Piers Anthony - Out of Phaze

There was an angry squawk from ahead. Startled, Mach paused.

“Who the hell art thou?” a voice screeched. “Stay out o’ my bower!”

“A harpy!” Mach exclaimed with dismay. He gripped his axe. Fleta, on his shoulder, was so tired that she didn’t wake.

“What didst thou think it be—a damned goblin?”

“Yes,” Mach said. Could he escape her surveillance in the darkness, or were they in for another horrible I chase? The harpy laughed raucously. “Well, no such luck! Come not near me, lest thou catch the tailfeather itch!” Mach knew he should shut up and hide, but something nagged at him. Why was this foul creature talking instead of attacking or summoning her cohorts? “I’m just a weary traveler,” he said. “I have no tailfeathers to itch, but I will detour around your bower. I apologize for bothering you.”

“Thou dost what?” she screeched.

“I apologize for bothering you,” Mach repeated.

“Nobody doth apologize to a harpy!”

“I don’t want any trouble, I just want to get somewhere where I can rest for the night.”

“Thou dost speak strangely. Who be ye?”

“I am called Mach.” If she knew his identity, his name made no difference now. “I am a robot.”

“What kind of monster be a rovot?” she demanded.

“One that looks like a human being.”

“Oh, hell, come into my bower,” she said. “I be lonely for company.”

Stranger yet! Was it a trap? Well, might as well spring it as have it pursue him. Mach climbed forward.

He parted a thick curtain of leaves and came into a snug chamber padded with ferns. There was a tiny bit of glow, so that he could ascertain its approximate size and see the form perched on a stick at one side. This was the harpy.

“Why, thou dost be a man!” she exclaimed.

“I said I looked like a human being.”

“Aye, that be true. And a bird on thy shoulder.”

“My companion.” Fleta was stirring now; what would she think of this interview?’

“I be Phoebe,” the harpy said.

Mach checked through his memory. “I know of a bird of that name. Nondescript, except that it wags its tail.”

“Aye, that be why the name,” she agreed. She rustled about as if to make the point. “But it be uncomfortable as hell, and not just in the feathers.”

“You really do have a tailfeather itch?”

“Aye, and no cure, so I be exiled from my kind.”

“You mean you’re not part of the pursuit?”

“What pursuit?” Phoebe demanded.

“We’ve been chased by harpies, demons and goblins,” Mach said. “We don’t know why.”

“I know naught o’ that! I’ve had no contact with my kind in a year.”

Could he believe that! Or was she just trying to lull him while others closed in?

“No offense—but you don’t smell. The other harpies I encountered—“

“I wash my feathers daily to keep down the itch, but always it returns,” Phoebe said. “An’ another o’ my kind come near, it will spread. That be my curse.”

Fleta jumped off his shoulder, then materialized as her girl form. “Know thou my nature?” she asked the harpy.

“A werebird! Ne’er saw I the like before!”

“Nay. Unicorn.”

“And thou comest to roust me out o’ my bower? For shame, ‘corn; I have no quarrel with thee!”

“Willst swear so on my horn?”

“For sure, an thou attack me not.”

Fleta parted the leaves of the bower wall and stepped out.

The harpy peered after her. She shrugged with her wings. “Hell, trust must begin somewhere, and I have no life worth living alone.” She half-spread her wings and hopped out after Fleta.

Mach followed her out, not certain what was happening.

Outside, he could just make out the dark unicorn shape. Fleta lowered her horn, and the harpy hopped up to it. The horn touched her feathers. “I swear I have no quarrel with thee,” the harpy said.

Fleta fluted.

“What, turn about?” Phoebe asked, evidently understanding her. “What for?”

Fleta played several notes.

‘That?” the harpy asked incredulously. “Thou wouldst?

An affirmative note. Mach tried to fathom what this was about, but it baffled him.

The harpy turned about, and Fleta put her horn on the creature’s tailfeathers. For a moment there seemed to be a kind of radiance, but Mach could not be sure.

“Mine itch!” the harpy cried. “Gone!”

Fleta returned to girl form. “Grant us rest in thy bower for a day, and all’s repaid,” she said.

“For this cure?” Phoebe cried. “Thou canst stay a year!”

Fleta made her way back into the bower and curled up on the fern. In a moment she was asleep.

“But—how could you know that we had no quarrel with you?” he asked the harpy.

“ ‘Corns be stubborn beasts,” Phoebe said. ‘They betray not who betrays them not.”

“And she cured you—just like that?”

“Aye, the horn has power, an there be ailment. But for ‘corn to cure harpy—that be rare indeed.”

“We were looking for a place to rest in safety,” Mach said.

“Ye have it now.” Phoebe wiggled her tail, appreciating the lack of itch.

Mach went in and lay down beside Fleta. It seemed that his willingness to talk with the harpy had paid off; she was not after all an enemy. In a moment he slept.

Fleta slept all night and much of the following day. It was evident that she had seriously depleted her resources in the long run. Mach, less tired, found himself talking with Phoebe. The harpy brought fresh fruit and edible roots, but urged him to wash them in a nearby spring. “I wash, but my talons form the poison, and it gets on what I touch,” she explained. Mach was happy to wash the food.

“There be my sisters in the sky, and goblins o’er the plain,” Phoebe announced after taking a flight. “An thou knowest not why they seek ye?”

“An Adept sent them,” Mach said. “He wants me alive; he doesn’t care about Fleta. She carried me from the Lattice in a day.”

“In a single day? Lucky thou art she died not on the hoof!”

“She’s a good creature,” Mach agreed.

“And for the love o’ thee!” She shook her head. She was as awkwardly endowed as all her kind, with a human head and breasts and the wings and hind parts of a vulture. Her face was lined and her breasts sagged; her hair was a wild tangle. About the only pretty part of her was her wings, which had a metallic luster. Her voice was harsh, sounding like a screech even when she talked normally. Mach could see that if she had behaved the way the others of her kind did, allowing filth to encrust her body, she would have been monstrously ugly; as it was, she was merely homely. “My kind has no such love.”

“If I may ask—just how does your kind reproduce? I understand there are no males of your species.”

“Aye, there be none. We lay eggs and leave them scattered about; an one survive the animals long enough to hatch, an the chick not get consumed, she grows to size and lays her own eggs. Legend has it that only a fertilized egg can hatch a male harpy—but only a male of our species can fertilize it. So it be an endless circle. We be chronically bitter about that, and take it out on all creatures.” She sighed. “Sometimes I wish it were otherwise. But what else be there?”

Mach shrugged. “I don’t know. It does seem a tragedy. But why didn’t you revile me when I showed up in the night?”

“I should have, I know,” she confessed. “But after a year denied the company of mine own kind, awful as that be, I was lonely. So I was foolish.”

“And got your tail fixed.”

“It passeth all understanding.”

“Phoebe—are harpies supposed to be ugly?”

“What point to be other?”