Golem in the Gears Page 15

  “Sure.”

  “Then we’ll haul it to regular ground, where I can see what suitable monster I can find to carry it.”

  Snortimer lifted one end, and Rapunzel, in human-size, lifted the other. Grundy led the way out of the grotto.

  It was a short but difficult climb to the level land, and the damsel was panting, her bosom heaving in the manner that only that kind of bosom could, but they completed the chore in good order. On one side was the Golden Coast and the sea while on the other was sand and the onset of the jungle. In the dim moonlight that jungle looked forbidding indeed.

  Grundy stood on the bed and called to the nearest tree in tree language: “Are there any good-sized monsters around here?”

  “There’s the Gold Bug,” the tree responded.

  “What’s that like?”

  “It marches up and down the coast, gold-plating everything.”

  “Does it ever go inland, to Lake Ogre-Chobee?”

  “Never.”

  “Scratch that,” Grundy muttered.

  “What did it say?” the damsel asked.

  “There’s a Gold Bug, but it stays strictly on the Gold Coast.”

  “I knew that,” she said.

  “So do you have a better suggestion?”

  “Since we need to go to Lake Ogre-Chobee, maybe we should find an ogre. Not all of them migrated north.”

  Grundy brightened. That was a better suggestion. He moved as if to squeeze her, but this time thought the better of it. For one thing, she remained human-sized at the moment. “Any ogres around here?” he asked a different tree.

  “That depends on your definition of ogre,” the tree replied.

  “Say, what kind of a tree are you?” Grundy demanded suspiciously.

  “I am a casuis-tree.”

  That figured. It was almost impossible to get any useful information from a casuis-tree, because all it would do was argue about fine points and make hair-splitting distinctions. He returned to the first one. “Any ogres here?”

  “There’s an ogress who prowls by almost every day.”

  Good enough! “Hey, Ogress!” Grundy yelled in ogre-grunts. “We have mess!”

  She heard him. “Hey great! Won’t be late!” she bellowed in reply, and began crashing toward them. By the sound of it she was proceeding in normal ogre fashion, knocking trees out of the way instead of going around them.

  Rapunzel was frightened. “I just thought—” she said timidly.

  “I’ll make her some kind of deal,” Grundy said reassuringly. “We’ll be there in no time.”

  “But suppose—suppose Mother Sweetness takes over the ogress?”

  That stopped Grundy cold. If the ghost of the Sea Hag took over the ogress, they would be in her power. That would mean doom for Grundy and Snortimer, and the Tower for Rapunzel. There seemed little doubt the Hag could take over the ogress, for such monsters were notoriously stupid.

  The crashing came nearer. “Hey, old shoe!” the ogress called. “Where is you?”

  But now Grundy did not dare answer. The risk was too great.

  They waited nervously, hoping the ogress would not be able to find them. The crashing approached, then drifted astray; without directions, she had lost them. “Me pound head, make he dead!” Grundy heard the angry ogress mutter in mild frustration as she moved away.

  So much for enlisting the aid of a monster! No monster could be trusted. Not while the ghost of the Sea Hag hovered near.

  “We’ll just have to tote it ourselves,” Grundy said regretfully. “This is apt to be a long, hard trek.”

  “I don’t mind,” Rapunzel said. “I’m not in a hurry to get to Castle Roogna anyway.”

  Grundy was surprised. “But that’s where the human beings are!”

  “Yes,” she agreed.

  “You don’t want to join them?”

  “I like being with you,” she said simply.

  He couldn’t answer that. “Might as well start off. I’ll get directions from the local foliage.”

  Rapunzel, in human size, picked up her half of the bed, and Snortimer took his end. They carried the bed slowly along, while Grundy selected the best route with the advice of the plants.

  Several hours later, they were marginally closer to Lake Ogre-Chobee, and both Bed Monster and damsel were tired. “We’ll have to rest,” Grundy decided. “This is going to be a very long trek.”

  Snortimer crawled under the bed, and Rapunzel flopped atop it, not bothering to change to smaller size. Grundy considered staying awake to stand guard, but he was tired too, as he had walked the full distance himself, and what was slow for the other two was a running pace for him. He might have ridden on the bed, as his weight would hardly have made a difference to them, but he had felt too guilty to do that.

