"But why are you traveling alone?" the Dastard inquired, sounding interested. "Shouldn't you be at home with your mother?"
"No, she lives too close to the madness," the child explained. "It waxes and wanes, and gets kinda crazy, so when it does, I go visit Castle Zombie for a while. I know my way around the forest."
"You surely do," the Dastard agreed, sounding impressed. "Your mother would have made sure of that."
"Yes, she can't leave her tree, but I can. Well, 'bye, you nice people; I gotta go." And she went cheerily on down the path.
The Dastard turned to Becka. "Well?" He sounded disgusted.
"I'm amazed! You were charming. You do know how to do it."
"I told you I did. I just don't see the point, if there's nothing I want from her. So now we're rid of the little brat and I don't want to hear any more from you."
Becka realized that without a soul he would never see the point. "Okay."
"Now there's a nexus," he said.
"A nexus," Becka agreed, resigned. How long would she have to watch him doing his dastardly deeds?
This time it was a female troll who came down the path. "Ugh," the Dastard muttered. "No panties there."
"So maybe you should just let her pass by," Becka suggested, not wishing the mischief of unhappening on anyone, even a troll.
"No, a nexus is a nexus."
So they hailed the troll. "Who are you, ugly face?" the Dastard asked, reverting to his normal crudity.
"What do you care, crude mouth?" she responded in kind. Already, Becka liked her better.
"You have recently done something or discovered something, or have had some significant effect on something," he told her. "I mean to change that."
"I don't care if you mean to fly to the moon! If you try to interfere with me, I'll banish you."
Perhaps the experience with Janell made the Dastard cautious. "Banish me?"
"Like this," the troll said. She pointed to a nearby rock--and suddenly it was gone. "I can banish people too. Can't necessarily bring them back."
The Dastard nodded. He understood threats. He turned charming. "That's an excellent talent."
The troll gazed at him as if trying to determine whether he was sincere. Then she changed into a centaur filly. "So what makes you think I have discovered something?"
Both Becka and the Dastard stared, she at the face, he at the bare breasts. "You are you the same creature?" Becka asked. "I mean--"
"I'm the same person, yes," the centaur answered. "Just a different form. And a different talent."
"A different talent? But--"
"But I can't control my form," she said. "I am Xena. Who are you?"
"I am Becka. I'm a dragon girl." She turned dragon for an instant. "So I know about changing forms. But that's all I do; I have no other talent, really. How can you have two forms and two talents?"
"I don't know, but I do. In this form I can see the true nature of anything. I see you are telling the truth." She looked at the Dastard. "But you--what a dastardly piece of work you are! You have no soul!"
"So what have you discovered?" the Dastard asked.
"That you have no--" Then the centaur was replaced by a clothed female with her head in the shape of a star, holding a tray supporting several bowls of soup.
"What are you now?" the Dastard asked. His interest might even have been genuine.
A mouth appeared in the star-head. "A souper star, of course. Have some soup; it's hot."
Becka was really hungry by this time, so rather than marvel where it had all come from, she accepted a bowl of blue carrot soup. It was delicious. She noticed that another bowl appeared on the tray the moment hers was off it.
"I mean, what other thing did you discover?" the Dastard said.
"Oh, that," Xena said. "It's a--"
She disappeared and was replaced by a fat trunked little tree. It danced constantly around, never rooting in one place for very long.
"This grows wearisome," the Dastard said wearily. "What is she this time?"
A wooden mouth opened in the trunk. "A hyper-bole, of course."
"What's a hyper-bole?" Becka. asked.
"A very active tree trunk," the mouth said.
Then the tree trunk disappeared, and a normal seeming woman stood there. "Unless I happen to assume the form of a hyperbole," she said, pronouncing the word differently. "Then I get wildly exaggerated."
"You're making me dizzy," Becka said.
"Excess exaggeration can do that."
"Don't assume that form!" the Dastard said, alarmed.
