Ghost Writer in the Sky

by Piers Anthony

  He woke in the afternoon, hungry and with a pressing bladder. And with his mind full of punnish takes on the fairly tales. Such as “The Princess and the Pee.” Well, why not? It wasn’t as if he would have to work out the main story himself.

  At dusk he fell into another daze, and the Colt did come. “Bad news,” the horse said. “I remembered a crucial limitation: only the mares can actually carry the dreams. I don’t qualify.”

  Ouch! But Goar, in his sudden desperation, actually came up with an imaginative answer. “But surely I can carry them, since I’m inventing them. So I can ride you, in my dreams, and you can take me to Xanth and to the places we need to be, where I can sow my stories. You will still be instrumental in delivering them.”

  The Colt considered. “There was a time when a girl managed to ride a night mare. I suppose a man could ride a night colt. But only in your dreams; I have no physical substance here in Mundania, and not much in Xanth.”

  “Then let’s do it,” Goar said. “I’m asleep now. Let’s do a test ride.”

  “Do you know how to ride a horse?”

  “No. I suppose I can hang on to the saddle horn.”

  “I don’t wear a saddle.”

  “I have to ride you bareback? That’s beyond credence.”

  “That complicates it,” the Colt agreed. “I will be leaping into the sky. What happens if you fall off?”

  “I guess I’d wake from the dream as I hit the floor. But since this is a dream, let’s amend it: I will imagine that my legs stick firmly to your hide, so I can’t fall.”

  “At least, not without pulling my hide off. Why not simply imagine you’re an expert rider?”

  Goar’s jaw dropped. “Why not, indeed! Okay, I’ll be a fine experienced rider.” He promptly jumped onto the Colt’s back.

  The Colt leaped up through the ceiling. They passed through all ten floors and out the roof, leaving some folk staring. This was a realistic dream!

  Then they entered the Fantasy Land of Xanth and galloped through the sunset. The sky was turning red. The Colt jumped from cloud to cloud, gaining elevation.

  “Yahooo!” Goar cried, waving his imaginary cowboy hat as they soared. “Yippee ti-yi, or whatever.”

  “Let’s get down to business,” the Colt said a bit sourly. “Spread some dreams.”

  “Okay. How about ‘Goldilocks and the Three Beers?’”

  “How does that go?”

  “Goldilocks is a little girl. She wanders into this bears’ house while they are out taking a walk. She finds three beers on the table, and sips from each. One is super spicy so she can’t drink it. The next is so bland she spits out the sip. The third is just right, so she drinks it down and gets instantly drunk. That makes her sleepy, so she tries the three beds. The first is hard like a board. The second is so soft she’s afraid she’ll sink to the bottom of the earth. The third is just right, so she lies down and falls asleep. She’s still there when the three bears return. ‘Someone sipped my beer!’ the papa bear exclaims. ‘Someone sipped mine too, and spat it out,’ says momma bear. ‘Someone sipped my beer, and gulped it all down,’ says Baby bear. Then—”

  “We have a problem,” Colt said. “We don’t have any bear family like that in Xanth, and bears here don’t drink beer.”

  “Well, find any three bears, and we’ll make them fit the story.”

  The Colt swooped down low over the green jungle, and soon did find three bears who were snoozing near a honey pot. “The story of Goldilocks and the Three Beers!” Goar called. The words drifted down and sank into the bears.

  Nothing happened. Was something wrong?

  “Maybe the timing is incorrect,” the Colt said. “This is the evening, when they’re sleeping. We need to catch them just before they wake. Because this isn’t a real dream, for them; it’s supposed to be a story for them to act out awake.”

  “We’ll try it again in the morning,” Goar agreed, nevertheless disappointed.

  They returned to Goar’s apartment in Mundania. At least they had had a trial run, proving their ability to fly through the sky of Xanth. Great things might be in the offing.

  “I will return in the morning,” the Colt said. “Maybe you should have a different story ready.”

  “I will,” Goar promised as the Colt leaped back through the ceiling and disappeared.

