Five Portraits Read online

  “You know, I want to start on those Five Portraits,” he said as he worked. “But somehow I can’t. The muse won’t come. I don’t know what’s wrong.”

  “You have Painter’s Block?” Kandy asked.

  “No, I can paint anything else. Just not one of you. Yet.”

  “But you’re an artist,” Merge said. “All you have to do is set up and paint.”

  “No. It has to be right. The five of you lovely women are somehow incomplete, and I can’t paint you.”

  “Artistic registration,” Metria muttered.

  He glanced at her. “Artistic what?”

  “Enrollment, entrance, ingress, adjustment, disposition—”

  “Temperament?”

  “Whatever,” she agreed crossly.

  Art nodded. “Maybe so. It’s ironic, because I really want to paint you, you beautiful creatures, and you are all ready to be painted. But something holds me back.”

  “We’ll surely figure it out in due course,” Tiara said.

  “I hope so.” He resumed his nature scene.

  Astrid sat on a convenient stool, resting, until she saw others looking at her. She glanced down—and realized it was a massive mound of animal dung. She had been gotten by a freshly spread stinking pun.

  She quickly changed the subject. “I have something to say that I hope won’t disturb you.”

  Mitch smiled. “Your direct glance might disturb us, or your deadly perfume, but not your words.”

  “I talked with the Demoness Fornax.”

  “The lady dog who tried to mess us up in her galaxy?” Mitch asked.

  “Oh, yes,” Kandy said, returning to woman form. “How did it go?”

  “We have an idea.”

  Merge was perplexed. “Isn’t Fornax mischief?”

  “She associates with antimatter,” Kandy explained. “She can’t touch anything here without it exploding into energy. That’s why she needs an intermediary. Apart from that, she’s not a bad person. I am negotiating for her with Demon Xanth to arrange the next Demon Wager.”

  “I don’t trust this,” Ease said. “She’s a seductive wench.”

  “Aren’t we all,” Kandy said fondly. “What’s your idea, Astrid?”

  “Fornax and I have agreed to be friends. But neither of us knows much about how to do it. So we talked with Wenda Woodwife—you know, the ‘I wood knot dew that to yew’ woman—and she says we should try helping children.”

  “Wenda does love children,” Pewter said.

  “So our idea is to rescue some children from the future and place them in good adoptive families. But we’ll have to take care of them in the interim. Neither Fornax nor I know anything about handling children, so we’ll need your help.”

  “I don’t know a thing about children,” Merge said. “But it might be good experience for when I find a man and, well, whatever.” She blushed.

  “That’s a good point,” Tiara said. “I feel the same, though I have found my man.” She glanced lovingly at Mitch.

  “I have son,” Metria said. “He’s a nuisance.”

  “Well, he’s half demon,” Kandy reminded her.

  “True. Ordinary children would not be half the perturbation.”

  “Half the what?”

  “Planetary alignment, confusion, devilment, rascality, mischief—”

  “Trouble?”

  “Whatever,” the demoness agreed crossly.

  Kandy glanced at the men. “You are oddly silent. Don’t you want children?”

  “We hadn’t thought of it,” Mitch said. “But I suppose we could help caretake a few for a while.”

  “So let’s do it,” Kandy said, quite ready to support Astrid and her connection with Fonax.

  Thus simply it was decided. “I will see about rescuing them,” Astrid said gratefully. She had feared that it would be more complicated.

  Then she contacted the Demoness. “Fornax,” she murmured.

  “Good enough,” Fornax said.

  But something was strange. The others were not moving. They seemed to be frozen in place. “Are they all right?” Astrid asked, concerned.

  “They are fine,” Fornax reassured her. “I merely froze local time so that we can take as much time as we need to rescue the children, and it will seem like no time to them.”

  “Oh. Thank you.”

  “We have had to compromise,” Fornax said as they flew to the troll’s glade. “Dysnomia concluded that paradox is after all beyond her rule-breaking abilities.”

