Horrors of the Dancing Gods

ENCOUNTER ON A LONELY ROAD

A RELIGIOUS PERSON EXPECTED TO GO TO ETERNAL reward or punishment at death, but to be suspended indefinitely in limbo made even Hell seem attractive.

It wasn't just the wood nymph part, although that was bad enough; it was all of it. She'd never even fully accepted becoming a she; the rest was just dung on the cow pie. That wasn't a matter of good and bad, either; it was just that a person was more than a collection of cells. A person was the sum of all the experiences from birth, too, and had an ego, an identity, a sense of self that defined that person, made that individual unique. No matter what anybody said, a body's sex was one hell of a determiner in that whole sense of who a person was, and to have it wrenched out made you culturally nothing at all.

So if you hadn't started out as female, you were never going to get comfortable as a female. And everybody of course treated you as if that was the first defining thing you were — they couldn't help it. You didn't grow up that way, think that way, see the world that way, act and react that way. So you didn't really fit in comfortably with the ones who did, but you hardly fit in with the boys, either. Not when you looked and sounded like she did.

She'd accepted her lot grudgingly for the sake of the boy and seeing the boy grow into manhood, but even that was not the stuff of dreams. You couldn't have a father-son relationship when Dad had been changed into a wood nymph. Somehow it just couldn't be the same. And since he had been separated from the boy for so long while the kid was growing up, there wasn't anything in the past to hang a really strong relationship on. Worse, having any kind of close relationship with a wood nymph when you were an adolescent boy was likely to create a situation more embarrassing and downright distasteful than anything else.

Because of that, she'd never gotten close to him — Irv — and had left his upbringing to other hands. As far as Irv was concerned, Dad was dead and gone in a hero's fight to the finish against the epitome of evil, the Dark Baron; both had been destroyed, consumed, in a fiery volcanic ooze, thus saving Husaquahr and the world beyond it from being overrun.

Most times she felt as if it would have been better if it had really happened that way. Certainly it would have been better had she been able to die like the Baron rather than emerge as the wood nymph bound to the Tree of Life itself. Even the deities of High Faerie had at least one vulnerable spot — their powers were dependent on the number of believers. Remove the believers and you removed their powers. They wouldn't die exactly, but they would cease to exist for all practical purposes.

Not her. She required no believers, no supplicants at all. Even if something unthinkable should happen to the Tree of Life, its juices flowed within her and made her totally, irrevocably immortal. She was the only wood nymph who didn't even need a tree, although there was this instinctual affinity with them. Wood nymphs had no need to eat; they made their energy from sunlight or could absorb it indirectly from plants. She didn't even need to drink like the others of her kind; the fluids of the Tree never evaporated and never wore out. Lack of carbon dioxide to breathe or prolonged cold might make her go dormant, but that was the extent of it, and that wasn't a very pleasant experience, as she'd discovered. It kind of felt, well, like death in slow motion, not quite asleep or awake but very definitely aware — and the nausea after coming out of it lasted what seemed forever.

Sister wood nymphs weren't much company, either. They had rather boring and basic lives, had no major life experiences, and, unlike her, couldn't travel far enough not to get back to their trees by dusk. Even if they had great mental potential, which they didn't, this didn't exactly give them much of a chance to broaden their points of view. In fact, they weren't quite as smart as the bimbos they looked like, and emotionally they were something like thirteen. And frankly, that was all they needed to be in either area. Their entire function in life was to create a psychic group that could maintain their woods.

That and one other thing. The wood nymphs had a symbiotic relationship with plants but not much with animals of any sort. Animal control and management, from the pest to the squirrel and bird and beyond level, was entirely under their male counterparts, the satyrs. Those lecherous half goats weren't much brighter then the nymphs, but they played their songs on their flutes, did their dances, ate leaves and grasses, and, of course, made it with the nymphs. If there was a need for any reason, that was the way you got new satyrs. Nymphs didn't reproduce that way — they budded. That's why they all looked and sounded and thought so much alike.

Avoiding satyrs was one of her daily goals. The romance of faerie was more than overstated; rather, it was an existence suspended halfway between animal and human, with a mind that could think, could reason, could even learn, stuck inside a body even more constraining than the ones humans had, in which instinct and certain behaviors were beyond thought or resistance. She still didn't enjoy the process, but those flutes were hypnotizing and irresistible.

It was scary to be in a situation that was totally irresistible, to be completely helpless and enslaved to the will of another. As much as ego and self-identity, that fear drove her to try to beat the system that had snared her in this nasty trap.

There had been an Aladdin's lamp once, one that really could grant any and all wishes. Although it was gone, far out of reach — in effect wished out of existence — the mere fact that it had existed gave her hope. Given a nearly infinite amount of time, which she had, there had to be something else here, something beyond that one lone lamp that would restore her true form. She had the time; the real question in her mind was whether she'd lose her sanity and her memories before she found the key that she was convinced, against all statements by the magical hierarchy of this world, existed.

She had been wandering some of the world of Husaquahr; it was too painful to remain back at the castle, watching a son grow up without parents but unable to get the nerve to tell the boy the truth. You just couldn't be much of a father when you looked like a teenage boy's bimbo dream.

She'd been away quite a while, searching — or so she told herself — for that magic way back to "normalcy" once again. So far: lots of rumors, lots of legends, nothing real. Not that some of those legendary pieces of magic didn't exist; it was just, well, they weren't exactly on the scale of great devices their press had built them up as being or in any way the equal of the Lamp.

