"I don't want to go back to the jungle alone," he murmured. His voice had lost much of the ogre guttural quality.
"I never thought you belonged there. Smash." Oh, how sweet she sounded!
"I want--" But the enormity of the notion balked him.
It didn't balk Tandy, however. "Smash, I told you before that I loved you."
"I have human perception at the moment," he said. "I must caution you not to make statements that are subject to misinterpretation."
"Misinterpretation, hell!" she flashed. "I knew my mind long before you knew yours."
"Well, you must admit that an ogre and a nymph--"
"Or a man and a woman--"
"Half-breeds," he said, half bitterly. "Like the centaurs, harpies, merfolk, fauns--"
"And what's wrong with half-breeds?" she flared. "In Xanth, any species can mate with any other it wants to, and some of the offspring are fine people. What's wrong with Chem the Centaur?
With the Siren?"
"Nothing," he said, impressed by her vehemence. Moment by moment, as she talked and his manhood infiltrated the farthest reaches of his
awareness,
he was warming to her nature. She was small, but she was an awful lot of small.
"And the three-quarter breeds, almost identical to the humans, like Goldy Goblin and Biythe Brassie and John the Fairy--"
"And Fireoak the Hamadryad, whose soul is the tree," he finished.
"All good people."
But he wondered passingly why, since nymphs were so nearly human, they didn't have souls. Obviously there was more to learn about the matter.
"Consider Xanth," she continued hotly.
"Divided into myriad Kingdoms of people and animals and in-betweens.
We met the Lord of the Flies and the Prince of Whales and the Dragon Lady and the Kingdoms of the goblins, birds, griffins--"
"And the Ancestral Ogres of the Fen," he said. "All of which believe they dominate Xanth."
"Yes." She took a breath. "How can Xanth be prevented from fragmenting entirely, except by interaction and crossbreeding? Smash, I think the very future of Xanth depends on the half-breeds and quarter-breeds, the people like us who share two or more views. In Mundania, no species breeds with another--and look at Mundania! According to my father's stories--"
"Awful," he agreed. "Mundania has no magic."
"So their species just keep drifting farther apart, making that land
more dreary
year by year. Xanth is different; Xanth can reunify. Smash, we owe it to Xanth to--"
"Now I understand what men object to in women," Smash said.
She was startled. "What?"
"They talk too much."
"It's to fill in for inactive men!" she flared.
Oh. He turned farther toward her in the dark, and she met him halfway. This time there was no confusion at all about the kiss. It was a small swatch of heaven.
At last they broke. "Ogre, ogre," she murmured breathlessly. "You certainly are a man now."
"You're right. The Good Magician knew," he said, cuddling her close to him. In the dark she did not seem tiny; she seemed just right. As with riding the nightmares, things were always compatible. He had known Tandy was very feminine; now this quality assumed phenomenal new importance. "He sent me to the ogres--to find you."
"And he sent me to find you--the one creature rough enough to drive off the demon I fled, while still being gentle enough for me to love."
Love.
Smash mulled that concept over. "I cried for you last night," he confessed.
"Silly," she teased him. "Ogres don't cry."
"Because I thought I would lose you. I did not know that I loved you."
She melted. "Oh, Smash! You said it!"
He said it again. "I love you. That's why I fought for you. That's why I bargained my soul for you."
She laughed, again teasingly. "I don't think you know what love is."
He stiffened. "I don't?"
"But I'll show you."
"Show me," he said dubiously.
She showed him. There was no violence, no knocking of heads against trees, no screaming or stomping. Yet it was the most amazing and rewarding experience he had ever had. By the time it was done. Smash knew he never wanted to be anything but a man and never wanted any woman but her.
They found another way out of the netherworld, avoiding the lurking dragon, and trekked south along the east coast of Xanth. Smash, by the light of day, was smaller than he had been, and less hairy, and hardly ugly at all. But he didn't really mind giving up his previous assets, because the acquisition of Tandy more than made up for them. She sewed him a pair of shorts, because men wore them, and he did rather resemble a man now.
They traveled quietly, avoiding trouble. When this threatened to rankle his suppressed ogre nature, Tandy would take his hand, and smile up at him, and
the rankle
dissipated.
