She was on a pleasant pebbled path. She walked along it, and came to a fancy gate with a sign: WELCOME TO ALWAYS-ALWAYS LAND. Beyond it were innumerable fancy entertainments ranging from roller coasters to candy-cane houses. This was definitely a lure for children. Indeed, children were everywhere, running and screaming in childish glee while their parents looked somewhat harried.
She entered and looked around. Where would her (so to speak) children be? It would take forever—perhaps literally—to check every one of the distractions. She needed to locate the children in the next two hours or so, or to be certain that they were not here. She needed help.
Who would help her, and why? She was an attractive woman, apart from her fire; she could probably entice a man to do it. But he would want payment of a certain sort, and might tell her anything to get it, then be off like a ghost the moment he had it. Men were like that; she had seen it often in the Mask. A woman would be a better bet, but what did Pyra have to entice a woman? This was a problem.
She studied the assorted booths in sight. One had a man who passed his hands across the limbs and necks of the children who put them out. What was he doing? She walked close enough to observe more closely.
The sign on the booth said JASON'S BASIN—A HAIR RAISING EXPERIENCE. The proprietor—Jason, surely—stroked his fingers across flesh and left a train of shaven skin. One boy had a hairy arm; it was hairless after the stroke. Another boy put his head in, and Jason neatly shaved the hair off the back of his neck. One girl verging on teenhood sat on the counter and swung her legs inside for stroking and shaving, before her shocked mother hauled her out. Pyra smiled; teens were notorious for testing the limits of the Adult Conspiracy. Of course there wasn't any in this particular reality. Still, parents obviously tried to protect their children.
Another booth's banner said FANNIE'S FANS and had a picture of a folding fan. Children were getting ordinary-looking fans that turned out to be anything but ordinary. One labeled FANCY made sullen folk suddenly like others, becoming their fans, as it were. A FANDANGO made its users dance exuberantly three times as fast as normal, snapping their fingers sharply. A FANTASTIC made folk feel so great that they practically floated. The FANATICAL made them extremely enthusiastic. One who picked up a FANFARE suddenly spoke in trumpet tones. The children plainly enjoyed such shenanigans.
Another booth was labeled POX & BUGS. This was extremely popular with children. The pox was in the form of a big red hen that would dab children unmercifully with red pox marks unless someone made such a fierce display that it scared the chicken off. It was a chicken pox. The bugs were in the form of lice that made people lie uncontrollably. Children were running around telling the tallest stories they could imagine. Probably this wasn't allowed at home, but here they had a pretext.
Still another was labeled JAMES' SUN BEAMS. The man in this booth put on a dizzying display of beams, focusing them without a lens, directing them into dark corners to light them up, making them turn corners. Then the sun went behind a cloud, and his act was halted.
All this was fine, but it wasn't accomplishing her purpose. Shaving fingers, fans, cowardly fowl, and bending sunbeams would not find the children for her.
She looked some more. There was a stall saying LLIANE & LLIANA—ILLUSIONS GAL-LORE. They were making a thing of all the L's, but if the children had been masked by illusion, this could be relevant.
She approached. Fortunately this booth was not busy at the moment. "Hello. I am Pyra. I am looking for three lost children."
Blonde Lliane—her name was on her cap—smiled. "Maybe you could check with the Llost & Ffound office. Children get mislaid all the time."
"Thank you; I will do that. Can you direct me there?"
"Walk down the center aisle," the other woman, brunette Lliana, said. "Turn right. You can't miss it; it's at the end of that aisle."
"Thank you." But this didn't seem enough. "I am not a child, but I am curious about your show."
"My talent is to make illusions real," Lliane said. "My sister's talent is to make real things illusion. We complement each other, which is why we prefer to work together. Would you like a demonstration?"
"Yes, please." Illusions were cheap magic, but could be very effective.
"Here is a real thing," Lliana said, picking up a red ball from a basket with several balls of different colors. "Take it, feel it, verify its reality."