The Stalk of Stavros, for example. Now, there had been one with real promise, a magical staff, they said, that could turn anything into anything. It had taken some effort to find it and get to it, only to discover it was useful mostly for giving long-distance hotfoots. And as for the Pincushion of Ptolemy — no, that was just too painful to think about, dud though it was from her standpoint. The Owl of Ozymandius had at least known something, but it had been the answer to the question all owls asked.

The Owl of Ozymandius knew who was who. That hadn't done her much good, either.

She had no idea how long she'd been out in the land seeking and not finding; she had long ago lost any sense of time beyond day and night. But the worst part was what some sages termed the Curse of the Gods.

It was getting pretty damned boring.

Oh, originally there'd been some excitement, but after a few adventures and risks and losing some life-or-death gambles only to discover that she couldn't really lose, the thrill had vanished. She couldn't die, she wouldn't get hurt, she didn't grow old. The hoariest monsters of the land were in the end helpless to do her harm. When you combined that with a total lack of need for anything — food, clothing, housing, whatever — there really wasn't much left. She'd never been much on school-type learning, and lately it just didn't interest her, anyway. She'd never been much of a collector, either, owning things for their own sake. Besides, where would she keep things if she had them? She could have the scents of any of the plants of nature, so why use artificial things? Even any jewelry would have to be organic so that it would not obstruct her if she chose to merge with tree or bush.

And when you neither wanted nor needed anything at all and there was no risk, no sense of family or attachment, nothing — what was there?

This sense of nothingness in her life, of a gray lack of meaning and purpose, along with the failure of her quest for a way out, was now bringing her back toward Terindell, back toward the only people who meant anything at all to her, now or ever.

But there was also something more, something much harder to pin down, a kind of grayness seemed to be settling in, permeating Husaquahr, almost as if it were some strange sort of vampiric fog, draining the energy from the land. It really wasn't anything you could see or put your finger on; rather, it was something you sensed, felt, lurking there, all around, omnipresent yet just out of sight in the corner of your eye.

It wasn't just faerie sense, or imagination, either. They all felt it, or so it seemed, mortal and faerie alike, although they could no more put it into words than she could. It was as if something ancient were stirring, something none of them had ever known before. Something impossibly old, unimaginably powerful, and of a nature that might be called evil but was something far worse.

It was the kind of gray that made the whole world seem tired, made ambition seem not worth the effort and inhibition a sucker's play. People tended to be surly; violence was up, tolerance was down, and nobody really knew why he or she was feeling and acting this way.

It gave whispered voice to thoughts she didn't want, too. If Joe survived the lava, no matter how transformed, then why not Boquillas as well?

What about it? What did the damnable Rules have to say about that?

She shook the dark thoughts from her mind and looked around. It was late; dusk was about to give way to total darkness — not a good time at all to be walking the trails and roads of Husaquahr alone even if life was not threatened. As a wood nymph, the only power she had was with the trees, so she made her way quickly toward a thick stand of massive tropical monarchs that probably was home to quite a colony of her kind. She never felt all that social toward her more limited sisters, but the forest certainly had room for one more, and she could use some rest.

Suddenly, not far ahead, there came the sound of shouts and a woman's terrified scream and then the clang of metal against metal.

It startled her more than alarmed her; she'd been walking half a day on that road and had barely met anyone who didn't live in and around the area of the road. Now she approached the sounds cautiously, carefully, straining to see if this was something she might avoid. With her greenish coloration and in her natural element, she could move with amazing quietness and near invisibility, at least to mortal eyes.

It had been three against two: three big, swarthy bearded men with the look of brigands or worse against a well-dressed and handsome middle-aged man and a chubby-looking young girl horrendously overdressed in a long brown cloak and full dress. It must have looked like easy pickings to the men, but the older fellow had put up quite a fight. One of the attackers lay, possibly dead, along the trail, and another had a torn jerkin and a spreading bloodstain on the right side of his chest, although it was clearly a superficial wound.

There were, however, too many of them; the one with the wound had grabbed the girl, who might well have gotten him with a dagger of some sort; he held her firmly while she futilely struggled to break free of him. The man who'd been untouched had beaten the old man to the ground with his heavy sword and now brought the blade down hard on the defender's neck.

The girl screamed again, then seemed to lose all will to resist further as blood spurted from the certainly fatal wound to her companion.

Joe looked around, trying to think of some way to help. Physically no longer a match for the pair, although her old self ached to pick up a sword and have at them, she was not without power and resources here.

"Put her down!" Joe shouted as menacingly as she could. "Let the girl go!"

Both of the surviving attackers froze in the deepening darkness; the one with the small wound frowned but kept his grip on the girl.

The other one looked around, trying to get a make on the newcomer, grinning as he thought things through. "Come on out yourself, darlin'! We got enough for two of you!"

"Take what you want but leave the girl here and go," Joe responded, moving around the periphery of the trees and bushes. This would be tricky, but it was makable.

"Well, now, I don't think we kin do that," the grinning man said. "See, we think we want her, too. We got real plans for her, y' see. What's she to you, anyways? You got to be a nymph from the sounds. Hell, this is what you's built for! Plenty of room for more!"

The girl, too, was suddenly paying attention. She looked desperate and her eyes were more than a little wild, but clearly she was looking for some kind of opening. Touching the great trees just in back of the man holding her, Joe decided that this wasn't something she couldn't provide.