  “Alert me if any monsters approach,” he told the surrounding brush, and the brush agreed. Plants were generally accommodating things, when asked politely.

  He settled down beside Snortimer under the bed, as there was no room on top of it. He remained uneasy, but he slept.

  Some time later a hand came down to pick him up. “Oh, Rapunzel,” he said sleepily. “What’s on your mind?”

  “You have caused me a good deal of trouble, Golem,” she said, frowning as she sat up and held him near her face.

  “I regret that,” he said. “But there didn’t seem to be any better way.”

  “You could have stayed entirely out of my life,” she said, her even teeth showing in a way that was not completely attractive. “What business did you have at the Ivory Tower anyway?”

  “You know that,” he reminded her. “It was the only way to complete my Quest to rescue Stanley Steamer.”

  “A mere dragon!” she exclaimed derisively. “A troublesome monster! Hardly worth the ivory in its tusks!”

  “Stanley has no ivory,” he protested.

  “Then it was for nothing at all,” she said. “You messed up my schedule something awful. Now I have to get back to the coast and the Tower, through all this stupid jungle.”

  “But you don’t want to go back there!” he protested. “The Sea Hag is there!”

  “The Sea Hag!” She sneered. Then she cackled. “Whom the hell do you think you’re talking to, wretch?”

  Now at last he realized what had happened. The ghost of the Hag had come while they slept, and taken over Rapunzel’s body! Disaster had come upon them.

  He struggled to escape, but the grip was tight. “How would you like me to squeeze you?” the Hag asked through the sweet lips of the damsel. Already the lovely features were assuming an unlovely cast. The slender fingers closed more tightly about him. The witch might have the body of a fair young woman, but that hand had a lot more power than existed in all of Grundy’s body, and the force was terrible.

  He bared his teeth, leaned forward as far as he could, and bit the uppermost finger. His relatively tiny teeth sank into the massive flesh. He could not do lethal damage, but the bite had to hurt.

  “Wretch,” the Hag screeched, dropping him. “I’ll twist your head off!”

  Grundy scrambled under the bed, but the hag hauled the bed out of the way, exposing Snortimer, who whimpered. “I’ll destroy both of you!” the Hag cried, snatching for Grundy again.

  He tried to run away, but she caught him and lifted him up. “I’ll bite your face off!” She opened her once-sweet mouth, where the teeth already resembled fangs.

  Grundy flailed desperately, though he knew that everything was lost. “No! No!” he cried.

  “Grundy! What’s the matter?” she asked.

  He was on the ground again, scrambling to avoid her hand. “No! No!”

  “But I don’t know what to do!” she protested, the tears starting.

  Slowly it penetrated: he had been dreaming! It hadn’t happened. Rapunzel’s body had not been taken over by the witch.

  “It’s nothing,” he said, shaken. “I just had a nightmare.” Indeed, now he saw the hoofprint of the mare. What a dream she h
ad brought him.

  “A nightmare?” Rapunzel asked.

  “You haven’t met them before?”

  “Well, I know what they are, of course. But Mother Sweetness never allowed them in the Ivory Tower.”

  “That figures.” He straightened himself around, shaking dirt and twigs out.

  “Let me bring you up to the bed,” she said anxiously, reaching for him again.

  Grundy looked at the approaching hand. He saw a mark on the index finger. “No!” he cried in panic.

  “What?”

  “How did you get that mark?” he demanded, pointing.

  She looked. She rubbed her finger. Dirt smudged off. Her finger had no injury.

  He relaxed. “All right—bring me up,” he agreed. “Then change to my size.” He knew he couldn’t afford to let a bad dream cause him to distrust her.

  She brought him up, and changed. Grundy described his bad dream, and she was sympathetic. “Oh, no wonder you shied away from me!” she said. “You thought I was—”

  “I should have known better,” he said ruefully. “But some of those nightmares are realistic.”

  “Let me squeeze you,” she said.

