Fractious (23 page)

"Wait," I said. "How did you get our ponies? Didn't we leave them with Roger?" I said
to Cu.

Cu shrugged. "I dunno."

"The girl brought them," Lug said. "She said she got lost on the road and ended up here.
Said the ponies weren't of any use to her anymore, so she left them here."

I echoed Cu's shrug. "Whatever. So I guess we're square then, huh?"

"Bob wants to stay with you, so Bob stays with you." He hitched up his watch belt.
"Plus, I'm not giving up my belt. I love this thing."

Bob licked my face, leaving shiny streaks of saliva on my cheeks. I didn't care; I just
rubbed my head against his side and left a wet patch of hair in my wake. Then Bob licked Cu,
who used the leg of my pants to dry himself off. I didn't even care. I was just happy to be
keeping our little rag tag group together. Bob had become a handy part of the crew. Then a
thought struck me. The girl Lug had mentioned had to have been Crista. Why didn't I think about
that before?

"What did you trade with the girl?"

Lug pointed.

I followed the line of his finger. Slung over one of the posts on the far side of the corral
was a leopard print bra with pink lace trimming. I recognized it from the orgy city of Tara. It had
been encasing Crista's ample bosom and matched a pair of panties. I hoped she had kept the
panties but hadn't the courage to ask.

"Not sure what I'm going to do with it," Lug said, pulling at his chin. "She just wanted
some food, but I told her that wasn't enough for such a prize as that. Plus she gave us those two
ponies without asking for anything else. I bet that spotted, stretchy thing will keep the Slow
Eaters from Grandmap's house really well."

"Slow Eaters?" I repeated.

"Yeah," Lug said. "Didn't she tell you about the things that will eat you slowly?"

I nodded.

"Well, what else would you call them? Slow. Eaters."

I shrugged. It made sense.

Cu cleared his throat. "Anyway, we best be off. We need to make it to Tara by
dark."

"You really want to stop in Tara?" I said.

He gave me a mischievous grin, his eyes flickering in the direction of Fiacha, who was
closely examining Crista's left-behind bra. "Hell yeah, brother!"

I rolled my eyes. I should have known. We thanked Lug and Lug's still nameless
grandmap. I didn't even bother to ask him what he'd done with my shoes and socks. My feet had
long since forgotten that they'd been barefoot since our first meeting and they didn't care that I
didn't ask. Then we were off again, bobbing along on Bob's bareback back, headed for Tara and
orgies galore. I secretly hoped we'd run into Crista. And not just for the orgies.

* * * *

We didn't.

Run into Crista, I mean.

Tara was pretty much as we'd left it, right down to the Tuatha Dé woman who
was still, even days later, humping the wooden post. Much to my surprise, Cu didn't even give
her a second glance, although he did give her a first. Fiacha paused to watch the spectacle for a
while, scratching her head as she did so. Cu let her look for a bit then pulled her away,
whispering something in her ear, most of which I didn't catch. Although I'm positive I did hear
the word "water" slip from his lips.

We headed down the road in the middle of the town, past sexual innuendoes and
positions I couldn't have dreamed up in a lifetime. I even saw Ken, Crista's old partner, doing the
wild thing with a pretty Tuatha Dé woman, though she had nothing on Fiacha. He spied
me and gave a friendly wave in my general direction, but it was obvious that his attention was
mostly other where.

We got a room at the inn, the same inn where we'd had drinks the last time. We had to
share a room but I knew what Cu and Fiacha wanted to get up to and volunteered to sleep where
ever I could find a place. Cu protested, but I managed to dodge three swings of his bright green
top hat and he relented. Bob agreed to sleep in the stables. We went down to the bar later in the
evening for dinner, where we met up with Nemain again and his talking parrot. Since I had no
more wickets, which was a thankful thing since I really didn't want to have Tom Cruise's likeness
in my pocket ever again in my life, I ended up sitting down without a pint of beer before me. I
pouted and the parrot took notice.

"Hey ugly!" it squawked. "What you sad for? 'Cause you so ugly?"

"I want a beer." I gave the parrot my saddest look ever.

"Why ask me? I poor."

"You're a parrot," Nemain said. "Of course you're poor." Then he suddenly threw a
woolen blanket over the cage. The bird instantly went silent.

