The Dastard (14 page)

The Dastard paused, reflecting. “I suppose I did,” he agreed. “I didn't mean to."

Becka knew he wasn't joking. He didn't do favors for others, only for himself. He had saved Becka in order to protect himself, and saved Nadine for the same reason. So his good deeds were incidental, and did him no credit. He would be doing more dastardly deeds soon enough.

“I'm getting hungry,” Becka said. “And I don't see much of anything to eat.”

“And we're not near another nexus,” the Dastard said.

“I can turn dragon and chomp something,” she suggested. “Then you can cook some of the meat for yourself”

Another girl came down the path. She looked to be about eighteen, and was strictly average in appearance. “Okay, chomp her,” he said. “She's not a nexus.”

Becka shuddered, because as usual he wasn't joking. He literally had no use for people he couldn't get something from or do something to. “No. No people. I never chomp people if they aren't trying to hurt me. We'll let her be.”

“Suit yourself,” he said indifferently. “You're the one who's hungry.”

“Hello,” Becka said as they met the girl. “I'm Becka, and this is--” She hesitated, not wanting to identify the Dastard by his real name and talent. The Sea Hag would know it anyway, and an innocent person did not need to be burdened by it.

“Dashing,” the Dastard said.

That wasn't a name Becka would have come up with, but she let it be. “My talent is turning dragon, and his is--is changing events.”

“I'm Janell,” the girl said. “My talent is exaggeration.”

“You mean you tend to say things that are more than they really are?”

“No. I exaggerate things.”

“Isn't that really the same thing? Like saying a berry is big, when really it's small?”

“No. I exaggerate the berry.”

Becka was having trouble with this. “I don't think I understand.”

Janell glanced to the side. There was a bush with a single dried up greenberry. “Like this.” Janell reached down to pick the berry. As she did, it expanded, becoming a big juicy fruit. “See: Now it's this big.”

“It's exaggerated!” Becka exclaimed. “This would make a meal for a person!”

“Or for three,” Janell said, touching it again. This time it expanded to watery melon size.

“Then let's eat it!” Becka said, delighted. “I was hungry, and this will feed us all.”

“We don't have any place to sit down and eat,” the Dastard grumped.

“Let me exaggerate this rock,” Janell said. She touched a stone by the side of the path, and it expanded into a small boulder. Then she touched three pebbles, and they swelled into rocks big enough to sit on.

“This is wonderful,” Becka said, sitting down and setting the fruit on the table stone. She rummaged for her pen knife, but it was too small to cut the huge berry.

“Allow me,” Janell said, touching the knife. It expanded into a full-sized kitchen knife. But it was dull. So Janell touched it again, and it became super sharp.

Even the Dastard was becoming impressed. He reacted in his customary way. “Let's see your panties.”

“What?” Janell asked.

“He says you must have some pantry,” Becka said quickly. “With all that exaggerated fruit.”

“Oh. No, I simply exaggerate things as I need them, so I don't need to store them.”

“What I said,” the Dastard said carefully, “was for you to show me your--”

“Your talent!” Becka. said. “But Dast--uh, Dashing, she's already shown us more than enough. It's our turn to show her ours. Our talent, I mean.” She rushed on, afraid of his next clarification. “For example, here's mine.” She stepped away from the rock table and turned dragon for a moment, spreading her wings.

“Oh, that's impressive,” Janell said. “You really are a dragon girl.”

Becka turned back. “Yes. My sire is Draco Dragon. I'd like to meet him someday for more than an hour.” She returned to the table. Draco didn't mind flying with her, but was always afraid she would turn girl and reveal his guilty secret to other dragons. So most of her life had been spent in girl form with her mother. That could get tiresome.

“What I'm trying to say,” the Dastard said determinedly, “is that you may not look like much, but if you can exaggerate your panties the way you can other things, you can really become interesting.”

“My panties!” Janell said, coloring.

“He didn't mean that!” Becka cried. “He's joking.”

“I am not joking,” the Dastard said in his most dastardly way. “And while you're at it, exaggerate your figure, too. Then we can--”

“It's just talk!” Becka said desperately. “He doesn't realize how it sounds.”

