Cube Route (27 page)

    “It's not far,” Lacky said. “Just a little way north.”

    Diamond caught Cube's left hand gently in her mouth, and Boss caught her right hand, tugging her north. But the thread went west.

    She blinked. The thread made an abrupt turn north. She was sure it hadn't done that before. It was telling her to go with the dogs.

    What could she do? “Then I suppose I'd better meet the Prince,” she agreed.

    “His castle is right this way.” Lacky walked briskly north, and the dogs bounded after her.

    Cube caught up to the young woman. “Why would a Prince have anything for me? I have nothing for him, and I can't stay here.”

    “He knows that. He likes Boss, but thought that Boss needed some company of his own kind. So I wrote my note, and you brought Diamond. It must have been some trouble for you; I know this isn't an easy place to reach, from real-time Xanth. He must have told Boss that he would have a reward for whoever brought him company.”

    “I'm not looking for any reward! We--I found Diamond, who seemed to be lost, and she was good company, and we didn't even know she would find a home here. It was serendipitous.” Then she explained about the pacifier's magic. After that, Lacky explained how her mother Lacuna, daughter of the original Zombie Master and Millie the Ghost, whose talent was to cause print to form anywhere she chose, had lived a dull life until she got the chance to go back in time, to the year 1078, and propose marriage to the man she liked. It seemed that he had been too shy to propose to her. That had ushered in her retroactive change of life in the year 1090, and suddenly she had three children. Lacky was delivered in 1079.

    Cube had heard this story before, but still couldn't quite connect it to her prior experience. “But then you were a legitimate--I mean regular person,” she said. “Why are you here?”

    The woman shook her head sadly. “I was the result of Vernon's proposing to Lacuna.”

    “But you said he didn't--” Then it came together. “If he had, then the stork would have delivered you. But because she did it retroactively, and proposed herself, that didn't count.”

    “So I was a might-be,” Lacky agreed. “Like so many others. Of course there's not room in Xanth for all of us. It's not a bad existence. But enough about me; how did you come to be traveling so widely?”

    Cube gave an edited account, not mentioning Counter Xanth or the nine Companions. By the time that was done, they had come to a low hill.

    “Here we are,” Lacky said. “The Prince's castle. Isn't it beautiful?” Both dogs wagged their tails.

    “But this is just a rounded hill,” Cube said. “Or maybe a huge fallen tree.” For the slope resembled bark. There was a curlycue pattern of grooves in it, as if some ogre had scraped his fingernails there.

    “Well, let's see.” Lacky put her hands to her face, forming a magic funnel, and called “Prince Dolin! Company!” And Boss added a loud “Woof!”

    After a generous moment a wooden column rose from the slope. Its sides were smooth and polished. It became a small tower about the height of a man, dark on top where the bark was and with lines showing the growth rings of a tree. But it was hardly a castle.

    “It gets better,” Lacky said.

    A second section rose, around the first, bearing it upward. This was similar to the first, only larger in diameter. When it stopped it was about man-high, with the first column rising another length higher. But it still wasn't a castle.

    Then a third segment lifted, bearing the other two upward, followed by a fourth that raised all the others. Several sub-sections also rose to buttress the formation. Now it was indeed a castle, albeit not a big one.

    “This way,” Lacky said, walking around to the side. Behind was a door, and beyond the door was a flight of steps leading down. Most of the castle was underground. They all trooped down, the dogs leading, and came upon an eight-year-old boy wearing a small crown. Prince Dolin, embracing the dogs.

    “The new one is Diamond,” Lacky said. “And this is Cube, who brought her here. Cube, this is Prince Dolin.”

    The boy stood up so quickly his crown fell askew, and he had to straighten it. “Thank you, Cube! Boss is great, but he needed canine company, and now he's got it. I have a present for you.”

    “There's no need,” Cube demurred.

    “This whisk broom.” He presented it to her.

    Oh--a token gift. She could accept that. “Thank you.”

    He glanced at her cannily. “It's magic.”

    “It is?” The little broom seemed ordinary.

    “It sweeps away distance.”

    “I don't think I understand.”

