Fair Peril (19 page)

“You are my princess now, he said. I will give you everything you need. But he had to get through law school first. So the prince and the princess worked hard. She earned tips and he earned a degree. Then they built a palace together,” Buffy said, “and the prince pulled a magic pickle out of his pocket, and the magic pickle made babies, pop, pop, pop, three sweet babies to keep the princess busy and happy. And all was well. And the prince gave his princess a professional decorator and an image consultant and charge cards to pay for many clothes and much hair. And all seemed well.

“But then one day the children grew up and went away to school and the princess had time to look in the mirror. Who is this woman? she said. I don't know her. Where's Buffy? So she went outside to try to find Buffy, and she didn't come home until after suppertime. I don't want you going out like that, the prince said. It isn't safe. So he locked all the doors and took away the keys. Don't worry, he said, I'll bring you food and Prozac and
People
magazine. I'll give you everything you need.

“But I'm a prisoner, the princess cried. Let me go. No, said the prince. I can't have you gadding about and saying whatever you think. I'm going into politics. I'm going to make you princess of Camelot. But I'm not a princess, she cried, I'm not this woman in the mirror, I'm a Cinderella. I'm Buffy, I'm grubby, I detest lipstick, I tell stories. You can't make me be beautiful and silent. Then no more kisses from me, he said. I have an image to maintain. And he took his magic pickle elsewhere.”

Buffy took a deep breath. It was getting difficult to maintain her storytelling tone and stance. Adamus stood close to her, too comely for comfort. Prentis loomed. The Queen was watching with a face as smooth and still as a white vase on a mantelpiece.

“Then the unprincess crawled into a chimney and curled up and huddled there, locked into the palace she had helped build, eating much ice cream, and she stayed that way for a long time.

“But one sunny day a little girl came and stood under the window and called, Maddie, Maddie! come out and play in the mud. So the unprincess rose up from her chimney and looked at the sunshine. She had gotten so fat she could not get out the doors even if they would open for her, but she went to the big decorator window and broke the glass. Then she flew out just like a big fat starling.” Buffy spread her arms, and her black cloak spread with them, and the five-pointed stars shone sharply amid the midnight softness of her velvet gown. “She landed in a nice gooshy puddle and made herself a little house out of mud and stones and sticks. Then Prentis came running over and said,
What
do you think you're doing? And she said, I'm a witch and you're not. Go away and let me alone, you pompous fool. He said, Don't be silly. Put that stuff away. You need me. I'm the one who takes care of you. I'm the one who's going to pay the alimony. I'm the one who can have my pickle and eat it too and keep giving you everything you need. And she said, All I need is freedom. Go away, you frog.”

In the passion of her narration Buffy swept her arms upward, then blinked, then stared as the fishy-white effluvium that was Prentis swirled, condensed, and took the shape of a huge, squatting frog made of mist, approximately six feet four inches and two hundred twenty pounds, if it had weighed anything at all. Prentis-sized.

Courtiers broke into applause; their clapping was like the ringing of a thousand glass chimes in the wind. Buffy had the presence of mind to take a bow, felt her left breast starting to dive out of her bustier, and hastily covered up with her cloak. Apparently the story was over. Fine; she didn't have a punch line anyway. She said to Fay, “You want to try kissing that?”

“I can't kiss him! I'm his mother. You kiss him.”

“Ew.” But Buffy had a promise to keep. She approximated her lips to the lips of the fog frog, puckered, and smacked.

A sound like the pealing of golden bells rang out—the Queen's laughter. A solid, slimy, six-foot-four frog sat at the foot of her throne now.

“Ewwwwwww!” Buffy jumped back. The Queen laughed harder. “Ew!” Buffy scrubbed her mouth with the back of her hand.

Not a bullfrog, this one. Not green. Cream-colored, with a darker marking covering its back, extending from shoulders to hips: a brown X. It was a spring peeper, supersized.

Buffy sucked in a long breath, then asked Fay, “You want me to try again?”

“Don't let her anywhere near me!” boomed a truly loud voice. “Keep her away from me.” The frog quacked just like Prentis.

“Fine by me,” Buffy said.

