Roc And A Hard Place (19 page)

Kim looked.  “They must be outside the magic.  We've got to do something.” She knocked on the window to the back, until Dug's face showed.  “Get Arnolde closer!” she yelled.

“Metria's toes are going!”

There was a scramble in back.  Then sensation returned to her toes.  They had gotten the centaur moved up as close against the wall as possible, so the magic was back.  But she knew this wouldn't last long.

It didn't.  All too soon the dread tingling resumed, then the dread numbness.  “I'm losing my feet,” she said.  “I won't be able to push the magic command pedals.”

“We can't stop,” Kim said.  “I'll have to do it.  But you'll have to tell me how, because I'm an absolute ignoramus on standard shift.”

“Take my place,” Metria said.

“We'll have to stop, so we can change.”

“No, just sit in my lap and sink through me.”

“Oh, yeah—you can dissolve.” So Kim scrambled across, and Metria turned smoky, so that she wound up sitting on top instead of on the bottom.

-Then she started to drift over to the other seat, but paused when she felt the tingling again.  “Oops.”

“The aisle!” Kim said.  “It's getting shorter and narrower. You can't go that way.”

“I'd better go in back, then.”

“No, we don't want to alarm them.  Can't you curl up in a ball or something, and sit in my lap?”

“Certainly.” Metria assumed the form of a lap dragon, curled and snoozing.

But soon Kim had to use the gearstick.  “There's a stoplight ahead.  What do I do?”

Metria pinched her left leg gently, using a paw with claws retracted.  “Push the clutch pedal down.” Then she pinched her right arm.  “Let me guide you.” She curled the tail around it and pushed Kim's hand along the sides of the magic H pattern of the gearshift.  By coordinating foot and hand, she got the job done.

“Weird,” Kim said.  “I don't know how folk ever survived, when all they had was this kind of shift.  And that clutch is well named:  It makes my stomach clutch, trying to coordinate it.” Then she glanced ahead.  “Oh, no!”

“What?” Metria asked, resuming curled-up mode.

“This looks like a gang-infested corner.  They're holding up cars for money, or worse.  And I can't avoid it.”

“This is bad?”

“This is awful.  A girl can get in real trouble when she's caught by animals like these.”

Oh, monsters.  Metria knew how to deal with those.  “Can you get them to reach in here?”

“I don't want them reaching in here!  I want to shut those punks out.” Then she made the connection.  “Oh.  Yes, probably.” She cranked the window down.

The truck rolled to a stop.  In a moment the scene Kim feared began to develop.  A young man whose aspect was somewhere between that of a tired ogre and a sick troll appeared.  “Hey, whatcha got, chick?” he demanded.

“Nothing for you, snotnose,” Kim replied politely.

“Now, go away.”

“Hey, we got a fresh one here!” he said.  “You know what we do to fresh chicks around here?”

“I could care less, sewer-breath.”

“We shake 'em down good.” He reached in and grabbed the front of her blouse.  “Now, cough up some change, or I'll rip this right off you.”

“My pet wouldn't like it, punk,” Kim warned him.

“Your pet ain't going to get it, girlie.”

Then Metria opened her dragon's mouth wide and clamped it on the exposed arm.

“Yeow!” the youth yelled.  “Let go!”

“You let go,” Kim said evenly.  “I warned you about my pet.”

He shook his arm, and hauled on it.  Metria clamped down harder, and exhaled a small curl of flame.  The man screamed with pain.

“I suggest you stifle it,” Kim said.  “Because noise annoys my pet, and then she starts chewing harder.”

The punk took a better look at what had hold of his arm.

Metria snorted a demonstration flame through her nose, and winked.  He opened his mouth to scream.  She clamped down harder, warningly.  He managed to stifle it.

“Now, give me your wallet,” Kim said.

“Like hell!”

Metria breathed a bit more heat past her teeth, lightly toasting his arm.

The punk reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet.

It was stuffed with money extorted from other drivers.

Meanwhile the way had opened ahead.  “Okay, you can go now,” Kim said.  “I recommend that you not tell your friends what just happened here.”

Metria opened her jaws and let the arm go.  The punk jerked it out.  “There's a damned dragon in here!” he cried.

