Jess saw that someone was already at the rest stop: a young man standing by the pond, about to remove his clothing so he could wash. That wouldn’t do; he might be seriously embarrassed to be discovered naked by a young woman.
“Yoo-hoo!” she called, to alert him to her arrival.
He heard her and turned. “Hello,” he said. “I’m Magnus. What’s up?” He had a nice voice.
Now she got a better look at him: he was tall and handsome, with classic facial features, dark brown hair, blue eyes, and muscles in his arms. Exactly the kind she’d love to have take hold of her for naughty attention. She was attracted to him already. But of course it would never happen.
“My name is Jess. I am traveling to see the Good Magician, and this is the last stop before his castle. I’d love to share it with you overnight.”
He laughed. “No, really, who are you and what are you up to?”
And there it was: her curse, right on schedule. She would have to try to explain. “I’m serious. But I am cursed to have nobody take me seriously. So even though you think I’m joking, please, please try to accept what I say at face value.”
“I’ll say this for you, whatever your name is: you can make even straight lines come across as funny. It’s a rare talent, but it’s time to turn it off if we are to get along. Please answer my questions.”
“I’m trying to!” she flared. “It’s the bleeping curse!”
“Yeah, sure.”
Jess had had a long day walking along the enchanted paths. She was tired and more than ready to rest. It would have been so much better if she could have remained alone. But as it was, she was frustrated to distraction. “Bleep, bleep, bleep!” she swore. Then she collapsed in tears. It was not at all the kind of scene she wanted to make, especially before a handsome man, but she was overwhelmed.
Then she felt his hands on her shoulders. He was gazing into her watery face. “You’re crying,” he said, surprised.
Worse and worse. “Just leave me alone!”
“I think I’m beginning to understand. You really are cursed.”
“I really am,” she agreed, miserably. “Now let me suffer in peace.”
He put his arms around her and brought her close. “I’m sorry.”
What was this? He couldn’t be taking her seriously. But she was beyond common sense. She put her face to his shoulder and cried into his shirt. It might be the illusion of comfort, but it was better than nothing.
“Let me explain,” he said as he held her. “I’m a showman. I put together entertainments. My talent is verisimilitude, the semblance of truth: that is, making it seem real. I’ve seen many acts, and I pride myself on being able to know reality regardless. But your curse caught me by surprise. It didn’t let me take you seriously. Even when you tried to explain. But I’m not stupid. My feeling says you’re joking, but my common sense tells me you’re cursed. I apologize for misunderstanding. I will try not to do that again.”
Her tears faded. “You believe me,” she breathed.
“I believe you,” he agreed. “Understand, my emotion thinks this is one big joke. But I do have a mind, and now I recognize and am trying to counter your curse.”
“You’re taking me seriously.”
“On the intellectual level. But that’s fragile.”
“I had better get away from you before you burst out laughing.”
“Yes,” he said seriously. “There are limits to my intellectual control, and your curse is pushing them.”
She disengaged and stepped away from him. “Thank you for that much.” He gazed at her with compassion. “It’s easier when you’re apart from me. I was almost choking on suppressed laughter.”
“I know exactly how it is.”
“I was about to wash up, before it gets dark.”
“I’d like to too.” Jess looked at the pond. “Is it safe? No water monsters?”
“What, you think there’ll be a kraken weed monster in there? This is part of the protected area.”
“That’s right,” she said, remembering. “And a kraken would be addicted to krack, and not all that dangerous.”
“That’s a folk story. They’re plenty dangerous.”
She sighed. “I had thought it was humor.”
“Oh. I was trying too hard to counter your curse. But maybe we can use it. If I took you seriously, emotionally, I’d be mortified to have you see me naked, since you’re not my girlfriend. But as it is, maybe not.”
“Maybe not,” she echoed, intrigued.
Magnus stripped off his clothing, hanging it on a convenient deposi-tree, the kind that never filled up, and stood naked. He was a glorious figure of a man! Then he strode into the water, and soon was neck deep. “It worked!” he called. “My body thought it was all in fun, so didn’t react.”
Now Jess was curious how far this could go. She had never seen a man without clothing before, and had no fear at all. In fact she wished she could be naked with him. Wished she could somehow get serious with him. It was a kind of personal challenge.
Well . . .