"That really works?" I waved a hand in front of the blanketed cage.

"Guess so," Nemain said. He yanked the blanket off the cage and the bird instantly
squawked, "You ugly!" He put the blanket back over and the bird went dead silent again. He did
this a couple more times until I told him to stop.

"You asked." Nemain lifted his empty palms in his version of a shrug.

"Sorry I did." I folded my arms on the table top and set my chin down on them.

Nemain apparently felt sorry for me, for he called out, "Bring me a pint of beer,
wench!"

A wench appeared with a pint of beer.

I reached for it but Nemain pulled it quickly away from me. "You want beer, you pay
for it." Apparently he
wasn't
feeling sorry for me.

"We killed Amergin," Cu said out of the blue.

"Seriously?" Nemain said, eyes wide with disbelief.

"Yeah," Cu said.

Nemain sneered at him for a moment, and then grinned broadly. He opened his arms to
the room and yelled, "Now who's gonna pay that wizard bastard's tab?!"

I didn't particularly care.

"I do have this." From the pocket of her shift, Fiacha produced an emerald the size of
my nose.

"Where'd you get that?" Cu said, his eyes as wide as the emerald was large.

"I filched it back at Black Mountain," she said proudly. "Everyone else was taking stuff,
I figured I should, too."

Cu and I glanced at each other and smiled. "You know, I like you more and more each
day," Cu said to Fiacha, giving her a look that might have had a little bit of love in it.

Fiacha grinned back and tossed the emerald to Nemain, who caught it deftly in midair.
"Keep the change," she said, still staring at Cu.

"How would I make change out of this, anyway?" Nemain said. "Now, what do you all
want to drink?"

Cu said, "Plenty of beers for my friend, Fractious here. As many as he can keep down."
Then he glanced at Fiacha with a wicked smile. He held up two fingers. "And two waters."

A wench delivered our drink orders, keeping the beers coming as long as I could hold
them. For me, at least. Cu and Fiacha only drank their waters, not even touching a single beer,
and soon retreated to their room. I didn't blame them; they couldn't keep their hands, feet and
other various body parts off each other after the water was gone.

I didn't even bother to listen in at their door. I could guess what they were up to, and
with more vigor than any of the previous nights they'd spent together. Not that I
could
have gone up to their room and listened at the door. I was stone drunk in about an hour. So stone
drunk, in fact, that I didn't wake up for twenty four hours. I was glad for once to have slept for
twenty four hours instead of having to try and stay awake for twenty four hours. It was a new
experience for me.

I woke up with the biggest headache I'd ever had in all the years of my life. And I woke
up on the floor of a bathhouse wearing only shoes and socks, and not my shoes and socks since
I'd traded those with Lug in exchange for Bob, the horse. I woke up wearing
somebody else's
shoes and socks. It was really weird.

My hands were dangling in the warm and somewhat frothy water of a nearby bathtub.
My head was lying on a neat, tiled floor that had images on it depicting various beings involved
in various sexual encounters. I suddenly understood that the portal in Intercourse, Pennsylvania,
was not there by mistake, then I threw up into the tub.

"Okay, that is gross!" somebody said.

"Sorry," I mumbled, as I struggled to my feet. A Tuatha Dé man stood beside a
garbage can on wheels and carried a broom and dust pan. He had a bottle of Windex in a holster
on his belt. The feather duster tucked into his back pocket made him look like a pretty lame
peacock.

"It's okay, bro," he said. "Happens at least three times a day." He shrugged and gave me
a reassuring smile. "Not that that makes it any less gross."

"How long have I been here?" I rubbed my aching head, not caring in the slightest now
that I was wearing shoes and socks that were not my own and that the rest of me was stark
naked. I shook my head to try and clear it but that didn't help any. I cleared my throat, excused
myself and puked into his trashcan. "Hope that helps," I said afterwards.

"Better than in the pool," he said. He pointed at me with the yellow straw end of his
broom. "You outta take it easy on the beer, man."

"Where the hell am I?"

"Bathhouse," he said.

I knew that, but didn't say as much. "Am I still in Tara?" I said instead.

He nodded.

"Good." I had no idea what I would have done had he said I was somewhere else other
than Tara. "Do you know where my clothes are?"

