Esrever Doom (Xanth) (3 page)

Then the dragon shrugged and moved on. It had concluded that they weren’t worth the effort. It would have required a lot of smoke to surround a tree this size.

“But if you hadn’t warned me, I’d have run right into it on the path. It could have smoked me with one puff, and swallowed me whole.”

“Tweet,” Tweeter agreed.

“Well, look who’s climbing trees!” a female voice screeched.

Kody looked, but didn’t see anything.

“A silly tweety bird and an ignorant Mundane oaf,” the voice screeched.

Now Kody saw the source, perched in a distant tree. It looked like a vulture, except that it had an ugly human head.

“That’s a harpy!” he exclaimed, amazed.

“Tweet,” Tweeter agreed.

“Lo, the light dawns!” the harpy screeched. “I’m Sniper, mistress of the long-distance verbal attack! What are you two doing there—making love?”

“That’s one foul mouth on that creature,” Kody remarked.

“Get it straight, idiot!” the harpy screeched. “I have a fowl mouth, not a foul mouth!”

Kody was getting annoyed. “And your face is uglier than your mouth.”

This set the harpy back. “Ugly?”

“Repulsive,” Kody clarified.

“But since the Curse I’ve been beautiful!”

Curse? Then Kody caught on: the reversal that made lovely women seem ugly, and ugly harpies seem beautiful. “Too bad, Sniper; I see you as you are.”

Tweeter was amused. “Tweet!”

“Oh, yeah?” the harpy screeched. “Well, you’re another!” Then she spread her motley wings and took off, evidently overmatched.

“Tweet.”

“You’re right,” Kody said. “That was sort of fun.”

They dismounted from the tree and resumed travel along the path. Now Kody appreciated his need for a competent guide. It wasn’t just a matter of finding a man, but of knowing what dangers to avoid. The bird knew.

They came to a bushy clearing. Tweeter flew ahead, then returned. “Tweet.”

“Right. Go this way.” He followed the bird to where a young man was kneeling before a melon.

The man glanced up. “Hello. Tweeter tells me you’re Kody, a fellow Mundanian, newly arrived, and you want to compare notes.”

“Uh, yes, in essence,” Kody agreed, taken aback. All that from one tweet? Well, maybe it did fit within 140 characters.

“I’m Bryce. Just let me capture this pun, and I’ll be with you.”

Now Kody saw that the melon had legs, head, and tail. It was a sadly fat little dog! Bryce opened a bag and put it over the creature. When it was safely inside, he closed the bag and stood up. “That’s a melon-collie, a gourd dog. More pun than guardian, I fear. We’re trying to capture the most egregious puns first.”

“So I see,” Kody said.

“So how did you come to Xanth, Kody?”

“I was being anesthetized for surgery, and they warned me there could be side effects, such as mood reverse. I got mood backward and it came out doom. Esrever doom. Things seem to have regressed from there.”

“Could you have died?”

“Not that I know of. I’m in a controlled coma.”

“So you should return when they bring you out of it.”

“Yes. Then the dream will end.”

Bryce smiled. “Funny thing about dreams. Some turn out to be true. Take me: I’m eighty-one years old and in ill health.”

Kody repressed a smile. “You don’t look it.”

“I know. I was magically youthened when I came here, and now am twenty-two, physically, and absolutely healthy. And being courted by a princess. For some men, that would be the stuff of dreams.”

“For some men,” Kody agreed cautiously.

A lovely teenaged girl approached, accompanied by several young dogs. “Did I hear my name?”

“Princess Harmony,” Bryce said. “Kody Mundane.”

Harmony smiled, lighting the area. She had lustrous brown hair under her pert crown, glowing brown eyes, and wore a shape-fitting brown dress. “Kody,” she repeated.

“Princess Harmony,” Kody said. “You look ravishing.”

She seemed surprised. “I do?”

He laughed. “I can’t think when I’ve seen a prettier teen, princess or not.”

Harmony turned to Bryce. “What do you see?”

“You are the ugliest creature I have ever seen,” Bryce answered matter-of-factly.

She looked again at Kody. “Do you want to rephrase your answer?”

“Tweet!”

Harmony looked startled. “True?”

“True,” Kody said. “I am not suffering that particular reversal. I see people as they are, and you are almost as beautiful as Princess Dawn.”

“Thank you. I think I was, before the gross reversal.” She frowned, frustrated.

