest of the time. Henrietta will fathom their schedule so they won’t be a problem.”

“I can do that,” the hen agreed. “I can verify their last tour.”

“Also the private access,” I said. “It will be masked or concealed so as not to affront the sensitivities of the regulars. You can check the construction of the castle, way back when, and get the layout. Finding it should be no problem.”

“No problem,” Henrietta agreed. “In fact, there should be some tasty bugs.”

“Mouth watering,” Joe said grimly.

“It should be in the swamp behind the castle,” I said. “Near their septic drainage field. There has to be one, because giants surely have bushels of crap to process, and they don’t want their water supply contaminated.”

“Indeed,” Sydelle agreed with a smile.

“Are there any questions?” I asked, enjoying their continued discomfort. They knew that if they rejected my plan, they’d have to nominate another leader, who might have no better smelling one. They knew they were stuck with it.

There were no questions.

“In that case, let’s march. Sydelle, for this I think you need to remain here, with a cage for the king and your magic to keep him in it.” The giantess nodded. “Carl, you’ll be with us, but first you need to zero in on that cage so you can teleport us all there together from the castle. When we arrive, Sydelle will cast a spell over us all to make us sleep, but she’ll release us as soon as the king is properly secured.” Carl nodded, and went to zero in on the cage.

“Joe, you will accompany me up front, and if we encounter a dog or anything, you will turn dragon and toast it on the snoot. In fact, maybe you’d better turn dragon at the outset, to be ready.”

Joe obligingly become the dragon. It wasn’t that he liked me, but that what I said made sense.

“Henrietta, you will fly ahead and orient on the access. Harriet, you can bring up the rear, and zap anything that tries to come after us. Understand, folks, I hope that nothing spies us, but we need to be prepared, just in case.” Then I thought of something else. “The king’s telepathic. Joe and Carl, you need to learn mind shielding.”

“We know it,” Carl said, returning. “Sydelle taught us this afternoon.”

Ah. That explained why I hadn’t picked up on Joe’s mental state as he trysted with Sydelle.

“Now you can’t read my mind when I think you’re a walking talking turd,” Joe said, assuming man-form for that speech.

“Good enough,” I agreed. “Because I probably wouldn’t have liked to hear you think that. But there’s more reason for mental silence: because those guards and hounds may locate us by our minds as readily as by our bodies, or at least the king will. We need to travel without lights and with our minds closed. That means we won’t be able to communicate with each other mentally either, but it’s the only safe way. We’ll signal each other, and whisper if we need more than that. If we get caught, all bets are off; dragon and hen should fly away, and the rest of us will have to fight as well as we can, doing our electric shock and hotfoot magic. Remember, this ain’t beanbag. Are we ready?”

They were ready.

We set off walking town the valley slope toward the castle, but veering into the surrounding lowland, following Henrietta’s flight. She went ahead, out of sight, but looped back to indicate the direction. It wasn’t bad, actually; the ground was firm and there was little brush.

Until we came to the river. I had forgotten about that. Damn! Was there a bridge? Was it guarded?

Henrietta led us to it, and it wasn’t guarded. There was her sense of the past, again; she knew when it would be clear. Phew! It was a stone ramp with a wooden center section arching above the dark water.

We crossed over and moved on, undiscovered. I liked the hen better than ever. Timing could be everything.

Now the ground got softer. We were entering the swamp. We should be there soon. I looked up at the castle on the small mountain, its lights pretty. That was deceptive, considering the cruelty of its proprietor.

Henrietta paused, tuning in on the past. She could see the actual building of the castle, when things were out in the open. Then she moved forward again, this time leading us somewhat out of the swamp, up the base of the mountain.

We came up to a dark structure. It looked like a little privy. It turned out to be a shed with a board floor. Joe the dragon breathed just enough fire to light the interior. There was a pull ring set on a big board. “Any alarm attached?” I asked Henrietta in a whisper.

She shook her head in a human like way.

I pulled on the ring, but it didn’t budge. It was a giant size board, while I was merely man-sized. Then Carl came to help, and managed to heave it up; he had a lot more muscle than I did. Beneath it was a sort of manhole from which a warm stench rose. Well, it was the sewer.

Metal rungs descended into the depth, which had a little light, maybe from glowing fungus. They were spaced about four feet apart, so were a challenge, but Carl helped again, anchoring himself on the middle rung and using his hands to steady the rest of us down. I was first, and found a level walk not far below. Harriet was second; she slipped and almost fell, but Carl swept her in close and saved her. “Sorry, ma’am; didn’t mean to grope you.”

She kissed him on the cheek. “Forgiven.” I appreciated her point, considering that she might otherwise have splashed into the festering sewer below.

Then Joe, in man-form for this. And Henrietta, flying down.

We were in a huge pipe, about ten feet in diameter, with sewage coursing along its lowest portion. We were able to spread our legs and keep our feet clear of it. But we couldn’t avoid its smell.

“Now we follow this up to the king’s chamber,” I said. “Henrietta?”

The hen led the way. The conduit divided as others intersected it, bringing their fragrant effluvia. It seemed that giants had quadruple the smell as well as the height. Fortunately my nose was becoming numb.

We came to a nexus that might be under the central castle, because half a dozen pipes converged on it, forming a larger chamber. Henrietta paused.

“What’s the matter?” I whispered.

“Rats!” Harriet muttered. Was she swearing?

Then I saw it. A giant sewer rat, maybe a hundred pounds in mass, with baleful red eyes. Behind it were others. Oh, no!

I looked around, but of course there was no retreat. In fact other rats were in the other tubes. They had us surrounded and they didn’t look friendly.

Chapter Eighteen

Children

“I could teleport us out of here,” suggested Carl.

“But we couldn’t teleport forward,” I said. “We would have to go back.”

“Going back is good,” said Joe, as the rats crept closer. He backed into me, and I could literally feel the man shaking. He stepped onto a steaming turd and didn’t seem to notice. “Very, very good.”

“No going back,” I said. “No retreating. We move forward, through the rats.”

“Now I know you’re off your rocker,” said Joe. “And who died and made you the leader? I thought I was the brains of this operation.”

Before I could answer, a particularly big rat charged. Its claws clattered on the walls as it ran nearly sideways, avoiding the muck and filth that pooled the center trough of the pipes.

I reacted first, raising my hands and was about to hurl a fireball, when Harriet grabbed my arm. “You can’t, Jack. The fire will ignite the methane.”

She was right, of course. Additionally, her electric shock wouldn’t work either. This sewer system was literally a ticking time bomb.

Carl removed the dagger given to him by Sydelle. It was, of course, a giant’s dagger, which meant it was big enough to look like a sword to Carl. Luckily, the ex-athlete’s hands were big enough to wrap around the thick grip. He stepped before us and raised the dagger—

And that’s when Henrietta shouted: “Wait! Don’t hurt it!”

Carl looked from the charging rat to her, then looked at me. He held the blade before him. The rat, which was the size of a medium-sized dog, would probably receive a fatal blow.

“Do as she says,” I said.

Carl nodded and lowered the blade, and instead timed a perfect kick that sent the rat skittering through the muck, but otherwise alive.

Before more of the rats could charge, I turned on Henrietta. “What’s going on? What have you seen?”

“These aren’t just rats,” the hen said, squawking in between her words. “They’re children. Giant children. I see...the king turning them into rats, discarding them down here with the others.”

“Why?” said Harriet, turning to face another rat that was inching closer from another, adjoining tube. “Why would he do that?”

Henrietta flapped in mid-air, above the grimy tunnel. I was certain she couldn’t keep airborne for much longer. I waved her over and she perched on my shoulder, her talons digging into my shoulders. Hens were heavy!

“They were servants...and they did something to annoy the king, who transformed them into rats. Their parents think they were killed—and some surely were. But others were tossed down here, to live out their lives as sewer rats.”

I didn’t have time to be appalled. Another rat had decided to charge, and another, and another. They came from all angles, all directions, all sewer pipes. How long the rats had been down here, I didn’t know. Whether or not some were real rats and some were the transformed children, I didn’t know that either. But we played it safe and didn’t fatally hurt any of them. That they were fairly mindless now was obvious, having none of their prior humanity.

We were able to fend off a half dozen easily enough: kicking them aside, and in some cases hurling them aside. They all smelled of wet fur and filth; that a king would choose to reduce his subjects to such a filthy life was beyond me.

The trouble was obvious: there were too many of them. They just kept coming and coming. Good God! How many kids had the king transformed? I didn’t have time to ponder the question. It was all we could do to throw the vicious creatures off us, even as they continued to come.

I didn’t have to be psychic to see what was developing. Soon, we would be overrun, and it would only be a matter of time before rats swarmed us completely, and ate us to the bone. Children or no children, these were now vicious, hungry creatures.

Many of us were now bitten. I nearly used my fire power, but resisted. I sensed Harriet holding back, too. Desperate, I looked up and spotted what had been our goal: a light high above, that surely led into the depths of the castle.

I had an idea. I grabbed the ex-football player, who was presently heaving two snapping rats off his shoulder, one of which had buried its front teeth deep into his flesh. He grunted, wincing, and turned to me. I pointed up to the pinpoint of light.

Focus on that spot, I thought, for the hellish, hungry, snapping sounds in the tunnel were too loud for him to hear me clearly. The clear spot above the hole.

He nodded and did just that. We were just going to have to risk that there was enough space above the hole for all of us. The rats seemed to redouble their efforts, pausing briefly, before charging as one collective unit.

I ordered everyone to grab hold of Carl. I did, too, and felt him wince as I accidentally gripped his wounded shoulder. Indeed, we were all bitten and wounded—which surely drove the rats’ blood lust. They continued coming, swarming and churning, like an ocean tide of red eyes, teeth and hunger.

As the tide of claws and fur swept toward us from seemingly all directions, I closed my eyes and felt the familiar sense of non-movement.

One moment we were in the tunnel, and the next we weren’t.

I almost didn’t want to open my eyes.

But I did so now...

Chapter Nineteen

Deal

We were in a reasonably clean chamber with brooms, brushes, buckets, and bars of what looked like soap. It was a maintenance working area where the necessary tools were stored. There was a round manhole cover that evidently was normally used to close the hole in the floor; for some reason it had been left off, fortunately for us.

There was a sound. “Get out of sight!” I whispered, leading the way into an overturned bucket whose diameter was a good six feet; there was room for all of us. Then I peeked out around its edge to see what was coming.

It was a giant servant maid, hauling a heavy bag. She went to the hole and peered down. “Are you there, darlings?” she called.

There was an eager chittering from below. She was addressing the rats!

“Here you are,” she said. She reached into the bag and pulled out half a loaf of bread. She dropped it into the hole. There was the sound of scrambling below as the rats pounced on it. She brought out a section of melon, and dropped that. Then the remnant of a cooked animal haunch.

She was feeding the children! She knew the origin of the rats; one of them might have been her own child. She had to know that they had become vicious creatures, but she still loved her child, and was helping in perhaps the only way she could, by feeding the rats the castle leftovers. That was why the cover had been left off: so she could return with the bag of scraps and feed them efficiently. Because it had to be fast; if she got caught, she would surely be punished, maybe beaten, maybe killed. Maybe transformed to something worse than a rat. We had been lucky enough to arrive in time to use the access hole.

“Not coincidence,” Henrietta said. Oh, of course: she had led us to the spot we needed to be, at the time we needed to be there.

The whole scene was both horrible and heartwarming. The servants were giants, but also human. They surely had no love for the cruel king. They were not our enemies. That didn’t mean they would help us; the king could read their minds, and would know the moment one sought to betray him. We remained on our own.

The giant woman emptied her bag of goodies, covered the hole, and departed. We relaxed, relieved.

What next? “We can use this servant’s network of passages to get to the king’s chambers,” I whispered. It was easy to converse quietly, here in the bucket. “It’s designed to keep the help out of sight but able to do their jobs. It will help us do our job.”

“Good thinking,” Harriet murmured.

“Lead us to the king’s suite,” I told Henrietta. “By a route that avoids the castle personnel.”

“Of course,” the hen agreed.

We headed out. The service routes were a labyrinth of diverging and intersecting passages, cunningly fitted around and between the regular halls and rooms of the castle. They seldom were direct, but did deviously get there.

“Oops,” Henrietta said.

“What is it?” I asked, concerned.

“Someone changed his route. He’s blocking off the passage we need to take, and there are workers in the others. We’re caught.”

Harriet glanced at me with a ‘Do Something’ look.

“Gather in to Carl,” I said, doing so myself. “Carl, take us back to the storeroom.”

Suddenly we were there. We had escaped discovery. This time.

“We need a distraction,” Joe said. “Chicken, make some gold.”

I didn’t like his preempting my position of authority, but let it be. “Why?”

“So the next time we’re trapped, we have something distracting.”

I worked it out. If a giant discovered a gold artifact that wasn’t part of the king’s treasury, he would probably snatch it up and depart post haste. And not bother us.

“Good idea,” I said grudgingly. It was, after all, his job to be cunning. I swallowed my pride.

Henrietta touched the smallest mini-bar of soap, and it became a gold brick. She touched others, converting them similarly. We each took one. They were heavy, but the protection they represented was worth it.

“Is it clear now, where we were?” I asked Henrietta.

“Yes, for now. It’s a fairly busy annex.”

“Carl, take us back there,” I said.

We gathered in to him, and were back at the other passage. We resumed cautious travel.

Only to encounter a sleeping giant. He was evidently goofing off on the job, but woke when we intruded. Henrietta hadn’t picked up on him because he had been unconscious and not in motion. Before we could back off, he woke. “What’s this?” he demanded.

My mind blanked; I had no strategy to deal with this.

Joe stepped into the breach. “We are elven inspectors,” he said smoothly. “Checking out passages and performance. Now I might question why you are sleeping when you should be working, but I’m softhearted, so take this bar of gold and get out of here, and we’ll pretend this never happened.” He proffered his gold soap.

The giant scratched his head. He was evidently not the brightest bulb on the chandelier.

“Of course if anyone sees you, they’ll take that gold,” Joe pointed out.

“Yeh,” the giant agreed. He heaved himself up, took the gold, and departed rapidly. He would stay away from the others, at least until he had hidden the gold.

“That made no sense at all,” Harriet said. “Why should an inspector pay off a miscreant?”

“But he believed it,” Joe said. “That’s what counts.”

So it seemed. Joe was a con man, and could be persuasive when he wanted to be. It had seemed to make sense to me, until Harriet spoke.

We moved on, this time not encountering any other servants.

“Here,” Henrietta said, pausing at an access door. “The king is on his bed, with a concubine, sleeping.”

“Um.” It hadn’t occurred to me that the king would have company, but of course he would. Well, it might mean that we would wind up with an extra person in the cage. We could sort that out at the other end.

“This is too pat,” Joe said ominously. “I think it’s a con.”

And he was a con man. He surely had a feel for what didn’t add up.

“What would you have us do?” I asked him.

“Get out of here now, and not return. This is a bum mission.”

I looked at the others. “Any seconds to the motion?”

“No,” Henrietta squawked.

“No,” Harriet said.

“We’ve come this far,” Carl said. “Let’s finish it.”

“We’ll finish it,” I agreed grimly.

“This is mischief,” Joe muttered. “I hope I am mistaken.”

I put my hand on the big access panel lever and pushed it down. The panel door swung inward, revealing the candle-lit king’s bedroom. I stepped quietly through, followed by the others. There was the giant bed, eight feet high, with a giant woman’s bare foot at the edge. I knew it was the concubine, because the toenails were brightly painted. It seemed that women of any size were vain about their nails.

But it was the king’s foot we needed, or any other part of his body that Carl could lay a hand on. Maybe a hand would be dropping over the edge, in our reach. Then zip! and we’d all be in Sydelle’s cage and zonked out by her sleep spell. We sidled on around the bed.

Suddenly I froze. This wasn’t deliberate; something had fastened on my mind, paralyzing me. I felt rather than saw the others freeze similarly.

“Welcome, travelers, to my humble abode.”

It was the king, wide awake!

“You should have heeded your adviser,” the king continued. “But maybe it takes one con man to recognize the wisdom of another.” The king’s huge legs swung down over the edge of the bed to land on the floor. His head came into view, looking down on us. “Did you really think you could walk in here and capture me? I haven’t kept my crown by being stupid.” He glanced to the side. “Topsy, make our guests comfortable. Wash them off first, so they won’t stink so bad. The sewer is hell on hygiene.”

The concubine got off the bed and circled around to us. She set down what looked like a have-a-heart mouse trap, the kind that caught rodents without hurting them. She picked Joe up, efficiently stripped away his clothing, washed him with a wet sponge, then opened the cage’s wire door and put Joe in. Then she did the same for Carl, then Harriet, then Henrietta, and finally me. She closed the door and it latched. Then we were released, mentally. Not that it did us any good: we were prisoners in a cage. Carl, I saw now, was in a separate chamber, out of our reach. He would not be teleporting us to safety.

“Now let me consider,” the king said. “Should I let you try to persuade me that you have talents I can use, such as pyrotechnic, electricity, retrocognition, shape changing, or teleportation? Certainly I can use the gold the chicken provides. Or should I simply conclude that you are not trustworthy, and turn you into rats?”

He knew all about us! He must have been able to read our minds despite our shields.

“He’s toying with us,” Joe muttered.

“Ah, I have it,” the king said as if just thinking of it. “I will use you as hostages to trade for the one I want, the Sorceress Sydelle. The bunch of you real world midgets are largely harmless, but she is dangerous. I underestimated her once, thinking that execution would deal with her, and she escaped me. Now she’s too canny to come within my reach. But she has one surpassing weakness: decency. She won’t want to see her little friends tortured, enslaved, or killed. So she just might make the trade, if properly persuaded.”

He gazed at us. “Yes, I believe that will do. Very well. You, Carl, will teleport back to her, carrying my offer. I will give her an hour to decide. If she comes here within that time, I will free the rest of you. If she does not, I will torture one of you to death and send her the corpse. If that does not persuade her, I will do the same with another, and so on, until the list expires. I suspect that in time she will see the light.” He eyed us coldly. “I hope for your sakes she does,” he said, smiling. But there was no smile in his eyes.

This was no bluff. We were at the mercy of Sydelle. Yet if she agreed to the deal, what guarantee was there that the king really would free us? None, I feared.

Chapter Twenty

Hourglass

With our powers nullified within the cage, the king fetched an hourglass and set it before us. Immediately, sand poured through in a steady stream. Faster than I would have liked.

“One hour,” he said, then got to work. “Carl, go to the witch.”

Carl nodded and disappeared.

We watched helplessly as the king telepathically assembled his guards, first throughout his room and then later, we learned, throughout the castle, anywhere we had traipsed through, anywhere Carl could have returned, in fact.

When finished, he returned to his bedroom, pleased. Once he inspected the guards, he came over to us. “I’m no fool,” he said. “At least, not as big a fool as some think. I know your little friend could potentially teleport an entire army, if given enough time, now that he knows the lay of the castle.” He paused and leaned down toward our cage. He looked directly at me. “I also know that the witch has access to your mind, Jack of New York. She speaks to you from afar. Tell me, did she warn you that you were walking into a trap?”

Not true, came Sydelle’s immediate reply, for she heard what I heard.

The king rested his elbows on his meaty thighs. He was not a big man, at least for a giant. I guessed he was about a foot shorter than most. He made up for his diminutive height with great powers. He grinned now just as Sydelle spoke in my head.

“She’s speaking to you now, is she not? She can see me through your eyes? Yes, she is a powerful witch, indeed.”

Don’t answer him, Jack. He’s digging for information. He does not know that I can speak to you. He’s only guessing. He can only read your mind. He cannot hear me. Therefore, do not respond to me either—

But I don’t understand.

Trust me.

But he’s telling me that you led us into a trap. Is this true?

Jack—

I need to know, Sydelle: did you know that he would be able to read our minds, despite the shields?

Of course not. I didn’t know the extent of his magic. No one could know. Up until this time, he has been the most powerful sorcerer in the kingdom.

Was she telling me the truth? I wanted to believe her. I had put all my trust in her—

“Let me guess, Jack of New York,” said the King, interrupting my thoughts. He leaned his face a little closer to the cage. “Tell me, wouldn’t a sorceress of her ability—a woman who could fake her own beheading, I might add—have full knowledge of her own king’s talents?”

That made sense to me. Then again, I knew nothing of magic and sorcery. All I knew was that a very wicked man was presently staring down at me—at us. The same man who had turned children into rats. A man who destroyed lives on seemingly on a whim. A man who had ordered Sydelle herself put to death.

Good, thought Sydelle. Remember that. He’s an evil man trying to create a wedge between us. Don’t let him.

“Ah,” said the king, nodding. “You have concluded that I am a wicked man. A fair assessment, given the circumstances. See this from your limited perspective—yes, I’m reading your mind even as we speak—I can see that I have acted monstrous at times.”

He’s baiting you, came Sydelle’s thoughts. I was certain her own thoughts were hidden from him. But my reaction to her thoughts, or my pondering her words were not hidden from him. In fact, I was certain that the king could hear just one side of the conversation, my side. Which was how he had fathomed I was speaking to her in the first place.

I decided to not mask my thoughts. Why would he bait me, Sydelle? Why would he care what I think?

I can’t tell you, Jack. Not here. Not now. But know this: he has no intention to kill any of you. Please let this thought go, release it. Do not ask me any more questions, because he is surely following your thoughts.

Except I couldn’t help what appeared in my thoughts next: The third talent, I telepathically blurted out. He wants our third talent, whatever that might be.

Yes, Jack. But I don’t have time to explain. I must go.

You’re coming here? Now?

Not yet, Jack. Soon.

Then where are you going?

To fetch something important to me.

I knew exactly what was important to her, but I forced myself to not think about it. I knew this thing that was important to her would make her vastly stronger, and could very well give her the edge she needed to defeat the king. Instead, I asked, And how far away is this thing?

An hour on horseback.

It figured! I looked at the disappearing sand in the hourglass. My God, you have maybe forty-five minutes!

Then time is of the essence.

And with that, I felt her noticeably leave my head. I blinked and looked up to the king’s wide face and eyes that just might look slightly homicidal.

“And what did the witch tell you, human, other than she plans on pushing the limit of the one hour time limit? For your sake, I hope she does not.”

I did all I could to not think of Sydelle’s prediction; that, in fact, the king had no intention to kill us. I very badly wanted to puzzle this through, but puzzling it through would let him know that we were onto him. And then what? Would he then decide to kill us, after all?

No, I realized, but there were some things that were far worse than death, weren’t there?

“Dark thoughts for a human,” said the king, tilting his head slightly, clearly tuning in to me. “Do you doubt my intention to kill you, if your witch doesn’t show?”

“I have no doubt that you are a very cruel man,” I said. “What I would like to know is why you care what I think about you?”

He sat back on his heels. His boots were polished leather. His breaches were made of a fine, loose material. Rings adorned his fingers. Gold rings, silver rings, all topped with massive jewels. He wore no crown presently, but I saw a reddish ring around his forehead where such a crown probably sat during the day. His narrow beard was perfectly trimmed, and didn’t do a very good job of hiding his thin lips.

Harriet gripped my hand tightly. I gripped hers in return. We couldn’t read each others’ thoughts—not in this cage. Apparently, only the great sorcerers—the king and Sydelle—read our minds through the cage.

The cage.

It was a trap, after all. Why would a king have two such cages in his bedroom, of all places?

“You are not as dense as you look, Jack of New York,” said the King, standing now and rubbing his knees. He had, after all, been squatting for a few minutes.

“You were waiting for us?”

“Yes, of course.”

“You need us,” said Harriett, stepping forward.

The king studied her a moment. “More than you know.”

“How did you know we would come?” asked Joe.

“I have my own way of divining the future, human.”

“If you need us,” I asked, “then why send for Sydelle?”

The king visibly cringed at the name. “I need all of you, of course.”

“For what?” asked Joe.

“Enough questions, humans.”

“I can help you!” said Joe, rushing forward, pressing his face into the bars. “I know her weaknesses—”

“I doubt that, human. You lie, although I admire your spirit.”

“I know, I swear—”

I pulled Joe back, spinning him around. “What’s the matter with you?”

“I can’t die here. I can’t. I have a life to live. I have a beautiful wife. I have all that gold—”

After his tryst with Sydelle, he was so eager to betray her. I was disgusted.

“He’s not going to kill us,” said Harriet. “He said so himself. He needs us.”

The look in Joe’s eyes was wide and wild. “Maybe not kill us now. But what’s to stop him from killing us later?”

The weasel had a point. I suddenly wished like crazy I had never ventured up the beanstalk. Or set out on this fool’s quest. It was obvious that we had been used to provide a doorway for Sydelle. Without us, she had no other way into the castle. Of course, the plan had been to kidnap the king. That would have worked, if the king hadn’t been so powerful. Sydelle would have known that. The king was right there, and she wasn’t being completely honest with us. Except, of course, she couldn’t tell us she was leading us into a trap. We wouldn’t have come. Now we were all in danger, pawns to a king and a sorceress.

I suddenly very much missed my crappy old job and my crappy old boss. At least he couldn’t read my mind.

The king paced in his room while his guards watched him without expression. I pondered. If the king could see into the future, had he seen a small army coming? And how many soldiers could travel along with Carl, anyway? A half dozen? A dozen? Maybe more. As many as who could touch him. But that was in one leap. What would stop Carl from leaping quickly, dozens and dozens of times, bringing with him more and more soldiers? The idea could work...but did Sydelle have that many soldiers? I didn’t know. I didn’t know if she had any.

I was surprised to discover that the king had paused and was watching me now, surely following my thoughts. “To answer your question, human, I have seen many probable futures. In one of them, she does indeed bring a small army.”

“And in the others?”

The king seemed to stare past me into, perhaps, the future. “We duel,” he said. “To the death.”

He continued pacing and I continued holding Harriet’s hand. Joe sat in the far corner of the cage, with Henrietta, stroking the bird for comfort. In a way, I felt sorry for him. Hell, I felt sorry for us. And I had been so close to living the dream life with Harriet.

Finally, we sat too, and watched the sands of time pile up in the hourglass.

The king watched it too, and I knew that he intended to carry out his promise. If not death, he would surely maim one of us, perhaps to the point of near death.

And as the last few grains of sand tumbled down, the king grunted and raised his hands in our direction...and that’s when the flash of light appeared.

I instinctively jumped in front of Harriet. I heard Joe squeal and Henrietta squawk.

I opened my eyes after a moment to discover a very large and lovely figure standing before us. Carl stood by her leg, a quarter of her size, although you wouldn’t know it. The man had guts and was ready to fight. I knew I always liked that guy.

Sydelle looked down at us and winked...and I saw something that perhaps no one else could see: the scar at her neck was gone.

She had her head back...and she was ready to fight.

Chapter Twenty-one

The Kiss

Now the king saw her. “You’re here!” he exclaimed as if not quite believing that his ploy had worked.

“Maybe,” Sydelle said. She spun about and strode toward Topsy, who was standing by the bed, her likely home base. The concubine lifted her arms defensively, evidently not knowing how to deal with such a direct approach by a woman. Sydelle reached out and gripped Topsy’s elbows, drawing her close. Topsy tried to resist, and the two turned, almost embraced, and half fell on the bed, rolling over. And the sorceress kissed the concubine on the mouth.

“You’re a lesbian?” the king asked, astonished.

“No!” the two exclaimed almost together as they untangled with a double swirl of hair.

I was as surprised as the king, and not just by that suspicion. Because now there were two Topsies, each garbed in a revealing nightie, showing similarly provocative curvatures of breasts and thighs.

“Oh, man!” Carl breathed.

“You mean women,” Joe said, licking his lips.

“What the hell?” the king demanded.

“Stay cool,” Carl murmured to those of us remaining in the cage. “It gets better.”

“What the hell is happening?” Joe demanded, recovering his arrogance. “I thought she came to make war, not love.”

The two Topsies bounced to their feet and faced the king. “Destroy the imposter!” one said shrilly, pointing at the other.

“Yes, before she can attack you,” the other agreed.

“Ludicrous!” the king said. “You can’t fool me! I can instantly tell you apart.”

“Good,” one Topsy said. “Then you know she’s the impostor.”

“Me?” the other squealed, outraged. “You’re the impostor!”

“Silence, both of you,” the king snapped. “I don’t have time for this idiocy.”

Both giant women paused in place, similarly and beautifully disheveled. Now I understood the ploy: that rolling on the bed had made it difficult to track one or the other. If the king blasted one with a bolt of fire, he risked destroying his girlfriend while the sorceress remained to attack him. Which she would probably already be doing, taking advantage of his distraction. He needed to get it right, or he was probably lost. Obviously he hadn’t anticipated this particular dodge. Score one for Sydelle. But it was only the beginning. She needed to be sure he got it wrong.

The king focused, staring at the pair of them. “I have to give you credit for cleverness, Deli,” he said.

Deli? Short for Sydelle, evidently a pet name, and also for delicatessen, a place to eat. As if she looked good enough to eat. Which she did, regardless of her form at the moment. That bespoke a familiarity beyond what we had known about. Could he tell them apart by sight? That made me nervous.

“Oh, the lady dog is clever, all right,” one Topsy said.

“I told you you shouldn’t have left her disposition to the stupid guards,” the other Topsy said. “They fumbled it.”

I pieced more of this together: when Sydelle kissed Topsy, not only had she assumed her appearance, she had read her mind in depth, so that she could imitate her mentally as well as physically. Now when the king read their minds he would find the same thing in each. Clever, indeed!

“I see I’ll have to do this the hard way,” the king said. “You can fool me by sight and by mind, but there’s one experience Topsy has had that Deli hasn’t: love. Topsy loves me, while Deli hates me. Neither can fake the opposite emotion. One kiss will sort it out.”

“Yes!” one Topsy said. “Kiss me!”

“Yes,” the other agreed. “I want it.”

“Uh-oh,” Harriet said. “He’s going to kiss them both, and know.”

“No, he needs to kiss only one,” Joe said. “Then he’ll know the other by elimination.”

The king raised his hands. There was a flash, and both Topsies stiffened, becoming like statues. “Well, that didn’t work,” he said. “Deli could have resisted, thus giving herself away. She didn’t. But that means she is now helpless to avoid my kiss.” He considered. “But it will be distinctly safer to kiss the real Topsy. Deli could have primed herself to detonate at my intimate touch, taking us both out like a suicide bomber. It’s the kind of sacrifice play she is capable of. So this remains a fifty-fifty proposition. If I guess wrong, I’m in trouble.” He glanced at Carl. “She’s primed, isn’t she?”

“I can’t lie to you, and don’t even want to,” Carl said. “She’s primed.”

The king nodded. “I did not anticipate this particular situation, where the issue is in doubt. So I say this to you, Deli: I have excellent reason for requiring the services of you and your cohort. It is not romantic, much as I would like to plumb your resistive torso in bed. I can’t safely open my mind to you to prove it, so you will simply have to consider my word: you do not want to kill me. There is mischief afoot that goes beyond the two of us. So if I guess wrong, keep that in mind. Killing me will be worse than being captured by me, no matter how badly I may treat you. I trust you understand.”

The two Topsies remained frozen. They couldn’t respond, but that wasn’t the point. The real one understood what he said, and it might influence her action, if he guessed wrong. But I wondered, knowing how the sorceress hated the king; was he gambling on a long shot?

“So—on with it.” The king approached the left side Topsy. All of us held our breaths. He put his arms around her, brought her in unresisting, and kissed her firmly on the mouth. It looked just like a meeting of lovers.

There was a flash of light that made them both glow. Then they fell apart.

“Oh, rotten cabbage!” the king swore. “I got it wrong.”

“Yes you did,” Sydelle said, resuming her proper form.

“But he’s still alive!” Joe protested. “She flashed him, but he’s not even hurt!”

Flashed him? Oh—he meant the flash of light as the magic struck. Still, it was odd that the king seemed to be intact.

“That depends on your perspective,” the king answered Joe. “She just hit me with the one spell I did not anticipate, or protect myself against: love.”

“Love!” Topsy said, appalled. “That can’t be! I’m your lover!”

I worked that out too. “Because she hates you. The last thing she wants is your love. So you ruled that out as an attack.”

“She finessed me,” the king agreed ruefully. Then he glanced cannily at Sydelle. “But I do know something about that spell: there’s a certain amount of backwash. You may not love me in return, Deli, but you no longer hate me.”

“I no longer hate you,” Sydelle agreed grimly. “That’s a necessary penalty of that spell. You’re a despicable excuse for a person, but I won’t hurt you unless you force me to.”

“Such as by trying to kiss you again,” he said. “As I would so very much like to do, now that I am smitten. But I know better. You’re my master now.”

“Mistress,” she said sharply. Then reconsidered. “In the master sense.”

The king smiled. “Understood. Your wish is my command.”

“Do you really love her now?” Topsy asked the king somewhat plaintively. “Instead of me?”

“My feeling for you is unchanged,” the king told her. “It has merely been preempted by my desperate passion for Deli. I suspect she will be satisfied to leave you as my concubine, as it is not a function she seeks with me, unfortunately.”

“Enough chitchat,” Sydelle said, annoyed. “Release my companions.”

The king gestured. The cages opened. We were free.

“He still has his magic,” Harriet murmured. “I don’t trust this.”

“Trust it, mortal girl,” the king said. “My magic is at her option.”

“Now tell me,” Sydelle continued grimly. “Why is it better to keep you alive than to kill you?”

“Ah, yes, that,” the king said. “The reason that I preferred to recruit you rather than kill you, once I understood the extent of your power, as I did not before. It is that the Cloud faces an extreme danger of extinction. If it occurs, all of us will die, and all our works will be destroyed. Then it will not matter who was master and who was servant. All of us will be gone. I fear that only our combined powers, along with the special skills of the mortals, can hope to stop it.”

“Be more specific,” Sydelle said sharply.

“It would be easier to show you via illusion image. This requires more space. Shall we adjourn to the main hall?”

“Yes.”

The king led the way out of the bedroom and down a grand flight of steps. No courtiers or servants were in evidence; they must have gotten the word to stay clear until summoned. “Topsy, convey our guests,” he said, and Sydelle did not challenge it. It was almost as if he remained in power.

“You’ll have to use the cage,” Topsy told us.

We returned to the cage, as it was obvious that we could not readily manage the four foot high steps. Then Topsy picked it up by a handle and carried it down to the main hall. There she opened the doors so we could emerge again. We were now in a huge chamber.

Just in time for the show. The king gestured, and a picture formed before us. It was like a monstrous window overlooking a strange scene: the edge of the Cloud. Beyond it was empty air.

“Look beyond,” the king said.

We did as we were told. In the distance was some kind of disturbance. It looked like a fiery tornado, whirling rapidly, hurling out sparks.

“I have been aware of that thing for some time,” the king said. “It seemed to be stable, no threat to my domain. But recently it has expanded, and started to move toward the Cloud. I fear that when it gets here, it will burn the trees, melt the rocks, incinerate the Castle, and evaporate the Cloud itself. I have tried to repel it with magic, but it seems to be immune. It just keeps coming. I am concluding that it represents a rogue dream, an alternate realm generated by some hostile dreamer or dreamers whose purpose is to wipe out the Cloud, whose fundamental nature is Air, and replace it with another element: Fire. I see no way to stop it except perhaps to locate the dreamer in the mortal realm and deal with him. I can’t go there; no giant can. It has to be done by natives of that realm, ones with formidable special powers. When I saw that Deli was recruiting exactly such people, I knew that I would have to convert them to our cause.” He smiled briefly. “I hope I have succeeded, albeit not in quite the manner I intended. This is your problem now, Deli. My resources are at your disposal. We are actually on the same side.”

“I did not anticipate this either,” Sydelle said. “I must consider. How long before the Fire Tornado intersects the Cloud?”

“My estimate is three days at its present velocity. That could change.”

“Go publish the news of my ascendancy,” Sydelle said. “You are now my lieutenant, answering directly to me. Change the rats back into their original children and see that they are properly cared for. Do what else you can to smooth the way. If you are effective, you may win some small token of my favor.”

Wow, I thought. She knew who was boss.

“I hear and obey,” the king said, and departed. Topsy followed him out.

“Just like that you’re letting him go out on his own?” Joe demanded. Apart from the rest, I suspected that he was jealous of any favors the sorceress might show the king.

“Yes. He is now my love slave. He will not betray me. He will do anything I ask of him, anything at all, hoping for a smile or another kiss.” Sydelle took a breath. “Also, I wanted some temporary privacy so we could consult. I trust you realize that I did send the group of you into a trap—a trap for the king. I could not tell you my plan, because he would read it in your minds. You had to be innocent in that respect. I never planned to betray you. And as you can now appreciate, it worked.”

“It worked,” I agreed weakly. “Even our suspicions of your motives fostered the deception.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “He called you folks my cohorts. That’s accurate enough; I depend on you for advice and assistance. What do you recommend?”

We looked at each other, Henrietta included. What, indeed?

Chapter Twenty-two

The Gods

I did the math, or tried to.

If one hour on earth was one week in the Cloud...and the firestorm was set to hit in three days, that meant the dreamer—or dreamers—back on earth, were maybe thirty minutes away from dreaming of the Cloud’s destruction.

I didn’t want to see the Cloud destroyed. Sure, the king was a bastard, but that was set to change. Additionally, Harriet and I had been offered a good life here, a life I planned on cashing in. A land of hellfire didn’t sound quite as appealing. Yes, we needed to act now and save Giantland.

Sydelle was following my train of thoughts, and said, “Jack makes a good point.”

“And, er, what was that?” I asked.

“You dolt,” said Joe, stepping forward. “She means that once we get back on earth, we will have only minutes to locate the dreamer or dreamers and stop them.”

“Oh, right,” I thought. I had inadvertently stumbled upon our greatest problem. Once on earth, time would be greatly accelerated.

“We need to locate the dreamer from here,” said Joe, “and not waste any time down there.”

“And once we’re down there,” said Carl. “We can pounce quickly, and take him—or her—out.”

“But what if this dreamer is accidentally dreaming of the Cloud’s destruction?” asked Harriet. “What if it’s, say, a nightmare? A child’s nightmare? I don’t want us to hurt anyone innocent.”

“Innocent, my ass!” boomed the king, returning from his mission with Topsy in tow. “They’re destroying my kingdom!”

“It’s no longer yours to destroy,” snapped Sydelle, and the king gave her a small bow, along with a tight smile. She looked at Harriet, who had made the point about a possible child.

“Yes, of course,” the king said. “I stand corrected. Anything for you, my love.”

“Oh, God,” said Topsy, and looked physically ill.

“Innocent or not,” added Sydelle, “they must be stopped. And you,” she said to Topsy, “may leave us now.”

The concubine gasped, offended and enraged, until the king motioned for her to do as she was told. She left, but didn’t like it, shooting Sydelle a hateful look.

Harriet ignored the ensuing drama, and stood her ground. “I won’t be party to hurting someone innocent.”

“Innocent, my arse,” said the king. “Let me be perfectly clear: this is a coordinated attack upon the kingdom. Someone is looking to destroy us all.”

“But who?” asked Harriet. “And why?”

“Not necessarily who,” said Sydelle. “You see, millenia ago, this realm existed beneath the seas.”

“And prior to that, we were in the mountains,” finished the king.

“Earth, air, water,” said Joe, catching on quickly. “Fire seems the natural next state.”

“Who is this guy?” asked the king.

“He is necessary,” said Sydelle. “For now.”

The king grunted and looked like he would enjoy nothing more than turning Joe into a rat...or just frying him right there. He held back, for the good of the kingdom. Joe seemed oblivious to how close he was to being toast...or having claws.

“To respond to your statement, yes, the inevitable course is for the kingdom to take a fiery turn...but to do so would destroy us all, and I’m not ready for that. None of us here could cope. We would all die.”

“Then who would live here?” asked Harriet.

“No one, for a while,” answered Sydelle. “It is the way. Many more ages would come and go before this world saw life again. What type of life, I could only guess.”

“But something suitable to fire,” suggested Joe.

“Yes, I suppose.”

“Why do these cycles exist?” asked Harriet.

“Ask the gods?” asked the king. “It is just the way.”

“Then this person—whoever is creating this rogue dream—is a pawn of the gods?” I asked.

“Indeed,” said the king.

“If we were to stop the dreamer,” I said, “what would stop the gods from using another human for another such dream?”

“Nothing,” said the king glumly. “We would be at their mercy.”

“Or lack thereof,” said Joe.

“It seems to me,” I said, “that we need to convince the gods to spare the world. Cut it off at the source.”

Joe shook his head. “Do you have any idea how foolish you sound, man? Gods don’t really exist. They’re just made up, like this whole goddamn dream. I demand to be returned to my life, to my bed, to my wife, and to my gold!”

“You will stop talking now, or die,” said the king.

“You don’t scare me, asshole. I know you need me—”

The king waved his hands and Joe’s lips turned into a long beak. Chains appeared next and wrapped themselves magically around the beak. A heavy padlock manifested last, so heavy that Joe nearly toppled forward. He grunted and writhed and tried to hold his head up.

The king, looking pleased, turned his attention to me. “You were saying?”

“We need to talk to the gods,” I said, “and ask for an extension.”

“An extension?” mused the king, stroking his chin. Joe, meanwhile, fought his new beak and struggled to stand straight, he pitched forward...and his beak promptly lodged itself between two thick floorboards. He was stuck and silent and we were all happy. But we would need him soon, I suspected. “How long of an extension?”

“As long as they will grant us,” I said. “That is, of course, if the gods are accessible.”

“They are and they aren’t,” said the king.

“What does that mean?”

“They are only accessible within a dream.”

“But we’re dreaming now,” said Carl.

“And Giants don’t dream,” said the king.

“That’s impossible,” I said. “Everyone dreams.”

“Humans dream,” said Sydelle. “Giants don’t. It’s true.”

“So that’s another reason why we’re here,” I said. “To perhaps appeal to the gods in a dream.”

“A reason I did not foresee,” said Sydelle.

As Joe continued to struggle with his beak, jerking violently to free himself, all eyes turned to me for reasons I didn’t quite understand.

You’re still the leader, Jack, thought Sydelle.

But you’re going to be the queen!

I’m not queen yet. What do you think we should do?

I thought about it. In fact, I thought about it harder than I had ever thought about anything in my life. Finally, I said, “I’ll go to the gods. Myself and Harriet. Carl and Joe will go to the sleeping human and stop him. Preferably Joe will be minus his new beak.”

“Oh, bloody hell. Can’t a guy have a little fun?” said the king. He snapped his fingers and the beak disappeared. Joe, who had been yanking hard on his trapped beak, veritably flew backwards, tumbling head over heals, until he crashed into the leg of a chair.

“Not funny,” he said, dusting himself off. “Not funny at all.”

“Carl,” I said, “keep your eyes on him. You two do whatever it takes to stop the sleeping menace in the human world.” I looked at Harriet and took her hand. “We’re going to meet the gods.”

“And say what?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said, “but I suppose we better get to sleep soon.”

Chapter Twenty-three

Fire Me

“Use the king’s bed,” Sydelle suggested.

“Never!” the king snapped, outraged. “That’s sacred.”

Sydelle reached out and literally touched her finger under his chin, lifting his face in the manner she might a child whose attention she wanted. “Their mission requires them to sleep. Your big bed is the safest place; they won’t fall off it no matter how much they may toss and turn. In due course, after we save the Cloud, you will be using it again with Topsy.” She paused. “And possibly, if you behave really well, with me. I am not unmindful of favors rendered.”

As she had shown with Joe, not that the man had deserved it, I thought privately. If it kept the king in line similarly, good enough.

The tough king seemed to melt. Just that merest hint of a promise completely overwhelmed him. That love spell was a killer, in its fashion. “Of course,” he said immediately.

“What about me?” Henrietta demanded. “I have no mission.”

“You’re with us,” I said. “I have a role for you.”

Sydelle picked us up and carried us upstairs to the bedroom, the king following meekly behind. Well, maybe not so meek; he was surely eying Sydelle’s shapely backside as she mounted the stairs. He was a man, wasn’t he?

I love the way she handles him, Harriet thought.

The way you handle me?

Of course. It’s a womanly art.

Surely so. Unfortunately we had urgent non-romantic business to attend to.

Or did we? I was getting a notion.

Harriet eyed me suspiciously, because I had snapped my mind closed to her. I hadn’t meant to cut her off; it was just that I feared my creativity would dissipate if I shared my idea prematurely. Artistic types can be like that, though I wasn’t much of an artist.

Sydelle set us gently on the center of the plush twenty-four foot square bed, and the hen flew in to join us. “Sweet dreams,” the sorceress said, and departed, towing the king.

“Now here’s what I’m thinking,” I said. “These elemental gods surely have good reason to maintain the Cloud and its predecessors and inheritors. They can’t dream.”

“No, that’s giants who can’t dream,” Henrietta said. “The gods dream up the Cloud.”

“In a manner,” I said. “What I mean, is, I bet they can’t dream creatively the way we can. They have a setting that they all contribute to, and one god gets to run it for a while, an eye-blink of maybe a thousand years, and then another takes over. But they need mortal dreamers to really animate it. That’s why we’re here. They provide the stage, as it were; we provide the animation, the drama, the feeling.”

“Why?” Harriet asked. “Don’t the gods have supreme powers?”

“They do. But power without imagination is helpless. They literally don’t know what to do with it. They need storytellers to bring it to life. Without us it’s like a chessboard with pieces but no players. Pointless. We make it all worthwhile.”

“We’re the real movers?” Harriet asked, surprised.

“Yes. Some mortal must have dreamed up the giants, ages ago, and the original story line, then moved on, and the giants continue their routine without doing anything really original. The same old story. Few of them even know.”

“The king does,” Henrietta said.

“Yes. That’s why he was so set on getting rid of Sydelle: she was a person with the potential to summon new dreamers and revolutionize the existing order, making him toast. Of course he had to squelch that. Only then she outsmarted him and got the upper hand. And the changeover of elements loomed, preempting that quarrel.”

“So now we’re all on the same side,” Harriet said slowly. “Because if Fire takes over, the giants are doomed, and we won’t have the Cloud to visit any more.”

“That’s it,” I agreed. I turned to the hen. “Now we need to scope out the gods. All we know so far is that they take their turns with the dream realm, and Fire’s turn is coming up. For purely selfish reasons we want to get them to delay that changeover. What would persuade a god to mess with the status quo?”

“A good diversion,” Henrietta said. “If they get better entertainment by letting the Cloud remain a while longer than by letting it dissipate, they’ll do it.”

“That’s what I thought,” I said. “Key question: what would divert a god?”

“A story. But I have no idea what story. I know what’s what, but I’m not creative.”

“A hot romance,” Harriet said. “Forbidden love.”

“Forbidden love,” I repeated. “That’s a human thing. Why should gods care?”

“That I can answer,” Henrietta said. “If humans craft the dream story with sufficient detail and feeling, the gods will think in human terms. They are vicarious livers, if you will.”

“So we can humanize the gods,” I said. “Make them relate to our concerns?”

“Yes, to a degree.”

“So what we need is to craft a good tale of forbidden love that depends on the existing setting, the Cloud, for its completion,” I said.

“But does the God of Fire care about the Cloud?” Harriet asked.

Good question. “Obviously not,” I said. “We need to relate it to Fire, somehow.” I smiled. “Me Fire. Fire Me.” But the attempted joke fell flat, without even a cluck from the hen. I wasn’t much of a comedian.

“Maybe we can sell the gods on us,” Harriet said thoughtfully. “And since we’ll be gone with the Cloud, if they want to keep us around, they’ll have to keep the Cloud. Like Scheherazade.”

“Who?” I asked.

“You don’t know that story?”

“Never heard of it,” I said. “She’s a movie star?”

“Your fantasy education has been neglected. Here it is, in a nut shell: an Arabian king was so annoyed by the infidelity of his wife that he killed her and married a new girl every night, killing her in the morning, so she would not have time to be unfaithful to him. It was getting so that the kingdom was running out of nubile maidens. They had to do something, but nobody could broach the matter to the king, for fear of losing his head, literally. Finally the prime minister’s lovely daughter, Scheherazade, tackled the problem. She volunteered to marry the king, then after he had had his way with her, told him a wonderful story filled with action, magic, and romance. But it was so long that she wasn’t able to finish it by morning. The king, hooked on it, and knowing that he would never hear the end of it if he killed her, postponed the execution for a day. Next night she continued the story, but it was still unfinished, and he postponed the end again. When she did finish it she immediately started a new story, just as exciting. Finally, after a thousand nights of this, she had borne him three babies and he was in love with her and canceled the execution. In this manner she saved herself and all the remaining maidens of the kingdom.”

“She must have been quite a storyteller,” I said, impressed.

“She was. But it’s her technique we need to emulate. If we can tell the God of Fire a good enough (and long enough) story, maybe he’ll postpone his takeover of the Cloud for a while. At least long enough to hear the end of it.”

“Could be,” I agreed. “And with luck he’ll never hear the end of it. Are you that kind of storyteller?”

“Not at all. I can’t even remember fairy tales well. I remembered Scheherazade only because she’s my ideal woman, savvy and sexy.”

I sort of viewed Harriet that way. “You?” I asked the hen.

“No way. I know what I know, but it’s not human fiction.”

I sighed. “So it must be up to me.”

“It was always up to you, dear,” Harriet said, smiling.

I had never regarded myself as much of a storyteller, but there was something about the way she phrased it that motivated me to try my best. “Okay, a communal dream featuring forbidden love involving the elemental gods, to get them interested and keep them interested. Plenty of action, mystery and magic along the way. Grade B movie stuff. I can animate the male character and Harriet can animate the female character so as to be halfway realistic, and Henrietta can set up the stage, costumes, lights and such. Like an extemporaneous play or a movie being filmed on location. Maybe the real he-man God of Fire has a thing for the luscious soft Goddess of Water, and she likes him too, but he can’t approach her lest his heat vaporize her and her moisture douse him. Yet maybe if she freezes into solid ice she can withstand his heat long enough, and if he clothes himself with a thin cushion of air, like maybe a cold condom—”

“Are you still awake?” Sydelle asked, startling me; I hadn’t seen her coming. “The Fire Tornado is accelerating and will be here all too soon. You can’t dawdle longer.”

“Uh, sure, we’re getting on it,” I said, disgruntled. “Maybe if you use a sleep spell on us, we’ll be on our way to talk with the gods.”

“Immediately,” she agreed, lifting her hands over us.

“One detail,” Henrietta said. “I just scoped the gods. The current Fire God is female, and the current Water God is male.”

“Oh, shi—” I swore.

Then we slept.

Chapter Twenty-four

Flying

I awoke, as it were, and found myself standing in a field of grass, holding Harriet’s hand, with the hen perched on my shoulder.

“Where are we?” asked Harriet.

I took in our surroundings. We were in a wheat field that spread far and wide...and flat. Gone was the hill upon which sat the great palace—and gone was the creepy forest within which was Sydelle’s tree home.

“I don’t think we’re on the Cloud anymore,” I said.

“Then where?”

“A dream within a dream.”

“Like the movie,” she said.

“Maybe,” I said, turning, noting that the field seemed real. In fact, I could feel wind on my skin and the sun on my face. “Except this is no movie, and we’re really here. Wherever here is.”

“Maybe it doesn’t matter,” said Harriet. “Maybe all that matters is finding our goal.”

“The fire god,” I said.

“Or the fire elemental.”

“Is there a difference?” I asked.

“Not sure,” said Harriet. “Either way, these are powerful entities.”

“Maybe not as powerful as we think,” I said. “They do, after all, need us to dream their worlds into existence.”

“Good point. So how do we find this fire bitch?”

That was, of course, the million dollar question. “I had assumed we would just dream ourselves to her.”

“We assumed wrong.”

We both scanned our surroundings, which were tranquil at best, with no hint, even in the far distance, of anything that might be the realm of the gods or elementals. Of course, I also didn’t know what such a realm would be like. For all I knew, we were standing in the middle of it, although I doubted that.

“Let’s puzzle it backwards,” I said. “The only way to reach the gods was via a dream within a dream.”

“True,” said Harriet.

“Why?” I asked.

“Well, I don’t know,” said Harriet. “Maybe it’s safer in dreams? Maybe there’s less of a chance to die or be hurt by these beings?”

“Or maybe this,” I said, and raised my free hand. Almost immediately a white dove appeared. It flew off immediately.

“Magic tricks?”

“The magic trick was just a test.”

“A test for what? And since when did you know magic? And where did you get that dove?”

I grinned and released her hand. I next raised mine high, closed my eyes, and a moment later a bald eagle appeared in the air above me. It screeched loudly, shot us an irritable look, and flapped its powerful wings. The downdraft blasted us, whipping our hair in a frenzy. Henrietta, still on my shoulder, squawked as she was almost blown off. Then she flew down to the ground, evidently feeling safer there.

“What’s happening?” asked Harriet. “Why are you doing this? How can you do this?”

“We can only find the gods in a dream within a dream because,” and I snapped my finger and something close to a mythical griffin appeared in the grass before us. It was massive and muscular and about as frightening as they came. Except, of course, I had secretly commanded it to be docile and helpful.

“Because why?”

“Because we can control the dream.”

“I don’t understand. I mean, I think I do—”

“Then watch.” I turned to the massive griffin, who was sitting in quiet repose in the tall grass. “Take us to the gods,” I commanded.

It nodded and ducked its head down. I took Harriet’s hand and led her and Henrietta to the waiting creature. Harriet, I noted, was visibly shaking. “Do not fear, my dear. You are safe.”

“But how do you know?”

“Do you trust me?”

“I-I do. Yes, of course.”

“Then come on.”

I helped her up onto the creature’s muscular back. I took hold of the lion’s mane along its back, as Harriet settled in behind me, holding me tightly around my waist. Her touch was intoxicating, to say the least.

Once we were on, the creature beat its massive eagle wings, and soon we were off the ground. Higher and higher we rose as the creature flapped its powerful wings. I heard Harriet laughing behind me, or was she crying?

Laughing, you dolt, came her thoughts, as words were nearly impossible due to the thunderous wind created around us.

Soon, we were soaring high above the wheat field, to parts unknown.

Chapter Twenty-five

Love

In moments we were over rugged mountains, then a lake, then a desert. Oops, I hoped that baked expanse wasn’t where we were going.

But of course it was, because it was the nature of fire to burn things up. Yet since this was our dream, I reached out with my mind and modified it to become a more compatible landscape that only looked burnt from afar. Up close it was a pleasant array of brown flowers surrounding a fiery castle that wasn’t actually burning.

Oh, for fiddle sticks! the Goddess of Fire’s thought came. You are clothing me in a ludicrously tame image.

Contact! “It gets worse,” I said, knowing that it was my thought that counted, not my drowned-out words. “We puny mortals would be incinerated by your mere visage, O scintillating creature, so we have to tame it down so we can survive it.”

“What corn,” Harriet muttered. “Watch out it doesn’t pop in your face.” She projected a picture of popcorn being heated over a fire.

There was the sensation of laughter. Interpretation is everything.

I remembered reading a vintage Superman comic in my childhood, sort of a history of comics sampler, wherein a magic little man with an unpronounceable name was slated to marry the king’s daughter. “Her face would stop a clock!” he protested. “What!” demanded the king, royally incensed. “I said her face makes time stand still,” the man said quickly, relieving the tension. Same thing, but a different slant. It could make a difference.

I think I like you. What a pity you’re not a god. There was a background swirl of smoky passion.

“Sorry about that,” I said, and to an extent, I was.

“Oh?” Harriet thought sharply.

“If I were a god I’d be less subject to illicit suggestion,” I said quickly.

“Responded the peon to the king’s challenge, saying the same thing.”

She had me there.

There was another waft of smoke. I like you too, mortal female.

That quickly stifled Harriet.

We glided in for a landing in the brightly lighted courtyard. I reached out with my mind again and toned it down to a pleasant glow.

O, bother.

“The effulgence of your mere premises threatens to overwhelm us,” I said. “It has to be damped down, lest we be too awe-inspired to manage a productive dialogue.”

“Mancrap,” Henrietta muttered. “Spread it on your garden; it will make your flowers grow.”

We dismounted and walked toward the main entrance, the hen perching on my shoulder again. The stairs here were our size; we were no longer in Giantland. That was a certain relief, overshadowed by awareness of the realm we were in. The gods, masked as they might be by my smothered dream imagination, were nevertheless wholly beyond our ken.

More smoke. I definitely like you.

“Don’t forget that the actual premises are nothing like your picture,” Henrietta warned.

Neither is my nature.

But my vision of those premises and her nature enabled me to function. I knew I was walking along the edge of a fire pit I dared not look at directly.

I decided to change the subject. “Henrietta, are you aware of how Joe and Carl are doing, back at the farm?”

“I am. Not well. They are trying, but there simply isn’t time, because of the temporal differential. They are still approaching the rogue dreamer.”

“So we have to handle it ourselves?”

“Yes.” I had feared as much. The burden of saving the Cloud was on us. If we messed up, everything was lost.

Harriet squeezed my hand supportively. I appreciated her gesture, but it only backed off my foreboding without abolishing it.

We came to a landing, then to what might be a ballroom or a royal audience hall. But even my stifling couldn’t entirely restrain it. The floor was clear diamond over a deep fiery caldera, the walls were scintillating ruby, and the ceiling—

Oh, my! It was the Fire Tornado, seen from below and inside.

Yes, mortal. This is closer to my real appearance.

For the moment I was tongue-tied. “Uh, we come to—to—”

“To offer you fabulous stories,” Harriet said. “To divert you from your eternal boredom.”

I have no need of stories, the Fire Goddess protested, her whirling cone of flames brightening dangerously. I would prefer to have an entire world, populated with real people (albeit manufactured in dreams) playing out their lives before me for good, ill, and mixed, with none of the stultifying certainty bequeathed by crafted stories from the old guard.

Oh shi—fertilizer, I thought. Our prime offering had been summarily anticipated and dismissed. Generating an entire world of individual people was surely beyond our capacity. Even in imagination, we would still have to define each one.

“You haven’t lost,” Henrietta said. “Provided you accept her counter offer.”

“Counter offer?” I asked blankly.

The fowl knows. There is one part of your fantasy that is true. Perhaps that is what guided your mind. I am in love with the water elemental, the God of Water. It has been an enduring frustration because of our opposite natures. Your conjecture that he might convert to ice for the occasion is intriguing, but there is no way he could remain ice in my presence, and certainly not with his stalactite in my supremely hot core. He would vaporize before touching me. If I attempted to cool sufficiently to avoid that, my animation would expire; I would, as you conjecture, be doused.

Worse and worse. She had seen me coming (as it were) and seen the fallacy of my notion. What, then, did I have to offer?

“Us,” Harriet said. “If we let the gods enter our minds and use our bodies to make love. We would not destroy each other.”

And there it was. Obviously the gods could enter our minds; they did so just to communicate. If that presence expanded to take over our bodies, they could indeed have sex—or make love. The cushioning of the dream within a dream might make it feasible.

But there were some complications. I looked at Harriet. “But would—” I began.

“Yes I would,” she said, blushing. “To save the Cloud.”

“And would we be able to—to watch?”

“To share,” she agreed, blushing worse.

So we would be making love too, though not controlling it. Of course there would be other times for us, if Harriet agreed.

Her cheeks were positively burning. That was answer enough. “But would we ever get back our—”

We would not want to occupy your bodies for longer than necessary, the Fire Goddess thought. They are tiny and stultifyingly limited. Only for this brief act would it be worthwhile.

We were making progress. “How often?”

“Once a month,” Harriet said before the Goddess got a more generous notion. “For an hour at a time.”

Agreed. Thus expediently was it done. The Cloud to endure as long as the arrangement continues.

Which meant indefinitely. We had won the reprieve. “Now about that approaching Fire Tornado,” I said.

That is a detail. Unfortunately there are limits to even godly powers. Once a manifestation has been loosed, it can’t be recalled.

“But that means—” I started.

“That the Cloud is still doomed,” Harriet finished.

Not necessarily. You creatures of imagination have merely to dream up a way to abate that problem. We gods lack sufficient innovation, but surely you can do it. We have confidence in you.

“Yes, that’s what you’re here for,” Henrietta said. “To convert the dross of the situation to gold. As I do with objects. Your objects are the Fire Tornado and the Cloud. That seems straightforward.”

Yes, a mere detail.

And it seemed it was up to me to work out that detail. “I will do my best,” I said, despairingly.

Chapter Twenty-six

Consummation

They were all looking at me expectantly, as if my agreement to try meant that the answer was at the verge of presentation. Instead my creative mind was blank. I needed time to think—more time than we were likely to have. What was I to do?

Right: I stalled. “Let’s have a picnic!” I said.

Harriet and Henrietta stared at me, not fooled. But the Fire Goddess came to my rescue. Yes, let’s. Just let me put on something appropriate. A swirl of fire appeared in the air above us, coalescing into a vaguely human form as it descended. A nude woman form.

“In clothing,” Harriet snapped.

“Oh. Of course,” the figure agreed verbally. Clothing appeared—and promptly burst into flame and drifted away in smoke.

“Maybe if you cooled off a tad,” I suggested.

“Ah.” The fiery figure turned flesh colored as it floated above us, with very nice legs. Clothing reappeared: shoes, skirt, blouse, gloves, this time not burning. “Like this?”

“That’s great,” I agreed, looking up appreciatively.

“With underwear,” Harriet said.

Panties appeared, and the blouse filled out as if a bra had been added beneath it. “So?”

“Down here,” Harriet said tightly.

The figure dropped to the ground, depriving me of my view from beneath. Ah, well. “Pleased to meet you, Fire,” I said formally.

She took my hand, and she wasn’t burning but did remain hot in more than one sense. Maybe the glove was insulating. “Ditto.” Then she turned to Harriet. “But you are the one I really want to get to know.”

“Me?” Harriet asked, faintly surprised.

“To be sure your persona is compatible, when I have my tryst.”

“Oh.” Harriet looked out of sorts. “Yes, of course.”

“And Jack should get to know Water,” Henrietta said. “For similar reason.”

“Uh, yes,” I agreed, now feeling as out-sorted as Harriet looked. The God of Water would have to enter my body to do his part. “We should invite him too.”

Fire lifted a hand. A spark flew from a finger, evidently a signal. And just like that another figure appeared, this one watery. In moments he shaped up as Fire had, and joined us fully clothed and looking human, with a head of hair the color of surf. I kept silent about my annoyance as Harriet eyed his well endowed body before he added the clothing. “Water, I presume?” I inquired.

“The same,” he agreed.

“You know, if the two of you can form images like this, maybe you could—” Harriet started.

“No,” the two said almost together. Then Water continued. “We may appear to be similar to you in this guise, but we are actually made of our elements.” He drew off his glove, which I now realized he was wearing, and water poured out of his sleeve. After a moment he put the glove back on and the flow stopped. “We are unable to mesh in this form.”

“Otherwise we would have done so eons ago,” Fire agreed, removing her own glove just long enough to let a jet of fire out.

“Not even in a dream?” Harried asked.

“Dreams go only so far,” Water said. “They lack sufficient substance.”

“And gods are not good dreamers,” Fire said.

“But we’re dreaming now,” Harriet said.

“Your dreams are supported by substance,” Fire said. “That makes a difference.”

I could see it. Our dreams reflected our realities, while the gods’ dreams, even to the modest extent they could dream, did not. Their realities would destroy each other, while ours would not. There were indeed limits to dreams.

At some point our surroundings had changed; I had been too distracted by the sights just above us to notice before. We were now in a grassy glade.

I still had no idea how to save the Cloud. “About the picnic,” I said. “We forgot to bring sandwiches, cider, cookies—”

“Crumbs, ants,” Henrietta added.

A huge picnic basket appeared, the gift of a god. Harriet opened it and took out sandwiches, a jug of cider, and a jar of chocolate chip cookies. Then she turned it over to dump out the crumbs, and a swarm of ants appeared to carry them away.

“Cups,” I added belatedly. “Hot dogs. A little campfire.”

These things appeared. We roasted dogs on sticks while Henrietta happily pecked up crumbs and ants. It was a great little picnic. And I still had no idea how to save the Cloud.

“The fire is spreading,” Henrietta said.

Indeed, it had sneaked out from its enclosure of stones and was burning the nearest dry grass. It occurred to me that fire was not so much a thing but a process; it converted organic materials to ashes, generating heat in that process. Just as life, another process, converted organic materials to poop. The two had a certain fundamental similarity.

And the idea came to me in a flash of genius, as Water unstoppered his arm and issued a splash to douse the errant flames, while Fire winced. I knew how to save the Cloud.

But would the others accept it? I suspected they would not. Better not to argue the case, lest they convince me I was mistaken. I was none too sure of it myself.

“I’ve seen that look before,” Harriet said. “You got an idea.”

“I did, but it’s tricky to explain,” I said. “Trust me.”

“I do, but we won’t be able to help you implement it if you don’t tell us what it is,” she pointed out.

I shifted the subject. “Fire, Water, you know that you need the Cloud to survive, to use as a setting for your, um, tryst. But the other gods need to have a say in it too, lest, say, Air decides to abolish the Cloud on his own. Would Air and Earth be amenable to a similar arrangement as, um, ours?”

“Actually, yes,” Fire said. “Air is a lusty male who heats me with his breath, to my annoyance, and Earth is a passionate female. But they have no better chance to get together than we do. He lacks sufficient solidity, while she has too much.” She reconsidered. “Than we did.”

“But if they had appropriate hosts, they could,” I said. “Such as the giants. The king, Topsy, Sydelle.”

“Oh, they could,” Harriet agreed. “The king and Topsy will surely agree.”

“You forget that the king is the love slave of Sydelle,” Henrietta reminded her. “He’ll want her to be the host.”

“To which she’ll be only moderately keen,” Harriet agreed. “She’d rather have Topsy do it.”

“Maybe they can take turns,” I said. “Sydelle should be willing the first time, knowing that it’s to secure the continuing welfare of the Cloud and that it’s not really him, but the God of Air borrowing his body. Then Topsy gets him for lesser events. He should be willing to make that sacrifice.”

“Sacrifice!” Harriet snorted. “Him and his harem.”

I gave her a straight look. “And your point is?”

“Oh, fudge,” she muttered, not arguing the case.

“So let’s get Air and Earth here,” I said. “So we can make the case to them.”

Fire emitted another spark and Water a drop, signaling the other gods. A miniature cloud appeared, forming into a wild looking man, and a floating pebble grew into a rock and then a small boulder, becoming a solidly formed woman with hair like an evergreen forest and breasts like conic volcanoes.

“Clothing,” Harriet and I said almost together.

The man conjured a loincloth that concealed very little and the woman bra and panties that actually enhanced her plush torso. That would have to do.

There were quick introductions, and more cider to be shared. Air and Earth seemed to be more interested in each other than in the setting.

“We know that it is Fire’s turn to take over the realm,” I said. “But we would like to delay that transition for a godly moment, say a thousand mortal years. There are things that can be done on the Cloud that you might appreciate.”

Air and Earth looked at me as if seeing me for the first time.

“Such as borrowing Cloud-borne hosts for a bit of interaction without risking mutual destruction,” I continued. “You, Air, might infuse the king, and you, Earth, the Sorcerness Sydelle, and come together to do what comes naturally. Their two bodies, being natural to the Cloud, can interact without dire consequences. Do you take my meaning?”

Air looked at Earth, who inhaled. They took my meaning.

“But only if the Cloud is not soon destroyed by the approaching Fire Tornado. So we all have an interest in postponing the changeover, don’t we,” I concluded.

They nodded. They were on board.

“Now all we have to do is stop the Tornado,” Henrietta said.

They all looked at me. “Um, yes,” I agreed. “It is time for me to talk to it directly. Fire, can you convey me there without my being cremated on the way?”

“In this inset dream, yes, I think,” Fire said. “Not in the main dream.”

“You think?” Harriet demanded. “You’re not sure?”

“Well, the Tornado is untethered, and I no longer control it. But a cautious approach should be safe, at least briefly.”

“This will do,” I said firmly.

“I’m going too,” Harriet said.

“But Harriet—”

“If you’re going to risk incineration, I’m doing it with you.”

“I like this woman,” Fire murmured. “She has a fiery spirit.”

“I like this man,” Water said. “He’s firm where required.”

I yielded. “If you insist.”

“And malleable where required,” Earth said. “Like molten lava.”

“If his notion isn’t just hot air,” Air said.

That was the rub. I couldn’t afford time to think about it. “Let’s go.”

Fire reached out and took each of us by the hand. Bearable heat flared around us.

We were in deep space, cruising toward the Fire Tornado. The closer it came, the worse it looked. This was sheer incendiary ferocity, hungry to consume anything it touched. Which was okay; I was counting on that hunger, turned to my purpose.

We hovered as close as was feasible before the whirling wall. I reached out with my mind. FIRE TORNADO!

What answered was not thought so much as destructive passion. The thing did not seem to have a mind so much as an urge to consume. This was not a good sign.

I tried again. I HAVE SOMETHING FOR YOU!

This time I got a more coherent answer. FUEL?

Still not good. But I kept trying. A CONCEPT. FORM SOME MIND SO YOU CAN UNDERSTAND.

The thing obliged, to an extent. WHO CARES ABOUT CONCEPT? I’M HUNGRY.

YOU CARE, I insisted. WHAT YOU CONSUME, YOU DESTROY, AND THEN IT’S GONE. YOU WANT MORE.

I DO?

YOU DO, I insisted. One advantage of a primitive mind was that it could be directed, at least to an extent. YOU WANT SOMETHING THAT WILL ENDURE BEYOND THE FIRST CONSUMPTION. THAT WILL NOT LEAVE YOU WITH MERE ASHES. YOU WANT POSITIVE INTERACTION INSTEAD OF NEGATIVE.

But it was too much for this largely mindless force to assimilate. GO AWAY.

Harriet came to my rescue. LIKE THIS. She reached out, took hold of me, brought me close, and kissed me passionately. I thought my head would float off, but fortunately I didn’t have a real head at the moment. Still, she definitely kissed something, and the joy of it radiated out from us. What a smooch!

And the Tornado reacted. I LIKE THIS.

We had shown it the joy of positive emotion.

Now for the closure. INSTEAD OF EMPLOYING THE DESTRUCTIVE PROCESS, TRY THE LIFE PROCESS. THAT WILL ENABLE YOU TO FEEL THIS. I kissed Harriet now, letting the emotion spread outward freely.

But the Tornado didn’t understand. HOW?

WHEN YOU INTERSECT THE CLOUD, DO NOT BURN IT. ANIMATE IT. THEN FEELING WILL COME. I hoped.

The Tornado considered. TOO COMPLICATED. But it was intrigued; we had shown it something it wanted.

“We’ll have to show it at the time,” Harriet said. “Provide it a pattern to emulate. Guide it until it gets the notion.”

“How?” I asked, perplexed.

Then I saw her blush. We had no proper bodies, but there it was. Oh.

Well, now, Fire thought.

We returned to the picnic site. The Tornado followed us like a hungry dog. Contact was incipient. Meanwhile I reached out mentally to Sydelle, back in the larger dream, updating her on her role. She was not totally pleased, but she understood the necessity.

“Get with the giants!” I told Air and Earth. “Infuse them. You know what to do then.” The two gods faded out.

“Our turn,” Fire said. She dissolved into a flame and merged with Harriet, who wasn’t burned.

Water dissolved into a floating splash and soaked me. Then he was inside me, one with my flesh. The sensation was weird but not actually unpleasant; there was all the surging power of the sea in him.

Meanwhile the Tornado caught up with the edge of the Cloud. “Now!” I exclaimed, and we dived for Harriet/Fire.

It started with kissing and progressed rapidly. I knew that Air and Earth were doing the same thing, in the larger dream. And I felt the Tornado picking up on it, emulating the feeling. Life, rather than death. Creation rather than destruction. Joy rather than pain. Instead of burning up the Cloud material, it was infusing it, animating it. The Cloud was coming to life. So was the Tornado. They were merging.

Then we launched into the climax, and the potent wonder of it suffused the universe. The emotional effulgence obliterated everything else. Nothing existed but the absolute pleasure of the union.

Moments or eternities later we drifted out of it. We were back on the Cloud, having transcended the inset dream. I was soaked in sweat, and Harriet was glowing, but we were sated for the moment. The two gods, their business done, had vacated. They would return in a month for more.

And the Cloud beneath us was quietly pulsing. It was no longer inanimate, but a living thing. As was the erstwhile Tornado within it. Destruction had been avoided. Of course it would take time for the gods and mortals to train the Cloud, to educate it, so that it could achieve full consciousness and self direction, to be all that it could be, but that was a project for the morrow. Right now was just satisfaction. Doom had been averted.

Then I heard something. It was Henrietta, evidently talking to the Cloud. “Yes, of course I’ll fill you in on your history, as far as I can fathom it, which is pretty far. You need to assimilate your past so you can progress to your future.”

So the hen had found an important continuing job. Good enough.

“It was a genius idea,” Harriet murmured.

“You helped,” I said.

“You talk too much.” She kissed me again.

And the cloud, picking up on the joy on its surface, pulsed with pleasure.

Chapter Twenty-seven

The Ball

CLOUD, I thought, reaching out with my mind. WHERE IS THE BEST LOCATION FOR OUR NEW WELL?

I stood with our children, Jack Jr. and Jill, fraternal twins, although one would never know it. Jill was at least six inches taller than her brother and already showing signs of puberty. Jack Jr. was scrawny and small for his size. In fact, he looked a lot like me at that age.

GO LEFT, JACK OF NEW YORK, said a whispery voice just inside my ear.

“He’s doing it again,” said Jack Jr. “Talking to the Cloud again.”

“I think he’s just talking to himself,” giggled Jill, and now they both laughed.

“You shouldn’t talk to your father that way,” said Harriet, coming up the hill behind us. “He might lose his train of thought when he’s talking to himself.”

Now the kids and my wife giggled uncontrollably.

CLOUD, I thought, CAN YOU HELP ME HERE?

WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE?

A RUMBA SEEMS APPROPRIATE.

A RUMBA IT IS!

And with that, the hill started shaking, but not too violently. The kids squealed, and so did Harriet.

“You did that, dad!” said Jack Jr.

I laughed. “I and the voices inside my head will never talk.”

Harriet laughed and now so did I. The Cloud, who was just beginning to grasp humor, tried a few chuckles, but mostly they sounded like hiccups.

KEEP WORKING AT IT, CLOUD, I thought.

I AM, EVERY DAY WITH HENRIETTA. BUT HER HUMOR IS...FOR THE BIRDS?

VERY GOOD, CLOUD. THAT WAS FUNNY.

THANK YOU. NOW TAKE FIVE MORE STEPS...THERE. STOP. YOU ARE AT AN IDEAL LOCATION FOR YOUR NEXT WELL.

THANK YOU, CLOUD. I CAN TAKE IT FROM HERE.

VERY WELL.

I put a stake in the ground where indicated as Harriet came up next to me, sliding an arm around my waist. I pulled her in close and we surveyed our land together. We truly lived in paradise, along with other humans who had chosen the same route, even if temporarily. Indeed, many human transients came and went. Some staying a week, others for many months. Not all, of course, had the means to live permanently as we did. But we had Carl who oversaw our sleeping bodies back on earth, in an estate purchased with Henrietta’s gold. A small team of nurses checked on us, turning us over, keeping us healthy and alive, so that Harriet and I could live in peace, here in paradise.

The same couldn’t be said for Joe West. Yes, he’d gone back to New York with more of Henrietta’s gold, but, according to Carl, he’d gotten himself involved in another scheme and was currently serving time. Occasionally we saw a dragon flying overhead, and we knew that it was Joe, here in the Cloud...anything to escape the drudgery of his prison cell, even if for a few days. I didn’t miss him; I felt that he had not contributed as much to our effort as the rest of us had. We had never actually needed the support of a ferocious dragon, as it turned out. But that was hindsight; at the time Joe had seemed like a good investment. That was, of course, his specialty: to seem, if not to be.

Now, with my arm over Harriet’s shoulder, I looked down the sloping hill to the verdant valley below, where the chimney in our stone cottage puffed smoke and our giant sheep and even bigger cows roamed mostly free. Our gardens were ripening, sprouting giant tomatoes, squash and berries, and Harriet’s flower beds were blooming. Yes, Spring was in the air.

We still had our monthly rendezvous with the gods, safely away from the children, but didn’t mind because that was the fair price of our continuing paradise. It wasn’t as though we did anything with them that we didn’t do on our own, and we knew they really appreciated it. Sometimes they even stayed to listen to Harriet’s harp playing; she had become quite good with practice, and loved it. I would dance my jig then, liking to think I had improved similarly as a dancer. The children thought we separated from them for that hour to avoid their candid comments on our musical and dancing abilities, and we did not see fit to disabuse them.

The castle shimmered in the far distance, where Sydelle had proven to be a fair and competent ruler. The previous king, of course, gave her his best counsel, all while he comically waited for any loving scraps she might hand his way. A kiss on the cheek here, a smile there. It was enough to keep him satisfied, such was the power of the love spell.

“If we don’t hurry,” said Harriet, “we will be late to the ball.”

“We are in no rush,” I said.

“But the ball is at dusk, and it’s many hours ride to the castle.” And then it hit her. She turned me toward her, excited. “Carl is coming.”

“But of course,” I said. Like other transient humans, Carl made it a habit to spend a week with us here and there.

“Uncle Carl’s coming?” gasped Jack Jr. behind us, overhearing us.

“Sure he’s coming,” Jill said knowingly. “He’s got a thing for the Queen’s little sister, Auntie Selle, even though she’s a giant. She likes him too. She makes herself seem his size, sometimes when they’re alone.”

“Oh?” Harriet asked, surprised.

“Yes, Uncle Carl is—” But that was all I could get out. Both kids squealed with delight, grabbing hands and running down the hill recklessly toward our cottage home.

“Careful!” shouted Harriet after them. “You’ll fall down and break—”

“Don’t say it,” I groaned.

“Neck,” said Harriet. “I was going to say neck.”

But we both laughed anyway. My wife had, of course, always wanted to name her daughter Jill. And I had always wanted a boy named after me. Nursery rhymes and fairy tales were alive and well here on the Cloud.

“You could say that again,” said Harriet.

“I didn’t,” I said. “I thought it.”

“Well, same thing,” she said, “here on the Cloud.”

I nodded and held my wife a bit longer, soaking in the beauty, the peace, and reveling in the joy of living here, far away from bosses, time cards and traffic. We had achieved our salvation without the need for our powerful but obscure third talents, whatever they were. Maybe those were for some other adventure.

Harriet took in a lot of air. “Even though Carl can transport us there instantly, we still need to get ready. The queen is expecting us.”

She held out her hand, and I took it, and I led m’lady down the grassy hill, toward our simple stone cottage in paradise.

I knew I was dreaming, but I prayed I never woke up.

The End

The Fantasy Collective continues in:

Lavabull

Return to the Table of Contents

LAVABULL

A Fantasy Collective Novel

by

PIERS ANTHONY

J.R. RAIN

Lavabull

Copyright © 2015 by J.R. Rain and Piers Anthony

All rights reserved.

Lavabull

Chapter 1: Lavender

Lavender looked at herself in the mirror. She saw a solid girl of 18, with an ample figure and hair so thick it was like a mat. Her eyes were like burning pits, her teeth like faceted stones, her hips like shapely anvils. So why were boys afraid of her?

Oh, she knew, really. She was hot, literally, especially in her core, and any young man who tried anything funny got burned in a very tender part. When she was a child the boys had tried to beat her up, and she had picked one up and hurled him into the sea. She read the minds of the others and prevented them from playing any nasty tricks on her. After that they had been more cautious, but when years later she grew breasts and hips, matching those of the other girls, they still had not wanted to date her despite her interest in socializing. It was frustrating. She was simply too much girl for the average boy. They preferred the soft, meek, shy, fragile efforts of the human girls. Lavender was something else.

She paused, remembering the story of her parents. Her father was Jarvis, of human stock, who at age 28 had visited the volcanic island and encountered her ageless mother Lava. Lava was made of molten rock from the local volcano. She could read minds and shape herself into any form she chose. She was lonely and craved companionship and appreciation. So she catered to Jarvis, forming into a nymphly shape, fulfilling his dreams, and he promptly fell in love with her. Men were manageable, when a woman put her mind to it. Now they had been married 19 years and remained happy with each other, maybe in part because Lava remained as lovely as ever and constantly obliged his wishes before he even formed them. She didn’t have to be burning hot, just hot enough to function comfortably for him.

That left Lavender, who was bored. She had no trouble with school, because anything she needed to know she read in the minds of the teachers and parroted back to them. She knew she wasn’t actually very smart in the human fashion, but she didn’t need to be as long as there was a smart human near. She could have fit in perfectly. She could have rendered herself all soft and cuddly and porous for a boy to handle, and cooled her core enough. So why hadn’t she? This was where she differed from her mother. Lava was entirely shaped by Jarvis’s desires, completely malleable. But Lavender was half human, and she had some human orneriness and ambition. She wanted to be someone in her own right, not just a sop for male interests. She could have faked it, and gotten along fine. But she was at least the equal of any of the local boys, and wanted them to know it. Unfortunately the process of making them recognize it had also eliminated her as an object of romantic interest. She didn’t have to guess at this; she read it in their minds. If she had wanted to become an endlessly obliging housewife like her mother, she had blown it. She wasn’t really sorry.

And there it was. She was not like Lava. She had too much human orneriness in her. She wanted adventure, recognition, and romance, in that order. With a man who had similar ambitions. Yes, of course his first priority would be sex; that was simply the nature of the beast. She could handle that aspect. But then he should have the desire for adventure and recognition. He also needed to be powerful physically and forceful emotionally, with maybe a volcanic temper. Her grandfather was a volcano; she liked the type. And she wanted him to worship her much the way her father worshiped her mother, without being any less of a man. Was that such a tall order? It seemed it was, here on the island.

She turned away from the mirror and put on some clothes. She picked up a magazine her mother had been looking at. And saw him pictured there. The ideal man.

She promptly read the article. It seemed that this human man named Carl Gray had been a rodeo clown, distracting the bulls when they threw off their would-be riders. Then he had gotten caught by a bull, El Diablo, as a storm approached, and lightning had struck and fused them together. Now he was called The Bull. He had horns and a tail, was big and powerful, and it was said, ornery as hell. But his love life wasn’t much. It seemed the women preferred to have pieces of tail apply to them, not to their boyfriends.

She knew it instantly: that was her man. But there was a problem: he lived in Rustic City, Arizona, while she lived on a Pacific volcano island. He didn’t know she existed. So she would have to go to him.

She went to the kitchen where Lava was making a meal for Jarvis. “Mom—”

“Of course, dear,” Lava said, knowing exactly what was on her mind. “I will persuade your father.” Because he could not read minds and would be slow to understand.

“You want to go to the faraway mainland?” Jarvis exclaimed. “No way!”

“Dear,” Lava murmured.

“But she has no connections there, no experience!”

Lava kissed him, then took him into the bedroom while Lavender took over the pot stirring. In fifteen minutes they emerged, and Jarvis gave his blessing. Lava’s soft as putty persuasion invariably made him soft as putty too.

Armed with a change of clothing and a credit card, Lavender caught the next tourist ship and sailed for the mainland. She faked eating, taking very small portions as if dieting. She could eat and drink the human food, but did not need to, and there was no nutritive value in it for her. Not to mention the messy inconvenience of ejecting it from her body later. She did not advertise her nature, which meant that the men aboard saw her as a young pretty woman and promptly got the usual idea. When one corralled her in an isolated nook and angled for a kiss she did what she had to do. “I’m so sorry, but I have a bad skin malady where it doesn’t normally show.” She lifted her skirt to show a burning red rash on her bottom. She then superheated her lips and gave him a searing kiss he would not soon forget. He dashed off, yelping.

It wasn’t that she couldn’t have accommodated him. His mind showed her exactly what he wanted her to do, and she had made her core cool enough for this journey, as she didn’t want to set fire to the bedsheets. It was that now that she had seen The Bull, she wanted to save her virginity for him alone. She let the rash fade out; it had served its purpose.

In due course the ship reached the port, and she caught a plane for Arizona. It was routine, until she picked up a mental distress signal. The pilot was going into a blackout. He didn’t know it, but she did. She hurried forward, passing the plane’s bathroom, where the copilot was having a siege of indigestion. She couldn’t send her thought to warn him, but could read his knowledge of the plane. She kept that line open as she used the pilot’s code to open the door, forged inside, and put her hands on the pilot as he lost consciousness. She lifted him out of his seat and set him on the floor beside it. Then she got in herself and used her mental line to the copilot to ascertain what to do. She put the craft on autopilot before it could go wrong.

The copilot returned. “What’s this?” he demanded.

“He blacked out. I put it on auto,” she said, rising from the seat.

“But you’re no pilot!”

“True. But you are.” She left the cockpit and returned to her seat in the body of the plane. No one had noticed her excursion except the stewardess, who had thought she might be in another kind of business with the pilots and kept her mouth shut.

When the plane landed without further event, she knew the copilot wanted to talk to her, so she waited until the craft emptied. “Who are you?” he demanded.

“Just a passenger.”

“You may have saved all our lives.”

“Please, I do not want notoriety.”

“Neither do we,” he said. “That was one close call. No one knew what was going to happen to him, least of all himself. We are getting him to the hospital now. You did exactly what was needed. The management will want to reward you.”

“Please, no.”

“But we owe you!”

“Please.”

He gazed at her. “If word got out about this, there could be repercussions. Safety is our prime concern.”

“I will say nothing.”

He shook his head. “Silence suits us all. But if there is ever anything I can do in return, well, here’s my card.” He gave it to her.

“Thank you.” She tucked it into a pocket and left the plane. She doubted she would ever call him, but who knew for sure?

She took a taxi to the address of Carl Gray. Then she went to the door. She could tell by his mind that he was inside.

She paused to focus on her body. She could not change her shape instantly the way her mother could, because she was only half lava, but she could do it slowly. She sprouted a petite set of horns and a tail that showed under her skirt. She enhanced her bosom and broadened the spread of her hips. She dulled the fire in her pupils, as there was no need to reveal her inner fire. She was ready. She knew that The Bull’s first impression of her would count for a lot. She wanted him to know instantly that she was his kind of woman. The details could come later.

When the door opened, she stood as a solid cowgirl, literally. She smiled.

Chapter 2: The Bull

I was almost drunk.

Almost drunk wasn’t going to do it, not when you’ve had the day I had. No, I needed to be all-the-way-drunk and forget this day ever happened. Which is why I fished out another beer from the case propped open on the floor next to me. A stack of similar cases sat in the far corner of the room. I had them shipped here weekly, brought in by two burly guys, who stacked them in piles of two, nearly up to the ceiling. Guys who stared at me the entire time. Guys who almost never made small talk with me. And if they did, it was often one-word answers. When they were done unloading, they got the hell out of here. I was even willing to bet they demanded hazard pay, too.

Not that I would hurt any of them. At least, not intentionally. This year alone, I had accidentally gored two people at a local feed store. Yeah, that’s right. I buy my food at a feed store. You got a problem with that?

Luckily, beer goes down just fine. Maybe it’s all that barley in it.

Despite my best intentions—and despite the copious booze already consumed—I found myself reviewing the day’s events anyway. The day had started like any other: I had awoken in my living room, hung over and nearly buried in empty cans of beer. On this morning, my right horn had caught in my couch’s arm, and I had spent a half minute trying to work it lose—that is, until my short temper had kicked in and I had ripped it free, veritably flinging the couch halfway across the room in the process.

In case you haven’t guessed by now, yeah, I’m half bull and half man. The half-bull part is pretty obvious: I have a wide set of horns and whip-thin tail that, amazingly, I can control as surely as if it were any arm or a leg, a tail that sometimes seems to have a mind of its own.

This morning, as I stood among my dozens and dozens of empty beer cans, with my couch leaning against the far wall, I was vaguely aware of my tail absently reaching for nearby cans and tossing them into the empty beer case. My intention had been to clean the mess... and so my tail had begun the chore of doing so, even when my mind was, in fact, on my nearby cell phone. It had been my phone that had awakened me from my deep slumber. It had, I was certain, rang numerous times. Perhaps even dozens.

Grumbling, I crunched over empty cans to the low bookcase where my cell had been charging. I had long ago removed anything in my apartment that could break...or get caught in my horns. Nothing was on the walls, and no furniture was higher than my waist. I’d learned that lesson after going through three TVs in a month. Literally through. In fact, my entire apartment is crisscrossed with gouges and punctured with holes. Truth was, I had no business living in a small apartment. Not with this huge set of horns. Unfortunately, a bat cave didn’t come with my condition, or a Fortress of Solitude. Sure, I might be one of the world’s most recent superheroes, but I was presently living off my savings—savings that were drying up fast. I might be supernaturally strong and people had no problem calling on me for help, but they sure as hell didn’t pay me for my time or help.

Which brings me to this morning. As I snatched up my phone, looking down at it in such a way that my left horn gouged a deep furrow along the top of the bookcase, I saw that I had missed, exactly, nineteen phone calls. Sighing, and using fingers that had, mercifully, remained human—I fumbled through the phone until I found the voice mail feature, and played back the messages. They were from, it turned out, the same woman. Requesting my help, over and over. Each message sounded more desperate than the last. Story of my life.

I clicked off the phone and set it down, rubbed my face. I looked like hell, I knew. Truth was, I looked like the world’s biggest freak, with these horns and tail and hooves for feet. That lightning strike a few years ago had done a number on me. Not only had it seemingly fused me with the bull I had been wrangling, it had given me supernatural strength. Not just the strength of the bull, but ungodly strength, too. Or, perhaps, god-like strength. The horns might as well have been made from the hardest stuff in the known universe. The tips were so sharp as to cut through, literally, anything. Cut through, puncture through, tear through. I had done it all. My tail could often extend as far as I reasonably needed it to, easily four or five times its actual length. It served as a wonderful whip. And then there was my upper body strength, which was matched by only a few on this planet—and all were either superheroes or supervillains. Of course, my strength was enhanced even more when I actually charged—that is, when my back hooves kicked up a cloud of dust and undeniable rage filled me. Jesus, when that happened, I don’t think anything on this planet could stop me. No wall. No fortified fortress. Maybe not even the big green guy, the Hulk. Certainly not any creep who threatens innocent people.

Which had been the basis of the panic calls this morning, the last of which had been just a few minutes ago. Some asshole was threatening his girlfriend. Threatening to kill her if she ever left him. And he was on the way to her house now. I had to replay one of the messages to remember the address—unfortunately, I wasn’t given a super memory in the lightning strike—and then I was off. I charged down the center of the street, dodging cars, running faster and faster the angrier I got. And I was getting damn angry thinking about this asshole punk hurting this innocent girl. At least, she sounded innocent.

I rarely drive these days, although I have been saving up for a convertible, for obvious reasons. No, when I’m getting around my small town, I don’t need to drive. I can run as fast or faster than most cars, especially in a lazy town like Rustic City. In no time at all I was at her small house on the edge of town. I slowed and assessed the situation.

The place was quiet. A truck was parked haphazardly in the driveway. Its driver’s side door was open. So was the front door, from which issued a blood-curdling scream—and I was charging again.

This time through the front door, my wide shoulders shattering the door frame, and my even wider horns leaving two long grooves to either side of the door.

Snorting and my tail snapping this way and that, I found myself in an empty room. No, not entirely empty. I saw the cameras. Everywhere. High up in the ceiling. On tripods down hallways. On the kitchen table.

I had only recently learned that videos of me often go viral. As I break up a street gang or stop an armed bank robber or save a family from a fiery building—right, my thick bull hide is nearly impenetrable—video of my heroism spreads like a different kind of fire—wildfire. Apparently, I’m somewhat of a sensation on YouTube. All superheroes are.

As it turned out, I had been set up that morning by some college punks hoping to upload the next video to go viral. There had been no one in danger. No murderous ex-boyfriend. And so I gave them an eyeful. In a few minutes flat, the home was leveled and their cameras were destroyed, although one or two survived, somehow.

After all, that’s the video I’m watching now on my laptop—myself destroying the home in a fit of rage—when there comes a knock on my front door. Now who the hell could that be?

Chapter 3: Deal

There he stood, a giant bull of a man, literally. Wide-set horns, thin whip-like tail, the rest human, clad in last week’s tattered cowboy suit. His body reeked of beer, and his mind reeked of frustration, futility, and shame.

Lavender had mentally prepared an introductory speech somewhere along the lines of, “Hello, Mister Bull. I am Lavender; I have admired you from afar, and I have come to be your loyal companion. Please take me in and let me show you what I can do for you. I do have useful talents, such as telepathy and the ability to change my shape.” When he balked at such a sudden commitment, she would try to sweetly reason with him, leaning forward to give him a conducive peek of her ample bosom, to persuade him that she really did belong in his life. She did know how to make an impression on a man.