Vines suddenly shot out from the tops of the trees and grabbed the man who held the terrified woman, wrapping themselves around his neck. While not thick or strong enough actually to do him in, they were enough to cut off his wind and give him a sudden and direct choice between letting his captive go and letting the vines keep wrapping around his neck. There wasn't even a contest; reflex made him let go of the girl and grab for his neck.

The girl dropped to the ground, spied the dagger she'd dropped after stabbing her captor, picked it up, and rushed toward her assailant, who was just pulling the last vines free, his head leaning back so he had room to grab them and break them loose. It was almost as if he were offering his throat, and with a desperate reach and a slashing motion the girl shoved the dagger right into his Adam's apple.

He went down with a gurgling sound, pulling out the dagger as he fell to his knees, but by then the blood was filling up his air passages, strangling him. He knew it and could do absolutely nothing to stop it.

"You bitch!" the remaining attacker screamed, grin now gone, and he ran to where the girl was just turning away as if to flee. As she turned, he struck her hard on her back and shoulder with the flat of his sword. She cried out once more and fell, crumpling from the force of the blow.

The man stepped back, not wanting to get trapped by vines as his companion had been but also unwilling to abandon either his prize or the possibility of revenge from the still not clearly seen attacker.

He stepped over the girl's still body and put his sword down on her. "All right," he growled menacingly. "Show yourself! Show yourself or I start on the girl here. She's not much, but it can be a little hard to watch, especially if'n she comes to! First a foot, maybe? Then the other'n? So's she won't walk away on us? Then the hands, arms, legs, that sort of thing. What do you think? What should I start with? Maybe this here leg? You got five seconds to try'n stop me!"

The bastard was good; Joe had to give him that. This was no common robber or cutthroat; he knew his business too well. He also had picked a stance and a position where it would be next to impossible to get him with vines, and there wasn't much else around, either, except maybe throwing rocks and sticks — and Joe knew just how little arm strength she had for that sort of thing.

"What would it get you?" Joe tried, hoping to stall while she thought of something.

"Satisfaction," the man responded. "In fact, I don't think I like stalling. You've used up your time, girlie." The sword arm came up a bit, the muscles tensed, and Joe, familiar with the stance and the move, had no doubt what was coming next.

"All right," Joe said, stepping into the clearing but away from the swordsman, out of easy reach. "So now what?"

The man obviously had some faerie sight; he didn't seem at all bothered by the nearly pitch darkness around them, and he stared carefully at the wood nymph. The kind of bravado and guts she was showing, as well as quick thinking, was beyond most nymphs of any stripe, but aside from this one being a bit taller and having if anything an even more inhumanly exaggerated set of proportions than the usual, she didn't look all that different.

"I guess you didn't hear me," the man growled with a kind of confident, even smug tone. "I didn't ask you to come out. I said you had to stop me."

The sword hand moved, and Joe sprang at him without even thinking, leaping over the distance and hitting him in the chest. Since he stood maybe five-ten and weighed a hundred seventy pounds or so, he was a brick wall to her four-foot-eight, perhaps eighty-pound bulk, but it was enough to knock him back and break his sword motion.

To him it had been a solid punch; to Joe it was that whole brick wall and it hurt like hell, and she fell onto the ground, slightly dazed.

He was over her with the sword before she got back her bearings.

He put out the tip of the sword and touched her left shoulder, and there was a hissing sound where metal met faerie flesh, as if the sword were not solid at all but some kind of horribly caustic acid, and an acrid smell of boiling flesh and a tiny whiff of white smoke came from the wound.

"You know, it's gonna be a shame to kill you," he said, almost sounding as if he meant it. "Never saw a nymph with this much guts. Can't have you doggin' me and threatenin' my back, though, or callin' in some damned army or the cops. Good-bye, girlie," he added, and plunged the iron sword deep into her, making a horrible gash along her entire breastplate, probably all the way down to her back.

The hissing and smoking and smell were terrible, and the nymph screamed in pain and then went still.

The man pulled the sword out, satisfied that he'd done the job, and returned to the fallen girl. She was coming to, but there would be some time to go, and he didn't like this particular forest, not at all.

He put down his lethal short sword, reached into a small knapsack he had brought with him, and removed two very delicate sets of bronze cuffs. No iron here. He rudely grabbed both of her wrists, brought them in back of her, and put on the smaller cuffs. Then he pulled off her boots and brought the ankles together, clearly with the intent of cuffing them as well.

Suddenly he felt a horrible, burning pain in his back, and he cried out and straightened up, dropping the cuffs on the ground. He stood, frantically trying to reach between his shoulder blades and remove the dagger that had been driven in between them, but he could not reach it.

He looked around, totally confused, wracked with pain, yet desperate to see who had gotten him, only to see the wood nymph standing there, looking at him in grim satisfaction, the ugly gaping scar on her chest blazing but already beginning to somehow heal and disappear.

"But — but — that was iron!" he managed. "How…? It's not… possible!"

He then pitched forward, shuddered, and was still.

"This is Husaquahr, bub. They got a rule for everything here and an exception to every rule," Joe commented.

She was probably the only one in all faerie — save the dwarves — who could not be killed by iron. But it really did hurt like Hell.

The girl groaned, tried to get up, found she couldn't put a hand out to steady herself, and didn't quite make it.

"Try getting yourself into a sitting position," Joe told her. "I can check and see if he has a key to those cuffs on him."

"No, no," the girl managed, feeling the bruise of that blow. "These are held by spell. I can feel it." She managed a sitting position, and Joe went over and looked at them. There were tiny little bands of color, like spiderwebs of varicolored light, all over the things.

