Board Stiff

  Empty. That gave her a notion.

  PUT YOUR FEET IN, she thought.

  As usual he thought it was his own idea, and acted on it without question. He lurched ahead, caught a boot by the laces, and thrust his foot in. He didn’t even need to remove his shoe; the boot fit over it. Now his right foot was booted.

  The boot struggled. It tried to jump away, but that only made the man’s leg wobble. He pressed his foot down hard on the ground, pinning down the boot, and in about a moment and a third it gave up the struggle. It was captive.

  GET THE OTHER!

  Oh. Ease grabbed for the matching boot, but it jumped away. He pursued it. The other boots came at him, making ready to kick his butt. But he had the Board in his hand, and Kandy swung around pretty much on her own volition and knocked the other boots away.

  It was a fair chase, but Ease could run faster with one boot and one shoe than the other boot could hop. He caught it and jammed his foot inside. The boot struggled only briefly before yielding. It was after all footwear, and could not deny its nature. Yet Kandy, perversely, wondered if it was like a woman being ravished. How did boots feel about having smelly feet thrust into them?

  Fully booted, Ease stood. Now the other boots ignored him; he was two of them. He strode on over the hill and down the other side. As he went the boots faded; it seemed they could not leave Boot Hill. But he had passed the first Challenge.

  Only to encounter a snow-white slope guarded by a huge white bear. By two white bears. They stood as if conjoined at the hip, blocking the way.

  Ease raised the Board. The bears raised their big front paws. They could knock the Board out of the way before it could knock them. That was no good.

  PAUSE. THINK.

  Ease paused and thought. It wasn’t that Kandy thought he would up with anything useful, but that this would give her time to think before he did something terminally foolish. She understood that often the details of a Challenge provided the key to its solution. Like the detail of the boots being empty, so they could be filled and thus governed. These bears weren’t empty, but there must be something about them.

  There was. One bear looked happy, the other sad. Other than that they looked like identical twins.

  “Oh, bleep!” Ease said. “It’s a pun.”

  What did he have against puns? They were ubiquitous.

  “I hate puns,” he continued as if in answer. “Once I stepped on one, and it squished and stuck to my shoe. I couldn’t get the mess off. Another time I ate one by accident; I thought it was a bun. Then I got pundigestion, and started emitting puns, and nobody else could stand to be near me. It took days for the stink to get off me. I’d like to see every pun in Xanth abolished.”

  Maybe it was just as well that he hadn’t realized that Boot Hill was a pun. But what was the pun here? Kandy didn’t see anything funny about the twin bears.

  “They’re bi-polar bears,” he said. “On an ice bar.”

  Kandy feared her wood would warp. How could she have missed that? One happy bear, one sad bear, opposite extremes.

  Then she realized something else: he had been responding to her regular thoughts. She was starting to get through to him without shouting. That was good, maybe.

  “So how do I get by this Challenge?” he asked rhetorically. “If I have to try to think of a pun, I’ll retch.”

  Kandy’s turn. What would nullify a punnish pair of bears? Could they be made to dance? Do a pole dance?

  A bulb flashed. A bi-pole dancing bear. FETCH TWO POLES, she thought, in caps but not bold or italic.

  “Poles,” he echoed, looking around. Along the border between Boot Hill and the polar ice were some stakes, boundary markers, maybe so the bears and boots wouldn’t argue about territories. He went and pulled up two stout ones. He brought them back to the bears and jammed them into the icy snow. “All yours,” he said, backing off.

  Sure enough, the bears were fascinated by the poles. Each took one pole and began to dance around it. They were indeed bi-polar dancing bears.

  Ease quietly walked by them and on across the ice bar. The second Challenge had been navigated.

  Then there was a zombie. “Oh, bleep!” Ease muttered. “It just gets worse. I can’t stand zombies.”

  Kandy wasn’t partial to them herself. But if this was the third Challenge, it had to be handled. Maybe they should talk to it, just in case they could make it go away.

  “Um, hello,” Ease said. “Can you understand me?”

  “Ssure I understhand you,” the zombie replied with a moderate slurring because of rotten teeth. “I’m undead, not stupid.”

