Esrever Doom (Xanth) (18 page)

“One feel and one kiss.”

“Done.” He had evidently concluded that she was not going to yield more.

Zosi stepped up to the raft. She had plainly gained the terms she had aimed for. Charon embraced her and kissed her, also squeezing her bottom through her skirt.

“Yuck!” Plato said loudly.

“Stuff it, brat,” Charon said.

“I’ll stuff it up your—”

“Plato!” Zosi said.

“Nose,” the boy finished under his breath. It was clear that he was willful but not stupid.

“Now we’ll all cross,” Zosi said.

“Nuh-uh. You bought passage only for you and the brat. They’ll have to make their own payments.”

“They have a pass.”

“What pass?”

Kody showed the pass.

“Oh, bleep!” the Ferryman muttered.

They boarded the raft, and Charon started poling it across. “That pass covered the whole party, including you,” Kody said to Zosi. “Why didn’t you mention it before?”

“I’ve never been kissed by a Demon. Or felt. Zombies seldom get that kind of attention. I was curious.”

“You minx! How was it?”

“I’ve had better.” Half a smile hovered at the fringe of her mouth. “Not long ago.”

She was learning, or remembering, how to be a girl. But would that mean she would decide to remain alive to mentor Plato?

They reached the other side of the river. “We shall be returning,” Zosi told Charon.

“That pass is good for only one crossing,” he said, eying Naomi.

“It’s a season pass,” Kody said.

“I don’t honor those.”

“I’ll tell Mom,” Plato said. “She’ll tell Dad.”

“But it will do for this time,” Charon agreed.

“I’m hungry,” Plato announced.

“Would you like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?” Zosi asked.

“No! I want tsoda pop.”

Zosi conjured a sandwich. “Try it.”

“No!”

“Try it, or I’ll kiss you. You know I can do it, because I just kissed Charon.”

The boy opened his mouth angrily. The woman pursed her lips.

After a tense pause, Plato backed down. He took the sandwich and bit into it. “Hey! It tastes a little rotten. I like it.”

They were getting along.

The path continued, leading away from the river. Soon it emerged from the gloom. There was Xanth in all its colors, complete, as it turned out, with a nest of puns.

Plato picked up a bell and shook it, but no sound came out. “Dumb bell,” he said, dropping it.

“That is the point,” Yukay said. “It doesn’t make a sound when rung.”

“I wonder where we are?” Ivan said, looking around.

“You are emerging from the path to Hades,” a small snake in the grass said. “It doesn’t matter where in Xanth it is, because folk can go to Hades from anywhere.”

“A talking snake!” Ivan said.

“Well, duh, you ignorant man,” the snake said. “I’m not just any snake. I’m an asp. A smart asp.”

A roil of smoke formed. “A smart what?”

“Cobra, viper, poison, serpent, reptile—” the snake said.

“Donkey?”

“Whatever,” the asp said crossly.

“You silly asp!”

“Not half as silly as a demoness with a speech impediment,” the snake said smugly.

“Metria, you got it backwards again,” Kody said, smiling.

The demoness formed, wearing two long straps and nothing else. “It’s a time of reversals.”

“Cover up!” Yukay snapped. “There’s a child present.” Fortunately Zosi had already covered the little boy’s eyes with her hands.

“Ooops! I’m wearing my gownless evening straps. Must’ve grabbed the wrong hanger.” The straps fuzzed, and formed into a strapless evening gown.

“Aw, it’s only a demoness,” Plato complained as Zosi released his gaze.

Metria fuzzed again. In her place stood a cute little girl. “Woe Betide at your service,” she said.

“A girl,” Plato said witheringly.

“I know where there’s dead things,” Woe said.

Suddenly she had the boy’s attention. “Where?”

“Here.” She pointed to the ground between them. There lay a bloated dead frog.

“Great!” Plato picked up the frog, held it half a moment, then set it down. It gave a resonant croak and hopped clumsily away. It had become a zombie frog.

The adults exchanged glances. For once the demoness was helping.

“Regular practice like this, and he’ll soon be competent,” Yukay said.

“But it was a clumsy frog,” Naomi said. “He’ll need time to get it right.”

“And a frog is far from a human being,” Ivan said.

“And Xanth needs responsible zombies, not flesh-eating monsters,” Kody said. “It will take years.”