Becka stifled a smile. He was thinking of his experience with Janell, whose exaggeration was not verbal but physical. "What's your talent in this form?" she asked Xena.
"It is to copy people. But it's not much good, because they last only a few days, and they're really stupid. Only the original has normal intelligence."
The Dastard was interested, which was not a good sign. "Can you copy yourself?"
Xena shrugged. "Sure. But the copy remains stupid."
"Let's see it."
The woman twitched, and suddenly there were two of her, looking identical.
"Which is which?" Becka asked.
"I'm the original," the left one said.
"Show me your panties," the Dastard said to the copy.
"Gee," she said stupidly, and reached down to draw up her skirt. She was actually a well enough formed woman.
"Oh, no!" Becka exclaimed, disgusted. "That's why he wanted a stupid woman."
"He won't get far," the original said. Then she and the copy changed into ogresses.
"Yuck!" the Dastard said. For the ogress's panties had the opposite effect, completely turning him off. The ogre kind was expert at ugliness, and it hardly stopped at the face.
"Me brute; he cute," the ogress said, reaching for the Dastard with a ham hand. Her smile was worse yet.
"I've seen enough," he said. "Uncopy her."
"That is not talent me got," the original ogress said smugly.
"Because your form changed," Becka said, catching on. "And as an ogress, your talents are strength, stupidity, and ugliness."
Meanwhile the ogress copy, who seemed to be of average intellect for her form, was pursuing the Dastard. "Me want see he pantee!" she cried, grabbing for his pants.
Becka's stifled smile almost tugged her mouth off her face in its effort to emerge. The Dastard was being served as he deserved. Hey, she thought--she was rhyming like an ogress!
The centaur reappeared, in both places. "I see that you are a genuinely good girl," Xena said. "But I also see that your friend the Dastard is well named."
"He is indeed," Becka agreed. But something nagged at her. She had introduced herself, but didn't think the Dastard had been named. How could Xena know his name, then?
Meanwhile the copy-centaur had caught the Dastard and was holding him to her ample bare bosom. She might have changed form, but had not forgotten her romantic interest. The Dastard seemed to be not entirely unwilling. But was that how even a stupid centaur filly would act?
"You're the Sea Hag!" Becka said.
The centaur reached for her. "I'll stifle you before he catches on!"
Becka turned dragon and chomped her hand. Xena shrieked.
The Dastard heard her. He struggled to turn within the copy-centaur's embrace, and saw. He understood. "Get over here," he cried.
Becka flew across to him, and returned to girl form as she landed. He grabbed her hand.
Then the two of them were sliding into limbo. They moved back in time and geography, locating the moment the Sea Hag infused Xena. It was not long before, as it had to postdate Nadine Naga's reversion.
There was Xena in troll form discovering a very special stream, which glowed with life. "That's the Stream of Life!" the Dastard said.
"What's that?"
"It is to healing elixir as a mountain is to a molehill. Of course nobody needs that much restorative power, so there's never been a search for i
t. But it would probably attract the Sea Hag."
Xena changed to hyperbole form, and reacted wildly. She dipped a damaged root into the stream, and the root was suddenly whole and vigorously healthy.
After a moment Xena became the centaur--and the centaur paused, looking surprised, then repelled, then smug. The Sea Hag had come.
They slid back to the time between the stream and the Possession. The Dastard emerged into the regular scene, and gave Becka a shove. "Introduce yourself, give her some herbs, and tell her to meet your friend where we met her before."
"You're still after her panties!" she exclaimed, disgusted.
"Two things, girl: First, she's obviously of age, so can show me her panties if she wants to. Second, those panties are too brief between changes to be feasible, so what I'm after is the nexus, which I have not yet identified."
He was right. She was being unduly suspicious and restrictive. It was not her business to police his morals. Her experience with the Sea Hag had shown her how much, much worse morals could be. Embarrassed, she walked out to intercept Xena. "Hello, Centaur filly."
