Ogre Ogre

"That's right!" she exclaimed. "I forgot about your ogre strength! It's handy at times."

A rush of fire flowed along the tunnel they had quitted. They had gotten out just in time!

"This is it!" Tandy cried. "The netherworld! I haven't been in this section before, but I recognize the general configuration. A few days' walk, and I'm home!" Then she reconsidered. "No, there isn't any direct connection. The-what's that thing that cuts Xanth in half? I can't remember-"

"The Gap Chasm," Smash said, dredging it out of his own fading memory. In his ogre personality, he was too stupid to forget things as readily as Tandy could.

"Yes. That. That would cut off this section from the section I live in, I think. Still-"

She led him through a dark labyrinth, until the sounds of the enraged dragon faded. They finally stood on a ledge near cool water. "She'll never find us here. It would douse her fire."

"I hope you'll be able to find our way out. I'm lost." Ogres didn't care one way or the other about the depths of the earth, but did like to be able to get around to forage for food and violence.

"When the time is right," she said. "Maybe never."

"But what of our missions?" Smash demanded.

"What missions?" she asked innocently. Then Smash remembered. She no longer cared about seeking fulfillment. She had given up her soul.

Chapter 15. Point of View

But in a moment he realized this was not serious. "I have your half soul," he said. "Take it back." He put his huge paw on his head and drew out the fillet. It adhered to his own soul, with which it had temporarily merged; evidently the two souls liked each other, different as they were. At last her soul rested in his palm.

Then he moved the faintly luminous hemisphere to her head and patted it in. The soul dissolved, flowing back into her. "Oh, that feels so good!" she exclaimed. "Now I know how much I missed my soul, even the half of it!"

Smash, back to his own half soul, suddenly felt tired. He sank down on the rock where he was resting. It was dark here, but he didn't mind; it was easy to rest in this place.

Tandy sank down beside him. "I think my soul feels lonely," she said. "It was half, and then it was whole with yours, and now it's half again, with maybe the better half missing."

"Yours is the better half," he said. "It's cute and spunky and sensitive, while mine is gross and stupid."

"But strong and loyal," she said. "They complement each other. A full person needs strength and sensitivity."

"An ogre doesn't." But now he wondered.

She found his hamhand with her own. "Okay, Smash, I remember our missions now. I wanted to find a good husband, and you-"

"Wanted a good wife," Smash finished. "I didn't know it, but the Good Magician evidently did. So he sent me where I could find one. But somehow the notion of sharing the rest of my life with an ogress no longer appeals. I don't know why."

"Because true ogres and ogresses are brutes," she said. "You really aren't that kind, Smash."

"Perhaps I wasn't when I had the Eye Queue curse. But when I lost it, I reverted to my natural state."

"Are you sure your natural state is brutish?"

"I was raised to be able to smash ironwood trees with single blows of my homely fist," he said. "To wrestle my weight in 'dragons and pulverize them. To squeeze purple bouillon juice from purple wood with my bare hands. To chew rocks into sand. To-"

"That's impressive. Smash. And I've seen you do some of those things. But are you sure you aren't confusing strength with brutishness? You have always been very gentle with me."

"You are special," he said, experiencing a surge of unfamiliar feeling.

"Chem told me something she learned from a Mundane scholar. Chem and I talked a lot while you were in the gourd, there in the Void, because we didn't know for sure whether we would ever get free of that place. The scholar's name was Ichabod, and he knew this little poem about a Mundane monster

resembling a tiger lily, only this one is supposed to be an animal instead of a plant."

"I have fought tiger lilies," he said. "Even their roots have claws. They're worse than dandy-lions."

"She couldn't remember the poem, exactly. So we played with it, applying it to you. 'Ogre, ogre, burning bright-' "

"Ogre's don't burn!"

"They do when they're stepping across the firewall," she said, "trying to fetch a boat so the rest of us can navigate past the loan sharks. That's what reminded Chem of the poem, she said. The flaming ogre.

