Something percolated through her mind. Fighting pillow. Fighting pills. Pillow fight. Pill fight.
The familiar light flashed above her head. She could indeed use these pills.
She swooped her free hand into the pillbox and caught as many fighting pills as she could. It was a struggle to hang on to them. She ran across to the pit bull. "Take this!" she cried, throwing the fighting pillow at him. "And this!" She threw the expanding handful of fighting pills.
The big pillow and small pillows attacked the pit bull with enthusiasm. Wham, wham, wham, WHAM! They needed no anchor; they were able to do their whamming without support. The bull, confused, tried to fight back. He managed to gore the big pillow. Feathers started flying out, adding confusion to the scene. But as the large pillow lost its stuffing, the smaller ones grew to size, their buffeting becoming harder as they did. The bull was entirely distracted.
"Let"s go!" Kim cried. She and Bubbles and Nada ran across the plum pit region, and the pit bull didn"t even notice them. They left the action behind and got on the drawbridge.
And stopped. For there in the middle of the bridge was a stool, and on the stool perched a pigeon. The stool was covered with bird droppings. In fact, it was a bird dropping-an amalgamation of droppings that had mounded into that shape. It stank.
As soon as the pigeon saw them, it flew up above the bridge and dropped another dropping. And another. In fact, droppings fairly rained down around the stool. "Nyaa, nyaa!" it squawked. "I"ll bomb you with stools, and your smell will make the castle shut you out. You can"t get by me." It dropped another dropping, in the shape of a small stool.
"I can"t pa.s.s under that dirty bird," Nada said, wrinkling her nose. "It wouldn"t be princessly. It thinks it"s a harpy." Bubbles, though no princess, seemed no more eager.
"A stool pigeon!" Kim exclaimed, disgusted. She didn"t want to get soiled either.
So what was the cleanest way to get past this obnoxious creature? She looked around, but saw nothing but dung on the bridge. She looked out across the moat, but there was only the moat monster, looking on with amus.e.m.e.nt. She looked back the way they had come, but saw only the pit bull, still fighting pillows. One pillow, instead of whamming the bull, seemed to be trying to press the bull down, without much effect.
A pillow pressing down. A down pillow.
Kim ran back, grabbed the pillow, and zipped away before the bull could round on her. She threw the pillow at the pigeon.
Sure enough, the pillow landed on the bird and held it down on the giant stool. The pigeon couldn"t fly up to bomb them. "Yuck!" the stooled pigeon squawked.
They picked their way through the mess and to the far side of the moat. But the end of the bridge was blocked by a pile of melons. One large melon was bossing the others. "Honey, move over here," she said, and the addressed melon moved over, displacing the other melons, which rolled around before settling down. "Honey, get up on the bridge." The other melon rolled up on the bridge.
Kim stood and watched, trying to fathom the pun. Those looked like a particular type of melon- "Honeydew!" Kim exclaimed. "Telling the others what to do. And they"re so busy doing it that we can"t get by the pile of them."
Now she knew the problem. But what was the solution?
Kim looked around again, but this time saw nothing to help. In fact, mere was no longer a retreat across the bridge, because the pigeon had succeeded in pecking the down pillow apart, and the down was dropping into the moat. The pit bull had succeeded in goring the remaining pillows, and they too were expiring. So whatever there was that could help, had to be right here.
Bubbles was cautiously sniffing the nearest melons. That didn"t necessarily mean anything, but sometimes Kim got notions from watching what the dog did. Could there be anything here for her?
She peered at the constantly shifting pile of melons. They were of different types. Buried almost out of sight was one whose name she couldn"t quite remember. But it was suggestive. So she cudgeled her brain and forced it out: cantaloupe. It was a ripe cantaloupe.
And that, perhaps, was her answer. If she could manage to play it right. It was an excruciating pun, but of course she would never have entered this game if she had wanted to avoid that sort of thing.
"Honeydew, there"s a cantaloupe in your pile," she said boldly.
The honeydew paused in her stream of directives. "Yes, I know. I"m trying to get rid of it, so I can elope with my honey."
"You think it means can"t elope," Kim said. "But it doesn"t. It means an incantation of elopement. It"s In the Pile, a Cantation of Elope. It"s been trying to help you all this time, and you"ve been refusing to listen."