"You're right," the nymph said, sighing. "Unless you've got the knowledge to untangle that mess, I guess you're stuck until we can find somebody who does."

"I probably could, if I could see it, but I cannot," the girl responded. "It's all right, though. It is not as important as it seems." She paused a moment. "My father — he is dead?"

Joe was startled by the question; somehow the idea that this might be a father-daughter pairing just hadn't occurred to her. She went over to the well-dressed man and scanned him.

"I'm sorry. He's gone," the nymph told the girl. "I think it's just you and me right now. And an audience of stunned fairy folk of all sorts peering out from the bushes."

The girl sighed but resisted breaking into tears. "I–I suppose I knew that the moment I saw him fall. He — he was a good man."

"I'm sorry I wasn't here to help him when you first got attacked, but I didn't even know anybody was ahead of me until I heard the sounds of battle."

"It — it's all right. I owe you a great deal for what you did do. More than I can ever repay. My father — he'd been a knight and a soldier once, and I think this is the way he would have wanted to go, if it hadn't been for me, anyway." She stared at her savior in the darkness, so obviously using faerie sight "My goodness! You really are a wood nymph!"

Joe smiled. "I, too, was a knight and a soldier once, and this is definitely not the way I wanted to go, but I'm stuck. Call me Joe. I use other names now and again, but that's the one I prefer."

The girl ignored or hadn't comprehended the oddity of a wood nymph stating that she'd once been a knight and a soldier and concentrated on the pragmatic. "All right — Joe. I am Alvi. Short for Alvida Zwickda of Month Keep, which is too big a name for anybody, anyway, and never really did fit me, I guess."

"Morath Keep? That's not anywhere I've heard of before."

"It is a land beyond the Western Dark, as it's called here. A very long way away by land and sea." She sighed. "Not far enough away, though."

"Farther than I've yet been, and I thought I'd really seen this world. Huh! Who were they? The other two seem like common cutthroats, but that leader there, he was a pro. And they weren't out to ravish you like I thought at first. He was taking you somewhere and to somebody."

"Yes. We've been running, you might say, for a very long time."

Joe didn't press, not right then, but looked around to see if there was anything else of hers to be gathered up. She spotted the boots, carelessly tossed to one side by the chief attacker, went and got them, then brought them back. "At least we can put you back together," she began, then suddenly noticed the girl's feet. They weren't like any feet the nymph had seen before, not on anything or anybody. Long and somewhat broad, with downward-curving claws for nails; more like the feet of some animal than any human.

"You're faerie!" Joe exclaimed.

"No, I — oh, what's the difference now? I'm so sick of hiding and pretending anyway. The truth is, I'm pan faerie." Joe suddenly understood. That certainly explained the long cloak and hood in this climate. "A halfling! Well, don't worry. You're among friends here."

Halflings were the offspring of humans and faerie, two groups not really intended to mate but in some cases close enough that it was possible to do so and have offspring. Such creatures were of both worlds and neither and tended to be what might charitably be called monsters. The laws of most lands said they were to be killed at birth, but it was very hard to kill your own kid, no matter how misshapen or distorted it might be. The vast majority were caught when very young, anyway, or died in infancy, unable to sustain themselves in a form not intended to be sustainable, but occasionally one was not only stable enough but also resourceful enough to stay hidden among society and grow to adulthood, where at least halflings were no longer subject to death.

Still, they had little status and few rights and tended to live lonely and often bitter lives.

Alvi sighed and nodded. "I have spent my whole life disguising my curse. As a child, my life would have been at stake; as an adult, I might have to forfeit any inheritance. Not that any of that matters now."

Joe arose and checked the dead. Her father had quite a purse on him, which Alvi perhaps would need; there was also a large signet ring on his right hand that she pried off. Something to remember him by, perhaps.

The highwaymen had less of interest. A few coins to be added to the small treasury, little else of value. She did retrieve the bronze dagger and a folded sheet of paper from the knapsack of the head man that contained mostly the chicken-scratch type of writing used there that Joe had never learned and almost certainly wouldn't, but that also contained a fairly decent sketch of both father and daughter.

It certainly was no official "wanted" poster; there were no official seals, symbols, or such on it. This was a private matter; someone had hired mercenaries to track them down.

"Can you get to your feet?" Joe asked her. "We'd be better off moving into the trees and away from here a bit, if only because of what these bodies will attract in short order."

Alvi managed to get to her feet rather handily, almost as if somebody had pushed her from behind. Joe was becoming curious at just what she did look like under all those clothes.

Still, this wasn't the place or time for details. It was best that they move well away from there, and Joe led Alvi off into the very dense, dark grove of woods.

When they were well enough in, protected and away from the likelihood of discovery, Joe found a soft area well protected by trees and broad leaves and, very much in her own most comfortable element, told the stranger to settle there.

"Thank you," Alvi said sincerely. "It has been a very hard day. Let me rest here for a little while. Then…"

Joe nodded and replied, "Rest all you need. I will be here when you wake up."

After all, there certainly wasn't anything better for her to do or any hurry to do much of anything at all. The day had proved to be dangerous and very painful but also very interesting.

It was the most fun she'd had since she'd wound up in this situation.

Alvi slept well into the morning, and Joe only tried to ensure that they were undisturbed. Someone had found the bodies and the remains of the fight; that much was certain from the commotion off toward the trail, but she didn't bother to investigate. It didn't sound like much that couldn't have been expected, and they wouldn't know about the girl, anyway.

