Then Electra got up. "Do you mind keeping an eye on the twins for a while? I have something to do."
The girls, in the manner of their kind, were glad to keep an eye on the twins. All girls loved all babies, in Che"s observation. Electra hurried out.
"I wonder what she has to do so urgently?" Jenny said musingly.
"I suspect she means to apologize to Prince Dolph," Che said.
"Apologize? For what?"
"For being jealous," Gwenny said.
"Oh." But Jenny wasn"t quite satisfied. "Couldn"t she have just said she was sorry, here?"
"Perhaps she had a gourd realm apology in mind," Che said, smiling.
Jenny"s brow furrowed. "That"s different?"
This time it was Gwenny and Che who exchanged the glance. "You don"t know about apologies among the bra.s.sies?" Gwenny inquired.
"An apology"s an apology, isn"t it?"
"I see we shall have to show you," Gwenny said, with an obscure smile.
"Che?"
The naughty girl! Che approached her. He was seven and she was fourteen, but he was of a larger species, and his human portion was somewhat taller than she. "Who apologizes to whom?" he inquired.
"I"ll apologize to you," Gwenny said. "The way Electra will do with Dolph."
"Very well. Proceed."
"I don"t understand-" Jenny started.
Gwenny embraced him. "I apologize, Che," she said winsomely. Then she drew herself close and kissed him on the mouth.
"What are you doing?" Jenny asked, amazed.
"Do you accept my apology?" Gwenny asked.
Che grimaced. "I"m not sure," he said with a smile, playing the game.
Actually, Gwenny was very nice to have so close; her body had become rounder and softer in the past two years. But that was surely irrelevant.
"Oh, you"re not?" Gwenny breathed. "Then I shall just have to try harder." She removed her spectacles and brushed back her hair with her hands. Then she embraced him again, more closely, so that there was no s.p.a.ce between their bodies. She reached up and hauled his head down, mussing his hair, and plastered him with Xanth"s sloppiest kiss. "Now are you sure?" Her face was serious, but he knew she was trying to stifle her laughter. It was a favorite game, to imitate the foolish things adults did.
He stifled his own mirth. "Well-"
"Enough!" Jenny cried, giggling. The twins seemed to be smiling, too, watching the apology instead of the Tapestry So was Sammy. "You mean that"s what Electra and Dolph are doing now? Kissing?"
"More than that, I think," Gwenny said with mock gravity as she recovered her spectacles so that she could see clearly again. "But I"m not partial to the Adult Conspiracy, so I don"t know what. I suppose they enjoy it, though."
"That Adult Conspiracy is such a bore," Jenny said.
"What is it they think should be such a big secret?"
"I"m sure I don"t know," Gwenny said. "But it seems to relate to why men like to look at creatures like Mela Merwoman."
They looked at Mela again in the Tapestry, whose body was no longer fuzzy. But no matter how hard Che stared, he couldn"t fathom why men would prefer to look at the merwoman rather than at something interesting, such as a dragon or pie tree or mathematical equation.
Meanwhile, the action proceeded in the picture. Mela and the other woman were trying to get the block of crystal to break open, for it seemed that there was something inside it that they wanted. They weren"t having much success.
"But we were supposed to see Okra Ogress," Jenny said plaintively.
Che suffered a realization. The room brightened momentarily as an invisible bulb flashed above his head.
"That big woman-that"s the ogress!"
Gwenny and Jenny stared. "But she"s not big enough or ugly enough!"
Gwenny protested. "She"s mostly like a big human woman."
But now Che was orienting on particular features.
"Ido believe she is an ogress," he said. "The patterns of her bones, her way of moving-these indicate ogre stock.
"But she must be the smallest, weakest, and least ugly of all ogresses."
"Maybe she had a bad illness," Gwenny said. "So she doesn"t measure down to ogre standards, and got booted."
"Maybe she should have gotten the part, then," Jenny said. "Maybe she should have become the major character, so-"
"And where would you be, now, if that had happened?" Gwenny inquired sharply.
"Back in the World of Two Moons," Jenny said. She began to cloud up.
"With my family, and the ability to send-"
"Without your spectacles," Che said quickly.
"Or your new friends," Gwenny added.
Jenny brightened. "That"s true. But still, it wasn"t fair to exclude-"
"We don"t know why you were chosen to come here, or by whom," Che said.
"But there must have been good reason. One day we shall learn it. Until then, we can"t judge it."
"I suppose you"re right," she agreed. She looked again at the picture.