  “So are you a Challenge?”

  The zombie eyed him with its deteriorating eyeball. “You’re sstupid yet alive. Of coursh I’m a Czallenge! I am shpending my year of Shervice thwarting other petitioners. Try to get by me and I’ll shlime you with a shleazeball.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Ease pushed forward, leading with the board.

  The zombie lifted one stringy arm. Its discolored fingers held what looked like a huge sludge of snot. It lofted the ball toward Ease.

  Kandy smashed the ball with her face. SQUISH! Instead of flying cleanly into the sky the way a fair-minded ball would, it flattened and clung to the board. She had to peer through its greasy green goo. Yuck!

  “Yeah,” the zombie answered belatedly. Zombies were not notably quick minded; they had rotten brains.

  Ease backed off as the zombie readied another sleazeball, knowing when caution was the better part of valor. He wiped the board off on the turf. That was a relief.

  So how could they handle this disgusting opponent? Kandy looked around; she could do that without actually moving her eyes, because they were flat like a picture, gazing directly at whatever was in sight. She saw an eggplant growing to the side, with a number of fresh eggs. Could this be a way?

  “I see an eggplant,” Ease murmured. “I wonder.”

  Exactly.

  He went to the eggplant. The eggs were oddly labeled with words like SPLORE, PLAIN, and CITED. What did it mean?

  Kandy focused. These were likely to be puns, because the eggplant itself was a pun. What kind of an egg was a Splore? A Plain?

  Ease groaned. “Egg Splore,” he said. “Eggs Plain. Egg Cited. More punnishment.”

  Kandy groaned too, but it wasn’t even a board squeak. Next question: how could pun eggs stop a zombie?

  “I’m just going to throw them,” Ease decided.

  Well, why not? Kandy did not have a better idea at the moment.

  Ease picked the Splore Egg and hurled it at the zombie. It struck a ragged shoulder and splatted messily. Immediately the zombie started looking around, checking everything nearby.

  He was exploring, of course. His mangled pronunciation wasn’t good enough to distinguish between spellings. But he still wasn’t out of the way.

  Ease tossed another egg, the Cited. It struck the zombie, who suddenly began dancing around, excited. But he still wasn’t off the path.

  Ease threw the Plain egg. It caught the zombie on the head. “I need to eggsplain ssomething,” he said. “You can’t egg me on off the path.”

  “Maybe I just haven’t yet found the right egg,” Ease said. He took one labeled Xactly and threw it.

  “Eggzactly,” the zombie said. “You’ll never find the right egg. Not until you’re eggzausted.”

  This wasn’t working. It occurred to Kandy that the eggs were a distraction—an eggstraction?--placed there to confuse the issue. There had to be something else.

  She looked around. There was a kind of garden with pretty flowers, but on closer eggsamination—stop that!--they turned out to be small flowery cars. They were arranged in maplike outlines the shape of nations. What were they?

  Then her board really did warp. In-car-nations! Another eggregious pun. She had to stop this before she eggsploded.

  Beyond the flower cars was a beehive. It looked to be in poor condition. So were the bees. They looked as if they would fall ap
art at any moment.

  Then she caught on. They were Zom Bees! If anything should mess up a zombie, it should be bees of its own type. That had to bee the key.

  All they needed to do was get the bees to attack the zombie. How could they arrange that?

  “Zom Bees,” Ease said, picking up her thought. “That’s easy.” He walked to the hive and swing the board. It struck so hard that the hive sailed through the air like a lead balloon and smacked into the zombie. He had, per his talent, found the easy way.

  The bees were annoyed. In fact they were furious. They swarmed over the zombie and started stinging him.

  His reaction was curious. Instead of exclaiming in pain, he burst into wild laughter. He rolled on the ground, laughing uncontrollably.

  Kandy realized that Zombies were different from alive folk. What hurt a person might have the opposite effect on a zombie. So the stings were more like tickling. At any rate the zombie was out of commission. Ease walked right by it and through the setting. He was through the third Challenge, as much by luck as by skill.

  And there before him was the drawbridge over the moat.

