“Thank you.”
Rose looked at Myst. “I feel yours too, dear. You remind me of a lovely summer cloud.”
“Thank you,” Myst said, taken aback. A cloud, of course, was vapor. Mist.
Rose gave them watering cans, and they toured the beds of roses. “Do be careful not touch touch any,” Rose warned. “Their thorns can be cruel.”
They were of five basic colors. “I may have heard vaguely of your roses, Magnus said. “Aren’t they magic?”
“Yes. They signal true emotions. The red ones are for Love, the white ones for Indifference, the yellow ones for Friendship, the pink ones for Romance, and the black ones for Death. Folk come to take them to prove their true feelings, such as for Love. The roses always know.”
“I wonder,” Magnus said.
“Yes?”
He murmured something Jess didn’t hear. But Rose nodded. “Perhaps it can be arranged.”
“Thank you.”
Jess, watering a red bed, accidentally touched a stem. No thorn scratched her.
“You are in love,” Rose said.
“Much good may it do me,” Jess said a bit sourly.
Rose looked more closely at Jess. “And you are an odd one. I can’t quite fathom your magic. Somehow it repels me. That is, pushes me away.”
“It’s my curse. Nobody takes me seriously.” Jess glanced at her companions. “They are pretending I am his girlfriend and her mother. That way we can act like a temporary family without them bursting out laughing.”
“And you . . . you wish it could be true.”
Jess felt herself blushing. “Yes. But it can never be.”
“I am not sure of that. I have been cultivating experimental new varieties of roses. Let me lend you one.”
Had she gone totally irrelevant? “But—”
“This one.” Rose indicated a large brown rose. “I think you can pick it.”
Rather than argue with the nice woman, Jess reached out and picked the rose on its stem. There were thorns, but they did not prick her. She stepped back to stand between the man and the girl, holding the rose. It smelled faintly of, well, acceptance.
“What happened?” Myst asked, surprised.
“What, indeed?” Magnus echoed, similarly surprised.
“It’s just a pretty rose,” Jess said.
Rose of Roogna smiled.
“Maybe we should demonstrate,” Magnus said.
“Yes,” Myst said.
“Demonstrate what?” Jess asked.
Then Myst stepped in and hugged her. Magus reached around them both, drew Jess into him, and kissed her. She was so surprised that she was caught off balance with her mouth partway open. Yet there was something different about the contact. Something divine.
Then she caught on. “You’re not faking it!”
“Your curse is gone,” Magus said.
“But—”
“The rose!” Myst said.
“The rose,” Rose agreed. “I have cultured this variety to suppress magic in the one who holds it. I have not had much use for it, until now.”
“I’m not cursed,” Jess breathed, amazed.
“Your magic remains,” Rose said. “It merely is nullified by the rose, at least for a day or so while it remains fresh. That will allow Humfrey to take you seriously, as he needs to. As it happens he is indisposed today, and in any event the firesail boat won’t arrive here until tomorrow morning, so you will need to wait. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Give them a room,” Myst said. “Give me another. I can be alone for one night.”
“There is no need, dear. You can stay with me tonight. In fact you can help me finish watering the roses.”
“Yes! I love the roses!”
“But—” Jess started.
Wira reappeared. “The room is ready,” she reported. “This way, please.”
Magnus took Jess firmly by the elbow and brought her along with him as he followed Wira. Completely confused, Jess went along.
Soon they were alone together in the room. There was food for a meal on the table, a kind of magic called Room Service.
“You’re beautiful,” he said, gazing at her.
“I’m plain.”
“No. It’s the curse that makes folk see you as plain. Now I see you as you are. I’m glad I knew that I wanted you before I saw that. It means I’m not being unduly influenced by your appearance.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“Then believe this.” He led her to a person-high mirror.
She looked. There was this exquisitely attractive couple. The man was Magnus, handsome as ever. The woman was as lovely as he was handsome, matching him perfectly.
Or did she? “It’s a magic mirror!” she said. “Showing me as I wish I were.”
“No. It shows you as you really are. The curse affects even you, in this respect, making you see yourself as others see you. So you think you’re plain. You’re not. The rose shows the truth.”
“I’m not,” she breathed, amazed.
“Jess, I knew intellectually you were the woman for me from the first! That’s why I worked so hard to get around the curse. It prevented me from saying how much I respected you. Now, while I can, I want to do everything with you that I couldn’t do before, especially the physical part. Rose of Roogna understood. Myst knew; that’s why she agreed to leave us alone for a night, the way she’s leaving her folks alone. Just keep holding on to the rose.”
This had to be a dream! A wild indulgence with no reality outside her imagination. But she loved it. She let it continue. Her suit became a vaporous negligee.
“Unless I have been misreading you,” he said. “Is this not something you want as much as I do?”
“Do what you want with me,” she said. Her heart was pounding. What harm could there be in a dream? “Please!”
Magnus did not delay. First he kissed her mouth. Then he took off her negligee and kissed more of her. He was doing it! “More,” she breathed, afraid he would not.