“I'll get somebody else to kiss him,” said Fay. “Tempestt can kiss him. Come on, Prentis. Thank you, your Majesty.” As if the Queen had done anything. But Fay bowed to her Majesty, backed away, then turned and swept out with the megafrog hopping after her, spla-THUD, spla-THUD, spla-THUD. Each hop shook the flooring.

Which was, Buffy noticed, made of the living branches of huge trees. A soft pink-and-lavender glow filtered down from behind the golden orbs—no, they were golden leaves now. Dawn was lighting the tinted-glass dome of the sky. Day was on the way.

“Well,” said the Queen, “that was most amusing.” Facing her, Buffy saw no warmth, only silky merriment. “Quite diverting. Though I must say, I do not entirely understand the story.”

“I understand it, your Majesty,” Adamus said quietly. “Prison is that which keeps you from being who you are. That's all.”

She silenced him with a look of jaded uncomprehension. “Let me think about this matter of the girl, what is her name?” Before either Buffy or Adamus could answer, she gestured dismissal. “Come before me again tomorrow night.”

The party was breaking up. Buffy suddenly felt very tired, weary enough to accept the Queen's prevarication. She bowed (keeping her arms folded over her chest) and backed away.

When it was permissible to turn and walk, Adamus walked by her side. “That went not badly at all,” he whispered when they had achieved a safe distance from her Majesty. “She could just as readily have turned you into a black toad turd.”

Buffy nodded. She knew it was true but no longer cared, she felt so exhausted. “I guess I'll go home and get some rest—no, dammit, the cops are looking for me.” It was hard to remember what was happening in that world out there. “I guess I'd better stay here. Take LeeVon and—”

Adamus, she noticed, was looking around anxiously. All the tables were empty, the great hall nearly empty.

“LeeVon?” Buffy asked the hall.

Nobody answered.

“LeeVon? Addie, do you know where he is?”

Adamus shook his head, his fair face pale.

Eleven

The prince in the periwinkle tunic with the tushie slits was standing in a secluded bower, watering the trunk of a tree, when Buffy and Adamus finally found him after several hours of searching. He shrieked and cowered away when he saw Buffy, but it was hard to tell whether his reaction was because of a guilty conscience, because she was a great and fearsome conjuror, or because his weewee was sticking out.

“Have you seen LeeVon?” Buffy demanded.

“Hu-hu-who?”

“LeeVon! My frog!”

“Superlative librarian,” Adamus put in. “Green face, tattoos, rings—”

The person in periwinkle had his equipment tucked away now, and turned on them with unexpected vehemence. “I'd dance in hot iron shoes first,” he burst out. “I'd roll down a hill in a spiked barrel before I'd kiss that—that slime-pated devil-belch spawn of—”

“So you have seen him! He did ask you!”

“That ringle-jingle serpent on legs! He didn't just ask. He pursued me. He stalked me. He harried me like a green demon. He would not hear me say no. He said—” Periwinkle's voice began to quiver with horror. “He said, Awright, you don't want to kiss me, howsabout I kiss you?”

It sounded as if LeeVon was getting a wee bit tad desperate. “You're lucky he didn't ask you to lay eggs so he could make milt,” Buffy said.

“Milady, have mercy,” whispered Adamus.

“I guess it's a hetero thing.”

“I'm afraid to go to sleep,” the courtier whined.

“My sympathies. Where is LeeVon now?”

“He infuriated me.” The courtier flushed with defiance, inflated his narrow chest, and glared. “I seized him and hurled him above the treetops.”

Buffy saw everything go gray and start to sway. “You—you killed him?”

Hands supported her—Adamus. “Gently, gently,” that quiet voice said. “Remember, this is Fair Peril. He may not be killed. Just as likely that he is back in human form.”

It was true. It was the insane truth of it that made her want to faint. There was no logic to things—or rather, any probability in this place violated all common sense. Mushrooms might grow wings and fly here, and gold rings turn to rainwater.

“We should be searching for Emily,” Adamus said.

But shock still ran through Buffy. She had to get out of this nutty place. She had to. Gray, lavender, periwinkle swam before her eyes; she could not see anything properly … then vague whiteness took form around her. Walls. There was a loud, bellicose sound in her ears.

Cops? Buffy cowered.