The honeydew was speechless for a moment. But she recovered quickly. "Then let"s elope!" she cried. "Honey, do it now!" And she rolled away from the bridge and around the castle. All the other melons followed her.
"That may be quite a ceremony," Kim murmured appreciatively. "You might say a melon-choly occasion."
Now the way was open. Kim had navigated the last of the three punny challenges. She marched ahead and up to the main gate of the castle.
The door was closed. She lifted a knuckle and knocked.
In a moment the door opened. There stood a pretty young woman of about eighteen, whose hair matched her brown shoes and whose eyes matched her pink dress. Kim was a bit startled by the eyes. "May I help you?" the girl asked softly.
"Um, yes. I"m Kim. I"m playing the game, and I"ve come to see the Good Magician Humfrey, so I can find out where to find the prize."
"Of course," the girl said, smiling. "Is anyone with you?"
Kim was slightly annoyed. "Of course. Can"t you see them?"
"No." The girl looked apologetic. "I"m sorry; I should have told you. I am Wira, the Good Magician"s son Hugo"s girlfriend. I am blind."
Suddenly Kim felt about two feet high. She had made a pushy, smart remark about sight! She felt herself blushing. "I, uh, they"re, uh, Nada Naga, who is my Companion, and Bubbles, my dog."
"Oh, a real dog?" Wira asked. "We don"t see many of those here. Our castle dog Canis Major is away right now. May I pet her?"
"I, uh, she doesn"t like strangers much," Kim said, feeling worse.
But Bubbles was already stepping forward, wagging her tail. Wira stooped to pet her on the head, and the dog accepted the pet.
Kim was amazed. This was only the second time she had seen Bubbles take to a stranger. "You must have a way with animals," she said.
"It"s my talent," Wira said. "I am sensitive to things, and can tell how they are. Animals like me." She straightened up. "But I must not delay you. I will take you to Ivy."
"Princess Ivy? I"d love to meet her. But my business is with the Good Magician."
"Ivy has taken over his appointment book." Wira explained. "It is too hard for the several wives to keep track, since they"re always in and out. Ivy will know when he is scheduled to see you."
Oh. Once again Kim had embarra.s.sed herself with an ignorant remark. She shut her mouth and followed Wira, and Bubbles and Nada followed her.
They came to a chamber with a desk and book. There was a young woman, marking items with a pencil. She looked up. "Yes?"
"You"re Princess Ivy!" Kim exclaimed, forgetting herself again. "What are you doing as a clerk?"
Ivy smiled. "You must be a Player."
"She is," Nada said from behind her. "h.e.l.lo, Ivy."
"Nada Naga!" Ivy exclaimed, delighted. She jumped up with unprincessly haste and went to embrace Nada. "I haven"t seen you in months!"
"I"m serving my time for sipping red whine in the gourd realm," Nada explained. "This is Kim, the Player I am Companioning."
"She needs to see the Good Magician," Wira added.
"Oh, of course. Let me see." Ivy went back to the book. "Yes, that"s an hour from now. That will give you time to clean up and have a bite to eat."
"I"ll take them to MareAnn," Wira said.
"MareAnn?" Kim asked.
"She"s the Good Magician"s Wife of the Month," Wira explained as she set off down the hall without hesitation. She evidently knew her way around the castle, so was not inhibited by her lack of sight. "She was his first love, but his fifth and a halfth wife, because she wouldn"t marry him early. She can summon equines."
"Oh. Yes," Kim said, remembering. She had read about that, just as she had read about Wira. Now she remembered that Wira had been put to sleep by her family, because she wasn"t much use to them. Fortunately she had met the Good Magician"s family in the dream realm, and they had rescued her. Somehow what she had read didn"t register readily here in real-seeming life. The people she was meeting were far more impressive than those she remembered from books.