“Oh, yes.” Then he loved her on the bed. She moaned continuously in rapture. She was transported. But always, she clung to the rose. Even in sleep, she knew it was the secret to this experience.
They slept embraced, and woke, and made love again. “But you said pretty girls throw themselves at you,” she said as they rested between efforts. “I’m not pretty.”
“There you go again. You’re not ugly! You’re ordinary with the curse, and that’s fine with me. The girls I have met are shallow creatures,” he said seriously. “All they want is the notoriety of being stars briefly on stage. They see me as just a means to that end. I prefer a girl of a different kind.”
“I’m different,” she agreed. “Because of my curse.”
“You are different regardless of your curse. You have emotional substance. You are the one I want to be with.” He paused, thinking. “Jess, ask the Good Magician to cure you. Or to give you a whole garden of brown roses. I want to take you seriously for the rest of my life.”
This was getting too serious for a dream. “I wouldn’t be much good as your assistant without the curse. You know that.”
“If I must choose between having you as my assistant, or having you as my wife, I want the wife.”
That utterly thrilled her. But something in her would not yield. “I would love to marry you, Magnus. But it’s something I think I should earn myself, not as a gift of a rose. I must keep the curse.” She could hardly believe she was saying that, even in the dream, but there it was. She had never been one for easy answers.
“Somehow I knew you would say that. I respect you for it. There has to be another way.”
“Another way,” she agreed sadly. Why did doing the right thing feel so bad?
“But we still have tonight,” he said. “Let’s make the most of it.”
“The most,” she agreed, relieved that he was not arguing the case further, because she was not at all sure she could hold out much longer if he did.
They dissolved into another storm of rapture.
Jess woke beside him in the morning. She was wonderfully worn out, and she was sure he was, too. What a night it had been!
Had it really happened? Or had it all been a dream sponsored by the rose? She still clutched the rose, but now it was starting to wilt. Its power had been expended. Her curse had returned.
She saw that the food on the table had all been eaten. They must have taken some breaks along the way.
Magnus woke. He reached for her, and paused. “Bleep!”
“The rose has faded,” she said.
“Maybe I can fake it.”
She laughed unhappily. “No. Let’s not mess up the memories.”
“Right,” he agreed. “You were great, Jess.”
“Thank you.”
“There has to be a way.”
“I hope so.”
They got up, cleaned up, dressed, and were ready when Wira came to fetch them for breakfast.
They joined Rose and Myst. “How was your night?” Rose inquired politely.
“It was a dream,” Jess said.
“Some dream!” Myst said.
Magnus just smiled.
Then it was time to see the Good Magician. “He was bottling some vapor from a forget whorl,” Rose said. “His hand slipped, and some of the vapor touched him. He quickly cleaned it off, but it did affect his memory. He is not quite himself today.”
“As long as he can help us get to Fibot,” Magnus said.
“Oh, that is not the problem. The boat will dock here within the hour.”
“Then what?” Myst asked.
“As you know, he requires a year’s service, or the equivalent, for an Answer to a Question,” Rose explained. “He has a mission in mind for the three of you. But he can’t remember what it is.”
They looked at her. “Is there any hint?” Magnus asked.
“Yes. It involves Fibot. Also the participation of one nightmare and one day-mare. And perhaps one or two future princesses.”
They continued looking at her.
Rose shrugged. “That is all I know, because it is all he knows.”
“But how can we perform a mission if we don’t know what it is?” Magnus asked.
Rose smiled somewhat wistfully. “Consider it a challenge.”
The three of them exchanged a rather wavering glance.
“One irony is that it’s not the worst of our problems,” Rose said. “The next querents working their way through the challenges are twins. One has the talent of banishing things to the Void. The other can recover things from the Void. Both talents are extremely dangerous, as they know, and Humfrey needs to devise a way to nullify them. But with his memory messed up, that will be a challenge in itself.”
“We appreciate the challenge of it,” Jess said. It seemed that even the Magician of Information had problems.
Wira showed them up a winding staircase to the Good Magician’s cramped little office upstairs. It was mostly filled by a giant book spread open on a table. Jess knew about this: it was the Book of Answers. The Magician needed to provide the Answers to querent’s Questions.
“The querents are here,” Wira said, and faded back.
“Thank you, dear,” the Good Magician answered. He was gnomishly small, and looked about a century old. Jess was surprised, because why would he be that age when he had youth elixir to youthen him?
“State your Question,” Humfrey said grumpily.
“We wish to obtain transport aboard Fibot from village to village for our show,” Magnus said.
The gnomish eyes squinted at him. “Not to obtain the perfect assistant?”
“I have already found her.”
Humfrey looked at Myst. “Not to be reunited with your siblings?”
“That, too,” Myst said. “But I want to help the show first.”
Finally the Good Magician looked at Jess. “Not to be rid of your curse?”
For half an instant she was tempted to change her mind. Without the curse she could be beautiful! Then she bore down, banishing it. “I want to help the show, too.”
