Chicks in Chainmail (42 page)

I also accumulated a hundred Experience Points, and got my first promotion. I became Maureen Birnbaum, Stalwart 1st Grade. You know, oddly enough, I didn't feel
the least bit
different.

From then on, it was one room after another, one monster after another. There were more Gooey Things, Lumps, Blobs, and Spooks, all in rainbow colors, and giant insects of all kinds, and then I started running into rodents, which didn't please me—Giant Glowing Rats, Ravenous Mice, and Lust-Crazed Hamsters. That's what Glorian called 'em, anyway.

In one room I found a Baby Green Gremlin, and I sort of hated to, you know,
slaughter
the poor thing except it leaped right for my goddamn
throat
. And in the next room was a Mommy Green Gremlin, followed by the Daddy Green Gremlin. That Daddy gave me a
real
battle. I used Old Betsy like she'd never been used before, and every bit or magic stuff I had with me. Finally, though, the Daddy Green Gremlin disappeared in a noxious cloud of avocado-colored smoke, leaving behind about a thousand pieces of gold, some scrolls, two wands, and, best of all, a complete suit of really neat chainmail.

Really neat chainmail in, God help me, Size 6.

What kind of Size 6 heroes were they expecting around there? Maybe some eleven-year-old girl gymnasts had passed through the week before or something. "Glorian," I go, "how about a Wand of Expand Armor? A Scroll of A Summer, Shapelier You? I can't even fit my
hand
into this sleeve."

"Very sorry, Maureen," he goes. "I have no control over what appears after you extinguish a monster. You have to take the trash with the treasures."

I've always felt that the world could get along very well without people smaller than a Size 10. Oh, yeah? Name
one
. Bitsy, Meg Ryan is an
actor
. They're not even
real
.

After I killed a Red Wriggler—giving me a Half-Strength Healing Potion and two hundred pieces, of gold—it looked like the corridor had come to a dead end.

Glorian goes, "Just a moment." He went to a blank wall, bent over—Brad Pitt's buns in tight cutoff jeans—and pressed
something
. I don't know exactly what he did but the wall sort of swiveled, revealing another down staircase cut into the speckled gray granite. Down we went to the next level.

"What's down here?" I go.

"It gets more difficult the further we descend, but the rewards are comparably greater as well."

In the first room, there was not one but two monsters waiting for me. I wondered what they did between heroes. You couldn't even get up a good game of "I Spy." There was really nothing to look at.

The first monster was a Furry Fungoid, according to Glorian, and the other was a plain old Werewolf. They came at me together, and I worked up a pretty good sweat before I managed to kill them. When I did, more gold and jewels appeared, along with a Wand of Fireballs and a Magic Parchment.

Just as I thought that Glorian would need a shopping bag to carry all the treasure, damned if he didn't pull a Bloomingdale's shopping bag out of the air somehow. Don't ask
me
. It was just one of his supernatural talents. It was very practical—better than, say, spinning oats into molybdenum.

Now, though, I had to make some decisions. I had gathered twenty-two items, and I'd have to drop a couple. I asked Glorian's advice. He goes, "The Wand of Fireballs is a much more potent weapon than Basic Blast."

"Okay." I dropped the Wand of Basic Blast.

"You'll want to keep the Magic Parchment. When you learn a new spell, you have to write it on the Parchment before you can use it."

After a lot of thought, I dropped a Ring of Increased Stamina. I hated to lose it, but I had enough confidence in my natural abilities. We went on.

Before we entered the next room, Glorian touched my arm. "If you successfully defeat this next monster, you'll be promoted to Stalwart 2nd Grade. Then you may choose one magic spell to learn."

"I'll be successful," I go. "Do
you
have some doubt?"

He gave me that full-lipped Brad Pitt smile. I just sort of you know,
dissolved
inside. And he goes, "It would be a good idea to save now and then. Especially before this important battle."

That one soared right over my head. "What do you mean, 'save'?"

"It's a long and tedious process, Maureen, but when you're killed, I'll be able to resurrect you at precisely the moment when the save was done."

