Picka could see that Dawn was not taking this well. It was that princessly aversion she had to being balked. He tried to intercede. “We are looking for a castle. We’ll be leaving soon.”
“There are no castles here. Never have been. Probably never will be. Dragons don’t live in castles. Go.”
Dawn started to swell. Picka was afraid she would burst. “Maybe we can qualify as winged monsters,” he said quickly.
“I doubt it,” Mim said. “This is your last warning. I can change my wings into anything, including weapons. I don’t want to have to use them.” She spread her wings, and they became shining swords.
Dawn opened her mouth as if about to identify herself. That would ruin the anonymity of their group.
“Think of us as having invisible wings,” Picka said desperately. “You can’t see them, but we can fly.”
“I doubt it,” Mim repeated.
“All I need is to say the magic words to invoke them,” Picka said. “Which are, ‘Granola, be my wings. Make me fly.’”
“Ludicrous,” Mim said. She did not know that there was an invisible giantess with them. She thought granola was cereal.
Picka spread his arm bones and flapped them in the manner of a bird. Granola, standing behind him, reached down and put her fingers around his waist. She lifted, gently, and he rose into the air.
Mim stared. “It’s true!”
“It’s magic,” Picka said. “The rest of us can do it too.” He lowered his arms, and the giantess obligingly set him back on the ground. That freed her to lift someone else.
“It’s a stupid demonstration,” Dawn said. “But if it will cut short this bureaucratic hassle…” She spread her arms and sailed upward.
After that the rest of them demonstrated their ability to fly, one by one. Even Woofer and Midrange. The dog evidently enjoyed it, the cat less so.
“So you can fly,” Mim said with resignation. “But what about the bird? He can fly, but he’s no monster, as I said before.”
Now Dawn helped. She knew all about Tweeter, because of her talent. “Tweeter, I know you don’t like to show your power, but this time you’ll have to. Remember when you stomped the ground and made it shake? Monster feet? Do that now, in the name of our Granola magic.”
Picka did not know about this stomping, but evidently Dawn did, and so did Tweeter. But did Granola?
“Make the ground shake,” Dawn said encouragingly.
Tweeter stood up straight, lifted one tiny leg, and brought it down hard on the ground.
The ground shook. Granola had caught on, and stomped in time with the bird.
“Harder, Tweeter,” Dawn said.
Tweeter stomped again. This time the ground shuddered so hard it was like an earthquake. The rest of them had trouble keeping their feet.
Dawn opened her mouth to order worse.
“Okay, okay, he qualifies!” Mim said hastily.
Dawn smiled, and the sunlight seemed to brighten. “That is so nice of you, Mim.” She turned to the bird. “Try to dampen your tread now, Tweeter. We don’t want the mountain to collapse.”
Tweeter nodded amenably. They had made their point.
“Get your business done and go,” Mim said shortly. She surely suspected she had been fooled, but at this point she just wanted them gone. She went back into her tent, in effect dismissing them.
“We shall,” Dawn agreed. She glanced around. “I don’t see any castle, so I suppose we can go, now that we’ve made our point.”
They could have gone at any time, but Picka knew that Dawn had been unable to back off from a challenge to her authority, even though she was anonymous. It was a character flaw, but it came with the territory of being royal.
“Woof.”
“You smell something?” Dawn asked him.
Midrange spoke. “Meow.”
“Something significant?”
Tweeter flew up high, looking around. “Tweet!”
“Well, then, let’s go see,” Dawn agreed.
They headed on across the mesa. Soon another tent appeared, concealed before because it was the same color as the ground.
“Hello!” Dawn called.
A man emerged. “Dawn!” he exclaimed, surprised.
“Great Grandpa!” she exclaimed, running to hug him.
Great Grandpa? The man was not nearly old enough.
Then Dawn introduced him. “This is Great-grandfather Bink. He was youthened a while back. He’s actually ninety-four. He’s Grandpa Dor’s father, who was Dolph’s father, who is my father. It’s all legitimate.”
So it seemed.
