Pornucopia

by Piers Anthony

  “You can bring the Cherry Tree here?” Prior was excited.

  “A branch of it, paleass. That's enough. You look at it—then you can quit, and we'll just sashay back down the mountain, and not break any ill wind about it, okay?"

  “Quit?” Prior demanded incredulously. “Because of a look at one fool branch? You're nuttier than I thought, and that was pretty damn—"

  “I'm smart,” Black said, taking no offense. He brought out a red crayon and began marking off a large pentagram. “You got a notion that'll wipe you out—and not only in this life."

  “For someone who doesn't believe in God—” Klo said, poking her head and one breast out of the spray. Then she saw the pentagram. “Hey! That's how you summon a demon!"

  “Don't bother me, pig. This is tricky."

  Prior decided not to bother him either. Black was acting as if he knew what he was doing.

  The Negro completed the diagram, then brought out a package of powder and a candle.

  “Talk of the dark ages!” Klo said, coming out. Prior was ready for his own shower, but decided to keep his clothing on despite the discomfort until he had a better notion what this was all about.

  “The black ages,” Black corrected her automatically. “Now you two stand back. I've got an amulet to protect me, but your only safeguard is this diagram. Don't step in it, don't get too close—DON'T DRIP ON IT, BITCH!” he screamed as Klo did get too close. She stepped back hastily and wrapped the towel about her. Black glared at her a moment more, then resumed. “When I light this—"

  “Sure,” Prior said, amused. Black magic, indeed! He scratched a wrinkle in his scrotum where some chocolate had lodged itchily.

  Black set the candle in the center of the pentagram. It promptly fell over. “So it's like that, eh,” he muttered. He lit a wooden match and melted the candle's base so that the wax dripped, then set it down firmly in the puddle. This time it stayed. He used the same match to light the wick. When the candle flame was steady he popped the lighted match into his mouth to extinguish it, stood back beyond the rim of the pentagram, poured some of the powder into his palm, and made a last check to see that Klo and Prior were well clear.

  Black chanted:

  FEE FOO FII FANCH, I SMELL THE SAP OF A CHERRY BRANCH!

  BE YE GREEN OR BE YE BRASS, I'LL GRIND YOUR WOOD TO WIPE MY ASS!

  As he chanted, he threw a pinch of powder into the candle flame, taking care not to enter the pentagram himself, and there was a bright flash.

  As Prior's sight cleared, he saw within the pentagram a mass of foliage. It was a limb from a tree-and a single bright red cherry showed.

  “There it is!” Black grunted, sweating.

  “Sure enough,” Prior agreed, not knowing what to make of it. It was the spire he required, not the actual branches of the cherry tree, and their removal from the tree wouldn't make it any easier to climb.

  “Now will you leave Mt. Icecream?” Black asked.

  “Because you tore one branch off a cherry tree by magic?” Prior chuckled, walking toward it. “What kind of a white fool do you take me for?"

  “Stay back, idiot!"

  Prior ignored him. He stepped into the pentagram and kicked at the lone cherry.

  His foot never landed. The greenery metamorphosed into a tremendous demon-shape. A huge gray hand shot out to fasten around Prior's neck.

  “So you'll grind my wood to wipe your smelly little pucker, eh?” the demon boomed, blowing sawdust in Prior's face.

  Prior was just beginning to comprehend what Black had tried to warn him of. He should have realized that this was no ordinary cherry tree. How could it grow in perpetual snow, otherwise? Now he was in trouble.

  “No, no!” he gasped, trying to free his neck from the crushing grip. “All I wanted was to—"

  “To take my cherry!” the demon cried. “Well, let's see you try it, sucker! My cherry has never been breached by mortal man, but there's always a first fucking time, right?"

  “To get the spire!” Prior finished, beginning to black out.

  “To get the spire!” the demon mimicked. “As if you could mount to the divine dildo without first plucking the cherries off the five guardian branches of the Tree! Well, I am the least of those branches, and I have taken the cherries of better mortals than you, fool. I'll wipe your ass, all right—right out from your puny body!"

  “Cherries?” Prior was confused, and the hand choking him did not facilitate his clarity of mind.

