Faun And Games Part 40

"We'll have to change color," Forrest said.

"Maybe not," Imbri said. "With the blanket of obscurity, we may not be noticed."

He hadn't thought of that. "Then let's go ahead. You can ask directions with dreamlets that show the correct color."

They crossed the ridge-and abruptly their tilt was wrong. It was geared to the blue face, which was sharply different from the red face. They were now at a steep angle to the terrain. In fact their heads wanted to collide with the ground at a slight angle, while their bodies wanted to point slightly into the air.

"We are oriented ninety degrees to the blue face," Imbri said.

"The red face differs from the blue face by a hundred and twenty degrees. We shall have to crawl on our hands. I don't feel comfortable with that." Indeed, she was lying on her side with two feet in the air.

"Maybe I can figure it out," Eve said. She touched a finger to the red rock. "Aha! There's a colony of lings near the edge. We can make a deal with them."

That was a relief. They crossed back to the blue face and walked along the edge until they were near the lings. This happened to be by the sh.o.r.e of a blue lake that went right up to the boundary, bent around the corner, and became a red lake at the new angle. Then they waited for the obscurity to wear off, so that Forrest could crawl to the lings camp. But as the spell faded, a large canine creature loped toward them from the blue side.

"What is it?" Eve asked, concerned.

"That looks like a dire wolf," Dawn said. "Get well away from it!"

"Maybe I had better invoke the blanket of obscurity again," Forrest said, taking it out of his knapsack.

. "No, just cross to the red side," Dawn said urgently. She and Eve were already doing so, while Imbri stood warily by.

A deep ba.s.s note sounded from the lake, almost under Forrest's elbow. He jumped-and the can flew out of his hand. It splashed into the water, where a big fish swallowed it.

"Oh, no!" Dawn cried. "That's a largemouth ba.s.s. It swallowed the can."

Meanwhile the dire wolf was coming close. Forrest quickly brought out a storm package and opened it. Dark clouds swirled out, making sheets of rain and peals of thunder. The wolf got a blast of spray in the snoot, reconsidered, pa.s.sed close by them, and ran on, not attacking. "Of all the bad luck," Forrest said.

"That's the thing about a dire wolf," Dawn said. "Wherever it goes, disaster follows. That's why we had to get away from it."

And he hadn't done so, not realizing what she meant. Now their main protection from hostile interest, the blanket of obscurity, was gone. If only he had understood in time!

There was nothing to do but dry off and proceed with their mission, hoping they could get along without the obscurity. Forrest crossed to the red and crawled to the place where the lings were. They were easy to deal with; they flocked to the edge, and treated each person as she crossed. Imbri was the one who made the actual deals, so she lost several more bits of her substance and became a smaller horse. But now they were able to walk at the correct angle. They were also red; they had had to deal for that too. Things were looking better, but they were paying a price. If only they hadn't lost their main protection! Maybe they were blundering because of the prior loss of the Good Magician's list of words.

Dawn touched the plants, and Eve touched the objects, and soon they had a notion where a sleep-talented woman had been. They followed her trail, being watchful for any dangers, and in due course located her.

Except that when they found her, they couldn't see her. There was her nice little red brick house, but no woman. They had not wanted to be sneaky, but their awareness of danger made them careful, so they peeked in a window first. And saw nothing.

"But she's there," Imbri insisted. "I can feel her fleeting dreams."

Then Forrest made a connection. "She's the daughter of Graeboe Giant.

Is he an invisible giant?"

"Not any more," Imbri said. "He's a winged goblin now."

"But he has the invisible heritage. She's invisible!"

Eve touched the house. "Why so she is! This is the house of an invisible woman."

"So maybe we should just knock on the door and introduce ourselves,"

Forrest said. "Instead of generating our own complications."

The others, abashed, agreed. So Forrest knocked-and in a moment a red-cloaked woman answered. "Yes?" she inquired from the depths of her cowl.

