Knot Gneiss

  “My winged merman,” Meryl agreed.

  “Finding a fast, easy root to the Good Magician’s Castle,” Wenda said.

  Hilarion smiled. “Finding my betrothee, of course.”

  “I suppose I would wish for something similar,” Ida said.

  “The rest of my substance,” Angela said. “I am at present only half solid. Beauregard notices. But not at Wenda’s expense.”

  Wenda realized that she had lost only half of her body, so that was all that Angela had gained. The angel was more apparent than real.

  “A Status Point,” Jumper said.

  The others looked at him. “How’s that again?” Hilarion asked.

  “For Eris,” Jumper explained. “She’s a Dwarf Demoness. With enough Status Points she could become a full one.”

  Wenda nodded. “Yew dew love her.”

  “Oh, yes. And you, in a different manner.” He looked around. “Did you notice that she did not wish for her own lost substance back, but only for the completion of her mission? None of the rest of us are that unselfish.”

  Wenda felt herself blushing, for no particular reason. “Yew were unselfish too. Yew wished for a favor for yewr deer.”

  “My dear,” Jumper agreed. “I owe her everything.”

  Hilarion shook his head. “I am surely not the only one who envies you such a relationship. I am not thinking of her power, but of her love.”

  “Surely not the only one,” Ida agreed.

  “Now we have established our wishes,” Meryl said. “Now all we need is an invisible fun house with prizes.”

  “I wonder,” Hilarion said. He got out of the boat and walked to the fence that surrounded nothing. There was a gate. He opened it and stepped through. And stopped. “There is a structure here.”

  “The house?” Wenda asked.

  In hardly more than a moment the others had joined the prince. There was indeed something, invisible but solid.

  Hilarion reached out to touch it. And a picture formed before him, like an image in a magic mirror. A picture of a lovely young princess, complete with gown and crown. “Well, now. That would be her.”

  “Your prize,” Jumper agreed. “Should you choose to pursue it.”

  “I do.” Hilarion stepped forward, into the picture. He tripped on something, but caught himself. “It is a doorway, and a stairway,” he said. He stepped up, and up again. Soon he was standing at head height. “Perfectly solid.” He felt ahead, then to the sides. He turned to the left, paused, then stepped up again. “It is indeed a maze. My prize must be at its end, if I find the right route.”

  “Let me try that,” Meryl said. She balanced on her tail before the door, which now showed a handsome merman. She entered, felt about, then spread her wings and flew upward. “I have flying space,” she announced. “But I can feel the nearness of barriers.”

  Angela approached the door. Now the picture showed a mound of what looked like blubber: her missing substance. She stepped into it and through it, discovering invisible stairs downward.

  They seemed to be discovering the rules of this game. Would it really deliver the prizes? They would just have to find out.

  Jumper stepped up. He’d remained in human form, ever since learning that his magic changes were limited. “May I gamble?” he asked Wenda. “I would really feel more comfortable in my natural state.”

  “Gambol,” she agreed.

  He became the giant spider and touched the picture space. A shining numeral appeared, the number 1. One Status Point. He stepped into it, and evidently discovered a web network, because suddenly he was using all eight legs to climb an invisible scaffold.

  That left Ida and Wenda. “Can it really deliver a Demon item?” Wenda asked.

  “Not unless it has Demon endorsement.”

  “Is that possible?”

  “It is possible,” Ida said. “Though I think unlikely. We don’t know the background of this alien network.”

  “We dew knot know,” Wenda agreed.

  “Let’s see what it offers me,” Ida said. She approached the gate, touched the picture place, and gazed at the forming picture. It was of a handsome older prince or king. “I think he would do, if real.”

  “Yew judge by appearances?”

  “When there is no other information. I would of course need to come to know him first.”

  “There is something vaguely familiar about him,” Wenda said. “But I can knot place it.”

  Ida focused. “Could it be Hilarion’s father, the king of his isle?”