Pyra did so. The ball was quite solid.
Lliana took it back, then held it back out to Pyra. "Now try it."
Pyra reached for the ball—and her hand passed through it. It had become illusory! "That's impressive."
Lliane reached out to touch it. "Now try it," she said.
Pyra touched it, and it was solid again. "That is impressive," she said. "Can you do it to living things too?"
"No, only objects," Lliana said. "If there's an illusion of a person, my sister can make a statue of it, but not a living creature."
"And living things don't stand still long enough for her to make them illusion," Lliane said.
So they couldn't have done it to the children. That was a relief. "Thank you," Pyra said. "Here is my talent: fire." She heated herself so that the flames danced along her body.
"Too bad," Lliana said. "This carnival already has a fire-eater."
"Oh, I'm not looking for work here. Just for the children. Now I'll check that Lost and Found office."
Pyra followed their instruction, and soon found it: LLOST & FFOUND—Jean Poole, proprietor. She paused, assessing it: gene pool? Surely a stage name.
"May I help you?" Jean inquired. She was young, hardly more than a girl.
"I am Pyra, looking for three lost children, ages ten, ten, and five. Have they—"
"No lost children have been turned in here today," Jean said. "When did you last see them? They may be at a game booth, such as the Fairy Tails."
"Stories?"
"Yes. The fairies' tails go to the Fairy Tail Tree, and children pick them for stories."
Pyra considered. "Are the stories suitable for children?"
"Oh yes, of course."
"These ones wouldn't be interested, then. They're naughty children."
Jean laughed. "Sorry I couldn't help you."
"Thanks anyway. I can't even be sure they're on this world."
"Oh, you're a worlds-traveling tourist?"
"Not exactly." Pyra didn't want to talk about herself, so asked the girl about herself. "Is your name a pun?"
"Only partly. My talent is to have all the talents in my ancestry. The trouble is I don't know them all, so can't use them unless I happen to discover them by accident. My father is Whurl Poole, whose talent is making whirlpools. His parents were an anonymous woman and a forget whorl that met in a love spring. My mother is Blue Jean whose talent is making pants; her father was Denim, who could turn cotton into a hard substance, and her mother Jean could sew without using her hands. My parents met after running into the same forget whorl that was one of Whurl's parents, so they may have forgotten more than they ever knew. It's a problem, because I want so much to know about my past. My magic depends on it."
"I appreciate your problem," Pyra said.
"I work here so I can meet many people," Jean said. "Some of them may have known my parents, and known more about them than I do. Darn that forget whorl, even if it is my grandfather."
"I hope that works," Pyra said sympathetically. She was discovering that actually talking with folk and getting to know them was far more evocative than merely seeing them on the pictures of the Reality Mask.
She walked back toward the main aisle. She passed a booth whose banner said DON'T BE A LITERALIST. She paused, curious despite her need to get on with her search.
"Have some milk," the man in the booth said. "It's the cream of the crop." He proffered a glass.
Pyra accepted it and sipped it. It was indeed cream. "You're the literalist," she said, catching on.
"Yes, any figure of speech I use becomes literal,
" he agreed. "So I am being careful not to say to say that you look good enough to eat."
"Thank you for not saying that," Pyra said, smiling. She moved on.
Then she saw a nearby stall containing a handsome but clearly disconsolate man. The sign said FINN THE AMAZING FIRE-EATER. So why wasn't he eating fire? She had a certain interest in the subject.
She approached the booth. "Finn?" she inquired.
The man looked up. He had flame-colored eyes and appealingly scorched skin around his mouth. She liked his look. "No show today," he mumbled, and returned his head to his hands.
"I know something about fire. What happened?"
He looked up again, sadly. "You really want to know? It's a dull story."
She flashed him a fetching smile, exerting the female aspect of her nature. "I really want to know."
He reacted as he had to, becoming more accommodating. "I eat and breathe fire. That's how I earn my keep. But I'm a fraud."