Bink looked at the others. “I see you are keeping unusual company, Dawn.”
“Yes,” she said proudly. “This is Picka Bone, my fiancé.”
Bink was evidently a man of the world, but even he was surprised. “I suspect there’s an interesting story there.”
“There is,” Dawn agreed. Then she introduced the others, including Granola.
“Remarkable,” Bink agreed. He did not seem as surprised as others had been; he had evidently been around.
“But why are you here alone?” Dawn asked. “And how did you get the winged monster girl to let you stay?”
“I am not alone,” Bink said. “And I had your father Dolph introduce me.”
“He assumed dragon form!”
“Exactly. They concluded that the grandfather of a dragon qualified as a de facto dragon, at least for the time being.”
Dawn smiled, appreciating the device. Picka knew about Dolph’s shape-changing ability, because Dolph had once traveled with his own father, Marrow Bones. “So whom are you traveling with now?”
“My wife, of course.” Bink faced the tent. “Girls, come meet our great-granddaughter’s friends.”
Two women emerged. One was almost as lovely as Dawn herself. The other was breathtakingly ugly. Dawn’s pretty jaw dropped. “Great-grandma Fanchon,” she said. “Great-grandma Wynne. How is this possible?”
“Let me explain for your friends,” Bink said. “My wife Chameleon is a changeable woman. She normally has three forms: Fanchon, who is extremely smart but not pretty; Wynne, who is lovely but not smart; and Chameleon, who is a compromise, being ordinary in both respects. She cycles among forms in the course of a month. I long ago learned to live with it.” He took a breath. “But recently Chameleon had the misfortune to walk through a Double You, and got split into her two most extreme forms. We find this problematical, so are on a Quest to get her recombined. We were told that this could happen here on Mount Rushmost. We hope that is true. We are not enjoying the split.”
Picka could see why not. Two wives, one with all the brains, the other with all the looks?
“But isn’t it twice the fun to have two wives?” Dawn asked.
“For whom?” Fanchon asked, frowning. She frowned well. “This ignorant ignoramus has no romantic interest in me. All he can look at is Window-head here.”
“Thank you,” Wynne said. It seemed she was not smart enough to realize that the pun on her name was insulting rather than flattering. “I like his interest.” She hugged Bink, and kissed him.
Bink did seem to like her attention. Wynne was very shapely in the fleshly manner. His hands stroked her body in the human male fashion.
“I think I’m going to vomit,” Fanchon muttered. “It’s the triumph of matter over mind.”
“I am beginning to see the problem,” Dawn said. “Men can be frustrating to deal with, because all they are interested in is one thing.”
“And that thing is not intelligence,” Fanchon said.
“Actually, my favorite is the compromise,” Bink said. “The midpoint, Chameleon, who is neither too smart nor too pretty, but a perfect meld. She does not repulse me with her attitude or her body. And there’s only one of her, so her components can’t quarrel.”
“Your two halves quarrel?” Dawn asked the two, surprised.
“She’s such an idiot,” Fanchon said.
“S
he’s so ugly,” Wynne said.
“But you’re both parts of one woman,” Dawn protested, “who changes with the tides of the moon. This way, you can offer your husband beauty and brains.”
“We’d rather merge and be the way we were,” Fanchon said. “Then we won’t have to talk to each other.”
“Or see each other,” Wynne agreed.
Picka was beginning to see why Bink wanted them reunited.
“If you don’t mind my asking,” Joy’nt said, “how did you get here? This is a pretty remote and dangerous spot for a regular man and two women. It’s not on an enchanted path, and there are monsters.”
“Oh, we’re safe enough,” Wynne said. “Thanks to Bink’s magic.”
“Nuh-uh, dummy,” Fanchon warned, too late.
“He has magic?” Joy’nt asked.
Dawn exchanged a glance with her great-grandfather. “Can I tell them? They’re good friends.”
Bink shrugged. “Try it and see.”
“I’m not sure about this,” Fanchon said. “Bad policy.”
