neetha Napew - The Paths Of The Perambulator

“Something wrong with being female, water rat?” said Dormas in a tone that was all stallion.

Jon-Tom tried to ignore his own voice as he explained. “You’d have to know Mudge better to understand what he’s going through right now, Dormas. I’m afraid this particular metamorphosis has hit him harder than any of us.”

“Come on, Your Lordship.” The otter was pleading with Clothahump. “We saw wot you did back in Ospenspri, changin’ that black cloud an’ all. Couldn’t you work just a wee bit o’ magic and put us right? I don’t know as ‘ow I can ‘andle this for very long. I’ve a weak constitution, I do.”

“It is not a life- or even situation-threatening perturbation,” Clothahump declared formally. “Hardly worth the danger entailed by a serious conjuration. You will just have to be patient, like the rest of us, and wait for the change back to occur naturally.”

“Aye, but wot if it don’t? Wot if it takes days, or even weeks? Cor, I can’t stay like this for weeks.” He turned on Jon-Tom. “Wot say, mate? Use your duar there to sing us a change-back song, will you? Just one little ditty?”

“I’m no more comfortable in this guise than you are, Mudge, but I agree with Clothahump. It’s not worth chancing any dangerous spells.” A sudden thought had him grinning. “Just sit back and enjoy the fire—beautiful.”

Mudge didn’t find the suggestion funny. “Look, mate, a joke’s a joke, but this ain’t amusin’.”

“Amusing? I’d say it’s more like poetic justice. Who says fate has no sense of humor?”

“I’m warning you, you skinny ape. Watch it or I’ll—”

“Or you’ll what? Scratch my eyes out?”

The otter growled and yanked his hat down sharply over his ears (or was it her ears?). His hat had changed along with his more personal accessories. Just as Jon-Tom’s had. Actually, he thought the dress he was now clad in rather attractive.

It is truly astonishing, he told himself, the situations that a sense of humor can carry one through.

The effects of the perturbation were most obvious in Mudge and himself, for in Clothahump, Sorbl, and Dormas’s species, the differences in appearance between male and female were not nearly so striking. Mudge continued to try to retreat into his hat, which had turned into a frilly broad-brimmed chapeau that might have been borrowed from some petite southern belle.

“Please do somethin’,” the otter whined, in a tone so pitiful Jon-Tom was moved to look hopefully at Clothahump.

“I could try, sir. It might be a good idea for me to make a stab at reversing the effects of one of these shifts when the change involved isn’t quite as severe as it might be.”

The wizard looked thoughtful. “Very well, my boy. But do be careful. It is not inconceivable that a badly thrown spell might make things worse.”

“ ‘Ow could things be any worse?” Mudge wanted to know. “Wot could be worse than this?”

“You really can be extraordinarily insulting, you know,” Dormas told him.

“Right now I’m just extraordinarily miserable, lass—or is it to be sir?”

“I don’t know myself,” she murmured. “Let’s see what your spellsinger can do about it.”

Jon-Tom took his time preparing and choosing, keeping Clothahump’s warning in mind. He tried to use songs by both the most masculine and feminine performers he could think of, ended up alternating lyrics by good old Elvis P. with some hot flashes by Tina Turner. The result left something to be desired musically but apparently not magically.

“There,” he said with a sigh, as he cleared his throat and put his duar aside. It had been fun to sing soprano for a while, but he was glad to have his own voice back, though not as glad as Mudge. Once the otter discovered that he was indeed himself again, he bounded from his position by Sorbl’s tree and danced frenziedly around the fire. Only exhaustion finally brought him to a halt.

‘ Tis a true abomination wot’s forcin’ this poor perambulator to wreak such obscene havoc. I’ll personally put ‘im out of ‘is misery when I see ‘is rotten face, I will.”

“I personally hope it is that easy,” Clothahump commented quietly. “Now I suggest that we retire, early as it may be. We will need all our reserves in the event the morrow brings fresh surprises. The next perturbation may require even stronger magic to counter.”

As close as the wizard ever came to complimenting him, Jon-Tom thought sourly. He’d expected nothing more. He was right about getting some serious sleep, though. Jon-Tom put his duar aside, wrapped himself up in his lizard-skin cape, and rolled over. Mudge was laying out his own bedroll. Jon-Tom smiled at him.

“Good night, you cute little pinch of fluff, you.”

The otter glanced at him sharply. “ ‘Ow’d you like to try singin’ without your front teeth, mate?” He flopped down in a huff, turned away from the tall young human.

Morning provided a powerful reminder that serious perturbations could take place as dramatically while they slept as while they were awake. The indifference of sleep offered no escape.

Instinctively he reached for his duar. Not only was the instrument missing, he discovered that he had nothing to reach with. He tried to sit up and found to his considerable confusion that he had nothing to sit up with, either.

No amount of bewilderment could mask the fact that this was the most radical perturbation they’d yet suffered.

Around him the air was murky, thick, and cloying. He tried to see through it and felt his vision slide. It was as if his eyes were rattling around loose inside his head. Shoving down the panic he felt, he struggled to get hold of himself. At least he could still see, even if only in shades of black and white. He could not make out any colors. Or perhaps, he told himself, he could make out colors and there were none to see.

The sky overhead was a pale, reflective white. Surrounding him were dark gray trees. That was when he saw the monster and recoiled from it. At the same time the monster shrank back from something unseen, and Jon-Tom realized it was cowering away from him.

There were other monsters around, and every one of them appeared petrified by the sight of its neighbor. Jon-Tom began to wonder what he looked like.

Along with color vision he’d lost any sense of smell. He could still hear clearly, though. Just as he could hear the sound of his own body moving forward. The sound was not pleasant. It implied a means of locomotion involving something far less sophisticated than legs.

This time the perturbation had not merely knocked reality askew, it had turned it inside out. Heretofore the perambulator’s changes had made some sense, but this current transformation made no sense at all. Had it begun to draw upon its captor’s insanity?

He struggled to form words. “Can anyone understand me?”

“I can.” The gross form that replied was more incongruous than repugnant in appearance. It did not seem an appropriate home for someone as lithe and swift as Mudge, but it was Mudge’s voice that spoke to him. Directly, through some unknown variety of thought transference. Neither the Mudge-shape nor Jon-Tom nor any of the other monsters possessed anything recognizable as a mouth.

Clothahump spoke up, and then Sorbl and Dormas. Transformed as they were by the unaccountable, all were accounted for. Dormas was the biggest of the five, Sorbl the smallest. The perturbation had stuck to the laws for transformation of mass. It seemed that some rules still applied.

Excepting differences in size, they all looked pretty much like each other: bloated, colorless blobs of gelatinous protoplasm drifting in a slightly less dense fluid. Smaller shapes and outlines were visible within their own bodies. Their shiny epidermi were in constant motion.