Board Stiff (Xanth) (12 page)

“Whatever,” Mitch agreed irritably. “Now you’ve got me doing it.”

Metria eyed him. “You’d really be annoyed if I stayed around.”

Mitch opened his mouth, but stifled his retort, knowing that the demoness would just become more annoying.

“A conditioner?” Tiara asked.

“Like this.” Metria dissolved into smoke, which swirled around Tiara’s head. It infiltrated her hair, and faded out, leaving the hair perfectly coiffed.

A mirror appeared in Tiara’s hand. “Look,” it said.

Tiara looked. “Oh my! I’m beautiful!”

“That’s me infusing your hair, holding it down,” the mirror said. “Do you want me to go away?”

“No!” Tiara said, just before Mitch could say yes.

“Good enough.” The mirror puffed into smoke and dissipated.

“Bleep,” Mitch muttered, and moved away. But Kandy saw him glance back at Tiara, whose whole aspect was now a magnitude prettier. He was noticing.

“Actually it is a useful service, and it keeps her out of
our
hair,” Ease said. “She strikes me as a pretty interesting creature.”

“Oh, bleep,” Astrid muttered. She was no more interested in having a sexy demoness along than Kandy was, for the same reason. But what could they do? Tiara obviously adored the hairdo.

“We have a problem,” Mitch called from the periphery.

“We’d better check,” Astrid said. She and Ease hurried to join the man.

“I think the firewall is weakening,” Mitch said. “That was a Cough-Fee drink.”

There was a mug on the ground, but it wasn’t coughing, it was dissolving, an obvious victim of the virus.

Ease acted immediately. He swung the bat down to strike the mug, sending it hurtling out through the firewall and into the mess beyond. Kandy made sure the hit was strong and true.

“Thank you,” Mitch said. “But we had better check on Pewter.”

They did. “I am weakening,” Pewter admitted. “The fort is larger than my home cave. I shall not be able to maintain the firewall much longer. I am also unable to do any reality-changing magic while maintaining the firewall, now that the virus siege is upon us. Such as enhancing Tiara’s hair-flotation ability.”

So it wasn’t just Tiara’s hair that had enabled her to float, Kandy realized. Pewter had been enhancing it.

“We shall have to move on soon,” Astrid said. “Ultimately Pewter must protect himself, or the Quest is likely doomed.”

“How can you do that, trapped here in the fort?” Mitch asked.

“We travel via my Sequins of Events,” she explained.

“There’s a pun, I think. What does it mean?”

“Each time a sequin falls off my dress, and we put it back, it triggers a whole new Event. That’s how we came here, and how we’ll move on. But we don’t want to desert all these folk who have taken refuge here.”

“I think we need an idea,” Ease said.

“I will cast for one,” Mitch said. He closed his eyes, concentrating. “Got one: take us with you.”

“I don’t know,” Astrid said uncertainly. “The sequin affects only the immediate vicinity.”

“We’ll crowd close,” Mitch said.

Pewter glanced at him. “Do it soon. I am fading.”

“I need to make an announcement that will override the background noise and confusion,” Mitch said.

Tiara joined them. “I heard that,” her hair said. “I’ll help.”

“We don’t need your help, demoness,” Mitch snapped.

“Yes you do.” The hair formed into a large cone. “Blow me; I’m a megaphone.”

Mitch hesitated, then yielded with imperfect grace. He took the phone, put it to his mouth, and spoke. “Here ye! Hear ye!” his voice blasted out, wonderfully loud. “We have to get out of here. There is a way. Gather immediately around me.”

The megaphone shaped back into Tiara’s neat hairdo. “See? You needed me,” the voice of the demoness said. Mitch didn’t answer. It seemed that he liked Tiara but not the demoness, and having them so closely linked disturbed him.

Folk hesitated, but then the mare showed the way, trotting to the stair, climbing the steps, and joining them on the upper floor. The people followed. They did not know exactly what was going on, but they trusted the mare, and the mare trusted Mitch. Soon all of them were jammed tightly around Pewter, Ease, Astrid, and Tiara.

“You had better do it, Tiara,” Astrid said. “You won’t freak out.”

“Freak out?” Mitch asked.

Tiara removed a sequin and held it. The dress went translucent, showing Astrid’s phenomenal bra and panties. Mitch was silent; he had freaked out. So had several male villagers.