Instead her words preceded her thoughts. “You’re drunk!”

“Not yet, but trying hard,” he said. “Whatever you’re selling, I can’t afford it and don’t want it. Now get out of here before I vomit on you.”

His mind was indeed in a vomitus state. She closed it off for the moment, as getting into it made her feel dizzy and disgusted. She should be able to handle this much on her own. It was clear he needed serious help.

“Aren’t you going to invite me in?” Now she did the leaning forward bit.

“I told you I don’t want any.” But it required no mind reading to know that he did want something, and not just a peek at her bosom. He just didn’t know how to express it.

“Thank you,” she said. She pushed by him and entered the house. It was a total mess. “First let’s make some space.” The couch was upside down in the corner, half buried in beer cans. She gripped the edge of it and exerted her strength, turning it over. Then she looked up.

The Bull was staring at her. “You heaved it over!”

“Somebody needed to,” she snapped. “Now clean up those cans so we have space for our feet. We have to talk.”

“But you’re a girl!”

“And now you’re two for two. Are you going to get with the program?”

He seemed dazed. “Program?”

“Clean up the cans. Then sit down here with me so we can talk about our relationship.”

He began to swell up belligerently. “Who the hell are you to come in here and boss me around?”

This required a stronger measure. She stepped into him, used a hand to haul his head down, and kissed him soundly on the mouth.

It was as if a bomb went off in his skull. He had dreamed of something like this, which was one reason she did it. He secretly wanted to be governed by a woman, a pretty one, who understood and accepted him, as no other woman did.

Then he turned around and started using his tail to sweep the cans into piles in the corners. The main floor was soon bare.

Lavender sat on the couch and looked around. The room was in a sorry state, with horn-gores in the walls and crates of beer cans stacked in a far corner. He really was trying to drink himself into oblivion. Well, she would put a stop to that. When he had the empty cans clear, she caught his eye and patted the seat beside her.

Meekly, he obeyed, coming to sit where indicated. “You won’t be needing that drug any more,” she said. “We’ll stack the crates in a back room and forget about them.”

“But—”

“You drink to try to wash out your disgust with your own sorry state. That will change as of now. You have talents, but you’re almost broke because people have been taking advantage of you. That has to stop.”

“I know that!” he flared.

“Of course. I read it in your mind. You need to get organized.”

“You read my mind?”

“I’m telepathic. You have a problem with that?”

He was beginning to focus. “I guess not. You’re no ordinary girl.”

“I’m not,” she agreed. “Just as you’re no ordinary man.”

“You have horns. Tail.”

“It’s about time you noticed. I’m the same as you, at least in the ways that count. I’m only part human; the rest is a savage force of nature. You can’t make it with an ordinary girl. They’re afraid of you, and way too fragile.” She got that too from his mind.

“Who the hell are you?”

“Rephrase that question, please.”

“The hell I will! You can’t just—”

He stopped, because she had kissed him again.

After the explosion in his skull dissipated, he regrouped. He was catching on that he was beaten in this respect. “I—I apologize for my language. What I mean is, why are you here?”

Now was the time for candor. “I’m a misfit, like you, as I said. I’m half human and half volcanic lava. Regular men are afraid of me, with good reason. I am literally too hot to handle, if I choose to be. I read about you, and decided that you could use my help and my love. You’ve got more power than brains, at least in the way you manage your life. I’m good at getting along, when I have to. I can help you manage, too.” She knew from his mind that this was what he wanted.

“I do need help,” he agreed. “But why should a pretty girl like you bother with me? Nobody else has.”

“Because I think that together we can make a lot more of ourselves than we can apart. You’re a lot more man than I’ve encountered elsewhere, so I’ve come to be your girlfriend. That’s just the beginning.”

“My girlfriend? The beginning? Are you insane?”

“Who knows, maybe? And this is the beginning of what I hope is a successful long-term collaboration. We aren’t misfits to each other.”

“Girlfriend,” he said in wonder, picking up on that detail. “Do you even know what that means?”

“Yes. Remember, I know what’s in your mind, including the passion. I can handle it, physically and emotionally. But you don’t even know what romance is. You have no idea how to treat a girl you want to keep. So we won’t get in bed together until you have a better notion. Now you need to take a bath to soak off some of that grime, and put on clean clothing.”

“But—

“You need a girl who will love you. But for that you need to make yourself lovable. Or maybe more correctly love-a-bull. Or, better yet, lava-bull. I like it! Anyway, I’m telling you how.”

“But—”

“Do I have to kiss you again?”

“You’re serious?”

He was catching on to what she offered. He desperately wanted it. But she was not about to settle for drunk and disorderly. “I can strip you and scrub you and dress you if you wish. Your body hardly matters when I know your mind. So—”

She was interrupted by the ringing of his cell phone. She got up and fetched it. “This is the residence of The Bull,” she said. “What can we do for you?”

“He’s got a secretary?” the voice asked, amazed.

“More than that. Get to the point.”

“Listen, my company needs a load of tanks of diesel fuel, and we need them now. The regular delivery was stopped by a wreck. A damn drunk driver hit it and knocked the wiring loose.  We need a man to put a chain on that wreck and haul it to the factory, and the local towing service won’t touch it this late in the day. It’s only a mile. The Bull can do it.”

“Yes he can,” she said evenly. “What fee do you offer?”

“Fee? The Bull doesn’t charge a fee.”

“He does now.”

“This is outrageous!”

“Then get someone else to haul your truck. Nobody’s sponging off The Bull any more. Spread the word.”

There was a pause. She wished she could read his mind, but that worked only at close range. So she was bluffing.

“Fifty dollars,” the man said.

“Two hundred dollars.”

“Seventy five.”

“A hundred and fifty.”

“A hundred.”

“Deal,” she agreed, hoping they weren’t being taken. “Where’s the truck?”

In moments she had the location. “We’ll be there.”

She disconnected and turned to The Bull. “Postpone that bath. We’ve got a deal. Where’s your car?”

“Still in the shop from the last time I wrecked it. But I can run to the site.”

“I can’t. I can do a lot, but I’m no distance runner.”

“Then I’ll carry you.”

She nodded. “Good enough. Let’s go.”

They exited the house, he picked her up and slung her over his shoulder, and ran at an incredible speed. Any ordinary girl would have been wiped out by the rough bouncing, but of course she wasn’t. Still, in due course she would teach him how to carry a lady. She didn’t really like having her legs over his shoulder and her skirt being blown up by the wind so that any oaf could see her exposed bottom.

They reached the site. The Bull set her down. There was a chain on the truck. He took that and anchored it to the hoop in front. She got into the cab. He hauled, and the truck was moving at a good clip, considering.

At the factory the manager came out to thank them. “You’re welcome,” Lavender said and held out her hand for the money. He gave it to her and she tucked it away. “We’re done here, Bull. Let’s go home.”

The not really odd thing was that the manager approved. He knew The Bull needed supervision and a woman with gumption and a really tough hide. Then he would no longer be almost as much a menace to the community as an asset. Of course he wouldn’t say so openly, at least not to The Bull. But it was in his mind.

The Bull picked her up again, same as before. She knew the manager’s eyes were bugging as her skirt flew up; she read his appreciative peek. Couldn’t be helped, this time.

Back at his house she took over again. “Bath,” she ordered. “New clothes.”

This time he didn’t try to argue. He went to the bathroom.

“And soak your face in cold water,” she called after him. “You need to be sober for our next discussion.”

Then she sat down and let go in a wash of reaction. She had played it tough because it was an emergency, but now she would have to persuade a sober and halfway sensible man that he really did want her in his life. That might not be easy.

Chapter 4: Villainous

World Media Transmission #1

Greetings, I am Villainous.

If you are hearing these words for the first time, it means one of two things: you are about to die, or I have failed.

I do not plan to fail. I have taken careful steps not to fail. In fact, I have devoted my entire life to carrying out this plan, to assure its success—and to assure the total destruction of the earth.

You see, I have grand plans. In fact, no one has ever accused me of not being ambitious. Sure, they’ve accused me of everything else under the sun—many nasty, nefarious, villainous things (and most of them are true, let me assure you)—but never have I been accused of thinking small.

And this is big. Very, very big.

Perhaps the biggest ever.

Nothing short of the total destruction of this wretched rock we call planet Earth.

You see, I think we have mostly gotten it all wrong. I think we could have done a better job of managing this planet, of managing its people, and managing its resources. I think we are rapidly heading to destruction, and I just can’t have that. Not on my watch, and not when I can do something about it.

I do not want money. I do not want new technologies. I want only the chance to hit the reset button. I have plans for this planet. Big plans. New ideas. New governments. New family units. New everything. We are few, but we are ambitious, to say the least.

But I can’t implement these plans if the rest of the world is hell bent on destroying itself and its precious resources. And I certainly don’t intend to be a target for the world’s mightiest powers.

And so, I have disappeared from the limelight, so to speak. You might even recognize my voice. If so, you are correct. However, I go by a new name now. It’s only a temporary name, you see. It fits my mood. It fits my current temperament. After all, why should names be so permanent? Who made that rule up?

New ideas, new names, new everything.

I am Villainous, and if you are hearing my words, it might already be too late. After all, I have cooked up a helluva scheme. And soon all the world will tremble.

But for now, you might have a few minutes, or a few days. After all, even I can’t predict when a volcano will explode, try as I might.

But let me assure you, there is no stopping the damage... and the resulting poison that will spread. Sure, some of you might survive in your bomb shelters, and some of you might even make it a few months or years. But know this: I have thought of everything, and every last one of you—every last human and primate, that is—will understand what death is. Your destruction is imminent.

So, I want to thank you for participating in the human race.

Except now the race is finished.

Game over.

Chapter 5: Decision

Lavender turned on the TV while waiting for The Bull to complete his cleanup. What came on at first confused her, then made her wonder. It seemed to be a repeating printed message from an anonymous source, threatening the destruction of the human species, and indeed, all primates. That was to say, monkeys who walked on two legs.

Oh—it was a cheap video adventure. She had seen those before. The end of the world was a favorite theme. It always got saved at the last moment.

Except that there were no commercials, and no breaks. When the printed message concluded, it immediately started over, without change. Also, normally the videos were acted out, not displayed like the pages of a book. Curious.

The Bull emerged from the bathroom. He was clean and dressed, looking almost handsome. He did not sway as he walked, indicating that he was well on the way to being sober. It was a vast improvement.

“Okay, now we can talk,” he said. “But first, how about another kiss? Or are you just playing me the way everyone else does?”

He was definitely interested, and she liked that. But now, ironically, she was going to have to change the subject. “One kiss. Then you have to watch the TV.”

“Who cares about the TV? It’s all junk.”

She went to him and kissed him. He liked that even better sober than when he was tipsy. “There will be more as we work things out,” she said. “But first I need your judgment on this TV program. I’m new to the mainland and there are things I don’t properly understand. Do you think it’s a joke?” She took his hand and had him sit down beside her on the couch.

He looked. “Yes, must be a joke. Hackers trying to make me think I’ve got to save the world. Make a fool of me yet again.”

“I’m not sure of that. It doesn’t seem to be directed at you.”

The phone rang. Lavender picked it up. “Yes?”

“Are you that new girl with The Bull?”

“Yes. Who are you and what do you want?”

“This is Ian, your neighbor to the north.”

The man was just out of mind reading range. “Hello, neighbor.”

“Have you seen the TV?”

“It’s got an end of the world program.”

“That’s it. Think it’s a joke?”

So he was concerned too. This seemed legitimate. “We were wondering. Want to talk with The Bull?”

“Yes, please.”

She handed the phone to The Bull. “Neighbor to the north named Ian. He’s watching the same program.”

“I know him. He’s legit.” He lifted the phone. “Hi, Ian. You’re getting it too?” He paused, listening. Lavender could have picked up the other voice through The Bull’s mind, but didn’t bother; this was minor interaction, incidentally establishing her place in The Bull’s life.

“And the other neighbors? Overriding their normal programs? I agree: this is weird.” He disconnected.

Weird indeed. “Let’s walk around the block,” Lavender said.

“Why?”

“So I can read minds as we pass other people. I need to get reasonably close, like within about talking distance. Then we’ll know how widespread this is.”

He looked at her, his thoughts percolating. He didn’t quite believe in her permanence, and feared she would disappear without ever being more than an in-name-only girlfriend. Another tease.

“It’s not like that,” she snapped. “What use is a girlfriend to you, if the world ends tomorrow?”

He sighed. “We’ll walk around the block.”

They walked. She reached out with her mind, catching the occupants of the houses they passed, at the fringe of her range. They were watching the broadcast with amazement, annoyance, and dawning fear. It was happening to everyone.

They returned to the house. “So it’s not just a joke on me,” The Bull said.

“Not,” she agreed. “But what is it?”

“Smells to me like a brag. Someone who hates us just had to crow a little about his evil plot.”

Then the message disappeared. It was replaced by a regular TV announcer. “Folks, we regret the interruption of our normal programming,” he said. “Hackers got into the system and had their illicit fun. Ignore the ‘Villainous’ message. It was simply an ugly practical joke. It appears to have been put on worldwide at the same time. It is rapidly being eradicated.”

“That’s a relief,” The Bull said. “At least this time the joke’s on someone else.”

“This time,” she agreed. Then she remembered something. “Oh—here’s your money.”

“Money?”

“The fee you earned for hauling that truck. A hundred dollars in cash.” She dug it out of her purse and handed it to him.

“Oh, yeah.” He really hadn’t tuned in on the money.

“Now about our relationship—” She broke off, reading his mind. “All right, we’ll talk this way.” She got up, moved over, and sat on his lap. “Girlfriend style.”

“Yeah,” he said, pleased, putting his arms around her.

“Don’t worry, I won’t break or freak out. You know I’m half lava, hot inside. I can cool down where it counts when I put my mind to it, but you don’t want to rush it. My form is mostly my conscious shaping, including the horns and tail. When I sleep, I may settle into a lump of hot rock. Can you handle that?”

“Yeah,” he said, drawing her in close. “Same’s you handle my being half bull.”

“That’s why I came here. I figured you’d understand about how I’m different.”

“Yeah.” He absolutely loved having a real live girl in his arms. One who could handle him.

“I think I should handle your finances, because—” She stopped, because he agreed. He gave her back the money.

She laughed. “How can we have a comprehensive dialog if you agree before I finish my thought?”

“What I want doesn’t require much talking.”

“Don’t I know it! You see me as a heifer in heat. I’m hot all right, but not quite that way. However—”

The phone rang again. She took it, again. “The Bull’s residence. His assistant speaking.”

“Girlfriend,” he said loud enough for the phone to pick it up.

“I am calling from the limousine parked outside your house,” the voice said. “Please join me immediately.”

“Now wait a minute,” Lavender protested. “We don’t find these jokes funny.”

“Read my mind.”

He knew about that? She reached out and caught the mind in the limo. It was at the edge of her range, but that was enough. “Oh, my.”

“Say nothing,” the voice said. “Just join me. Both of you.” The connection quit.

“Huh?” The Bull asked.

“That was a representative of the Secretary of Defense,” she murmured in his ear. “We need to meet with him in the limo, which is secure from electronic surveillance. It is not a joke.”

“What has any such person to do with me?”

She put her finger against his lips. “I think we’re in deeper than we know.”

They went out to the waiting limo. The door opened and they got in, joining a seated man.

“Read my mind,” he repeated.

She did. Up close she had a much better take on him. He was absolutely legitimate. But it was so complicated that she backed off. “Maybe you’d better spell it out aloud,” she said. “The Bull is not a mind reader.”

“Of course,” he said as the chauffeured limo moved out. “The recent broadcast, as nearly as we can ascertain, was not a joke. True, it was put on by hired hackers, but they are losing their appetite for it as they come to realize that they, too, are included in the destruction. We are up against a homicidal madman. I use that term advisedly, as we are not at all sure he is human.”

“We’re not exactly human either,” Lavender said sharply.

“Exactly. That’s why we need you. Villainous seems to be the representative of a group of, for want of a better term, crossbreeds, though they are not exactly that. We call them animen, though they are female too. One of you is a merger of human and lava, the only cross with the inanimate we know of. The other is a merger of human and bull. This sort of thing has been happening rarely, but all over the world. There are crosses with orcas—that is, killer whales—elephants, giant squid, bears, and perhaps others we don’t yet know of. They all have human intelligence and animal strengths. You, Lavender, are the only telepathic one we know of; perhaps that is a quality of the volcano that sired your mother. The one who calls himself Villainous seems to be a human-polar bear merger. The polar bears are in desperate straits as human-caused global warming melts their icy habitat and human settlements encroach on their arctic domain and human over-fishing depletes their food supply. He hates mankind and means to exterminate it.”

He paused for a breath, then continued. “It seems they have devised a kind of gaseous poison that affects only primates, killing them within hours. Human beings are primates. Their problem has been distribution. Now, if the broadcast is to be believed, they have found a way: insert it in the lava chamber of a volcano, and let a subsequent eruption disburse it into the atmosphere. Global air currents would spread it across the globe soon enough, bringing human death wherever it goes.”

“Wow,” The Bull said. “Why tell us?”

“Because you represent a unique combination of talents that we desperately need for this mission: strength and telepathy, with a volcanic connection. We need you to locate the key volcano and remove the poison before it erupts. Once it erupts it will be too late. Humanity may be doomed.”

“You mean, unless they’re bluffing,” Lavender said.

“We can’t afford to take the risk that they’re bluffing.”

“You don’t know which volcano?” The Bull asked.

“That’s right. We don’t know. We will provide you with all necessary transport to any and all volcanoes, and all assistance you require. You will be top secret agents, as of now.” He smiled briefly. “If you are concerned about money, we will pay you ten thousand dollars a day, or more if you demand it. The service we require is of course priceless.”

“Well,” The Bull started.

“We need to consider,” Lavender said.

“Of course. Will an hour do?”

“It should.”

The limo drew to a stop right before The Bull’s residence. They got out and walked to the house. “What’s this about considering?” he asked inside. “Of course we want to help save the world, and the money’s good.”

“Big decisions of any nature should always be considered carefully,” she said. “Here’s the thing: we are what they call animen. We’ll probably be immune to that poison. We’ll surely be welcomed into the new order, if it comes.”

“So?”

“Which side are we on?”

Chapter 6: Animen

We had an hour. I only needed seconds, but I could see that Lavender was having a tougher time with it.

“Isn’t your father human?” I asked.

“He is, but perhaps we can convince Villainous to spare him.”

“And you would want to negotiate with a man—or animan—who is willing to kill billions of people?”

She shook her head, and I saw literal steam waft up from under her collar. “No, of course not. I’m sorry, I don’t know what I was—”

I took her perfectly formed face and cradled it in a hand that could, if called upon, crush skulls or snap trees. And her face was “formed” too. I had no doubt that Lavender could take on any shape she wanted. That she had picked such an appealing form was a form of manipulation of course. I wondered what her natural form looked like. Or was I seeing it?

Didn’t matter, not with a creature who could take on any shape she wanted—and the shape she had chosen was a damn fine one indeed.

“Thank you, big guy, now where is all of this leading?” she said, following my train of thoughts.

“It’s understandable that you would want to be like others of your own kind—hell, picturing myself with other half-breeds, and being accepted—is damn appealing. But being accepted is one thing. Killing billions is another. I can live as an outcast. But I couldn’t live with myself knowing I didn’t try to stop this madman.”

“Point taken. I really am a good person. I just had...”

“A momentary lapse?”

“I was going to say a rough life. I was mostly alone. Kids avoided me, especially after I threw one of them into the sea.”

I laughed at the image, then grew somber as I remembered the very real threat we were all facing, human and non-human. After all, what kind of world would remain, if run by this madman?

“Good point,” said Lavender, picking up my thoughts like a champ. “So what’s the plan?”

Admittedly, I liked seeing her human side. It was a pleasant change from her smoldering lava side, which she’d been laying on kinda thick since her arrival. I also liked seeing her uncertainty, too. As tough as she came across, she was no superhero. Not yet, anyway. I liked being needed, and I also liked taking charge, too. I’d only been in the superhero business for a short time, but I had more experience at it than she did.

“First, let’s tell the representative we’re in.”

We did so, and were told that a military transport plane was waiting at the nearby Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, along with a crack team of Navy SEALS who would be assisting us. Apparently, another team of superheroes—a more famous team whose exploits were often featured on the big screen, were given the task to find Villainous himself. Two teams: one searching for the rigged volcano (us), and another searching for the bastard himself. Seemed about as effective a plan as we could have, under the circumstances. Of course, Villainous had had years to concoct his own plan, and to put safeguards in place. I suspected finding him and his lair would be a challenge, even for an experienced team of superheroes.

“Never mind that,” said Lavender, reading my mind, as usual. “We have a volcano to find.” She shot a glance at the representative. “Speaking of which, how did you know I was here? More important, how did you know about my family’s volcanic roots? And, quite frankly, how did you get here so fast? The message was only recently aired—” She paused, reading his mind. “The apartment is bugged. You’ve been listening to us.”

My mouth dropped and I felt the heat rising in my face. I am quick to anger, as bulls are wont to be. And when I get angry, I tend to want to destroy things. Take that last house for instance.

The representative’s smarmy smile faltered when he saw me puff out. No doubt my face was taking on a shade of red, too, which tends to happen. More than anything, I see red. Blinding red that fills me with rage and hate.

“Easy, Bull,” he said. “We try to keep tabs on all superheroes. At least, all new superheroes. We have to know whose side they are on. We have to know if they pose a threat and need to be neutralized. You have proven, time and again, to be on the side of good. And, yes, Lavender, we were aware of your arrival this morning. We’ve been frantically looking into your background ever since, and were shocked, to say the least, by your ancestry. There’s not a lot of people on earth who can say their grandfather is a volcano.”

“That doesn’t explain how you got here so fast.”

“I’m based out of Davis-Monthan. We received advanced word that something big was about to get announced. That the world media had, in fact, been hijacked. We were all put on alert. Lavender’s arrival can only be described as serendipitous.”

“Seems legit to me,” I said.

Lavender scanned his thoughts some more, frowned, then said, “You’re hiding something else, Mr. Brookstone.”

The representative smiled, and some of his oiliness returned. “We have been well-versed in compartmentalizing our secrets from mind readers, Ms. Lavender. You are not the only telepath on earth. And we have many, many secrets.”

“Cut the crap,” I said to him, sitting up. “The way I see it, we need to find this rigged volcano, and fast.” I looked at Lavender. “Any ideas?”

She bit her lip in a way that I found adorable. Finally, she nodded. “I do. Take us to the nearest volcano. Active or dormant, it doesn’t matter.”

Mr. Brookstone blinked, then pulled out his phone, swiped it on, used his thumbs to rapidly do a Google search, and reported: “The closest is Sunset Crater Volcano, just north of Flagstaff, about one hundred miles away.”

“Then that’s where we need to go.”

“I’ll let the pilot know.”

“What’s the plan?” I asked.

She rested her hand on my thigh. “We’re about to awaken a dormant volcano.”

“Is that safe?”

“For me, yes. But the volcano might be annoyed.”

“You speak as if it’s a person.”

“It’s a kind of person. It’s an entity all its own, and it might have answers for us.”

Chapter 7: Volcano

The plane oriented on a private strip near Flagstaff, and Lavender admired the Painted Desert nearby before they landed. She liked landscapes, being half rock herself. An inconspicuous mini bus took them north to the Sunset Crater Volcano. “This should be interesting,” Brookstone remarked.

Lavender didn’t respond to his borderline sarcasm. She knew what she was doing. What she didn’t know was how the volcano would react to being roused from its slumber. She was in a position to know that volcanoes could be irritable; if one got angry, it was best to be far away. She would have to tread carefully, physically and mentally. But this was the only way she could see to make progress on their mission.

They pulled up at the fringe of the volcano. Lavender saw immediately that it was only a shadow of its former greatness. Its contours had weathered down and brush had overgrown much of it. That brush would not have dared encroach, in the volcano’s heyday.

“What now?” The Bull asked.

“I need to commune with the mountain. It’s asleep now. It may not like being waked. The rest of you should probably withdraw a space.”

“How far is a ‘space’?” Brookstone asked snidely.

“Three miles should suffice.”

He laughed. “How about three hundred feet?”

That was ludicrous, but she was annoyed. “Suit yourself.”

The bus backed off about a tenth of a mile, leaving the two of them. “Maybe you should join them,” she told The Bull.

“I’m with you. A little shaking won’t hurt me. Besides, I’m curious what you’re up to.”

She liked him, but he too maybe could use a lesson. “As you wish.”

Now she doffed her clothes and sat on the ground, increasing her contact with it. She let her posterior melt somewhat, melding with the soil beneath, which had formed from an ancient lava flow. There was an affinity.

“Wow,” The Bull said appreciatively. “You’ve got some ass. I mean that in the most admiring way.”

“I know it. Now please be silent while I commune.”

He shut his mouth, but his eyes remained on her bare body, and his thoughts were rampant.

“Your mind too,” she snapped. “This isn’t your bedroom.”

He tried to stifle his thoughts, managing to mute them somewhat. That helped.

Lavender reached out with her mind, the way she did when communing with her grandfather. She searched down through the layers of igneous rock, seeking the heat below. There would be a magma chamber, sealed over, quiescent, but still the mind and heart of the volcano.

She found it. Mountain mind, she thought. Hearken to me!

There was a stir of awareness. Who are you?

I am Lavender, half human granddaughter of an island volcano. But Grandfather is far away, so I must commune with you instead. I apologize for waking you, but my need is dire.

The awareness expanded. A powerful mind force coalesced around her. There is lava in you.

Yes. I am imperfect, a crossbreed, but I stem from volcanic lineage.

What volcano?

She presented the mental signature of her grandfather.

I know of him. All volcanoes connect via the subterranean labyrinth.

Yes. Grandfather told me that if I were ever in desperate need, far away from him, to come to whatever volcano I could reach and he would help me. So I have come to you.

The mind intensified. What need is this?

She could have told him about the threat to human existence. But she knew that volcanoes hardly cared about human concerns; men were mere flies on the hide of elephants. Instead she told him about the way the animen were using a volcano. How they were planting chemical bombs that the heat of the erupting volcano would disperse into the atmosphere. The humans do not like this. They may nuclear bomb volcanoes to get rid of the chemical. She sent an image of the kind of destruction such a bomb could do to an innocent volcano.

The volcano reacted. The nerve! We do not want this!

Of course not, she agreed. But it is the plan of the animen. They are using you to destroy their enemy.

The volcano pondered. The more he pondered, the hotter he got. His magma chamber swelled, pushing the rock above it upward. Bushes and trees were shaken.

“Yow!” That was The Bull, reacting to being jostled by a small earthquake. The government men were out of ready telepathic range, but she got a mental jolt as their bus was bounced and shaken. Well, she had warned them.

What do you want of me? the volcano asked.

I want to eliminate the poison vapor bomb, so that the humans will not fear volcanoes and seek to decimate them. It is in a volcano, but I do not know which one. It is my hope that you can commune with your brethren and learn which one has been been molested by the animen. Then I can go to remove the vapor bomb, and there will be peace between the volcanoes and mankind.

The volcano considered. His heat continued to grow, and the ground shoved upward and cracked open. Super-heated gas speared out from the new vents, incinerating the remaining vegetation. The Bull danced about, avoiding the steaming cracks; even he was not immune to this kind of heat. It did not bother Lavender, of course.

The government men had finally gotten the word. The bus was speeding away from the action, seeking the three-mile distance she had recommended. They were learning.

I am contacting the network, the volcano reported. Querying for such intrusions.

Thank you, she thought, relieved that he had decided to cooperate. It certainly could have been otherwise.

Well, there’s a certain hot sweetness about you, lava child, he thought.

Lavender had practiced using human sex appeal on human men. Did it work also on volcanoes?

The ground she sat on lifted higher as the heat of the volcanic outreach increased. Lava welled up, filling the cracks, flowing down the new slopes. An acrid cloud of gas floated just above the level of her head. The Bull danced closer to her, ducking down, realizing that her perch was relatively stable.

Three volcanoes have been molested, the volcano reported.

Three! Where are they?

The volcano projected a spherical map of the globe. The spots were widely scattered around it. Lavender grabbed it with her mind, making it her own. Thank you! she repeated.

Now let me sleep in peace.

Welcome, Grandfather. It was an honorary term.

The swelling of the earth abated. The ground slowly sank, the crevices sealing up. The radiation of heat diminished. The cloud thinned. The volcano was returning to quiescence. It would be a while before things were normal, but there would be no eruption.

“Wow!” The Bull exclaimed. “That was some thrill ride!”

Lavender disengaged her lava from the ground and reshaped it into a human posterior. She stood. “Don’t touch me yet,” she warned. “I’m too hot.”

“I’ll say!”

They walked across the ruined landscape toward the bus. When she had cooled enough, Lavender put her clothing back on.

“Did you get what you sought?” he asked.

“Yes. There are three volcanoes we have to check.”

“Three! What ones are they?”

“I do not know.”

“But—” His mind was all confusion.

“I have a map.”

“Oh.”

In due course, they reached the bus, now parked in the safe area. Brookstone came out to meet them. “We were afraid we’d lost you!” he said.

“You forget my origin,” Lavender said, stifling her urge to be smug.

“Any more volcanoes we have to visit?”

“Three.” She loved the mental cringe she felt.

“Where?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know!”

“Now I need a globe of the world.”

“We can show one onscreen.”

“No. A real one.”

“We’ll do what we can.” He no longer questioned her needs; his arrogance had been replaced by frustrated respect.

They drove to Flagstaff and found an old fashioned curio store. It had an old fashioned globe. Lavender focused on it, aligning the map in her head with the one of the globe.

She found one of the sites. “Pinotubo,” she announced.

“Pinotubo!” Brookstone exclaimed, punching it into his genius phone internet connection for information. “That’s the one that blew out so much ash it cooled the whole planet by a degree for several years!”

“That must be the one,” she agreed.

She found another. “Thera. Or Santorini. Both names are on it.”

“And that’s the one that destroyed the empire of Crete over two thousand years ago. Those cones are dangerous.”

She found the third. “Mount St. Helens.”

“And that’s the one in the state of Washington that wiped out a whole landscape.”

“The gas bomb is in one of those,” she said.

“One? Then why did they go to three?”

“I can tell you that,” The Bull said. “They wanted to hide it so we couldn’t just zero in on one and nullify it. By the time we check all three, spaced around the world, the real one may go off. And I’ll bet that even the animen who placed them don’t know which of the three is the real one, so Lavender can’t read any minds and get it that way. And I’ll bet further that they’re not just sitting there. There will be animen guarding each one. Even your Navy Seals will have trouble handling bear or tiger or orca men.”

“So might a bull man,” Brookstone said, recovering his snideness.

“And suppose one’s telepathic?” The Bull asked.

That set Lavender back. She had been the only telepath involved in their mission so far. What would she do if one of the enemy could read her mind as readily as she could read others?

This mission promised to be more of a challenge than she had first thought.

Chapter 8: Battalions

“Stay here,” said Brookstone, pulling out his phone. He stepped out of the curio shop and into the bright Arizona sunlight, where he proceeded to speak with what appeared to be some urgency. No surprise there. I watched him with some urgency, too, if that was possible.

“Where does he get off telling us to wait?” said Lavender, hands on her hips and steam literally coming out of her ears.

“He’s the one who controls the planes out of here,” I said. “Unless you can sprout lava wings, we’re grounded until we figure out what to do next.”

“Some superheroes we are, at the mercy of some bureaucratic ass.”

“For now,” I said.

“And, yes, I can sprout wings, for your information. But not for flying—for gliding. I used to do it as a kid. I would jump off my grandfather’s highest point, and glide down for nearly an hour. Pure heaven.”

“Okay, now that I gotta see!” I spun the globe idly. “So what’s he saying out there?”

She shook her head. “His mind is shielded. I think he does it automatically, out of habit, and I don’t read lips.”

“And he’s out of my hearing range,” I said. Bulls may not be known for their hearing, but we can pick up high frequency sounds beyond normal human hearing. Trust me, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Try sleeping when you can hear your neighbor’s snoring from across the street!

“Oh, boohoo,” said Lavender, reading my thoughts. “Try explaining to your classmates that your grandpa is a volcano.”

I spun the globe again, this time faster than I’d intended. It leaped off its axis, and shot down the aisle of the curio shop, knocking over a postcard display case and grazing the bum of the old lady who ran the shop. The globe finally came to a rest at the far end of the store, leaving a minor trail of destruction in its wake.

“Oops,” I said.

“Like a bull in a china shop,” said Lavender, laughing.

“If you two are done screwing around, it’s time to go.”

I fished out a couple of twenties from my workout sweats that I tended to favor these days. There wasn’t a shirt on earth that would fit me, unless you wrapped a bed sheet around me. And there was no way in hell I was walking around in a bed sheet. I am who I am, and what I am is a beast of a man, in every sense of the word. I left the twenties on the counter.

When we were were settled in the mini-bus—and after my horns were guided carefully through the open windows on either side—Brookstone explained. “We have teams converging on all three locations as we speak—”

“But—” began Lavender.

“But nothing. You two are new to the hero game, and you have served your purpose, for now. You gave us intel that would have been impossible to get otherwise. Now, let’s just sit back and let our teams take down the animen.”

“And what about Villainous?” I asked.

“We have another team of heroes searching for him. A proven team of heroes. We can watch the action unfold from the base.”

***

And so we did.

We took a seat in the Command and Control Room, or C&C, which was located deep in the base, and could have doubled as NASA’s mission control. Banks of computers were everywhere, manned by what Brookstone called “spooks,” or data intelligence gatherers. Massive screens surrounded us on either side. Most prominent were the three screens before us, which featured a very grim President of the United States. Other screens displayed the heads of other states. There was the German Chancellor, the British Prime Minister, and Russia’s President. There were others, too, all watching their own feeds, all waiting and seeing just what would happen.

“We have three teams on standby, waiting to hear from our remote viewer in Langley, Virginia.”

“Remote viewer?” I asked.

“Distant seeing. It’s a form of clairvoyance. Don’t ask me how it works, but once our guy locks onto a target, he can scan it from a distance.”

“What’s he looking for?” I asked.

“Something that would indicate a viable threat. Possibly a thermonuclear warhead. Now sit here quietly and watch the fireworks,” said Brookstone. “Oh, and don’t touch anything.”

The representative left to join a group of men at a long table near the front of the command room, leaving us alone. “I’m really beginning not to like that guy,” I said.

“I didn’t like him the moment I read his mind,” said Lavender. “He’s hiding something. I’m sure of it.”

“Well, we might as well watch the show. There’s nothing else on TV. Hey, do you think there’s a vending machine around here? I’m starving.”

***

I had barely come back with my bag of M&M’s when we got the first round of bad news. As I took my seat next to Lavender, the entire C&C was in an excited uproar, including the heads of state who were consulting now with those closest to them.

“What did I miss?” I asked.

“They’re not saying much, but I can pick up the general thoughts of the room. From what I gather, the distant viewer confirmed the package deposited inside Mount Pinatubo is a fake. The team there is going to engage the animen anyway.”

She pointed to the screen to the far right, and what I saw was a barely discernible mess. The images were mostly from head-mounted cameras, and I caught brief glimpses of flashing gunfire—and teeth and claws. The animen there were putting up a furious fight. Until one after another, the head gear winked off. One such gear landed on its side, and I realized I was looking at a fallen soldier. A bear-beast appeared in frame, bounding over the rocky soil. It stopped at the fallen soldier, raised a mighty paw, and slashed down. The image turned black.

I looked away. Poor bastard.

“More US and British soldiers are pouring into Pinatubo,” reported Lavender. “Meanwhile, the focus now is on Mount St. Helens in Washington State, where a joint US and Russian team is waiting on standby.”

I marveled at my new girlfriend—and just saying that sounded strange and exciting—whose head jerked this way and that, as she continuously scanned the thoughts of those in the room. The action on Pinatubo continued, until I finally looked away. I might be a new superhero, but I didn’t like watching men die... and so viciously, too.

“Mount St. Helens is a fake, too,” reported Lavender. “The teams there are engaging the animen, as well.”

And so they did. I saw gunfire and explosions and twisted bodies and death everywhere. I looked away.

“The focus is now on Thera in Crete, where a battalion of European Union commandos is waiting.”             

We waited. Meanwhile, the action on the other screens continued, as good men died, fighting against creatures that were nothing short of monsters. Creatures like me. How long before I was viewed as such a monster? How long before the men in this room turned on me as well?

The group of top brass closest to the big screen leaped to their feet.

“Confirmed in Thera,” reported Lavender nearly as fast. She sat forward. “A thermonuclear warhead is buried deep in the magma there. It’s not quite on a timer. Instead, it appears set to go off once the outer shell of nickel has been melted away. According to the distant viewer, we are hours away from an explosion. The battalion is engaging.”

And the animen were waiting, and they were many. They appeared on screen from seemingly everywhere, bounding over land and bursting from the sea. Great cats and gorillas and sharks. Creatures I couldn’t quite recognize. As the slaughter continued, I wondered how the other animen had formed. I thought my situation had been a fluke, with the lightning strike. Perhaps the lightning had just been on the way. Or perhaps the lightning hadn’t been such a fluke after all. I considered that maybe Villainous had created his own soldiers, and somehow I got caught up in it. Perhaps an errant lightning strike, all while he was creating his soldiers elsewhere. Something to ponder.

More explosions, more carnage, and from what I could tell on the big screen, the European soldiers were being decimated. At the least, they were making no progress, and time was slipping away.

“The distant viewer just confirmed that the volcano is lined with poison. Megatons of poison. All set to explode into the atmosphere as soon as the nuclear bomb goes off.”

“This just keeps getting better and—”

“Shh! Hold on. They’re talking about us, Bull. They’re desperate. There’s something here, on the base. Something highly experimental.” Lavender looked at me. “It’s a teleporter.”

“A tele-what?”

“Teleporter... and they want to send us into the volcano.”

Chapter 9: Burning Lady

“Send us to Thera?” The Bull asked. “What can we do there that their crack troops can’t? We may be animen, but we’re just two to their dozens.”

Lavender cobbled her answer together from what she was reading telepathically and her own thoughts. “You’re an animan. You could mix with them and they’d think you’re on their side. I am in a similar form, a cowgirl. In all the rush of battle, they wouldn’t think to check our authenticities. I am also telepathic. I can read their minds to discover whether there is any way to turn off that bomb before its casing melts. Usually there’s a way, in case the personnel are delayed getting out; I pick that up from the minds here. If we turn it off, the eruption will melt it instead of setting it off, and there will be no nuclear dispersal to impregnate the entire mountain with the poison. Their end-of-the-world bomb will fizzle.”

He shook his horny head. “I may be bullheaded, but even I can see that this is risky as hell. There may be no way to turn it off, but if there is, there may be no animan there who knows it. If there is one who knows, they may recognize us as not in their group, if they have cohorts that know each other the way regular military units do. You can’t read any minds if they attack us the moment they see us. Maybe we can be teleported in, but I’ll bet we can’t be teleported out again. We’ll be on our own in hell.”

These were apt thoughts. How were they supposed to get out, once the mission was done? She searched the local minds. What she found was not reassuring. If they failed, the bomb would detonate, triggering the eruption of the volcano, and they would be vaporized along with everyone else there. Which might be just as well, because the rest of the world would suffer horribly before being wiped out by the poison. If they succeeded, they would quickly vacate the mountain, because the eruption was building regardless. There was a hidden speedboat that would take them to Crete, where they would contact the authorities to arrange transport home. Assuming the animen did not discover the boat first. If so, they were on their own. Like all jury-rigged plans, this one was not completely tight.

“I agree,” she said after a moment. “But what happens if we don’t risk it?”

“Mankind dies.”

She nodded. “So it’s a choice between a bad risk, or outright doom.”

“I hate your logic.”

Brookstone appeared. He opened his mouth. “Yes, we’ll go to Thera,” Lavender said with resignation.

The man paused, taken aback. Then he remembered her telepathy, and wondered irrelevantly whether she had been with him that way when he used the head. She was tempted to tell him yes, though she hadn’t been; she wasn’t much interested in how men peed. “Uh, thank you,” he said. “This way.”

The teleporter was a disappointment. There were no fancy futuristic dinguses, no flashing strobe lights, no mysterious symbols. It was just a small empty chamber. The operative machinery was outside, all around it, focusing on the inside. There was barely room for the two of them. Barely was the word; they had to doff their clothing, because the animen were unclothed and apparel of any kind would give them away. “Aren’t we cozy,” Lavender said as he put his arms around her bare body.

“Yeah. I wish—”

Which was the trouble with males. In the presence of female nudity, their thoughts were limited to a single subject. “After the mission is safely over. Then I’ll cool my core.”

“Great!”

There was a zzapp! and they were in a dark tunnel, part of the labyrinth made when the animen were planting the poison. They unclasped, stood, and looked around as well as was feasible. The darkness was not complete.

“The action is that way,” Lavender said, pointing.

“Someone’s coming.” He was picking up on the footfalls.

“A wolf man and a cat man,” she said, reading their minds. “They don’t like each other much, but they’re on the same team. They’re running to reinforce the ones fighting the human troops.”

“We’ll join them.”

“Neither knows anything about the bomb. But their leader may.”

The two animen loomed out of the darkness. Both were fully furred and roughly human in outline, but had canine and feline facial features, pricked ears, and tails. “Where’s the action?” The Bull called. “We’re lost.”

“Down ahead,” the wolf man answered. “We’re going there.”

“You’re speaking English,” the cat man said.

Oops. This was Europe; English was their second or third language. “We’re from the Brit contingent,” The Bull said. “We got separated.”

They were doubtful. Then Lavender spoke. “We liked each other’s looks and we may not see each other again, considering the danger of this mission. We paused alone for just a few minutes, thinking it no harm. And took a wrong turn getting back.”

Now the animen saw that she was emphatically female, her light fur not concealing anything. They were interested.

“There’s no time,” Lavender said.

The animen agreed, regretfully. “After this—” the wolf man said.

“Maybe,” she replied, though “never” would have been more accurate. He needed to find himself a bitch—a female wolf—instead of a cow. Lavender’s femininity was distracting them from questioning her identity. Maybe it would help with others.

They ran on to the action. There in a chamber were half a dozen other animen. “Reinforcements? About time you get here,” a rhino man said.  His epaulets, tacked to his thickly creased hide, indicated he was an officer. “The humans have lasers. They’re messing us up. We need shields, not more bodies.”

Lavender read his mind. He was a group leader. He knew about the bomb! It could be switched off. It was a manual lever beside the control panel, there in case of emergency complications. But where was the panel?

Rhino paused. “You and you,” he snapped at The Bull and Lavender. “You’re foreign.”

“Brit contingent,” The Bull said quickly.

“There is no Brit contingent. You’re spies!”

Oops. The minds of the other seven authentic animen were focusing. “Flee!” Lavender told The Bull.

But the enemys’ reactions were as fast as their own, and so was their strength. Four of them grabbed The Bull’s arms and legs. He gave them a good fight, but couldn’t get away. He was surprised, though he shouldn’t have been; he had met his physical match.

The other four grabbed Lavender. She struggled, but was also overpowered. “Talk, cow girl,” Rhino said. “Or we’ll punish you.”

“Punish her anyway,” the wolf man said eagerly.

“Last chance,” Rhino said. “Who sent you? What’s your mission?”

Lavender couldn’t break free of them. All she could do was turn lava and melt into hot glop. But that would take minutes. Her mother Lava could do it in seconds, but Lavender was only half volcanic. “No.”

“Do it,” Rhino told the wolf man. “Make her talk.”

The wolf man turned the arm he held over to the cat man, while the other two animen held her legs apart, pinning her to the floor sunny side up. The wolf man came down on her, knowing better than to try to kiss her. Her mouth was not his object anyway. He oriented on her nether section.

“Don’t!” she cried. Her change was way too slow.

He paused. “You ready to talk?”

“No!”

“Good.” He set himself and thrust.

Lavender couldn’t escape them, but she was already hot from her effort to melt. She heated her core further.

“Ooooo!” the wolf man howled as the smell of scorched flesh spread out. He scrambled back to his feet. The odor was coming from him as he danced about in agony.

The other animen stared. “Look at that!” the cat man said. “Roasted!”

“She’s no animan!” Rhino said.

“That’s right, I’m not,” Lavender agreed. “I tried to warn you off.”

“She’s even hotter inside than outside,” a gorilla man said, awed.

Rhino had had enough. “Kill her!”

But she was finally hot enough. The others let go of her arms and legs as their hands were burned.

She wasn’t through. She got to her melting feet and walked splashily to where the four were still holding The Bull. “Let him go,” she said.

They did not. So she put her melting hands on their arms, making their flesh sizzle. Now they let go.

But she could hardly walk, let alone run. “Pick me up,” she told The Bull. “Don’t touch my limbs.”

He obeyed, putting his arms under her torso. That was hot too, but not enough to burn him. Yet. He carried her away from the staring animen.

“Where to?” he asked.

“There are old lava tubes honeycombing this mountain. That’s what they adapted for the passages. We need to get into one the animen don’t know about.”

Behind them Rhino was organizing a posse. They would be in pursuit in moments.

“Where?”

She extended her mind, reading the mountain like the mind of a volcano, which it was. “There,” she said, pointing up. “Knock a hole, jump in, close it over.”

He set her down, reached up, and bashed the roof of the tube. A section broke off. “Toss me up,” she said.

He took hold of her by the neck and groin and heaved. That wasn’t the way a man should ordinarily handle a woman, but she wasn’t hurt and it did the job. She sailed into the hole and landed beside it. Then he jumped up after her. He slid the fragment back to mostly cover the hole, and Lavender used her burning hands to melt the edges so they sealed. It was haphazard, but with luck, the animen wouldn’t think to look up as they charged along the tube.

They didn’t. They ran right on past in hot pursuit of nothing. The Bull and Lavender were safe for the moment.

But the hue and cry was after them, and they still had their mission to complete. How were they going to reach the control panel and turn off the bomb?

Chapter 10: Lava Army

“How long until the bomb goes off?” I asked.

“Hang on,” said Lavender and closed her eyes. One neat trick I had was that I could mostly see in the dark. Not always perfectly. But often good enough. Who knew bulls had night vision?

We were still in the lava tube. Reverberating through the stone, I heard the occasional explosion and what I thought was gunfire. There were still soldiers out there fighting the animen. What side was winning, I didn’t know. That Villainous had been concocting this plan was obvious. One didn’t lightly go about planting a nuclear warhead deep within an active volcano. This needed time and manpower, let alone securing an actual warhead. Next, he, or someone close to him, clearly had something to do with the animen.

And with me, I thought grimly.

There was a grand plan here, something that had been hatched out for years, if not decades, and it was going down before our very eyes. Of course, Villainous and his crew hadn’t considered Lavender, our ace in the hole so to speak.

“Okay, I found one of the minds that knows... we have less than thirty minutes. The animen are in a desperate fight. They had not expected human soldiers to be here. They thought they only needed to guard the volcano from a safe distance. They are trying to flee before the bomb goes off and subsequent eruption.”

I knew, of course, that the soldiers were here as a direct result of Lavender’s gifts. “Can you reach out to him?” I asked. “Convince him to switch off the bomb?”

“Maybe,” she said and closed her eyes again. “Doubtful,” she reported. “He’s been trained to go down with the ship, so to speak. All the animen here are fully aware that this might be their last mission.”

“Is there perhaps another, weaker mind we can influence?”

“I’ve never tried to influence anyone—”

“Then we have less than a half of an hour alive together, Lavender. When the bomb blows, we will die as surely as they will. I’m just half bull, not built to survive explosions. And your half human side could not endure a thermonuclear explosion, let alone a volcano blast.”

She took my hand, and I yelped. She was still warm, but I powered through. If she wasn’t able to convince someone to stop the bomb, then this might very well be my last physical contact...

“Get your mind out of the gutter,” said Lavender, and gave me a shot with her sharp elbow.

“Oof,” I said, and grinned.

She had closed her eyes again, and was clearly stretching her telepathic skills to the maximum. Ten seconds later, she shook her head. “No one has second doubts about the mission. All are willing to die for Villainous.”

“How many of them are there?”

“Dozens. Maybe a few dozen. Enough to thwart the soldiers. And all the animen are heavily armed as well. This was a well thought out scheme. The fighting is ferocious, but the animen have dug in. No one is close to the warhead.”

My internal clock suggested we had inside twenty-five minutes, maybe less.

“Less,” said Lavender. “My current contact is synched with the bomb. Twenty-four minutes and counting.”

I paced the cramped lava tube. I was feeling a strong need to bust out and do some damage. I might get two or three of the animen, maybe more. As strong as I was, I suspected the rhino man was even stronger.

“Brute force isn’t going to stop the bomb,” said Lavender.

“You can communicate with the volcano,” I said, pausing in front of her. My great horns scraped across the rock wall, causing a small amount of obsidian to break free and cascade around her.

“Yes, and watch it, will you.”

“We’re going to have bigger problems than just a handful of falling rock,” I said. “Explain this: how was it possible that the volcano was amenable to this intrusion?”

“The planting of the bomb and army?”

“Right?”

“Unless the mountain is worshiped and revered, they are generally not too concerned with the goings on with man.”

“You mean, it was probably unaware of what was happening.”

“Probably. These are old souls, ancient beyond comprehension. Even if he blows and man is wiped off the face of the earth, what is it to him?”

“But you are, in a sense, one of his kin. Would he be so amenable to seeing you die, too?”

She considered as I continued to pace. “No. You’re right.”

“Perhaps we can appeal to him.”

“And do what?” asked Lavender.

I continued pacing, and continued scraping free more rock. “Your mother was an extension of the volcano, was she not?”

“She was.”

“And the volcano could form any shape it wants?”

“It can. I can, too—but not as quickly—”

“No time for that,” I said. “What if the mountain formed not just one person, but an army of soldiers. Or whatever it thinks is fit to stop the animen?”

“Worth a try,” said Lavender, and she closed her eyes again. I watched as her bottom melted into the floor, becoming one with it, so to speak.

I continued to pace...

Lavender’s lips moved and I could see she was communing with the volcano. Perhaps it was a sort of uncle to her. I didn’t know.

I continued pacing...

“It is done, Bull,” said Lavender. “But the volcano requires a sacrifice.”

“Where are we going to find a virgin—”

“Volcanoes quit requiring virgins centuries ago. No, it wants a mate.”

“What kind of mate?”

“The way my father mated with my mother. It desires such companionship.”

“How will we find it a mate? There’s no time—”

“Not now, silly. When this is all over. I agreed to the deal.”

“Fine, so what do we do?”

“We don’t do anything. He’s forming the army as we speak.”

“Then we need to get to the bomb. Do you know where it is?”

She closed her eyes, then nodded. “I do.”

“Great,” I said, and used my indestructible horns to break through the sealed entrance into the tube, and we dropped down.

Lavender led the way.

Chapter 11: Aniwomen

They rounded a curve, going toward the control room where the bomb switch was. The route was not direct, because the lava tubes were not straight; they curved like spaghetti. Fortunately the fighting was no longer right here, and Lavender could sense the minds of any animen who happened to be in the vicinity. It should not be hard to avoid them by shifting to another tube.

“Not so fast, deary.”

Lavender and The Bull both slewed to a stop. The creature before them had horns and fur and a great barrel of a chest under a tight blouse. But it was not exactly an animan in a skirt. It was an aniwoman. Lavender had been tuning only into male minds, so had missed this. “Oh!” At the moment she could not think of a more appropriate comment.

“Yes, I’m a buffalo gal,” the woman said. “Rhino sent me. You won’t be burning off any of my appendages, lady lava.”

The Bull resumed motion. “Get out of the way, cow,” he snapped as he strode toward her.

“Or what, horn head?” Buffalo inquired, swerving to intercept him. She caught him in her embrace and drew him in close for a bosomy hug.

Lavender saw that he was at a loss, not designed by nature to fight a female, especially one as phenomenally endowed as this one was. He was not about to hit her or hurt her. That was one reason Lavender herself had been able to manage him. Buffalo knew his incapacity and was using it against him. In a moment she would have him seduced or unconscious. Or both; it was in her mind, and she was a lusty creature.

Fortunately Lavender was made of different stuff, literally. “Or I will deal with you,” she said. “I’ll burn your ponderous udder.”

“I think not, hot box,” Buffalo said as she tightened her grip on The Bull. “Look behind you.”

Lavender knew it before she looked. There were two more aniwomen: a tigress and a wolf bitch, both in roughly human form but with fur, tails, and catlike and wolflike faces. Both were quite well endowed in the human fashion, and wore almost translucent blouses and quite tight short skirts. She did not need to read their minds to tell their normal roles in the animan army.

Oh, damn! She might quickly handle one, but it would take time for two if she could do it at all. Worse, she saw that they were ready for her: they wore fireproof mitts. Rhino had learned well from his own encounter with her. She would not be able to come to The Bull’s aid; she had problems of her own.

They gave her no time to consider. They pounced on her, each grabbing an arm with their mitts. Meanwhile The Bull, having to deal with Buffalo Gal on his own, was not doing well. She was squeezing against him and kissing him. He had always been a sucker for a kiss, and she was close to his own species. That kiss was clouding his male bovine mind.

Lavender knew she needed help. Thera! she called to the volcano. Send a liquid lava rivulet here immediately!

She felt the volcano’s acquiescence. He was diverting an existing flow into this tube. It would arrive in minutes. Thera by himself was not smart in the human manner, but now he was attuned to her.

Meanwhile, Lavender had to prevent the two aniwomen from demolishing her, and the third from finishing The Bull one way or another. There was one advantage to being the center figure in a threesome: leverage. She was anchored in a manner they were not. She brought her arms forward, hauling the two along so that they collided with each other. They had the wit not to let go, so she hauled them back, and crashed them together again, harder. This time their heads banged, and they did let go, uttering feline and lupine curses.

Lavender jumped to tackle Buffalo Gal, clapping her hot hands to the aniwoman’s sensitive ears. Buffalo snorted and turned The Bull loose. But now the other two aniwomen caught up, and it was three against one. Two grabbed her arms again, and the third made ready to gore her in the torso. She could not really be hurt this way, but it was taking invaluable time.

But now the lava flow was arriving. It was as yet only a thin trickle, but it would do. Lavender used her arms against theirs to haul herself into the air, kicked out with her legs, and hooked their legs so that the four of them crashed to the floor in a clumsy tangle.

Right onto the lava flow. It didn’t hurt Lavender, of course, but it scorched the tails of the aniwomen. Maybe more than the tails. The stench of burning flesh puffed out. There was instant, fiery chaos.

Lavender drew herself free of the thrashing mass, snatched up a loose mitt, and used it to grab The Bull’s arm. “Run!” she cried.

They ran while the three beast women struggled to get out of the lava stream without burning themselves worse. It was thin, but now it covered much of the floor. They literally could not stand on it. Thanks, Thera! Lavender thought, grimly amused.

Just find me a female with a spirit like yours, lava lady, he replied.

She intended to, when the time came.

They reached the bomb enclosure. But it was sealed off by a solid metal door with a similarly solid internal lock. The Bull tried bashing at it, but it was proof against his strength.

“I will melt the lock,” Lavender said, discarding the mitt and heating her hands. Only five minutes remained.

Wait. The bomb had not been on a timer. It was set up to detonate when burning lava touched its mechanism. That lava was only five minutes distant. Yet it wasn’t quite the same thing.

Thera! she thought. Turn off the lava flow here!

Soon. That was not because he didn’t take her request seriously, but because liquid lava could not be cooled on a dime. It was going to be a close call. She’d better get in there and pull the switch, just to be sure.

“Well now, we meet again.” It was Rhino. “I suspected you’d be canny enough to deal with the ladies, so I lurked here. Just as well.”

And Lavender, distracted by events, had forgotten to scan for minds here. Rhino had outsmarted her.

The Bull charged him. The two collided with a thud that shook the tube. Then they fought. Rhino had no fear of The Bull; he was just as massive and tough and ornery. He knew that he did not need to overcome The Bull, just delay their effort long enough for the bomb to detonate. Rhino was quite ready to sacrifice himself and any other animen in the vicinity for the cause. Lavender had to grudgingly admire the animan’s grit.

She did not go to The Bull’s aid, because that would delay her effort with the lock. She focused on the mechanism, making her fingers as hot as only lava could be. The metal began to melt. But there was a lot of it, deeply set; would she melt out the lock in time?

Then she remembered something else. Thera! Send some lava men here!

Soon.

The fight continued, as the two animen were evenly matched. Her melting effort continued. The minutes passed.

Three lava men burst into the chamber. They were only vaguely human, without proper faces or anatomical details; there had not been time to craft perfect ones. But they were animate and had arms and legs. They quickly carried Rhino away.

The three aniwomen arrived, having finally escaped the lava stream. Their bodies were badly burned in several places, but they were too tough to let that stop them. The lava men immediately took them on, and their female wiles were useless. So this battle had been won.

But the time was also up, and Lavender had not finished with the lock.

All of them froze, knowing that they might not exist seconds from now.

A minute passed. The bomb did not detonate. The key lava flow had been diverted or cooled enough. But the bomb was still armed, and could be set off at any time.

Lavender still needed to get in there and pull the switch to disarm it. But now there was a clamor of more animen charging toward the scene. This was bound to get complicated.

Chapter 12: Shaft

“Oh no,” said Lavender.

“What now?” I asked. I was facing the entrance into the chamber, an entrance from which I was expecting a small army of animen to appear at any minute.

“I just caught the last thoughts of Rhino before he went up in flames, literally.”

Some of the animen had escaped, while others had fought the lava army to their deaths. Rhino had been one of them, and now the smell of cooked rhino flesh—along with cooked leopard and jackal—filled the chamber.

“Go on,” I said. The sounds of running feet—and claws and hooves—were getting louder.

“The distant viewer the military used was wrong. The nickel plating over the weapon was only to protect the bomb from the lava. Lava doesn’t melt everything; at least, not immediately. Nickel has a melting point of—”

“Never mind all that, what’s your point?”

“The bomb is still ticking, literally. And we have less than five minutes.”

“Where’s the shut-off switch?”

“There’s no shut-off switch. The bomb is on a timer.”

“Where is it located?”

“Not far from here, within an active lava tube.”

I didn’t know much, but I knew that most countries these days tested their weapons underground, where the damage was contained and fall-out was negligible. Just outside the entrance, I heard a commotion. Many more animen had arrived—luckily, they were met with just as many lava soldiers.

“You picking up my thoughts?” I asked Lavender.

“Yes. But even if Thera could cool the rock enough to completely encase the bomb, there’s still a chance the explosion might set off the chain reaction Villainous is hoping for.”

“How big is the bomb?”

“Not very big. A suitcase bomb, I think they call it. But big enough to possibly cause a volcanic eruption—hey, what are you doing?”

“Hop on up, cowgirl, you need to ride me out of here—and take me to the bomb.”

“But what about the animen?”

“You let me take care of them...”

And with her superheated arms and legs wrapped around me, I charged out of the room, and heaven help anyone who got in my way.             

***

Turns out, quite a number of animen and aniwomen had.

But when I have a full head of steam, there’s not much on the planet that can stop me, even other animen. And I was charging through the lava tubes, horns and shoulders lowered, barreling and goring my way through. Amazingly, the molten soldiers let me pass. How they distinguished me from the enemy, I didn’t know.

“They recognize me, you big oaf, now take a left into this next channel.”

I did, turning and skidding, and then picking up speed.

“Turn here, and here.”

I followed her directions until I found myself standing before a steaming pit that could have been the entrance into hell. Below, glowing magma churned and bubbled.

“It’s down there,” said Lavender, hopping off my shoulders, and joining me at the lip of the pit. Within the broiling pool of molten rock, I saw a smaller, darker section. An island of sorts, where Thera had cooled the lava around the nuclear device, back when we had thought cooling it would help. “This is the main conduit down to the large magma chamber. Most volcanoes explode when the pressure builds up inside this chamber, eventually blowing the top off a volcano.”

“But there’s no pressure in here now.”

“Not yet. Truth is, no one knows what would happen if a nuclear bomb went off inside a volcano. My guess—and Villainous’s guess too—is that an explosion in here would blow the top off this volcano; in effect, mimicking an eruption.”

“And blowing the poison into the upper atmosphere.”

“Where it will be swept up and effectively spread far and wide.” Lavender looked at me, and I saw the tears in her eyes. For the first time, I realized that this spunky woman who had suddenly appeared in my life, didn’t know what to do, and didn’t have all the answers.

I may not have all the answers, either, but I was a man of action.

“Contact Thera and have him–or it–continue to cool the surrounding magma.”

Although nuclear weapons were often tested underground, I also knew that fusion bombs vaporized the surrounding rock, sometimes causing large craters to appear, or rock caverns that caved in on themselves. So, the more surrounding rock, the better.

“Look who’s suddenly the expert,” said Lavender, picking up my thoughts. “What are you planning to do?”

I scanned the vertical shaft that led to the vent above. It was hard to believe that just earlier in the day I was getting drunk in my living room... and now I was deep inside a volcano. “I’m going to plug up this hole and bury this weapon. We can’t stop it from going off, but we can negate its effectiveness.”

I was about to charge off, when I paused, swept Lavender up in my arms and gave her the mother of all kisses.

“It occurs to me,” I said, breathing heavily, “that this might be the last time either of us are alive.”

“Too bad we don’t have another five minutes,” she said, winking.

“Five? Give me two! Now, contact Thera and have him—”

“Already done, big guy, while you were busy kissing me. Is there anything I can I do?”

“You can stand back,” I said, and then set off.

***

My plan was simple and bullish.

I lowered my head as I ran along the narrow shelf. My right horn—as hard as anything on earth—dug deep into the rock wall and plowed a deep furrow into the cylindrical shaft. The result was better than I could have hoped. Massive chunks of wall broke free, splashing down into the magma chamber below.

I continued running along the narrow shelf, once slipping and nearly losing my balance to plunge into the molten rock below. Anyway, I continued on, gasping, and digging my horn deep into the wall, leaving a wake of crumbling rock behind me.

By the time I had gone completely around the shaft, I was pleased to see the mayhem and destruction I’d caused. Much of the interior wall had crumbled down into the magma chamber, filling it, and, I hoped, burying the weapon deep below.

I paused only briefly to admire my handiwork—or my horn work—and swept Lavender up and onto my back.

And charged the hell out of there.

***

We felt the explosion.

The floor buckled and I buckled with it. I nearly lost my footing, but somehow managed to stay upright. I continued running, wondering when we would be vaporized too...

“Stop, Bull. We did it.”

I slowed to a stop, gasping, hunched over. Some superhero I was.

“Thera has confirmed that the explosion has been contained. But he is badly wounded. Too wounded to think of a mate. I told him we would be back.”

I nodded, too tired to speak.

“I’ve been thinking about Villainous.”

“When... when did you have time to think about him?” I wheezed.

“Mostly during my piggy-back ride.”

“Bull-back,” I quipped, finally catching my breath.

“Did you find it strange that Mr. Brookstone appeared almost seconds after Villanous’s media transmission?”

“He said he was nearby—”

“Or was he waiting?”

“He said his department had been keeping tabs on me.”

“Why you? There are dozens of animen and aniwomen.”

“Maybe they keep tabs on all of them. I just happened to be the closest.”

“Fine. Then how is it that these other animen and aniwomen have formed an alliance with Villainous, leaving you out of it?”

“I’ve been entertaining the idea that he created them just for this purpose.”

“Then that means he created you too. But how?”

“I thought I had been created by accident, one night while working as a rodeo clown. During a fluke lightning strike.”

“Maybe it wasn’t a fluke. Maybe the lightning strike had been pre-planned, for just that moment.”

“But why?”

“Maybe you were his test subject. Maybe he got the wrong person. Maybe he had plans for you. Were you ever approached by anyone?”

“Not that I can think of? Just media types. Interviews.”

“No one who asked you to join him?”

“No, not that I can think of.”

She bit her lip, thinking. Her eyes glowed in the darkened tunnel, and I wondered if she could see into the dark as I can.

“I can, to a degree,” she answered, although she sounded distracted.

“Maybe he hadn’t gotten around to me,” I said. “Maybe he was planning to come around. Maybe there are others like me—”

“No,” she said. “I would have heard of them. The world would have heard of them. You were the rare fluke. You were the media sensation. Hell, I read about you in a magazine from my small island. I hadn’t heard of the others.”

“Which means he created them in secret,” I said.

“But created you publicly,” she added. “Why?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I was just a down-and-out rodeo clown. Hell, I was a down-and-out superhero too.”

Lavender began pacing. “Rhino and the others seemed brainwashed, somehow. Too willing to give up their lives for Villainous.”

“What are you getting at?” I asked.

She paused, biting her lower lip. “I don’t know. But you aren’t like the others.”

“Maybe I’m a fluke.”

“Or maybe you are a mistake. Maybe you are the one animen who got away, so to speak. At least, got away from him. Maybe there’s a reason why you were sent into this volcano. Lest we forget, Brookstone sent you here. Just like he appeared out of the blue.”

“Or he is who he says he is, and I was sent here to help stop a global catastrophe.”

“Oh, I have no doubt we foiled Villainous’s plan. He certainly didn’t expect someone like me to come along. The volcano should have exploded, and the poison should have been released into the atmosphere. It’s just that you were supposed to die with it,” she said. “Villainous wanted you dead. So did Brookstone.”

I didn’t like where this was going. Then again, I didn’t like the idea of the entire human race being destroyed, either. I happened to like most of the human race.

“So what’s the plan?” I asked.

“We get out of here... and talk to Brookstone.”

Chapter 13: Honeymoon

They had made the decision, but there were details to work out. Lavender knew they could not simply emerge from the volcano, catch a flight to America, and go to confront Brookstone. As far as Brookstone knew, they were now safely dead. If they tried to act openly, giving themselves away, they would soon enough be dead in reality.

“I have a problem with that,” The Bull said.

“I am with you,” Lavender said. “We need to stay dead, at least until we reach Brookstone.”

“I always wanted to be a zombie,” he said with a laugh.

“Not a zombie. They are undead. There’s a difference.”

“Or a ghost?”

“They lack substance.”

“You can read my mind, but I can’t read yours. What is on it, hotcore?”

Now she laughed. “I would cool my core for you, bovine boy. What I mean is that maybe we could assume different identities, so that we remain officially dead but are actually still in business.”

“What identities?”

“That is the detail I am stuck on at the moment. Human folk like to have things like ID cards to prove they exist, and we can’t use ours now. They also use money for things, and what we have isn’t enough.”

“Can the volcano help?”

“I’m not sure how, even if it were in good condition.”

“Via the telepathic volcano network. To locate a couple of folk we might switch out with. Ones who maybe would like to have lava buddies like your mother or a really hot man.”

Lavender was amazed. “You’re a genius, bullhead!” She kissed him, her mouth now cool enough so as not to burn him. Then, answering his thought, she said, “No, it will take several hours to unheat my core. You’ll just have to wait on that.”

“Damn.”

“Meanwhile, I’ll ask Thera.”

She reached out to the ailing volcano. Thera knew the score, from her mind, and agreed to contact other volcanoes in the area. They would survey the minds of all the thousands of tourists in the area.

“Meanwhile, let’s get out of here,” The Bull said.

They made their way cautiously up and out, avoiding any remaining animen. In due course they stood on the surface overlooking the waters of the Mediterranean Sea. The scene was deceptively placid.

A pair of figures approached them. Both The Bull and Lavender girded for mischief, until she touched minds with them. They were a lava man and lava woman, newly minted, both telepathic, sent by the volcano. They were coming to consult. “They’re okay,” Lavender murmured.

“Well now,” The Bull said, eyeing the shapely nude female.

“Her core is hotter than mine,” Lavender murmured, amused. “In fact, her surface would burn you. She’s freshly made.”

“Oh, I really wasn’t thinking of anything.”

The creature’s mind laughter was so emphatic that even The Bull picked it up. “She’s telepathic,” Lavender reminded him. “She knows what you’re thinking.”

“Then tell her to put some clothes on,” he said, embarrassed.

“They would burst into flame. Now let me dialog with them.”

We have found a couple, the male thought.

“Found a couple!” Lavender repeated aloud.

“Damn!” The Bull said appreciatively.

The couple was John and Marsha, names they had chosen to mask their real intention, which was to exchange identities with a native couple on Crete. They were history buffs and wanted to explore the country at leisure. They had not been able to clear it with the authorities, so wanted to do it unofficially. In fact, they had married recently not from love, because they weren’t each other’s type, but their common purpose. They were on their honeymoon, pretending to be lovers while searching desperately for two Cretans who might want to exchange identities with them for a few months, visiting America. So far they had been unsuccessful, and the tour was almost over.

“Would they be amenable to associating with telepathic lava folk?” Lavender asked.

They might be. This wasn’t certain, because the matter had not been raised with them. But if Lavender and The Bull talked with them, maybe there could be a deal.

“And do you lavas want to be making out with these humans?” The Bull asked. “They may not be perfect people.”

What the lavas and the volcano wanted was full human engagement, from mind to genital, from joy to pain. Thera would experience the human mode completely, because of the mind contact; it wasn’t even exactly vicarious. Just as Lavender’s mother and grandfather had.

“We need to get to that cruise ship,” Lavender said. “Soon.”

“We’ll swim,” The Bull said.

“I’m not sure I am fit to swim. I can make the motions, but I’m pretty solid for my size and might simply sink. I wouldn’t drown, but I wouldn’t get there fast walking on the bottom.”

“You’ll ride my back.”

“Good enough.”

The lava couple did not try to swim for the same reason as Lavender. They would wait on the mountain, and be in touch telepathically. It seemed that the range of one telepath contacting another was much greater than when they were reading the minds of non-telepaths. Their range was also greater than Lavender’s because they were full lava folk, undiluted by human ancestry. If the deal was made, they would know from Lavender’s mind, and arrange a rendezvous.

“And cool off,” The Bull said. “I don’t care who the man is, he’ll need a cool core.” He was surely thinking of the wolf animan’s fate.

They read his mind and agreed to be cooling while waiting.

The Bull entered the water, and Lavender clung to his back. She had cooled considerably, but her surface remained warmer than the human norm. “No danger of getting cold in the water,” he remarked. “Not while you’ve got my back.”

“I’ve got it,” she agreed, pressing her breasts against him.

“Now you’re heating me up,” he complained.

“As if you mind.”

He swam where she directed, going for the cruise ship. It took time, but he moved well, and by dawn they spotted it. It was one of those multi-decked liners that looked like huge stacked sugar wafers. It was anchored at the moment, while parties went ashore for assorted tourist traps. The Bull simply took hold of the anchor chain and shimmied up it, carrying Lavender with him.

No one was on the deck, by no coincidence; Lavender had checked nearby minds before they left the water. They shook themselves dry and walked naked to the cabin where John and Marsha slept. Lavender knocked on its door.

A young man answered. He looked at Lavender’s bare body. “Uh—”

“We came in response to your summons, John,” she said smoothly. “You and Marsha are looking for a couple to switch places with. We are that couple.”

The thought of protesting flickered through his mind. Lavender inhaled. The thought fled. “Come in.”

Marsha was still in her nightie, sitting on the bed. She opened her mouth. “You’re beautiful, Marsha,” The Bull said, going to sit beside her. She closed her mouth. He was after all a lot of man.

“We need to return to America anonymously,” Lavender continued blithely. “We are thought to be dead in the volcano eruption, and we prefer to leave it that way. We will be happy to take your places here, and assume your identities, at least until the tour is finished.”

“How did you know about—?”

She inhaled again, stifling him. “I am telepathic. I read it in your minds. I am Lavender, part human, part volcano lava. We have an additional deal for you, if you are interested. There is a lava couple who would like a social and maybe romantic association with a human couple. The woman looks like me, only more shapely. The man looks like my friend The Bull there, only more handsome. Both are telepathic and eager to oblige in any manner you might desire. They also represent formidable protection from any thugs who might seek to harm you as you poke about the ruins. I can put you in touch with them now if you wish to verify this.”

“You’re talking magic,” John protested. “That doesn’t exist.”

“Yes, magic. For this reason, we prefer that you keep our secret. Magic exists, but it is not politically correct. However, the proffered deals are real.”

Now Marsha spoke. “We’re interested. But we’d prefer to check out these lava folk before making any commitments.”

“Open your mind, and the man will contact you mentally,” Lavender said. The thing about mental contact was that it was inherently honest. Lying was impossible, and compatibility was either there or not there.

Marsha was dubious, but tried it. In a moment a look of wonder crossed her face. Then interest. Then passion. “Oh, I want to meet you, lava man,” she breathed.

“About the lava woman who looks like you—” John said.

“Open your mind. You will know her when she comes.”

John did. “Wow!”

“They will guide you to them,” Lavender said. “You will need to rent a small boat to go pick them up. You will have to deal in cash only, so as not to give away your identities, but they will help you earn enough money to live on. Remember, they can read minds; that makes a difference both personally and when dealing with other people. They will be your loyal companions. All they want is your respect and love. Speaking as the child of a human/lava couple, I can assure you that you can trust them. And the volcano they represent.” She knew she didn’t need to say more, because the lava couple was already in touch. They knew.

Marsha stood and put on her clothing. She efficiently packed her bag, but left her purse for Lavender. “We are on our way.”

“Our identities are yours,” John said, handing The Bull his wallet. “You can reach us through the lava folk if there is need.”

Then John and Marsha departed.

The Bull lay down on a bed. “I’m overdue for a nap,” he said, and conked out.

Lavender didn’t need sleep in the same way he did, but she was ready for a good rest. She lay down on the other bed.

They were on their way to America, anonymously. And Brookstone was in for an ugly surprise, in due course. And maybe they would succeed in learning what he and Villainous were really up to.

Meanwhile they were John and Marsha, a honeymooning couple. She would have to drill The Bull on compartmentalizing his mind, and on mentally being a man in the throes of love and sex, so that any telepaths they might encounter would be fooled.

She glanced at The Bull, sleeping. She doubted he would have a problem. He was already dreaming of her.

Chapter 14: Villainous #2

World Media Transmission #2

Greetings, I am Villainous.

You are still alive. Congratulations. If not for the heroic and misguided attempts of a few individuals, you would surely be breathing your last. The poison needed only to be inhaled by a few of you, and would travel quickly to the rest. My calculations predicted 90% human and primate casualties within 7 days. 99% within 10 days.

A lot of death. A lot of mayhem.

I do have a back-up plan, of course. Every good criminal mastermind has a back-up plan. Or three.

No, do not hate me. I am merely ending your existence quickly, before you do it slowly. Thus giving the earth a chance to rebuild from the plague that was the human race. Yes, I used the past tense.

Your death is imminent.

I had tried to remove you quickly and painlessly. The poison—one of my own concoctions—would have put you all to sleep, to breathe your last in blissful slumber.

Now, well, now you are not so lucky.

Truthfully, I prefer method #2.

Yes, I am a monster, after all.

Prepare for your death.

Now, you burn.

Chapter 15: Secrets

We were sitting in the cabin, eating enough for three men. Correction, I was eating enough for three men. Turned out, Lavender didn’t need much food.

“What do you eat?” I asked.

“You don’t want to know.”

“Try me.”

She was sitting on the corner of the bed, watching me. She had long since ditched her horns to blend in with the other, non-horned tourists, which is how she was able to score me my personal buffet. Myself, I wasn’t so lucky. These massive horns weren’t going anywhere. For now, or until it was dark, I was cabin-bound.

She got up from the bed and plucked the fork out of my hand. Yes, I use a fork—and utensils in general. I’m not a complete animal, after all. Lavender held the fork before her, and in no time flat the pronged utensil began glowing. Then it did more than glow, it wilted over her knuckles like a plucked flower. And what she did next, I’ll never forget.

She crumbled the fork up into a superheated, glowing ball... and then popped it into her mouth like something a kid would buy at a candy shop. Except this candy had once been a metal.

“Alloy to be exact. Not the most satisfying of snacks, mind you, but it will hold me over until I find something more suitable.”

“And what’s more suitable?” I asked, suddenly aware that the only fork in my possession was presently down my girlfriend’s gullet.

“Silver. Gold. Nickel. Titanium. Your high-end metals.”

“Jesus, that could get expensive.”

“I never said I came cheap.”

“You can say that again. Now, could you fetch me another fork?”

She did, and when she returned, she said, “The boat is abuzz.”

“I thought it was afloat.”

“Very funny, Bull. Apparently, there was another Villainous transmission. He’s threatening to burn the world.”

“Burn how? More lava?”

“I doubt it. There’s only one way that anyone could reach the entire world with fire.”

I set down the fork. I suddenly wasn’t feeling very hungry.

“You can’t mean...”

“I do. Somehow, the bastard got a hold of not just one nuclear weapon. But my guess is a whole arsenal of them. Enough to destroy the world.”

“And not just primates,” I said. “Us included.”

“Well, you. I could withstand a nuclear blast, as long as I’m not too close to it. Radiation would do little to me.”

“And you know this how?”

“Call it a gut instinct.”

“Let’s hope you’re right. But for the rest of us, we have to stop this bastard once and for all. He’s beginning to bug me.”

Lavender laughed, then snatched up my fork, heated it, wadded it up, and swallowed it down.

“Will you quit doing that?” I said, setting aside my plate.

“Hey, I figure I’m gonna need my strength.”

“For what?”

And now I saw a different sort of smoldering. This time from deep within her irises. “Hey,” I said. “Nice trick.”

“It’s no trick, big guy.”

“But don’t we have the world to save?”

“We will, in due time.”

“But—”

And she shushed me by pressing those super-heated lips onto mine. I might have whimpered a little.

***

It was after, and I think I broke the bed. Oops.

“You might have broken me, too, big guy,” she said, winking. Lavender could, of course, adapt her shape readily enough. Apparently not as fast as the pure lava men and women, but swiftly enough, especially as I myself was heating up. “My question is: did you have to bray like something wounded?”

“Oh, did I?”

“You did, and it was loud.”

“It was also the first, um, time since, you know...”

“Since you turned?”

“Yes. I wasn’t even sure I could. I mean, I suspected I could, but I also thought I would seriously hurt...”

“A normal girl?”

“Yes.”

“Well, luckily I’m not normal.”

“And luckily you came into my life.”

“You can thank the article I read on you. Which gets me thinking about Villainous.”

“Ouch.”

“Fun time is over, big guy. You might just be the only guy who can defeat Villainous, which is why he sent Brookstone after you in the first place.”

“To set me up?”

“I think so, yes. You were very much meant to die in that volcanic eruption. And, for all he knows, you really did die.”

“Fine. But let’s circle back to this ‘I might be the only person who can stop Villainous’ business. Why would you say that?”

“Because I’m beginning to think that he created you.”

“You said that. You thought I might be his first.”

“Yes, I had thought that. But I have been thinking about it ever since, especially when you finally got off me and were catching your breath—”

“Hey, I’m beginning to think I didn’t do a very good job—”

“You were fine. Now, can we talk about saving the world... again?”

“Fine,” I said, although I was suddenly not very fond of the word. “Why do you think I can stop him? I mean, I can stop just about anyone, but why do you think he wants me dead?”

“Because you were his mistake, Bull. Think about it. While he was busy building an army of animen and aniwomen, he inadvertently created you too. Not to mention, you were the one he couldn’t control. Last I checked, you aren’t doing his bidding, unless your bidding was bedding me.”

“Very clever,” I said. “Who knew lava girls could be so funny.”

“Half lava,” she said.

“Fine. So I was his big mistake. So what does that mean?”

“It means he fears you somehow. Enough to arrange to get rid of you in the volcano.”

“Fears me why? I mean, if I ever see the little weasel, I’d wring his neck.”

“No. It’s more than that. Anyone with half a mind would fear your great size and strength. No, he fears something else.”

“While we think about it, why don’t you give me another shot at it.”

“Shot at what?”

I jutted a thumb at the bed behind me.

“Oh no, big boy. I’m still recovering. I think my legs are still out of joint—oh, don’t mope. No one likes a sad bull.”

“I just think I could do better. I was a little rusty.”

“You could say that again. But there’s always later. Especially when the world isn’t being threatened with nuclear destruction.”

“Fine,” I said, and sighed. Yeah, I was moping.

“There’s something about you. Something he can’t predict. Or something else.” She suddenly paused, turned and faced me. She took my head in her hands. They were pleasantly warm. “I have an idea. No, not that idea. Another one. Let me search your mind... maybe there’s something hidden in there... something I can find that you might not be aware of.”

“Worth a shot,” I said.

And with that, she closed her eyes, and I felt her probing my mind, probing deep...

Chapter 16: Mark Twain

It was like walking through a wasteland or a garbage dump, this excursion through the guts of a man’s mind.

It seemed that half of it was concerned with sex, a third with survival, and the rest with assorted things washed up on the shore of a frustrated existence. It didn’t help that she was the passionate object of the sexual portion; both his man aspect and his bull aspect wanted to get into her and never get out. Completely unrealistic, of course, but the underlying passion had little concern for reality. If there was one thing men were stupid about, it was sex. Fortunately around the edges, among the weeds, were some reasonable constraints, such as the knowledge that she could heat her core and incinerate any intrusion she did not want. Also, the early throes of what could reasonably pass for love. This bull’s experience with that china shop was limited, but it was already forming into a ring in his nose.

What she was looking for was anything relating to Villainous or the animen, that predated the Villainous broadcast. The Bull had not consciously known of them, but they had surely known of him, especially if he had been created as part of the program. What was different about him? Why did they want to eliminate him? Just because he had a bovine mind of his own? That might be annoying, but not reason for such a complicated effort to get rid of him. Why hadn’t they tended to the extermination of mankind first, then gotten around to the details like The Bull at their convenience? He really would have known nothing about the animen had Brookstone not told him. Not that ignorance would have been bliss, as the human realm collapsed.

There had to be something else. Something that made him a real threat to Villainous. How could that be, when he was just one of a group of conversions? It had to be a difference that set him apart from the others. Yet the merging of animal and man had been successful, so it wasn’t physical. Could it be mental? It wasn’t extraordinary intelligence; he was okay, but no genius. It wasn’t any great background knowledge; he didn’t know anything that had not already been in the minds of the man and the bull before they merged.  He did not have any secret knowledge of Villainous scandal that could be used for blackmail. He simply didn’t know anything outside of himself.

But there was an obscurity. It was like a passage into a cellar chamber marked NO TRESPASSING. What was that doing here? Why bother to mark it off? It was right between the mind of the bull and the mind of the man, like an interface. It was not native to either mind; it was something inserted from outside. That had to be the work of Villainous.

She oriented on it. It seemed like a connection between the two minds, except that it was closed, not open. Why have such a thing, when the minds were essentially unified without it? It seemed to be without purpose, and that made her suspicious. Why go to all the trouble to put it in there if it had no function?

Lavender had no real knowledge of the wiring of computers, but she had heard of something called a logic gate. As she understood it, which was hardly at all, it was a kind of arbiter of a concept, like a transistor that limited the flow of current along a wire, unless a signal to the transistor told it to get out of the way. This was blocking a concept, unless told to unblock it. What was the concept? All she could tell was that on one side was the bull mind, and on the other was the man mind. They were walled from each other, at least to this very limited extent.

She knew she was on to something. Since the man and bull minds were already working together well enough, so that their joint body could function and their joint mind could agree that they desired to have endless sex with a tough enough woman, why should just this one portion be limited? She traced the leads, and discovered that they led to the centers of identity: the innermost essence of the bull and the man, which remained separate. Their self-awareness. In fact, The Self, the seat of personal consciousness. That connection was blocked off by the logic gate. That meant that there was no community of identity in this one area. The identity was that of the human, while that of the bull was outside looking on. What would happen if the transistor was told to change and let the bull identity through?

She did not need to ponder long on that. The bull was raging; it wanted to dominate, and charge through the streets goring man, beast, and building, leaving a wake of destruction behind. If it ever got through and took over, beauty would be governed by the beast. The man she knew and was starting to love would be gone.

It was surely similar in every animan and aniwoman: the beast was chained, the human governed. But why? If the gate were ever changed, either the animals would take over, or the creature as a whole would become dysfunctional as its two selves fought over possession of the body. Why nullify the animen like that? Why have even the potential for nullification?

She left that question in abeyance as she studied the gate. Now she saw that this one was broken; maybe the lightning strike that merged bull and man had incidentally fried the gate. Either the bull or the man could have been given control; as it happened, it was the man. Maybe others had failed, and the raging animal had run amok and gotten itself killed. This one had been lucky. So if the signal came through to change the gate, nothing would happen; this one was off its hinges and would not move. The Bull was safe; he would never turn fully animal and destroy himself.

But, again, why? Obviously the dangerous gate had been installed for a reason. What could that possibly be?

The question brought its answer: animen were wild creatures, prone to violence. Only the human element made them at all manageable. Suppose one got out of control? A signal to the gate could shut it down in a hurry. Villainous might be justifiably paranoid about his minions; one on the loose could be very bad mischief. The Bull was proof of that. There needed to be a way to turn him off in a hurry, quietly so as not to disturb others in the vicinity. The gate would do it. The boss was making sure there could be no revolt of his minions.

Now she was beginning to understand. Villainous must have caught on that The Bull’s gate was broken, so he could not be quietly turned off. Maybe Brookstone had verified that, when they met. So he had to be eliminated before he got troublesome. In fact, he was already troublesome; maybe the same broken gate accounted for his independence from Villainous and determination to be his own beast-man.

So what was the signal that would change the gate, not that it mattered in The Bull’s case? This time she followed the lead from the gate. It went to the nerve center for speech and hearing. So it was a spoken command. What was it?

Finally she ran it down: Mark Twain. She knew that was the pen name taken by a famous American writer, Samuel Clemens, who had once worked on a riverboat on the Mississippi. When the water got shallow they had to know exactly how deep it was so the boat would not snag on a bar. They needed at least twelve feet clearance, or two fathoms. When the man called out “mark twain,” that meant it was deep enough, but watch it. Certainly there were treacherous waters here!

Now at last she had it: when an animan heard those two words, the logic gate would open the channel for the animal, and internal hell would ensue. It was a ready way to nullify any or all of them.

She withdrew from The Bull’s mind, carefully, trying not to disturb any of the muck or incite the sexual interest that lurked throughout. It was like backing out through a deep dark cave haunted by myriad ghosts. She had never been this deep in anyone’s mind before, and hoped not to have to do it again soon, if ever. She felt like taking a shower. It wasn’t just The Bull; she knew that plumbing this deep in any male mind—and maybe in any female mind too—would be like this. Minds were best left to their filthy privacy.

“I felt you tramping around in there,” The Bull said. “Weird. What did you find?”

“I found the answer,” she said. “Now I know why Villainous wants you promptly dead.”

“Why?”

“There is a logic gate in every animan mind that—” She paused, picking up his blank response. “It’s like a stoplight at an intersection. The logic gate does for thoughts what the light does for traffic. It directs the flow so that there’s no trouble. If the light malfunctions, such as by showing green both ways, the cars will crash and there’ll be a mess, and that intersection will be blocked for hours.”

“There’s a stoplight in my head?”

“The equivalent, yes. If it receives the signal 'Mark Twain,' it will malfunction, and the man and the animal will struggle for control of the body. That’s like crashed traffic.”

“Who?”

“Mark Twain. It’s the pen name for the American writer Samuel Clemens.”

“Why didn’t he use his own name?”

“Writers are odd. They like to use other names.”

“They’re ashamed of what they do?”

“No. At least I don’t think so. The best ones use pseudonyms.”

“But why?”

She was getting impatient. “You’d have to ask them.”

“I mean why put the stoplight in my mind?”

Oh. She should have read his mind. “To put you out of commission.”

“But—”

“Don’t worry. Your stoplight is broken. It’s locked on you regardless. Otherwise when I said the words, you would have gone kaplooey.”

“Okay. So my stoplight’s broken. Is that reason to kill me?”

“Oh, yes! Because it means Villainous can’t control you. Worse, for him, you can put any other animan out of commission in a hurry, just by saying those magic words. In fact, we could broadcast those words across the globe and put any animan or aniwoman who heard them out of commission.”

“But why wouldn’t they wipe out mankind first, then come after me, since I’m only a detail?”

“Because even after mankind is gone, you could still wipe out any other animan with those words. And if you tell the human authorities those words now, you can bollix the whole animan campaign. Any human will be able to take out any animan just like that. So they need to take you out before you can do any such thing.”

“But how do they know I know the words?”

“They don’t. Yet. They want to kill you so you won’t have a chance of learning them. Once they learn that you’re still alive. That’s why we need to stay dead as long as we can.”

He nodded. “Okay. You can poke into my mind anytime, you marvelous creature. Just feeling you in there made me get ideas.”

Didn’t she know it! “Thanks, no. If we could take the sex out of your mind, there would hardly be enough left for you to function. But we do need to protect ourselves, to take out some insurance, because once they learn we’re not dead, they will be totally committed to our extinction.”

“Insurance?”

“Such as writing out the words and what they do and sending the letter to a newspaper to publish—if we die. Or maybe better, putting them into the Internet with a logic gate triggered by our deaths. Maybe we’ll have to send our own code words every few hours or it will send out the words anyway. So that Villainous will know that he can’t simply rub us out. He will have to negotiate.”

“I don’t think he’ll negotiate.”

“Then we’ll broadcast the words and wipe out his nefarious project.”

He nodded again. “I like it. Now—”

She laughed. He really had never left his favorite subject. “Well, I guess I’ve been poking into you pretty intimately, so it’s only fair to let you poke me in return. I wonder if I could wear out your sexual interest for a few hours so we could focus on more important things for a while.”

“Not a chance.”

“Why not?”

“There is nothing more important.” Then he grabbed her, and she did not resist at all. She was ready for some diversion herself. She was already shoring up her torso and cooling her core for some serious interaction.

But she knew that their battle with Villainous was just beginning.

Chapter 17: The President

Okay, now I know I broke the bed. In fact, it was little more than padded kindling at this point... with scorch marks, of course.

“Oops,” said Lavender when she got up from the broken bunk. “I think I might have enjoyed myself more than I let on.”

I grinned and noted the deep grooves in the walls, the punctures in the bedding, the knocked over lamps and dislodged sconces. I had even managed to tear up the carpeting. “John and Marsha are definitely getting a nasty letter from the cruise ship.”

“I doubt they care,” said Lavender, who had been too quick to don the terry cloth robe hanging in the bathroom. I had only been able to admire her backside for the briefest of seconds. “The cruise ship has insurance, and I’m sure the lava couple is keeping the pair of them busy. That is, if Thera has recovered enough from the explosion. And no more admiring my backside, or any side, until this business with Villainous is done. You do realize he threatened to scorch the earth, right? For all we know, the world is in flames while we’ve been canoodling.”

“Oh, that wasn’t canoodling. That was—”

“I know what it was, Cow Brain. My point is, we have to get serious about this threat. Villainous is not someone—”

“Or something,” I cut in.

“—to take lightly. He’s already proven himself capable of getting his hands on one nuclear weapon. What makes us think he hasn’t gotten a whole arsenal at his disposal?”

“Because only a handful of countries had that capacity to blow up the world. No way in hell Villainous was also busy making enough nukes to blow up the world.”

“Well, he was busy designing a new race…”

“Exactly. Too busy to also be in the bomb-making business. Besides, the United States has eyes everywhere. No way someone is making that kind of weaponry in secret.”

“Then how else would he hope to torch the earth?”

I didn’t know, but I just caught a peek of Lavender’s robe opening—an opening that was promptly closed. Geez, that woman was in my head.

“No need to be in your head to see what you’re leering at, Bull Boy. And I just had a thought.”

“So did I...”

She ignored me. “Just because Villainous couldn’t have made the bombs, perhaps he has access to existing bombs.”

“It would take a lot more than one suitcase nuke to incinerate the earth.”

“Exactly. Like, say, all the nukes in the United States’ arsenal?”

I laughed and nearly reached for the woman sitting at the edge of the broken bed. Or was it called a bunk? “Only the President of the United States can launch those nukes, don’t you know? There are some serious safeguards in place. I read about it once. No one, but no one, can walk in there and launch those nukes.”

“No one but the president,” said Lavender, and she had a far-off look in her eye that had nothing to do with sex, but everything to do with mischief.

“What are you getting at, lava girl?”

“Villainous has already managed to place a high-ranking mole in the Department of Defense—”

“We don’t know for sure if Brookstone is—”

“No, but it’s likely. For now, let’s assume he is.”

“Or we can assume that Villainous is full of hot air, and the rigging of Thera was his best chance at world domination.”