“Squawk,” Zap agreed.

They looked at Zosi. “I just don’t know,” she said. “I just don’t think I could stand staying alive that long.”

“You can postpone your decision,” Kody suggested. “You have shown that it is feasible, because the boy minds you. But that doesn’t mean that you have to do it. Continue traveling with us while you think about it.”

“Yes,” she breathed gratefully.

“I think we’re done here,” Metria said, reappearing. “Woe Betide can have a play date another time. Now I must begone.” She produced a pair of mirrors and spun them around. Smoke issued from them, forming a cloud around her. When it dissipated, she was gone.

“Squawk.”

They looked at Zap. On her side were printed the words
SMOKE & MIRRORS
. It was another pun.

Zosi fetched Plato, who was playing with a small collection of zombie animals. “Time to go home,” she said.

“Awww.” But he looked tired, and was ready to go. He probably needed a nap, after the effort of animating the corpses. “Can I do it again tomorrow?”

“I’m not sure about tomorrow,” Zosi said. “But sometime.”

“Okay. Pick me up.”

Zosi picked him up.

“Oh, almost forgot,” Kody said. “How do things look to you folk?”

“You’re not as ugly as usual,” Yukay said.

“Neither are you,” Kody said. The others agreed. “That means we are farther from the source of the Curse. We’ll have to try another direction, after we return Plato.”

The boy had already fallen asleep in Zosi’s arms. “I must confess he’s cute,” she said. “And it is a nice talent.”

“Does that mean—?” Yukay asked.

“No.”

But maybe she was mellowing.

They started the trek back to Hades. They would have much to report to Princess Eve.

8

D
RAGON

Next morning, having had a good night as Princess Eve’s guests, they navigated the path, Naomi gave Charon a K&F (kiss and feel) for passage across the river, and emerged in Xanth. Zosi was silent, feeling guilty for not agreeing to stay alive to be Plato’s governess, but she had promised to think seriously about it. Kody suspected that what she lacked was some positive personal reason to counteract the chore of continued life, but he didn’t know what such a reason could be.

Once they were clear of Hades, the chessboard worked again. They pondered the sixty-four little pictures, hoping to avoid the kind of mischief they had encountered before.

Yukay recognized one picture. “That’s the Ever and Ever Glades,” she said.

“The Everglades?” Kody asked.

“In Xanth they go on forever and ever, if you get lost in them,” she explained. “Careless travelers can have a problem.”

“We should not have a problem, as long as the board works, because we’ll simply jump to our next site.”

“It should work, since they are in Xanth proper.”

They clustered together, and Zap pecked the picture.

Now they were on a broad, level plainlike swamp interspersed with islands of palm trees. Sure enough, it seemed to go on forever, whatever way they looked. It was hot; the sun beat down without interruption.

“In Mundania, the Everglades turned out to be a broad river,” Kody said, remembering. “About two hundred miles wide and six inches deep, on average. Then they channelized one of the contributing rivers, and started to dry it up.”

“The Demon Corps of Engineers did that here,” Yukay said. “They took hold of the S’s in the Kiss Mee River and pulled them straight, into L’s, so that it became the Kill Mee River. It stopped being friendly and became hateful. Nobody could stand it, and finally they had to put the curves back in. Now it is good for honeymooners again.”

“In Mundania that’s Kissimmee,” Kody said.

“Mundania does tend to be sloppy,” she agreed.

“Now let’s check our difference,” he said. “You remain plain, not as bad as before.”

“Same to you,” she said. “So we are evidently farther away from the Bomb. That’s progress, of a sort.”

“Yes. If it’s not to the south, it must be to the north.”

“You folk can handle this without me,” Zosi said. “I don’t need to be here.”

She was really feeling down. “I’ll talk to her,” Kody said.

“You do that while we stretch,” Naomi said. She stretched, in the process showing off the fine points of her torso. Naturally Yukay then had to stretch too, and her points were just as fine.

But the display made Ivan turn away, repulsed. “Why couldn’t you girls have done that while we were still in Hades?” he asked.

“Because you would have freaked out, ruining the effect,” Naomi said.

“Let’s go explore while we wait,” Ivan said to Zap.

“Squawk,” the griffin agreed, amused. She was neither freaked nor repulsed by human torsos, however pretty or ugly they might be.