"How could you do it, if you're a fraud?"
"My magic is really to breathe combustible fumes. I have a magic sparker to ignite them. Then I can do clever things with the flames. But my sparker is used up, and I don't know where to find another. I'm finished. I dread telling the boss; I'll get fired. Ha-ha." But he wasn't laughing.
This continued to be interesting. "Maybe I can help."
"Do you have a sparker?"
"In a manner of speaking. Blow some fumes."
He pursed his lips and blew out a small jet of gas. Pyra passed one hand near, and the jet ignited. Suddenly it was a column of fire.
"You did it!" Finn exclaimed, the flames playing around his teeth. "You lighted my fire!" His reassessing glance at her body hinted that there was more than one interpretation of his statement. Neither interpretation bothered her at all. She liked to verify that she could still fascinate the male eye when she chose. There was a certain pride of power in being female.
"I'll make you a deal. I'll light your fire if you will help me search for three lost children."
Finn shut his mouth and the fire went out. "But you can't stay here forever. When you go, I'll be quenched again."
She saw his point. But she had an answer. "You can look for another sparker while I look for the children." Of course he could look without her company, so that wasn't much of an offer.
He considered. She smiled encouragingly and took a deeper breath. Men could be illogically influenced by such irrelevant things. She hadn't promised him anything, but the mere whiff of the hope of such a promise could work occasional miracles.
It did. His eyes connected to her chest and turned off his mind. "Agreed. How can I help you search?"
"What is the most likely distraction half-demon children would go for?"
He smiled, and his face became handsomer. "The Hell & Slimeballs Express. It's notorious. Children love it."
That did sound apt. "Take me there."
He lifted the counter of his booth out of the way and stepped out. "This way, Miss—?"
"Pyra."
"Pyra," he agreed. "Of course."
He brought her to a little station marked HELL & SLIMEBALLS EXPRESS. A miniature train with several cars was rapidly filling with children. A man in an engineer costume sat on the little engine.
Then Pyra noticed another sign: ADMITTANCE—A PIECE OF SOUL. That set her back. "I don't want to lose any of my soul!" For that would make her smaller, as her body here was composed of soul stuff, and she would be missing it when she returned to Xanth.
"Readily solved," Finn said. He went to the admittance booth. "Pyra and I will serve as guards."
"Great!" the man said. He gave Finn two tickets.
Finn took Pyra's hand and led her to a front seat. The two of them barely fit; it was sized for children. In fact it was really two seats along the sides with their knees colliding in the center. "I happened to know they are short of guards. There have been a couple of accidents and folk aren't eager to serve. Don't let the children know."
"It's dangerous?"
"Not normally. It's probably just an aberration. But until they're sure things are clear, they try to put a guard or two on every train."
Pyra looked at her ticket. It said GUARD—FRIENDLY COURTEROUS SAFE. Then something occurred to her. "The ones I'm looking for aren't on this train. How can I check the others?"
"The trains pass each other along the way. You can look across to see whether your children are there."
Pyra nodded. "That seems feasible."
The last car filled and the engineer started the train moving. It chugged along, emitting cute balls of smoke from its little stack. The children screamed with anticipation. The occasional parents along looked resigned.
"Fasten your seat belts, kids," Finn called. "It gets steep."
"Awww!" they chorused in protest. But the parents insisted, and most of them did belt up. Pyra and Finn tried to set an example by fastening their own.
The track climbed a steep hill. The train handled it, rising at a daunting angle. The children screamed again, loving it. Some might have fallen out, without the seat belts. As it was, a number were leaning out over the edges of the cars, daring each other.
The train made it to the top of the hill. Now Pyra saw that this was actually a tall wooden structure, the height of a roller coaster. The train crested the ridge and accelerated down the other side. It was scary and the children screamed with due appreciation.