  He walked boldly across it, jauntily swinging his board. There was a moat monster; it raised its toothy green head from the water, eyed him, and let him be. It knew he was entitled.

  He marched up to the front gate. A woman with a baby stood there. “Hi, Wira!” he called. “It’s me, Ease, again.”

  “So I see,” she agreed. “We seldom see a querent a second time.”

  “Well, the Good Magician didn’t help me before. Then I got this notion, how about asking him a different Question? Maybe this time he’ll give me an Answer.”

  “He regretted letting you go, before,” Wira said, guiding him into the castle. “Because after that there was a really tough mission, and he had to send a woman who almost wasn’t up to it, because she lacked your magic.” She paused.

  It was a significant pause. There was something on her mind. Maybe he should inquire.

  “I heard that pause,” Ease said. “What’s on your mind, Wira?”

  “Two things. One about you, the other about me.”

  “About me?”

  “Ease, the Good Magician has a mission in mind for you. But I remember from when you were here before. You don’t much like puns.”

  “I sure don’t. And there was half a slew of them out there today.”

  “Yes. I think maybe he was trying to turn you off so you wouldn’t finish the Challenges. Because the mission involves puns.”

  “Oh, bleep!” Then, remembering the baby, he mended his language. “I mean, oh, no.”

  Wira smiled. “She doesn’t understand language yet. No harm done. But you may want to pass up this mission.”

  But Kandy was curious. A mission involving puns? That could be wonderful or horrible, depending on the mood of the puns. She preferred to see it through.

  “I prefer to see it through,” Ease said bravely. “What’s the other thing?”

  “I really shouldn’t bother you.”

  “Oh, come on, Wira. You were nice to me before. Maybe I can help.”

  “All right. It’s that I can’t decide what to name my baby. Normally men get boy babies and women get girl babies, and she’s a girl, so she should have a W name, after me. But I’m not sure I want to be that conventional. That leaves me with no idea. I don’t want to leave it too long, because a person is incomplete without a name. Do you have any idea? Maybe what is difficult for me will be easy for you.”

  Ease considered, flattered. “What’s her talent?”

  “She can summon lizards and tame them. Small ones, so far, but they may get bigger as she matures. I’m hoping she’ll be a dragon tamer when she’s grown.”

  “Then name her after her talent: Liz.”

  “That’s it!” Wira said. “That’s perfect! Thank you.” She kissed him on the cheek.

  “Always glad to be of service to a lady,” Ease said gallantly.

  Kandy had to admit that he had come through on that one. He had indeed done easily what had stymied Wira.

  Now they came to the castle reception hall. “Mother MareAnn!” Wira exclaimed. “I have a name! Ease thought of it.” Then, embarrassed, she remembered her role. “This is Ease, who was here once before. Ease, this is MareAnn, the Designated Wife of the month.”

  “Hello, Ease,” MareAnn said. She was a pretty woman with a brown ponytail. “We haven’t met before, because I was not here when you were. I am glad to meet you now.” Then she turned to Wira. “A name?”

  “Liz! After her talent.”

  “Perfect,” MareAnn agreed. “Thank you for finding it, Ease.”

  Ease opened his mouth to say something modest. But Wira spoke instead. “Oops! I think Liz has to poop.” She hurried off.

  MareAnn smiled indulgently. “She’s so pleased with that baby. For years she couldn’t signal the stork for one, because she needed to help Humfrey. Now at last she and Hugo are parents, and they are happily unsettled.” She shook her head, politely bemused. “New parenthood is as wonderful and challenging in its way as new love. I remember--” She broke off. “But I don’t mean to bore you with reminiscences. The Good Magician is not able to see you at the moment, so there is time for you to eat and relax. We have a fine salad bar.” She produced what looked like a soap bar. “Also boot rear.”

  Ease hesitated. ACCEPT, Kandy thought, realizing that he needed schooling on social manners. AND ASK HER TO REMINISCE.

  So Ease, duly prompted, did the socially polite things, accepting the food and inquiring about the reminiscence.

  “You’re interested?” MareAnn asked, surprised.

  Ease opened his mouth.

  YES

  “Yes.”

  “Or are you just being polite?”