“Do you mind?” she called. Then without waiting for his answer she stripped away her own clothing, hung it on the deposi-tree and stood on the bank as nude as a nymph. She knew her figure wasn’t bad; the problem was that nobody took it seriously, either.
He laughed. “It’s a game! Good thing I didn’t see your panties.”
She hadn’t thought of that. The glimpse of a girl’s panties could freak out just about any man. “Should I put them back on?”
He laughed again. “This is fun! I can enjoy your human form without frustrating you, since we both know this is only a game. But no, don’t put anything back on; come on in and swim, if you care to. The water’s fine.”
She needed no further invitation. She waded in, and soon was happily swimming. “I’ve never done this with a man before.” But it was hardly the beginning of what she would like to do with a man.
“I’m a fair judge of people,” Magnus said. “I have to be, to assemble my show. There’s something different about you, and I don’t mean your body or your curse. The way you look around, the way you disport yourself. Something about you appeals to me.”
“Most men don’t like smart women.”
“That’s it! You practically radiate intelligence.”
“I try to conceal it. My curse is bad enough without that.”
“I’m sure it is. But I am attracted to smart women.”
“Are you teasing me?”
“No. I’m serious. I’m attracted to that aspect in you. Unfortunately—”
“I know.”
“I think I can guess why you’re coming to see the Good Magician,” he said as she swam closer. “To abate your curse.”
“You got it. And you?”
“Far more mundane. I need to find a good assistant for my show.” Then he paused. “And suddenly I have an idea.”
“Why do I suspect it’s not to kiss and stroke a bare woman in the water?”
He laughed again. He laughed often and well, and surely not just when her curse prompted it. “No offense, but I can’t take that idea seriously at the moment.”
“No offense,” she agreed sadly. The curse was firmly in place.
“It’s that we just might be able to solve each other’s problems, and not need to see the Good Magician at all.”
“Oh?” She was surprised.
“I need an assistant to warm up the audience. To make the people laugh. To divert them when I’m changing sets. You could do that.”
“I could,” she agreed guardedly.
“Also to do the incidental things I tend not to keep up with, like tracking the tent pegs.”
“Tent pegs?”
“I have to put up a big tent for the show. It’s traditional. I’m not very good at it, and that messes up the show. Women are better at that sort of thing.”
“I could track tent pegs,” she agreed. “But it’s not what I want in life.”
He gazed at her across the water between them. They were both standing in the shallower section now, with only their heads above the surface. “What do you want in your life, apart from abolition of the curse?”
“A good man.”
He laughed, then choked it off. “And. You. Are. Serious,” he said word by word, fighting his automatic dismissal of it.
“Yes. I’d give him anything he wanted.”
“If you abolished the curse, you could probably get a good man. You are not bad looking, and that’s what counts, for a man.”
“Yes.”
“Would I be the kind of man you want?”
There was no point in trying to avoid the issue. She was finding herself seriously attracted to him. “Yes.”
“I was afraid of that.” He raised his hands in the water in a gesture of surrender. “I mean no offense. It’s that with your curse—”
“Exactly.”
“But the thing is, I need you as you are. To make folk laugh. Which means—”
“You can’t be my man.”
“Not the way you want,” he agreed. “I’m sorry, Jess. I think we might make a fine show together, but not as a romantic couple.”
“That’s right,” she agreed sadly.
He pondered further. “Actually, we might even make a couple, if only—”
“It weren’t for my curse. You can have me one way or the other. Not both.”
“And you want both.”
“Yes. But I will settle for one.”
“I don’t want you to have to do that.”
Jess laughed without a trace of humor. “You have an alternative?”
“I may. But I doubt you’d like it.”
“Let me have it.”
“We might fake it. Pretend to be lovers. I could hug you as a joke. Kiss you as an act. Maybe even—”
“I’ll take it.”
He did a double-take. “What?”
“I am so desperate that I’d rather have a fake romance than none at all. Especially with you. To be hugged and kissed by you, to be told sweet nothings by you, even knowing they are pretense. But I have to warn you . . .” She trailed off, unwilling to say it.
But he understood. “You might fall in love with me. Not pretense.”
“I’m already on the verge. You are the first man to take me seriously even to this extent, to understand me. To treat me as a person rather than a clown.”
“You’re not a clown!”
