They looked at the little dog. He had metal side panels, fin-like feet, a fish-like tail, and a screen for a face. On it was printed the word WOOF!
“These are the folk who will sail Fibot,” Zephyr said to the animals. “Lydell and Grania. Treat them as temporary proprietors, because they are.”
The bird flew back to Zephyr. “Oh, bleep!” her voice said.
“Tata must sniff you, to check you out,” Zephyr said. “He has to do that with every person or creature who boards this craft, to be sure they represent no threat to it.” A flicker of a smile hovered near her lips. “The peeve checks you out verbally; the dog does it by odor and magic. Together they represent considerable if not completely comfortable security. For you as well as the boat.”
“That is good to know,” Nia said a bit tightly.
Tata walked forward and sniffed Dell’s shoes. He wagged his fishy tail. He moved on to Nia, sniffing her slippers. He glanced up, seeing under her skirt. YIPE! his face screen printed.
“Spare me the canine humor, dog-face,” Nia snapped. “I know I’m no lovely young thing, and my panties are long past their prime.”
Tata returned to join the peeve. The two evidently got along.
“Okay, you’ve been introduced,” Zephyr said. “Go out and bid farewell to Moatie.”
Bird and dogfish flew and scrambled up and out of the hatch.
Dell saw something: a button marked PANIC. “What’s this?
“Oh, that’s just there in case someone’s in a panic and needs your help. Nobody’s likely to do that. Ignore it.”
Dell shrugged.
“And now I must bid you both adieu,” Zephyr said. “I do hope we’ll meet again. You’re so sweet.” She hugged Grania, and kissed Lydell, sending his head reeling. Then she handed each a small metal key. “There are the temporary keys to the boat. The proper proprietors will have the permanent ones. Do not lose them.”
“Uh, sure,” Dell said awkwardly, pocketing his key.
Zephyr turned and went to the exit ladder. She climbed it, providing Dell a tantalizing glimpse of her legs as she climbed to the hatch. The dogfish would not have YIPED her.
They followed, closing the hatch after them, and stood on the regular boat, which remained as small as before. “Peeve! Tata!” Zephyr called. “Time to go!”
The little bird flew in, and the dogfish swam in and joined them on the deck. The moat monster looked sad. Clearly they were friends.
Zephyr stepped out onto the moat bank. “Farewell,” she called, waving.
They gazed at her, not yet reacting.
The peeve perched on the back of the dogfish. “What are you waiting for, idiots?” a gravely voice demanded, the bird’s emulation of the voice it thought the dog should have if it had one. “Are you on a mission or aren’t you?”
That goosed them into action. Dell hauled up the mast and unfurled the sail, while Nia sat beside the rudder. He snapped his fingers, and the sail caught fire, then caught the wind. This time it was square. Nia angled the rudder to make the boat tilt upward, and it sailed up over the moat and into the sky. It was exhilarating, yet sad.
Dell waved to Zephyr, a lump in his throat. Would he ever see her again?
They were on their way.
Chapter 4
Keys to the Craft
The patchwork landscape of Xanth was beautiful from this vantage. Dell admired its seemingly endless variety and detail as they sailed above it, following the wind.
“Well, you’re doing it,” the peeve growled in Tata’s supposed voice. “But you’ll never measure up to the way it was before.”
“Naturally not,” Nia agreed evenly. “Do you have any suggestions where we should go?”
“Us? Suggestions? We’re just mascots, harridan.”
“So what good are you, then, birdbeak?”
For a moment the bird seemed disgruntled. “We provide protection and atmosphere, witch. What’s it to you?”
“We have a mission to accomplish, lizardfoot. We have to find the permanent proprietors of Fibot.”
“So what, hag?”
“You’ll run out of original names to call me long before we succeed.”
That made the bird pause half a moment. “What’s your point, scold?”
“The more efficiently we search, the faster we’ll succeed. Then you’ll be rid of us, birdie.”
“And good riddance, shrew.”
“But if you don’t help us, peabrain, we’ll take longer, and you’ll be stuck with us forever. Wouldn’t that be a fate worse than getting eaten by a snake?”
“Ugh!” the peeve agreed. “Okay, bag, you’ve made your point. What do you want?”
“I want information on how to run this craft, and pointers on how to search efficiently for the proprietors.”
“Bleep.”
“Compliments will get you nowhere.”
“You’re one tough old battle-ax, you know that?”
“Of course I know it, buzzard beak. I also control your birdseed. So which is it to be between us, peace or war?”
“You drive a hard bargain, doll.”
“My kind does.”
The bird wrestled with the decision a good moment and a half longer. “You win, slut.”
“I win what?”
The peeve reluctantly ground it out. “You win, Nia. You’re a mover and shaker.”
“You think I don’t know what a mover and shaker is, you disreputable bird? A troll-like creature with a large pouch for catching things, wheels for moving items, long arms and huge hands for wrapping around trees to shake down the fruit. Do I look like that?”
“It’s figurative,” the peeve said. “They get things done.”
“As you meant it in that sense?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you. That’s so nice,” she said graciously. “From here on you will address me with grudging respect.”