Anyway, the poem tells how they go through the jungle in the night, the fiery ogres, and are fearfully awful."

"Yes," Smash said, becoming pleased with the image.

"We had a good laugh. You aren't fearful at all, to us. You're a big, wonderful, blundering ball of fur, and we wouldn't trade you for anything."

"No matter how brightly I burn," Smash agreed ruefully.

He changed the subject. "How were you able to function without your soul? When you lost it before, you were comatose."

"Partly, before, it was the shock of loss," she said. "This time I gave it away; I was braced, experienced."

"That shouldn't make much difference," he protested. "A soul is a soul, and when you lose it-"

"It does make a difference. What a girl gives away may make her feel good, while if the same thing is taken by force, it can destroy her."

"But without a soul-"

"True. That's only an analogy. I suppose I was thinking more of love."

He remembered how the demon had tried to rape her. Suddenly he hated that demon. "Yes, you need someone to protect you. But we found no man along the route, and now we are beyond the Good

Magician's assignment with-out an Answer for either of us."

"I'm not so sure," she said.

"We're drifting from the subject. How did you survive, soulless? Your half soul made me strong enough to beat another ogre; you had to have been so weak you would collapse. Yet you didn't."

"Well, I'm half nymph," she said.

"Half nymph? You did seem like a nymph when-"

"I always thought of myself as human, just as you always thought of yourself as ogre. But my mother is Jewel the Nymph. So by heredity I'm as much nymph as girl."

"What's the difference?" He knew there was a difference, but found himself unable to define it.

"Nymphs are eternally young and beautiful and usually none too bright. They are unable to say no to a male for anything. My mother is an exception; she had to be smart and reliable to handle her job. She remains very pretty, prettier than I am. But she's not as smart as I am."

"You are young and beautiful," Smash said. "But so is Princess Irene, and she's a human girl."

"Yes. So that isn't definitive. Human girls in the flush of their young prime do approach nymphs in appearance, and have a number of nymphal qualities that men find appealing. But Irene will age, while true nymphs won't, She loves, while nymphs can't love."

"Can't love?" Smash was learning more than he had ever expected to about nymphs.

"Well, my mother does love. But as I said, she's a very special nymph. And my father Crombie used a love-spell on her. So that doesn't count."

"But some human people don't love, so that is not definitive, either."

"True. It can be very hard to distinguish a nymph from a thoughtless human girl. But one thing is definitive. Nymphs don't have souls."

"You have a soul! I am absolutely certain of that! It's a very nice little soul, too."

He could feel her smile in the dark. Her body relaxed, and she squeezed his paw. "Thank you. I rather like it myself. I have a soul because I'm half human. Just as you do, for the same reason."

"I never thought of that!" Smash said. "It never occurred to me that other ogres wouldn't have souls."

"They're brutes because they have no souls. Their strength is all magic."

"I suppose so. My mother was a variety of human, so I inherited my soul from her."

"And it gave you strength to make up for what you lost by being only half ogre."

"Agreed. That answers a mystery I was never aware of before. But you still haven't explained how you-"

"Functioned without a soul. Yes. It was simply a matter of how I thought of it. You see, human beings have always had souls; they have no experience living without them. Other creatures never had souls, so they have learned to cope. My mother copes quite well, though I suppose some of my father's soul has rubbed off on her." Tandy sighed.

"She's such a good person, she certainly deserves a soul. But she is a nymph, and I am half nymph. So I can function without a soul. All I had to do, once I realized that, was to think of myself as a nymph. It made a fundamental difference."

"But I think of myself as an ogre-yet I have a soul."

"Maybe you should try thinking of yourself as a man, Smash." Her hand tightened on his.

"A man?" he asked blankly. "I'm an ogre!"

"And I'm a girl. But when I had to, I became a nymph. So I was able to operate without sinking into the sort of slough I did before, in the gourd. I was able to follow your fight, and to step in when I needed to."

