Swell Foop Part 20

There was the Random Factor, gesturing.

Suddenly they were standing in a deep forest. Something stirred just ahead of them. It was huge and green. In fact, it was a big tangle tree.

"Get out of here!" Sim squawked. But like Becka, he was too late. Myriad tentacles flicked out and coiled around all three of them. They were hauled into the main foliage of the tree.

"Here's another fine mess you've gotten us into!" Garnishee screeched.

"I'll turn dragon and get us out," Becka said. She changed form-but the dragon was just as securely bound as the girl had been. She exhaled fire, but the tentacles wrapped around her snoot, closing it.

"I'll curse us out," Garnishee said. She let fly a torrent of expletives that browned the tentacles holding her. But then another flicked in and circled her head, holding her mouth shut.

Sim did not like pulling rank, but this was an emergency. "Have you any idea who I am?" he demanded of the tree in an outraged squawk. "My mother is-"

Then a tentacle whipped around his beak, closing it.

All three of them were caught and gagged. They could neither fight nor protest. Meanwhile, the tangle tree was opening its huge wooden maw, considering which of them to eat first.

It decided on Sim. It carried him inward. He tried to struggle, but succeeded only in jostling loose one feather. The wind caught it and blew it away. He tried to squawk in protest, but all that emerged was one m.u.f.fled peep. The maw loomed hugely, dripping digestive sap.

Then it halted. Sim dangled just beyond the wooden teeth, unable to fathom the delay.

A huge hairy ham-hand appeared. It grabbed the twisted tentacles holding Sim and squeezed. They quickly became green pulp, and Sim dropped to the ground, the severed tentacles writhing off him like headless snakes.

Someone had rescued him! Sim turned to look at his benefactor-and saw an ogre.

But beside the ogre was a lovely young nymph, and she was holding a little boy. The boy had aspects of both ogre and nymph; they were evidently a family. But why had they intervened to save Sim?

Then he saw the feather in the little hand of the boy. Like all of Sim's feathers, it scintillated with twice the colors of the rainbow. Evidently it had blown their way, and the child had been intrigued by it. So they had come to see what was what.

"My, you are a pretty one," the nymph said somewhat shallowly, as was typical of her kind.

"I am Sim," he squawked. "I thank you for rescuing me from the tangle tree."

The ogre shrank into the form of a man. "I am Smash Ogre," he said. "This is Tandy Nymph, my wife, and Esk, our son."

Sim was for the moment squawkless. He knew this family-but the adults were in their late fifties, and the child was in his late thirties and married to a bra.s.sie woman. How could they be so young?

Unless.

"What year is this?" Sim squawked.

"Why, it is the year Ten-sixty-six, of course," Smash said.

Sim's smart mind clicked through ancient dates. That was two years after Smash and Tandy had married, and one year before Magician Dor married Princess Irene. "We got displaced in time!" he squawked.

"Yes, Smash caught you just in time," Tandy agreed. "I thought it would be a shame to see such a beautiful bird eaten, so I asked him to do something about it."

And so, either by pure chance, or to spare future Xanth a paradox, the ogre family had come just in time to rescue him. But how had they traveled backward in time? Probably the Random Factor had simply fed them into a magical wormhole that popped them out in a random time. That was certainly an effective way to get rid of them.

Sim realized that they were still standing amidst the quivering tentacles of the tangle tree. "You can cow a tangler just by your presence?"

"Well, Smash is a real ogre when he gets worked up," she said. "And I can throw a mean tantrum when I get worked up. The tree knows that, so it leaves us alone. A cow wouldn't scare it, but an ogre family can. We wouldn't have interfered, except for the feather."

Little Esk waved the bright feather, liking it.

Sim realized that he had been uncommonly fortunate. The Random Factor had sent them back thirty-five years, to a time before any of them had existed. It could have been worse, if the ogre family had not seen the feather.

But the others were still tied up. "Would you do me a favor?" he squawked. "I have two companions who are also caught by the tree, and I would like to save them."

They considered. "Are they worth saving?" Tandy asked.

"Certainly. One is Becka Human, who-" He realized that it might not be expedient to identify the girl. The complications of Castle Maidragon and the Random Factor would be anachronistic at best. "The other is-" He stalled again. Since when was a harpy worth saving?

"Har-pee!" little Esk exclaimed, spying the dirty bird.

"Yes, that is a harpy," Smash said. "They can wilt foliage with their swearing."

"Gee!" the child said, smiling.

Sim tried to make the best of this. "They can also make a nymph blush. I'm sure she will be happy to demonstrate, if you wish."

Smash walked to where the harpy was hanging. "Give," he said, not loudly.

The tentacles let go. Garnishee dropped to the ground, bas.h.i.+ng her tail. "x.x.xX!" she swore. Sure enough, Tandy blushed, and the gra.s.s wilted. Little Esk clapped his hands with delight.

"And my other companion is a nice young woman," Sim squawked.

Smash walked to where Becka hung bound. "Give."

But this time the tree balked. This was, after all, the most delectable of the three. It did not want to give up such a morsel. Instead it started swinging Becka toward its maw.

Smash swelled up into full ogre stature, but Tandy acted first. She nestled Esk in the crook of her left elbow, and made a throwing motion with her right arm. Sim didn't see anything leave her hand, but suddenly the tentacles around Becka straightened out as if electrified, and so did Becka's hair as she dropped to the ground. The tantrum had struck.

"Uh, thank you," Becka said, disheveled.

"The pretty bird asked," Tandy said.

