Free Isle Of View by Piers Anthony Page B

one will tell me! Not even my Betrothee.”
    “Your what?”
    “My fiancée, girlfriend, promised, engagee.”
    “Oh, you mean your prospective ball and chain.”
    “Whatever. Why do you ask?”
    “Because it's more fun to pester innocents. Human folk are pretty dull creatures, but ignorant young men are subject to amusing temptations. Maybe I'll keep you with me for a while, so I can entertain myself. It's been a decade or so since I've toyed with a mortal man.”
    “Oh? Who was that?”
    “I forget. An ogre, I think, only he looked like a man. Aristocrat.”
    “What?”
    “Patrician, gentleman, esquire.”
    “Oh, you mean Esk Ogre!”
    “Whatever. Why did you ask?”
    Dolph opened his ghost mouth, but discovered that he had forgotten whatever they had been talking about. “Enough of this. I have to find Che Centaur.”
    “But I told you he's not here.”
    Now he remembered: that was how all this had started. “You're of the demon folk. I can't trust you. So I'm going to keep looking.”
    “Do you mind if I tag along on your futile search?”
    “Yes! Go away!”
    “Great! I'll stay right with you.”
    Oops He had made the mistake of admitting that her presence bothered him. “I'll ignore you.”
    “Suppose I tell you how to summon the stork?”
    He stopped in the air. “You will?”
    “Of course not! Don't you know about the Adult Conspiracy?”
    “But you're a demoness. You don't honor that stuff.”
    “Of course I do!” she said indignantly. “It's the best torment yet devised for children.”
    “I'm not a child!”
    “You are until you figure out the secret.”
    She had him there. “So you won't tell me, you mare. Go away.”
    “I'm a what?”
    “Ewe, doe, hen, sow, lioness—” He broke off. “Oh, now you've got me doing it! Female wolf—I can't think of the word.”
    “Ha! You're young and innocent. You don't know the word!”
    She had nailed him again. “And you won't tell me. So go away and let me finish my search.”
    But she lingered, her shape becoming even more shapely. “I won't tell you the secret about the stork, but I might show you.”
    She had his interest again, but he still didn't trust her. “What's the catch?”
    “You have to resume manform.”
    “Nuh-uh! Not until I finish searching the Elements.”
    Metria frowned prettily. “You're being unreasonable, Dolph. I'm the one who is supposed to be difficult! Why don't you give up this hopeless search and let me show you the stork's secret?”
    “Because I don't trust you! Not only will you stop me from finding Che, you'll fade out without showing me anything, and leave me twice as frustrated as before.”
    She nodded. “You're getting smarter. But you know, there is something more important you should be doing now.”
    Again, foolishly, he paid attention. "What could be more important than finding Che?”
    “Plugging the hole.”
    He couldn't make sense of this. “Are you referring to the stork again?”
    She laughed so hard she dissolved into fragments of smoke, and it took her a while to resume her shapely shape. “I could have been, but I wasn't. What an entendre!”
    “What?”
    “Never mind; it's not in the dictionary anyway. The Muses are way behind the times. No, I mean the hole in Xanth where the foreign elf and her foreign cat come through.”
    “What foreign elf?”
    “The one who's with Che now, helping him flee the goblins. How do you think she got here, otherwise?”
    Dolph knew she was trying to confuse him, but he didn't want to admit how well she was succeeding. “Why should the hole be plugged?”
    “Because alien monsters may come through it. The elf is harmless, but what else follows her is not. All Xanth could be threatened. That's not just a hole between two worlds, it's between a squintillion worlds, and the Simurgh only knows what connection may be next.”
    “Why didn't you plug it, then?”
    She shrugged. “It would be tedious. But I'll show you where it is, if you