The Color Of Her Panties Part 28

"Naga," Metria agreed crossly. Then she did a double take. "Hey-"

"Do you know where she is?" Ida asked.

"Of course I know where she is!" the demoness said. "She's with my kind."

All three of them were astonished. "She's among the demons?" Mela asked.

"Correct. There's some very important project in the making, and she's part of it."

"But she's not a demon!" Mela said. "She's a naga princess. What would she want with your kind?"

"Nothing," Metria said. "But she doesn't have a choice. She tasted some red whine in the realm of the gourd. A person can't leave the dream realm if she eats of its substance. She didn't eat, she drank, and she didn't really drink, she only tasted, but it compromised her. So she has a debt to work off before she can be free. She's serving her time."

Ida found this confusing. "But I thought the demon realm was different from the dream realm."

"It is. But a beautiful creature like her is no good for bad dreams, so she's TDY to the demons."

"She's what?" Ida asked.

"Ha!" the demoness said. "Caught you! That's the term I meant to use."

"But I still don't understand it."

"It stands for temporary duty. Tee-Dee-Why. The dream realm is lending her to the demons."

"But what's she doing there that the demons couldn't do for themselves?"

Ida asked.

"That's what I'd like to know, " Metria said crossly. "But they won't tell me. It's some fat juicy secret, and they're afraid I'll blab it across Xanth if I knew it."

"Wouldn't you?" Mela asked.

"Of course I would! That's my privilege. I'm a gossipy demoness. It really gripes me that they are preventing me from doing my thing."

Ida, however, could see the point of the other demons.

They could not very well keep a secret if one of them blabbed it everywhere.

But Mela had an idea. "We have to go talk to Nada. But we don't know how to get to the demon realm. You, on the other fluke, want to-"

"The other what?"

"Sorry. I'm from the sea. I meant to say hand. You want to know what's happening there. Maybe we can make a deal."

Metria considered. "I get you there, you tell me what's going on?"

"That's it."

"But if they know you'll tell me, they won't tell you. And if I get you there, they'll know."

"You can a.s.sume any form," Ida said. "Why don't you a.s.sume human form and join our party? Then you can learn it yourself."

The demoness wasn't sure. "Demons are pretty good at recognizing other demons, because we all change form constantly.

"Suppose they never thought to check you?" Mela asked. "If you were beneath suspicion. Some harmless innocent waif, maybe."

"That should work," Ida said. "They could recognize you, but maybe won't. Because it never occurs to them."

Metria began to be convinced. "But I don't know any harmless innocent waifs."

"We'll invent one," Ida said. "Cerebral, my centaur tutor, told a story of a little human match girl. She was so poor she wore rags. She sold matches. They are magic splinters of wood that make fires when rubbed against things. But no one wanted them, so she froze to death,"

"Why didn't she use her magic sticks to make a fire to keep warm?" Okra asked.

Ida shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe she didn't think of it. I think she wasn't a very smart little girl.

"Then that's perfect for Metria," Mela said. "No one will suspect her, because she's really smart."

The demoness seemed tempted. "But what would she be called?"

"Smart Aleck," Okra suggested.

"Perfect!" Metria said. Then she reconsidered. "Now just a minute! That won't do, because I'm not a boy."

"You need a name that is pitifully plain," Mela said.

"Because woe betide us all if you get caught."

"That's it!" Ida exclaimed.

"What?" the other three asked in an imperfect but serviceable chorus.

"The name! Woe Betide."

The demoness fogged, then reformed as the smallest, cutest, most innocent ragged little girl imaginable. She carried a box of tiny wooden splinters with red tips.

"Please buy my matches," she begged in the most waifish of voices.

"Oops," Mela said. "This is Xanth. We don't have money. So how can she be selling anything?"

"No problem," the waif said. "Demons do anything they want to. Since we can make coins from air, we use them to trade for things. "She lifted one hand, and a bright golden disk appeared in it.

"But won't the coins turn back to air again soon?" Mela asked.

"Of course. As soon as we forget to concentrate. So what?"

"But then the sale isn't real!"

"Neither are the matches." The waif held up one, and it puffed into smoke and drifted away.

"But that will give you away," Ida pointed out. "A real waif would have real matches."

Metria sighed. The entire box of matches vanished.

"We'll have to make real ones."

They found a Handy firewood tree and peeled off a number of splinters.

These worked; when vigorously rubbed against a stone, they burst into fire. Then the demoness made a new box, and put the real matches in it.

"That should surfeit them."

"Should what them?" Ida asked.

"Induce, inveigle, a.s.suage, complete, qualify-"

"Satisfy?"

"Whatever," the waif said crossly.

