Jest Right

by Piers Anthony

  Soon they were in her comfortable living room, which was phrased like a coral reef, explaining everything.

  “You have come to the right world,” Ida said as they concluded. “Our world’s Brain Coral Pool is guaranteed never to let a bad prisoner escape.”

  If they could just get there in time.

  Chapter 12

  Noe

  Dolph transformed again, and they circled Ida until they were able to orient on the World of Coral. This turned out to be mostly sea with scattered islands. Where was the Brain Coral? Somewhere deep in that sea. Dolph could change to whale form and reach it, if he knew where to go.

  “I can vaporize and sniff it out, sensing the smart water and air near the Brain, if we get close enough,” Myst said. “Within a few miles.”

  While the planet was a few thousand miles around. “We have a problem,” Jess said.

  “We can ask Aunt Ida,” Aria said. And there was the answer.

  Dolph flew low over the sea, orienting on Ida’s castle. Soon it showed up as a vertical coral reef, with turrets reaching into the sky and foundation under the water. It was pretty in its unusual way, with pennants in the shape of fish. He landed on a reef that circled it: this world’s version of a moat.

  Ida heard them and came out. She had an appealing fishy aspect, and her hair resembled seaweed. Her orbiting planet was in the shape of a bird; in fact it seemed to be flying around her head.

  Jess quickly explained, and Ida quickly understood. “As happens, the Brain Coral’s Pool is not far from here; my brother can reach it within an hour.”

  The Hag tried to make a break for it, but Dolph clamped a hand on her arm and pacified her. Then Jess and Myst held her while Dolph transformed. They bundled her aboard and took off. This seemed almost too good to be true!

  It was. “She’s gone!” Aria said.

  The roc slewed to a halt in mid air, an interesting maneuver. “Squawk?”

  That needed no translation. “The Sea Hag is gone,” Jess sad. “We’re too late.”

  “Squawk!” Which also needed no translation, especially in the presence of a child. The air around them was crackling.

  “Of course she vacated the moment she could,” Jess said. “She knew where we were taking her.”

  “But we should be able to track her,” Myst said.

  “I am trying,” Aria said. “But I don’t sense her presence. She just seems to have vanished.”

  “We’d better go back to Princess Ida,” Jess said. “Maybe she’ll know what to do.”

  Dolph looped about and flew back to Ida’s coral castle.

  “But of course,” Ida said. “The Sea Hag has a long and ugly history, and we know her nature. She can be detected only when she occupies a living host. Between possessions she is merely an evil spirit.”

  “How long can she go between hosts?” Jess asked.

  “Indefinitely. Sometimes she seems to have taken time off, and has not reappeared for generations.

  “So we can’t hang around waiting for her to take another host,” Jess said. “She can out-wait us.”

  “Yes,” Ida said. “I’m afraid you have lost her.”

  “Suppose she hangs around as a ghost near us, until we go to another world?” Myst asked. “Then grabs a woman there?”

  “No, she can’t do that, as far as we know. Spirits can’t change worlds without hosts, except in very special circumstances, such as when a person vacates her body here, and sends part of her soul to the next world. They do it that way so they can return to their world of origin; the soul remains connected. Since the Sea Hag has no body here, she can’t safely travel the worlds. Her soul would dissipate, ending her existence. She must travel in a host, or not at all.”

  “Then we can’t be sure she’ll be marooned here on Coral,” Jess said.

  “You can be fairly sure she won’t be,” Ida said. “But it may take her some time to corrupt a new host and reach Xanth proper.”

  “Like maybe about nine years,” Aria said grimly.

  “Yes, dear.”

  “Blip!”

  “But those of us who have had direct experience with her will be able to track her,” Dolph said. “Especially you, Aria. And Noe.”

  Jess realized that Noe had been strangely silent since her release.

  “About Noe,” Aria said. “She is in a bad way.”

  Jess did not like the sound of this. “A bad way? Shouldn’t she be better now, as Nia was?”

