Please trust me. My name is Nimby.”
He had said enough. Now it was make-or-break time.
Slowly he raised his head and peered over the rocks. There she was, and—
It was the wrong girl.
“Oh—a funny donkey!” the girl exclaimed.
And now Nimby was mute, per the contest rule. He had had a good long moment, longer than expected, and had spoken well. But how had he come to this mistaken connection? He extended his awareness out and back, tracing the girl's travel here, and in a moment he had it: Miss Fortune's bad luck had struck again. There was a crossing of two paths, just beyond a wide wallflower, and she had collided with another girl. The two had had their breaths knocked out, and had sat down on opposite sides, gasping.
Then they had gotten up, brushed themselves off, made quick curt apologies to each other though each was sure the other had been at fault, and gone on their ways—down the wrong paths. Fortune had gone on the other girl's errand, which was to fetch a nice bow from a bow-vine so her mother wouldn't give her a punish-mint. And the other girl had gone on Fortune's errand, and had been just realizing her error when Nimby had spoken to her.
She was Chlorine, whose talent was poisoning water.
She was plain, stupid, and mean-spirited, in complete contrast to Fortune. The collision bad been her fault, because she had been rushing along without looking, too fast for path conditions. Thus she had given Fortune the colossal ill luck to lose her encounter with Nimby, who could have helped her so much, and had given Nimby the worse luck to have wasted his opening monologue on her. What was he going to do with this wretch of a wench? Because she was the one he was stuck with.
Chlorine approached him. “And you can't talk anymore?” She inquired. “Not even to bray?” She giggled at her own clumsy humor.
She was asking for it. Nimby stood up, showing his dragon body.
“Oh—you're a weird dragon,” she said. “Ugliest creature I've ever seen! Why should I ever want to keep company with you?”
Why, indeed. Fortune would have had some sympathy, for she was a decent girl. But Chlorine had a harsh personality, such as there was of it. And now, casting his awareness back across her life, he discovered something even worse: she had once had some sensitivity, but it had been beaten out of her by her abusive family. She had long since cried herself out, and now had only one tear left, and she did not know where that one was. Even if so moved, she couldn't cry a tear for him. And she wouldn't be moved, because she had become cynical and heedless of the feelings of others. Chlorine was simply no prize.
Nimby stared defeat in the snoot. He could hardly have invoked a worse companion. All because he had not been paying attention, while a girl known for her ill luck had suffered more of it. He had come up with the perfect speech—for an undeserving girl. He had thrown away his chance for victory. He hung his head in remorse.
“Still,” Chlorine said, “if what you said is true, this could be my lucky day. I'm going to give you a chance.
But I warn you, if you try to eat me, I'll poison your water, and you'll have one awful bladder infection.” Actually, her language was somewhat more cynically descriptive, the key phrase being “pied pee,” but Nimby wasn't quite current with inferior vernacular.
So she wasn't afraid for her safety. She could indeed poison any water with a touch, which meant she could kill a creature if she had to. She couldn't do it to Nimby, because he was a Demon, but of course, he couldn't afford to let her realize that. And she was what he was stuck with, and the contest had not yet been resolved; maybe he still had an outside chance to win. So he nodded, showing that he understood her warning.
“Make me beautiful,” she said.
That was easy. He focused on her, and transformed her various pans. He made her straggly greenish yellow hair into luxuriant green-tinted golden tresses that curled just enough to be interesting. He made her yellowish complexion into the fairest skin seen in Xanth. He shifted the substance of her body so that her egg-timer torso became an hourglass figure. He formed her thick clodhoppered feet into dainty digits in glassy slippers. And he adjusted her shapeless dress into an elegant robe that clung to her suddenly firm curves like an artistic lover. She was now a stunning creature of her kind.
She looked down at herself, appreciating the change.
“Oooo! Is this real? I mean, not illusion? It feels real.”
She pinched her delightful derriere just hard enough to verify its mind-freaking reality.
Nimby nodded, agreeing that it was real. As long as their association continued.
“I need a mirror,” she said. “I want to see my face.”
Nimby made one of his scales mirror-shiny and turned it so she could look. She peered at herself, thrilled.
Then she reconsidered. “I'm not just dull-looking, I'm dull-thinking. I've been told that often enough. Can you make me smart, too?”
That was phrased as a question, but it was actually a request, just as the mirror had been. Nimby concentrated on the spongy interior of her head, increasing the efficiency of her mind.
She smiled. “I'm getting smarter! I can feel it! I'm beginning to understand things I never did before. My perspective is broadening immeasurably.” She paused. “And so is my vocabulary. I never talked like that before.”
Nimby nodded. He had improved not only the height of her intelligence, but also its breadth. Now she could overwhelm problems by force of intellect, and have the judgment to know when to apply it. Now she really would use the term “bladder infection.”
She cocked her head, looking at him. “You know, you're quite a creature, if I'm not dreaming this. Your talent is quite strong. But now I have the wit to look a gift dragon in the tooth. Why are you doing this for me? You said you need my company, but I'm sure my company is not unique. Was it chance or design that brought you to me?”
Nimby couldn't answer that, so just gazed at her.
