Piers Anthony - Out of Phaze

Bane looked at her. He looked exactly like the man she loved. “How dost thou feel about Mach?” he asked.

Fleta dissolved into tears again.

“I know not what be right,” Bane said.

“Thy father will tell thee,” she said. Then she changed, and galloped away, ashamed of her longing. Of course she could not condemn her friend Bane to exile in Proton-frame, for the sake of her own private joy with his other self.

She proceeded back to the Herd Demesnes, knowing she had to talk to her dam, Neysa. She had to know— what she did not know.

She located the Herd by nightfall. She checked in with the Herd Stallion, who was her uncle Clip. She was safely out of heat now, so this visit was all right. Belle, Clip’s first mare and still his favorite, grazed nearby, her mane glinting iridescently. But it was Neysa she had come to see.

Soon Neysa joined her, separating from the Herd. Neysa’s equine head was turning gray now, and her white socks hung lower on her rear feet than they had in youth, but she remained a handsome small mare. She had returned to the Herd when her breeding years passed; she had had to remain apart when her brother assumed the leadership, but now there was no problem. She still spent much of her time elsewhere, however, because she had friendships with many of the venerable wolves of the werewolf pack, and of course with Stile and the Lady too.

They changed to human form and sat under a shade tree. “And didst thou get bred?” Neysa asked.

“Nay. I—found other occupation.”

“Thou didst not come into heat?”

“I did, but. . .”

Of course her dam had to have the whole story. Fleta told it. “And now Bane be safe, and Mach be back in Proton,” she concluded. “And I love Mach.”

Neysa understood about hopeless love, of course. “When thy season comes again, thou must be at the other Herd,” she said. “Naught e’er can come of thy interest in a man.”

“Yet, if he returned, as he said he might, for a visit—“

“Get bred, get a foal, and be friends with the man,” Neysa advised. ‘That be the way it must be. That be the way thou thyself didst come into existence.”

“But if he stayed—“

“Fleta, he be a man, son of an Adept!” Neysa reminded her. ‘Thou canst ne’er forget that!”

“But why must we be apart? An he love me too—“

But Neysa changed to mare form and dismissed the notion with a harmonica chord from her horn. She had never been one to entertain dreams of the impossible.

Fleta realized that there was no more acceptance here for her wild dream than there had been at the Blue Demesnes. Yet she was young and impetuous, and still could not give it up. For without Mach, her life had no meaning.

She sighed. Then she changed to mare form, played a chord of parting to Neysa, and set off across the plain toward the Werewolf Demesnes.

That journey took some time. She paused for the evening, grazing while she slept on her feet, and resumed it in the morning.

She reached the Pack later in the day. The hackles of the wolves rose as they spied her, but then they recognized her as the filly of Neysa, and escorted her in to meet the leader, Kurrelgyre.

Kurrelgyre shifted to man form, and Fleta to girl form. He was grizzled, a veteran of many combats, and perhaps approaching the time when one of his offspring would kill him and take his place as leader. But he was friend to Neysa, and therefore to Fleta. “What brings thee here, filly?” he inquired.

“I would talk with Furramenin,” Fleta said.

“And welcome,” he said. Furramenin was his whelp by his favorite bitch, a lovely creature of Fleta’s generation.

Soon they were talking, apart from the Pack. “Didst thou get bred?” Furramenin inquired eagerly, now in girl form. Soon enough she would have to leave the Pack for similar reason, traveling to one not led by her sire.

“Not exactly,” Fleta said. As before, she had to explain, covering the story in fair detail.

“Oooo, with a man!” the innocent bitch exclaimed. “But of course it couldn’t take!”

“It was only to prevent me from going on to a Herd,” Fleta reminded her.

“Swish thy tail when thou sayest that!” the wolf exclaimed. “It was the man thou didst desire!”

“It was the man,” Fleta agreed. “And after my season passed, he wanted it more, and his way, and—“ She shrugged.

“And now thou art in perpetual heat for him.”

“Aye, in a way. Ne’er before did I seek it for itself, for love of the one it was with.”

“And who wouldn’t? The whelp of an Adept!”

“Nay, he be from the other frame.”

“So that be why he knew not it was impossible.”

“Aye.” Fleta looked at her pleadingly. “I have no life without him. But I know not whether he will return, and e’en if he does—“

“It still be impossible,” Furramenin concluded. “A dream for a week, then back to reality.”

“Yet if he does return, and wants me—“

“Adepts have concubines,” the bitch reminded her. “Some they like better than their wives, if truth be known.”

“But I want him all to myself!”

Furramenin shook her head. “Impossible,” she concluded.

“Thou dost believe that?”

“Aye. This be Phaze; hadst thou not noticed?”

They talked about other things, and it was pleasant enough, but Fleta had learned what she had come to learn. The werewolves did not understand her desire either.

Next day she galloped on to the cave of the vampires. Here she talked with Suchevane, the loveliest of the vampires. In girl form, Suchevane had chestnut tresses that swirled luxuriantly to her pert bottom, and a figure that virtually drained the blood of males before she even touched them. She was notorious already for her liaisons with any males capable of assuming man form—vampires, werewolves, unicorns, genuine men (including Bane)—and some that only came close. Naturally she had the broadest of perspectives in such matters.

“But Fleta, it can’t be serious!” Suchevane protested.

“I am serious,” Fleta insisted with unicorn stubbornness.

“I mean, not from the human man’s view. Any human man likes to play, but ne’er to marry other than his own kind. Think not I would remain single, an it were otherwise.”

Grim news! If the lovely vampiress could not snag a human man, how could any ordinary animal expect to do so?

“Actually, the other species be none too keen on it either,” Suchevane continued. “I had a really interesting fling with a werewolf, and he petitioned to his Pack to bring me into it, but they negated it.”

“But they could not stop him from marrying thee, an he truly wanted to!” Fleta said.

Suchevane shook her head, and her hair swirled in a way Fleta had to envy. “Aye, they could stop him.”

“But he could run away with thee—“

“Not after they tore him to bits.”

Fleta stared at her. The vampiress was serious.

Suchevane shrugged. “Do what I do, ‘corn. Be a private concubine, and seek no more. Accept thy place and live in peace. Haifa pint o’ blood be better than none.”

It was good advice, Fleta knew. But it gave her no comfort. She didn’t want to love Mach in shame.

So she repaired south to the castle of the Red Adept. This was on a conical mountain, with a path spiraling up to it. But the Adept did not live in the castle, which he had inherited from his predecessor; he lived below it, inside the mountain. For he was Trool the Troll, elevated to Adept status by the action of Stile—and the Book of Magic. All other trolls were truculent and to be feared, but not this one. Not by the friends of Stile.

She blew a chord of query, seeking admittance. In a moment a hole opened in the base of the mountain, big enough for a unicorn. She trotted in.