  “Nia looks young, but she’s a grandma,” Aria said. “She’s tough as fingernails. Noe isn’t. She is hurting. I am stabilizing her, but that’s temporary.”

  “How can we help her?” Jess asked, alarmed.

  “I think, judging from the nuances, she needs to cry. In the arms of someone who understands. Then she needs to talk.”

  “I think I understand,” Myst said. “But I’m too young.”

  “I think I understand, too,” Jess said. “But I doubt she could take me seriously.”

  “I had two daughters,” Dolph said. “Sometimes I comforted them. But I don’t know Noe well enough.”

  “I believe I understand,” Ida said. “I have seen much in my tenure as guardian of the worlds. Let her go, Aria.”

  Noe had been standing erect. Now she slumped into utter dejection. “I’m soiled,” she said. “I think I can never be clean again.”

  “Come here, Noe,” Ida said, opening her arms.

  The girl lunged to them, sobbing as though her heart were being ripped out of her body. Ida held her close. With her eyes, Ida indicated that the others should clear out for the moment.

  Jess, Dolph, and Myst exited the castle, standing beside the coral moat. “I think I was thinking too much about containing the Hag,” Jess said. “And not enough about Noe.”

  “Me, too,” Myst said. “If it had been one of the siblings, I’d have picked up on it better.”

  “The siblings,” Dolph said. “Noe has sisters?”

  “No. Noe’s a girlfriend to Santo. It’s a relationship of convenience. The siblings are five of us who got rescued from the future by Astrid Basilisk and Demoness Fornax. Firenze, Santo, Squid, Win, and me. We all got adopted out, but we’re siblings. It’s complicated.”

  “You were all from one family?” Dolph asked.

  “No, all different families and different ages and talents. We’re not at all alike. And Squid isn’t even human. But that experience, and our common origin, well, it made us closer than anybody else could be. We trust each other, we’d do anything for each other, we understand each other. We’ll always be brothers and sisters, no matter what. Ula isn’t part of that, though we all like her, and neither is Noe, though we like her, too, and think she’s good for Santo.”

  Jess suffered a revelation, though a bulb did not flash over her head. “Noe needs to be a sibling!”

  “No, she’s a girlfriend,” Myst said. “That’s one thing we sibling girls will never be to Santo, and not because he’s gay. We’re his sisters.”

  But the idea had hold of Jess. She parked it on a mental shelf, ready to be dusted off without notice.

  Ida and Noe appeared in the doorway. “Now we need to talk,” Ida said.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t understand!” Myst said, bursting into tears. She ran to hug Noe.

  “Nobody could really understand, who hasn’t been taken by the Sea Hag.” Noe said. “But Princess Ida has shored me up. I do have things to live for, if I can handle it.”

  Jess noted that Aria was now the silent one. “We will listen,” she said.

  They settled into Ida’s comfortable living room. “When—when the Sea Hag took me, it was like drowning,” Noe said. “I tried to fight her, but she overpowered me. I couldn’t hold my breath long. She just pushed me down into the mud and sat on me. I could feel her fighting somebody,
but it wasn’t me. It was Aria. Then Aria gained strength and pushed the Hag down in the stinking mud with me, but that didn’t free me; she was still on top of me. She’s so awful! It was like being buried in manure. I don’t think I’ll ever get the filth all the way out.”

  Noe paused, as if expecting to be interrupted, but no one else spoke. “I clung to one thing, there in the muck: Santo. I’m just his show girlfriend; it was never real. But I always did like him; he’s so smart, and talented, Magician caliber, and he treats me so well even though there’s nothing womanly he wants from me. He’s just a great guy.”

  Jess remembered how Santo had dismissed her, and how Squid had called him on it. Santo wasn’t perfect, but overall Noe was right. Santo was a remarkable boy, or young man.

