“That’s no ordinary bat,” she said. “That’s a com-bat! I’ll never be able to pass it.”
Nimby, behind her, shrugged, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. He was being neutral. That made her suspicious, not of his motive, which was surely amicable, but that there was a way, and he was trying not to give it away. And of course, there was a way, because otherwise it wouldn’t be a legitimate Good Magician challenge.
She pondered a moment, and cogitated an instant, and thought a while, knowing that this would not be easy unless she found the right approach. It wouldn’t do to try to get around the bat, or to fight it. She had to outsmart it, or at least figure out the proper way to denature it. There had to be something obscure that would be obvious the moment she thought of it. Because that was the way everyone knew the Good Magician’s challenges were. He didn’t want just anybody barging in to pester him with Questions, so he made it difficult to reach him, but he did play fair, by his definition. By anyone else’s definition he was a grouchy gnome, of course, but nobody else’s definition counted for much here. So what was there? Her fine new mind focused, exploring possibilities and bypaths at a rapid rate. What was obscure but obvious? There wasn’t anything special in the landscape; no evidence of doors to underground bypasses or such. In fact, the only thing even a quarter way remarkable was the marking pen she had found.
Ha! That was surely it! Things did not just lie around the Good Magician’s premises; everything was here for a reason. So this had to be the key.
She brought out the pen. It was just a garden-variety marker, somewhat used but still serviceable. How could this ever help her?
Her good mind focused on the problem. Assuming that this was the key, how would it operate? It was a pen, a marker, a—a Magic Marker? To mark the com-bat? That seemed unlikely, because the bat would destroy her lovely, beautiful but not phenomenally muscular or armored body before she got close enough to do that. A pen was made mainly for writing—
For writing. Suppose she wrote something with it—something that would help her? Like GO AWAY COM-BAT?
She fished in her purse and found a little notepad. She took the cap off the marker pen and wrote GO AWAY COM-BAT.
Nothing happened. But of course, she hadn’t tested it yet. She took half a step toward the moat—and the bat zoomed up before her, threateningly. She hastily canceled the rest of her step and retreated, and the bat zoomed away.
Obviously that wasn’t it. But maybe she just hadn’t found the right way to use it. How else would a magic marker work? She couldn’t think of anything much, despite her superior mind.
She glanced at Nimby, but he remained carefully neutral. And she wasn’t about to ask for his help anyway. “Um, if you want to take a nap or something—” No, he didn’t sleep, he claimed. “Maybe play a mental game that entertains you? I hate to bore you with my indecisions.”
Nimby nodded, and went into a state of repose. She wondered what a donkey-headed dragon had to think about. At some point she would ask him. But now she had other business.
She crossed out her message—and there was a tiny shimmer around her. She looked around, afraid that a quake monster might be approaching to shake her up, but all was normal. So it must have been an indication of magic. Crossing out the message had canceled it, and that had had magical effect. If only she knew what it was.
She focused her mind once more. Why was she having so much trouble with what should be a simple matter? Somehow it seemed that even her old, dull self would have figured it out by now.
Then a dim bulb flashed over her head. Maybe this challenge was geared to her regular self. Maybe the Good Magician didn’t realize that she was now much smarter. Or maybe he realized, but didn’t care. So he had set her a simple challenge, and she was being too intellectual about it.
“So let’s try it the dull old-fashioned way,” she said.
She turned a page on the pad and wrote COM-BAT. Then she crossed out the C and wrote W. And felt the trace tingle of magic. Had it worked?
She stepped forward—and there was a small furry creature standing barely knee-high to her. It was a wombat. It tried to bar her way, but she simply stepped around it and proceeded. She had done it! She had used the magic marker to change the name, converting the deadly creature to a harmless one. The key had been in naming it, and changing the name. Obvious—to a nonintellectual person.
She came to the bank of the moat. Now, where was that dock and boat she had seen? She saw the boat, but now it was perched on muck, and between her and it was the biggest, hugest, hairiest, awfulest spider she could remember encountering. It wasn’t big enough to gobble her down in a single bite, but three or four bites would do it. Actually spiders, as she remembered, didn’t gobble prey down whole; they trussed them up in spiderwebs and sucked the juice out. But she didn’t want to be juiced, either, no matter how juicy her current luscious body was.
Chlorine was retreating as she pondered; it seemed to be the expedient thing to do. The spider did not follow. In fact, it had disappeared—and there was the dock she had seen before. So she reversed course, trying to reach the dock before the spider returned—and the spider reappeared. And the dock was gone.
Something was definitely odd. The spider wasn’t blocking her view of the dock; she could see handily around it. There simply was no dock. Was she up against illusion? In which case, which was the illusion: the spider or the dock? It made a difference.
She retreated a step, this time watching the spider. And the spider disappeared—and the dock reappeared. They were changing into each other! This was a dock spider.
Her fine mind began to take hold. This was definitely a challenge, and she surely wouldn’t be able to handle it by writing the word SPIDER on her pad and changing the SP to C. Even if that worked, what good would it do her, since she didn’t want cider, she wanted that dock so she could get in the boat without muddying her pretty little feet. She needed to get to that dock without it changing into the spider. How could she do that?