    “When you have a long way to go, it makes it short. You'll see when you use it. I know you came a long way to bring Diamond; this will make it shorter.”

    “That's nice,” Cube said, not sure he was serious.

    “You'll see.” Then he returned to playing with the dogs.

    “He's a child,” Lacky murmured. “He has a short attention span. We'll go now.” Then, louder: “Bye, Prince!”

    “Bye,” he said, not looking up.

    They exited the castle. “It was really the Prince who needed more company,” Lacky said outside. “But I pretended it was Boss. I'm so glad you came.”

    “So am I,” Cube said. This had turned out to be worth it after all, making two dogs and a Prince happy. “Now I should be on my way.”

    “Of course. If you see my brother, back in real Xanth, give him my regards.”

    “Your brother?”

    “His name is Ryver. He has a wonderful talent with water.”

    “Ryver!” Cube echoed, stunned. “I know him!” Vernon and Lacuna were his parents. He had told her. That was why she remembered them.

    “You do? That's wonderful! I know his Ptero self, of course, but I've never met the real one. Real folk seldom come here.”

    Acting impulsively, Cube put her hand in the pouch. “Ryver,” she murmured. Then she remembered that this wasn't the real pouch, but just her soul emulation of it. So her Companions weren't in there.

    A hand caught hers. Then Ryver slid out and stood beside her. He spied the woman. “Sis!” he cried, and stepped forward to embrace her.

    “Oh, it's so good to see you, Ryver,” Lacky said. “But what are you doing here? You didn't die, did you?”

    “No, I'm traveling with Seren.” He turned to face Cube, who was tongue-tied. “She's on a Quest, and I'm a Companion. I had no idea she was coming to see you.”

    Cube finally untied her tongue. “Neither did I. It was serendipitous.” As she said it, she realized that this was the work of the pacifier. It had renamed her, again, and was causing her to find more unexpected things.

    “Do we have time to visit, Seren?” Ryver asked. “I'd really like to be with my sister a while. I never see her in Xanth.”

    How could she say no? It wasn't as if she had a real schedule, and she liked being able to do something for Ryver, however unexpectedly. “Of course.”

    “No, she's just being nice,” Lacky said. “She has a Quest she has to return to.”

    “She is nice,” Ryver said. “Just not beautiful, yet.”

    Lacky's eyebrow lifted. “You have an interest?”

    “She's going to be beautiful when she finishes the Quest. Then I'll be interested.”

    “If you associate only with beauty, what about me?”

    “You're my sister. You don't count.”

    Lacky glanced again at Cube. “My brother is male,” she said. “He sees better than he thinks.”

    “What's your point?” Ryver asked.

    Both Cube and Lacky laughed, while Ryver was mystified.

    Then, to distract herself from the unfunny aspect, Cube tested the whisk broom the Prince had given her. How did it work? She made a little sweeping motion in front of her--and suddenly she stood alone. What had happened to the others?

    She looked back, and there they were, about a hundred paces behind. She looked at the broom. Had it really swept away that distance?

    She faced back and swept again. And almost collided with Ryver and Lacky.

    “I see the whisk broom works,” Lacky remarked.

    “Yes,” Cube agreed, amazed. “This will make traveling much faster, if I don't bang into things.” In fact, it would allow her to visit for some time, and still make faster progress than before.

    They continued on toward Lacky's house. “How did you recognize me, since we haven't met before?” Lacky asked Ryver. “I know you, because your non-Xanth aspect is here, but you shouldn't know me.”

    “I dreamed of you,” Ryver said. “You're the big sister I never had. I'm sorry you didn't get to be delivered in Xanth.”

    They had a nice visit at Lacky's house. Then the dogs returned. “That's our signal,” Ryver said. “I wouldn't want Seren to go without me.” He put his foot to the pouch and slid in.

    “I can't thank you enough for bringing my brother,” Lacky said. “He's really not a bad sort, when you make allowances. I hope you do manage to get beautiful. Then maybe you can tell me how.”

    “Maybe,” Cube agreed. “I'm not sure I quite believe it yet. This trek is more of a challenge than I expected.”

    “That's the way it is, when you're real.”