  “Oh? Why?”

  “If she broke the laws of Time and went back to her origination and persuaded Eris not to generate her, she would no longer exist. Then she would be unable to accomplish anything, such as her own elimination. That’s paradox: a self-contradictory argument, like ‘This statement is false.’ It is essentially nonsense. So travel back in time cancels itself out before it accomplishes anything. Visiting the future has similar peril, because there is the need to return to the present, which is travel to the past, at least from the future. Knowledge of that future would itself change it. Paradox again. She says it makes her head spin, and she does not care to risk it.”

  “So we can’t rescue the children?” Astrid asked, disappointed.

  “We’ll fetch them. Just without time travel.”

  “But if they’re from the future—”

  “This requires some fundamental theory. There is not just a single Xanth. There are an infinite number of Xanths, in parallel universes. Each differs from its neighbors only slightly. Some are exactly similar to ours, except that they are a trace behind or ahead of ours. Only by a second, but if we cross enough parallels, those seconds add up, and we can reach a Xanth fifty years ahead, about to be destroyed. That is where the children will be.”

  “Just like our Xanth, only fifty years farther along?”

  “Yes. So it emulates time travel without invoking paradox. That’s an advantage.”

  “But can we just cross to other Xanths?” Astrid asked, confused.

  “We’re not supposed to. But sometimes it happens. There was a case when Surprise Golem crossed to another parallel to recover her misplaced baby. Demons can cross, because we are spread across all the parallels; it is merely a matter of which one we focus on. That is what makes us infinitely more potent than mortals. All the parallel Xanths are part of Demon Xanth. But as a general rule we don’t do it, because it can complicate things. Duplicated people showing up in a single frame, that sort of thing. It can be hard to keep track. But in this case, Dysnomia will do it. That is the rule she is prepared to break.”

  “But what is her interest, if she doesn’t care about the children?”

  “The challenge. She wants to see if it is feasible, or whether it is another kind of paradox. Demons love challenges.”

  “Such as the challenge of friendship?”

  “Indeed.”

  Something elusive was bothering Astrid, and after a generous moment she pounced and nabbed it. “But if Demons cross over all the Xanths, needing merely to focus on one, what rule is Dysnomia breaking?”

  “We are taking you along. That will double you up with the Astrids of the parallels we cross, perhaps making mischief if you encounter one or more alternate selves. That’s the violation.”

  “Maybe I should stay in this one, then, and let you fetch the children.”

  “No, you will need to touch the children to bring them with us, because you are mortal, with a soul, like them. We soulless immortals can’t do that. We have worked it out to bring you, this one time, but that’s the limit. The laws of the universe start getting ugly when tweaked, and once is all we can get away with. We won’t be able to stay long, either. Demons are close to omnipotent, but this impinges on the impossible. We can’t be sure it will succeed.”

  “So it’s
risky?”

  “That does enhance the challenge.”

  “What happens if it goes wrong?”

  “Nothing to us; we’re Demons. But you would fragment across all the Xanths you passed through, and become only a shred of an atom in each.”

  “I would die?”

  “That would be another way to view it, yes.”

  Astrid felt a chill. Just how much did she want this friendship?

  “You are reconsidering?” Fornax asked.

  That decided her. “No!”

  “That is good, because we can’t do this without you.”

  They came to land in the troll’s glade. Dysnomia was there. “Are we ready?”

  Astrid knew that meant her. “We are.”

  “Take my hand.”

  Astrid took her hand, and Fornax took her other hand. Then the environment started quivering. “What’s happening?” Astrid asked nervously.

  “We are crossing parallels,” Fornax explained. “For us it would be smooth, but your mortality generates some friction. That should diminish as we accelerate.”

  “Accelerate?”

  “Each frame is a second ahead of the prior one. There are many seconds, so we are increasing our rapidity of crossing. To you it will seem like traveling into the future.”