What was the stupidly simple answer? Immediately it came to her: bribe the spider. But what would it want, aside from a long session sucking her succulence? What else did she have that might appeal to it?
The magic marker! She no longer needed it, but maybe the spider would like it. If she made a good enough case for it, in spider terms.
She stepped toward the spider, though she was prepared to backpedal at a furious rate if she had to. “Hey, handsome creature!’’ she called. “How would you like something nice?”
The spider wiggled its mandibles, and a drop of slaver fell to the ground, where it smoked quietly as it digested an unfortunate little poul-tree that hadn’t even yet grown its first chick, let alone the roc bird it might have made at maturity. Chlorine felt sorry for it, but knew she couldn’t help the tree.
“No, you can’t have me,” she said quickly. “Under this pretty exterior I’m just a plain and rather tasteless person anyway. But I have something that may appeal to you more: a magic marker.” She held it up. “This marker can change things. For example, you could use it to change a lug to a bug. Here, I’ll demonstrate.” She looked around and spied a lug, which was a kind of nut from a nuts and bolts tree. She picked it up and set it in front of her. Then she wrote
LUG on her notepad, and crossed out the letter L and replaced it with the letter B. And the lug became a bug.
“See—just the kind of magic you have always wanted,” she said enthusiastically. “Think what you could do with a big lug! You could turn it into Xanth’s biggest juiciest bug. And feast on it, snug as a lug in a rug.”
The spider slavered some more. It liked the notion.
“And I will trade you this fine magic implement for one favor,” she continued persuasively. “All you have to do is become the dock and let me get on board that boat. Then you can have the magic marker and my pad of paper, so that you can—” She hesitated, paused by an awkward thought. “You do know how to write?”
But
the spider shook its head no.
This was a problem. But her fine mind rose to meet it. “Well, can you draw? Let me see if this works with pictures.” She found another lug and set it before her. She quickly sketched a crude picture of it, then crossed it out and drew an even cruder bug.
And the lug became a bug. It did work pictographically. Maybe the Good Magician had figured she was too stupid to read and write. Which was actually a pretty accurate assessment; she had never gotten beyond the first year of Centaur School, so could handle words of only one or two syllables. If she had had to write “quintessential,” she would have expired.
“So if you can draw, you can use this marker,” she concluded. “I confess I don’t know exactly how versatile it is, but since there are a number of lugs around here, at least you’ll have all the bugs you want. Is it a deal?”
The spider nodded yes.
But now she had just the slightest, wee-est little tinge of apprehension. Was this spider honorable? Suppose it grabbed her and the marker? But then she concluded that it must be honorable, because otherwise the Good Magician wouldn’t use it in a challenge. So she girded her loin—no, that would be unmaidenly. She lifted her chin and walked into the spider’s range. If she had misjudged the situation, and the spider grabbed her and tried to suck her juice, she would turn its juices to poison and make it sorry. But she hoped for the best.
The spider became the dock. Chlorine set dainty foot on it and went to the boat. She climbed in. Then she set the magic marker on the dock, untied the boat’s tether, picked up its paddle, and shoved off. “Nice doing business with you,” she called cheerily.
The spider reappeared, holding the marker in its mandibles. It waved at her with a long forelimb. She had passed the second challenge.
Oops—she had forgotten Nimby. “Hey, Nimby!” she called. “Can you join me?”
Nimby walked down to the dock as Chlorine returned. The spider obligingly changed form, allowing Nimby to tread its planks and get into the boat. Maybe it realized that Nimby was actually a dragon with impenetrable scales, so wasn’t anyone to fool with. Then they pushed off again.
She paddled across the moat without incident. But she knew there would be a third challenge. What would it be? They were never the same, she understood. Just so long as it wasn’t a fierce moat monster, because she didn’t know what she would do in that case.
She came to land at a garden within the moat outside the Good Magician’s castle. They climbed out of the boat. The moment they did, the boat wended its own way back across, stranding them. It was now too late to change her mind.
She gazed at the garden. It was lovely and loathsome. The left side was overgrown with foul-looking and -smelling weeds and had statuary that was downright disgusting. The right side had a multitude of pretty flowers, with attractive scents. Naturally that was the side she wanted to step into.
But the path led into the foul side, so that was where she went. It would have been impossible to go into the nice side without treading on flowers and ripping out beautiful vines, and she couldn’t bear to do that. But the path was overgrown with burrs, thorns, nettles, stinging vines, scratchpads, and even a stink horn she just missed stepping on. That would have wiped out all her appeal in one swell foop, for nothing and nobody could stand the sound or stench of stink horn.
The farther she went, the worse it got, until it was plain that she could not get through this way. This was one mean garden half. And obviously a challenge.
She backed out and rejoined Nimby, who was innocently waiting. Her nice dress was smirched with refuse-colored yuck, and her arms and ankles were scratched. What an awful section!
She considered the nice side again. If only the path were there! But it wasn’t, and though the garden was beautiful, it was just as thickly woven as the ugly side was. Not only would she do a horrible amount of damage if she tried to forge through there, she probably wouldn’t make it to the far side anyway.
