"I am a pet peeve. Couldn't you tell?"
She burst out laughing. "A pun! What a stinker."
"Thank you." The peeve always thanked folk for true observations, mainly because that tended to annoy them.
"I am Barbie Que," the girl said. "My talent is to cook raw food instantly by touch. It's another pun."
"Ha," the peeve said sourly. "Ha. Ha. There: I have laughed. It was an effort. Now can you compress the air in your head enough to answer my question?"
"No, I haven't seen any children. Only an awful ram or wolf with ten tongues who I fear wants to devour me."
The peeve's sympathy was limited. But she had finally answered its question, so it dallied a moment and a half more. "Come on, sister: is it a ram or a wolf? The one won't eat you; the other will."
"I think it's a crossbreed. It has big horns and huge sharp teeth. I don't want to get gored or chomped."
"Idiot, you have no need to be afraid of it," the peeve said. "It should be afraid of you."
"I don't understand."
"Of course you don't, doll-brain. Here it is: consider it raw food, and touch it. That will cook its goose."
Barbie's pretty mouth fell open. "I never thought of that! You're right." Her cute little chin firmed. "I'll tell it to begone if it doesn't want to be roasted."
"No time like the present, D-cup. There he is."
Barbie's manicured hair swirled as she spun around. "Oh!" she cried with maidenly distress.
"Hey, dog-snoot!" the peeve called, using Barbie's voice. "I dare you to try to devour me!"
The crossbreed monster was taken aback. He curled several of his tongues around to form words. "I don't want to eat you. I want to be your friend. I was hoping you are as lonely as I am."
"My friend!" Barbie exclaimed with maidenly shock. "But what big teeth you have, wolf!"
"Wolfram Tungsten," he said. "Two names for the same element. So I'm part wolf, part ram, and have tongues ten. It's a burden."
"You're a pun too!" Barbie exclaimed.
"Yes. Half the folk I meet don't get it, and half sneer at it. That doesn't leave many to befriend. I thought maybe a creature like you would understand."
"Oh, I do!" she exclaimed, thrilled. "Now that I know your nature." She kissed the wolf on a ram horn. "You really don't want to ram me or wolf me down?"
"Not as a meal," the peeve said, picking up a couple of marvelously naughty unintended interpretations. "Ha-ha-ha!"
Both maiden and monster glared at it. "Let's leave this birdbrain," Wolfram said.
"Delighted," Barbie agreed. The two newfound friends departed together.
Well, it had been fun while it lasted. The peeve had gotten off a couple of decent insults and a snide observation before the subjects caught on. It resumed the search.
Soon the peeve located something not by sight but by smell. It was a boy hiding invisibly in a gnarly crevice of an old beer-barrel tree. "What are you up to, twerp?"
"Oh, you found me," the boy said, disappointed.
"Of course I found you, brat. I'm sniffing out children."
"But I'm Hidey. I can hide from anything."
"Visually maybe. Not from a good nose."
"Oh, I forgot!" Then Hidey faded out, losing his smell.
"Did you see any other children, gamin?" the peeve called.
"None, hummingbird!" the boy's voice replied from midair. He really was good at hiding, and he had gotten off a good insult: the peeve was small, but not that small. That had to be respected.
There was yet another irrelevant person, this time a lonely-looking young woman sitting on a stone. The peeve perched on a low branch before her. "What's bothering you, airhead?"
She looked up. "My name's Lydia, not Airhead."
She had missed most of the insult. That was annoying. "You didn't answer my question."
Lydia sighed. "I have a good talent, I'm sure of it. But no one is interested. I can interpret dreams, but most folk can't even remember their dreams. I wish I could find somewhere where dreams are remembered. But I have traveled all around Xanth, and there's nothing."
The peeve was about to launch another cutting insult. But then Lydia looked at it and spoke again. "Oh, one of your pretty green feathers is ruffled. Let me straighten it." She reached out and set the feather in order. For some reason that stifled the insult.
"Maybe I can come up with something," the peeve said, hating the sudden foolish irrational wish to be helpful. "I'll ponder it."