"Maybe we can do you a favor in return," Becka said.

Smash shrugged as he returned to man form. "Probably not. The only thing we lack is knowledge of our son's magic talent."

Sim strained his copious memory, but apparently that bit of information had not yet been entered into his database. "We will try to figure it out," he squawked.

"Oh, thank you!" the nymph exclaimed, throwing him a kiss with her fingers. It smacked against his beak, sinking in pleasantly.

They walked to the ogre's den. By tacit agreement, none of the three time travelers spoke of their origins. Instead they focused on little Esk.

"It may not be a fancy talent," Beck said cautiously.

"That's all right," Smash said. "We're not fancy folk. We just want to know, whatever it is."

Tandy set Esk down in his playpen, where he tried to break out but lacked the strength. So obviously he wasn't much of an ogre in terms of strength. He was looking around brightly, so he wasn't much of an ogre intellectually, either; ogres had always been justifiably proud of their stupidity. He was a halfway-middling handsome lad, so wasn't suitably ugly, either.

So what could his talent be? He had to have one, because every person with any human component did. Some talents were so simple as to be hardly worth it, like forming a magical smudge on a wall or changing the color of one's own urine. Others were so powerful as to be scary, such as transforming others into other forms, as was the case with Magician Trent. Most were in the broad, dull, middle range, such as, well, Becka's ability to turn girl or dragon.

"Maybe he can change form," Sim squawked.

"Try this," Becka said, and turned dragon.

Esk tried, but did not manage to change into a dragon.

"It doesn't have to be a dragon," Sim squawked. "It could be to anything else. A crow, an ant, even a plant." But still no luck.

"Or an intellectual talent," Becka offered. "Such as having magical intuition, knowing about things better than others do." But if Esk had that, he didn't show it. "I guess that's limited to women," Becka added intuitively.

"Still, there could be other intellectual talents," Sim squawked. "Like maybe being able to decipher any code." He tried to think of a code that a two-year-old might tackle, but for once his super bird brain failed him. In any event Esk was looking blankly at him, so that probably wasn't it.

"Or to intimidate anything," Smash suggested hopefully. He made an ogre face. A low-flying cloud saw that, and hastily scudded out of the way, intimidated, but Esk just yawned. He didn't seem to be much on intimidation, either way.

"Or to hide anything so not even Jenny's cat can find it," Garnishee screeched.

"Who is Jenny?" Tandy asked.

Oops-Jenny would not exist in Xanth for another three decades. "Just someone with a clever cat," Sim squawked.

"But he's not good at finding things," Smash said. "He loses his marbles all the time."

"Enough of this feline-footing!" Garnishee screeched. "If he doesn't show a talent this instant, I'll kiss him."

Esk gazed at her with horror. Small wonder; it was a dire threat.

"So where's your magic?" the zombie harpy screeched, leaning down over the playpen to kiss him.

"No," Esk said.

"Well, maybe not," she agreed. "Maybe I'll just stroke you with my fowl wing." She stretched forth a wing.

"No."

"Or not," she agreed. "Maybe I'll just tell you a nice nursery story of bloodshed, mayhem, and betrayal. Once there was a sickly sweet pretty little princess who loved a hateful ugly troll who wanted only to butcher and cook and eat her. So she sneaked out-"

"No."

"Well, it's not much of a story, because she escapes, and after that she listens to her parents. Still, it has a nice wrinkle when she falls naked into a den of starving nickelpedes and-"

"No."

"Stop stopping me from telling my story!" she screeched, frustrated. "I haven't even gotten to the part where the harpies catch her and make her clean out their hutches with her tongue, and-"

"No."

"But-"

A lightbulb flashed over Sim's head. "He can say 'No'! That's his talent."

The others looked blank. "Anyone can say no," Tandy said. "It's an easy word."

"But he means it. Try doing something he doesn't like."

"Well, he doesn't like a bath. Of course it hasn't been convenient recently."

"Because he said no," Sim squawked. "Try it now."

Tandy brought out a tub. "Time for your bath, Esk," she said.

"No."

"You're right, it's not time," she agreed. "In fact, it's never time, these last few weeks." Then she paused. "It's true! He's been doing it all along!"

"That could be another reason the tangle tree stopped," Becka said. "Maybe he told it no."

"Yes," Esk agreed smugly.

"We've found your talent!" Smash cried. "And it's a good one." Then he considered. "I wonder if it works to stop other things you don't like, such as being confined in a playpen."

A little bulb flashed over Esk's head. He took hold of the playpen bars again. "No." And pushed on through; they had not been able to balk him.

"I wish you hadn't thought of that," Tandy murmured.

"I'm an ogre. I do stupid things."

"So you do." She kissed him. "Like loving me. I'm glad the night mare brought me to you."

"Me too," Smash agreed. They embraced. Little hearts appeared, circling them. She had evidently forgiven him.

Esk paused in his exploration of the great outside, turning slightly green. He was jealous of too much affection that wasn't shown directly to him. He opened his mouth.

"Better not," Becka said in a singsong voice. "Where will you be, if they stop loving each other?"

Esk thought about that long and hard. Finally he nodded, and went on with his explorations. He forged toward a nettle bush. It readied a nettle for him, but changed its mind when he told it no.

"I think we have repaid them for rescuing us," Sim squawked. "Now how do we get home?"

"You can't just walk home?" Smash asked.

"It was a very devious route," Becka said. "I think we can't return the way we came."

That stumped them, until Tandy thought of something. "How about reverse wood?"