“And what if we’re wrong? What if Villainous has one more trick up his sleeve?”

“Then we leave it to the people who can do something about it. Namely, the military. No way he’s getting close to the nukes.”

“He may not be... but the president can.”

“Now, hold on—”

“Like I said, he already managed to get Brookstone in—and for all we know, he’s an animan himself. Maybe there’s a cat tail curled inside his suit. My point is, he could be something smaller, less obvious than...”

“A bull?”

“Right.”

“Do you know how crazy this is, Lavender? Are you suggesting that the President of the United States is an animan, too?”

“I’m not sure what I’m suggesting. But I am guessing that if Villainous could get to the president, he could get to the nukes...and that would be the end of it all.”

I paced the small confines of the cabin. “Just craziness. You know that right?”

“Hear me out, Bull. Villainous has already proven to be a master geneticist. Hell, he created his own subspecies of man and animal. You’re living proof of that. How much harder would it be for him to create, I dunno, a clone of the President?”

“A clone? Did you just say a clone?”

“I did, and I’m being serious. What if he had... and even now, this clone was about to replace the real President of the United States… What if, at this very moment, the president is being held captive in secret, while his clone is about to launch enough explosives to destroy this world many times over?”

“I would say I just made love to a crazy woman.”

“There was no ‘making love’ about any of this,” said Lavender, pointing to the destroyed furniture.

I stopped pacing and eyed the open laptop on the desk. It had been left by John and Marsha. I knew what she was saying was ludicrous, but there was just enough doubt in me to sigh heavily and sit at the desk. “I saw on the news last night that the president was vacationing in the Mediterranean. On a heavily guarded and remote island. Not very far from us, in fact.”

“Perhaps that’s why Villainous chose Thera, knowing the president would be nearby, just in case the volcano eruption plan fizzled.”

I didn’t like this. I didn’t like any of this. I especially didn’t like the idea of knowing that life on planet earth might be destroyed, all because of one crazy bastard. “Fine,” I said. “So what do you propose we do?”

Chapter 18: Yot

Lavender’s mind was spinning. She hated having to come up with world saving plans on the spur of the moment. In fact she hated having to do it at all. All she wanted was to settle down to eating, sleeping, and cuddling with a good man who was comfortable with her nature. Saving the world required too much thought and effort.

“I propose we warn the president, so that he can avoid the clone and not contribute to the end of the world as we know it.” There; that was pretty simple, once she got it formulated.

“But he’s thousands of miles away.”

“No. I told you. He’s nearby, on his yacht.”

“Oh, yes. What’s a yot?”

“A big pleasure boat. Y A C H T.”

“Oh, a yaw-chet.”

He had not made the connection between the sound and the spelling. He was an inland guy, unfamiliar with the fancy craft that came to the island she had been raised on. It wasn’t worth a hassle at the moment. “Whatever.”

“Isn’t he surrounded by secret service men who won’t let anyone get close to him?”

“Unless it is someone they already know about,” she said. “So they let him through.”

“If we have trouble reaching him, wouldn’t the clone have trouble too?”

“Good question. Maybe they sneaked the clone into his bathroom, and when he goes there to defecate—”

“To what?”

“Poop. Something you fully living folk do a lot of. The clone can be waiting there, and take his place, and the secret service folk may never know the difference. So what we need to do is get to that bathroom first, and take out the clone. Then he’ll be able to poop in peace.”

“Does he know about us? So they’ll let us in?”

“I don’t think so. We’re largely anonymous, by design. But maybe—” She trailed off, an idea coming to the fore.

“Maybe what?” he demanded impatiently.

She silenced him with a kiss as she focused on the elusive thought. It related to the volcano. On the way the two lava figures had connected to John and Marsha. Something about that had differed from the way she related to The Bull. They were telepathic, yes; so was she. So that wasn’t it.

The Bull managed to free his mouth. “But—”

She kissed him again, harder, and goosed him for good measure. The lava folk’s telepathy reached farther than hers, because they were first generation magma, while she was diluted second generation. She could do what they could, but slower and not as well. Even so, there was something—

He escaped again. “What—”

She pushed him down on the battered bed, tore open the front of her robe, whipped out a hot breast, and jammed it against his face. She held him tightly in place so he couldn’t breathe, let alone interrupt her thinking. He hardly struggled at all; he liked breasts and he could hold his breath for a long time. His body relaxed. Better yet, so did his mind. He liked keeping abreast of the situation.

What were they doing that she was not? How did it relate to the present challenge? They had reached out to John and Marsha to reassure them—

Now he was licking her nipple. It was ticklish. She suppressed her reaction and held firm.

And there it was. The lava folk had not merely read the human minds, they had projected their own thoughts, so that John and Marsha got to know them in a hurry, from the inside out. Lavender couldn’t do that; all she did was read minds.

And he was sucking. Okay, that was distracting. She bore down harder, filling his mouth with more of her breast. She doubted he could take the whole thing in, but he was trying.

Yet wasn’t she lava too? Diluted, but still a child of the volcano. If they could project, why couldn’t she?

She reached out to the lava couple, questing, hoping they would read her. How do you project?

The answer came immediately. Like this.

Suddenly the ability was in her mind. It was indeed like this. She had had it all the time, but somehow never thought to invoke it. It was not as strong as theirs; she would have to touch a person physically to project a thought into his mind, at least until she knew him. But she could do it.

Thank you! she projected. She could do it long distance, with a lava person, because they had minds like hers, only more so.

Welcome, the female thought. She was in a rather intimate clinch at the moment, having cooled her core, but her mind was free.

Marsha’s fun, the male thought. But your breast notion is fun too. I will ask for hers.

“Welcome,” Lavender murmured, laughing. She pulled her own breast out of The Bull’s mouth. “I need to save some of that for myself, before you swallow it whole,” she told him, tucking it back into her gown.

Now he could talk. “What—?”

“I will project to the secret service folk I encounter,” she said. “Reassuring them that I’m legitimate. And when we get to the president, all I need is to touch his hand, to familiarize myself with him. Then I will be able to project the danger. To warn him about the clone. So he can protect himself.”

“Okay.” He did not understand the details, but was satisfied that she had worked out the program.

They got on it immediately. They donned swim suits, borrowed tourist scuba diving gear from the cruise ship inventory, fitted it on, and dropped into the sea. They were headed for the president’s “yot,” only a few miles away. Lavender didn’t actually need the gear to breathe, but the fins did help her swim without sinking. So did the little paddle motor. Mainly it was camouflage: they needed to resemble innocuous tourists diving for shells.

Their minds, too. Just in case there was an enemy telepath in the vicinity. Remember, she thought to him. We are the honeymooning couple John and Marsha, and all we have on our minds are love, sex and shells.

Got it, he agreed, not thinking to be surprised by receiving her thought. Maybe he didn’t fully realize that it wasn’t his own thought. Then: shells?

We’re shell diving. It’s what tourists do when they’re not in the bedroom.

He considered that. How about underwater?

He was not thinking of shells. No. We don’t want to tear up the Mediterranean the way we did the cabin.

Oh. He was of course disappointed, but also flattered by the implication that their lovemaking could tear up the seascape. Men—what could you do except love them?

They swam toward the president’s boat. Lavender ranged out with her mind, seeking animen. She found some scattered around, but they were neither telepathic nor thinking of her. They could be bypassed and ignored.

Closer to the craft there were straight human lookouts, actually secret service personnel, male and female, routinely scanning for any potentially hostile craft. None were looking under the water.

They made it to beneath the “yot” without raising any hue and cry. So far so good. Were she in charge of presidential protection, she would damn well be scanning underwater too; it was sloppy. Maybe the ones assigned to do that were off having a wild party with call girls and all. The secret service had a reputation to maintain, after all.

It was dusk. No one’s watching aft, she thought to The Bull. We can climb the anchor chain, same as before.

They did, The Bull carrying her over his shoulder, gear and all. They made it to the deck. So far so good, again. She doffed her fins, set down her motor, and scanned and located the president alone in the master cabin. Actually they didn’t need to approach the president himself, just the lavatory (interesting word) to take out the lurking clone. Because there was indeed a presence there.

“Freeze!”

They froze. Men appeared from their hiding places. “Oh, crap!” The Bull muttered. “It’s a trap.”

So it seemed. But why hadn’t she located the men mentally? She had been scanning constantly.

Then she remembered what Brookstone had said: compartmentalization. They had walled off what they were really doing, and she hadn’t thought to check all the compartments. She had been an idiot.

Worse, some of them were animen, who had been similarly hidden. Damn! Now they stood in a circle around the two of them, and they were armed. Any false move would make them pile in.

Armed? As she checked their minds more closely she realized that there were no guns here, only knives or other weapons. And she knew why: the president’s wife had forbidden firearms on the “yot.” More power to her! But that did not mean that these men were not formidable.

All she could do now was to try to alert the president openly. “We have to see the president,” she said loudly. Though she did not move physically, she was busy both heating her core for action and enlarging her breasts and hips to make a sexier presentation in the tight wetsuit. Every little thing could make a difference, especially when dealing with men.

The head man gazed at her evenly. “Why?”

It was clear there would be no reasoning with him; his mind showed it. Also, these men were under orders to capture the intruders alive. Why? The men did not know, but would obey to the best of their ability. The leader, appreciating her growing sexiness, hoped to get to rape her the moment it was allowed. He did not understand her full nature. She was going to enjoy burning him to a crisp.

Now she realized also that there had to have been a telepath involved. Just as she had been scanning mentally for animen, the telepath would have been scanning for her, while remaining out of her mental sight. So her arrival with The Bull had been no surprise, and they had walked blithely into the trap. It was a lesson for the future, if there was one: learn to detect any telepathic scanning that touched her.

But now they had to act.

To the president’s cabin, she thought to The Bull. Now!

Then she said aloud: “Mark Twain.”

The animen stood unmoving, fighting their internal battles. They were out of the fray. That reduced the odds at the outset.

Meanwhile The Bull leaped into action so swiftly that even these trained men were caught off guard. His horns and fists hurled them left and right. Meanwhile, Lavender simply charged forward, picking up the squad leader and flung him overboard. He had not anticipated anything like that from this pretty girl with the swelling bosom. Her core power was stronger than any man or woman’s. Another reason she was a good fit for The Bull.

A man emerged from the president’s cabin. It was the president himself! She knew him from his pictures on the media.

“Mister President!” she cried. “You are in great danger!”

“Oh, I doubt it,” he said, eyeing her torso.

“Do not go near your bathroom—”

She broke off, reading his mind. They were too late.

This was the clone.

Chapter 19: Submersible

“Mr. President,” I said, not sure what the protocol here was. I almost reached out for his hand, then nearly bowed. In fact, I did a little of both. No doubt looking foolish.

“Give it a rest, Horny,” said Lavender. “He’s a fake.”

The faux president bowed. “I would say all the way down to my fingertips, but that’s not quite accurate, for even a clone’s fingertips will vary from the original. But everything else is nearly identical.”

“All of which will help you launch the nuclear weapons,” said Lavender.

The clone bowed. Lord, but he looked just like President Walton. “But how?” I asked. “President Walton was only elected, what, three years ago? How could a clone exist so quickly? I mean, don’t they have to, you know, grow up?”

Lavender turned to me. “We really don’t have time for this, Bull. I’ve scanned the clone’s mind, and I can ascertain he’s only a few years old. In fact, barely over a year.”

“I don’t understand—”

“You can thank Villainous’s advances in technology for that. Not only has he perfected cloning humans—which isn’t that difficult to do—but he has created the ability to do so quickly. The clone before us has limited intelligence. In fact, he knows only what he has been trained. Correction. He is being operated by a distant mind.”

“What the devil does that mean?”

“He’s being remote controlled.”

“I need a beer.”

“Focus, Bull,” said Lavender. “You can drink later, when all of this is over.”

“And if we survive.”

“That goes without saying,” said Lavender. “First things first, we need to know where the real president is. You,” she said to the fake. “Where are you keeping President Walton?”

“I don’t answer to you, bitch.”

“No, you don’t. And your mind is blank. Bull, throw him in the ocean. Feed him to the sharks.”

“With pleasure,” I said, and picked him up by the scruff of his neck, feeling an odd sense of fear and guilt grip me. After all, he looked so much like the real president. At the railing, I paused. “Are we sure he’s a fake?”

“I’m sure.”

“Then here goes.”

“Wait!” screamed the fake.

“Wait for what?” asked Lavender, who came up to my side. Behind her, I heard growls and gnashing of teeth, and claws clamoring over the wooden deck. The animen, who had been out of earshot before, were more animal than men, and they were fighting it out on deck. I don’t know how Noah did it.

“The clone knows nothing,” he said, in a voice that suddenly sounded a little higher pitched. “Please put him down.”

“Do no such thing, Bull,” said Lavender. “Who are we speaking to?”

There was a short pause. The man weighed close to two hundred pounds. For me, that might as well have been next to nothing. I could hold him over the railing all day if I had to.

“I am Villainous,” said the voice through the faux president.

“You are controlling the president?” asked Lavender.

“I control many of my creations.”

“You don’t control The Bull,” said Lavender.

“No, and that is unfortunate. He ended up being a real pain in the ass.”

“Hey,” I said.

“Where’s the president?” asked Lavender. “The real president?”

“He’s needed elsewhere. The clone is just for show, of course. His fingerprints or retinal scan won’t unlock the nuclear codes. Only the real president can launch a nuclear attack. And he will, too, whether he wants to or not.”

Elsewhere on the ship, I heard crashing and growling and the sounds of feasting. The animen were really going at it. A part of me wanted to jump in there, and join the fray. The animal part of me, that is.

Lavender put a hand on my arm. “I scanned the ship. The secret service agents are being held below decks. Many of them are wounded. The one I have connected to understands that before the nuclear bombs can be launched, the president must be positively identified. The United States has a two-man rule in place, and while only the president can order the release of nuclear weapons, the order must be confirmed by the Secretary of Defense.”

“You are a powerful telepath, my dear,” said the fake president dangling from my grip. “I could use you.”

“For what?” asked Lavender, surprising me.

“To help rule our new world.”

“There won’t be much of it left once the bombs go off.”

“Not much above ground, dear girl. But I am building a Utopia below. Far, far below, where it will be safe, and where your kind will thrive.”

“My kind?”

“Yes, Lava girl.”

“And what of the humans?” she asked, surprising me further. I sure as hell wished I could dip into her mind to see what she was up to. But she was the telepath. I was just the muscle.

“They will be removed, of course. Humans are a plague to this earth.”

“And yet you propose to wipe the earth clean of all life, not just humans.”

“Like a forest fire consumes the dead log, a nuclear holocaust will give the earth a chance to renew.”

“In thousands of years,” said Lavender.

The president continued dangling over the railing of the ship. He had given up fighting me and now hung there, watching Lavender with interest.

“Oh, it will be more than a thousand. But what’s a few thousand years to this planet? Once the radiation has decayed, life can begin anew. As we watch from below.”

“And you will be dead many times over.”

The president laughed in my hands, sounding just like the real president. So weird. “My dear, I have created life. I have created new species. What makes you think I haven’t conquered death as well? Everyone in my world will live for as long as they wish. Reborn over and over again into fantastic new bodies. Stronger bodies. Join us, Lavender.”

“I’m interested,” she said, and I turned and stared at her.

She looked at me and shrugged. “We should at least hear the guy out.”

“You mean, just before he kills us?”

The president laughed in my arms, following this conversation. And for all I knew, Villainous was following my thoughts too, and Lavender’s. Which meant...

Which meant the bastard was nearby.

“Of course I’m nearby, Bull,” said the president. “Now, if you’ll put me down, you’ll find a submersible on the starboard side of the ship. Yes, that means the other side of the ship. You missed it coming in from the port side of the ship. You will find your president in there.”

“And you too?” asked Lavender.

“Of course. We’ve been waiting for you.”

Chapter 20: Templa

Lavender thought fast, doing her best to shield her thoughts from the telepath she knew had to be close by, maybe with Villainous. But she needed more. Maybe The Bull could help.

“Grab my ass,” she murmured to him.

“Huh?” He knew she wasn’t naive about his interest, but she had always discouraged public displays of it.

“Now.”

He was confused, but happy to obey. He put down the clone and took hold of her right buttock and squeezed. His mind plunged into a maelstrom of sexual aspiration.

“You must have an interesting personal relationship,” the clone said, licking his lips. The sight made him wish for something similar. He was, after all, male. They were like cookie cutters in this respect.

“Yeah,” said The Bull. “She’s some doll.”

Now there was so much sexual tension that any telepathic contact with their minds should be hopelessly compromised. That and her shield should suffice for long enough.

Lavender sent a thought to the two lava folk. Vital message.

Transmit.

“Mark Twain stops animen.” Send it to all volcanoes, to tell humans, unless I tell them not to every 24 hours.

Done. They did not question her meaning or her reasoning, knowing from her background mind that this was serious business.

That was it. Thank you.

She returned to the immediate scene. “Now let go,” she murmured.

The Bull reluctantly obeyed, knowing that she had her reasons in this department too. The sexual tempest eased.

“I presume there was a point to that little display,” the clone/Villainous said.

Now it could be told. “Yes. To block out your telepath while I sent the following message to all volcanoes: ‘Mark Twain stops animen.’ If I do not counter it every day, it will go out to the human realm. Should I become incapacitated or die in the interim, it will be broadcast, and you will lose your animen. That will likely complicate your program, Mr. V.”

“You took out an insurance policy.”

“What else? It isn’t as though we trust each other.”

The man gazed at her. “Damn. I like your style.”

“I don’t like yours. Now let’s adjourn to your sub to negotiate.”

He smiled. “This way,” the clone said, leading them to the starboard, which was the right side of the yacht when facing forward. There was the sub, nestling close, its top hatch open. “Sorry I can’t join you, but it’s a private meeting.”

They jumped across and climbed single file down the ladder into the sub. The hatch closed, shutting them in. They were in a small modestly illuminated chamber. Subs weren’t known for spaciousness or for wasted power.

A svelte young woman appeared. She wore long blond hair, a tight blouse, and a very short skirt. “Hello, Bull and Lavender. I am Templa.”

“The telepath!” Lavender exclaimed, surprised. It was right there in the woman’s mind. The Bull just looked, as she was an eyeful.

Templa smiled. “You were looking for a male, lava girl. Mistake.”

“Mistake,” Lavender agreed. She had missed the obvious again, by limiting her focus to one gender. But she could tell that this woman’s powers of mind reading and projection were significantly beyond her own. That was another reason Lavender had missed her: she was better at hiding. She was dangerous.

“We are meeting under truce,” Templa said. “Agreed?”

Was there a choice? “Agreed,” Lavender said, and The Bull nodded, his eyes locked on the woman’s torso. Lavender was annoyed that his interest was so readily invoked, but what could she say? He was male.

“This way.” Templa turned, providing The Bull a view of her pert rear, and led them to a larger chamber where two figures waited in comfortable chairs.

The enemy was throwing curves at them, in more than one sense. Both Lavender and The Bull had been unbalanced, albeit for different reasons. There were certainly rough seas ahead.

“Welcome, visitors.” He was a big, powerful bear of a man with white hair. Villainous was the merged man and polar bear. The other man was the real President Walton. “Take your seats.”

Lavender and The Bull sat. “The president appreciates your coming,” Villainous said. “He hopes you will somehow free him and save humanity, but he doubts your ability to do so.” Lavender read the truth of that in the president’s mind. He was a thoroughly experienced politician, a realist, who understood the odds against him. Knowing himself to be powerless, he was lying low.

Then Templa took the last seat, opposite them, her skirt not even trying to cover her thighs. “Three of us present are not telepathic,” she said, meaning the three males. “Therefore I will translate as necessary.”

“You’re human!” The Bull said, his eyes not quite reaching the level of her face.

Her lips quirked. “You noticed. To answer your questions, yes I am to be spared the holocaust. I am Villainous’s girlfriend. I am also the leading telepath of the vicinity. It is a business and social relationship. But Vil is not the jealous type, should you be minded to join our cause. I happen to like animen.” She smiled at The Bull, who shifted uncomfortably.

“Let’s get on to business,” Lavender snapped. She was aware that if Templa succeeded in distracting The Bull sufficiently, Lavender would be on her own. Villainous might even use him as a lever against her. There were levels and levels.

True. Lavender almost jumped. That was Templa’s projected thought.

“First, the tour,” Villainous said smoothly.

“Tour?” Lavender asked, surprised again.

“I will show you Utopia. You need to appreciate what we offer.”

“You offer disaster.”

“Hardly. Unrestrained humanity offers the disaster. It will not govern itself for the sake of reason. It needs to be stopped before the world is completely ruined for the future of life itself.”

“He has a point, Lavender,” Templa said. “You know it.”

And she could read Lavender’s mind to verify it. He did have a point.

Still, she fought. “Humanity has its flaws, and some are huge,” she conceded. “It needs to be corrected, not destroyed.”

“Books have been published on the subject,” Villainous said. “Movies have been made and shown. Scientists are overwhelmingly aware. Common sense shows that the human course is wrong. Yet the destruction continues. It will soon enough wipe out most other species, and then mankind itself. Man is doomed. My proposal merely takes man out of the picture while something else remains to be saved. It is, by grim analogy, like a lone man getting to end himself before pointless and hideously expensive medical procedures wipe out all his assets and needlessly impoverish his family. He is being sensible; it is the larger society that is mad.”

“You know—” The Bull started.

“Grab my ass,” Lavender said, hoping to shut him up.

“Or mine,” Templa said. “I will let you talk freely, animan.”

The Bull remained loyal to Lavender, but Templa’s offer was tempting. He wished he could somehow be allowed to grab both.

And Templa knew it, salaciously reading his mind at the same time Lavender was. She did know what interested animen. Villainous was making progress with The Bull by focusing on his weakness.

“She’s full human,” Lavender murmured. “Your unbridled passion would kill her.”

Templa winced, now reading Lavender’s mind. What The Bull considered fondling, anyone else would consider mayhem. “True,” she said regretfully.

There was a bump. “And we are here,” Villainous said grandly.

“Where?” The Bull asked.

“Utopia,” the president said. “It is impressive.”

“You’ve seen it?”

“Templa projected it to my mind. It’s like a total immersion internet game.”

Lavender was becoming increasingly wary of Templa. But something bothered her: so far it seemed as if Lavender herself were the object of their persuasion, rather than The Bull. Did that make sense?

Smart girl.

Yet Lavender was neither fully human nor an aniwoman. She had no ‘Mark Twain’ flaw. She was just The Bull’s hot stone girlfriend, a creature of no significant account. She should be just a minor obstacle to eliminate.

False.

What was she not picking up on? She needed to know soon, lest any argument she try to make be torpedoed by her ignorance. There was more going on here than a silly tour.

True.

Damn that snooping mind! This was like playing a tennis game blindfolded.

True.

“This way,” Villainous said. He stood and led the way back to the entry ladder. They ascended one by one. Lavender was last, following Templa. Those legs! At least The Bull was not getting freaked out by that nether perspective.

I may be your friend.

Lavender very much doubted that.

They were in a larger chamber surrounding the hatch. “This is pressure and heat controlled, of course,” Villainous said. “Because we are two miles down, and the pressure and heat would otherwise be lethal. It’s actually a shell, a bubble in the rock. It will be much larger, in due course. This is really just a model, a sample. But it shows the direction.” They walked out the open door.

And paused, stunned. The vista ahead was of a mountain villa with a grassy slope descending to the valley below. White clouds floated in a blue sky, and sunlight reflected off the surface of a valley lake. Petite picturesque cottages formed a village where two small rivers joined. The air was sweet, with a trifling breeze. A lone deer bounded across a field.

“And there are fish in the lake,” the president said. “And corn and wheat growing on the farm.”

“This isn’t underground!” The Bull exclaimed.

“Ah, but it is, my friend,” Villainous said. “Observe.” He turned back to the house they had just emerged from and tapped the stone wall with a finger. There was a hollow clink.

The Bull tried it. “Plastic!” he said. He walked to the side and tapped the air beside the house. There was another clink. He drew back his fist.

“Uh-uh,” the president cautioned. “You don’t want to punch a hole in the facade and let the noxious gas in. The whole scene is a model, as he said. Like a winter blizzard ball you can shake and put down. But we don’t want to shake this.”

“All fake?” The Bull asked, amazed.

“The inner wall of the shell is painted, as is the sky,” Villainous said. “The mock sun crosses it by traveling on its track. But inside the bubble, it is as you see. The air is not generated naturally; it is more like air conditioning so as to keep the local environment fresh and wholesome. We have terraformed this much, and animen are laboring to extend it so that more can reside here. The whole job will take time, but we will have time, once the disruptive folk above are gone.”

“Animen,” The Bull said. “Let me see them.”

Lavender kept silent, happy to let him ask the questions.

“Here.” Villainous walked to the edge, found a crevice, and pulled open a panel. He ducked through it, disappearing from view. The Bull followed, and then the others. Templa and Lavender were the last, again.

“How can we be friends?” Lavender demanded quietly.

“When we are on the same side.” The woman ducked through the aperture, and Lavender followed. She had hoped to provoke a more informative response. So much for that.

There was a short passage leading to another dome, but this one was quite different. It was like a mine, and smelled of sweat and rock dust. Animen and aniwomen were working with sledgehammers to break up rock at the base and sides, enlarging the space. “We don’t use power tools here,” Villainous explained. “Too difficult to process the pollutive exhaust in this confined space. We do use fossil fuels to power the larger equipment that forms the initial chambers, drawing from the virtually inexhaustible supply in the low layers. That pollution gets piped down below. We do not want to mess up our realm the way the humans are doing in theirs. Utopia has to be climate controlled.”

They returned to the first bubble. “This doesn’t seem too bad,” The Bull said to Lavender. Yes, they were impressing him.

“Remember, it’s just a sample, a show,” she said. “It could be prettied up, unlike the reality.”

“It is,” Villainous said. “But it presages the reality. We intend to have the full enclave every bit as nice as this.”

There was a false note here. This was not adding up. Lavender had sent out the “Mark Twain” information to protect herself, but now she doubted they cared about that. What was their real concern? “And what is the reality?” she demanded. “What do you really want of us?”

“We need your help, Lavender,” Templa said. “We may not be able to do it without you. Wiping out the humans will be pointless if we can’t make a viable population to replace them.”

“What are you talking about? We’re your enemies!”

“We need you as our friends.”

“This is crazy!”

“No,” Villainous said. “This is reality. We really are trying to save the world, but not humanity, which we feel is beyond redemption. But we have one potential opponent who can destroy it all. We need to nullify that opponent at the outset, lest all our efforts be wasted.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The volcanoes. We are setting up beneath bedrock, working our way down. Below us is the magma. The volcanoes can raise it at any time and wipe us out. Their minions can read our minds; they know precisely what we’re doing. They can strike at any time they choose. We need to be sure they won’t. That is why we need a deal with the lava folk.”

“I don’t believe this!”

“Show her, Templa.”

“Read my mind,” Templa said, and laid it open.

There it was, spread out like a gourmet banquet. Everything relevant, without restrictions on the irrelevant, in case Lavender wanted to verify the larger picture. It was impossible to deceive, this way. The woman had laid herself out like a virgin on an altar, completely vulnerable to the men of the tribe.

And it was all true. They were building Utopia. They needed a deal with the volcanoes. They were not offering to save mankind.

Again, which side was she on?

Chapter 21: Death

I scratched my chin, watching Lavender watch Templa.

That the woman I had come to have some strong feelings for—sex and saving the world will do that to a guy—was having a wide range of emotions was obvious. I had no clue what the telepath, Templa, was showing Lavender. Nor was I sure I wanted to.

“She’s in conflict, Vil,” said Templa, blinking and stepping back.

“Understandable,” said the massive polar bear. Come to think of it, maybe I needed a catchy name, too. The Bull was rather obvious. Villainous didn’t go around calling himself Polar Bear. He called himself Villainous

“And this one,” said Templa, jutting a thumb at me, and surprising me with her ability to read two minds at once, “is busy wondering what name he should choose for himself. Apparently, he’s not happy with being called The Bull.”

“Simple thoughts,” said the massive white bear, “for a simple man.”

I considered taking offense to his words, until I realized that, yeah, for the most part, I was simple.

“The simplest of men,” said Templa disdainfully.

Truth was, I enjoyed living a simple life. I enjoyed drinking, playing pool, watching football, and working as a rodeo clown—which could be damn exciting at times. I hadn’t asked for any of this. But I decided to let it go. Now wasn’t the time to let loose, but I sure hoped it came soon. My horns were veritably itching to tear through all this plastic crap.

“Horny wants to destroy something,” said Templa.

“A classic bull in a china shop,” said Villainous. “Or, in this case, a bull in Utopia.”

I lowered my head. A man—or bull—could only take so much.

“Bull, wait!” said Lavender.

“Why?” I asked, and wondered if that was actual steam I could see wafting up from my nostrils. “So that you can have time to decide to join them or not?”

“Is their offer so terrible, Bull? This place has potential. And he’s right, we are the freaks up there,” she said, pointing vaguely up. How far below we were, I hadn’t a clue. She continued, “Down here...”

“Down here, you are with brothers and sisters,” finished Villainous.

“That you created,” I said.

Villainous, whose tufts of white fur scattered over his broad face made him look almost elderly, smiled and said, “My children.”

I shuddered at the thought.

“You know,” I said, lowering my head some more. “I never asked for this shit. I never asked to be turned. And yet you did it anyway. You made me into what I am. And you know what? That just pisses me off.”

“Oh, how I would love to have a shut-off switch for you, old boy,” said Villainous. “Perhaps there is some way to convince you to join our cause?” He snapped his fingers. Like me, part of him was human, and although long, dark claws stretched out from his fingers, his hands were just that: human hands. Big hands, granted, with thick tufts of white fur along the back of them. Just as he snapped his fingers, a panel in a nearby wall opened and three women appeared. All were nude, and all were shivering. The sight of them, however, had the opposite effect, especially when I saw that some sported lash marks.

“Human playthings,” said Villainous. “I couldn’t, after all, let all of humanity go to waste.”

“And on that note,” said the president, stepping forward. “Are you no better than the men above, the governments above, the corporation above? Sure, some of their practices might be destroying the world, but there are many good people up there fighting to save it. Your solution is to accelerate the destruction. Which is no solution at all.”

The giant polar bear turned his massive head toward the president. “I don’t call myself Villainous for nothing, Mr. President. The nukes, which you will soon authorize to launch—”

“Like hell I will!”

Villainous ignored the president’s protest. “Will launch only at the biggest cities in the world. The initial destruction will wipe out more than half of the human population. The rest will be dispatched over time with my special anti-primate remedy.”

“Poison,” said the president, seething. He was a good man, despite the fact that I had not voted for him.

“Of course. As you can see, I have an affinity towards animals. I do not wish to see the earth completely destroyed, or to harm more animals than is necessary. I only wish to see man, the real plague, removed.”

“And who are you to decide the fate of mankind?”

“Who am I indeed? Templa, show them.”

His shapely telepath nodded, and what came next was an onslaught of images and memories, all culled from Villainous and broadcast to those of us in the room. Yes, Templa was a powerful telepath indeed.

What I gathered from the barrage of visions and scenes was of a troubled scientist, a genius before his time, who had been badly disfigured growing up. Indeed, this young genius had endured ridicule and pain that few would ever understand. He had first used his great mind to devise a way out of his limited apparatus, and into something very, very powerful. I next saw series after series of experiments, many of which had gone horribly wrong, and many good men and creatures had to be put down. I had been one of the first successful blends, apparently. And it had been entirely by accident. Wrong place and time. Well, that explained that.

Shortly, he improved upon his experiments, and in the intervening years, had mastered the process, so much so that he had created an army...and had given himself a powerful new body. And, apparently, a desire to end the human race.

“So kids were mean to you,” I said, when the visions had ended. “Is that any reason to take out your pain on the entire world? There are many good people on earth. Many people helping other people.”

“And if I could save them, I would.” And the villain merely shrugged his hulking, muscle-packed shoulders. Yeah, he was certainly no longer the deformed boy in a wheelchair.

“So that’s it, then?” said the president. “You had a rough life, and so the rest of the world must suffer?”

“Partly,” said Villainous, and now he strode around our little group. Like me, his lower half was all animal. Or mostly animal. He sported a fuzzy little nub of a tail that was almost comical. “I realized that I was put on earth for a reason.”

“Really, now?” said the president. The man had, as my dad would say, chutzpah. “I am, after all, part of nature too. So, why would the world give birth to someone like you?”

“A psychopath like you?” I asked.

“A genius like me,” said Villainous, and he continued to circle our group. I kept my eyes on the furry bastard. “I realized it was to put my great intellect to use.”

“To destroy?”

“To rebuild. I am here for a reason, ladies and gentleman, and that reason is to purge the earth.”

“Jesus,” said the president, turning to me. “Someone has a God complex.”

“Lucky for us,” said Villainous, “that we need only your retinal scan and fingerprints to unlock the launch sequence.” I noticed again that the president was sporting a small briefcase. A briefcase that Villainous snatched from him with one great paw. “My clone, of course, can do the rest.”

“What are you saying?” asked the president.

“I’m saying, there is no more need to keep you alive.”

With one quick thrust, a set of twelve-inch bloody claws appeared from the president’s chest. The man struggled briefly, gasped, and then slumped forward.

The President of the United States was dead.

And that’s when I charged.

Chapter 22: Shunt

Several thoughts tumbled through Lavender’s consciousness in that instant.

One was that Villainous had deliberately provoked The Bull to violence. He wanted a good fight, and to get rid of an animan he could not directly control. Another was that Villainous would not have done it had he not been sure of winning. Fair play was not a significant part of his repertoire, as his slaughter of the president showed. Yet The Bull was if anything stronger physically than the Bear, and he had been fighting folk throughout, while Villainous had been dallying with captive human women while planning his holocaust. He was probably out of shape, physically, despite his passion for violence. So what was his secret weapon?

And there was Templa, watching the fight with interest as The Bull collided with the Bear. She was the weapon! She could project thoughts, which meant she could probably mess with The Bull’s mind and render him unable to fight effectively. She didn’t need the Mark Twain logic gate. Suppose she turned off his sight, or stunned him so that he was vulnerable to the Bear’s attack? How could Lavender protect him from that? Well, maybe there was a way, if she could set it up. A long shot, but if it worked—

She had to act quickly. Using the cover of The Bull’s nearly mindless rage, she sent another message to the lava folk for them to relay to the volcano. Shunt! Would they understand the accompanying sentiment? Maybe not, but maybe the volcano would. It was after all in touch with other volcanoes, including her grandfather. Grandfather knew how she thought. But it had to be fast, within minutes if feasible. Seconds, if possible.

Templa glanced at her. “What are you up to, lava girl?” she asked. “I had better see.”

Before she could follow up with a probe into Lavender’s mind, Lavender charged her. She knocked the human woman back against the wall. She was far stronger physically than the telepath, just as The Bull was with respect to the Bear. Templa could not focus mentally at the moment; she had to save her own lovely ass.

Meanwhile the two males were having a blast. The Bull was swinging fists while the Bear was gouging with claws, each scoring repeatedly on the other. The pain of their wounds radiated out, but neither cared. The smell of blood only revved them up further. This was what combat was all about, and they reveled in it.

Stupid males, Lavender thought.

Agreed, Templa responded. Stop foolishly attacking me like a thoughtless male and see the light. You are destined for great things in the new order. Villainous likes you. She sent a picture of the Bear kissing her naked flesh. Lavender was revolted. She would never let such a monster get at her body.

Forget it, witch! Lavender took hold of her by the shoulders and shook her. My doubts were quelled the moment Villainous gratuitously killed the president. My body is not for the likes of that. I’ll never join you now.

Too bad. You’d like the Bear’s hug. Now the telepath fought back, using her strength of mind. Suddenly Lavender’s vision clouded; it was as if she had blundered into thick fog. But she still had hold of the woman, knowing better than to let her go.

The fog cleared, leaving her standing on a rocky summit. All around her the slope dropped down toward a turbulent sea far below. Wind tore at her, almost pushing her off the pinnacle.

How could this be? She could not have been teleported from the underworld to such a distant site. Templa had a powerful mind, but there had been no sign of such ability when she read it.

Then there came a speck in the sky. A bird flying toward her. A large one. A very large one. In fact, it was a winged dragon.

That was the giveaway. Dragons were popular in fantasy, but they had never actually existed. Credulous primitives had found the giant bones of dinosaurs and conjectured their fantastic origin. Thus the wild stories of fire-breathing monsters. What reptile had ever breathed fire? It was rubbish. This was an illusion, nothing more.

The dragon oriented on her and blew out a blast of fire that would have toasted any ordinary person who failed to leap off the mountain. That was evidently the design: to trigger an involuntary reaction to avoid getting badly burned. To make the victim plunge into the surrounding sea, where hungry water monsters surely lurked. But Lavender was no ordinary person. If there was one thing she had no fear of, it was fire. She was a creature of the fire, of a volcano. So she stood her ground and took the blast on her chest.

Her clothing puffed into ashes and went up in smoke. Oh, she had been dressed for this, in the vision? Now she was smokily naked but unburned. “Come and get it, big boy,” she called to the dragon.

Could this be a fantasy game Templa played with the Bear? He would hug the dragon, whose body would feel like the woman’s, and they would make mad love? So it had been adapted to terrorize Lavender. But she simply did not fit the frame. If she got hold of the dragon, she would make short work of it.

If? She had been holding Templa when this scene came on, as she had remembered. She had not let go. She could take control of this vision. She reached out and caught the tail of the dragon as it swooped past her. She hauled it in close. It did feel like a woman. In a moment, she had the telepath in her embrace. Well now.

Templa struggled, but Lavender muscled her into position for a hot kiss. Very hot. There was a stifled scream, and it wasn’t her own.

The vision dissolved. “Help!” Templa cried through burnt lips.

Villainous paused in his own bear hug with The Bull. He reached out and caught Lavender by the shoulder. He hurled her against the wall. Templa fell away, sobbing through scorched lips.

The Bull, seeing his opening, leveled a thunderous blow, smashing Villainous in the face. The animan fell to the floor. The Bull dived for him before he could recover his feet, ready to finish the job.

“Do it!” Villainous cried to the woman.

Templa visibly focused on The Bull. She was sending the kill thought!

Villainous collapsed. The Bull stood over him uncertainly. Was he faking?

No. The animan was unconscious or dead.

“What happened?” The Bull asked, bewildered. “I didn’t hit him that hard.”

“It was the shunt,” Lavender said. “The protection against cheating.”

“The what?”

“I had the volcano put a mental shunt in your head,” she explained. “It didn’t do anything itself; it was inert. You didn’t feel it at all. But when Templa sent the knockout or kill thought, the shunt bounced it off you and to Villainous. He got blasted. He’s a victim of friendly fire.”

“Templa tried to kill me?”

“Or cripple you so Villainous could kill you. She was his secret weapon. He had no intention of fighting fair.”

“The bastard!”

There was a groan. Templa was sitting on the floor. She was looking at the fallen Bear. “You killed him!” she said through ragged lips.

“No, you did,” Lavender told her. “It was your mental blast that felled him. You got the wrong target.”

The woman looked at her. Then her tears turned to fury. “Well, I won’t get the wrong target again.”

Lavender knew that the telepath could strike mentally before either of them could reach her. Templa was probably more dangerous now than Villainous would have been. This battle was not yet over.

Chapter 23: Impasse

“Be smart, Templa,” said Lavender. “You did hit the right target. Your blast rebounded and hit Villainous instead. Bull is protected, and so am I. Your mental blast could very well have rebound and hit you.”

I knew I was protected, but I hadn’t known Lavender was, although it stood to reason. Why not also protect one of their own? Then again, I didn’t know much about any of this. I was a simple man, after all. They were right about that. Indeed, I lived to drink and fight and copulate—and not necessarily in that order. Villainous had proven to be a worthy opponent, too. It had been a glorious battle that had ended far too soon. Indeed, one moment I had been locked-up in mortal combat—and loving every second of it—and the next, Villainous was lying on the ground, seemingly dead.

I looked down at the many wounds inflicted by the massive white bear and his razor sharp claws and teeth. Already the wounds were healing. Whatever mad science had created me, had also infused me with rapid cell regeneration. Before my very eyes, my wounds were healing and closing and disappearing altogether. Only the fresh splatters of blood remained.

“Yes, Bull, you were designed to regenerate,” said Templa, although I don’t think she was reading my mind. Reading my body language was more like it. “You were, in fact, designed to live a long, long time.”

“He’s immortal?” asked Lavender.

“Not quite, but close. His skin cells are configured to replace themselves immediately...” She knelt down and ran a hand over the bear’s bloodied face. I had done a number on him. I noted that he wasn’t regenerating. He just lay there, unmoving.

“My death thought, as I call it, can effectively shut down a brain,” said Templa. “Or, more accurately, fry a brain. He’s quite dead. Such a shame. He was a worthy lover and a devoted follower.”

“Follower?” asked Lavender.

“Yes, follower. Polar Bear made such a good Villainous, don’t you think? Very convincing.”

“Then who’s Villainous...”

“She is, Bull,” said Lavender. “Polar Bear was a fake. He was only pretending. Or being compelled to pretend.”

“Maybe a little of both,” said Templa, shrugging. “Perhaps you two failed to note Polar Bear’s claws? Hard to do serious lab work without opposable thumbs.” She studied me. “I am reminded of the old riddle where a father and son are in a car accident. The father dies instantly, and the son is transported to the nearest hospital. Once there, the doctor comes in and exclaims: ‘I can’t operate on this boy.’ ‘Why not?’ one of the nurses asks. And the doctor responds: ‘Because he’s my son.’”

“This is hardly a time for riddle—” began Lavender.

“I don’t get it,” I said, cutting in. “I thought the dad had died.”

Lavender elbowed me in the ribs. “The doctor is his mother, you big dope.”

“Ah,” I said, nodding. “Now I get it.”

“And that’s the problem: the world is full of dopes,” said Templa. “Chauvinistic dopes, powerful dopes. Dopes who will do all they can to keep us women down, to subjugate us, torment us, rape us, and give us far less than our fair share. Even a girl who, at the age of fourteen, had been top of her class at MIT. A girl who would go on to be the leading geneticists of her time, a girl who had been forced, time and time again, to prove herself to far inferior males. A girl who had removed herself from society. A girl who had used her family’s vast fortune to create everything you see before you. Even you, Bull.” She paused, breathing deeply. She had gotten herself worked up. “Of course, much of my plan involves rebuilding under the earth while the surface radiation dissipates. To do that, I need to reach an agreement with the lava folk. Their magma chambers would make ideal cities. Not to mention, I do not wish a war with them.” She looked at Lavender. “That’s where you come in.”

“Forget it. No way in hell I’m helping you destroy the world.”

“I could try to coerce you. You are, after all, surrounded by a small army of animen.”

“Two words,” I said. “Mark Twain.”

Templa nodded. “Exactly. With those two words, you could effectively render my army into a pack of mindless animals.” She looked at Lavender. “Not to mention, if any harm came to you, I suspect this cavern would boil over with magma.”

“You can say that again, sister,” said Lavender. “So you can tell your human guards to lower their weapons.”

“You sense them?” asked Templa, surprised.

“Ten of them, scattered throughout the plastic city.”

“Very good, Lava girl. You are stronger than I thought. Maybe even stronger than you thought, too.”

“Just remember,” said Lavender, “if we die, the lava folk attack.”

“Understood,” said Templa, bowing slightly. “The human guards are simply my assurance that Bull Boy doesn’t gore me to death. I don’t have to read minds to know what he’s thinking.”

I blinked. She was right, of course. I had, indeed, been thinking that most of this problem goes away if Templa suddenly found herself on the wrong end of one of my long horns.

“I die, and we all die,” said Templa.

“Understood,” said Lavender. “Like you said, an impasse. What, then?”

Templa took in a lot of air. “I spent years planning for this moment. Down to the last detail. What I hadn’t planned on was either of you or the lava folk. What’s the old saying... the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.”

“Very apropos,” said Lavender.

Templa, or Villainous, sighed. “And since I have effectively assassinated the President of the United States, I will be on the run for the rest of my life.”

“And no doubt planning the future destruction of the earth?” quipped Lavender.

“Oh, that is a given,” said Templa, winking.

I could be wrong—and I hoped like hell I was wrong—but these two seemed to be getting along. Hell, it was as if they were bonding or something.

I stepped forward, ready to put a stop to this. “Well, I for one want to get the hell out of here.”

“That can be arranged.”

“And no funny business,” I said.

“I assure you there will be none.”

“So says the woman who had no problem murdering billions,” I mumbled.

“We all have dreams,” said Templa, shrugging. “The world needs a good villain, and I am more than happy to fulfill that role.” She cocked her head to one side, as if listening to someone invisible next to her. “Now, if you two are ready, your submersible awaits.”

Chapter 24: Proposal

Lavender did not trust this. Templa was letting them go? How would that resolve the impasse?

She did not need to read a mind to figure that one out. By detonating the sub and destroying them both without a fight. Then Templa would be free to pursue her agenda without opposition. It could be made to look like an accident.

Smart girl.

Except for the automatic revelation of the Mark Twain code if Lavender died. Had Templa forgotten that?

Oops.

Lavender put her mind into interference mode. “Distract her,” she told The Bull.

He looked at her, surprised. “Not kill her?”

“Not yet. If you kill her, the lurking humans we can’t stop via Mark Twain will spray this chamber with bullets and you’ll be dead. I don’t want that to happen. You’re tough, but not that tough.”

“You won’t be dead?” he asked.

“I can’t be killed with bullets. At least, not here. There’s too much hot stone in me. You’re the one in danger. So distract her. Kiss her if you have to. Her mind is treacherous, but her body is real, and it’s the kind you like. Have some fun with her, but keep her busy.”

“What are you up to?” Templa asked. “I can’t read your mind now.”

“I’m not the telepath you are,” Lavender said. “But I can block you out.” Then to The Bull: “Do it.” Meanwhile, she kept her mind clouded. Templa might read it anyway if she had time to fully focus, but probably not when she had to deal with The Bull at the same time.

He looked dubious, but he trusted her. “Maybe a small kiss.”

“I’ll fry your brain, cow boy,” Templa said derisively.

“Not with the shunt. Go ahead; blast me. You’ll only wipe out yourself.” He advanced on her.

Templa raised a hand. “One word or one signal from me will get you shot dead, bull turd. They have explosive bullets that will tear you to pieces too small to heal. I am holding off only because I prefer to keep you as leverage against the lava girl.”

“And if you take me out, you’ll have no leverage at all,” he said. “I got that. Then she’ll kill you by burning you to death. I’m betting you’d rather make out with me than have to kill me and face her wrath.” He caught her raised hand and drew her in to him. “Hey, she’s right: your sexy body’s real.”

“You ignorant oaf! You think you can take my lover’s place?”

“Yeah, since you didn’t really care for him either.” He bore her back against the wall. “You said you liked animen, remember? You showed me your shapely butt. Okay, let me at it.” He grabbed her butt.

“You insufferable beast!” She struck at him with her free hand.

“Praise will get you nowhere,” he said, not even trying to dodge the blow. She couldn’t hurt him physically.

He was doing a nice job. Lavender had her mind on interference, and could not read Templa any more than the woman could read her, but knew she was outraged. It wasn’t that Templa had any objection to making out with a man, any man or animan; it was that she wanted it to be on her terms, not his. Feminist that she was, she hated the notion that he could feel her up with impunity, as if she were just a passing prostitute. Lavender appreciated that aspect; she felt much the same. Her relationship with The Bull was by her choice; any other man would get burned, literally. Which was why this was such a good distraction: Templa was letting her emotions interfere with her sensible curiosity about what was on Lavender’s mind.

Lavender put her body on auto-pilot, doing what she had laid out for it. Meanwhile, she reviewed the mental situation. Templa’s “Oops” rang false. She had not forgotten the Mark Twain caution. So why was she ready to kill Lavender and set it loose?

The same reason Villainous had killed the president: they no longer needed him alive. For a few hours, his fingerprints and retinas would remain sharp; they could carefully cut off his fingers and pull out his eyeballs and use them.

And that gave her the clue. Templa had now read Lavender’s mind thoroughly enough to be able to emulate it in thought. That might even be the reason for their physical meeting. She could send the ‘postpone’ signal, and the volcano would not know the difference. She no longer needed Lavender alive. She could kill Lavender by isolating her from the ground and blowing her up in the sub. She wasn’t letting them go at all; she was tricking them into their doom.

“You unutterable turd!” Templa exclaimed. “Get your bovine muzzle off my breast!”

The Bull did not answer. It seemed that his mouth was busy. Lavender had shown him the way of that. He was after all enjoying his chore.

“Huh?” But that was him now. What had happened?

“You thought the kill signal was the only one in my arsenal?” Templa demanded. “How do you like making out with a crocodile?”

Oh no! She had made her body resemble that of the reptile, at least in appearance and sensation. Crocodiles lacked human lips, buttocks, or breasts, and a reptile belly just wouldn’t taste the same. No wonder he was out of sorts. Lavender had to admire her versatility.

“Or a dragon?” Lavender knew how the woman could conjure a seeming dragon. She was turning the tables on The Bull without actually hurting him. “How do you think I controlled the bear man, you idiot? I could be anything he wanted—or didn’t want, depending on my mood.”

But he had done his job. Templa had been distracted long enough. “It’s okay, Bull,” Lavender called. “You can let her be now.”

The Bull backed away from the scaly creature. “I know it’s an illusion, but it’s a mean scaly illusion,” he said, disgruntled.

“What was the point of all that?” Templa demanded, reappearing in a somewhat mussed state. “We’re still at an impasse, and might as well separate.”

“We’re still at an impasse,” Lavender agreed. “But the situation has changed. Look at the president.”

“He’s dead, but we can still use his prints and—” Templa broke off. “Oh, no!”

“What the hell happened to him?” The Bull asked. “His hands are gone, and his eyes are smoldering.”

“I burned out his fingers and eyes,” Lavender said. “While you distracted Miss Crocodile and I kept my mind masked. Now those prints can’t be used to validate deployment of the American nukes.”

“But that means—”

“No more nuclear threat,” Lavender finished smugly.

“You bitch!” Templa exclaimed. “You set him on me while you did your dirty work.”

“You thought reading minds was the only thing in my arsenal?” Lavender inquired sweetly. “You’re free to kill us now, but we’re also free to kill you. Since it’s not safe for us to use the sub, we might as well stay here and finish you off, The Bull in his way, and I in mine, should your minions try to interfere. That should be interesting.”

Templa was clearly a tough minded realist. “We have nulled each other, for the moment,” she agreed. “What is on your mind, volcano spawn?”

“I thought you’d never ask, crocodile snot. I believe it is time for us to compromise.”

The woman considered. “It seems I underestimated you. I assumed you were just another crossbreed variant like the animen. What kind of compromise do you propose?”

“We don’t actually have to fight, or face mutual destruction. What you’re doing below ground is worthwhile. Curbing the human decimation of the topside planet is also worthwhile. If we work together we just might improve things.”

“I doubt we can work together,” Templa said grimly.

“There may be a way. We have solid reasons to distrust each other. But I think it has been established that the animen are really no better than the humans, and I’m not even sure that the lava folk are perfect either. Destroying any one type will merely allow the others to prevail, prosper, and become corrupted by their dominance, to the detriment of the planet. We can’t trust any of them with ultimate power. Maybe if we combine our resources we can facilitate the colonization of other planets, where humans can settle alone, or animen, or lava folk. We are going to need new worlds; Earth is almost exhausted at this point. There’s no point in wiping out mankind along with most of the other creatures, when left unchecked mankind will soon enough do that for himself. Destruction will not usher in the braver new world.”

“I disagree. But assuming you are correct, what can we do?”

“We can install new leadership that will labor to turn the corner and put mankind, animankind, and lavakind on a course to global sustainability, whether on Earth or other planets. To truly cut pollution, global warming, overpopulation, depletion of diminishing resources. It may take centuries to see the result, but it’s the direction that counts.”

“And who exactly can be trusted to provide such leadership?”

“You, me, and The Bull, to start. We do have our special talents.”

Templa laughed. “It’s an illusion to think we’re not corruptible.”

“After we prepare a governing template of the ideal qualities of perfect leadership. And submit ourselves to be the first recipients of that template. Which will be installed by the telepathic power of the volcanoes, who really don’t care what happens to life on Earth as long as it leaves them alone. They are, in this respect, objective.”

Templa stared at her. “You’re serious!”

Lavender smiled somewhat grimly. “The template would include our mutual desires to support and trust each other, and to be worthy of that trust, and to work unstintingly for the common good. And to recruit other telepaths and skilled individuals to join the cause. It would cost us our ornery freedom of choice but make us reliable.”

Templa shook her head. “I have to think about this.”

“Don’t we all! Salvation does not come cheap.”

Chapter 25: Escape

While Templa mulled the offer over, we waited in a structure that resembled a grand ballroom. The air was clean and fresh. The plastic structure served to keep the noxious gas at bay. I suspected the gas wouldn’t have much effect on Lavender, but I sure as hell didn’t want to breathe it.

Just prior to dropping us off, Templa had said that the plastic city was made of material of her own creation. She wasn’t a mad scientist for nothing. Additionally, a fleet of orca men, whale men, and dolphin men, had steadily brought supplies and building material down into this vast underground chamber—a chamber that had been hollowed out eons before by folk history had yet to record. Templa conjectured that this, in fact, might be the remnants of Atlantis—or another long lost kingdom—now swallowed up by the sea. Perhaps from the volcano now simmering below. Meanwhile, a team of animen builders had constructed the city, as they were doing even now, pushing deeper and deeper into the earth, following long-carved out caverns and natural lava tubes. I suspected Lavender would be at home here.

Finally, I eased down on a very real wooden chair. I always eased down on wooden chairs. Trust me, I’ve broken my fair share of chairs over the intervening bullish years. The room was a storage room of sorts, filled with all manner of wood and metal panels, furniture, and machinery. Apparently not everything was plastic. One thing was obvious: Villainous, or Templa, had thought of everything.

“Exactly,” thought Lavender, and I could tell she was running some interference between us and Templa, who was undoubtedly somewhere nearby. “She put a lot of thought and effort and time into this plan.”

“She’s not going to give it up easily,” I thought, nodding.

“She’s the queen bee here. The animen and women are her worker bees. Why give this up for altruistic reasons? She doesn’t have an altruistic bone in her body. She’s drunk on power and revenge. I’m afraid nothing will stop her.”

“Maybe you’re wrong. Maybe she really is considering your proposal.”

“There’s one way to know...”

And Lavender got that far-off look in her eye that she gets when she’s going deep within. I don’t go deep within. Hell, I’ve never gone deep within. The deepest I got was trying to decide if I was too drunk for another beer.

A moment later, Lavender blinked. She was back. “The lava folk have confirmed my fears.”

“How so?”

“They couldn’t read her mind—she’s even too powerful for them—but they could read the minds of her surrounding minions. They are planning to attack us here, in this room; in fact, within a matter of minutes.”

“But if they attack us, won’t the lava folk retaliate, and burn these caverns?”

“She’s apparently aware of that, and had made plans with her submersible captain to escape, along with the presidential clone.”

“The clone,” I said, snapping my fingers.

Lavender nodded. “Apparently, there’s a Plan C to her attempt to take over the world.”

“Rule via the fake president.”

“A president she has complete control over,” said Lavender.

“We can’t let her escape.”

“I agree,” said Lavender, “which is why I’ve already summoned the lava folk.”

“They’re coming now?” I asked, sitting forward.

“Oh, yes. A whole army of them.”

Gunfire suddenly erupted, followed by a loud, blaring alarm. Bullets crisscrossed through the air, puncturing through the plastic walls. Many just missing us.

“Let me guess,” I said, ducking. “They’re here.”

“Good guess,” said Lavender.

***

My hide was tough enough to withstand most ordinary bullets. Only a direct hit to the head, or one of those explosive bullets would probably kill me. Then again, my regenerating abilities were off the charts. Who knows. Maybe I would regenerate before I could actually die. I didn’t want to find out.

Which is why I grabbed an unfinished metal door with one hand, and Lavender’s hand with my other, and charged forward, near the rear of the plastic structure. Mercifully, the bullets were coming from one direction—from the main chamber. Two or three errant projectiles slammed into the door, dimpling it from the inside. One of which was just inches from my head. Yeah, that woulda hurt.

“What’s the plan?” asked Lavender when we reached the back entrance.

“Find Templa and stop her.”

“That’s all you got?” asked Lavender.

“I’m known for my brawn not my brain—let’s go!”

I kicked down the door, which was easy enough to do, and we found ourselves in a narrow back alley. A plastic back alley. Screams filled the air, followed by more gunfire, and now a small explosion. The ground shook, which was the last thing I wanted to feel while deep beneath the ocean floor. At least, that’s where I think we were. The strong chemical acrid smell was the plastic melting. We needed to get out of here anyway, and fast. I didn’t believe much of what Templa said, but I had no reason to doubt that the plastic city kept the poisonous fumes at bay.

“This way,” I said, and continued down the alley, to where I was certain the submersible was berthed.

Chapter 26: Gate Rape

Lavender knew they were in a desperate situation.

They had to avoid the battle while making their way to the sub, and they had to get there before Templa did. But they could not take it alone; Templa would trigger its bomb and they would be blown up. If Templa got on it alone, she would go to the yacht and take over the president clone, and go on from there. So they had to get on it with Templa. That of course was serious mischief, because though Lavender could take Templa physically, she could not do so mentally.

Yet there was one possible saving grace. Lavender had tried to convert Templa, because the woman had phenomenal telepathic and intellectual talent and could do enormous good, were she only on the right side. Similarly, Templa wanted to convert Lavender, because she represented immediate access to the lava folk that Templa needed to protect the undersea paradise. They needed each other. They did not have to like each other, but both would be better off on the same side, whichever side that was. They needed to hammer out a compromise.

But how could Lavender win Templa to her side? Any mental engagement was likely to go the other way. Unless—

“Bull,” she said. “Take me by the hand and lead me to the sub. Or carry me if you have to. Just get me there. I’m about to tune out.”

“You’re a terror when you tune out,” he said.

“More: don’t let Templa board the sub alone. But don’t board it without her. We three have to be on it together.”

“But—”

“If she gets on it alone, she’ll go to the ‘yot’ and take over the clone and start organizing to take over the human world. With her powers of telepathy and projection she just might be able to succeed. We can’t afford to risk that.”

“Got that,” he agreed. “But—”

“If we get on it without her, she’ll use her mind to detonate the bomb on it, and we’ll be smithereens. We don’t want to risk that either.”

“Yeah, we don’t,” he agreed.

“So we have to be together.”

“But can’t she mess up your mind?”

“Yes. I can’t match her mental ability.”

“So being on the sub with her is no good either.”

“So it would seem. But we have to do it. It’s our only chance.”

“But—”

“Trust me. And cover me with your lecherous thoughts. You’d be making love to me now if it wasn’t for the battle. If we survive this, they’ll come true.” Before he could protest further, she tuned out.

What could he do? She felt him leading her by the hand while his thoughts caressed her body. If there was one thing he could do well, it was imagining sex. It was hard for any other mind to touch hers while that firewall of lust and aspiration surged around her. She had to hunker down mentally herself so as not to get swept up in the storm and wrap her body around his. Templa would find it treacherous going.

Now she tunneled out, mentally, on a tight beam that contacted the lava folk. Need help. Now.

They answered her. We can mark you for extraction from the scene. Our folk won’t hurt you.

No. I need another shunt.

A second one in The Bull?

No. In me.

There was a fractional pause as they assimilated this. What kind?

Lavender gave a quick but detailed mental description. It needed to be in one place in her mental scheme, but to appear to be in another. The real shunt needed to seem to be her center of voluntary control.

There was an internal wrench that left her dizzy. It is done. They did not need to inquire why she needed it; they had picked that up from her mind.

Lavender came out of it. They were at the sub, waiting on Templa. She kept her thoughts stifled, as if she had been drugged. The woman appeared, hurrying toward it. She saw them. Lavender retreated mentally, clothing herself with a feeling of weakness and frustration. She saw no way to prevail.

“What’s with the lava girl?” Templa called.

“She tuned out,” The Bull explained. “I think she hit her head or something. I had to drag her here. It’s not safe to make out with her in the middle of a battle.”

“Well, get out of the way, bully boy. I’m taking the sub. You can stay here and screw her to pieces exactly the way your mind suggests.”

“No,” he said. “We’re taking the sub too. I know that’s what she wants.”

She hesitated, her mind flicking through Lavender’s defeated mind, and The Bull’s ongoing lust, then came to a decision. “Very well. You operate the sub while I deal with her. The controls are simple; I’ll show you how. I promise you’ll get to screw her, and maybe me too, after I’m through with her. She’ll do anything you want.”

“Great!” He picked Lavender up and carried her into the sub, following Templa.

Could the woman actually believe that The Bull cared for Lavender no more than this? As a tough body to satisfy his physical urges? Or was it that Templa was so sure of her power that she didn’t care?

He put her down on a metal bench, then went with Templa to study the sub’s controls. So far so good. Lavender lay there like a slowly recovering victim.

Then the sub was in motion. The Bull was operating the controls, and Templa was back. She did not try to talk to Lavender. She simply laid a hand on her head and plunged into her dazed mind.

It was like a nest of ants swarming over a freshly killed carcass, or maybe one that wasn’t quite dead yet. They delved into every aspect, seeking its treasures.

Lavender stirred herself. “What?”

“Be at ease, stone person,” Templa said. “I need your help in connecting to the lava folk. Since it seems you won’t give it voluntarily, I’m overriding your voluntary control.”

“But that’s rape!” Lavender protested fuzzily. “Rape of the mind. Of my free will.”

“What’s a little rape to a creature like you? Almost got it. There.” She thrust with a thought that felt like a sword being driven into Lavender’s head.

And fell back, literally. “Oh!”

“It was a trap, a roadside bomb as it were,” Lavender said. “Another shunt. Only this one led to your own mind. You just knocked out your own free will.”

“I—I can undo it,” Templa said dizzily.

“First, listen. There is something you need to know. This was not simply a bounce. It was the installation of a logic gate like the one you put in the animen. When it is activated, it will wipe out your mind in a similar manner. But the activation key is not words. It’s an intention: the mental effort to corrupt or eliminate it. So you will be committing suicide.”

“Suicide,” Templa echoed, stunned mentally rather than physically. She knew herself to be a fool to fall into this trap. She had been too eager to wrap it up, and became careless. Exactly as Lavender had hoped.

“Meanwhile, you have a choice,” Lavender continued inexorably. “You can either try to avoid or fight it, knowing that you are flirting with your own destruction. Or you can accept that the battle has been fought and you have lost. You can work with me, using your considerable talents to build the animan paradise below the sea, and to find positive ways to turn the tide on mankind’s destructive impulses so that the world can be saved rather than destroyed. You can have a good life, with considerable power. Only your design to exterminate most of the human species will be changed.”

Templa stared at her. “Damn you!”

Then she fell to the floor. Lavender knew from her mind that she was dead. She had suicided rather than surrender.

“Damn,” Lavender echoed.

Chapter 27: Roommates

Turned out, I was a natural at driving a submersible.

I’d always been a quick study and, really, the thing drove itself once it got moving. Now, as we glided up through the dark water, toward a surface still hundreds of feet above, I finally let myself relax.

With Templa, aka Villainous, lying dead at our feet, Lavender and I had been faced with some tough decisions. And not just for ourselves, but for the entire world. What to do with the body of the real President of the United States?

He had been a brave man, courageous in the face of an unpredictable enemy. He had died a painful death while standing up to said enemy. He deserved better than just to rot here in this forgotten cavern. And so, after deliberating, we had reached an agreement, and I had gone back to fetch the body of the fallen president. In doing so, I had seen first-hand the wrath of the volcano people. The plastic city was in ruins: most of it burning or reduced to plastic slush. The animen and aniwomen hadn’t fared much better. I saw their torched, genetically manipulated bones poking up through the melted plastic. Many were frozen in time, in the throes of battle. I felt little sympathy. The animen had chosen sides. Even with the threat of the cut-off switch, they had chosen to follow a woman hell bent on destruction. A decision based on violence rarely ended well for anyone.

The president, who had died away from the plastic city entrance, and thus away from the burning carnage, had been left unscathed. I had scooped him up and returned him to the submersible, stepping over the dead body of the beautiful—but deranged—form of Templa. We had set off immediately after.

I sat back in the seat and, careful of my wide set of horns, laced my fingers behind my head. “There are some who might want to misuse the presidential clone for their own advantage. He’s a simpleton, remember. Any telepath could influence him.”

“I’ve considered that,” said Lavender. “Which is why he should come back with us.”

“With us?”

She nodded. “I’ve scanned the ship above. There are a handful of mindless animen and aniwomen roaming the deck. However, four secret service agents are still alive, presently locked in the brig, deposited there by the animen before we uttered the cut-off switch. The clone is in the galley, eating nachos without the chips.”

“So, he’s just eating the cheese?”

“Yes.”

My stomach growled. I patted it. “Sounds delicious.”

“Anyway,” said Lavender, shaking her head. “Once on the surface, we’ll swap the dead president with the living clone. I’ll implant the secret service agents with a new memory, one in which the president died fighting for his country, which isn’t very far from the truth. He took awful injuries to his body, eyes, and fingers, but never yielded. I’ll also wipe their memory clean of ever having seen us.”

“Holy smokes, you can do all of that?”

“I didn’t know I could, until I saw Templa utilize the full extent of her power. I’m not as strong as her, but I can get close.”

“So, no one will know of the underground city.”

“No one except the lava folk, who won't care.”

I nodded, thinking about it. “And what do we do with the clone?”

Lavender smiled, and steam literally rose from the corners of her lips. “He’s going home with you, Bull.”

“Say again.”

“Meet your new roommate; unless, of course, you want to just toss him overboard.”

“I’m not a murderer,” I said.

“Neither am I,” said Lavender. “Which is why he’s going home with you, where you can keep an eye on him.”

“Great,” I said, although I had a brief and satisfying flash of the clone fetching me beer whenever I needed it.

“Your getting drunk days are over, Bull. Anyway, from what Templa implied, the clone might have a very short life span. He might only be functioning for another few years.”

“Lucky me,” I said, and crossed my arms over my massive chest.

“We are doing the right thing, Bull,” said Lavender. “Neither of us are very political. I suppose I could have controlled him, but such a massive undertaking would be exhausting. No, there is a better man suited for the job, and he is the vice president, a man hand-picked by him,” said Lavender, jutting a finger at the presidential corpse I had laid across a bench behind us.

“And there is the matter of the president's relatives,” I said.

She nodded. “Ultimately, our little ruse would have been discovered, and they call that treason, if I am correct. Besides, his family deserves to know he died a hero’s death, protecting his country and the world. The nation deserves to mourn.”

I thought about all this and more as the submersible continued silently up to the surface. I knew the world was filled with more animen and aniwomen. How many had sided with Villainous? All of them? Or just the handful we had seen? How many were there... and could they reproduce? Could I reproduce?

“Now, this is a line of thinking I’m enjoying,” said Lavender, coming over to my seat and sitting on my lap.

I wrapped my arm around her tiny waist. Her horns were back, jutting up through her hair. I admired her solidarity. It felt like we were a real team.

“A super team,” said Lavender.

“Lava Girl and Bull Boy,” I said.

“It does have a certain ring to it,” she said, and leaned down and kissed me, her own lips searing mine, but I didn’t care. My lips were regenerating even as we kissed harder and harder.

To my regret, she pulled away. “Oh, by the way, you will be getting two new roommates.” She winked.

I grinned and pulled her back toward me. “I’m going to need a bigger apartment.”

I might have whimpered as she kissed me harder and deeper than ever before...

The End

The Fantasy Collective continues in:

The Worm Returns

Return to the Table of Contents

THE WORM RETURNS

A Fantasy Collective Novel

by

PIERS ANTHONY

J.R. RAIN

The Worm Returns

Copyright © 2016 by J.R. Rain and Piers Anthony

All rights reserved.

The Worm Returns

Chapter 1: Bad Buffalo

Bad Buffalo.

The name alone is enough to send shivers down the backs of most men.

Bad Buffalo.

His reign of terror is known throughout the West (and three states in the East).

Bad Buffalo.

He is the meanest, baddest, toughest, roughest, cruelest, smelliest and loudest outlaw the West has ever known.

And when Bad Buffalo comes to town...well, most people get going. Out of town, that is.

Well, now! Little did Bad Buffalo know that his reign of terror as the dirtiest and downright most unpleasant human being in the West (and three states to the East) was about to come to an end...

***

Bad Buffalo saw a squirrel. He grinned.

(It was an ugly grin for two reasons: one, because Bad Buffalo had horribly rotten teeth. And two, whenever Bad Buffalo grinned, well, there was bound to be trouble!)

The squirrel was pushing fat acorns from one side of the branch to the other, and depositing them into a hollow knot. The busy squirrel was preparing for the coming winter.

Bad Buffalo, riding easily upon his huge black mount, slid free his long-barreled pistol and took aim. There, propped on the squirrel’s little head was an acorn. The scene reminded Bad Buffalo of the time he’d seen an Indian lady carrying fruit on her head in a reed basket.

(Bad Buffalo had, of course, proceeded to take the basket and eat all seventeen of the apples and eleven of the peaches, all while holding the lady at gunpoint. Bad Buffalo strikes again!)

The outlaw took careful aim, sighting the squirrel along the polished pistol barrel (his guns were always polished), and slowly squeezed the trigger. He always squeezed slowly when possible. The shot rang out. The acorn blew to smithereens.

The squirrel, clearly caught by surprise, didn’t move. In fact, its little squirrel paws were still raised above its little squirrel head, now holding air, rather than an acorn. Now, it lowered its fists, and turned slowly to stare at Bad Buffalo.

Bad Buffalo had the squirrel in his sights. He cocked the hammer back, and took careful aim.

But the gunslinger, who had the instincts of a native, sensed something was off. For starters, why was the squirrel staring at him? And rather angrily, too? Why hadn’t the little bugger dashed off, as squirrels are wont to do? Bad Buffalo lowered his weapons and thought about it. In all his years of mischief, Bad Buffalo had never seen a creature act so brazenly brave.

(Speaking of years, Bad Buffalo had no idea how old he was. Once he tried to figure it out but he couldn’t get past eight, for that was the highest he could count. So, when the topic of how old Bad Buffalo was ever came up—and he answered eight—you’d be best advised not to snicker. If Bad Buffalo said he was eight, then he was eight. Hell, if Bad Buffalo said you were eight, then you were eight. You see, Bad Buffalo had never in his life lost an argument—and he let his pistols do most of the talking!)

The outlaw maneuvered his big black mustang, Horse, over to the squirrel’s tree. Bad Buffalo was an expert rider, among the many other things he was good at. He stared up at the squirrel and frowned.

“That was very rude,” said a voice.

Bad Buffalo whipped his head around to and fro. His pistol was already cocked and ready. “Who said that?” demanded Bad Buffalo.

“I did!”

Bad Buffalo jumped off Horse and crouched low to the ground, his alarm bells sounding loudly in his head now.

“I’m up here, not down there!”

Bad Buffalo swung his gun up, his movements fast, practiced. An attacker would already be dead. But he didn’t see an attacker. He only saw the same stupid squirrel standing there. His every instinct told him that he’d ridden into some sort of a trap, although he found that extremely hard to believe, considering he’d never been trapped before. Not to mention, this secret route through the Rocky Mountains was known only to him. Or so he’d thought.

“That was my favorite acorn,” said the squirrel.

Am I dreaming? thought Bad Buffalo.

“I was dreaming of that acorn until you shot it.”

Bad Buffalo’s mouth had long since fallen open. Had the squirrel just read his mind? His gun began wavering in his hands. His gun never, ever wavered. Not even once. Always, he held it with a sure grip.

“By my reckoning, you owe me one acorn. One big, fat, nutty acorn. And an apology, too!”

Bad Buffalo blinked. He tried to get his tongue working, but it faltered.

“I’m waiting,” said the squirrel, and now, it crossed its little arms over its little furry chest.

Had he taken a fall from Horse and hit his head? The last time Bad Buffalo had taken a fall from Horse, was never. And the last time he’d hit his head—in a shootout at Tombstone—he’d cracked a boulder in half.

“Why don’t you crack me open a big fat nut, you big fat dope?”

Bad Buffalo wasn’t used to name calling. Or having something read his mind. Bad Buffalo considered his many options—four of them included putting some hot lead into the mouthy squirrel—and finally decided against it. The outlaw had, after all, destroyed a perfectly good acorn. The squirrel had a point.

“Well, I suppose I am sorry for shooting the acorn off of your head, although it was an impressive shot.”

“Hmm...”

“Hmm what?” asked Bad Buffalo.

“That wasn’t much of an apology.”

“It was my first apology. And I don’t handle criticism very well.”

“No, I don’t suppose you do. Very well, I accept your apology. Now, you need to find me a new acorn.”

“Well, there are acorns everywhere—”

“A perfect acorn. One that was just as good or better than the one you recklessly destroyed. But good luck. It took me days to find that—”

“How about this one?” asked Bad Buffalo, holding up a particularly round and large acorn. Bad Buffalo had always been a little lucky, too.

The squirrel dashed along the narrow branch and examined the proffered acorn. The critter looked at it this way and that, and finally nodded. “I must say, that might just be the most perfect acorn I’ve ever seen.”

“So we’re even?” asked Bad Buffalo.

“Yes, I suppose we are. Just please be more careful next time.”

He nodded and said he would, and discovered, to his surprise, that he quite liked talking to the little squirrel. Still, Bad Buffalo was never one to stay in one spot for too long, and so he adjusted his hat, dusted himself off, wished the squirrel a good day, and hopped perfectly up into the saddle. Horse snorted as Bad Buffalo took the reins.

“Good day, little squirrel.”

“Wait!”

Bad Buffalo had already turned Horse in the direction he wanted to go. He looked back at the little squirrel. “Yeah?”

The squirrel leaped from the low branch to the ground. “You’re pretty good with that gun.”

“I think, maybe, I’m the best. No one else seems to shoot faster or straighter. I hope I don’t sound like I’m bragging. Momma always told me not to brag—”

It was at that moment that Bad Buffalo questioned his sanity. After all, talking to a squirrel was bad enough, but seeing it turn into a beautiful woman was quite another. A smallish woman with a full figure. Dressed only in well-placed leaves.

“We could use a man like you,” she said.

Bad Buffalo found speaking impossible.

The woman bowed. “I am Dia, a forest sprite, and we are in trouble.”

Chapter 2: Dia Sprite

Dia finished her bow, and Bad Buffalo managed to yank his eyes from her revealing décolletage. Those leaves did not cling that closely. “My name is short for Diana, meaning ‘pure goddess of the moon.’ I’m not a goddess, and the moon is far away, but I like the association.”

Now, he saw that she had luxuriant light-blue hair to her waist, with eyes to match.

Light blue?

She saw his surprise. “I’m a blueberry blonde, as befits a creature of nature,” she said defensively. “Do you have a problem with that?”

He finally found his voice. “Uh, no. It’s—it’s beautiful.”

“Thank you. I can change it if you want. I’m not a natural blonde. In fact, I’m not a natural girl, by your definition. I’m a sprite, a kind of nymph. My details are not fixed.”

“Don’t change a thing,” he said quickly. “Except maybe your size. You’re sort of small.”

“I can explain that, if you’re interested. But first I need to know if you really want to help us.”

The more he looked at her, the more he wanted to help her. So he got to the point. “What kind of trouble are you in?”

“Magic trouble.”

Dang. “I don’t do magic. It’s mostly fake.”

“I’m not fake!”

Bad Buffalo backed off, something he was not good at. “I mean what regular human folk do.”

Dia nodded. “What humans practice is mostly fake, because the magic is almost gone. That’s the problem.”

“In fact there really ain’t no such thing as magic, with us. Just clever card sharps. I’ve plugged more than one who thought to cheat me.”

“Good for you. However, what we sprites practice is real magic. But it’s running out, and I think we need a man like you to save what little is left.”

Bad Buffalo liked the look of her, but not her crazy talk. Save something that didn’t exist in the real world? So he tried to shut her up. “What’s in it for me?”

Dia eyed him speculatively. “I proffer tangible appreciation for your service on our behalf.”

He actually understood the words, but they could apply to anything from a payoff in gold coins to a sincere thank you. “What’s that in human lingo?”

“I will lend you my feminine favors.”

If that was what it might be, he definitely was interested. “What favors?”

“I will be your girlfriend.”

But for some girls, that merely meant saying hello without flinching when they passed each other in the street. “What kind of girlfriend?”

“We will make physical love.”

This was getting closer, but he wanted to be sure. “Try again, in bad-ass talk.”

She almost smiled. “My plump little ass will be yours for a poke, you horny hobo.”

Well, now. He was definitely interested. But there was always a “but.” “Where’s the but?”

“Right here,” she said, slapping her behind.

Oho! She thought he’d said “butt.” It would do. But he still needed clarification. “I mean, dolls like you don’t just give it out for free. There’s always wiggle room. What’s yours?”

“Certainly I can wiggle it,” she said, and did so most provocatively.

“You’re teasing me. What are you hiding?”

She became two sizes larger, and her leaves dropped off so that she was splendidly nude. Especially as she breathed. “Nothing.”

“There’s no catch? Come on, you want me to do something for you, you have to play straight with me. I’ve seen teases before, plenty of them. I want the straight goods, or I’m outta here.”

“You’re pretty canny.”

“I’ve been called hundreds of names, none of them good, but nobody ever called me stupid. Not for long. Out with it.”

“There is a caution,” she agreed reluctantly. “You, me, as we are now—it simply wouldn’t work.”

He sighed. He had known she wouldn’t give him anything real. Women never did, except the whorehouse hussies, and even they were reluctant unless he paid double. “I guess I know why. Women tell me I’m ugly, mean, dirty, smelly and worse. They’re right.”

“Yes, you are close to nature. I love that.”

He was caught completely off guard. “Huh?”

“I have seen human women. There’s no soil on them, and they smell like artificial roses. They are miles from nature. It’s a wonder a man can touch them without leaving smears on their polish. You are not at all like that. You are a man dipped deeply in the essence of nature. The kind of man I could love.”

Was he dreaming? “You—you like a dirty man?”

“Yes. I’m an earth creature. That’s why I’m so sad that it wouldn’t work. Not yet, anyway.”

“What wouldn’t work? You let me get hold of you, you saucy little piece, and I guarantee things will work.”

Now she sighed. “I will have to show you. Take hold of me.”

Bad Buffalo strode forward and put his arms around her evocative body. He hugged her. And his hands passed through her without resistance. “Huh?”

“You see?” she asked, her sweet lips half overlapping his nose. “I lack substance. I am frustrated too. I need my full quota of magic in order to fill out completely. As it is, I must be small and solid, or large and diffuse. I might as well be vapor.”

“Vapor,” he echoed, stunned. “How come?”

“As I said, our magic has been depleted,” she said, literally in his ear. “We will soon enough fade out entirely unless the dreadful course is reversed. That’s why we need a man like you.”

His mind remained bemused. There she was, in his embrace, overlapping him, yet also untouchable. “Don’t you mean ‘dreadful curse’?”

“That too,” she agreed. “The course is a curse.”

“How can I get you your magic back?” Because now he really wanted her to be solid.

“My magic will grow back naturally, in time,” she said to his neck. “Once we solve the problem. Then I will be able to not only change my appearance—illusion is much of what I have in my depleted state, because it’s cheap magic—and size and form, and to fly, but to do real substantive magic and be generally more impressive.”

“More impressive,” he echoed weakly. Such as maybe her vapor becoming solid flesh.

“Then I will gladly do with you what a lusty woman does with an attractive man.” She drew back slightly and glanced down at her blueberry-blonde nether region.

Attractive man! He was no longer sure she was teasing him. “Time,” he said, grasping what little he could.

“Yes. Magic forms naturally in the environment. The plants are imbued with it, gleaning it from the wonderful soil.” She kissed his smudged left eye without sensation. “We sprites harvest it like bees with nectar, a little each day, growing ever stronger. In a matter of weeks, we can be back at full strength. If.”

“If?” he asked through her flaring blue hair.

“If you help us solve our problem.”

“I’ll help you!” he cried. “Just tell me how.”

“It may be a boring discussion.”

“Bore me!”

“Very well.” She drew away from him, became the squirrel, scampered up the tree, perched on the low branch, and became the woman again, this time squirrel sized. She bestrode the branch, her legs dangling down on either side. “You can touch me now.”

He reached up and touched her delicate leg with a finger. It was solid!

“Yes, I am touchable,” she said. “But not in the way you want. Nothing would fit.” She glanced meaningfully down at her lush little torso.

“Dang,” he said.

“Well put,” Dia said. “Some dull history. Once the whole flat world was magic, and there were many magical creatures ranging from musical gnats to fiery dragons. Then the worms came and sucked out the magic, and left the world heart-achingly empty. Sadly depleted, it curled up into a tight ball and suffered. That was about three hundred years ago. Folk crafted what they called science to fill in the desolation, and came almost to believe that the world had always been a sphere and there had never been such a thing as magic.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, believing it.

“But there were two mitigating factors.” She paused, realizing that he didn’t know the word, then rephrased it. “Two things that helped. The worms did not get quite all the magic, and more was slowly being generated by the plants, especially in the hinterlands where mankind did not intrude so much. So we sprites survived, albeit in reasonably dire straits.”

“Straights are good card hands,” he said. “So are flushes.”

She silenced him with an impatient glance. “We stayed out of the way, because all humans saw was, well, our bodies.” She inhaled deeply, making her point. “Then the worms returned, emerging from their wormholes to suck out the restored magic. They feed on magic, destroying it. That was disaster.”

“Worms suck,” Bad Buffalo agreed. “Can’t you chop them up or something when they come out of their holes?”

“No. A wormhole is not exactly a hole. It’s a—a tunnel between different parts of the universe. The worms may forage anywhere, maybe on the other side of the galaxy, then come here when that’s used up. Much of the universe is sterile, because of them.”

“Whoa, girl! Universe? Galaxy?”

“Maybe I’m speaking a bit anachronistically,” Dia said. “Sometimes I lose track of time. You do know what stars are? The worms may come from another star. Regardless, they graze on our magic, and it’s awful. We’re really the last magic creatures on Earth, unless a few remain in Ireland or Africa. The worms won’t stop until the last magic is gone, and we’ll be, well, not even history, because human historians already don’t believe in us. They think they know everything, when really they know nothing.”

“Nothing,” Bad Buffalo agreed, wishing she would adjust her position on the branch so that he could see between her flexing legs. She was small, but still well worth contemplating. “So how can I help?”

“You can plug the holes.”

“Not as long as you’re either too small or too vapory.”

“The wormholes,” she said, not much amused. “Now please pay attention to what I’m saying, not to my legs. The holes are actually very small, maybe even singularities, but the worms squeeze through them to get here. The holes squeeze things tightly, so that if you poked your finger into one, it would be compressed into less than a grain of sand or a mote of dust. Wormholes are dangerous to approach. That’s why we can’t just walk up to one and plug it; we have to remain a safe distance from it. That means the worm has clearance to feed on the surrounding magic. It’s a real problem.”

Bad Buffalo decided not ask what a singularity was; this discussion was bypassing his knowledge of the world. If it wasn’t for her shapely little body, he’d have broken off the lecture already. Still, it was time to get to the point. “So how did you say I could help, if I can’t even get close to a hole?”

“I am getting to that,” she said impatiently. “We think a perfect round acorn might plug a hole, if we could manage to throw it in exactly right. Or a ball of lead. Something really solid, to choke its pipe as it were. When I saw how you shot my acorn, I thought maybe a bullet would do. You could stand back maybe twenty-five feet and fire into it, safely plugging it from there. If you can plug the holes as they form, maybe we can stop this scourge, and after a while, they’ll give up and migrate elsewhere to feed. Like another planet. Then we’d be saved, and the magic would slowly return, and I would be able to be as solid as this and as large as this at the same time.” She became full sized, lifting her spread knees to brace her feet on the branch.

Bad Buffalo almost freaked out seeing that view from directly below and in front, as maybe she’d intended.

“So will you do it?” she asked.

“Uh, sure,” he said. He would have agreed to eat a whale in one mouthful, at this moment.

“That’s so nice of you,” she said, smiling as she closed her legs and shrank back into mini-size. “You won’t regret it, in a few weeks.”

“A few weeks,” he echoed blissfully.

“Very good. Now we must go plug our first wormhole.”

“Plug our first hole,” he agreed. “Where?”

“We can sense them as they form,” she explained. “They distort space/time, radiating gravitic ripples.” She paused, seeing his blank expression. “Maybe think of it this way: we can smell them. Anyway, there’s one forming not far from here. All you have to do is shoot a bullet into it.”

“I can shoot a bullet into anything,” he agreed.

“I believe it. Follow me.” She jumped off the branch and flew at about his head height. Now he noticed that she had little wings; had she had them all the time? Not that it mattered; it was her torso that counted.

He kept his eyes on her cute little bottom as he leaped onto Horse and followed her, hardly aware of the forest scenery. Would it really be as easy as shooting bullets into little holes? Would that actually get him a girlfriend like her, his size and solid? Or would something go wrong, as it usually did when there was anything he really wanted? His hopes and fears were riding high.

They entered a glade.

“There,” she said, pointing.

There in the center of the glade was a tiny black spot. Bad Buffalo was almost disappointed. But she had said the wormholes were tiny.

He took aim at the spot, not bothering to dismount. He could readily score on it from here.

Chapter 3: Wormhole

Bad Buffalo’s shot was true, as he knew it would be, as he expected it to be.

In fact, Bad Buffalo couldn’t remember the last time his shot hadn’t been true. Perhaps it had been back when he was a youngster, first learning his way around a pistol, but even then, to the consternation of his mother and all those within two or three towns of him, he had been surprisingly adept at shooting. Bad Buffalo never did understand what the big deal was. Bullets shot straight, didn’t they? All a body had to do was aim the pistol, line up his target, pull the trigger, and let the bullet do the rest.

Smaller targets posed little problem for Bad Buffalo. In fact, the smaller the target, the truer his aim. Bad Buffalo tended to get lazy when his target was, say, a big, fat banker holding a big, fat bag of money.

Truth was, Bad Buffalo rarely shot anyone in cold blood. In fact, he was pretty sure he hadn’t. No, anyone he had ever shot had needed a good shooting, at least according to Bad Buffalo’s code of ethics, which were quite loose, to say the least. A cheating card shark, a cheating bartender (Bad Buffalo always knew when his whiskey was watered down), a cheating girlfriend, a cheating banker, a cheating baker, a cheating ironsmith, a cheating preacher.

These days, of course, people rarely cheated him. These days, of course, people rarely crossed his path in any way, shape or form. Indeed, Bad Buffalo lived a mostly isolated life, usually drinking whiskey alone at the abandoned saloons. Or quietly robbing banks that had long since been abandoned, once word had spread that Bad Buffalo was coming to town.

Now, the lonely gunslinger lowered his gun and watched as the dark wormhole winked out of existence. Where it went, he didn’t know. Where his bullet went, he didn’t know that either.

Almighty strange, he thought. Bad Buffalo didn’t like strange. And when Bad Buffalo saw something he didn’t like, he got mad. When Bad Buffalo got mad, he liked to shoot things.

“Are there any more wormholes?” he asked. It was all he could do to not put some hot lead into a crow circling high overhead. Bad Buffalo didn’t like crows. Too black. Too loud. Too many. But a part of the gunslinger was aware that the crow might be another sprite in disguise. Bad Buffalo was many things, but he wasn’t a cold-blooded murderer. Unless you cheated him.

But Dia wasn’t listening. She had flown over to the very spot where the wormhole had appeared, and flitted about this way and that, moving so rapidly that Bad Buffalo got a little dizzy. Bad Buffalo didn’t like being dizzy. He grew angry and nearly raised his gun, when he reminded himself that he liked Dia, and she really hadn’t done anything wrong to him. Bad Buffalo often had to talk himself out of killing things. More often than not, he lost the argument. But now, he lowered his gun. Yeah, he liked the little sprite. She’d said something about being his girlfriend. And he liked that idea, too.

“I think it’s gone, Buffalo,” said Dia, flitting back over to him. “That was some good shooting.”

Bad Buffalo shrugged. He didn’t understand the concept of a compliment. First, he rarely got them. Second, he didn’t need them. His shooting was what it was: on target every time. It was like complimenting the sun for rising each morning.

“Someone thinks mighty high of himself,” said Dia. She had dropped down on his shoulder. From the corner of his eye, he could see she had her hands on her hips and was scanning the surrounding mountainside.

“What the devil does that mean?” he asked.

“Oh, I forgot to mention: I can read minds when I’m pint-size, which is when I’m at my densest and strongest. Heck, half of what I’ve been telling you has been through telepathy, as it is now.”

“Telepa...” But Bad Buffalo gave up trying to sound out the word. Truth was, he didn’t like big, fancy words. In fact, he didn’t have much use for words at all. Whiskey, women and money was all he really had much use for. A well-placed grunt had gotten him far in life. So had his guns.

“Telepathy, Buffalo.” She leaped off his shoulder and buzzed around him, coming to a stop directly in front of him. “And if you’ll look close enough, you’ll notice my lips aren’t moving.”

Bad Buffalo had noticed that. But he had promptly forgotten it when she had flirted with him. Yes, indeed, her lips weren’t moving.

“You can read my thoughts?” he asked, just coming around to the concept.

“Most of them. The ones right there running along the front of your brain. And, yes, I will make a good girlfriend if we can get out of this mess, but I won’t be your girlfriend if every little thing sets you off and you choose your gun to answer your problems.”

Bad Buffalo literally had no idea what she was talking about. He was about to tell her that much when he saw for himself another wormhole appear behind her. It appeared quickly, and this time it was much bigger than the first. Bad Buffalo raised his gun, but Dia was in the way. She yelped—not because of the gun.

Indeed, one of the worm-like tentacles had reached around her little waist.

Buffalo saw the fear in her eye and this time she did use her tele-whatchamacallit. She screamed for him, loud and clear, except he couldn’t draw a bead on the tentacle with her in the way. And she kept screaming even as the tentacle dragged her back into the wormhole.

Just like that, she was gone.

Chapter 4: Worm Turned

Bad Buffalo stared at the fading hole that had swallowed his would-be girlfriend. That annoyed him, and few folk liked him when he was annoyed.

He holstered his gun and dived at the hole. He caught it with his hands. It reminded him of a tightly pursed mouth. He punched it to loosen it up, jammed a finger in, then another, prying open the sphincter-like circle. It yielded reluctantly, emitting a belch of noxious gas. He yanked it wide apart, finding no teeth to knock out, then hauled himself into it. There was a moment of suffocating pressure. Then he was inside, sliding down a curving slope like the inside of a beer bottle. The throat, maybe.

He emerged in what might be the stomach of the thing. The air here was foul, but he had breathed worse. There was the worm, maybe three feet thick, its tentacular tongue still wrapped around Dia, who was kicking and screaming desperately. The worm had a good hold of her, and it seemed she couldn’t expand into vapor to escape. But she was crosswise to its circular mouth and it couldn’t quite get her inside. Yet.

The thought of her getting eaten by the worm annoyed him further. In fact, he was on the verge of getting angry. Folk really didn’t like him when he was angry.

For a fleeting moment, Bad Buffalo considered drawing his gun and plugging the worm. But he was afraid the bullet would pass through it and make a hole in the side of the wormhole, and he wasn’t sure that was safe. So he used his fists instead. That saved on bullets.

He stepped up to the side of the worm and punched it in the snoot, or as close as he could get. The creature was probably about the mass of several buffalo with a bear or two thrown in, but it was one good, hard punch. It dented the soft flesh and shoved the creature back several inches.

The tongue tentacle loosened, and Dia slid free. “BB!” she cried gladly. “You came to rescue me from a horrible fate!”

BB? Well, his initials would probably do. “Somebody had to,” he said gruffly.

Then the worm oriented. Its blind snout curved around to sniff out the source of the punch. Its tongue uncoiled, snapping at Bad Buffalo.

And recoiled, as did the snout.

“What, turning chicken, you coward?” he said. He advanced on it, and launched another punch, making the snout compress like an accordion as it retreated. “Stand up and fight like a man, you worm!”

But the creature kept retreating, and finally it turned tail, literally, and wriggled rapidly down the intestine-like tunnel.

“You saved me!” the tiny Dia exclaimed, flying up to plant a kiss on his cheek.

He liked that, but knew they weren’t out of danger. “We gotta get outta here.”