“So be it. Here are three boarding passes. The craft will be at your service as long as you need it, between its other missions.”
They accepted the passes. “Uh, about these versatile clothes,” Jess said.
“Keep them,” Humfrey said impatiently. “You’ll need them on your mission. Whatever it is.”
Then Wira was ushering them out of the study and down the stairs. “I think you surprised him,” she murmured. “That doesn’t happen often.”
“Maybe he forgot our revised mission,” Magnus said.
Chapter 3
Fibot
An hour later they stood in the forest glade marked forty-two and watched the boat come in. It was an impressive spectacle. It was an ordinary small craft, except for two things: it was sailing through the air, and its lone sail was made of fire. That was the fire sail, unlike that on any other boat.
A child sat at the stern, a nine-year-old girl with her hair blowing forward so that it formed a kind of bonnet around her face. “Win!” Myst screamed gladly.
Startled, Win looked, and the boat veered before she reoriented. “Myst!” she cried.
The craft landed neatly on the ground, its square sail flickering and expiring. Win jumped out as Myst ran toward it. The two collided beside the hull, gladly hugging each other. Win was a little taller than Myst, but they were of similar size.
Another girl appeared on the boat. She jumped down to join the other two. She was one size bigger, age ten.
“Those would be her sisters,” Magnus murmured.
Myst hugged her also, then turned to face Magnus and Jess. “This is Squid. She’s our Mock Octopus.”
“Hello,” Squid said shyly.
“I don’t mean to insult you,” Magnus said. “But you look exactly like a girl.”
“Thank you, sir.” She giggled. She was young, but she was clearly impressed by him. Jess realized that his magnetic handsomeness affected girls as well as women.
“These are my pretend family, while I’m away from my real one,” Myst said. “Magnus and Jess. They’re in love, but can’t show it.”
Squid looked at them. “Why not?”
“It’s complicated. Sort of like you being a girl. Show them your tentacles.”
“Okay.” Squid shifted, becoming bulbous with tentacles every which way. It was an amazing transformation.
“Thank you,” Magnus said politely. “Our problem is that Jess is cursed: nobody takes her seriously. I would like to, but usually I can’t. So she can love me, but I can’t love her back, at least not openly. Maybe you can take her seriously, being inhuman.”
“Hello, Squid,” Jess said. “You are impressive.”
“You’re joking,” Squid said, reforming back into the girl.
“She isn’t joking,” Myst said. “But you can’t accept that, because of her curse.”
Squid nodded. “The way some folk can’t accept me as a girl, because I’m a squid. Now I understand.”
Maybe that would do.
Two adults appeared on the boat, a young man and a lovely young woman. Where had they come from? The craft was hardly big enough to hold more than four people.
“Dell! Nia!” Win called. “These are them!”
The two stepped down from the boat, the man helping the woman though she did not look in need of it. He was nondescript, with light brown hair and eyes, and forgettable face and body. She, in contrast, was a stunningly lovely creature, from her glossy dark brown hair and scintillating gray eyes all the way down to her dainty feet.
How had an indifferent man like him won such a beauty? There was surely an interesting story there.
The two approached the three of them, for now Myst was shyly wedged between Magnus and Jess. Jess remembered that while the child knew her siblings, she did not know the others on the boat.
“The way she walks,” Magnus murmured, perhaps unaware that he spoke aloud. Jess understood; the woman radiated nuanced sex appeal from every moving curve. It was surprising that one so young seemed so practiced in her manner.
The two halted before them, framed by the two girls. “Hello,” the man said.
“Hello,” Magnus replied. “I am Magnus, and this is my assistant Jess, and Myst. We are a, well, a make-believe family. The Good Magician granted us the use of Fibot for our traveling. We hope that is all right with you.”
“It’s fine,” the man said. “We got the call, and came over immediately. I am Lydell, Dell for short, and this is my wife Grania, Nia for short. We make a make-believe family with the children, too.”
“We are sure we’ll get along,” Nia said. Her voice was dulcet. “The Good Magician always has good reason for what he does, even if it is not immediately apparent to others.” She laughed, and Jess nudged Magnus to prevent him from freaking out. That bosom in motion was a threat to male sanity. “We discovered that ourselves. We never suspected we’d become a couple.”
Jess laughed, too. “This time it’s not apparent to the Good Magician either, because he forgot what our mission is.”
“You’re joking, of course,” Nia said with a sophisticated hint of disapproval.
“No,” Myst said. “It’s true. He forgot. So we have to find out what it is.”
“Jess is cursed,” Magnus said. “Nobody takes her seriously. That’s why you thought she was joking.”
Nia eyed him in a manner that threatened to blow him away. Jess realized that she, too, was responsive to his masculine appeal. “Yet evidently you take her seriously.”
“I’m faking it. I have learned to accept what she says despite not believing it.”
Dell and Nia exchanged a significant glance.
“It’s true!” Myst said. “I do, too.”
“And we know our sister,” Win said. “She’s not a liar.”
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