“Yes I am. A figure everyone laughs at. You too, of course. But behind your laughter you do care. You could fake everything with me, making me at least look like a girlfriend, at least to others.”
“That would be utter cruelty. I wouldn’t do it. I’m not a sadist.”
“I’ll take it,” she repeated. “I’m that desperate.”
“Bleep, Jess—”
“The traditional story is boy and girl meeting at the outset, suffering adventures together, and marrying happily at the end. This is a variant. If you want it, take it.”
“But you know that all I really want is a competent assistant. That nothing beyond that is real. That I am only using you.”
“Use me. Please.”
“This is ridiculous!”
“No, it’s my curse. Frankly, I’d rather be unhappy with you than away from you, and I think I could fool myself that I’m not really unhappy with you.”
He paused, considering. “It seems that my choice is between cruelly using you, or cruelly sending you away. Both are abhorrent to me.”
He was fundamentally decent. That made it worse. “I apologize for putting you in this situation. I know it’s not fair to you.”
“Fair to me! What about you?”
“I can still go to the Good Magician. Maybe he’ll have an antidote to the curse.”
“And maybe he won’t. Then where will you be?”
“With you or without you.”
He considered again. “Let me try the fake. Maybe you won’t be able to stand it. That would be an answer.”
“Welcome to try,” she said, hoping he would.
“I am going to pretend I want you for something amorous, and want only to fool you into going along with it. Nothing I say will be the truth. It is all one big joke. If that doesn’t revolt you, then maybe it’s an option.”
Jess smiled, this time sincerely. “Revolt me, Magnus.”
He moved toward her in the water. “I want to be with you, you lovely creature.” Then he paused. “No, I can’t say that, because it implies you are ugly in reality, and that’s not true, so I’m not lying. You do look kissable and holdable, especially nude in the water.”
“The lie,” she said firmly, “is that you want to hold and kiss me. How I look is irrelevant.” Could he actually do it despite the curse, phrasing it this way? She very much feared he couldn’t.
“Yes, I suppose that’s right. On with the show.” He resumed movement toward her. “I love you, Jess. I want to kiss you and hold you and be naughty with you and summon the stork with you.”
He was almost upon her. When would he burst into helpless laughter? “I, too,” she said. She was in no danger of laughing.
He reached her. He put his arms around her as they stood in the water. He drew her in against him, torso against torso. She yielded gracefully so that their contours fit together with no space between. In fact she flattened against him. He put his face to hers. He kissed her. She kissed him back.
Only one thing was missing. There was no manly passion in him. In this position it was easy to tell.
“Maybe if you feel my bottom,” she said.
He moved his hands down and did so. Still nothing. He was making the motions, but his body was not taking her body seriously.
“Or kiss my breasts.”
He took a breath, then moved down and did so. Still nothing.
The curse remained.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and he wasn’t laughing. “You’d think that with a willing woman I’d be more ardent.” He was plainly embarrassed.
Still, it was infinitely better than nothing. “Maybe if I try?” she asked hesitantly.
“Try,” he agreed.
She stroked his hair, kissed his ear, and then his lips, languorously. She took his hand and stroked her breasts with it. She lifted her legs, spread them, and wrapped them around his hips. It was easy to do in the weightlessness of water.
They might as well have been children climbing on each other.
“Bleep!” he swore, giving it up.
“But the point is not whether you can make it with me,” she reminded him. “It is whether I can handle the pretense. I can. I’m not revolted, only saddened.”
“That’s right,” he agreed, brightening slightly. “We can fake it.”
“You can fake it,” she agreed. “I actually liked it, what there was of it. If you can handle it, so can I.”
“You’re sure? Because I’d really like to have you join me in my show.”
“I will join your show if you will regularly pretend to desire me in the way we just tried. That means, among things, kissing me and letting me kiss you. Spending the nights in bed with me, both of us bare. Letting me try to arouse you. Making others think we are a romantic couple. So that I can live with my curse. Deal?”
“Deal,” he agreed, bemused.
“Then let’s get on with the evening, as a couple,” she said. “I think we are both clean enough now.”
Now he laughed, and it was with her, not at her. “We were washing up!”
“And we got distracted, making out in the water. Couples do.”
He did not argue the case.
They waded out of the pond, harvested towels from the towel tree, dried each other off, dressed, and harvested pies from the pie bushes for supper.