  “I clung to him to save my sanity,” Noe continued. “In my suffering mind what had been mere show became real. I came to love him, as a woman loves a man. He’ll never marry me, but in my heart I’m his wife. I held on to that dream, and survived. I owe my survival to him.” She paused again, but again there was no challenge. “Now the Sea Hag is gone, and she will never return to me. I’m like ashes that can’t be burned again, or undeleted material, that can’t be deleted again. That’s the way it is with former victims, if they live; I know it now. But I don’t know whether I want to live.”

  Now Jess had to protest. “Noe! Of course you want to live!”

  “I am dirty, right through to my soul. There’s a stain remaining that I can’t ever wash out.” She smiled briefly. “Like Atrocia’s soiled panties. The only clean thing I have left is my love for Santo, and that is futile. Even if I were clean, he would not want me in the way I want him; I always knew that. And even if he were hetero, once he saw my putrid core he wouldn’t want me. I have nothing for him except my foolish love. And maybe it would be kinder for him, and for me, and for everyone if I took that love to oblivion. Then he would be free, and not feel that he had to maintain any pretense about liking me.”

  She was a child, but she was talking like a woman. The worst of it was that she was deadly serious.

  “Oh, Noe,” Jess breathed with sympathetic pain.

  “I think you had to hear this,” Ida said to the others. “You may hate it, but at least you will understand why she does what she does. It has happened to other survivors of the Sea Hag. That’s why I knew.”

  “She’s going to kill herself!” Myst protested.

  “Yes, dear. It will end her pain.” Ida was plainly resigned.

  Jess looked at Dolph, but he was frozen, not knowing how to handle this. He was a prince and a Magician, but also a helpless man in the face of such naked emotion. She looked at Myst, and she was neither resigned nor frozen, but had no idea what to do.

  That left it up to Jess. Now she knew what she had to do, unkind as it might seem. “Noe, I listened to you. Now you listen to me. Take me seriously, if you can, because I have the answer you need. Heed me.” She fixed the child with her gaze, holding it until Noe gave way and accepted her dominance.

  “Yes, Jess,” Noe whispered.

  “You have not thought this through, or seen the larger picture; you are thinking mainly of yourself, and that is a mistake. I submit that you do not properly understand your feeling for Santo. Yes, he is a fine young man, and yes, you have been badly soiled. But that is not the end of it. What you really want is him in your life, respecting you and caring for you, as he respects and cares for his sisters. Loving you, as he loves his siblings.”

  “Yes,” Noe whispered.

  “And you want the feeling of family that the siblings have,” Jess continued. “They are completely unrelated, male and female, and one is not even human, but Santo loves them all. They are as close as any people can be.”

  “Yes.”

  “You have your own family at home, but what you want now is a family with Santo, as the siblings have. What makes them siblings? Their own choice, because they share a larger background that unifies them emotionally. You do not share their origin in an alternate future, but you do share significant experience, such as hosting a Sorceress, and the need to save Xanth from a fate just about as bad as the one the siblings escaped. We need you for that continuing effort.”

  “But I’m unclean!”

  “The bleep you are! What you suffer is the remnant of the putrid evil that is the Sea Hag. That filth can be expunged. You just need to live in a way the Hag never would, being a good person in every way that you can be. Noe, you need to become a sibling.”

  “But—”

  “They are siblings, as I said, because they choose to be—and because they accept each other as siblings. Because of their common experience losing their original families. You have not lost yours, but you have had an experience as bad as any of theirs, that put you in doubt about whether it was worthwhile to continue your existence. That is strong medicine. You are locked into the same deadly mission they are now, trying to save Xanth from future destruction. You are one with them in spirit. They will accept you as one of them. Yes, you are not the prettiest, smartest, or luckiest girl in Xanth, but you have an underlying quality they appreciate: you are decent. You are nice. You care. They want you to be with them, and not just as a pretend playmate for Santo. They need you, as they need each other, as we all face the horror ahead.”

  “But I’m unclean!”

