“Mine itch!” the harpy cried. “Gone!”
Fleta returned to girl form. “Grant us rest in thy bower for a day, and all’s repaid,” she said.
“For this cure?” Phoebe cried. “Thou canst stay a year!”
Fleta made her way back into the bower and curled up on the fern. In a moment she was asleep.
“But—how could you know that we had no quarrel with you?” he asked the harpy.
“ ‘Corns be stubborn beasts,” Phoebe said. “They betray not who betrays them not.”
“And she cured you—just like that?”
“Aye, the horn has power, an there be ailment. But for ‘corn to cure harpy—that be rare indeed.”
“We were looking for a place to rest in safety,” Mach said.
“Ye have it now.” Phoebe wiggled her tail, appreciating the lack of itch.
Mach went in and lay down beside Fleta. It seemed that his willingness to talk with the harpy had paid off; she was not after all an enemy. In a moment he slept.
Fleta slept all night and much of the following day. It was evident that she had seriously depleted her resources in the long run. Mach, less tired, found himself talking with Phoebe. The harpy brought fresh fruit and edible roots, but urged him to wash them in a nearby spring. “I wash, but my talons form the poison, and it gets on what I touch,” she explained. Mach was happy to wash the food.
“There be my sisters in the sky, and goblins o’er the plain,” Phoebe announced after taking a flight. “An thou knowest not why they seek ye?”
“An Adept sent them,” Mach said. “He wants me alive; he doesn’t care about Fleta. She carried me from the Lattice in a day.”
“In a single day? Lucky thou art she died not on the hoof!”
“She’s a good creature,” Mach agreed.
“And for the love o’ thee!” She shook her head. She was as awkwardly endowed as all her kind, with a human head and breasts and the wings and hind parts of a vulture. Her face was lined and her breasts sagged; her hair was a wild tangle. About the only pretty part of her was her wings, which had a metallic luster. Her voice was harsh, sounding like a screech even when she talked normally. Mach could see that if she had behaved the way the others of her kind did, allowing filth to encrust her body, she would have been monstrously ugly; as it was, she was merely homely. “My kind has no such love.”
“If I may ask—just how does your kind reproduce? I understand there are no males of your species.”
“Aye, there be none. We lay eggs and leave them scattered about; an one survive the animals long enough to hatch, an the chick not get consumed, she grows to size and lays her own eggs. Legend has it that only a fertilized egg can hatch a male harpy—but only a male of our species can fertilize it. So it be an endless circle. We be chronically bitter about that, and take it out on all creatures.” She sighed. “Sometimes I wish it were otherwise. But what else be there?”
Mach shrugged. “I don’t know. It does seem a tragedy. But why didn’t you revile me when I showed up in the night?”
“I should have, I know,” she confessed. “But after a year denied the company of mine own kind, awful as that be, I was lonely. So I was foolish.”
“And got your tail fixed.”
“It passeth all understanding.”
“Phoebe—are harpies supposed to be ugly?”
“What point to be other?”
“If you get lonely, you are more likely to find company of any kind if you look nice.”
She laughed with her raucous cackle. “What a notion!”
“Why don’t you let me do some work on your hair, and see what happens?”
“Thou canst not make me beautiful,” she said. “That would take the magic o’ an Adept!”
“I’m just curious.”
She shrugged. “It be a mere game, but I be beholden for thy company. Play with my hair, an thou wishest.”
“I need a comb.” Mach looked about. He found a piece of a fish bone with a few ragged spikes.
He pondered. Then he sang: “Give this home one big comb.”
The fish bone shimmered, and became a huge mass of wax and honey. The stuff dripped from his hand.
“A honeycomb!” Phoebe screeched, snatching it out of his hand. In a moment she was gobbling it, getting it all over her face and in her hair. Then she paused. “Oops, my harpy manner o’ercame me. Didst conjure it for thyself?”
“No, welcome to it,” Mach said. “I wanted a hair comb.”
“Check in my purse. Mayhap there be a comb there.”