It was enough to discuss the situation with the local faerie, who would do little or nothing to save or protect a halfling but had just as little to gain from doing it harm, either; also, they were willing to give a little to Joe. In fact, all the creatures, no matter what the race, seemed to hold the strange wood nymph in mixed fear and awe; a faerie immune to iron was not someone you wanted to cross.

Alvi looked quite ordinary in her dress and cloak and hood, with a pretty heart-shaped face that seemed very innocent and very sweet with just a tuft of straw-colored hair peeking out from the center. She seemed taller than Joe, perhaps five-one or — two to Joe's four-eight, more toward average for a mortal woman of the land, and there was certainly nothing in her face or hands that said "faerie" to any onlooker. But her face was too thin and too normal for that bulk.

The hands, though, did tell a few things about her. They were quite smooth, unblemished, the nails not so much shaped and polished as professionally manicured. Likewise, her facial complexion was perfect, without blemish and with little sign of weathering or stress. Whoever she'd been, she'd been brought up in a wealthy household and protected against all elements both natural and sentient.

Joe guessed her age as no more than the mid-teens — perhaps sixteen, certainly not much older than that — and certainly still a virgin. No faerie or one with' faerie sight could fail to sense that right off. Virginity was in fact a handy condition in civilization but pretty dangerous out here, a red flag that would draw predators like flies to honey.

Alvi finally stirred, yawned, stretched out her body, and brought herself awake. Only when she tried to bring her arms out for a full stretch — to find them still cuffed behind her — did she suddenly become fully alert. She looked startled, perhaps a bit scared, and sat up. She spotted Joe sitting on an exposed tree root and sighed. 'Then it wasn't a horrible dream."

"Afraid not," Joe told her. "Welcome back to reality, such as it is."

Alvi turned up her nose. "I smell like a horse, I need to freshen up and relieve myself, and I can't do anything at all with my arms like this."

"I think I might be able to do something about those, but we'll have to wait a bit now. There's a Mossuk — that's a mall race that lives inside the tunnels created by these old me trunks — who knows some of the basic spells and thinks he can get you free. We didn't want to try it with you still asleep, and I think he's off doing whatever Mossuks do right now. In the meantime there's a fairly nice pool fed by a warm stream not much farther over, and it's not deep enough for you to drown, so it might be fine for freshening up."

AM looked around at the somewhat forbidding jungle. 'There are… creatures… around here? All around here? Looking at us?'

"Sure. You get used to it. There's nobody here that's going to hurt you or cares much one way or the other. You leave them alone, they'll leave you alone, period."

"I–I have to take your word for it. I suppose I'm at your mercy, really. It's just that, well, you'll have to forgive me. I've — I've never been completely on my own before, and I've never addressed any of the faerie at all."

"Never? That's hard to believe."

"Not if you saw the ones that lived around our estates. Besides, my father believed that if my true nature were generally known among them, they'd be out to get me or something. Inside the walls was strictly human staff. Many of them knew of me, of course, but like most such staff, they had worked for my father's family for generations. Except for two handmaids, no one ever saw me except fully dressed, properly concealed. Then no one could tell. I don't give off a faerie aura or have much in the way of magical skills. I do have serious problems with iron, but I can sense its presence and be a bit careful around it."

"So you've been raised as, and passed as, a normal human girl," Joe said, nodding. "But surely your father and you knew you couldn't keep this up forever. There would be young men, family influences, pressures to many, and so on."

She nodded. "True, but in another two years I would have come into proper inheritance on my own, and my father intended then to sign full rights, title, and birthright to me. After that, well — I should not like to be married to a man who found me repulsive or monstrous. If anyone stopped his pursuit of me because of this, it would be good riddance."

"Maybe." Joe personally had her doubts about this. Born a full-blooded Native American, she knew that the value of papers and legal documents when race was an issue wasn't anything sacred and inviolate. And she had seen more than one of the type of man who'd swallow hard, marry, get the money and the estates, then denounce his wife as a monster. In this world her testimony as a halfling against his as a full human wouldn't even bring a contest. Still, it was kind of a moot point now.

"So with all those plans, why were you over here in the middle of nowhere being hunted by these men?"

"I–I'm not sure. One night, months ago now — seems like years — my father woke me up, told me to pack everything I could, particularly clothes, and be ready to leave immediately. He said that some very evil forces were coming that he couldn't fight off or stand against in any way and that we had no choice but to flee. He hoped that we could find safety with old friends, powerful wizards apparently, until things blew over. When I asked him who could hate us this much, he only said that once he'd had to make a bargain with somebody who otherwise he would never even have acknowledged and that he had hoped to be able to fulfill the bargain without involving me or risking everything but that it had proved impossible. He never would say more. We have been on the run ever since, often only minutes ahead of them. When we left home, I saw them ride in."

"Who? Those guys?"

"No. Ugly, nasty things on shining demonic horses with blazing red eyes and nostrils spouting fire. Tall, scary homed riders in shiny black armor and great bat's wings folded against their backs. Since then I've seen them again, but only in ones and twos and in the dark. Most of the time it's been ones like those last night. Mercenaries and robbers hoping for some sort of reward. Well, perhaps my father's body is enough for them now!"

Joe doubted it. They hadn't shown any care in taking the old boy out, yet they had bound her and had been making ready to take her someplace. No matter what, it was Alvi who was the prize here.

This was getting interesting, and it had been a very long time since anything or anybody had interested Joe.

A small creature, perhaps no more than a foot high, emerged from under one of the big roots. At first glance it seemed like some gigantic bug, but two four-fingered white-gloved hands, big round eyes, a round bright red glowing nose, and a purple mustache over two enormous protruding buck teeth said otherwise.