  “Well,” said the demon conversationally as he squeezed. “Technically they aren't cherries unless they're ripe and fresh and female, and most aren't, unfortunately.” It gave Prior's neck another painful tweak. “But you know what I mean. Unfucked.” Prior finally twisted his neck free, leaving some skin and possibly a vein or two behind, and sucked wind. “No I don't know what you mean. All I came for—"

  The demon put a talon in Prior's collar and ripped the shirt lengthwise. “All you came for was to grind my wood. Ha ha. Well, grind, mortal, grind!” It ripped Prior's trousers open, the claw narrowly missing a testicle. “Shit, mortal—not only are you deficient in wit, charm, and personal hygiene, you're missing a copulatory organ! Wait till I tell my siblings about this!"

  Prior still didn't quite understand what was going on, but was sure he didn't like it. He was naked now, and of course the demon had never been clothed. And the demon had a fat nine-inch phallus stiffened for business.

  Prior tried to pull away and get out of the pentagram, but the demon tripped him and sent him sprawling. Prior tried to roll, and the demon kicked him back. It was, in fact, a game of cat and mouse; the demon couldn't help chuckling every time Prior's chance at escape turned out to be illusory.

  Prior noticed, however, that the cheery cherry demon stayed well clear of the burning candle. Maybe the thing really was made of wood, and would go up in smoke—literally—if ignited.

  Prior reached for the candle. But the demon, no fool, was too quick for him. It caught his foot, twisted it, and threw him down prone with the step-over toe hold. “Hey!” Prior screamed inanely.

  “Sorry—business before pleasure,” the demon grunted regretfully. “Much as I'd like to play with you longer—chew your balls, bite your dong, squeeze the shit out of both ends of you, and all that innocent fun—I have to inflate you first."

  Prior opened his mouth to scream for help, but saw that Black and Klo were staying well clear of the pentagram. They wouldn't come in after him. This wasn't betrayal so much as common sense. It was his own fight, brought about by his own stupidity in blithely entering the forbidden diagram.

  The demon positioned itself, its heavy limbs holding down Prior's own. It leaned forward and banged woody fists into Prior's thighs. “Get them open, flab hole—I can't see your cherry.” And the trunklike penis rammed into a tender buttock. Prior felt as though he were being impaled on a dull stake.

  In fact, he finally had the message. He was about to get raped.

  “You see, only the unfucked can hope to attain the Spire,” the demon said conversationally as it zeroed in for another shot. “That's the way it is. So we five branches eliminate threats by fucking everything that approaches. Beautifully simple, is it not?"

  The demon shifted about in order to gain better penile leverage—and in so doing released the submission hold on Prior's leg. This happened just as Prior realized the truth about cherries. This coincidental (?) juxtaposition galvanized him; he jumped and scrambled so suddenly that the demon was caught offguard.

  Prior somersaulted out of the pentagram where the demon could not follow. “Gee, it was a virgin hole, too,” the creature lamented. “Unsoiled by anything other than shit, water, a few fingers—and an Eeg egg.” It nursed its disappointed phallus. “An only slightly tarnished cherry."

  “Good for you, white turdling!” Black exclaimed. “You won through on your own. Now I can banish the branch and—"

  “Leave it there!” Prior gasped, suddenly determined. The notion of getting mut
ilated or killed had been bad enough, but the threat against his assiduously-defended rectum had made him really angry. He dived for his supply pack.

  “What are you doing?” Klo cried apprehensively. “Don't you know when to quit? That thing might break out and screw us all!"

  Literally, Prior now knew. But this didn't change his mind. He plunged a hand in and brought out the twelve-incher. He clapped Monster to his socket and waited while it burgeoned. “I came to climb the Cherry Tree, and this branch sure needs some climbing."

  “Man!” Black said admiringly as the pigskin towered turgidly, vaguely resembling a football in its full formation.

  Prior marched toward the pentagram, phallus clearing the way like a snowplow. “Now I'm armed, you manfucking woodpecker! Come and get it!"

  The demon seemed daunted, for Prior's fighting member was longer by three inches and leather-tough. But the spell and diagram kept the supernatural creature there, and this was its fucking business.