"Oh thank you, lovely creature!" she exclaimed.
The peeve returned to the quest. There really was nothing significant. Just ordinary stupid pedestrians who hadn't seen any children, and routine monsters like tangle trees and nickelpedes. Certainly no lost children.
Then the peeve spied a vine bearing a gourd. It was a large one, and yes, it was a hypno-gourd, an entry to the dream realm. Could the children have gotten into that? There were no bodies lying with their eyes glued to the peepholes, but they could be hidden by a spell by the Sorceress Morgan le Fey. That would be a fine way to hide the children for an indefinite period. Their bodies would be absolutely still and silent, while their minds were locked into the horrors of the dream realm. They could be anywhere in there.
Well, there was one way to find them: by their minds. If they were in the dream realm, they'd be happily making mischief in the bad dream sets, not invisible at all. The disruption should be considerable. They shouldn't be hard to locate.
But it wouldn't do to look into the peephole and freeze the way others did, because there was no easy way to escape the trance. The peeve knew it needed to be in full control. Well, for a bird who had had experience with Hell, there was a way. The peeve flew toward the gourd, closed its wings, and plunged through the peephole. It had entered physically.
It found itself in the standard opening setting: a creepy haunted house in a scary forest. Everything was in thick shadow, and there was a faint background of eerie music. Ideal for giving innocent folk the queasies.
But this was not a social visit. The peeve flew rapidly around to the side and into a broken upstairs window, bypassing the ghosts and pitfalls of the main drag. It found itself in a bedroom with a creaky bed festooned with cobwebs. A skeleton lay under the covers, awaiting the approach of a frightened victim. Then it would groan and stir—the peeve wasn't sure how fleshless skeletons could groan, but they did when they needed to—and with luck frighten the victim into jumping right out the window in mid-scream.
But this was no time for fun. The peeve flew to the bed and perched on the bare skull. "Wake up, hollow-head. Have you seen any children here?"
The skeleton jumped, startled in the manner normally reserved for human victims. "Whooo?" it asked, dazed.
"Ted and Monica Demon, and Woe Betide. Ages ten, ten, and five."
The skeleton began to get organized. "I meant, whoo are you?"
"I asked first, bonehead. Answer before I poop on your pate."
The skeleton grabbed with bone fingers, but the peeve was already in the air and hovering. It had had decades of experience avoiding angry folk. It dropped a small blip on the skull's polished pate. "That's just a warning, vacuum-head. Next one will be poop du jour."
The skeleton had very little wit in its hollow head, but that was enough for it to know when it was overmatched. "No children here."
"Thanks for nothing." The peeve flew to the closed door and scrambled under the sill.
Now it was in the upstairs hall. A female ghost was lurking, facing the stairway, expecting a victim to ascend.
"Take off, empty skirt," the peeve said loudly right behind her.
The ghost did. She sailed up and passed halfway through the ceiling before recovering. She drew herself back and floated down, looking nervously around. She was accustomed to being the spooker, not the spookee.
"Good thing you don't have anything to see down here," the peeve remarked from under her full bell-shaped dress.
"EEeee!" she screame
d, capitalizing the first two e's in her dismay as she sailed up again, pulling her skirt close about her invisible ankles.
"You might at least have the courtesy to wear ghost-white panties," the bird peeved.
"Get out of here, you dirty little snoop!" she cried angrily. "You're messing up the set." She huffed up her top section like a forbidding matron.
"Just tell me whether you have seen three children here, balloon-bra."
The ghost pulled her décolletage tight as her face went grimly white. "No children, you nasty little beak."
"Thank you, paleface."
The peeve flew on down the stairs, passing an empty pair of walking shoes that were tramping down the steps, making a clattering calculated to freak out any visitor already shaken by the apparitions downstairs. Accordingly, it dropped a small smelly offering in one shoe as it passed. "Courtesy of the trade, footfalls."