"A man!" he repeated incredulously.

"Please, Smash. I'm a half-breed, like you. Like a lot of the creatures of Xanth. I won't laugh at you."

"It's impossible! How could I ever be a man?"

"Smash, you don't talk like an ogre any more. You're not stupid like an ogre any more."

"The Eye Queue-"

"That vine faded a long time ago. Smash! And the one you got in the Void-that never existed at all. It was sheer illusion. Yet it made you smart again. Did you ever consider how that could be?"

It was his turn to smile in the dark. "I was careful not to think that one through, Tandy. It would have deprived me of the very intelligence that enabled me to indulge in that chain of thought, paradoxically."

"You believe in paradox?"

"It is an intriguing concept. I would say it is impossible in Mundania, but possible in Xanth. I really must explore the implications further, when I have leisure."

"I have another hypothesis," she said. "The Eye Queue was illusion, but your intelligence was not."

"Isn't that a contradiction? It's illogical to attribute an effect as significant as intelligence to an illusion."

"It certainly is. That's why I didn't do it. Smash, I don't think you needed the Eye Queue vine at all, ever.

Not the illusory one or the original one. You always had the intelligence. Because you're half human,

and human beings are smart."

"But I was never smart until the Eye Queue made me so."

"You were smart enough to fool everyone into thinking you were ogrishly stupid! Smash, Chem told me about the Eye Queue vine. Its effect wears off in hours. Sometimes its effect is only in self-perception. It makes creatures think they're smart when they aren't, and they make colossal fools of themselves without knowing it. Like people getting drunk on the spillage from a beerbarrel tree, thinking they're being great company when actually they are disgusting clowns. My father used to tell me about that; he said he'd made a clown of himself more than once. Only it's worse with the vine."

"Was I doing that?" Smash asked, mortified.

"No! You really -were smart! And it didn't wear off, until you lost the vine in the flood. And it came back the moment you got a new vine, even though you only imagined it. Doesn't that suggest something to you. Smash?"

He pondered. "It confirms that magic is marvelous and not entirely logical."

"Or that you became smart only when you thought you ought to be smart. Maybe the Eye Queue showed you how, the first time. After that you could do it any time you wanted to. Or when you forgot to be stupid."

"But I'm not smart now," he protested.

"You should listen to yourself. Smash! You've been discoursing on the nuances of paradox and you've been talking in a literate fashion."

"Why, so I have," he agreed, surprised. "I forgot I had lost the Eye Queue."

"Precisely. So where does your intelligence come from now, ogre?"

"It must be from my human half, as you surmise. Like my soul. I just never invoked it before, because-"

"Because you thought of yourself as an ogre, until you saw what ogres really were like and started turning off them. Now you are sliding toward your human heritage."

"You see it far more dearly than I do!"

"Because I'm more objective. I see you from the outside. I appreciate your human qualities. And I think the Good Magician Humfrey did, too. He's old, but he's still savvy. I ought to know; I cleaned up his castle for a year."

"It didn't looked cleaned up to me. I could hardly find a place to stand."

"You should have seen it before I cleaned it up!" But she laughed. "Actually, I didn't touch his private den; even the Gorgon leaves that alone. If anyone ever cleaned up in there, no one would know where all his spells and books and things were. He's had a century or so to learn their locations. But the rest of the castle needs to be kept in order, and they felt the Gorgon shouldn't have to do it, since she's married to him now, so I did it. I cleaned off the magic mirrors and things; some of them bad pretty smart mouths, too! It wasn't bad. And in that year I came to understand that behind the seeming absent-mindedness of Humfrey there lies a remarkably alert mind. He just doesn't like to show it. He knew all about you, for example, before you approached the castle. He had you marked a year in advance on his calendar, right to the day and hour of your arrival. He watched every step of your progress. He chortled when you came up against those ogre bones; he'd gone to a lot of work to get those set up. That man knows everything he wants to know. That's why he keeps the Gorgon in thrall, instead of she him; she is in complete awe of his knowledge."