“It bit my arm!  It's got fire and everything!”

Meanwhile, with Metria's help, Kim was getting the car in gear.  As she pulled it out, the other punks approached.

“They robbed me!” the punk was yelling.  “Her and that dragon!  Got my wallet!”

Metria assumed the form of the softest, furriest, dearest little cat kitten she could imagine, the feline equivalent of Woe Betide.  She put her head up by the window.  “Mew,” she said sweetly.

The other punks almost fell over laughing.  “Some dragon!”

“I did try to warn him,” Kim said.  Then the truck was out of their range and accelerating.

“Yes you did,” Metria agreed with a Cheshire grin.

“That was almost fun,” Kim remarked as they resumed normal travel.

“We make a decent team,” Metria purred.

But all was not well.  The aisle was still shrinking, and Metria had to hunch herself in to avoid the warning tingle.

“How far?” she asked.

“Maybe another hour,” Kim said.  “But you know, there's no road to Xanth.”

Metria had forgotten about that.  “I don't think we can make it afoot.  Arnolde was hardly able to walk before, and Ichabod—”

“I know.  So we'll have to drive cross-country and hope we make it.  Because without Arnolde—”

Metria knew exactly what she meant.  Arnolde was all that stood between Metria herself and a dissolving swirl of dust.

“Cross-country,” she agreed.

Kim checked her map, then turned off the main road onto a dirt trail.  She followed that as far as she could, until it too, went the wrong way.  Then she bucked the truck across a field.

“Hey, whatcha doing?” Dug shouted from in back. “You're bouncing us all over the place!”

“Trying to get us to Xanth!” Kim yelled back.  “Just hang on!”

“Women drivers!” he said, and shut up.

They found a small winding trail that went approximately the right way.  But it was no delight, as Kim zoomed too fast along it.  “That's sugar sand ahead,” she said.  “If I even slow down, we'll be stuck.”

“But sugar sand is good to eat,” Metria said.

“Not in Mundania it isn't.” She plowed into the sandy section, and Metria felt the truck slewing and slowing, but it managed to keep going.  “If we don't make it pretty quick, we aren't going to,” Kim said grimly.

“Not all of us, anyway,” Metria agreed.  For the first time in her long existence she felt the threatening fear of extinction.  Already the tingling was tweaking her dragon tail when it extended beyond Kim's lap; the aisle was still shrinking.

Then the trail veered whimsically away to the side.  “My dead reckoning says Xanth is straight ahead,” Kim said.  “If I follow the trail, it may take us away from Xanth.  But if I don't—”

Metria's dragon ears were starting to tingle.  She flattened them down, then changed to Woe Betide, whose ears didn't project as far.  “Go for it,” she said.  “We are about out of time.”

“You got it.  Get me into low gear.”

Woe Betide helped her with the motion of the stick through the labyrinth of the H.  The truck slowed, but seemed to have more power.

“Hang on,” Kim said grimly.  “We're going until we stop.”

Metria hung on, hoping that those in back were doing the same.  She watched as the scene through the windshield got rough.  The truck bucked like an angry unicorn and charged for the trees of the forest.  Just as it seemed they would crash into a treetrunk, Kim steered slightly to the right and missed the nearest tree, then slewed to the left and grazed the next.

They plowed through thick brush that couldn't be avoided.

The forest, realizing that Kim couldn't be bluffed, gave way, and they ground on slowly toward Xanth.  The ride was bumpy but tolerable.

Then they came to a marsh.  “Uh-oh,” Kim muttered.  “I don't know how deep this is.  But we'll find out.” She revved up the engine and squashed on in.

At first the truck was game.  But the farther it went, the slower it got.  “The wheels are spinning,” Kim said.  But they were still moving forward, and ahead the ground was rising.

They nudged toward it, and the truck began to lift out of the muck—and then the motor stalled,

“Bleep!” Kim swore.  “Wires must've shorted.” She tried to start the motor again, but it would have none of it.  They were definitely stuck.

Kim sagged in the seat.  “We didn't make it,” she said.