MareAnn was in the kitchen, baking animal cookies in the shape of horses. Cookies might grow on plants by the banks of the With-A-Cookee River, but elsewhere it seemed easier just to bake them instead of making the long trip to fetch them from the river. MareAnn was a pleasant older woman who seemed not at all out of the ordinary. Yet Kim had a vision of her as she was in her youth, with lovely brown hair and eyes matching the manes and tails of the unicorns she could summon then, with marvelously formed legs because of all the equine-back riding she did. She had met and loved Humfrey when they both were in their teens, in fact when they were even younger than Kim was now, sixteen. But MareAnn had been determinedly innocent, so the unicorns wouldn"t leave her, and refused to marry Humfrey though she loved him. It had been such sweet sorrow. Kim saw her riding, her hair flung out behind, a tear on her cheek, as she left Humfrey to be King of Xanth. Humfrey had married a demoness instead, but it was always MareAnn he loved.
Kim snapped out of it, aware that others were looking at her. "Oh-I guess I was daydreaming," she said, embarra.s.sed again.
"Of course," MareAnn said. "Mare Imbri is here. She brought you a daydream. She tells me she also brought you the dream of the disposal bubbles."
Kim almost thought she saw the outline of a small black mare behind the woman. "Yes. It was the strangest thing, turning real at the end. That"s how I got Bubbles, my dog." She petted Bubbles. "Just now she showed me how it was when you were young. You were so beautiful and nice!" Then she realized that she had committed yet another gaffe. "I mean, not that you aren"t now-"
"My dear, I am happier now than I was then," MareAnn said. "Even though I can no longer summon unicorns. The other equines still do come to me, though." She petted Mare Imbri, who perked her ears forward. The horse was there, though invisible.
Then Mare Imbri glanced elsewhere, and abruptly bolted through the wall and away. Someone else had a daydream coming. Kim felt a twinge of envy for that person.
There was a garden behind the castle with toiletrees that helped them get cleaned up and back in order. They returned to find the cookies on the table, along with a coiled chain. "What"s this?" Kim asked doubtfully.
"A food chain, of course," MareAnn said. "A ghost horse brought it in. Just break off any link you want."
She should have known. She dimly remembered that ghost horses wore chains wrapped around their bodies, which they could rattle to distract and frighten living folk. It hadn"t occurred to her that such chains might be edible.
They broke off links and chewed on them, and the food was good. Each link was a different texture and flavor. Some were like vegetables, some like breads, and some like meat. As a general rule, the vegetables were at the lower end of the chain, and the meats at the upper end. Kim broke off a link at the very top and gave it to Bubbles, who found it quite intriguing.
After the meal it was time for the appointment with the Good Magician. Wira showed them the way up the winding stone stairs to the gloomy cubbyhole the Magician called his own. Kim realized that it made sense for the blind girl to do this, because the lack of light did not concern her. She could find the Good Magician in complete darkness.
And there he was, almost hidden behind a monstrous tome. "What do you want?" he demanded grumpily, evidently irritated about being disturbed.
"This is Kim, the game Player, Father Humfrey," Wira said. "She has an appointment."
"Oh." He glanced at Wira and the barest hint of a flicker of the corner of a smile brushed by his glum mouth. Kim realized that he really liked the girl, though he labored gnomefully not to show it.
"I have a Question," Kim said. "But I don"t think I can pay for it. I mean, you require a year"s service for an Answer, but I"m Mundane, and can"t stay in Xanth that long."
"It is part of your Companion"s service," Humfrey said. "It has been factored in. Ask and be done with it."
Just like that! But suddenly Kim realized that this too was a challenge. The obvious question was where the game prize was to be found. But she had lost much of her interest hi that, about the time she met Dug. Now she wished she could ask about something that didn"t concern the game. But of course that was out of bounds.
Or was it? She didn"t have to go for the win, did she? Why not play the game her way, and if she lost, at least she had expressed herself. She pondered a good two-thirds of a moment, then asked: "How can I get what I most desire?"
Humfrey turned the pages of his tome. "D," he muttered as he did so. "Demagogue, demon, depraved, descent, desire. Ardent, b.e.s.t.i.a.l, confused, decayed, foolish ... most. Ape, baboon, canary ... human. Player, game. Female. Young. Kim." His forehead added a wrinkle. "Now, that is interesting." He glanced up at Kim. "Your greatest desire changed recently."
That was one comprehensive reference tome! "I suppose it did, sir," she confessed meekly.
"No matter. Go to the realm of the gourd. You will find it there."
