“That would be 0ld Ogress. She's not phenomenally ugly, but she is extremely enthusiastic.” The ogre's eyeballs were unwaveringly oriented on Imbri, who was twirling her skirt dangerously high.
Forrest tore his own eyes away, realizing that he could probably make a better deal while Ogle was distracted. “What can we do for you in return for this information?”
Ogle considered again. This time his eyeballs turned white hot. Maybe that was mostly because Imbri was drawing off her blouse again. That might not seem like much, but the ogre probably had forgotten that there was a halter under it, and the centaur was frowning so determinedly that it was obvious that something truly naughty was happening. “Nothing,” he concluded. “I don't need anything.”
Forrest had a notion, based on what he had recently learned from Cathryn. “You like to see things,” he said. “Especially things you're not supposed to see, like human pantomiming,” he continued, emphasizing the first syllable of the last word, so that it sounded as if he were about to say the P word. Cathryn's sudden shocked intake of breath aided the effect.
“Yeah, yeah,” Ogle agreed, his eyeballs bulging as if he actually had seen the forbidden thing. It was clear that being souled did not change his fundamental nature.
“Well, the one thing you can't see is what is within your blanked out year.”
“Yeah. I can see everything on this side, and everything on the far side, but when I try to go into it, I just slide right across and my age changes a year in a single moment. It is exceedingly frustrating.”
Now Imbri's shoes were coming off. Forrest knew that he had to get on with it quickly, lest she be forced to show something really naughty.
“Well, we can go there, because we aren't you. We can tell you what is happening in your forbidden section.”
That prospect actually brought the ogre's eyes from Imbri, which meant that she was able to dance without removing any more items, giving her more time. “But only souled folk can see souls,” he said.
“I am souled,” Forrest said. “Don't you see my glow?”
“So I do,” Ogle agreed, surprised. He glanced at Imbri. “And hers, too. That makes her even more interesting. A naughty view of a souled creature is much more effective than of an unsouled one. So it seems you can indeed go into my barred region. Very well: if you will tell me what I am doing in there, I will tell you where to find Old Ogress.”
“Agreed! We'll go now.” Then Forrest realized that it wasn't quite that simple. “Uh, where is it?”
“Right this way.” The ogre led the way east.
As they progressed, Cathryn continued to grow younger. Soon she was dancing along like a yearling foal. Fortunately the ogre stopped before she hit the limit of her range. “Here,” he said. “Right now it's when I am twenty four years old, and moving slowly forward. I don't seem to be much changed on either side of it, but I sure am curious about what's in there.”
“We will go in and observe carefully,” Forrest said. “And when we come out, we'll make a full report.”
“I don't think I'd have the patience for that. How about half a report?”
“Half,” Forrest agreed amicably. “Or even a quarter, if you prefer.”
“Wow! That's great.” Then a slow thought percolated through what passed for the ogre's brain. “But what will I do, with nothing to ogle? My attention span is very short.”
Cathryn stepped in. “I will tell you a foal's story I know. ‘The Ogre and the Three Bares.’ At my present age, it's the only one I know, but I think it's a good one.”
“I love that story!” Ogle said. “I haven't heard it since I was in my ogret range.”
“I will refresh your memory. Once there was an ogre who was lost in the forest. Of course he could simply have bashed all the trees to smithereens, but of course he was too stupid to realize that.”
“Of course,” Ogle agreed appreciatively.
“So he stumbled about until he saw this odd house. He bashed down the door and went in, and there were three bowls of really icky gruel. So he gulped down the first, but it was too hot…”
Forrest and Imbri quietly departed as the story enraptured the ogre. It seemed that forbidden adventures were almost as compelling as forbidden sights. The story wouldn't last long, so they had to get to the center and see what there was to be seen and get back.
As it happened, there wasn't much. The vegetation was much thicker, because it had had a chance to grow up during the year's absence by the ogre, but since other ogres occasionally passed this way, large patches of damage remained. Forrest could appreciate how Orgy Ogre liked the perpetually bashable walls of the castle, because it was obvious that natural terrain simply could not stand up long to an ogre's presence.