“So you’re here for a reason,” Bryce said. “To abolish the Curse.”

“I’m not sure about that. I think I’m here by coincidence, or pure imagination. But if I can help, I will.”

“I need that Curse to be abolished,” Harmony said seriously to Kody. “You heard him say how I’m the ugliest creature he’s ever seen. That means when the Curse goes, he’ll see me as the loveliest. Then maybe I can nail him. A kiss or two could do it. Certainly a night in the hay. Then he’ll have to marry me.”

“Stop it!” Bryce said. “You’re only seventeen. You know I won’t touch a child.”

“I know you’ll
try
not to touch a teen. But you’re weakening.”

Kody shook his head. “You’re trying to seduce him, and he’s resisting?”

She made a cute moue. “He has this foolish Mundane thing about being my grandfather’s age and not robbing the cradle.”

“I
am
your grandfather’s age!” Bryce protested.

Harmony turned to Kody. “See?”

Kody shook his head. “There must be more of a story here than I know.”

“There is,” Bryce and Harmony said together. Then they laughed. They had evidently been over this ground many times. Obviously they knew each other well, and were probably in love even if they didn’t admit it.

“Maybe I can help you collect a few puns while we talk,” Kody said. “I need to know more about this land of Zanth.”

“Xanth,” Bryce said, somehow hearing the spelling. “And yes, you do need to know more about it, if you’re to abolish the Curse.”

Harmony conjured (perhaps literally) a pun bag for Kody, and they reoriented on the pun-collecting chore. “Woof!” a puppy barked.

“Show the way, Wolfe,” Harmony said.

“Wolfe’s the son of Woofer, Tweeter’s friend,” Bryce explained. “He and his sister Rowena are working with us today. Their mother, Rachel, crossed into Xanth last year with me, found romance, but returned to Mundania. Woofer was pretty broken up about it, but the pups are doing well.”

Kody saw that the male pup had a W name, the same as his sire. The female one had an R name, the same as her mother. “Woofer? That sounds like a loudspeaker.”

“Precisely. There are three of them, Woofer Dog, Tweeter Bird, and Midrange Cat. They came to Xanth with a Mundane family, and now live here.”

“There seems to be a lot of Mundania here.”

“Right around here, yes. Not elsewhere. That’s probably why Dawn sent you to me. Mundanes understand Mundanes better.”

Wolfe barked. There was a huge-trunked tree that looked like nothing so much as a giant beer mug. Small side branches held out steaming hot dogs and mugs of what had to be beer.

Bryce held up his bag. “Now if we can just fathom the pun.”

“Frank ‘n Stein,” Kody said before he thought.

The monster mug shimmered, dissolved into smoke, and flowed into Kody’s pun bag.

“You’re a quick learner,” Bryce said as Kody stared.

“I had no idea!”

“You could make a good pun catcher,” Harmony said. “Of course, it is considered hard labor because it drives people crazy.”

“But about this Curse,” Kody said as they resumed their quest for puns. “I understand I’m supposed to go beg a favor from a certain Good Magician, who will tell me how to go about it. But that he charges outrageously. I don’t see why I should do it.”

“Because if you don’t, you’ll be stuck here forever with pundigestion,” Harmony said. “Watch where you’re stepping. That’s crab grass.”

Now Kody saw the little green pincers orienting on his feet. He quickly put down the bag. “In, crabby.” And the grass wavered into smoke and flowed in.

Wolfe barked, signaling another pun. A woman was walking toward them. She was of indifferent appearance, which meant the reversal had little effect, but her bosom was curiously cloudy. In fact it was roiling, as if live things were trying to escape. The effect was both fascinating and alarming.

“What is that?” Bryce asked. Kody was similarly perplexed.

“A storm front,” Harmony said. “If you men weren’t so fixed on bosoms…” She opened her bag, and the front dissolved and entered it.

“Ah, here are some nuts,” Bryce said. But when he took one it unwound into a wad of paper money. Wolfe barked.

“Cashews,” Kody said. “So money really does grow on trees, here.” But he was concluding that they were right: he needed to get out of this punfest before it rotted his brain. “How do I get to the Good Magician’s Castle?”

“We’d take you there,” Bryce said. “But we’re pretty busy here, as you can see. We don’t want any of these puns to escape, lest they reproduce. Any we don’t get today will be lost. But Harmony may be able to help.”