"And I thought he was asleep!" Smash said ruefully.

"Everyone does. But he's the Magician of Information, one of the most powerful men in Xanth. He knows everything worth knowing. So he surely knew how much of a mind you had and crafted his

Answer accordingly. Now we know he was correct."

"But our missions-neither is complete! He didn't know we would fail, did he?"

She considered, then asked, "Smash, why did you fight the other ogre?"

"He annoyed me. He insulted me."

"But you tried to avoid trouble."

"Because I was at half-strength and knew I'd lose."

"But then you slugged him. You knocked out a tooth."

"He was going to eat you. I couldn't allow that."

"Why not? It's what ogres do."

"I had agreed to protect you!"

"Did you think of that when you struck him?"

"No," Smash admitted. "I popped him instantly. There was no time for thought."

"So there was some other reason you reacted."

"You're my friend!"

"Do ogres have friends?"

He considered again. "No. I'm the only ogre who ever had friends-and they were mostly human friends.

Most ogres don't even like other ogres."

"Unsurprising," she said. "So, to protect me, twice you risked your soul."

"Yes, of course." He wasn't certain of the point of her comment.

"Would any true ogre have done that?"

"No true ogre. Of course, since ogres don't have souls, they would never be faced with the choice. But still, if they did have souls, they wouldn't-"

"Smash, doesn't it seem, even to you, that you have more human qualities than ogre qualities?"

"In this circumstance, perhaps. But in the jungle, alone, it would be otherwise." "Why did you leave the jungle, then?"

"I was dissatisfied. As I said before, I must have needed a wife, only I didn't know it then."

"And you could have had a nice brute of an ogress, with a face whose full glare would have made the moon rot, if

you'd reacted more like an ogre. Are you sorry you blew it?"

Smash laughed, becoming more conscious of her hand on his. "No."

"Do ogres laugh?"

"Only maliciously."

"So you've thrown away the Answer you worked so hard for, you think. Are you going back to the lonely jungle now?"

Strangely, that also did not appeal. The life he had been satisfied with before seemed inadequate now.

"What choice do I have?"

"Why not try being a man? It's all in your viewpoint, I think. The people at Castle Roogna would accept you, I'm sure. They already do. Prince Dor treated you as an equal."

"He treats everybody as an equal." But Smash wondered. Would Prince Dor have been the same with any of the Ogre-Fen Ogres? This seemed questionable.

Then something else occurred to him. "You say I was able to make the illusory Eye Queue vine work in the Void because I always did have human intelligence, so there was no paradox?"

"That's what I say," she said smugly.

"Then what about the gourd?"

"The gourd?" she asked family.

"That was illusory, too, in the Void, and it had nothing to do with my human nature, yet it also worked."

"Yes, it did," she agreed. "Oh, Smash, I never thought of that! But that means-"

"That illusion was real in the Void. That what we thought was there really was there, once we thought it, such as gourds and glowing footprints. So there is no proof I'm smart without the vine."

"But-but-" She began to sniffle.

Smash sighed. He hated to see her unhappy. "Nevertheless, I admit to being smart enough now to find the flaws in your logic, which, paradoxically, proves your case to that extent. Probably we're both right.

I have human intelligence, and the Void makes illusion real." He paused, yet again aware of her hand on his. What a sweet little hand it was! "I have never in my life thought of myself as a man. I don't know what it could accomplish, but at least it might be a diversion while we wait for the dragoness to stop searching for us."

Her sniffles abated magically. "It might be more than that. Smash," she said, sounding excited.

Smash concentrated. He imagined the way men were: small and not very hairy and rather weak, but very smart. They used clothing because their natural fur didn't cover the essentials. They plucked shoes from shoe trees and socks from hose vines. He had a jacket and gloves; that was a start. They lived in houses, because wild creatures could otherwise attack them in their sleep. They tended to congregate in villages, liking one another's company. They were, in fact, social creatures, seldom alone.