He pointed. Sunk into another, much cleaner pool was my clothing. I fished everything
out with the use of the handle of a mop I borrowed from the janitor dude and wrung out the
excess water. It took me a good five minutes to put on my wet jeans. Only after I had them on
did I realize once again that I was wearing shoes and socks, but not my shoes and socks, since I'd
left those with Lug ages ago. I took off said shoes and socks and set them aside.

"Any idea who those belong to?" I pointed at the shoes and socks so the man who
seemed to be a janitor would know what I was talking about.

"No clue, buddy."

"Okay." I looked around. There was nobody there but myself and the janitor, nobody to
claim the strange shoes and socks. "Where is everyone?"

"Outside," he said. "Celebrating the death of Amergin."

"Really?" I said. I stabbed my thumb at my chest. "You know,
I
helped kill that
dude."

"Sure you did," he said. He pushed a button on the wall and the tainted water began to
drain out of the tub.

I shrugged, not caring that he didn't believe me, and left the bathhouse. Carrying my
soaking wet shirt and once again sockless and shoeless, I wound my way through tiled corridors
until I found a door that seemed like the right one to go out of. I opened it and stepped into the
street.

It was sunny and beautiful outside but I felt like such shit that I hated the sunniness and
beautifulness of it all.

There was a big party going on in the square, the typical Tara orgy type party, with
fucking and more fucking to be seen everywhere I looked. I walked around, taking the
occasional glass of free beer that Fiacha's emerald was apparently still paying for, and downing
them when I felt capable. A few drinks came back up in a couple of Tara's back alleys but I
didn't much care.

I found Cu and Fiacha on the roof of a building that had a sign identifying it as "Little
Miss Muffin's Bakery." Little Miss Muffin, or an older Tuatha Dé who I assumed was
Little Miss Muffin, handed me a muffin that I munched on while trying to get Cu's attention.
Finally, for lack of any better ideas, I threw what I hadn't eaten of said muffin. It hit Cu on the
head. I triumphantly threw my hands in the air with a "Whoop!"

Cu paused in his thrusting and looked up, obviously not thrilled at my triumph. "What
do you want?"

"Can we go now?" I said.

"You look like hell, Fractious," he said, and returned to his sexual rhythm.

"Feel like it too," I said. "I woke up in a bathhouse."

"This town doesn't have a bathhouse," he said.

"It did today." I pointed back in the direction I'd come from.

Cu shrugged, shuddered, and then pulled back from Fiacha. She squeezed then slapped
his buttocks before she moved out of my sight. Cu watched her go before he sat on the edge of
the roof, his stuff dangling between his legs. He didn't seem to mind in the least that he was
naked.

Tara does that to you. Crista had been the same way in Tara.

I sighed. "Seriously, can we go now?"

Cu took one long look at me, his face serious. "Yeah, Guy, we can go now." He rose and
disappeared for a minute. He reappeared fully clothed and climbed down a ladder leaning against
the house. A moment later, Fiacha, also fully clothed, followed him.

Fiacha stepped to my side as we walked back to the inn to collect Bob and the rest of
our things. "Are you okay, Guy?" Her voice was full of concern.

I smiled down at her. "As okay as one can expect. I did have a lot to drink last night. Or
was it the night before?"

She only raised an eyebrow at me and turned away.

I couldn't say, at that point, what had gotten me down. I was hung over beyond belief. I
was missing Crista. I was missing my world. I had no idea what I'd done the night before or how
I'd ended up in a bathhouse wearing shoes and socks that were obviously not mine. But there was
something plaguing me, something I couldn't identify, not until much later anyway.

We found Bob out behind the stable, a line of mares positioned before him. He'd
obviously gotten to the water and so had the dozen or so females who were waiting for a shot at
him. Since getting cleaned up at Amergin's place, Bob did look quite handsome, and all the
ladies agreed with that. We let him finish up the line, but we had to shoo away two or three late
comers, explaining the situation as best we could. We had to get back to Murias and back to the
king. The mares protested but in the end they understood.

When Bob was done with everyone, we left Tara with only the briefest of glances back
at the orgy-filled town. And I knew that Cu and Fiacha had bought a gallon of water from
Nemain that they were bringing with them.