“What’s that?” Magnus was eyeing a tree bearing small brown bottles.
“One of those grows near my home village,” Jess said. “It’s a boos tree.”
“Booze?”
“Not exactly. I can’t explain it because you’ll think I’m joking. Try a sip.”
He picked a bottle, uncorked it, and took a swallow.
“Booo!” a voice yelled.
“See, it’s a boos tree.”
He nodded. “Now I understand. Like boot rear, only audible.”
Then they heard something. “Is that a child crying?” Jess asked.
“It’s off the enchanted path. It could be a spook.”
Because there were myriad dangers in Xanth. The enchanted paths guaranteed security so that folk could get safely from one place to another, and wise folk did not stray far from them, if at all. Demons and monsters sometimes assumed appealing forms and tried to lure innocent people off the paths, to ravish them, consume them, or worse. Nevertheless, the two of them hurried along the path toward the sound.
“But suppose it’s real?” Jess asked.
“I don’t mean to insult you, but would a monster take you seriously?”
“I doubt it. Nobody takes me seriously, and a monster is a body.”
“Then maybe you could check it with less danger than I could. Ordinarily I wouldn’t let a lady risk it, but—”
“I’ll do it.”
“If it attacks you, I’ll fight it.” Magnus had swept up a spear at the edge of the camp, evidently left there for just such a purpose.
They came to the place. There behind a bush was the sound, close by. It was definitely a child crying.
Jess forged off the path toward it. She saw a large animal grazing nearby, but recognized it as a gulli-bull, a harmless bovine that was very easy to trick. No threat there.
She rounded the bush and spied an eight-year-old girl. She had hazel eyes and mouse brown hair. “What’s the matter?” Jess asked.
The girl looked at her. “Are you a monster in disguise?”
“No! I’m a woman.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Uh-oh. It was the curse. Even a child in trouble couldn’t take her seriously.
“Magnus!” Jess called. “It’s safe, I think. I think we need you.”
Magnus came charging toward them, spear ready.
“I think this child is real, but she won’t believe I’m real,” Jess said. “You know why.”
“Ah.” Magnus halted, no longer threatening with the spear. He spoke to the child. “I’m Magnus, and I’m a regular man, not a monster. Who are you, child?”
“I’m Myst,” the girl replied, evidently believing him. He was easy to believe, because of his talent. “I went off the path to wee-wee, but then got lost. I couldn’t find my way back!”
“You shouldn’t leave the enchanted path,” Magnus said. “It’s dangerous.”
“Not to me,” Myst insisted.
“Monsters love to gulp down children,” Magnus said. Jess stayed out of it, as she really couldn’t help.
“They do,” Myst agreed. “But they can’t hurt me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Touch me.”
He reached out cautiously to touch her. His hand passed through her arm. “You’re a ghost!”
“No, I just misted. See.” Myst dissolved into a small cloud of vapor floating a few feet above the ground. Then it coalesced back into the girl. “It’s my talent.”
Magnus nodded. “It’s a good talent. But if you were in no danger, why were you crying?”
“Because I was lost. I couldn’t find the enchanted path. Monsters can’t hurt me, but I don’t want to be lost forever. I hate being alone.”
“Oh. Now I understand.” Magnus turned around. “I know where the path is. I’m good with directions. I never get lost. Follow me.” He set off for it, and the child followed, with Jess bringing up the rear. Seeing how he handled the child, she was more than ever satisfied that she wanted to be with him, whatever the arrangement. He was neither condemning nor dismissing Myst; he was treating her as a person in her own right. “And here we are,” he said with a flourish as they stepped back onto the path. “The rest stop is just up ahead, there.” He pointed, and started walking that way.
“Oh goody!” Myst exclaimed, following. “Now I can get there in time.”
Magnus looked at her. “You are going to see the Good Magician?”
“No. To join my siblings on Fibot.”
Magnus exchanged a questioning look with Jess. “Who or what is Fibot?”
“The Fire Boat. My sisters and one brother are there, helping crew it. I’ll help them.”
“It’s a boat? But there’s no big river near here.”
“That’s okay. It floats on air. It’s going to be at the Good Magician’s Castle tomorrow, so I need to be there to catch it.”
Magnus caught Jess’s eye again. It seemed that from this distance he could take her seriously. Then he continued his questioning. “There is a boat that sails in air?”