There had to be a way through. But where was it, if not the path? Chlorine looked back and forth between the two garden halves, sure that she was missing something.
Now that she took the time to wake up and smell the flowers, as it were, she saw that the path was lined with purslane, which made sense for a lane, and trailing arbutus, which made sense for a trail. There were also primroses, making it a primrose path, and at the very beginning, a trail blazer jacket. So no one could be confused about where the path was.
A dim bulb flashed. That trail blazer—suppose she moved that to the other side? Would it then blaze a new path there, where she wanted it? That might be the answer.
She reached for the jacket, but it was just out of reach. She stretched her arm out—and got scratched again. Apparently that piece of apparel wasn’t supposed to be taken. So much for blazing a new trail.
So she couldn’t move the path. What else was there? Move the gardens?
A dim bulb appeared over her head, but didn’t flash. It simply hung there expectantly. She hadn’t quite gotten her bright notion yet.
Was there a way to change the positions of the gardens, so that the same path led through the nice part? Now she thought there could be. It was exactly the kind of inverted thinking that the Good Magician was noted for.
Chlorine reconsidered the gardens and the path. Now she saw that the path wound past a nasty-looking well. She made her way to it, stepping carefully to avoid the nettles and thorns, and peered in. Smoky fumes smudged her face and jammed up her nose. Phew! That wasn’t water in there, that was firewater. Not exactly poisonous; she knew poisoned water when she encountered it, that being her talent. But not exactly healthy, either. Mean spirits. This was one mean well.
Across the path from it was a dingy thyme plant. She turned to consider it. Thyme was tricky stuff, she knew; it could speed things up or slow them down, or even just change the time of day. Normally she stayed well clear of it. But could there be a reason it was growing here, so close to the path and the well? Her bulb brightened slightly.
Mean well, mean thyme. In the mean section of the garden. It figured. But there were other meanings of mean. Such as when a person meant well. Then the intention was good, even if the result wasn’t. Could this be that kind of well? And the thyme plant—it affected time, and sometimes time was sort of average, and they might call that mean time. It wasn’t necessarily nasty, merely rounded off. Suppose some of that well-meaning water were poured by the thyme plant—would that round off the time in a good way? Her bulb brightened. It well might!
She took the grubby bucket and dipped some of the smoking water out. Of course, it looked awful, because its true nature wasn’t supposed to be obvious. But if she was right—
She poured the water at the base of the thyme plant. It turned greener and healthier almost immediately. Then night fell.
What? Chlorine looked around, startled. It hadn’t been close to nighttime! Oh—the thyme plant, feeling its oats, as it were, had accelerated time, bringing the garden rapidly to night. Maybe she should have anticipated that.
But what good did it do her? It wouldn’t be any easier to forge through this tangle by night than by day. Unless—
Now her dim bulb flashed so brightly that the entire garden lit up. Sure enough: this was now the kinder section of the garden. It was a kinder/meaner garden, and one section was as different from the other as day from night. So it was night, and suddenly this half was the nice one—with the path wending pleasantly through it. She had found the way at last.
“Come, Nimby,” she said, as if this were routine. “We shall pay a call on the Good Magician.” And she marched down the path, her way lit by pretty glowworms set along the edges.
The path led right to the castle entrance. Chlorine knocked on the door, and it opened immediately. A pretty young woman stood there. “Welcome to the Good Magician’s Castle, Chlorine and Nimby,” she said. “I am Wira, his daughter-in-law. Please come this way.”
So she had, indeed, been expected. She wa
s glad she had played it straight, and found her own way through the challenges.
They followed her inside. The interior was surprisingly light, because rays shone in through the high windows. Chlorine realized that it wasn’t really night; that had just been a local effect in the garden, which passed when they left the vicinity of the thyme plant.
“How did you know our names?” Chlorine inquired. “If my memory is correct, you—can’t even see us.”
“It is true I am blind,” Wira said. “But I know this castle well, and can’t get lost. And I overheard Magician Humfrey grumbling about the situation. It seems he had no trouble identifying you, Chlorine, but your friend Nimby baffled him. He had to look him up in the Big Book of Answers, sure that there was no such person. But the Book had an entry the Magician must have forgotten, and it said Nimby was a dragon ass with the magic talent of enabling himself and his companion to be whatever the companion wished them to be. That his full name was Not In My Back Yard, because most people didn’t like him. The Magician shook his head, not wanting to admit that he had been ignorant of such a creature. I fear he is beginning to feel his age.”
Chlorine smiled. “The Book of Answers spoke truly. Nimby is not the man he appears to be, but he is much nicer than he looks in his natural form. He is welcome in my back yard, for I have come to know him by his actions, not his appearance. His only liability is that he can’t speak. He is enabling me to have a really nice time, for now.”
“For now?”
“I know it has to end all too soon, and I will return to my wretched home life. But I will always have this wonderful adventure to remember, my single shining moment, thanks to Nimby. I intend to make the most of it.”
“I fear the Good Magician means to make more of it than you expect.”
“Oh, no, my year’s Service is part of it,” Chlorine said cheerfully. “I am resigned to that. It will extend my adventure.”
Roc and a Hard Place Page 39