Bubbles wagged her tail.
"The gourd?" Kim asked somewhat blankly.
"That is the realm of dreams, accessible by a certain variety of gourd," Nada said. "I can find one for you."
Kim had known that. Her blankness was because she could not see how the realm of dreams could possibly help her do anything but dream, when what she wanted was a better reality. The Book of Answers must have slipped a cog, or whatever it did. Maybe that was because this was a computer game, and only so much could be programmed into it. The game would naturally a.s.sume that her most ardent desire was for the game prize. It was foolish to expect the game to know or care anything about her real life or feelings.
"Thank you, sir," she said, trying not to show her disappointment. "I will visit the realm of the gourd."
Humfrey"s nose was already buried in the tome. He had tuned her out.
As they went back down the stone steps, Wira spoke. "The Good Magician"s Answers may seem cryptic or unsatisfactory at first, but they are always correct. I am sure your greatest desire will be found in the realm of dreams. Mine was."
"Thank you," Kim said. But her doubt remained.
"Magician Grey Murphy brought in three fresh gourds yesterday," Wira said. "We have them in the guest room."
"You knew yesterday that someone would need gourds?" Kim asked. She was not impressed so much as resigned. Obviously the Good Magician had a standard Answer lined up for game Players, and that was to direct them to the next stage of the game. Kim had now explored much of Xanth, except for the gourd. It made sense that she explore that too. How could the game know that though her body would continue going through the motions of the quest, her heart had been foolishly diverted? Only an idiot would go to Xanth for anything but laughs. Unfortunately she was that idiot.
Wira showed them to the guest room. Sure enough, there were three gourds lying on mattresses. "You must hold hands as you look into the gourds," Wira explained. "Otherwise you will not find yourselves in the same region."
"How did you get into the gourd world, being blind?" Kim asked.
"There are other ways. When I was put to sleep, I was in a coffin, and its magic let my soul drift from my body and join the souls of the others of that realm."
So when Wira was put to sleep, it had been a lot like dying. Kim could think of similar cases in Mundania.
She looked at Nada. "You really don"t have to join us in this," she said. "I know what the dream world is like."
"I insist," Nada said with a peculiar expression. Had Kim not been distracted by her own private concerns, she might have wondered what was on the Naga princess" mind.
They lay down on the mattresses and held hands. Kim was in the middle; her left hand held Nada"s right, and her right hand held Bubbles" left forepaw. Then Wira turned Kim"s gourd around so that the peephole was toward her.
Though she was blind, she seemed to know exactly what she was doing. Kim realized that it made sense to have Wira here, because it was impossible for her to be accidentally caught by the gourd.
Kim looked into the peephole-and abruptly found herself standing in a gloomy field near an even gloomier cemetery. Oh, no! This must be the section of the dream realm reserved for the walking skeletons. She could handle it, but she would have preferred to be in a candy garden or the pasture of the night mares.
In a moment minus an instant Bubbles appeared beside her. "Oh, Bubbles!" Kim cried gladly, "I never thought to ask whether you wanted to come here. But I"m glad you"re with me." She petted the dog, who licked her hand.
Then Nada Naga appeared. "Oh, the graveyard shift," she said. "That is not my favorite."
"Mine neither," Kim agreed. "But maybe we don"t have to deal with the skeletons. This is just our starting point. The prize may be somewhere else."
"Defended by a challenge," Nada agreed. "The most rigorous one." There was something about the way she said it that made Kim a trace uneasy, but she couldn"t fathom why. Nada had been a proper Companion throughout, though somewhat reserved. That was to be expected of a princess.
"Well, then, let"s look elsewhere," Kim said. It seemed to her that the Good Magician"s Answer, all-purpose as it might be, was not a great help, because she knew that the realm of dreams was as big in its fashion as all the rest of Xanth. The prize could be anywhere at all. But of course this was the game, so there would surely be a hint for her to pick up on.
But as they started to walk away from the cemetery, a skeleton spied them. "Hi-yo!" it called, hailing them. "Are you looking for something?"
Kim realized that if her route lay through the cemetery, the game would not let her avoid it. So she turned back with resignation. "I am a Mundane playing the game. I am looking for the prize."