“That may not be easy. The worms can get out, but we don’t have their magic.”

“Yeah? Maybe I can punch our way out.” He kicked at the yielding membrane of the wormhole.

Then there came a reaction. The entire wall of the tube heaved inward and outward in some kind of convulsion.

“Oops,” Dia said. “I think you shouldn’t have done that.”

“Yeah? Well, I’ll do it again. Take that, hole-for-brains. And that. And that.” He kicked the membrane repeatedly.

The tube constricted, squeezing the two of them together. Then it developed a bubble that carried them rapidly along. It squeezed them right out of the opening mouth. They flew through the air and landed on a pile of moss.

“Peristalsis!” Dia exclaimed. “It vomited us out!”

“Guess it didn’t much like getting its butt kicked, or whatever.” He looked around, but the wormhole was gone. Only Horse remained, placidly glazing. Horse was used to Bad Buffalo’s comings and goings, and took them in stride. “Served it right.”

“Oh, BB!” Dia exclaimed, kissing him on the nose. “I thought I was done for, but you rescued me! I’m ever so grateful.”

“Well, that and a lot more substance would be great.”

“About that,” she said, looking thoughtful. “You saved me before the monster could eat me, and I didn’t lose any magic in that high-magic environment. In fact, I even have a bit more than I had before. Maybe I can thank you in a way you’ll appreciate.”

“You can be big and solid?” he asked hopefully.

“Not that much more magic. But maybe I can be part smart.” She stood before him and expanded to full human size, nude. “Feel me.”

“But you’re vapor!” he protested.

“There,” she said, touching her own chest. “Now.”

He shrugged and extended one hand to her marvelous bare front. And felt flesh. “They’re real!” he exclaimed, grabbing with both hands.

“But only for a moment, and only there,” she said as he squeezed. Sure enough, the moment passed and she dissolved back into vapor, there and everywhere. But it had been some feel.

“Wow,” he said belatedly. “But how’d you get any magic, instead of having it all sucked out of you?”

“I have been thinking about that,” she said, reverting to mini size. “The worms do suck magic, while this one didn’t. Instead it grabbed me physically. I think I represented a compact tasty package of magic, so it was easier to eat me whole instead of taking the time to suck out all my magic. The end would have been the same. Once it digested my magic, it would have spit out the husk of my body. But I noticed also that it is high intensity magic inside the wormhole, supercharged, so I didn’t shed magic there, I absorbed it, maybe by osmosis. If I’d stayed there longer, I might have taken in enough to, well, become full-size solid. You would have liked that.”

He was learning to ignore her four-bit words and squeeze out the meaning. “Yeah. We should’ve stayed longer.”

“No, it’s too dangerous. You did the right thing, saving me quickly. But I wonder. When you punched the worm, it really reacted. It backed off.”

“Folk do back off when I brace them,” Bad Buffalo said. “It turned out to be a big sissy.”

“I’m not at all sure of that. There was something else. Now I am coming to realize what it is. You have no magic at all.”

“Right. I’m strictly a down-to-earth guy.”

“Most humans have a little magic, which they tend to pass off as coincidence. They pick it up from the natural environment, just as we sprites do, but not as efficiently. They’re not really interested in magic.”

“Yeah.”

“But you have none at all. You’re void.”

“Folk do avoid me,” he agreed.

She smiled as if he’d said something funny. “I mean, there’s not even a tiny trace of magic in you. While the worm is a magic eater. You must taste really bad to it.”

“I leave a bad taste,” he agreed. “What’s your point?”

“Why didn’t you pick up magic from the wormhole, as I did? Why aren’t you sucking all the magic from me? Not because you want to; because such a void should be as bad as a worm. Magic abhors a vacuum. But you don’t suck.”

“I love hearing that from such a pretty girl.”

“You must be something else.”

“I sure am.”

“I mean that your void must somehow be blocked off, so that magic does not nudge in to fill it. That must be a kind of magic itself. Maybe like antimatter.”

“Huh? I thought I was understanding you, but now I’m lost. I’m magic because I’m not magic?”

“It’s confusing to me, too. But I think that only a special kind of magic must be able to prevent magic from acting the way it normally does. You may be inherently immune. I wonder if someone cast a magic spell on you whether it would work.”

“Honey, when you spread your legs at me, it cast a spell on me.”

“That’s sex appeal. Not the same. All men are horny. That’s so women can manage them.”

“No woman ever managed me!” he protested.

“Until now.”

“Not even now.”

She expanded to human size, floated on her back in the air, and spread her bare legs toward him.

Oh, that blueberry-blonde fur! “You wouldn’t dare do that if you were solid!”

“You just saved me from the worm. It’s only the beginning of what I would do to repay you. I’m just making the point: you can be managed, too. It might as well be by me.”

He had to concede her point. “Okay,” he grudged.

“You’re sweet.” She contracted to mini-size, flew to his face, and kissed his left eyebrow. He didn’t protest that he was bad, not sweet; she had demonstrated her power over him. “But there’s more. The way that second wormhole appeared, right where I was, so the worm could grab me and gobble me, it thought. I think it realized that we had just plugged a hole, and it was investigating, and acting to stop it. And, but for you, it would have succeeded, and no one would have stopped future holes. We thought the holes were mostly random and the worms just took advantage of them to feed on the local magic. But this suggests that they know what they’re doing, and can control the wormholes.”

“If they know what they’re doing, they’ll know I can punch them out,” Bad Buffalo said. “So maybe they’ll stay away now that I’m on the scene.”

“But maybe they’ll go after you next, knowing that you represent the worst danger to them. So that they’ll be able to graze magic in peace.”

“Let them come,” he said. “I’ll plug the lot of ’em.”

“BB, I like you a lot, and truly hope I can recover enough magic to really do things with you. But I think you’re being a fool. Those worms are dangerous.”

“So am I.”

She shook her little head without speaking. He realized that she was afraid for him, and that made him nervous. What could the worms do, anyway?

They were about to find out.

Chapter 5: Holes

All this shooting and damsel saving was getting Bad Buffalo hungry. He’d seen a rabbit or two on the way in. He could go for some rabbit stew.

“The rabbits are our friends, BB. You can’t eat them.”

“Ah, crud.”

“Same with the squirrels and chipmunks and birds and lizards—oh, and definitely deer and bear and cougars and skunk and raccoon. Especially the raccoon. They are all our very good friends. Not to mention, one of my sisters might be in animal form. So, you can’t take a chance on shooting anything in the forest.”

“Double crud.”

“Here, let me gather you up a nice salad, BB. You will love it. I’ll make my very own lavender dressing.”

“Great.”

And as little Dia flitted about, to and fro, gathering ingredients from the forest—and humming a haunting song as she did so—Bad Buffalo had a strong urge to get on Horse and ride him hard, as far away from the crazy mountain glen as possible, never looking back and never thinking again of Dia’s silky-smooth legs. At least, he thought they were silky smooth. Then again, Bad Buffalo was pretty sure he had never felt silk before, but he’d heard it was smooth, and Dia’s legs looked almighty smooth, too.

He shook his head, already entranced by the promise of her touch. So much for getting on Horse and riding out of here. That would be rude. Of course, Bad Buffalo didn’t care much about what anyone thought of him. But look at Dia. She was working so hard to make him a forest salad. Yeah, turning his back on her now didn’t seem right. Bad Buffalo was only vaguely aware that this might have been the first time he’d ever purposely chosen “right” over “wrong.”

That in and of itself felt wrong. But oddly right, too.

Bad Buffalo kind of wished that Dia had remained hidden, and had never chosen to reveal herself to him. Life was easier then. Of course, she had a good reason to seek his help. He was, after all, the best shooter in the West (and three states in the East). Seeking him made sense, and her reasons were valid. She lived off magic and something was eating the magic of their world. That didn’t seem to right to Bad Buffalo. There he went again! What had gotten into him? He knew darn well had gotten into him...Dia. And now, here she was bringing a wooden bowl of food to him, a bowl she was levitating before her, a bowl that was overflowing with...weeds!

“I know what you’re thinking, BB,” she said, pausing and hovering before him. “And thank you for staying. Your help stopping the wormholes could very well save this world. People need magic more than they know. Magic helps germinate seeds, magic helps form wind and rain and snow. It is magic, after all, that starts fires. People think there’s a lot of science to some of this. Science only goes so far. In the end, it is the spark of magic that keeps this world turning. You have a question, BB?”

“What’s science?”

“Never mind that, you big beautiful man. Now, settle in here and let’s eat.”

“You eat, too?”

“Sometimes, when the mood strikes, or if I am feeling weak. The forest is full of magical plants, and I have given you the best of them. And no, Buffalo, these are not weeds. Quite the opposite.”

Bad Buffalo sighed and hunkered down, adjusting his right six-shooter. He wore two weapons, one at each hip. He used both equally well. Once, he’d heard someone say that he was ambidextrous. Bad Buffalo shot him, of course. No one calls Bad Buffalo names he ain’t ever heard of.

Using his big fingers, Bad Buffalo dug into the salad, and found that he quite enjoyed it. More interesting, the more he ate, the stronger and more alert he felt. Which was good, because as he got to the bottom of the wooden bowl, and as he soaked up the rest of the delicious lavender dressing with a leafy green, he saw another wormhole appear.

It was about fifty feet away, and hovered in the open space between two giant oaks. Bad Buffalo shoved aside his bowl, licked his fingers, and drew the gun all in the same motion. Little Dia barely had time to gasp before the black wormhole had been plugged full of lead. Dia turned in time to see the hole shudder, then disappear. She was just about to compliment him on his fine shooting when she saw it. Another wormhole, not very far from the first.

“BB, there!”

But the outlaw had already seen it. The second shot was as true as the first, and the wormhole quickly retreated. Or perhaps it died. But that didn’t seem right to Bad Buffalo. Whatever was appearing from these holes wasn’t dying. It was retreating and starting again. Bad Buffalo suddenly had a very bad feeling about these worms. He was wondering if they could be killed, at least by bullets. He also had another feeling...his gut instinct was telling him it was the same worm, appearing over and over.

“You might be right, BB,” said Dia. “And it might be closer to an octopus than a worm.”

“An octo-what?”

“They are friends of my cousins in the sea, the sea nymphs. Octopuses have many legs, eight, in fact. I think what we are seeing here is a many-legged worm.”

“That can’t be good.”

“It’s not good at all. It suggests that, like a lizard, it can lose its tail—or in this case, a tentacle-like arm—and still be a threat. Perhaps it can even grow another arm, instantly. It is certainly gobbling up enough magic to instantly create new limbs. We might be dealing with something huge and many faceted. Something that can self-replicate. Something that’s determined to gobble up all the magic in the world. Including me.”

He didn’t understand the half of what she was talking about, but he sure understood that last bit. “You?”

“Yes, you dolt. I’m magic, too. Without it, I cease to exist.”

Bad Buffalo didn’t like that at all, and so when another wormhole appeared, this time closer, he plugged it up before it barely had a chance to form. He was out of bullets. He reached for more along his gun belt and expertly freed them and dropped them down into the six-shooter’s chambers. He spun the cylinder, and snapped it back together. He did all of this while shooting another wormhole with his free hand. Bad Buffalo was a multi-tasker, even if he didn’t know what multi-tasking was.

Another wormhole appeared, and then another. Now, Bad Buffalo was using both weapons, firing them simultaneously at the two different targets, plugging them both up. More wormholes appeared. In fact, five of them appeared at once. Blam, blam, blam, blam, blam! Bad Buffalo shot them each as fast as he could shoot, which was almighty fast.

He needed to reload gun #2. He continued shooting gun #1 as more wormholes appeared. He plugged up each and now, he was shooting with both guns again, as more and more holes appeared in the glen around them. Some tentacles got loose and reached for the ground. But they never got very far. A well-placed bullet in its snout got each of the tentacles retracting quickly, shuddering and bleeding.

They could bleed, he thought. If they could bleed, they could die.

And then it happened. Bad Buffalo had run out of bullets, and before them were a half-dozen wormholes, all with black, tentacle-like appendages reaching out...and reaching for the two of them. Bad Buffalo snatched Dia from out of the sky, where she had been hovering safely just behind his head. She squeaked as he shoved her in his front pocket. He leaped onto Horse, snapped the reins, and now they were charging out of the glen, while more and more wormholes appeared around them...

Chapter 6: Bug

Horse could outrun just about anything, not that he needed to with Bad Buffalo aboard and loaded. But now he was out of bullets, and would have to go to his secret cache to get more. Meanwhile there were wormholes surrounding them. Those worms really meant business!

“But this doesn’t make sense,” Dia said from his pocket. “They don’t want you! They can’t stand your blocked magic.”

“They want to be rid of me,” Bad Buffalo said as they dodged around a hole. “Now that they know I’m dangerous to them.”

“Well, yes. But they can’t touch you, literally. The holes don’t like you much, either; that one spit you out. So what are they going to do?”

“I’d sure like to know.”

Horse dodged another hole. He was smart about things like that.

“I think they’re herding us,” Dia said. “Maybe they want to drive us over a cliff. That wouldn’t hurt me, because I can fly, but it might kill you and Horse. Then they could go after me and the other sprites with impunity.”

“With who?”

“With nothing to worry about.”

Oh. “There’s no cliffs in these parts.”

“I know. It was just an example. Maybe something else, like a man-eating monster.”

“Ain’t none of them in these parts neither.”

“Unless they bring one in.”

He pondered that for a long second, which was about as long as he’d ever pondered anything. “I’d better reload on bullets.”

“You’ve got more?”

“Got a cache. Got several. A man never knows when they’ll come in handy. Can’t ever have too many bullets.”

“I suppose that’s right,” she agreed, bemused. “Can you get there soon?”

“One’s close by. I keep them where there’s always one where I might need it.” He nudged Horse with a knee, and the trusty steed responded by leaping over one forming wormhole, dodging another, and galloping in a new direction. When push came to shove, Horse knew what was what.

The wormholes seemed confused by the sudden shift, but soon they reoriented and followed. There was no doubt they were orienting on Bad Buffalo. But he had the drop on them, as it were, and made it to his hidden cache before they could close in.

Horse skewed to a halt beside a standing deadwood with a hornets’ nest near the top. The hornets knew Bad Buffalo was one of them, and didn’t bother him, but that kept the cache safe from others. Bad Buffalo jumped off, reached into a crack in the trunk, and hauled out a leather bag of bullets. He quickly loaded his pistol and jammed the rest of them into a saddlebag. He remounted Horse, Dia still in his pocket. She clearly felt safer there, where a worm couldn’t grab her.

But that brief pause had given the wormholes time to catch up. Now they completely surrounded the tree, so closely that there was no room to pass between them. They were like a thick forest of saplings.

“Dang,” Bad Buffalo said, holding his gun ready. “I could use up all my new bullets before I plug the last of these. I really hate to waste bullets.”

“Maybe you can plug just the ones right in front, to clear a path.”

“Yeah. But that’d be temporary, and they’d be after us again. We need to figure out how to get rid of all them, permanent-like.”

“They’re not advancing,” she said. “Why? I doubt they fear the hornets.”

It was true. Horse was watching the hovering holes warily, ready to stomp any that got near his feet, but they were staying clear. “Dunno. I can’t think about two things at the same time. Right now I’m trying to figure how to get rid of them all.”

“So am I. Do you know, I’m remembering a story, really a legend. It probably doesn’t relate, but I wonder.”

“A legend? I thought you sprites were a legend.”

“We are. But that doesn’t mean we can’t have legends of our own, derivative as it may seem.”

“Weird. What’s your legend?”

“That there were magic-eating worms on a far planet, but there were bugs there that ate the worms. So now there are no worms there. That’s about all I remember. Maybe it was just a dream.”

“Sprites dream?”

She laughed. “Certainly we do. I’m dreaming now of getting big and solid and becoming your dream.”

“I’d like that.” But something was nagging him. Bugs?

“Hey, in your mind—follow that up. It may be something.”

He laughed. “Something in my mind? Other than eating, fighting, and cheap dames?”

“It is a stretch,” she agreed. “Those will be limited once I get my full magic. But humor me.”

Dang. She meant to turn him into a decent law-abiding hombre, and there didn’t seem to be much he could do about it. Not if he wanted her favor when it counted.

“Correct,” she said. “Now focus on the bugs.”

He focused on bugs. Actually, they seldom bothered him, any more than the hornets did, because his skin was too tough and smelly; it gave them nausea. Once, long ago, two flies had bitten him when he’d been too busy to swat them, then had immediately squared off and fought each other to the death. His blood had that effect.

“That’s not it,” Dia said. “There’s a drunk. That’s the one.”

The drunk. Now he remembered. The guy had meandered on about worms that did something other than feed birds, and bugs that ate worms. Bad Buffalo never heard the end of the story, because the drunk had gotten in his way and he’d plugged him without paying much attention. Could those worms and bugs have been magic? It hadn’t seemed to make any sense, then, but now it was starting to. Knowing Dia made a big difference. “Bug-eating worms.”

“Suppose there was this planet where the worms thought to feed on the magic as usual, only it wasn’t what they expected?” Dia asked. “Instead of the worms sucking the magic out of the bugs, the bugs sucked it out of the worms? What would the worms do?”

“They’d damn well hightail it out of there and leave that planet alone.”

“They would,” she agreed. “But there must be a connection between that world and ours.”

“Why?”

“How else would the story have gotten here? The worms wouldn’t tell. There must have been a traveler, maybe with his own magic tunnels, who then paused at Earth and mentioned it.”

“The drunk!”

“Maybe so,” she agreed. “Maybe he was bragging a bit. Men do foolish things when drinking, which is why you won’t be doing it anymore.”

“Who says?” he demanded.

She floated up out of his pocket and spread her little legs in front of his face.

“Oh, that,” he said. It was part of the price of her and he knew he’d have to pay it. She knew it, too, reading his mind.

Meanwhile the wormholes hovered in their places. What were they waiting for? Reinforcements? There were already hundreds.

Dia returned to his pocket. “If there really is a planet with bugs like that, maybe there’s a way to reach it. If we got some of those bugs, maybe we could drive the worms from this planet, too.”

“How could we get any bugs?”

“I don’t know. But there’s something else in your mind. You’ve got an idea.”

“I sure don’t know what.”

“Let’s reason it out. If you were a wormhole worm, and you discovered that a particular planet was dangerous, what would you do?”

“I’d blast it to smithereens!”

“But if you had to go to it to do that, and if you opened a wormhole there, suppose the bugs were lurking, ready to invade your tunnels the moment you opened it there? What if some were already in that particular tunnel?”

Bad Buffalo concentrated. Thinking like a worm was hard, and thinking like a damn coward was harder. But he tried, and got a kind of answer. “Maybe I’d not go there. Maybe I’d seal off that tunnel and never use it again, and spread the word: DANGER, THIS HOLE IS BUGGY.”

“I think that’s it. You’re so smart.”

He got an ugly suspicion. “Are you managing me, you little fairy?”

“Of course. But I think you’re right. You have managed to think like a worm.”

He gazed down at her in his pocket, getting a good view down her classic little front. “When you get your whole magic, you’re going to owe me a lot of poking, you know that?”

“And I will gladly pay it all,” she agreed, taking a deep breath that further enhanced that profile. She obviously knew what she was doing, flashing him and praising him. He’d have been furious, if he didn’t like it so much.

“Exactly,” she said, answering his thought. “So, now what are you going to do, assuming there is such a sealed-off wormhole segment?”

“Do?” he asked blankly.

“We have to get those bugs.”

“But we’d have to go back into a worm tunnel!”

“I don’t relish the thought myself. But is there any other way?”

He thought about it. The worms couldn’t touch him physically. If he went down there, he’d just punch out the worms and do his own thing, looking for a sealed-off tunnel that was bound to be the one. “How would I catch any bugs?”

Dia produced a transparent bag from somewhere. “I use this to forage in the forest. It could be used for bugs, too, which I believe I could sense, if they were in range. I’d fly out and catch them, then fly back to you, where I’m safe, because the worms can’t get me when I’m right up against you.”

“You ain’t scared?”

“Terrified! But you’ve got enough bravery for both of us.”

What could he do? He suspected that she was nudging him mentally in the direction she wanted to go. But how could he oppose such a pretty little magical creature who might soon enough be a big magical creature? “Okay, I guess. But how do we get into another tunnel?”

“I think they have solved that particular problem for us.”

“They have?”

“You’re like a bug, BB. They can’t handle you, so they want to get rid of you. And now I think we know how.”

“How?” he asked somewhat blankly.

“By sealing you off the same way they sealed the bugs. That’s what they’ve been waiting for. It’s probably the same tunnel they sealed off before, with the bugs, or at least leads to it. That’s why it’s complicated for them to get its aperture here.”

Bad Buffalo opened his mouth, then closed it. There before them was forming the biggest, hugest, baddest wormhole of them all, big enough to take in a man his size without choking. The worms had held him here while they’d brought the big one.

But if they sealed him off, how could he return with the bugs?

The hole irised open wide. It advanced slowly on them.

Then he got a notion. “Maybe they could seal me off, but there ain’t nothing that can stop Horse when he has a mind to get somewhere. He’s coming too.”

“But he’s too big for the hole!”

“Then we’ll just make it fit. You stay on Horse. Tell him to jump when it’s time.” He reached into his pocket and picked her up, setting her on the steed’s noble head. Then he jumped off, right at the advancing hole.

It opened wide to engulf him. But he didn’t go in; instead, he spread his arms and legs, bracing them against its edges as he squatted. Then he slowly straightened up, heaving the sphincter farther apart. It opened in an enlarging circle, until it was a good six or seven feet in diameter. Big enough for a careful horse.

“Now!” he called.

Horse leaped. He brushed by Bad Buffalo as he passed, throwing him clear of the sphincter and on into the tube, but that was fine. They all wound up inside as the hole closed behind them.

Bad Buffalo mounted Horse again. He picked Dia up and returned her to his pocket. “Easy,” he said.

“Just so,” she echoed faintly.

Now all they had to do was find the bugs.

“Show me the way,” he told Dia.

Chapter 7: The Way

So far, Dia wasn’t picking up anything.

Bad Buffalo didn’t like traveling along foreign terrain. He liked to know the lay of the land. In particular, he liked to know ambush points, both for himself and for others. So far, the tunnel was open and tubular, much like the mining shafts that Bad Buffalo often used as hideouts. But unlike those mining shafts, these walls were smooth and pinkish, and, if Bad Buffalo wasn’t mistaken, seemed to give off a slight luminescence. As if the walls themselves were glowing. The outlaw noted the many shafts branching off the main tunnel.

As they traveled, Bad Buffalo did his best to understand what he was up against. He always knew his enemy. Sometimes better than his enemy knew themselves.

“The holes lead to tunnel openings,” he said.

“Which the worms or tentacles travel along,” said Dia.

“So the holes themselves are not nefarious,” said Bad Buffalo, certain he’d used the word correctly, a word that was often whispered behind his back. “They just act as a transport system for the worms, like train tracks.”

“I think so, yes.”

“Except the worms can control when and where the holes appear.”

“Like when it corralled us,” said Dia. “So, how did it know where we were?”

Bad Buffalo knew something about lookouts. “Each tentacle acts as eyes for the creatures.”

“Or perhaps it sniffed us out.” Dia gave a sniff near Bad Buffalo’s armpit, brave girl. “Which wouldn’t be too hard to do.”

The outlaw ignored her. He was quite certain he had plugged more than a few people for commenting on his body odor. “Perhaps it uses the same tunnels over and over again, but can control where the holes appear.”

Dia made a small movement in his chest pocket. She was, Bad Buffalo was certain, nodding her little head. “Makes sense. Unless it can create these tunnels at will, too.”

Bad Buffalo didn’t think so. The tunnel seemed solid enough. He said as much.

“If that’s true, then the worm or worms are using established tunnels, and then orienting the openings when and where they want.”

That seemed about right to Bad Buffalo. He might not be the smartest guy in the West, but he knew how to assess an enemy. Speaking of which, where was the worm that had opened this tunnel?

“Good question,” said Dia, reading his mind.

“But I didn’t say—”

“You didn’t have to, you big oaf. I suspect the worm that created this tunnel retracted instantly, perhaps down one of these side tunnels.”

The outlaw didn’t like the thought of his enemy moving so quickly. He decided to change the subject. “Have you picked up on the bugs?”

“Not yet.”

Bad Buffalo was certain the tunnel was meant to be a trap, but so far, it just continued on. Maybe they were never meant to escape. Maybe they were meant to travel the corridors endlessly, lost and confused. Which gave him pause for thought. If the bugs had been sealed off in a tunnel, how had they survived? Buffalo had seen the drunk stranger maybe two weeks ago, in Carson City. Bugs usually lived for only a few days, let alone a few weeks. Maybe these were special bugs.

How these tubes connected to planets, Bad Buffalo didn’t have a clue. What a planet exactly was, he didn’t know that either. But from what he was gathering, planets were out there...in the night sky. Space, as he’d heard it called. Maybe all those twinkling stars were planets. Bad Buffalo was quite sure the moon was such a planet. In fact, he had heard that people lived on the moon.

While they continued following the pinkish tunnel that glowed, Dia, who had been following the outlaw’s train of thought, filled him in about how the Moon orbited the Earth, and how the nine planets in the solar system orbited the Sun, and how the sun orbited the Milky Way, and how the Milky Way orbited the Universe. She described other suns and other planets, too, some of which supported life. When Bad Buffalo asked Dia how she knew all of this, she reminded the gunslinger that she was connected to Nature, and that Nature was connected to the Earth, and the Earth was connected to everything in the Galaxy and beyond.

Bad Buffalo was still confused. After all, he lived on the Earth, too, didn’t he?

Dia picked up on his confusion. “True, BB. But, unlike you, my mother is Mother Nature. Myself and others like me come from her womb, born whole and complete, with all the knowledge of the Universe.”

“So, you have no parents?”

“Only Mother.”

“And this Mother Nature...she’s a real damsel?”

“Not a damsel, although she can take on the form of a person. She is all of nature. She is, quite frankly, the soul of the world.”

The gunslinger was quite certain the little fairy was mad. Then again, all of this was mad. Heck, maybe he was dying of heatstroke out in the desert.

Something pinched his chest good and hard and for the first time in his life, Bad Buffalo let out a girl-like yelp. “Hey!”

“Pain is real. And this is real, too, BB.”

He grumbled and rubbed his chest, and found himself wishing like crazy he’d never left Carson City. But then, he wouldn’t have met Dia, and he kind of liked Dia, even if she did things like pinch him and boss him around. As he rubbed the little spot where he was certain she had pulled free some hair, too, he found himself thinking of the bugs.

“What about the bugs?” asked Dia, reading his mind, which the outlaw still wasn’t used to, and didn’t think he would ever get used to.

“Well, I think they’re goners. Ain’t nothing can live in these tunnels for very long, not without food and water. And I don’t see any of either. I don’t care what planet they’re from. A body needs food, and a body needs water.”

He felt Dia cross her arms inside his pocket. He flinched involuntarily.

“I think you might be right, BB. Maybe this is a fool’s errand.”

He felt his hackles rise. “Who are you calling a fool?”

“Relax, BB. I’m just afraid I might not have thought this through.”

He hadn’t either. Then again, the attacking worm had given them precious little time to think anything through. In fact, their only real option had been to jump into this tunnel. Which gave him pause for thought. Why this tunnel, and where did it go?

“They led us here for a reason,” said Dia, picking up on his thoughts. “And probably not for a very good reason, either.”

If Bad Buffalo wasn’t already on high alert, he was so now, more so. He made sure the well-used handle of his six-shooter was easily accessible, and he rode forward on Horse, patting the proud creature’s neck, a gesture he always did right before a gunfight.

They continued on, deeper into the wormhole, to where they did not know. What awaited them, they didn’t know that either. Bad Buffalo suspected the further they went down the hole, the farther they were from home. He wondered if he would ever see his Earth again, and hoped he would. He had grown rather fond of the place, even if it seemed like there was trouble everywhere he went. Which gave him pause for thought: was there the smallest of chances that he was the cause of the trouble? Something to ponder.

As they rounded another bend, Bad Buffalo had an idea. “Say, even if the bugs are dead in the tunnel, the planet they are from is still out there. And one of these tunnels surely leads straight to their planet.”

“Good thinking, BB, but how do we find the right tunnel?”

He thought about that, and as he did so, two things happened nearly simultaneously. The first was that Bad Buffalo said, “Didn’t you say you were connected to Mother Nature?”

“Yes.”

“And she is connected to the entire cosmos?”

“Yes.”

“Ask her!”

The little fairy was about to reply when the second thing happened. From around the bend, something made a noise. A clicking sound. Or perhaps a snapping sound. Bad Buffalo didn’t like the sound, whatever it was. He was tempted to turn back, but Bad Buffalo had never run from a fight, and he wasn’t about to now.

He took a deep breath and aimed his weapon at whatever was about to emerge from around the bend...

Chapter 8: Caterpillar

And there was a monster so enormously huge that it entirely filled the tunnel. Its front end was armored, with an impressive an array of clubs, knives, spears, guns, shields, and other exotic weapons. It seemed as surprised to see them as they were to see it. It halted in place, nothing moving, maybe deciding how best to destroy them without getting too much blood on its surface.

Horse skidded to a halt.

“Whoa!” Bad Buffalo exclaimed, not to the steed but to himself. It was obvious that his trusty six-shooter was more like a peashooter against this behemoth. “What’s this?”

“I think it’s a tank,” Dia said, impressed.

“You mean to store water?”

“Oops, I’m getting anachronistic again. The tank hasn’t been invented yet. It’s a big armored vehicle with caterpillar treads and—”

“A caterpillar?”

“A mechanical one, maybe,” she said.

He looked at the base of the thing. It did seem to have a number of little caterpillar feet. “A big caterpillar,” he agreed.

“It—I’m trying to read its mind. It’s alive, after a fashion, but it’s alien, not on my wavelength. I think it’s not hostile, just job oriented.”

“What’s its job?”

She focused, interpreting the alien thoughts with difficulty. “It is a—a maintenance worker. It patrols the tunnels, scrubbing grime off their walls, cleaning up worm droppings, compacting trash for disposal. Routine repairs of the framework so the vacuum doesn’t get in. It’s been doing it for hundreds of centuries. So it’s got a scoop and a flip-top can for rubbish. That’s what we heard.”

Bad Buffalo was getting a glimmer. “What trash?”

“Anything that litters the tunnels. Like dead bodies.”

The glimmer brightened into a suspicion. “Like our dead bodies? So they won’t stink up the tunnel?”

“Yes.” She continued reading the alien mind. “Things get in, and get lost, and have nothing to eat or drink, and die of hunger and thirst, and become litter. Trash. So it picks it up and squashes it into organic blocks and dumps it out on some passing planet as fertilizer.”

Now he saw that the swords were actually scrapers, the clubs were peg pounders, and the guns were the ends of hoses to spray paint or glue. Not that it made a huge difference. “That’s what the worms have in mind for us,” he said. “Raw fertilizer. There’s probably no way out.”

“No way we can negotiate,” she agreed. “It’s an ugly business.”

“So the caterpillar’s not our enemy, just a creature doing its job.”

“Yes, I think that’s it. Maybe it’s waiting for us to die so it can clean up the mess.”

Bad Buffalo thought about that. “That’s not the kind of mess I have in mind for us.”

“I’m not sure what we can do. We can’t get around it, and it’s not going to back up until its job is finished.”

“When will that be?”

“Its job is never finished. Eventually it will retire and another caterpillar will take its place.”

Bad Buffalo wasn’t good at pondering, but he seemed to have no choice. He put his rusty mind to work. They had either to deal with the caterpillar, or retreat back to Earth, their mission unaccomplished. The word “retreat” was not in his limited lexicon. In fact, “lexicon” wasn’t in it either.

Horse snorted.

“You what?” Bad Buffalo demanded. He did not have Dia’s telepathy, but he generally knew what was on Horse’s mind, because it was so similar to his own.

Horse snorted again.

“That’s what I thought you said. Well, if you must, you must. Go ahead.” He tended to give his steed leeway that he wouldn’t give a man, because he trusted Horse.

Horse stepped forward and sniffed noses with the caterpillar.

“Well, now,” Dia said. “That gesture of friendliness wowed the caterpillar. No one’s sniffed noses with her in two hundred years.”

“Her?”

“Caterpillars have genders too, it turns out. Any century now she’ll go home and breed.”

“Not with Horse!”

“Uh, no. That would be miscegenation. With a male caterpillar, so they can merge into a cocoon and some millennium, hence transform into the universe’s largest and loveliest butterfly, if I understand it correctly. I may have a detail or two wrong, but that’s the essence.”

“So it’s more like being just friends with Horse.”

“Yes. It’s nice to have company every century or so, even that of an alien creature, just to pass the time.”

That gave him an idea. “Friends do things for friends.”

“They do,” she agreed. “But we did not sniff noses. We’re not friends.”

He thought about sniffing noses with the caterpillar. It did not appeal; it might blow a barrel of snot on him. “Is there any other way to get to be friends?”

She concentrated, reading a bit more of the caterpillar’s mind. “Well, it’s not quite the same, but the worms mesmerize the caterpillar.”

“They do what?”

“They—they hypnotize it.”

“Why didn’t you say so? How?”

“I’m not sure. Her mind is somewhat foggy. She’s not clear exactly what they do, but it works. That’s why they can get the caterpillar to do things they want, like opening new branches on Earth so they can go suck out the magic.”

Bad Buffalo pondered again. He felt his poor brain heating with the effort, but he was making progress. “I heard tell, once, of a swampy in Ink who hypnotized a, well, I guess a kind of thick-necked rattlesnake.”

“Let me look at that memory,” she said. “Aha: you are thinking of a swami in India who played his flute to hypnotize a cobra in a basket.”

“Yeah, that’s it. Real big poisonous snake, but it didn’t bite him because of the music.”

“I have heard of it. It’s not the music, because snakes are tone-deaf. It’s the motion. The swami sways constantly back and forth, and the snake sways with him, and gets dizzy, and entranced.”

“Yeah. So maybe if we sway enough, the caterpillar will like us.”

“I wonder. If she liked us, or at least felt obliged to respond to us, she might do what we say, just as she does for the worms.”

“And we’d tell her to take us to the bug planet. She’s got to know the way, and she can open a porpoise there.”

“A portal there,” Dia said patiently. “BB, I think your genius has scored again.” She kissed her hand, then threw the kiss up to his face. It scored on his mouth, leaving a nice taste of sweetness.

She was managing him again, but what could he do? He liked it. Maybe if they could manage the caterpillar the same way, they’d get the job done.

“So how do we sway hypnotically?” he asked.

She considered. “Maybe we can dance.”

“Dance! I don’t do that sissy stuff.”

She paused a moment, probably figuring out the best way to manage this. “You know, somewhere along the time-line, they wanted to get boys to play with dolls, so they could sell twice as many of them. But boys didn’t like sissy stuff. So they renamed them things like GI Joe and made them look tough, and then the boys liked the dolls just fine.”

“Stupid boys.”

“My point is that you do dance. Just not the way a girl does. You call it something else.”

“I don’t.”

“Say you meet this tough hombre in a saloon, and you don’t like his look, but the sheriff is there with a posse and a Gatling gun and you know that if you plug him, you’ll get canned, unfair as that may be to you. But you can’t just let the guy get away with annoying you. What do you do?”

“I’d call him out, then plug him when he meets me in the street.”

“And what if he plants his fool feet on the floor and won’t move?”

“Then maybe I’d encourage him a bit, such as shooting at his feet, giving him just time to move ’em before he loses a toe or two. I’m make him dance.”

“You’d make him dance,” she agreed.

Then Bad Buffalo realized what he’d said. She’d caught him. Again. “Okay, maybe men do dance.” He smiled grimly. “Some even dance in the air.”

She reached into her anachronistic memory. “It is not sweet, with nimble feet, the dance upon the air,” she quoted. “Not at a hanging.”

“Yeah. There’s sheriffs in dozens of towns want to make me do that dance, but they know I’d plug ’em if they tried to arrest me, so they leave me alone.”

“Very well. Let’s get down before the caterpillar and see if we can impress her with our dance. You shoot at my feet and I’ll shoot at yours. No real guns or bullets, just the motions.”

Bad Buffalo wasn’t easy about the notion of even that kind of dancing, but if it won over the caterpillar maybe it would be worth it. “You can shoot at my leaves, too,” she said as they dismounted and she assumed her full-sized vapor shape. “Cock your finger.”

He cocked his finger at her central leaf. She whipped it away and flung her hips to the side to miss the phantom bullet. Ah, so.

They did the dance, phantom shooting at each other and dancing to escape the bullets. It really was almost fun, because of the way Dia and her leaves gyrated. And it worked! Soon the caterpillar was swaying, echoing the motions of their bodies. In fact, so was Horse. They had both been hypnotized.

“Now I can guide her,” Dia said. She reverted to her small form and addressed the caterpillar, sending her a telepathic message as she spoke. “Take us to the worm-eating bug planet.”

The caterpillar started moving. Bad Buffalo leaped onto Horse to get out of the way. They retreated down the tunnel, with the caterpillar following. But the creature was actually leading from the rear. Soon they came to one of the myriad intersecting tunnels, and turned down it. Now Horse and Bad Buffalo were following.

The caterpillar came to a chamber and a dead end. She advanced a tool of some sort and pressed into the blank wall. A small hole appeared. She pushed against it, and it irised into a big hole—big enough for a man and a horse to pass through.

They were there.

Dia flew down and kissed the tip of the caterpillar’s snout. “Thank you so much.” The snout actually turned pink. Dia’s kiss did that. “Please wait for us,” the sprite continued. “We will return soon, and need you to get us safely back to Earth.” Bad Buffalo knew that the caterpillar would wait.

Now Horse and his riders stepped boldly out upon the surface of the Bug World. Fortunately the air was breathable.

Chapter 9: Swarm

The grass was purple. The sky was pink, and Bad Buffalo counted three different moons in varying degrees of waning and waxing.

“What is this place?” he asked, already not caring much for it. Mostly, he didn’t like the flat field of grass. There wasn’t a tree in sight. Nor a hill of any kind. The outlaw frowned. A body needed trees, even if for shade—or maybe a nice pile of boulders for a good ambush. And grass should be green and a sky should be blue. Bad Buffalo felt quite strongly about that.

“We are on another planet, BB. According to the caterpillar’s mind, the planet is called Libom 76, and it supports a full array of life. The caterpillar, in fact, only works with planets that can sustain life.”

“Sustain life?” he said, raising a bushy eyebrow. As he did so, he spotted a smudge of something dark that had appeared on the far horizon. It could have been blowing sand. Or a massive flock of birds. He kept his eye on it.

“It means Libom 76 has the right balance of oxygen to hydrogen, along with being the ideal distance from the local star. You see, BB, not all planets can sustain life. Some are too cold or too hot. Some have no air to breathe.”

Bad Buffalo grunted, not knowing the half of what she was saying, although he understood living and dying. He experienced plenty of both. Living for him, and dying for his enemies.

Behind them, the wormhole had retracted to just a small black pinhole in the sky. Mildly alarmed, Bad Buffalo leaned back and stuck his finger in the hole. He worked it open enough to get a good look inside the tunnel, and spotted the giant caterpillar just settling down to wait. He released the hole and it snapped back into place, returned to a mere black dot. Most people wouldn’t have noticed the dot. Bad Buffalo might have missed it, too, had he not known it was there. Which got him wondering: how in tarnation were they ever going to find it again, once they left this spot?

“This is how,” said the fairy, picking up his thoughts and rising up out of his pocket. The back draft of her little wings blasted cool wind in his face.

She circled the area beneath the wormhole, and as she did so, she tossed what appeared to be glittering sand. Magic sand, no doubt.

“There,” she said. “The hole has been marked. And I’m pleased to say that magic works very, very well in this world.”

“How well?”

“This well.” And she appeared before him, a full-bodied fairy, perhaps a tad smaller than the women Bad Buffalo was used to, but so perfectly proportioned that Bad Buffalo nearly fell off of Horse, which would have been a first for him.

Dia settled onto the purple grass, her now normal-sized wings generating quite a windstorm around them.

“Try me,” she said, and stuck out her rear end.

Bad Buffalo blinked. Blinked again. Then reached out a tentative hand. She was as real as any woman he had ever felt.

“Okay, that’s enough, big boy. Save some for later.”

This very odd world with its purple grass and pink sky was suddenly looking almighty appealing to the outlaw. In fact, he could get used to the place.

“Don’t even think about it, BB. This isn’t our home. In fact, we are very, very far from our home, so far that it would make your head spin.”

“Trust me, my head’s spinning.”

She returned to mini-size and flew back into his pocket. “Down boy. We have work to do. And don’t worry about the wormhole. It’ll stay like that for weeks, although inside the wormhole itself, it will only feel like minutes.”

“What the devil does that mean?”

“It means a few minutes in the wormhole are really a few weeks on our world. I don’t see why it would be any different here.”

“So, when we get back to Earth...”

“Depending on how long we are in the wormhole, it could be weeks, maybe even months in the future.”

Bad Buffalo liked the idea of that. He’d had a posse on his tail since leaving Dodge City. Maybe they’d already given up looking for him. He grinned to himself. These wormholes could be very handy to an outlaw like him. Very, very handy.

He felt another excruciating pain in his chest. The little fairy was pinching him again, and this time with both her little hands. “Don’t you think about it, BB. If you want anything to do with me, you’ll stay on the right side of the law. And trust me, you very much want something to do with me.”

He grumbled, but he still was not convinced this little fairy was worth the trouble. Hell, he’d been mean and ornery since last he could remember. Would take a lot to rid him of all the rattlesnake venom coursing through his veins.

“I agree,” she said, flying up out of his pocket and circling his head. “And I see it as a challenge. But first things first, we have to stop the worms from decimating the magic in our world. And these bugs here figured out how. We need their help, somehow.”

Bad Buffalo didn’t much care for bugs, since they usually got in his hair and food and boots. But if they could help save the magic in his world—and help bring Dia that much closer into his arms, well, he was willing to play along. “Right, the bugs.”

“Now, according to the caterpillar, the bugs are the dominant species on this planet.”

“Say again?”

“Dominant species. It means they rule this world.”

Bad Buffalo snorted. “Can’t be much of a world, if it’s ruled by bugs.”

“I guess we’re about to see. Look.”

Bad Buffalo looked, and what he saw, he didn’t much like. It was a giant black cloud coming their way. The cloud seemed to be expanding exponentially, now filling the sky from horizon to horizon. Some parts of the cloud were denser than others. He’d been in a dust storm before. But this was different, this was black, and it was also buzzing. Dust storms didn’t buzz, last he checked. He considered the wormhole, but it would take a precious few minutes to work it open big enough for all of them to fit. No, there was only one option.

“Run!” he said, swooping the fairy up off the ground with one hand and tossing her behind him. He spurred Horse hard, and soon they were racing through the high, purple grass.

Bad Buffalo looked behind him and for the first time in a long time—maybe even ever—he felt real fear: the black, buzzing dust cloud was gaining on them. The noise was growing louder, too, filling his head so much that he couldn’t think. And so he didn’t think; instead, he leaned forward and rode Horse harder than he’d ever rode the creature before. All while Dia held on from behind, resting her head on his back. She could probably fly just as fast, but he wasn’t so sure. Horse was almighty fast—the fastest he’d ever seen.

For now, Horse needed only to be faster than what was looking increasingly like a swarm...of what he didn’t know.

He stayed low in the saddle. The purple grass slapped at his heels. He prayed to whatever deity that oversaw this planet that Horse wouldn’t step in a gopher hole—or whatever was equal to a gopher in these parts.

The buzzing grew louder. His teeth vibrated. His head hurt. He thought his ears might bleed.

And still, he rode. Bad Buffalo didn’t know the meaning of giving in. Then again, he’d also never run from a fight either. And with that thought, the outlaw yanked the reins hard, drawing Horse to a skidding stop. He turned the creature around and faced the coming swarm.

He drew both his weapons and took aim.

Chapter 10: Deal

Then he paused.

The black swarm was thickening into an almost solid mass, but not attacking, yet. There wasn’t much point in firing into it until there was a leader to plug. That’s how you stopped a mob: plug the leader, and plug the one who replaced him. Pretty soon the mobsters got the message, and lost their taste for leadership. So far no bug leader had appeared.

Then he thought of something almost irrelevant. “You say time’s different in the wormhole? Minutes inside are weeks outside?”

“Yes, that’s one of the things I learned from the caterpillar. Things inside a wormhole are actually squeezed to virtual singularity—that is, pretty thin—and time contracts. There’s a theory about it, but that hasn’t been developed yet.”

“So what about when we were inside, before rescuing you from the worm? Before we got spit out? Horse was still there waiting for us.”

“That’s right,” she agreed, surprised. “It could have been two weeks for him. I’ll ask him.” She was silent a moment. “Yes, it was. He’s a very patient horse.”

“It really was two weeks?”

“Yes. He says next time please leave him where there’s better grazing. He ate the grass down to stubs in that whole area. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could wait for you without starving.”

He felt a pang. People were people who mainly didn’t matter, but Horse was someone he cared about. “Sorry, Horse. I owe you one.”

Horse wiggled an ear at him, acknowledging. He was generally pretty easygoing.

“Maybe we’d better consider the bugs,” Dia hinted.

Bad Buffalo looked. The swarm had coalesced into a single solid-seeming shape, that of a giant buffalo-sized bug. And what a bug! It was entirely made of smaller bugs, which could be seen if one squinted closely at any part of it. They clustered so tightly that they seemed integral, probably forming the giant image of any one of them. It had seven spindly legs, five stout wings, three huge bug-eyes, two limber antennae, and one lip-less mouth with a formidable set of teeth. Along with a candy-striped thorax, and a filthy brown stench.

Teeth? What color stench?

“We’re not on Planet Earth anymore,” Dia reminded him in a whisper. “Their conventions differ.”

“They sure do!”

Now the monstrous bug addressed them telepathically. What manner of creatures are you? Are you edible? You smell odd.

That stirred up his dander. “You don’t stink so tasty yourself, bug-eye.”

“We’re from another planet,” Dia said quickly. “We’ve come to make a deal.”

A foreign planet! No wonder you’re weird. They have no standards.

“Listen, piss-for-brains!” Bad Buffalo snapped. “You’re the weirdo! Where’d you get that chocolate-and-vanilla striped vest? From your sick poop-hole?”

“BB!” Dia warned, too late. For some reason, she was nervous about insulting giant alien bugs with teeth.

All three bug eyes and two antennae oriented on him, and the teeth clacked. You have a rare finesse with concepts, alien visitor.

“Yeah? Well you can just take that ‘fine S’ and fly it into the blue moon, bugger.”

“BB!” Dia cried, horrified. “Finesse means it’s good. She’s complimenting you. Stop insulting her!”

He was taken aback. “She?”

“This is a representation of the queen of the hive. She came personally, in emulation, to investigate the visitors from the wormhole. Because they don’t trust wormholes. Because of the worms.”

Oh. He was new to apologies, but he made an effort. “Sorry about that, Queenie. We don’t much like the worms ourselves.”

It seems we have a certain common basis. Yet you use their holes.

“Well, we had to, to get here. Didn’t see no other way. We’re from real far away.”

There was caution in her mind. How far?

He looked at Dia. “How far?”

“I think it’s across the galaxy.”

“Across the whatever.”

She was relieved; the feeling came through with the thoughts. I heard. That’s far enough; you are not near neighbors. You have no designs on our territory.

“Yeah. We don’t even decorate our own things much.”

Amusing humor. So he must have said something funny. He was actually coming to like this big fake bug; she seemed to understand and accept him in a way few, if any, human girls ever had. Oh, I do, you wonderfully lecherous male. What is your business here?

“Well, the worms are raiding our planet,” he said. “Sucking out all the magic, so my magic girlfriend here can’t hug me and I can’t poke her. That pisses me off.”

“BB!” Dia protested despairingly.

You are delightful, the Queen thought, comprehending him perfectly. She was reading his thoughts rather than hearing his words, and his thoughts about what he would do with Dia if she were only big and solid enough were deliciously graphic. You have such fundamental urges and expressions.

Bad Buffalo reminded himself that the fancy words her concepts translated into were not meant to insult him. “Yeah.”

We like you.

“Oh? You and who else?”

“That’s the royal we,” Dia said quickly. “She is thinking of herself. There’s something about your primitive candor that appeals to her.”

Well, if that’s the way of it, why not? “You seem like quite a dame yourself, Queenie.”

Oh, I certainly am. I know all about the pleasures of courtship and mating. But this is business. What do you want from us?

“You can stop the worms from sucking magic. We want some of your bugs to come to our planet and stop the worms there. So the magic can get strong again, and I can get into my girl’s pants.”

A worthy ambition, and she does seem amenable. Yes, we can provide a starter package of worker females who will proliferate and quickly discourage the worms from further invading your demesnes.

“Our what?”

“Earth,” Dia said. “Our land.”

“Oh. Okay.”

This will solve your problem, the Queen continued. However—

“Oh shoot! I’ve heard that tone before. There’s always a catch.”

Indeed. We call it bargaining.

“Yeah. What do you want, you cunning creature?”

Your compliments never cease! We would like to have you for our paramour— She paused, picking up his ignorance of the word. Our potent stud. But since that is not feasible, we being of different sizes and species, not to mention the objections of your girlfriend, we must settle for a lesser alternative.

“Here it comes,” Dia murmured warily. “She’s been flattering your foolish male ego for a reason. Remember, in person she could perch on your finger. She wants something, and it’s not your lechery.”

He knew she was right. It was the way females were. “What are you saying, Queenie?”

We would appreciate a particular service you may be able to render.

“Sure. Let’s have it.”

There is a species that is intruding on our demes—our land—that we abhor. We are unable to repel it, and this is causing us considerable distress. But you, with your—I believe you call them guns—might be able to discourage these vile creatures in much the manner our contingent of bugs will discourage the invasive worms on your planet.

“But don’t you have magic to fight them off?”

Our magic is contrary. It stops magic leechers like the worms, but this enemy is more physical. We are largely helpless against it.

“I thought you ran this planet.”

We have been the dominant species until recently. Now this new enemy threatens that, and indeed, our very existence. It is much larger than we, though smaller than you, immune to our stings, and unkindly aggressive. It is taking our land and driving us toward extinction. There was a mental sob. Please, help us in the hour of our desperate need.

“For pitiful sake,” Dia muttered. “Has she no pride at all? Now she’s emulating a helpless maiden. She thinks you’ll be fooled by that.”

Bad Buffalo pondered. This was of course an effort for him, because thinking was more difficult than simply blasting an enemy to smithereens with well-placed bullets. Of course, a giant hive of bugs could not fool him into seeing them like a human girl.

The big bug dissipated into the swirling swarm, then settled into a new outline. Bad Buffalo gaped.

Now the form was like a giant human woman sitting cross-legged on the ground, nude except for her golden crown, and extremely well endowed. Her voluminous hair seemed almost to float, and it buzzed slightly. Please, she thought, taking an eye-popping breath though she didn’t need to breathe. We would be ever so grateful. The foul odor had been replaced by an evocative perfume that made her twice as interesting.

“Pheromones,” Dia grumbled.

What could he do? He simply wasn’t very good at saying no to a lovely woman, even one he knew was buggy. “Sure, we’ll get rid of those brutes for you,” he said gallantly.

“Spirits preserve us,” Dia said, and Horse snorted. They thought he was making a fool of himself. And he surely was. It was what men did in such situations.

The Queen blew him a kiss. It smacked him upside the head like one of Dia’s kisses, only larger. Thank you. The dread enemy is the swatters. They look like this, only smaller.

The form dissolved again into the cloud of bugs, then condensed into a giant beaver-type animal with a broad, flat tail. That awful extremity smashes us into oblivion.

Fly swatters. Of course.

Now Dia, resigned to the project, had a question. “He can plug the swatters, but what’s to prevent them coming back after we return to Earth?”

They came to our region when an earthquake threw up a natural causeway connecting their foul island in the lake to the mainland. What you need to do is drive them back across the causeway, then destroy it. They can’t swim, so that will confine them.

“Okay!” Bad Buffalo agreed. “Where are they?”

The lake is not far from here. Follow the arrow. The swatter dissolved, and a huge floating green arrow formed, pointing the way across the purple plain.

“There’s something she’s not telling us,” Dia said darkly. “And I can’t read it in her devious insectoid mind.”

“Who cares? We’ll just plug the swatters, push out a link of the causeway, and be done. Then we’ll get our jarful of bugs and go back to Earth. It’s pretty simple.”

“You’re a fool,” she said fondly. “But we’re stuck for it.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, following the green arrow as it moved though the pink sky. The image of that cross-legged, bare bug woman lingered in his mind. Surely there was nothing to fear from such a sexy lady.

Chapter 11: The Island

Mercifully, something resembling a small hill appeared on the horizon. Hill might have been too generous. A slight curvature to the otherwise flat plain.

“Not a plain, BB,” corrected Dia. “This is a steppe. Much more vast than plains, and much flatter, too.”

Bad Buffalo didn’t know much about anything (other than shooting, riding, robbing, and womanizing), but he knew a step when he saw one, and this sure as hell wasn’t any step he’d ever seen.

“Not that kind of step, BB. According to the Hive Queen’s mind, this steppe is so wide open and vast that many in her hive become hopelessly lost, usually dying of dehydration and hunger before they are found. It’s a good thing she has provided the arrow.”

Bad Buffalo grunted. He didn’t like being lost or hungry. He probably didn’t like being disoriented, except he didn’t know what it meant. Still, if he had to make a list of his least-favorite things in the world, high up on that list would be hungry and lost, right below being cheated. Hell, he would put disoriented on that list, too, because it sounded terrible and it made his head spin thinking about it. In his pocket, he sensed Dia shaking her pretty little head.

Anyway, Bad Buffalo was an expert tracker, so he was rarely lost. And he was also an expert hunter, so he was rarely hungry, either. Still, the few times that he had been either lost or hungry had made him angry. In fact, he was angry now thinking about it.

“Easy, BB,” soothed Dia from his pocket.

Still, he could see how a body could get lost out here, especially if, say, a fog rolled in. Or if there was cloud coverage. Not to mention, there wasn’t much in the way of eating, other than the tall purple grass, which looked unappetizing at best, although Horse occasionally eyed it.

Bad Buffalo rode hard toward the slight rise along the steppe. The wind howled over his ears, just like at home. If anything, Bad Buffalo felt lighter somehow, and Horse seemed to run faster than usual.

“It’s a smaller planet, BB. So there’s less gravitational pull. We both weigh far less than we did on Earth, perhaps even by half.”

Bad Buffalo launched a whole volley of questions, which Dia patiently answered, all while the trio charged up the gradual incline.

By the time Bad Buffalo had grasped the law of gravity they had crested the hill. In the distance was a sight to behold: an expansive lake, which glittered blue, completely surrounding a large land mass. This was called an island, according to the Hive Queen. Bad Buffalo ain’t never seen no island before. Until now. Turned out, the island wasn’t much different the rest of the landscape, except it was surrounded by water. It also had some trees and boulders, both of which the outlaw longed for. He missed hiding behind a tree, and waiting for a stagecoach. Or hiding among the boulders and waiting to ambush a local posse. In fact, Bad Buffalo was already missing his home planet. It was, he was certain, the first time he had ever missed anything before.

But most interesting of all was the steady parade of huge, lumbering beasts that waddled out of the trees and formed a single-file line. They had to form such a line because of a narrow rocky land bridge that had thrust up from the lake depths. The massive creatures seemed shaky at best, clearly not built to navigate the irregular walkway. As Bad Buffalo sat high in the saddle, he watched no less than three of the creatures stumble off the causeway and into the lake itself, never to be seen again. He felt bad for the big fellows. Clearly, they were each putting their lives at risk to escape the island.

Bad Buffalo frowned at that. He never knew of any creature, be it beast or man, who would put their lives at risk unless there was a good reason. Now, as a fourth creature stumbled off the rocky path and plunged into the dark depths, Bad Buffalo grunted, not liking this at all.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” he said aloud.

He felt Dia’s little head moving inside his shirt pocket. “They’re prisoners.”

“I think so,” said Bad Buffalo.

The question was: had these creatures done something wrong to warrant incarceration? Bad Buffalo doubted it. How could an entire species of animal warrant incarceration?

“Maybe we need more answers,” suggested Dia.

The gunslinger agreed and clicked his tongue...and Horse galloped down the slight incline, toward the lake, and toward where the massive, waddling creatures emerged onto the mainland...

Chapter 12: Dragon

Yet as they moved, Bad Buffalo wondered: how could the bugs have rounded up all the swatters and locked them up on the island, and then been unable to stop them from wading across the causeway when it formed? If they could do the first, why not the second? If the bugs hadn’t done it, who had? Usually a prison was at least guarded; he had been in enough jails to know that. But this island seemed to have been left strictly alone until now. This didn’t seem to make much sense.

“The arrow is gone,” Dia murmured.

So it was. The bugs had done their job and gone home. They were on their own.

They came to the first of the creatures that had made it across the causeway to the mainland. Up close it looked more than ever like a giant beaver, maybe half the size of Horse, except that it wasn’t. It had no big front teeth to chew through trees, and its big flat tail was clearly not designed for slapping water. Or, for that matter, flies. It looked to be a kind of grass grazer, and that was what it was doing: eating the purple blades. It was evidently quite hungry. It seemed to be ignoring its fellows who had drowned while trying to cross the lake as if it didn’t care about them. That too was odd.

“Ho, stranger!” Bad Buffalo called.

The creature glanced at him with its single eye, then returned to its grazing. This was its reaction to an alien creature—that was to say, a man—it had never seen before?

“Let me peek into its mind,” Dia said. Then: “It’s not smart like us, or if it is, not in the way we are. It’s just a—an animal, like Horse, only different.”

“I always got along pretty well with dumb animals,” Bad Buffalo said.

Horse twitched an ear at him questioningly.

“I didn’t mean you,” Bad Buffalo said quickly. “You’re my pal. I mean the creatures home on the range, where the deer and the antelope play, and they almost never say a mean word and the skies are not cloudy all day.” Though he actually preferred the forests where an outlaw could find decent cover.

Horse returned to his own grazing, accepting that.

“But that only complicates the mystery,” Dia said. “The beavers aren’t exactly prisoners. They’re—” She paused to read farther into the creature’s mind. “Refugees.”

“Refugees? From what? If a bad-ass like me doesn’t spook them, what does?” In fact he was just a bit annoyed by that lack of reaction. He was accustomed to terrifying folk.

She probed again. “The dragon.”

“The what?”

“They are creatures of your folklore,” she explained patiently. “Giant fire-breathing reptiles, some of whom can fly. People found the enormous bones of ancient dinosaurs and figured that they must be dragons who remain a threat. I am adapting from the mythology to find a suitable parallel. This one is a lot like that, only it’s real. It seems it’s been toasting the swatters so that they have to flee their land lest they be roasted and eaten, alive or dead. They really don’t have much choice.”

“Well, if one of them dragons comes near me, I’ll plug it,” Bad Buffalo said, caressing his holstered pistols. “But how’d the swatters get to the island?”

“There seems to be a wormhole exiting there. So they are using it to cross from their world to this one, fleeing oppression. They just want to be left alone to graze.”

“So then why’s the bug queen so afraid of them? They ain’t no threat to her.”

“That’s what I don’t understand. All I can think of is that she’s so anal-retentive that she doesn’t want any alien creatures coming here, even if they’re harmless.”

“She’s so what?”

“Anal-retentive. She doesn’t like sharing. Can’t let anything go, even if she can’t use it herself.”

“Not even a turd?” he asked, picking up some of the context. “But pretty girls like her don’t even have turds, do they?”

Dia seemed privately amused, but answered, “She’s not really a pretty girl, BB. She’s a bug.”

“Oh, that’s right. So I guess she can keep her turds if she wants to.”

“It seems she wants us to break up the causeway so that the swatters can’t get across at all, even with high attrition.” She caught his confusion immediately. “So many of them drowning.”

“What happens to the swatters if they can’t cross?”

“I suspect they’ll get backed up until they clog the tunnel and can’t escape anymore. Then the dragon will eat them.”

“I ain’t sure I like that. They’re like the deer and antelope, meaning no harm.”

“I’m not sure what we can do about it.”

“Well, I know! We can go plug that dragon. Then the swatters won’t have to flee, and the problem is solved, and we can get our jar of bugs from the queen and go save Earth from the worms. So you can get your magic back and get big and solid. So I can give you a real good poke.”

“A marvelously succinct summary,” she agreed. “You certainly know your priorities.”

“I sure do,” he agreed, flattered.

“But are you sure it’s wise?”

“I’ve never been wise in my life. I just do what I know how to do. I plug anything that gets in my way.”

“That dragon could be pretty fearsome.”

“What’s your point?”

She shrugged. “Very well. Let’s go plug the dragon.”

Horse started moving. He galloped down to the lake, plunged in, swam across, and emerged on the island.

Bad Buffalo jumped off, carrying Dia with him. Then Horse shook himself dry. Water flew out in all directions, plastering them in the process. Then Bad Buffalo shook himself dry, and the water departed. So did the sprite, flung out of his pocket. She spread her wings and hovered nearby, unhurt though slightly mussed. She still looked cute.

“It is an education to know you,” Dia said, amused.

“Thanks.” He got back on his steed and she got back into his spin-dried pocket.

Horse trotted along beside the line of swatters, tracing them back to their origin. Sure enough, this was a giant wormhole propped open by a fallen branch. The swatters were still trundling out of it.

“You’re sure?” Dia asked as Horse paused.

“Sure I’m sure! I may not know what I’m doing, but I’m never in much doubt.”

“It may be dangerous.”

“Yeah,” he agreed with relish.

Horse plunged into the tunnel. There was room for him beside the line of swatters, and that line marked their route perfectly.

They were on their way to plug the dragon. If the dragon had an ounce of sense, it would have been nervous.

Chapter 13: Tor

Now this is a suitable planet, thought Bad Buffalo upon emerging from the wormhole. Tall, craggy mountains surrounded them, many of them belching fire. Green plateaus filled the space between the peaks. Bad Buffalo liked green plateaus. Thick, reddish clouds filled the sky. Bad Buffalo wasn’t too sure about reddish clouds.

The lumbering beaver beasts crowded the opening, which was held open with another such branch. Had the beasts concocted the use of such a branch? If so, then they might be smarter than the creatures at home. They were also quite patient, too, each waiting their turn to step into the wormhole, despite the creature circling high overhead, a creature that was belching fire of its own.

Bad Buffalo hadn’t known his mouth had dropped open until Dia flew up and helped close it.

“That, BB, is a dragon,” she said.

“It’s so big.”

“It is.”

“I’m going to need a bigger gun.”

“Or a better plan.”

The creature banked slowly in the air, its outstretched wings black against the red clouds. Its wings reminded the gunslinger of a bat’s wings, angular and coming to a point. A long tail trailed behind the flying creature. On its next fly-by, the creature dropped down, and now, Bad Buffalo could see what appeared to be scales glittering along its underbelly. Bad Buffalo might have felt something resembling fear, but he brushed it off. Fear didn’t suit him.

“What do you know of dragons, little fairy?”

“I’ve heard only stories, from fairies who had heard of stories, passed from world to world.”

“Then tell me what you know, and hurry. It’s coming back for another look.”

“Other than flying and breathing fire, I don’t know—wait!”

“Wait what?”

“They hoard gold.”

“Fat lot of good that does me,” grumbled Bad Buffalo, although he made a mental note to be on the lookout for gold, one of his most favorite things in the world.

“Also, if you could lodge an arrow under its scales, you could do mortal harm.”

“I don’t want to do mortal harm. I just want to convince it to stop attacking the swatters.”

Bad Buffalo had barely gotten the words out of his mouth, when the giant creature banked suddenly, dropped low, flapped its massive wings once, extended its wicked claws, and snatched a patiently-waiting swatter up off the ground. The creature bleated in pain and confusion.

“We forget that the swatters are probably the creature’s natural food source.”

Bad Buffalo understood the animal chain. He’d watched wolves attack caribou. He’d even watched a mountain lion snatch a raccoon out of a tree. He’d seen eagles pick bass from lakes, and hawks take field mice. How was a dragon grabbing a swatter any different? Did it make the dragon any worse than a pack of coyotes ganging up on, say, a fawn?

Bad Buffalo suddenly wasn’t so sure. Who was he to decide what was right or wrong, especially on a distant world? He was about to say as much to Dia, when the dragon tore the swatter in two. Blood rained down, as each talon now held one half of the dead creature. Bad Buffalo could hardly believe his eyes. Next, the dragon released both halves of the animal, which dropped down amid a pile of...hundreds of severed swatters. Bad Buffalo could see them now, littering the hillside. He’d thought he was seeing bushes or rocks. But no. These were destroyed creatures.

Eating for food was one thing. Bad Buffalo had done plenty of hunting in his time. But killing for killing’s sake was just...wrong.

Oh, yes, the dragon was his enemy.

His mortal enemy.

Bad Buffalo didn’t know the difference between a mortal enemy and a regular enemy, but mortal enemy felt right, somehow.

Yeah, he thought, trying the words on, and liking the way they sounded. My mortal enemy.

To date, every one of Bad Buffalo’s mortal enemies had one thing in common: they were now pushing up daisies. Now, as the dragon circled high overhead, surveying the high grassy plateau for more victims, Bad Buffalo watched it carefully, and a plan took hold.

“Oh, no,” said Dia from his pocket, picking up his thoughts.

Except once Bad Buffalo had formed a plan against a mortal enemy, there was no turning back.

***

The swatters continued piling in through the wormhole. Bad Buffalo, Dia and Horse hunkered on the far edge of the herd.

Overhead, the dragon circled once again, but this time, closer and lower. Bad Buffalo could see that the dragon had oriented on a young swatter straggler. It had broken away from the herd and seemed to find some interest in a large blue butterfly. Bad Buffalo liked large blue butterflies, too. He could see the appeal.

The dragon continued circling. The young swatter seemed oblivious, now chasing the blue butterfly through the field. Bad Buffalo, admittedly, wanted to join them. Nearby, a clearly agitated swatter broke away from the pack, bleating loudly. It was, Bad Buffalo was certain, the young swatter’s mother. The problem was, the youngin’ was nowhere near the mother. Not to mention, there really wasn’t anything the mother could do, except sacrifice her life.

Bad Buffalo’s jaw clenched. He gripped the reins. He waited for his moment.

And when the dragon dipped a wing and swooped down toward the little swatter, Bad Buffalo’s moment had arrived. He shouted, “Hee-yah!” and Horse shot forward, scattering some nearby swatters, and charged through the low grass.

Bad Buffalo sat forward in his saddle, one hand on the reins, the other holding his lasso...a look of grim determination on his face.

Chapter 14: Hoard

As the dragon opened its monstrous mouth to take the little swatter into its jaws, Bad Buffalo flung his lariat. He was as accurate with that as with gun or fist, naturally. The loop circled the dragon’s gaping snout, then snapped tight, drawing the mouth firmly closed. Suddenly the monster could neither bite nor shoot fire.

Startled, the dragon lurched upward, back into the sky, messy balls of smoke puffing like vaporous snot from its nostrils and ears. The little swatter bleated and ran back to join its mother, miraculously saved.

Then the slack in the rope was gone and the dragon’s head was jerked to the side. “Get along, little dogie!” Bad Buffalo sang as the other end of the rope snapped tight on the saddle horn to which it was anchored. Horse, trained for this, halted and braced against the pull. Yanked off-balance, the dragon did a serpentine twist in midair, looped a loop, squawked like a bird and came down to the ground snoot first, the rest of its body smacking beyond it upside down with a satisfying whomp that sent out a cloud of dust and debris. It was a splendid take-down, one of his better efforts.

The swatters stood and gaped appreciatively. They had never seen a show like this.

“Inertia!” Dia exclaimed, amazed.

“Naw, it just crashed ’cause it couldn’t stop fast enough,” Bad Buffalo explained. “Like a roped steer.”

Now, however, the dragon realized a bit of what had happened. Maybe a vine had snagged on its snoot and brought it down. That annoyed it, for some reason. It twisted lithely back to its feet, unhurt, oriented on the other end of the rope, spread its battered wings, and launched toward Horse. In moments it would crash right into them, and the mass of its body could wipe them out even without teeth or fire. This creature was no coward and no quitter.

“I think we’d better vamoose,” Dia said.

“Naw, I got it under control.”

She did not argue, but looked a trifle dubious. More than a trifle.

The huge head loomed close, the two giant eyes focusing on Horse.

And Bad Buffalo plugged the right eye dead center, forming a new little pupil.

The eye blinked. The bullet was too small to be more than a pinprick, but it evidently did complicate vision in that eye, and ichor was welling from it. There was surely more damage inside, and maybe even a token prick to the brain behind it. The dragon lurched up, passing just over their heads, not certain what to make of this nuisance.

Then the slack was taken up again, and Horse was almost jerked off his feet by the pull. The rope did not break—Bad Buffalo used only quality cord, the finest hemp—but the hauling was so strong that Horse was obliged to spin about and gallop after the dragon to keep his balance. In fact that powerful lift and pull caused the mighty steed to go higher and faster than he ever had before, almost sailing over the terrain.

“Yeehaw!” Bad Buffalo yelled joyfully. He was glad Dia had finally gotten to see him in real action. Oddly, she did not seem to be enjoying it as much as he was. Her flowing blueberry-blonde hair and strategic green leaves were flying out behind even though there wasn’t much behind in his pocket apart from hers.

They came to rougher terrain, with rises and falls, rocks and rills, and undefinable contours. Horse had to really step pretty to handle it, and once or twice he even leaped from hillock to hillock, lifted by the tight rope.

“Oh, my!” Dia exclaimed.

“What, getting seasick?” he asked.

“Not exactly. Anyway it wouldn’t be seasick, it would be airsick. But I’m not. It’s the magic.”

“Yeah, this whole caper is for the magic. So you can, and I can—”

“I am familiar with that picture,” she said. “All in good time, for your poke. But here’s the thing: there is unusual magic on this world. It’s in patches. We’re passing through low and high regions, like clumps of fog on the ground. Right now we’re in a high-magic zone.”

“Say—you mean?”

“Exactly.” She flew out of his pocket, hovered before him despite the way they were racing forward, expanded to full human woman size, completely nude, and caught his free hand. His other hand was holding on to Horse’s mane, because it was like riding a bucking bronco. He was an excellent rider, but sometimes more was needed.

Her small hand was soft but solid.

“Say—” he repeated, catching on to the potential.

“Exactly,” she repeated, moving in to kiss him. Her lips were completely firm. “If we could only pause a few minutes right here—”

“Yeah!”

Then they crossed over another hillock. Her grip softened further. In fact her hand became vaporous. “Darn,” she said. “We’re out of the high-magic zone.” She shrank to tiny size.

He echoed her sentiment, only in somewhat coarser language.

Then came another rich-magic zone. Dia expanded again, only this time she became a huge rag doll with a stitched smile. “Oops! This is a different brand of magic. I need to get the hang of it.” She concentrated, and slowly turned into a woman, the doll stitches merging into human lips.

Only to lose it when they moved into another zone.

“Dang!” Bad Buffalo said.

“Maybe if you loosed the dragon so we could stay in a hot spot,” she suggested.

“Double dang! Then we’d lose the dragon and maybe never catch it again. I want that monster D E D…dead.”

“I understand, despite the misspelling,” she said regretfully.

“Maybe we can come back this way after I slay the dragon.”

“Maybe. But I think the patches are moving, drifting with the wind. We may not be able to find one again before we have to go home.”

Triple dang! He had to choose between killing and poking. That was a mighty hard choice.

“That’s odd,” Dia said, looking to the side.

“It ain’t odd so much as frustrating,” he grumped.

“No, I mean what’s happening over there.”

Bad Buffalo looked. “It’s just a bunch of beavers in a circle.”

“Yes. They are fanning the air with their big flat tails.”

“Maybe one of ’em let out a stink.”

“I wonder,” she said thoughtfully.

“Animals do stink when they want to. People too, sometimes.”

“No, I think it’s something else.” Then a little light bulb flashed over her head, as if she were in a saloon with irregular electric current. It was a magic effect he hadn’t known she could do. “They’re fanning magic! To make a concentration, so they can do something special. That’s what those tails are for.”

He laughed. “Not fanning triggers. Fanning magic.”

“But you know, if they wanted to fan some magic for us ...” She trailed off, leaving three dots behind. The more he thought about it, the better he liked those dots.

“It’s called an ellipsis,” she explained.

“I don’t care what it’s called. I care about what’s in it. Like maybe a good poke.”

“Exactly,” she said once more.

Meanwhile the terrain continued to zoom by, as their steed tried horsefully to handle the constantly changing landscape.

Suddenly they were at the mouth of a huge cave. This must be the lair, as there were scorched bones piled up around the entrance. The dragon folded its wings and plunged in. They were dragged in after it. Darkness closed in.

The dragon stopped. Its head came around. Little streaks of light leaked from its tied muzzle so that they could see at least that much. It scraped its snoot against the rough wall of the cave.

“It’s trying to drag off the loop of rope!” Dia exclaimed. “If it does that, we’ll be toast!”

“Then I’ll just tighten it a bit,” Bad Buffalo said. He did so, keeping the jaws wired shut. They were in a struggle, because while the dragon was bigger and stronger than he was, he was fighting only its noosed snout. Like a horse with a bridle or a bull with a ring in its nose, that noose had leverage. “Meanwhile I want to see its horde.”

“That’s hoard,” she said.

“That’s hard?”

“H-O-A-R-D,” she spelled. “Treasure. A horde is a crowd of disreputable people.”

“My kind,” he agreed. “But it’s the treasure I want right now.”

“First we have to deal with the dragon,” she reminded him.

“Yeah, that.” He considered for a few heartbeats. “If I kill it in here, it’ll stink up the cave and I don’t know how we’ll drag the body out.”

The dragon angled its neck to bring its injured eye close, to get a better glimpse. It seemed it understood him, maybe with some telepathy. It wasn’t frightened, it was grimly amused. He had it at a disadvantage at the moment, but kill it? It was to laugh.

“Yeah?” Bad Buffalo retorted. “Well, lizard face, see how you like this.” He drew his large hunting knife. “I’m going to carve me some eyeball candy, and when I get enough of it cleared out, some brain candy. Think you’re going to stop me? Lotsa luck, Sparky!” He brandished the blade while keeping the noose taut. That knife could truly carve out a cave.

The dragon jerked its head away. But Bad Buffalo hauled on the rope and drew it back close. “Ready,” he said. “Set.” He oriented the point for a solid thrust. “Go!”

But he missed, because the dragon was zooming ahead, right out of the cave. Bad Buffalo flicked his wrist to release the loop, letting the dragon go. In moments it was gone.

“But you freed it!” Dia protested. “Now it’ll be lurking for us outside!”

“Naw. I just taught it a mite of respect. Now it knows what’s it’s up against. It’ll be sensible, and stay the hell clear of me, at least for an hour or so. When it’s ready to die, it’ll return.”

She stared at him in dawning awe. “You really are one tough hombre!”

“Yeah. Now let’s see that hoard.”

They walked farther into the cave, toward the dragon’s nest and treasure. There was a faint light around a curve ahead. That would be the glow of the precious artifacts.

They turned the corner and saw the hoard. There was gold galore, diamonds, assorted beads and trinkets that looked magical, such as a small cornucopia leaking candy corn. And something else.

“Help!” a vaguely male voice called mentally, sensing their presence. There was something alive there, bound, gagged, and blindfolded. A wretched prisoner.

“Oh, my,” Dia breathed.

“What is that?” Bad Buffalo asked. “Sure sounds like someone we need to rescue.”

“That is a hooded basilisk,” Dia said, amazed. “I thought they were extinct.”

“I guess not on this planet,” he said. “What’s a basket lass?”

Chapter 15: Ambush

“A basilisk is considered mythological by most human historians. But us faery know differently. They were wiped out on Earth.”

“Why?” asked Bad Buffalo, moving over to the bound creature. He removed his Bowie knife from his belt, and flipped it in the air and caught it by the antler handle, a handle he had whittled himself. Most folk would be stunned to learn that Bad Buffalo spent his evenings whittling by an open fire. That is, when he wasn’t raising hell.

“Careful, BB,” said Dia, flying next to him.

“Careful of what?” he asked. “It’s bound tighter than a pig in a blanket.” He slipped the tip of the knife under the blindfold.

“Because its stare can kill!” Dia shot forward, her wings a blur. “Don’t look it in the eye!”

Too late, Bad Buffalo had already flicked the blade through the blindfold. Dia was now moving faster than Bad Buffalo had ever seen her move. As she did so, she grew to normal size. Turned out, this was a magic cave. A powerfully magic cave. Before the blindfold had fallen away, she had enveloped Bad Buffalo entirely with her wings.

He liked the feeling of her wings around him, especially since he could feel her full physical form pressed behind him. How he seemed to feel every curve and mound, he didn’t know, but he wasn’t complaining. Most interesting to him was that his reaction wasn’t entirely physical. Something happened to his heart right then and there. Perhaps it was the way Dia protected him without thought. Perhaps it was the way she held him. Perhaps it was the way she kept holding him, even after he got the idea: looking at the basilisk’s eyes was a very bad idea.

Bad Buffalo only wished they were on top of his bedroll, under the stars, and not in a dragon’s lair with a strange little creature and its death stare.

Dia released her hold on him, opening her wings. Her hands, he noted, had also covered his eyes. Bad Buffalo was pretty sure this was the first time anyone had tried to save his life. He was used to the opposite: those who wanted him dead. He was feeling something, something he did not understand.

He sensed that Dia knew what it was, but was letting him puzzle it out in his own time. This was, after all, a brand-new emotion for Bad Buffalo. He was feeling about the same way he did about Horse, but different somehow, too. A lot different. He felt Dia shake her head behind him, silently amused at his confusion.

Horse! he thought, in a rare bout of panic.

“Relax, BB,” said Dia, picking up his thoughts. “Horse’s instincts haven’t gone extinct. Although the basilisk is extinct on our world, he still remembers to look away.”

“So, how come I didn’t remember?”

“Man, unfortunately, has strayed far and wide from his instincts. A part of you thought that removing the blindfold was a very bad idea. But you ignored that part, because it was buried too deep beneath everything that isn’t important.”

“Like poking you?” said Bad Buffalo. “I think that’s pretty important.”

“Maybe to you, but not to your survival. Your instincts are better than most, but even you are susceptible to the needs of your lower self.”

He looked down at his lower self. Truth be told, she was right. Ever since he met her, he wasn’t thinking straight; indeed, he had one thing on his mind.

“Nothing wrong with poking on the mind,” said Dia. “But we have to get out of here alive. And we can’t do that if you are acting recklessly.”

Bad Buffalo knew she spoke the truth. After all, they still needed to convince the dragon to stay away from the swatters, so that the swatters could live in peace in their own land and not infringe on the Hive Queen’s world. But how to stop the dragon? His victory was surely only temporary. Anything that could fly and breathe fire and liked to kill would surely be back to settle the score. Bad Buffalo had lost the element of surprise. And unless he could plug both the creature’s eyes with a flurry of shots, he didn’t think even he stood much of a chance against the beast.

“Such grim thoughts for a world-class warrior,” said the creature next to them in a sing-song voice.

Bad Buffalo nearly turned his head to look at it, when Dia’s hands flew back in place, along with her soft body. Bad Buffalo could get used to that body on his.

“He really does have a one-track mind,” said the voice again, and, once again, Bad Buffalo would have turned toward it if not for Dia’s firm grip.

“You speak English.”

“I speak all languages. I need only to access the mind for words and meanings. Call it a gift.”

Although Bad Buffalo enjoyed Dia’s proximity, he knew this situation needed to be corrected. He reached to tear free a shirt sleeve and, with eyes still shut, he felt his way over to the strange little creature. He tied the sleeve/blindfold on, perhaps tighter than necessary, but he didn’t want it coming loose.

“I spend more time in a blindfold,” sighed the beaked basilisk.

Bad Buffalo peeked one eye open, nodded. His blindfold had been solid work. Then again, this wasn’t his first go at blindfolding, either. Granted, the objects of his handiwork were generally bank managers, and not weird little creatures.

“So thinks the hairy giant,” said the basilisk.

“Coast is clear,” reported Bad Buffalo, and wondered if he should take exception to being called a hairy giant. Then again, he was a big man with a lot of hair. Bad Buffalo nodded, and cooled down.

“You are a mind reader, then,” said Dia.

“Oh, yes. Most everyone on this world is. If you’ll note, my lips aren’t moving; indeed, I do not have a ‘voice box’ as you call it. Even the dragon is listening in to this conversation, so to speak. He’s just outside the cave entrance, circling, planning his attack. And to answer your question, it’s not very hard for me to find the words in your minds, words you will understand. We have been doing this mind reading for a very long time, you see.”

“So, what gives?” said Bad Buffalo. “Why are you tied up in here?”

“Oh, I was double-crossed.”

“Come again?” asked the outlaw.

“Dragons don’t like basilisks. We are one of the few creatures who can kill them.”

“With your stare?” said Bad Buffalo, catching on.

“Exactly. So, many of us are stationed around villages and serve the purpose of keeping dragons away. Only, someone in the village ambushed me, tied me up, and bargained with the dragon.”

“Let me guess,” said Bad Buffalo, really catching on now. “For gold?”

“Correct.”

“And where is this person?”

“You were holding his leg bone not just two minutes ago. Turns out, dragons aren’t very good at keeping promises.”

“So, why didn’t the dragon just eat you?” asked the outlaw.

“It would have, in due time. It had gotten its fill on the creature who ambushed me. Which is why, as I probe your memories, it wasn’t feasting on the swatters, as you call them. Had the dragon been hungry, it would have feasted. As such, it was bored. I see that’s making you mad, Mr. Buffalo.”

“Darn tootin’, it makes me mad. We need to stop this dragon.”

“I agree,” said the basilisk, which was really a strange-looking fellow now that Bad Buffalo got a good look at it. Why, the gunslinger was certain the little guy might have been part rooster! “The problem is, the dragon knows you have tied me back up and is attacking even now.”

“Say again?”

And that’s when an unholy screech filled the cave, followed by an eruption of fire that billowed along the tunnel.

Chapter 16: Mirror

Bad Buffalo whirled, simultaneously drawing both guns.

“No!” Dia cried.

“What, you a pacifist now? That critter needs plugging.”

“No, you idiot. It’s that we’re at the periphery—” she paused, reading his mind. “At the edge of its range. The fire isn’t really getting to us yet. But when the dragon comes closer, gets around the curve, and can see us, then it will melt your guns and scorch us to ashes before you can plug it, assuming that your bullets do any more damage than that one did before. You can’t rope it in the confines of this cave. We’re sitting ducks. We need a better strategy.”

He hated to admit it, but she had a point or two, apart from the ones on her chest. “Okay, what’s your plan?”

“This nest is full of magic. Some of the artifacts here must be magic, able to do things the stupid dragon doesn’t even know about.”

“True,” the basilisk/cockatrice said/thought. “I’ve had time to check out a few. Good stuff.”

“Which means that we need your help,” she said. “Let’s make a truce, since we’re in common peril.”

“Why? I can handle fire.”

She flew across and kissed him on the beak, leaving a little heart-shaped mark. He was visibly moved. Bad Buffalo knew how that worked.

“Okay, let’s negotiate a truce,” the creature said.

“We don’t have time for that,” Dia said. “Just agree.” Indeed, there was the rumble of another blast of fire, this one closer.

“Not so easy, sprite. I’ve been betrayed before, and not that long ago.”

“What do you want?” she cried desperately.

“Well, your kind can assume different forms...” He sent a lecherous thought.

“Not that! I am promised to another. Anything else.”

“Anything?”

“Almost anything,” she qualified quickly. “Look, basilisk, if you don’t get a better attitude in a hurry, I’ll tell my friend here to cut off your head and eat it. That may not kill you, but you won’t get it back until he defecates it out a day later, if he survives, and then it will stink.”

“Yeah,” Bad Buffalo said, holstering his guns and drawing his knife. He’d eaten worse than chicken heads in his day.

“Very well,” the creature agreed. “We’ll talk. See that miniature hourglass in the nest? Take it and invoke it.”

Dia dived for the hourglass just as another, louder, hotter rumble came. The dragon was just beyond the bend. A roil of smoke surged forth, coming for them.

“Invoke!” Dia cried, holding up the trinket.

The roil paused in place. The rumble halted.

“Hey, what happened?” Bad Buffalo asked, surprised.

“Your girlfriend invoked the hourglass,” the basilisk explained. “Time is frozen, at least for a few minutes.”

Bad Buffalo had a problem with this. “We’re not frozen!”

“He means it’s frozen for everything else, not us,” Dia explained. “Maybe we’re actually moving much faster, so the outside world seems frozen. But it won’t last. It just gives us time to negotiate the truce.”

“Truce, hell! We need to blast that dragon.”

“Your friend’s not the speediest bullet in the gun,” the basilisk remarked.

The chicken-head thought Bad Buffalo was stupid?

“He’s got other qualities,” Dia said. “What do you want?”

“First, to get recognized as a person and correctly identified. I am actually the male of the species, technically a cockatrice. My name is Crag.”

Dia, back in Bad Buffalo’s pocket, kicked his chest with her little heel. He managed to catch the hint. “Sorry we got it wrong, Crag. Sure you’re a cock.”

“Correct,” the creature said, mollified. “A cockatrice stands up hard. A basilisk lies down soft. We get along. Forget this nonsense about an egg laid by a rooster hatched in a dung heap by a toad with the dog star ascendant; we reproduce in the regular way, only we don’t stare into each other’s eyes. Furthermore, it’s only our direct stare that kills, not the stench of our bodies. Otherwise the dragon would be dead by now, and you too.”

Now Bad Buffalo had time to take a good look at the creature. His head was mostly that of an aggressive rooster, while his wings were more like bat’s wings. There was a kind of dark brown mane that circled around to the front and carried on beyond the wings. The legs were large and powerful, each foot as long as the head, with hefty black claws. The rest of the body was like a snake, with scales above and a tan underbelly below, trailing off behind. Obviously, a bird/bat/snake crossbreed. The ancestors must have had one hell of a drunken party, making love not war, at least on that occasion.

“They did,” Crag agreed. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”

“We recognize you as a person, Crag,” Dia said. “What else?”

“Take me to your world.”

That set her back. “What, blindfolded?”

“If we make the truce, I will agree not to look directly at you, and to blink if you happen to look my way. You will simply have to trust me on that.”

“Actually, since I can read your mind, I can trust you,” Dia said. “Still, it would be chancy. Accidents do occur.”

“They do. I can help you kill the dragon and escape this world. That might be worth the chanciness. Also, if I am with you, I can stop other predators from attacking you.”

“Hey, I can take care of myself and her,” Bad Buffalo protested.

“I’m sure you can, gunslinger, when you’re not stuck in a cave with no room to swing your lariat. Right now you need a look that kills.”

Bad Buffalo had to grudgingly yield the point.

Dia, from the pocket, sent him a mental glance. Did this seem to be worth the risk?

“Yeah, I guess so,” he agreed.

“Very well,” Dia said. “We’ll free you, Crag, and you protect us. We’ll take you to Earth, where you’ll have no competition.”

“Deal,” the cockatrice agreed.

Bad Buffalo went and untied the blindfold. Crag averted his gaze.

“Very well,” the cockatrice said. “The time freeze is about to wear off. We’ll need the magic mirror.”

“Hey, what’s a mirror got to do with it?” Bad Buffalo demanded. “Only sissies use mirrors.”

“It’s magic, but it does also reflect,” Crag said. “We can set it up on the nest so that when the dragon rounds the corner, he’ll see it.”

“Yeah? Then what?”

“Then he’ll see my reflection in it, staring at him, and die.”

Oh. But it seemed complicated. “Why don’t you just sit in the nest and face him?”

“Because I don’t want to get toasted by his fire while the smoke prevents him from meeting my gaze. It wouldn’t kill me, but it would render me very uncomfortable for long enough for him to eat me, and that would be a long hard hassle. I would survive it, and finally get excreted, covered in digestive refuse. I’m practically immortal, but I value my comfort. I need to be out of the line of fire.”

That did make sense. Bad Buffalo would not much like getting chewed up, swallowed, and shit out either.

“I’m glad you understand.”

The mirror was just outside their time freeze zone, but that was fading. They hurried to the mirror as the cloud of smoke resumed roiling, gaining speed, and the sound effects returned. It was a big one, about a yard across, circular, and absolutely clean and reflective despite being part of the junk in the nest.

Bad Buffalo put his hands on the rim and lifted up the whole thing. It wasn’t really heavy. He noticed that his fingers did not touch the mirror surface; instead, they poked right through it. Surprised, he paused.

“It’s magic,” Dia reminded him.

He wanted to learn more about it, but a gust of smoke heated his back side and he realized that time was short. He set the mirror down standing up to face the entrance tunnel; he could see the roils of smoke behind his own reflection, getting ready to make the final charge. But he knew he couldn’t let go of the rim without it falling over.

“My job,” Crag said. He got behind the mirror and scrabbled rapidly with his claws, sending gold coins, faceted diamonds, and assorted magic trinkets tumbling. Soon there was enough of a mound to hold the mirror in place.

But then it wanted to fall forward. It needed propping in front too, but Bad Buffalo couldn’t spare a hand to scoop up more gems. “Dang!”

“My job,” Crag repeated. “Avert your gaze; I can’t work blind.”

Bad Buffalo shut his eyes as the cockatrice came around to the front of the mirror and began scooping another mound. In a moment the mirror firmed, able to stay in place on its own.

There was a roar as the dragon burst into the chamber. He inhaled, preparing to torch them on the spot. “Get out of the way, BB,” Dia cried. “Get your reflection in place, Crag.”

Bad Buffalo shoved his left foot down to jump clear of the mirror. But it skidded on a pocket of diamonds and he fell to his knee, opening his eyes. Then the next blast of smoke powered into his back, prelude to the full fire. It pushed him roughly forward. He put down his hands to catch himself, but they landed on more loose diamonds and got no purchase. He rolled forward, crashing into the side of the basilisk who hadn’t yet gotten clear, and shoving the creature through the untouchable surface of the mirror. He saw Crag disappear into it, his reflection changing as if he had dived into water without a splash.

Then Bad Buffalo was up against his own charging reflection, unable to stop.

Dia screamed as the three of them plunged through the mirror into...

Chapter 17: The Woman in the Mirror

Bad Buffalo tumbled forward. He tucked a shoulder and rolled while simultaneously drawing the little sprite from his shirt pocket with his left hand and his revolver with his right. He kept her cupped and safe while he completed the controlled maneuver. Bad Buffalo had always known how to take a fall. It came instinctively to him, especially when it came time to dive off Horse and take cover.

He came up on a knee, releasing Dia and holding his gun out before him. Bad Buffalo liked to think his eyes were better than most, but even he was having trouble seeing where they were. He caught sight of the basilisk taking cover under a nearby table. Dia fluttered before him, raised a little hand, and immediately light appeared in her palm. A small light, but certainly bright enough to get their bearings. But before the famous outlaw could make sense of his strange surroundings, one thing was evident to him.

His trusty steed had been left behind in the dragon’s lair.

And just as that thought crossed his mind, and just as Bad Buffalo was going to feel his first real panic, ever, a wild, ear-splitting screech erupted behind him. Bad Buffalo rolled again, because his instincts were that something was coming up behind him, and coming up fast. He was right. Or his instincts were. Horse thundered past him, making a devil of a racket, clearly distressed. Bad Buffalo saw why: his tail was on fire!

Bad Buffalo was on this, throwing off his vest, and while Horse bucked and panicked, he timed his lunge between kicks and caught hold of the blazing tail. He wrapped it tightly, smothering the fire in an instant. But it took many seconds for Horse to calm, and he was still in great pain.

Dia was at the steed’s side as well, her little wings fluttering in a blur. She lay her hands on the horse’s flank and another burst of light appeared, and it spread over the creature’s backside and rushed along the tail. Horse’s pain seemed to lessen and soon the creature had settled considerably.

“I took away his pain,” said Dia. “And encouraged his burns to heal. He should be fine in a few days. But that was all the magic I had. I’m wiped out.”

Bad Buffalo was suitably impressed, and it was only now, with all of them united, even Crag had emerged from under the table, walking carefully with his eyes closed tight, Bad Buffalo finally got a good look around. And, for the life of him, he hadn’t a clue where they were. It was clearly a room. A big room, with lots of junk and dust and, most importantly, a similar magic mirror. It was leaning against the wall. There had been a red blanket over it, which now lay across the floor before it. Bad Buffalo took hold of it, cut a strip, and handed it to the basilisk.