Both shoes froze for fully half an instant, then leaped up and turned over to dump out the dottle. Naturally it stuck in place. The shoes knocked their heels together, finally dislodging the gooey gob. They made violent kicking motions. The peeve nodded, satisfied; one might almost get the impression they were annoyed.
There were no children in the house, and no evidence of the disruption of their passage. But they could have entered the dream realm via another site, especially if they had visited it before; it generally held the place of each visitor, so no one could avoid anything by waking and returning another time. All settings would have to be checked, until the children were found. That was apt to be a big job, but easier if any of the denizens of the dream realm had news of them.
The peeve flew out the back, rapidly checking the zombie graves; the children wouldn't be underground, being alive. It reached the edge of the horror set, which was a wall painted realistically with further gloomy trees, graves, and suggestions of dark monsters going bump in the night.
There was room to scramble under the wall where the ground dipped. The peeve scrambled, and emerged in the next set: a halfway pleasant scene with a village in a valley, not far below a massive cracked dam that looked about to burst asunder. Beyond it loomed deep dark storm clouds threatening torrential rain. This stage would be to craft dreams for folk concerned about flash flooding; it was probably quite a sight when that dam let go.
The peeve flew through the village, searching for signs of mischievous children. There were none. In fact the village seemed unoccupied. This was either the off season, or there was no current call for a bad flood dream.
It came to a slope beset with caves; those could hide a lot, if they were extensive.
A dull-looking man sat before one cave. The peeve approached. "Hey, dullard—any children here?"
"Who wants to know?"
"I, the pet peeve."
"I'm Dennis. This here's the cave complex of Denver, where all the denizens live when they're not working on sets."
That would be the spot dream sets, which required a lot of design, manufacture and assembly before they could be used in bad dreams. "Children work on the sets?"
"Sure, many. Which ones you want?"
Uh-oh. That could mean multiple dream children. "Live human ones, part demon or even full demon. Ages ten, ten, and five."
"Live children?" Dennis asked. "None of that kind here, just dream children. I thought that's what you meant."
So much for that. The peeve flew on, looking for the edge of the scene. It didn't want to fly into a realistically painted wall.
There was a swirl of smoke that paced it. "What are you up to, bitty bird?"
"What wants to know, smoke-face?"
The smoke formed into a human head, neck, and part of a splendid set of breasts seemingly molded from stone. "I'm a buffet."
"You're a what?"
"Slap, smack, cuff, box, spank—"
"Bust?"
"Whatsoever," the head agreed crossly. "The top section of a statue."
"You expect me to call you statuesque."
"Certainly. Do it." More stone flowed to fill out the burgeoning bosom.
The peeve refrained. "What are you doing here, Metria?"
"Finding out what you're doing on this course, birdie."
"I'm looking for three lost children."
"How long have they been lost?"
"Centuries!" the peeve said sarcastically, losing what little patience it possessed.
"That long ago? Maybe they're at Buick."
"Where?"
"The colony they founded at Buick Rock."
"Where?" the peeve repeated peevishly.
"Chevy, Chrysler, Jeep, Ford, Volks—"
Ah. Mundane crates. "Plymouth?"
"Wherever," she agreed crossly.
"Is there a Plymouth Rock here in the dream realm?"
"No."
"Then get out of here, you infernal tease!"
"I can't. I'm not through with my dream."
"Demons can't dream, you twit."
She looked dismayed. "Oh, that's right! Anyway, I'm currently busy elsewhere. I can't be here." She faded out, leaving only a wisp of smoke in the form of the heaving outline of her overstuffed halter.
The peeve flew on. Demons were usually a pain in the tail, and this one moreso. It found the boundary wall and scrambled under.
There was a sound, a sustained note. The peeve went toward it, and found several large lakes or small seas. Each was at a different level. The notes were coming from them, each an octave apart. "What's this?" it asked itself.
The demoness reappeared, head, shoulders, bosom trailing into a fuzz of smoke. "The C's," she explained. "High C, middle C, low C."
"Get out of here, smoke-tail!"
"Spoilsport." She vanished.
