Board Stiff (Xanth) (3 page)

Oh? He was aware of Kandy after all?

“Dream girl?” the centaur inquired politely.

“She comes only when I’m sleeping. Maybe she’s a forest nymph, or a demoness. She warned me that Cherry was underage.”

He had been awake when Kandy did that. Maybe he misremembered.

“She is,” the centaur agreed. “For a human.”

Did the centaur know how to summon storks? Kandy had heard that centaurs didn’t use storks, but had some other mechanism, cutting out the middleman as it were. Regardless, it seemed that Cherry had not retained any such knowledge. She had truly been innocent, and now Ease was getting the credit for leaving her that way.

“Farewell.” The centaur turned and galloped away, her red tresses flying behind her. She was a beautiful creature in every part.

“That was an interesting experience,” Ease said to himself. “Too bad I didn’t meet an of-age girl.”

Kandy suffered another instant siege of jealousy. She had been with him throughout, and she was of age. Bleep that spell!

“Let’s see what there is to eat, before I move on.” He walked to the nearest pie tree, but all it had at the moment was pot pies and the pots weren’t ripe enough to be edible. He went to the pond and saw a round gray object growing underwater. “A navel orange!” he exclaimed, pleased. He reached down and brought it out. “The merfolk won’t mind if I eat one of these.” He brought it to his face and tried to take a bite, but its hide was metallic; he couldn’t get his teeth into it. “Bleep!”

I CAN HANDLE THAT
, Kandy thought.

“Maybe if I bash it with my board,” he said.

He set the fruit on a stump, then whammed it with the board. Kandy saw the key seam and oriented to score exactly on it. This had to be done just right, or the fruit would be squashed instead of opened. She scored; the fruit split apart, revealing several ship-shaped orange sections. Now it was edible.

Ease popped a wedge into his mouth. It was soft and juicy. “I’m glad I thought of doing this.”

I thought of it, you numskull
,” Kandy thought. But what was the use?

He finished the orange. “I’m still hungry.”

Well, he was a healthy young man. But there just didn’t seem to be any other food at the moment.

“I smell something,” he said. “Tarts!”

Kandy looked. There at the edge of the forest was a girl with a raised bed. Smoke was rising from it. It was a fire bed, probably left behind by a fireman and still smoldering. She was baking something on it. Tarts. Indeed, she looked like a tart, with a dress that was cut too low above and too high below, so that too much of her overstuffed body showed.

“That’s for me,” Ease said.

The stupid man! The tart was off the enchanted path, which meant she was probably not what she seemed, bad as that was.
Don’t go there
.

But she had forgotten to put it into
bold
CAPPED
italics
, and he didn’t hear. He was already forging off the path, lured by the display.

“Well, honey, what can I do for you?” the tart inquired, smiling with too many teeth.

“I’m hungry! How about some tarts?”

“Well of course!” She lifted a steaming tart from the hotbed and handed it to him. “Here is a really sweet one. A sweet tart.”

Don’t eat that!
But again she forgot to enhance her thought.

“Sweetheart,” Ease agreed amiably. He took the tart and bit into it. “Oh, say! I want to kiss you!”

Now Kandy got a good whiff of the tart. She recognized the smell.

SPIT IT OUT!! IT’S SPIKED WITH LOVE POTION!

This time he heard her. He spat out the biteful.

But the woman tart was already in motion. She was leaping forward, her fangs coming into sight. She was a troll!

SWING THE BAT!

Ease swung, somewhat clumsily. That was all right; Kandy guided it to the proper target.
WHAM!!
It connected with the tart’s bottom with a foul-smelling smack, knocking some of her flesh out of the top of the dress on the other side. It wasn’t nearly as appealing when thus exposed. She stumbled, missing Ease’s face, which she had been about to bite off. Her teeth clacked together empty, showering sparks.

Ease, not being entirely dull, dodged around the troll and ran back to the enchanted path and safety. “I’m sure glad I caught on in time!”

He
had caught on? What was the use?