“You know the drill, crazy eyes.”

The magical creature sighed and took hold of the proffered rag and tied it deftly over his eyes. This wasn’t his first blindfold. “Is there any chance all of you can, you know, not look into my eyes?”

“We can’t take that chance, hombre,” said Bad Buffalo. “And where the devil are we?”

“From what little I saw,” said Crag, “I would guess we are in a storage room of sorts.”

“Who stores a magical mirror?”

“What else do you see?” asked Crag.

“Paintings,” said Dia.

“Statues,” added Bad Buffalo.

“Nyaah,” chimed in Horse.

“My guess,” said Crag, “is that we are in the storage room of a museum.”

“Well, I don’t give two figs where we are. We need to get back through the mirror so that I can plug that dragon. No one torches my Horse.”

“It’s probably waiting for us,” said Dia. She flew over and hovered before the mirror. “I don’t see it.”

“Of course you don’t,” said a voice from inside the mirror. “I’m a mirror, after all. Not a window. There’s a difference.” And with that, a woman appeared in the mirror. Only she didn’t step out. She hovered just behind, as if floating.

Dia started, did a back flip, and zipped back to the safety of Bad Buffalo’s pocket. He was the hero after all. She was just a tiny sprite.

Bad Buffalo moved over to the mirror, framed in hammered copper. The mirror was easily bigger than Bad Buffalo, far bigger than the cave mirror. Unlike the cave mirror, this one featured a woman dressed in a flowing, shifting white robe. She was beautiful. He found himself staring, confused and intrigued, and suddenly, in a great deal of pain, too.

“Ouch!” he shouted. It felt as if he’d been stung by one of the Hive Queen’s followers. But no, it was Dia and she was not happy where his mind had wandered.

“You could say that again,” she huffed.

Bad Buffalo grumbled and cleaned up his thoughts and looked again at the mildly attractive and scantily clad woman in the mirror. “Say, why don’t you come out of there?”

“I can’t,” she said. “Not until the curse is lifted.”

“What curse?” asked the gunslinger.

“Until a male person falls in love with me, I am bound to this mirror forever.”

“And how’s a man supposed to fall in love with a mirror?” Bad Buffalo asked.

The woman in the mirror wept. Bad Buffalo was certain he could see through her dress or maybe through her. Both intrigued him, until he felt another pinch to his chest. He yelped again.

“Well, I’m very sorry for your problems, miss, but will you kindly step aside? We have a dragon to plug.”

The woman, whose dress seemed to flow around her as if she were underwater, stopped crying and looked up at him. “I will not.”

“Why not?” asked the outlaw. “I said kindly.”

“I will not until you help me.”

Bad Buffalo blinked. “Help you what?”

“Find someone to love me.”

“We don’t have time for this nonsense. I’ve got a dragon to plug. Step aside.”

“Wait!” said Dia. “The dragon might be waiting for us.”

“I ain’t afraid of no dragon. C’mon Horse, we’re getting a move on. You can come, too, Crag, if you are so inclined.”

The little cockatrice crossed his wings over his chest and might have made a noise that sounded like a chuckle.

“Suit yourself,” said Bad Buffalo. He snatched Horse’s reins and stepped into the mirror.

Or tried to. Suddenly, the woman was gone and there, well, a mirror was there. A real mirror, and it was now smeared with the blood of Bad Buffalo’s crushed nose.

“Ouch!” he said holding it and stumbling back.

The woman appeared again, hands on hips, her long hair billowing around her. “Now, will you help me?”

Chapter 18: Marey

Dia flew to Bad Buffalo’s face, trying to mop up the blood. “I’m sorry, BB; I’m out of healing magic. As soon as I get more, I’ll take away the pain.” Then she looked at the mirror woman. “Are you satisfied, you mother of a dog? Have you hurt him enough?”

The woman in the mirror looked surprised. “You’re sweet on him! And you’re telepathic! No wonder I couldn’t get through to him, with you running interference.”

“No wonder,” Dia agreed caustically. “So why don’t you quit with the seduction and go hide in your closet while we pass through?”

The woman frowned. “We have a problem.”

“We wouldn’t, but for your dog-in-the-outhouse attitude.”

The woman looked at Dia calculatingly. “Very well. I will make an amend.” She gestured. “In that cupboard you will find a jar of healing balm. Use it on him.”

Dia went to the cupboard and found the tiny jar. She brought it back to Bad Buffalo. She unscrewed the lid, dipped out a handful of balm, and smeared it on Bad Buffalo’s nose.

Immediately the pain eased and the blood stopped flowing. It was magical!

“Now we’ll listen,” Dia said. “I am Dia Sprite and this is Bad Buffalo.”

“I am Marey. I suspect you are wondering how I got stuck in here. I was part of the royal household staff. I changed form and seduced a handsome young prince when we were out for a ride in the woods, and the innocent told his overprotective mother, who was most annoyed. I told her he was of age and could do what he wanted with his associates. I didn’t think she could do anything about it, now that he had learned the joy of social intercourse.” She smiled reminiscently. “I was an imperious filly in those days. But she locked me in this mirror until another male loves me.” She grimaced prettily. “My mistake; I didn’t know she was a sorceress. Otherwise I would have been more careful, and warned him not to tell her. I also didn’t know she was going to throw the mirror away so that no ordinary male could encounter my image. Then the dragon collected it for his treasure. So I have been stuck here for more time than I care to mention. I would do just about anything to get free.”

“Hey, you know, she’s got a case,” Bad Buffalo said. He loved plugging men, but pretty girls were something else. They required a different kind of plugging.

“You folk seem to be missing the obvious,” Crag said. “Maybe you’re deceived by appearances, something I’m not able to do at the moment.”

“What are you talking about, bird beak?” Dia demanded. She was evidently not in the best mood at the moment.

“You haven’t been paying attention to what the creature says,” Crag said. “She said she has to be loved by a male person, which is not the same as a man. Then she mentioned changing form to seduce the prince. She said she was an imperious filly. And consider her name: Marey. Does that give you a glimmer?”

“No,” Bad Buffalo said.

“Oh, my!” Dia said. “She’s not human!”

“She sure looks pretty much human to me,” Bad Buffalo said. “And I’ll bet if she took off that robe, she’d look all-the-way human.”

“She’s a were,” Dia said. “A were-horse.”

“A were-mare,” Marey corrected her. “The female of the species.”

“And the prince must have been riding her filly form,” Crag continued. “And when they were alone in the forest, she surprised him by changing into a luscious girl and had at him, and he loved it. Then she changed back, and he rode her home. And told the queen he’d made out with his horse. No wonder his mother was not amused.”

“What’s a were-mare?” Bad Buffalo asked.

“Observe,” Marey said. When she had his attention, she threw off her white robe and stood revealed, indeed, as a luscious girl with silvery hair. Then she shifted and became a lovely white mare with a silvery mane.

“A shape-changer,” Dia said shortly. “Weres come in all kinds, mostly wolves, but there are others. So she’s a woman/filly.”

“I can give you such a good time, BB,” Marey’s voice came, telepathically projected. “In either form. All you have to do is love me, so I can get out of here and be with you.”

Bad Buffalo opened his mouth, but shut it again before Dia attacked him.

“He’s taken,” Dia snapped. “Get that though through your furry head, and quit horsing around.”

Marey fixed her smoldering gaze on Bad Buffalo. That wasn’t fully effective, because his own gaze was fixed about a foot lower. “She can give you what you want, bad boy, when she gets her magic some time in the distant future. I can give it to you now. Why wait?”

Bad Buffalo considered opening his mouth. Dia considered nailing it shut. So he didn’t answer.

“Then find your own way out of the mirror,” Marey said coldly as she reverted to girl form.

“And of course she’s a bit older than she chooses to look,” Crag said. “By five or six decades. That mirror evidently locked her into her filly age.”

“Some time has passed, yes,” Marey admitted as she languidly dressed. “I didn’t have much of a choice. It has been frustrating. But once I get out I’ll age normally, so it won’t matter. Physically I am the age I look, and that’s the age I’ll act. Does anything else matter?”

Bad Buffalo knew better than to even think about opening his mouth.

It was Crag who spoke for them. “We want to get out of the mirror. So do you, mare. We need to bargain, to benefit all of us. But the man you want is not available, so we are at an impasse.”

“Which is readily resolved, cock,” Marey said. “Let the man make his own choice. Give me one hour to remonstrate with him, and I think he will conclude that he is after all available. Then we’ll all be free together.”

Dia said something in sprite language that Bad Buffalo did not understand, but the dust on the floor sparkled and turned to ash.

“Well spoken, dear,” Marey said, fluffing out her robe to release the smoke. “But it doesn’t change the situation.”

“What is required is compromise,” Crag said. “Otherwise we all lose. Fortunately one is available.”

Bad Buffalo, Dia, and Marey all looked blankly at the blindfolded cockatrice. “No, we’re not going to share him,” Dia said tightly.

“Agreed,” Marey said as tightly.

“You are a mare,” Crag said. “You can make do with the love of a man, or of a horse, equally well. Fortunately we have a horse.”

Three jaws dropped, and Horse’s ears perked.

“The cock is right,” Marey breathed. “He’s a handsome brute. I could gambol with him as a filly.”

“Hay, no gambling,” Bad Buffalo protested. “Horse is no card shark. He’s an honest comrade.”

Dia sent him a terse correction: in this case it meant to frolic.

“Well, why didn’t she say so?”

“Very well,” Marey said. “Give me Horse, and I’ll let us all out of here.”

“Not so fast,” Dia said. “How can we trust you to follow through, and stay with Horse and not look for a man once you’re out?”

Marey sighed. “Trust. Yes, it does come down to that. Maybe you should vote on it.”

“Given that we all want to get out of here, that score is even,” Crag said. “In addition, you’ll get to romance the horse, so you’re ahead. What extra’s in it for the rest of us?”

“You’re a canny one,” Marey said, somewhat admiringly. “Very well, I will buy your votes with gifts of information that will seriously benefit you. Fair enough?”

“That depends,” Dia said mistrustfully.

“It has been a long, boring incarceration. I have had time to peer out the mirror and study the contents of the dragon’s nest. He collects stuff just because he knows others value it; he can’t use most of it himself. Like this mirror. Like a cockatrice. Once you folk have slain the dragon, that treasure will be yours. Obviously, you can’t take the whole of the hoard with you. You will need to select useful items that will serve you well in the future. I will identify those items.”

“Let’s get more specific,” Dia said.

“For you, sprite, there is a magic ring. Put it on and it will imbue you with all the magic you will ever need.” Marey smiled briefly. “You could become instantly full human size and mass. Or a giantess. Whatever you want. I can tell you exactly where to find that ring, and to know it despite myriad other rings that look similar but lack its magic.”

“Do that, and you have my vote,” Dia said, amazed.

“How about me?” Bad Buffalo asked, though he was just about ready to settle for the ring on Dia. It would let him give her an immediate poke.

“There is a box of bullets that never runs out; it refills itself.”

“Hoo!” he exclaimed, enraptured. “You got my vote.”

“What about Horse?” Dia asked. “He’s the one who’ll have to be with you.”

“A cornucopia. Know what that is?”

“A can of corn?” Bad Buffalo asked.

Marey smiled. “Not exactly. It’s a large horn-shaped device filled with all manner of edibles: grains, hay, apples, sugar cubes and such. Like the bullet box, it never runs out. Horse will never be hungry again. Neither will I, when he shares feed with me. In fact, none of you will lack for food, as long as you stay on Horse’s right side.”

“But I mount him from the left side.”

“She means you have to keep him liking you,” Dia said.

Oh. He wished she’d do more straight talk. Bad Buffalo looked at Horse. Horse twitched an ear. “He votes yes.”

“And me,” Crag said.

“There’s a pair of goggles with reflective dark-colored, one-way glass: you can see out, but others see only their own reflections, as with this large mirror. Your gazes can’t meet, so no one dies. Unless you take off the goggles. So no more blindfolds or avoiding eye contact. You’ll be able to become social.”

“Sold! You have my vote.”

“Except—” Dia said.

“Trust,” Marey said. “Of course. You don’t trust me. But I trust you. I will let you out to slay the dragon, then you can pick up your prizes—I can direct you to them from the mirror—and verify that they are as I have described them. Then give me about one minute alone with Horse, and soon we’ll all be safely out.”

“One question,” Crag said. “A horse doesn’t notice a mare unless she’s in heat. Are you in heat?”

“No. Not physically. But BB can help me there.”

“The h—” Dia swore, the word consumed by a fireball.

“By throwing a vial of perfume into the mirror,” Marey said. “I’ll catch it.”

“Perfume? Horses don’t care about that. He’ll ignore you.”

“There’s a vial of Eau d’ pheromone, equine style. I’ll put that on my tail and brace myself for a storm. He’ll come.” She smiled almost as if there were a pun. “I will keep the vial for future use. I have decades of abstinence to make up for, and damned if I’ll wait on the equine cycles.”

“Absinthe’s strong, all right,” Bad Buffalo agreed.

“Are we agreed?” Marey asked. “We have a deal!”

“We have a deal,” Dia agreed.

“Then here’s the strategy. You will go out as a foursome, plunging through the mirror, BB with his lariat ready, Crag with his eyes clear. If one of you doesn’t get the dragon, the other will. Then it will be time for the spoils.”

“Got it,” Bad Buffalo said. He mounted Horse and hefted his lariat. Dia flew into his front pocket. Meanwhile Crag lifted a foot and clawed off his blindfold. “Don’t look my way,” he warned.

“Wait until I tell you,” Marey said. “The mirror’s porous now, but we need to know exactly where that dragon is.” She faced away from them, peering out. Dia kicked the pocket to interrupt Bad Buffalo’s gaze at her shapely backside.

“The dragon’s snoozing on the nest at the moment,” Marey said. “In fact his confounded backside is on the mirror. We’ll have to wait until he moves.”

Now they could see the dragon’s huge tail flat against the mirror.

“The hell with that,” Bad Buffalo said. He guided Horse to stand right up against this side of the mirror, drew a gun and poked it hard into the mirror and beyond. He fired a bullet.

“Oo-ooo!” The dragon lurched up, half-spread his wings, and launched into the tunnel.

“You goosed him!” Dia said, smirking. “With a bullet!”

“Now’s the time,” Marey said. “Nail him when he turns around to see what poked him out of his nap, before he gets a lungful of fire.”

“Ho!” Bad Buffalo yelled as Horse leaped through, followed closely by Crag. They landed in the nest, on guard against the dragon.

But the dragon didn’t turn immediately. It seemed he had gone too far into the narrow tunnel, and had to go all the way out to have turning room.

“There’s the bullet box,” Marey called from the mirror, pointing. Bad Buffalo jumped down and swept it up, plopping it into a saddlebag. “The cornucopia.” He put that into another saddlebag. “The ring.” Dia flew down and was guided to the right ring. She put it on, and suddenly was ten feet tall, with Bad Buffalo looking up under her leaf skirt appreciatively before she shrank back to mini-size. “And the goggles.” Bad Buffalo pushed aside a useless old-fashioned lamp marked ALADDIN and put them on Crag, who actually looked sort of handsome in them. “And the vial of perfume,” Marey concluded, pointing it out. Bad Buffalo picked it up and hurled it into the mirror.

“Get in there, Horse,” he said, slapping the steed’s flank. Horse leaped back into the mirror and disappeared.

“Let’s give them a moment of privacy,” Dia said. She was now human size. She stepped into him and clasped him with solid arms. She kissed him, her face wondrously firm and soft, her breasts pressing into him.

There was a roar. The dragon had turned and was coming back. He did not seem to be pleased about getting goosed.

“Uh-oh,” Crag said. “There’s a smoke ball leading the way again. We’re in trouble.”

Chapter 19: Dragon Begone

Bad Buffalo was many things, but first and foremost, he was a man of action.

Without a second’s thought, he leaped onto the pile of treasure. He’d seen it minutes earlier during his scavenger hunt: a unique shield inscribed and painted with intricate depictions of the Earth, the Sun, the Moon, and the constellations—all of which Bad Buffalo was now familiar with, thanks to Dia’s thumbnail education. Along with the astronomical renderings, were pictures of vineyards and herd animals and people dancing, all flowing around the circular shield. Bad Buffalo suspected it was old—perhaps even ancient. He only hoped—nay, prayed—that the fashioners of the shield had done a good enough job to stop dragon fire.

The others, who could all read his mind, were already moving, huddling behind him and high piles of gold coins and jewelry and silver chalices. And just in time, too, for the ball of smoke was soon upon them, followed immediately by a torrent of fire, both of which blasted up and over the pile of treasure...and into the shield.

Heat thundered over them, along with licking flames that reached around the shield. But Bad Buffalo held tight, grunting, sweating, burning. He expected the shield to heat up, but it didn’t. In fact, it remained cool to the touch and surprisingly light, too. As the fire poured around them, snapping and lapping like a living thing, Bad Buffalo grunted and held tight and ignored the searing pain.

And then it was over. Dragons, he realized, needed to breathe, too, at least enough to muster up enough air for another bellowing blast. He lowered the shield, taking score. They were all alive. Some of the treasure hoard around them was still glowing from the explosive fire. His clothing was scorched in some places, his shoulders raw. Bad Buffalo did not want to have to go through that again. Then again...

“Then again,” said Dia, following his train of thought. “He thinks we’re toast.” She crawled from behind him, where she had been hidden, caught in her larger form.

Bad Buffalo was no dope. “He won’t expect us to be alive.”

The goggled cockatrice blew on some singed feathers. “He’ll probably take his time coming back here. What’s the rush? After all, he’s used to his victims being burned to a crisp.”

“So, what do we do?” asked Dia.

“We could charge out,” said Bad Buffalo. “With guns a-blazing.”

“There’s not enough room to ride out,” said Crag. “Besides, we would be facing the business end of a dragon’s snout.”

“And the business ends of my guns.”

“He’ll fry us before you did any real damage.”

“Not if we set you high in the saddle, and the dragon gets a good look at you.”

Crag shook his head. “No good. Like Horse, the dragon instinctively knows to look away, or close his eyes. He doesn’t need to see us to fry us to smithereens.”

It was then that Horse and Marey, riding high on top in her human form, exploded out of the mirror, to land next to the group. Horse’s mane seemed unusually mussed, and there was a rare gleam in his eye. The same could be said for Marey, who held the creature’s neck tenderly.

“Let me guess,” said Bad Buffalo. “The two of you are in love.”

“I feel love in my equine form,” said Marey. “In my human form, I feel only fondness for this great steed. He is my hero, after all. I am free of the mirror.”

“Well, only for so long,” grumbled Bad Buffalo. He wasn’t entirely sure he liked the look in Horse’s eye, and worried that his trusted steed was no longer his trusted steed. Things were changing rapidly for the gunslinger, and he wasn’t sure he liked that either. He missed the open range, the drinking and card playing, the fear in most people’s eyes.

“What do you mean?” asked Marey.

“The dragon means to fry us,” said Dia, “and we’re running out of ideas.”

From high atop Horse, the beautiful one-time prisoner said, “I might just have an idea that will work.”

“Good,” said Crag, as a bellow sounded along the narrow tunnel, “because the dragon’s returning.”

***

The mirror was angled just so.

Once the cockatrice confirmed that Bad Buffalo and Marey were all positioned correctly, he quietly hid with Horse, who had backed into the shadows of farthest reaches of the cave. They all had one shot and one shot only. If this failed, no shield would protect them from the dragon’s fire.

Turned out, Crag had been right. The dragon took its sweet time to check on its would-be charred victims. Hunched and frozen in place—and wearing the scorched hide of a swatter—Bad Buffalo watched in the mirror as the dragon’s snout appeared in the mirror first, followed by its massive diamond-shaped head. Two plumes of smoke rose from its flared nostrils. Its eyes gleamed red. Perhaps they were irritated by the smoke rising up from its snout. Bad Buffalo could even see the small damage he had done to one eye, damage that didn’t seem to bother the creature much. Now the rest of the creature lumbered into the hallway. It looked directly at them. Bad Buffalo stayed frozen in place, off to the side of the tunnel, hidden with Marey behind a pile of oddly shaped bones. Thus reflected in the mirror, they both did their best to appear charred and dead. At first glance, both would have appeared quite dead...and, thanks to the mirror’s reflection, both appeared directly in the dragon’s path.

Bad Buffalo felt a small twitch on his nose. The small twitch turned into something a little bigger. Now, he was certain there was something about the dusty, scorched hide that was going to make him sneeze. He held his breath, eyes watering. Was a simple sneeze going to be the end of the infamous outlaw?

***

Little Dia, who had reverted to her pint-sized form, held her breath in the tiny, rocky fissure, as the massive dragon lumbered by. She saw the gleaming, sharp scales, surely sharp enough to slice through anything. She knew that dragon scales made for some of the sharpest blades ever.

When the creature had moved past her, she flew out from the crag and sprouted to her full-size. She settled behind the dragon as quietly as she could, careful of the swishing, pointed tail.

I’m in position, she thought to Bad Buffalo.

I have to sneeze, came his gruff reply.

Well, don’t or you’re both toast.

What’s toast?

Never mind that, just let me know when the dragon is in position.

Almost there. Almost there. Almost—

“Achoo!”

The dragon stopped. In fact, it backed up a step or two. Dia couldn’t have that. The dragon needed to go forward...and it needed to go forward now. It hunched back on its hindquarters, and she knew it was about ready to let go with another hellacious blast. But she blasted it first, using her own enchantments. She braced both hands in front of her, summoned all the energy she could, and let loose with a sparkling fireball that singed the creature’s massive hindquarters. Surprised, the dragon roared, and, unable to turn around in the narrow tunnel, charged forward.

***

Bad Buffalo knew they were toast, whatever that was.

The sneeze had startled him as much as the dragon, and now, he watched the creature rear back, its nostrils flaring, hatred in its reptilian eyes. He watched the creature in the mirror prepare to let loose with another blast. Bad Buffalo had just reached down for his guns—no way in hell he was going to fry as a sitting duck, when he saw a flash of light illuminate the tunnel from somewhere behind the creature.

Dia!

Now, the creature bellowed in rage and pain and charged forward, its only course of action, and it ran right toward them. But no, not really at them. Instead, it charged into the mirror...where it promptly disappeared.

***

“So, the dragon is in the storage room?” asked Bad Buffalo, confused.

“Not quite. It’s in the mirror, trapped as I was,” said Marey, once again sitting astride Horse. They were standing at the cave’s opening, looking out to the picturesque valley below.

“But we ended up in the storage room,” the outlaw pointed out, reasonably he thought.

“That’s because the mirror was occupied by me. As such, it could be used for safe travels. But because I escaped the mirror...”

Bad Buffalo, remarkably, caught on. “It imprisoned the next occupant.”

“Exactly,” she said.

The outlaw took it a step further. “And to escape, the dragon would have to find true love.”

“Right again, BB,” said the were-mare.

Bad Buffalo couldn’t help himself. He started guffawing, so hard that he had to hold his stomach. He couldn’t imagine anything loving that dragon.

“So, where to now?” asked Marey.

“Now,” said Dia, “we let the swatters know that the dragon has been banished, and they are safe.”

“Swatters?”

“You’ll see,” said Bad Buffalo. “Now, if you don’t mind...”

She got the hint, and leaped off, instantly transforming into a beautiful white mare. Dia hopped upon her, riding bareback, as Bad Buffalo stepped up into his well-worn saddle. The little cockatrice leaped up, flapping its mostly useless wings, but got enough air under him to settle in Bad Buffalo’s lap, and the five of them charged down the mountainside...

Chapter 20: Stick

Bad Buffalo spied a nice copse of alien trees, like an island in a grassy plain. A person could disappear into that thicket and not be seen from outside. That gave him an idea. “Hey!” he called, pointing.

Dia glanced his way, then at the copse. She nodded, picking up on his thought immediately: poke. She jumped off the white mare. “Marey, BB and I have business in that copse. Why don’t you and Horse share another sniff of that perfume?”

The woman replaced the mare. “We’d love to. Just first let me check the talisman.”

“What kind of man?” Bad Buffalo asked.

“Something I picked up from the nest for myself,” Marey explained. “I don’t like to go into the future without warning; that’s a lesson I learned from my captivity in the mirror. Power, riches, romance are all fine, but useless in the face of key bad breaks.” She held up a small stick with a fancy ornament on the end. “This is a magical device that enables the user to see her critical junctures up to a day ahead, and it gives an alarm.”

The talisman bonged.

“Uh-oh,” Marey said. “That’s a warning of mischief within the hour, but the concept is obscure. It’s not something I have experience with. I’ll see if I can evoke a picture.” She focused her pretty face on the ornament.

There was a small swirl in the air above the talisman. It formed into a little picture.

“That’s the wormhole,” Dia said. “The one we’ll be using to return home. See, there’s the stick propping it open, and the swatters coming out of it.”

Bad Buffalo peered at the miniature scene. That was exactly what it was.

Then a clumsy swatter banged the stick with its tail, and the hole snapped closed, almost catching the swatter. Suddenly the hole was gone.

“Oops,” Dia said, alarmed. “We need that wormhole!”

“And so do I,” Mare said. “Since I want to go with Horse to his home range. I gather from his mind that there’s no better place in the universe.”

“He’s right,” Bad Buffalo said. “Home on the range.”

“We have to stop that hole collapse from happening,” Dia said. “You said within the hour? I think we’re about an hour’s ride from there.”

“No such luck,” Crag said. “You were hauled in by a dragon tether. You’re over an hour’s ride from there.”

“I believe he is correct,” Marey said. “You need a faster mount.”

“Horse is the dang-fastest mount in the whole wide Old West,” Bad Buffalo said. “There ain’t no faster steed.”

“Then you will need to make one,” Crag said.

“What you talking about?” Bad Buffalo demanded.

“You need to reach that wormhole in half an hour,” Marey said, rechecking the talisman. “Twice horse velocity.”

“Nothing’s that fast!” Bad Buffalo said.

“What are you thinking of?” Dia asked Crag.

“You,” the cockatrice said. “Writ large.”

“Oho! I forgot about my ring.” Dia expanded to a dozen times Bad Buffalo’s height, maybe 75 feet tall. Everything was proportionately large, including her petite green slippers. What a leaf-bursting sight she was!

“Get your mind off the leaves,” Dia boomed from far above. “I’ve been riding in your pocket. Now you’ll have to ride in mine.”

“You don’t have a pocket,” Bad Buffalo protested.

“Yes I do.”

“No you don’t. Just leaves.”

She leaned breathtakingly down, reached out, and picked him up in her huge hand. She lifted him dizzily high into the sky. Then she tucked him in behind the leaf that covered her bosom. Oh. It was indeed a kind of pocket, one that men didn’t have. Firmly wedged between her monstrous mounds with his feet on an inward curl of the bottom of the leaf he was actually quite comfortable. The mounds were soft yet firm and marvelously contoured. Just so long as the leaf kept him from falling into the abyss below it.

“A caution,” the were-mare said.

Bad Buffalo was surprised. “How can I hear you, filly, from way up here?”

“Telepathy helps,” Marey said. “You remain within range.”

He looked over the leaf and down at Marey, whose figure was also interesting from this perspective. He could see right down inside her gown.

“Eyes front!” Dia snapped. “I’m all the woman you can handle.” She was speaking literally.

“What’s this caution?” Crag asked, also telepathically.

“The future is malleable. Sometimes you can change it, but sometimes, it is resistive to change. So that wormhole collapse may be inevitable.”

“I don’t care if it’s uneatable. I just want it open.”

“We’ll do what we can,” Dia said.

“We’ll wait here,” Marey called, patting Horse’s flank.

“Right!” Bad Buffalo called back, knowing that the were-mare would be making good use of her potent perfume, Horse not at all reluctant.

Dia started running, her giant legs covering 40 feet per stride. This was another experience, as her massive breasts bounced up and down with each step. He had to hang tightly on to the leaf, lest he be flung out. Just when he was getting the hang of it, riding with the motions somewhat the way he did when on Horse, there was another development: she started breathing hard. In fact she was soon panting. He had heard about rollercoasters, but had never been on one. Now he had a fair notion what it was like. He clung to the leaf with both arms as the framework rose and fell, moving him with powerful heaves.

Meanwhile they were zooming along at eagle speed. In fact a surprised eagle was falling back, unable to keep the pace.

Bad Buffalo looked around, now that he had the hang of riding this bronco. Dia’s blue-blonde hair was flying back like a flag, and she was leaving giant footprints in the countryside. Taken as a whole, this was better than being dragged after the dragon by the lasso tether.

“Hang on,” she said. Then she spread her wings and took off.

Bad Buffalo clutched desperately at the leaf, because now it was beneath him and he could all too readily slide forward and out of the pocket. Her heaving breathing now lifted him up and down like a swooping bird. But the view was even better than before, because this position and the pumping of her wings changed the configuration of her—

“Eyes down,” she snapped.

That was a pretty good sight too. The entire alien landscape spread out below them, like an intricately detailed map. There were fields and forests, plains and rivers, mountains and valleys. But it didn’t compare to the splendor of his home range. Nothing could.

“Agreed,” Dia said.

Soon they reached the site of the wormhole, visible in the distance. It was still there. Bad Buffalo and Dia both breathed sighs of relief, but hers was more impressive.

Dia glided to a landing just out of sight of the line of swatters. She reached into her pocket and lifted him out of the lovely crevice. “I have to shrink to my former size now, so as not to spook the swatters,” she explained as she set him on the ground. Her bosom was still impressively heaving.

“Yeah,” he agreed.

“I know you’re a man, with just one thing on your mind,” she said. “But try to focus on our mission of the moment.”

“Two things on my mind,” he said, staring at her left and right mounds. “Three, if you count poking.”

She shrank rapidly down to doll size and flew to his pocket. That diminished the effect. “First the wormhole.”

“First wormhole, then poker,” he agreed.

She didn’t laugh at his pun on “poke her.” Maybe she wasn’t sharp about puns.

They walked to the wormhole. Just as they got there, a swatter stumbled, and its tail caught the stick that was propping the hole open.

Bad Buffalo dived for the stick, catching it before the hole collapsed. He wrenched it around to resume its service as a prop. He had saved the wormhole!

“Now get up, please,” Dia gasped.

Oh. She had been squashed in his front pocket as he hit the ground, and his muscular front was not nearly as soft as hers. He scrambled up, collided with the next swatter, and fell. One foot swung out and knocked the stick well clear of the hole.

The hole snapped shut, as if waiting for its opportunity, and winked out.

They stared at the place where it had been, horrified.

“The future can be resistive to change,” Dia murmured. “Now we know.”

He wasn’t much for philosophy. “How are we going to get home?”

She laughed without humor. “Maybe Horse will have an idea.”

“Yeah, he’s pretty smart.”

They walked away from the site, then Dia changed, put him back in her breast pocket, spread her wings, and took off. They didn’t talk during the return flight. Bad Buffalo didn’t want to say that he was not at all sure that Horse would have an idea.

Chapter 21: Retirement

Stallion and mare were grazing side by side near the dragon’s cave while Crag sunned himself, wearing his reflective goggles. “Hey why aren’t you using the corn copia?” Bad Buffalo asked as Dia landed and shrank to normal human size.

“Grazing is more companionable,” Marey said telepathically.

“We got bad news.”

“Dia advised us mentally,” the cockatrice said. “We have been discussing it. We may have an answer.”

“You mean Horse knew?”

“No, we asked him, and he said neigh,” Marey said, flicking an ear as she continued grazing.

“Listen, mare face, this is serious business.”

The woman reappeared. “Indeed it is. But it was Crag, not Horse, who came up with the idea.”

“Let’s have it,” Dia said tersely.

“We realized that the dragon must have ranged widely to gather his treasure,” Crag said. “There are all manner of alien world artifacts. Some of those gold coins are from Earth’s Roman times, and actually Marey was originally from medieval Earth.” The cockatrice formed an emoticon smile in the air. “She may have been in the mirror a tad longer than she thought. But here’s the thing: how could the dragon have gotten items from faraway planets, unless he traveled the wormholes?”

“Wow,” Bad Buffalo said. “He must’ve.”

“Which means he must have a wormhole key,” Crag continued. “An amulet he can invoke when he wants to travel more widely. He probably wears it on a chain around his neck, so that it will always be with him. It’s the one prize he would not leave in the nest. All we have to do it get it from him.”

“Hey wait. He’ll use that key to escape the mirror!”

“That occurred to us,” Crag said. “So we checked. He’s still in the mirror. Our theory is that the key does not create wormholes, just provides access to existing ones. Opens doors, as it were. He can’t reach a wormhole from the mirror, so the key is useless to him.”

“But we can use it,” Bad Buffalo said. “So let’s go get it.”

“And who will bell that cat?”

“Who cares about cats? Ain’t no cats here. It’s the key we want.”

“You’re right, Crag,” Marey said. “He’s not the swiftest of bullets.”

“Listen, horsetail,” Bad Buffalo said. “This ain’t about bullets. It’s about getting that key.”

Dia put her soft hand on his and leaned forward so he could see under her front leaf, supposedly by coincidence. That shut him up for a moment, especially when she took a breath. He had spent time bouncing around between those magnified globes, but the sight never lost traction. “What they mean, dear, is who is going to enter the mirror to take the key from the dragon?”

“Well, why didn’t they say so? I’ll go.” He was always the man for action, when others were too timid.

“The dragon would toast you before you ever got close enough.”

Bad Buffalo considered. “Guess I’d better take my lasso.”

“And then how would you get out of the mirror chamber?” Marey asked. “It’s one-way entry, no exit, until the protagonist finds love. I’m in a position to know.”

That stumped him. “You got a better idea?”

“Yes. There’s an alien conjurer in the nest with a viewfinder. You could use it to conjure the key out.”

“Condor? View finger? What’s that for?”

“It makes a special image of you that can go in to locate the target item and fix on it so the conjuration can be accurate.”

This was confusing. “Special image?”

“A ghost, if you will. The dragon can’t toast that, because it’s mere illusion.”

Bad Buffalo didn’t quite follow the logic, but plowed ahead anyway. “So let’s get this condor thingamajig and get that key.”

Marey looked at the others. “Shall we?”

“We shall,” Dia agreed.

They went to the dragon cave and on into the nest. There was the treasure, haphazardly piled. Marey felt through the rubble and came up with a box with a lens on the top. “This.”

“How’s it work?”

“It’s designed to be pretty much idiot-proof,” Marey said. “However, there are limits. Just follow my instructions to the letter and you should be all right.”

They set up the box on a tripod facing the mirror. The dragon was probably watching them, but since he couldn’t get out, that didn’t matter. Maybe. Following the were-mare’s instructions, Bad Buffalo stood beside the box, then touched the lens.

“Good enough. Now march into the mirror and put your hand on the key. That’s all.”

Bad Buffalo took a step forward, then remembered something. “How’m I going to get out again, if it’s one way?”

The three chuckled and even Horse snorted. Annoyed, Bad Buffalo turned around, and paused.

Dia, Marey, Crag and Horse stood behind the box. Bad Buffalo stood beside it, looking vague.

Something was odd. Bad Buffalo glanced down at himself. He was here. So who was that by the condor box, that looked just like him, only uglier?

“You’re a ghost, for the moment, BB,” Dia said. “That’s how the viewfinder works. Go on in; nothing can touch you, literally.”

He shrugged, then turned about and stepped into the mirror.

And found himself in the wide-open jaws of the dragon. Immediately they clamped closed on him. Or tried to. They passed right through his body.

The dragon looked almost as surprised as Bad Buffalo felt. It seemed he hadn’t heard the business about the ghost, or understood it if he had, any more than Bad Buffalo had. Now it was becoming clear. “Tough tits, big mouth,” Bad Buffalo said, punching the dragon on the snoot. But his fist went through as it if were fog.

“The key,” Dia’s voice reminded him, in his mind.

Oh. Yeah. Bad Buffalo looked and saw a chain around the dragon’s huge neck. He reached through the neck and put his hand on it.

The dragon, catching on, reared back, heaving his body to the far side of the chamber. But too late; the key remained in Bad Buffalo’s hand. Then it vanished.

“Dang!” he swore. “Thought I had it.”

“You did,” Dia said. “It got conjured to us once you fixed on it. Now get out of there.”

It did seem to be time, because the dragon was rebounding, sending an incinerating blast of fire. Maybe fire couldn’t touch a ghost either, but Bad Buffalo didn’t risk it. He got out of there fast. The mirror couldn’t stop him.

There was Dia, holding up the key, which looked like a little letter opener, not that Bad Buffalo had ever opened a letter. He stepped up to his frozen physical self and merged with it. Then Dia hugged him and kissed him, and he knew he was back in one piece. “Now we can go home,” Dia said. “After I fetch one more thing.”

She dug out what appeared to be a bottle with liquid flowing continuously from its upper level to its lower level.

“What is it?” Bad Buffalo asked.

“It’s a streaming audio. I recognized it from a description I read once.”

“What’s it do?”

“It streams audio.”

Bad Buffalo gave up on that one, rather than admit that he couldn’t make sense of it.

“One other thing,” Crag said. “This is one powerful treasure trove, in rare metals, precious gemstones, and invaluable magic artifacts. Do we want to just leave it here for any oaf to raid?”

That made them all pause. They had earned this treasure by disposing of the dragon; by rights it was theirs. They didn’t need it, but still, why should they just let any undeserving traveler lout have it? So, they discussed it, came to an agreement, then found a carton of cherry bombs and planted them at the mouth of the cave. Then they retreated a fair distance, and Bad Buffalo fired one bullet into the carton.

It exploded, bringing down the rock above, collapsing the cave. Now it was nothing but a landslide, as far as anyone could tell. No one would think to find any treasure there. But just to be sure, Marey used another thing she had salvaged from the treasure: a vial of super fertilizer. She poured it on the rubble, and immediately the assorted seeds in the sand sprouted and grew into a thick forest that looked as if it had been there for millennia. Now the treasure was really hidden.

But if for any reason they should ever want to raid it themselves, they could use the conjure box to get in ghostly and conjure out what they wanted. It would require planning, care, and cooperation, but that was fine; they were now a pretty tightly knit group of two-and-a-half people and two-and-a-half animals.

“Now we have traveling to do,” Dia said briskly. “We’d better eat.” She glanced at Marey. “Grazing takes too long.”

“Agreed. I’ll settle for cake and ice cream.”

Dia fetched the cornucopia from Horse’s saddlebag and tilted it before the were-mare. Out slid a small plate loaded with chocolate cake and cherry ice cream on the top, complete with a little plastic fork.

“Say,” Bad Buffalo said appreciatively. “Not that I eat sissy stuff like that.”

Dia tilted the magic horn toward him, and he got a chunk of battered months’-old slightly moldy fruitcake with snow crust on top, and a rusty spoon. That was more his style, as the sprite knew. He pitched in with gusto.

Then she downloaded a small pile of corn for Crag to peck up, a pile of sweet feed for Horse, and a handful of petite sweet peas for herself. They all feasted.

Bad Buffalo had to admit it: that corn copia was a nice device. Horse had chosen his gift well. Horse twitched an ear, picking up on his thought.

Well-fed, they separated briefly for natural functions, then got ready to travel.

Marey assumed her mare form and carried Crag, still wearing his classy goggles. Dia and Bad Buffalo mounted Horse, she back in his pocket. They made their leisurely way back to where the wormhole had opened. When they got there, Dia used the key to open the wormhole again, to the relief of several swatters who had gotten trapped inside. They propped it open again and went on into the tunnel. They followed the trail of swatters back to Libom 76, the bug planet exit. They left the island, crossing to the mainland, then moved on to where the bugs lived.

The queen bug was plainly amazed to see them again, but fair was fair: they had stopped the swatter invasion, and deserved the jar of bugs. She provided it. Bad Buffalo got the impression that the queen would be satisfied if she never saw them again; she didn’t like having her routine disrupted.

They entered the next wormhole. There was the caterpillar, the wormhole maintenance creature, patiently waiting. Dia greeted her gladly. The caterpillar guided them all the way back to Earth.

Before emerging, Dia addressed the caterpillar. “You have been so helpful that I got a gift for you. I know it gets sort of dull here in the dark tunnels as centuries pass, so here is something to liven up the hours. Just press the button on the top and it streams audio; it won’t stop streaming until you press the button again.” She set the bottle on the floor before the caterpillar. “Like this.” She pressed it.

Sound came out of it, weird and halfway lovely. The caterpillar was plainly enchanted; rapture fairly poured out of her. This was her kind of music.

They left her to her joy and exited the wormhole. There was the Home Range. Bad Buffalo gave a shout of joy and fired off all six bullets into the air in celebration, then reloaded from the magic bullet box. Dia gave a little shriek of delight. Horse neighed appreciatively.

Then Bad Buffalo brought out the jar of bugs. “Go get them worms!” he exclaimed as he unscrewed the lid and set them free. The bugs sailed out, formed a small OK sign in midair, and dissipated into the wilderness. They would zero in on any worm that dared show its ugly snout. The mission had been accomplished; the sprites would have their magic back.

Dia kissed him on the ear. “You did it, BB! I can’t wait to reward you for your heroism.”

Marey exchanged a muted glance with Crag. Neither seemed to be all that excited. This was the finest place of all? Well, it was a world, anyway. They would make do. “What now?” Marey inquired.

“I think we’ll settle down on a small farm,” Dia said. “With a married couple, a stallion, a mare, and a chicken.”

“Settle down?” Bad Buffalo demanded. “I ain’t the settling kind. I’m the meanest, baddest, toughest, shootingest, tootingest, hellraisingest kind.”

She stepped into him, planting her soft lips against his hard ones and pressing her plush front against his muscular front. “How’s that again, dear? I thought you might like a quiet life with continuous poking.” She moved her hips against his suggestively.

Continuous poking! She had just overridden any objections he might have. “I—I forget.”

“What’s this about a chicken?” Crag demanded. “I am no chicken.”

Dia turned to him between kisses. “When strangers come, you won’t want them to know your true nature. That would be dangerous to them and ultimately to you. There’s a reason basilisks and cockatrices are extinct on Earth. Your presence here must never be known. So you will use your mental power to cloud men’s minds and make them see you as a stupid rooster. That way they will leave you alone, which is what you want, no? Meanwhile you will have plenty of food and a safe roost for the nights, with intellectual company when you want it. What more do you want?”

“A basilisk.”

“So you can use the key to travel the tubes and locate a girlfriend, when you’re ready.”

Crag shut up.

“I don’t know,” Marey said. “I’ve been away a long time, and Earth seems rather dull now. At least this part of it.”

“Very little magic here now,” Crag said. “At least, compared to medieval times. But with the worms gone, the magic will gradually build up again, making it more interesting. Patience will be rewarded.”

Marey nodded, seeing it.

“We can all use the key,” Dia said. “We can go traveling the wormholes any time, maybe even return to the dragon’s nest for more items. It can be as interesting as we care to make it, as long as none of the Earth natives know. Meanwhile you did mention having a lot of poking to catch up on, Marey. I’m sure Horse will oblige.”

Horse twitched an ear. He was interested.

Marey nodded again. “You’re a bit more savvy than I took you for, sprite. Horse is the greatest ever.”

“Hey, Horse is mine,” Bad Buffalo said. “You can’t take him from me.”

“Indeed I can’t,” Marey agreed. “A girlfriend is only a girlfriend, a sometimes thing with a horse, but he’s your pal, and friendship is forever. I just want him for stud service.”

It was a fair answer. But Bad Buffalo had never been known for good judgment. Now he proved it. “Hey, you’re acting as if you prefer him to me. What’s he got that I ain’t got?”

Dia’s aspect clouded dangerously.

“Well,” Marey said thoughtfully, “apart from being handsomer, smarter, and much better endowed...”

Bad Buffalo opened his mouth, but realized in time that he was being teased. He shut up. That was probably his best decision in years.

The End

The Fantasy Collective continues in:

Dolfin Tayle

Return to the Table of Contents

DOLFIN TAYLE

A Fantasy Collective Novel

by

PIERS ANTHONY

J.R. RAIN

Dolfin Tayle

Published by Rain Press

Copyright © 2013 by J.R. Rain and Piers Anthony

All rights reserved.

Dolfin Tayle

Chapter One

The killer is all around us, and I am afraid.

Around me, the sea is foaming and churning, and the dead are everywhere. Among the dead is my mother. I am confused and lost and hurt.

Earlier, something swept through the waters, something unseen, but felt by all. This unseen force gathered many of us up, along with other creatures of the deep. This thing, this sweeping thing, prevented us from surfacing, to breathe air.

I also got swept up into the force, got tangled into the invisible web. My mother was there, too, by my side. She fought frantically for me, tearing at the unseen material that kept us from surfacing. She used her great beak and teeth, and finally tore through what she called the netting.

But she could only tear a small opening, for this netting is nearly indestructible, and she was losing her strength. She needed to surface. All of us needed to surface. We needed to breathe. We were dying.

But there was only room for the smallest of us to escape.

My mother urged me through, and I listened to her, because I always listened to her, for my mother was known as the Seeker of Truth, and in her words was the truth, and I always listened to the Mother Seeker. Always, even when I did not want to. Always, even if I was tired or wanted to play with my friends.

Now my mother, the Seeker, urged me through the opening, holding this netting open with her strong jaws, speaking to me rapidly through clicks and chirps, our language of the deep. I did as I was told, and squeezed through the opening. She helped me through by nudging me with her bony beak. Our beaks aren’t like bird beaks. No, they are long, bony protrusions that jut from our faces and allow us to snap at rapidly fleeing bass and mackerel, our favorite food.

Finally on the other side of this net, terrified, I listened as others began singing their death songs, and the ocean was filled with dying words and memories and voices and cries. I cried, too, and watched as others of our pod began floating silently up toward the surface, although they did not get very far. The netting held them in place, suspended in the water. Those whom I had once called uncle and aunt, those whom I had called friend and teacher, those who were kind and patient with me, those who were so wise to the ways of the deep, had finally quit fighting the net. And now they were floating.

The water, once alive with their fighting, filled with their haunting singing, slowly quieted and stilled.

“Hurry, ma,” I said, zigzagging back and forth on the other side of the net. Above me, a human boat—a massive human boat, trawled slowly over the ocean, bouncing slightly on mild currents, its sleek and narrow shape a dark shadow above.

I saw that my mother was badly tangled. Her flukes and fens were bleeding as she struggled. She needed air. I needed air, too.

“I am stuck,” she said. And as she spoke, I saw that she was fighting less and less. Blood wafted up from her many wounds as the net cut deep into her smooth hide. The more she fought, the more the net seemed to be holding her tighter and tighter, like a living thing. A great, evil thing. My mother, amazingly, smiled at me, although her face was growing a frightening shade of purple. She needed to breathe. She was dying. I needed to breathe, too. I would die unless I surfaced immediately.

“Please come with me, ma. Please.”

“Live bravely, Azael,” she said, calling me by my nickname.

“But I cannot live without you.”

“You can do more than you ever dreamed. Go breathe. Go live.”

“But—” But my breath was faltering. Darkness encroaches from the corners of my vision.

My mother spasmed violently; her blowhole quivered as it failed.

“I will not be far, my daughter. None of us will be. The sea is alive in you. Go now, girl. Now!”

And I did, turning up, thrusting with my tail and flukes, for I needed to breathe so very bad. From below my mother’s death song reached me, and it was the most beautiful and horrible thing I had ever heard. I looked down once just as my mother’s blowhole exploded open and she sucked in a great quantity of water. She shuddered convulsively...and then began floating.

I screamed and kicked hard and burst from the ocean like a flying beast. I released my air in a spray of water and inhaled deeply and landed with a massive splash.

But before I landed I saw clearly the markings on the ship. It was a white vessel with a large blue circle on its side, its hull, as my mother had taught me. The circle had the picture of a fish in it. Artwork, my mother had taught me. Humans were adept at art.

They were also adept at killing.

I would never forget that ship or the blue circle with the fish inside.

Chapter Two

I watched in horror as the net was brought up to the surface, and with it the tangled bodies of those in my pod. I watched as my mother’s lifeless form was pulled haltingly to the surface, for she was still very much entangled in the wicked webbing.

I followed her up, touching her, nuzzling her, drifting through the blood that surrounded her badly wounded body.

At the surface, as the sun shone high in the sky and seagulls circled, her body floated serenely in the wake of the ship, bouncing and bobbing. I floated with her, always careful of being ensnared in the webbing again. Others of our pod were there at the surface. All were dead. All floated lifeless, and the scene was too much for me to bear. I cried out and sang a song of deep sorrow. And as I sang, those humans on the ship turned and looked at me. Many watched me, holding their hands to shield their eyes. I saw one or two shake their heads, and then they went back to work, moving quickly, calling loudly to each other, doing whatever it is that they do on these ships.

Actually, I knew quite well what they did on this ship. They killed. And their netting was the instrument of death. Those creatures who did not need to breathe air were still alive, flopping wildly within the net, desperate and helpless, and even though only moments earlier my pod had been hunting them, I felt sorry for them, trapped as they were.

I continued to sing. I continued to nuzzle against my dead mother. The mackerel fought the netting furiously, twisting and angling their muscular bodies, damaging themselves. Great swaths of blood now drifted away from the netting, and I knew the sharks would be here soon, attracted by the blood. No doubt they were already on their way.

My mother was a beautiful creature. Long and elegant and sleek. Her eyes stared at me now, unseeing and lifeless, and I sang harder, my voice traveling far and wide.

Above, the humans worked quickly, hauling the net out of the water. I drifted on the currents, lifting and bobbing, staying close to my mother, but far enough away from the hateful netting.

And now my mother was moving, but not with life. No, she was being dragged over the surface of the ocean as the humans on board the ship gathered up the black net. As they took it in, I saw, they hauled great amounts of flopping mackerel from the ocean. They also hauled the bodies of my uncles and friends and those I had loved with all my heart.

My mother shifted on the currents, and then she was moving steadily toward the ship. She moved sideways. So unnatural. So painful to see. I did not want her to go up on that ship. I did not want her to leave the ocean. But I did not want to watch the sharks from the deep consume her, either.

I was torn and lost and full of pain. Still, I turned and dove under her lifeless body. I tore at the netting that held her in place, that cut into her body. But I could not tear it. How my mother had managed to do so, I did not know.

Still, she moved steadily toward the ship. And still I fought the netting, helpless.

“Leave her be, little one,” said a voice from below. “You do not want to risk being caught yourself, correct?”

I did not know who spoke, but indeed the voice was right. Once or twice, as the net shifted and moved toward the floating ship, I had nearly become entangled myself. Through my tears and confusion, I looked down below and saw a very old seal.

“I do not want her to leave me,” I said.

“Of course not, little one. But she would not want you to perish foolishly, either. Is your mother not the Seeker?”

I nodded.

“Then she has taught you that she will live on, yes? In spirit?”

I nodded again, and as I did so, I saw that I had drifted very close to the great ship. Men reached over the railing, hauling the netting up, using also what appeared to be a metal machine to aid them. My mother shifted. She was, I saw, slowly rising up out of the water.

“No!”

I was about to dash for her. I was about to plunge through the netting and tear her free. I was about to sink that whole blasted ship when the old seal reached out a fluke and wrapped it around me gently. “No, little one.”

“But what will they do with her?”

He did not answer immediately, and together we watched as my mother, along with others from my pod, rose slowly out of the water, and flopped over the wall of the great ship...and disappeared from view.

“I do not know,” said the old seal, and now he patted my back gently. “Come,” he said. “The sharks will be here soon.”

Chapter Three

My pod was gone, and I was alone.

Well, not really alone. I was with the old seal, whose name was Kasmar. The ship had hauled its great net, bringing with it everyone and everything I had known and loved. Kasmar said it was better that we did not stay around, and I believed him, although I wanted to follow the ship. I wanted to follow it until they gave me back my mother.

“No, child,” said Kasmar, as he gently nudged me away from the ship again, out toward the setting sun. “It is best we leave it be.”

But we didn’t leave, not yet. I had drifted up to the surface and lifted my head above the rolling waves, the wake left behind by the ship. As water gently splashed over me, as the sun shone down behind me, I watched the ship slip away over the ocean, hauling with it my pod.

My dead pod.

In a blink, in a span of moments, in a span shorter than it would take for me to consume milk from my mother, I was left alone in the ocean.

I sensed them coming from below. Actually, I heard them whispering, their low, guttural voices. Voices carry exceptionally well through water. I did not need to be close to them to hear them. The voices whispered of blood and hunger. The voices whispered of killing and destroying.

“Come,” said Kasmar, he nudged me again, but this time harder. “We need to go.”

I looked down, and far below I saw the white, torpedo shapes rising. Sharks, and not just any sharks. White sharks. Their whisperings grew louder.

A natural fear gripped me, and this time I heeded Kasmar’s advice. He had already kicked off, and was looking back. I thrust my tail hard, and together Kasmar and I shot just beneath the ocean surface. I had been taught, long ago by my mother, to avoid splashing on the surface when the sharks were near, to keep from surfacing for air as long as possible, and so the two of us glided rapidly away from the scene of death, in the opposite direction. Far, far away from where they were taking my mother.

And when I couldn’t last another moment without air, Kasmar and I surfaced together. He lifted his mouth and sucked in air, but I burst high above the waves, far higher than I had ever risen before, and as I twisted briefly in the air, the sunlight straight in my eyes, I let out a great, tormented cry.

I landed hard and not very smooth. Air burst from my blowhole, and together the old seal and I sped away. I knew one or two of the sharks had briefly given chase, but they let us go. After all, there was blood in the water to investigate.

Once or twice I waited for Kasmar to catch up to me, as the older seal could not swim quite as fast. But he was an excellent swimmer for his kind, and I was still young, and thus not as fast or swift as the older dolphins.

When we were many miles from the death scene and from the sharks, Kasmar and I finally slowed; it was then that I broke down and wept, my cries filling the ocean.

The old seal swam over to me and lay a flipper on my side, and we floated on the surface like that for a long, long time.

Chapter Four

At last growing hunger distracted me from my grief. I had to eat, or I would die, and that would waste the effort my mother had made to save me. She was gone, but I remained, and I had to do what I knew she wanted, and survive.

Kasmar understood, maybe before I did. “Let’s go find some mackerel,” he said.

We sniffed the water, orienting on that type of fish, and picked up the faint scent. I was glad for the seal’s continued company; he was now my only link to my former life. Why he was helping me I was not sure, but I was not ready to question it.

Soon we located a small school of mackerel and dived in, as it were, catching the fish in our mouths, chewing them into bits, and swallowing the delicious fragments. Then, sated, we returned to the surface.

“What will you do now?” Kasmar inquired.

The question stumped me; I had no idea. My grief for my lost pod surged back overwhelmingly.

“Come visit with us,” the seal suggested.

That surprised me, because seals and dolphins were only nodding acquaintances, foraging in similar places. But the notion appealed; I did not want to be alone. Now I had to ask: “Why are you helping me?”

“That’s a bit complicated,” he said. “Mainly it’s because you’re a child alone and you need some help, at least until you learn to manage on your own. But it is also that we seals have our own issues with the killer humans.”

“Tell me,” I said as we swam where he led. Maybe it would distract me from my misery.

“We seals, unlike dolphins, do some things on land. We have favored beaches for birthing and nurturing our babies, for one thing. We have cousins who make their families in very limited regions. And the humans come with clubs and bash the skulls of their babies, brutally killing them for their delicate fur. The carnage is awful, and the mothers mourn for weeks. We hate that, but can’t stop the slaughter. I thought of that when I saw your pod about to get caught with the mackerel in the deadly net. I would have tried to warn you, but I could not catch up to you, and it was too late by the time I got close enough. All I could do was watch, and try to help if I could. You were the only survivor, so I came to you.”

That made sense. “You seals suffer as we do,” I said.

“We do.”

Then I experienced a new emotion: the desire for vengeance. “I wish I could fling a big net over their cursed boat and haul it down into the sea until they all drowned, too.”

Kasmar sighed. “I know I ought to tell you to avoid thoughts of revenge, to focus on positive things like lovely corals, the majesty of the mighty ocean, and personal survival. But I can’t, because I feel as you do. I’d like to abolish the killer humans. The urge is pointless, because they have machines and weapons we can’t touch, and just approaching them is dangerous. But still I wish for some retribution.”

His confession was immensely reassuring. I was not alone in my feeling. And it gave me a mission: “I will find a way.”

“Don’t be foolish, little one. All you are likely to do is get yourself killed. You must learn to accept what you can’t change, as I do. You don’t have to like it; I don’t. But you have to be realistic, or you won’t survive.”

“I’m too young to be realistic,” I said rebelliously. “At least I must search for a way. That may give my life meaning.”

“Maybe that will do,” the seal agreed. “Just make sure that you don’t convince yourself that you have the answer when you don’t. Be realistic at least in your quest, so that if you ever do discover the way, you will know it is real and not foolish fancy.”

That struck me as excellent advice, the kind my mother would have given me. “I will,” I agreed. And the pain of my grief lessened somewhat, becoming slightly more manageable.

Kasmar took me to the seals, and they welcomed me. They were not my kind, but it was a comfort to be with them. Whether it was because I was so young, or that they shared Kasmar’s outrage at what the humans did to their cousins, or some other reason I did not know. Maybe it was that Kasmar, as an elder seal, had influence to sway the others. But for now it sufficed.

Chapter Five

I played and hunted with the seal colony, enjoying the companionship of the young cubs and the protection of the mature members.

I explored the ailing coral reef with them; there was still some good hunting there, though much of the coral was whitening and dying and the fish were leaving. We swam in the shallow waters of the great land that bordered the sea, digging out edible tidbits. I discovered that there were many tasty fish, not just mackerel, each type with its own habitat and ways. I learned the little tricks of hunting and foraging, and did not go hungry as might have been the case had I done it alone. Life with the seals was good enough.

I grew and filled out as time passed, becoming less a child than a young female. But several things prevented me from accepting, or being accepted, completely. I was not a seal, but a dolphin, a different species. I saw the males and females beginning to appreciate each other in new ways, but I could not relate in that manner. The seals could not swim at my pace, and I could not join them to bask on the beach. And though they feared and hated the human killers in their dreaded boats, they generally accepted that they could not do anything except avoid those boats. I, in contrast, was attracted to the boats, not from any pleasure; I wanted to discover how to sink them and wipe out their killer men. I was serious about my mission, and that determination grew as I matured, rather than fading.

Kasmar picked up on this as swiftly as I did. “You are not like us, Azael,” he said. “Even if you were a seal, you would not be the same. We hate the boats and men on general principle and caution; you hate them seriously, from your immediate experience. I don’t blame you; in fact I wish you success in abolishing them, if it is remotely possible. But you can’t hope to accomplish your purpose by associating with us. You must strike out on your own. Maybe there are others in the sea who are closer to your passion, like the whales who are being destroyed by the men, or the squid who get eaten by them. You must search them out, if there are any of your frame of mind. I fear there are not, but you must find out for yourself.”

His words confirmed my own thoughts. “Then I think I must leave you,” I said with regret. “To search out others of my emotional persuasion, if they exist.”

“I fear you must,” he agreed. “You are now a healthy dolphin and strong swimmer; you are ready to quest alone. But if you seek and fail, you will still be welcome to return and swim with us.”

I was not sure of that. “I think the others are growing tired of me.”

“Perhaps. But I am not. I thought to rescue you as an orphaned child, but you are my closest associate in terms of attitude, of intellect, of mission in life, and I enjoy your company. You have become my friend. I can’t even aspire to abolish the human kind; I am simply too old and weak. But you will be coming into your prime, and maybe you have a chance. I urge you to go for it, though I will be lonely without you.”

That support, again, uplifted me. “Oh Kasmar, I love you,” I said, and kissed him on the snout.

“Go, girl, before I become embarrassingly maudlin.”

I went, appreciating the sentiment, because it applied to me as well.

First I did what I should have before: I sought a pod of dolphins we knew were in the area. Maybe I could join them, and enlist them in my mission. They surely were suffering losses too, as the predatory boats and nets plied their dreadful trade. Only my joy of association with Kasmar had restrained me before.

It did not take long to locate them, for they were moving into the territory my original pod had occupied. I whistled a greeting.

And got a rude reaction. “Go away!” the elder member of the pod whistled in return.

“But I came in friendship, to—”

Two young males detached from the pod and swam toward me, whistling hostility. I did not know what they intended, but feared it would not be pleasant. I fled, swimming with my utmost velocity. The males were larger than I, and swam well, but they did not know this territory the way I did. I looped around the coral reef, ducked under an overhang, and shot through an odd current that would carry my scent trail in the wrong direction. So I lost them, and escaped.

Then I paused to consider, chagrined. What had just happened? I had approached the pod in friendship, but they had never given me a chance. They had driven me away without even trying to get to know me. How could that be?

How could my own kind be less welcoming than the seals? This was shocking and appalling. I had never even imagined such a reaction.

Slowly I realized that they were a foreign pod, moving into an unfamiliar place, and they distrusted all strangers. Maybe they had brushed with the humans, so were on edge because of the danger. They trusted only their own, and did not want to share. Probably the elders in my original pod had known of them, and known to stay clear. I, in my innocence, had not. But now I did.

Oh yes, I did.

Chapter Six

Disheartened by this betrayal, I swam immediately to my next prospect. There was a small whale foraging in the region, an orca. That species was distantly related to the dolphins, but we seldom associated. Even the smallest whales were far more massive than our kind was. I approached him cautiously.

“I have a mission,” I said.

He glanced at me. “If you were older and larger, I’d be interested.”

There it was again: the hint of something the two male dolphins had indicated, that I did not understand. “Interested in what?”

“In mating. What else?”

Mating! This was completely beyond my experience, so I ignored it. “I want to destroy the humans and their boats.”

“Don’t we all! But there’s no chance, so get out of my way and let me forage in peace.”

And that, it seemed, was that. The orca was not interested in my mission, and though I sensed he was not overtly hostile to me, neither did he respect me, and it seemed safer to stay clear of him. I retreated, and he did not pursue, to my relief.

What was I going to do? I knew I could not destroy the humans alone; I needed help. But help was proving hard to come by.

Disappointed and distressed, again, I dived down into the trench. This was a section of impossibly deep water where the pressure was intolerable. I could not stay there long; it was too uncomfortable. My dive was symbolic anyway: depressed spirits, descending body. I leveled off, ready to return to the surface.

“Azael!”

I whipped around, surprised. Who was calling me? This was too deep for the seals, and it wasn’t the orca. I didn’t know anyone down here. Yet I had plainly heard my name. “Who are you?” I whistled.

There was a kind of chuckle. “Here.” And a figure appeared where there seemed to have been none before, faintly glowing. “Levy.”

“You’re a squid!” I exclaimed, astonished. “Using your colors for camouflage so I didn’t see you.”

“True,” Levy agreed, waving three tentacles nonchalantly. “I sense you have a mission. Maybe you’re the one.”

“How can I talk to you?” I asked. “I don’t even know your language.”

“Yes, I think you are the one.”

“The one for what?” I asked warily. Squid were dangerous, and this was the largest one I had ever seen, a true monster of the deep. Was he trying to lure me to within range of his tentacles so he could catch and consume me? Certainly his interest was not of the type the dolphins and orca had evinced.

“No, my dear. Dolphins are not on my diet, and certainly not mating. It is that I have a mission for you, if you choose to accept it.”

“If it involves destroying humans, then I’m interested.”

That set him back; I could feel it in his mind. “Not exactly.”

Feel it in his mind? That did not make sense. But I was curious. Curiosity had always been a bad habit of mine. “What, exactly?”

“First there are things to explain. Can you come lower? This elevation is painful for me. In fact I risk the bends.”

“The whats?”

“I am a creature of the deepest depths. Coming up to the lesser pressure of the heights stresses me. It’s a blood thing, I think too complicated to explain briefly. Please, descend a bit with me so we can converse.”

The heights? “This is already too much pressure for me,” I protested. “I need to get higher.”

He sighed. “Then we must converse here, briefly. You asked how we can talk, when we have no common language. We are not really talking; we are in telepathic contact.”

This utterly bewildered me. “In what?”

“Mind talk. My mind is reaching out to touch yours, sending my thoughts and receiving yours. Language is no barrier; this bypasses that. You hear it as your kind of speech, but it is really straight understanding.”

“But I don’t understand!”

“This.” Then suddenly I grasped the concept of telepathy, mind talk. He had sent it without the filter of language. The very fact that I now understood it confirmed its authenticity.

“What is it you want of me?” I asked. I was not being negative; I really wanted to know.

He told me, buttressing it by a broader background understanding fed directly to my mind. I absorbed it, amazed.

Alien visitors from another planet—suddenly I understood what “aliens” and “planet” were, along with other remarkable concepts—had settled in the deepest trench, where conditions mimicked their home environment. They had discovered that there was sapient life on Earth, but incredibly it was on hot dry land, not in the comfortable sea. They needed to make contact, but that was awkward because they could not go to land—they would explode, literally—and the land creatures could not come to the depths. So they needed to establish a chain of intermediaries to make the connection. Levy was the first, and Azael could be the second. She could contact the humans.

“Contact the humans!” she exclaimed. “I want to destroy them!”

“This is a problem,” Levy agreed. “I don’t much like them myself; they eat my cousins, and chop them up for bait. But this contact is necessary. Will you do it?”

“No! Never will I—” I paused as more thoughts packed in, impressing on me the vital importance of this mission. It truly was essential that the contact be established; I believed that completely. It wasn’t that my mind had been overridden; it was that there was a huge amount I hadn’t known before. “—decline such an opportunity,” I concluded.

“That’s good. You will need a communicator.” Levy extended a soft packet. “The aliens made it with their technology. It will operate as long as it remains in contact with your body. Swallow it.”

I swam close and took it from his tentacle with my mouth. I swallowed it as instructed. Now I had the power of telepathy, and would be able to converse with the humans. “I must go, before I suffocate.”

“Yes. I will sink to a more comfortable depth. When you return here, send me a mental signal and I will rise to meet you for a more intimate dialogue.” Then Levy jetted forward and down, his glow disappearing into the darkness below.

I was left with the communicator and the mind ability it provided me, and a new mission. I had to get in touch with the horrible humans. The ones I wanted to destroy. I still hated them, but now had a far broader perspective. This was bound to be a challenge, direct mental talk notwithstanding.

I launched my body toward the surface. There was a good deal more than air on my mind.

Chapter Seven

It was late and I was alone.

The water was calm and the sky above was clear. I floated idly on the gently rolling waves, rising and falling, and thinking of my mother, and of my friends in my pod, who were all gone now. I had watched many of them suffocate or bleed to death.

Above, a lone seagull circled, idly chattering to himself, his words just barely reaching me, “I’m circling, I’m circling, I’m circling.”

That I could understand the cries of a seagull was a wonder to me. That I heard even now the whispered, frenetic thoughts of the many hundreds of fish below me, was amazing as well.

Even now, I heard a school of tuna in the near distance chattering among themselves. “Turn right, right, left, left, right, left. Go up, now down, down, too far down, up, up, up.”

Yes, this alien technology was something to behold, and something to listen to. As I had learned at a young age, various sea creatures of the same general ilk can mostly communicate with each other, as I had done with the orca, although he wasn’t a dolphin. I shouldn’t have been able to understand the giant squid, nor the seagull or the tuna.

But I could, and, I have to admit, it was threatening to drive me crazy. The ocean sounds that I had once been used to were long gone, replaced now with mindless thoughts, idle chatter, and conversation I really didn’t want any part of.

Sardines were for eating. I really didn’t want to hear about their day, or nights, or of their own quest for food and safety. It made eating them that much harder.

But I had committed to this mission and for good reason. The deep-water aliens, it appeared, were here to thwart a looming global disaster. The image that had been impressed upon me by Levy was nothing short of horrific. All of life, including that in the deepest oceans, could face extinction.

I couldn’t have that. Although I missed my mother and my pod, and although I often felt lonely and sad, I could not pass up the chance to save the earth. To save my friends like Kasmar and even Levy.

Earlier in the evening, as the sun was setting on the far horizon, sending a streak of shimmering gold radiating across the ocean surface, another dolphin pod had come and gone, rejecting my request to join them. Once again, I had to dash off, just barely evading the aggressive males.

Had my own pod been so rude, so cold, so angry? So heartless to those in need?

I didn’t know. I had been too young to know the mechanics of the pod. My own mother had been so loving, nurturing, and others had been full of spirit and doing a great job. I couldn’t imagine my own mother turning away a young dolphin in need, as others had done to me. But my mother hadn’t been the pod leader, had she?

No, that had been Grayback, to date the biggest dolphin I had ever seen. Grayback was always very serious, even around the young dolphins. We soon learned to give a wide berth to our pod leader. Yes, I could definitely see Grayback running an eager, lost dolphin away.

But not my mother. She would have helped. I believed that with all my heart. And as I lay there on the ocean surface, swishing my tail and flukes, thinking of the mother I lost, I saw something amazing in the sky. It was a flash of light, moving rapidly and growing brighter before it flamed out of existence. As it did so, I heard a soft whisper from seemingly nearby. A whisper that sounded like my mother.

“Beneath you, Azael.”

“Mother?” I asked, but whatever I heard must surely have been my imagination. My mother was dead of course, and the shooting star had surely just been a natural phenomenon.

Yes, my imagination. I was missing her so much, I had imagined I heard her speak to me.

I was just about to close my eyes, to drift off to sleep on the rocking currents of the ocean, when I heard the whisperings rise up from below me. Three voices.

“Hunger, hunt, prey,” the voices said, seemingly in unison. “Hunger, hunt, prey,”

The voices were faint, and I might have missed them if not for the strange warning I’d received just moments earlier. The warning that sounded very much like my mother. I might have, in fact, slept through the harsh whisperings.

The whisperings of sharks. I was sure of it.

And they were directly below me.

Chapter Eight

What to do? If I suddenly swam away, they could tune in on the motion and pursue, and surely catch me. But if I didn’t, they would probably spy me anyway.

“Prey, above.”

They already had. I was in trouble. Already they were cruising smoothly higher, orienting on me.

Desperation gave me an idea. If it failed, I was lost.

“Flee north!” I thought loudly, as I fled south.

The sharks reacted as one, swerving north. And in moments I was out of their range. I had used my new telepathy to save my life. It had been a lie, but it seemed that what counted was not the truth, but the thought. That was a useful discovery.

But as my fear and excitement subsided, I realized that I could not afford to delay long. There were too many dangers. I had to contact the humans, because only they could act to avert the looming disaster. I hated them, and would have been glad to leave them to their fate, except that the creatures of the sea would suffer the same fate. The day was late, but I had better see what it might offer.

I swam toward the fishing village by the shore. There were always boats coming and going there, as they ranged out to slaughter more innocent fish. I detested this, but had to try to contact a human.

I saw a boat anchored off-shore. What was it doing here? Normally they remained tied up at their docks overnight, not parked on the sea.

As I came close I picked up the thoughts of the humans aboard. One was the usual kind of brute fisherman. He was mending his tackle, a tedious chore, his mind largely blank. The other—

The other was a young female, wearing an almost skintight sheath of cloth that covered her torso. A swimsuit. The man’s child. A girl, not yet of age to mate, with an outlook surprisingly similar to mine. She had prevailed on him to take her out fishing. Catching fish on a hook, rather than in a net. She was at the front—the prow, in their language, which I could now grasp—dangling a line into the water. It had a baited hook. She didn’t really care if she caught a fish; she just liked being out here on the sea.

This was the one. She had never slain a dolphin; in fact she loved dolphins and was distressed when they got caught in the fish nets and died. I read the sorrow for that in her mind. She wished she could be friends with a dolphin.

That might happen.

“Girl!” I called mentally.

She looked up, startled. “What?”

“I called you with my mind. It is mind talk. Telepathy.”

She looked around, amazed. “I hear you but I don’t see you. Who are you?”

“I am Azael. Who are you?”

“I am Tayle. It’s short for Tallulah, but I don’t like it, so I go by Tayle.” She continued too look around. “Are you invisible?”

“Not exactly. I’m in the water.”

“All I see are waves.”

I swam to the surface and lifted my beak. “Here. I am a dolphin.”

“A dolfin!” she exclaimed, delighted. There was something faintly off about her thought, but I couldn’t place it. “Oh, let me hug you!” She jumped into the water beside me.

Now I was the amazed one. “But you’re not safe off the boat! There are sharks!”

“Oh, they don’t bother people. Pa would spear any who came close.” She splashed toward me. “You really, really are a dolfin! And you’re talking to me! This is some daydream!”

Daydream? I picked up the concept from her mind: a pleasant mental excursion, not a real happening. “I’m not a dream,” I protested.

“You have to be. Or maybe I have fallen asleep and am dreaming. Either way, I could never talk to a real dolfin. Now I’ll hug you. I couldn’t do that to a real one either.” She spread her arms wide, then wrapped them around me.

I had no idea how to react to this contact, so I just stayed still. I picked up from her mind that it was a friendly gesture. Indeed, the pleasure of the act in her mind spread across to me, and I liked it too.

“Tayle!” It was her father, who’d discovered her in the water.

“Over here, dad!” she called physically; I heard the sound coordinating with the meaning. “With Azael!”

He peered across the water. “A dolphin! Get away from it, girl! That’s no tame captive creature. That’s a wild one.”

“Azael’s my friend,” Tayle protested. “She wouldn’t hurt me.”

He was genuinely concerned. That was a side of the human I had not seen before. “That thing could catch you by the arm and drag you down to drown! Get over here!”

“Oh, dad,” Tayle said, disgusted.

It was time for me to clarify things. “I will not hurt her,” I projected to the man. “We are friends.” As though it were possible for a human and a dolphin ever to be friends! Yet at this moment, immersed in the genuine innocence and good spirit of the girl, I could almost believe it. And I needed the human contact.

“It talked!” he exclaimed, shaking his head. “Now I know I’m crazy!”

“You are not crazy,” I sent. “I am telepathic. It is essential that I get in touch with the human species.”

But he was locked in to his confusion. “Tayle, get back into the boat! We’re going home before anything worse happens.”

Reluctantly, the girl obeyed. “Gotta go now,” she said apologetically. “But can we meet again tomorrow? This is too good a dream to lose.”

He thought he was crazy; she thought she was dreaming. This was not a perfect start. It was better to back off and try again on the morrow. “Come out here again, and I will meet you,” I told her.

“Great!” She hugged me again, then splashed back to the boat and heaved herself over its railing. Its motor sounded, and it forged rapidly away.

Would tomorrow be better? I hoped so.

Chapter Nine

That night, while floating alone with a heavy heart, I dreamed of my pod and my mother. In my dream I swam safe and free and happy. So happy! My mother’s love poured over me, her watchful eye ever on me.

I awoke to the sound of distant thunder and the sizzling sound of raindrops hitting the ocean’s surface. I also awoke weeping, wondering if I would be forever alone. Finally, as I rose and fell gently with the undulating ocean, as the rain was heavy on my thick skin, I thought of the girl Tayle, and her warm hug. No, her loving hug. I nearly smiled as I fell back to sleep.

***

When morning finally came, the sun was out and the storm had passed. Mercifully, I dreamed only of catching and eating fish, which wasn’t so heavy on my heart.

And catching fish is exactly what I did.

As I hunted among the dying coral, flushing out the tasty morsels, I did all I could to block out their fear and cries of anguish. I could see that the thought communicator was both beneficial and annoying.

Never before had I heard the cries of the mackerel or sardines or the other colorful fish that I eat. Now I do, and it was almost driving me to become one of those pitiful creatures who chews on kelp. Perhaps there was a way I could block out or drown out, or perhaps even turn off the device when I didn’t want to use it. If I ever met the giant squid again, I would ask.

For now, though, I heard each of their frightful pleas and their death cries as I bit into them.

Now, that was enough to make me lose my appetite!

When I was done feeding, wondering if I was any better than the human who preyed upon the oceans themselves, I swam back to the seaside village feeling guilty for the first time in my life.

I was, after all, a killer too.

Tayle was there, waiting for me, sitting on the prow of her small boat, scanning the ocean eagerly. She was eating something small and square and seemed to be enjoying it. It didn’t seem to look like a fish, which surprised me. Surely all humans, like dolphins ate fish? Perhaps not. There was much I needed to know.

To get her attention, I first dove down, skimming the shallow, silt-covered sand just off shore, then kicked my tail hard and aimed for the surface—and exploded out of the water.

I breached as high as I could, arching, as water sparkled all around me, and for a brief moment I was airborne, and it was wonderful.

As I reached the apex of my arch, I sent out a shout to Tayle, who clapped her hands and stood and waved, rocking her boat dangerously.

Fully exposed and free of the sea, I had a taste for what it might be like to be out of water...a small taste of what it would be like to be a true land dweller.

After all, I knew that was part of my mission, too.

I had to convince a land dweller to change places with me, albeit briefly, but giving me enough time to complete my mission. Would young Tayle be that land dweller?

I didn’t know, but I sure liked her.

I splashed down none too gracefully, hitting the surface hard enough to cause a massive splash. I laughed and heard Tayle laughing, too, and hers was a sound I was growing to love.

I kicked my tail and aimed my fins to her little boat. It was time to see if Tayle could aid me in my mission.

Chapter Ten

“I’m so glad you came!” Tayle exclaimed mentally and physically. “I was afraid you wouldn’t.”

This was curious. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“You’re a dolfin. My people have been killing your people. Oh, they’re not supposed to, but they do, because the nets catch everything. Once a dolfin is dead, there’s nothing to do but process the meat. No sense giving it to the sharks. But if your people were killing my people, I’d want nothing to do with you.”

And this was an interesting perspective. So the humans weren’t really trying to kill dolphins, they were just sloppy with the nets. But the effect was the same. “I don’t want anything to do with you,” I agreed. “Or I didn’t, before I met you. But I have a very important mission, and I have to talk with the human pod leader. Can you bring him here?”

Tayle laughed. “I’m just a wee girl. I’m not even sure how to spell ‘doll-fin.’ Not that I’m stupid; there’s no correlation between spelling and smarts, at least that’s what my teachers all say. I’m still not really sure what ‘correlation’ means, but I like that word. It kinda rolls off the tongue funny. Anyway, children don’t count. I couldn’t even bring my father here, if he wasn’t curious about my meeting a talking dolfin. I can’t help you.”

“But I have to meet with the pod leader! Or the world will end.”

She thought about that, as her little boat rose and fell on the gentle swells. Her long hair fluttered about her face. I’m glad dolphins don’t have hair. What an annoyance!

She said, “Well, I guess that’s pretty serious.”

“It is! But it’s complicated to explain.”

“Maybe you better try explaining it to pa. He knows more about government. He’s always complaining about our mayor, but he’s a nice enough guy. The mayor, I mean.”

I remembered her pa. He was loud. Plus, he was a fisherman. A professional hunter. “But I’d rather talk with you. You’re nice. You’re not killing dolphins.”

“Azael, I’d have to know a lot more about dolfins, and I think you’d need to know a lot more about humans. I don’t think it can work, with just the two of us. I don’t even know how we can mind talk together. My father says there’s no such thing as telepathy; it’s just junk movie stuff.”

I got an idea. “Maybe we could switch places, and I could explain it to your father with your voice.”

“You mean, put your mind in my body, and mine in yours? I wouldn’t even know how to swim in yours, and I’m not sure you could even walk in mine. We don’t have the same reflexes.”

I realized that she was right. We couldn’t make it in each other’s bodies. Not without a great deal more preparation. Yet the need to reach a human leader, and do it without much delay, was urgent. What could we do? I had no idea, yet knew I had to find one. “What do you suggest?”

Tayle focused. “What’s this about the world ending?”

“It’s complicated,” I repeated. “I don’t properly understand the concept, but I know it’s authentic.”

“Try me.”

“It’s a big magnetic bubble in space, heading for Earth. It’s been traveling between stars for a billion years, but now it will strike this region. When it hits, it will disrupt Earth’s magnetic field and let the sun’s rays through to scorch the surface. All surface life will end. We can’t see it because it’s invisible, and it has no mass. It’s just a flux in space. But it will wipe us out.”

“Like a sci-fi movie! Instead of a big meteor, an invisible menace. So how do we stop it?”

“We have to build a super magnetic repulser to fend it off. The aliens know the technology and will share it, once they have a responsive contact with machine-building humans. It can be done, if it is started in time.”

“Wow. I never even imagined such things before.”

“It’s the telepathy. It can do amazing things. I’m still finding them out. It put this big mass of technical knowledge in my mind, and I can put it in another mind. But it really needs a trained recipient.”

“I guess so. I know it’s true, because that’s part of what you’re sending me. But I also know that I’m understanding only a little part of it, because I don’t have the science or the math or the training. I could tell someone that there’s a big threat, but that’s about all, and they wouldn’t believe a child.”

“If I could get close to a machine-proficient human, I could send him the technical details. But first I have to reach him, then convince him. I’m not sure how to do that.”

“Neither am I. But maybe if we get to know each other better we can figure something out. I don’t think we can safely switch minds, but maybe we could piggy-back minds and get somewhere.”

Piggy-back. I did not know what a pig was, exactly, but got the meaning: one mind carrying the other. Tayle might be able to carry my mind to the right human person, and then I could dump the key information on him. It might work.

But first we had to get experience doing it. I thought the telepathy could accomplish it, but wasn’t sure. “Maybe we could take turns piggy-backing,” I said. “I could carry you down into the sea, so you’d know how it works, then you could carry me onto the land.”

Tayle clapped. “Great! Let’s do it!”

“But if we do, the one who is riding won’t be conscious of her own body during that time. That would not be safe.”

“I’ll lie down. We can try it for like, ten minutes and see how it works.”

“That may be feasible.”

Tayle went under the cover of the ship’s cabin where her father was working. “I gotta lie down a while, dad,” she said. “Okay?”

“Okay,” he agreed. “But if you’re not feeling well, we should go home.”

“I’m well. Just got some heavy thinking to do.” She lay on the narrow bunk. Ready, she thought, closing her eyes.

Then I extended my mind in the way the telepathy allowed. I took hold of Tayle’s mind and gently drew it in to mine. The girl, I sensed, now occupied what she thought of as a mental passenger seat. She could see, hear, and feel what I did, but did not control the body. This would be interesting.

“Wow!” Tayle repeated. “I’m a dolfin!”

I flipped my flukes and forged down below the surface. This was a guided tour. Would it accomplish its purpose?

Chapter Eleven

I gave her the ride of her life.

We dove deep, swimming rapidly over the ocean floor, skimming over barnacle-encrusted sunken vessels, and bursting through kelp that waved much like Tayle’s long hair.

Tayle’s laughter was infectious, and I was reminded of when I was a pup, and swimming with reckless abandon with my mother nearby. I remembered, in particular, diving deep for the first time. I had trailed behind my mother, as worry and concern quickly turned to awe and wonder. We went deeper and deeper, and despite the pressure I had felt inside my head, and despite the fact that I knew I must breathe soon, I knew that something magical had happened that day. Other than the deepest depths of the ocean, surely where no dolphin belonged, I realized at a young age that I could venture far and wide. I realized then that the ocean was my home, my playground. Even my thick hide kept out the icy water.

And so I gave Tayle that same experience. I breached the ocean, sucked a great lungful of air through my blowhole, and then dove down rapidly, kicking my tail furiously, as deeper I went. Deeper and deeper while Tayle squealed with delight inside my head, which was a very unusual experience, albeit one I was rapidly getting used to.

Before us was a slow moving shadow, one that I immediately recognized. Its wingspan looked similar to that of the sails atop the many boats docked near Tayle’s seaside home. The great creature paid us no mind as it literally glided through the depths, at peace and unconcerned.

It was a great manta ray, and he was, to my surprise, humming a gentle song: “The southern seas sing to me, the northern swells call to me, the eastern storms follow me, the western depths are my home.”

“He has a very nice voice,” said Tayle in my ear.

“I suppose he does,” I said.

The great manta ray’s sweeping wing strokes faltered a bit, and it ducked its flat head down to peer behind it. I could see its curved mouth quiver with what I thought might be confusion. “Who said that?”

“I did, sir,” I said. I hadn’t realized that my conversation with Tayle could be heard by anyone nearby as well. I had thought falsely the conversation had been only going on in my head. The giant squid, Levy, short for Leviathan, had also taught me how to focus my thoughts so others could not hear. I would have to be more careful.

“Well, how is it that a dolphin can speak to me?” asked the great manta ray.

“It is an alien communication device,” I said.

“Sounds alien to me,” said the manta ray. “Now where was I?”

“You were singing about the western depths,” I said.

“Yes, yes, right, right...the western depths are home to me...” sang the great flying beast as it sailed off into the ocean.

I banked hard right, and returned to the ship, knowing that I had pushed the length of our agreed time limit. Time was still something I was getting used to, as dolphins had no use for it. But it seemed important to Tayle, and I could feel her awareness of it. In this deeply connected state, what concerned her, seemed to concern me. And I suspected vice versa.

“You suspect correct,” giggled Tayle in my ear. “For some reason, I’m hungry for fish—raw fish! Eew!”

We both laughed as I cruised up below her ship. There, I paused and, as I had earlier drawn her mind toward mine, this time I withdrew it just as gently. This was all new to me, and surely to Tayle, and I suspected the more careful we were about it, the less problems we would have. Turns out we were both naturals. I sensed Tayle waking up in bed and sitting forward.

“Okay, Azael,” she said. “Your turn!”

Chapter Twelve

Tayle came to the side of the boat and looked down at me. “Come on in.”

Suddenly it seemed more complicated. She had ridden along with me; I had been in control. Now I would be leaving my body, something I had never really thought seriously of until now, let alone actually done. “First I need a safe place to wait, because I think my body will be unconscious,” I said. “I have not done this before.”

“Can you split your attention? When I’m walking to the dock I’m on auto-pilot. My feet do the work while I’m thinking of other things, but I’d know if I was about to bump into something.”

I considered. “Maybe I can do that,” I agreed. It was similar when I was cruising the sea; my body handled the swimming while my mind ranged elsewhere.

“Then you can stay right beside the boat. The sharks won’t come close to it; they know they’re not welcome. It should be safe enough.”

“It should be,” I agreed. I swam right up against the side of the boat. “Open your mind to mine, so I can enter and settle.”

Tayle did, and I leaped in a fashion, out of my body, out of the water, and into her head. It felt like landing in a thick bed of seaweed, only it wasn’t physical.

“Oh, I feel you!” Tayle exclaimed. “Like hugging you, only with my mind.”

“Yes, you are holding me now,” I agreed. “Piggy-back.”

“Can you see out of my eyes, the way I did with yours?”

I tried. “Yes. I see the deck.”

“I’ll walk around the boat.” Tayle did so, and I saw the view of it shifting as she walked, as if she were swimming. Swimming with no water.

“This is weird,” I said, using a term she liked.

“Maybe it’s like riding a horse, only closer.”

I picked up the image and feeling from her mind. “Close enough,” I agreed.

“Sorry I can’t do much, here on the boat. I wonder how you would like a roller coaster?”

I picked up that giddy concept too. “Not right now, please.”

She laughed. “So what else is there? I can’t give you the kind of tour you gave me.”

“This is enough. We can talk to your father. I am going to need his support, if I am to get in touch with a human leader.” Because I understood that she had no legal standing in her culture, while her father did. That was one of the differences between humans and dolphins: not just anyone could do some things.

Tayle nodded. “I guess so. I don’t know how well he has adjusted to your earlier contact. He’s been doing a lot of thinking.”

“Tell him I’m with you.”

“Okay,” she said doubtfully. “But you may have to jump back into the water in a hurry.”

Return to my body. I was peripherally aware of it, floating beside the boat, quietly breathing. “I can do that.”

She walked to the cabin, where the man sat with his tools. “Hey, dad, can we talk? I’ve got something big to tell you.”

“About the strange dolphin?”

“Yes. She’s with me now. In my head, I mean.”

He studied her. “So I wasn’t imagining things yesterday.”

“You weren’t,” Tayle agreed. “She’s a telepathic dolfin, and she needs to talk with you.”

He smiled. “And I think I need to talk with her. It’s that, or question my own sanity, after that voice I heard yesterday. I pondered overnight, and concluded that I’d rather verify a telepathic dolphin.”

He was coming to terms with it! But I did not try to contact him directly, after the way he had reacted yesterday. It was better going though Tayle. “She wants to tell you her story,” she said, responding to my thought.

“You’re sure she’s friendly? Not trying to lure you into some alien mind trap, like one of your junk movies?”

Tayle smiled. “Pretty sure, dad. We’re sharing minds. She just took me on a deep sea tour. We met a manta ray.”

“So if it’s insanity, we’re both suffering it.”

“A talking dolfin’s easier,” Tayle said, smiling.

“So what’s her story?”

“Well, it’s complicated to explain, dad. She—”

“Can she talk through you?”

“I guess.” Tayle turned to me, inwardly. “Can you?”

I tried. I activated her vocal chords. “Hello, Tayle’s sire.” I said slowly. I was not doing a perfect job, and the voice was significantly different from her natural one. I had to translate my thoughts into the human language, which was not a song or whistle. It was awkward. I couldn’t think in human.

“Er, hello dolphin,” he answered. “Who are you? I am Johnson Davis. Jon for short.”

“I am Azael, a dolphin.”

“So you say. And you are in, ah, my daughter’s mind but you are not pure imagination,” he said.

Did he believe it, or was he humoring his daughter? I touched his mind without interfering, and discovered extreme tension. The idea of insanity truly appalled him, but it was difficult to believe in a telepathic dolphin. He did value his sanity more, but was not at all sure he wasn’t going crazy.

That gave me the key. “I know how you feel, Jon,” I said carefully. “I felt that way when a giant squid spoke to me telepathically. I was afraid it wanted to eat me. But instead it gave me telepathy. Then I knew it was not hostile. I can share that telepathy with you, and then you will know that you’re not crazy.”

“A giant squid,” he repeated.

“It was surprised too. It had been contacted by aliens.”

“Aliens.”

“They are deep sea creatures. They can’t come to land themselves. So they sent the squid to me, with the telepathy, and it sent me to you. We have to reach your pod leader, because there is great danger to all of Earth.”

“That does it,” Jon said. “This is a grade Z movie, testing me to see how much bilge I’ll believe. We’re getting out of here.” And he jumped up and went to the motor controls.

I had thought we were making progress! Was it all about to be lost? What could I do to save the situation?

Chapter Thirteen

The engine rumbled to life.

I knew of such engines, as I’ve heard them throughout my life. My mother had taught me to be wary of the sound of approaching engines. For good reason! Their great nets had spread far and wide, catching anything and everything, including our fleeing pod. Hearing the sound now, and being so close to it, awakened old fears and anger...and hate.

Be calm, cautioned Tayle. He’s just my father. He would never hurt a dolfin. We are not commercial fisherman. He is just confused and, true to his nature, tends to run away from problems. He ran away from my mother years ago when things got rough.

Where is your mother now? I silently asked.

She’s passed, Azael.

This was a strange term, but accompanied with images of seeing her mother dying in a strange white room, surrounded by more man-made machines, I understood the concept.

We have that in common, I thought.

Tayle merely nodded, and I sensed within her that the loss of her mother was as fresh as the loss of my own. I gave her a mental squeeze and she returned it.

Meanwhile, the boat was moving, and I reached out to my idly floating dolphin self and kicked once, twice and moved away from the sharp propellers.

I considered our dilemma. Her father truly feared he was going insane, which I understood as losing one’s ability to think rationally. We didn’t worry about such things in the ocean. We worried about food. We worried about sharks. We worried about man. We didn’t worry about our minds.

My father likes to worry, thought Tayle to me now. He’s always worrying and pacing and seeing his doctors and taking medicine.

All of these were, of course, foreign concepts to me, but I quickly grasped their meaning—or tried to—based on the images and feelings and memories Tayle had of each word.

Apparently, there were other humans who treated other sick humans with something called medicine, something that appeared magical, at least in Tayle’s mind. Perhaps one of these medicine men, or doctors, was who I should seek.

But first things first, how to convince her father—one who was already prone to worry—that he wasn’t going insane? That a dolphin really was speaking through his daughter, and that he should not only trust us, but help us. Or help me to deliver the message I needed to deliver.

I pondered as the boat began moving toward the shore. I permitted my dolphin-self to follow safely a few lengths behind.

I saw the crux of the problem. Any attempt to prove that I was who I claimed that I was, would only further convince him that he was going crazy.

As the ship bounced over the choppy waves, wind whipped Tayle’s long hair, which fluttered around her face like so much seaweed. I still could not see the appeal of having such a long mane.

Tayle giggled. Hair is fun, silly. I can put a bow in it or make pig tails out of it. But my favorite is a ponytail. Anything that has to do with ponies are my favorite.