"I am Forrest Faun. I have come to ask a favor from Ghina."

"I am she. I am glad to give favors, for they increase my stature.

What is your wish?"

"My friends and I need your help to nullify the four Wizards of Pyramid."

"Oh, my!" she exclaimed. "That is a very dangerous undertaking.

"Yes. But if we succeed, the tyranny of the Wizards will be ended, and you will be free."

"Free? We're free now. The Wizards have done a great many favors for us."

Ooops. He had forgotten that though the Wizards were oppressing the folk of Ptero, it was the opposite for the folk of Pyramid. Ghina might not want to cooperate.

He pondered as swiftly as he could, and decided that the truth was best, though it was dangerous to utter. "We are from another world. The Wizards are harming that world, in order to do favors here."

She considered. "Are any of my friends being harmed?"

"They could be. There are many might-be folk there, and surely some of them are relatives of yours." He wasn't quite sure what system there was, as there seemed to be might-he's on all the worlds, but it seemed a safe a.s.sumption that there were invisible giants, goblins, and harpies on Ptero. So her ancestry was surely well represented.

"Well, then, I suppose I had better help. And if I am helping my relatives, it isn't really a favor to you."

"It's a fair exchange of favors," he said, relieved.

"Very well. I'll help." She stepped out the door.

"But don't you have to close up your house, or anything?"

"It will keep until Mom and Dad fly home. Or until my brother Geddy walks home; he's out charming the ladies with his songs. Where are your friends?"

"Here they are." The three others were stepping forward. "This is Mare Imbri, who speaks in dreamlets."

Imbri sent a dreamlet of a winged goblin girl. "h.e.l.lo."

"And these are Dawn & Eve Human, whose talents are to know all about living and inanimate things." The twins in red jeans nodded. Forrest noticed, irrelevantly, that Dawn's hair color had returned to its natural flame hue, while Eve's hair was now midnight red. Both girls remained infernally attractive.

Ghina's cowl looked thoughtful. "Are you related to Magician Trent?"

"He's our great grandfather," Dawn said.

"Now rejuvenated to his twenties," Eve said. "So he's not much older than we are."

"That's the one! Mother knew him." The cowl looked down, as if blus.h.i.+ng. "In fact, Mother rather liked him. If he had been willing, she would have ordered me from the Stork Works with him, instead of with Graeboe, and I might have been visible. Not that I have any objection to Graeboe; he's a fine father. It's just that sometimes I wonder what I might have looked like."

"Like this," Imbri said. In the dreamlet, her human figure conjured a bucket of red paint and flung it at the cowled Ghina figure. The paint splashed all over, was.h.i.+ng off the cowl and leaving a red winged goblin girl.

"Oh!" Ghina cried, delighted. "I'm pretty!"

"Just like your mother," Imbri agreed.

They started off. "I suppose we should do the Red Wizard first, since we're here," Forrest said. "Do you know where his castle is?"

"It's in the center of the red triangle," Ghina said. "But I don't know the best way there. I'll ask the chess nut."

"Chestnuts talk?" Forrest asked.

She must have smiled. "You're funny." She led the way through the forest to a glade wherein stood a.s.sorted life sized redwood figures of men, women, horses, towers, and children. The floor of the glade was marked in squares: light red and dark red. As they approached, a figure of a light red man with a pointed hat slid across a diagonal and grabbed a dark red child figure. It tossed the child to the edge of the glade, where it joined a tumbled collection of figures.

"Uncle Kerby!" Ghina called.

There was a stirring. "Yes, Niece Ghina," a voice came from the air.

"Oh-an invisible giant, of course," Dawn murmured.

"From her father's side of the family," Eve agreed.

Imbri made a dreamlet showing the glade with its wooden figures, and the outline of an invisible giant standing over them, ready to move another piece. The giant seemed to be of about average size for his type, with unruly brown hair and green eyes. Apparently his invisibility allowed him to be normal colors, instead of shades of red.