The undergrowth gradually thinned as they progressed east, because in that direction it had had less time to recover.
Then Forrest saw a hulking figure ahead. “That looks like an ogre, sort of,” he said.
“Sort of,” Imbri agreed. “But it's insubstantial.”
“Who ever heard of an insubstantial ogre!”
But lo, it was true. The figure was bashing a small mountain into a molehill, and they could see through its outline as well as the mountain's outline. What could this be?
“It's Ogle,” Imbri said, surprised. “See those bulging eyeballs.”
She was right. The faint image was their ogre. “And that must be a mountain on Xanth, because it's flat here,” Forrest said, walking through both ogre and mountain.
They paused to study the figure. Soon the ogre stopped bashing and stepped up on the top of the large molehill he had made. He turned around, looking in all directions. Then his eyes bulged and his jaw went slack. He remained frozen in place.
“He's ogling something,” Imbri said.
“I wonder what it is?” Forrest walked around the figure. He discovered that at the right angle, he could see a reflection in one of the eyeballs. It seemed to be a white square, inside of which was pink material, bulging in two places.
Then Forrest freaked out. He found himself lying on the ground with small planets spinning above his head. Imbri was kneeling beside him, trying to help. “Forrest! What happened?”
He tried to speak, but his mouth had not yet recovered from the freakout. Imbri sat on the ground, picked up his head, and cushioned it in her lap. She stroked his forehead, her soft hand passing pleasantly across his horns. “It's all right,” she said. “Just relax. You don't seem to be physically hurt.”
He finally got his tongue unfreaked. “How could I be, in soul form?” he asked.
“Forrest!” she exclaimed. “You're recovering!” She leaned down and kissed him. It was a surprisingly nice kiss, and the way her soft yet resilient blouse nudged his face enhanced the effect.
“I am getting good care,” he said. “I can't remember when I've been so comfortable.”
She hugged him, in her fashion, and that bordered on delightful. “I was concerned. You were looking at the ghost ogre, and then you abruptly collapsed. What did you see?”
Then he remembered. “I saw the reflection of what he saw. What he was ogling in Xanth. It was-”
“Yes?”
“A panty. In a window.”
Imbri dumped Is head on the ground. “You're not supposed to look! “
“I'm sorry,” he said, as he waited for another tiny planet to clear away. “I didn't know what it was, until I saw it. And it was just a reflection, not the real thing.”
“Well,” she said, faintly mollified. “Just don't do it again.”
He sat up, then made his way back to his feet. The ogre was still standing like a statue. “I guess now we know why he was bashing down that mountain. It was to make a platform so he could see something better, inside that house. When he saw in the window-”
“He saw a woman changing her clothing,” Imbri finished, disapprovingly.
Suddenly the ghost ogre fell off his platform. He lay on his back, and ghost planets spun o
ver his head, just as they had with Forrest. The woman must have moved away from the window, breaking the freakout view.
“We have more than enough to report, I think,” Forrest said. “Let's go back, before Cathryn runs out of story.”
“Yes,” she said tightly. She was becoming more like a woman and less like a mare in attitude as well as appearance. Forrest wasn't sure that was a complete improvement.
They left the ghost ogre to recover on his own, and hurried back west.
They emerged just as the centaur foal was finishing:
“And so the ogre bashed his way out of that house, and never went there again. And he never ate icky gruel again, either.”
“Yeah, yeah!” Ogle agreed.
“We have returned,” Forrest said.
Both centaur and ogre looked at them. “You look as if you are recovering from a freakout,” Cathryn said to Forrest.
“And you look as if you are recovering from awful outrage,” Ogle said to Imbri.
“Right on both counts,” Forrest said grimly. “We saw the image of your Xanthine self.”
“Bashing a mountain into a molehill,” Imbri continued.
“Until he could look in a window and see a panty,” Forrest concluded.
Ogle was amazed. “I ogled a panty?”