The peeve flew on across the C's. The dream realm was big, and this wasn't accomplishing much. There needed to be a way to check all of it at once. How could that be accomplished?
At the edge of the lowest C a man of middle age was standing. Maybe he could help.
"Say, grizzlepuss—have you seen three children around here?"
"Call me the Mariner," the man said affably. "I work with water." He dipped his hand in the C, splashing the water into an arc. The water remained in the air, and the Mariner put his boots on it and climbed it like a ridge.
The peeve was impressed despite its cynicism. This was useful magic. "What are you doing here?"
"My sole motivation is to find rare and peaceful fishing spots," the Mariner said. "I always get pulled into some adventure that diverts me. I have an enchanted fishing rod and spear to catch huge catfish, if I ever find the right water."
"The dream fish that got away?"
The question was meant to be annoying, but the Mariner merely smiled and agreed. Couldn't win them all.
A big whiskered fish poked its head out of the C. "Meow," it said.
"There's one now," the Mariner said, whipping his fishing rod around. But in his distraction he forgot his spell on the floating splash of water, and it dropped him into the C with a great splash. The catfish, of course, was gone.
Then the peeve caught on. Fishy business. "Metria."
The demoness appeared beside him, shifting from catfish to luscious human woman form. "I couldn't resist," she confessed.
It occurred to the peeve that the bothersome demoness could be useful after all. "How would you like to really mess up the dream realm, prune-bosom?"
"Those are overripe melons, not dried plums," she said, glancing down at her swelling front. "You didn't notice, muck-tail?" She was handling the insult distressingly well. "How can I mess up big time?"
"Form into a super megaphone and let me use you to blast out my announcement about the children across the entire spectrum."
Metria considered. "That's too much like doing you a favor, pigeon-brain. I can't risk it." She faded out.
The peeve hardly cared to admit it, but the demoness was annoying it almost as much as it hoped it was annoying her.
It found the next boundary
wall and scrambled under. The next scene was a jungle filled with tigers, crocodiles, mean men with big knives, and other Mundanian brutes, all of them slavering. A lovely young woman in revealingly tattered clothing was fleeing everything, staying barely ahead of the pursuit. This was of course a standard bad dream, probably for delivery to some naughty Mundane maiden. The peeve understood that the export trade was very good; Mundanes were constantly in need of punitive dreams.
Naturally the peeve approached the girl. "Hey, tear-skirt—have you seen three children around here?"
She ignored him, continuing her panting progress up the slope as the monsters gained on her. She panted quite well; human males would be staring.
The peeve landed on her tousled tresses. She had long red hair that flew fetchingly out behind her head. "I said, HAVE YOU SEEN ANY CHILDREN, straggle-locks?"
She tried to brush it off her head, but the peeve fluttered up, avoiding her swing, and landed again when her hand was safely past. "Answer, or I'll poop."
That got her attention. "Get out of here, you stupid little bird, before you mess up the shot."
"You were warned." The peeve let loose a foul poop that splattered on her glorious hair.
"Ugh!" she cried, trying desperately to brush off the stinky stuff. But her effort only got her dainty hand gooked too. "Yuckety yuckety yuck!" she cursed.
"Cut!" someone yelled loudly. The monsters paused in place. A stout man in a visor appeared, carrying a megaphone. "That's not in the script, Diana. You know you're not supposed to use foul language. What's the matter with you?"
The luscious redhead became a small blonde woman wearing glasses. "This awful bird just soiled my hair!"
"What bird?" the man demanded. For of course the peeve had vacated the moment the action paused. It was inspecting the megaphone from cover. It also noticed that there was a crew with a fancy camera, and a number of other hangers-on. This was a full-fledged filming. Could this dream be intended for a Mundane movie starlet?
"An obnoxious little green talking bird," Diana said. "Look at what it did to my hair! Director, you've got to do something." She showed her poopy head. "I didn't escape to fantasy to endure an outrage like this."
The director snapped his fingers. Immediately two plain women appeared with water, soap, sponges and other apparatus and got to work on the soiled hair and hand. In one and a half moments they had her clean and shining again.