He imagined himself joining that company, walking like a man instead of tromping like an ogre. Resting on a bed instead of on the trunk of a tree. Eating delicately, one bite at a time, chewing it sedately, instead of ripping raw flesh, crunching bones, and using sheer muscle to cram in whatever didn't conveniently fit in his mouth. Shaking hands instead of knocking for a loop. But the whole exercise was ridiculous, because he knew he would always be a huge, hairy, homely monster.

"It isn't working," he said with relief. "I just can't imagine myself as-"

She set her other hand on his gross arm. Now he felt the touch of her soul, her half soul, for he was attuned to it after borrowing it. There seemed to be a current of soul traveling along his arm between her two tiny hands. He had rescued that soul from the gourd, and it had helped rescue him from the ogres.

He also remembered how quick she had always been in his defense. How she had kissed him. How she had stayed with him, even when he went among the ogres, even when she lacked her soul. Suddenly he wanted very much to please her.

And he began to get the point of view. He felt himself shrinking, refining, turning polite and smart.

Suddenly it opened out His mind expanded to take in all of Xanth, as it had when he first felt the curse of the Eye Queue. This time it was no curse; it was self-realization. He had become a man.

Tandy's hands remained on his arm and hand. Now he turned to her in the dark. His eyes saw nothing, but his mind more than made up the difference.

Tandy was a woman. She was beautiful in her special fashion. She was smart. She was nice. She was loyal. She had a wonderful soul.

And he-with the perspective of a man he saw her differently. With the mind of a man he analyzed it. She had been a companion, and he realized now how important that had become to him. Ogres didn't need companions, but men did. The six other girls had been companions, too, and he had liked them, but Tandy was more.

"I don't want to go back to the jungle alone," he murmured. His voice had lost much of the ogre guttural quality.

"I never thought you belonged there. Smash." Oh, how sweet she sounded 1

"I want-" But the enormity of the notion balked him.

It didn't balk Tandy, however. "Smash, I told you before that I loved you."

"I have human perception at the moment," he said. "I must caution you not to make statements that are subject to misinterpretation."

"Misinterpretation, hell!" she flashed. "I knew my mind long before you knew yours."

"Well, you must admit that an ogre and a nymph-"

"Or a man and a woman-"

"Half-breeds," he said, half bitterly. "Like the centaurs, harpies, merfolk, fauns-"

"And what's wrong with half-breeds?" she flared. "In Xanth, any species can mate with any other it wants to, and some of the offspring are fine people. What's wrong with Chem the Centaur? With the Siren?"

"Nothing," he said, impressed by her vehemence. Moment by moment, as she talked and his manhood infiltrated the farthest reaches of his awareness, he was warming to her nature. She was small, but she was an awful lot of small.

"And the three-quarter breeds, almost identical to the humans, like Goldy Goblin and Biythe Brassie and John the Fairy-"

"And Fireoak the Hamadryad, whose soul is the tree," he finished. "All good people." But he wondered passingly why, since nymphs were so nearly human, they didn't have souls. Obviously there was more to learn about the matter.

"Consider Xanth," she continued hotly. "Divided into myriad Kingdoms of people and animals and in-betweens. We met the Lord of the Flies and the Prince of Whales and the Dragon Lady and the

Kingdoms of the goblins, birds, griffins-"

"And the Ancestral Ogres of the Fen," he said. "All of which believe they dominate Xanth."

"Yes." She took a breath. "How can Xanth be prevented from fragmenting entirely, except by interaction and cross-breeding? Smash, I think the very future of Xanth depends on the half-breeds and quarter-breeds, the people like us who share two or more views. In Mundania, no species breeds with another-and look at Mundania! According to my father's stories-"

"Awful," he agreed. "Mundania has no magic."

"So their species just keep drifting farther apart, making that land more dreary year by year. Xanth is different; Xanth can reunify. Smash, we owe it to Xanth to-"

"Now I understand what men object to in women," Smash said.