    And Cube realized that whatever her appearance, she was better off than this nice woman, because she was indeed real. That was another serendipitous lesson of life.

Tesseract

    She went outside, stood with the thread extending ahead into the blue mist, and made a little sweep with the whisk broom. Nothing happened. She took a step forward and tried again--and found herself well away from the house. It was motion that did it! So she tried running along the line, and sweeping--and suddenly she was almost to the Comic Strip.

    She paused to consider. Could she whisk right through that Strip without suffering its effect, or was that dangerous? She had been whisking past largely empty terrain, but she probably did pass through it, very fast. Suppose she collided with a pun? It might explode, soaking her in pun ichor. Then nobody would want to be near her.

    It was better not to risk it. She would have to navigate the Comic Strip on her own, then resume speed beyond it. She braced herself and stepped into it.

    She found herself facing a giant eyeball. It was lapping up some dark liquid with a strong smell. She wasn't sure how an eyeball could lap up anything, but it was doing it. “What are you doing?” she demanded, not sure whether this thing was dangerous.

    “I'm dining, of course,” the Eye observed.

    She thought she heard a groan from the pouch. She was imagining Karia reacting to a pun. Then she got it: “Eye-o-dine!”

    “What else?” the Eye squinted.

    She dodged around it, and almost collided with a small person, resembling a goblin but different. It was female, and was swinging back and forth across the path with a clicking sound, blocking the way. “Who are you?”

    “Metra Gnome, of course.”

    Now Cube was almost sure she heard a groan from the pouch. She timed her move, and dashed through while Metra was swung over to one side.

    Ahead was a sign: PASSING WIND. Cube hardly had time to ponder that before the foul-smelling wind gusted through, catching her and blowing her into the river, which had become a lake. Well, the sign had warned her that a wind was passing; she had foolishly supposed it meant something else.

    Her feet splashed in the water, which was only knee deep. But the bottom was mucky and she wanted to get back to land, so she strode toward a small island just ahead. Just as she caught up to it, it zipped away from her so that her foot splashed back into water. Now it was just ahead of her again. Maybe she had misjudged its distance.

    She forged on toward it, and lifted a foot to step on it, when the island moved again. This time she was watching closely and saw it happen; it had just jumped to another location.

    Annoyed, she gave up on the isle and walked on across the lake, no longer caring that it was mucking up her legs. At least the shore did not move as she stepped on it. She stood on it, dripping sludge, and looked back.

    Now she saw the sign: BEWARE THE MISS-ISLES. This time she didn't need to imagine Karia groaning; she groaned herself. Isles that were hard to catch.

    A group of dishes on spindly legs ran past. The last one was small and unsteady, and it almost collided with her. She put her hand on it to steady it, and sent it on to catch up with the grown dishes. Across its face was printed the word CHILD. Did she hear a groan? This was a child dish.

    “What are you doing?” a woman's sharp voice came.

    “Just setting the child dish straight,” Cube said.

    “That's bad.”

    Bad? “Why?”

    “Because children should be abused.”

    If this was a pun, Cube did not find it funny. “Who are you?” she demanded angrily.

    “I am the wife of Uncle Nym.”

    That would make her Aunt Nym. Was that another groan? Cube focused, and put it together: Auntie Nym. Antonym. The opposite of a given word. So when she said something was bad, she meant good, and children should not be abused, but pampered. “You're a loathsome hag,” Cube told her.

    “You're worse,” Auntie said, obviously flattered, and moved on.

    Tired and wet, Cube sat on a handy ledge by the lake so she could remove her shoes and wash off her legs. She splashed the water on herself, getting her feet, ankles, shins, calves, and knees clean. Suddenly her mind seemed to expand. “Why, I know everything!” she exclaimed. “The origin of puns, the secrets of the Stork Works, the meaning of ultimate reality--all the information of the universe is cramming into my head and threatening to explode it.” Nervous about this, she stood and glanced back at the ledge. On it was printed KNOW LEDGE. Oh.

