Demons Don't Dream Part 5

"Well, you aren't any of those things, you midget-brained Mundane," the Fairy retorted. "So what did you come here for?"

"We need a solution," Dug said. "Just give us a bucket of it, and we'll get out of your face."

"And what will you give me for that solution, you fugitive from dreariness?"

Dug paused. "t.i.t for tat, eh?"

"No. That's the next booth over."

They looked at the next booth, where several bare-breasted nymphs perched. A man was approaching it, hauling along a bag marked TAT. Nada decided not to inquire further.

Dug seemed quite intrigued by the nymphs, however. His eyes seemed eager to zip over there, hauling his head along after them. "Don't forget what you're here for," Nada murmured.

He forced himself to remember, without perfect success. "What are those creatures?"

"They are nymphs, of course. Females almost without minds, existing only for the sport of the moment"

"But what a sport!" he breathed.

"If you want to have brainless fun," she agreed.

"Yeah." He seemed oblivious to her tone.

"That is evidently just about your velocity," the Fairy remarked.

That got Dug's attention. "What's it to you, Nuff? You never heard of play?"

"Fair play, of course," the Fairy said.

"Ouch! I walked into that one. Okay, what do you want for your solution?"

"I want not to be the object of misrepresentation."

"You don't have a solution for that?"

"My solutions apply only to others."

Dug considered. "Exactly what kind of misrepresentation are you the object of?"

"Folk insist on calling me gay, when as you can plainly see, I am nothing of the kind. I want recognition as the sour individual I am."

"Let me see if I have this straight. You are a fairy, therefore folk call you gay?"

"Exactly, I have no idea why they think all fairies are gay-"

Dug pursed his lips, seeming to think of something obscure. "Maybe this is a problem it's better to avoid," he said. "Exactly how is your name spelled?" Dug could have read it on the ledger, but for some reason his eyes were straying back to the nymphs.

"Eff Aay Eye Are Why. Enn You Eff Eff."

'Try spelling it FAERIE."

"That will change things?"

"It just might"

Nuff looked extremely dubious, which was the way Nada felt. How could such an irrelevant change affect the att.i.tudes of others?

"Very well." He touched the ledger, and the letters s.h.i.+fted. Now it read FAERIE NUFF.

Another person approached the booth. "What are you spelling, Nuff?" he asked seriously.

"Nothing to interest you, clodbrain," Faerie Nuff snapped.

"What a grouch!" the man said, moving away.

Nuff stared after him. "It's magic!" he breathed.

"Right," Dug agreed. "Now they know you're not gay. How about our solution?"

Nuff made a negligent gesture.

"Take any bottle," Dug told Nada.

"But who said to?" she asked.

"Nuff said."

So it seemed. She lifted a nice decanter of purple elixir, pulled off the stopper, and poured it into the pail. When she set it back on the table, it refilled of its own volition. She replaced the stopper. "Thank you, Nuff," she said.

"You earned it," the Faerie said sourly.

But when she looked in the pail, it was empty. Had Nuff cheated them? She started to speak, but Dug beat her to it. "Did we misunderstand the nature of the deal?" he inquired in what was, for him, a remarkably peaceable tone.

"Fair well," Nuff said, waving.

Nada looked around-and saw several wells she hadn't noticed before. "I think it's in a well," she said.

So they went to the wells. There were five of them, labeled A B C D and E. One of them must have the solution they could haul away.

Dug's face lighted. "Fair-E-Nuff!" he exclaimed. "Well-E-Nuff. We want E-Nuff."

"We want enough, yes," she agreed, perplexed.

They went to Well E, which was somewhat isolated from the others. "Well E Nuff Alone," Dug said with satisfaction. "It makes weird sense."

There was a bucket on a rope. Nada let the bucket down into the well until it splashed in the water below. She drew it up. The fluid was purple, matching that of the bottle they had chosen. Nada poured it into the pail, and this time it stayed there. "Good," she said, relieved.

"Good E Nuff," Dug agreed cheerfully.

They returned the way they had come. When they reached the castle of the Ice Queen Clone, they walked around it-and found themselves immediately in a snowstorm. Nada had forgotten to bring along her boots and blanket, and was suddenly cold again.

"Try a drop of solution," Dug suggested.

Nada dipped her finger in the pail and flicked a drop of fluid out into the snow. Immediately the storm calmed, and a clear path opened before them. The solution was working.

"You are really coming to understand how things work here, Dug," she said, impressed.

"Well, I always was a quick study," he said. "Once I caught on to the rules of nonsense, I just had to apply them."

So it seemed. He was young, arrogant, and a Mundane, but he did have his points.

They returned to Isthmus Village. "We have the solution," Dug announced. "Where's the s.h.i.+p?"

The headman led the way south to the port. There was me sinister s.h.i.+p, with its great awful censers hanging fore and aft On its hull was its name: BIGOTRY. Nada felt a tingle of horror as she beheld it. This s.h.i.+p was made from the disgusting wood of the bigotree! No wonder it smelled so bad. It was surrounded by an aura of suppression; it was impossible for there to be any joy or freedom near it.

There seemed to be no sailors on that dread vessel. It was a ghost craft, bearing no living creature. What person could stand to be near it?

"Looks good," Dug said. "Let's get aboard her and douse those censers."

That meant that Nada would have to do it, because Dug wasn't really in this scene. He was protected by his screen.

She sighed silently and got into the dingy little dinghy boat the headman showed them. She set the pail between her knees and took the oars. She hauled on them. They were heavy, but she heaved hard and made them move. The headman watched as the dinghy moved out. She was alone, except for the screen.

