Board Stiff

by Piers Anthony

  Tiara laughed. She had a pleasant laugh, too. “No nothing like that! I’m a normal girl. My sisters bring me food every day, and I have a virtual reality illusion game to keep me occupied.”

  “A game?” Ease asked.

  “Yes. It is marvelously inventive and fun. But it is about rescuing a maiden in a tower. That gets old fast.”

  “Because you are a maiden in a tower,” Astrid said.

  “Exactly. I don’t want to play the game, I want to get rescued myself.”

  “We can rescue you,” Pewter said. “But we are cautious. We need to know why you are confined. Is there some horrendous spell that will destroy Xanth if you are freed?”

  “No, of course not. It’s more personal. It’s because I don’t fit in.”

  “Maybe you had better tell us the full story,” Astrid said.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t want to bore you with such a tedious narrative.”

  “Bore us,” Pewter said.

  Tiara immediately complied. “I have many sisters, each with her special nature. There’s Apopto sis, who can program the death of cells. Ba sis, who always gets to the fundamental aspect of an issue. Cri sis, who handles difficult situations. Ellip sis who saves words that others omit. Gene sis who can make almost anything from almost nothing. Neme sis, who makes a bad enemy. Sta sis, who can make anything stop. They’re all very talented, and they all have very neat hair.” At this point Tiara choked up.

  Kandy began to get a glimmer. The Good Magician had told Ease to “merge the hair.” Could this be the hair? How could it be merged?

  “Hair,” Astrid prompted.

  “And I don’t!” Tiara wailed. “My unruly hair is simply awful! I can’t do a thing with it. I am an embarrassment to them all. So they gave me this awful sarcastic name and put me away so as to be out of sight. But I hate being alone. I am a friendly person. I wish I could find and be with someone who doesn’t care about neat hair.”

  Kandy found herself warming to this distraught young woman. If only she knew how much worse things could be than having bad hair! Such as becoming a board, or being a basilisk. But the problem really wasn’t with her, it was with her narrow-minded sisters who wanted her to conform in appearance, when she couldn’t. Just letting her out would not suffice; her sisters would simply put her back in the tower.

  HAVE PEWTER FIX IT she thought to Ease. Maybe that would qualify as merging.

  “Maybe Pewter can fix it,” he echoed. He never questioned the origin of his thoughts, maybe assuming that anything halfway smart must be his own.

  “Let me see,” Pewter said. He approached Tiara and touched her wild hair.

  Immediately it settled down, becoming neatly brushed and coiffed. “Check that,” he said.

  Tiara went to her mirror on the wall. “Oh!” she exclaimed, delighted. “It’s perfect! Now I can rejoin my sisters.”

  “Unfortunately there’s a catch,” Pewter said. “My talent is to change reality in my immediate vicinity, but the effect won’t last when I depart. This is merely an exploratory demonstration; we have not yet solved your problem.”

  “Oh!” she wailed, crushed.

  COMFORT HER Kandy thought to Astrid. BRIEFLY. Because too long a hold would intoxicate her.

  Astrid embraced Tiara reassuringly. Kandy was sure this was an new and unfamiliar role for the basilisk, but surely one it was worthwhile for her to learn.

  In a scant two moments Tiara, reassured, stepped away, looking slightly dizzy. “At least you showed me that you understand. You don’t seem to be repulsed by my hair.”

  “Your hair has flair,” Astrid said. “Personality. Your sisters are wrong to insist that it conform. They should accept you for your other features, such as your magic talent.”

  “But I don’t have a talent!” Tiara wailed anew.

  “Everyone has a talent,” Ease said.

  “I never found mine. The only thing that distinguishes me is my awful hair.”

  Hair that was supposed to be somehow merged?

  “I wonder,” Pewter said thoughtfully. “If you truly can’t control it, there must be magic there, if only a curse.”

  “It just wants to fly off my head,” Tiara said. “Even when I put a hat on it, it won’t stay. I even tried tying it own with a scarf knotted under my chin, but that only made me feel light-headed. Nothing works.”