Harpies had purses? Mach found her handbag and sorted through it. It contained several colored stones, a moldy piece of bread, a dozen acorns, a large rusty key, two large red feathers, a number of prune pits, a fragment of a mirror, the skeleton of a small snake, three pottery shards—and a fine old comb.
“But we’ll have to get the honey out,” he decided. “Can you wash your hair?”
“Aye, it be time for another dunking anyway,” she said. She licked off her claws—evidently the poison didn’t affect her own system—and launched herself clumsily into the air. She flapped toward the spring, folded her wings, and dive-bombed into it.
So that was how she bathed! Mach and Fleta had drunk from that spring in the morning. Suddenly he felt queasy.
Phoebe emerged. For a moment, with just her head and bosom showing above the surface, she looked distinctly human. Then she spread her wings, and clambered into the air, and the effect was gone.
She came to a crash-landing beside him, spattering water on him. “I be clean now,” she announced.
But what of the water in the spring?
Mach took the comb and began working on her hair. There were tangles galore, so the job was tediously slow, but he didn’t have anything better to do while waiting for Fleta to recover.
Gradually the hair straightened, and as it did so, drying, it began to assume some of the metallic luster of the wings. Small iridescent highlights glinted as the sunlight struck it.
“Thou didst conjure that honeycomb!” Phoebe exclaimed, belatedly realizing what he had done.
“I tried to conjure a comb,” he reminded her. “I always mess it up.”
“But then thou canst do magic!”
“Not a fraction as well as the one whose body I’m using. As a magician I’m a dunce.”
“But to do any magic, aside from that of were-creatures and the like—that be special!”
“Well, my other self is an apprentice Adept.”
She drew away from him, shocked. “Adept!”
He smiled. “Don’t worry. I’m not an Adept! I’m just a clumsy imitation.”
“But that must be why they seek thee! One who dost do clumsy magic today, may be Adept tomorrow.”
Mach paused. “Do you think so?”
“What else? They know they must abolish thee today, else thou willst abolish them another time.”
“But they want to capture me. Why not just kill me?”
She shrugged with her wings. “I know not. But thou dost be nothing ordinary, an thou canst conjure.”
“Maybe I should save myself time and conjure your hair combed.”
“Mayhap. Combing a harpy’s hair be a thankless task, methinks.”
Mach pondered. Then he hummed to try to intensify the magic, and sang: “Make this hair beyond compare.” A cloud formed about her head; then it cleared and her hair was revealed.
It was an absolute fright-wig. Spikes of it radiated out in all directions, making her most resemble a gross sea urchin.
“I think I botched it again,” Mach groaned. Phoebe flopped over to her purse and snatched up the fragment of mirror. She peered at herself. “O, lovely!” she screeched. “I adore it!”
Mach was taken aback. “You like it?”
“I’m beautiful! I ne’er thought it possible!” And, amazingly, as she straightened up in admiration of herself, the lines in her face eased and her breasts firmed. She did indeed seem to
be a fairly handsome half-specimen of womanhood.
Mach decided to leave well enough alone. He returned to the bower and settled down for another nap.
By the following morning they were ready to resume traveling. The search in sky and on land seemed to have abated; it was now safer to be out. They thanked Phoebe for her hospitality.
“Ah, it be the two of ye must I thank,” the harpy screeched. “The one did cure my tail, and the other my head!” She scrambled for her purse and drew out one of the feathers. “An ye need my presence, burn this feather. I will smell it and come, where’er ye may be.”
“Thank thee, Phoebe,” Fleta said graciously, tucking the feather into her cloak.
They headed on up the steepening slope. Now it was faster going, because it was daylight and Fleta was rested and back to her normal self. Indeed, she seemed brighter than ever, almost effervescent; Mach had to scramble to keep up with her.
By noon they had reached the crest of the mountain—which turned out to be a mere foothill; the real range was farther south. They paused for food, finding plentiful fruits. “I’m amazed that there is so much to eat in Phaze!” Mach exclaimed. “Everywhere we go, there are more fruit trees.”
