“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 ho
le 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 tho
ught. 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.”