The trip took several days, but that didn't matter, because it was sheer joy. Smash hardly noticed the routine Xanth hazards, since most of his attention was on Tandy. Somehow the hazards seemed diminished, anyway, for news had spread among the griffins, birds, dragons, goblins, and flies that Tandy's companion was best left alone, even if he didn't look like much. It seemed that a certain ogre of the Fen had staggered out of the jungle with a headache, and though he had not given any details, it was evident that he had been roughly treated by the stranger he had fought. Even the crossing of the Gap, which
Smash
had almost forgotten until he encountered it again, was without event. The Gap Dragon, reputed to have a sore tail, stayed clear.
At length, they drew near the entrance to Tandy's home region. The route was through a chasm guarded by a tangle tree. It was a big, aggressive tree, and Smash knew he could not overcome it. So he drew on his human intelligence and harvested a number of hypnogourds, intending to roll them down to the tree. If it made the mistake of looking in a single peephole--
But as they carried two gourds from the patch, a cloud of smoke formed before them. This coalesced into a dusky demon.
"Well, my little human beauty," the demon said to Tandy, switching his barbed tail about. "You were lost, but now are found. I shall have my will of you forthwith." He advanced on her, grinning lasciviously.
Tandy screamed and dropped her gourd, which shattered on the ground.
"Fiant!"
So this was the demon who sought to rape her! Smash set his own gourd down carefully and stepped forward. "Depart, foul spirit!" he ordered.
The demon ignored him, addressing Tandy instead. "Ah, you seem more luscious than ever, girl-creature! It will be long before I tire of you."
Tandy backed away. Smash saw that she was too frightened even to throw a tantrum. The demon had come upon her so suddenly she had not been able to brace emotionally for the assault.
Smash interposed himself between demon and girl. "Desist, Fiant," he said.
The fat demon put out a band and shoved him. Smash tripped on a stone and tumbled to the ground ignominiously. The demon stepped on his stomach and advanced on Tandy. "Pucker up, cutie; your time has come at last."
Smash was becoming perturbed. Tandy might believe in crossbreeding as the hope of Xanth, but she had not chosen to do it with the demon. As she had explained, there was a considerable difference between what was given voluntarily and what was forced. Smash scrambled to his feet and hurried after Fiant, catching him on the shoulder.
The demon swung about almost carelessly, delivering a brain-rattling slap across Smash's cheek. Smash fell back again, reeling.
Now Fiant shot out a hand and caught Tandy by the hair. She screamed, but could not pull away.
Smash charged back into the fray--only to be met with a careless straight-arm that nearly staved in his teeth. Now the demon deigned to notice him, momentarily. "Get lost, lout, or I'll hurt you."
What was this? Fiant seemed to be stronger than Smash!
The demon drew Tandy in to him by the hair, reaching with the clawed fingers of his other hand to rip off her blouse.
Smash charged again, fists swinging. He caught the demon on his pointed ear.
This time Fiant became annoyed. "You seem to be a slow learner, creep." He loosed the girl, spun about, and struck Smash with a lightning-fast one-two combination punch on chin and stomach. Smash went down, head fogging, gasping for breath. "No man can stand against a demon," Fiant said arrogantly, and turned again to Tandy.
But the brief respite had given her a chance to work up some spunk. She dived for Smash. "Take my soul!" she cried, and he felt its wonderful enhancement infusing him, He had forgotten how weak he was with only half a soul.
Then she was yanked away by the hair. Fiant held her up, her feet dangling. "No more Mr. Nice Guy," he said. "Off with your skirt." On the trip down, Tandy had remade the tatters of her red dress into a good skirt, and completed her wardrobe and Smash's by sewing material from cloth bushes.
Smash leaped up and tackled the demon. Now he had his strength! But Fiant poked two fingers at his eyes.
Painfully blinded.
Smash fell to the ground again. He had a full soul again; why couldn't he prevail?
It was Tandy who came up with the answer. "Smash, you're too much of a man now!" she cried from her dangle.
"Too gentle and polite.
Try thinking of yourself as an ogre!"
It was true. Smash had spent several days becoming manishly civilized. As Fiant had said, no man was a match for a demon.