  “This is interesting. Perhaps we can find out the exact nature of this curse.” Pewter touched her hair again. “Hair reverts to normal.”

  Immediately the hair threatened to sail off her head in a tangled cloud. “Oh, it’s back!” Tiara wailed. She was good at wailing, having had much practice.

  Pewter picked up a dish from Tiara’s little counter. He held it over her head, then let go. The dish did not fall; it hovered there half a moment before starting to slide of to the side. “Anti-gravity,” Pewter said, catching it. “That is special magic.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Your hair floats because it resists the magic of gravity. When you tie it down, it tries to make your head float, so you feel light headed. Your hair is your magic talent. I wonder what the limit is?”

  “I don’t want it to float! I want it to behave, so I can be a regular person.”

  “You are unhappy because you are trying to suppress your magic,” Astrid said. “Instead you should encourage it.”

  “That’s easy for you to say. You have neat hair.”

  “I have no hair at all!” Astrid snapped. “I’m a basilisk.” Then she caught herself, too late.

  “A what?” Tiara asked.

  “Oh, bleep! I shouldn’t have said that. But it’s out. I am a transformed basilisk, given human form and language so I can seek friendship and happiness that I can’t in my natural form. It’s just that I think you should appreciate what you have, instead of bewailing it.”

  “A basilisk! But your stare didn’t kill me.”

  “Note the dark glasses,” Astrid said. “Also, I try not to look at others too much. I am lethal, whatever my form.”

  “If I had known, I would have been terrified of you,” Tiara said. “But you comforted me.”

  “I am a person,” Astrid said. “A deadly person, but I mean well by this group, and by you too. You have no need to fear me.”

  “Now that I know you, I don’t fear you,” Tiara said. “And you’re right: my bad hair is nothing compared to your situation.”

  “About that hair,” Pewter said. “It may be your blessing, not your curse.”

  “No more than Astrid’s death glare is her blessing.”

  “She helps ensure the safety of our party. Your hair may be similarly useful.”

  “How?”

  “For one thing, it might enable you to float or fly, if you gave it full rein.”

  “I don’t see how.” But she was obviously intrigued.

  Astrid found a toehold and stepped into the dialogue. “Repeat after me: ‘I love my hair. I want it to prosper. More power to it.’”

  Bemused, Tiara repeated the words. Her hair flared out twice as far, reaching toward the ceiling. It was almost pulling her up with it.

  “That’s it,” Astrid said. “Now wrap it around your head, under your chin.”

  Double bemused, Tiara did so. And the hair drew on her head so hard that she was pulled up onto tiptoes.

  “More,” Astrid said.

  “I love my hair,” Tiara said.

  And for a faction of a moment her feet left the floor. She wasn’t jumping, she was being pulled upward.

  “More.”

  “I want it to prosper. More power to it.”

  Now her feet left the floor entirely. She floated slowly up to the ceiling.

  “So you can fly,” Astrid said. “That may be only the beginning. If you stretch out your hair so that you can sit on it, it may lift your body more comfortably.”

  Tiara descended back to the floor. “What does it mean?”

  “It means that you can escape this tower b
y yourself. Just train your hair, sit on it, and coast down to the ground. You can be free.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t dare!”

  “You’re afraid your hair might weaken and drop you to your death?”

  “Or that my sisters would not approve.”

  The girl lacked confidence, for sufficient reason. Kandy prompted Ease, who was hardly loath. “Come with us for a while. We’re looking for something significant that may be on one of these islands. You can show us around while you practice with your hair.”

  “That would be wonderful!” Tiara said. “You folk are accepting me as I am.”

  “We know the value of that,” Astrid said.

  They descended the long spiral stairway, Tiara preferring that to jumping out the window. But her feet were hardly touching the steps, either from lightness or delight.

  Back on the ground, Pewter reverted the lock to locked. Let the sisters wonder how Tiara had escaped.

  “I know all these islands,” the girl said eagerly. She pointed. “That one’s the Isle of Flies, populated by Mom and Pop Flies, Infield Flies, Time Flies, Fly Balls (uncouth as it is to refer to them), and Fruit Flies. You could catch some of those last ones; they are many kind of fruits, all quite ripe.”