  He spent the night, his normal waking time, refurbishing the stories suggested by the fairy tales. He decided to try ‘The Three Little Prigs’ next.

  In the morning Goar was ready. “I have a different story,” he said as he mounted the Colt. “It’s about three little prigs. Three teenage girls, each of which is fussier about minor deals than the others. Then comes the Wolf, who wants them for a nefarious purpose. But he’s big and messy and has carrion breath, so they’re not interested. When he comes after the first girl, she slams the door of her straw house in his face. But he huffs and he puffs and he blows her house down and catches her. Then he goes after the second prig, and she hides herself in her wood house, but he huffs and puffs and blows it down too, and gets her also. Then he goes after the third prig, but she barricades herself in her brick house, and he can’t get her. So she lives and dies an old maid.”

  “That’s not much of a story,” the Colt said as they flew across the landscape of Xanth.

  “Well, it’s what I got.” Goar didn’t want to admit that it was rather freely adapted from a fairy tale, his own imagination having failed him. “Find me three prigs near a wolf.”

  The Colt swooped down over a village. They could see into the houses as if they were roofless. Some villagers were out and about, but though they glanced at the sky, they obviously didn’t see anything unusual. Goar and the Colt were invisible. Which was fine. It allowed them to do their business without fear of interference.

  And lo, there were three houses near the edge where teen girls slept. “The Tale of the Three Little Prigs!” Goar hollered as they passed over the houses. He saw the girls stir as they received the dreams.

  They flew back to his apartment. “I will watch and report what happened, tonight,” the Colt promised.

  Goar waited impatiently for the night report, meanwhile adapting more fairy tales to his purpose. But when the Colt came, he was disappointed. “They woke up and shook off the dreams,” the Colt reported. “Nothing interesting happened.”

  “What are we missing?” Goar asked.

  “I think your stories lack sufficient definition. You need to nail them so they can’t be dismissed. Maybe if you wrote the title where folk could see it, so they know it’s a story setting.”

  “And maybe I can name the girls, for this purpose,” Goar said. “So they’re tagged, as it were, and can’t move on until they have fulfilled their roles.”

  “We’ll try again tomorrow,” the Colt said.

  Before dawn, they flew to the village again. This time Goar made a smoking torch—in his dream he could conjure things as needed—and held it aloft as the Colt made letter patterns in the sky right above the three houses.

  THE THREE LITTLE PRIGS

  “Who are named Eenie, Meanie, and Minnie,” Goar pronounced. “Who are about to encounter the Big Bad Wolf.”

  Then they hurried back to Mundania, because making the aerobic title had taken time and they had to be gone before dawn.

  The Colt appeared that evening. “I have good news and bad news,” he said. “The story worked. But it didn’t play out exactly as you had plotted it.”

  “I will endure,” Goar said, secretly relieved, because what he really needed was not a timid adaptation but an original story.

  It turned out to be some story. It seemed that the first Prig, the one named Eenie, woke first, got up, opened her door, and was confronted by the Wolf, exactly as specified. The Wolf was dressed like a big lunk of a neighbor boy. “Well, little girl,” Wolf said with a lup
ine smile that showed too many teeth. “You and I are about to have a fine time. Let me into your house and we’ll indulge on your bed.” He eyed her contours, which actually were good ones.

  Eenie considered that for all of a microsecond. But Wolf was shaggy, and his teeth weren’t clean, and his breath smelled of carrion. That turned her off. She was very fussy about such details. “Not by the hair of your chinny chin chin,” she replied, and slammed the door in his face.

  That annoyed Wolf, for some reason. “Well, I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blo-o-ow your house down,” he growled.

  “Get lost, fur-face,” Eenie called from inside.

  So Wolf huffed, and he puffed, and he blew out a blast that compared pretty well to a hurricane. It blew the house apart, exposing Eeenie. “Well now,” Wolf said, licking his chops. “Shall we get to it, you delectable morsel?”

