Stork Naked

  Then she reconsidered. Yes, she would, to recover her baby, rather than allow Prize to suffer in the possession of the Sorceress. But again the Sorceress had beaten her to it, and she was temptingly naked. No wonder she had been such a good sport about losing the clothing contest. Maybe she had lost it deliberately, to gain that advantage.

  "You would assume that guilt, to save your baby?" Che asked.

  "If that is the way it must be, yes," Morgan answered. "Nothing is worth more than her welfare."

  He studied her breathing body, which was now artfully posed. Surprise was both disgusted and fascinated. She had learned some things about fascinating centaurs in the course of this adventure. Obviously the Sorceress knew them too.

  Of course Che would never accept it. He was an honorable centaur, and besides, he knew better.

  "That is persuasive," Che said. "I believe we have an agreement."

  Surprise stared at him, shocked. How could he? Everything she knew about him, and everything he knew about her, suggested that this was not at all the way it was done, if it was done at all.

  "We do," Morgan said. "Fetch me out of here, gallant centaur."

  Che spread his wings, flew slowly into the pit, caught Morgan's upstretched hands with his own, flicked her bare body with the tip of his tail to lighten it, lifted her, and swung her onto his back. He ascended, while Surprise watched incredulously. She wasn't able even to voice a protest. This was just so unbearably sudden, amazing, and awful.

  "Let me pick up the bassinet," Che's voice said from beyond the rim. "Then I will fly us to a suitable place for the rendezvous."

  "By all means," Morgan's voice agreed.

  In little more than a moment, which seemed not only brief but cruelly twisted out of shape, they were gone. Surprise was left alone in the pit.

  "What a dirty deal!" the peeve said.

  She had forgotten the bird. "How could he?" she asked tearfully. "Couldn't he see that that would not be my way?" Yet, again, she knew she would have done it, had that been the price of her baby. And she did retain her passion for Che, so it would not have been onerous, whatever she might try to pretend. So she wasn't really innocent, much as it pained her to confess it to herself.

  "He should know," the bird agreed. "But the way she was flaunting that borrowed body of hers, he must have been half freaked out. Males are like that; their common sense vacates when they see a desirable body."

  "Yes," she agreed sadly. The disappointment and hurt was threatening to overwhelm her. "Do you mind if I cry?"

  "No. I would cry too, if I could. In fact I think I can. I've been learning how."

  Surprise let the tears flow freely. She knew she was trapped here, perhaps doomed to perish, but her concern was for the horror her baby faced. All because she had not been able to persuade Che she was the real Surprise. She had lost out to the cynical acting of the Sorceress.

  "I met a man once whose talent was conjuring forget whorls," the peeve said. "His name was Levi. I wish he were here now, so we could forget."

  "I don't want to forget," Surprise said. "I'd rather suffer than ever forget my baby."

  "I met another who could change the environment with her emotions. She was Dina. I think you have some of that talent; this whole pit is bleak."

  "It has reason," she agreed bleakly.

  "Did you ever wonder how the night mares deliver bad dreams to Mundanes despite the lack of magic?"

  "No. But now that you mention it—"

  "Their horseshoes are made of magic dust."

  Surprise manage to smile through her tears. "You're trying to divert me, aren't you, peeve? To make me feel better."

  "Less worse, anyway."

  "It's not working. But thank you for trying." She kissed the bird on the beak. The remarkable thing was that the peeve did not protest.

  They settled into joint gloom, waiting for nothing. If they had not quite been friends before, they were friends now.

  Some time later there was a voice. "Surprise!" It was Che.

  "I am here," she responded, not having the heart to add "of course." Where else would she be?

  He fluttered to a landing in the pit. "I am sorry."

  "You found out you picked the wrong one!" the peeve said, its voice dripping with disgust.

  "I did," Che agreed soberly.

  "After you gave the baby to the witch."

  "Yes."

  "So did she pay off before taking off?"

  "No. She was gone the moment she held the baby, satisfied that she finally had the necessary permission."

  "Serves you right, moron!"

  "Peeve, please, don't," Surprise begged. "He couldn't know."