"Is this what is happening right now, there?"
"I don"t think so," Che said. "I understand that the Tapestry normally orients on events of the past, so this may have happened a few days ago.
But it is now night; it may be that the ogress is sleeping, so the Tapestry showed her a few hours ago, when she was active."
"I wonder what"s in that block?" Gwenny remarked.
"If we knew how to manage the Tapestry, we could change the orientation of the picture," Che said. "We are seeing the block from behind. But it looks as if there is a person inside it."
"How weird!" Gwenny exclaimed.
Then Electra reappeared, looking slightly disheveled but happy. She was back in blue jeans. "Thank you," she said, going to the twins.
"Did he accept your apology?" Jenny asked.
"What?" Electra asked blankly.
Gwenny stifled a giggle. "We thought maybe-but obviously we were wrong. The twins are fine. Do you know their talents yet?"
"As a matter of fact, we do. The Good Magician told us. Dawn will be able to tell anything about any living thing, and Eve will be able to do the same for any inanimate thing. He says those are both Magician-cla.s.s talents."
"Wow," Gwenny said, awed.
"Well, it"s not really coincidence. Every one of Grandpa Bink"s descendants has Magician-cla.s.s talent. I"m not sure why, but it has been true so far. I was just lucky I married Dolph, so that my children are blessed."
"That"s great," Jenny said. "Those talents will be very useful, when they get old enough to use them."
Electra picked up the ba.s.sinet and carried it away.
Sammy jumped down, losing interest. Che went with Gwenny and Jenny to their room, where the girls changed into nighties and he lay down on the floor among cushions. Sammy joined him. Then Jenny sang a song, and soon they were all in the magic dream that formed. There was a trick to sharing Jenny"s dreams: they had to divert their minds to something else first. But they had learned how to do that, and so had Sammy. So they found themselves sharing a dream of friendly dragons, unicorns, and centaurs in an orchard much like the one around Castle Roogna, with pleasant skies. Then they lay down on the soft sward and fell asleep.
Somehow it was always more fun to go to sleep in a dream than it was in reality.
On the morrow they resumed their trek to the Good Magician"s castle.
There was an enchanted path leading directly there, so they knew that that part would be easy.
But they also knew that getting into the castle would not be easy. There were always three challenges, and if the querent succeeded in getting by them, she still had to perform a year"s service for the Good Magician.
In short, frivolous Questions were discouraged. Thus their mood was not light as they set out.
The air fuzzed before them, and the Demoness Metria formed. "You must be really excited," she said.
"Our antic.i.p.ation knows no bounds," Che agreed tersely.
"Especially considering that the Good Magician has arranged to hit you with the most intriguing possible challenge," the demoness continued. "I have never seen him use this one before in the century or so I have known him."
She was of course trying to fl.u.s.ter them. Che knew better than to let her succeed. "No doubt the other challenges are even worse."
"No, there is to be only one challenge this time."
"But there are always three! And we are three people, so we may have more."
"Not so. The Good Magician has made a freedom in your case."
"A what?"
"Privilege, manumission, deliverance, emanc.i.p.ation, liberation-"
"Exception?
"Whatever," she agreed crossly.
"But why? We are just ordinary supplicants, not deserving of any special treatment."
"True. Therefore it is a mystery. How I love a mystery!"
"Why don"t you ask a Question of the Good Magician yourself, then?"
"Because it is his business to resolve mysteries, not to generate them. Anyway, Dana doesn"t like me to get too close to him."
"Who?"
"The Good Magician. Who else?"
"I mean, who is Dana?"
"His wife. I told you about that before."
"Oh." She hadn"t told him, but probably had told someone and misremembered whom. Her memory was like that. Che had heard about the matter: the Good Magician had had five and a half wives in the course of his life, and now they took turns being with him. Dana must be the one who was a demoness. So it seemed that one demoness could be jealous of another. That was interesting. They did have some human emotions.
Then he thought of a way to get rid of Metria, for a while. "Why don"t you go ahead and wait for us to arrive at the castle, instead of watching our boring walk there?"
"Are you trying to get rid of me?"
"Of course."
"That means you don"t want me there. You are trying to fake me out."
"Of course."
"Good idea. I"ll do it." She vanished.
"You faked her out!" Jenny exclaimed. "How did you manage it?"
"I locked her into an either-or mode," Che explained, pleased. "She thought she had to be either here or there, and chose there as more interesting. It didn"t occur to her that she could have done both."
"You"re smart!"