“That is correct,” Imbri said primly. “It was outrageous. You should be horribly ashamed.”
Ogle tried to wipe the amazement, awe, and delight off his puss.
“Horribly,” he agreed. “No wonder I feel so high near that border.”
He glanced at Forrest with a women-don't-understand expression. Forrest could only nod slightly hoping the females wouldn't catch it.
“So now you can tell us where Old Ogress is,” Cathryn said. As a foal she did not seem as upset about the report as she might have been, but it plainly set her back somewhat.
“Right this way,” Ogle agreed, and began tramping northwest.
They followed, with Cathryn rapidly aging, and with each step her expression became firmer. She was achieving adult female human perspective on the report, unfortunately, even though centaurs normally didn't care about human hang-ups. Forrest knew there would be no point in discussing the matter. The ogre was right: women just didn't understand some things. Maybe that was to prevent them from getting freaked out by their own apparel.
They passed the general vicinity of the knoll where they had met Ogle and went on. They entered a region of tumbled timber trees, and there in a crudely fashioned pig sty was an ogress. She was covered with stinking mud.
“Hey, what are you doing, Old?” Orgy asked.
“I'm trying to make myself ugly,” she responded dolefully. “Using bad smelling mud packs.”
“Maybe you don't need to be ugly. These folk have a deal for you.” Then Ogle, having fulfilled his part of the exchange, tramped away, looking at everything except the not-ugly-enough ogress.
She noticed Forrest, Imbri, and Cathryn for the first time. “Faun, mares-who cares?” she inquired.
Forrest leaned over the rail of her sty. “How would you like to live in a castle with all the food you want, and an ogre who heeds your every word and doesn't care how you look?”
“Me think me-oh, phooey on the rhymes! I'd love it. What deeply disgusting thing do I have to do to get it?”
“Just make sure your every word is praise for the ogre's accomplishment in knocking down the walls so well.”
“But that comes naturally! Normally I have to stifle it, lest I be unogressly nice.”
“Come with us, and we'll take you to castle and ogre.”
She lurched out of the sty, shedding squishes of manure. “Let's go! “
“You don't even need to wear the mud,” Forrest said.
“Excellent.” She tramped to a nearby well, hauled out a huge bucket, and doused herself with cold water. In a moment she was wet but clean.
They set off for the castle. “Out of curiosity,” Imbri said, “why is it that Ogle stares at attractive human women, and their clothing, but wants an uglier ogress?”
“I have wondered that myself,” 0ld said. “I think there is something wrong with his vision, so that he thinks human women are somehow uglier than ogresses. It's a sad case.”
“Very sad,” Imbri agreed, satisfied.
They reached the castle and stood at the closed door. Old glared at the bell-weather, and it immediately sounded the alarm. In a moment the door opened and Orgy stood there.
“Are you the ogre who so successfully bashes down walls?” the ogress asked.
“Yes.” Orgy looked pleased, for an ogre.
“Show me how you perform this great art. I can never see enough of superior wall bashing.”
Soon it was apparent that they would get along. Orgy was bashing down walls at twice his prior pace, and Old was waxing ever more delighted in his accomplishment as she feasted at the well stocked table. The visitors had fulfilled their service.
Orgy paused in his bashing and pointed out through the hole in the wall he had just made. “Fifty three of your paces straight out that way,” he said. “Good fortune on your quest.”
“Thank you,” Forrest replied, and the three of them stepped through the wall and started counting paces. It required three paces to get beyond the castle. Sure enough, just fifty of Forrest's paces out from the wall lay a glowing horn.
Forrest picked it up and gave it to Cathryn. “Now you can show us where the faun territory is,” he said.
She considered. “No, I think not. This is merely the means to the end, the exchange will not be satisfied until the end is achieved.”
Forrest sighed inwardly. She was right. They would have to complete that aspect before moving on. Still, this was progress.
They returned toward Cathryn's adult range, as she was not comfortable as a juvenile. They came to the comic strip. There was nothing to do but plunge on in, hoping to make it through without suffering permanent damage to their dignities.