“I think I have heard of it,” Jess said. “Doesn’t it have a fiery sail?”
“That’s it,” Myst said. “Win helps it go, because she always has the wind at her back.”
“Win is one of your sisters?” Magnus asked as they arrived at the camp.
“Sure. Sort of. So’s Squid.”
“That sounds more like a fish,” Magnus said.
“Well, ’cause she’s a squid. You know, like a octopus.”
This was becoming stranger. “Your sister is an octopus?”
“Sort of.”
They digested that. “I think we need to get to know each other better,” Magnus said. “Suppose we introduce ourselves more completely to you, while we eat supper, and you can tell us all about you and your siblings?”
“Sure,” Myst agreed happily.
While they ate fresh pies, they got into it. “Jess and I are a couple,” Magnus said. “We just met an hour ago.”
“Oh, no,” Myst said. “You want to be alone!”
“We don’t have to be alone,” Jess said.
“Don’t lie to me! I don’t like it!”
There was the curse again.
Magnus held up a cautioning hand to Jess. “Why do you think we’re lying?”
“Cause my folks are the same way. They want to summon the stork, and they don’t want me around while they’re doing it. It’s the Adult Conspiracy, and I hate it. That’s why I ran away.”
They were learning more about the child. Myst needed support and guidance.
“We won’t be summoning the stork,” Magnus said, artfully avoiding the serious matter of running away from home.
“But you said you just met, and you’re a couple.”
So of course they were eager to start stork signaling, generating the three dots of the ellipsis that zipped away at the speed of desire and told storks all they needed to know. Would it were true! “This is complicated to explain,” Jess said.
“I’ll bet,” the child said witheringly, not crediting it. Of course.
Magnus took a breath as he exchanged another glance with Jess. At least he was able to do that seriously, maybe because it was about a different person. “I think we can satisfy you on that score, Myst. We just didn’t think you would be interested.”
“Why not?” the child demanded. “Because I’m a child?”
The irony was that no matter how much Myst railed against the Conspiracy when young, the moment she became adult she would change sides. It was part of the background magic of Xanth.
“First you need to understand Jess’s nature,” Magnus said. “Her magic talent is a curse: nobody takes her seriously. That’s why you don’t believe her when she talks.”
“She’s got a weird talent? I know about those. My brothers and sisters have them, sorta.”
“Sorta?”
“Well, they’re not really my siblings. We’re in five different families. But we believe in each other.”
So the “sorta” referred to the siblings rather than their talents? Or maybe both?
“This promises to be interesting,” Magnus said. “But let’s finish with Jess first. Can you believe her curse?”
“Oh, sure, now you’ve told me. Nobody believes her.”
“Yes. So we have trouble being a couple, because I can’t take her seriously. So we aren’t going to try to summon any storks, and we don’t need to be alone.”
“Oh. Okay.” When he said it, the child accepted it.
“But we are a couple. A pretend couple. We want other people to believe we are romantic about each other.”
“Why?”
There was a tricky question! “Because I can’t have a real boyfriend,” Jess said. “So I’m taking a fake one. It’s a role.”
“Like a game,” Myst said, perhaps understanding because this was a clarification of a pretense. “I get it. Like the way we five children are siblings, only we’re really not.”
“Like that,” Magnus agreed. “Sometimes appearances count more than reality.”
“They sure do,” Myst agreed.
Jess really admired the way Magnus was handling Myst. He was clearly good with children.
“So Jess and I are a couple, but you don’t need to worry about us demanding privacy. But if you want to be with us, you have to pretend to take her seriously when she talks to you. It’s part of the game.”
“The game,” Myst agreed. Children understood games. “Sure.”
Magnus glanced at Jess. She took the cue and picked up the dialogue. “We are really curious about your siblings,” she told Myst. “How is it that you are only sort of brothers and sisters?” Could the pretense of seriousness become a kind of reality?
Myst started to laugh, then stifled it, playing the game. “It’s complicated.”
“We will try to understand.”
The child took a moment to organize her thoughts. “It really started with Astrid Basilisk. She—” She paused, seeing their expressions. Then she laughed. “Now you’re not taking me seriously.”
“You do know the nature of a basilisk?” Jess asked gently.
“Sure. You meet her gaze, and you die. But she’s a nice person, and we all love her. And she wears a veil.”