"Greetings, human girl."
"I'm Becka, a dragon girl."
"So I see, and you do mean well. I'm Xena, a multiple--" Suddenly she was the ogress. "Me be torn, many form."
"You have many forms?" Becka asked, drawing on her prior experience to catch on remarkably quickly. "That's your talent?"
Talents too, different doo," the ogress said.
"A different talent for each form? That's remarkable!"
"Mainly painly," the ogress said, looking unogreshly pensive.
"You don't like it? Well, I'm afraid I can't help you with that, but let me give you something. These herbs will protect you from some other threat. Take them." She proffered a string of herbs.
"Girl give she, gift me see?" the ogress asked, dully astonished. She donned the necklace.
"Yes. And--"
But now the ogress was the souper star. "Oh, good," Xena said through her star shaped head. "Now I can repay you. Please have some nice hot soup before I change again."
"Thank you." Becka took a steaming bowl of black potato soup and tasted it. It was just as good as the other soup had been, or rather, would be. "I think I saw you discover something a moment ago. What was it?"
"The Stream of Life," Xena said. "I thought it was mythical, but I just stumbled upon it. Well, actually I was looking for it, but I never expected to find it."
Becka was aware that time was passing. She had to get back to the Dastard. "Look, Xena--I'd like you to meet a--an associate." She couldn't push the word "friend" through her reluctant mouth. "Why don't you walk on down this path, and I'll take a brief errand behind some bushes, then I'll tell him about you, and then you can tell us everything."
"Very well," the troll said. "Keep the soup."
"Thank you." The troll walked on down the path.
Becka rejoined the Dastard, who pulled her right into limbo, then reverted to their present. They emerged walking along the path as before. Becka was still eating her excellent soup. She decided not to wonder about that too much, lest it fade away. "You took your time," he grumped.
"She kept changing form. I couldn't let on that I knew about it. Anyway, I learned that she was looking for the Stream of Life, so she must have a reason, and maybe that's why she's a nexus."
He glanced at her almost appreciatively. "That helps, sometimes I almost regret that you're underage." He glanced where her panties would show, if they showed, but of course she made sure they didn't.
"Not to mention being a dragon girl," she reminded him grimly. One of his problems--by no means the worst--was that he could not appreciate a girl or woman at all without orienting on her underwear. Age had very little to do with it. What princess of any age would ever put up with that? He ought to settle for a nymph who liked being forever chased and--what did they call it? Celebrated. Maybe she should suggest that.
They rounded a turn, and there was Xena, in her woman form. "Hello, Xena," Becka called.
"You know me?" the woman asked, surprised. "Did you see this form?"
"I recognize the herb necklace."
"Oh, of course. And you have the soup."
"Yes, it's wonderful. This is the Das-Dashing. He's very interested in what you found."
"Yes," the Dastard said. "What use do you have for the Stream of Life?"
"I want it to revive the Heart of the Forest. It's the only thing that can. For years I have searched for the Stream, and now at last I have found it. I filled a can--"
She became the centaur. "--teen with it." She stared at the Dastard. "But I am not at all sure I should tell you about it. You are not a nice man." She paused, reflecting. "But there is that in your mind that suggests I owe you a considerable favor."
How true that was, Becka thought. He had, for purely selfish reason, saved her from the Sea Hag.
"If you held your human form long enough to show me your panties," the Dastard said suggestively, "I'd show you how nice I can be. For a little while."
Xena considered. "You know my nature, and you want to get at my panties?"
"You know mine, and you want to give them to me?"
"Perhaps. It is true that no man has been interested in me after the first or second change."
Becka was amazed and slightly appalled. They were working it out! She knew she should keep her mouth shut, but it opened anyway. "But you want to marry a princess," she reminded the Dastard.
"True. But until I find one, I want to find a temporary relationship. One I can throw away as convenient. This is a prospect."