“Yes,” the princess agreed as she grabbed a vat of tea that had books floating in it. “Novel-tea.” It dissipated and was duly captured. “I can mark a path there. But you’ll need a steed, and some protection. Here there be dragons.”

“True,” Kody agreed, remembering the one he and Tweeter had encountered. “And harpies.”

“I will talk to Dawn about it tonight,” she said. “I’m sure we can arrange something.”

“You could just point the way, and I can go there. I have a good sense of direction.”

Both Bryce and Harmony shook their heads. Tweeter tweeted negatively. Even the dog barked No. Apparently they had little confidence in his traveling ability.

Kody sighed. “What must be, must be. I will accept the help I need.”

Bryce nodded. “You’re learning.”

Harmony punched him on the arm. “Now if you were as fast a study, you’d learn that age is irrelevant here in Xanth. Then you’d marry me.”

“Unfortunately I’m not that fast a study,” Bryce said.

They all laughed.

2

M
ISSION

So it came to pass. Kody had a good night at Caprice Castle, and in the morning Picka and Dawn took him out and showed him the marked path, which consisted of a floating blue line winding into the forest. But something was wrong.

“The scenery,” Kody said. “It’s not the same.”

“To be sure,” Picka agreed. “It is the nature of Caprice Castle to travel. It soon gets bored with any particular locale, so it moves.”

“The castle moves? But I didn’t feel anything.”

“It does it in its own fashion. It fades out at one place and fades in at another.”

Now Kody understood why they had needed to get all the puns of the locale harvested yesterday; they were no longer there today. That was also why they couldn’t point him in a direction: it changed overnight.

“I believe a steed was mentioned,” Kody mentioned.

“Yes. Unfortunately he can’t come to the castle. But the path will lead you to him. Your guardian will be with him. You should be safe enough.”

“Guardian?”

“Normally, living folk travel on enchanted paths that are guaranteed to be safe,” Picka said. “But there’s no such path here, so Princess Harmony had to mark an alternate route that avoids most hazards. But considering your unfamiliarity with the land, we thought some additional protection was warranted. It would help if you had a magic talent, but fresh Mundanes generally don’t.”

“Let me check,” Dawn said. She touched his hand. “Why yes he does! It seems to be another aspect of the reversal. Kody, your magic talent is to summon chips of reverse wood. Do you know what that means?”

“No.”

“Reverse wood reverses things, often in unpredictable ways. Presumably it won’t affect you; that would be part of your talent. It’s marvelous stuff. If a dragon threatens to toast, steam, or smoke you, you can conjure a chip and flip it at the creature, and it will suffer an awkward reversal of some sort. So you should be able to defend yourself, once you get the hang of it. You can practice during your trip to the Good Magician’s Castle.”

“Shouldn’t I practice here, before traveling?”

“Not in my castle,” she said firmly. “Reverse wood is tricky; there’s no telling what harm you might accidentally do.”

“Not here,” he agreed. “How do I summon one? I promise not to flip it.”

“Just hold out your hand and will the chip to appear.”

He held out his hand. “Like this?” And a chip of wood appeared.

“Like that,” she agreed. “Now get rid of it before it reverses something and causes a problem.”

Kody willed the chip to vanish, but it didn’t. “I don’t seem to be able to banish it, just to summon it.”

“Oh, that’s right,” Dawn said. “Yours is a one-way talent. You have to use what you fetch.”

“I’ll put it in a pocket.” He tucked the chip in his left front shirt pocket.

“That would not be wise. That reversal is struggling to take effect, and it might start affecting you.”

“Already,” Picka said, looking at the pocket.

Kody looked. The pocket was inside out, having been reversed, and the chip was on the ground, where the dirt was turning into mud. Its solidity had been reversed. He quickly picked up the chip, and the ground solidified. “I guess I need to use it on something.”

“Touch me,” Picka said. “I can’t be hurt.”

“I’m not sure of that,” Dawn said warily.

Kody touched the skeleton’s hip bone. Suddenly it was clothed in flesh. In fact his whole midsection had become a bare human posterior. His dead bone had been reversed to living flesh.

“Now that’s a real ass-et,” Picka said, amused, flexing his nether cheeks. “When I first met Dawn, I wasn’t attracted to her, because her nice bones were covered in awful flesh. Since then, I’ve grown more tolerant.”

“Get it out of here!” Dawn said sharply. She was definitely not amused by the exposure. It seemed that she liked her men as flesh or bone, not a mixture.