Jess caught on. “She’s in human form?”
“Yes. She can change forms. When she’s human she’s the prettiest girl you’ll ever see, if you look at her. Anyway, she got together with the Demoness Fornax to—” She broke off again. “Look, are you going to take me seriously or not?”
Jess tried, while Magnus smiled in the background. “It’s just that capital D Demons are, well, out of this world. I have heard of Fornax. She’s the patron spirit of anti-matter. Anything she touches explodes. You can’t bring her into a story without some clarification.”
“Okay. She’s got magic to stop herself from touching anything here. Mostly she stays clear. But when she’s home in the Fornax Galaxy she can make it possible for us regular-matter folk to be with her, to touch her. She’s nice too, when you get to know her. We call her Aunt Fornax, same as we call Aunt Astrid. We love her, too.”
Jess was really coming to appreciate the problem others had with her curse. She really had to try to believe what the child was saying. “So the basilisk and the Demon, both in human form, got together,” she said. “What did they do?”
“They decided to rescue some children from the future.”
Both Magnus and Jess had to stifle their disbelief. The child was serious.
Then a bulb flashed over Magnus’s head. “You’re one of the children!” he exclaimed.
“Yes, the littlest,” Myst said proudly. “We were on a track fifty years in the future where Xanth was about to be destroyed. They couldn’t stop that from happening, but they could get some of us out of it. They rescued five of us, and took us back in time with them, and got us different families here, and that put us on another track so Xanth won’t be destroyed.”
“You were five children in a family?” Jess asked.
“No. We’re from five different families. But we became one family, with Aunt Astrid and Aunt Fornax. Now we’re in different families again, adopted, but we’ll always be Family to us. We’re all from the same world, and nobody else is. Because it’s gone, or will be in fifty years.”
It was coming clear at last. They were all orphans who had made their own family, unified by their tragedy. “So you are going to join your siblings on the fiery boat,” Jess said.
“Yes. Because they’ll understand.”
“And the boat will be near the Good Magician’s Castle tomorrow.”
“You got it.”
“So tomorrow we’ll part company, but tonight we can be our own family.”
“Yes. If—”
“No storks! We promise.”
“Okay.” Myst looked at Jess. “You know, once I got into the game, I could play it. You’re a couple the same way I have siblings. We just agree to make it so. Nobody else matters much.”
“Yes. We have to keep playing the game. Otherwise—”
“I know. It’s like looking into Aunt Astrid’s eyes. Not smart to do.”
Astrid the Basilisk. “Not smart to do,” Jess agreed.
Magnus stepped in. “It’s not real, the way others see it, but it can be real to us. Maybe Jess is a little bit like Astrid, in her fashion.”
Now Myst looked at him. “Can you kiss her?”
“As part of the game, yes. We’re like actors on a stage. It’s all make believe, but we try to make it look real.”
“I mean, really?”
“I will demonstrate,” Magnus said. He stood up. Jess stood up. They came together, and he kissed her. Jess loved it.
“Yuck!” Jess exclaimed. “Mush stuff! It sure looks real.” Then she reconsidered. “But Jess doesn’t have to fake it, does she? I mean—”
“I can take him seriously,” Jess agreed as she separated from Magnus. “My curse affects others, not me.”
“Sort of the way I can touch others, but they can’t touch me, unless I want it.” Myst dissolved into mist, then reformed. “I think . . . I think I am coming to understand you better, Jess. You’re nice, at least in the game.”
“Thank you.” Jess stood there a moment longer, hesitating, as emotion surged. The child really did understand her, in a manner. “May I . . . could you stand it if . . . if I hugged you? Like a daughter? I may never have a daughter of my own.”
“I’ve been hugged before.”
“I mean—”
“I know what you mean. It’s part of the game. I’ve been lonely, too. Sure, hug me.”
Jess knelt before Myst and put her arms around her. She hugged her, her tears overflowing. Myst started to dissolve into mist, but then firmed again, forcing herself to play the game. Then she hugged Jess back. “You are a little like Astrid.”
She was being compared to a basilisk. But it was a compliment. “Thank you.”
“Now we’d better turn in for the night,” Magnus said. “We’re a family, a pretend family, but it will do, so we don’t need to stand on ceremony. Jess and I will sleep together, holding hands, sometimes kissing, the way couples do. Do you prefer to be near us or apart from us, Myst?”