At the foot of the hill, when the train was going at breakneck speed, another set of tracks swerved close and another train passed, going the opposite way. Pyra nearly popped her eyeballs checking the children on it. None of them were Ted, Monica, or Woe Betide. She wasn't sure whether to be disappointed or relieved.
Now the train made a dangerously sharp turn and ran beside a meandering river. Huge sea monsters popped their heads from the water and plunged ugly toothy heads toward the train. The children screamed again, this time with more authority. But the gaping jaws snapped closed just shy of the train; no children were gobbled.
"The tracks are enchanted," Finn explained conversationally. "The monsters are real, but they never seem to learn that they can't get at the morsels. It makes a fine show."
"Except for accidents?" she asked.
He looked somber. "Best not to speak of those too loudly. We're pretty sure the enchantment remains tight."
"Pretty sure?"
"Well, until we find out exactly what has gone wrong, we can't rule anything out. But the spell has tested perfect every time."
Yet there was some sort of mischief they weren't openly talking about. Pyra didn't like that. Suppose the demon children got caught in an "accident"?
The train turned and chugged into a thick forest. Now the monsters of the woods came out, looking vaguely like dinosaurs, with wetly glinting teeth. They made horrendous passes at the occupants of the train, but couldn't touch them. The children, encouraged, started making faces and calling "nyaa, nyaa!"
They came to a mountain, but this time did not climb it. The train plunged into a tunnel, and darkness closed in like a massive fist. Then the monsters of the subterranean realm appeared, with hugely glowing eyes and questing long noses. They couldn't get close either.
Light appeared: the glow of heated rock. Rivers of lava coursed along beside the tracks, and there was a sinister rumbling. The children had been getting cocky; now they held on a bit nervously. Where were they going?
"This is one good show," Pyra murmured.
"It gets better."
It did. Suddenly there was a jump in the tracks, and the train zoomed downward into a seeming abyss. The monsters could be seen in the high distance, looking balefully down; they didn't dare go into this dread depth. Weird shapes coiled around the tracks, forming a menacing kind of tunnel, but the train rushed heedlessly on. Pyra found herself hoping that this wasn't where any accidents were occurring.
The train slowed, and demons with pitchforks menaced the children, again with no success. Se
veral buxom demonesses turned, hoisted their skirts, and made as if to flash their panties, but somehow something always got in the way so they were never quite visible. "This is an Adult Conspiracy-Approved tour," Finn said.
"I thought there wasn't an Adult Conspiracy here."
"Oh, are you from one of the Non-Conspiracy worlds? Here at Always Always Land we try to honor it, because many of our tourists are from Xanths where it counts."
That was just as well, because several of the slightly older boys were watching rather too eagerly, prime candidates for freaking out. One of the crazy things about boys—and men—was that they never seemed to learn the danger of panties, and so got freaked out again and again. Or maybe that was more properly Always-Always.
"My home reality honors it," she said.
"We draw from many realities, and many moons. We pride ourselves on being a major tourist attraction for children. Folk come here from most of the moons."
A subway train station formed around them, with regular lights and platform. The train glided to a stop. They were at a banner saying welcome to hell.
"Rest stop," the engineer called. "The station is safe, but don't go beyond it."
The children piled out onto the platform. There were machines with every flavor of—slimeballs. They seemed to be big gooey globs of spun sugar. The children quickly grabbed all the balls they could hold and returned to the train, where they soon got into a slimeball-throwing contest.
The train resumed its course. In a moment another train passed it, and Pyra flexed her eyeballs again trying to check every child in it. None of the three she sought were there.
Now the train was climbing. Hell, it seemed, was deep underground. It forged to the base of a mighty chasm, passed into a tunnel on the opposite side, turned, crossed the canyon at a higher level, entered another tunnel, and came to a screeching halt.
"Trestle's unsafe," the engineer said. "Lucky I saw it in time."
"This is our call," Finn said grimly, getting out.
Xanth 30 - Stork Naked Page 23