  But Eenie’s talent was the Flee Market. The one magic thing she could do was flee fleetly to that market. So she fled to it, with the Wolf in slavering pursuit. Unfortunately he mistook it for the Flea Market, where fleas went to pick up their dogs, and the fleas mistook him for a dog and leaped on. It took him an hour with noxious chemicals to get free of fleas.

  But the Wolf had by no means given up the chase. The first little prig was gone, but there was another next door. She lived in a wood house, which she was now busily cleaning, being persnickety about such details. Wolf pounded on her door. “Open up,” he cried. “I have urgent business with you, you tasty little twerp.”

  Meanie had a certain streak, and she didn’t much like being termed a twerp. “Forget it, hair for brains,” she called without opening the door.

  So Wolf huffed and puffed and it was like a tornado blasting the house to smithereens. Meanie was exposed in more than one sense; the wind had also blown away her clothes. That annoyed her.

  So when Wolf stepped into the wreckage and took hold of her, she tapped him on the chest and invoked her talent. That knocked the wind out of him, in a single powerful gust, leaving him so depleted he had to struggle to gasp. But he managed to get out a few words. “That was mean of you.”

  “Thank you,” Meanie said. “Now get your carcass out of here before I touch you again.” It was no bluff, and he reluctantly retreated. What business did girls have with magic talents? They only impeded progress.

  But one house remained. Once Wolf had recovered his breath, he approached the third house. It was made of solid impervious brick, so he did not threaten to try to blow it down. This was the occasion for a bit of discretion. “Let me in, trollop,” he called politely. “I have big things in mind for you.”

  Despite Wolf’s politeness, there was something about the way he addressed her that Minnie found annoying, so she responded in kind. “By all means, bush-tail,” she said as she opened the door and presented her nice bare shoulder. Wolf eagerly put his paw on it, a prelude to much further touching—and froze in place. She stepped back, and he toppled, flaking off chips of ice. Her talent, of course, was the Cold Shoulder.

  Then Minnie called in her friends Eenie and Meanie, and the three of them shoved the frozen Wolf into the neighboring sewer and watched him float away. Chances were that he would not be bothering the Three Little Prigs again. Meanwhile, Eenie and Meanie would have to move in with Minnie, at least until their houses were rebuilt. None of them mourned the Wolf. Maybe if he had taken a bath and brushed his teeth it would have been a different story, but they were self-righteously choosy. They knew they could do better elsewhere.

  “And that’s how it went,” Colt concluded. “It seems that Wolf is just not into Prigs, however much he might have desired it.”

  “Too bad,” Goar said. “Still, it pretty much proves the case. I will make notes for my novel. We can choose future prospects more carefully, and get some really interesting stories.”

  “And maybe mess up some staid Xanth traditions along the way,” Colt agreed.

  The two exchanged a mental smile. They were in business.

  Chapter 2

  Princesses

  Princess Eve left her seven-year-old son Plato in the competent hands of the governess Zosi Zombie and walked the path from Hades to Xanth. She was going to visit her twin sister Dawn, who had something disturbing on her mind. Eve was really curious what that might be, because Dawn had a virtually perfect life in Xanth, with a great talent, husband, children, and mission in life. It was not like her to be bothered by incidentals. That sort of thing was Eve’s province; she was the darker one, in hair and mood. Why just this morning she had suffered a weird dream whose details she had forgotten, but the oddity of it lingered. Something about a Princess and a Frog? No, that wasn’t it. Princesses and frogs seldom interacted.

  Eve reminisced how they had come to their places in life. They were twin sisters, twenty-six years old, one lovely as the morning, the other lovely as the evening. They were Sorceresses because all the descendants of Great Grandpa Bink had been promised Magician caliber talents by the Demon Xanth. Dawn could tell anything about anything she touched that was alive, while Eve could tell about anything inanimate. In their youth they had been mischievous girls, sometimes naughtily flashing panties to freak out boys, but both had grown up to be more responsible married women. Eve had wooed and won the Dwarf Demon Pluto and become the mistress of his nether realm Hades, colloquially called Hell, ministering to the sorry souls there. Dawn had wooed and won her friend the walking skeleton Picka Bone, and taken residence in the traveling Caprice Castle, collecting and storing surplus puns. Eve had married for status, Dawn for love; Dawn had the better deal.