I didn't buy into this getting-killed thing. Glorian mentioned it with absolute certainty, and I didn't appreciate his lack of confidence. I'm like, "You can
resurrect
me? How do our community's spiritual leaders feel about that?"

He sort of let that one pass. "Do you wish to save now?"

"Sure," I go. "I'm easy to get along with."

The procedure w
as
boring, just as he'd warned. I thought there would be some colorful magic involved, maybe a lot of chanting and incantation and some nice incense and stuff. Afraid not. Mostly Glorian just sat down on the cold granite floor and typed.

He
typed
, Bitsy. I don't know on what. Suddenly he had this
keyboard
that like wasn't connected to anything, and he typed. For ten or fifteen minutes. When he was done, he stood up. The keyboard seemed to have gone away again. "All right," he goes. "Now you can enter fearlessly into that room."

I go, "
Hey
! Like I didn't need you to transcribe your thoughts for a quarter of an hour to go fearlessly into the next room. I was fearless before I met you, and I'll be fearless long after you've gone back to… wherever."

"As you say."

The next room was like most of the others except for one detail: I didn't see a single monster. "Am I supposed to wait around here or what?" I go. "Jeez, some monster missed its cue, and I have to hold up my whole quest until it feels like showing up?"

Glorian spoke to me in Brad Pitt's soft, low voice. Have you ever noticed how
blue
his eyes are? Anyway, he goes, "Have patience, Maureen. No time is passing in the real world while we're down here. When you return—
if
you return—it will not be a moment later than when you first arrived in the village of Mudville."

"That's okay, but I still want to get on with it. I have more imp—" Something whacked me a good one on the back of my head. I almost fell on my face. Instead, I spun around and saw—

—nothing. There was nothing there. That didn't seem to matter, because it hit me so hard just below my breastbone that I doubled over and almost barfed.

"It's an Invisible Gooey Thing," Glorian informed me.

I wanted to make a crushingly sarcastic reply, but it as all I could do to force air into my lungs. When I could breathe again, I started poking around with Old Betsy, trying to find the goddamn monster.
Blammo
! It hit me again. I was getting furious.

And like Glorian is yelling, "Put your back against a wall!"

Good thought. That would keep the Invisible Gooey Thing from sneaking up behind me. I went to one of the room's corners. When the monster came after me again, I'd be able to find it and kick its see-through ass into Monster Heaven.

It didn't take long. I collected a pretty good jab to the stomach, and then I lashed out with Old Betsy. I swung with all my strength at what looked to me like thin air.

I hit something. There was a tiny, shrill scream, and I saw a puddle of Gooey Thing blood form on the floor, and from out of nowhere a double handful of diamonds and a scroll appeared.

Glorian goes, "Very well done, Maureen! You killed it!"

I just, you know, played humble. I go, "You don't have to
see
'em to
whack
'em." Glorian scooped up the diamonds and added them to my treasure. I took the scroll and opened it. The writing was very decorative in a Metropolitan Museum of Art king of way. Across the top was lettered
A Scroll of Glass Breaking
. I sure didn't want to trade off one of my twenty items to carry that worthless piece of magic, so I just dropped it and went on toward the next room. Glorian followed faithfully.

"See?" I go. "I
told
you I wasn't going to be killed."

"Yes, you did, Maureen. Saving is still a good idea, though. A hero must have more than courage. There is a time for prudence as well."

"Maybe. Now, you said something about a promotion?"

"Yes. The Invisible Gooey Thing was worth a hundred and twelve points to a Stalwart 1st Grade. You are now a Stalwart 2nd Grade, with all the perquisites and privileges appertaining thereto. I offer you my heartiest congratulations, Maureen. Both your Hit Points and your Hex reserve have been increased, making you more difficult to defeat in battle. Also, you may learn one of these magic spells: Fireballs, Light, Jump, or Paralyze Monster."

I have this habit of chewing my lip when I have serious thinking to do. "I've already got a wand for Fireballs," I go.