Point taken, I thought, although I was glad that dolphins did not have to deal with the mess.

I considered my options. We were heading toward shore, and somewhere on shore would be the pod leader, who would have the answer. Or, rather, who would have the ability to make the necessary decision. It was a big decision. Humanity was in for a surprise. We all were. There was not much time to waste. In fact, we were fast approaching a small wooden dock.

Yes, that’s our dock, thought Tayle. Our private dock. You would be safe there, perhaps even under it. No one would mess with you there or even see you.

I thought about that, and realized that now, better than later, would be ideal to forward this mission. I needed her father to come around.

I considered the idea of his medicine, and asked Tayle to explain them further.

They’re supposed help him relax, thought Tayle. At least, that’s what he always says.

And then it hit me. I could help him relax. In fact, I had direct access to his mind, much like the medicine.

Let’s go talk to your father again, I projected to Tayle.

Please don’t hurt him. He’s kind of messed up, but he’s all I have.

I won’t hurt him, I reassured her. I’m going to work with him much the same way his medicine works for him.

Dolphin medicine!

Something like that, I thought.

We soon stood next to him on the bridge, as Tayle thought of it. This was a strange room with many sparkling blinking machines. Why humans make everything so complicated, I would never know. As Tayle stood next to her father, he jumped a little, and then gave her a small smile and patted her head lovingly. He loved her, I sensed it from her and him. He was just, perhaps, a little frightened.

As we stood there, I reached gently toward his mind. Yes, good, he was calming down. He was telling himself over and over again that his daughter just had an overactive imagination. This seemed to be working for him, but it was not accurate. His daughter, of course, was not imagining me.

I reached deeper, beyond this first layer of thought, and reached a deeper layer within his mind. Here, I suggested to him that all was okay with him, that he was not going crazy, that there really were aliens in the deep, and there really was a looming threat to the earth.

When I had done all I could, I retreated out of his mind and back into Tayle’s own, and when the boat finally docked and after her father had properly secured it, and as my own gently swimming dolphin self glided safely under our feet to rest near some wooden pylon, her father turned to us and said, “So, you would like for me to take you to our pod leader?”

I spoke through Tayle. “Yes, sir.”

“Then let’s go.”

Chapter Fourteen

What did you do? Tayle asked me internally. He’s completely different.

I went deeper into his mind, I answered. I reassured his—I think you call it subconscious—his subconscious mind that this is legitimate and he’s not crazy.

But if you can do that, couldn’t you also convince him that purple fairies rule the world? That the Flying Spaghetti Monster is God?

I don’t think so, because the truth works better than a lie.

That’s good. She was reassured. She didn’t much like lies, necessary as they might be on occasion.

We got off the boat and walked along the dock to their house. Then to what I learned from her mind was their car: a kind of boat that moved on land. “Where are we going?” Tayle asked her father.

“Bill Norris’s office. He has the connections we need.”

“Gee.”

He smiled. “Don’t be impressed, kid. He’s just a two-bit politician like the rest of them, hungry for votes, money, and notoriety, in that order. But he has the connections we need, being a congressman. If Azael can persuade him the way she persuaded me, he’ll be a useful link.” He glanced at her. “But stay out of his reach, girl, you understand me?”

“He grabs girls?”

“Parts of them. Don’t say anything, just stay clear.”

“I will,” Tayle promised.

I understood more of that warning than she did. So human males could go after girl children, just as rogue dolphins or orcas did. Indeed, she should stay out of reach.

We got in the car, which was a sort of house with turning wheels, a thing I had never encountered before, but understood from Tayle’s mind. Tayle fastened what she knew to be a seat belt in the passenger seat, while her father took the driver’s seat. Then he did something, and the motor came to life.

I cringed, but handled it. It was no worse than the boat motor, and Tayle had no fear of it at all. The car moved out, maneuvered to reach the street, then went faster along it. In fact the trees and houses fairly zipped by on either side; this thing was zooming! Yet it left no wake in the road behind. It was a different kind of craft.

There was a red boat light ahead, and the car stopped. Then there was a green light, and the car moved forward again. It obeyed the commands of the lights! Was a colored light the ruler of the land?

No, silly! Tayle thought, laughing. The lights just direct traffic so cars don’t crash into each other at intersections.

I learned to do what she did: tune out the things outside the car. They were her father’s concern, not ours. I could not afford to get lost in incidental details. I needed to make the necessary connection, then return gratefully to the sea.

“Now Azael,” Jon said.

I used Tayle’s mouth to answer. “Yes.”

“First we need to get in to see Rep Norris. His secretary will block us. It’s her job to keep un-wealthy constituents away from him. Will you be able to persuade her to let us in?”

“I think so.”

“And once we’re in his presence, you can persuade him to listen? Because he’s going to be ten times as balky as I was, and he doesn’t much care about the health of the world the way we do. He’ll never believe about dolphins, aliens, or global threats just from the telling. Not unless there’s money in it. You’ll have to tweak his mind.”

So Jon understood what I had done with him, and accepted it. He was on our side. “I will try,” I agreed.

“Good girl.”

Once dad gets convinced, he stays convinced, Tayle thought.

But I knew that the representative would not have a daughter he loved to help persuade him. This could be a difficult case to make.

In due course we reached the office complex. Tayle and her father got out of the car and entered the building. Sure enough, there was a desk with a secretary, a forbidding woman, physically and mentally. She assessed his rough clothing and humble demeanor at a glance and knew he was not worth the representative’s time. “May I help you, sir?” she inquired, with no intention of helping him do anything but get quickly out of the office.

I didn’t fool with her. I reached into her mind and thought THIS GUY’S IMPORTANT. HE HAS MONEY. This was a concept I had picked up from Tayle: there were layers of importance in the human culture, and they all had to be properly navigated. Money was completely foreign to my experience, but magical here. Jon didn’t have much of it, so this was a lie that needed to be replaced with the truth as soon as possible.

Jon opened his mouth. But the secretary, subtly persuaded, was already buzzing the inner office. “Go right in,” she said, smiling superficially.

“Thank you.” Privately Jon was smiling, enjoying this. You’re good, dolphin, he thought to me.

I am drawing on Tayle’s mind for power, since my own host body is distant, I replied. I don’t know how far it will stretch.

Draw on my mind too, he suggested.

Thank you. I may have to.

Representative Bill Norris stood up from his chair behind his desk as we entered. “Always glad to meet a campaign contributor,” he said, shaking Jon’s hand. This was a sort of touching of flippers, a formal greeting humans did.

“Well, it’s not exactly that,” Jon said. “It’s more important.”

The man frowned. “Oh?” As if anything could be more important than votes and money, two aspects of the same currency.

“The world is in great danger.”

The frown deepened. This threat did not make the politician’s top ten. “Global warming, if it exists at all, is not my bailiwick.”

“Not that. This is more immediate.” Azael, he thought. Your turn.

I plunged in to the man’s mind, bypassing the first three layers, as votes, money and notoriety were not my concerns. Down under global warming and pollution, which he did not believe in, was something he did: a threat to his frequent yacht vacations with his very young and adoring mistress. He did not want bad weather on those dates; sea sickness was hell on sex. But would this tie in with the larger threat to the world? Because I needed to find an avenue in his mind from yacht weather to the deadly magnetic bubble, and I needed to do it fast, before I lost his attention. My powers of persuasion were weakening with distance and the involvement of other minds, so it had to make sense on his terms. Could I manage it?

Chapter Fifteen

I used all my focus to project an image of the earth’s destruction. It was, in fact, the same image that had been projected into my mind from Levy who, I suspected, received his image from the aliens themselves.

As I delivered the image, Norris blinked and sat up straight. He shook his head a few times, and then rubbed his eyes.

I sent him an image of the earth’s destruction, I told Jon.

Tayle father’s nodded, and said, “Are you okay, sir?”

“I’m, ah, not entirely sure.” The representative rubbed his head some more, as I sent further details of the earth’s destruction: human cities collapsing, mountains crumbling, oceans burning.

Now Norris turned pale and reached for a steaming mug of something liquid—coffee, according to Tayle. He drank, and set it down a little too hard. Brown liquid splashed up and scalded his hand. Apparently coffee was hot. He yelped and shook his hand.

“Is everything okay, sir?” asked Jon again.

“I...I need to lie down, I think.”

The representative was thinking he’d had too much of what he called alcohol last night, that he might have partied for a little too long with one of his female friends who was not his life mate. I wasn’t sure what partied was, but it certainly wasn’t what Tayle considered a party. The man’s idea of partying involved a lot of this alcohol consumption, and frolicking with his female friend. He thought these images were hallucinations, which, I gathered, was a sort of daydream inspired by artificial means.

“You are not hallucinating, Mr. Norris,” I said through Tayle. “You were shown images of the earth’s destruction. These images are the same images that were shown to me. The threat is real, and we need your help. The earth, in fact, needs your help.”

Norris stared at Tayle/me. His face, I noted, had gone from clownfish red to coral white.

“What I need,” he said, “is a drink.”

His idea of “drink” was more of this alcohol. He reached inside his desk and pulled open a drawer. As he did so, I noted with some interest that human words were coming faster to me, as my mind-link with Tayle grew more comfortable. I was able to quickly summon words and meanings from her mind. And it was more than just terms and definitions; I was able, through Tayle’s observation, to grasp what he was doing.

Within his “desk” there were several “drawers”. Such desks and drawers were there for convenience sake, to store things of value or out of necessity. I also understood from Tayle that the bigger the desk, the more important the man. The representative’s desk was quite large and polished. This denoted he was an important man. Tayle was familiar with desks, as she used them in her school learning, which I grasped immediately from her mind. But she was unaware of what was in the man’s drawers.

I, however, was aware. As Norris reached inside his desk, I knew he was looking for more of this alcohol, something that he considered a quick fix to his hallucination problem.

I said through Tayle, “Alcohol is not your answer, Mr. Norris. I would suggest you leave the flask in the drawer and listen to what I have to say.”

The representative stared at Tayle, and what color remained in his face seemed to have left it completely.

“How did you know about that, young lady?” he asked.

“Because I’m not a young lady. Or, rather, I’m not a young human lady.”

“What the devil are you talking about?” Amazingly, some of the color was returning to his face. Pink appeared in his cheeks. Boy, human faces were so expressive!

I thought it would be better to show him, then try to explain through Tayle. After all, I was almost at the far limit of my telepathic reach.

I impressed upon Norris the image of the giant squid, and relayed to him the leviathan’s message to me. I next sent him a mental picture of Tayle and myself coming together and sharing bodies.

When I was done, wondering just how much of my message had been transmitted and received, Norris looked at Tayle and her father, nodded once, and said, “You’re telepathic.”

“Yes.”

“A telepathic dolphin?”

“In a way. I’m telepathic only with the help of alien technology.”

“Do you know how crazy that sounds?”

“I do,” I said. “Do you doubt your sanity?”

“No. At least, not yet.”

I reached into his mind again. No, he didn’t doubt his sanity, but he was still wondering if this might be all an alcohol-induced dream. A part of his mind suspected he was out on his ship somewhere, dreaming all of this.

Again, how could I convince him that wasn’t a dream?

I had an idea, and asked Tayle to accommodate. She shrugged, walked around the desk. The representative watched her, perplexed, until she reached out and took some of the skin along his hairy forearms, and pinched hard.

“Ouch!”

Tayle gave him a sweet smile, and said in her own voice, “You see, Mr. Norris. You’re not dreaming.”

She came back around and stood next to her father while Norris rubbed his arm. He turned his confused eyes onto me. “And you’re really a telepathic dolphin?”

“Yes,” I said through Tayle.

“What am I thinking now?”

“About your yacht. You wish you were there now.”

His mouth dropped open. “And the earth is in great danger?”

“Yes,” I said. “You will lose more than just your precious yacht. But there is hope. We need your help, and others like you.”

“I see,” he said. “Hold on.”

Norris got up and crossed the room. As he did so, I reached into his mind, but it was a chaotic mess of confusion. And soon, he was out of my range.

Tayle’s father looked down at her, patted her shoulder, and said, “We did the right thing. He’s a good man, at heart. He’ll find us help.”

Behind us, the office door banged open, and I heard Norris shout, “There they are, officer. Arrest them!”

Chapter Sixteen

And there was what the humans called a policeman, a minion of their law. What had Norris told him, to make him think that Tayle and her father should be arrested? It couldn’t be the truth.

But Tayle’s father, Jon Davis, was ahead of Tayle and me in this respect. He had evidently encountered the police before. “Officer, what is the charge?” he demanded as the policeman approached.

“Trespassing and threatening the Representative, in his own office,” the policeman said. “You and the child both. I’ll have to take you in.”

“We came as constituents, and he agreed to see us,” Davis said evenly. “Suddenly that’s trespassing? You have to do better than that.”

The policeman hesitated. I took advantage of the opportunity to read his mind. It was the secretary who had called him, when she realized that we had somehow gotten past her, and Norris saw him arriving and made the wild charge.

“Well, you two come on down to the station and we’ll sort it out,” the policeman said, slightly flustered.

“Coming to meet our representative is an arresting offense?” Jon demanded.

“No. Barging in and threatening him is.”

I reached into the policeman’s mind and touched a lower layer. THAT’S A LIE.

The policeman thought it was his own thought. He turned to Norris. “Are you sure about this, sir? It doesn’t make much sense to me.”

Meanwhile I checked the mind of the secretary, who had really started this. She had gotten suspicious when my imperative to her faded, and realized that she had been somehow duped. Her mindset was similar to that of her employer, so she had called the police. It was easier to make a wild charge than to acknowledge possible error on her own part. These humans were more complicated and more devious than dolphins!

“Of course I’m sure!” Norris blustered. “The girl physically attacked me!”

He meant that pinch. Tayle put on her most innocent little-girl look. “Me?”

Now the policeman was thoroughly uncertain. Norris did have a certain reputation. So he did what came naturally in that situation. “I don’t think there’s a case here, so I’m letting you all off with a warning. The two of you get out of here.” He turned and departed.

Jon and Tayle followed him out, realizing that nothing remained here for them.

But I was still exploring the mind of the secretary. There was something in that complex tapestry of personal threads that related to the sea. I traced it down, and discovered that there was a top government official, someone who really could investigate a threat to the world, without having to face any voters. He was in the secretary’s mind because he was vacationing in the area, and the Representative’s office tracked everyone who was anyone who came within range. He was going scuba diving. Diving! I fished around and caught his name: Brad Beamis.

But the secretary was also reacting to the departure of the policeman and fugitives, as she saw them. “You have to arrest them!” she said angrily. “They barged in here with this weird story and threatened Rep Norris! They can’t just disappear!”

The two of them left the office, but the policeman was caught. “Now ma’am—” he was saying as the door closed between them.

“We’d better get away from here,” Jon said. “That bitch’s going to trump up more charges. Good thing we never gave our names.”

We went quickly to the car and drove away, becoming like a fish in the river of cars that flowed along the street. But I was watching the minds of Norris and the secretary, and they were ganging up on the policeman, persuading him to pursue us and arrest us after all. He was wavering, as the Representative had political clout. He was a kind of piranha among prey fish.

“They will follow us,” I said through Tayle’s mouth.

“And get our license tag number,” Jon said grimly. “Damn!”

Indeed, the policeman’s car was starting up. There were now several other cars between it and us, but it turned on a wailing siren and cleared them back. It was like a whale stunning its deep-sea prey with sonics, something I understood. “Take evasive action!” I said tersely.

Jon did, but there was only so much he could do in traffic, locked in the midst of tightly packed fish-like cars, and the predatory police car was bearing down on us. In a moment the policeman would be able to see our tag. “Can you divert him?” he asked. “Make him chase the wrong car?”

Ah. The car beside us was of a similar color and size. It was just turning off onto an intersecting street river. THAT ONE I projected to the policeman’s mind.

The police car turned off, pursuing the other car, siren sounding, getting its tag number.

“We make a good team!” Tayle said as we turned off onto a different street, becoming lost amidst its own school of cars. The police car would never find us. But what a disaster that visit to the Representative had been!

Then I shared the information I had gleaned from the secretary’s mind. “Brad Beamis,” I told Jon via Tayle’s voice. “High official, scuba diving near an offshore island with his girlfriend, Heidi Green. I can swim to them directly when they’re in the water, and talk to them with far more authority at close range.”

Jon smiled. “It’s an ill wind that blows nobody some good. We can sail to that island. I will do some spot research on the internet and get the address.”

“Thanks, dad,” Tayle said.

He reached across to tousle her hair, and I felt the good feeling between them. “Anything for you, kid. And I don’t mind if we save the world on the side.”

We reached their home, and I returned to my own host body at last, under the dock. I needed to rest a while in my own more comfortable environment; this out-of-water excursion had been mentally wearing. I knew that Tayle and Jon needed time for themselves also; they did have lives of their own. But we agreed to connect again in the morning.

Chapter Seventeen

I was alone again.

Clouds filled the night sky, blotting out the moon and stars, as I swam absently, flicking my tail and flukes. I was hungry but not in the mood for seeking out food. I was troubled by the cries of the creatures I ate. When hunger grew to be too great, I would feed on them again, and do my best to block out their panicked chatter.

As hunger gnawed at me, and as I listened to the distant hum of countless plankton—a hum that sounded more like a long, continuous, sad song, a song that I could hear now thanks to the alien device within me—I heard something else. Something much closer.

It was another voice singing, a voice that wasn’t being translated through the alien device. No, I could understand the voice clearly.

It was another dolphin.

I held my breath, closing my blowhole tightly, and remained motionless, floating on the surface. Was it another pod? Was I about to be chased off again by the aggressive males?

I didn’t know, but one thing was certain: the voice wasn’t female.

It drew closer, and the words reached me now, clearly:

“’Tis a vast sea, that calls to me,

To distant shores and cold harbors.

’Tis a vast sea, that swallows me.

Into its depths with sunken ships.”

I remained motionless on the surface, and soon saw the spray of what appeared to be a lone dolphin. The spray glowed briefly white, then dispersed, as the dolphin dove below the silent sea. He was, I noted, on a direct path to me. I also suspected, he wasn’t paying much attention to where he was going.

“I always pay attention to where I’m going and I spotted you a mile away.”

Oops, I had forgotten he could hear my thoughts. Evidently, he had been unaware that I had “thought” those words and not actually spoken them.

He was bigger than myself. Long, white scars crisscrossed his back. He saw me looking at his scars, and heard my questioning thoughts, although I had yet to speak a word.

“A fisherman’s net. I was able to bite my way free. The others in my pod were not so lucky.”

“Those nets are strong,” I said, recalling my own attempt to free my mother.

“I was lucky, I guess,” he said, “There was a tear near me, and I was able to work it free, cutting myself badly in the process. One other escaped with me, a childhood friend. He died of blood loss from his own wounds.”

I noted the deep bite wounds along his back.

“I got lucky again,” he said, hearing my thoughts again. “The sharks came in droves. I was able to fight them off me and my friend, but one of them got a lucky bite in. He paid for it later, though. I drove my nose hard enough into his belly for him to cough blood. They finally went away, and my friend died in peace.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, and looked again at the young dolphin before me, impressed. He was surely no older than me, but I couldn’t help but be amazed by his story. He fought off sharks?

“They are not so tough,” he said, reading my mind again. “You just have to stay away from their teeth. They’re kind of dumb, actually. What’s your name?”

“Azael.”

“That’s a nice name. I’m Hrump.”

“Your name is hard to say,” I said.

“That’s okay,” said Hrump. “Once you learn it, you’ll never forget it. Say, are you alone?”

“Yes.”

“Where’s your pod?”

For an answer, I gave him a peek at my own mother dying in similar nets, and as I did so, Hrump began circling me slowly.

“You didn’t say a word,” he said.

“No.”

“But I saw the images. In my mind. But they were not my images. They were your images.”

“Yes,” I said, and showed him more. I showed him Levy. I showed him the pictures of the earth’s demise. I showed him of our adventures the day before, driving in the metal boxes.

Hrump stopped swimming and looked at me long and hard. “That is some wild story.”

“I’m afraid it’s only going to get wilder.”

“You need help,” he said. “And I need a pod.”

“I’m hardly a pod. It’s just me.”

Hrump gave me a look and slapped me lightly with his tail. “It’s a start,” he said. “Say, are you hungry?”

Boy was I.

He read my mind, and kicked his tail, diving down fast. “Then follow me,” he called up to me. “I happen to be an expert hunter.”

I circled the surface, once, twice, grinned to myself, then dove down after him.

Chapter Eighteen

We found a school of sardines and eagerly snapped them up. But I did not gorge; I ate only what I needed to sustain me.

“You lack appetite?” Hrump inquired as we glided back toward the surface.

“I hear their anguish,” I explained. “I don’t like inflicting such pain on them.”

“That’s another side of this telepathy you acquired?”

“Yes. It changes me.”

“Maybe you can learn to turn it off.”

“Maybe,” I agreed. “But I’d still know how prey species can feel and hurt.”

“Your life is more complicated than I realized.”

“It became complicated two days ago. If you don’t want your life complicated similarly, you should swim on now, because I’m committed.”

He considered as we reached the surface and breathed fresh air. “It wasn’t coincidence that I found you, Azael. I got news of another lone dolphin in this area, an immature female, somehow escaping sharks and an orca without fighting them, and I was curious. I don’t like being alone, but no pod will take me. A lone dolphin is better than none. So I looked for you, and finally found you. In time we might mature and begin to form our own pod. But I did not know about the telepathy.”

“I don’t like being alone either,” I agreed. “But when I met the giant squid, and got the telepathy, I just had to try to do what I can to save the world. So I can’t play with you, or even swim with you very long, because when daylight comes I must meet with my human girl and try to persuade a human diver of the danger. If you want to associate with me, I would like that, but you will have to help me.”

“And if I swim away, and you fail in your mission, and the world ends, what then of me?”

I almost laughed. “If the world ends, you will have more to worry about than one girl dolphin.”

“I mean if I knew the world might have been saved, had I helped. So my choice may be between helping and maybe not succeeding, and dying anyway if I don’t try.”

“It may be,” I agreed. “Not that anyone is forcing you. You surely have other things to do, sharks to fight, entertainments to pursue, fish to eat.”

He washed that off. “How may I help?”

“You’re serious? I think you would have to get a communicator similar to mine. Then you’d have trouble eating fish, and would have to associate with humans, and maybe share your body with one, or join a human to go on land. That might not be fun.”

“I understand. How do I get a communicator?”

“We’d have to go see Levy, the giant squid.”

“Big squids are dangerous! Let one get a sucker on you, and you’re in a fight for your life. You have to bite off the tentacle if you can, before others latch on and it eats you.”

“This one’s not hungry for dolphin meat.”

“It’s still a huge act of trust.”

I had little patience with his doubt. “So maybe you’d better swim away now.”

“Let’s go,” he said, and dived again, this time swimming toward the deep trench.

I followed, pleased. I had rather feared he would balk.

We entered the trench and I broadcast a mental call. The huge squid came up to meet us. “I brought someone to help,” I said. “He needs a communicator. Then we’ll try again to contact the humans.” I flashed the disaster of yesterday.

“Here,” the squid thought, holding out another packet.

Hrump swam up to take it. He knew about swallowing it, from my mind.

“Time is short,” Levy warned us.

“We’ll do our best,” Hrump replied.

Levy sank back into more comfortable depth, and we swam up to a more comfortable depth. “See, he didn’t eat you,” I said somewhat smugly.

“This is amazing!” Hrump said. “I hear mental voices all around.”

“It’s constant,” I agreed. “You have to learn to tune out most of them, so as to be able to focus on the ones you want.”

“This is a challenge.”

“It is.”

“Can you help me?”

“Like this,” I said, projecting the damping mood I had worked out. “It doesn’t do the whole job, but it helps.”

“It does,” he agreed, trying it. “But I suspect I will go hungry for a while, until I am inured to the pain of the prey.”

We shared the mental experience, so that he could gain proficiency. He picked up on it quickly, but there was a lot of detail to work out. The time seemed brief, and then I saw it was light, and knew that dawn had come while we communed.

And there were the mental traces of Tayle and Jon coming out to the boat. It was time for introductions. “Tayle!” I thought. “I have another dolphin to help.”

“Another dolfin! Great!”

The two of them stood on the dock and gazed down at the two of us in the water. “I am Hrump, a young male. I have a communicator too. I want to help save the world.”

“We can use all the help we can get,” Jon said. “Tag along as we boat out to the island.”

They got in the boat and Jon started the motor. The craft nosed out, then picked up speed. We swam on either side, pacing it, staying in mental touch. Jon talked with Hrump, updating him further; it seemed they were more comfortable male to male.

In due course we reached the island. Jon cut the motor, in effect parking the boat a polite distance away. Time to get ready for action.

“Now how do we do this?” Tayle asked. “Do we swim out with you?”

“We can’t begin to match the pace of the dolphins,” Jon said.

“You can ride mentally with us, while leaving your bodies safe on the boat,” I said. “Tayle, you can ride with me, and Jon can ride with Hrump if he wants to.”

“Sure,” Jon said. “I want to find out what it’s like, after what Tayle told me.”

I reached forth and took in Tayle’s mind. Hrump picked up my technique, and did the same with Jon’s mind. Then Hrump and I swam on toward the beach of the house whose address Jon had researched, talking with our passengers.

Then we picked up the minds of two people scuba diving. Brad Beamis and Heidi Green! Now we could make our case. Assuming they would listen to two “talking” dolphins better than the politician Norris had.

Suddenly I was very glad to have telepathic company of my own kind, as well as the presence of the two humans. Maybe they could help me avoid the pitfalls of such a dialogue.

There they were, exploring for shells on the sea floor: two humans with goggles, mouthpieces, air tanks, and fins on their feet, trailing bursts of bubbles. The two we’d come to contact, a healthy man and a slender woman. They looked up alertly as we approached, wondering why dolphins were swimming toward them. They would wonder even more when we projected our thoughts to them.

Chapter Nineteen

The next few hours were a blur of miscommunication, confusion, fear, anger, hostility and, ultimately, understanding and acceptance.

The two divers now sat across from us on their large vessel as the sun shone directly overhead. It was mid-day, and we had spent the better part of it trying desperately to communicate the gravity of the situation. We had ultimately succeeded in doing so, which left most of us spent and hungry.

The two divers were scientists. They also had frozen fish on hand, which they tossed to Hrump and me. My new dolphin friend and I briefly inhabited our bodies long enough to gulp down the cold morsels, relishing the fact that we did not have to listen to their cries. Once done, we sat with the others again, in the tiny cabin, inhabiting our respective hosts.

There was a lot to discuss.

Now, as the others ate what they call “sandwiches,” and drank soda, the broad-shouldered male scientist, whose name was Brad, said, “My fiance and I work together at Cal Tech.” I didn’t know what Cal Tech was, but I needed only to reach inside Brad’s mind to quickly understand that this was an institution for advanced science. Yes, we surely stumbled upon the correct people. Turned out, we didn’t stumble upon them at all. Brad explained further. “We were both due a vacation and had been trying to decide where to scuba dive.”

“And you chose here? We’re hardly known as a diving destination, what, with our mostly-dead coral reefs,” said Jon, munching his sandwich hungrily. I would have munched it, too. It looked very tasty.

I’ll make you one, silly, thought Tayle, who, of course, sensed my every thought, especially now that we were linked.

That sounded very nice to me, but I impressed on her later. I needed to hear this.

“True,” said Brad, oblivious to the minor exchange I’d been having with Tayle. “I wouldn’t have normally chosen this site, except that I’d been dreaming of it.”

Jon choked on his sandwich and Tayle quickly handed him more of the bubbly soda. Jon gulped it quickly, cleared his throat, recovered his speech, and said, “You dreamed of coming here?”

“Yes.”

“And you acted on this dream?”

Brad might have reddened a little with his expressive human face. As he did so, his “fiance” laughed lightly. Fiance, I’d come to learn, was a designation used for one who intended to mate for life with another. I couldn’t help but to think of Hrump and his suggestion to form our own pod. Had he intended to mate with me for life?

Heidi, Brad’s fiance, said, “I was against the idea. I thought it was foolishness. We are scientists after all. We work with numbers and hard evidence. We do not base decisions on dreams.”

“But you came anyway.”

Heidi shrugged, sipped her own soda. “He was adamant.”

“The dreams were persistent,” said Brad.

“And what were these dreams?” asked Tayle.

The scientist turned and looked at the girl. “A good question. I dreamed of deep trenches. I dreamed of giant squids...and of dolphins. Mostly, I dreamed that I should be here for an important reason.”

Jon looked at me, and as he spoke, I knew it was Hrump speaking through him, as Jon’s voice was monotone and slightly awkward. “Do you think the aliens reached out to him?”

“Maybe,” I said through Tayle. My own words sounded much more natural through Tayle, as the young girl and I had grown accustomed to this manner of communication. “Something had reached out to him.”

“I have a hard time believing that an alien intelligence sought me out, found me, and then invaded my dreams.”

“But you have an easier time believing that dolphins are speaking to you through humans?” Earlier, through much demonstration, we had shown Brad and Heidi that, yes, they were indeed speaking to dolphins and that, yes, this was really happening and they weren’t dreaming.

Brad shrugged. “Honestly, at this point, anything could be possible.”

Now Jon spoke up, the real Jon. “Accepting the possibility that the aliens perhaps sought and found the correct scientists to help us, why would they not impress upon him all the information he needed?”

I had an answer to that, as I myself had recently reached the limits to my own telepathic ability. “They can only reach so far. And, I suspect, the kind of information they can give is limited. Rather then detailed information, the best they could have hoped for was a subtle approach through dreams.”

“But how did they find them?” asked Hrump through Jon.

“I suspect I know how,” said Brad. He stood and walked over to the window and looked at the glittering sea. He spoke with his back to us. “Heidi and I are part of a team of scientists who have been tracking this pulse from space.”

“So you know about it!” This was Tayle, not me.

Brad and Heidi, I suspected, probably didn’t know when I was speaking or when Tayle was speaking. Ultimately, it didn’t matter.

“Yes,” said Heidi. “But we couldn’t calculate when it would arrive or what danger it would pose. Now we understand the magnitude of the situation.”

“Perhaps they tried to reach other scientists, but could only get through to Brad,” I suggested.

“I think so,” said Brad, turning to us. “Well, we’re here, and we’ve seen, thanks to your telepathy, the impact this pulse will have. I’ve also seen, through your telepathy, what we need to build to save our planet. Except there’s one problem.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

He looked directly at me. “The information you’ve given us is incomplete.”

“How can that be?” asked Jon.

“Perhaps something was lost,” suggested Heidi. “From the alien mind, to the giant squid, to Azael, and then finally us...something got lost in translation.”

Brad nodded. “I understand what they want us to build, and we even have the technology at Cal Tech, but there’s something missing.”

“What?” I asked.

But Heidi answered for me. “The power source.”

“Yes,” said Brad. “We don’t have anything near strong enough to power want they want us to build.”

“What do we do?” asked Jon. His own sandwich was now forgotten in front of him.

“Well, I think the answer is obvious,” said Brad, giving us a half smile. “We need to speak to the aliens directly.”

“But we can’t swim that far down,” said Hrump through Jon. “I tried. My head nearly imploded.”

“Well, we don’t want your head to implode,” said Heidi. “I think what Brad is alluding to is that we need to go down, too.”

“Humans?” I said. “Into the trench? But how?”

“We have a friend,” said Brad. “A famous movie director who has his own deep sea manned sub. We can fit three in there comfortably. And, as luck would have it, he’s filming an undersea documentary nearby.”

“Perhaps it’s not luck at all,” suggested Jon. “Perhaps the aliens had something to do with that, too.”

“Perhaps,” said Brad. “We’ll find out soon enough.”

Chapter Twenty

I wasn’t satisfied. Something was bothering me, and finally it came to the surface. “I don’t think we can do it.”

The three other human bodies looked at ours, and Tayle herself was confused. “Why, Azael?” Heidi asked, showing that she knew which of us was speaking.

“Because in the mass of information they gave me there was something I only picked up on now, when we realized we would have to meet the aliens more directly. They’re not here, exactly. They’re in a deep trench.”

“Off the Patton Escarpment, west of the California coast,” Brad said. He knew about the undersea landscape.

“No. That’s just a—a life-ship, sent to get closer to you at Tech Cal,” I said. “Specially engineered to withstand the lesser pressure of the surface water. All it contains is a—a metal device.”

“A robot mechanism,” Brad said.

“Yes. A Row Bot.” But that wasn’t it. The concept was of an intelligent machine, like a boat or car, but more sophisticated. Robot. “With the telepathy to reach out and project to the nearest sapient or near-sapient creatures. That’s how the squid was contacted; it swam close to investigate, and got the message and the telepathy packs. The aliens see through the—the robot’s eyes, and receive its thoughts, but they aren’t here.”

Brad nodded. “They’re in one of the really deep trenches. The Mariana or Puerto Rico. Neither of which is close by here.”

“Yes, the Mariana Trench,” I agreed, relieved that he understood what I barely grasped. “This little local trench is just for the robot.”

“But they are in touch with the robot,” Brad said. “So if we descend to it, bypassing the squid, we’ll have contact that much more direct. That may suffice.”

“Maybe,” I agreed uncertainly.

“The alternative is to commission a mission to fly the six of us—four humans and two dolphins—plus my friend’s deep sea sub—to the alien mother ship. More than six thousand miles west, near the Philippines. That would be cumbersome and expensive at best.”

“But if it’s really the end of the world we face,” Heidi said, “expense is no object, is it?”

“We’d have to wrestle with the government bureaucracy. I’m a consultant rather than an official; it would be a months-long hassle.”

“Unless we cut out the middleman and go directly to the president. With the telepathy.”

“Can’t do it,” Brad said. “Azael and Jon had the right idea, trying to use the political chain of command, and look where it got them.”

“Well, Norris is a turd,” she said.

“The political scene is lined with turds.”

“So it is,” she agreed with resignation.

“Anyway, the nature of the threat is too complicated for any politician to comprehend. Even with direct telepathic access to the president, it would be a tough sell.”

“The end of the world can’t be that complicated,” she protested. “if we can understand it, the president can.”

“We don’t understand it. That’s part of the problem. We need to get closer contact with the aliens for that, and we’re still wrestling with that aspect.”

“What do you mean, we don’t understand it? It’s a magnetic storm.”

“Which few if any Earth scientists really understand. We need a far clearer picture before we take it further.”

“What is so damned difficult about it?” Jon asked.

Brad sighed. “Very well, I’ll try. If we here can’t get it, we aren’t going to be able to sell anyone else on it, regardless of urgency or alien contact. But I’ll have to provide some background.”

“Sure,” Jon said, and Heidi nodded.

“Historically, there are precedents,” Brad said, sounding like a college professor, according to Tayle’s thought. “Back in AD 775, the European dark age, the skies lit up with seeming glowing serpents. Nothing else seemed to happen, and there’s no direct trace of it today except in things like the tree rings record. That showed that a supremely powerful blast of radiation struck our atmosphere from space; there was a remarkable spike in carbon-14 levels. So it did no real harm to the world then, but it’s a warning, because if something similar happened today, with our highly developed technology, satellites would fry, power stations would melt, the internet would shut down, and we’d lose power and communications for years. In fact we might never bounce back from the resulting chaos. And we do face this today, perhaps not from the same source.”

“But what was it?” Heidi asked.

“That’s what we don’t know. There’s no earthly source strong enough, by a hundredfold; it had to come from space. Only something like a nova next door could generate such intense radiation, and there was none. Our best guess is that it resulted from a coronal mass ejection—we abbreviate it CME—wherein a billion tons of the sun’s atmosphere got hurled into space, and Earth happened to be in its path. What caused the CME? Maybe a meteor grazing the surface of the sun; we don’t know, and we can’t reliably predict such an event. It’s hard enough to track meteors that might impact the Earth, and the sun is a far more likely target. In addition, no two CMEs are the same; they vary widely in nature. Now this threat the aliens warn of isn’t even exactly that, but the effect would be similar.”

Heidi nodded. “I think I could comprehend that if I worked on it. You?” She looked at Jon and Tayle.

Both shook their heads, and Hrump and I agreed. Nova? A billion tons of solar atmosphere? A hundredfold intense radiation? I did not know what those were, but I felt their menace. This was mind-stretching stuff that surely made sense to a scientist, but was beyond us.

So I focused on the problem I could understand. “So let’s go talk to the squid, and maybe the robot will know how to get enough power to build the machine that will keep that deadly radiation bubble away. Then at least we’ll have the answer, even if we don’t properly understand the question.”

Brad nodded. “Let’s hope so.”

Chapter Twenty-one

The film director just might have been insane. His name was Kevin Dupree.

After our arrival to his vast research ship, a ship that Kevin’s film company had chartered (yes, so many new terms and ideas for a simple dolphin...yet concepts I could understand well enough thanks to the aid of those humans around me), I reached out to the director’s brain—and was surprised by what I discovered there.

It was incredibly fast, bouncing around from idea to idea. The director, I saw quickly enough, was a different kind of genius, far removed from the analytical brains of the scientists, whose brains I had more closely identified with. The director was a different story; thoughts coursed through his mind rapidly, wildly, imaginatively. He was an artist, I soon learned, an artist who used movie pictures to tell his story.

Yes, so many wonderful new concepts.

Most importantly, his was an open mind.

He, too, had been contacted in his dreams. He, too, had dreamed of trenches and aliens and the end of the world. Yes, he, too, felt compelled to be here now, in this remote sea, to film his next movie.

The aliens, I was discovering, were serious about getting help. As they should be. The whole world needed to take this seriously, if what was coming was really coming.

The ship itself seemed like a floating world, complete with rooms and hallways and a food preparation room, and so many electronic devices. The ship, I understood, was generally designed for deep sea research and salvage. That is, investigating the shipwrecks that I’d often come across on my lone journeys. The director had a full crew to help film a science fiction movie about, of all things, deep sea aliens.

Yes, this threw us all for a loop (which was, of course, a saying Tayle often used).

After a surprisingly short time informing the eccentric director (that was a word the scientists used to refer to their friend), we soon came upon a plan.

As a storm approached, and as the ship rocked and heaved—and as some crew members vomited over the sides—we decided that the three deep-sea divers would be the director and the two scientists.

Tayle didn’t like it, although I sensed Jon’s relief. He didn’t like the idea of being inside a cramped submarine deep beneath the ocean.

Heidi didn’t much like the idea of me riding piggy-back alongside her own mind, as we journeyed to the alien craft deep beneath the ocean surface, but knew she would need my telepathic guidance to help communicate with not only Levy, the giant squid, but the alien craft itself.

“It’ll be okay,” I said to her as we prepared for the journey. “I’m not so bad.”

“You have picked up American idiom rather well, Azael. I am most impressed.”

“Dolphins, as many of you scientists know, are not so far behind you humans. We use our intelligence to enjoy the freedom of the open sea, and explore our world, rather than wage war and hurt others.”

“A good use of intelligence, Azael.”

“Also,” I added, “I suspect the alien device within me goes a bit further than just helping me to communicate through telepathy. It also helps me quickly understand foreign words and concepts.”

“It helps you think like a human,” said Heidi. We were standing in a bay that housed the narrow submarine, which swung above us gently from cables.

“Yes,” I said, “Or to communicate quickly and efficiently with whatever creature I’m engaging, be it human or sea creature.”

“These aliens are advanced indeed,” she said. “I would like to speak with them.”

“We can satisfy our scientific curiosity later,” said Brad, coming over to us. “For now, we have a world to save.”

“I want to come, too,” said Tayle, frowning. I felt her frown, because I was inside her.

“Our job is done, Tayle,” said Jon, reaching out and gripping her shoulder. “We did what we could. It’s time to pass the baton to the others.”

“What’s a baton?” asked Tayle. But the moment she said the word, I sensed what it was, a small stick used to pass along in running games. How did I know this? Tayle surely didn’t know it. I suspected I was picking up latent information from Jon, as well, and perhaps the others.

Behind us, the director, Kevin, was quickly going over the submarine, inspecting it with his mechanics and engineers, prepping it for the long dive. It had already been decided that Hrump and I would go down, too, piggy-backing alongside Heidi and Brad. Brad, for his part, seemed excited by the prospect of entertaining a dolphin intelligence.

“I will be back soon,” I thought to Tayle.

“And we can play in the lagoon by my house?” she asked.

“Always,” I thought, and considered the fact that she, and her father, were a kind of pod to me.

“We call it family,” said Tayle, and she gave me a mental squeeze, one of her deep hugs.

“Okay, folks,” said Kevin, clapping his hands and looking at us each in turn, wildly, I might add. “The sub is ready. We’ve got an alien to meet—and a world to save!”

Yes, he was definitely crazy!

But I liked him.

Chapter Twenty-two

I leaped out of Tayle’s mind and into Heidi’s.

The female scientist jerked a little, gasped, stumbled a little, and then righted herself.

“Okay, that feels weird,” she said.

Are you okay? I telepathically asked her.

I think so, she thought back to me.

It’s not so bad is it?

I feel a little dizzy, Azael.

I reached out with my own mind and put hers at ease. Soon, she was calming down and feeling less dizzy. That was a good thing. When she was dizzy—I was dizzy! Also, I was getting very good at connecting and working with humans. Yes, this alien device was something special. I could not imagine what awaited us beneath the deep.

When Hrump was comfortably connected with Brad, we all watched in fascination as the experienced crew used cranes and cables and a lot of careful handling to guide the Triton submersible from the hangar and then over the ship’s side and down into the water. Nearby, both mine and Hrump’s inert dolphin forms would be watched carefully by the crew...and by Tayle herself.

Once the submersible splashed down, the center latch on top was opened and the three of us slipped inside. Kevin and Brad sat in the front, and I sat in the back with Heidi. Or rather, she sat in the back and I tagged along inside her.

Above, the crew carefully sealed us in, and the submersible powered on. Kevin the director, who was also an expert submersible pilot, scanned the dashboard in front of him, checking on this and that, twisting knobs and flicking switches.

The lengths that humans must go to, to do what dolphins do naturally must amuse you, thought Heidi.

It would, perhaps, if the world’s fate wasn’t on the line.

Heidi nodded and gripped the arm rest next to her as the submersible lurched forward...and angled down.

“And away we go,” said the director excitedly, clapping his hands for emphasis. I noted that the submersible was equipped with deep sea cameras, cameras he would use to document this trip, and to document our contact with the alien craft. I wondered how wise that was, and suspected the aliens would not appreciate being documented. We would see how that played out.

Now the vessel dipped below the lapping waves and down a few feet. Heidi gasped a little. She was nervous about going so deep in a man-made vessel. A part of her worried that the machine might not hold up, especially when confronting the alien craft. The truth was, no one knew that answer. In this regard, we were explorers together. Either way, I touched her mind again, easing her fears.

The submersible went deeper and deeper.

I was used to the sights surrounding us: the schools of mackerel and smaller squid, the lone blue shark looking like trouble (I hoped he stayed far away from the research vessel), and curious and colorful fish who approached the vessel, whispering to themselves, wondering what we were. Yes, I heard all of their thoughts.

Deeper still.

Sunlight from above disappeared. Not a problem. Kevin the director reached over and flicked on his own light, illuminating the sea before us.

Yes, man was a clever—and dangerous—animal!

Ahead, through the darkness, was a dark rift in the ocean floor. I knew down into the rift lived Levy the great squid. Fearlessly, Kevin aimed the vessel toward the rift, using my own instruction as his guidance, and soon we were over the lip and heading down, down, down into the darkness.

There, a great, many-tentacled creature rose up to meet us.

Levy was here, to guide us to the alien craft.

Chapter Twenty-three

Oh my god! Heidi thought/felt. A real live giant squid! I’ve never seen a live one before. What lovely colors!

That’s Levy, my contact, I agreed. Then I projected my thought to the squid: Hello Levy! This is Azael, inside the metal submarine.

I recognize your trace, the squid agreed. I felt you coming.

I am with Heidi, a human scientist and diver. She likes your colors.

The skin of the squid erupted with flowing bands of color.

“Wow! What a show!” Brad said.

“No animal on land can match it,” Kevin agreed. “Bless my cameras!”

“This is Levy, our contact,” Heidi said. “He’s showing off.”

Kevin laughed. “He can be the star of my movie! After we settle our business with the aliens.”

They all like your colors, I thought to Levy. But we are here to meet the alien machine.

I know. Follow me. I felt the squid’s gratification. Squid don’t much care about audiences other than prey, or about human beings, but this one understood from the telepathy that impressing us was good. He literally glowed as he swam down into the rift.

We followed, but could not keep the mollusk’s pace. Our sub was simply too clumsy. Levy had to loop back, then lead at a relative snail’s pace. And of course he was a distant relative of the snails. He did not swim as I did, by moving flukes; instead he swallowed water and jetted it out his mouth, propelling himself backward, his tentacles trailing. That might seem clumsy, but it was nothing of the kind; he swam beautifully.

“This is already worth the investment,” Kevin said. “The footage I’m getting is priceless.”

“The mission is priceless, apart from your footage,” Brad reminded him.

“Sure thing! I’ll take it all.”

And if the mission failed, I thought, that footage, which meant the pictures he was taking, would be worthless for an ugly reason: humans and other creatures would be gone from the world.

True, Heidi agreed.

In the depth of the rift we found the alien life-craft. It looked nothing like any of our expectations. It resembled a huge dark green millipede with hairlike legs on either side, eyes along the top, and a pig-like snout at one end. That description was from Heidi’s memory of creatures I had not encountered.

But it can swim at 30 knots, Levy thought. I trailed it when it arrived.

“Amazing!” Brad said. “It must have propulsion we don’t understand.”

Levy, dwarfed by the machine, swam to that snout. Be eaten, he thought.

“What?” Kevin asked, startled.

“Go inside,” I clarified via Heidi’s mouth. “To meet the aliens.”

Ahead of us the snout irised open. The aperture was big enough to take in the entire sub.

“That is what we came for,” Brad said. “We have to trust them.”

Kevin steered the Triton into the maw. The snout closed behind it. Then the water drained out of the compartment. The sub settled into a channel in the floor, until it was propped in air.

“It’s an airlock!” Brad exclaimed.

“Trust,” Kevin said. He pushed the button to open the port.

The air was pure and sweet, smelling faintly of a country garden. Heidi released her breath, which she had been holding. “They do know our environment,” she remarked. I was relieved too, because she would have suffocated if the air was wrong.

We exited the sub and stood in the lighted airlock. A green line went from the sub to another portal. We followed it, and another gate irised open. We stepped into...a contemporary living room.

“Our environment,” Kevin echoed in wonder.

“They read it from my mind,” I said, using Heidi’s mouth again. “When I went to land in Tayle’s body, then came back for another communicator for Hrump. They want us to be comfortable.”

“Comfortable!” Brad said with irony. That was another human concept I was coming to understand: it meant that he meant the opposite of what he said. He was not comfortable despite the physical amenities. That was not surprising; neither was I.

Be unfooted. That was an alien thought.

I translated again, with Heidi’s help. “Be seated.”

We sat in the human-comfortable chairs, which faced the center of the chamber. We were guests of the aliens. I knew this was as strange to the humans as it was to Hrump and me.

There was a swirling of vapor in the center of the room. It thickened, and coalesced into—a smaller image of the life-craft. The green pig-snouted millipede.

The hairlike limbs moved, clicking against each other. They changed color, and glowed. The clicks increased, sounding like a sandstorm striking a tin roof. Not that I had any experience with either.

Kevin was the first to catch on. “Damn—it’s an alien! A holograph! The ship’s built in their own image.”

“Correct, Kevin,” the creature said.

“And we’re not really understanding your speech,” Kevin continued. “Your speech is the clicks, way beyond Morse code, but the telepathy is now translating it for us so it feels like verbal dialogue. For our comfort, as we are visual and verbal creatures. We like to see and hear what we’re talking to.”

“Continued correct,” the alien agreed. “I am—my technical name identity is unintelligible in your language—Joe.”

“Hello Joe!” the three humans said almost together, as if this were, in Heidi’s image, a mental health meeting with a new member.

“Would you prefer that I emulate one of your kind in appearance? I can do this if it would make you more comfortable with my simulated presence among you.”

“Like a sexy blonde?” Kevin asked.

The millipede dissolved and swirled, and the classic image of actress Marilyn Monroe formed in its place. Her decolletage was quite low, and her skirt quite short, and her smile quite teasing. Indeed, she seemed about to burst joyfully out of her clothes. Both men stared appreciatively, not at all alarmed by the prospect.

“He was joking!” Heidi snapped.

The image flowed back to the alien form. “I apologize. I misunderstood. Humor.”

“Jealousy does not become you, dear,” Brad murmured.

“We’re here on serious business,” Heidi said, not much mollified.

“Business. Of course,” Joe said. “We shall proceed to it now.”

Chapter Twenty-four

“We appreciate the problem,” Brad said. “An invisible but intense magnetic bubble is headed for Earth that will obliterate Earth’s magnetic field and thus destroy most life on Earth. We’re not keen on letting that happen, so we need to shield ourselves against it or divert it. But to make a generator strong enough to accomplish that is likely to take more power than any earth facility can generate.”

“That is correct,” Joe said. “That flux is about a light month in diameter and will take about a year to pass this region of space, two years hence. You can’t shield against it; it will be as pervasive as Earth’s magnetic field itself. So you will have to divert it so that it misses this sector and goes on harmlessly between the stars. A sufficient sustained counter magnetic field can accomplish that, as magnetic fields repulse each other.”

“So how do we get a power source capable of generating and maintaining such a field?”

“We have assessed this problem,” Joe said, “and concluded that for your situation Dark Energy is required.”

Brad nodded. “You are speaking of the unknown power that is driving the universe apart at ever-greater velocity?”

“Yes. It is not unknown to us, merely obscure. It is so extensive that you should be able to tap it to have all the energy you require, without perceptibly diminishing the source.” There came a clicking flash across the alien’s body that telepathy translated as a smile. “Since you are not currently using it for your machines, there is no conflict there; it will not disrupt your normal activities.”

“Great!” Brad said. “I presume you will share the secret of safely harnessing this energy with us?”

“Yes, this is what we came here to do.”

“At what price?”

There of course was the kicker, as Heidi’s mind assessed it. The aliens would want something phenomenal in return for the favor of their technology. Something Earth would not want to give, short of complete destruction. They had not gone to the enormous effort of coming to Earth and contacting the inhabitants to share their formidable technology out of pure altruism. What was it?

“There is something we would like,” Joe agreed.

Uh-huh, Heidi thought cynically.

“We have a certain problem with our home world. We were caught by the magnetic bubble before we were able to mount a deflection, and it wiped us out. Only our distant space satellites and installations survived. A few of us were able to evacuate to our space fleet, but we are now without a home base.”

“And you want to come here,” Kevin said. “Because you need a suitable world, and the depths of our seas are ideal for you.”

“This is true. We are a deep water culture. The so-called gas giant planets have no bottom, as it were, and dry rocky planets are completely unsuitable. Very few have the conditions we require, and Earth is one of them. But the code of sapience requires us to get permission of the dominant species before we colonize, even if our environment does not impact theirs.”

“And if we don’t give you that permission,” Brad said, “you will depart and leave us to fry in the bubble.”

“We would not care to put it so unkindly,” Joe protested.

“But that is the reality,” Brad said. “You need Earth, and to have it you need to save it, so you will certainly help us deflect the bubble if we agree to let you settle. But if we don’t, then you will have no practical reason to expend your limited resources on our behalf, and will focus your attention elsewhere. You may survive on another planet, but Earth will not. These are the cold equations.”

Again Heidi’s mind clarified it for me. The cold equations: extremely unyielding reality, painful regardless of the manner handled.

“Yes,” Joe agreed reluctantly.

“Brutal,” Heidi said, and I agreed.

“We are not unmindful of your situation,” Joe said. “But our resources are severely depleted by the loss of our home planet. We can’t afford to waste them, or to expend them in a manner that will not materially benefit our own kind. Our survival as a species is at stake.”

“It makes sense,” Kevin said. “We’d do the same.”

“I am gratified that you understand.”

“As I see it, we need three things,” Kevin said. “Science, politics, and money. You folk—what do you call yourselves, Joe?”

“We are the Millennia.”

“The Millennia,” Kevin agreed. “For your vision and your legs, no? You Millennia will provide the science, and we humans will provide the local labor. The challenge will be the politics; without political approval we’ll never get the money to start work. I think our best approach is to persuade a leading science establishment, the kind that Brad and Heidi belong to, which will then help us persuade our political leaders, who will in turn set the wheels or whatever in motion. Straightforward, no?”

“I sense that you are being ironic.”

“Oh, yes! Scientists can be prejudiced, and politicians are necessary evils. We’d get farther faster if we simply bribed them.”

“Bribe,” Joe repeated, fathoming the unfamiliar concept. “To make an illicit payment to a key official, to facilitate necessary progress.”

Kevin smiled. “You got it. But even if we had to go that route, we don’t have that kind of money. We’re going to the politicians to get money, not to spend it.”

“Money,” Joe said, doing more fathoming. “Your system of resource distribution. We are in a position to facilitate the recovery of some of the wealth of the seas. Would this be worthwhile?”

Kevin nodded. So did Brad and Heidi. I explored the concept: minerals, shipwrecks, crystallized energy—the wealth of the seas was fabulous.

“Oh, it would,” Kevin said. “But using it for bribes would be dishonest. Let’s see if we can save the world honestly, before having to save it dishonestly. Let’s at least try to persuade a leading science organization and leading politicians of the truth. The problem there is, how? When the dolphin tried to persuade a local politician, he freaked out.”

Azael, Hrump, and Joe fathomed further, assimilating “freaking out.” It was accurate.

“Part of the problem was trying it indirectly,” Joe said. “Dolphins and ordinary humans are not equipped for this sort of thing. We need to establish a more immediate connection. I must contact the key human minds directly. I could persuade them logically and telepathically.”

“But you can’t leave the deepest depths,” Kevin said. “That’s why you established the chain.”

“That chain was necessary to bring you here. Now it can become significantly closer.”

“Joe, are you thinking what I am thinking?”

“Yes. My mind needs to ride your mind, as the dolphins are riding your two companions’ minds. This is not possession, merely piggy backing with the informed consent of the host body. If you are amenable.”

“True,” Heidi said. “It is sharing, not dominating.”

Kevin laughed. “Joe, I thought you’d never ask! I’d love to have immediate access to a sapient alien mind. I’ll be honored to take you to my leaders.”

“I appreciate that. However, I can’t just join you now, as my host body is a quarter of the way around your planet. This is not incidental telepathy or holography, it is a temporary personality transfer. To accomplish it, our two bodies need to be physically adjacent, at least within a few hundred feet. I must travel to join you, or you must travel to join me.”

“Consider it a challenge,” Kevin said, smiling.

I realized that this adventure was about to become considerably more interesting.

Chapter Twenty-five

We were back in the submarine, in the alien craft’s airlock, while the massive room began filling with water.

As the water rose around us, Brad was speaking, “Joe has quite the challenge on his—or its—hands. How will he convince the world’s governments to agree to his help?”

“And do we have enough time?” added Heidi.

“The Pulse is still two years away,” said Kevin. “If I understood correctly.”

“True,” said Brad, “which is why Joe gave us enough information to begin building the shield.”

“And what if he and Kevin cannot convince the world leaders to help?” asked Heidi.

“Then the shield won’t be completed. Undoubtedly they will depart to greener pastures, or deeper waters, leaving the earth to fry.” Brad looked at her, and his face was grim. “His hands are tied, as he said. The technology cannot be given without consent.”

“Consent by whom? A few random, elected officials. Royal families who are oblivious to the plight of their own people? Who determined when and how the consent is given?”

“My guess,” said Kevin the director, as he reached over and turned on the electric motors once the water levels had risen high enough, “is the United Nations. There, the world governments can be properly represented, and Joe can plead his case. Let’s hope the world listens, and consents. We’ll see.”

“So, our plan is clear then?” said Brad. “Heidi and I and our team will begin building the shield...”

“And my team will head out to meet Joe and the mother ship.”

It looks like your job is done, Azael, thought Heidi. Thank you for leading us to Levy. Cross your fingers—or flippers—that we succeed.

Indeed, the thought of resuming my mundane life, swimming in the open seas, perhaps now with Hrump, was appealing, although I doubted I could relax and enjoy my time with my new friend until after the month was over.

I think I’ll stick around, I thought. With Tayle and her father.

Bonding with the human girl was also a sweet thought. She and her father were a pod of a very different type, but the feelings of warmth were still there, not dissimilar to the warmth I’d felt with my own pod. More important, I did not relish the thought of leaving Tayle so quickly, especially with the future of our world still uncertain.

“And we have blast off,” said Kevin.

Indeed, the floor beneath us irised open and we dropped down beneath the long, undulating alien ship. Kevin worked the controls and soon we were moving forward and upward at a good clip.

As the giant squid swam a great circle around us, his long legs trailing behind him for many dozens of feet, I was looking forward again to being within my body. Watching Levy swim majestically reminded me of the freedom of the open water...freedom I could experience with Hrump.

You like him, don’t you? asked Heidi, giving me a mental wink.

I was about to answer, shyly no doubt, when frantic words erupted in my head. It was Tayle. Hurry Azael! They have Hrump! And they’re coming for you next!

I don’t understand—

They have guns, but some of them are scientists too. Daddy says they were sent by that mean councilman. They want to study you and Hrump and the alien ship.

Tayle screamed, and Brad, who’d been hosting Hrump, jerked violently and gasped. “He’s gone. Hrump left me. He’s back with his body.”

I shifted my attention to my dolphin self on the surface above, where I had been gliding idly next to the director’s research vessel. There was my inert body, existing simply as it waited for me to join it again. But something was happening on the choppy seas around me, something I was not fully aware of until Tayle’s shout of alarm.

There was another boat nearby, a bigger boat—and they had just cast a net around Hrump.

My brave friend fought wildly, fiercely, thrashing his tail and slapping his flukes, but his efforts were futile. The netting only cut deep into his hide as he was finally lifted from the water.

“Go to him!” shouted Heidi, who could see and hear what I could see and hear. “Hurry!”

And I did, leaping from her body and back fully into my own dolphin self. What I would do, I didn’t know, but I had to do something, and fast.

Chapter Twenty-six

It was chaos.

Tayle was on the deck of the research ship, screaming. Beside it was the attacking vessel, with the sailors hauling on the net. The net that had caught Hrump. But there was one notable difference between this netting and the ones the fishermen used: it was being consciously used to catch the dolphin, not drown him. The upper section extended above the water, so that Hrump could surface and breathe. It was connected to the ship by an extended boom. They were lowering the net to dip the dolphin in the water while they organized a tank on the ship. So Hrump was scraped but not in danger of death.

Still, this was formidable mischief. We couldn’t let them capture Hrump or me, because they surely had no interest in saving the world, just in getting profitable information. But how could we save the dolphin from the net?

I needed the direct help of a human mind. So I jumped to Tayle.

“Azael!” she exclaimed aloud. “You’re back!”

How can we stop them? I thought.

“I don’t know!” she wailed hysterically.

Jon came to join her. “Is that Azael?” he asked.

“Yes,” I answered though Tayle’s mouth. “What can we do?”

“That’s Norris’s yacht, the Naughty Girl! It’s way too big and fast for the research vessel to stop. But maybe with your telepathy, you know, touch the mind of the captain, make him let the dolphin go...”

Great idea! “I’ll try,” I said. I vacated Tayle, returned to my own body, and swam vigorously toward the yacht.

I hugged the hull where the sailors couldn’t see me unless they really looked. I reached out with my mind, trying to sort through a jumble of unfamiliar minds, seeking the captain. But there were so many minds, so many thoughts, all overlapping each other, that I couldn’t make sense of it. This wasn’t working.

Then I thought of another tack. Heidi, back in the returning submersible, might have a better notion. She was more mature and educated than Tayle, less likely to go hysteric. I’d ask her.

I swam away from the yacht a safe distance, then returned to Heidi’s mind, which I could do at this distance because it was familiar.

“Azael!” she said aloud, just as Tayle had.

I rapidly updated her on the scene on the surface. So I can’t find the captain’s mind, I concluded.

“And if you did, his second in command would simply take over,” she said, grasping the situation with scientific precision. “We’re going to need more than that.” Then she updated Brad and Kevin.

“I’ve got a wicked idea,” Kevin said. “Straight out of a wildly improbable movie. Let’s see if I can work with Joe on this. I’m still in touch with him.”

“But Joe’s seven thousand miles away!” she protested. “You’re going to sail there to meet him.”

“But there may be something I can do now, with his telepathic support.”

“But if Azael couldn’t touch the captain’s mind from up close, how could Joe do it from around the world?” Now she was sounding a bit hysterical herself.

“There are ways and ways,” Kevin said mysteriously. “Shut up and let me focus.” He closed his eyes, concentrating.

Nettled, Heidi shut up.

Brad touched her hand. “Oh ye of little faith,” he murmured.

Her anger flared. “You can just take that faith and shove it—”

I intercepted her mouth and shut it for her. We have to trust them.

“We do,” she muttered grimly. But there was a tide of mayhem in her mind. She didn’t like being patronized.

Kevin opened his eyes. “It’s feasible,” he announced. “Levy will guide the craft, at least as far as he can. We can’t keep the pace in the sub.” He glanced at Heidi. “Azael, tell them help is coming.”

“I will,” I agreed via Heidi’s mouth, and reverted to my own body. I knew that Kevin would explain to the others what was happening, but I couldn’t wait on that.

I swam close to the dreaded net, knowing it couldn’t be deployed to catch me without letting Hrump go. “Help is coming!” I sang to him.

“That’s a relief,” he sang back.

Then I swam to the research vessel and rejoined Tayle. Help is coming.

She grasped at that as if drowning. “I hope it’s fast!”

I hoped so too. What did Kevin and the alien, Joe, have in mind?

We waited interminable minutes as the hoist brought Hrump close to the yacht and hauled him back into the air, swinging him to the tank. They dropped him in with a splash. They knew what they were doing. Did we?

Now the net, emptied, was ready to be deployed again. And the sailors knew where I was. I had either to flee the vicinity immediately, or run the risk of capture. I did not like either alternative.

Then something weird happened. The yacht seemed to jump in the water. Sailors cried out with alarm, grabbing the railing to keep from falling.

“Look at that!” Jon called from the other ship. Tayle stood beside him, open-mouthed.

Then I saw it: huge green jaws projected from the water, clamping onto the stern of the yacht.

Green?

I ducked down and saw the rest of it, under the water. It was the alien life craft! The pig snout had been replaced by a toothed mouth, and it was biting the yacht.

The mouth twisted, and the yacht tilted sharply. The dolphin tank slid across the deck, crashed through the rail, and dropped into the sea. Hrump vaulted out with a mighty heave of his flukes, and splashed into the water. He was free!

But not the yacht. The jaws still held it fast.

Then the hairlike legs vibrated, and the craft accelerated backward, hauling the yacht helplessly along. The aliens were taking it out to sea.

I watched with mixed emotions. I had had no idea the aliens were capable of such a thing. This was the rescue that Kevin and Joe had worked out: to use the life craft itself. It could travel where neither Levy nor Joe could go. No telepathy, no magic, just an ocean predator biting its prey.

They won’t hurt the yacht, Heidi’s thought came. Just take it out to sea and leave it, as a warning, Kevin told me.

But what if they tell what happened? I thought back.

Who will believe them?

That seemed like an excellent question. Meanwhile Hrump was swimming toward me. “You told me help was coming,” he sang. “Thank you.”

“You are welcome,” I sang back, as if I’d known all along.

Chapter Twenty-seven

The next few months went by in a blur.

Kevin and Joe and a very advanced submarine journeyed deep into the Mariana Trench, far enough down that even the giant squids were uncomfortable. There, the director and his small team photographed an amazing site...a structure that spanned many human miles and camouflaged perfectly with its surroundings. Indeed, the surface of the spaceship even mimicked the smoke stacks and vents that covered the surface of the deep trench.

The whole scene was filmed for the world’s benefit—after all, Joe and Kevin were even now pleading their case to the human representatives. A shame that dolphins didn’t have a say in this. We would have quickly seen the benefit of such technology. But from the reports provided by Jon, and as I watched the humans’ fascinating TV through Tayle’s eyes, I saw the many conflicting reports on their various news channels. Yes, all of this was a lot to take in for a dolphin, but I was, at this point, firmly embedded in the human culture. Indeed, Jon had even built a pond for me, complete with a protective fence and covered roof. I could venture into it at any time, lock it behind me with a flick of my bony beak, and then mind-link instantly with Tayle.

Once the initial images of the UFO had been confirmed as real and not a hoax, panic gripped the earth. There were riots and skirmishes. Whole cities shut down as the humans fled to and fro. Water and food quickly became scarce.

This lasted for many weeks, although the shortages did not affect Jon and Tayle. He fished from the sea, and had his own well. He was also handy with a rifle, and kept looters at bay.

Weeks later, when the humans realized they were not under attack, the world picked up its pieces and resumed again, albeit at a cautious pace.

Still, there was much suspicion and negativity surrounding the aliens. Whole groups formed to protest them and demand their removal from earth. Other groups formed to protect them. And still others didn’t seem to care at all. Many questioned the validity of the reports of the Pulse, until scientist after scientist came forward to assure the world that the threat was real.

It wasn’t until Levy and his fellow giant squid began hauling vast riches upon the ocean shores did people really begin to perk up. Especially the big businesses, as Jon put it. Apparently, money spoke loudly—louder than even common sense. As the money flowed and the ocean was mined, those who could help came forward, providing materials necessary to build the Deflector, as it came to be known. A machine of gigantic proportions that could only be built at the bottom of the sea. Already, many humans had lost their lives in its construction, furthering the outcry against the aliens.

I would have gladly watched most humans perish in a fiery blaze—humans were, after all, the reason I was motherless and podless—but their demise meant my demise, too. And Tayle and Jon’s. Some humans weren’t so bad, but most left a bad taste in my mouth, which was a common human idiom, one that was quite accurate in this situation.

At times, I wondered if I was becoming more human than dolphin, but then I needed only to slip back into my body and find Hrump, and would spend the evenings hunting and feeding, and doing our best to block out the cries of prey.

Yes, our lives were weird, but it was our reality.

Hrump and I were growing closer, and often we didn’t swim or hunt at all. Often we nuzzled next to each other, flicking our tails idly, and enjoying each others’ company. I didn’t mind his scars. His scars were a testament to his heart and courage.

As the months elapsed, as the Deflector grew in scope and size, as the opposition against the alien presence seemed to grow, too, Jon finally could sit still no longer. He and Tayle packed up their belongings, and headed out to the fleet of ships that sat high above the construction of Deflector.

Jon was determined to help, one way or another. He wasn’t the only such human. Many had made a similar choice, offering their services.

Hrump and I made the decision as well to do our part. One way or another.

And just after the sixth month, as Kevin and Joe still lobbied the world’s leaders for consent, as the Deflector was constructed deep beneath the surface of the ocean, and as the Pulse grew steadily closer, Hrump and I headed into deeper waters, driving our tails hard, leaping high into the air and splashing down again, over and over...and ever closer to the Deflector.

Yes, we would do our part.

Whatever that meant.

Chapter Twenty-eight

Hrump and I paused, amazed.

It was a clump of ships on the water, rather than a fleet; the vessels were linked together by ropes and crosswalks so that the humans could go from one to another without having to use smaller boats. Small powered carts zipped across like cars on highways, going from ship to ship. What was going on?

I quested for Tayle’s mind, and found it. The girl thought: We’ve been expecting you. There’s lots to explain. Come on into our minds.

I consulted with Hrump. “This is a strange sea,” I sang. “We can’t risk leaving our bodies unattended.”

“You go; I’ll watch your body,” he sang.

I didn’t argue. I jumped into Tayle’s mind. The girl was standing on the deck of one of the ships, facing out toward the dolphins, but they could not be seen under the waves. Then Hrump leaped through the air. “There!” Tayle cried, nudging her father.

“And here,” I said via her mouth. “Hrump’s watching my body.”

“There’s a safe pen here,” Tayle said. “We had them make it for you.” She grimaced. “It’s made of net, but I promise you, not to trap you. To keep sharks out.”

“I’ll tell Hrump,” I  said. “We’ll come in.” I returned to my own body.

We swam in and found the pen. The netting had flaps we could open to pass through it, that sharks would not know how to operate. We could relax here. That was just as well, because we had come a long way and were physically tired.

We jumped to the human hosts. Now we could catch up on other things. “Why are the ships tied together?” I asked.

“It’s a city on the sea,” Tayle explained. “There’s a mess ship—that means it’s where we eat—and a laundry ship, a tenement ship, a waste processing ship—we call it the poop deck—and a whole lot of work ships. We’ve got golf carts to take us around quickly on the various ships, as well. It’s all sort of slipshod, but it works, because there’s a whole bunch of landlubbers here doing all sorts of things and they can’t be bothered to learn seamanship. Mainly they focus on the giant cable in the center going down to the Deflector. It guides the supply capsules down and up.” She continued describing it all, and I had to agree: this was a human city, with all the city functions.

“But look,” Tayle said. “There’s stuff coming up, but you must be tired. You should sleep tonight, and we’ll tackle it in the morning. They’ve got a barrel of fresh fish for you to eat.”

“Thanks,” I said. Then Hrump and I reverted to our bodies. The fish were good, though their squeals of pain still bothered me . Then the two of us went to sleep in swimming mode, within the enclosure. We really did need the rest.

In the morning we rejoined Tayle and Jon. “Two things,” Tayle said. “One good, one bad.”

“What is good?” I asked.

“They’ve verified the bubble. The Millennia said that it’s pretty much invisible, but can be detected by things like the index of refraction of a laser beam passing through it, and its effect on the existing area magnetic fields. That doesn’t mean much to me, but the scientists are satisfied that there’s a fierce magnetic storm on its way here, just as the Millennia said, and that it will wipe us out if it gets here. So the governments of the world are agreeing to cooperate to keep it away. This is a multinational effort. Some of the people still think it’s a cruel hoax, but they don’t count.”

I was ironically relieved to know that the threat was real, since my whole reason to contact the humans had been to alert them to it. “What’s the other?”

“They’re having trouble emplacing one of the units below. It has to be anchored to the sea floor, but there’s stirred-up muck so they can’t see, and it won’t attach. It’s too deep for the humans outside their subs, and the remote controlled equipment is clumsy. We thought that maybe if you dolphins could go down and take a look, maybe you could figure it out. They say it’s at your depth. They can’t complete the Deflector and get it running without that unit in place.”

“We came to help,” I said. “We’ll check it.”

“Okay!”

“But there is one thing,” Hrump said via Jon’s mouth. “This is far from our usual haunts, and we don’t know all the dangers. Such as the local sharks.”

Jon answered him with his own mouth. “We humans are wary of sharks too. They’ve got effective shark repellants. In fact they repel everything.”

“We’ll take that,” Azael agreed.

“It’s a tag they can put on your tail. An electronic repellant. And another to help you orient on the unit. It pings as you get close.” Hrump and I returned to our bodies. Soon a human man came to the net and fastened the tags to our flukes. Then the two of us dived deep. We followed the big cable down, and sure enough, no swimming creature of any kind came close, not even edible fish. That could have been a problem in another circumstance.

Then we oriented on the pinging. It led us to the unit, which was a big metal box with six stick-like legs and big splayed feet with spikes. The muck had been stirred up, so the unit was in a cloud, but we were able to check it sonically.

The feet weren’t sticking because the rock here was flaking off when anything tried to drill into it, so the metal plugs were ineffective. This device would need a different kind of anchorage.

We returned to the surface, joined the minds of the humans, and explained. Maybe they could weight down the feet with bags of stones.

“We’ll consider that,” the human supervisor said. “We’ll come up with something, now that we know what the problem is.”

I knew that there would be more useful work for us to do here. I was satisfied.

Chapter Twenty-nine

Work continued, and the months piled up.

Hrump and I were employed almost daily, from using our echo location to “see” through the silt, to hauling lines and equipment and supplies from the surface to the ocean floor, and back again. Often we assisted in rescue situations, removing fallen equipment from divers, or recovering the bodies of those we could not reach in time. Indeed, it was a challenge for the humans to work so deep under the sea. Most made it, but a few did not. The humans, as questionable as they were, did sing beautiful songs for their dead, and Hrump and I sang with them.

As the seasons passed, and the day of the Pulse drew near, as most of the world had finally come around to understanding the gravity of the situation, Hrump and I often slipped away from the city of ships to be alone, to enjoy our time together, the freedom of the open seas. After all, should the deflector fail to work, or should Joe and Kevin fail to get the last of the balky government to consent to the aliens’ help, Hrump and I knew that these might be our last days together.

Sometimes Jon and Tayle piggy-backed with us via mind link, exploring the undersea world with us. But mostly Hrump and I ventured out alone.

We were alone now, under a full moon, racing through the cold water and leaping high in the air. We did this game often, a chasing game. Usually Hrump chased me, but usually I slowed and let him catch me. I liked when he caught me. We would touch flukes and tails and roll together, twisting through the water, spiraling down, down. And then we would chase each other again, doing this over and over again, the chasing and the catching and the spiraling. We did this until we were exhausted and finally swam idly on the surface, touching flukes, and speaking quietly to each other.

At the moment, Hrump was close behind me and gaining. I drove my tail into the ocean hard, surging froward powerfully. At such moments I felt like I could do anything, and heart sang, and I wanted to sing, too. But I couldn’t sing now. No. Hrump, after all, was closing in fast.

I banked hard to the right, using my right fluke to cut through the water, and Hrump sailed past me wildly and I giggled.

He cursed and looped down, then rocketed up through the water. He was a powerful creature, and he truly did look like one of the human torpedoes. Never had I seen a dolphin move so quickly, and I paused in awe, watching him, my heart swelling with something I was sure was more than awe.

It was love.

He was showing off for me, I was sure of it, as he approached the surface with lightning speed, I surfaced in time to see him shoot out into the night sky, where he arched high, moonlight reflecting off his shiny and scarred back, as water droplets sparkled like so many stars in the night sky. He cleared the surface higher than even the most athletic orcas, and, had I been in Tayle’s body, I would have clapped with her hands. Instead, I slapped the surface of the water with one of my flukes as he landed perfectly, gracefully.

“You are a show off, Hrump,” I said, after he had circled back toward me.

“Maybe,” he said, sliding next to me. “Mostly my heart sings with joy.”

“Joy?” I asked, although I suspected what he might be alluding to. “But we are close to possible destruction.”

“That’s one way to look at it,” he said, nuzzling me slightly with his scarred beak.

“And what’s another way to look at it?” I asked.

“We are close to success.”

Now we were rolling just under the surface, spinning slowly together, his flukes on me. I shivered at his touch.

“I like the way you think, Hrump,” I sang in a soft whisper. “So why does your heart sing for joy?”

“Because I am in love.”

“Love?”

“Yes, Azael,” he said, and nudged me with his beak. “With you.”

Hearing him say those words for the first time, and feeling his tender touch, nearly brought me to tears. “But I am podless. I don’t have much to offer.”

He laughed. “The only thing I want, Azael, is your heart.”I shivered at his touch as we continued rolling, our flukes touching, our beaks nuzzling. We surfaced only long enough to catch our breaths, and then we were below again, together, rolling, my heart singing, the Pulse all but forgotten.

Chapter Thirty

Along the way, almost incidentally, we spied and recruited stray individual dolphins, those without pods for whatever reason.

Most were extremely wary of humans, having lost friends or relatives to the dreaded nets, but we begged them to meet with Tayle and Jon, mind to mind, and when they did they started to thaw. When they agreed to swallow the translation packs and become telepathic, they came to appreciate the full nature of the threat, and became willing members of our artificial pod. I was the senior female, and Hrump the senior male, not in age but in association with the Millennia and the project, so we were like pod leaders. Not only did the other dolphins accept that, they did not want to change it.

There was one thing that unified us, apart from the threat to the world: we wanted the killing of dolphins to stop. Tayle and Jon pursued it among the humans, campaigning to outlaw this murder however it occurred: nets, spears, bullets, pollution. That last was the most difficult, because the seas were already contaminated with the wastes of centuries, but none of it was easy.

“I hate to put it this way,” Tayle said, who was growing older and smarter. “But the human special interests don’t do what’s right, they do what entertains them or increases their safety or wealth. They don’t care about dolfins. You need to have something to trade, something the humans really desperately need. Otherwise nothing much will change.”

“We’re helping build the Deflector!” I reminded her.

“Yes, and that helps. But there are a lot of countries, and more factions, and whole slews of ignorant folk that resist any change in anything. More is needed.”

And there it stood. We could not budge ignorance. We were saving the world, but not our species. That rankled.

Then at last the Deflector was ready. That was just as well, because the magnetic bubble was looming close, and we couldn’t let it reach this section of space.

With great fanfare they cranked it up, with humans manning the stations that controlled the individual beams needed to magnetically push away the magnetism of the bubble. They had shown us how one magnet repelled another, if it was of the same type; this was one magnetic beam repelling a magnetic flux. I did not understand the whole of it, even with telepathy, but I accepted its validity.

And it didn’t work.

They tried again. And failed again. Something was wrong.

The Millennia finally figured it out. The beams needed to be very specifically targeted to particular points in the bubble, or they glanced off and passed through harmlessly. The bubble was not just a single formless blob; it was a complex of swirling forces, like whirlpools in tidal shallows. It was a bit like catching a fish: my teeth had to snap cleanly on it, or it slipped out and got away. The human controllers could not see the gyres well enough, or track their seemingly random motions accurately enough, to score on them.

Had all this effort been for nothing?

Tayle visited as I swam alone, delving for fish, and we discussed it mind to mind, as if we were two dolphins. “You know, you dolfins can see and hear in ways we humans don’t,” she said. “I wonder if you could do it?”

“Swim in space with magnetic beams to push the bubble?” I asked. “We can’t even leave the sea to go on land, let alone space.” I nabbed a fish, crunching it quickly so as not to hear its scream.

“I couldn’t catch a fish like that. They dodge so quickly I’d be grabbing at nothing.”

“It’s a matter of tracking them closely, and anticipating where they will go, and getting there when they do. It was hard at first, but I’ve had a lifetime of practice. And my mother was a great teacher.”

“Suppose the gyres of the bubble are like that?”

“Like fish? I wouldn’t want to eat one.”

“But maybe you could catch it, by thinking of it as a fish.”

“Maybe,” I agreed dubiously. “But what’s the point? We don’t want to catch the gyres, we want to drive them away.”

“Yes, but you have to catch them first. To lock on, so that then you can push them away. That’s what we humans aren’t doing.”

We pondered it, and it seemed to make some sense. So we went to Heidi, in Tayle’s body.

“Different reflexes,” Heidi agreed thoughtfully. “Magnetic gyres aren’t fish, so it’s farfetched, but we’re desperate. We should give it a try.”

There was resistance in the human hierarchy, but Heidi enlisted Brad, and Brad enlisted Joe the Millennial, who had finally succeeded in getting the world’s vote, and soon an experiment was in process. They constructed a tank suitable for a dolphin, in the shape of a sphere, with pictures projected on its surface so that it looked transparent, as if the ocean were right there. It also handled sound, so that a song to a distant dolphin seemed to reach it, and the answering song came back realistically. Hrump and I zeroed it in, working in adjacent spheres, enabling them to get the effects just right. When we turned, so did the scene, matching our attitude, as they put it. We were able to swim in any sea of the world, including arctic with icebergs. It was fun.

Then they switched it to deep space. Suddenly I was swimming among stars. That was weird, and I quickly got seasick, in my fashion, which was a distinctly new experience. But I tried again in a few hours, and lasted longer, until I was able to handle it. While I was recovering, Hrump tried it, with a similar reaction, and other dolphins. But we all made progress.

Then I sang, and they translated my song into a beam, or at least it controlled a beam. I learned to orient that beam on a swirling likeness of a gyre. The thing eluded me, dodging randomly to the side; I had to chase it down. But soon I learned its nature, and began to outsmart it, anticipating its motions. Before long I could push that gyre anywhere I wanted. So could the other dolphins. We all liked it, and so did Tayle, riding along with me. “It’s like shooting targets from a roller coaster,” she said. “Tricky but fun.”

But this was only simulation. Could we do it for real? The fate of the world might depend on that.

Chapter Thirty-one

Our makeshift pod was growing.

Not to mention, I was showing signs of being with child. Yes, indeed, one way or another, Hrump and I would have our pod. For now, though, we had perhaps the biggest pod I had ever seen. A ragtag collections of young and old dolphins, some wounded and maimed, most alone or having traveled with just two or three others. We all had one thing in common: we had all been decimated by man. Our growing pod had become a beacon for the lost and abandoned.

At the request of Hrump, our group was gathered just outside the city of boats and ships that have now collected here in this Pacific region of the oceans. Dozens, if not hundreds of additional ships had found their way here, most to film what could be the earth’s final days. This had become, as Tayle had put it, a ‘media circus.’ If humans could figure out a way to make money at the end of the world, then what would stop them from making money off the blood of my brother and sister dolphins?

In short, nothing.

Except, of course, we dolphins had the upper flipper. The humans needed us to save them, and the world.

This fact had not escaped me, or Hrump, or any of my fellow dolphins. Despite what humans might think, dolphins are smart. Perhaps smarter than many humans. Either way, we saw an opportunity here, and we were discussing our options now.

The human scientists were impatient. In fact, the whole world was impatient. They were all ready for the “Big Event” as the media had come to call it. Through Tayle’s eyes, I had seen much of this media circus, as had Hrump. All programming was now focused on the Pulse. Mostly, it now centered on us dolphins. Word had gotten out that we could control the deflector beam and the humans were putting their hope in us.

“They put their hope in the very creatures they slaughter,” said Papi, an old dolphin missing one eye. “I am willing to bet they regret doing so now!” He slapped his tale for emphasis, and swam in a short tight circle, which was what Papi was best at.

It was late evening, and the arching sky above was afire. Indeed, the color of the night sky had begun to turn with the coming of the Pulse. Its approach, although unseen by physical eyes, could be witnessed in the heavens. It would have been beautiful if it hadn’t been so deadly. With the beautiful, iridescent light, came death.

“I have no doubt the humans regret their actions now,” I said. I could feel the little one within me move ever-so-slightly. Would my babe see the light of day? As of yet, I did not know, and this saddened me beyond words.

“And so we are expected to help them?” asked Rory, a young dolphin of exceptional size, so big that had someone painted him black and added white spots, he might have been confused for our orca cousins.

“We help ourselves, Rory,” said Hrump, keeping close to me. He kept closer than usual once he realized I was with child. Sometimes he kept a little too close! My life was a far cry different from those early days when I wandered the oceans alone, my songs of sadness going unanswered.

“And once we save them, Hrump, then they will thank us by killing us again, rounding us up in coves and slaughtering us by the dozens,” said Dart, a fast little guy that could catch anything in the sea. His pod had vanished when he was very young, too young to even remember his own name. Dart suited him, and we all accepted it, and him.

“Perhaps not,” said Hrump.

I glanced at my scarred mate, battle tested and fierce, who held the respect of all in attendance. “What do you mean?”

“I called you here for a reason,” said Hrump, winking at me, then glancing at my slightly rotund belly. I sensed his deep love for me, and for his babe. “I have a proposal.”

The churning sea of dolphins, many of whom had become my friends over the past few weeks and months, quieted and listened.

Hrump eased away from me, and swam before them. “We demand that the humans stop the slaughter of dolphins, and our brothers and sisters, the whales.”

“They will never agree,” said a voice from the crowd.

“They must,” said Hrump, “or it will be the last decision they will make.”

“But that would mean the death of us all,” said Papi.

“Death by the Pulse,” said Hrump. “Or death by their nets? Which would you prefer?”

That silenced everyone. They were all thinking, and hard. Hrump and I had already discussed this approach, and I had approved wholeheartedly. Yes, I would rather die by the Pulse, than suffer what I had seen my pod suffer through.

“But how do we make the humans keep their word?” asked a young female who’d just recently lost her pod. Apparently, the human fishermen were continuing their dastardly efforts even as the final days approached. I had spent some time comforting her just the night before.

“That is our challenge,” answered Hrump. “But we have most of humanity on our side, not to mention Joe and the Millenia, who are now quite proficient in the handling of the various human governments. I am confident mankind will concede and new laws will be put into place. But before I approach the humans, I must have your consent. We must all be in agreement, and we must band together.”

A great amount of discussion ensued. Many were concerned with the other creatures of the seas, the beautiful tuna and marlin, who were hunted for sport. The sharks who were hunted for their fins. Hrump addressed their concerns. “First things first, my friends,” he said, coming back to me and slipping a fluke under my belly. “We will first demand the protection of dolphins and whales everywhere. Once done, and once we have the assurance of the world’s government that they will do all they can to protects us, we will next seek protection for our friends.”

And so we had a vote, which seemed a very human thing to do, but was effective. To a dolphin, we all voted to stand together, united.

The humans must meet our demands.

Or we would all die.

Chapter Thirty-two

“Wait,” Hrump sang. “The human Jon has asked to join with me. He is on our side, as most humans actually are. He has been silent until this, but now he speaks. He says no agreement is binding without enforcement. He says that we can make the humans agree, but we can’t stop them from reneging once the threat has been abated. Even if they make it against their law to kill dolphins, and enforce it, there will still be criminals who do it anyway, as they do in killing elephants for their ivory tusks.” He paused. “Elephants are big land creatures with very long noses and huge projecting teeth that form into tusks. They are becoming extinct because of poaching: the illicit killing by criminals. We need a law, yes, but we also need enforcement, or we are lost anyway.”

He’s right, Tayle thought. She was now riding with me. Humans are like that.

“And how to we get enforcement?” Dart demanded. “That has been my concern all along.” There was a singing murmur of agreement among the dolphins.

“I have an idea,” I sang, to my surprise. Tayle was with me, and she was as concerned about this as her father was. “I think.”

The pod oriented on me respectfully. “What is it?” Dart asked.

“It’s the telepathy,” I said. “You know how we feel the pain of the fish we eat? I hate that, and I try to dull it down, but I still have to eat.”

“We all feel that pain,” Papi said. “I would be happy to be rid of the telepathy, and after this mission has been accomplished I hope to shit out the pack and be done with it.” There was another murmur of agreement.

“But that’s the key,” I said. “Suppose the telepathy were so strong that when you killed a fish, you died too? Because of the linkage?”

Oooh, wow! Tayle knew what was in my mind.

“We’d all shit out our packs,” Rory said. “And go on eating.”

“Suppose I kept my pack and swam near you when you fed,” I argued. “Suppose I linked your mind to that of the fish, so that you both died together?”

“We’d swim away from you,” Dart said. “You couldn’t stay that near all of us all the time.”

“Suppose I swam in the school of fish, so that you couldn’t feed without entering my telepathic field? And other dolphins swam in other schools, protecting them similarly?”

“We’d drive you off,” Rory said. “We have to eat.”

“Suppose you couldn’t drive me off?” I persisted. “So you couldn’t eat without dying yourself?”

“Where are you going with this?” Papi asked.

“Suppose a telepathic dolphin swam under a human boat, where they couldn’t see her, and linked the human minds to the dolphin minds? So that when they killed a dolphin, they’d all die? And the boat would be left floating with a dead crew?”

“They’d get the message pretty fast,” Hrump said. “The killing would stop. There wouldn’t even need to be a law.”

“Let’s get the law anyway,” Papi said. “So they are warned. But can we do it?”

“I think we need to talk with the Millennia,” I said. “To see if they can do it.”

The pod agreed. We would make our demand to the humans for a law, but we would also go to the Millennia for the enforcement.

Hrump and Jon went with Kevin to present the ultimatum to the legal humans: outlaw the killing of dolphins. Meanwhile Tayle and I went with Heidi to talk with the Millennia. It was odd having two human minds with me, but feasible; the telepathy allowed it. We swam down to meet Levy the giant squid, and he dived deeper than we could go to contact Joe. But Levy had one stipulation: include big squid in the ban on killing. We had to agree, both because it was the right thing, and because we needed him to reach Joe.

In due course the alien life craft swam up to join us, and for the first time I entered it in my own body. I swam into the lock, and it set the water pressure for my physical comfort. Then I remained in the water as the Joe image entered the chamber.

Wow! Tayle thought. She had not been here before, and was in a state of wonder.

“Hello, Tayle,” Joe thought in a simulation of speech. Then he assumed the likeness of a human boy about her own age, so as to communicate with her more comfortably. “You are a pretty girl.”

Tayle was mute for the moment, unable to formulate a quick response. She knew Joe was an alien creature like a centipede, and that she was at the moment in the mind of a pregnant “dolfin” but she was still flattered by the compliment. Heidi smiled mentally; the change in appearance did make a difference. Joe was good at getting along with people.

We presented our case, which was accomplished efficiently because of the telepathy we already had. It was my idea, but Heidi had a better mind for the details. Would the Millennia agree with it, and if they did, could they provide the enhanced telepathy?

“We do agree, and we can do it,” Joe said. “We will provide you with more powerful communication units for this purpose. But a caution: you will have to turn them to a low setting when you feed, lest you kill yourself.”

That was a good point. We promised to be careful.

Joe tossed a pack into the water, and I swallowed it. I felt its power immediately. What I had before was like a minnow; this was more like a tuna. Then he had me practice with it, making sure I could properly tune it with my mind. I would have to train other dolphins with similar units, because they were dangerous. The trickiest thing was to link two other minds together without tying my own mind in, lest I die when they did. Only when he was sure I had it mastered did he relax.

“Levy will bring up a hundred of these,” Joe said. “Do not give them out carelessly.”

“Never!” I agreed. “Just to trained dolphins, and our allies, such as the whales, the squid, and the seals. The slaughter will stop.”

Then Joe reverted to centipede form, and we swam into the lock, and were processed out. Our mission had been accomplished.

I wish I had a boyfriend like that, Tayle thought wistfully. I mean, mentally. The boys I know are so immature.

You could get a human boyfriend your age, and have Joe ride in his mind, Heidi suggested.

That notion intrigued all three of us, perhaps for different reasons.

Chapter Thirty-three

Two days before the arrival of the Pulse, Tayle and I were swimming together.

“I miss you, Azael,” said Tayle. “You’ve been so busy.”

“A dolphin’s job is never done,” I thought, having, at this point, nearly fully assimilated her English language and idioms and common phrases, even the jokes. Tayle and I had, of course, been mind-linked now for a few years. I had watched her grow from a curious girl who loved dolphins—or dolfins, as she still preferred to call us—to a young lady who was facing an uncertain future.

We were, of course, all facing an uncertain future.

Now, we were just a girl and her dolphin, swimming the mostly-open seas. We weren’t far from the circle of ships, now known as the Floating City. After all, I couldn’t venture too far, or Tayle and I would lose our connection.

“Do you think we’ll make it?” asked Tayle, as I sped through the water as fast as I could, although certainly not as fast as I was capable. Being burdened with a child slowed me down.

“The dolphins will do our part,” I said. Sometimes I forgot when I thought the words, or when I sang them. Sometimes I did both. With Tayle and I mind-linked, either method worked, as the communication device translated thoughts and words equally.

“I guess we can’t ask much more than that. I hope we make it, Azael. I want to get married like you and Hrump.”

“We are not married,” I said. “We are life mates.”

Tayle giggled in my head. “Then I can’t wait to find my own life mate! I just want to grow up, go to college, meet my dream man, and have children of my own. Is that too much to ask for?”

I knew all of these concepts by now, although I could see, via Tayle’s own projected image, her version of each thought. She was not asking for much, no. Just what humans considered the happy basics.

“I hope you can someday have everything you want, Tayle,” I said.

“And I hope to someday swim with you, Hrump and your little one.”

I gave her a mental smile, since that was the best dolphins could do. Next, I dove deep, swimming in and out of a long-forgotten shipwreck, while Tayle clapped and squealed in my thoughts. She loved exploring the deep sea with me.

Shortly, I shot up through the water again, and launched as high as I dared to launch. I arched gracefully enough and splashed down cleanly.

“I love you, Azael,” said Tayle.

“I love you, too,” I said, and as I thought those words another thought reached out to me. It was from Hrump. With our enhanced communications units, the dolphins were able to communicate with each other across great distances.

“It’s time, Azael. We need you here.”

And with that, I banked hard to starboard, and turned my beak to the Floating City.

As the humans say, it was showtime.

Chapter Thirty-four

Everything was ready, and we couldn’t wait any longer to tackle the Pulse. But there was one not inconsequential detail. “Have they outlawed the slaughter?” I asked. Because that was an essential part of the deal.

Jon answered. “They have not officially done that, yet, but they have agreed in the principle, and will make a good-faith effort to make it law.”