The peeve shrugged, defeated. Nia had done a job Dell knew he couldn’t have: taming the obnoxious avian.
“Just what kind of bird are you?” she asked. “A parrot? And what’s your gender?”
“No way, either one. I’m a parody.”
Dell realized that made sense. Certainly it was no ordinary bird.
“Now where should I steer this boat?” Nia asked. “I don’t want to sweat up a storm. It’s unladylike.”
“Don’t do that!” the peeve exclaimed. “Sweat storms are the worst.”
“To be sure. We prefer to be relaxed, don’t we? Now answer my question.”
The bird sighed in its own voice. “Look for the children.”
“The first hint,” Nia agreed. “And how to we do that?”
The peeve glanced down at the dogfish, on whom it still perched. “What say, pal?”
The robotic screen illuminated. GROUND.
“Ground it,” the bird said.
Nia tilted the rudder, and the boat angled down. Dell trimmed the sail, so that there was less forward push. She brought it neatly to the edge of a green swamp.
Tata jumped out, landed on the squishy ground, and stood for a good four fifths of a moment. Then he jumped back onto the boat.
Dell, freed from sail duty for the moment, looked at the dogfish’s face screen. Now it showed a map, with an X by a hummock in the swamp.
“That’s where children are going to be,” the peeve said.
“How does he know?” Dell asked.
“It’s complicated.”
“All the same, we’d better understand,” Nia said.
“Tata associates with the Princess Eve, whose talent is to know all about any inanimate thing she touches,” the bird explained. “He borrows that talent to touch the ground and make a map of the local scene.”
“But he sniffed us,” Dell said. “We
’re not inanimate.”
“He sniffed your shoes, moron, not your stinking toes. But he can learn a lot from your offensive body odor, too.”
For some reason Dell didn’t really like the bird. It seemed it had made peace only with Grania.
“We’ll go that way,” Nia agreed.
They cranked up the boat again and sailed forward, low over the land. The sail was triangular.
“Wrong direction,” the peeve said.
“But that’s the way the wind blows,” Dell protested.
“Then tack.”
“What?”
The bird made a shudder as if suffering through unbearable stupidity. Then it explained. “Tacking is a nautical term. It’s a way of sailing the direction you need to go, regardless of the wind. Angle the sail while she holds the course steady. You can even sail into the wind, if you do it right.”
That was surely rare magic!
In the next hour they learned tacking, zigzagging against the wind. They got the boat going toward the X on Tata’s map, skimming low over the moor. Their control of the boat was improving.
They crossed a river. “Well now,” the peeve said, and Tata wagged his metal fish tail. There was a bare-breasted mermaid waving at them with her thumb. She was hitchhiking!
“Wow!” Dell breathed, his eyes that close to crystallizing.
“You do know she has no legs?” Nia asked him. She had an uncanny awareness of what aspects of a woman interested a young man. It seemed that came from raising a son and a grandson.
“That’s why she needs a lift,” he said. “She can’t walk across the land.” He glanced at her. “You told me to consider girls who weren’t exactly pretty. Well, she’s like a pretty girl with a deformity.”
“So be it,” Nia said with resignation. “We’ll give her a lift.”
They halted the craft beside the mermaid. She reached up, Dell reached down, and wrestled her into the boat. It was an awkward maneuver as her bare torso slid across him and her sunlight hair brushed his face, but for some reason he loved it.
“Thank you,” the creature said as her tail braced against a bench so that she could maintain an upright posture. “I am Merrie Mermaid. The drought is drying up my river, so I need to find a new one that isn’t already occupied. That may be difficult.”
Dell tried to respond, but was tongue-tied. She was lovely, including the tail!
“I am Grania,” Nia said. “This is Lydell. And these are Peeve Parody and Tata Dogfish.”
“With boobs like that,” the peeve said with Dell’s voice, “you must be really stupid, slattern.”
Merrie turned her face to him, a cloud darkening her sunny countenance.
“That’s the bird talking,” Nia said quickly. “It likes to insult people with other people’s voices so they get the blame. And the dogfish needs to sniff you, to be sure you’re legitimate.”
Tata sniffed the flukes of her tail and a lock of her trailing hair. Dell realized that the scales on the tail must be inanimate, and the hair too, so the dogfish could judge her nature. CLEAR, his screen printed.
Dell was relieved. He would have hated to have to toss her back into the swamp. It wasn’t just her bare bosom; she had nice hair and hips too.
The mermaid nodded. “Ah, now I understand.” She took a breath which strained Dell’s eyeballs further. “May I inquire what your business is here in the wilderness, with your remarkable flying boat?”
Dell finally managed to speak. “We’re looking for children.”
“As it happens, I saw a child hardly an hour ago. She looked lost in the swamp.”
“We’d better rescue her,” Nia said. “We don’t like letting children come to harm.”
Tata flashed a map on his screen. It seemed he knew the locale just from Merrie’s reference. They followed it, and soon found the girl. She looked to be about nine years old, wet, cold, and frightened. She was crying.
Tata jumped into the muck and swam to sniff her clothing. CLEAR.
Dell helped her into the boat. The child was shivering violently, maybe not entirely from the cold. They were all strangers to her.