Tiara pinned the sequin back in place. The dress resumed its color. Ease, whom Kandy had prompted to close his eyes, snapped his fingers, waking the other men. All folk gazed around, surprised.

The scene had changed. Now they were in a large castle courtyard big enough to have enclosed the entire little fort.

Just in time. Pewter, strained to the breaking point, collapsed. So did the firewall. Fortunately no virus came to wipe out the puns.

“Well, now!” Two children, about two years old, were standing on a balcony overlooking the courtyard. One was a human boy in a boy suit. The other was a skeleton girl in a girl dress.

“I know of them,” Mitch said, amazed. “Princess Dawn married a walking skeleton and the stork delivered two crossbreed children. This must be Caprice Castle!”

“Sure it is,” the boy said. “I’m Piton. She’s Data. Who are you?”

“I am Mitch, and these are my friends. We just escaped the pun plague. May we talk to your parents? We may have a problem.”

“Problem?” Ease asked.

“They collect and put away puns at Caprice Castle.”

“Oh-uh.”

The children considered, then decided to approve this.

In a moment and a half a skeletal man and a beautiful woman appeared. “We are Picka Bone, master of Caprice Castle and Xanth’s leading musician, and Princess Sorceress Dawn,” the woman announced formally. “To what do we owe this unexpected visit? The children tell us there may be a problem.”

“There are puns among us we don’t want dispatched,” Mitch said bluntly.

“May I touch you?”

Mitch was startled. “If you wish, Princess.”

Dawn stepped forward and took his hand for a moment. “Oh, my.”

“We really did not choose to come here, and do not wish to cause trouble,” Mitch said. “We--”

Dawn silenced him with a smile. “Of course.” She turned to the skeleton. “Dear, see that our guests are comfortable. We have much to discuss with a few members of this group.”

Soon Mitch, Pewter, Ease, Astrid, and Tiara were seated on comfortable chairs in the castle living room facing Princess Dawn, while Picka Bone, ably assisted by the two children, saw to the comfort of the villagers. It seemed that the castle had plenty of everything needful, whether food, drink, or elbow room.

“My talent is to know everything about any living thing I touch,” the Princess said. “I have now touched each of you, so there is no need for further introductions. Only Mitch is precisely what he seems: a man trying to help his village.”

Oh? Did she know that Astrid was a basilisk? That Tiara’s hair was a demoness? That Ease’s board was an enchanted woman?

“Yes,” Dawn said, looking directly at the board.

Kandy stifled any further thoughts she might have had.

“We had not known about the pun virus before,” the Princess continued. “We presume the Good Magician was keeping it quiet so as not to incite panic. But your recent experience shows that the time for quietude is past. Something has to be done.”

“But--” Mitch said.

“But we at Caprice are in the business of eliminating puns,” Dawn said for him. “That does not mean we hate them or want to see them all gone. It is simply that puns have been spreading so widely that they are choking off normal things, like weeds, so need to be culled. We collect them and store them, and will release them again at such time as they are needed.” She frowned, and the room seemed to darken. “Which may be sooner than we anticipated. This virus, in contrast, completely destroys them. That is quite another matter.” She smiled, and the room brightened again. “Bluntly: we are on your side. We do not support punhibition, with secret speakeasies that get raided. We will continue collecting puns, but not to destroy them; to preserve them for the future. Meanwhile the virus needs to be stopped.”

“This is a relief to hear, Princess,” Pewter said.

She laughed, and the castle seemed to laugh with her. “Whatever would Xanth do without you and Com Passion?” she asked. “The shoe trees and humble pie plants? De-Ogre-Ants that repel ogres? No, Xanth is largely made of puns. We just don’t want it to be overwhelmed by them.”

“So the villagers of Punic Curse have nothing to fear from you?” Mitch asked.

“Nothing,” Dawn agreed. “Indeed, we will care for them here until they can find a new location for your destroyed village. They have had a horrible experience.”

“We thank you, Princess,” Mitch said gratefully.

“Now the question is how can we address this menace of the virus? How can we best assist your Quest to discover the antidote?”

A despairing look passed among them and fell to the floor. None of them had any idea.

“I think we will set our pun collectors to searching for that antidote too,” Dawn said. “While your Quest continues. Is there anything we can provide you that will facilitate your mission?”

“Just information,” Ease said. “The Good Magician said to merge the hair. Do you have any idea what he meant?”