  So why was Dawn disturbed? She had the perfect life. It was a mystery.

  Suddenly there was a tavern astride the path ahead. Eve did not remember any such thing along this route; it was the private path the sisters used to visit each other, going to Hell and back, not open for others. Yet here was this establishment, typical of the type that sent many folk to the nether realm. Had she taken a wrong turn while wrapped in her thoughts, and arrived at a bypath?

  Eve stooped and touched the surface of the path with one finger. No, it was correct and unchanged. Somehow the tavern had been added to the existing path. How, and maybe more importantly, why? Every citizen of Xanth had a magic talent of some sort, ranging from Magician or Sorceress level down to hardly worth it. Someone must have the talent of instantly building houses, and dropped one here on the path. That man needed a Speaking To—it was surely a man, because women had little truck with such establishments—to be sure he didn’t do it again.

  Well, maybe she could find out. She walked up to the building and touched the door with her finger. And stood surprised, if not quite amazed. Because the tavern was illusion. That was to say, more apparent than real. She was unable to tell who had made it, because she couldn’t actually touch it, just the appearance of it.

  Now she was good and curious. Why should anyone plant such a well-developed illusion here on a strictly private path? Illusion was efficient magic, because it required little effort to get an impressive effect, and it could accomplish a lot when it tried. For example, someone might craft the illusion of solid ground that extended over a deep pit, so that anyone who walked innocently along that ground would fall in the pit and possibly get hurt. Nasty men had been known to buy spot illusions for exactly that purpose, to trap pretty girls in locked bedrooms where they had to bargain their way out in a manner they would not ordinarily choose. Men could be such beasts! Not that Eve herself had any such concern; all she had to do was murmur the name of her husband, and the Demon would be there to make very short and quite unkind work of any aspiring lecher.

  Eve walked through the insubstantial door and entered the image of the tavern. And felt a change. The building had become real, as she verified with a touch of the wall. Or maybe the door was actually a portal to send a person to the real tavern at another site. At any rate she was now in the main
room of it, and her touch had also advised her that she was locked in. An illusion trap indeed!

  The room was filled with people and creatures going about their business. Some elves and gnomes were sitting at the bar, glugging from big glass mugs. Some goblins were at the tables, glugging from more ordinary mugs. Some trolls, ogres, and humans were standing around, glugging from yet more mugs. There seemed to be an endless supply of mugs filled with frothy brownish liquid. Yet none of these gluggers seemed to be drunk. Was the drink illusion? Then why should they bother?

  Now she realized another thing. All the folk here were male, except for her. If it was a male-only establishment, why had she been admitted? Because the proprietor could readily have enchanted the door to admit only more males.

  And there before her was a table with a single huge mug. On the side was printed PRINCESS EVE. She was definitely invited to this party. In fact she had been expected.

  One more thing: above the table was a sign floating in the air:

  THE PRINCESS AND THE GROG

  Curiouser and curiouser. Was that a story title? Then what was the story? And why was it being presented in this manner? There was a certain familiarity about it, and she realized that that was what she had dreamed of. Not a frog, but a grog. So this might be part of a larger story.

  Fortunately she did not have to linger perplexed. She could soon unravel the mystery. She extended her finger and touched the mug.

  Uh-oh. The mug contained a magical brew that would immediately render the person who drank it quite drunk and incapable of saying no to anything anyone else might suggest. Worse, it would wipe out the memory of whatever happened this day. In fact it was what in Mundania was known as the date-rape drug. The following morning a girl would have only her sore body to hint at what had transpired.

  Eve became aware that though the males in the room were theoretically engaged in their own pursuits, all of them were actually watching her. Waiting for her to take up the mug and drink the grog with her name on it. For her to be unable to say no, or to remember next day.