The troll, realizing that the prey had slipped the net, retrenched. She tucked her flesh back into her dress and folded her fangs out of sight. “But you didn’t finish your tart, honey!” she called.

Ease opened his mouth. He wanted to argue with the troll? There was nothing to be gained by that, as she was probably smarter than he was. He would also need a bully-proof vest that would bounce things back on the perpetrator to withstand her attacks.
DON’T ANSWER! JUST WALK AWAY.

“I guess that’s best,” he agreed. “Don’t stoop to her level. Depart with dignity.” He started walking.

“Go bleep yourself!” the troll screamed after him. “You’d never have escaped if it wasn’t for that bleeping enchanted board! But you probably wouldn’t have tasted very good anyway.”

“Enchanted board?” Ease lifted the board to look at it. “Maybe that explains some things. When I swing with this, I always connect. I never was much with a weapon before. When I wished for the perfect weapon I was thinking of maybe a magic sword that always scored, making me expert. But you know, with this board, I get the job done. I found it right there at the wishing well. So maybe I did get my wish. This is the perfect club.”

That wasn’t the half of it, but Kandy decided to be gratified that at least he was now giving her some credit.

“And I wished for the perfect woman,” he continued. “And you know, maybe that’s who comes to me in my sleep. My dream girl. Maybe the well gave me another wish, just not the way I expected it.”

His perfect woman. She was certainly that. So he was two for two. Would he make the connection between the two?

“So I guess all I need now is the perfect adventure,” he concluded.

So much for that. Yet if the well had granted two of Ease’s wishes and maybe was working on the third, what about hers? She had wished for Adventure, Excitement, and Romance. As a Board she was certainly in a sort of adventure, and there was some excitement as she saved Ease from his follies, and a weird kind of romance as she lay with him at night, unable to do anything that amounted to anything. So maybe it was happening, but as yet was incomplete. Maybe it would become whole once all the parts of it were accomplished.

Maybe Ease’s wish and her own were linked, and had to be fulfilled together. So all she had to do was see that he did what he was supposed to do. Encourage him, goose him when he hesitated, correct him when he went wrong, bail him out when she had to. It was a role she was already playing. A role any women played with any man, could the men but know it.

So be it, for whatever it was worth. He wanted adventure?

GO FOR IT
.

“I think I’ll go for it,” Ease decided. “Onward to the Good Magician’s Castle.”

Just so. Kandy went to sleep.

Chapter 2:

Challenge

When she woke, Ease was standing before the Good Magician’s castle. He must have made good time, because it was still mid-afternoon. It was picturesque, with tall turrets surrounded by a moat, surrounded in turn by assorted terrain. There was a winding path leading to the drawbridge across the moat.

“I don’t know,” he muttered. “This looks complicated. I know a person’s natural magic doesn’t work at the Good Magician’s Castle, so it won’t be easy. It wasn’t before. I’m not used to that. Maybe it was a bad idea to come here.”

For pity’s sake!
GET YOUR DONKEY IN GEAR!
she thought imperatively.
MOVE!

Ease stepped forward, thinking he had been prompted by his own impulse. His donkey was in gear.

Immediately he was at the foot of a small hill. There was a sign saying BOOT HILL. It was hardly necessary, because the hill was populated by walking boots. Not by people, just boots. Kandy realized that the original wearers of the boots must be buried in the hill. She had heard that legendary gunfighters of Mundania favored such a place, maybe because it facilitated some expression of their restless spirits.

The path led over the hill, so Ease stepped smartly out. And was immediately blocked by a tall pair of black boots. He stepped to one side, but the boots stepped with him. He stepped the other way, and so did they.

“Bleep!” he muttered. There were no children present, so he could have spoken an adult word, but the convention started to protect children had insidiously expanded until now it covered many adults as well, limiting their expressions. It occurred to Kandy that there might be a power motive there, as some folk tried to make other folk conform to their personal tastes. Where would it end? But that was incidental at the moment. This was obviously a Challenge, and Ease had to figure it out and get through it.

He did no such thing. “Get out of my way, leather-for-brains. I got business beyond.” He strode forward. Evidently diplomacy was not his forte.