“What now?  We can't haul Arnolde through this muck, and he sure can't haul himself.  We can't leave him, for two or three solid reasons.  And without him …”

Woe Betide was only a child, but she knew what Kim wasn't saying.  Without Arnolde's aisle of magic, Ichabod would probably die, and she herself would dissolve into a swirl of wind.  Only Kim, Dug, and Jenny non-elf would be able to trudge on to Xanth.

So she asked a childish question.  “Could Arnolde maybe slide forward to dry land, if the front of the truck wasn't there?”

“I guess.  But what would that gain?”

“Could he maybe be pushed, if we had a sledge to hold him?”

“I suppose so.  But we don't.”

“Could we push it through that rocky tangle ahead, if we had a channel?”

“What is the point of this.  Woe?  We can't change the landscape.”

“Yes we can.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Your magic talent.”

Kim laughed, bitterly.  “I don't have any magic talent!  I'm Mundane, remember?”

“The one you won.”

Kim reconsidered.  “Oh, you mean the talent of erasure I got for winning the game, three years ago.  I can use that only in the game.”

“Only in Xanth.”

“Same thing!” Then Kim did a double take.  “We're going to Xanth!  I could use it there!”

“What about in the aisle?”

Kim's jaw dropped.  “Why—I never thought to try.”

“Try,” Woe Betide said.

Kim put her hand against the dashboard and stroked sideways, as if washing it.  That section disappeared, as if it were part of a picture that had been erased.  The brush of the swamp bank showed through that gap.

Kim touched the hole with her other hand.  “It's gone!”

she said.  “The whole front of the truck is gone!”

Then she made a reverse stroke, with her palm toward her.

That erased the erasure, and the dashboard was restored.

“So erase what's ahead, and push Arnolde through,” Woe Betide said.

“Maybe it would work,” Kim said, awed.  “As long as the magic lasts.  Maybe we can make it after all.”

“Sure,” Woe Betide said eagerly.

“But this has to be sensible.  I can erase the truck, and maybe some of the terrain, but there needs to be something to replace it.” Kim erased the front of the truck again, this time using broader strokes, then smoothed her hand across the air that was in the hole.  A kind of dull blah substance filled in.  “Smeared paints from what I just erased,” she said.

“Instead of restoring, I smeared it back.  That makes a base, I think.  Shame to ruin Ichabod's truck, but this is an emergency.”

Then she turned around.  “This I'd better erase excruciatingly carefully, because I don't want to erase Arnolde too.”

She moved her hand slowly across the back of the cab.

In a moment and a half the barrier between the front and the back was gone.  Dug peered through the hole, with Sammy and Bubbles at his feet.  “What are you girls doing?”

he demanded.  “First you plunge into a swamp; now—”

“Using my talent,” Kim replied.  “The truck's mired and dead; we need to go on by ourselves.”

“Arnolde and Ichabod can't—”

“We have a plan.  I'll erase what gets in our way.”

“I'm not in your way!” he said, stepping back.  Behind him, both Arnolde and Ichabod seemed to be unconscious.

Kim smiled, briefly.  “I won't erase you.  Dug.  We'll need you to push the boat.”

“Boat?”

Woe Betide smiled as she took a place almost astride the unconscious centaur.  “Ship, craft, vessel, canoe, raft—”

“Stifle it, tyke.  What boat?”

“The one I'm erasing,” Kim said.  She had now gotten the rest of the barrier out, and was starting on the back of the truck.

He looked at Jenny.  “Does this make sense to you, elf?”

“No,” Jenny said.

“So it's not a gender or age thing,” he said, shaking his head.  “Do you think she's lost her marbles?”

“No,” Woe Betide said.  “It's an intelligence thing.”

“Okay, genius:  What is she doing?”

“She's making a boat by erasing everything that's not a boat,” Woe Betide explained.

Dug squinted.  “I see.  But there's a problem.”

“Just let me do it,” Kim said, concentrating on her careful erasing and occasional restoring.  She was clearing away the truck from the edges, leaving an intact platform in the center.

Then it stopped happening.  She tried repeatedly to erase the side panel, but it resisted, remaining real.

“That's the problem,” Dug said.  “You can't erase outside the magic, and it doesn't extend far enough out to the sides.”

“But if Arnolde turns, so that the aisle angles across the sides—” Kim said.

“Then everyone else will have to turn with him.  And even so, it's just a flat platform, not a boat.”