Was that good enough? “I don’t trust that,” Tayle said. She remained with me, by her choice, just as Jon was with Hrump. “There’s always a bad faith joker to mess it up.”

“The units are in place,” Hrump said.

The special high-power telepathy units the Millennia had provided, with dolphin proctors to use them. That meant that enforcement was ready, though unofficial. That would have to do, as we were out of time. Only a portion of the pod was engaged in this aspect; others were on other business, such as tracking fishing boats.

I entered my sphere. As I did so the wall surrounding me became a picture of the region of space between Earth and the Pulse. Spaced out all around me were other spheres, containing other dolphins, for this was a joint effort.

Hrump took charge from his sphere. “Are we ready?” he sang. “Signify by blinking your sphere.”

All around us, in three dimensions, the spheres flashed, briefly illuminating their operators. Most were dolphins we had trained for this. But two—

“We had two late recruits, for whom we made special larger control spheres,” Jon explained. “There may be aspects that will benefit from a slightly different perspective.”

“Greeting, dolphin tidbit,” the orca I had encountered long ago said from his larger sphere. “This time you have something that interests me.”

“Thank you,” I said, discovering that I really appreciated this support from the whales, whom we had included in the killing ban.

“And I am along as host to Joe Millennium,” Levy the giant squid said from his sphere. “We are observing, and will not interfere unless requested.”

“Thank you, too,” I said, taken aback but reassured, because Joe knew more about the equipment than any dolphin did. If there were a problem, he would best know how to handle it. Neither Joe nor Levy could handle shallow water, but their sphere was in deep water, only seeming to be close to the others. The magic of communication put us all into deep space as a fleet of spheres.

“Move out,” Hrump directed. We surged forward at light speed, as we could do in simulation while our spheres remained where they were. It was the beams we controlled that counted, not our physical presence.

And there was the Pulse, highlighted by simulation, but all too real in its onslaught. It resembled a monster purple jellyfish with a thousand burning red eyes cruising through it, each looking small but actually larger than a star.

“Orient on your targets,” Hrump said. “We must repel together, so that it maintains cohesion.” We had been over this in training: you could not repulse a jellyfish with a needle, for it would just poke harmlessly through. But several score dull needles poking together could be a different matter.

We oriented, singing our songs. I fixed on the eye closest to me. It almost seemed to be staring at me, though I knew this was imagination; the Pulse was not alive, and in any event, could not see us in our far-away sea spheres. My song surrounded it, so that I knew exactly where it was. It was not exactly echolocation, but was allied; neither was it exactly sight.

“Fire!”

The green beams lanced out together, each striking a different eye. And the eyes seemed to blink and retreat. They were magnetic, and the magnetic beams were disrupting them. They drifted to the sides, but the beams followed them, still painfully poking. It was tricky staying oriented on mine, but I had the reflexes to do it, as humans did not.

“The Pulse is moving!” Levy cried. “Deflecting!”

We were doing it! All we needed was to angle it a little bit so that it missed our solar system.

Then my beam slipped and the eye got loose. It charged at me like a malignant brand. I could not reorient fast enough to catch it again. If its magnetic storm got too close to me it would blind me and destroy my system. Tayle screamed.

A blue beam from the side caught the eye and hurled it back. That gave me the chance to reorient my own beam and catch the eye again. “Thank you!” I said.

“Welcome, tidbit,” the orca said, and moved on to look for other dolphins in trouble. That was his job.

We stayed at it for hours, magnetically deflecting the Pulse. I was tiring, but could not rest; I had already seen how any mistake could be disastrous.

And finally it was done. The Pulse continued, for it was virtually indestructible, but now it would miss the solar system. That was all that was required.

“Return,” Hrump said. “Congratulations on our success.”

There was a cheer from the space-borne spheres.

I set my sphere for home, and was back in the ocean. It turned off and I swam out into the real sea. “That was awesome!” Tayle said.

I just wanted to get with Hrump and relax and sleep. I did.

Next day we held a dolphin meeting to review the situation, and the orca was allowed to join. The trackers had verified that the Pulse had been slightly deflected, just enough to miss us. Our mission was indeed a success.

But there was another thing. Jon reported it. “While we were busy in space, a mystery developed here in the sea,” he said. “Three fishing boats turned up drifting, their crews mysteriously dead. One had a blue circle with a fish inscribed. They appear to have been poachers going after illegitimate harvesting. Of course we have no idea what happened, but illicit fishing has abruptly diminished. Meanwhile the human effort to outlaw the killing of dolphins, whales, and large squid continues, and will surely succeed in due course.”

Tayle giggled, and there was a murmur-song among the dolphins, who somehow did not seem to be unduly dismayed by the ugly mystery. Neither was I. I remembered that blue circle on the craft that had killed my mother and my pod. Now they, too, were dead.

The future of the world, human, dolphin, and Millennial, was opening out before us.

The End

The Fantasy Collective continues in:

The Journey

Return to the Table of Contents

THE JOURNEY

A Fantasy Collective Novel

by

PIERS ANTHONY

J.R. RAIN

The Journey

Copyright © 2017 by J.R. Rain and Piers Anthony

All rights reserved.

The Journey

Chapter 1: Inside Floyd’s Mind

The Journey was stupid. It was also reckless and dangerous.

But here he was, on his mount, in the dead of night, ducking against the driving rain and wishing like hell he was home, in front of a fire, toasting marshmallows, and sipping hot chocolate, all while his goofy kid sister strummed her lute, and his father yelled at any and all of them, and his mother fussed in the kitchen.

Hey, a guy could dream.

And dream he did, as his old war horse plodded ever forward into the darkness.

In fact, they’d been plodding for hours, and Floyd knew he would soon have to set up camp and sleep. Except he really, really didn’t want to set up camp on the cold, wet ground. He suspected Old Blackie wanted to be dry too. Not to mention he wanted a fire, and he was pretty sure he wasn’t good enough at making fire to start one in the wind and rain. Or even one without the wind and rain. In fact, he wasn’t very good at it at all. Which was why he was certain he would die tonight.

Which was a damn shame, because he had only just started living.

Floyd had turned eighteen two days ago, which meant, of course, he had to begin his Journey. Floyd, of course, didn’t want to begin his Journey. He was perfectly happy living in the village, thank you very much. Except from his village, every male or female had set off on their own journeys. His father had done it. His mother had done it. Every adult had done it.

The idea behind The Journey was, Floyd had pointed out numerous times, stupid. And not just stupid, but reckless. Who in their right mind sent their 18-year-old son or daughter out into the world on their own, for no good reason at all? Of course, the village had a reason. Officially, it was to return with stories. Unofficially, Floyd suspected, it was to cull the weak.

Well, I have a story now, he thought ruefully. Village boy gets soaked to the bone and catches his death.

Floyd had, of course, pointed out that there were murderers out there. Cutthroats and thieves. He told anyone who would listen, but no one did. The Journey was the way of the village, and that was that.

Stupid Journey, he thought again, ducking under a branch a fraction too late.

They sent him off into the woods, knowing full well that he might not return. Which was probably why his mother had been crying and why his kid sister hugged him and wouldn’t let him go, not until she was pried off him. His father had given him last-minute pointers on how to pitch a tent or field-dress a deer.

Now, he was on his own, not to return until years later with stories to entertain the village. But Floyd knew they didn’t really want stories. They wanted a man to return. Leave a boy, return a man. Simple as that.

Now, cold and alone, he regretted not paying more attention to his father’s instructions on how to build a fire. A part of Floyd, a realistic part of Floyd, thought his parents wouldn’t actually send him out on his own Journey. Yes, his friends had all set out, but he didn’t really think his parents would give him the boot. But they had. And here he was. Cold, wet, alone, and miserable.

He knew they were all sitting around the fire now, sipping chicken broth and wondering if he had already died. Floyd nearly stopped. Nearly turned back. Nearly decided to sit outside his parents’ humble abode for the rest of his life, eating whatever scraps they tossed to the chickens and pigs.

But he didn’t. He knew he couldn’t. After all, no one came back without stories to entertain the village for days and sometimes weeks on end. He wouldn’t be the first, no matter how much he missed his ma’s cooking. Or his pa’s fire. Or his little sister’s terrible lute playing.

Or Amelie. Sweet Amelie.

He sighed. Perhaps he would miss her most of all.

The Journey had no rules, other than to return with stories. And finding real stories took time. Floyd considered finding a cave high in the nearby Green Mountains and living there for a few years, all while making up stories about trolls and dragons and rock monsters, stories about princesses and fairies and evil wizards. All of which were the subjects of those who returned from their own Journeys.

That would show them, he thought. I would make up the damn stories, all while living like a hermit in the mountains, growing my beard out—or those few hairs on my chin. I would make up the damn stories and show them how stupid their Journey is. Or maybe I would never return. Yes, that would show them.

He shook his head and mumbled, “What are they thinking, sending a kid out on a night like this?”

“Maybe they hope you will return a man,” said a voice. A sweet voice. A female voice.

Floyd blinked, certain he had made up the voice. After all, it sounded just like...

“Amelie?” he asked, certain he had already found himself under the spell of a forest witch. Or maybe he had fallen off Old Blackie and hit his head?

“Of course, dummy,” said the voice.

And lo! There she was, swinging down from a branch above, and dropping nearly in front of him. Old Blackie neighed and reared back. When he had regained control of his mount, he saw her standing there before him, one hand on her hip. She snapped her fingers and a fireball appeared just a few inches above her palm. Floyd blinked. Had he really just seen that?

“Amelie... I don’t understand. Why are you here?”

“Because someone has to keep you alive, dummy.”

“I don’t understand—”

“You already said that.”

“But I really don’t—”

“Shh!” she said, bringing a narrow finger to his lips.

And then he heard it too. Voices. Men. Maybe half a dozen of them. Even more terrifying was that some of the voices were speaking his name.

“This way,” she said, and cast her light in the direction of a side trail Floyd would never have seen in the dark. “Follow me if you want to live.”

Chapter 2: Fee Faux

What could he do? Those men seeking him were surely up to no good. The fact that they knew he was coming boded ill. Most likely they were a press-gang, out to capture fresh meat for galley slaves, because the old ones often didn’t last long. It hadn’t been any secret that it was his turn to take The Journey, so they went for the easy pickings. Poor Old Blackie would wind up at the glue factory.

Yet wouldn’t his folks have known about that danger? So why did they openly send him out? It didn’t make much sense—unless they really did want to get rid of him expeditiously.

No, he couldn’t believe that. There had to be some other angle. Maybe the men weren’t a press-gang, but friends who meant to protect him from any such threat. But then why not have them accompany him from the start, instead of having to search him out in the wilderness? This didn’t seem to make much sense.

“Are you coming?” Amelie called, already on the obscure path. “Or do you plan on woolgathering until they find you?”

She had him dead to rights. He did tend to think too much instead of acting. He was not especially smart, but neither was he stupid; he just liked to make sense of things. Maybe he was a dreamer. Regardless, now was not the time. He hastily turned Old Blackie in her direction. “Follow her,” he told him, knowing that he would do exactly that. He was wise for a horse; it came with age and experience. Floyd regarded him as his friend.

Amelie moved along with surprising dispatch for such a slip of a girl. He was barely able to admire her flexing tight breeches in the flickering light as gusts of wind blew her cloak momentarily aside.

Soon they came to an enormous chestnut tree. The path ended at its broad trunk. Amelie touched that trunk, and a door opened. She stepped through.

What? He stared. This was impossible!

“Get in here, imbecile!” Amelie’s voice called from within the tree. “We need to be safely out of sight before the press-gang gets here.”

That goosed him into action. He nudged Old Blackie with his knees, and the horse obediently walked forward. The seemingly small door turned out to be big enough to admit them. He heard the door close behind them.

Inside was a fair-sized shed and stable, with sweet-smelling hay piled invitingly. Better yet, it was dry and warm. He quickly dismounted and removed the horse’s saddle and bit, then let him start in on the hay.

But now his inner alarms were sounding. This was plainly impossible. This interior was far wider than the tree trunk, and it wasn’t the way trees were made. He had cut enough wood to know. It had to be magic. And Amelie had magic too, though she had never evinced it in her regular life. All of which suggested that—

“Get that wet clothing off,” Amelie snapped. “Before you perish from the shivers! I’ll dry it while you wash up.”

Undress in her presence? Floyd was wet and cold, soaked through to his clammy underwear, but that was not enough. There might come a time, but this was not it. “I can’t—”

She strode forward, stepped into him, and kissed him firmly on the mouth. It was like getting hit by the punchline of a really romantic story, with him the protagonist. He reeled back, sweetly stunned.

Then he obediently stripped off his clothing, all of it, and she took it and hung it up by a hot hearth he hadn’t noticed before.

As he gradually recovered his volition, he noticed something else. “Why aren’t you wet?” he asked. For she was completely dry, from her curly fair hair to her dainty lady’s boots.

“You don’t want to know.”

What kind of answer was that? “I do want to know, Amelie. You were out in the storm the same as I was. You should be soaked too.”

“I have magic,” she confessed reluctantly.

“I can see that! How did you find this tree-trunk shelter?”

“It’s not really in a tree trunk. It wouldn’t fit. The door in the trunk is a portal to this private retreat.”

Floyd’s suspicion burgeoned. “Who are you?” he demanded. “Or should I ask, what are you? Amelie never had talents like yours.”

“Don’t pester me, Floyd. Just be satisfied that I’m keeping you safe, when otherwise you’d have suffered grievously.”

She was right, but his dander was up, as it were. “How do I know you’re not some foul witch who has worse in mind for me than the press-gang does?” Like a slow boil in a big kettle, meat for several meals.

“Trust me; I don’t.”

But he did not trust her at all. “I’m getting out of here,” he said, lurching for the door. But three things stopped him: he was naked, it was miserable out there, and there was now no door.

“Behave yourself,” she said. “Don’t make me kiss you again.”

That shook him. That kiss had had the impact of a soft sledgehammer striking through to his pulsing heart. So he temporized. “Why not kiss me again?”

“Because each disciplinary kiss has power,” she said evenly. “They are not like ordinary kisses. Too many, too soon, and you will be hopelessly in love with me, completely unable to function without my say-so. You don’t want that.”

“I’m already half-besotted with Amelie,” he countered. “Only you’re not her, are you? Tell me the truth.”

“You really must have it?” she asked somewhat wearily.

“I always want the truth. So I can make sense of things. I’m not making much sense of this. Exactly what are you, and what do you really want with me?”

She sighed. “I fear you’ll be sorry. You’d be happier in ignorance.”

“Never. I’m already too ignorant for my own good. Tell me.”

“I am a Fee.”

“A what?”

“A Fee. A variety of Dusky Elf. I normally live in a crystal cave underground. I can assume the form of any female, so for this purpose I became your girlfriend Amelie. I can also become invisible.”

“Show me,” he demanded.

She faded out, becoming invisible.

“I mean, show me your real form,” he said quickly. “Is it monstrous? Or are you one of those elves whose breasts are so pendulous she has to throw them over her shoulder?”

She faded back in. “I’m not like that. I’m a fair creature in my own right.”

“Show me,” he repeated.

She grimaced. “As you wish.” Her clothing dissipated into mist and she stood there as a phenomenally endowed fair-haired young woman, sexy as hell.

His body started to react. He couldn’t help it.

“Oh, stop that,” she snapped impatiently. She gestured toward his midsection. Suddenly, his reaction went limp.

“Uh, thank you, I guess,” he said somewhat lamely. “How do I know you’re really trying to help me, and not setting me up for something too awful to imagine?”

She sighed again. “If you will agree to behave yourself, and cooperate, I will tell you everything. Is it a deal?”

Floyd gambled that it would be okay. Maybe her appearance made him want to keep things amicable. “Deal.”

A steaming platter appeared in her hands. “Eat while you listen.”

So she could conjure things. He sat on a chair by a small table that also appeared, and ate from the sumptuous repast she had provided. He listened.

“Your family was concerned that the required rite of passage for your kind, The Journey, would make short work of you, and you would die,” she said, sitting opposite him, not bothering either to eat or to reclothe herself. That was fine with him; he loved looking at her, especially now that he was not embarrassing himself with a visible reaction. “So was Amelie. She had done a skry to ascertain who in all the village was her best possible husband.”

“A what?”

“A skry. She has very little magic herself, and most of that she uses to slightly enhance her appearance, as many girls do. But she read in a book of spells how to skry, which is to do a kind of reading by seeing visions in a crystal. Most of the magic is in the crystal, and it doesn’t work for everyone, but if you have the touch and the right question, you can get an answer, and it is always a true one. She asked it for the man who would be her very best possible partner in marriage, and it formed a picture, and it turned out to be you.”

“Me?” he exclaimed, pleasantly surprised.

Now she laughed. “No joke. I admit I really can’t figure why, as you are not rich, strong, handsome, smart, or lucky. But there is something about you. The skry does not lie. She had not paid you much attention before, but now she became seriously concerned about your welfare. So she checked privately with your mother, and learned that soon you would have to take The Journey, and your mother feared grievously for your health.”

“I knew nothing of this!”

“It was vital that you not know, lest it queer the skry. The object of a skry can mess it up by refusing to follow the prescribed course. The future is unfortunately malleable. But now you have agreed to cooperate with me, so it should be all right.” She met his gaze. “The skry merely indicated that you were best for her; it provided no guarantee that you would live to fulfill it. At any rate, they made a deal: your family would send you out on this night, and Amelie would arrange assistance for you to guarantee your survival. That is why I intercepted you.”

Floyd still saw a hole in it. “Why should you, a magical creature, do that?”

“Why, indeed,” she agreed wryly. “Nursemaiding an ignorant village lout around the world for three years!”

“Thanks,” he said, as wryly. “Why?”

“Three reasons. One, I wouldn’t mind seeing the world myself; it gets dull here in the local forest, for an almost-eternal creature like myself.” She saw his look, and smiled. “Yes, I look young, by design, but I am literally older than the hills. So this could be a pretext to explore while doing my job.”

“Nursemaiding an ignorant village lout,” he agreed. It didn’t really bother him, because of the beauty of her body on display before him, and because her potent kiss had not yet worn off. Who would he rather be nursemaided by?

“Two, I am curious to see why the skry answered as it did. I am a sucker for riddles, and that is a great mystery. But I will never get an answer if you don’t return to marry her.”

“It’s a mystery to me too,” Floyd said. He saw nothing about himself to make him better than any other village lout.

“Three: Amelie purchased my service. So we made the deal, and I am here. If I do not succeed in safeguarding you, I will not get paid.”

“But Amelie has no great money,” he protested. “None of the villagers do.”

She made a gesture as if spitting to the side. “I have no need of gold; I have plenty, which I can conjure at need. It is a mere medium of exchange. No, I will require something more fundamental and enduring.”

“Like what?” He was really curious.

“I haven’t decided yet. It might be her soul; we fantasy creatures lack them and crave them.”

“Her soul!” he exclaimed, appalled.

She put her fine little hand on his. “Peace, Floyd. It can be collected only after she dies of natural causes, probably several decades hence. A soul can’t be hurried, or it loses validity. You could have a happy lifetime with her.”

“What else?” he asked grimly.

“Maybe her firstborn son. We Fee don’t have many males in our number, and they are valuable, especially when properly trained from birth. We can’t bear our own, of course; immortality has its price.”

“But that would be my firstborn son too!”

“She might bear you only girls. Then you would escape that sacrifice. I am ready to gamble on a boy. He would grow up to be no lout.”

“Is there a third option?” he asked, hoping to find something less strenuous.

“I might require the services of her husband every night of the full moon, for the sabbat.”

“But the sabbats are notorious! They are orgiastic affairs no decent person would touch. I wouldn’t agree to that.”

“As if you would have a choice,” she said seriously.

Floyd remembered her kiss, and the fact that she was telling him the truth. As he gazed at her in her nakedness, her body seemed to glow enticingly. She had turned him off, sexually, at least in the purely physical sense; she could turn him on. Indeed, he would not have a choice. But if that was what it took to save his life, and fulfill Amelie’s dream, how could he decline? Anyway, it was far away from now. Much could happen in the interim.

“Like your death,” she said, as if reading his mind. As if? Could she—?

Slowly she nodded. Well, if he had to be nursemaided, she was surely competent. It was probably a fair deal, all things considered. And she nodded again.

“So I guess we’ll be keeping company for three years,” he said. “But I still have questions.”

“To answer them,” she said. “You may call me Faux.”

“Fo? Fo Fee?”

“Fee fo fi fum,” she said, smiling. “No, that word is spelled F A U X, for false, pronounced Fo. I resemble Amelie, by no coincidence, but I am not her, so I am false in that respect. I look as young as you, and that is a monstrous falsity too. I seem to strangers to be innocent, and that may be the greatest falsity of all.”

“Faux,” he repeated, this time mentally spelling it correctly. He realized that because she could read his mind, she had picked up on his error. He was indeed ignorant.

“And no, Amelie need not be concerned about my seducing you, as I could readily do. I am not interested, at least at this time, no matter how coquettishly I may act on occasion, and of course I can prevent you from ever getting serious about addressing my body.” She glanced meaningfully at his midsection, which remained completely passive despite his aroused thoughts.

Still, there was one more question.

“And that one could be a problem,” she agreed, reading his thoughts again. “Suppose I were to actually get interested in you, perhaps because I get to like your qualities, or because I figure out what it is that makes you so highly marriageable, and want to take you for my own? I could take you for your lifetime, and move on thereafter. I have done similarly before, in the course of eons. Amelie would not like that. I would forfeit the payment, of course, but still it could be awkward.”

“Awkward,” he agreed somewhat ruefully.

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

“Let’s hope,” he agreed again. But he wasn’t sure, and the knowing twitch of her lips didn’t help. He nearly wondered if there was a way to make himself appear less desirable, but decided to stop that thought in its tracks.

“And the question you didn’t think to ask,” she said. “How did Amelie come to make the deal with me? And the answer is that she found one more spell in the volume, on how to summon a supernatural creature. I was in the vicinity, on call as it were, so I responded, and we made the deal. Then your folks sent you out, knowing that I would intercept you. Now there’s merely the chore of keeping you out of mischief for three years, and making sure you see enough to have good tales to tell upon your return. I believe I have a convenient route. Now go poop; it’s time for us to rest and sleep, preparing for the morrow.”

“Go—” he began querulously. Then his gut kicked in, and he practically leaped for the privy pot before he exploded. She had known, again, before he did.

She merely smiled.

“What for the morrow?” he called as he performed, no longer caring what she saw. He had no secrets from her anyway.

“That ship the press-gang serves,” she answered. “It sails for far ports. We’ll take it.”

“I don’t want to be a galley slave!”

“Of course not. We will travel in style as the Dowager Queen of Lyonnesse and her wastrel nephew, whom she is taking to Xanadu to make a man of him, so that he will be ready to assume the throne when the time comes. It will doubtless be a long hard haul, physically and emotionally, but it will be accomplished in due course.”

Floyd completed his toilette and returned to the table. “Xanadu—isn’t that rather far away?”

“Half around the world, in Mongolia. It will require months to get there, if we don’t take shortcuts.” She indicated a pile of straw. “Put on your shorts and sleep here beside me. There is room for two, and I don’t want to have to conjure more.”

He balked. “That’s too far. I don’t want to go.”

She pursed her lips as for a compelling kiss. “We will go. I have long been curious about Xanadu where Kublai Khan made a stately pleasure dome beside the sacred River Alph. There are said to be marvelous caverns, and a sunless sea.”

He put on his shorts but did not lie down. “No. I want some say in where we go. It’s my Journey, after all.”

She stepped toward him, lips leading. “I will not argue, Floyd.”

“You’re bluffing,” he said, though he was uncomfortably nervous. “You don’t want to kiss me into submission, because then you’d be stuck for three years with a lovesick village lout forever trying to beg your slightest favor like a hungry puppy, and that would be an impossible pain in the posterior. You want me to agree to do your bidding so you don’t have to waste magic on me and can sleep beside me without having to constantly remove my fumblingly eager hands from your body.”

Faux paused, assessing him. “Not just your hands. So there’s a bit of a spine there after all. What do you really want?” She did not seem angry, surprisingly.

“Just a hint of respect. You’re not my mother or my lover, just a creature hired to keep me safe. You won’t dictate terms to me.”

She nodded. “Agreed. Where do you want to go?”

It had worked! He had established his domain, as it were. He lay down beside her. But then he realized that he had no place in mind. “Xanadu will do.”

She smiled. “So it will.”

“What about Old Blackie? I don’t want him to suffer.”

“He can come too. With enough gold anything is possible, and I’ve got enough. Now sleep.”

He opened his mouth to protest being dismissed, but suddenly he was deep in slumber. Fortunately his dreams were sweet. In them she didn’t mind if he touched her body with hands or whatever.

Chapter 3: Fade Out

Floyd was certain it had all been a dream. The Dusky Elf. The magical tree. The breasts. My God, the breasts. And Amelie, too. Ah, sweet Amelie. Although it had all been a dream, it had been nice to know, however briefly, that the fates had something in store for the two of them.

But, alas, she was on the other side of the village, and he was here, in bed, in his family’s simple cottage, with another day of feeding chickens and showing Old Blackie to look forward to. Oh, and pining after Amelie.

The Journey.

Always, The Journey had been at the back of his mind. Always he knew his time would come. And it had come. Yesterday. When his mother had roused him from in front of the central fire, where he had fallen asleep listening to yet another of his father’s own stories, and been told it was time. Time for what, he asked. Your Journey, she had answered. I packed Old Blackie for you. There’s clean underwear too.

He had stumbled out of the cottage, pushed along by his father, with his kid sister weeping in the doorway, a smattering of neighbors to see him off. He was certain he had seen Amelie back there, too, in the shadows, and then he was too far away to see any of them. And then it was too dark to see even his village. And then the rains had come and the forest had closed in, and he had been one miserable camper, as his dad would say.

But that had all been a dream, right? Because shortly after he had heard the slave traders coming—or what he had assumed were the slave traders—and that’s when the little elf had appeared in the form of Amelie. Amelie!

After that, well, after that had been the stuff of dreams. Of which he was emerging out of now, surely in the comfort of his own bed.

Except...

He touched the mattress with his fingertips, then patted it. This wasn’t his straw mattress with its quilted cover. This was soft. So very soft and heavenly and—

He bolted upright.

And not his bed!

***

“Good morning, sleepyhead,” said a voice from above.

Floyd blinked and rubbed his eyes and seemed to be having a hard time adjusting them. After all, what his eyes were reporting back surely didn’t make sense. A woman was floating above him, legs crossed. And naked.

Now, as his eyes came into focus, Floyd found himself conflicted. Firstly, he had never quite seen a view such as this. Second, he didn’t want to disrupt such a view either, except he needed answers.

“No, you did not dream last night, you dolt.”

Floyd propped himself on his elbows, still looking up, knowing he was being impolite, but unable to tear his gaze away. Then again, maybe this was all part of the dream, too? Maybe he hadn’t really woken up? Maybe he was still back in—

“Ouch!”

“Snap out of it. This is no dream, strange as it might seem. You are awake, as evidenced by my slap, which, by the way, I enjoyed entirely too much.”

He rubbed his heated cheek. “Speak for yourself.”

“It had to be done.”

“You could have, you know, pinched my arm or something.”

“Nothing like a sharp pain to knock some sense in you.”

Floyd stopped rubbing his cheek. It was, after all, more of a shock than anything. “Why are you floating up there?”

“Because Fee don’t sleep, silly boy.”

“Why not?”

The naked creature unfolded her compact frame and settled in next to him, much like a feather coming to rest. “I don’t quite know. And if I did know, I have forgotten.”

“Just how old are you?” he asked, fully aware that, although she lay on her side with one arm propping up her head, her breasts hovered as if floating in water.

“Put your tongue back in your mouth. And I told you last night. I’m older than the hills.”

“But how old is that?”

She scrunched her face. Her pointed ears twitched. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know a lot,” he said, all too aware that he was still naked. His clothes were surely dry by now, even though Faux hadn’t made a fire. He suspected the elf had something up her sleeve when it came to drying his clothing. Even though she wasn’t presently sporting any sleeves. Or anything, for that matter.

Breasts, he thought. She’s sporting breasts.

“Hey, wake up little boy.”

“I’m not little. I’m eighteen. A man in my village.”

“A man who had been turned away and told to return only when he had enough stories.”

“You know the ways of my village?” he asked.

“That, and you talk a lot in your sleep. And you are a little touchy-feely.”

Floyd thought back to his dreams of the night before. Yes, they had, in fact, been very pleasant dreams. “So you just floated up there all night?”

“No, I dried your clothing.” She pointed at his trousers and tunic and boots, all of which were thrown over crystals that he hadn’t noticed before, crystals as big as his chickens back home. They glowed from within, seemingly radiating heat. “And sometimes I lay next to you.”

“Why did you lie next to me?” he asked.

“I get lonely. I hope you don’t mind.”

He blinked. That perfection was lying next to him? Of course he didn’t mind.

“Enough of that,” said Faux rising again into the air. And this time, as she rose, he watched something he still wasn’t entirely prepared to see: clothing appeared over her curved flesh. And as it did, her face and figure changed too. Before his very eyes, the Dusky Elf had turned into the great love of his life, Amelie.

“Now, are you ready?” she asked.

“For what?” he asked, already forgetting their conversation from the night before. There was a lot that he wanted to forget, admittedly. Like his own parents sending him out into a driving storm, to be kidnapped and sold into slavery. Or worse.

“Your adventure, you dolt!”

“Perhaps we can stay here, in your home—and dream up stories for the next year?”

“All while you fall hopelessly in love with me?”

She had him there. Her Amelie impression was perfect enough to confuse him to no end, even down to the voice and hand gestures. He shrugged glumly.

“But we’re safe here,” he said.

Her motion was faster than he expected. In one instant she was standing before him, hands on hips, and the next she had flipped backwards, retrieved his clothing, and flipped back to present him with them. “That’s where you’re wrong.”

“Wrong?” His clothes were wonderfully warm.

“Get dressed. We’re not safe here.”

“But—”

“No buts, hurry.”

“I don’t understand.”

And just as he pulled his leg through his trousers, hopping on one foot, he saw what she meant. The magical room was fading before his eyes. Just beyond the forest was coming into view. The soggy, dripping forest. And perched against trees here and there, their backs pressed against them and heads lolled to the sides, were half a dozen men. The press-gang, surely, waiting them out. One of them knew a little about Fee magic.

“Oh, bunk,” she said, pointing.

He saw it, too. One of the men wasn’t sleeping. One of the men was floating above the forest floor, similar to Faux’s display earlier.

“A Dusky Elf?” he asked, pushing his head through his tunic and yanking on the first of his boots. The room was rapidly dissolving. More of the forest came into view.

“A Hunter Elf,” she said through pursed lips.

“Why is he here? What does he want with me?”

She didn’t answer at first.

“Faux?” asked Floyd. He had pulled on his boot and the magical room was nearly completely dissolved.

“He’s not after you,” she said. “He’s after me.”

In that moment, the shield went down and somewhere a horse neighed. Nearly all the men jumped to their feet. The Hunter Elf lifted his head, looked at them, and smiled. It was not a nice smile.

Floyd didn’t know much, but he knew how to run. He leaped upon Old Blackie and grabbed Faux’s hand and yanked her up behind him. The nice thing about an elf, Floyd thought as he heeled his horse, is that they are nearly light as air.

They dashed off into the forest, riding hard, with the sounds of their pursuers close behind.

Chapter 4: Innocence

It was great having Faux virtually glued to his back, and he was highly conscious of the soft parts of her body touching him. But Floyd soon realized that the press-gangsmen had faster, fresher horses than tired Old Blackie. They were gaining, and they were already way too close for comfort. Worse, the Hunter Elf was unmounted. He floated ahead and slightly to the side of them, his intense gaze fixed on Faux. He could not be escaped no matter how fast the horse ran.

“What does he want with you?” Floyd asked as they charged through the forest.

“What does any bull want with a cow?” she asked in return. “Or a buck goat with a doe in heat?”

Floyd had seen such animals in action. She was right: that was the look the elf was firing at her. He could appreciate why: she was as luscious a female as he had ever seen, clothed or unclothed, active or in repose.

“Willing or unwilling,” she finished his thought. She took a deep breath, which he felt at two delightful spots on his back. “Ravisher has lusted after me for what seems like eons. I have held the brute off magically, but he regards it as a challenge. If I make any slip at all, he’ll bind me spread-eagled with a spell and nail my flinching pelvis to a tree trunk for hours before he even warms up his member, let alone exhausts it.”

Floyd shuddered. A supernatural man would not have mortal limits. “But you’re not in heat,” he protested weakly. Animals did not breed when not in heat.

“True. I can take it or leave it. But he is in chronic heat and cares not whether his target is ready or unready. He is a mean male.”

“I certainly am, you luscious morsel,” Ravisher called. “And now I have you over a barrel because you have to distract your attention from defending that ignorant mortal lout. I believe there is at last an avenue, and I mean to get thoroughly into it. But I will be generous: oblige me fully without further resistance, and I will spare him the ministrations of the press-gang. For as long as you remain mine.”

Floyd had little doubt it was a fair offer, considering their present plight. “Maybe you should dump me and fly out of here, as I know you can. Save yourself; I’m doomed anyway.”

“Never!” she said tightly. “I gave my word. There are other options.”

“You have about run out of options, cupcake,” Ravisher called. “What little remains is realism. Open up, at long last, and enjoy the experience.”

Indeed, the pursuers were now so close that their lead horse could bite Old Blackie’s tail. The end was entirely too near.

Faux brought out a small figure; Floyd could see it beside him in her extended hand. “What’s that?” he asked, curious despite their predicament.

“It’s an Elf Talisman,” she replied, holding it up and stroking it with her thumb.

“A what?”

“To summon the Light Elves. Specifically, the White Ladies.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I do, you female hound,” Ravisher said, and dived for it.

But Faux’s thumb punched the belly of the figure just before he got there.

Then suddenly they were in a pleasant glade: Floyd, Faux, and Old Blackie. The horse was in a sad state, breathing so hard he seemed about to explode.

A lovely young woman appeared before them, garbed in a flimsy white gown that barely concealed her evocative curves. She had sky-blue eyes, and her hair was like fresh cornsilk, flowing gently down to her waist. “Peace, stallion,” she said, stroking the horse’s nose. The horse relaxed immediately, as if rested for an hour.

Floyd and Faux dismounted, and the woman led the horse to the side, where there was excellent grazing. Then she faced Faux. “To what do we owe the honor of this visit by a Dusky Elf and her cohort?”

But Floyd picked up a certain aura about the woman that made him pause. She was surely a magical creature, and not necessarily a friend despite her soft language.

“We greet you grandly, Lady Sunrise,” Faux said formally. “I am Faux Fee, and this is my charge, Floyd Mortal, and Old Blackie Equine. We plead sanctuary.”

“And what do you offer in return, Lady Faux?”

So this was a business deal, something for something. But Floyd doubted these creatures had any need or desire for gold. What was their medium of exchange?

“The entertainment of The Innocent.”

Sunrise considered momentarily, glancing at Floyd with disconcerting intensity. “I believe it will do. My sisters are engaged at the moment, but will return shortly. Do you wish to admit the hovering Dark Elf to join us here?”

“No. He is the reason we ask for Sanctuary.”

The White Lady nodded. “He shall be excluded. Come, relax while my sisters conclude their business and come to join us.”

“Thank you, Lady,” Faux said gratefully.

Sunrise showed them to a pavilion in the glade, and sat them at a table bearing white sweetcakes and wine glasses. She poured a sparkling white fluid into the glasses.

Floyd was nervous. “Uh, should we be drinking? We have far to go.”

Sunrise smiled brilliantly, and the glade seemed to illuminate. “Dear boy, we have extended our hospitality. We will not cause you any mischief. This is fruit juice that will not cloud your mind.” She formed a lesser smile. “We would not want to cloud your mind.”

What did that mean? He glanced at Faux, who nodded almost imperceptibly and sipped her own. So he lifted his glass and sipped. It was indeed mixed berry juice, pleasantly tart, surely harmless. He bit into a sweetcake, and it was delicious.

“We seldom have visitors,” Sunrise said.

Faux laughed. “That may be because you are extremely rare creatures in these parts. I believe you are the only White Lady clan outside central Europe. We would never have found you without the Talisman.”

“We do value our privacy,” Sunrise agreed. “If I may ask, how came you by the Talisman?”

Faux made an intriguing moue. “I did a favor for a lonely elf king some time ago.”

“Ah, you were the one!” Sunrise exclaimed. “He spoke of that night of utter bliss with special fondness.”

“I did my best to satisfy him,” Faux agreed. “Unfortunately that attracted the attention of Ravisher.”

“Ah.” Sunrise’s expression showed complete understanding.

Another fair young woman appeared in the glade. She was much like Sunrise in face and figure, but her eyes were darkly shadowed. “Moonlight,” Sunrise said. “How goes it?”

“He was unworthy,” Moonlight said with a hint of regret. “I had to dismiss him.” She produced a jeweled comb and stroked a single displaced tress back into place.

“This is our guest, Faux Fee,” Sunrise said, indicating Faux. “And her companion, Floyd Mortal. He will presently join us in a game of Innocence.”

“Ah.” Moonlight focused on Floyd with the same disconcerting appraisal her sister had shown. “That will be nice.”

Soon another White Lady appeared, similar to the others but with eyes that seemed almost to shine like bright stars. She was introduced as Morningstar. And another, with dark star eyes: Eveningstar. And finally one whose eyes were like the setting sun: Sunset. All of them were transcendentally beautiful. Sisters indeed!

Faux stood. “I believe I shall be on my way.”

“But what of this game?” Floyd asked, alarmed that they would miss what he suspected would be a most interesting experience. “We can’t go yet.”

“Let me explain,” Faux said gently. “Ravisher is lurking outside this magically protected park. He seeks to intercept me as I leave, which could be a rather awkward encounter. So I prefer to make my way to the ship in a disguise he will not recognize, and meet you there in due course. One of the White Ladies will guide you for that brief trip only; the game is to select which one.”

“But I don’t really know these ladies, lovely as they are,” Floyd protested. “They owe me nothing. I don’t wish to impose.”

Sunrise put her fine hand on his arm, and he froze in place. “It is not an imposition, Floyd. We truly appreciate your company.”

And while the Lady held him in stasis, Faux faded out. It seemed he was committed. “Uh, then thank you, Ladies. I hope I don’t disappoint you.”

“You are unlikely to do that,” Sunrise said softly.

“Uh, okay,” he said awkwardly. He knew he could trust Faux, and that she would not leave him in a bad situation, but these lovely, powerful creatures made him nervous. What did they really want with him?

“The game is simple,” Sunrise said, turning him around to face the center of the pavilion. The table had been replaced by a low circular dais. A maidservant was just finishing placing the chairs around it. “You will interview each of us for approximately one minute, and then choose which one of us will accompany you to the ship. None of us may touch you during the show, but any promise any of us makes must be honored on the journey.”

“But I’m hardly equipped to judge. Maybe you should just have one, well, volunteer for the chore.”

She smiled. “That is not the way it works, sweet man. You alone must choose. Now we begin. I will be first.”

He found himself rooted to the spot as she mounted the dais. “Floyd, I would like to guide you along the path to the ship,” she said as the other maidens settled into chairs that the maidservant placed behind them. “I see in you a fine young man with great potential. I will entertain you along the way with my merry melodies. Some songs are romantically conducive.” And she broke into a pretty song with just a hint of titillation that thrilled him for the brief time it lasted until her minute was up. Then she went silent and stepped off the stage.

Floyd knew already that she was the one he wanted to accompany him. What a sprightly creature! He longed to hear her more seductive songs. But he had to watch the other Ladies first.

Now Moonlight stepped onto the dais. “I can entertain you with my little magic tricks,” she said. A handkerchief appeared in her hand. She shook it out and a small bird fluttered out. “I can do tricks with your body too. I can make things rise.” Her hands moved suggestively. “Once we are discreetly alone.”

Was she promising what he thought she was? He would love to have her hands evoking his body. She had already made a portion of him rise. She was the one he really wanted.

It was Morningstar’s turn. She was fully garbed and veiled, most attractively. She did not speak, she danced. First she removed her veil and let it flutter to the floor of the pavilion. Then she removed her robe and was revealed in decorative bra and panties. She drew that bra off, and her marvelous breasts bounced seductively as she moved. Then her panties, so that she paraded nude as her minute ended. She stepped off with a smoldering glance, her pert buttocks flexing.

Had he wanted the others? Foolishness. Indeed, this was the one!

Eveningstar stepped on. She wore a low-slung halter and lower-slung pantaloons. She did not remove them, but instead moved them in a manner that phenomenally enhanced her considerable assets. It was a striptease, and this clothed art was phenomenally seductive, making evocative mysteries of her barely hidden parts. Floyd realized that it was not really the nudity that was sexy, it was the motion. Yes, she was the one he wanted.

Sunset was on. “Day is ending, night is coming,” she said. “I can deliver you into a divine dream you will never want to end. The passions of Day fade before the passions of Night.” She made a stroking-and-kissing gesture that practically made him float off the ground. Oh, how he wanted to dream of her all night long! She was definitely the one!

The maidservant stepped onto the dais. She was ordinary to the point of plainness, with a homely face and rather spare figure, and her hair was cut short about her neck so as not to interfere with her humble duties. She toyed nervously with her simple bead necklace. “I am sorry, sir,” she said. “There was supposed to be a sixth Lady, but she was detained and I must substitute. I am Trudy. I am a lowly mortal girl. I will not bore you long. I promise only to always tell the truth when you ask me a question, to the extent I know it or am allowed; I am under a geis not to reveal too much of the private business of the Ladies I serve.”

“A what?”

“A geis,” she repeated, pronouncing it geesh. “It is a magic obligation of honor that binds me. The White Ladies will not allow some of their secrets to be revealed to mortals. But apart from that, I will help you all I can. I know the way to the port town well, as I have relatives there I often visit. I can get you there in time to catch the ship.”

Floyd was taken aback. Trudy was promising him nothing except honest and competent guidance. Wasn’t that what he wanted? The Ladies were all fabulous, but he knew they were toying with him. In fact, he realized that they could read his mind. They must have been deliberately exciting him so they could revel in his innocent mortal reactions. That was why this game was called Innocence. If he chose one, and she seduced him on the way to the ship, she would pick up every nuance of his evoked and surely clumsy passion, and likely share it mentally with her sisters. They all would be seducing him. He would be like a performing bear, an object of great amusement. That was the deal they had made with Faux, in return for deliverance from the press-gang.

“This is true,” Sunrise said beside him, not concealing her intimate inspection of his mind. “But you can enjoy it too. We guarantee that.”

“And what then of my—my innocence?” he demanded. Suddenly that was valuable to him, oddly.

“It will inevitably dissipate. Innocence is a sadly fleeting thing, in mortals and immortals. We treasure it the little time it endures, and value it immensely. Already yours is suffering. Please, Floyd Mortal, indulge us in this. Your innocence will all too soon be lost anyway, wasted on those who won’t appreciate it as we do, and we offer a most pleasant way to abate it. Choose a companion.”

But Floyd had had enough. He feared being mocked by these sophisticated creatures, and wanted none of it. “I choose Trudy,” he said curtly.

“But I’m just substituting; I’m not really supposed to—” the girl protested.

“The decision is mine to make, isn’t it? Let’s get moving, lest I miss the ship.”

She bowed her head submissively. “As you wish, sir.”

“Old Blackie!” he called, and the grazing horse perked up his ears. “Here to me!”

The horse came. Floyd mounted, then swung Trudy up before him. She was a light little thing, smelling faintly of new-mown hay. He turned to the White Ladies. “I do thank you for your service,” he said. “You did save my life. If we ever meet again, perhaps my attitude will differ.”

“But you will no longer be innocent,” Sunrise said sadly.

“I apologize for that.” Then he nudged the horse with his knees, and they walked out of the glade.

Chapter 5: Trudy

“This way,” the girl said, indicating a path through the forest. “It’s the best one.”

“Thanks.” He guided Old Blackie that way. The horse picked up the scent of the path and followed it without further direction.

“You were amazing,” Trudy said. “I was sure you would choose one of the Ladies, and she would have obliged you handsomely. They are excellent at what they do.”

“But my mission was merely to reach the ship. I am doing that now.”

She laughed. “With an ugly peasant girl! Others will think you a fool.”

“You’re not ugly.” But that was as far as he could honestly take it. She was completely plain.

“Thank you. But I know I am nothing.”

Old Blackie snorted. “He smells something,” Floyd said. “He’s alarmed.”

“I fear I know what it is,” she said. “There was more going on than you knew.”

“Oh? What?”

“That press-gang. They eliminated it. That’s why they were late getting to the pavilion. Moonlight even got her hair mussed.”

“I don’t understand. Those were rough men. If they’d encountered any of those lovely women—” He broke off, not wanting to share his ugly thought.

The horse halted. There was something in the path ahead of them.

Floyd quickly dismounted, and Trudy followed. What they saw was a dead man.

“That’s one of the press-gang,” Floyd said. “I can tell by his uniform. They were probably laying siege to the Ladies’ sanctuary, waiting for us to emerge. It looks as if his neck is broken. How could that have happened?”

“The Ladies pay me in incidental spells,” Trudy said. “Let me invoke one.” She lifted her necklace and touched a bead.

A ball of light appeared above the body. It expanded into a globe that showed a scene. It was this path. A woman walked along it. It was Moonlight!

A man strode out of the shadow of a tree. It was one of the press-gangsmen. “Ho, wench!” he called. “What do ye here, alone in the forest?”

“I go to the field to harvest fresh berries, sir,” she replied. She looked lovely in her filmy gown. “Please let me pass.”

“No one else is near?” he asked, looking around.

“No one, sir. I go alone.”

“Well now.” He grabbed her by her narrow waist. “I’ve got something better for you to do than pick berries.”

“Please unhand me, sir,” she said, struggling ineffectively. “I do not wish to be with you.”

“Tough crap, sister.” He put a hand to her bodice and ripped it down, exposing her breasts.

“Will you not let me go, sir?” she pleaded plaintively.

“Sure, after I’ve swived you.” He ripped at her exposed panties as he bore her back. “What a body!”

“Then I must need defend myself,” she said. She stepped into him, put her hands to his head, and turned it sharply with surprising force. There was a crack as his neck broke. She stepped back as he dropped to the ground. One tress was loose.

The picture faded.

Floyd was amazed. “I saw that loose tress. She—she did a magic trick. She said she would—be with me.”

“And so she would,” Trudy agreed. “You were innocent, and not trying to force her. They can be very nice to men they like, but they kill men they don’t like. All the press-gangsters are dead except the last one, who I think must have treated the Lady with some respect, so she obliged him and sent him on his way with a warning. That was why she did not show up for the game, and I had to take her place. It requires more time to seduce a man than to kill him.”

“Moonlight—she was so soft and nice,” Floyd said, stricken by the contrast.

“Your innocence is blemished. The White Ladies are soft, but they are not nice unless they choose to be. Moonlight gave that bad man a fair chance.”

“She did,” Floyd agreed. He dragged the corpse out of the path. He scrounged for a solid stick and scraped out a shallow grave, then dragged the body into it and dumped it over. The press-gangster was bad, but he was after all a man, and deserved that much of a burial.

“You’re nice even to a dead enemy,” Trudy said.

“I try to do the right thing,” he said. “Even if I don’t always know what it is.”

“That is good.”

Then they returned to the horse, mounted, and resumed their trek. “What do you do for the Ladies?” he asked her.

“Housework, mostly. I clean out the dust, make the beds, that sort of thing.”

“Beds? What need have they of beds, if they don’t sleep?”

She laughed. “They don’t sleep, though they can pretend to. Sometimes they have visitors, such as royal male elves. Then they really use those beds. Sometimes the sheets get tied in knots from their exertions. Those are busy days for me.”

“I remain amazed.”

“You travel with a Fee,” she said. “Have you no idea of her nature?”

“Oh, yes! But it’s a platonic association.”

“No sex?”

“None. Remember, I’m innocent. A virgin youth. But she could change that instantly if she chose.”

“You may be more valuable to her innocent, as today showed. Do you love her?”

“No. I love a village maid I know. From afar. But I’m sure Faux could change that, too, if she wanted to. But I think she prefers to have me as an emotionally independent companion. I respect that.”

“So do I. You’re a nice boy.”

“Thanks,” he said dryly.

“I didn’t mean to be unkind. I meant nice in the way those press-gangsters were nasty. The kind of man a woman could respect and love.”

“Oh? Even you?”

She blushed. She was sitting ahead of him, facing forward, but her neck gave it away. “I shouldn’t have said that. But it’s true. I wish I were pretty enough to hold your attention.”

A slow revelation was forging through his mind. A girl did not always need to be pretty to be worthwhile. Trudy was good, and he could surely be happy with her, were he not blinded by Amelie’s distant beauty. “I—wish I had more time to get to know you better,” he said.

“You don’t. That ship won’t wait for you. You have far better things to do than dally with the likes of me.”

“I’m supposed to be learning things I can tell as stories when I return home. Maybe I’ll have one about you.”

She stiffened, alarmed. “Please don’t! I’m so dull you’d quickly put your audience to sleep. Tell them instead about the lovely White Ladies.”

“Them too. But that skry you did on that body wasn’t dull.”

Trudy looked at the sky. “Oops, we’re late. We shouldn’t have paused so long with the dead man.”

Was she changing the subject? “I didn’t think of our schedule at the time,” he said. “I’m clumsy that way.”

“It’s a nice clumsiness. You took time to decently bury that man. But that expended our limited time. Look, Floyd—I know a shortcut that can get us there in time regardless. But you may not want to take it.”

“Why not?”

“It goes right through a field of magic passion flowers.”

“Does that mean what I think it means?”

“We would have to walk through it acting passionate. Like a committed couple. Kissing and such. The flowers aren’t telepathic; they don’t know what’s in our minds. They judge by appearances. So if we appear loving, they’ll let us through.”

“And if we don’t? If we try to forge grimly through?”

“They are like the White Ladies, deadly when annoyed. Passion can be negative as well as positive. They would sting us to death. That’s why few folk other than lovers take that particular path.” She took a breath. “Can you handle it?”

Could he be affectionate with a girl, any girl? Why not? “I can handle it if you can.”

“I can handle it. I already like you.” She paused, then quickly amended herself. “I know you must go on your way to Xanadu, and all, and probably will not be back. I would never want to interfere with your life, even if I could. So I can handle that aspect too. I’m a realist, as I have to be. But for a few minutes, in the field, it may seem otherwise.” Her blush returned. “As if I actually had a boyfriend.”

And of course she didn’t. Because she was plain. Floyd felt burgeoning anger at all boys, including himself.

“You are angry,” she said. “I feel your body stiffening.” For his arms touched her on either side as he operated the reins, for all that Old Blackie hardly needed the guidance. “I’m sorry. I tend to talk too much. I apologize.”

“No, you’re fine. I’m angry at myself. For being a lout.”

“You’re not a lout! You’re a traveler.”

As if the two could not coincide. Best not to argue the case. “We’d better get on the path to the passion flower field.”

“We’re on it. The horse accepted my guidance, the pressure of my legs, once you agreed.” She looked up. “And here it is.”

Ahead of them a field of purple flowers opened up. They grew on vines and were quite pretty. The path led through the center.

Floyd dismounted, then helped Trudy down. Now he was conscious of her body; she did have woman features under her maid’s outfit. He wondered what the pressure of her legs would feel like when they weren’t guiding a horse. He was also conscious of the pleasant fragrance of the flowers. It made him want to romance someone.

“Too bad Old Blackie doesn’t have a mare to flirt with,” Trudy said. Then, peering across the field, she looked surprised. “Or does he? There’s a wild filly.”

Indeed, across the field was a fetching young female horse. “Could be a spook,” Floyd said warily. People weren’t the only ones who could be treacherously tempted.

She laughed. “Spooks need company too. Old Blackie will know.”

Floyd petted the horse’s neck. “Go flirt with the filly, Blackie. But meet us at the far side.”

Blackie twitched an ear affirmatively and set out across the field. The mare bounded forward to meet him, her tail flying high. They met in the center and nuzzled each other.

“Our turn,” Trudy said. “Brace yourself.” She took his arm.

Maybe it was the ambiance of the passion flowers. Floyd turned into her, put his arms about her body, and kissed her. She met him eagerly. With his eyes closed, she felt like, well, the way he imagined Amelie to be. Her lips, and even her body. How much difference was there, really, in girls, when touch was the operative factor?

Then they broke, mutually embarrassed. “Uh, I’m sorry,” he said. “Something came over me.”

“And me,” she said breathlessly. “Come on, we can’t dawdle long.” She gripped his hand and led him into the field.

Floyd didn’t try to count the times they kissed while crossing. That was just as well, because he suspected the kisses were countless. He was sorely tempted to get down on the ground with her and do more, and suspected she would cooperate. But he did retain some personal control, and confined himself to kissing and maybe a little guilty feeling when his hands strayed low on her backside.

Then they were across, and Old Blackie was waiting for them, the spooked mare was gone. Had she been properly bred? It was possible.

They mounted and resumed their trek. Neither spoke; what could they say? But Floyd knew that if he ever came this way again, and Trudy was there with him, they’d revel in complete passion and not regret it. So she was plain; who cared? There was more to a girl than appearance.

Even the horse seemed invigorated, stepping right along. That filly must have made him feel young again.

Floyd realized that he had learned a lesson. He was infatuated with distant Amelie because she was pretty, but he hardly knew her. In just a few hours he had come to know plain Trudy, and she was surely as good a girl. It had been fun with her among the magic passion flowers. Why should his eye be on the distant beauty while he missed the ordinary nearby one who might actually be just as good for him? Just as his eye was now on far Xanadu, when the local scene might be just as good. Such as the White Ladies. He needed to gain perspective. “Life is a Journey,” he murmured.

“Life is a Process,” Trudy answered, startling him. She had thoughts too?

“Life is complicated,” he agreed ruefully.

They soon came to the outskirts of the town. There was the harbor, and the ship moored at the wharf. It was a large galley, with sails and oars. Floyd shuddered to think how close he had come to being hijacked to man one of those oars. It was much better to be a paying passenger. The sailors were raising her mainsail; she was ready to sail.

Floyd looked around. “I’m supposed to meet Faux here. Where is she?”

“She is here,” the girl before him said, subtly changing.

Oh, no! “Faux! It was you all along!”

“Be at ease,” she said. “There really is a Trudy, employed as described. I merely emulated her for convenience, so I could reach the ship without that bad elf recognizing me.”

Of course. She had used him as part of her cover. He should have expected no less. “You had me fooled.” He had even been talking about her, and her power over him. Had she arranged to have them traverse the passion flower field? Surely so. His ignorant kisses must have amused her.

“You are taking strides toward manhood, but there remains a way to go,” she said, not denying it. “Now the Dowager Queen must take over. We shall dismount.”

Floyd did so, and then she let him help her down, as Trudy had. But now she was a regal older woman with a dark crown on her head.

He thought of something. “If you left while I was, um, entertaining the White Ladies, how could you also be Trudy?”

“I sent a phantasm, like a will-o-the-wisp in my image, to furtively flee the glade,” she explained. “Ravager spied it, of course, and pursued it, but it remained ever just beyond his grasp. By the time he realized that it was a decoy, we were here. It will take him just long enough to get here for us to safely board the ship.”

“I’m glad you made it,” he said. “Though I suppose we didn’t have to catch this particular ship.”

“Oh, but we did, dear boy,” she said in her auntly manner. “Ravager has hounded me for decades, and I need to escape him entirely. Elves can’t touch open water, unless they’re of a water variety, or have very special magic, so he will be unable to reach me once I’m on the ship and the ship is at sea. This is the right ship, as it sails for the Orient. He’ll never find me there, even if he takes another ship.”

“Elves can’t cross the sea? I didn’t know that.”

She patted his cheek. “There are more things in Heaven and Earth than your philosophy dreams of. That’s a quote from—”

“I get it,” he agreed quickly.

They approached the ship, whose name he now read on her prow: MNEMOSYNE. He had no idea what it meant, if anything other than some girl’s name.

“Mnemosyne is the Goddess of Memory, mother of the Muses,” Faux explained, answering his thought. “I knew her well, in days of yore, but we have fallen out of touch in recent centuries.”

Oh.

They marched up to the entry gangway, leading the horse. The officer there looked as if he were about to protest, but the queen preempted any likely response of his with her haughty announcement: “Dowager Queen Faux of Lyonnesse, with her wastrel Nephew Floyd and a Royal Equine, on the way to Xanadu. Here is our payment for first-class passage.” She thrust forward a small bag.

The man took the bag, opened it, and peered inside. Heavy coins clinked. His pupils widened appreciatively. “Very good, ma’am.”

They crossed the gangway—woman, youth, and horse—and were soon settled in the ship’s best cabin and stall. The ship cast off, and the chained oarsmen set to with an (ill) will, buttressing the slack sails.

They were on their way. Floyd looked out the porthole, and saw a raging elf hovering by the shore. “Elves can’t fly over open water either,” Faux explained smugly. “It depletes our special powers.”

Just so.

Chapter 6: Writer

Floyd was exhausted.

This had been, he was certain, the strangest day he had ever had, and it was only day two of his Journey. At this rate, he was going to have many lifetimes of tales, certainly more than he could ever relay to his village. Why, how was he going to remember them all?

“Keep a journal,” said Faux, who had returned to her natural fey appearance, which was just as well. Floyd wasn’t sure what he thought about Amelie; after all, he was fairly certain he just might have fallen in love with the servant girl, Trudy.

“A what?” he asked, distracted.

“A journal is a written record of one’s life,” she said patiently. They were in a cramped room just above the ship’s hold. Occasionally, Floyd could hear the scuttle of rats coming up through the floorboards. From the sound of it, the rats had taken over the bottom of the ship. He felt sorry for Old Blackie down there, who was surely doing his part in stamping the life out of the rodents. Faux went on: “The more interesting the life, the more interesting the journal.”

“Very well,” he said. “But what is this ‘written’ that you speak of?” He stretched out along a fold-up plank, held in place by thick iron hinges. Never before had he seen what Faux had called a wall bed. Floyd used his rolled-up overcoat for a pillow, and crossed his feet at his ankles. With the rocking of the ship, Floyd couldn’t have been more comfortable. Which made him feel a little guilty about Old Blackie alone in that dark hold, with all the rats, among other critters, no doubt.

Floyd felt her eyes upon him. Once again, she was floating in the air above him, legs crossed. She was still clothed, which was just as well. He was exhausted, and he’d had enough excitement to last, well, many days. Maybe even weeks.

“You do not know how to write, let alone read,” she said, dropping down a little and hovering just above his chest.

Although one of his arms was presently under his head, Floyd managed to shrug. “Almost no one in my village knows how to write or read, but what does this have to do with ‘written’?” he asked.

“Written is the past participle of write.”

Floyd nearly fell asleep right then and there. It took a super-human effort to keep his eyes open. He yawned and said, “Write, I know. Written, not so much. ‘Past particles’ sounds like gibberish.”

“Participles—never mind. Would you like to learn how to read and write, Floyd?”

“I thought only friars knew how to read and write,” he said.

“Only in small villages like yours, Floyd. In bigger cities, writers are very popular.”

“Why?”

“Because they create stories that take readers away.”

“Away from what?”

“Their mundane lives.”

“They write about their own Journey?”

Faux giggled. “You really haven’t gotten out much?”

“Beyond my village? Almost never. Once my pa and I went to the next village over, but it was a day’s ride and I didn’t care for it very much at all. I preferred to stay at home and daydream.”

“Floyd, most villages do not send off their youth on such frivolous and dangerous adventures. In fact, yours might be the only one.”

“But then how do writing men get their stories if not from their own Journeys?”

“Writing men or women are called writers, Floyd. And many travel the world on their own—or with traders or explorers. Some join armies and fight in distant lands. Many more write about their own life experiences. And still some create stories straight from their own heads.”

“Seems safer to just make them up.”

“I would hazard to guess that most writers use a little of everything: travels and experience and loads of imagination.”

“Imagine—what?”

“Making up stories.”

Floyd nodded at that. He was good with making up stories, which was one reason why he never felt the need to go find his own stories. Why risk one’s life when one could just make them up?

“And you have read these written stories?” he asked Faux.

“They are called books, and I have. As many as I can get my hands on.”

“But why? Are they so pleasurable?”

“Some very much so! But I read to fill up my time.”

“But why?”

“I am a sleepless immortal, Floyd. I have a lot of time to fill up.”

“Is that one reason why you accepted this mission? To fill up some of your time?”

“You are smarter than you look, Floyd.”

Floyd wasn’t sure if that was a compliment or not, and so he decided to let it go. Instead, he considered her words. After all, had he not, just the day before, settled on the idea of holing himself up in some mountain cave and creating his own stories? He had, and he thought it would have been easy to do. Perhaps if he knew how to read and write he could become a professional storyteller.

“And there are those who make a living with words?”

“Indeed. And some are very famous. In fact, one of them is on this very ship.”

“A writing man—I mean—a writer is on the ship? I would like to meet him!”

“And perhaps I can arrange it. I see this has struck your fancy.”

“Boy, has it. Writing seems much more fun than tilling fields or harvesting crops or feeding pigs or collecting eggs or...”

Chapter 7: Swift

“His name is Jonathan Swift,” said Faux the next morning.

They were in the ship’s galley with the other paying passengers. Faux had once again summoned her haughty queen guise, and Floyd had awoken dressed in clean garments befitting a queen’s nephew. Prior to breaking their fast, Faux had spent some time with Floyd, teaching him the alphabet and a few common words. They used a writing slate or “blackboard,” as Faux called it, which hovered magically in the air before him. He also used chalk sticks, which formed stark white lines on the flat stone. Seeing the words he spoke take shape before him was one of his greatest thrills ever. Faux, he saw, seemed pleased.

The man sitting alone in the galley was reading a book. Floyd had seen only one book in all his life, and that had been the Bible from which Friar Anton read from each Sunday. His Bible was as big as a brick and was bound with wood and copper clasps, and was easily one of the oldest things in the village.

This book, by comparison, was half the size and featured no wooden covers or straps, and barely looked a day over ten years old. Floyd was dubious.

“Books come in all shapes and sizes, village boy,” said Faux next to him, whispering in his ear. Her hot breath on his skin was a vivid reminder of the frolicking the two had done just the day before. Not for the first time, Floyd had nearly requested for Trudy to materialize again, and for them to return to the fun and games. But he resisted. After all, it wasn’t Trudy that he had been kissing. It had been Faux. It was all a bit much for his confused brain.

“I should have warned you, little man,” said Faux now, “but I doubted we could have passed the scrutiny of the passion flowers.”

Floyd nodded now. In truth, he was more interested in only the second book he had ever seen—and in the man reading it. Next to him, Faux shook her head and mumbled something about men and gnats and attention spans. Floyd wasn’t sure; after all, he wasn’t listening. Instead, he found himself drawn inexorably to the man reading the book with his back to him.

Floyd cleared his throat and mustered his courage. “Hello, good sir. My name is—”

“Floyd of Lyonnesse,” said the man turning. He carefully closed his book. “I have been waiting for you.”

“Y-You have?”

“Your aunt the queen told me all about your Journey last night. Fascinating stuff. I would like to hear more about it.”

“S-She did? Y-You do?” Floyd could think of nothing more dull than his little village.

“Of course he does,” said Faux, sidling next to him and extending her hand to the writer of stories. The man took it and kissed it, his lips lingering. Floyd couldn’t help but note the look in the man’s eyes. Or the sparkle in them. Both meant for Faux. Floyd was surprised to discover he was jealous. And why shouldn’t he be? Hadn’t he been kissing her just yesterday? He had been, and he’d quite liked it.

“Your Highness,” he said. “Always a pleasure to meet one of my readers.”

Floyd didn’t like the way the man said ‘pleasure.’ He also didn’t like the way the man continued to hold Faux’s hand. Floyd had never felt jealousy before, and he didn’t like it. Not one bit.

“Floyd,” said Faux sharply, effectively cutting off his rapidly spiraling thoughts. “Let me introduce you to one of Ireland’s greatest writers: Jonathan Swift.”

Floyd wanted to be angry. He wanted to storm out of the galley. But he was hungry, and the man intrigued him. Floyd had never met a writer before. And before yesterday, hadn’t known they existed. But here was a man who made a living with words and tales. Perhaps he wasn’t so bad.

“Thank you again for giving my nephew an audience, Mr. Swift. Surely, you are a busy man.”

“Not as busy as you think, Your Highness.”

“But surely you are in the middle of another fine tale. I absolutely adored the very fun and clever A Tale of the Tub.”

Swift, to his credit, turned a shade of pink and thanked her for her kind words. In response to her question he told the two that he’d been suffering a bit of writer’s block of late and had hoped this sea voyage would galvanize his imagination and his pen.

“But I am with little hope, I’m afraid,” he said. “The drought has been going on for nigh six months.”

“Perhaps you just need to find the right Muse, Mr. Swift,” said Faux playfully. Too playfully for Floyd’s liking.

Swift’s spirits seemed to lift. He winked. “Perhaps I already did.”

“What’s a Muse?” asked Floyd. “Do I have one?”

“If you are so lucky, lad. Perhaps I should return to my book before I turn you off from writing completely.”

The writer had just made a motion to sit again when a warning bell sounded outside. This was followed by some shouting and the running of feet. “Perhaps I’ll see what’s going on,” said Swift, and stood, nodding once to Faux.

Floyd turned to the elf for an explanation, and found her eyes closed. They remained closed as she said, “The captain fears a storm. A most unusual storm.”

“A most unusual storm?” asked Floyd.

“Supernatural, perhaps.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I do. Ravager.”

“But you just said he can’t travel across water.”

“He can’t, but his friends can.”

“What sort of friends?”

“Sirens,” said Faux. “Water nymphs of a dastardly kind. They can control the ocean, to a degree. We’re going to have to plug your ears.”

“My ears. Wait, what?”

It was then that something soft and silky slid into his ears and all sound abated for Floyd. This was followed shortly by the softest of words he had ever heard, just inside his ears.

Can you hear me, Floyd?

It was Faux, and she was in his head. He nodded, confused but intrigued too.

Good, let’s find the captain and Jonathan too. And as many shipmates as we can. They can all use earplugs.

But why? he asked, hoping he was doing this mind-to-mind communication correctly.

You are doing it fine. And it’s because the Sirens hope to crash the ship into a nearby island. She cocked her head again. A very mysterious nearby island.

Mysterious, how? he asked, as Faux pulled him along the now-hectic galley. Floyd sure wished he could have had any food at all, but that thought quickly fled when her next words gently filled his head: I see little people.

Except Floyd hadn’t a clue what she meant.

Chapter 8: Nor Any Drop to Drink

Faux’s quiet magic blocked the ears of all aboard the Mnemosyne so that they did not hear the deadly song of the Sirens. But that did not solve every problem. The storm rocked the ship, forcing heroic measures just to keep her on course, even with her sails trimmed. The galley slaves had to struggle to maintain direction and motion, and it turned out that the Sirens were not limited to song.

Floyd stood on the windswept deck, desperately clinging to a mast, because the severe rocking of the vessel made him seasick and he didn’t want to vomit in their cabin. Wild as the weather was, it did not prevent him from seeing what was beyond the deck, in the water: absolutely lovely young women, at least their bare top halves. They spied him and beckoned alluringly, their hair flaring and their breasts bouncing. He knew better than to go to them; he would drown in short order. But not all the sailors were that restrained.

Then someone joined him on the deck. Not a crewman, a passenger. In fact, it was Jonathan Swift, looking ill. He put his head close to Floyd’s head and shouted to be heard over the earplugs and raging storm. “You, too?” he inquired sickly.

Floyd’s resentment of the man diminished. He was a companion in seasickness? “Yes,” he shouted back.

After that, they got used to the shouting, so that it seemed almost like a normal conversation. Almost.

“I’m thinking this voyage is a mistake, at least for me,” Jonathan said. “You young folk can handle it, but I’m fifty-three. I never had good health; even as a child I suffered from dizziness, deafness, and depression, and my stomach seldom grants respite. At this moment I’m not sure I want to live to fifty-four.” He made a dry heave. “Maybe writer’s block isn’t so bad, at least if it’s on solid land.”

“Or at least on a steady ship,” Floyd said. If he had envied the man his literary status, at least in the eyes of Faux, he saw now how he was suffering. “I’m eighteen, and would hate to suffer another year of this.”

“Actually mankind may be born to suffer. Wisdom is incompatible with happiness. I have chosen wisdom, to the extent I can achieve it; therefore, I am doomed to be largely miserable.”

Floyd realized that Jonathan was a thinker, with a mind far more gifted and knowledgeable than his own. A literary snob. Better to set him straight immediately. “I wouldn’t know. I’m just an illiterate ignoramus.”

The man eyed him. “You speak metaphorically, as a king’s son?”

Oops. He had for the moment forgotten his present identity. There was no help for it but to come out with the rest of the truth. “It—it’s a pose. To get us safely on the ship. Please don’t tell—the Dowager—that I let that secret slip.”

Jonathan laughed weakly. “Your secret is safe with me. I value honesty more than status. I’m glad you came out with it. I knew immediately, of course, that your aunt is no Queen of Lyonnesse.”

“You knew? Then why do you treat her like royalty?”

“Lyonnesse is mythical. King Arthur’s homeland. According to the story, it was the southwest corner of England, and sank beneath the sea a thousand years ago. But it is also clear that Faux—the very name betrays her nature to the literate, as she surely intends—is no ordinary woman. There is something almost magical about her. My curiosity was instantly aroused, and I hope to learn more of her on this voyage. So I honor her little charade. And yours.”

So the man’s interest was intellectual rather than romantic. Floyd could live with that. “She is special. But I think I am not free to say more.”

“Nor need you. I like your discretion.”

“Don’t waste your time on me. I’m just a village lout trying to learn stories I can tell when I return.”

“Ah. A rite of passage.”

“Yes. So you will be best to ignore me, much as I regret saying it.”

“On the contrary, Floyd, I like you. You honestly know your place. You are a refreshing gust of fresh air in a world with all too many foul stenches.”

“You like me? But—”

“And of course I may better unravel the intriguing mystery of your faux aunt if I associate with you. So I do have an ulterior motive to cultivate your acquaintance.”

That did put it into perspective. “True.” He was relieved that at least that much of the deception was over.

Now Jonathan caught sight of something beyond the heaving deck. “I say—is that what my fevered eye suggests?”

“A bare-breasted water nymph? Yes, the Sirens are out in force, trying to lure the ship into wreckage.”

“Ah. So Sirens really do exist. Reminds me of Stella. The body, not the wreckage.”

“Who?”

“Of course you wouldn’t know. I speak of Esther Johnson. She’s my closest friend, back home in Dublin. I write letters to her, to ‘Stella,’ detailing my life. Four years ago we almost married, but the social politics were complicated, and we didn’t, to my everlasting regret. And we are of different stations.”

He had a secret love that was frustrated? Floyd’s dislike faded further. “How did you come to know her?”

“I tutored her when she was just eight years old. Sir William Temple hired me. I suspect she is his natural daughter, though of course I never said a word. Her mother was his wife’s companion and housekeeper, a fair-looking woman. You know how it is.”

“I can guess.” Indeed, he was learning.

“Stella was such a bright and pretty child. I liked her from the start, and she liked me. But of course she was too young, then.” He smiled reminiscently. “What a woman she became!” Then, perhaps realizing that in his distraction he might have said too much, he shifted the subject. “Have you a secret love, Floyd? No, I don’t need to know her name! Just whether you understand.”

That was easy to answer. “Yes. More than one, maybe. I wish I could be with any of them, especially two girls my age, but I can’t.”

He nodded. “Two. You do understand. So many would not.”

“One’s prettier than the other, but the other might be better for me, if I had the choice. And the wit.”

“Exactly. There are two for me too, both named Esther. I call the other Vanessa; she pursues me, with an eye to seducing me, which aggravates Stella. But I can’t marry either one without mortally hurting the other. So I am in stasis, unable to act, and I temporize. Perhaps if I had more emotional courage.” He sighed.

“But of course you don’t want to hurt either of them! I understand that perfectly. You’re a nice person.”

Jonathan laughed. “Nice? There are those who would emphatically disagree with you. I am smart, not nice.” Then he changed the subject again. “I hate mankind. There are too many people in this world! And nothing to be done about it. Such questions bother me.”

“Maybe we should start eating the babies,” Floyd said facetiously.

Jonathan laughed. “Now there’s a thought to shock the world! What an idea! I could call it ‘A Modest Proposal,’ and sing the benefits of it. Floyd, I believe you are helping me get past my block!”

“More likely it’s the seasickness,” Floyd said.

“That, too,” the man agreed ruefully.

Then there was a crash and a severe jolt, and the ship’s motion stopped. Simultaneously, the storm abated. “Oh, no!” Floyd shouted. “I think we just ran aground.”

“At least we are stable, for the moment,” Jonathan shouted back, starting to look less waxen.

Then they looked at each other. The Sirens’ song had stopped the moment of the crash. It seemed that their job had been done. The silence was almost eerie. They removed their earplugs, ready to put them back if the singing resumed.

Soon Faux, as the Dowager, appeared. “There you are, you naughty boy! Why did you sneak out?”

“Blame him not, Madame,” Jonathan said. “He merely sought to spare your tight cabin the stench of his sickness. I came here similarly. We are comrades in misery.”

“I see,” she said, her haughty irritation artfully fading. “It was a bit rough, I confess. But now it may be worse. The captain says the naked water spirits distracted the helmsman, and he steered the ship onto a rock. The hull is staved, and water is leaking in. The horse is up to his ankles in it. He is not pleased. The ship won’t sink, being landbound, but it will take a week to bail out the bilge and repair it so it is seaworthy again.”

“So the Sirens succeeded after all,” Floyd said.

“They did,” she agreed. “It’s a great nuisance. Possibly we can find games to divert us. Charades, perhaps. Well, come, boy; you’re soaked, and your father the King would be most annoyed with me if you died of a chill. We must get you dry forthwith.” She glanced at Jonathan. “You too; it is unfortunate you don’t have a woman to keep you in order.”

“It is indeed,” Jonathan agreed sadly.

Faux bustled him into the cabin, where she made him strip his sopping clothing, wash off with a cloth, and get into a dry shirt and breeches. “He knows, of course,” she remarked. “Just as I know his physical incapacity with women. Nobody will tell.”

“You knew he knew?”

“Silly boy, I read his mind, and a fine mind it is. He is surely Britain’s unhappiest literary genius ever. But we all benefit from playing our parts.”

There was a knock on the cabin door. It was the captain. “I regret we have a problem, Madame.”

“Of course you do,” she responded, and Floyd knew she was reading his mind and knew all about it. “The Mnemosyne is stranded for a week for repairs. It will be dull, but we can handle it.”

“Yes. We have supplies for the duration, except for one: we expected to pick up fresh water at the next port. We will run short.”

“Water!” Floyd exclaimed. “We’re surrounded by it.”

“Potable water,” the captain clarified. “We will become thirsty. Some may die.”

“The galley slaves,” Faux said. “They are expendable.”

“Yes. Unless we send a mission to the island to fetch fresh water. It’s green, with trees; there has to be a spring somewhere. Unfortunately—”

“It’s dangerous,” Faux finished.

“The men are spooked,” the captain agreed. “They have heard wild stories of little people infesting isolated islands. Not to be credited, of course, but there may indeed be unknown dangers. We shall need to send a party of volunteers, if we can find any.”

Floyd thought of the plight of the oarsmen, chained in the flooding hold, but unable to drink the salt water. If not for Faux, he could have been one of them. “I’ll go!” he said.

“Thank you, Prince,” the captain said gravely. He had evidently hoped for this. The highborn were notably less superstitious than the lowborn. “I will personally row you ashore in the lifeboat. However, you should not go alone.”

“He will not go alone,” Faux said. “That would not be fitting.”

“Madame, you can’t possibly—”

“Of course not. It is no place for a royal woman. I shall sequester myself in my cabin for the duration, and do not wish to be disturbed.” She frowned with royal authority; she would be obeyed. “But I sense that there will be another volunteer.”

“As you say, madame,” the captain agreed dubiously.

Floyd strapped on his sword and donned the protective helmet Faux handed him. The prince was ready to make a bit of a man of himself.

“I will be with you, invisible,” Faux murmured. “You need not fear the little folk; they are of our number, distantly related. I do not know them personally; they have been long apart from the mainland.”

“Thanks,” Floyd said, relieved.

“But I prefer not to reveal myself unless necessary. Try to handle things on your own.”

“I will try,” he agreed.

“Please me in this, and I may please you in that.” For a moment she was Amelie again, then Trudy, before she faded out.

One or both of those girls? In a mood to please? That could be glorious!

They went to the lifeboat, which was already tied to the stern, ready to be boarded. It was loaded with empty water flagons. And there stood Jonathan Swift, also freshly attired, with a stout walking staff. “The word is that you are in need of volunteers,” he said to the captain.

The captain did not remark on the man’s obvious physical weakness; the need was desperate. “Very good, sir.”

Floyd was glad to have the man’s company. Obviously Swift did not believe in little people, or if he did, he was not concerned about them. That was encouraging.

The three of them boarded the craft, and the captain rowed. It seemed he had been unable to roust out any frightened crewman. Or did he have reason to join them himself? That was curious.

Floyd looked around and saw Sirens in the water, but they neither sang nor flashed; they merely watched. It was almost as if they wanted the volunteers to land. That was disquieting.

Chapter 9: The Little People

The trio fought their way up a sandy embankment, leaning into the wind. Floyd wondered just where Faux was, knowing she could float above the ground and thus wouldn’t even leave a footprint.

I am near, Floyd. But I’m afraid I have bad news for you. Look behind you.

Floyd spun, stumbling in the soft sand, and was dismayed to see their small lifeboat already adrift many hundreds of yards off shore. No, not adrift. Two or three of the Sirens were towing it with what appeared to be seaweed looped through a hole in the bow. The seaweed had been entwined to form a serviceable length of living rope.

“Well, that won’t do,” said Jonathan, coming up next to him, and shielding his eyes against the wind. From their vantage point, the boat was stark against the gray skies. The sea, Floyd noted, had calmed considerably.

Soon the captain joined them and the three watched until the boat was little more than a pinprick on the horizon.

“Look!” said Mr. Swift, pointing.

A giant tentacle, the likes of which Floyd had never seen before and could barely fathom existed, waved above the surface of the ocean, very near the small boat. Floyd had seen such tentacles in the marketplace. They belonged to a squid or an octopus, he was sure of it. But none as big as this. In fact, nothing was as big as this. Another great tentacle appeared—surely as wide as the biggest of tree trunks—and soon another, and another. Three in all. The first curled around the small boat and lifted it above the waves. Even from here, Floyd could see the water pouring from it. The Sirens, he noted, had formed a semi-circle a safe distance away, although Floyd wondered if anything could be safe from such a behemoth. Surely this was the Leviathan that Friar Tucker preached about.

There was a great crack that seemed to split the sky, and Floyd’s jaw dropped even further when the three tentacles had combined to render the wooden vessel into nothing more than kindling. Tentacles and Sirens slid beneath the surface, leaving only a hint of wreckage on the frothing, bubbling waves.

“You don’t see that every day, now do you?” said Jonathan Swift, chuckling lightly.

“I see this as no laughing matter, sir,” said the captain. “We are effectively shipwrecked.”

“One man’s shipwreck is another’s adventure.”

“We have no time for adventure. My crew is counting on us to deliver them water. We have two maybe three days, tops.”

“We may have less than that, old chap,” said Swift, coughing and pointing ahead.

A narrow tentacle was presently crawling along the great ship’s hull. Those aboard spied it and the trio heard a great shouting and screaming from on board. A musket blast sounded, followed by nearly a dozen more, and the tentacle retreated, shuddering and bleeding. Sirens had appeared nearby, circling the ship. Floyd hoped that Faux’s earplug magic was still in place.

Of course it is, silly. I know the nature of my sister Sirens. They don’t easily give up.

“Other than for its longest of tentacles, the ship is in too-shallow water for the beast to reach it,” said the captain.

“Until high tide,” said Swift, who seemed to Floyd to be the bearer of bad news. “Which, by my estimation, will be some time tonight.”

The captain knew that the writer’s words were true. “Then instead of three days, we have twelve hours to find water, build containers, build a raft, avoid the Kraken, and save my crew.”

Jonathon Swift clapped his hands. “Then I suggest we get started!”

***

Floyd didn’t exactly share the great writer’s enthusiasm, but neither did he dwell near the captain’s darker temperament. Floyd suspected he was somewhere in-between: eager for adventure—and thus more stories—and concerned for the welfare of those on board the ship, especially his loyal and brave horse.

They had no sooner found a narrow trail through a glade of short grass when Floyd, remarkably, began to feel sleepy. How was this so? There was water to find! Lives to save! And yet, each footfall felt heavier than the last, until he found himself slowing considerably and yawning, suddenly too tired to care for anything but sleep. His companions seemed to have come to the same conclusion. Sleep would be nice. Now sleep was all that mattered. Shortly, the three of them stretched out in the short grass and, with the sounds of distant waves hitting the shore and a strange moan in the air, Floyd closed his eyes. His last thought before sleep overcame him was not a thought at all, but Faux’s urgent plea to stay awake.

The last words he heard before sleep took him over were what might have sounded like Faux herself shrieking.

And then Floyd was gone to the world.

***

It was some time later when Floyd awoke.

No, that wasn’t quite right. The sun was not much lower in the mist-filled sky than what it was when he first stretched out in the grass, on his back. Had it only been minutes that he was asleep? But how was that possible? Or worse yet, had he slept a whole day? If so, then surely the great beast had struck the ship. He prayed only that the crew was able to fight it off.

Floyd blinked, feeling oddly groggy. Had he had alcohol to drink? He didn’t think so. He’d only once or twice drunk the dark beer his father sometimes made in the cellar, and the effects he was feeling now were similar to what he had felt then.

Next to him, he heard a deep moan. And then another such sound—perhaps closer to a groan—from his other side. Floyd soon realized that the captain and Jonathan Swift had been sleeping on either side of him. All, apparently, were awakening in unison, which seemed strange in and of itself. Hadn’t they been on a mission of the utmost importance to seek water? They had. And yet all three had decided it was time to nap?

You were exposed to a sleeping potion, you dolt, came Faux’s irritated words.

We were, but how?

It was on the mist, of course. You inhaled it readily enough.

But who would do such a thing? And where are you?

I am not very far from you. Bound as you are, although my bindings are magical and yours are not.

I’m bound? thought Floyd, and for the first time, he attempted to rise, only to discover that he could not. He yelped for not only was he pinned to the ground, his longish hair was fastened to it too.

Floyd fought the bindings but was effectively pinned to the ground. He rolled his eyes to the left and right and saw the captain and Jonathon Swift similarly bound, by braided string. Hundreds of braided strings, all staked into the ground next to them.

And to answer who, we were done in by another one of my cousins, came Faux’s thoughts. The little people. Or, as they pronounce it, Lilliputians.

Chapter 10: Decision

The Lollipops? Floyd thought.

She laughed. That’s anachronistic. Lollipops haven’t been invented yet, though they will be before the century is done.

We have them in my village. The grandmothers make them for the children. We just haven’t exported them. So the world doesn’t yet know how good they are.

He felt her verbal frown. No matter. The Lilliputians are not candy; they are little people about six inches tall.

They did this? Why?

“Let’s talk aloud,” she said. “So the others can hear. The little people won’t understand us anyway; they speak a different language. Captain, Jonathan: I am Faux, of the Fee folk, Floyd’s magical companion whom you have known only as his Dowager Queen aunt. I am presently invisible, to protect my privacy. I trust your future discretion. We have a problem here that we shall need to work together to handle. Do you understand?”

“Not at all,” the Captain said. “But please continue your explanation, madame. I am amenable to any avenue that might conceivably facilitate our escape.”

“That explains a lot,” Jonathan said. “I have heard of the Fee, but never met one before. I am extremely glad to make your acquaintance, Faux Fee; I was quite curious about your real nature.”

Floyd was glad to know that he remained protected, knowing that Faux would not let him suffer unduly. He managed to turn his head a little to the side, by dint of some painful hair-pulling, so that he could see the other two men.

“I am trying to protect Floyd from the dangerous vicissitudes of life, and incidentally make a man of him. It’s a challenge,” Faux continued. “But that is neither here nor there. It seems we underestimated the mystery of this island. You are now captives of the local inhabitants, the Lilliputians, who are human in form and nature but only half a foot tall, and ignorant of the ways of the larger world.”

“You are not captive, madame?” the Captain asked. “Can you free us?”

“Yes and no. I am not physically bound, but these folk are my magical cousins and there are protocols that prevent us from interfering in each other’s business. We can interact, but here on the Isle of Lilliput, it must be on their terms. Floyd is under my protection by a prior protocol and they may not kill or seriously harm him without a violation that would free me to wreak vengeance. They will not do that; they know the Fee are not lightly trifled with. But the other two of you lack that protocol, and it is too late for me to invoke one. So it may be necessary for me to bargain with them, or to leave you to your own devices.”

“We are tied down!” the captain reminded her.

“Yes. That is a limitation.”

“We might fight our way clear.”

“I do not recommend that. There are a hundred Lilli archers surrounding you, and they will loose a fearsome volley if you try. True, their arrows are only two inches long, hardly more than darts or splinters to you, but they would sting, and it could be awkward if one struck your eye.”

Floyd strained to see the archers, but they were beyond his limited field of vision.

“Why didn’t they merely kill us when we were unconscious?” the captain asked.

“An attack could not have been immediately fatal. It would have roused you from your slumber, whereupon you would have jumped to your feet and stomped them flat. They were not eager for that. So they bound you more expediently, not disturbing you. One or two cords would not have sufficed, but a hundred are more effective. In addition, I suspect they want your service. That is why they made a deal with the Sirens and the Kraken to disable your ship and bring your small party here.”

“What service?” the Captain asked.

“If the three of you authorize me to negotiate for you, I will endeavor to find out.”

“Negotiate, yes,” the Captain said. “But we will make our own final decision.”

“Spoken like a true man,” Jonathan said. “I agree.”

There was a brief silence. “Floyd?” Faux finally asked.

“Am I really part of this?” he asked. “Since you said I am under your protection?”

“You are if you choose to be,” Faux said. “Do you wish to cast your lot with these two other men?”

Floyd wasn’t sure why she was giving him that choice. Was it part of how she was making a man of him? Would he be more of a man if he came out from under her skirts? He concluded he would. “Yes.” He hoped he wasn’t making a bad mistake.

“Welcome to the club,” Jonathan said dryly.

Floyd was pleased to have that dubious endorsement. He knew that Jonathan had very little respect for any person, so this was a signal of favor.

“Now I will talk with them,” Faux said. There was another pause. Then she spoke again. “The service is to stomp their rivals on the adjacent island, with whom they perpetually feud.”

“Like England and Ireland!” Jonathan exclaimed. “Fighting each other, when their real enemies are on the Continent!”

“Their littleness is not limited to their bodies,” Faux agreed.

“Help them?” the Captain grumped. “I’d far rather piss on their palace!”

“Can you spare the water?” she asked.

He laughed bitterly. “Point made, magic maid. Our need for fresh water lured us here.”

“I might be able to bargain with them,” Faux said. “Barrels of water in exchange for stomping their neighbors.”

“Plus the safety of my ship.”

“They might proffer more than that. They might provide food and entertainment too.”

“Entertainment?” Jonathan asked.

“Such as pretty dancing girls.”

“Six inches high?”

“But perfectly formed. They might dance in their flaring skirts on a transparent platform just above the level of your head, so that their legs show well, and more, if that is your interest. Or they might be entirely nude. Or, if you insist on females your own size to play with, they could get some amenable Sirens to cooperate, their mouths fastened closed so they can’t sing. Some can shift their tails into legs. They can be very understanding of a man’s desires, and remarkably fulfilling, if they choose. They don’t get many live men to keep.”

“That could be interesting,” the Captain said. “What’s the catch?”

“You would be essentially indentured servants, locked in for the duration.”

“Like galley slaves,” Jonathan said.

“Happier than they are,” she said. “But yes.”

“But my ship!” the Captain said. “What of her?” A ship was always female.

“The water would go to your ship, and she would sail on. But you would remain on Lilliput.”

“I couldn’t do that!”

“You can turn them down.”

“What would happen to me then?”

“They would keep you bound, and feed and water you by hand, and their little ladies might get to play with you. I understand some are quite intrigued by the prospect of interacting with a member that is as tall when standing as they are, yet can’t attack them. Their challenge would be to make it perform like a fountain. And of course they would have to collect your wastes as they emerge, you being unable to do it for yourself.”

The Captain wrenched one arm up, breaking several strings. Immediately a shower of miniature arrows plinked into it, like flying needles. “Ow!” he bellowed.

“Best not to do that,” Faux said. “They think you are trying to escape.”

“I am trying to escape, madame.”

“You would most resemble a pincushion by the time you got free, if you got free. Some of their arrows could be poisoned.”

The Captain let his spiked arm sink desolately back to the ground. “Point made.”

“I hate mankind, and probably Lilliputian kind too,” Jonathan said. “It would not bother me greatly to stomp their enemies. But I am not certain I would wish to stay for years on this island, like a captive beast of burden.”

“Then you may not want to make the deal.”

“What of Floyd and you, madame?” Jonathan asked.

“Floyd has cast his lot with you, for good or ill. I read his mind, and know he wasn’t thinking of this aspect, so it remains valid: I do have to save him, and that means I must save the three of you. I will do that if I have to, but it will break relations with a kindred species, causing serious repercussions among the little people and perhaps making me an outcast by my own kind. I much prefer to avoid that.”

“You haven’t answered the question,” Jonathan said.

“Yes I have. We will resume our excursion, all of us, with or without Lilliputian consent. But I would prefer to make a compatible deal, for the sake of general relations of our species and my personal status.”

“I think we need other alternatives,” Floyd said. “My late grandpa always said that life is not either or; there is always another way, if we can but find it.”

“I believe I would have liked your grandfather,” Jonathan said. “Our presented choices are to hold firm and maybe be tortured, or to capitulate and have a passingly decent life, albeit it with sacrifices. Or to break relations and cause general mischief. We mortals don’t want the first two, and your Fee protector does not want the third. If you have another alternative, this is the time for it.”

“Well spoken,” the captain said. “Does your grandpa have that other alternative in mind?”

Floyd knew the onus was on him to come up with something, as he was the one who had suggested it. But he was not his grandfather, who had had some more wit and far more experience than Floyd. What would he have come up with?

“Uh, Faux—” he said tentatively.

“I may not advise you in this,” Faux said. “The protocols forbid it. But it would please the girls if you turned out to be man enough to come up with it on your own.”

Floyd’s first reaction was disappointment. She would not provide the answer. But his second reaction was hope: her phrasing implied that there was a viable alternative. Otherwise, why would she say it was there for him to find? His third reaction was excitement: by ‘the girls’ she had to mean Amelie and Trudy, either or both of which she could emulate. There was the prospect of the pleased girls again. He had a momentary vision of lying on a bunk, naked, with one bare girl on one side and the other bare girl on the other, both eager to express their pleasure with him. He had to come through!

Then it came to him. “A contest!” he exclaimed. “Are the Lillis competitive?”

“They are,” Faux said.

“We can challenge them to a double-or-nothing competition with fair terms where physical size is not an issue. If we win, we get our freedom, plenty of fresh water, and transport back to the Mnemosyne without the Sirens molesting us, so we can repair the ship and depart these waters forever. If they win, they get the services of we three men in whatever capacity they choose, for as long as they choose.” He was pleased to include himself as a man, not a youth.

“Well spoken,” the captain repeated.

“Suppose it’s a draw?” Jonathan asked.

Floyd pondered, but he was on a roll and had an answer. “Then a compromise. We serve them for a week, while the ship is being repaired, and we get water and transport thereafter, and will be allowed to depart.”

“An answer worthy of a novel,” Jonathan said. “About how a dull man, maybe named descriptively Gullible, blunders into captivity by tiny folk, and gets to move on. Maybe I’ll write it one day. I will title it Gullible’s Travails, if I can get that delightful title past my staid publisher.”

“That smells like navigating a treacherous channel,” the captain remarked. “Mayhap with Sirens along the way.”

“Mayhap,” Jonathan agreed. He seemed to be in a good mood despite their predicament, perhaps because his writer’s block was clearly alleviating.

“Now all we need is a suitable contest, to which they will agree,” the captain said.