She was startled. "What?"

"They talk too much."

"It's to fill in for inactive men!" she flared.

Oh. He turned farther toward her in the dark, and she met him halfway. This time there was no

confusion at all about the kiss. It was a small swatch of heaven.

At last they broke. "Ogre, ogre," she murmured breathlessly. "You certainly are a man now."

"You're right. The Good Magician knew," he said, cuddling her close to him. In the dark she did not seem tiny; she seemed just right. As with riding the nightmares, things were always compatible. He had known Tandy was very feminine; now this quality assumed phenomenal new importance. "He sent me to the ogres-to find you."

"And he sent me to find you-the one creature rough enough to drive off the demon I fled, while still being gentle enough for me to love."

Love. Smash mulled that concept over. "I cried for you last night," he confessed.

"Silly," she teased him. "Ogres don't cry."

"Because I thought I would lose you. I did not know that I loved you."

She melted. "Oh, Smash! You said it!"

He said it again. "I love you. That's why I fought for you. That's why I bargained my soul for you."

She laughed, again teasingly. "I don't think you know what love is."

He stiffened. "I don't?"

"But I'll show you."

"Show me," he said dubiously.

She showed him. There was no violence, no knocking of heads against trees, no screaming or stomping.

Yet it was the most amazing and rewarding experience he had ever had. By the time it was done. Smash knew he never wanted to be anything but a man and never wanted any woman but her.

They found another way out of the netherworld, avoiding the lurking dragon, and trekked south along the east coast of Xanth. Smash, by the light of day, was smaller than he had been, and less hairy, and hardly ugly at all. But he didn't really mind giving up his previous assets, because the acquisition of Tandy more than made up for them. She sewed him a pair of shorts, because men wore them, and he did rather resemble a man now.

They traveled quietly, avoiding trouble. When this threatened to rankle his suppressed ogre nature, Tandy would take his hand, and smile up at him, and the rankle dissipated.

The trip took several days, but that didn't matter, because it was sheer joy. Smash hardly noticed the routine Xanth hazards, since most of his attention was on Tandy. Somehow the hazards seemed

diminished, anyway, for news had spread among the griffins, birds, dragons, goblins, and flies that Tandy's companion was best left alone, even if he didn't look like much. It seemed that a certain ogre of the Fen had staggered out of the jungle with a headache, and though he had not given any details, it was evident that he had been roughly treated by the stranger he had fought. Even the crossing of the Gap, which Smash had almost forgotten until he encountered it again, was without event. The Gap Dragon, reputed to have a sore tail, stayed clear.

At length, they drew near the entrance to Tandy's home region. The route was through a chasm guarded by a tangle tree. It was a big, aggressive tree, and Smash knew he could not overcome it. So he drew on his human intelligence and harvested a number of hypnogourds, intending to roll them down to the tree.

If it made the mistake of looking in a single peephole-

But as they carried two gourds from the patch, a cloud of smoke formed-before them. This coalesced into a dusky demon.

"Well, my little human beauty," the demon said to Tandy, switching his barbed tail about. "You were lost, but now are found. I shall have my will of you forthwith." He advanced on her, grinning lasciviously.

Tandy screamed and dropped her gourd, which shattered on the ground. "Fiant!"

So this was the demon who sought to rape her! Smash set his own gourd down carefully and stepped forward. "Depart, foul spirit!" he ordered.

The demon ignored him, addressing Tandy instead. "Ah, you seem more luscious than ever, girl-creature! It will be long before I tire of you."

Tandy backed away. Smash saw that she was too frightened even to throw a tantrum. The demon had come upon her so suddenly she had not been able to brace emotionally for the assault.

Smash interposed himself between demon and girl. "Desist, Fiant," he said.

The fat demon put out a band and shoved him. Smash tripped on a stone and tumbled to the ground ignominiously. The demon stepped on his stomach and advanced on Tandy. "Pucker up, cutie; your time has come at last."