"Hey, girl! Still want me to look at the halfling's bond spell?' the creature piped, whistling through its teeth. "Yes! Over here, old-timer!" Joe called.

The Mossuk scurried over and looked at Alvi with a distasteful expression. "Well, don't just stand there! I can't climb up, y' know! Just set here and look the other way and I'll see what I can do about them cussed cuffs."

Alvi was startled. "Um — I'm sorry!" She sat and put out her wrists as much as she could for the little creature. She realized that she was the stranger and the freak there, but all these creatures were so new and so very odd…

There was a sudden click, and she felt the cuffs give way. The sudden pain in her shoulders as she brought her arms forward was more than compensated for by the relief of moving freely again and feeling blood course through her arms.

There was a motion deep within the baggy dress. Joe could almost swear… No, never mind.

"Thanks! Maybe I can do something for you sometime!" Joe told the little creature.

"Could be. Doubt it, though. No big problem here. Simple stuff. Cheap bonds, really. If you could see it clear, you could get it loose. Just a bunch of standard knots, that's all."

Joe went over to Alvi as the little creature vanished back underground, stood in back of her, and began massaging Alvi's neck and shoulders as she sat, trying to get her fully back to normal.

Alvi breathed an excited and heavenly sigh. "Oh, don't stop! That feels so very good!"

Eventually it was time to stop, though. "Where are the rest of your things?" Joe asked her. "I'm sure you had a lot more than what I saw."

"We did, but we had to leave it in a hurry. We had two pack mules, but when it was clear we were being followed, we had no choice but to leave them and hurry on."

"You had no horses?"

"We should have, but a wagon or surrey would have been too large and hard to manage on these kinds of roads, and I can't really handle much of a regular mount, I'm afraid."

They reached the pool of fresh water. "Well, you're going to have to take off what you have in any case," Joe noted. "For one thing, you'd sink with all that on. For another, it's not practical out here. Third, they're pretty filthy and we're a long way from a laundry."

"I–I'm sorry. I'm just not used to this! I mean — my whole life has been one of concealment! Now, suddenly, I'm here, with nobody I have known, and I'm — well, it is difficult. I never knew how much the monster I was until we were on this trip. There have been times — it could not be helped — when others have… seen. And I have endured their looks, their pity, their revulsion, and whatever. You are so perfect. You cannot know what it is to be like this! You can never know how I envy you!"

Joe was taken aback. Perfect? Envy me? If only she knew!

But the fact was, putting aside the couple of extra inches of perfectly proportioned height and dimensions, Joe was physically about as perfect as one could be — for a wood nymph. It was just that, well, Joe had been neither born nor raised a wood nymph, or a member of the faerie race, or even female and culturally was even more cut off from this existence. Somehow she'd been feeling so damned sorry for herself that it had never once occurred to her that to any stranger she really was perfection of her race and for this world, anyway, normal and acceptable.

And of course there were far worse things to be than a wood nymph, particularly in this world. Somehow, though, the idea that one who considered herself such would actually feel envy for Joe was unreal, unheard of, and hard to deal with.

^'Well, I might as well see it," Joe told her. "I promise I won't turn away or treat you any differently. I wasn't born like this. I was born so different that this form and existence are to me so unhappy that I've been wandering the world trying to discover how to change it, to go back. I'm hardly the one to be turned off by the way anybody looks."

"But it is just a disguise and a pleasant one to look upon, at that," Alvi noted. "You don't have to hide half your body from the world, always fearful that someone will see, will start yelling and pointing out your shame."

By that point Joe's imagination had already conjured up more horrible things than were likely to be hidden under that baggy dress of Alvi's. Still, she could understand the problem and sympathize. "Anyone who sees me sees only a simpleton, an oversexed, ignorant, dumb little faerie girl with only one reason to be looked at and one thing on her tiny little mind," Joe noted. "At least, with your dresses and cloaks, you could be treated more as a person."

"It was not the same," Alvi responded. "Not only was the fear too great, but the limits were much too restrictive and even dangerous. It wasn't equality from my point of view. It was play equality, that's all."

Play equality… Hey, chief! You ain't no Injun, are you? We don't serve no Injuns in this here place… Who'd ya kill to get a job drivin' that truck, Geronimo? Yours? Get dutta here! Aita no Injun afford a truck like that… How many times, after all those fights and the hospital time that almost caused him to lose his truck, had Joe tried to "pass," to deny his own self-evident heritage? That was why he'd resettled in the East once he could. In the East "Indians" were exotic, fascinating creatures, like people from Mars; the Easterners had other targets.

"You don't have to playact with me," Joe said gently, and helped Alvi remove the rather elaborately fastened clothing.

The real problem with halflings was that they made up survivable combinations of creatures with no reason at all for being other than that the mixture, for some reason, worked. Mostly things that would be okay on the proper creature just didn't turn out right or weren't in the right proportions or places on the body or things like that. They were deformed — mutations, sort of — and nobody ever felt comfortable around that sort of unfortunate. Still, in a land where Joe had battled zombie armies, monster carnivorous rabbits, real fire-breathing dragons, and even nastier types and one that had countless thousands of faerie races, demons, and monsters all its own that were "normal," how bad could it be?

The answer was not so much bad as very, very bizarre.