Fleta snorted, sounding in that moment very much like a unicorn though she remained in human form. “The trees be not common at all; it be that I sniff them out as we travel.”
“Oh. Well, I always knew I had some reason to travel with you.”
She laughed, then turned sober. “There be a problem soon upon me,” she said. “I fear I must leave thee for a time.”
“Leave me!” But immediately he regrouped his emotion. “Of course there is no requirement that you remain with me, Fleta. I never meant to hold you from your—”
“It be not that I want to leave thee,” she said. “But I think it may be best.”
“Best? Why?”
She opened her mouth as though planning to speak, but could not formulate the sentence. “Let me explore,” she said after a moment. She shifted to hummingbird form and buzzed off.
Mach stared after her. What was the problem? She had seemed so vigorous and cheerful during the climb, completely recovered from her hard run of two days before. There was no evidence of pursuit at the moment. Why should she have to leave him now, if she didn’t want to?
He ate his fruit and rested, admiring the countryside. She would surely tell him in due course, and meanwhile this was about as nice a region as he could imagine. He had never had physical experience with either mountains or forests before, there being only holo representations of such things in the dome-cities of Proton, and he liked them very well. The hill sloped gradually down to the south, and then the nearest segment of the Purple Mountain range heaved up to an extraordinary elevation, the highest peak spearing a cloud and anchoring it so that it could not drift away.
Actually, it wasn’t just the terrain that exhilarated him, he realized. It was the living body. He had discovered that eating was not the nuisance he had imagined it to be, when in robot body; it was a pleasure. In Proton, as a robot, he had lacked the sense of taste, it being unnecessary to his survival; here it was a glorious perception. Even the complication of periodic elimination was not really bothersome, once he knew how to handle it expeditiously. The rest of it was wonderful: the feel of the wind against his skin, the pleasure of, healthy exertion, the sheer satisfaction of slaking thirst, the act of living was a dynamic experience.
Fleta returned and changed to girl form. “There be a good path ahead,” she reported. “There be a dragon to the east, but it moves not from its stream; an we steer clear o’ that, no problem.”
Mach looked at her. “What about this matter of—” he began, but then sheered off, deciding not to press the mystery of her need to leave him. “Clothing? How is it that you have no clothing in animal form, yet do now? Where does it go when you change?”
She laughed with a certain relief, as if she had feared another type of question. “That be no mystery, Mach! I wear clothing in all three forms. In one it be called feathers, and in another, hair.”
So simple an answer! And it seemed that anything she carried with her in human form she carried with her in animal form, transforming it to feather or fur.
They resumed their travel. But Fleta seemed increasingly uneasy. Something certainly was bothering her.
In the hollow between the slope of the foothill and the slope of the mountain, she turned to him with a strange expression of hunger. Suddenly he remembered his fear of the unicorn, the first night, not knowing what it fed on. As it had turned out, unicorns were herbivores; his concern had been groundless. But now—
“Are you all right, Fleta?” he asked nervously.
“I think I must leave thee now,” she said tightly. “I had hoped to see thee safely o’er the mountain, but that must needs wait.”
“Fleta, where do you have to go?” he asked.
“To the herd I was destined for, before I met thee.”
“Well, of course you can go there, if you wish! But why right now?”
“Mayhap I can go, and return in a few days to see thee the rest of thy journey. Thou shouldst be safe here.”
“Well, yes, if that’s the way you feel! But—”
“It be fairest to thee.” She looked about. “There be fruit trees ahead, and so long as thou dost not go east to the river, and dost avoid being spotted from the air—”
“Fleta, please tell me why! Have I given you some offense? if I am too much of a burden—if I’m not doing enough—”
“I see I must needs tell thee. I must go to the stallion to be bred.”
“Right now?”
She made a wan smile. “As soon as I can reach him. It be a fair distance.”
“Another long run? You’ll wear yourself out! Can’t it wait for a more convenient time?”