“Perhaps they will have such a contest in mind,” Faux said. “I will put it to them now.”

Floyd hoped the little people would agree, and that the three of them would prevail in that contest. And that the girls would be pleased.

Chapter 11: Contest

“The Emperor accepts your challenge; that is, unless you’re interested in his own plan.”

“What’s his plan?” asked Jonathan.

“He would have his finest surgeons blind each of you in just one eye. But by his good graces he would spare your second eye, thus giving you the gift of sight.”

“I fail to see how this is a plan at all!” shouted the Captain. “Why, I have the gift of sight—in both eyes!”

“Let me finish,” said Faux. “The emperor is of the opinion that by sparing you the one eye, each of you, to the man, will appreciate his profound generosity and mercy, and, thus filled with eternal gratitude, agree to smash his mortal enemies into smithereens.”

“Why, that’s the craziest—”

Jonathan jumped in: “Hold on, Captain, if I may? Dear Faux, explain to the emperor that we have heard and considered his generous offer and, although a close second, we would rather continue forward with the proposed contest.”

“Floyd,” said Faux. “Does Jonathan speak for you too?”

“Er, yes. I would rather proceed with the contest.”

“Very well, hang on.” This time, the pause was filled with the captain’s mumbled cursing. Shortly, Faux spoke again. “The emperor has consulted his philosophers and clerics and believes he has come upon a fair contest, one that knows no shape or size.”

“Go on,” said Jonathan.

“Archery,” said Faux.

“Never!” shouted the captain immediately, and once again fought his bonds. He was met with a flurry of arrows, many of which, as far as Floyd could see, had affixed themselves to the very tip of the man’s porous nose. “Ouch! You see, they are expert marksman! Why, I would damn near wager half my cargo that the lot of us never shot an arrow any straighter than a woman’s arse. Besides, their bows and arrows are much too small!”

“The emperor’s greatest weapons makers and armorers will be set to task to create bows and arrows of proper proportion and strength—”

Jonathan said, “Please explain to the esteemed emperor that we are not archers and feel this would not be a fair competition—”

Floyd, who had been listening quietly, had a burst of inspiration. “No, we are not archers. But we are storytellers!”

“Speak for yourself, lad! I am a captain of the high seas!”

“A captain who has seen much and has, no doubt, more stories than all of us combined.”

“Tis true. Why, just a fortnight ago, I watched a man tumble overboard—only to discover—”

“Save the story, Captain!” shouted Floyd. He angled his face toward Faux, although he could not see her. “Tell the emperor that we hereby challenge the Lilliputians to a contest of storytelling! Surely they have storytellers amongst themselves.”

“Hold on,” said Faux. “The emperor is intrigued. Yes, they have many popular tellers of tales. He wishes to know how a winner will be chosen.”

“The story that is commonly agreed upon to be the most moving, most humorous, and most adventurous will be deemed the winner.”

“One moment,” said Faux, paused, then spoke again: “The emperor accepts your terms and conditions and will now offer you some of his own. First, the stories must be original stories that include the themes of courage, adventure, and food preparation. Oh, and there must be one blue dragon.”

“Why one blue dragon?” asked Swift.

“The emperor loves blue dragons. You may all participate in the story, of which I will translate for the Lilliputians, as they speak an entirely different language. Likewise, I will translate their story. Additionally, because each of you have passed on his magnanimous and merciful offer to leave you sight in one eye, now, should you lose this wager, you each will be completely blinded. By his best surgeons, of course.”

“And how does the old chap propose we destroy his rivals if we are blind?” snapped the captain, who blew once again on his smarting nose.

“You will be directed via telepathy where to stomp. But fear not, his concubines are still interested in you. You won’t need sight for that either.”

“But sight is half the fun! Why, if this isn’t the cockamamiest—”

“Tell the emperor we accept his generous terms,” said Floyd, jumping in.

“And who gave you the right to speak for me?” demanded the captain.

“No one, but it’s our best chance to get out of here alive and with our sight.”

“Or be blinded and used for the rest of our days!”

“Then I suggest,” said Jonathan, and Floyd detected the humor in his voice, “we tell a rather ripping good story, eh?”

Chapter 12: Truly Fair

Faux relayed their agreement, and the Lilliputian soldiers came and used their swords to hack through their myriad bonds. They were free. But the archers remained arrayed, ready to loose a swarm of arrows if the trio tried to make a break for it.

“You will have one hour to prepare your tale,” Faux advised them. “In the interim you will be fed and can take care of natural functions in the nearby crevice, where there is some privacy.”

They went to the crevice, getting that out of the way. Then they drank at the local river.

“Who judges this contest?” Floyd asked Faux.

“Not you. Not the emperor’s men. It will be the royal women, who have time and discretion. They have done this before, as storytelling is a favorite pastime here, complete with competitions. The royal women are reasonably fair-minded.”

“Women, however, have different tastes than men,” Jonathan murmured. “We should keep that in mind.”

Floyd thought of Amelie and Trudy. What were their tastes? He really had no idea.

Then they returned to sit down on the ground. A small army of Lilliputian serving girls hauled carts of food to them. Portions were small, but the breadstuff and meatstuff was actually quite good, and the miniature pies were delicious.

The girl who served Floyd smiled as she unloaded her little wagon. He looked down at her, noticing that she was actually quite pretty, in a doll-like way. From his vantage, almost over her head, he peered down eighteen inches and he could see that her torso inside her loose blouse was authentically shapely. She had glorious fair hair and classic features. Had she been his size she would have been a devastating beauty. Even in miniature she was a pleasure to behold.

“Who is she?” he quietly asked Faux.

“Her name is Temperance, and she’s the emperor’s favorite daughter. She also has quite a temper, fittingly. In another year she’ll be eighteen and due to marry some prince to facilitate a beneficial political alliance. But she’s willful, questioning the need. She’s been assigned scullery duty to discipline her spirit, and this is part of that. She knows you’re peering down inside her halter, and that annoys her, but if she shows any ire she’ll be transferred to greasy pot washing. So she’s bearing with it, having little choice.”

Floyd wished he could express some sympathy, but the princess would not understand anything he said, and might interpret it as some crudity about her chest configuration. So he merely smiled and accepted her tasty offerings.

“Now the tale,” the captain said as he ate. “I am not certain that sea monsters and shipwrecks will appeal to those particular judges. Nor will descriptions of lovely Sirens and their business. I know nothing at all about blue dragons; I didn’t know they existed. Just ordinary-colored ones. You, Jonathan Swift, can surely spin a better yarn for this purpose.”

“Not necessarily so,” Jonathan demurred. “My specialty is satire. I could eloquently ridicule the emperor and his establishment, but that would not likely be well received. Floyd, here, may be better positioned for this.”

Floyd opened his mouth to protest that he was the least experienced of them. But then he thought of something. “Women judges. Maybe a woman’s story would be in order.”

“You have a point,” the Captain said. “What do you know about women?”

And there was the flaw. “Practically nothing,” Floyd said.

“Not so,” Jonathan said. “Women are much like men in many respects, merely with a different orientation. Devise a story about yourself, and convert it to the female perspective, and few will question it. Skimp on details, so that the listener can fill them in for herself, making it seem more authentic. This is the tale teller’s art: to provide a framework that enables the listeners to identify, to get personally into the scene, and they will love you for it.”

“But all I can think of is heroic adventure of the kind I have heard other villagers tell. I know nothing about sewing and baking and all those other things women do.”

“And they perchance long to get away from women’s work,” Jonathan said. “Give them the chance to be heroes, at least in their fancy, and they will not chide you for it.”

“Can that be true?” Floyd asked incredulously. “Women wanting adventure?”

“It can be true,” Faux agreed, surprisingly. “Even old women, but especially young ones.”

“But if a man tried to tell a tale about a girl, women would laugh him out of contention!” In any event, the only girls he could think of at the moment were Amelie and Trudy. And the doll-like princess serving girl. How could he identify with any of them? He wouldn’t dare use their names either, unless maybe a variant.

“Not so,” Johnathon repeated. “The voice of the narrator fades away into the background as the tale takes hold. He can seem to be repeating what he knew of a woman. He becomes her, in the magic of the story. The listeners willingly suspend their disbelief.”

Floyd was becoming intrigued. Could he actually get into a girl, in that manner? Into her feeling? Become her? Jonathan thought it was possible, and he had infinitely more experience as a writer than Floyd did.

They discussed the tale, and each contributed aspects. A story took form, with all the required elements. Floyd would be the narrator, with Faux translating, and the others would quietly correct him if he started going wrong. It seemed feasible, amazingly. And so, with the full attention of the royal women, and feeling more nervous than he thought he would, Floyd began his tale:

***

Truly looked up from her labors with the serving spoons, which she had polished to perfection. She was the daughter of the emperor, a princess with glorious fair hair and classic features, and shapely to boot; tall men had actually blushed when they glimpsed down into her décolletage. Especially when she breathed. Smart and beautiful, she had so much potential. So what was she doing here in the scullery?

But she knew the answer: she had tried to question her father’s judgment, so he had put here to chasten her spirit and make her more malleable to his will. She had a role to fill, and it certainly wasn’t the wild adventure she secretly craved. The fact that she hated her assigned role didn’t matter; she was a woman, a girl, and so had no right to decide her own course in life. Her destined fate was to become the docile partner of some prince she never met before the marriage, and serve him loyally for the rest of her life. Mainly serving his belly and his groin. Scullery and bed. Love had nothing to do with it.

Her father’s birthday was approaching, as it did at this time every year, and there would be a phenomenal feast in his honor, with rare and splendid dishes. About the only delicacy he hadn’t been served, over the years, was fried blue dragon’s egg. That was scarcely surprising, because Danube, the blue dragon, was exceedingly loath to give up her egg, and toasted and consumed any who were foolhardy enough to waltz in and try to steal it.

Then an idea struck her like lightning from a pale cloud: she could go to fetch that egg! No one could be denied that mission, because it was for the emperor’s benefit. So far none had returned from that quest, but she might be the first. After all, no woman had ever tried it. But she would make a deal: if she fetched the blue dragon egg, she would have the right to marry when and whom she chose, even if not a foreign prince. She would be free, her own woman, out of the scullery forever. That was surely worth the gamble.

Truly dropped the shiny spoon she held, flung off her dull apron, and marched off to see her father. She could twist him around her little finger when she tried; now she had reason to try.

Chapter 13: The Djinn

Her father hadn’t been pleased with the proposal.

In fact, he initially denied her request. But Truly truly did have her father wrapped around her finger, to a degree. Ultimately, he was a fair enough man, and it had pained him to see her upset. But there was one condition: he would allow her to search for the blue dragon’s egg if only she was accompanied by his greatest knight. She agreed, and soon they set off.

Sir Longmire feared no man. It was safe to say he had never feared anything. Of course, his skill with his sword had something to do with that. And his archery skills were second to none. More than anything, he seemed to be touched by the gods themselves. He always seemed a little stronger than his enemy, and often a little luckier too. When he fought, his feet rarely slipped, or his blade rarely broke, and always, always he seemed to guess correctly where his opponent would attack next. And Longmire was there, waiting, ready to parry, and ready to dispatch his adversary.

Truly, who had been born with the gift of second sight, saw immediately the source of Longmire’s great skill: a small djinn-like creature rested upon his right shoulder at most times, a djinn who aided the warrior in all manner of combat, from guiding his sword, to confusing his enemy with pixie dust.

She saw this firsthand when bandits appeared upon their trail on the second day of their quest. The attack lasted but a few minutes, if that. The knight sprang into action—and so did the little djinn. Truly saw the confused expressions on their attackers’ faces, saw their swords ricocheting harmlessly against an invisible barrier, saw the knight’s own blade guided perfectly every time, cutting through throats and lodging deep within hearts. Most importantly, she saw the little djinn zig and zag wildly in the air, altering blades and tripping foes, throwing magical dust in eyes, and deflecting arrows and swords. In short, doing the majority of the work. In a matter of minutes, the bandits had been dispatched, and the duo had barely broken their stride.

“That was quite impressive,” said Truly, for the knight had given no recognition to the little djinn who had done most of the work, the little djinn who once again sat upon his shoulder.

“It was nothing, Your Highness,” said the knight, not bothering to blush. “All in a day’s work, as they say.”

“You are... very good with your sword.”

“I am better than most, yes.”

“You have practiced long?”

“Hardly at all.”

“So it comes naturally for you, then?”

“Yes, I suppose it does.”

“Did you not notice the confused way your enemies stumbled around?”

But the knight only looked at her blankly, and Truly realized the man had only known enemies who stumbled, or had poor aim, or who perplexedly seem to step right into his sword. The knight, in short, had never faced an enemy on his own terms. More curious, the knight seemed unaware of the little djinn who, even now, was watching Truly carefully, his little scrunched face unreadable.

During their fourth night, while the knight slept contently upon his bedroll near a large fire that he’d brought to life far too quickly, especially considering the recent rainstorm, unaware that a certain little djinn had sprinkled more magic dust upon the wet logs, Truly addressed the little creature directly.

“I see you,” she said.

The magical creature, which had been picking idly under its longish claws, assumed an on-guard position. It looked this way and that.

“I’m talking to you, little man,” said Truly.

Now the djinn, realizing there was no danger afoot, froze, although Truly could see his little eyes moving.

“Freezing doesn’t help,” said Truly. “I can still see you.”

The little creature held his pose for a heartbeat or two longer, than exhaled, his round little belly dropping down to his knees. Small wings that Truly had at first missed sprouted from his shoulders and he rose up from the knight’s shoulder, and flew over to her. Truly was reminded of a fat little bird.

***

Floyd was pleased to see the little fair maidens giggling once Faux had relayed his last line. He caught Jonathan’s and the captain’s gaze, both of whom encouraged him to continue. Floyd gathered his thoughts and continued his tale, well aware of the emperor, who sat upon a portable throne and was guarded by dozens of his finest knights, staring at him from under his crown.

Floyd swallowed, and continued his tale:

***

“You have the gift of second sight, I assume,” said the little djinn who, now that he was just a few feet from Truly’s face, she could see was quite cute. He had little pointy ears and a neatly trimmed goatee that also came to a point. His cheeks were round and ruddy, but nothing was rounder than his belly, which Truly suddenly wanted to tickle.

“Go ahead and tickle it,” said the djinn.

“You can read my mind?” asked Truly, who reached out and tickled the chubby rolls.

When the djinn was done giggling, he said, “Only with those who make contact with me.”

“The knight seems unaware of your presence,” said Truly.

“Your second sight is strong.”

“I watched you single-handedly dispose of the bandits. The knight, if anything, appeared to be in the way.”

“That’s because he is a doofus. If not for me, he would have been dead a thousand times over.”

“Why do you help him, then?”

“Do you see that ring on his finger?”

Truly looked again at the big emerald ring gleaming in the fire light. She’d noticed it before, as it was hard to miss. “Yes.”

“That ring binds me to him.”

“How did he find it?”

“By pure luck. As a boy, he came across my dead charge.”

“Dead charge?”

“The man I had been bound to before. He had been a charlatan, and knew of me, and used me to steal from the pockets of his customers. I stole money and wristwatches and heirlooms, many he kept and many more he held for ransom, until the owners could pay him. He was a bad man. I was pleased when he had drunk himself into a stupor, and pleased further when he suffocated on his own vomit. The boy Longmire had come upon the charlatan’s weathered bones in a field.”

“You stayed with the body long after death?”

“I stayed with the ring, Your Highness.”

“And Longmire is unaware of the ring’s true purpose?”

“He sees it as good luck.”

Truly thought about it, then walked over to the sleeping Sir Longmire, reached down, and pulled free the ring. The knight barely stirred and only smacked his lips. Truly held the massive gem in her hand, marveling at its craftsmanship. Then slipped it onto her own finger. The little djinn, who had been hovering over the fire, flew to her and alighted upon her shoulder. From the corner of her eye, she could see him bow deeply.

“Your wish is my command, Your Highness.”

Chapter 14: Blue Egg

Truly was pleased to have acquired such a potent ally so expeditiously. She was sure she would have no trouble getting the blue egg, with the djinn’s help. In fact that help well might assist her in becoming a truly powerful figure on the island. She liked the ring of that: Truly Powerful.

Then she became aware of the direction of the djinn’s gaze as he perched on her shoulder: almost straight down. “Are you looking down inside my blouse?” she demanded.

“Indubitably. It is a marvelous reward of my position, Highness. I have not been treated to such a glorious frontal glimpse in centuries, since I served a harem guard. He was of course a eunuch, but I am not. I love it when you breathe.”

Truly considered. She could surely fetch the blue egg with very little danger, with his help. It behooved her to keep the little imp happy. There was no point in holding her breath. So she changed the subject. “What is your name?”

“I am Djim.”

“Djim Djinn?”

“Exactly, mistress.”

“Mistress?”

“It is the female form of master, and you are very much female.”

She was not completely satisfied, but concluded, again, that compromise was best. “Just call me by my name.”

“Yes, Truly.”

“I think it best that no one else know of your presence, Djim. I want Sir Longmire to continue believing that he is protecting me. Can you do that?”

“I can, as long as he is near you. I must remain close enough to you to protect you.”

That meant that Sir Longmire would continue to get glimpses. Well, it couldn’t be helped. She was not about to change her comfortable outfit just because a man looked at it. But maybe there was a way to handle it. “Can you fog out my décolletage so that he can’t actually see anything he shouldn’t?”

“Done, Truly.”

She glanced down. Now nothing special was visible inside her blouse. Just teasingly shapely shadows. Good enough. But there was another issue. “When he wakes, he’ll notice that his ring is missing, and he’ll see it on me. That may make him suspicious. Can you put a fake ring on him? And fog out mine?”

“I can make linked illusions,” Djim said. “So that he sees the ring as being on his finger, and it is invisible on yours. Will that do?”

“Nicely, thank you.”

The ring disappeared from her finger and reappeared on the sleeping man’s finger. But she knew she still had it, because she could feel it. Good enough.

It was time for her to sleep. “Do you sleep?” she asked the djinn.

“Never. But I can fake it when necessary.”

 What would he be looking at while she slept? His perch on her shoulder was entirely too close for her esthetic comfort, especially because she was bound to be breathing, but she couldn’t tell him to go away. Well, she could handle that. She put on her jacket and closed it up tight, theoretically for warmth. “Good night, Djim.” She lay down and closed her eyes.

“Oh, bother,” he muttered.

In the morning the knight had his usual good luck refurbishing the fire, not even seeing the busy djinn, and they ate heated leftovers for breakfast. Then they moved on, she back in her light traveling skirt and blouse.

At noon they reached the fabled Blue Mountain where it rested beside the Blue River. Everything in the vicinity was a shade of blue. Near the highest blue crag was a crevice that provided anchorage for the great blue dragon’s nest. It was perched almost directly above the river far below, probably for convenient dragon launching. She had to scale that mountain to fetch the egg? That was daunting.

But Truly was a smart girl. She had special resources. Djim, she thought. Can you fetch me a pair of magic boots so that I can walk safely up that mountain slope?

I can, Truly. I can conjure them from a private cache I have.

Do so, once we are alone. Meanwhile, can you protect the knight if he goes to yon hill? She gestured toward the hill.

Yes, as long as he is in my sight.

Do so, as needed.

Then she crafted her most winning smile. “Sir Longmire, why don’t you go to the top of yon hill and distract the dragon so I can safely scale the mountain and take the egg?” Her suggestion had the force of a command; she was after all a princess.

The knight was startled. “That mountain is not safe for a delicate flower like you to scale. You might tumble into the river and drown. Then your father would be most wroth with me.” He did not need to say more. He would be far better off to tumble in and drown himself. She could not command him to put herself at significant risk.

But there were other ways. Remove the fog for ten seconds. She leaned forward and put her soft hand on the knight’s arm. “Please. I assure you I will be duly careful.”

Longmire, though half-stunned by the near view, opened his mouth to protest.

She took a deep breath.

By the time he recovered his common sense, Longmire was on his way up a nearby blue foothill in plain sight of the dragon’s nest.

Now Truly donned the magic hiking boots the djinn provided. They were secure and comfortable on her feet, and anchored to the ground so firmly that she knew they would do.

The knight reached the top of the foothill. “Hey blue funk!” he yelled, waving his arms. “I dare you to take me on, you coward!” He made an obscene upward thrusting motion with his sword that was bound to heat the dragon’s fires.

The blue dragon lurched off her nest, spread her great blue wings, and climbed into the sky. Then she oriented on the distant man with blue smoke puffing from her nostrils. He stood defiantly, ready to smite her with his sword when she came within range. The challenge was ludicrous, except that Djim Djinn was on duty as usual.

Truly strode up the steep mountain slope on the side away from the river. Not only did the magic boots hold firm, they enabled her to walk at a tilt that kept her at right angles to the rock. They kept her comfortably warm. They also provided her with remarkable energy, so that she did not tire at all. She really liked these boots!

She reached the blue nest and peeked over the rim. There was a single blue egg. It was larger than an ordinary bird’s egg, but she could handle it. She climbed in, as the nest was big enough to hold her, and picked up the egg, half surprised to feel its warmth. But of course it was warm!

She tucked the egg into the crook of her arm, regretting that she hadn’t thought to bring a bag to hold it. She went to the edge of the nest—

There was the dragon flying toward her, squawking angrily. The distraction hadn’t lasted long enough! She hoped that Longmire hadn’t been scorched. But no, there he was, waving his sword overhead and jumping up and down. But the dragon was no longer interested in him. What could she do?

Truly leaped out of the nest on the river side, holding the egg. She plummeted toward the water. She knew how to swim, but this was an awfully high dive, and she could not let go of the egg. It occurred to her belatedly that she might not have made the best choice.

Then her descent slowed. The boots were sustaining her! She landed on the water, and did not plunge under the surface. In fact she stood on it, with the djinn perched on her shoulder.

Well now. She walked toward the bank, crossing the blue water, only slightly denting its surface. This footwear was even better than she had known. “Djim, may I keep these wonderful boots?”

“Well—” he started doubtfully.

She would have to bargain. “I will not sleep in my jacket as long as the boots keep me warm.” Meaning that he could look at what he wanted, while she slept.

He capitulated, being male. “Wear them as long as you wear the ring.”

“Deal,” she agreed.

She reached the shore and stepped back onto land. But now the dragon was angling down, orienting on her with vicious intent.

She looked quickly around. There was no good cover within range, except possibly the water: if she dived in and swam below. But there were three problems there: she would have to remove the boots, lest they keep her on top, and when she came back up, the dragon would be there, ready to toast her. And she would have trouble swimming while holding the egg.

She stood still while these thoughts were racing through her head. In that interval the dragon swooped down—and passed her by, not frying her.

Or had Djim put up a heat shield to protect her from the blue fire?

“I did,” the djinn answered her thought. “But it turned out not to be necessary. She withheld her fire.”

“Why did she do that?” But as she spoke, Truly saw the answer: she was holding the dragon’s precious egg. The creature couldn’t fry one without frying the other.

That in turn brought another realization: to the human folk, the blue egg was a gustatory prize, a fabulous meal. But to the dragon, it was her baby.

Truly was a woman. A young one, an impetuous one, but a woman. She wanted to marry and have her own babies in due course. Woe betide the one who tried to kill her babies!

The dragon was a woman. A ferocious, flying, fire breathing one, but a woman of her kind. Of course she had to defend her baby. Truly understood that on a fundamental level.

Did she really want to take the blue egg?

She looked around again, this time with a new perspective. There were the mountain, the river, and the high nest. The dragon circled warily in the sky; she would not be able to carry her egg back up there, and would have to nest on the ground if she recovered the egg. But Truly could do it, using her boots. She could take the blue egg safely back to the nest. She could return what she had stolen. She could let the baby blue dragon live.

If Truly took the egg to her father, she would be a heroine and a largely free princess. Her life ambition would be realized.

If she returned home without the egg, she would be a failure and scullery maid again. But she would have the boots. And Djim Djinn. And her private personal vindication as a potential mother. As a woman.

She had to choose. Which was it to be?

Chapter 15: Wingless

“Perhaps I can be of help, mistress,” said the small voice upon her shoulder.

Truly shielded her eyes, “I’m listening.”

“Were you aware that there are, in fact, two sets of dragons upon this mountain?”

“I was not, no.”

“Few were. Indeed, most do not get much further than this leeward side of the mountain.”

“Leeward?”

“It is the side of the mountain protected from the wind. It is also the territory of the flying blue dragon.”

“You emphasized flying.”

“Very good, mistress. Upon the windward side of the mountain, there resides a flightless species of blue dragon, a species that is very populous, a species that lays not only many eggs, but often many unfertilized eggs, much like your chickens and ducks.”

“Why do we not know of—never mind. The flying blue dragon scares them away.”

“Indeed, mistress. Few mortals have crossed over to the windward side—that is, the side that gets most of the wind and rain and vegetation. Particularly thick vegetation. Another reason why the wingless species have gone unnoticed. They remain hidden, flourishing, while their winged cousin scares away men and their penchant for hunting.”

Truly considered what she’d just heard, and the more she considered, the more excited she got. “Are you suggesting what I am thinking you are suggesting?”

“I am suggesting what you are thinking I am suggesting.”

“Are you okay, Your Highness?” echoed a voice from a great distance away. It was Sir Longmire, and he was a sorry sight: sweating, out of breath, and leather jerkin trousers torn asunder. She realized the man had ran down the hill at a full sprint, through thorns and brier patches and anything else that might have slapped at him. Mostly, she saw the concern in his eyes. And something else, something she had missed.

“He’s smitten, yes,” said Djim Djinn, as they watched the knight stumble over boulders and crash through grass. “As he has been since the first day he laid eyes on you, mistress.”

“How long ago was that?” she asked. The knight was still too far away to hear.

“When you were both very young. It is why, when he found the ring, I answered his unasked request. Indeed, I am compelled to.”

“What was his unasked request?”

“To become the world’s greatest knight.”

Truly sensed there was more. “And?”

“To win your heart.”

“I am hardly in love with him. And what right does a djinn have to control who one loves?”

“We don’t. He merely wanted to win your love.”

“Well, look at him. Is he hardly worth love?”

But as soon as she said it, she saw something else, too. She saw that he was badly injured: indeed, the dragon had scorched him. His right arm was red and raw, but he ignored it. Indeed, his concern was only for her.

“Heal him, Djim. But not too quickly. But double or triple the process, and leave no scars.”

“As you wish, mistress. He is a fine man with a brave heart.”

“But he is clumsy.”

“He was lucky to have found me. But the truth is, he would have eventually become a fine knight all on his own.”

“You have stunted him in a way.”

“I have.”

“Well, I can’t have him being killed. He’s in no position to defend himself. I need to keep him close, and I need you to keep your eye on him.”

“As you wish. And the flightless dragons?”

“Let’s go find one of their eggs.” She glanced down. “After I return this egg to its mother.”

***

And so the princess, with the help of the bumbling knight—and Djim Djinn, of course—returned the flying dragon’s egg to the nest, then retrieved one of the many unfertilized eggs of the flightless ground dragons.

Shortly, they returned home triumphantly, holding the egg, and the king feasted upon it and declared it to be terrible, which was probably for the best. Truly was not keen to reveal the fact that the egg had been of the flightless variety, and nor had anyone asked. Her reasoning was sound: a blue dragon egg was a blue dragon egg, whether winged or not.

In due course, the king released her from her marital obligations, and shortly after that, she wed the brave and suddenly accident-prone knight, for she had grown quite fond of the awkward man who loved her so. It was a great ceremony, with much pomp and circumstance, after which they honeymooned in the country where Truly made arrangements with a very secretive knight who went by the name of Lancelot, to teach her new husband the way of the sword. For, by then, the new bride had confessed her sin of stealing the ring. Both had promptly agreed to release the little djinn from his bondage to the ring. As a thank you, the magical creature stayed by their side and watched over them and their many uncoordinated kids all the days of their lives. She also used her magic boots to trek rapidly to the blue dragon nest every month or so to visit the new baby dragon, Dan, whom she had spared, as the mother dragon appreciated. It was the beginning of a wonderful human-dragon alliance that would truly benefit the kingdom, as her father appreciated.

Chapter 16: Naughty Nauticals

Floyd finished narrating the story. “That’s it,” he said. “And they all live happily ever after.” Was it enough? He had liked the tale while he was in it, as it were, but now he was back in reality, and feared it was inadequate.

“That was a very nice tale,” the Emperor said via Faux’s translation. “Now we will hear the competitive story.” He turned to his chief storyteller.

The Storyteller looked at the panel of judges, all royal women. They seemed to be in a daze. “Your eminence, I have a wonderful story to tell, all about invading the enemy island and slaughtering our enemies, that any man would love, but I can see that the judges have already decided the winner. It’s a woman’s story! I think we should save time and confess a default.”

Surprised, the Emperor looked at the women. “What say you, fair judges?”

“He’s right,” the lead princess agreed. “We love Truly. She’s our kind of girl. She did what she had to do, with the tools she had available. We’d all like to have a captive djinn and a pair of boots like that. Who wants another male tale of pointless bloodshed? Magic and romance are so much better. So is peace with blue dragons.”

The emperor threw up his hands, literally. “You win,” he told the three visitors. “We will honor the terms of the agreement. We are, after all, civilized folk, unlike our enemies.”

Floyd, Jonathan, and the captain had the sense not to argue.

That was it. The Lilliputians set about fetching big (to them) barrels of fresh water, which they mounted on wheels and trundled slowly toward the ship. Other crews set about fashioning a raft that would support the three men and the barrels. Others went to inform the Sirens that the men must be allowed to return safely to their ship. They even enlisted some Sirens to haul the raft.

Meanwhile the captain, Jonathan, and Floyd were allowed to relax. Little maidens were soon coming to perch on their laps with tidbits as they sat on the ground. The men were hardly in a position to object; the girls were young and fair, and wore rather scant halters and skirts. They might be as small as dolls, but they were anatomically correct and animated dolls. Some even sat on big male hands, and kicked their legs up prettily. It was almost as if they enjoyed showing off their bodies to men they knew could never take advantage of them. Or maybe they simply liked to tease.

Just one girl came to Floyd: the emperor’s daughter, Temperance. She must have told the others to stay clear. She signaled, and he reached down carefully with his flat hand. She set her pert posterior on it and pulled up his thumb to hold on to. He lifted her up to the level of his face, her lovely legs dangling over the edge. From a foot away she spoke, and Faux invisibly translated.

“I greet you, wonderful tale teller.”

“I return the greeting.” He hesitated. “What may I call you, Princess?” He knew her name, but didn’t want to admit that Faux had given it to him.

She laughed. “Temperance. But Truly will do.”

Oho! “Then hello, Truly.”

“I loved your story,” she said. “I felt as if I were right in it myself.” She fixed his right eye with her intense gaze. “Tell me the truth: was I really the model for the heroine?”

“You were,” Floyd said. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“You saw down my blouse.”

“I did,” he admitted. “I was impressed.”

“Clearly so, as with the djinn.” She made a moue. “I hope our men don’t catch on how we run their lives via their undisciplined eyeballs. You gave away some secrets.”

“I apologize. I needed to tell an effective story.”

“I forgive you. Bring me close and I’ll kiss you.”

He brought her carefully right up to his face, and she leaned forward in exactly the manner Truly had leaned toward Longmire in the tale and put her delicious little lips to his huge ones. A tiny kiss, but it was like miniature heaven.

“I have a favor to ask,” she said, leaning back and flexing her legs. She did not seem to be wearing much under her skirt.

“Anything!” He knew she was managing him the same way as Truly had managed the knight in the story, but how could he resist?

“I’d like to tour your ship. I and my friends. It would be a fine adventure, and we’re really curious how giant folk like you manage.”

“But the ship is so much bigger! If you fell—”

She silenced him with another kiss. “We would need guides, of course. Big men to carry us and keep us safe. To protect us. One man per visitor.”

Floyd opened his mouth to protest again, but she extended a delicate foot and touched his lip with her jewel-like toes. He wasn’t sure whether it was the touch or the sight beyond the foot, but it effectively shut him up. The next thing he knew he was consulting with the captain.

When the captain tried to protest, his own contingent of petite maidens added their pleas in their appealing fashion, and he too was silenced. Jonathan smiled, and Floyd suspected that the writer proffered his own protest merely to evoke a similar silencing. The thing about being managed by pretty girls of any size was that the men hardly minded it, even when they knew.

So in due course the royal maidens got to tour the ship. The sailors turned out to be happy to cooperate, each one carrying a dainty damsel in his hand and going where she directed, showing her the sights. Each was rewarded by smiles and supposedly accidental flashes, showing him other sights, and a mini kiss at the conclusion.

On the following days there were other visiting contingents, ordinary Lilliputians male and female, and the Emperor himself joined Floyd for a tour. “What did you have to promise your daughter to get her to set this up?” Floyd inquired.

The Emperor scowled. “Peace with the neighbors,” he grumbled. “For now.”

At the end of the week, the ship had been repaired, the water kegs were aboard, and every Lilliputian who wanted to had toured the giant ship. Even some Sirens had come aboard, silently, their bare bodies carried by sailors since they could not walk on their flukes. They had, it seemed, set a price on their pacifism: to share the action. Some even got to see the closed cabins of the officers, and to swing on their hammocks. There seemed to be quite a bit of swinging at times. Even the chained oarsmen got some visits, as the Sirens admired their muscles, and more. It seemed that a single Siren could entertain and be entertained by a number of men, when she chose, and she did not have to bite with her sharp teeth when she kissed. It also seemed that Sirens liked warm live men almost as much as cold dead men. It was a novel experience for all.

And all the girls liked Old Blackie, and he liked them. Something about girls and horses. They fed him tiny treats and brushed out his mane one hair at a time and pretended they were riding atop him. He enjoyed it as much as they did.

“My writer’s block is definitely over,” Jonathan said with satisfaction. “I know I will be writing about these little folk. Not the story we told them; I will devise a greater one about them.” The pert maiden on his shoulder whispered into his ear. “Complimentary, I’m sure, for the most part.” She kissed the ear, rewarding him.

Old Blackie whinnied. “And maybe one about horses, too,” Jonathan agreed in good humor.

Then it was time to go. The hull had been repaired, the ship was free of the sand, and well supplied for the resumption of the voyage. Some sailors seemed almost sad to depart these treacherous waters, oddly. Floyd echoed their reluctance. He had come to know Truly reasonably well, and liked her a lot, and she seemed to like him. If only she hadn’t been a princess, and so small!

“What must be, must be,” she told him, with a farewell kiss that fairly melted his upper lip. Then she was on her way back to the island, a likely future queen. She did not actually need boots or a djinn to prevail.

The ship rowed out to deep water with alacrity; the oarsmen had new vigor, and not only from their week’s layoff. The wind freshened, and the sails were set. They were on their way.

Floyd was resting in his cabin, emotionally unwinding. What an adventure it had been! He would certainly have a tale to tell when he finally got home. But he missed Temperance.

The door opened, and a woman entered. She had glorious golden hair, classic features, and a trim yet shapely figure. She looked somehow familiar. Especially her low loose blouse and short skirt.

Then he recognized her. “Truly!” Or Temperance, as the case might be.

“Floyd!” she breathed, and merged into his embrace. She kissed him, and it was more than a little bit of heaven. “I had to come to you.”

“But you’re my size!” he said. That was why he hadn’t identified her at first. “And how did you reach the ship? We’re hours on our way.”

“With magic, all things are possible,” she said.

“And you’re speaking my language!” Then he thought of something. “Am I dreaming?”

She naughtily pinched his bottom. “You’re awake. Otherwise the pinch would have ended your sleep.”

That seemed to be true. Then he thought of something else. “Faux!”

“Oh, phooey,” she swore. “I didn’t even get you into bed yet.”

Not that she was likely to have done that, to his frustration. “But why?”

“I’m a hopeless tease. Now you have three girlfriends to pine for. Some day you will have to choose between them. I won’t make it easy.”

That sobered him. Indeed, he wasn’t sure which one he would choose.

Chapter 17: Xanadu

The ship sailed ever onward, propelled by winds both fierce and frail.

When the gusts slackened, the oarsmen were put to work. Floyd, who had since admired the workers’ muscular shoulders, surprised one and all by volunteering to do oar work, thus relieving one of the other men, most of whom were glad to have a day or two off.

Although Floyd put his all into each stroke, it was obvious he was the weak link. Indeed, the captain was forced to relieve another rowman on the opposite side, lest they row in circles. Normally, the captain would have none of such foolishness, but he owed a debt to the young storyteller.

At a port in Baleeira, Portugal, Jonathan Swift disembarked with his new friend, another writer by the name of Daniel Defoe, who had been discreetly stowed upon the same ship. Unlike Swift, Defoe’s voyage had been designed to be somewhat of a vacation from his work as a pamphleteer, a job that required not only writing but publishing and distributing; instead, upon being shipwrecked and stranded and hearing word of the island’s most unusual inhabitants, Daniel had immediately sealed himself in his cabin and set about writing something new. Indeed, it was the opening scenes to be a book he would later call Robinson Crusoe, about another type of shipwreck. Upon hearing word of another writer feverishly setting ink to parchment, Swift sought out Defoe, only to discover that, although each was writing their own castaway story, both tales were vastly different. Swift and Defoe became fast friends, but history would not record this fleeting friendship, or of their true inspiration. Both would release stories of shipwrecks and castaways, although Defoe would beat Swift to it by a number of years. Both books would go on, according to Faux who had some glimpse of the future, to become worldwide phenomenons. For centuries to come.

Later, as the winds slackened and the days turned to weeks, young Floyd grew stronger and stronger. So strong that the captain finally put the second oarsman to work opposite Floyd. As the weeks turned to months, Floyd’s own shoulders began to fill out, much to Faux’s apparent delight.

They made their way south, docking at many African ports, many of them run by Portuguese and Dutch traders. Floyd was dismayed to see that many of these companies traded in human flesh; that was, slaves. Floyd didn’t think that was right, nor did many of his fellow passengers, and with the help of Faux and her magical African counterparts, they disrupted and destroyed many of the slave trader bases. Floyd himself led some of the raids, having long since learned the art of the sword from some of the fighting men on board his ship.

When the ship wasn’t docked, and when the winds were strong, Faux taught Floyd how to read. The young man learned easily enough, although sometimes, perplexedly, he saw the words backwards. Either way, he got the hang of it, and Faux presented to him many of her best works, all of which had been hidden within a secret room accessed through a small pendant she wore around her neck. She merely had to open the pendant, and then she was gone, winking from view, leaving Floyd confused and disoriented, only to return with more books for him to read. And read he did, as many books as she could bring him.

The ship rounded Cape Horn, a recent Dutch settlement, and headed north along the shores of Africa’s east coast. There, Floyd and company had many more adventurers, and made many friends and some enemies with the kingdoms along the coast. Floyd could spend days or weeks—heck, years—watching the endless parade of beautiful and massive animals that moved through the brush.

And so, it was with great reluctance that the ship pushed across to what Floyd had come to know as the Middle East, as in halfway to the Far East, which was ultimately their destination. Already nearly a half year had passed, and Floyd felt he had enough stories in spades, but he knew his little village would not welcome him home unless he had two years’ worth of stories. Two years! He had already done so much in six months!

As their vessel made their way around the Arabian coast, Floyd marveled at the blowing sands that seemed to stretch into eternity. At a dock in Balhaf, with rocky cliffs rising all around, they met a strange man named Niddala whom Faux took a liking to. Floyd thought him nothing more than a common thief who claimed to procure relics of great interest for others. For a price of course. He asked her, in private, what her fascination with the man was, and she explained that he was a king in hiding. Not only could she read his mind, but she knew well the djinn he kept in a lantern in his tent. The djinn, Faddy, was known to her kind, and was known as one of the more powerful of djinns. He knew something of djinns, having heard of them in the tales of those who had returned from their own Journeys. In fact, Floyd had even heard of the tale of Aladdin and the Lamp, and, as he spoke, Faux waited for comprehension to dawn on him. It did, eventually. Niddala was, of course, Aladdin spelled backwards.

Faux explained that the handsome man with his secret djinn was about to have an adventure of his own, an adventure involving sprites and dragons and lion serpents, and one special woman named Jewel. Floyd nearly asked to travel with Aladdin, but Faux cut short his unasked question, reminding him that he had his own tale to tell. Not Aladdin’s.

And so it was with great reluctance that Floyd bid the swarthy man adieu, which was French for goodbye, a language that was common in some of the books Floyd had read.

And so it was many months later when they docked in Bohai Bay in the Oriental city of Tianjin. This was where they said their goodbyes to the captain and his crew, many of whom had become like brothers to Floyd. To say that he had transformed mightily in the eight-month voyage would be putting it lightly.

It was here, while Faux led him through the busy fish markets, that they would discover that Xanadu had been destroyed hundreds of years earlier, in the fourteenth century. But, according to their local informant, as translated by Faux, there remained some of the city’s walls; in particular the remnants of a holy temple that might be worth seeing. Floyd was about to say no, when a passerby heard their conversation and stopped. She went on to say that there lived a lone man in Xanadu. She had heard of travelers coming upon him. He lived in the ruins and refused any help.

“But why does he live alone?” Floyd asked.

Their new informant merely shrugged her narrow shoulders, and said she did not know, but there were rumors that he had been living there for centuries, and that he was waiting for someone.

When their informant had continued on, Floyd stole a glance at Faux, who sat atop Old Blackie, and who had transformed herself into a matronly Chinese woman. Admittedly, it was his least favorite of her disguises. She said, “This is your Journey, Floyd. What do you wish to do?”

Chapter 18: Dulcie

Floyd looked at her. He had become more canny about her little ways. “Xanadu is where you will make a man of me. Of course I have to go there.”

“Of course,” she agreed, and he knew he had made the correct decision. He also knew that he would become a man in her esteem not simply by sex with her, though that prospect hardly dissuaded him. He would have to earn her respect first, and that would be a challenge. He knew he had made progress during their long journey, but he still had a way to go.

“Technically, Xandu,” she added.

“Xandu?”

“That’s where the regular resort area was. I remember it well. But the magic aspect remains Xanadu. That’s where the sacred River Alph flows, the brief time it is in the mortal realm.”

“Brief time? I thought rivers were timeless.”

“You’ll see.”

He knew she would not tell him more. He would have to figure it out for himself. “Are there any other technicalities I should know about?”

“The Emperor’s name was actually Kublai, but we Fee called him Kubla.”

“And of course you had relations with him.” That was a euphemism.

“Of course. But that was some time ago.”

Floyd decided not to question that aspect further. He knew Faux had been around, and she could fascinate any man she chose, even an emperor. That was then; this was now.

They bought a sturdy mule, together with supplies, and set out on the trek northwest, following a local map. They rode Old Blackie, while the mule carried the supplies. It was about 300 miles into the Mongolian highlands, passing a corner of the Gobi desert: two weeks of rough travel. They bought extra supplies along the way, such as bread and yak milk, and camped along the trail rather than at disreputable inns, and did well enough, considering. They washed up when they crossed the chilly streams, and it was a secret pleasure that was surely no secret from Faux when she assumed a vibrant young form for bathing. She didn’t mind that he looked. Otherwise she would have done it in the Chinese matron mode.

The trip was grueling, but they had an advantage: they were alone, and when Faux got bored she could do a little subtle magic to make it seem that they were traversing sweet Irish meadows at a comfortable temperature and humidity. The animals really appreciated that. She also had little powders she mixed with the drinking water that lent extra vigor, so that the trek was not as tiring.

But the thing that intrigued Floyd most was her appearance. For an hour she would be Amelie sitting before him on the horse, prim and proper, and he could talk to her as if she were real. He could privately admire her form, sometimes getting a peek down her blouse when she leaned back against him, and if on occasion he nuzzled her ear, she did not object. Then for an hour she would be Trudy, and while she was not as pretty, she was a better conversationalist. That made a difference when boredom threatened to overwhelm him. Then she would become Temperance—Truly in the story—with her special boots, and she turned around and faced him so that not only could he garner peeks, he could hug and kiss her as they rode. Temperance was the most expressive of the three, in the physical sense, and she was to an extent a tease, as the others were not. She knew he could not get very serious while riding the horse. Then she would spend an hour as herself, Faux Fee, her fair hair flowing and her phenomenal body straining at her clothing with each breath. “But there is one more,” she said.

“One more woman?”

“Yes. There will be five for you to choose from.”

“Five! All I need is one!”

“Yes. But you need the right one.”

“Isn’t Amelie the right one?”

“Not Trudy?”

“Well—”

“Or Temperance?”

“She’s not real! At least, not in any way I could be with.”

“Ah, but in emulation you could be with her for life.”

Floyd was taken aback. “You would emulate her for life? No more teasing?”

“For your life, not mine. Forty years would do it.”

“Which would be just an instant to you,” he said, seeing it. “A dull one, but then you’d move on.”

“It would not have to be dull.”

“Uh-uh. You’d have to stay within the limits of the person you emulated. Only as yourself could you really express yourself.”

Slowly she nodded. “You continue to gain perspective. You do interest me.”

Now he was surprised. “You’d be with me as yourself? For my lifetime?”

“If I chose.”

“An ignorant country lout?”

“No longer quite so ignorant or loutish.”

“You can do better than that.”

“Perhaps. But it takes all types to make a world, and variety is the spice.”

Could he believe this? “Why would you so choose?”

“If you proved worthy, and became a true man, and wanted me, then I could be interested. You have constancy and a certain willingness to learn.”

And what lessons she could teach him! He had wanted her throughout, as she knew, but thought she was unobtainable. “But what then of your deal with Amelie, that started all this? To bring me back safely so I could marry her?”

“I would forfeit that. Then she could keep her soul.”

“But she did it because she learned that I was the best possible husband for her.”

“As it seems you will be,” she agreed. “But consider the converse: is she the best possible wife for you?”

Now he was mentally stunned. Such a question had never occurred to him before. “I—should choose—the best for me.”

“Or the best compromise, considering the needs and qualities of each party. Sometimes the second or third choices of the two parties are best when combined.”

“How can I possibly know that? People are complicated!”

“Such judgments can better be made by mature folk. This is what you need to become.”

Indeed, there was more to manhood than he had thought. “Five. You said five to choose from. Who is the fifth?”

“Dulcie. You will meet her at Xanadu.”

And if she were anything like the others, it would be a difficult choice. “We came all the way here, with all this adventure, so I could choose from among five?”

“Yes.”

“I need one more bit of information. You are a marvel of illusion, but I do not think you could deceive me completely if I got close enough to you. Will you let me kiss you?”

“Smart boy.”

Floyd took that as a yes. He had learned a lot about judging people, and one thing he had found was that deception was easier at a distance. A handshake could tell a lot about a person, if a person was alert to the signals. A kiss could tell more. He had kissed her before, when she had first pacified him, and in the passion flower field with Trudy, and when she emulated Temperance, but this was different. There were different kinds of kisses, as her disciplinary kiss had demonstrated. This would not be innocent fun, but a serious assessment.

She was facing him on the horse. He put his arms around her body and drew her into him. She did not resist or turn her face away. He kissed her soundly on the lips. It was divine.

He drew back, pondering, laboring to fathom the reality behind the sheer delight of the kiss itself. Emotion was fine, but that was not the distraction he sought at the moment. “Your body says you would do it. You are not teasing me. You would be with me, if I chose you from among the five.”

“I would,” she agreed.

So it truly would be a choice among all of them. Two real girls, one emulation, one as yet undefined, and Faux herself. If he proved worthy.

There was the rub. Floyd did not yet know whether he would be worthy.

At last they reached the ruins of Xanadu. They were not impressive. There were irregular fragments of a wall that had once surrounded the area, and the remnant of the temple in the center. It was hard to believe that this had once been a fabulous vacation resort for an emperor. There was no sign of a river, sacred or otherwise.

They approached the temple. An old man tottered out to meet them. “Who are you?” he demanded.

Faux was silent, now in her matronly mode, so Floyd knew it was up to him. “I am Floyd, a traveler from far Ireland, and this is my traveling companion Faux and my horse and mule. Who are you?”

“You dare to question me?” the man demanded angrily.

One of that kind. Floyd had a notion how to handle unjustified arrogance. “You take a simple question, like the one you asked me, as a dare? If you do not care to identify yourself, we will ignore you and go about our business. As far as I can tell, you are a trespasser here as much as we are. We can cooperate to forward our mutual purposes, or we can stay clear of each other. It’s your choice.”

The man stared at him. “You are not at all fazed by the spook of the temple.”

“I don’t believe in spooks.” At least not in that sense; he had seen the supernatural and knew it was real, but this old man seemed mortal.

The man came to a decision. “Call me Waiter. Are you the one I am waiting for?”

“I have no idea,” Floyd said. “Probably not.”

Faux’s straight face masked a smirk.

Waiter began to look somewhat frustrated. “I am waiting for the one who can rescue Dulcie.”

Dulcie! That was the name of his fifth choice. “Then I may after all be the one you want. I do want to meet Dulcie.”

“This is not completely straightforward,” Faux said, shifting to her natural form.

“You’re a Fee!” Waiter said, astonished.

“And you’re a wandering spirit,” Faux returned. “I will not allow my ward to get trapped by misinformation. It is time for you to come clean about you and Dulcie.”

“I was about to,” Waiter said. He faced Floyd. “When Kublai Khan governed here, this site was a paradise with pleasant springs, delightful streams, lovely woods and meadows, all sorts of beasts of chase and game, a five mile long sacred river, and a sumptuous house of pleasure that could be moved from place to place.”

“Now, wait,” Floyd protested. “That—”

“The Mongols used tents,” Waiter explained. “The fanciest tents extant, unlike any seen elsewhere. They could be moved, yet inside them it was as comfortable as in any palace. I know; I was one of the tent maintainers.”

“Now wait again. That was four or five hundred years ago.”

“Yes. I was a spirit trained in tentmanship who could inhabit a regular worker and make him expert in a moment. The emperor found folk like me useful. When the empire passed and the rebellious Chinese destroyed Xandu, I survived by taking over the body of a new person who could profit from my tenting expertise, and thus earn a good living. When he grew old and died, I moved along to a new younger man. It was always a fair exchange. And so I have continued for centuries.”

“Which is why you understand him,” Faux said. “As a spirit he touches your mind and sends his thoughts, which you hear as words in your own language, just as I do.”

Floyd paused, chagrined that he had not caught on that he should not understand the man’s Chinese. He should have been more alert.

“And I have lingered here, in one host body or another—suicidal young men will come to me, and I cure them of their depression in exchange for their hosting of my spirit—waiting for a mortal who will do my bidding.”

Floyd realized this was possible. “Why stay here, when you could have found a more comfortable existence elsewhere?”

“Because of Dulcie. She was from Abyssinia, a dusky musician who animated a local girl to make her expert in dancing and playing the dulcimer. I loved her and couldn’t let her go. But when the reality shifted she was trapped in a cavern, down near the sunless sea, unable to escape because of a lecherous demon who wanted her for his own. She managed to hide in a spelled ice chamber he could not enter, but neither could she escape it, because he lurked. Her host body is suspended in youth, but what use is that when she is a prisoner? I can’t rescue her; only a brave mortal can do that. One who can defeat the demon and bring her out of the measureless caverns and across the barrier to this realm.”

This was complicated, but Floyd was following it. “What barrier?”

“The reality barrier. The Chinese did not just physically destroy Xandu, because they hated the Mongols and all their works. They moved it into an alternate reality that only they, being mortal, could cross.”

Now it was coming clear. “I am mortal,” Floyd agreed. “So it seems I can cross. But how?”

“You must do it with your mind,” Waiter said. “You must visualize the two realities here overlapped, the one where Kublai Khan existed, and the one where the handiwork of Kubla Khan was banished. Then you will be able to go to Dulcie.”

“Ah. Just my mind?”

“Caution,” Faux said. “I am not mortal, so can’t cross that barrier. If you do, you will have to go by yourself. That means facing the guardian demon alone.”

And that was surely a challenge not for a boy but a man. Faux had seen this coming and set it up for him: his trial of manhood, alone. A trial he wanted to win.

“I’ll do it,” he said.

“I am not sure you grasp what is entailed. You can’t slay a demon with a sword. He is immaterial. But he can reach into your body and squeeze your heart with his electrical essence until you die.”

That made Floyd pause. “Then how can I deal with him?”

“You need a little electricity of your own, to charge a wire and make a magnetic field to contain him.” She produced an almost invisibly thin thread that looked like silk. “Use this to weave a circle around him thrice. That should hold him long enough.”

This struck him as gibberish. Electricity? Magnetic field? Long enough for what? Whoever heard of such nonsense? But if that was what it took to handle the demon, so be it. He took the thread and stuffed it into a pocket.

Faux stepped close and kissed him on the cheek. Was that a tear in her eye?

“Is that it?” he asked.

Faux was silent. She was letting him make his choice, for good or ill.

“Whenever you are ready,” Waiter said eagerly.

“I am ready now.”

Floyd closed his eyes and concentrated, thinking the words Kublai and Kubla, so close, yet the key to adjacent realities. KUBLAI—knock off the I—KUBLA.

Nothing happened.

He tried again. XANDU—add the A—XANADU.

Nothing.

Disappointed, he opened his eyes. And stood amazed.

The parched ruins were gone. In their place was a gorgeous landscape with forests and fields, small flowing streams, placidly grazing animals, and all manner of brightly plumaged birds. In the center, a phenomenal palatial tent; indeed it was a mobile palace. There was also a tremendous fountain geysering high into the air, splashing down to form a river surging along between the hills. That would be the River Alph, starting its five mile course before plunging back below ground. Truly a wonderland.

Then he saw what wasn’t there: Waiter, Faux, Old Blackie, and the mule.

He was on his own.

Chapter 19: Ice Dome

Floyd had never felt more alone or scared. More than anything, he felt distinctly vulnerable. He was suddenly alone in a strange land; worse, he was alone in a strange reality, too. An alternate reality, the old man had called it.

Floyd didn’t want trouble. He only wanted to find Dulcie, save her, and return her to the real world, although this world looked pretty real too. He could feel the wind, feel the sun, and hear voices coming from within the tent nearby. He had no business with the occupants of the tent. He needed to find that ice cave.

Now, as he kept to the shadows of trees and tents, behind carts and oxen, he knew of only one direction to go: down toward the sunless sea. Wherever that was. Shortly, when Floyd had made it through camp unseen, he found himself in a dense forest. Once there, he had the bright idea to climb the tallest tree and get the lay of the land. Once he settled on what was surely the tallest tree around, he went about climbing it. He was reminded of the monkeys he’d seen in India, those mischievous, human-like critters who’d roamed many of the city’s rooftops.

He smiled at the thought as he climbed higher and higher. Floyd had always been a good climber. Indeed, nearly all the boys in his village were. Floyd loved the freedom of it. Up in the trees, the world seemed small and beautiful, and he liked that. Now, as the treetop itself bowed under his weight, Floyd found himself smiling and gazing in nearly all directions at once. It was hard to believe this land was an alternate reality. It seemed as real as his own. He nearly preferred it to his own, what with all the rolling hills, the fertile grounds, the many gardens, the miles of stone walls, punctuated by round towers. He saw people, too, and livestock, all tiny as ants from up here. He caught the scent of incense-bearing trees, and knew this to be paradise.

But, lo, to the east was a dark sea. From here, Floyd could see the clouds huddled for miles beyond, with the occasional flashes of lightning. He could also see where the River Alph continued on its five-mile journey, cutting through the green hills through a deep chasm.

And so Floyd made his way down as fast as any monkey and fashioned a walking stick from a lightning-blasted branch, and set off in the direction of the sunless sea.

***

Floyd followed the chasm due east.

Water surged over rock and sometimes cascaded down in smaller waterfalls. Floyd enjoyed the whispering sounds of running water almost as much as he enjoyed the sounds of the howling wind.

But when he heard the voices of men on the wind, he took cover within a cedar grove, and waited for a troupe of mighty-looking Chinese soldiers on horseback to pass him by. Later, as the sky darkened under a waning moon, he heard something else on the wind. He was about to take cover when, yes, he was certain it was a woman’s voice. A woman wailing perhaps. But strangest of all, he could get no bearing on the haunting sound. After many minutes of trying to pinpoint it, something stranger still happened: the wailing seemed to move from one direction to the other. Floyd shivered and suspected these hills and woods just might be haunted.

Down through the chasm the river flowed, and down through wood and dale Floyd followed. His best estimate was that the river flowed about five miles, a journey that he knew he could make in under an hour. Indeed, such a distance was but a drop in the bucket compared to his travels of late. In Africa, he had walked for days hunting slave traders. In India, he had journeyed a week to a sacred temple. Floyd smiled. Surely by now he’d gathered enough stories to appease his elders.

It was but a short time later that the sound of crashing surf mingled with the whispering river. Floyd crested a small hillock and saw two things at once: gray skies and a dark, churning sea. The temperature had dropped as well, and as Floyd pulled his cloak tighter around his shoulders, he noted the dead grass and stunted trees. He also couldn’t help but see how the ants between his boots roamed in circles, seemingly confused. Next, Floyd watched two seagulls crash into each other and drop like rocks from the sky. Although a stiff wind blew, Floyd noted that the sea lay inert, unmoving.

Something evil is here, he thought.

In fact, now that he was here, he realized that what he had seen from a distance was a mirage. A vision of what lay below: the sunless sea.

Now, as he crept along the hill, huddled within his cloak and suddenly realizing he had been foolish beyond reason to volunteer for this quest, he heard it again. A wail on the wind. The same sound he’d heard earlier. Only now it was closer—and seemed to be coming from where the river cascaded from a steep cliff, to drop down as a waterfall to the lifeless ocean below.

Floyd, hair whipping and teeth chattering, took in some air and made a decision. He would see this adventure through to the end. He would win Faux’s heart in the process. And so he made his way down to where the river plunged over the cliff, and where the sound of wailing could be heard. He leaned carefully out and took a look—and saw one of the strangest sights he’d ever seen. The tumultuous river poured into a brightly lit dome of ice.

The cavern of ice?

And was the wailing he heard from Dulcie?

Floyd didn’t know, but he knew there was only one way to find out: he had to get into that dome. Unfortunately, he saw no other opening except where the water entered through the very top.

He was just about to look for a way down the cliff—perhaps there was a vine hanging nearby, or a natural path in the rock—when a voice hissed next to him, “You have come a long way to die, boy.”

Floyd turned, gasping, and saw what he could only describe as a living shadow. It hovered over him, black as night with two glowing red eyes. It fluttered and wavered on the wind, formed and re-formed, expanded and retracted. Now, as Floyd reached for his sword, knowing in his heart it would be useless against what was surely the demon, he lost his balance. And as he teetered on the precipice, a cold wind blasted him.

His grabbing hands found nothing as he fell over the cliff, and down toward the ice dome below.

Chapter 20: Demon

There wasn’t time for fear. Floyd simply fell beside the column of water plunging into the ice dome. He was sorry he hadn’t done a better job of the rescue. He was just a village oaf, sadly outmatched.

Yet Faux had believed in him enough to give him the thread and let him tackle his challenge alone. She must have had some reason for faint hope.

Then he felt something holding him back. He wasn’t falling as fast as he should. It was as though a lifeline were gently taking up the slack, slowing his fall. How could that be?

There was a tug on his pocket. The silken thread! It was somehow holding him back. Faux must have anticipated this, and given him some protection from his own folly. He should have known she would not simply send him to his doom.

But he was still falling, albeit more slowly. He crashed into the dome of ice, right beside the entry hole for the water, cracking it asunder and denting it in. Then he slid on through and dropped to the floor below, landing clumsily on his feet amid a shower of ice shards. He saw that the waterfall went right through the center of the dome and down into a hole, surely exiting into the sunless sea.

There was a scream. He looked and saw the damsel holding her dulcimer. Dulcie! She was dark and shapely, with a cute face and long black hair, a lovely young woman in her nicely fitting jacket and skirt. If he understood her situation correctly, she was actually a trapped spirit, so he should be able to talk with her just as he had with Waiter.

“Uh, hello,” he said awkwardly. “Dulcie?”

She calmed somewhat. “Who are you? What is your purpose here?”

So he was right about that. They could talk. “I am Floyd. I have come to rescue you. Waiter sent me.”

“Waiter! The tenter? He remains?”

“For centuries. He loves you. He says you sing and dance beautifully.”

She played a chord on her dulcimer and did a little dance step that multiplied her physical appeal. “He’s nice. But only a mortal can save me.”

“I am that mortal,” Floyd said. He hoped.

“That gives me joy. I have been trapped here far too long.” Now she played a lovely melody, her fingers moving deftly, and danced in a manner he hadn’t seen before. She sang of Mount Abora, surely a wonderful place, as much a paradise as Xanadu itself, where she had come of age. Her homeland, animated by her gestures. It was extremely evocative, and the way she flung her hair and moved her hips—

Then something crashed down behind him. Floyd whirled, sword ready. It was the demon, complete with horns, fangs, hooves, and tail.

“Oh!” Dulcie cried. “I spelled the ice to keep the demon out, but you made a hole in it, and now he’s here.”

“But there was already a hole,” Floyd protested. “For the water.”

“I couldn’t use that hole,” the demon said. “The water would have shorted me out. But you made one I could use, you mortal fool.”

Oops. He had been an idiot again. “Sorry about that.”

“And now at long last I’ve got you,” the demon told Dulcie leeringly. “On honeydew I have fed, and drunk the milk of paradise far too long; it is way past time to have a woman. So how do you want your nooky, you luscious creature? The easy way or the hard way? I prefer the hard way.”

He was talking about her reluctant cooperation versus outright rape. “No way,” Floyd said, menacing him with the sword.

The demon laughed. “You want me to do you too, man-child? Wait your turn.” He stalked toward Dulcie, who screamed and backed away.

Floyd swung the sword, catching the demon at waist level. And the blade passed right through without resistance. Oops, Faux had warned him.

The demon turned and advanced on him, his eyes flashing and his hair floating. “You annoy me, mortal twerp. Cease your antics, or I might do this to you.” He swung his hand at Floyd as if to slap his chest, but the hand passed through his body.

And gave his heart an awful start. That electric squeeze! Floyd fell back, gasping. Faux had warned about this too. Curiously, the demon was shaking his hand as if it had gotten hurt.

But Faux had also given Floyd the key to victory. To weave the electric thread around the demon three times.

The demon had already turned away, satisfied that Floyd was no threat at all. He was stalking Dulcie again. How did he propose to rape her when his body could not touch her physically? Maybe that same electrical squeeze, down in her tender part. She plainly feared it. In her distress she dropped her dulcimer.

Now was the time. Floyd brought out the thin thread—and paused. How could he weave it around the demon three times without anchoring it somewhere?

Then he got a notion. He looped the thread around the hilt of the sword and drew it tight. He held on to the other end with his hand.

“Hey, horntoad!” he called.

The demon glanced back at him, without letting go of Dulcie’s arm. He had just caught her and was about to draw himself close to her. Evidently he could use her body as leverage when he chose to. “You again, pipsqueak? Do I have to put you down to stop this nuisance?”

“You sure do, fangface,” Floyd said. “Hoof it over here so I can dispatch you without getting any of your dirt on the lady.”

A wisp of smoke rose from the demon’s head as his hair floated higher. The insults were getting through! “So be it, moron.” He let go of the damsel and strode toward Floyd.

“Ki-yah!” Floyd cried, and flung the sword at him. It passed right through, of course, and clattered to the floor beyond. He could see the faint luminescence of the thread as it carried its charge. He hoped the demon wouldn’t see it.

“Ho ho ho!” the demon laughed. “Couldn’t even hold on to your weapon, butterfingers!”

“I don’t need a sword,” Floyd said. “I’ll hex you instead.” He made an indecent gesture with one finger.

The demon dived for him, but Floyd nimbly stepped aside, then veered to complete a left-turning circle around the stumbling creature, trailing the glowing thread, which the demon evidently didn’t notice. One loop.

“I’m going to screw you to the wall!” the demon cried, and charged again.

Floyd avoided him, and loped around for a second turn. Now there were two glowing loops circling the demon. “You’d better brush up on your attacks,” Floyd said. “A lame bear is more agile than you are.”

“I will destroy you!” the demon cried, enraged. He charged again, his hands fairly crackling with his own deadly current.

Floyd dodged him again, completing a third loop. Got it thrice! Now would it work?

The demon oriented once more. Floyd jerked on the thread, drawing it closer.

The demon froze. “Oh, no! That’s Faux Fee’s thread!”

“She gets around,” Floyd said, though he was surprised himself about this detail. Faux really had been around. That was why she had known what he needed here. “Well, off with you, fool.” He twitched the thread to be sure it was tight. Then he picked up the sword and tossed it at the plunging liquid column.

“Noooo!” the demon cried as he was pulled after the sword, into the waterfall. In a moment he disappeared in a flash, shorted out by the water.

“You did it!” Dulcie cried, running to hug him. Oh, her joy was sweet! “You beat the foul demon!”

“Well, that was the general idea,” Floyd said modestly. What an armful she was!

“But how do you propose to get me to the real world? I don’t have a host body there, and I’m sure Abyssinia has changed beyond recognition; I would not be comfortable there anymore.”

“We should be able to get you one of the local village girls, who would be glad to exchange her drab existence for your appearance and expertise with song and dance.”

“That would do,” she agreed. She wriggled enticingly in his arms. “And you, Floyd—are you interested?”

Suddenly he was. “But Waiter—I’m rescuing you for him.”

“And a fine man he is,” she agreed. “But you are the one who rescued me. You have the first pick.”

She was fabulously compelling, and she was on Faux’s list. But would it be right to take her? “I—I don’t know.”

She kissed him on the cheek, then went to fetch her dulcimer. “I’m teasing.”

Maybe so, but it was a tease that could readily fascinate him. She was every ounce a woman, and she knew it. “I—I need to get you across the divide.”

“Yes. That is your realm.”

“I think if I hold you while I change, you will come with me.”

“I certainly will.” She squeezed him excitingly tightly.

Floyd focused on the names XANADU—XANDU. KUBLA—KUBLAI.

The ice cave was gone. They stood back among the barren ruins. They were in a deep gully, maybe the spot where the ice dome was, in the other realm.

“Now you must choose,” Dulcie said, stepping away from him and twirling her skirt appealingly as she played a chord on the dulcimer.

He was nonplussed. “But you don’t have a host here, yet.”

“Oh, but I do, Floyd. I am with your guardian, the Fee. That is temporary, unless you wish it to be permanent.” She spun gracefully about, her skirt rising higher. Oh, those legs! “I will gladly be your paramour, if you choose me. Your decision is upon you.”

That explained it. Faux had intercepted them here, and hosted Dulcie’s spirit immediately. If he chose Dulcie, Faux would continue hosting her indefinitely. But what then of the other girls? Amelie, Trudy, Truly, and Faux herself? What of Waiter, who would be cheated out of his love? That wasn’t right.

“I—I need more time to consider.”

“No. This is your crisis of manhood.” He knew that was really Faux speaking. “Not physical or mental, but emotional. You must decide before we rejoin Waiter.”

He had to decide now that the complete roster was here. That was his final test of manhood.

Damn. He would rather be fighting the demon. There, there was no confusion about good and evil. Here, he had to choose among five girls, all of whom were good. That was qualitatively different. Which one was best for him? Which one was he best for? He wished he could have all of them, but that was not the nature of the choice. Damn, damn, damn.

Chapter 21: Host Fee

“I see where this is going,” said Dulcie, coming to the forefront.

“Y-You do?” asked Floyd. Even he had no idea what was happening.

“Yes, you are leaning toward the Fee, named Faux, my present host. Do you deny it?”

Admittedly, Faux did seem the most obvious prospect. After all, he had gotten to know her well during this past year and a half. Or had it been two years? He had lost track of time, so long was his journey from home.

“I-I’m not sure.”

“Well, she is the obvious choice. And now that I’m here, merged temporarily with her, I see that she has something resembling feelings for you, but be careful with that.”

“What do you mean?” asked Floyd.

“As a Fee, feelings do not come naturally to her, if at all.”

“I don’t understand.”

“For an immortal, feelings are a hindrance.”

“I’m not sure I’m follow—”

“Think about it, Floyd. What use does a Fee have for feelings, when mortals die off? How many has she watched die? Better to not have feelings, and watch the world pass you by, than to continuously feel heartbreak, decade after decade, century after century.”

“But you said she does have something resembling feelings.”

“It’s as close as she can get, Floyd. It is not real love. It is her best approximation at real love.”

“But she’s trying to love me,” he said, hoping he was following.

“She is, yes. But it is not real love. Not in the human sense.”

“And you have loved?” he asked.

“Oh, yes.”

He saw the look in her eye, and the way she glanced back to where the ruins of Xanadu would lie. “The Waiter,” he said, understanding.

She held his gaze, then suddenly crossed her arms under her chest. Her fingernails drummed a staccato upon her upper arms. Floyd knew that drumming anywhere. Faux had come through. “She is not speaking the truth, Floyd. She is in love with the Waiter.”

“Then why does she not go to him?” I asked.

“She feels obligated to you. She is, in fact, bound to you, until you release her.”

That didn’t feel like love to Floyd, either. And neither did it feel like love when a creature—no matter how desirable—had to fake it. Floyd said, “Then I release her.” He corrected himself. “I release you, Dulcie. You are no longer bound to me. You may go to the Waiter. He has, well, he has waited a long time for you.”

She uncrossed her arms and pirouetted a few inches off the ground. Dulcie was back again. As her dress flew up and Floyd appreciated all over again what he was seeing, he wondered if he was making the correct choice. Next, she flung herself into Floyd’s arms and covered his face and lips with kisses. Floyd thought he might have died and gone to heaven. “My hero! Thank you for saving me, and thank you for releasing me. Now, I can go to my one true love!”

And with that, she was gone, and standing in her place was Faux, who had now taken on the guise of Trudy, the simple serving girl of the White Ladies. Seeing her caused a nearly physical reaction in Floyd. After all, he had spent an afternoon kissing her—or who he had thought had been her. Of course, it had turned out that he was kissing Faux all along, who had been emulating Trudy. But that had been nearly two years ago. Two years! Sadly, he could see, despite his body’s reaction, that he was no longer interested in Trudy. Not because she was plain, but because he had nearly forgotten her. Floyd took her hand, kissed the back of it, and wished her well. She was not the one for him. Anyone who could be forgotten would not suit his need for lifelong love.

Trudy faded with a sad smile, and in her place was Truly, now full-sized and as lovely as any woman he’d ever met. Truly looked around her, slightly confused. “I feel like a giant.”

“You would be a giant in your world. In mine, you are normal sized.”

“No, this doesn’t feel right. I feel gangly and heavy. I prefer to be fleet of foot and closer to the ground. But if you choose me, I will give up life as I prefer it to start a new one with you. You are my favorite storyteller. And I would enjoy spending a lifetime listening to your tales.”

Floyd was touched by the compliment. Yes, he wanted to be a teller of tales, but, thus far, he had only written in his journals of his travels, and had only told the one tale, which had, of course, featured Truly in the title role.

But seeing her now, the way her arms hung at her side, the way her hips dragged down, the way her hair hung forward, Floyd knew she would be living in misery to be with him. He took her hands and kissed her cheek and released her as well, and there was a brief instant where Floyd watched her shrink down to her normal six inches. She did a cartwheel and skipped off through the tall grass... and disappeared.

An instant later, Amelie stood before him.

“What of me, Floyd? You will summarily dismiss me as well?”

He opened his mouth to speak, but closed it again when no words emerged. Seeing her again brought back a lot of emotion in him. Unlike Trudy, Floyd hadn’t gone a day without thinking of Amelie, a girl he barely knew, yes, but had loved from afar, seemingly his entire life. That love had not faded, even after years and months of his Journey. In fact, seeing her now made his heart sing, and he ached to be with her, to love her, to make love to her, to start a family with her. More than anything, he ached to feel her love. Real love. Not a simulation.

Faux, of course, could read his mind, and spoke to him through Amelie’s perfect mouth. “You do not know if she will return your love, Floyd. Whereas, I can promise you something close to it for as long as you live. I will never grow old, unless you want me to. I will be everything you want me to be.”

“But why?” asked Floyd.

“You have proven to be interesting.”

“But not because you love me,” he said.

“I do not know this word, I’m sorry. But I will do my best to mimic it.”

Floyd nodded and made his decision. “I choose Amelie. I choose to take a chance on her, for good or ill.”

And just as the words escaped his lips, Amelie leaped forward and threw her arms around him, hugging him harder than any other girl had ever hugged him. He fell to his back, and she showered him with even more kisses than Dulcie.

“I picked Amelie. Not you, Faux!” he managed to say between the onslaught of lips and even the tip of her hungry tongue.

“It is Amelie, you dolt!” she said, then resumed the kissing.

“Wait, what?”

She sat back, straddling him, her thighs smooth and bare, her skirt riding up. “Don’t you get it? Faux isn’t just a Fee, but she’s a Host Fee.”

Floyd sat up on his elbows. His body having already reacted mightily to the shower of her kisses and the press of her body. “A Host Fee? I don’t understand.”

“All of us could come through her, even from afar. We can see what she sees. She hosts us.”

“But...” he said, certain he wasn’t understanding, “but I thought she was only assuming your likeness.”

“You thought wrong.”

“You are really Amelie?”

“I am.”

He thought of a complication. “But what of your Journey? You can’t marry until you have taken it.”

“This counts as that. It is of the mind more than the body, but I have been gathering stories too.” She smiled mischievously. “Some are about you, that you might not care to tell yourself.”

Somehow he wasn’t worried. “And where is Faux?”

“She is here, watching us. Curious as always.”

“Are her feelings hurt?” he asked. “I did not choose her, after all.”

“She feels no love, and no heartache either. But she wants to understand love and hopes that she can by hosting my body, at times.”

“So when we kiss...”

“Yes, Floyd. She will be there with us.”

Floyd was about to roll her over onto her back, to give her a proper kissing, when another thought occurred to him. Months ago, when Floyd had helped a curious man named Niddala with a small assignment, the man had repaid Floyd with a most impressive diamond ring. Now, Floyd searched his innermost pocket and removed the concealed ring. He dropped to a knee, but before he could ask her, she said, “Yes!”

“But I didn’t ask!” he protested as she threw her arms around him.

“You didn’t have to,” she said through kisses. She tapped his skull. “I can read your mind, remember?”

The kissing had only just begun when Floyd heard a familiar voice from behind him. “A touching moment that, sadly, must be cut short.”

Amelie gasped. So did Floyd. He turned in time to see the Hunter Elf step from behind a rocky ruin of a wall. One by one others in the press-gang appeared too.

Floyd stood and reached for his sword.

Chapter 22: Man

Floyd paused to slip the diamond ring onto the little finger of his left hand, as he had been interrupted before actually putting it on Amelie’s fourth finger. There was no sense in leaving that loose, especially now. In fact, he realized it would help him make his point.

Then he gazed at the circled press-gang thugs. “Something you lads should know before we engage,” he said conversationally. “You’re not the first gang this foul elf has led. The first ones I encountered two years ago did not fare well. They were rude to the White Ladies, and most of them were killed.”

The men of the gang looked tough, but something about Floyd’s attitude put them off. He could see by their reactions that one or two had heard of the White Ladies, and knew that they were not to be fooled with.

“Ravisher, here, is not your friend,” Floyd continued. “He led the others into that death trap, and he is leading you into similar mischief. You’d be best off to quit now and save your hides.”

“Save your breath, pipsqueak,” Ravisher growled.

“Butt out, frogface, or I’ll hurt you,” Floyd snapped.

The Hunter Elf’s jaw dropped in astonishment at his temerity. So did Amelie’s.

Floyd returned his attention to the press-gangsmen. “You see, to do your job you must capture me without killing or seriously injuring me. Because boat captains don’t pay well for battered oarsmen. They want strong, fit men who can row well from the outset. So you must take it easy on me. I, in contrast, have no such restraints; I can hurt you or kill you with impunity, since your business is illegal. So though you outnumber me, you have no advantage. In fact it’s an unfair engagement. Ravisher doesn’t care about you at all; it is Faux Fee he is after. He is merely using you as a pretext to get rid of me so that he can have Faux all to himself. You can all die as far as he cares.”

Now one of the men called his bluff. “I can take you with my bare hands, twerp!” He advanced menacingly. “I don’t have to kill you, just bind you.”

“Perhaps a token demonstration is in order,” Floyd said. His sword flashed so quickly it was almost invisible. The man cried out as he clapped his hand to his ear and fell back.

In a moment it became clear what had happened. Floyd had cut off the man’s right ear. “Now I think you lads know that I could as readily have cut off his nose—or his face,” he said conversationally. “This was merely a demonstration, as I said. If you annoy me, I will strike with more conviction.”

The men were plainly impressed. Floyd had moved swiftly and with unnerving accuracy. He wasn’t bluffing.

“Enough of this nonsense,” Ravisher said, striding toward Floyd.

The sword flashed again. The Elf’s head flew off and landed in the dirt with an expression of surprise. The body stood there headless. There was no blood.

The press-gangsmen stared. They had clearly never seen anything like this before.

“I believe I gave you fair warning,” Floyd said calmly to the head. “Do not interfere with what concerns you only peripherally. In the past you were dealing with a boy. Now you face a man. There’s a difference.”

Then he squatted, picked up the head by the hair, brushed off the dirt, and handed it to the Elf.

Ravisher carefully set the head back on his neck and twisted it into place. “So it seems,” he said grimly. He was hardly cowed, but he was impressed. He was canny enough to know when he faced a dangerously unknown quantity. He would wait until the situation clarified.

“That, too, was a token,” Floyd said. “Don’t make me hurt you. Fear not, I will get to you in due course.”

Then he addressed the men again. “Do we understand each other?” he inquired.

The men exchanged glances. They had seen his proficiency with the sword. They had seen him attack the Hunter Elf with seeming impunity. Then they turned and walked away, one man carrying his ear. Indeed, there were no easy pickings here.

That left Floyd, Amelie/Faux, and Ravisher.

“Your turn, Faux,” Floyd said.

“Mine?” Faux asked, surprised. “I represent no threat to you, Floyd. Quite the opposite.”

“That depends on how you see it.”

Even Ravisher was surprised now. He was listening closely.

“You made a deal with Amelie,” Floyd said. “You would protect me, and indeed, make a man of me, so that she could marry me in due course.”

“So I did,” she agreed. “And it seems I have delivered.”

“You delivered,” he agreed. “But there remains the matter of your price. You may take her soul, or her firstborn son, or her husband for your monthly sabbats.”

She nodded. “True. I have yet to decide which.”

“I love Amelie and do not want her to pay any such price. It would hurt me to have a soulless wife, or to lose my firstborn son, or to be subject to your lecherous whims on a monthly basis. Therefore you are a threat to me that I must deal with.”

Faux was taken aback. “Floyd, that deal was made before you ever met me. It is what caused me to take two years of my attention to see to your needs. You are in no position to renege now.”

“No position,” Ravisher echoed.

“Stay out of it, sphincter,” Floyd snapped. “I am not dealing with you yet.”

Amused, the Hunter Elf was silent.

“You have something in mind,” Faux said. “It is curiously opaque at the moment, but there’s something.”

“I propose to settle Amelie’s account myself,” Floyd said. “To relieve the need for Amelie to do it.”

Faux smiled. “I don’t want your soul. My association with you is meaningless unless you are independent.”

“I am not offering it.”

“What, then?” she asked, baffled. Ravisher was plainly curious too.

“This: I will enable you to escape Ravisher forever. You will never have to oblige his passions, even long after I pass from the scene.”

Now Faux exchanged a glance with Ravisher. They were mutually perplexed. Such a thing was plainly beyond any powers Floyd might have, man or not.

“Fat chance,” the Hunter Elf muttered darkly. “Your behind will be mine, Fee lass.”

“I’ll bite,” Faux said after a moment. “What is it?”

“Do I have your agreement? That guarantee in exchange for anything Amelie owes you?”

“No. I need to know the mechanism first.”

“She has a point,” Ravisher said, amused again.

Floyd ignored him. “Do you remember our encounter with Niddala?”

“Yes. A passing incident. You did him a favor and he gave you a token. In fact it was the diamond ring you were about to give Amelie.”

“Exactly. It’s a lovely and valuable ring. Also magic.”

“Could be,” she agreed. “Niddala did have a small collection of magic artifacts. I hadn’t realized you had kept it. It faded from my awareness, until you produced it just now. What of it?”

“It was not coincidence that you forgot it. Its magic repels the supernatural.”

“Ah. I am supernatural, so even my awareness of it was repulsed. Still, what has this to do with the price of rice in China?”

“Everything. I had time to myself during those long sails around the continents, given that you did not elect to share your bed with me, and I amused myself not only by practicing swordplay and learning to read. I studied the ring. Bit by bit I learned its qualities. It protects the wearer from attack by the supernatural. Since most human events are natural, the ring normally has little if any effect. But in its element, it’s powerful. I tested it cautiously, and found no limit to its repulsive power. I cannot be injured by any supernatural force I could find. I believe the same would be true of anyone else who wore it.”

“I have heard of those rings,” Ravisher said. “They were crafted in prehistory by folk who were tired of being molested by spirits like me. They can be given, but not taken.”

“So it seems,” Floyd agreed. “I was about to give it to Amelie, to protect her, but now I have a better use for it.”

Amelie appeared hurt. “You are breaking our engagement?”

“By no means, my love. It is only that I must find some other token to express my love for you. I must give this one to Faux.”

Her lower lip turned rubbery. “I feel jilted!”

“Not so, Amelie. I must do it to protect you from serious loss. Let me talk to Faux again.”

Faux reappeared. “I believe I am beginning to get your gist. You knew that ring would protect you when you went to rescue Dulcie from her demon.”

“I forgot about the ring then,” Floyd admitted. “But surely it was protecting me, yes. Now I remember that the demon hurt his hand when he tried to squeeze my heart.”

“So it was raw courage, in that case.”

“I suppose so,” he agreed. “I simply wanted to rescue the damsel, and prove myself to you.”

“As you did.”

Floyd shrugged.. “But we drift from the subject. If I give you this ring, and you wear it always, it will prevent any supernatural thing from attacking you.”

“I’m not going into battle,” Faux said. “What I need is—” She paused.

“To you, Ravisher’s attentions are attacks,” Floyd said. “Is that not so?”

“So they are,” Faux agreed thoughtfully.

“All I want is to kiss you and stroke you and—” Ravisher began.

“And plumb me until your demon seed spurts from my ears,” she agreed wrathfully. “I’d rather be impaled on a thick, pointed mast, sails and all.”

Floyd held out the ring. “Deal?”

“Deal.” She took it and put it on her fourth finger of her right hand.

Amelie sighed. “I suppose it is a fair deal, much as I would have liked to have that ring for my own.”

“You will have it, dear, as long as you are with me,” Faux replied. “It will protect us both.”

“True,” Amelie agreed, mollified.

“We’ll see about that,” Ravager said. “I think it’s a bluff. Those rings exist, but we have only this yokel’s word that this is one of them.”

Faux smiled. “Then come to me, wretched lover.” She opened her arms invitingly.

The Hunter Elf stepped into them, eagerly clasping her mouth with his.

There was a flash as his body was flung back. He fell on the ground, stunned.

“Great stuff, electricity,” Faux remarked. “Remarkable effect on hostile spooks.” She glanced at Ravisher. “Kiss me again, spook.” She pursed her lips.

The Elf sprang back to his feet. “This is your fault, mortal,” he said savagely to Floyd. “You no longer have the ring. I will pulverize you.”

“Welcome to try,” Floyd said. “Kiss me, spook.” He pursed his lips.

Not at all amused now, Ravager charged him, catching him in a bear hug. And froze, paralyzed, before Floyd dropped him to the ground.

“Incidental detail,” Floyd remarked to no one in particular. “I have had the ring for some time, keeping it always close. Some of its repulsion seems to have rubbed off on me. I suspect the effect will last several months. Longer, maybe, if I embrace the one who wears it. Eventually I may have to find some other protection, but this residual effect will do for now.”

Ravisher stared at him, then faded out. He knew he had been bested.

“Good show, Floyd,” Faux said. “Amelie made a good choice. You are worthy.”

Now, belatedly, Floyd felt doubt. “Am I? It remains a mystery to me why Amelie’s skry selected me as the best for her to marry. As you said at the outset, I’m nothing special.”

Both women laughed. They were using the same mouth at the same time, but he heard the two voices. “There is a reason,” Faux said. “You said it yourself.”

“I did?” he asked, perplexed.

“You became a man. Other villagers are shallow boys, even after they survive their Journeys, and the girls who do it are hardly better. Being exposed to the wider world is no guarantee that a person will benefit by it. But you are the exception. You became a true man, as you have just demonstrated.”

“But Amelie’s skry couldn’t have known about all this!”

“The skry didn’t need to know the details. It just knew you were the best. You were nothing, but now you have courage, decency, and realism. That’s a good combination.”

Floyd realized it was true. He had indeed matured. “But I did have considerable help along the way.”

“I did my job,” Faux agreed. “And have been paid.”

Amelie reappeared. “Thank you from saving my soul,” she said. She spread her arms. “Come to me, my man, my love. After all, you need to be close to the ring. Especially when we sleep at night and can’t be alert.”

“Especially,” he agreed. He knew they would have a long trip back to Ireland. He expected to enjoy it. There were advantages to being a man.

Chapter 23: Dublin

Floyd stood on the balcony of his flat, watching the sky darken over Dublin. Mostly, he watched the lone figure stroll eagerly along the empty sidewalks. A figure who had, if anything, a pep to his step. A small travel bag hung from one shoulder. Floyd thought he might have heard whistling.

“He is eager to leave,” said Amelie.

“He is eager to live a little.”

“Or a lot,” she added.

Directly below, thousands of candles and wicks flickered in open windows, illuminating homes and businesses everywhere. The street was surprisingly quiet for this time and day. Beyond his window was the popular city square, now mostly deserted. A lone lamplighter worked his way around the square, and Floyd watched with interest as the man deftly wielded his extraordinarily long pole.

He felt hands on his shoulders and soon warm breath on his neck. This was followed by soft lips on his earlobe. “You can still stop him,” said Amelie softly into his ear. “We are no longer living in the village.”

Floyd shook his head. “As much as I hated it, The Journey made me who I am today. And helped me win your heart, too.”

“Your son has been raised among poets and artists. He wants to follow in his father’s footsteps and write great novels. He is a sensitive soul. The world can be cruel.”

“And it can also be wondrous, too. He needs to live in order to write.”

“Better he was a stable boy then.”

Floyd laughed. “We have taken steps to ensure his safety.”

“Faux Fee has asked for an unusual payment this time.”

“Our next child to raise as her own,” Floyd said, nodding.

“Can we do it?”

“We will have to,” Floyd said, “unless Jonathan can circumvent the deal.”

“Like you did with the ring,” said Amelie.

“Our boy is clever.”

“When he returns, he will be a boy no longer.”

“One can hope,” said Floyd.

In the near distance, the ambling figure of their son, Jonathan, turned a corner and was gone, and Amelie wept silently into Floyd’s arms.

“I hate this.”

“It’s not so bad,” he said. “Some boys return to marry their girls.”

“I would have married you anyway, you fool.”

He held her at arm’s length. “Really, now?”

“No, I thought you were droll.”

“But interesting enough to want to save?”

“You can thank the skry for that,” said Amelie.

“I do,” said Floyd. “Every day.”

Below, a young couple moved along the sidewalk far below their flat, holding hands and seemingly in love. The man said something and the woman covered her mouth and laughed.

“Where do you think he will go?” asked Amelie.

“I heard Faux mention a lost city of gold in the Americas. She also mentioned Xibalba.”

“Xibalba?”

“The Mayan underworld. There is a girl there, being held captive by the gods—”

“Just stop. I can’t listen to any more. Promise me he will be safe.”

Floyd threw back his head and laughed. “Our son is in good hands with Faux Fee. It’s the Mayan gods I’m worried about.”

The End

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Author’s Note:

Piers Anthony

This collaborative novel was a challenge in places, as we delved into a few historical or semi-historical figures.

When I checked the background of Jonathan Swift, I discovered an interesting private personal life, as he tells Floyd. Then when we got to Xanadu I reread Coleridge’s famous poem, Kubla Khan, and was disappointed. Here’s the thing: I first encountered its remarkable first verse in high school, no, not in class, but when sneak-reading my own preference of junky science fiction and fantasy. Obviously I was never going to get anywhere in life with that attitude. It was quoted in a story, and it mesmerized me, so that I sought Coleridge in preference to the dull stuff in classes. Things like The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, “We were the first that ever burst into that silent sea”; Christabel, who lay down in her loveliness; and France: an Ode: “The Sensual and the Dark rebel in vain,/ Slaves by their own compulsion! In mad game/ They burst their manacles and wear the name/ Of Freedom, graven on a heavier chain!” What a commentary on the French Revolution, and indeed as it turns out, on contemporary events! But always first in my fond memory was the opening of Kubla Khan: “In Xanadu did Kubla Khan/ A stately pleasure dome decree:/ Where Alph, the sacred river, ran/ Through caverns measureless to man/ Down to a sunless sea.” Fabulous Xanadu has colored my imagination ever since. It may be that I named my magic land Xanth because of my affinity for a word so close to Xanadu. I had also liked the name Xanthe, surely from that same affinity. So there is where I wanted to return, in my imagination, and in this novel I finally did so.

So what happened? I discovered, as a more cynical octogenarian, that the memory of my teens was too rosy. That first stanza remains lovely, but the rest of the poem is disjointed and vastly incomplete. After further description of the pleasure dome and river, and some nice references such as “...haunted by woman wailing for her demon lover” and “It was a miracle of rare device,/ A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!” it introduces from nowhere the vision of the damsel with the dulcimer. What has a vision of an Abyssinian girl to do with Xanadu? Then again from nowhere, “And all should cry, Beware! Beware!/ His flashing eyes, his floating hair!” Who was that? My guess is the demon lover the other woman is wailing for, who on honeydew has fed, and drunk the milk of paradise. Maybe he has left her to pursue the damsel with the dulcimer, the heel. And there the poem ends, providing no answers. It is indeed a fragment, as the author says.

So, what happened? Well, Coleridge has answer: that he was medicated with opium, slept several hours, dreamed of Xanadu, woke and hastily scribbled down the words before they could be forgotten—then was interrupted by a person from the neighboring village of Porlock, on business, who detained him for an hour. Then he returned to finish recording the marvelous vision, but it had faded and he was able to write no more. What a loss! So he published the fragment that he had, and moved on; what else could he do? Fie on that lout from Porlock!

So, why am I cynical? Because literary research has shown that there was more fiction in the explanation than in the poem itself. Porlock never happened. He devised it to explain why his effort was so fragmented. Okay, I’m a writer, not a poet, but there’s a parallel. I can appreciate what really happened: Coleridge had a marvelous notion, based on recent research he had been doing on scattered things like Kubla Khan and even the water caves of Florida, yes, where I live. He started putting it together, but the reality of his writing did not match the magnitude of his dream and he had to give it up. That happens; ask any creative writer or pothead. We blame it on the inadequacy of the language. Still, there were elements that he did not want to give up entirely, so he published what he had, with his manufactured excuse. And, I must say, even that fragment is compelling; consider the profound effect it had on me. So I don’t condemn him, but neither do I praise him unduly. He wrote some great poems; this just wasn’t one of them, unfortunately.

So we late time novelists made of it what we could, animating the Abyssinian damsel and the demon who wanted to be her lover, rescuing the one and abolishing the other in standard tale-telling style. I’m sure the lady thanks us, and the demon curses us. Her kind surely became fans, while his kind became critics. Now you know the rest of the story, to a degree.

If you enjoyed this novel and want to know more of me, you can check my website at www.HiPiers.com, where I do a monthly blog-type column and maintain an ongoing survey of electronic publishers for the benefit of aspiring writers. Writers need all the help they can get, from Coleridge’s day to ours. We never have all the fans we want, or as few critics.

This book was proofread by Scott M Ryan and Anne White, who catch the myriad errors I miss.

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About the Authors:

Piers Anthony is one of the world’s most prolific and popular authors. His fantasy Xanth novels have been read and loved by millions of readers around the world, and have been on the New York Times Best Seller list twenty-one times. Although Piers is mostly known for fantasy and science fiction, he has written several novels in other genres as well, including historical fiction, martial arts, and horror. Piers lives with his wife in a secluded woods hidden deep in Central Florida.

Please visit him at www.hipiers.com for a complete list of his fiction and non-fiction and to read his monthly newsletter.

J.R. Rain is an ex-private investigator who now writes full-time. He lives in a small house on a small island with his small dog, Sadie, who has more energy than Robin Williams.

Please visit him at www.jrrain.com.

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