  “Nia is as soiled as you are; she hosted the Sea Hag, too. But she’s a grandmother with much experience of life; she can handle it. Consult with her, when we rejoin the community of the boat. She will help you gain perspective. So will the others. You are not alone, even in this. Do not opt out without giving them a chance. You must join them, not leave them.”

  “But they won’t—”

  Jess fixed her gaze on Myst. “Myst! You are a sibling! Would you accept Noe as another?”

  “Yes!” Myst said, catching on.

  “Would Santo?”

  “Yes!”

  Jess returned her steely gaze to Noe. “There is your course. Think of the others: what will Aria do without a host? She saw her mother deleted, and now she’s trying desperately to stop that horror. She truly needs you, Noe. What will Squid do without her friend Aria?”

  Noe’s face froze. Indeed, she had not thought it through!

  Jess did not relent. “And Santo. You think he won’t miss you? He will think it was something he did that drove you to kill yourself. Everyone else will think you did it because you discovered he was gay, and he won’t be sure they aren’t right. You won’t be there to tell them otherwise, will you, Noe? Is this how you propose to show your love for him?”

  The girl was transfixed with sheer horror. “No, no—”

  “Don’t hurt Santo by dying. Help him by living. He does love you in his fashion, and wants you with him. Become his sibling. That will be for life. You can still play-act at being his girlfriend, to keep judgmental strangers at bay. Not only will you help him, you will be part of a larger family, and you will have regular access to Fibot, no minor thing in itself. Do it!”

  “Yes,” Noe whispered tearfully.

  “And one more point. We all need you in our fight against the Sea Hag, now that you are immune to her possession. When we finally corner her, to carry her away and put her in the Pool, she will be desperately looking for a new host. That’s what happened when she was in Nia, and left her to take you. You can grab her host and hold her without being at further risk, unlike other women. She will have to vacate, and maybe by then we will have the means to catch her mean spirit. It will be an ugly scene, but you can do it, and we will need you for that.”

  “Yes,” Noe repeated, desperate determination rising.

  “Yes. Do it,” Jess repeated grimly, and let her attention go.

  Myst went to comfort her, as a sibling, as Noe dissolved into another siege of tears, as she had with Ida. But this time they were tears of understand
ing and relief. She would live, and likely prosper. She had a new mission.

  Jess discovered the others looking at her.

  “Now we know why Jess is the protagonist,” Ida said.

  “I just did what I had to do, cruel as it might seem,” Jess said.

  “Exactly.”

  “True,” Dolph agreed. “You were amazing.”

  But Jess felt the passion draining from her. She had briefly overridden her curse, but now she was reverting to normal. It might never happen again.

  Noe disengaged and straightened up, wiping her face. Then Aria spoke. “Thank you, Jess.”

  Jess simply nodded her head, choked up for the moment.

  “I think all we can do now is move on,” Dolph said. “Hoping that we will be able to orient on the Sea Hag when she takes a new host, and run her down and put her away.”

  “We might as well rejoin the crew at Fibot,” Aria agreed. “If we can find it.”

  “You may be able to do that,” Ida said. “I believe the World of Three Moons is about four worlds up. Won’t the boat be passing there in due course?”

  Noe perked up. “Yes! We have a tunnel to build there.”

  They thanked Ida and moved on. Dolph transformed into the roc, and they oriented on the World of Bird that seemed to be orbiting Ida’s head. Jess knew now that this was more apparent than literal; it was merely a way to magically connect. But it worked, and that was what counted.

  They discovered a world of towering mountains and jagged valleys, with hardly a level surface anywhere. Birds of all types abounded. A purple roc intercepted Dolph as he glided toward the only landing place in view, a rounded mountain peak.

  “Squawk!” the other bird demanded.

  “Squawk!” Dolph replied.

  The other bird spun about in mid air, then winged away. Dolph followed. Other birds gave them leeway, except for one flock of small ones. Jess was surprised. They looked just like the peeve! They even cast insulting glances at the visitors.

  Soon they came to a castle clinging to a precipice. Princess Ida’s residence!