There was a wall. On it were the words PUNNSYLVANIA PUNITENTIARY: ABANDON SANITY, ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE.
“We have no choice,” Cathryn said grimly as she scrambled over.
“How I hate the comic section!”
Forrest and Imbri followed her. He was used to puns in Xanth, but here on Ptero they seemed to be festering out of control. But he knew the strip wasn't deep; they would soon be out of it.
They almost crashed into a billbored. It seemed to have been fashioned from unpaid bills that had gotten bored with their inaction, so had clumped together to form a sign saying BORING. “Don't touch that!”
Cathryn warned. “You will have to pay any bill you get.”
But she was too late. Forrest had already touched a corner, and a bill had stuck to his hand. It formed into a face. “Pay me!” it cried.
“Why should I? I don't even know you.”
“Because otherwise I'll turn you over to a collection agency.” And it indicated a horrendous hooded ogre shape labeled YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE. It held a huge bone in its paws, which it snapped in half.
Imbri burst out laughing. “It's not funny,” Forrest said. “I'm about to get my bones broken.”
“I'm not laughing at you,” she chortled. “I'm stuck in this article.”
He looked. She was indeed caught in a bush whose twigs resembled little R's. They were tickling her unmercifully. It was an R-tickle plant.
“How did that happen?” he asked her.
“I followed that head line.” She gestured back, where there was a line of heads on the ground.
He took a step toward her, but stumbled into a plant that looked like a tangle of spaghetti. “Use your noodle!” it exclaimed angrily.
So he did. He reached across and plucked a handful of R's from Imbri's bush. “Here is your pay,” he told the bill, rubbing the R's against it.
“Oh, ho ho, hee hee!” it squealed. “That's not-ha ha!-what I meant.”
“Then blame it on the Rtickle bush, there; tha
t's where I got this ticklish business.”
“Collector-hoo hoo!-take care of it,” the bill cried as it slid off his hand.
The hooded ogre tramped to the bush and began pounding it with two hamfists. R's flew all over. Soon the ogre was laughing as it flattened the bush. Imbri escaped, but didn't manage to stop laughing.
“I'm not getting-hee hee-tickled any more,” she explained. “It's that it serves it so right.”
They lurched away from the bushes. Cathryn was trying to work her way past a counter made of packed beans. “I can't get by this bean counter,” she complained.
A head formed from the counter. “Of course you can't,” it said. “Nothing gets by me.”
But Forrest saw something else. It looked like a huge man, bigger than an ogre, but it was standing quite still. His feet seemed to become roots, and his hands sprouted coin sized mints. “What is that?”
The centaur glanced at it. “A Man-Age-Mint, I think,” she said.
Then she brightened. She plucked a mint from the tree and stuffed it into the mouth of the bean counter's head. “Take that,” she said with satisfaction.
The bean counter began to fade. His beans became shriveled. A vile odor of indigestion issued from him. “Help, I'm genuinely aging!” he cried.
“That's because you ate the mint,” Cathryn informed him. “Now you will age rapidly into stinking extinction, unless you do whatever the Man-Age-Mint plant demands.”
“What does it demand?” the bean counter asked.
“Count its mints,” she said.
“ But I'm a bean counter. I don't count mints.”
“Too bad. I hope you fade out before your odor of spoiled beans permeates the entire neighborhood.”
“I suppose I could count some mints,” he said dolefully. “One, two, buckle my shoe; three, four. . .”
Then, while the counter was distracted, they squeezed by it and out to decent terrain. They had gotten back through the comic strip without quite going crazy.
“Some day I'm going to gather a posse and stamp out every pun in existence,” Cathryn muttered.
They went to the section where they had first met the centaur. It was interesting to see her age as she walked, progressing from foal to gangly juvenile to early filly and finally to fully flushed young female. Her mass changed, but didn't seem to affect her directly; she evidently didn't have to eat to add weight, any more than she had had to eliminate to lose it. He knew that he and Imbri were aging the same amount in years, but it didn't make as much difference to them.