neetha Napew - Spellsinger

extraordinary means of locomotion. Looking back over her shoulder, she flashed a

dazzling smile at Jon-Tom.

"What a wonderful way to travel! Que magnifico! You can see everything without

having your behind battered." She faced forward again and placed both hands on

the pommel of the saddle.

"Giddy up!" Her heels kicked girlishly at the scaly sides. The snake did not

notice the minuscule tapping on its flanks, but paid attention only to the

steering tugs at its sensitive ears.

"Any particular route you'd like me to follow?" Talea inquired of her fellow

saddle-mate.

"The shortest one to the Tailaroam," replied Clothahump. "There we will hire

passage."

"What about building our own raft?"

"Impossible. Tacking upstream against the current would be difficult. At the

Duggakurra rapids it would become impossible. We must engage professionals with

the know-how and muscle to fight such obstacles. I think we should turn slightly

to the left here, my dear."

Talea pulled gently on the reins, and the snake obediently altered its slither.

"That'll take us a day longer, if I remember the land right. It's been a long

time since I've been as far south as the river. Too many nasty types hole out

there."

"I agree it may take us a little longer to reach our goal this way, but by doing

so we will pass a certain glade. It is ringed with very old oaks and is a place

of ancient power. I am going to risk a dangerous conjuration there. It is the

best place for it, and will be our last chance to learn the nature of the

special corruption the warmlands will have to face.

"To do this involves stretching my meager powers to the utmost, so I will

require all the magical support the web of Earthforce can supply me. The web is

anchored at Yul, at Koal-zin-a-Mee, at Rinamundoh, and at the Glade of Triane."

"I've never heard of the others."

"They lie far around the world and meet at the center of the earth. The affairs

of all sentient beings are interwoven in the web, each individual's destiny tied

to its own designated strand. I will stand on one of the four anchors of fate

and make the call that I must."

"Call? Who are you going to call?"

But Clothahump's thoughts seemed to have shifted. "The glade is close enough to

the river so that we may leave our riding snake before we reach it and walk the

rest of the way."

"Why not ride the snake all the way to the river?"

"You do not understand." She could feel his eyes on the back of her neck. "You

will not, until you see the result of what I am to attempt. Such as this," and

he tapped the riding snake's back with a foot, "is but a dumb creature whose

life might not survive even a near confrontation of the sort I have in mind. It

is as strong as it is stupid, and in a panic could be the undoing of all of us.

So we must leave it a day behind when we give it its freedom."

She shrugged. "Whatever you say. But my feet will argue with you." She urged the

snake to a faster pace.

Several days of pleasant travel passed as they journeyed southward. No predator

came near the massive snake, and at night they didn't even bother to set a

watch.

Flores Quintera was a pleasant companion, but what troubled Jon-Tom was not her

dissuasion of his hesitant attempts at intimacy so much as that the excitement

of the trip seemed to make her oblivious to anything else.

"It's everything I ever dreamed of when I was a little girl." She spoke to him

as they sat around the small cookfire. The flames danced in her night-eyes,

prompting thoughts of obsidian spewing from the hearts of volcanoes.

"When I was little I wished I was a boy, Jon-Tom," she told him fervently. "I

wanted to be an astronaut, to fly over the poles with Byrd, to sail the

unexplored South Pacific with Captain Cook. I wanted to be with the English at

Agincourt and with Pizzaro in Peru. Failing a change of gender, I imagined

myself Amelia Earhart or Joan of Arc."

"You can't change your sex," he told her sympathetically, "and you can't go back

in time, but you could have tried for the astronaut training."

She shook her head sadly. "It's not enough to have the ambition, Jon-Tom. You

have to have the wherewithal. Los cerebros. I've got the guts but not the

other." She looked up at him and smiled crookedly. "Then there is the other

thing, the unfortunate drawback, the crippling deformity that I've had to suffer

with all my life."

He stared at her in genuine puzzlement, unable to see the slightest hint of

imperfection.

"I don't follow you, Flor. You look great to me."

"That's the deformity, Jon-Tom, My lack of one. I'm cursed with beauty. Don't

misunderstand me now," she added quickly. "I'm not being facetious or boastful.

It's something I've just had to try and live with."

"We all have our handicaps," he said, not very sympathetically.

She rose, paced catlike behind the fire. Talea was stirring the other one

nearby. Mudge was humming some ribald ditty about the mouse from Cantatrouse who

ran around on her spouse, much to the gruff amusement of Pog. Clothahump was a

silent, brooding lump somewhere off in the darkness.

"You don't understand, do you? How could you imagine what it's like to be a

beautiful animal? Because that's how the world sees me, you know. I did the

cheerleader thing because I was asked to." She paused, stared across the flames

at him. "Do you know what my major is?"

"Theater Arts, right?"

"Acting." She nodded ruefully. "That's what everyone expected of me. Well it's

easy for me, and it lets me concentrate on the harder work involved in my minor.

I didn't have the math for astrophysics or tensor analysis or any of that, so

I'm doing business administration. Between that and the theater arts I'm hoping

I can get in on the public relations end of the space program. That's the only

way I ever thought I'd have a chance of getting close to the frontiers. Even so,

no one takes me seriously."

"I take you seriously," he murmured.

She stared at him sharply. "Do you? I've heard that before. Can you really see

beyond my face and body?"

"Sure." He hoped he sounded sincere. "I don't pretend that I can ignore them."

"Nobody can. Nobody!" She threw up her hands in despair. "Professors, fellow

students: it's hell just trying to get through an ordinary class without having

to offend someone by turning down their incessant requests for a date. And it's

next to impossible to get any kind of a serious answer out of a professor when

he's staring at your tetas instead of concentrating on your question. You can

call it beauty. I call it my special deformity."

"Are you saying you'd rather have been born a hunchback? Maybe with no hair and

one eye set higher than the other?" '

"No." Some of the anger left her. "No, of course not. I just could have done

with a little less of everything physical, I suppose."

"Asi es la vida," he said quietly.

"Si, es verdad." She sat down on the grass again, crossing her legs. "There's

nothing I can do about it. But here"--and she gestured at the dark forest and

the huge serpentine shape coiled nearby--"here things are different. Here my

height and size are helpful and people, furry or human, seem to accept me as a

person instead of a sex object."

"Don't rely on that," he warned her. "For example our otter friend Mudge seems

to have no compunctions whatsoever about crossing interspecies lines. Nor do

very many others, from what I've seen."