  “No!” Then he had to laugh. “Sorry. The dream—”

  “Of course,” she agreed, hurt.

  “No, I really am sorry. Here.” He leaned over and kissed her.

  Several things occurred at this point. He hadn’t realized he was going to do that; it was indeed spontaneous. She, not quite realizing what he was up to, turned simultaneously to face him. Thus instead of kissing her cheek, he scored on her lips. This changed the effect. Her lips were the softest, sweetest things he had ever touched.

  After an eternal moment, they broke. “I know what that was!” she exclaimed, delighted. “That was a kiss!”

  Grundy could only nod, privately overwhelmed by the impact of it. It was obviously the first such experience for her; it was also the first for him. And, he thought ruefully, it had better be the last.

  “How did I do?”

  “What?”

  “Did I kiss well?”

  Well? He felt as if his feet had not yet regained the ground. But how could he tell her that? The act had not been intended as any test of her prowess! But if he told her no, she would be hurt. “Uh, yes.”

  “Do people usually kiss when they’re sorry?” she asked brightly.

  “Not exactly,” he mumbled.

  “Good. I’m not sorry. Let me try it now.”

  “You don’t understand—” he protested, drawing away.

  “But I’m really trying to understand,” she said. “I want to know how things are in the real world.” She leaned toward him, lips pursed.

  He drew further away, not knowing what to say. As a result, they both lost their balance and fell on the bed, she on top of him. “Like this?” she asked, putting her lips to his.

  Grundy was pretty sure he would regret this, but for a moment he gave up the fight. He wrapped his arms about her and held her tight while they kissed.

  After a much longer eternal moment, she lifted her head, smiling. “Oh, my, this is fun!” she exclaimed. “I never knew what I was missing, in the Ivory Tower!”

  And he, Grundy, had never truly known what he was missing, all of his life! But he couldn’t tell her that. She had what he lacked: a future with the human or elven kind.

  “Dawn is coming,” he said somewhat gruffly. “We had better get the bed to cover.”

  “Oh, my, yes!” she agreed. She sat up carefully, shifted to human-size, and helped Snortimer carry the bed to the deep shade of a stout umbrella tree. Then, remaining that size, she moved about the area, locating and plucking some fruits that she brought back to the bed. Then she changed back to golem-size, and they chewed into the huge fruit.

  Now the sun was up and bright. “I think the ghost is gone, now,” Grundy said. “She must have had to take some other form. So we can relax.”

  “Just the same,” she said, “stay close by me.”

  Again, he knew he would be sorry, for the closer he stayed by her, the more he liked her, and not just as a friend. When she found her own place with her own kind, whichever kind that might be, he would be twice as lonely as before. But at least there was this moment—this moment of the journey. Now he, like she, was not in any great hurry to complete it.

  They settled on the bed, lying side by side. She took and held his hand, and he did not protest. Her little intimicies were so innocent, for her, and so significant for him—but he didn’t want to point that out to her. Her naïveté was part of her appeal.

  They slept again, and this time no night mare visited. But a pesky fly did. It was a fast-buzzing, biting kind, and it settled on Grundy’s leg and took a chomp. To a human-sized person it would have been a nuisance; to Grundy it was a jolt that wrenched him brutally from his repose.

  The fly was clumsy. He reached down and grabbed it by the wings. It buzzed furiously, but he held it tight. “You bit me!” he exclaimed, in fly-talk, looking at the welt rising around the fang marks on his leg.

  “I’ll do more than that to you, wretched golem!” it responded.

  “Yeah?” He looked about. Above them was a large spider’s web. “Do you want this fly?” he called out in spider-talk.

  The spider came out. “Certainly, if you’re not going to eat it yourself.”

  Grundy stood, then heaved the fly into the web. “Catch!”

  The spider caught. In a moment the fly was tied up in webbing. Then the spider chomped off the fly’s head.

  “So much for that,” Grundy said, slightly nauseated. He wiped his hand off on the mattress of the bed. What had possessed that fly to attack him like that?

  “Ooo!” Rapunzel exclaimed.