She was quick to understand, because of her new intellect. “Let me rephrase that: was it chance?”
He nodded yes. He had been looking for Miss Fortune, and ill chance had brought him Chlorine instead.
“Chance that you found me,” she said slowly, feeling her way through the powerful mind she now possessed, becoming aware of the several informational options and their bypaths. “But you must have had a design. Did you need me specifically?”
He shook no.
“Is your ultimate intention toward me beneficial?”
He nodded yes. He had to do her enough good to make her care enough to shed a tear for him.
But she was too canny, now, to accept that uncritically.
“Beneficial for me as well as you?”
She had caught a significant qualification. He really didn't care about her long-term welfare, only about his victory in the contest. But since he needed her emotion, so that she would cry for him, he intended to treat her well. He wanted her to come to like him, to care about his welfare. By her definition, as he understood it, his intention was ultimately beneficial, if not totally happy. So he nodded yes.
“So you just need a person—and not to eat or otherwise harm.”
He nodded yes.
“Of course, I can't be sure I can trust you,” she said sensibly, for common sense was now one of her strengths.
“But with the powers you have demonstrated, I'm sure you could have rendered me unconscious and consumed me, had that been your desire. So the evidence substantiates your claim. You need company.”
He made a small nod.
“But there is more,” she said sagely. “Yet I could surely guess for days and never happen to discover it. I've never been good at the game of nineteen questions, or even five questions.” She paused again, startled. “But I could be good at it now. However, I see no need. As long as I keep your company, I can be as I am now—and when I separate from you, I will revert to the way I normally am.”
He nodded again.
“So let's see what else I wa
nt to be,” she said, getting practical. “Beauty is only skin-deep. I want to be healthy, too.”
He focused on her, making her supremely healthy. He had already accomplished some of this when he made her beautiful and smart, and now her chemistry was good as well as her bones and flesh. She would live a long time, and never suffer illness, and would heal quickly if injured.
While she remained with him.
“Yes, I can feel that health coursing through me,” she said. “I feel like running and jumping.” She did so, and her body responded perfectly.
She returned to him. “What is the range of your ambiance with respect to these benefits?” she inquired. “Ten of my paces? A hundred? A thousand?”
He nodded yes at the third suggestion. She had to be associated with him, and while distance wasn't the key, it would do as an approximation.
But she did not think to ask a related question: could she go beyond that ambiance, formally terminating the relationship, then change her mind and return, without losing the benefits? She assumed that she could—his awareness told him that—and that was potential disaster for them both. But he couldn't tell her; she had to ask.
Another notion caught her fancy. “I am now aware that though my mind and body have become excellent, my personality has not. I am a cynical mean-spirited vixen; that's one reason people don't like me. Can you make me nice?”
She hesitated, caught by an errant thought. “But not too nice, because I wouldn't want to be washy-wishy.”
That was actually another request. Nimby focused, and adjusted her personality to make her nice. Naturally he did a good job, providing her with qualities of integrity, compassion, sympathy, empathy, and thoughtfulness. She would be about as nice a person as any could be. But he added a reasonable dollop of realism, so that she would not be, as she put it, washy-wishy.
“Oh, my,” she breathed. “I appreciate what a female canine I have been, and for such inadequate reason. I have some amends to make. And I shall make them, in due course.” She looked at Nimby again. “What about my talent? Can you give me a better one?”
This was dangerous. She could ask for the talent of omniscience, and if she got that, she would soon know all about him—and that would lose him the contest. Her intelligence was already dangerous enough. So he shook his head no.
“Ah, well,” she said, being nice about it, but realistic.
“You have already done so much for me that I would be unduly greedy to wish for more. Still, now that you have done all this for me, I'd like to do something similar for you. Can you change yourself as you have changed me?”
Nimby hadn't thought of that. Of course, he could—but should he? He concluded that there should be no harm in it. So he nodded yes.
“Then make yourself into my equivalent, in form, mind, health, and character,” she said. “By that I mean a princely human man.”
So Nimby became a handsome, smart, healthy, nice, but realistic princely human man. Thus efficiently had Chlorine abated his ugliness, as well as her own.
“Oh, yes,” she breathed. “You are the kind of man I've always dreamed of, but who I knew would never even look at me.” She glanced appraisingly at him. “Look at me.”
She had the notion that he had to obey her. That was not the case, but since it hardly mattered, he was not concerned. He looked at her.
“Embrace me,” she said. “Kiss me.”
So he held her and kissed her. She was now mostly as he had Grafted her, and his own form was hardly natural to him, but he found the experience interesting and mildly pleasurable. This was perhaps because he had Grafted a complete human man form, with its inherent appreciation of any woman who looked and acted the way this one did.
Her exquisitely Grafted human female body elicited certain responses in his supremely healthy human male body. He realized that for the first time in his long existence he was feeling a tinge of human desire.
She ended the kiss, and sighed. “Too bad you're really a donkey-headed dragon,” she said. “If you were a real man, I'd marry you.”
Such illusion! But it was just as well that she thought of him as the monster, and not as the Demon X(A/N)th.
“And you're still mute?”