  “That might bee it,” Wenda agreed. “Though he did knot say his father was widowed.”

  “His uncle, perhaps.”

  “Yes. He should have similar sterling qualities.”

  Ida entered the invisible maze. Her path turned abruptly right, then left. Wenda saw her feeling her way with her spread hands.

  Now it was down to Wenda. “I dew knot like leaving the Knot unattended,” she murmured. Then she had an idea. She returned to the boat, made sure it was firmly docked off the alien highway, and peeled away the remaining sheathe of reverse wood, which was pretty much depleted anyway. That allowed the Knot to have full effect, petrifying anyone else who approached. It should be safe from molestation.

  She returned to the gate. But still she was bothered. “Someone should bee in touch with the others, to bee sure they dew knot get lost or need help,” she said.

  Then she had an idea. The picture seemed to be guided by thought. Could it be guided by hers?

  Her picture showed the Good Magician’s Castle. She reached to its sides and took hold of the invisible frame. She felt that frame gradually shrinking in her hands, until it was relatively small.

  “Hilarion,” she murmured. And there was his picture, the size of her hollow palm. He was still making his way through the maze. She looked directly, and saw him in the distance, above the ground, in the same position as the picture. So it seemed to be valid.

  “Hello, Hilarion,” she said. He did not respond, which did not surprise her; this was a picture of him, not a communication with him.

  “Meryl,” she said, and the winged mermaid appeared. She had disappeared from the original “house” but the picture showed her flying over a mountain vista. There in a high valley was a small lake. She flew down toward it.

  “Angela,” Wenda said. Again, the original had disappeared in the gloom below, but showed clearly in the picture. The angel was now in a vast subterranean cave whose stalagmites had been sawed off to make level tables. On each table was an object, a seeming work of art. Angela touched the nearest, a figure of a catlike creature, and it expanded and animated, becoming an ancient tome. It was titled Cat-Egories of Interest. She turned the pages, which showed pictures of cat-related things, such as a double-hulled boat or a device to hurl rocks into space, or an underground cemetery, or a wild natural disaster. She obviously could not make anything of this, and neither could Wenda. She put the book back, and it returned to its animal statue form.

  The next object resembled a goat. Angela touched it, and it became another book, this one with pictures of goat-related things. A human man with a small pointed beard. A bearded fish. A small bird. A herb. A person obviously being seriously annoyed by another. Neither Angela nor Wenda could make anything of this, either.

  One of these objects should relate to Angela’s missing substance, but which? How? It was a mystery.

  “Jumper,” Wenda said. He, at least, remained visible directly; he was climbing some giant invisible web. It seemed to stretch from star to star, spanning the scene.

  But there was a platform, a shelf anchored nowhere, and on that platform was a collection of bundles of glowing 1’s. Those must be the Demon Status Points. Jumper was climbing steadily toward it. But Wenda saw what Jumper could not: there was also a ferocious ogre guarding the bundles. How would the spider handle that?

  “Ida,” Wenda said.

  Ida was still making her way through the invisible labyrinth. But she see
med to be approaching some person-sized object; Wenda saw its shadow. So she peered in Wenda’s direction in the real maze—and saw that she was now in the same area Hilarion was. Were their two convoluted passages going to intersect?

  So it seemed. Ida stepped up to a passage while Hilarion stepped down to the same passage from a different direction. They saw each other and spoke together, gesturing. Wenda could not hear what they said, but presumed it was a surprised greeting. They talked; what was it about?

  Then Wenda pieced it together. It seemed that the two of them were not actually in the same passage, but at adjacent intersections. It further seemed that a section had to be rotated to let them pass, like one of the magic revolving doors in Mundania. And that whichever one got the use of that access, the other would not. Only one of them could proceed.

  They discussed it for some time. Wenda suspected that each was courteously deferring to the other. Well, they would work it out somehow.

  Wenda focused on her own path. This twisted and turned and folded back, doing its best to confuse her, but she plugged away and finally won through to what appeared to be a mountain path. It seemed that only the original maze was invisible; its several passages led to visible routes.