Alvi didn't have to go far to lose all illusions of humanity. In fact, she looked decidedly less human and more alien than Joe had ever been as a creature of this land. And it was easy to see why she'd not been terribly put off by being handcuffed. In fact, had that fellow managed to take her prisoner, he might have been in for a very nasty shock.

The head of course was normal: the face of a pretty girl with a nice short hairstyle, thin brows, big brown eyes, the usual, set atop a fairly long neck, nice shoulders, and a pair of medium-sized and fairly firm breasts. Then the fun began.

Just below this was a second set of shoulders, mounted under the first but tapered in just a bit from the top, from which extended two additional arms ending in hands as well and between which were two slightly smaller but otherwise perfect medium-sized and fairly firm breasts.

Just below this was yet a third set of shoulders, again mounted under the first and in just a bit from the second set, with a third set of arms, hands, even breasts, in a threesome that cascaded down in such a way that each succeeding set was perhaps ten percent or so smaller than the set on top and, interestingly, was proportioned so that all three pairs of hands ended at the exact same point on the body. This, however, left room for only a small flat stomach area with no visible navel, and then the whole thing tapered into the hips so narrowly that it all appeared to be on a giant ball joint. The only girl with top measurements thirty-six-thirty-three — thirty and a waist of maybe twenty-two, Joe thought. But the hips really blew it.

Those hips were very wide, supporting two thickly thighed and very nonhuman legs that might have more properly been on a bipedal lizard or perhaps a small dinosaur. That is, the legs were attached to the hips slightly splayed rather than straight down, which was why the hip area looked so wide in the first place, and it was this that had given her clothed figure the appearance of being fat. Extending out from the tailbone and crotch area rearward was a thick, tapered tail in keeping with the lower body but rather stiff-looking for all that and relatively short. In fact, it appeared to be somewhat rigid, although her movement showed that the tail could be brought in against the legs, forming a sort of third appendage between and in the back that wasn't quite long enough to reach the ankles, let alone the ground. This tail was designed as a counterweight, for balance, not support, and to some extent its operation was automatic.

As startling was the patterning of the whole lower area starting just below the small third breast pair. It was as if a gang of mad tattoo artists had beset her, producing a riot of attractive but totally abstract designs and colors over her whole lower body. The skin was quite smooth and had a texture similar to that of her human part; the colors were not dull, either, but bright and vibrant, the design about as complex as could be imagined. Only the underside of the tail, revealed through the opening between the legs, was left au naturel, a somewhat segmented-looking off-white.

There was no hair anywhere except on the head or any obvious sign of female genitalia. If it was there, then it was lost in disguise in that riot of color and shape and form, although Joe reflected that anything fairly small might well be anything but obvious in that riotous yet attractive mass.

"You kept — this — a secret even from part of a household? And from anybody around?"

She nodded. "It's not as hard as you think, and I was used to it, raised to control it. Growing up, they used to tie my lower arms to my sides all the time so I wouldn't reflexively move them, and my tail got lashed to my leg for the same reason. That was tougher. I always had to walk really slowly and deliberately because I couldn't use it for balance. The hands, too, were a problem, mostly if I lost my balance or something. Your instinct is to use everything you have to break a fall. I spent a lot of time in my quarters, alone or with the two serving maids whose folks had been with the family for generations, just to be free of those despicable straps and my tent dresses. I yearned to be outside like this, free, able to run and stretch and not pretend. But it never happened."

The tremendous difference in Alvi would have made any sort of medical solution more grotesque than the social one her father had adopted. Still, if a big, ugly Injun truck driver could wind up a nymph, surely there was something that a rich guy like her father could summon up from the magical arts. Joe didn't really know all that those Books of Rules contained — except that it was far too much — but surely in them was one of those universal laws: the rich could buy themselves out of almost anything. She raised the point in more delicate terms.

"It was not even an issue," Alvi replied. "There were occasional sorcerers as guests, of course — I told you that my father was friends with many powerful ones. They knew of my condition; it could hardly be hidden from them. I am certain that I was examined, perhaps without my knowledge, on magical levels many times, but nothing was ever done. The few who so much as alluded to it — none of them ever came right out, at least in front of me — suggested that there was some kind of curse, that whatever might be done by magic for me would only make things much, much worse. I never understood it. Many times my father started to tell me—I knew he truly wanted to — but each time something held him back. I was never sure if it was part of the curse or some promise he made, like to my mother, or what, but he couldn't, not even in these last few months on the run."

"This is beginning to sound very much like a curse," Joe agreed, considering her story so far. "Come, though. Get into the pool and wash off the grime. You'll find the water's warm and clean, and the bottom's basically stones."

In the water Alvi leaned back and enjoyed the warmth and clean feel — and only her neck showed. Joe wasn't very worried; of all the people she'd ever met anywhere, Alvi seemed absolutely drown proof.

"You're not coming in?" Alvi called to her.

"Sorry. My race is very good for showers, even better for being out in the rain, but baths are risky. If I absorb too much water without any sort of drain, I can become heavier than gold. Take your time, though, and enjoy. I've got absolutely nothing else to do and nowhere else to go."

"That's all right. I just feel bad because this is so nice. I finally have a tub that fits me!"

Joe let her enjoy herself for a while, then asked casually, "Just out of curiosity, what race was your mother? Do you know?"