"Where is the center of the triangle?" Ghina asked.

"All paths lead to it," Kerby replied, moving another chess piece.

"Thank you, Uncle!"

"But we're forgetting something," Dawn said.

"That's right: Jfraya," Eve agreed.

So they were. They needed both people to do the job. "We'll have to go to the green face first," Forrest said with regret.

Kerby overheard him. "That will be a harder trip."

"Uncle, could you help us?" Ghina asked.

"I could, but I don't want to take any ma.s.s from you, sweet thing."

"I will trade you this smile," she said, turning her invisible face in Kerby's direction.

Forrest couldn't see the smile, but the glade brightened. The giant must have seen it, being also invisible.

"Climb on," he said.

Imbri's dreamlet showed a huge hand being laid on the ground before them. They climbed on and took hold of the fingers, and Imbri lay in the palm. Then the hand lifted above the trees, and the red terrain whizzed by below.

It didn't take long. Kerby lowered them at the corner between the red and the green faces. "Actually I could reach across, if you know where your friend is," the giant offered.

"Let me touch a tree," Dawn said. "Maybe she walked past it once."

"Let me touch the ground," Eve said. "Maybe a path leads to her home."

They scrambled off the invisible hand. They had the usual trouble with the changed angle of the green face, but crawled to a green tree and green stone.

Soon they returned. "Someone once opened a door near here," Dawn reported. "The trees were astonished, for it was a door into the ground.

"And the ground knows of other doors that opened in it, in that direction," Eve said, pointing.

"I will reach as far as I can in that direction," Kerby said.

The girls scrambled back onto his hand. Then they rode way out across the green terrain, until the giant's reach reached its farthest reaches, and he lowered them to the greensward.

"Thank you, Uncle!" Ghina called, flas.h.i.+ng another glade brightening invisible smile as they slid to the ground.

"Welcome, Niece," he called back, as he started back toward his chess game, his voice sounding lower because of the special magic of Doppler.

It occurred to Forrest that Doppler must have been an interesting Magician, though it wasn't clear why he wanted to fool with sounds.

Now they had to struggle with the terrain. It was possible for them to walk erect, if they clung to trees and other features of the greenscape, but not easy. There seemed to be no lings in the vicinity. So they were stuck in the greenery, being both red and grounded.

"Maybe we can brace each other," Dawn gasped. "So we can walk more or less upright."

"Or tie ourselves together," Eve added. "So we can be braced without using our hands."

They found some greenbriar vines, but they were too th.o.r.n.y to use. Then they saw a green rope leaping around. Forrest managed to snag it as it jumped over him. The rope struggled, wanting to be free to leap some more, but the girls grabbed hold of its ends and subdued it. "It's a jump rope," Eve gasped. They wound it around, and tied themselves into a clumsy ma.s.s. It worked, not well, but better than nothing, and the rope's natural inclination to jump helped. Imbri was the center, and the other four cl.u.s.tered around her, their feet bracing outward. It was uncomfortable, but feasible, for now.

Forrest was wedged against Ghina, because there needed to be two people to a side and the twins couldn't agree which one of them would get to press against the faun. Ghina was invisible within her cloak and cowl, and quickly shed those so as to be entirely invisible and less noticeable. But her body was solid. Forrest felt her wings brus.h.i.+ng him every so often, and he was aware of other parts of her. He realized that he was in close contact with yet another healthy young woman. How did he keep getting into these situations?

"She's that way," Eve said, after touching the ground for information.

"Not far."

So they trundled along in that direction. Forrest had no idea what they would do if something unfriendly spied them. They weren't in any condition to fend anything off. Maybe another storm package would drive it away, but maybe not.

"Say, I never realized that fauns were so interesting," Ghina murmured.

"Do you suppose we could-?"

"Unfeasible," he said. Was there any point trying to explain about the effect faunish contact had on females?

"Oh," she said regretfully.