Mela pursed her lips. "I don't think that will do. We shall have to keep the dialogue simple. You're supposed to be unsmart, anyway."

"Maybe just 'Match? Match?'" Okra suggested.

"That's fine," Mela agreed. "Waif, just say that, so you can't mix up the word."

The waif turned wonderful big brown eyes on her.

"Match?" she begged pitifully.

"That's it!" Ida said. "That would melt a heart of stone."

"Oh, let's see!" the waif said. She approached a stone that was roughly heart shaped. "Match?" she begged so soulfully that it seemed impossible that she should be a soulless creature.

The stone began to melt around the edges.

"I think we're ready," Mela said. "How do we get there?"

"I can carry you there in a basket," the demoness said.

A huge basket appeared.

Ida didn't like the look of that. She remembered how it had been told that Princess Rose had been taken to h.e.l.l in a hand basket. So she fashioned an objection. "If we enter the demon realm magically, they will know there's demon magic involved. So we'd better sneak in the way real folk would."

"That makes sense," Mela said. "There must be some secret access."

"There are several," the waif agreed. "But we're not supposed to tell mortals of them."

"And other demons aren't supposed to tell you what's going on there," Ida reminded her. "If we follow those rules-"

"There's one in the Gap Chasm," the demoness said quickly. "I can take you there."

"No, we had better walk there," Mela decided. "So we do it nonmagically all the way. And on the way we can get used to calling you Woe Betide, and you can get used to playing the part. That way we'll be less likely to make a stupid mistake."

To that the demoness agreed. They started walking north, along the first divergent enchanted path they came to.

By the time they reached the Gap, little Woe Betide seemed quite real to them all. She had trouble keeping the pace, and seemed to shiver in her rags though the day was warm, and she answered every question with the plea "Matches!" Ida hardly cared to admit it, but she was developing considerable sympathy for the waif despite knowing she wasn't what she seemed.

Ida was awed by the Gap Chasm. The centaur tutor had told her of it, but she had discounted it somewhat in her mind. Now she saw the vast expanse and depth of it, and knew that it had already been discounted by the centaur, whose memory of it might have fogged just a trifle. There were even small clouds hovering below her eye level, as if the atmosphere of the Gap were a world apart.

There was a bit of a rocky path down the sloping side of the chasm. Ida was nervous about falling off it and plunging down to the distant bottom, but she reminded herself that this couldn't happen if they were careful. The path led to a shallow hollow that didn't show from above, which fed into a cave, which debouched into a crevice, which finally gave up and let them into a tunnel down into the ground. There was a faint greenish glow which helped them see the walls; it was from mold coating them.

"This is an old vole hole," Woe murmured. "Demons don't need tunnels, of course, so they ignored this. But I found it one day while teasing a vole."

"Oh?" Mela said. "I thought the voles left Xanth a thousand years ago."

"Oh, was it that long? I must have been thinking of something else."

Ida wondered. Could the demoness be a thousand years old? It seemed possible.

"How far is it to where Nada is?" Mela asked.

"Oh, several days' walk through the labyrinth. No problem."

Ida exchanged a glance of dismay with Mela. It might be no problem for a demoness, who could jump there instantly, but it would not be any fun for them. For one thing, what would they eat on the way? She wasn't sure how much longer her magic sandwich would last. She also dreaded the notion of sleeping on cold stone in a perpetually dark tunnel. Who knew what monsters might lurk in this region?

"Are there rivers down here?" Okra asked.

A river! That notion was far less unappealing than dry tunnels. They might make a boat and float, saving their feet.

"Oh, yes, there are fivers galore throughout the caverns," the seeming match girl said. "Why?"

Ida and Mela explained why. Metria told them where some pieces of driftwood and flotsam were, and they made their way to these and dragged them to the water. The water had a faint blue glow of its own, contrasting with the green of the walls. It was rather pretty in its sinister way.

Okra used her ogre strength to bend the wood into new shapes and weave it together, forming the raft. She turned out to be good at it, and in due course they had not merely a raft, but a crude houseboat, with a woven shelter above.

"Now if only we had some food," Ida said.

"Oh, that's right; mortals like to eat."

"And match girls like to eat too," Mela reminded her firmly.

"Well, there are blind fish in the river, and water chestnuts and water biscuits and water taffy," the waif said.

"Oh, goody!" Mela said. She lay down on the raft and put her face over the edge, into the water. In a moment her hand swept down, and came up with a fish. "It didn't see me," she said. "I'll ignite my waterlog, and cook it."

Ida and Okra managed to pick some of the chestnuts, biscuits, and taffy from the shallow edge of the river. In due course they had enough to fill out the meal.