The Dastard (19 page)

Melody's mouth worked. “I'm all right. I just tripped.” She wasn't saying it; the Sea Hag was.

The others helped her up. Melody tried to cry out to them, but her jaw locked. The pain came again, less intense but quite bad enough. I will hurt you.

There was no question of that. The Sea Hag was notorious for stealing young beautiful bodies and wearing them rapidly out, making them old before their time. Then she threw them away by getting them killed, and went on to the next. It was the most horrible fate imaginable.

I see you understand, my pet. Now cease opposing me, and I will hurt you less. Open your memory.

Melody tried to keep her memory closed, but the hideous mind of the Sea Hag forced its way in, like the venom of a zombie cobra, hurting all the way. The filth of it was as bad as the pain of it. Melody had never imagined a mind this ugly. Her very soul was being laid waste.

You're from Ptero! the Hag thought, amazed. "You're a princess! In fact, you're Princess Melody! And your two sisters are with you here, invisible. And you have a big bird with you too. What a collection!

She had wrested the secrets out, in much the manner she might have dug out a living kidney with her dirty claws. Melody knew she was lost.

That's right, my pet. You are forever mine. Now stop trying to hold back, or I'll hurt you more.

Melody did not stop, and the Sea Hag did hurt her more. Why she resisted she wasn't sure; she just couldn't give in completely to this monstrosity.

Meanwhile her sisters remained concerned. “Melody, you look faint,” Harmony said.

“You look pained,” Rhythm said.

I will punish you later, the Hag thought. Then she focused on the externals. She made Melody's mouth smile. “I am all right, sisters dear. It is just a passing indisposition.”

This was not the way Melody normally spoke. She hoped her sisters realized that, and caught on that she was not herself.

So I must use your silly mannerisms, the Sea Hag thought. Thank you for advising me, you sad excuse for a princess.

Melody realized that she would have to stifle her thoughts, because the Hag was too apt at intercepting them. Her only hope was for her sisters to catch on. But then what? They wouldn't be able to dislodge the parasite from outside. So all she could do was delay her utter capitulation as long as she could manage.

You're learning, my pet.

Meanwhile Melody's body was walking with increasing facility, and her sisters' concerns were abating. They came to the bower where the Dastard and Xena had been, but they were gone. Becka's glowing footprints led on. She had evidently caught up with them, and now they were all going somewhere.

They saw a four-legged black creature. Oh, there's that dumb Mundane brute again, the Hag thought. He's been wandering all over Xanth, looking for a home. What a nuisance.

Maybe the dog would smell the change in her, and so alert her sisters to her predicament.

Forget it, my pet. There is no way to tell my presence physically, because only my spirit is here. The stupid canine will never catch on.

So it seemed, for the dog walked sorrowfully on.

It was getting late in the day. I'll wait to catch him, the Hag decided. He's a cunning rogue, and has unhappened my Possessions more than once. I need to be fully prepared before I brace him again.

But Harmony and Rhythm were moving right along toward the rendezvous. The Hag had to delay them. So she made Melody's body trip again.

“There's definitely something wrong,” Harmony said.

“We had better find a place to camp,” Rhythm said.

They turned aside, locating a suitable spot to stay the evening. They turned visible, and Sim glided down to rejoin them, but he remained invisible because there was no easy way to conceal his great size and bright color. Melody's body harvested a hagberry pie and smacked Melody's lips over it. The sisters did not comment. The Hag realized that she had made an error; sweet young princesses did not like hagberry pie; they preferred peach or cherry pie. Then, as the Hag fashioned a nest for the night, she used Melody's mouth to speak silently to Melody.

“Now I can in time roust out your entire personal history,” she spoke. “But what use is it? You're an exchangee from Ptero, so your experience hardly relates. I'm certainly not going to let you return there. So first I'll have to separate you from your siblings. I can do that tonight when they sleep.”

Melody feared that Harmony and Rhythm would never realize. They would think she had gotten up in the night for a call of whatever, and gotten lost.

“You three princesses do seem somewhat naive,” the Hag remarked silently. “I suppose that comes from living on an unreal world so long.”