  "You don't blame me?" Che asked.

  "I can't blame you, Che. She played me better than I did, and she was, well, nude."

  "Yes. She made her body most alluring."

  "Surprise wouldn't have done that, idiot," the peeve said. "Couldn't you tell?"

  Che nodded. "Yes, I could tell. However—"

  "You let her dazzle you with the promise of sex!" the peeve said. "Didn't you know she would renege the moment she got what she wanted?"

  "I knew," the centaur agreed.

  "You knew!" For the moment the peeve ran out of words.

  "Yes. It was the verification of what I suspected. Surprise would not have reneged, of course—but neither would she have made that particular deal."

  "I would have," Surprise said. "If I had to. But not that way."

  "Precisely. So I was pretty sure it was Morgan le Fey I was rescuing."

  "And you gave her the baby!"

  This time Surprise did not protest the peeve's accusation. "If you knew—how could you—?"

  "I gave her a baby."

  Something was emerging from the fog of her confusion. "Not the baby?"

  "The real Prize is now with Stymy Stork. I made an arrangement with some talented children to exchange Prize for the baby Kaylynn, whose talent is to change her appearance to any other. Another girl's talent is to exchange places with anyone else. She is Ronica. When we finally located Prize, I signaled them and they got swiftly to work while Morgan was distracted with Surprise. She exchanged with Prize while carrying Kaylynn, then left Kaylynn and exchanged with another person so as to get well clear."

  "So the witch got the wrong baby!" the peeve exclaimed, suddenly well satisfied.

  "But didn't that leave another person there, where Morgan's fury would strike?" Surprise asked. "She might return when she discovered she had the wrong baby."

  Che smiled. "I'm afraid I was unkind. That other person is Martin, whose talent is to make people really cold. He would have struck the moment Morgan spied him and attempted some ill deed, if she did. As it was she did not. At least not while I was there."

  "Cold?" the peeve asked.

  "Attempted?" Surprise asked.

  "Morgan would have become a block of ice."

  The peeve burst out laughing.

  Surprise was doubtful. "But wouldn't that kill her?"

  "You softhearted fool!" the peeve said. "Who cares?"

  "Not that Sorceress," Che said. "It would take her a day or so to thaw. By that time we'd be long gone. Ronica will see that baby Kaylynn is returned safely to her friends. She can exchange with a known person even if she doesn't know where that person is. We simply needed the substitute baby long enough to be sure we identified the right mother for Prize. I am satisfied that you are that one."

  "Thank you," Surprise said weakly, still not quite assimilating her sudden change of fortune.

  "Those rescued children have been eager to help."

  "You cunning rogue!" the peeve said. "All the time you were setting up the trap to catch the Sorceress."

  "I did need to be sure. I knew she would not let Prize escape readily, and suspected there would be some sort of faceoff to force Surprise to agree to let her baby go. So I prepared. Timing was essential; had she caught on prematurely she would have hidden Prize elsewhere. Fortu
nately it worked." He faced Surprise. "I am sorry to have had to put you through this trial. But a mistake was unthinkable."

  "Oh, Che!" Surprise cried, this time with tears of relief. She fell forward to hug him.

  He caught her and lifted her up, kissing her. She kissed him back, passionately, overwhelmed by the emotion of her reprieve. Somehow there seemed to be an awareness, as if something was watching closely. She hardly cared.

  Then he drew back his head. "Oh, Surprise, I love you, but we must not."

  That restored her to reality. "We must not," she agreed. "It would be—corrupting."

  "Too bad," the peeve muttered. The faint foreign awareness faded, almost as if disappointed. Surprise would have wondered about that, had she not had more emotion to control than seemed proper.

  "Now we must return to the others, and go home," Che said.

  "Yes." She got on his back, and he spread his wings and flew up out of the pit.

  Soon enough they were back with Cadence, Stymy, Stymie, the three children, Pyra, and a man Surprise didn't recognize. "This is Finn, from the Always-Always Moon of Ida," Pyra explained. "My betrothed."