  “Thank you,” Astrid said faintly.

  They did speed up. She could tell, because the angle of the sunlight started shifting, as though the sun were moving faster. Then the sun dropped behind the trees, and darkness came. Soon light returned: now they were in tomorrow. It brightened, and faded; now they were in tomorrow night. How many seconds in a day and night? They were crossing many parallels!

  The night passed, and another day, faster. Soon the lights and darknesses became a flicker, as they were covering the days so swiftly. In that flicker she saw the trees change, some of them losing their leaves. It was winter. And spring, and summer, and winter again. A year was passing!

  The years moved across more swiftly, one two, three, ten, twenty—it became too fast to count. Would they overshoot the fifty?

  Then the progression slowed. The years reappeared, and the seasons, and the days. Finally they came to a halt. They had arrived. Somewhen.

  The glade had changed. Now it was just a clearing in the forest. A cable stretched across it like a mundane power line. Had electricity come to Xanth?

  “No, it is a cable for a car,” Fornax said, answering her thought. “It crosses not just from glade to glade, but from Xanth to Xanth. This is one of its stops. Families hoped at least to save their children. But its promise is false; all Xanths in this region will be destroyed.”

  “What a crime,” Astrid said. “Who would tease desperate families like that?”

  “They did not realize. The intention was good.”

  The cable jerked. A hanging car appeared above the forest. It was black, with the words MODEL T printed in its side. It swung down to the clearing, touching the ground as if ready to take on a passenger.

  Instead Fornax went to it and opened its door. “All out,” she said.

  A tousled ten-year-old boy got out. “Is this the end?” he asked.

  “Not exactly, but it will do. This lady will take you home with her.”

  “No. I’m going to the end.” The boy turned to reenter the car.

  “There is no end,” Fornax said. “The cars are traveling more slowly than the termination. It will catch up and destroy the cable and cars.”

  “I don’ care. I’m supposed to go to the end.”

  “The end is doom.”

  “And who the sweet violets are you?” the boy demanded insolently. He couldn’t cuss because of the Adult Conspiracy, but he had a bad attitude. “You aren’t my mother. You can’t tell me what to do.”

  “We are trying to save you from extinction,” Fornax said evenly.

  “Well go extinct yourself, cousin of a canine. I’m not listening to you.” He ducked to reenter the car.

  Fornax looked at Astrid. “Maybe we should let him go. I don’t think this one is worth saving.”

  “No!” Astrid said. It had not occurred to her that the child would be this old or this ornery, but she had to save him if she could. She moved closer to the car.

  “And who are you, spectacle face?” the boy asked Astrid. “You aren’t my mother either.”

  “Fortunately,” Astrid agreed. “But I’m here to help you even if you don’t want it at the moment.”

  “Help, smelp! I’m tired of all you adults telling me what to do. I’m going on.”

  But Astrid blocked the car door. “No you are not.”

  “Get out of my way, stupid!” He sought to push past her, but she stood firm. He could not get back into the car.

  “You stay,” Astrid said.

  Then the cable jerked, and the car lifted and was carried up and away across the forest.

  “You made me miss the car!” the boy screamed, outraged. Then something odd happened. Little rockets seemed to fly out of his head. They rose into the air and exploded into dazzling displays. They were literal fireworks!

  Astrid removed her glasses and glanced at the fireworks. They turned to ashes and dropped to the ground. Then she closed one eye and glanced fleetingly at the boy. He staggered, stunned. “Now behave yourself,” she said.

  “What—what are you?” he asked, amazed and frightened.

  Astrid put her glasses back on. “My name is Astrid. I am a basilisk in human form. Now tell me who you are and what just happened to you.”

  The boy had plainly suffered a sudden attack of caution verging on respect. “I—I’m Firenze,” he said, accenting the middle syllable, fir-EN-zee. “That’s my talent. To go off like fireworks when I get mad.”