“Come here, dear,” Grania said, enfolding her comfortingly.
“There’s clean clothing below,” the peeve said helpfully. It seemed it wasn’t inclined to insult hapless children.
“Dell, get the peeve to show you where clean clothing is stored,” Nia said.
Dell really appreciated the way Nia knew what to do, sparing him some floundering. He worked the hatch and they went down into the yacht portion of the craft. Soon they had clothing for the girl. Dell turned away while she changed. The peeve opened its beak, caught Grania’s glare, and abstained from commenting.
Warmed and dressed, the girl looked much better. Nia had even done her hair. It was sunny orange, matching her eyes.
Now Merrie took charge, surprisingly. “I saw you earlier, and asked them to pick you up. I am Merrie Mermaid, and these are friends. Who are you, and why are you alone here in the swamp?”
The girl did not seem to find it odd to be questioned by a mermaid. “I—I’m Ula. My name means ‘sea jewel’ though I’m not valuable and I’ve never seen the sea.”
“But you do have a talent? Every straight human has a talent.”
“Yes. It is to be useful in ways no one expects. But so far I’ve just been a burden.” Her eyes teared up again.
“Your mother doesn’t tell you that, does she?”
“I have no mother. Or father. I’m in an orphanage. I don’t like it, so I tried to escape, but I just got lost. I’m no good at anything!”
“You must be good at something,” the mermaid said. “You just haven’t found it yet.”
The child gazed at her with dawning hope. “You think?”
“Of course I do.”
Dell, next to Nia for the moment, murmured, “I like this mermaid.”
“So do I. She’s nice. She may after all be a prospect for you.”
“You know we should return you safely to the orphanage,” Merrie said.
Ula shuddered. “Oh, please, please don’t! They’ll beat me and put me on bread and water. I’d rather drown.”
The mermaid looked at Grania.
“It seems we have a decision to make,” Nia said. “By rights we should not help a child to run away. As a grandmother, I could never sanction that.”
The child winced and drew into herself.
“But we can’t take her back to a place she doesn’t like, where she’ll be punished for trying to get away,” Dell said.
“So I gather you vote no to that.”
“Oh, is it a vote?” Merrie asked. “I have some responsibility in this matter too, because I told you about her. I vote no.”
“Well, if we’re voting,” the peeve said, “I vote no.”
They looked at Tata. His screen printed NO.
“So it seems I have been overruled by a four-to-one vote,” Nia said, sounding not at all displeased. “Majority rules, of course, though I am on record as opposing our action, should the question ever be raised. We will try to find a better place for the fugitive. Until then she will be our guest aboard the boat.”
Ula lurched across to hug her.
Grandmothers did have their ways.
“Why don’t we anchor for a while so we can rest below?” Nia inquired. “We don’t have to hurry.” It was her way of telling them what to do.
They went below. Dell picked Merrie up and carried her to the hatch. She wasn’t really heavy and she cooperated to make herself seem even lighter. Going below was a tricky maneuver because he had to use his hands to cling to the ladder. The mermaid plastered herself against him so that he didn’t need to support her, her soft chest against his, her soft hair in his face, her tail between his legs. The maneuver was quite awkward, but he
bore with it. There was just something about her he liked.
He set her on a bed in a stateroom, and she relaxed, pulling a blanket over her. She was evidently more tired than she had let on. Ula took the next bed and lay there restlessly.
“You can sleep now,” Merrie told the girl.
“I’m too tired to sleep,” Ula said tearfully.
“We can fix that. I will sing you a lullaby.”
“They don’t work.”
“You haven’t heard mine.”
“None of them work on me.”
The mermaid smiled. She opened her mouth and sang a lovely lilting melody.
The girl listened, and was soon asleep. Dell was affected another way. He wanted to go hug Merrie, and that was just the beginning.
She stopped just in time. “Sorry about that; I forgot you were here. I have a bit of siren ancestry.”
“Oh.” He left them there and exited, closing the door.
“Now what?” the peeve asked Nia.
“Now we eat,” Nia said, and went about raiding the ship’s stored supplies, knowing what to do with them. That was another aspect that Dell couldn’t have handled himself.
Dell was left with the dogfish. That was fine, because there were things he wanted to know.
“Tata, you interest me,” he said. “Can we talk?”
The dogfish looked at him askance, a question mark on his screen. Probably few folk ever wanted to get to know such an incidental animal.
“I’m interested in ordinary things,” Dell explained. “And you’re way more than ordinary. I never heard of a mechanical land-walking dogfish before. I understand you came down in a shower? That’s unusual.”
The screen showed a scene with a storm cloud from which cats and dogs were falling.
“Ah! You were one of the dogs when it rained cats and dogs. How original! We dull humans get delivered by flying storks.”
Tata wagged his tail.
“You associate with Princess Eve? The mistress of Hades? I have heard of her and her twin sister Dawn, who is mistress of Caprice Castle.”
On the screen appeared a picture of a very pretty dark-haired woman wearing a petite crown: the Princess. She looked at Dell and winked. He almost fell off his chair. Obviously it was true: they associated. But why? She surely had better things to do than connect with an obscure little dog.
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