    But one advantage of having sat on this seat of learning was that now she knew the best way out of this Comic Strip. She marched past a shelf of beer bottles, knowing better than to drink from any, because they were bottles of ail. She went to a nearby plant with many identical leaves, picked one leaf, and ate it. This was the re-done-dent plant that made for repetition; that was one of the things she had learned. “Out,” she said. “Out out out out out out--”

    Then she stopped: she was out. She had used the pun against the Comic Strip, forcing it to eject her.

    But now she was back on regular land without her shoes, and she still had a fair distance to go. Well, it couldn't be helped; she was not going back into the Comic Strip to retrieve them. She took a step and swept with the broom, and moved rapidly forward. Soon she came in sight of Castle Roogna, and felt her age: she was back in her mid-thirties, because she had been traveling To, into the future. She could appreciate the advantage in being any age one chose, but overall she preferred to live through all her ages slowly, as she did in Xanth proper.

    The thread led her back into Castle Roogna. This time no one intercepted her. She followed the thread across the drawbridge, into the castle, down the central hall, and up the stairs. Suddenly she recognized where it was going: to Princess Ida's chamber. Was there another Ida here on Ptero? This was weird even on a world whose weirdness she had been getting used to.

    She came to the Princess's door and knocked. Ida opened it. She was about fifteen years older than the one Cube had met before. Around her head orbited a pyramidal-shaped moon. “Why hello, Seren. Is there a problem?”

    “I, uh, I'm the one from Xanth, here on a mission. I met your Xanth counterpart, and she sent me on to Ptero. I--do you know anything about my Quest?”

    “I remember that you had one about fifteen years ago. I believe it came out all right.”

    “That's the one I'm on now,” Cube said uncomfortably. “Will it change it if you tell me what happened?”

    “Probably not. Fate can be devious. Sometimes a person is supposed to know how something finishes, in order to ensure that it does. You discovered Counter Xanth.”

    “Well, I didn't discover it, but I'm trying to find a good route to it. I'm following a thread the three Princesses made, and it led me here.”

    “That means you must go to my moon Pyramid, or beyond. That is quite in order.”

    Cube quailed. “I'm already on one moon. You mean there's another?” But obviously there was, and the thread led right to it. “Is it possible for a person not of Ptero to--to go to your moon?”

    “Oh, yes. There is a seemingly endless chain of moons; no one has explored them all.”

    “But Pyramid is so small! Ptero is just a little ball, and Pyramid is just as tiny. How can it be a whole world?”

    Ida smiled. “Magic is marvelous stuff. Each moon is a full-size planet, with its own rules of magic unlike any others. They just seem small from our perspective.”

    “But I'm here only in soul form. To go to Pyramid, wouldn't I have to leave most of my soul behind?”

    “Yes, but that is no problem; it will rejoin you when you return. You will be perfectly normal, as you are here.”

    Cube looked down at her bare feet. “I feel more like a barefoot girl. I lost my shoes in a Comic Strip.”

    “Those are horrible, I know. But you will have no trouble on that score on Pyramid. When you get there, simply mold some of your surplus soul stuff into a new pair of shoes. You will be able to do that with a thought, merely by concentrating.”

    Cube thought of something else. “You say there are many moons. Is there any chance that I will have to go beyond Pyramid, to yet another moon?”

    “There is certainly that chance.”

    “And it will seem just as big as Ptero does?”

    “Not only as big. It has its own obstacles and dangers.”

    “That's what I was afraid of. This tour is threatening to take forever.”

    “Perhaps I can help. Some time ago I was given a dogsled. I do not travel enough to use it sufficiently, so I shall lend it to you. That will take you rapidly and safely to your destination, wherever it may be.”

    “A dogsled?”

    “I will show you.” Ida opened a door to the outside wall. She put her head out and whistled. In a moment there was the sound of barking. Then something slid into the chamber.

    Cube stared. It was a sled, or a dog; she wasn't sure which. It had runners or legs, and a canine head or a prow. “A dog sled,” she said, catching on.

    “A very good one,” Ida agreed. “Simply tell it where you want to go, and it will take you safely there.”

    “But I don't know where I'm going. I'm following the thread.”

    “It can do that too. Go ahead, get in. This should greatly facilitate your traveling.”