“If it’s harmful, she won’t be able to do it,” Bink reminded her.
There was something odd about this. What was there to tell? Picka had always understood that Bink had strong magic, but no one knew what it was.
Dawn faced the others. “Bink cannot be harmed by magic.” She paused, as if almost startled, then continued. “Part of it is that if anyone else knowing that would harm him, they won’t be allowed to know. So few people know. I know, because of my talent. But I would not be able to tell, if it was not all right. So it seems it is all right.”
“Or perhaps such knowledge by this group will help him,” Fanchon said. “This is interesting indeed.”
“So if there’s bad magic, Bink blocks it off,” Wynne said. “And we’re safe.”
“I don’t understand,” Joy’nt said.
“Say there’s a hostile dragon charging one of us,” Fanchon said. “A dragon is a magic creature, so can’t hurt Bink. So Bink steps in between, and deflects the dragon, and we’re safe.”
“But suppose something nonmagical threatens?” Joy’nt asked. “Like a swordsman?”
“That’s why his talent normally needs to be concealed,” Fanchon said, “so that enemies won’t focus on nonmagical means. If there is magic in the revelation, that magic is blocked. So normally enemies don’t know, and his talent is effective.”
“We’re not enemies,” Picka said. “We won’t tell.”
“But your actions might give it away,” Dawn said.
“It remains curious why Dawn was allowed to tell you,” Fanchon said. “I have never seen this before.”
“Why are you here?” Wynne asked.
“That’s a complicated story,” Dawn said, “but we’ll tell you a simplified form. I am on a mission for the Good Magician to tame Caprice Castle, which is also Pundora’s Box, which can hold all the abysmal puns so they won’t infest Xanth anymore. But to do that I need to marry Picka, and he needs to become Xanth’s finest musician. So we’re working on that while chasing the castle. But meanwhile the castle’s former occupant, Piper, was changed into a monster, and he can only be redeemed if he marries me. So he’s chasing us, with the help of his mistress, Pundora.”
“But why here?” Fanchon asked alertly.
“Granola’s talent is to find things in the next-to-last place she looks,” Dawn said. “This is one place. We can’t have a next to last before we have a last, so we have to search in more than one place. It gets tricky.”
“I can imagine,” Fanchon said. “What made her select this place?”
“I just have a feeling,” Granola said.
“Because this is the place we came to solve our problem,” Fanchon said. “I doubt that it is coincidence that you came here too, at the same time, so that we could meet. Your feeling must relate somewhat in the manner Bink’s talent does.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Granola said.
“Otherwise it would be an astonishing coincidence. I am not a believer in such coincidence, where magic is involved. Our destinies are somehow linked.”
Picka saw that the women’s intelligence was functioning. She was right: there had to be magical guidance. This should have been a routine stop, and it seemed it wasn’t.
“Maybe we should explore this further,” Dawn said. “To search for some hint why we met here.”
“We were told to come here,” Bink said, “but we were delayed a day by a misadventure.”
“We would not have made it here yesterday,” Dawn said, “so that delay must have been for a reason.”
“Indeed,” Fanchon said.
“Tell us about it,” Dawn said.
“Wynne suffered a revelation,” Fanchon said, her mouth twitching eloquently. Obviously she had not valued it. “Bink decided to follow up on it. So we borrowed a large flying carpet from the Castle Roogna closet and set off for Mount Rushmost.”
Picka pictured the scene as she spoke, having become accustomed to that from the Caprice Castle History book.
* * *
The three of them were sitting on the carpet, Wynne in the lead, then Fanchon, and Bink third. They sailed up, circled Castle Roogna, and headed south. All went well for a while.
But soon a floating menace spied them: Cumulo Fracto Nimbus, the worst of clouds, who liked to rain on parades. This was not exactly a parade, but with a pretty girl leading it, it was equivalent in a minor way. Fracto was not the only entity who liked to see a pretty girl get soaked. Bink could not be harmed by magic, but his talent did not regard wetness as harm, so he could get rained on.