"A mortal human and very pretty," Alvi responded. "What? Now, wait a minute! I saw your dad, and if your mother was human…"

"That's not exactly the way it seems," the girl told her. "I always knew that he wasn't my real father, but he was the only one I ever knew, and he was very good to me and to my mother. They had been betrothed, lovers since they were very young, but before they could many, something happened. I don't know what. Neither would really talk about it, but my mother went away for a while. After she came back, my father insisted that they marry anyway, and she agreed. He really did love her, and he was her whole life. They tried to have another child, one for both of them, but it didn't work out. The child was born dead, and the result…" It was the first time Joe had really heard any sincere emotion from Alvi about her parents and background. "It — it killed her. Not right off, but she was sick and never really got better. I was four or five years old, but I remember it. I remember all of it."

An interesting picture was emerging in Joe's mind. It might be completely off, but it fit the facts. Young, handsome nobleman is betrothed to the daughter of some wealthy local monarch or one of the landed gentry, the dowry most likely the estate itself. That was how things worked there. Everything set, going normal, when suddenly something happened, something that threatened the marriage, caused her to go away for a bit, and forced everything to be put on hold. What?

Alvi was what. Was it actually an illicit human-faerie affair? Some adolescent caprice that caused her extreme guilt ever after? Or was it perhaps some sort of a rape? Not all the faerie were nymphs and fairies and elves and other cute characters. Those bat-winged creatures who'd come for Alvi and her father, for example. Forces of the real father come to claim his child? The fact that she had no characteristics of such creatures meant little: in perhaps the majority of cases among the faerie, the male and female were so different, they might well be mistaken for different races or species entirely. Nymphs were a good example and by no means unique — satyrs for wood nymphs, those Boyfriends from the Black Lagoon for the water nymphs, you name it. The colorful lower body patterns would be the key; it seemed too complex and too natural to be a one-shot affair and was almost certainly some sort of racial characteristic. But which race?

The mother had refused to kill the daughter even though it was most certainly a monster and a creature of rape. The father had probably agonized, then agreed to take them in and protect the girl as well as his own child. Things would have been arranged so that Alvi would be presented as a child born of the father but before wedlock; married, there would be no stigma, yet that child would be a constant worry and a reminder of the initial problem. Six arms and the lower part of a lizard weren't exactly something you could overlook even if, incredibly, you really could hide it.

He must have loved the woman very much.

But there was more to it somehow, something still missing in the puzzle. Why did they want Alvi now? Who could want her? Of what possible value could she be to anyone: neither of human nor of faerie and considered monster by both? What was the bargain that had bound the old boy's lips from even his adopted daughter's ears, and with whom had it been made, and why?

Damn it! I never watched soap operas!

"Alvi, did those creatures in black armor come close to a birthday or anniversary?" Joe asked her. "That is, close enough to some event?"

She shook her heal.

"When was your last birthday? And how old were you?"

"I must be almost seventeen now. I was sixteen before they came, but it wasn't anything close. I mean, it was maybe a couple of months earlier."

Joe suddenly realized that the question meant nothing. Even if there was some sort of bargain or curse having to do with Alvi's sixteenth birthday, they would probably not celebrate the real date, in any event. In fact, it might not even be known, and whoever came to claim his or her or its prize might not be on a clockwork calendar schedule, either. There was, however, something that had been nagging at Joe, particularly since Alvi had awakened, and when the halfling emerged at last from the pool and lay down to dry off, Joe felt she had to bring it up.

"Um, pardon me for saying this, but everything you've told me says that your stepfather must have been devoted to you. He seems to have chucked everything for you, even the estates, position, titles, who knows? I just can't help but notice…"

"That I can't cry for him?" Alvi finished. "I know. I feel pretty rotten about that myself, but I just can't. I'm not sure why. I did love him. I mean, he was the only father I ever knew, and he spent his life trying to do what he thought was best for me. The thing is, well, I don't know… It's kind of mixed. In one way I can't think of him as really dead. I see him back at the manor somehow, supervising, tending, building. Part of me just can't imagine that he's really gone. He's been everything for me. I mean, my whole life's been planned and executed by him. Maybe that's it, too. I never was able to make any choices for myself. I was always hiding, always pretending, always in those painful straps, walk slow, special boots so it won't look like I'm walking like a chicken or something, don't go out, wear all this stuff even if it's boiling hot, don't work in the garden or you'll have to bend over and your tail will stick out… And on and on and on… It got so I became mostly a night person, wandering around late at night with little or nothing on, through my quarters, at least, and sneaking stretches on the roof terrace when it was dark enough. I was so lonely, so miserable, so full of fear that I felt more like a prisoner than a protected daughter. Does that sound inhuman, monstrous, maybe?"

"No," Joe responded rather gently, pleased with the answer. "It sounds very human indeed. I don't blame your father, and I doubt if you do, either, deep down: he was a product of his world and times and did what he felt was right and best. I'm sure he often wished he didn't have to, wished that you could just be yourself, but he couldn't. Not without the threat of losing you."

Alvi looked up at her, and there was a slight smile on her lips. "You really think so?"

Joe nodded. "I do."

But was it right? Hadn't she herself been so afraid that Irving would learn that his dad wasn't a dead hero but a live green bimbo and that she'd totally abandoned the kid? Left supervising all that growing up to somebody else "for the sake of the child"? Had she really done what was best for the kid, or had she instead inflicted as much pain and emptiness on Irv as the Duke had on Alvi?

How to know?

Damn it, if God wanted everybody to do the right thing, then why hadn't He written a clear and concise instruction manual?

She looked over at the very strange and very adrift halfling. Somebody was trying to nab this kid, who in any case had had no preparation whatsoever for this very dangerous and cruel world.

Ruddygore had his Rules, faeries had instinct, but what manual did she look in to tell her what the hell to do next?