The boots did not yield. In fact one of them kicked Ease in the shin.

“Ow!” he yelled. Then, bridling, he drew his Board. “Try that again! I dare you!”

Kandy realized she was not fated to avoid this Challenge. She would have to get Ease though it, one way or another, despite his blunders.

The boot tried it again. This time the Board intercepted the one doing the kicking and knocked it for a loop. The loop was formed by its flying laces as it fell on its back, its tongue lolling.

But in half a moment the boot was back on its foot, as it were. It looked annoyed. It stomped the ground angrily, then came at Ease again. It lifted high, drew back, and started swinging forward in a roundhouse kick, its laces forming the outline of a round house.

Ease swung the Board. Kandy scored on the boot, this time knocking it up so that its inner lining dropped out like a baby boot. But meanwhile the other boot scored, catching Ease on the rear and boosting him off the hill. There might not be people wearing those boots, but they had good power.

Ease got up, rubbing his sore rear. “Why you bleeping waste of shoe polish!” he swore. “I’m going to pulverize you!”

But Kandy saw that other boots had gathered, and there was now a solid wall of them across the path. It would be impossible to clear them all out of the way without getting kicked into oblivion. This Challenge required some thought, and it was clear that Ease, being masculine, was not up to it.

How could they deal with these obnoxious boots? The people in them could not be reasoned with or clubbed into submission, because there were no people. They were empty headed, in fact headless.

Empty. That gave her a notion.

PUT YOUR FEET IN
, she thought.

As usual he thought it was his own idea, and acted on it without question. He lurched ahead, caught a boot by the laces, and thrust his foot in. He didn’t even need to remove his shoe; the boot fit over it. Now his right foot was booted.

The boot struggled. It tried to jump away, but that only made the man’s leg wobble. He pressed his foot down hard on the ground, pinning down the boot, and in about a moment and a third it gave up the struggle. It was captive.

GET THE OTHER!

Oh. Ease grabbed for the matching boot, but it jumped away. He pursued it. The other boots came at him, making ready to kick his butt. But he had the Board in his hand, and Kandy swung around pretty much on her own volition and knocked the other boots away.

It was a fair chase, but Ease could run faster with one boot and one shoe than the other boot could hop. He caught it and jammed his foot inside. The boot struggled only briefly before yielding. It was after all footwear, and could not deny its nature. Yet Kandy, perversely, wondered if it was like a woman being ravished. How did boots feel about having smelly feet thrust into them?

Fully booted, Ease stood. Now the other boots ignored him; he was two of them. He strode on over the hill and down the other side. As he went the boots faded; it seemed they could not leave Boot Hill. But he had passed the first Challenge.

Only to encounter a snow-white slope guarded by a huge white bear. By two white bears. They stood as if conjoined at the hip, blocking the way.

Ease raised the Board. The bears raised their big front paws. They could knock the Board out of the way before it could knock them. That was no good.

PAUSE. THINK
.

Ease paused and thought. It wasn’t that Kandy thought he would up with anything useful, but that this would give
her
time to think before he did something terminally foolish. She understood that often the details of a Challenge provided the key to its solution. Like the detail of the boots being empty, so they could be filled and thus governed. These bears weren’t empty, but there must be something about them.

There was. One bear looked happy, the other sad. Other than that they looked like identical twins.

“Oh, bleep!” Ease said. “It’s a pun.”

What did he have against puns? They were ubiquitous.

“I hate puns,” he continued as if in answer. “Once I stepped on one, and it squished and stuck to my shoe. I couldn’t get the mess off. Another time I ate one by accident; I thought it was a bun. Then I got pundigestion, and started emitting puns, and nobody else could stand to be near me. It took days for the stink to get off me. I’d like to see every pun in Xanth abolished.”

Maybe it was just as well that he hadn’t realized that Boot Hill was a pun. But what was the pun here? Kandy didn’t see anything funny about the twin bears.

“They’re bi-polar bears,” he said. “On an ice bar.”

Kandy feared her wood would warp. How could she have missed that? One happy bear, one sad bear, opposite extremes.