It probably did. They simply lacked experience of Xanth, where geography was not time, and people's ages were firmly fixed. They had never thought to encounter anyone as smart as the Sea Hag.

“Enough of your dull thoughts,” the Hag decided. “I have to remain awake until they sleep. So I'll educate you by reviewing my early history, which is far more interesting than yours.” Then she sent her memory back, way back, perhaps thousands of years--she had long since lost count--to when she had her first incarnation as a girl in the year minus twenty-two hundred. “Back then we counted years backwards,” she said. “Because it was before the first official Human Wave of colonization, from which the current dating system derives. So I was a girl from minus twenty-two hundred to minus twenty-one ninety and a woman thereafter. I didn't much like it. For one thing, I didn't know I had magic. I was the daughter of two of the true first human colonists of Xanth, and they, being Mundane in origin, didn't have talents and didn't know about them. Later, of course, some of them would be breeding with assorted other species, as they ran afoul of love springs, giving rise to centaurs, harpies, merfolk, naga, sphinxes, ogres, goblins, elves, fauns, nymphs, fairies, imps, gnomes, werewolves, skeletons, vampires, and other crossbreeds and variants, populating Xanth with the hybrids we know and love today. But those other species tend to be close-mouthed about their origins, not liking to admit that their lineage was ever debased by human stock. I even recently encountered a dragon girl whose sire barely acknowledged her. But that was all in our future. We were just trying to make our living in this odd magic estate.”

As she spoke, the Hag pictured that ancient land, and Melody saw it take form. It was as if she was Sea Girl, as the Sea Hag was called then, because she lived by the sea shore and gathered pretty sea shells to trade for the necessities of life. She was a rather scrawny child with a tangle of wild hair and sea-colored eyes.

On the day she was ten years old she went out as usual to seek sea shells, and found several rather nice ones. She brought them home, thinking her stern salty father would be pleased, but instead her mother was there, her eyes rimmed with tears. “Daughter, today your father was toasted and eaten by a dragon,” she said. “I can no longer afford to maintain you.”

“But where will I go? What will I do?” Sea Girl inquired plaintively.

“I will have to sell you to the Green Horn,” Mother said sadly. “That will enable me to survive, and he will take care of you in his fashion.”

“The Green Horn!” Sea Girl exclaimed, horrified. “But he's not even human! He's a leprechaun.”

“No, he just looks like one,” Mother said. “He's quite human in ways that count, unfortunately. He has had his evil eye on you for some time, and now you must go to him and do whatever he wants.”

“How will I know what he wants? He always speaks in riddles.”

“I'm sure he will make his desire known,” Mother said with a shudder.

“How will I find him? He lives hidden in the deepest darkest forest.”

“He will send a coach for you.”

Then, tearfully, she hugged Sea Girl and sent her off with no more than half an electronic cookie, which had also been sent by the Green Horn. She stood by the trail out of the village and ate the cookie as she was supposed to. It tingled in her mouth as its current animated her.

Soon the coach arrived, orienting on the signal sent by the cookie. Many people did not have magic, but many things did, and the cookie's magic was to identify the person who ate it, and reveal that person's secrets to the one who sent it. Had Sea Girl known that at the time, she would never have eaten it; she would have fed it to a basilisk.

The coach was surprisingly fancy. In fact it was a cherry-ot, formed in the shape of a huge cherry. It rolled smartly up and the burdened beast that pulled it halted. Its red door opened.

Sea Girl hesitated. “This fancy coach can't be for me,” she protested. I'll am just an anonymous orphaned waif."

“It's just a stage,” the cherry-oteer told her.

Reassured, she boarded, and the coach rolled into the deepest darkest forest. Sea Girl shed a tear as she left her village. She would have shed another if she had realized that she would never see her beloved sea again. Not in this life.

Sea Girl dreaded her upcoming encounter with Green Horn, but this was because she hardly knew him. Had she known him better, she would have been properly appalled.