  Grundy looked. Now a bee was coming at him, in a bee-line. He threw himself out of the way, and the bee plunged into the mattress and stung it before realizing that it had missed its target. “Curses!” the bee buzzed in bee-talk. “Foiled again!”

  Unfortunately for the bee, it was one of the type that die after stinging. In a moment the bee rolled over, dead. Grundy took hold of it by a wing and hauled it to the edge of the bed and over, so that it dropped to the ground.

  “Why did it do that?” Rapunzel asked, amazed.

  “I wish I knew!” Grundy said. “The insects of this region don’t seem to like me.”

  “Not only the insects!” the damsel exclaimed. “Look!”

  A hummingbird was approaching. The humming became loud as it hurled itself at Grundy. He leaped out of the way, and it missed him and smacked into the trunk of the umbrella tree. The shock was so great that it dropped to the ground, dead.

  “This is most curious,” Grundy said. “All these creatures attacking so blindly, and dying so quickly!”

  There was a commotion in the brush. A rat scurried toward them, its little red eyes gleaming, its needle-sharp teeth showing. “I’m going to chomp your legs off, then your arms, then your head!” it snarled in rat-talk. “Then I’ll get mean.”

  “You can’t fight that!” Rapunzel cried with alarm.

  Indeed, he could not; the rat massed a good deal more than he did, and had natural weapons he could not match. It charged to the nearest leg of the bed and began to scramble up.

  “Snortimer!” Grundy cried.

  The leg of the bed was in shadow. A big, hairy hand came forth to grab the rat. It hurled the rodent into the trunk of a tree.

  The rat squeaked as it struck, and fell to the ground, dead.

  Grundy relaxed somewhat. “Something about this doesn’t add up,” he said. “These creatures don’t even know me, yet—”

  There was another disturbance. A Mundane hound came into sight. Now that the border to Mundania was open, Mundane creatures had migrated to Xanth in increasing numbers. Many fell prey to the magic predators, but some survived nicely—and the hounds were among the latter group.

  This one slavered as it charged directly toward Grundy. Rapunzel screamed an
d jumped off the bed, assuming her human size. She scrambled into the brush.

  The hound leaped for the bed. Grundy threw himself to the side, and the hound missed, landing on the far side. It rolled and turned, growling. “Grundy Golem, you will be dead meat!” Then it leaped again, jaws gaping.

  Again, Grundy threw himself to the side, and the hound was unable to correct course because it was in midair. But again it reoriented. Grundy knew that he could not avoid it much longer. But what could he do? He didn’t have time to get to a tree so that he could climb out of its reach; he had to remain where he was, precarious as that might be.

  The hound leaped a third time, sailing over the bed—and a club crashed down in its head, killing it.

  Amazed, Grundy looked up. There was Rapunzel, holding a heavy dead branch. “Oh, I never killed a real animal before!” she cried. “But I had to! It was going to eat you!”

  “You had to,” Grundy agreed weakly. Had Xanth gone mad? All these completely unprovoked attacks!

  “What did it growl at you?” she asked.

  “It called me by name,” Grundy said, remembering.

  “But how could it know your name?”

  Then the truth dawned: “The Sea Hag!” he exclaimed. “She’s assuming new forms!”

  “She hates you,” the damsel agreed.

  There was a roar. “Oh, no!” Grundy cried. “That’s a chimaera!”

  “We can’t fight that!” she said.

  “We never thought of what she would do if she didn’t get your body!” Grundy said. “She’s more dangerous this way than she was as either Hag or ghost!”

  The chimaera stalked toward them. It had the head of a lion, the tail of a serpent, and a second head of a Mundane goat growing out of its back. It was one of the most ferocious of Xanthly creatures.

  “So, stupid golem, you come to your ridiculous end!” the goathead bleated in caprine talk. “How could you ever have thought you could oppose one of my ilk?”

  “What’s she saying?” Rapunzel asked, shaking with terror.

  “I’ll tell you what I’m saying!” the lionhead roared in feline tongue. “Golem, I’m going to consume you and that Bed Monster, piece by bloody piece, unless—”

  “She’s making a deal!” Grundy whispered, amazed all over again.