Kody took Zosi by the hand and led her to a neighboring copse of palms. The palms, of course, were giant hands projecting from the ground, their fingers pointing to the sky. They sat down behind one, shielded from the gaze of the others. There was a little sign saying
NO SMOKING
. Kody smiled briefly, seeing it, then focused on his companion.

“Zosi, you have a right to make your own decision, whatever it is,” he said. “You should not feel any guilt in that. I know I would hate to become a zombie, and I suspect that is the inverse of your feeling.”

“I’m not used to guilt. I don’t know how to handle it.”

“Just abolish it. It is undeserved.”

“I can’t.”

He took hold of her shoulders. “Zosi—”

She leaned forward and kissed him. Surprised, he took a moment to react. Then he kissed her back, emphatically.

“It’s not just guilt,” she said. “It’s that if I live, I will have to live without you. I know you will be gone soon.”

“Zosi, I can’t stay in Xanth! I’m not even really here.”

“I know.” Tears streaked down her face.

Suddenly he was coming to know about guilt. He was a significant part of her unhappiness. She did not deserve it. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” she said. “It’s not your fault. It’s my foolish inability to control my emotions, after not having any for so long.”

“That inability is not limited to you. I—I have never felt about a girl the way I am coming to feel about you. If everything else were equal…” He trailed off, unable to formulate what he was feeling.

“What about Naomi and Yukay? They’re prettier than I am.”

“Yes, and they know it. I guess I prefer a girl I can believe in.”

She gazed at him, her gray hair somehow making her look young and vulnerable. “What would you do right now, if you could do anything you wanted?”

“This.” He kissed her again.

“Are you getting a crush on me?” she asked, amazed.

“I believe I am, foolish as it may be.”

She smiled. “Then maybe there is hope.”

“Zosi, any long-term relationship we might have is doomed. We both knew that from the outset.”

“Yes. There is only the present. What else would you do now, if—”

He kissed her with burgeoning passion. In three-quarters of a moment they were lying on the ground, embraced, and his hands were hungrily exploring her body as the kiss continued. She matched him move for move, opening her blouse, drawing down her skirt.

There was a shriek.

They paused, mutually disheveled.

Then they saw the huge shape ascending into the sky, trailing streamers of smoke. It wasn’t Zap. It was a dragon, carrying something.

There was another shriek. That something was Naomi!

They ran back toward their original site, tucking things in as they went. Yukay was there, in a dissipating cloud of smoke, also screaming. “The dragon! We didn’t see it! It just swooped down, choked us in smoke, and grabbed Naomi!”

“I should have been more alert,” Kody said.

“I shouldn’t have distracted you,” Zosi said.

“I should have grabbed her,” Yukay said. “So we would be too heavy together for it to carry off.”

Ivan and Zap came running back. “We should have been here!” he cried.

“Squawk!”

Guilt galore!

After another frenzied, useless moment, Kody hauled in his wits. “Maybe it’s not too late to save her. How can we do it?”

“If we can find the dragon’s nest, maybe we can attack,” Ivan said. “Before the dragon—”

“Eats her,” Yukay said succinctly.

“She’s a naga,” Zosi said. “Couldn’t she change and get away?”

“Not while in the air; she would drop to her death. Not in the dragon’s nest; that will be inaccessible and inescapable, regardless of her form.”

Kody spoke to Zap. “Can you locate the dragon’s nest?”

“Squawk!” Zap spread her wings and bounded into the air. Soon she was flying on the trail of the dragon, evidently sniffing its wake of smoke.

“Assuming she locates the nest,” Kody said, “what can we do then?”

“Against a dragon that size? Feed it.” Yukay grimaced. “With our bodies.”

“Feed it,” Kody repeated. “Zosi, how big can you make a sandwich?”

“Jumbo is my limit. I could conjure a number of them. But the dragon wouldn’t eat them. Dragons eat live meat.”

“But if we threw them into its mouth, down its throat, it might choke on them.”

“It would take a hundred sandwiches all at once to make it choke,” Yukay said. “Momentarily. Then it would blow them out on a wave of smoke.”

“Suppose I put a chip of reverse wood in one?”

Yukay paused, considering. “Depends on the manner the sandwich reversed.”

“Oops. I was thinking of it reversing the dragon somehow. But you’re right; it would reverse the sandwich first.”