He nodded, appreciating a benefit of this condition: he couldn't give his identity away.
“Ah, well. I'll just have to do the talking for both of us.” She paused, considering. “Obviously I can't go home in this state,” she said realistically. “My family would never recognize me, and would be jealous if they did. So I think I'll just disappear for a few days. They may not even miss me.”
She kissed him again, rubbing close against him, so that his body began to rev up and heat in an alarming though not unpleasant manner, then flirtatiously disengaged. “So let's take a long walk to unfamiliar places, in our present forms, and when I get bored with that I'll consider what next to do. Because if this is a temporary state, I want to make the most of it.” She eyed him appraisingly. “I suspect you haven't had much experience in human romance.”
Nimby nodded. In fact, he had no idea what she was talking about, and though his awareness tried to grasp her larger thoughts, there was nothing there to which he could relate. What was romance? Did it have anything to do with the revving of his body when she kissed him?
Chlorine laughed. “Never fear. Nimby. I'll teach you. I had no use for it before, but now that I'm beautiful and nice, I appreciate its value. But it must not be rushed. So let's set out on our adventure.” She took his hand and led him down the path, away from the thyme plant.
Then she thought of something else. “You said you could reverse my talent! How about that?”
That much he could agree to. In the course of a brief yes-no dialogue they established that she could not just poison water, but purify it. Actually she could have used her talent this way all along, had she realized it, because her poisoning was temporary, and abolished any bad living things in the water.
Nimby was feeling more positive. Chlorine had been a mistake, but had become considerably more interesting.
Perhaps it would be possible to find her lost tear. He knew where it was, of course, but couldn't tell her unless she asked the right series of yes-no questions. But she was doing exactly what he wanted: building a relationship.
Meanwhile his wider awareness was informing him that the mischief he feared from the interruption of the Interface was coming to pass: a significant storm was about to forge from Mundania into Xanth. Though he could not see the future, he knew from long-past experience what that could mean. If that storm progressed until it swept up significant amounts of magic dust, there would be trouble like none seen in millennia. And he couldn't prevent it.
In fact, he now understood how thoroughly the other Demons had fooled him. They had known that the Interface would waver when he changed form and entered Xanth as a character, and that a storm was moving toward it. They had timed it precisely, distracting him so that he would be severely limited at the worst time. And he, intent on his chance to gain significant status, had carelessly let himself be snared,
Chapter 2
HAPPY BOTTOM
Karen stared avidly out the window of the motor home, catching glimpses of the roiling surface of the sea. “Is Happy Bottom here yet?” she asked.
She was seven, and interested in everything but home and school.
“That's Gladys, twerp,” David said. He was her big twelve-year-old half brother, and he figured he knew everything she didn't. “Hurricane Gladys.”
But this rebuke brought her other half brother Sean into the fray, as was often the case. He was seventeen, so ranked David by the same amount David ranked Karen.
“Hurricane Happy Bottom,” he said, chuckling. “I like it. But no, she's not here yet; these are only her outskirts. Enjoy them.”
Karen giggled, enjoying the halfway naughty reference.
She saw Mom and Dad, up in the front of the vehicle, exchange one of their Significant Looks. That was
probably because of the business about the bottom and the skirts.
Adults knew what was fun, and avoided it.
“Tropical Storm Gladys,” Mom said. “She's not yet a hurricane. Otherwise we couldn't risk this drive across her path.”
Now the kids exchanged a significant glance. Point made about adults and fun.
“TS HB,” Sean remarked innocently. Then, after a pause just long enough to make someone wonder just what naughty notions the letters stood for, he clarified it: “Tropical Storm Happy Bottom.”
“TS,” David agreed with a smirk. Karen kept her face straight, because she wasn't supposed to know what TS really stood for, though of course, she did know. Tough Stuff. Just as she knew that PO really stood for Put Out.
But what about HB, in the naughty lexicon? Maybe Hard Bone. She was sure that would set the boys to sniggering, though she wasn't absolutely sure why.
Theirs was a modern blended family. Mom and Dad had each been married before, and it hadn't worked out. Karen knew why, of course: they had been made for each other, so their first marriages had been mistakes. Likewise their first children, though it wasn't expedient to say that, except in the heat of righteous anger when one of them teased her too hard. Sean was Dad's son, and David was Mom's son, which led to certain deviously competitive crosscurrents between them. In this respect Karen ranked them both, because she was both parents' child, and a daughter to boot. So. they were all half siblings, but she was the only one related by blood to everyone else. She liked it that way. She really belonged.
But there was only so much excitement to be had from watching water, even if it was stirring nicely. So Karen went back to check on the pets. They were in crates, to keep them out of mischief while the vehicle was in motion, and not happy about it.
“Hi, Woofer,” she said, reaching in to pat the big mongrel dog. Woofer was Sean's pet, but got along with everyone in the family, especially anyone who had food on his person. His fur was almost black, matching Sean's hair, and through him. Dad's. “Hi, Midrange.” She stroked the nondescript tomcat. Midrange was David's pet, but could be friendly with anyone who sat in one place more than a moment. His fur was mangy light, matching David's dirty blond hair, which in turn copied Mom's full blond tresses.