They veered to the side, trying to avoid the storm, but Fracto chased them. So they glided down to a rest stop on an enchanted path. They got under cover just before the storm struck. They rolled up the carpet and parked it beside the door.
There was a girl there, another refugee from the storm. She was compact and cute, with naturally curly hair. “Hello,” Bink said, his attention caught in the male fashion. “I am Bink, and these are my, um, friends Fanchon and Wynne. We are traveling south, hoping to solve a problem.”
“I am Eunice. My talent is toe change words by adding a silent E. For example, if there were a cub here, I could change it to a cube. But the effect lasts only while I am touching it.”
“That is interesting,” Fanchon said. She was interested in everything. “You could make a tub into a tube, or a can into a cane.”
“Yes. Or a dam into a dame, and a gam into a game.” She touched her leg, which abruptly became far more interesting.
“I do that,” Wynne said. “Men notice.”
“I cane imagine,” Eunice agreed wryly. Fortunately her spoken “can” did not become a literal “cane.”
“What we’d like to do is change this storm into a sunny day,” Bink said. “So we can resume our flight.”
“I cane try,” Eunice said. “Could we think of the water coming down as being like an open faucet? I might convert that long enough fore you toe get safely away.”
“I am not following this,” Fanchon said, irritated about encountering anything she couldn’t follow.
“I can’t say the exact word until I’m ready toe change it,” Eunice said, “because it happens automatically. But let me try it.”
Perplexed, they followed her to the door. She stepped out into the pouring rain, getting instantly soaked. “Tap!” she said loudly.
The water sluicing down on her changed into colored streamers. They piled up around her.
“Tap became tape,” Fanchon said. “But only the water that actually touches you. The rest of the storm remains.”
“I was afraid of that,” Eunice said, coming back inside. She was dripping wet. “Oh! I’m shivering!”
Bink grabbed a towel from the rack. “Take off your clothes. I’ll dry you.”
“We will dry her,” Fanchon said, taking the towel from him. “You go face away.”
“The only bare girls you can see are us,”
Wynne said. She was not bright, but she did have a grasp of the fundamentals, and did not want him ogling Eunice’s fundament.
Bink knew better than to argue. When it came to him and any other woman, Fanchon and Wynne were of a single mind: No Way. He took another towel, lay on his back, and laid the towel over his face. As it turned out, the towel was slightly porous, and he was able to see vaguely through it.
The two stripped Eunice and rubbed her dry. Bink saw her bare body, but the filter of the towel blurred the details enough so that he didn’t freak out. He was partly sorry; he had noticed young women ever since his rejuvenation. He loved Chameleon, but still liked looking. Ah, well.
They garbed Eunice in bra, panties, and a dress available in the closet. The panties made his eyeballs heat, but not a lot. “Now you can look,” Fanchon said.
He lifted the towel off. “I’m sorry I couldn’t help,” he said.
Fanchon took the towel. “This is porous!”
“Is it?” he asked innocently.
“And his eyeballs are warm,” Wynne said.
“That’s too bad,” Eunice said. But she did not seem annoyed, for some reason. She sat delicately on the bed he vacated.
“Well, we’re stuck with her till the storm abates,” Fanchon said.
“’Til it goes,” Eunice agreed. “Oops.”
For when she said “’til” it converted to “tile”—or more correctly, it converted the material of the bed she was sitting on. Since it was a textual word, the bedspread become a big tile covered with text: textile. A messed-up conversion.
The three of them gathered around the text tile, intrigued, trying to read the tight print. It was microscopically small, line after line, as if a larger text had been condensed to a small one. They lifted up the edges, peering close.
“I’m so sorry,” Eunice said, rising. “I messed up the material. Let me get away from it and it will revert.”
“No, this is interesting,” Fanchon demurred.
But Eunice was already stepping away. The text abruptly drew together, as though passing through a funnel, returning wherever it had come from.
They, holding onto it, were drawn along. They found themselves in limbo, the world swirling around them, with only the text tile remaining stable. It was carrying them along, wherever it was going.