Stork Naked (27 page)

Nada moved ahead. “I too have two aspects of guilt,” she said. “First, that I deceived Prince Dolph by pretending to be eight years old when he was nine, when I was really fourteen. By the time he learned the truth, he loved me. I should never have done that.”

“You were required to,” Dolph said. “Your family made you do it, because they needed you to marry a human prince.”

“It was still wrong. Maybe if I had let you know my real age, and you handled it and loved me, then it would have been all right. But I should never have deceived you for political reason.”

“It was a shock when I learned,” Dolph said. “But I did accept it, and loved you ever since. So it was no continuing deception, and you never deceived me since.”

“Still it was wrong, and I bear the guilt.” Nada paused, evidently marshaling her courage, then continued. “But the larger guilt is elsewhere. There was a demon who was interested in me, D. Vore. He was eligible, being a prince; I could have married him and had an alliance for my people with the demons. That would have accomplished my parents' purpose. But I was fixed on the human connection, and thought it would be more advantageous to marry a human prince. In fact—” she paused again, flushing slightly. “I thought that it would be easier for me to control a young human than a mature demon. I liked the notion of queenly power. So I chose the human, knowing he would choose me if I did not dissuade him. It was my decision.”

“Yet it worked out,” Surprise said. “You have been a good and supportive wife to him.”

“Demon Vore's passion for me was greater than I judged,” she continued as inexorably as Dolph had before. The guilt path was driving her. “When he saw that he had lost me, he swelled into a huge mushroom-shaped cloud and faded into the wind. He had returned to the earth that spawned him. In fact he was dead.” She stopped, verbally and physically, as Dolph had before, in tears. “I killed him with my indifference.”

“You couldn't know,” Dolph said comfortingly.

“Yet if I had it to do over, knowing what I know now, that you could have made it with Electra and I with Vore, I would marry him. That would save two lives.”

Surprise could see her point. Each had done the selfish thing, and bore the continuing guilt of it. They had a good life together, yet were haunted by what might have been.

“And that is our respective guilt,” Dolph said.

Surprise was perplexed. “You have expressed it well. Isn't that all you need to do to complete the guilt trip?”

Both shook their heads. “We have not expressed the last vestige of our guilts,” Nada said. “We have been unable to make ourselves reveal our final secrets. So we are unable to complete the trip. But you seem to have little if any guilt, as I noted before. You can achieve the end, and touch the guilt stone for us.”

“Maybe I can,” Surprise agreed. “But I remain confused about a detail. Just what does the stone do? Does it simply make you feel better?”

“No,” Dolph said. “It fixes the guilt.”

Nada had said something of the sort before. Surprise still couldn't make much sense of it. “But if the other people are dead, how can it ever be fixed?”

“It is retroactive,” Nada said. “It changes spot history. It leaves nothing to be guilty about.”

Surprise was amazed. “Retroactive! That is powerful magic! Are you sure it is wise?”

“We can't live with our continuing guilt,” Dolph said. “We regret changing history for others besides ourselves, but the main folk affected are the two who will have their lives restored. We believe that is best.”

Surprise had to agree, especially because she knew how well both marriages had worked out in her own reality. Yet she had one more question. “You love each other and are good for each other. Won't this break you up?”

“Yes,” Dolph agreed. “I hate that.”

“I fear for his welfare without my guidance,” Nada said.

“I love you, dear,” Dolph said.

“I love you, dear,” Nada echoed.

They embraced and kissed. They made a truly lovely couple, the handsome king and the lovely queen.

Surprise remained uncertain. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

“Yes,” both said together.

“Our love is suspect,” Nada explained. “We harmed others to achieve it.”

“We don't deserve it,” Dolph said.

They kissed again. Little hearts circled them.

Surprise shrugged. They were in evident agreement, so it was not her place to argue further. “Then I will try.”

She forged ahead along the guilt path. But now her own guilts beset her, and she had to speak them aloud; the path compelled it. “I was imperious as a child, thinking I could do anything. I flaunted my talents, embarrassing other children. I was hard to handle; they had to bring in a gargoyle to tutor me. When I discovered that I could use each talent only once, I was crestfallen, and for a time I was afraid to use any talent. I should have realized that character counts more than magic, and for that willful ignorance I still bear guilt.”