  Prior stepped into the combat zone again, leading with that massive genital bludgeon. The demon's nerve broke; it was out-gunned. It tried to run, but bounced off the invisible shield outlined by the pentagram and fell, its front scorched. Prior strode forward and caught it from behind, reaching a hand down and under to grasp the hanging testicles and yank the entire loin back. With his free hand he hauled one of the large gray arms around, tweaking those demonic balls when he encountered resistance. Soon he had the demon's hands and feet together, and tied them in one bundle with the remains of his torn trousers: wrists and ankles crossed under the clumsy knot.

  Now the demon got over its momentary shock and struggled earnestly, but that delay had been fatal for it. Prior wrestled the folded posterior into an upright posture and applied the pulsing tip of Monster to the demon's anus. The sphincter resisted, so Prior stepped back and kicked it with his snowboot, leaving a smear of caked vanilla across the hole. The muscle loosened only enough to fire a gaseous stench at him, then sealed as tightly as before. The demon flesh was tough!

  “So it's like that, is it?” Prior muttered as he choked on the fumes. He picked up the candle and applied the flame to the aperture. “Fart again, why don't you!"

  The demon did, not realizing what was waiting. A blow-torch developed as the gas hit the fire, and Prior had to reel back before he got singed. But first he jammed the blazing candle-wick into the open rectum.

  The demon howled. Its body distended, blimplike. Flame shot out of its ears. Then the candle blasted out of its ass and accelerated like a rocket toward the ceiling, leaving a trail of thick smoke.

  Prior launched himself at the rectum again, and drilled in with Monster before the sphincter could recover. It was like a furnace inside the demon, but he gritted his teeth and rammed in every inch before he began bouncing.

  “Fee foo fii fanch!” he chanted in time to the beats. “I smell the sap of a cherry branch!"

  “Mercy, you fucking bastard!” the demon cried as the odor of burning cherry-wood rose from it.

  Prior might have let up then, but something about the phrasing of this appeal annoyed him. “Be ye green or be ye brass, I'll grind your wood to wipe my ass!"

  As he finished the chant, he came, putting out the fire with living fluid.

  The demon emitted a terrible scream as the first jet of semen struck. Then it dissolved in greasy reddish vapor. Prior was left spurting into air.

  “You did it!” Black cried. “You beat the branch! You roasted its cherry!"

  “Yeah,” Prior said, contemplating the spatter on the floor. He knew that his victory had been largely luck—that and a brief combat rage that now was gone. He had never reacted that savagely before. Of course no one had ever tried to sodomize him against his will before, either.

  Black was right: the Cherry Tree was dangerous! He wouldn't care to try battling another demon like that. His quest for his natural penis wasn't worth such macabre risk of life and limb, not to mention virgin anus. They would have to go back down the mountain.

  “I thought you didn't know the score,” Black said as he erased the pentagram. “But that's the finest fuck I ever saw. By a white cock, I mean. You screwed that cherry right out of existence! Man, I sure wouldn't stand in your way now! Let's go on up and smear the whole spook-ridden Cherry Tree with baby-juice!"

  “Amen,” Klo said. “I thought you were a eunuch, but now I know you were just biding your time for a real challenge. I want to watch it all."

  And what could Prior say?

  Chapter 24—Second Branch

  The ascent to Stage Four was the roughest yet. It was not a far piece, but it was steep and treacherous. Prior had found new clothing at Stage Three, but it did not fit him well, and chafed in sundry new places. They used the pitons and ropes to scale a crystalline cliff, then had to lay low in the colored snow for two hours while a black walnut-flavored storm whistled over. The ice cream dumped on their heads was bad enough, but the pelting fragments of nut were like shrapnel, threatening to gouge out the skin of face and hands wherever it was exposed. In addition, their leaking body warmth sank them down into an underlayer of mixed sludge that became jelly-like around them. Prior would gladly have abolished all ice cream from the universe for all time!

  They resumed the climb when the storm abated—and got caught in an avalanche of chocolate chip. The chips were like darts, then like stilettos, and at the height of it like fine swords, for the weather here did not honor dessert-bowl conventions. Black got gashed on the arm by a fragment weighing several pounds, and his cherry-colored blood stained his sleeve, but he wouldn't quit.