  “I think we’ll skip that island,” Astrid said.

  Kandy agreed. There was unlikely to be any hair to merge there, and she wasn’t partial to flies anyway. Some of them bit.

  “Next to it is the Isle of Bats,” Tiara continued. “They’re always playing baseball, cricket, and other games with bats.”

  “No,” Astrid said.

  “Then there’s the Isle of Man. That’s where men go who want to marry princesses, waiting for love-lorn ones to show up. I hear they don’t even check their royal credentials, if a girl is pretty enough.”

  “Now that interests me,” Astrid said. “I’m not a princess, but I am shapely.”

  Tiara looked at her. “If you promised not to kill them, many of those men might be interested.”

  “I will keep it in mind,” Astrid said. “After the Quest is done.”

  “You’re on a Quest? What is it?”

  Astrid looked at Ease. “Is it all right to tell her?”

  Ease had been covertly eying Tiara’s body, evidently liking it. “Sure.”

  “We are on a Quest to find an elixir or something that will nullify the virus that is destroying puns.”

  “There’s a virus destroying puns?” Tiara asked, shaken. “Most of my sisters are puns, and many of the creatures on these islands. It would be horrible if such a thing struck here.”

  “Horrible,” Astrid agreed.

  “But your sisters locked you in a tower,” Ease said. “Wouldn’t you be better off without them?”

  “Oh, no, I don’t want to lose my sisters,” Tiara protested. “I want to fit in with them.”

  She was a nice girl, Kandy thought. That was perhaps her problem. But unless she found a permanent way to make her hair behave, her sisters would not welcome her. But how could they encourage riotously free hair to submit to taming? Wouldn’t that in itself be a crime, considering that her hair was her magic?

  Tiara returned to business. “Over there is the Isle of Conclusion. It’s close enough to jump to, but folk who do aren’t too popular, for some reason.” She demonstrated by jumping to it. But she had not allowed for her newly-empowered hair, and sailed up over head height, doing an involuntary somersault in the air. She came down on her bottom, but fortunately her hair still lightened her, and the landing was not hard.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, getting up and brushing herself off. She looked at Ease. “Are you all right?”

  “Oh, foo,” Astrid muttered. “He’s freaked out.”

  “Freaked out?”

  “You must have spent some time in that tower,” Astrid said.

  “Yes, since I was a little girl. Why?”

  “So you never learned about the power of panties. Which is all right; I only recently learned it myself. It’s that when a man catches a glimpse of them, he freaks out. You flashed him when you jumped and tumbled.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry! How can I fix it?”

  “First, watch how you jump.”

  “I will.”

  “Then, snap your fingers.”

  Tiara snapped her fingers. Ease resumed animation, apparently unaware that he had been in stasis.

  “And continue as if nothing happened,” Astrid concluded.

  “Something happened?” Ease asked.

  “Tiara accidentally flashed you and you freaked out.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “And that’s how it is,” Astrid said to Tiara. “Go on with your tour.”

  “Gladly. I have spent years looking at all the islands from my turret, using my telescope. I have seen so much happening on them.” She frowned prettily. “Though some of it was fogged out.”

  “Fogged out?” Ease asked.

  “When a man and a woman came together, I see them hold each other and kiss, but then the fog surrounds them and I see nothing more. I really wonder what they do.”

  “How old are you?” Astrid asked.

  “I will be eighteen tomorrow.”

  “That explains it. The Adult Conspiracy prevented you from seeing what you weren’t supposed to. But tomorrow you will be able to see it.”

  “But I don’t want to go back to the tower!”

  “Maybe I could show you,” Ease said.

  Kandy gave him a mental kick in the groin.

  “Or maybe not.”

  “But I’d really like to know!”

  “Let’s get on with the tour,” Astrid said.

  “Oh. Yes, of course. Over there is Key Board Island.”

  Kandy jumped at the mention of “board,” though she realized it was not the same thing.