“But didn't you mature, in character?” Nada asked.

“Yes, and I hope I am a better person now for that effort. But the early guilt remains.”

“I intend no offense,” King Dolph said. “But as guilt goes, that's trifling. Every child is imperious, and has to learn better. I did. You were normal, apart from your remarkable talent.”

Surprise forged on along the path, talking compulsively as she did. “Then I forgot to get my record at the Stork Works corrected, so the stork thought I was only thirteen, and took my baby elsewhere. Now I am here in this reality, complicating things, trying to correct that mistake. In the process I waded through love elixir with Che Centaur, and now we have an illicit passion for each other.”

“Why not enjoy it?” Nada asked. “Such artificial passion doesn't last long when indulged freely, unless the person wants it to, as I did with Dolph.”

“That isn't proper, in my reality,” Surprise said uncomfortably.

“But if you don't use it up, it will last forever,” Dolph said. “If you really don't want it, the sensible thing to do is to have a wild affair, for the brief time it lasts.”

“Have you done that?” Surprise demanded.

Nada laughed. “Of course he has. We both have. Once I slipped some love elixir into his water when he was setting out on a tour of the kingdom, and made a pretext to stay behind. It was hilarious.”

Surprise did not trust herself to speak. She kept being surprised by the differences between realities.

“When I drank that water,” Dolph said, “the first female I saw was an old ogress of the classic description: her face looked like a bowl of overcooked mush that someone had sat on. But there was no help for it. I assumed the form of an uglier ogre and had at her. She bashed me in the snoot a few times, but I would not be denied. And do you know, she was the best lover I ever encountered. She said so was I; that's the way ogres do it, you know.”

“I nearly passed out, laughing, when he told me about it,” Nada said.

“But I got Nada back,” Dolph said. “I put elixir in her drink when she went to negotiate with a goblin chief for a new boundary between the naga and goblin territories. The naga hate the goblins, you know. That messed it up awfully, because they were able to set no boundaries.”

“We still hate goblins,” Nada said. “But sometimes I arrange a tryst with that one chief, by that fuzzy line, for old times' sake. He's a wonderful brute, and he can't keep his hands or anything else off me. A woman likes to be appreciated.”

Surprise spoke very carefully to mask her utter shock. “We don't do it that way in my reality.”

“Just one partner?” Dolph asked doubtfully.

“It must be dull,” Nada said sympathetically.

“Just one,” Surprise agreed grimly. “So my passion for Che Centaur is illicit and inspires guilt.”

Dolph and Nada exchanged a glance, as of how to handle a person with a truly unreasonable fixation. “Of course, dear,” Nada said. “That's the way it is, for you.”

“Even if no one died,” Dolph agreed.

Surprise forged on, her feelings mixed. She had revealed her greatest current guilt, and learned that it was not even a blip on the screen in this reality. She wasn't sure whether to be embarrassed.

She came to the end of the path. There was the great Punk Rock, in the shape of a punkin. She looked back and saw that neither Dolph nor Nada had been able to make it to the end. Their remaining unexpressed guilt held them back.

Surprise stood beside the stone. Now what?

“Invoke it!” Dolph called.

“Tap it with a finger,” Nada added. “And name us both.”

Surprise reached for the Rock. It made a nerve-jangling sound, warning her off. It did indeed have a bad attitude. But she nerved herself and tapped it. “King Dolph Human. Queen Nada Naga-Human.”

Something like a spark jumped to her finger and coursed up her arm all the way to her mouth. Awful sour music sounded, making her body twitch with distaste. The Punk Rock was possessing her, exploring her body and mind, verifying that she had indeed come to it properly, having revealed her own guilts. Grudgingly, it told her what to do next.

She faced the two, who remained back, pain showing on their faces. Royal pain. “Dolph, come forward,” she called. “Reveal your final guilt.”

“I can't,” he said.

The nastiness of the Rock pushed her. “You will.” She pointed to the path behind him. It caught fire, scorching the foliage on either side. Surprise wasn't sure whether this was magic from the stone, or her own that it required her to employ. The fire advanced, forcing the king to come toward the stone lest he be burned.