Smash was becoming perturbed. Tandy might believe in crossbreeding as the hope of Xanth, but she had not chosen to do it with the demon. As she had explained, there was a considerable difference between what was given voluntarily and what was forced. Smash scrambled to his feet and hurried after Fiant, catching him on the shoulder.

The demon swung about almost carelessly, delivering a brain-rattling slap across Smash's cheek. Smash fell back again, reeling.

Now Fiant shot out a hand and caught Tandy by the hair. She screamed, but could not pull away.

Smash charged back into the fray-only to be met with a careless straight-arm that nearly staved in his teeth. Now the demon deigned to notice him, momentarily. "Get lost, lout, or I'll hurt you."

What was this? Fiant seemed to be stronger than Smash!

The demon drew Tandy in to him by the hair, reaching with the clawed fingers of his other hand to rip off her blouse.

Smash charged again, fists swinging. He caught the demon on his pointed ear.

This time Fiant became annoyed. "You seem to be a slow learner, creep." He loosed the girl, spun about, and struck Smash with a lightning-fast one-two combination punch on chin and stomach. Smash went down, head fogging, gasping for breath. "No man can stand against a demon," Fiant said arrogantly, and turned again to Tandy.

But the brief respite had given her a chance to work up some spunk. She dived for Smash. "Take my soul!" she cried, and he felt its wonderful enhancement infusing him, He had forgotten how weak he was with only half a soul.

Then she was yanked away by the hair. Fiant held her up, her feet dangling. "No more Mr. Nice Guy,"

he said. "Off with your skirt." On the trip down, Tandy had remade the tatters of her red dress into a good skirt, and completed her wardrobe and Smash's by sewing material from cloth bushes.

Smash leaped up and tackled the demon. Now he had his strength! But Fiant poked two fingers at his eyes. Painfully blinded. Smash fell to the ground again. He had a full soul again; why couldn't he prevail?

It was Tandy who came up with the answer. "Smash, you're too much of a man now!" she cried from her dangle. "Too gentle and polite. Try thinking of yourself as an ogre!"

It was true. Smash had spent several days becoming manishly civilized. As Fiant had said, no man was a match for a demon.

But an ogre, now...

Smash thought of himself as an ogre. It wasn't hard. He had spent his life indulging in just such thinking; the old thought patterns were strong. He visualized the ground trembling at his stomp, trees being ripped from their moorings, boulders being crushed to sand by single blows of horny fists.

Hair sprouted on his arms. Muscles bulged horrendously. His height jumped. His orange jacket, which hung on him loosely, abruptly became tight. His shorts split apart and fell off. His hands swelled into hams. His bruised eyeballs popped into awful ogre orbs. Ogre, ogre...

Smash put one hamfinger to the ground and lifted his whole body into the air, then he flipped neatly to his rockcalloused feet He roared-and the leaves of the nearest trees swirled away. So, unfortunately, did Tandy's clothes, such as remained; they were not constructed for hurricane winds.

She swung in dainty nudity by her hair. "Go get him, ogre!" she cried, and kicked the demon on the nose.

Fiant looked at Smash-and gaped. Suddenly he faced a monster far worse than himself. He dropped the girl and turned to flee.

Smash bent down, hooked his fingers in the turf, and yanked. The turf came toward him in a rug, dumping the demon on his horns. Smash took one tromp forward and launched a mighty kick at Fiant's elevated rump. The kick should have propelled the demon well toward the sun.

But Smash's foot passed right through Fiant. Smash, thrown off balance by the missed kick, did a backward flip and whomped on his head. That hardly mattered to an ogre, but it gave the demon a chance to get organized.

Fiant realized that the ogre could not really hurt him, thanks to his ability to dematerialize at will. This restored his courage marvelously. Bullies always got brave when the odds were loaded on their side. He got up, strode toward Smash, and punched him in the gut. It was a good, hard blow-but now Smash shrugged it off as the trifle it was and countered with a sweep of his arm that was so swift and fierce it caused a contrail behind it.