  “To get cut by chocolate!” he grunted in disgust. “It's enough to make a fellow believe in white!” Then he looked about nervously, worried that the candy lightning might strike him down for his blasphemy.

  “Probably there was an admixture of vanilla in it,” Prior suggested as Klo did some makeshift bandaging. “That's what made it nasty. It was hybrid."

  “Say, yeah,” Black agreed. “Pure black chocolate would never slice me. You, maybe, but never me. Always trouble when you mix races."

  “Can't trust halfbreeds,” Prior agreed. No, it wasn't at all difficult to get along with the big militant, once he knew how.

  They made it. Prior was dead tired, but it occurred to him that he might be better off tackling the four remaining Cherry Tree branches individually instead of in concert. He was not one of those men who could spurt twice in five minutes (except perhaps in extraordinary cases, such as the time with Oubliette) and certainly not four times consecutively, despite the fine array of weapons available. But if he could space each demon a day or so apart, and make careful preparation....

  “I dunno,” Black said in answer to Prior's query. “My magic ain't all that strong. I'm pretty much a layman, there. I might get the second branch here, but it could reach out of the pentagram some. And I know I couldn't handle the magic of the third branch, even with my amulet. You're strictly on your own there."

  He considered a moment. “But with a dingus like that twelve incher, you can do it. Man, I almost came myself when I saw that thing start pumping!"

  Every time Prior thought it was time to give up, he got unwelcome support for his quest. ‘Well, I'll give it a try,” he said, more bravely than he felt.

  Black set the stage and chanted his chant:

  FII FOO FUM FEE, I SMELL A BRANCH OF THE CHERRY TREE!

  BE IT DEAD OR BE IT GREEN, I'LL GIRDLE IT TO JACK MY PEEN!

  And the branch was there, its leaves green, its cherry bright.

  Prior decided to stick with a winner. He had Monster attached and erect. He took a breath and jumped into the arena, grabbing for foliage where he judged an arm would materialize, and thrusting the phallus toward the anticipated rectum. He wanted to do this rapidly, before the demon had a proper chance to fight. That might spell the difference.

  He found himself with a handful of leaves, his penis nudging rough bark.

  Um. “So you won't convert,
eh? Well, I can still core your cherry!” he cried. He picked up the candle and brought it near, hoping that he hadn't been tricked into assaulting a genuine non-demonic tree-limb.

  Then the metamorphosis occurred, but quietly.

  A woman formed from the wood. She was a dusky nude knock-out—bold of breast, massive of thigh, classic of feature. She wore a necklace of little shriveled sticks, oddly incongruous against her physical beauty. “You wouldn't club an innocent maiden, would you, handsome?” she purred.

  Black exploded with derisive mirth at the sideline. “Innocent! My uncle's cunt!"

  Prior was taken aback momentarily, until he realized exactly what she'd said. Then he doubled his effort. “This is precisely the kind of clubbing an innocent maiden needs!"

  He supposed that she would fight him, but she merely spread her comely legs with resignation. She had a remarkably neat genital region, not a hair out of place. Prior's member throbbed with something more than a sense of duty. “I'm really not in the mood at the moment,” she said.

  Prior was not to be put off by such conventional excuses. “You don't have to be, sister.” He got down on her, on guard against a sneak attack.

  “Not tonight; I have a headache."

  “This is a sure cure for headaches,” Prior said, orienting on her cleft.

  “Yeah,” Black called from the sideline. “Trade a headache for a pain in the ass!"

  “But your organ is too large for me,” she demurred.

  “I'll just bet!” Prior hastened to ram Monster home before the demoness could strike, either physically or verbally. He gripped his phallus in both hands and aimed for the lush target—but the member found no purchase. Somehow it slid past the aperture and smashed harmlessly against her firm cushiony and exciting but nevertheless irrelevant buttock.

  He peered between those statuesque thighs, parting the labia with his fingers, and discovered that she had spoken truth. Her inner cleft—her cunette—was ludicrously narrow, and her virginal vagina was no larger than the diameter of a knitting needle. There simply was no sufficient avenue for his tremendous penis, knock as it might at the portal.