"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!
"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 crossbreeding? 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."
"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 rock-calloused 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 h
is 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.
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