  Kandy hastily dictated a feasible answer, and Ease obligingly echoed it. “I don’t know what I face when the Good Magician answers my Question and gives me some Mission to accomplish. There may be some insight you can offer.”

  “But I have no idea what Humfrey has in mind. I can’t help you that way.”

  “I mean, your memories may do it. Not something that either you or I know about now, but they could provide me some perspective that will help.”

  She contemplated him thoughtfully. “Perhaps,” she agreed.

  Wira returned, bringing drinks. “I found some gin,” she said. “This should be good.” She presented a tray of glasses to Ease.

  “Gin? Isn’t that a Mundane drink?”

  “There’s a crude variant in Mundania, but this is better. There’s Ca-jin, Mar-jin, Ora-gin, Ima-gin, and Gin-jer. We also have rum.”

  IMAGINE, Kandy thought. That seemed less likely to intoxicate him.

  “Ima-gin,” Ease agreed.

  Wira gave him the glass. He sipped it, as Karen stopped him from gulping. With luck it would illuminate his mind.

  “I will have the Deco-rum,” MareAnn said, taking her glass.

  “You were remembering new love,” Ease said, prompted again.

  “Ah, yes,” MareAnn agreed. “Long ago, when I was young, which is longer ago than I care to say, I enjoyed my talent of summoning equines. That is, animals with some horse ancestry.”

  “You don’t look old,” Ease said, yet again prompted by Kandy’s thought.

  MareAnn laughed. “I am a hundred and eighty one years old.”

  Ease needed no prompting this time. “No way!”

  “You forget, we Wives have access to youth elixir. Humfrey uses it to maintain himself at approximately one hundred. Women prefer a somewhat younger default, and Humfrey is satisfied to accede. So physically I am twenty nine and counting, but chronologically I am more than six times that.”

  “Oh. Of course.” Still, both Ease and Kandy were set back by it.

  “My favorite equines were the unicorns, and since I was young and genuinely innocent I had no trouble summoning them. Then I met Humfrey. At first I took him for a boy of twelve, but he was my ag
e, fifteen. Then I thought he was a gnome, but he wasn’t. He helped me, and we got to know each other, and I liked him. He liked me too, especially when I innocently kissed him. So that was my first love, and I think his too. But our relationship was not to be, at least not at that time.”

  Ease and Kandy were working this out together. “Unicorns--”

  “Exactly. Folk who marry soon get un-innocent and summon storks. I knew I couldn’t afford that, because I would lose my ability to be with unicorns. So though it broke my heart, I declined to marry him. He married Dara Demoness instead.”

  “But then how--?”

  “How did I come to be his Designated Wife of the month?” she filled in. “That’s a long story, so I’ll condense it. In the course of his long life Humfrey lost several wives and associates to age or indifference, and when they died they wound up in Hell, I among them.” She smiled. “It’s not that we were evil, just that we weren’t ready for Heaven. We had unfinished business on Earth. Then when Humfrey rescued us, suddenly there were six of us, but of course he couldn’t remarry us all at once. So we arranged to alternate, month by month, and this is my month. Actually I’m his half wife.”

  “Half wife?”

  “It was a very small ceremony. I had turned him down before, preserving my innocence. But Hell is hard on innocence, and I had already lost my unicorns, so now I married him. I was the only one who had not married him before, so my status was less, even though I was his first love. So I am now a half-wife of twenty four years. But my love is undiminished. I am a half wife but not a half woman. And I remember how it was, to love and yet be denied.” She looked at Ease. “You have not yet experienced first love or denied love, but I think you soon will. Then you will understand.”

  “I have not,” Ease agreed.

  Wira had faded out. Now she returned. “Humfrey still is not ready to see Ease,” she reported. “He will do it tomorrow morning.”

  “Then you will stay the night,” MareAnn said. “Wira will show you to your room. I hope my reminiscence was not too boring.”

  Boring. That word electrified Kandy. Being bored stiff had been her undoing, and this might relate. The idea of unexpected love and denial also might relate. Both Kandy and Ease had wished for Romance, and it was seeming increasingly likely that they were destined for each other. If only she could stop being a board. NOT AT ALL.