“Some can conjure things,” he continued slowly, “and others can make a hole, or illusions, or can soar through the air. But in Mundania no one does magic, so it’s very dull. There are not any dragons there. Instead there are bear and horse and a great many other monsters.”
He stopped to count the words. All the way up to eighty-two!
Only eight more to go-no, more than that; his fingers had run out.
Twenty-eight to go. But he had already covered the subject. What now?
Well, maybe some specifics. “Our ruler is King Trent, who has reigned for seventeen years. He transforms people into other creatures.” There were another seventeen words, bringing the total to-say, it was ninety-nine words! He must have miscalculated before.
One more word and he’d be done!
But what one word would finish it? He couldn’t think of one. Finally he made a special effort and squeezed out another whole sentence: “No one gets chased here; we fare in peace.” But that was nine more words-eight more than he needed. It really hurt him to waste energy like that!
Sigh. There was no help for it. He would have to use the words, now that he had ground them out. He wrote them down as the bee spelled them, pronouncing each carefully so the bee would get it right. He was sure the bee had little or no sense of continuity; it merely spelled on an individual basis.
In a fit of foolish generosity, he fired off four more valuable words:
“My tale is done.” That made the essay one hundred and twelve words. Cherie Centaur should give him a top grade for that! “Okay, spelling bee,” he said. “You’ve done your part. You’re free, with your letters.” He opened the window and the bee buzzed out with a happy “BBBBBB!”
“Now I need to deliver it to my beloved female tutor, may fleas gnaw her coat,” he said to himself. “How can I do that without her catching me for more homework?” For he knew, as all students did, that the basic purpose of instruction was not so much to teach young people good things as to fill up all their time unpleasantly. Adults had the notion that juveniles needed to suffer. Only when they had suffered enough to wipe out most of their naturally joyous spirits and innocence were they staid enough to be considered mature. An adult was essentially a broken- down child.
“Are you asking me?” the floor asked.
Inanimate things seldom had much wit, which was why he hadn’t asked any for help in his spelling. “No, I’m just talking to myself.”
“Good. Then I don’t have to tell you to get a paper wasp.”
“I couldn’t catch a paper wasp anyway. I’d get stung.”
“You wouldn’t have to catch it. It’s trapped under me. The fool blundered in during the night and can’t find the way out; it’s dark down there.”
This was a positive break. “Tell it I’ll take it safely out if it’ll deliver one paper for me.”
There was a mumble as the floor conversed with the wasp. Then the floor spoke to Dor again. “It’s a fair sting, it says.”
“Very well. Tell it where there’s a crack big enough to let it through to this room.”
Soon the wasp appeared. It was large, with a narrow waist and fine reddish-brown color: an attractive female of her species, marred only by shreds of dust on her wings. “WWWWWW?” she buzzed, making the dust fly off so that she was completely pretty again.
Dor gave her the paper and opened the window again. “Take this to the lady centaur Cherie. After that you’re on your own.”
She perched momentarily on the sill, holding the paper.
“WWWWWW?” she asked again.
Dor did not understand wasp language, and his friend Grundy the Golem, who did, was not around. But he had a fair notion what the wasp was thinking of. “No, I wouldn’t advise trying to sting Cherie. She can crack her tail about like a whip, and she never misses a fly.”
Or the seat of someone’s pants, he added mentally, when someone was foolish enough to backtalk about an assignment. Dor had learned the hard way.
The wasp carried the paper out the window with a satisfied hum.
Dor knew it would deliver; like the spelling bee, it had to be true to its nature. A paper wasp could not mishandle a paper.
Dor went out to report to Irene. He found her on the south side of the castle in a bathing suit, swimming with a contented sea cow and feeding the cow handfuls of sea oats she was magically growing on the bank. Zilch mooed when she saw Dor, alerting Irene.
“Hi, Dor-come in swimming!” Irene called.
“In the moat with the monsters?” he retorted.
“I grew a row of blackjack oaks across it to buttress the wallflowers,” she said. “The monsters can’t pass.”
Dor looked. Sure enough, a moat-monster was pacing the line, staying just clear of the blackjack oaks and ’n got taggle dar ki ek . It nudged too close at one point and got hit by a well-swung blackjack. There was no passing. Still, Dor decided to stay clear. He didn’t trust what Zilch might have done in the water. “I meant the monsters on this side,” he said.
“I just came to report that the paper is finished and off to the tutor.”
“Monsters on this side!” Irene repeated, glancing down at herself. “Sic him, Weedles!”
A tendril reached out of the water and caught his ankle. Another one of her playful plants! “Cut that out!” Dor cried, windmilling as the vine yanked at his leg. It was no good; he lost his balance and fell into the moat with a great splash.
“Ho, ho, ho!” the water laughed. “Guess that doused your fire!”
Dor struck at the surface furiously with his fist, but it did no good. Like it or not, he was swimming in all his clothes.
“Hey, I just thought of something,” Irene called. “That spelling bee-did you define the words for it?”
“No, of course not,” Dor spluttered, trying to scramble out of the water but getting tangled in the tendrils of the plant that had pulled him in. Pride prevented him from asking Irene for help, though one word from her would tame the plant.
She saw the need, however. “Easy, Weedles” she said, and the plant eased off. Then she returned to her subject. “There may be trouble. If you used any homonyms-“
“No, I couldn’t have. I never heard of them.” Weedles was no longer attacking, but each time Dor tried to swim to the bank, the plant moved to intercept him. He had antagonized Irene by his monsters crack, and she was getting back at him mercilessly. She was like her mother in that respect. Sometimes Dor felt the world would be better off if the entire species of female were abolished.
“Different words that sound the same, dunce!” she said with maidenly arrogance. “Different spellings. The spelling bee isn’t that smart; if you don’t tell it exactly which word-“
“Different spellings?” he asked, experiencing a premonitory chill.
“Like wood and would,” she said, showing off her vocabulary in the annoying way girls had. “Wood-tree, would-could. Or isle and aisle, meaning a bit of land in a lake or a cleared space between objects. No connection between the two except they happen to sound the same. Did you use any of those?”
Dor concentrated on the essay, already half forgotten. “I think I mentioned a bear. You know, the fantastic Mundane monster.”
“It’ll come out bare-naked!” she exclaimed, laughing. “That bee may not be smart, but it wasn’t happy about having to work for its letters. Oh, are you ever in trouble, Dor! Wait’ll Cherie Centaur reads that paper!”
“Oh, forget it!” he snapped, disgruntled. How many homonyms had he used?
“Bear, bare!” she cried, swimming close and tugging at his clothing.
The material, not intended for water, tore readily, exposing half his chest.
“Bare, bare, bare!” he retorted furiously, hooking two fingers into the top of her suit and ripping it down. This material, too, came apart with surprising ease, showing that her body was fully as developed as suggested by the contours of her clothing. Her mother the Queen often made herself pretty through illusion; Irene needed no such enhancement.
“Eeeeek!” she screamed enthusiastically. “I’ll get you!” And she ripped more of his clothing off, not stopping