Kim paused, considering.  Then she resumed her work.  “I can carve a boat out of the middle, without erasing what's farther out,” she said.  “And I can make sides.” She demonstrated her newly found smeared-paint technique.  “This may not be artistic, but it works.”

Dug studied the short smear-wall she had just made.  He tapped it with his finger.  “Feels like compressed wood or metal.  Is it strong enough?”

“I don't know.  I'm still learning how to use my talent. Maybe you can find out for me.”

“Sure thing.” He lifted one foot and brought it down hard on the smear wall.  “Ouch!  It's strong enough.” Then he looked beyond the truck.  “But how can you float a boat without water?”

“I hope to erase the land and form a channel, and maybe the swamp water will fill it.”

He nodded.  “It works for me.” He looked around.  “Not much I can do here.  Maybe I'll scout ahead, see if I can find Xanth.”

Kim looked up.  “How will you know, without magic?'‘

“I'll go with him,” Jenny Elf said.  “When I change form, we'll know.”

“Go,” Kim said, returning to her work.  Woe Betide knew why:  They couldn't afford to waste any time.  If they didn't get to Xanth soon, it would be too late for half the party.

The two set off, and soon disappeared into the forest ahead.  “Don't you worry about your boyfriend and your friend?” Woe Betide asked.

“'No.  Jenny Elf was my Companion in the game.  I know her.  And I know Dug.”

Answer enough.  “Do you think we're close enough to Xanth to make it in time?”

“We have to be.  According to my map, we're just about at the Florida border, which for us is Xanth.  It must be within a mile or so.  And the fringe of magic must extend out beyond it.  So any further headway we can make is bound to help.”

But she looked worried Woe Betide knew why.  Maps might be wrong, or the party might not be as far along as they thought.  A small error could make a big difference.  They just had to hope they were close enough.

The boat was forming, but its shape showed their problem:

The front was broader than the rear, because in the time it took Kim to erase the connecting truck, the aisle was shrinking.  Now it was almost touching the centaur at the sides.

Kim also seemed to be working harder, as if the strength of the aisle was weakening as it shrank.  Time was really getting short.

Dug and Jenny returned.  “We found it!” he called.  “Less than a mile ahead.  Maybe closer, because it doesn’t thin out all at once.”

“Thank God!” Kim breathed.  Woe Betide saw the suppressed tension leaving her.  Then the girl smiled and faced Dug.  “Of course,” she said, as if there had never been any doubt.

“We've marked out the easiest route,” Dug continued.  “I mean, there's no point in erasing healthy trees or nice scenery.”

“How do I love thee,” Kim murmured.  “Let me count the ways.” Metria was struck by the utter sincerity of her words; under the banter and insults and shin-kicks there was a solid core of real love.  Then, louder, “Let's do it.  We've got to work fast.”

Dug walked around behind what remained of the truck, his feet sinking into the muck.  “Must be a rope here,” he said.  “Or a chain.  Got it.” He pulled forth a chain from under the truck bed.  “I'll just hook this to the boat, and haul it along.  Soon as there's a channel.”

Kim faced forward.  The ground now came right up to the edge of the boat, because the front of the truck had been erased.  She brushed her hand across the ground, and it disappeared, leaving-a dark hole.  She stroked her hands back, and the hole spread.  She wiped it out to the sides, and now some water seeped in.

She reached farther forward, but couldn't erase the land there; the aisle was now too short.  So she did what she could close to the boat, while Dug tried to hook the chain on.

“Need a hole,” he muttered.  So Kim wiped one finger there, and made a hole.  He passed the chain through, then tried to tie it.

“Here,” Kim said.  She erased part of one link, set the end of the chain there, and unerased the link.  Now the chain was firmly anchored.

Dug looked at that.  “That's a more versatile talent than I thought.”

“It's close to Sorceress level, properly exploited,” Woe Betide said.

Dug braced himself and hauled on the chain, but couldn't budge the boat.  “Too much weight on it,” Kim said, stepping off, “And not enough pull.  I'll help.” She joined Dug.

“You know, a fellow could get to like you, if he tried,” Dug remarked.

“Don't get fresh, just pull,” Kim retorted, smiling,

But though the boat wavered, it didn't actually move.