"A throwaway prospect," Xena agreed. "Your soulless candor is refreshing. I'll consider it. Certainly I wouldn't want to associate with you for very long." She became the ogress. "Me choose he use."
"Why do you want to revive the Heart of the Forest?" the Dastard asked.
"That's a separate story that perhaps would bore you," the centaur filly replied.
"We're interested," Becka said.
The souper star reappeared. Apparently the order of change was random, as was the duration of a particular form. "Soup?"
Becka had finished her prior bowl. She took another. So did the Dastard. "Tell us while we eat," the Dastard said.
"Very well," the star-head said. "The Dead Forest was once a wonderful living forest, until the Curse Fiends cursed it for obscure reason, killing all the trees. Something to do with an amorous ogre, I believe. But I live near it, and I regret that it suffers such a fate. I learned that it is not quite dead, merely dormant. In its center is its heart, and if the heart of the forest were to be revived, the whole forest would quickly recover. So I resolved to revive it. The only thing that can revive the Heart is water from the Stream of Life. I have been searching for it for years. Today, at last, I found it. Now I can revive that forest. It will be the culmination of my generally indifferent life."
Becka heard this narration with increasing distress. This was a truly worthy thing to do--and so naturally the Dastard would unhappen it, and the forest would never be revived. What a pity.
The centaur returned. "So that is why. And--" She stared at the Dastard. "And you intend to ruin it! I ought to kick your head!"
"Maybe there's another way!" Becka cried desperately. She knew that if the centaur filly tried to kick his head, he would just unhappen the event, then unhappen her project. Both together, probably, to avoid overlapping. "That dead forest has become a landmark. It's famous. People chart their courses by it. It would be a horrible shock to almost everyone if it suddenly changed. What you really want to unhappen is the dead forest itself."
The Dastard considered, surprised. "You could be right."
He was buying it! "And if you help her revive it, maybe she really will show you her p--pan--" She couldn't get the word out, in this naughty context. "You know."
Now he was definitely intrigued. "Would you?" he asked Xena.
"Oh, I think so," the centaur agreed. "In one
of my forms that has them. After the Dead Forest revives. Shall we call it a deal?"
"Deal," he said immediately. He was very quick to appreciate a net gain. Of course his word was not good, but he would go along with what profited him in one way or another or both.
They walked on down the path toward the Dead Forest. Xena changed forms erratically, but maintained her side of the dialogue well enough. She did seem pleased to be associating with someone for more than a change or two. Her life was surely a lonely and frustrating one. And, Becka forcefully reminded herself, she was an adult and could do as she chose. Even with a heel like the Dastard. So Becka sipped her soup as she walked, and let it be.
In due course they approached the Dead Forest. Souper star handed Becka a flask. "Follow this path on to the center of the forest," she said. "The Heart will be there. Pour the Stream of Life water out onto it, and observe what happens."
"But I thought you wanted to do that yourself," Becka said, surprised.
"I want to be sure that it is done," the centaur said. "But I know you will do it. Meanwhile there is a nice private bower here that I think will do for the other."
"Will do for what other?" Becka asked, perplexed.
"I am bound to assume my woman form before long. We need to be ready, as there may not be much time."
"Ready for what?"
Xena and the Dastard just looked at her, After a moment, Becka blushed as deeply as she could manage. "Oh."
She turned and walked on down the path. The fire on her face slowly burned off, leaving her merely embarrassed. She wished the Sea Hag hadn't so brutally educated her about the secrets of the Adult Conspiracy. There were some things she would gladly have waited several more years to know.
She saw the dead trees on either side of the path. They were huge and gnarled and bare. This was a really gloomy region, and would have been scary were she not a dragon girl. It seemed impossible that these trees could ever live again. But she would find out.
She came to the center. This was a heart-shaped clearing, slightly raised. Obviously this was where the Heart was supposed to be. But where was it? She looked all around and didn't see it. Just this dirty mound.