  She walked along the path. It curved around the side of the mountain, and then became a straight ramp leading down to—the Good Magician’s Castle. This was her access! If she got the wagon with the Knot here, it would be easy to roll it down to the castle, and her mission would be accomplished.

  Then she saw the dragon. It seemed to be made of string or cord, with many loose ends, but it was definitely a dragon. And it was definitely barring the way.

  Wenda paused, considering. Had it been a forest dragon she might have reasoned with it, because she understood all forest folk. But this was an alien thing.

  Still, maybe it was not truly hostile. She walked toward it.

  The thing flung out a spreading tangle of string that just missed her. It was trying to catch her so it could consume her at leisure. It was a dragon-net.

  She retreated, reconsidering. How was she to handle this creature? Obviously she needed to get it out of the way if she were to roll the wagon along this route.

  She decided to check on the others. She held the invisible mirror before her. “Hilarion.”

  Hilarion had evidently resolved his issue with Ida, because now he was moving on at a great rate. In fact he was sliding down an invisible chute to somewhere.

  “Angela.”

  Angela was paging through another book. This one was titled Doggerel, and it had pictures of dog-associated things, such as a very opinionated person, a determined person, a kind of flowering tree, a kind of swimming, and a kind of slow running. None of these seemed relevant.

  Angela touched another figure, but this one did not convert. It seemed she had a limited number of choices, and once she used them up, she was through.

  Yet she did not look dismayed. She moved on to other figures, searching more carefully. Maybe she had not actually touched the last one; Wenda had not seen closely.

  “Meryl,” Wenda said.

  Meryl was now apparently in the lake, swimming through underwater caverns, searching for where they led. Their windings were marvelously devious, but the mermaid seemed confident; it seemed that she could handle such twists.

  “Jumper.”

  The spider had discovered the ogre and taken him on. Wenda remembered that Jumper in his big spider form was one of the few creatures who did not fear ogres. The ogre was bashing gleefully—ogres loved to bash—but Jumper was avoiding each smashing hamfist and flinging a line of silk around it. Soon he had the ogre hopelessly wrapped in strong silk lines and largely helpless. The ogre was none too pleased; the fight was supposed to finish the other way around.

  Jumper pushed the swathed ogre off the platform. A line went taut; he was suspended in a kind of cocoon below the platform, unable to smash anything except air.

  Jumper started examining the glowing bundles. All he needed was one point, but it was possible that it was hidden among hundreds of fake ones.

  “Ida,” Wenda said.

  Ida had found her way to an open plain with thousands of circular holes, as if a giant with a pogo stick had been bouncing around. There was a castle in the distance, surely the one containing her promised prince or king. All she had to do was walk to it.

  Two people appeared, young men. “Hello,” Ida said, though she was not pleased to see them. At least, that was the way Wenda interpreted it, seeing her mouth move with two syllables and without a smile.

  “You look as if you distrust our motives,” one of the men said. At least, that was what his expression seemed to indicate.

  “I do. You seem most likely to be obstacles to my progress.”

  “That is true. I sense a person’s deepest fear.” He focused intently on her. “And in this context, yours is bad weather.” Or it least it must be something like that. There was a kind of threat in the man’s expression. The weather statement Wenda figured out by what happened next.

  Wenda saw Ida wince. Yet what was so bad about weather?

  “And I bring it to life,” the other man said.

  “I’m sure that is a very nice set of talents,” Ida said. “Now I must be on my way.” She walked past them.

  Immediately a storm came up, with roiling gray clouds and flashes of lightning. The young man had invoked the bad weather. Ida would have to hurry, lest she get soaked. But could that be the extent of it, Wenda wondered? Getting wet wasn’t fun, but it didn’t seem to be a serious threat.