  “Well, hereafter you will better control your temper, Firenze.”

  A rebellious expression hovered near the boy’s mouth. Astrid touched her glasses, and the expression fled in disarray. “Yes ma’am.”

  “How did you come to be aboard that car?”

  “The end of Xanth is coming. My folks couldn’t save themselves, but they tried to save me. So they put me in the car and told me to ride to the end of the line, where maybe I’d be safe.”

  “They miscalculated,” Fornax said. “There is no safety when the line ends.”

  “But—but they did it to save me!”

  “They meant well,” Astrid said. “And they did save you. We’ll take you to our home and arrange to have you adopted by some nice couple.”

  Now reality was closing in on him. “My folks—they’re gone!”

  “We’re afraid so. Your whole world is gone.”

  “Gone,” he repeated, crumbling into tears.

  Astrid put her arms about him. “It’s awful, we know.”

  “Oh, sock mending!” he said, which was as close as he could got to a bad word. “I’m alone!”

  “We’ll help you all we can,” Astrid said as he sobbed into her shoulder. He was after all a child. But she wondered: would any nice couple adopt a ten-year-old boy with a fireworks temper? This mission was already more complicated than she had anticipated.

  Then she gently disengaged, because her ambiance would soon overcome him. She simply couldn’t stay close to him very long. What irony, if they saved him from the destruction of his world, only to kill him by inhaling poisonous vapor!

  Firenze looked at her. “Have I seen you before? There’s something about you.”

  “I’m sure we’ve never met,” Astrid said.

  “The other, too. I think I saw you somewhere.”

  “That’s really not possible,” Astrid assured him.

  The cable jerked. Another car came into sight. This one was low and sleek, bright yellow, with large tires. It swung down to pause in the clearing.

  Fornax opened its side
door. A tentacular sea creature tumbled out, changing colors as it landed. What was this?

  Then the creature put two tentacles together in four sets to form four limbs. The central mass shaped into a body and head. Color flowed, becoming a painted-on dress and a flurry of curls. It looked like a cute six-year-old girl. “Hel-low,” she said tentatively.

  “We’re going to need your help,” Astrid murmured to Firenze. “We have another lost child.”

  Firenze, having cried himself out, revived. “Yes ma’am.”

  “Hello,” Astrid said to the octopus girl. “I am Astrid, a—a friend. Who are you?”

  “They call me Squid,” the girl said. “’Cause I’m like an oct—oct—”

  “Octopus,” Astrid said.

  “Yes. But I don’t live in the sea.”

  “How did you come here, Squid?”

  “My folks—were visiting from another world, when they got caught by the end of this one. So they put me in the car.”

  So this was an alien visitor, trapped by the end of Xanth. But nevertheless a child. “We will try to help you, Squid. But we don’t have any land-living octopi in our land. We will try to find you a family who will take good care of you.”

  “My family—gone,” Squid said, tearing up.

  “Can you comfort her, Firenze?” Astrid asked. “You know exactly what she’s experiencing.”

  “I guess. Even if she is a girl.” It seemed that her gender made more difference than her species. He went to Squid and sat down on the ground. “Hi. I’m Firenze. I know what it’s like. I lost my own family.”

  “Gone!” Squid cried, falling into his embrace.

  So it was working. Firenze was helping. But Squid was a similar problem: who would want to adopt an octopus in the shape of a girl?

  The cable car moved on. Soon another car came. This one was a mundane pickup truck. Inside it was an eight-year-old boy who looked quite ordinary. But Astrid feared that this appearance was deceptive, considering the way this was going.

  The truck door opened and the boy looked out. “Is this the end of the line?” he called.

  “Close,” Astrid called back.

  “I saw the other children, so I thought maybe it was.”

  “We are here to take you to a safe place where you can be adopted into new families. I am Astrid, not exactly what I seem, but I’m here to help.”