  Surprise realized that there was much going on that she hadn't kept up with. "Congratulations," she said weakly as she took Prize from the stork and held her close.

  "We're hungry," Ted said.

  "There were so many children here they ate up all the good things," Monica explained.

  Cadence looked around. "Courtney! Corona!" she called. "We need you."

  Two girls ran up to join them, obviously twins. "Anything for the folk who freed us," Courtney said.

  "Courtney can make anything grow on a tree," Cadence explained. "Corona can convert Xanth trees to Mundane trees, and vice versa. Courtney, the children need to eat before we go on our way."

  "Got it," Courtney said. She stepped up to the nearest acorn tree and touched it. Suddenly new buds sprouted, forming into chocolate pies, candy canes, tsoda pop pods, and assorted other childish delights.

  Ted and Monica grabbed what they liked and stuffed it into their faces. "Thank you, girls," Surprise said somewhat dryly. She would have preferred healthier foods, but this did not seem to be the occasion to insist. It would only delay their return trip.

  Cadence helped them carry Ted, Monica, and Woe Betide to the Stork Works. "We can never thank you enough for rescuing us," she said to them.

  "You and the others helped us just as much," Surprise reminded her.

  Then Cadence set wing for the rescued children, for there was still much organizing to do. Just as with the Punderground children, they had to be gotten home to their families. The remaining group entered the Stork Works.

  There was the giant Simurgh awaiting them. Now comes the hard part, she thought to them. Locating the correct home reality.

  Surprise remembered that Che had found the Simurgh when looking for the children. She had been caught here, and would be returning with them. "But can you fit inside the chamber where we choose realities?" she asked.

  Not in this form, the Simurgh agreed. I shall change. Then she shrank into the form of a clothed human woman. "Now I am Serenity, with the talent of spreading peace around me. Please do not bruit my alternate identity about elsewhere."

  Indeed, Surprise felt her tensions and nervousness fading in the presence of Serenity. This was exactly what she needed. "We'll never tell," she said, speaking for all of them.

  They entered the inner chamber, where Pyra set up the Reality Mask and oriented it on their home reality. Six pictures appeared. "That's odd," she said. "There should be only one."

  "Not so, unfortunately," Che said. "It seems it is as tricky to locate our home reality as it was to locate the one with Surprise's baby. This is because there are so many very similar ones, the equipment simply can't focus that finely."

  "But what about my misdelivery?" Stymy asked. "I returned to my original reality without a problem."

  "That was because of the fissure between realities," Che said. "They were locked together by that special event. The moment you returned, that fissure closed, and the only way to pass between realities was via the Stork Works. That is quite a different matter, because there are an infinite number of realities, and the storks address them all."

  "It was the mischief of the Sorceress Morgan le Fey," Serenity said. "I would be annoyed, were it my nature."

  "So how do you propose to run down the right reality?" Pyra asked. "Visit them all, as we did before?"

  "That probably would not be effective, because we have no one to verify the correct one by sniffing a baby," Che said. "I shall simply have to judge which one is correct, and hope that I get it right. I am fated to change the history of Xanth, and this may be the occasion. I hope to change it as little as possible."

  Pyra sent an obscure glance at him; Surprise recognized it because of her recent experience with the Guilt Trip. What was on her mind? But Che was already focusing on the problem. "Let me examine each of these closely. Please magnify the first."

  The first picture expanded to fill the screen. "Please focus it on something with which I am familiar, like the throne room of Castle Roogna."

  The throne room appeared. There was King Dor, Queen Irene, and a centaur just being ushered into the royal presence. "That is Charles Centaur," Che said. "I know him; he is sensible, honest, capable, and stalwart."

  Surprise laughed. She hadn't done that in a while. "Haven't you just described all centaurs?"

  "And not prejudiced against crossbreed centaurs, such as we winged ones," Che added.

  "That cuts the list down considerably," Surprise agreed.

  "Turn on the sound," Che said.

  The sound came on. "We have an awkward problem at Centaur Isle," Charles said, evidently answering the king's query.