Jenny joined them, but still it didn't work.  It seemed to be caught on something below.

“I can help,” Woe Betide said.  She turned smoky, sank through the boat, and spread out into a sheet immediately below it.  She could do this because she was still close to Arnolde, within the aisle.  In fact, she could now resume full volume and be Metria again.  She felt the snags on the bottom of the boat, where Kim had not been able to reach, and solidified her substance around them, smoothing them out.

Then she turned her bottom side slippery.

Suddenly the boat lurched forward.  It splashed into the erased hole before it—then out of it and onto the land.  Metria had made it so slippery that it moved readily, no longer actually needing a water channel.

The others did not question a good thing.  They kept hauling on the chain, and so Metria maintained the slippery bottom, and the craft fairly whizzed along over the ground.  It left the peculiar wreckage of the truck behind.  Years later, perhaps, Mundanes would discover it, and wonder whether a monster had chomped a boat-shaped bite out of it.  They would surely never guess the truth.

The trees passed, and the forest thickened.  The boat sloshed in irregular curves as it followed the route Dug and Jenny had prescribed.  Progress gradually slowed, because the haulers were getting tired, and because Metria was beginning to tingle on her underside.  She thinned her body, but knew that soon she would have to withdraw to the top of the boat or lose her substance.  That would make it that much harder to haul.  Were they losing their race against time after all?

Then the tingling faded.  Was she turning numb?  If so, she had to quit right now.  But it didn't seem like that.  It seemed almost as if she was gaining strength.  How could that be?

Well, as long as it lasted, she would do as much as she could.

She made her undersurface even more super slippery, and felt the boat pick up speed.  The others were pulling harder, doing their last-gasp bit too.

Arnolde lifted his head.  “What is going on?” he inquired.

Metria poked a mouth up through the boat.  “We're hauling you to Xanth,” she said.  “Before you poop out entirely.”

“Poop shit?  I was just resting.  You don't need to haul me anywhere.”

“Yes we do, because—”

“Look at Jenny's ears!” Dug exclaimed.  “They're pointed.”

“We're in Xanth!” Kim cried.  “Oh, I'm so glad, I could kiss someone!”

“Well, if you feel that wa—” But he was cut off by her hurtling kiss.

Metria floated up through the boat.  She extended an arm cautiously to the side.  She reached beyond the prior limit, and felt no tingle.  It was true:  They were now surrounded by magic.

“I could kiss someone too,” she said.  She floated to Ichabod, who was just beginning to stir.  “I think I'll wake the sleeping prince.” She put her head down, solidified her face, and planted Xanth's most poignant kiss on his mouth.

The man came awake as if electrified.  He seemed to float.

“I thought I was dying,” he said.  “Now I'm in heaven.”

“Would you settle for Xanth?” she asked.

“Same thing.”

Dug and Kim and Jenny closed in.  “You made it possible, Met,” Dug said.  “We couldn't budge that thing, until you iced it.  You were the difference.”

“You're a great person,” Kim said, and Jenny nodded agreement.

Metria opened her mouth to say something clever, but it dissolved instead.  She had never anticipated such a reaction.

She melted into a puddle.

They crossed the Interface and were back in Xanth proper.

Sammy found them a pie tree, and they feasted.  It was such a relief to be back in Xanth!  Even the animals seemed to like it; Sammy lived to find things magically, and Bubbles was becoming more lively than she had been.  Evidently she, like the centaur, needed magic to restore her vitality.

“Now we must organize,” Kim said.  “Arnolde and Ichabod need to return to the Region of Madness, and Dug and I and Jenny have to get to this Nameless Castle, and you, Metria, have your other summonsees to summons.  Do we just split up and go our separate ways?”

“No,” Metria said immediately.  “It's my job to get all the summonsees there safely, so I can't just turn you loose.

And I should make sure that Arnolde and Ichabod get to the madness safely too, because it was to help me fetch you that they left it, at great discomfort and risk to themselves.”

“Then perhaps we should travel together for a while longer,” Arnolde said, seeming undispleased.

“It works for me,” Dug agreed, similarly satisfied.

“Maybe the rest of us can help her fetch in the remaining summonsees.”