As he advanced, he spoke. “When I remember Electra, and how she was, I think she might have been a better wife for me than Nada.” He was flushing with shame for his betrayal of his wife as he reached the stone at last.

“Oh Dolph, you could have told me,” Nada said. “I would have forgiven you. I know I'm not perfect.”

Surprise kept a straight face. That was his most secret shame? That he had some bit of doubt about his wife? Surprise knew that there were many men who might have been better for her in one way or another than Umlaut, but it didn't bother her. She had married him, and was loyal to him; what might have been didn't matter. It was physical unfaithfulness that mattered.

She spoke again, her voice coarsely musical. That was the effect of the Punk Rock. “Nada, come forward. Reveal your final guilt.”

Nada tried, but her feet didn't seem to want to move. Surprise pointed to the path behind her, and a wisp of smoke curled up. Was she using a different spell this time, per her limit? Nada hastily moved.

“Demon Vore was older than I am, by thousands of years,” she said. “When I remember him, I think I could have had an older man, instead of a boy.” She blushed furiously.

“Of course I was a boy,” Dolph said. “You made a man of me. I bless you for it.”

Nada made it the rest of the way to the stone. “Oh Dolph, we've done it,” she said. “We have spoken our betrayals of each other. Now at last we can clear our guilts.”

“Now at last,” Dolph agreed. “I love you, Nada. I think I always will.”

“We can still have trysts,” she said.

“That will be great.” They kissed.

Again, Surprise withheld her reaction. These two people, so completely in love, expected to break up their marriage retroactively, so that it never happened, so they could do right by the two who had loved them and died. Yet they also expected to have a kind of continuing romantic association that would be illicit in Surprise's reality but was reasonable in this one. She was beginning to get her scruples realigned, recognizing that she could not judge the folk of this reality by the standards of hers. What they were doing seemed to make sense for them.

All she said was “What now?”

“Now we go back,” Nada said. “Thank you so much for your help.”

“We couldn't have done it without you,” Dolph said.

Surprise turned to the brooding stone. “Thank you, Punk Rock.”

There was a flare of discordant melody. The Rock was not pleased to have served.

They walked back along the path. There was no resistance. Dolph and Nada held hands and paused frequently to kiss. They seemed sorry about having to part, yet also glad to be doing it. Surprise suspected she would never completely understand.

They reached the covered panel. Dolph lifted up the curtain, revealing the exit to the castle, and they stepped through. Nothing seemed to have changed. The portal faded out behind them; this guilt trip was done.

“Oh, Dolph, we've done it!” Nada said.

“No one else will remember except Surprise,” he said.

“I won't tell,” Surprise said, realizing this was expected.

Dolph and Nada embraced and kissed once more, lingeringly. “Until the tryst,” Nada murmured fondly.

“But secret, lest it reveal the change,” he said.

“Of course. Now let's see what the search for the children has turned up.”

They left the room and went to the main chamber of the castle. There were several people there. One of them was Electra, much like the one Surprise knew, in blue jeans and crown. She came to hug Dolph. “Are you finished, dear?”

He hesitated barely an instant. “I think so, yes.”

There was a swirl of smoke and Demon Vore appeared. “And what were you doing with the human king, you luscious reptile?” he inquired cheerfully as he swept Nada into his arms.

“You have no idea, smoke-head,” Nada said affectionately.

Surprise recognized these as the spouses Dolph and Nada had in her own reality. This reality was now a step closer to that one.

“What about the search?” Dolph asked.

Two attractive teen girls appeared at the entrance and ran bouncily up to him. Surprise recognized them as Dawn and Eve, the one fair as the morning sun, the other sultry as dusk. “I checked the whole area, and nothing alive knew anything about any lost children,” Dawn said.

“I checked every nonliving thing, and they didn't know either,” Eve said.

They had gotten the suddenly restored daughters to search, Surprise realized. The daughters who had not existed in this reality before the Guilt Trip, but didn't know that they had only recently been retroactively generated. Her mind threatened to spin out of control.