    Bemused, Cube climbed into the sled. It was comfortable, with furry pillows inside, and strong handholds. “Uh, follow the thread,” she said.

    Instantly the sled was in motion. It slid along the thread toward Pyramid, and the moon quickly expanded into a planet and then into a world, each side colored with a different hue. Cube saw blue, red, green, and gray as it rotated. Each side was a triangle, and she thought there should be three of them, but somehow there were four, with the gray one at the bottom.

    Meanwhile, she felt her age diminishing. She was reverting to her natural age of twenty. That was a relief.

    The dogsled came in for a landing on the blue face and followed the thread rapidly across it. Cube remembered to concentrate on shoes, and they formed around her feet, very nice ones. She must have been shedding soul stuff without realizing it.

    She looked around. Everything was shades of blue. The mountains were blue, the plains were blue, the trees were blue. Even the occasionally glimpsed animals and people were blue. She and the sled were the only ones in other colors. That made them stand out as alien; blue heads were turning. She was glad they were moving rapidly so she didn't have to try to explain.

    And the magic here was different? Ptero had been tricky enough to adjust to, with its timed geography and Comic Strips; what might she encounter here? Why was the thread taking her here? She no longer had a dog to deliver to a good home; the dogsled belonged to Princess Ida and should be returned to her when Cube left the moons.

    But she did still have the serendipity pacifier. There was no telling what further surprises it had in store for her. This dogsled must be one of them. Meanwhile she hoped Mirror, the former Seren, was doing well. That trade seemed to be permanent.

    The weirdness of traveling moons in soul form was fading; her body seemed as solid and sensitive as always, and not half a whit prettier. Could she reshape herself, as she had her shoes, to be better looking? She wasn't sure, and was wary of trying, lest she mess herself up. She was, as far as she could tell, herself, and that was good enough for now.

    The thread came to a lake, and crossed it to an island. The dogsled zoomed along the thread like a track, heedless of the water. Cube was increasingly glad to have it; she wasn't sure how she would have crossed the lake on her own. For all she knew, there could be dangerous monsters in it. Maybe the whisk broom would have whisked her across--and maybe not. Of course she could summon her nickelpedes--or could she?

    She set aside the pacifier, then made the effort, and a blue nickelpede appeared on her hand. Relieved, she banished it. She could still protect herself if she had to. She took back the pacifier.

    The thread brought them to the door of a nice little house. This must be her destination. The sled stopped and Cube got out. “Wait here,” she told it. “I'd be lost without you.” The sled woofed and sank into a snooze.

    She knocked on the door. It opened, and there was Princess Ida, all in blue, with a small blue doughnut circling her head. Cube wasn't sure what she had expected, but it wasn't this. She was speechless.

    “I see by your color that you are from one of the other worlds,” Ida said. “How may I help you?”

    “I--I am Seren, from Xanth proper. I'm on a Quest, following a thread, and it led me here. I have no idea why.”

    Ida smiled. “Come in, Seren, and we'll discuss it.”

    Bemused, Cube entered the house, and sat on one of the blue chairs therein. Everything was in shades of blue here too. She was beginning to get used to it.

    Ida brought a plate of blue cookies, and a glass of blue drink. Cube tasted and sipped, and found that they tasted normal: blue chocolate and blue lemonade.

    “I should explain that my name is not really Seren,” she said. “But I carry a magic amulet, and it changes my name and causes me to find things I'm not looking for.”

    “That is intriguing. May I see it?”

    “Of course.” Cube handed her the pacifier. “I traded a rear-view mirror for it. My name is really Cube.”

    “And my name is Seren,” Ida said. “Oh, I see what you mean; now it has changed mine.”

    Cube smiled. “And it may cause you to find something you are not looking for. I should take it back before there's any mischief.”

    “Oh I have no fear of mischief. My life is dull; some mischief would enliven it.”

    “But you're a lovely Sorceress!” Cube protested. “How can your life be dull?”

    “My talent is the idea. What I believe is true, becomes true, even if it wasn't before, as long as someone who doesn't know my talent says it. That means I can't improve my own reality, and so I remain unmarried and alone. That is dull.”