But her protests were inadequate to stem the tide. “I think I understand him well enough,” Janell said grimly. She looked at the Dastard. “All you see of me is a pair of panties to get into. If you deem them good enough.”

“Now at last you understand,” the Dastard agreed.

Little hard lines appeared around Janell's eyes. “And do you know what I see in you?”

Becka decided to butt out. It was becoming apparent that this woman could handle herself.

“No. Who cares?”

Janell reached across the table to touch his hand. “I see a surpassingly ugly man, with a dirty mouth.”

The Dastard suddenly sprouted green warts, purple tufts of hair in the wrong places, and brown wrinkles galore. He resembled a huge toad with a loathsome disease. He opened his mouth to speak, but instead a big dead fly fell out.

“Who is already halfway to hell,” Janell continued inexorably.

The Dastard disappeared. Becka understood: He was literally halfway to hell, wherever that might be. Exaggeration was versatile.

“Sorry about that,” Janell said. “But I doubt he's worth your time. As boyfriends go, he's a stinker.”

“Oh, he's not my boyfriend,” Becka said. “I don't even like him. I'm just on an assignment to help him.”

“I can't bring him back. My talent is one way. Maybe I shouldn't have gotten mad, but the way he talked--”

“No man has the right to demand a girl's panties,” Becka. said. “I'll have to tell him that. Maybe after this he'll listen.”

“It may take you some time to find him. I think hell is a long way away.”

“That won't be a problem. It's been nice knowing you, Janell. I'm sorry you won't remember me.”

“Of course I'll remember you, Becka! You're a really pretty dragon.”

Then Becka found herself back on the path, walking beside the Dastard, and she was hungry. He had unhappened the whole episode, as she had known he would.

“This way,” he said, drawing her off the path.

They waited while Janell walked past from the other direction. After she was gone, they stepped out on the path again and resumed walking.

“You've got to stop being so blunt about panties,” Becka admonished him.

“Why?”

“Because girls don't like being seen as mere walking panties. They want to think you care for their personalities.”

He laughed. “Who cares about personalities? Take away panties, and all that's left is bras.”

She was having trouble getting through, as she had thought she might. “Dastard, I'm supposed to help you, though I think you're an utter creep. And maybe the best way I can help you is to make you realize that you're never going to impress a princess or any other woman if you don't clean up your language.”

“$$$$!” he swore.

“Exactly. If I hadn't been corrupted by the Sea Hag, that word would have freaked me out. Now why don't you try to be nice to the next girl you meet?”

“Oh, I can do it,” he said. “I just don't see why I should bother.”

“Because maybe you can unhappen things when they go wrong, but if you, perish the thought, should meet an available princess, you won't be able to marry her by unhappening the encounter. You'll have to impress her favorably. Your talent won't impress her, because she'll never see it. You have to do it without magic.”

He looked surprised. “I never thought of that.”

“Now let's try to find something to eat. You just unhappened a good meal.”

They walked on, but the pickings remained sparse. This was a barren region of the forest.

One more girl came down the path. She was cute, but looked to be only five years old. “Nothing there,” the Dastard muttered. “She not a nexus, and too small for--”

“So you have nothing you want from her,” Becka said. “So try to be nice to her. It'll be really good practice.”

“All right!” he snapped. “Then will you stop bugging me?”

“Yes.”

“Hello, cute little girl,” the Dastard called as they came within range. He sounded friendly.

“Hello, strange homely man,” the child replied.

“I am Dashing, and this is Becka, who can change into a dragon. Would you like to see that?” He sounded excited.

“Yes!” the child cried happily.

So Becka turned dragon, and suffered herself to be petted in that state. The child turned out to be Piper, the daughter of Hiatus and Desiree. Hiatus was the son of the dour Zombie Master and Millie the Ghost, while Desiree was a dryad: a tree nymph. How the two had ever gotten together was a long but interesting story, and now here was Piper, the point of it all, whose talent was healing. “Not like healing elixir,” she said. “I'm not that good. But I can heal some, and maybe more when I grow older.”

“But why are you traveling alone?” the Dastard inquired, sounding interested. “Shouldn't you be at home with your mother?”