The ride was not easy, because a rat spied the cherry-ot and decided to eat it. The Rat Race had recently immigrated from Mundania and had taken a liking to racing. Rats would race anything, and do anything to win, and would eat the loser after winning the race. No one else liked a rat race. The cherry-oteer whipped the beast of burden cruelly, making it gallop blindly ahead, outrunning the shorter-legged rats. But the coach bounced so much it almost fell apart. Sea Girl grew nauseous, and wished the ride was over. But had she realized what was at its end, she would have been truly sickened.

In due course the coach stopped at the very deepest, darkest part of the forest. “Debouch; you're done for,” the cherry-oteer said kindly. Or had he said “Debauch”? In any event, she might have wished for some other phrasing, had she understood either term.

She got out of the coach, and it rolled hastily away from that place. She stood before a ramshackle shack almost hidden in the gloom. In its poor excuse for a doorway stood Green Horn.

“So you have arrived,” he said. “Now do you know what I want of you?”

All Sea Girl knew was that she didn't want to know. So she made a desperate ploy. “Don't you always ask a riddle, and anyone who answers correctly gets to flee your awful presence?”

“That's only half right,” he said. “Anyone who answers correctly gets horrendously rewarded with an indescribable life experience.”

“So why can't I have a riddle?”

“That's different,” he said. “I bought you from your widowed mother. Too bad about that dragon."

“How do you know a dragon widowed her?” Sea Girl demanded bravely, trying to stall for time.

He answered with a riddle, as was his wont. “Who do you think sent the dragon?”

“You sent it?” she asked, beginning to be properly appalled.

“Who else, delicious girl?”

Delicious? She saw past him to the huge boiling pot on his hearth. Now she began to be truly sickened.

She tried again, twice as desperately. “So don't I rate a riddle?”

He frowned. “Very well, as it won't make any difference. No one ever answers correctly anyway. Here is my riddle: Where is my Green Horn?”

“What happens if I answer incorrectly?”

“I will do one of three things. I will curdle your milk so you never enjoy it again, or deform your knee joints so you never walk straight again, or cook you in green beer in my pot. I have already made my decision with respect to you, as it is near supper time.”

Sea Girl didn't dare answer incorrectly, so she made a wild guess. “There is your Green Horn,” she said, pointing directly at him.

“Curses!” he swore. “You got it.”

She was foolishly relieved. “What is my horrendous reward? What is my indescribable life experience?”

“I will marry you.”

She had thought that nothing could be worse than the boiling pot. Now she knew better. “I changed my mind,” she said. “I take back my answer.”

“Too late. I always keep my foul word. There is no help for it but that I marry you forthwith. Of course I will treat you despicably for the rest of your life, and make your worthless existence miserable, but that's only to be expected in marriage. Take off your clothes.”

Worse yet. “But I'm only ten years old!”

He glanced at her, perplexed. “What's your point?”

“What about the Adult Conspiracy?”

“It hasn't been invented yet. This is the year minus Twenty-one Ninety, remember.”

She realized that there was no escape. And so it was she married young, and hated every minute of it, for Green Horn was a despicably cruel husband who made her work her fingers off on the endless dull chores of the household. Once her fingers were gone, of course, she could no longer do the chores or feed herself, and soon expired in dull misery. It had not been, taken as a whole, a good life.

Even after she died, there was no respite, for her soul did not find any comfortable haven. It wandered across the landscape, unsettled. She saw the living people going about their business, and envied them. They at least had decent lives, of the sort she had not. Their children were developing magic talents--something the adults did not yet realize, but that was obvious to someone hovering invisibly near and observing. Regular people, too, could have magic!

Finally she spied a lovely young woman who seemed to have excellent prospects for marriage and all else. She wore her heart on her sleeve; everyone could see it beating there. Sea Girl couldn't help herself; she just had to try to share in it, even if it was only illusion. She floated to the woman and overlapped her body.

Suddenly her soul took hold, and the body became hers, answering to her directives. She had become the girl!

It took her some time--perhaps as long as five minutes--to realize that this was her magic talent. She could take over another body after she died! She could live her life over again.

But her marriage to the Green Horn had hopelessly spoiled her for conventional existence. She had so much bitterness accumulated that it would take several lifetimes to wear it out. So she decided to do something about it. The first thing she wanted was vengeance.