“Mach, must I speak more directly than I like. With thy kind, breeding be at convenience. Not so with my kind. When a mare dost come into heat, she must be bred; she doth have no choice. Be she in the wrong herd, the local stallion must do it; no choice for him either. That be why I could not approach mine own Herd in this time.”
Mach remembered what he had learned of horses and other animals. The females came into heat at intervals, and bred compulsively. They had no interest in such activity at any other time, but were desperate for it then. Fleta was an animal and so followed this pattern. She had seemed so much like a human being, especially because she had remained most of the time in her human form, that this aspect of her nature had not occurred to him.
“Now at last I understand why you had no concern when we went naked,” he said. “When you saw me aroused. You knew that—that breeding occurs only within a creature’s own species. So you had no interest in—” He found himself beginning to flush, and didn’t care to discuss it further.
“That be but a half truth, Mach,” she said. “I would fain have played with thee as I did with Bane in years o’ yore. But it be not seemly, when the parties are of age to know better.”
“Yes, of course. We are two different species. There can be no such thing between us.” He sighed. “Go and do what you must, Fleta; I will wait for your return.”
“Aye.” But she did not move, and he saw her lower lip trembling again.
“What’s the problem, Fleta? Don’t worry about me; I’ll be fine, here.”
“I fear for thee nonetheless,” she said. “If the goblins spy thee—”
“I’ll take that chance! Please, Fleta, don’t let me interfere with your life any further!”
“O, I wish there were the right plants in these mountains!” she exclaimed.
“Plants?”
“Herbs. We eat them at need, to suppress the cycle.”
“Oh.”
“O Mach, I love thee and would not leave thee vulnerable to the dangers of Phaze. I want to leave thee not!”
Mach took a step toward her, his arms outstretched, intending to comfort her, but she backe
d hastily away. “I dare not touch thee now!” she whispered.
“But I mean you no harm, Fleta!” he protested.
“Dost thou not see—it be thee I would be bred by, not some stupid stallion!”
Mach was stunned. “But—but I’m not your species! We agreed that it was not proper for us to—”
“Aye, we agreed,” she said, biting her lip. “And no way it would take. I be a pighead even to say this, but—”
“Are you saying—you and I—?”
“The body knoweth not; it thinks one breeding be as good as another. I could stay with thee till the time pass—”
“Stay—and—?”
“Dost despise me now?” she asked, her face wet with tears. “Fain would I ne’er have had thee know, but me-thought I could get thee to safety before—”
Mach worked it out aloud, to be sure there was no misunderstanding. “If you and I tried to breed, nothing would come of it because of the difference in our species. But then you would not have to run off to the stallion. You could stay with me.”
“That be my thought. I know I have no right—I know it be wrong—”
“Fleta, I come from a different culture. Robots and androids and human beings—we do this sort of thing all the time, knowing none of it can take. I myself am the offspring of an impossible marriage between a man and a machine. I have not—not tried to engage in—not with you, because—I understood you did not want it!”
“Ne’er did I say I wanted it not,” she said. “I said it should not be. I spoke not for myself, but for my culture.”
“Then we have no problem!” he exclaimed. “I have longed for—if I had realized—”
“Then—thou wouldst do it?”
“Just tell me when!”
Something gave way in her. “Now?” she asked faintly.
Mach stepped toward her again, and this time she did not retreat. “Now and forever!” he cried.
They came together, and he discovered in a moment that this was no ordinary tryst. He tried to kiss her, but she was too busy trying to tear off his clothing and her own. All she wanted was one thing, and she wanted it instantly.
They did that one thing, but such was the urgency and haste of it that it was not, for him, the fulfilling experience he had anticipated. He lay beside her on the leafy ground, his clothing half off, her cloak the same, and wondered whether that really could be all there was to it, in the living state. No preliminaries, no caressing, no speaking, not even kissing; just the straight, raw thrust of it. Yet of course she was an animal, and this was the way her kind did it, regardless of the form assumed. He should have known.