"Yes, but the Fireballs will be more powerful if they're cast by a spell than by a wand. And if you learned that spell, you could drop the wand and take another object in its place."

"That's cool. What do the other spells do?"

"light illuminates an entire chamber regardless of size, far better than the beams thrown by your lamp. Jump will teleport you a short distance—it could save your life if you find yourself trapped somehow. And Paralyze Monster does just that, except it doesn't work on all monsters., and on the monsters it
does
affect, it works only eighty percent of the time."

"Hmm." I could hear the thinking music from "Jeopardy" tinkling in my mind. "Okay, make it Paralyze Monster, then. No, wait a minute. Jump. Yeah, Jump."

"Are you sure?"

Of course
I wasn't sure. I'm like, "Give me another minute!" I thought about this real hard. I wanted to drop the Wand of Fireballs so I could pick up the next good object I found. I also liked the idea of Jumping out of tight situations. And Paralyze Monster sounded pretty handy, too. I didn't think I needed Light, so at least I'd eliminated one out of four.

"Maureen?" he goes.

"I'm
working
on it!
Jeez
, Brad! I mean, Glorian!" I debated with myself a little more. It was a tough call, like would you rather spend an entire week all alone with no money in Paris, or eight hours in Paramus, New Jersey, with Mel Gibson.

I went with Paralyze Monster. So shoot me. Glorian showed me how to write the spell on the Magic Parchment.

After that, the path got more complicated. The rooms didn't lead off each other in a nice straight line anymore. We were in a huge, confusing maze. I hoped Glorian was leaving a trail of bread crumbs or something, because if we were depending on my Girl Scout training to find the way back up to The Real World, well, I was going to get like real sick
of food
and
drink
a few days before I starved to death in this subterranean playground.

And I'd like to have a few words with whoever designed those monsters. I mean, except for the feet that any one of them could've, you know,
kitted
me—if I'd let it have the chance—they were all pretty ridiculous. I would've laughed in their faces if
one
: they
had
faces, and
two
: they weren't trying to, you know,
kill
me. When you hear the word "monster," Bitsy, what do you think of?

Well, okay, either the alien from
Alien
or whatever it was that lived in the back of my bedroom closet
I
could've come up with better monsters than the ones I had to fight. Probably somebody thought them up real quick at the very last minute during a lunch break.

You should've seen the next one I ran into. Glorian and I came to a fork in the tunnel and he goes, "Which way, Maureen? Choose, and choose carefully!"

"Does it really, really make
any
difference at all?"

"Well, truthfully, no."

So I go, "Then we'll turn left." That brought us to a small room. I could see a large metal shield in one corner, and a magic wand in another. Wow, like free gifts from the management! I took maybe three steps toward the shield, when the monster attacked. "Glorian—"

He goes, "It's an Un-Dead Elvis."

"Thank you very much," the monster goes. It executed a little hip swivel and then did this Flying Mare from all the way across the room. That's a
wrestling
term, sweetie. You should watch wrestling sometime. It's got to be
at least
as realistic as those soap operas of yours.

Well, at first I hesitated to lift my sword in anger against like
The King
, but this wasn't the
real Elvis
—I don't think. With consummate grace and speed I sidestepped, and the Un-Dead Elvis fell to the ground. I graciously waited until it got to its feet again, and then I chopped it into little tiny gory pieces. It looked at me as its life ebbed slowly away. In a tiny, weak voice, it gasped, "Thank you very much." And then it died.

Aw,
Bitsy
! C'mon! You're crying for a
monster!
Jeez, okay, pretend it wasn't an Un-Dead Elvis. Pretend it was, oh, an Un-Dead Vanilla Ice, if it makes you feel better.

Try
real
hard. You'll remember.

So now there was a wand and a shield in the room, and some sapphires and a new scroll and a package
of food
. Glorian got a second shopping bag and put the jewels in it. He told me I could take the
food
and it wouldn't count toward my total of items. The scroll was a Spell of Flatulence; and I went "Ew!" and dropped it.