“Near you. I told you, I don’t much like being alone. Getting here was awful.”
“We’ll see you safely to the fire boat,” Jess said. Then she reconsidered. “Only—”
“Only we have to go through the challenges,” Magnus said. “I don’t think you do, Myst. Will the boat come for you, away from the castle?”
“I don’t know. Squid and Win don’t know I’m coming.”
Squid and Win. The octopus and the girl with the wind at her back.
“Then maybe you should take the challenges with us,” Jess said, not expecting to be taken seriously. “Then we can all see the Good Magician.”
“Why are you going there?” Myst asked as she settled down beside Jess.
“To see the Good Magician?” Jess asked.
“Yes.”
“Well, I need to get rid of my curse, and Magnus needs an assistant for his act.”
“No, really: why are you going?”
There was the curse again. “You tell her, Magnus.”
“Wait a moment,” Magnus said, surprised. “It’s not the curse, she’s right. We don’t need to go.”
“But—”
“I have my assistant, and you can live with your curse. We worked it out just before we heard Myst. We no longer have to go.”
Jess’s mouth dropped open in the darkness. “That’s right! I forgot. We can skip the challenges.”
“But your show,” Myst said. “Won’t you have to travel a lot?”
“Yes,” Magnus said. “From village to village. There always has to be a new one, because any show quickly gets old with the same audience. It’s always fresh for a new audience. Also—” He broke off.
“Also?” she prompted.
“Well, pretty girls tend to throw themselves at me. It’s a complication of my talent. They believe in me. But if I stay long, they try to get serious. I can’t afford that.”
“And I am one of them,” Jess said. “Except I’m not—”
“Stop it!” he snapped. “Don’t disparage yourself. I’m just saying that those girls are a nuisance.”
“Most men would like it,” she said.
“Oh, I do, to a degree. But I know better. They would want me to settle down, become a troll farmer or something, but my heart is in traveling with the show.”
“Troll farmer?”
“Working on a farm where they grow nasty trolls for export into Mundania. So I need to move on before they get ideas like that.”
“Yet you seemed ready enough to try for something more serious with me.”
“Confession: I said all I wanted was a competent assistant. I believe you could be that. But I also want a regular girlfriend.”
“But you said—”
“One who would travel with me. Be part of the show.”
“Oh. Still—”
“To fend off the pretty girls. To advertise that I’m taken.”
Oh, again. “And since it would not be real, with me, you’d be without responsibility.”
He winced. “If I could take you seriously, I’d be hurt by your implication. I would like it to be real with you, because you’re not—”
“A pretty girl?”
“Bleep, Jess! I’m saying you’re not superficial. You’re the kind of woman I really could respect and love, if only—”
“If only you could take me seriously,” she finished. “Now I understand.”
He sighed. “I’m not quite sure you do. But I can’t even argue with you effectively, because of your curse. I think I need some other way.”
Jess decided to change the subject. “How will you get to the new villages?”
“Oops. I hadn’t thought of that.”
Neither had Jess, before. “We’ll just have to do a lot of walking.”
“You’re not mad at me? You’re willing to be with me?”
“Yes. And willing to walk.”
“That will mean very limited equipment,” Magnus said. “No prepared sets or heavy tents. Bleep.”
“And here I was all set to hammer tent pegs.”
“Take the boat,” Myst said.
They pondered that, and the more they pondered, the better sense it made. “I guess we do have to see the Good Magician,” Jess said. “Because we have no relatives aboard that boat. We’ll have to ask for it to be arranged.”
“That means the challenges,” Magnus agree morosely. “And the Service.”
Because the Good Magician demanded payment for his Answers: a year’s service, or an equivalent mission.
“Are we sure we want to do this?” Jess asked.
Myst began to cry. Jess knew why: if they did not proceed, the child would have to try to navigate the challenges alone, to reach the boat.
“Yes, I think we do,” Magnus said.
The crying stopped.
So they were committed after all.
Jess actually felt relieved. She wasn’t sure why, but suspected it was because she so much wanted to be part of a family, even a pretend family, and this was a family undertaking. The challenges would be no joke. They would face them together. As a family. At this point it hardly mattered to her whether they succeeded or failed; it was the togetherness she craved.