“No, she lives too close to the madness,” the child explained. “It waxes and wanes, and gets kinda crazy, so when it does, I go visit Castle Zombie for a while. I know my way around the forest.”

“You surely do,” the Dastard agreed, sounding impressed. “Your mother would have made sure of that.”

“Yes, she can't leave her tree, but I can. Well, 'bye, you nice people; I gotta go.” And she went cheerily on down the path.

The Dastard turned to Becka. “Well?” He sounded disgusted.

“I'm amazed! You were charming. You do know how to do it.”

“I told you I did. I just don't see the point, if there's nothing I want from her. So now we're rid of the little brat and I don't want to hear any more from you.”

Becka realized that without a soul he would never see the point. “Okay.”

“Now there's a nexus,” he said.

“A nexus,” Becka agreed, resigned. How long would she have to watch him doing his dastardly deeds?

This time it was a female troll who came down the path. “Ugh,” the Dastard muttered. “No panties there.”

“So maybe you should just let her pass by,” Becka suggested, not wishing the mischief of unhappening on anyone, even a troll.

“No, a nexus is a nexus.”

So they hailed the troll. “Who are you, ugly face?” the Dastard asked, reverting to his normal crudity.

“What do you care, crude mouth?” she responded in kind. Already, Becka liked her better.

“You have recently done something or discovered something, or have had some significant effect on something,” he told her. “I mean to change that.”

“I don't care if you mean to fly to the moon! If you try to interfere with me, I'll banish you.”

Perhaps the experience with Janell made the Dastard cautious. “Banish me?”

“Like this,” the troll said. She pointed to a nearby rock--and suddenly it was gone. “I can banish people too. Can't necessarily bring them back.”

The Dastard nodded. He understood threats. He turned charming. “That's an excellent talent.”

The troll gazed at him as if trying to determine whether he was sincere. Then she changed into a centaur filly. “So what makes you think I have discovered something?”

Both Becka and the Dastard stared, she at the face, he at the bare breasts. “You are you the same creature?” Becka asked. “I mean--”

“I'm the same person, yes,” the centaur answered. “Just a different form. And a different talent.”

“A different talent? But--”

“But I can't control my form,” she said. “I am Xena. Who are you?”

“I am Becka. I'm a dragon girl.” She turned dragon for an instant. “So I know about changing forms. But that's all I do; I have no other talent, really. How can you have two forms and two talents?”

“I don't know, but I do. In this form I can see the true nature of anything. I see you are telling the truth.” She looked at the Dastard. “But you--what a dastardly piece of work you are! You have no soul!”

“So what have you discovered?” the Dastard asked.

“That you have no--” Then the centaur was replaced by a clothed female with her head in the shape of a star, holding a tray supporting several bowls of soup.

“What are you now?” the Dastard asked. His interest might even have been genuine.

A mouth appeared in the star-head. “A souper star, of course. Have some soup; it's hot.”

Becka was really hungry by this time, so rather than marvel where it had all come from, she accepted a bowl of blue carrot soup. It was delicious. She noticed that another bowl appeared on the tray the moment hers was off it.

“I mean, what other thing did you discover?” the Dastard said.

“Oh, that,” Xena said. “It's a--”

She disappeared and was replaced by a fat trunked little tree. It danced constantly around, never rooting in one place for very long.

“This grows wearisome,” the Dastard said wearily. “What is she this time?”

A wooden mouth opened in the trunk. “A hyper-bole, of course.”

“What's a hyper-bole?” Becka. asked.

“A very active tree trunk,” the mouth said.

Then the tree trunk disappeared, and a normal seeming woman stood there. “Unless I happen to assume the form of a hyperbole,” she said, pronouncing the word differently. “Then I get wildly exaggerated.”

“You're making me dizzy,” Becka said.

“Excess exaggeration can do that.”

“Don't assume that form!” the Dastard said, alarmed.

Becka stifled a smile. He was thinking of his experience with Janell, whose exaggeration was not verbal but physical. “What's your talent in this form?” she asked Xena.

“It is to copy people. But it's not much good, because they last only a few days, and they're really stupid. Only the original has normal intelligence.”

The Dastard was interested, which was not a good sign. “Can you copy yourself?”