No. The ranting one was just a large, perturbed man in a plaid flannel shirt and a clashing bandanna. “Lady, would you get the hell out of here?”

“She ain't got a firm hold of her kite string,” another voice said. “We oughta call security.”

Urinals on the wall. Three distressingly normal-looking males faced her. Adamus was nowhere to be seen. “I'm back in the mall?” Buffy whispered.

“This is the men's room, for God's sake. Would you get the hell out?”

She exited hastily, noticing that something stank—it was, she realized, her. There she stood wrapped in smelly black plastic in the main concourse of the Mall Tifarious, with quite a few people looking at her.

She ditched the plastic in a trash container and scuttled in her nightgown toward the nearest exit and outside. Amazing, the energy jolt a good rush of adrenaline can produce, even in a person who hasn't eaten or slept. Flannel flapping, clutching wallet and keys in one hand, Buffy ran for her car—

It wasn't there.

Yes, this was the right parking lot. Yes, this was the right row. No, the car wasn't there.

Buffy wondered briefly whether her Escort could have kissed a frog-eyed Sprite and run off. Then she started giggling. Actually, the cops probably had her car, giggle, giggle, giggle. Here she was wandering around the mall parking lot in her nightgown; her daughter, who did a damn good statue imitation, was missing somewhere in Fair Peril; she had contributed to making her favorite librarian first an amphibian and then a guided missile; now her car was gone? It seemed hilarious. Giggle giggle GIGGLE at the thought of calling the cops to report her vehicle missing, along with LeeVon. Damn cops had probably grabbed the car because they were looking for her. Crazy woman in nightgown giggling in the parking lot at ten in the morning, giggle giggle ye ha ha snort. Emily's Probe was gone too. They had probably towed it—

Emily's—car—was—gone?

Buffy stopped giggling with a gasp, about-faced, and thundered back into the mall to find a phone. She dialed Prentis's number. The Trophy Wife answered.

“Hi, Pestt, this is Buffy. Has—”

“You have the colossal nerve calling here!” Tempestt sounded just a teensy smidgen overwrought. “After what you've done!”

“Yeah, well, has Emily—”

“Big wet frog tracks all over the carpeting!” Tempestt yelled, tearful. “I don't know how I'm ever supposed to get them out.”

Prentis was home, evidently. “Did you kiss him?”

Tempestt's voice shrilled to a new level of hysteria. “That's personal! Why do you want to know?”

“Just curious.”

“That's incredibly rude!”

In other words, she hadn't kissed him. She couldn't deal with it. Prentis would have to take his pickle-puss elsewhere. “Has Emily come home?”

“Emily? Who cares about Emily!”

Nobody but me, evidently.
“Is she
home?
”

“
NO,
she's not home. How can you ask such things when my husband—”

Buffy hung up and stalked down the mall and bought herself a cup of coffee and a soft pretzel. There was nothing like complete nutrition to keep a person going, and evidently she was going to have to keep going for a while longer. She headed toward the mall office, passing all three fountains and all three pedestals on her way. The winged stag, she noticed, was gone—interesting but unsurprising, as she herself had seen it fly. The princess with the garland of golden roses and the star on her forehead was still missing. But the frog king was still squatting sullenly up there.

“'Scuse me,” Buffy bespoke the horse-faced woman at the mall-office desk. “Can you tell me what's happened to two of the statues?”

The woman was staring at her instead of answering her. The people at the pretzel stand had stared at her too. People she had passed as she was walking, likewise. Buffy concluded that her nightgown was not being perceived as a fashion statement.

“The statues on the pedestals in the fountains,” she said in read-my-lips tones. “Where are they?”

“Missing,” the woman said.

“Missing? As in, somebody stole them?”

“Looks like.” Only the woman's mouth had moved. The rest of her equine personage was still rigid with staring.

Next question. “Is there a place around here where I can grab a nap?” There had to be a quiet corner somewhere.

The woman's glassy eyes widened to the limit of their sockets. “You're not to sleep in the mall! There's a homeless shelter—”

“I'm not homeless!” Why would this appearance-challenged person think she was homeless? Just because she was dressed rather casually? Hadn't shampooed her hair in a few days? Was getting a bit skanky?