  “What is there?” Pewter asked.

  “It is full of keyboards and other useful interfaces,” Tiara said. “But it is also overrun with mice. I would not want to go there, lest a mouse run up my leg.”

  “Maybe we can skip it,” Pewter said with regret.

  “Then there’s Unicorn island,” Tiara continued. “But they won’t associate with anyone who’s not a, um--”

  “Virgin,” Astrid said. She knew about it from Humfrey’s half wife MareAnn.

  “Yes, whatever that is.” Tiara was evidently treading carefully here, hampered by her innocence. “The unicorns seldom cross to other islands. Sometimes young ones come from Love Spring Isle, but I’ve never been able to see what happens there.”

  TELL HER, Kandy thought to Ease. It occurred to her that Astrid was unlikely to know all the details either. STANDARD LORE.

  “When creatures meet at a love spring, they summon the stork,” Ease said. “Later the stork delivers a baby to them.”

  “But how do they--”

  TOMORROW

  “We’ll tell you tomorrow,” Ease said.

  “Tomorrow,” she agreed, not quite understanding the significance of her eighteenth birthday.

  “Actually it’s getting late in the day,” Astrid said. “If we’re not through with the Islands, we need to find a place to spend the night.”

  “We’re not done,” Pewter said. “We have not yet discovered the significance of this Event.”

  “And we haven’t fixed Tiara’s hair,” Ease said.

  Ease remained entirely too interested in Tiara for Kandy’s taste. But she couldn’t protest without confessing to herself that she was foolishly jealous.

  “Tiara, do you know of an inn or other place where travelers on a Quest could safely stay the night?” Astrid asked.

  “Why yes. There’s a nice Inn on the Isle of Missed.”

  “The Isle of Mist? That sounds pleasant.”

  “No, it’s the Isle of Missed. That’s where women go who are looking for men. It’s like the Isle of Man, only for women.”

  “The women who have been missed,” Ease said. “That’s really interesting.”<
br />
  Kandy had been afraid of that. She kept her mind shut.

  “Yes, I have heard that Miss Q is there. She can’t get anything right. And Miss Isle; she likes to throw things but her aim is very bad. She can’t hit the broad side of a barn. Then there’s Miss Shapen, who is not very pretty. And Miss Carry, who can’t get the stork to deliver. And--”

  “We get the picture,” Astrid said. “It’s only the inn we want.”

  Kandy was slightly comforted. It seemed there were reasons those women had been missed instead of misses-ed.

  “This way,” Tiara said. “It’s on the other side of this island, beyond the Lethe stream. There’s a boat.” She started walking, light on her feet because of her uplifting hair.

  “What stream?” Pewter asked alertly.

  “Nobody can remember its real name. It’s just a thin flow of water from somewhere to somewhere else. It’s quite forgettable. No need to be concerned.”

  “On the contrary,” Pewter said. “That streamlet is dangerous.”

  “Oh, have you been here before?”

  “No. But Lethe water makes folk forget. We don’t want to go anywhere near it.”

  “I don’t remember anything bad associated with it.” Then Tiara paused. “But if it makes folk forget--”

  “Precisely. Avoid it.”

  “I will try to go around it. But I don’t know the route well. It has been maybe ten years since I played there as a child.”

  “You didn’t touch the water?” Astrid asked, alarmed.

  “I don’t remember. In fact I don’t remember any of my childhood before that time.” Tiara paused again. “Oh, my!”

  It occurred to Kandy that there might have been more than just Tiara’s hair to cause her sisters to lock her in the tower. It might have been for her own safety. At least until she got old enough to understand some of the more serious facts of life. Such as staying away from enchanted water of any kind.

  They came to a field of flowering plants. “Oh, those are peas,” Tiara said. “I do remember them. Try not to touch any.”

  “Why not?” Ease asked.

  “They make you—oops!” For she had just brushed by a pea plant. She swayed uncertainly on her feet, looking foolish. “That must be a dip pea.”

  “Nonsense,” Astrid said. “Peas should not make you foolish, they should make you--” Then she burst out laughing.