"Boy, you sure look great when you're moving like that," Dug said, staring at her front.

As if things weren't bad enough! "Why don't you take an oar?" she gasped. Because she was a maiden she did not speak the rest of her thought: And shove it somewhere loathsome. In fact, because she was a princess, she could not even think of it in greater detail, frustrating as it was. She suffered the same sort of repression the censor-s.h.i.+p brought to the isthmus, only hers could not be doused by any solution. She wished that just once she could step out of her role and do something fiendishly unprincessly.

Meanwhile the awful mood of the s.h.i.+p intensified. There was an ambience of gloom, hatred, and loathing. The s.h.i.+p was here on a mission of destruction, seeking to extirpate not only all pleasure in life, but ultimately life itself. Total repression, so that it would no longer be possible even to breathe, and all the victims could do was expire and rot away. What a cargo of malice! Her breath was getting short, and not just from her effort of rowing; it was as if a depressing weight were bearing down on her squas.h.i.+ng out her strength and will. How much longer could she continue?

The dinghy touched the somber hull. "Okay, tie the boat close, and carry the solution up there," Dug said. "This isn't nearly as hard as I thought it would be."

Nada tried to make an angry remark, but the overpowering fumes of the censers left her barely able to breathe. So she took the pail in one hand, and grabbed a rope ladder with the other. She hauled herself up, rung by rung, until she made it to the deck.

"Great!" Dug said. "What an antique this is! I wish I had a model of it."

Nada just wished he could be physically here, to suffer the effects of this s.h.i.+p of doom. She dragged herself across the dark planking toward the nearest censer. It was as if she were climbing a mountain, and the slope got steeper with each step. She had to drag each leg forward through a seeming miasma that clung like rotten goo. Every breath seemed to bring in a thick sludge of vapor that soiled her tenderest innermost recesses. She closed her eyes and plowed on.

"Come on, Nada, you're real close," Dug said encouragingly. "Just a couple more steps, then heave the pail up and slop some in."

Two more steps? It might as well have been two more worlds! Nada couldn't even keep her feet any longer. The stench from the looming censer was overpowering her last resolve, and she was falling. The pail was tilting, its precious solution about to spill out across the deck, wasted.

Hands caught her and the pail. "Come on, we've got to get this done," Dug said. "We can't give up now." He coughed. "Phew! What a stench!"

He lifted the pail from her slackening grasp and lurched forward. His breath wheezed. His body trembled. He seemed to be swept back by a sickly wind. But he fought forward just a little more, closing the grudging gap between the pail and the censer. He heaved the pail up, tilted it, and splashed some solution into the censer.

There was a pouff! and a hideous cloud of vapor spread up and out. It soiled the air, then thinned, and faded away. The incense had been extinguished. For the first time she saw the lettering on the censer: HATRED.

A breath of clean air swept in. Nada, sprawled on the deck, inhaled. How sweet it was!

They had done it! They had overcome the censor-s.h.i.+p. The isthmus would be free!

Then another whiff of awfulness came. Nada looked- and saw the far censer. They had extinguished only one of the two. The job was only half done.

She dragged herself up. She had no idea now she would ever make it the length of the s.h.i.+p and to the other censer. She would just have to try.

"Oh, brother, the other one," Dug said, staring across at it "I don't think I can make it."

As her mind cleared, Nada realized something. "Dug! You're in the scene!"

He looked around, startled. "I guess I am. How did that happen?"

"It means you believe," she said.

"I don't believe! I just couldn't stand to see you struggling like that, when I'm the one who got us into this thing. It wasn't fair."

"You must believe I'm real, or you wouldn't care."

He stared at her. "I guess maybe I do, men." He shook his head, not really believing his own belief. "Maybe it's just that when I realized this was serious, I had to believe. I couldn't let censors.h.i.+p win, even in a joke land like this." He smiled. "Well, maybe we can make it to the other censer together."

"Maybe we can," she agreed. "Take my hand."

He took her hand. Then they walked together across the deck. It was much easier now. There was far more strength in unity than she had imagined. Also, she now knew that the solution worked, and that gave her more courage. What they were doing wasn't pointless; all they had to do was do it right, and the censors.h.i.+p would be finally defeated.

The fumes intensified, but their effect was no longer overpowering. The two of them forged onward, not even slowing. They reached the grim censer, and Dug lifted up the pail and poured out more of the solution.

The fumes stopped. A glow came from the censer, but not of burning incense. It was the glow of clean daylight The gloomy cloud surrounding the s.h.i.+p was dissipating, and the deck was brightening. They had defeated the second censor censer more readily than the first.

Nada looked at it Its letters said IGNORANCE.

"Hatred and ignorance," Dug murmured, awed. "The two pillars of bigotry. And I'll bet this is the s.h.i.+p of fools, too. Because only fools would let such bad things govern them."

"And only fools would try to stop all others from saying or even thinking what they wanted to," Nada said. "Fortunately we don't have a lot of that in Xanth."

"We have plenty in Mundania, though," he said. "I guess that's what makes it such a dreary place." He looked around. "d.a.m.n! I'm glad to be here!" Then he laughed. "Hey, I swore! It didn't get bleeped out. The censors.h.i.+p really has been beaten."

"It really has been," she agreed. "For now. But it will surely be back, once it returns to its source and gets its censers restored."

"I guess so. Too bad. But let's get off it and get back to Isthmus Village. We have a whole adventure to get through."

So they did. This was only the beginning.

Chapter 4: WATER.