  "Tough udders, horse-foot!" the floor said. The king's talent was to talk to the inanimate, and have it answer, and it tended to talk too much in areas he frequented. "You uppity centaurs can just go—"

  Queen Irene tapped one foot warningly, and the floor was abruptly silent. She was still shapely, with excellent legs despite her age.

  Che smiled. "She always did know how to keep the talking inanimate in line. Her Sorceress talent is to grow plants magically swiftly, but any object on the ground knows better than to peer up under her skirt and say half a word about panties."

  "Which is just as well," Surprise agreed. "The inanimate tends to be crude, loud, and not very smart."

  "Of course we will help in any manner we can," King Dor said. "We value our good relations with Centaur Isle, though as you know, we also maintain them with the winged centaurs."

  "Yes, and I for one approve that," Charles said. "This is a rather different matter. We have discovered that a geological fault is causing Centaur Isle to drift away from Xanth."

  "Whose fault?" Irene asked.

  "This is a Mundane term," Charles said. "It refers to a certain stress and slippage in the ground that can cause the landscape to rearrange somewhat. If this continues, it will in time remove our Isle from Xanth. We do not desire this."

  "Maybe our daughter Io can help," Dor said.

  "Next," Che said.

  "What's wrong with this one?" Pyra asked.

  "In our reality, their daughters are Ivy and Ida. There is no Io."

  "That's right," Surprise agreed. "You're correct; that can't be ours, though it looks the same."

  The second reality expanded. The scene was the same. "But Ivy's talent is Enhancement," Charles said. "We don't want the fault enhanced."

  "This may be ours," Surprise said.

  "You centaurs will have to face an unpleasant reality," King Dor said. "Only magic will halt this process. Ivy can enhance the magic in the centaurs so that they can oppose the fault."

  "Magic in centaurs!" Charles said, shocked. "This is obscene."

  Queen Irene smiled. "To us, the open display of certain natural functions is obscene, but we have learned to accept it in centaurs."
r />   "Just as we have accepted magic talents in humans," Charles agreed. "But we don't ask you to violate your sexual scruples, and don't expect you to ask us to violate our magical ones."

  King Dor sighed. "Then perhaps we can contact Demon Litho. He should have the ability to solve your problem, if he cares to."

  "I remember Demon Litho," Charles said. "His force is Melding, which means combining at the atomic level."

  "Atomic?" Irene asked.

  "Another Mundane term," Charles explained, "as we lack an equivalent magical concept. He lost a Demon game millennia past and was forced by the Demon Xanth to meld his world with Xanth's world, underneath. That allowed the voles to leave Litho and enter Xanth. His force also affects the formation of magic dust. But how could he save Centaur Isle?"

  "He could meld the underlying rock of Xanth with that of the Isle," King Dor said. "Thus preventing the Isle from departing."

  "This seems promising," Charles said.

  "This reality seems promising," Surprise said.

  "Yes it does," Che agreed.

  "I think not," the peeve said.

  They turned to the bird. "Not?"

  "Why aren't the inanimate things talking?"

  The peeve was right: the floor and furniture should be putting in their annoying remarks. "Dor must have another talent," Che said.

  They tried the third picture.

  "How do we contact the Demon Litho?" the centaur asked.

  "This is not an easy thing, Charleton," Kind Dor said.

  "Oops," Surprise said.

  They tried the fourth picture. "It can be done," King Dor said. "However—"

  "Now comes the kicker," the throne said. "Kick the centaur in the—"

  "Tail," Irene said warningly, tapping her foot. "Or I'll shrink you into kindling."

  "She shrinks things?" Surprise asked. "Instead of growing things?"

  They went to the fifth picture. Surprise was becoming tense. Suppose none of the six fitted perfectly? Of course there had to be one, because their reality couldn't have disappeared. Yet she worried.

  "So the Demon will want some sort of payment," Charles concluded. "Do you have any idea what that might be?"

  "We did have contact with Litho once before," Dor said. "Our impression was that he wanted an outlet to Xanth proper, so as not to be confined perpetually to the depths. We did not feel free to grant that, but perhaps the centaurs will."