“Surely not the way the Demoness Metria has done with Tiara’s hair,” Dawn said. “He can’t stand Metria. It must be some other person’s hair.” She glanced at Mitch. “That might be you. You should join the Quest.”

“Me? I’m just the village master of ceremonies, assisting the mare.” He grimaced. “That did not work out well today.”

“No fault of yours. Your village just happened to be in the path of the invading virus. What is remarkable about you is not your talent so much as your hair. I’ve never seen hair on a man quite like it.”

“It’s nothing compared to Tiara’s hair. Hers is fascinating, when not tied down by the demoness. I envy it.”

“You do?” Tiara asked, pleased.

“What’s so unusual about it?” Ease asked.

Dawn smiled. “Mitch, perhaps you should take off your shirt.”

“What does that have to do with his hair?” Astrid asked.

Mitch shrugged. “If you say so.” He drew up his hair shirt and pulled it off over his head. He let it drop. It did not fall; it hung there from his head.

“Your shirt is your hair!” Tiara exclaimed.

“It’s so long and thick it gets in my way,” Mitch said. “Sometimes folk mistake me for a woman. So I try to make it useful. Yours, in contrast, is magic. That’s much better.”

“I don’t mistake you for a woman,” Tiara said.

“The question is whose hair is to be merged, and how,” Dawn said. “None of you know that, so I don’t know it either. But the Good Magician, however grumpy and obscure he may seem, is always correct. It has to be relevant in some manner. It could be Tiara’s hair, but it also could be Mitch’s hair. Since we don’t know, the sensible thing is for you to join the Quest, Mitch, so as to be there when it counts—if it turns out to be your hair.”

“I might think of ways I’d like to merge with Tiara,” Mitch said. “But I wasn’t thinking of our hair.” He started plaiting his hair back into the shirt. His fingers worked rapidly; it seemed he had done this many times before.

“Good thing, too,” Tiara’s hair said while Tiara blushed. She had not yet been educated about the secrets of the Adult Conspiracy, but she was evidently getting a notion. Kandy realized that having the demoness around was likely to hasten that education considerably.

“Well, think about it,” Dawn said. “Now I must go to be sure our other guests are satisfied.” She got up and departed.

“She’s giving us a change to discuss it among ourselves,” Astrid said. “There does seem to be a good chance that Mitch’s hair relates. Maybe he should join us.”

“If he does, I’ll go!” Tiara’s hair threatened.

“Is that a promise?” Mitch asked.

“Oh, manipulate!” Metria said, separating from the hair to float as a dark little cloud over Tiara’s head.

“Oh, what?” Tiara asked.

“Circumvent, sidestep, avoid, cheat, hedge, chocolate--”

“Fudge?”

“Whatever,” the demoness agreed crossly. “No it’s not a promise. It was supposed to be a threat, had you had the wit to take it as such.”

“If the members of the Quest want me, I’ll join,” Mitch said as he pulled his new shirt on over his head. When it settled into place it was hardly evident that it was made from his own hair. He was indeed making it useful.

“I want you!” Tiara said eagerly.

Mitch nodded. Her interest was sparking his interest.

“I second the motion,” Astrid said. “You are a talented, useful person who well might help us accomplish our purpose.”

“Well,” Ease started. Then Kandy, concluding that she liked Mitch, prompted him. “I third it.”

That left Pewter. “Mitch acted to get us here when I was failing. That will do for me.”

“Very well, then,” Mitch said. “I will join, and help in whatever way I can.” He stroked Tiara’s wild hair. “I hope you can keep the demoness out of your hair, however.”

“Corpulent gamble!” Metria said, diving for the hair. In half a moment it was conventionally coiffed.

“Maybe that’s the point of merging the hair,” Astrid said. “To get rid of the demoness.”

“I heard that!” the hair said.

The others laughed. They might not be able to get rid of Metria, but they could tease her.

“But we still need to find the virus antidote,” Pewter reminded them.

“I have no idea how to do that,” Mitch said.

“None of us do,” Astrid said. “But if it does happen to be your hair to be merged, you’ll surely do your part.”

“I will do my best.”

“I wonder,” Tiara said. “Can you weave your hair into a blanket?”

“Oh, I do that all the time, at night. It’s warm.”

“For two?”

He looked at her. “If your hair joined it, they might even make a bouncy mattress.”

“Yes,” she whispered, blushing furiously.