But this blow, too, passed through the demon without effect.

"He's dematerializing!" Tandy cried. "You can't hit him!"

Unconvinced, Smash plunged his fist at the demon's head from above. This blow should have driven the demon halfway into the ground. Instead, it passed the entire length of Fiant's body without impediment and struck the bare rock beneath, where the rug of turf had been removed. The rock cracked apart and powdered into sand, naturally. Then Smash rammed a straight punch at Fiant's belly-and only succeeded in sundering the tree behind him. Smash was tearing up the landscape to no avail.

But the demon could hit Smash, by rematerializing his fists just before they struck. The blows didn't really hurt, but Smash was annoyed. How could he pulverize a creature who could not be hit back?

He tried to grab Fiant. This worked slightly better. The demon's body was as diffuse as smoke to his touch, but Smash's spread hamhands had more purchase, and he was able to guide the smoke as long as he handled it carefully. Unfortunately, the demon's fists remained material, and they now beat a brutal tattoo on Smash's face. His nose and eyes were hurting anew.

"Use your mind. Smash!" Tandy called.

Smash held the demon in place, enduring the facial battering while he put his natural Eye Queue intellect to work What would deal with such a demon once and for all? It would not be enough merely to drive Fiant off; he had to fix it so the demon could never again bother Tandy. If Tandy had a notion how he should proceed, why hadn't she simply screamed it out?

Because if the demon heard, he would act to negate it. Smash had to do whatever it was by surprise.

He glanced at Tandy-and saw her sitting on the gourd he had carried. Suddenly he understood.

He snapped at the demon's fists, using his big ogre teeth. "Oh, no, you don't, monster!" Fiant exclaimed.

"You can't get me that way!" Sure enough, he punched Smash on the tongue, and when Smash's teeth closed on the fist, it dematerialized and withdrew unhurt.

But meanwhile, Smash was carrying the demon toward the gourd. When he got there, he slowly tilted Fiant down toward the peephole Tandy had been sitting on. The demon was about to face the gourd. If Fiant saw it too soon, he would strike it and shatter it, ruining the ploy.

Fiant, intent on punching Smash's snout into a pulp, did not spy the gourd until he was abruptly face to face with it. "No!" he cried, realizing what it was. He jammed his eyes closed so he could not look, and dematerialized.

"Yes!" Smash grunted. He shoved the demon headfirst at the gourd. Because Fiant was dematerialized, he passed right through the peephole, headfirst. Suddenly Smash remembered the bottle ifrit inside this same gourd. Wasn't the gourd another kind of container? "You want to force your way into something?

This is a good place." Smash fed the rest of the demon through, arms, torso, legs, and feet, until all of him was gone.

"Let him find his way out of that," Tandy cried jubilantly. "Oh, this really serves him right!"

Smash put his ear to the peephole. He heard a faint, angry neighing, as of an aroused stallion, and a startled scream. It seemed the demon could not dematerialize very effectively in a world where everything was already immaterial. Then the beat of hooves faded away in the internal distance.

Smash smiled. As Tandy had suggested, it would be long before the demon found his way out of that situation!

He drew forth Tandy's fillet of soul and handed it back to her. Suddenly he felt his full strength return, and saw Tandy brightening similarly. Their two half souls had been returned!

Smash realized what it was. The nightmares had made a fair exchange for the two halves of Fiant.

Smash straightened up, keeping his eye averted from the peephole. He squinted at Tandy, perceiving her disheveled but pert nudity. "Ogre confess, like she dress," he said.

"Oh, you're a sight for sore eyes yourself!" Tandy said in nurselike fashion, wiping Smash's battered face. "And sore nose, too! But do you know something? I love you just as much in the ogre view."

He kissed her then, using his sore lips, not caring what point of view it might be. Love was, after all, blind.

Copyright © Piers Anthony