But an ogre, now...
Smash thought of himself as an ogre.
It wasn't hard. He had spent his life indulging in just such thinking; the old thought patterns were strong. He visualized the ground trembling at his stomp, trees being ripped from their moorings, boulders being crushed to sand by single blows of horny fists.
Hair sprouted on his arms. Muscles bulged horrendously. His height jumped. His orange jacket, which hung on him loosely, abruptly became tight. His shorts split apart and fell off. His hands swelled into hams. His bruised eyeballs popped into awful ogre orbs. Ogre, ogre...
Smash put one hamfinger to the ground and lifted his whole body into the air, then he flipped neatly to his rock-calloused feet He roared--and the leaves of the nearest trees swirled away. So, unfortunately, did Tandy's clothes, such as remained; they were not constructed for hurricane winds.
She swung in dainty nudity by her hair. "Go get him, ogre!" she cried, and kicked the demon on the nose.
Fiant looked at Smash--and gaped. Suddenly he faced a monster far worse than himself. He dropped the girl and turned to flee.
Smash bent down, hooked his fingers in the turf, and yanked. The turf came toward him in a rug, dumping the demon on his horns. Smash took one tromp forward and launched a mighty kick at Fiant's elevated rump. The kick should have propelled the demon well toward the sun.
But Smash's foot passed right through Fiant. Smash, thrown off balance by the missed kick, did a backward flip and whomped on his head. That hardly mattered to an ogre, but it gave the demon a chance to get organized.
Fiant realized that the ogre could not really hurt him, thanks to his ability to dematerialize at will. This restored his courage marvelously. Bullies always got brave when the odds were loaded on their side. He got up, strode toward Smash, and punched him in the gut. It was a good, hard blow--but now Smash shrugged it off as the trifle it was and countered with a sweep of his arm that was so swift and fierce it caused a contrail behind it.
But this blow, too, passed through the demon without effect.
"He's dematerializing!" Tandy cried. "You can't hit him!"
Unconvinced,
Smash
plunged his fist at the demon's head from above. This blow should have driven the demon halfway into the ground. Instead, it passed the entire length of Fiant's body without impediment and struck the bare rock beneath, where the rug of turf had been removed. The rock cracked apart and powdered into sand, naturally. Then
Smash
rammed a straight punch at Fiant's belly--and only succeeded in sundering the tree behind him. Smash was tearing up the landscape to no avail.
But the demon could hit Smash, by rematerializing his fists just before they struck. The blows didn't really hurt, but
Smash
was annoyed. How could he pulverize a creature who could not be hit back?
He tried to grab Fiant. This worked slightly better. The demon's body was as diffuse as smoke to his touch, but Smash's spread hamhands had more purchase, and he was able to guide the smoke as long as he handled it carefully. Unfortunately, the demon's fists remained material, and they now beat a brutal tattoo on Smash's face. His nose and eyes were hurting anew.
"Use your mind. Smash!" Tandy called.
Smash held the demon in place, enduring the facial battering while he put his natural Eye Queue intellect to work
What
would deal with such a demon once and for all? It would not be enough merely to drive Fiant off; he had to fix it so the demon could never again bother Tandy. If Tandy had a notion how he should proceed, why hadn't she simply screamed it out?
Because if the demon heard, he would act to negate it.
Smash had to do whatever it was by surprise.
He glanced at Tandy--and saw her sitting on the gourd he had carried. Suddenly he understood.
He snapped at the demon's fists, using his big ogre teeth. "Oh, no, you don't, monster!" Fiant exclaimed. "You can't get me that way!" Sure enough, he punched Smash on the tongue, and when Smash's teeth closed on the fist, it dematerialized and withdrew unhurt.
But meanwhile, Smash was carrying the demon toward the gourd. When he got there, he slowly tilted Fiant down toward the peephole Tandy had been sitting on. The demon was about to face the gourd. If Fiant saw it too soon, he would strike it and shatter it, ruining the ploy.
Fiant, intent on punching Smash's snout into a pulp, did not spy the gourd until he was abruptly face to face with it. "No!" he cried, realizing what it was. He jammed his eyes closed so he could not look, and dematerialized.