  Ida hurried. But so did the storm. It intensified by bounds and leaps, sweeping closer. In no more than two and a half moments it caught her. The wild winds pulled at her hair and clothing, and rain sluiced down in drenches. In three-quarters of another moment she was soaked, and still it poured.

  Wenda wished she could help, but she couldn’t. So she focused on her own problem: the string dragon. At least she could try to talk to it.

  She stepped forward. “Dragon!” she called. “I am Wenda Woodwife, and I am here to—”

  It flung out a net and snared her. In no more than a moment and a quarter she was hauled into the air, bagged by the net. The dragon was slavering stringily.

  “Yew dew knot want to dew this,” she warned it.

  The dragon paid no never mind. It opened its ropey maw and bit her on the right foot.

  And dropped her, groaning. For of course her foot was not maidenly flesh, but hard hollowed wood.

  “I tried to warn yew,” she reminded it as she got to her feet and removed the net. “Woodwives are knot edible. Now why dew yew knot go away and leave this path clear so I can use it?”

  For answer, the beast pounced on her, trying to bite off her head. It succeeded only in further damaging itself. In two instants it was rolling on the ground, moaning with several awful toothaches.

  “Please go now,” she told it. “I dew knot want to hurt yew anymore.”

  But the dragon roused itself and attacked her again. Apparently it was too dull to realize what it was up against. A fire-breather could have burned her up, but string could not hurt her.

  Still, she realized that they would not be able to roll the wagon through this pass as long as the dragon remained. Its string could foul the wheels, and it could bite other members of their party. The thing was too stupid to know when to quit, and that gave it the victory. It was annoying as spit, but she was not going to win her prize.

  With that realization, she felt herself sinking. It wasn’t just emotional; she was physically descending into the forest floor. She fell down and down, the earth sliding by, until she was back in the invisible maze. Then she was out of it, landing un-neatly at the entry gate.

  “Let me help you,” Hilarion said, helping her to her feet.

  “Yew are supposed to bee in the maize,” she protested.

  “I yielded the right of way to Princess Ida. It was the princely thing to do.”

&nbs
p; “That’s why yew were sliding,” she said, realizing. “Yew were beeing washed out.”

  “Yes. I am sorry to see you suffering the same fate.”

  “It was knot fated to bee,” she agreed. “Ida—I am surprised she agreed to take yewr path.”

  “She didn’t. She wanted to yield to me. But I worked the rotary door to favor her, and she was through before she realized. I regret playing such a trick on her. I hope she finds her king.”

  “Yew are really a pretty decent person.”

  “I do what I feel is right,” he said. “As do you. She’s an elder princess with diminishing prospects, while I could marry some other young woman than my betrothee if I chose to. Her need is greater.”

  That seemed to cover it. “Let us see how she is dewing,” Wenda said, lifting up the mirror.

  Not well, as it turned out. The storm was so thick that it was difficult to see immediately ahead, let alone across to the castle. Ida tried to avoid the holes, but their slopes had become larger, so that there was hardly room to step between them, and erratic gusts were pushing her that way and this. Now Wenda understood why Ida feared the storm: it made her route become too treacherous to navigate.

  Then she lost her footing and fell, sliding into one of the holes. Suddenly she was zooming helplessly down and out of the maze.

  Hilarion and Wenda were there to assist her as she emerged at the gate. She was soaked and obviously miserable, but she put on a smile. “Hilarion, is your father a widower?”

  Startled, Hilarion considered. “Not that I know of, though it may have been some time since I last saw him.”

  “Dew yew have an uncle?” Wenda asked.

  “I do. But I don’t understand your interest.”

  “It’s that Ida’s ideal man might bee him,” Wenda explained. “In which case she will know where to look next.”

  “I suppose that is possible,” he agreed. “Princess Ida, you will be welcome to join me when I return to my home isle for a visit after this mission is complete. I’m sure my uncle would consider you more than worthy.”

  “Thank you. I regret that you gave up your chance for nothing.”

  “I must act in a princely way,” Hilarion said seriously. “Else I risk becoming nothing.”