the sleekly scaled tail, her dress fading out.
'If you find a monster, send it my way,' Smash called. 'I'm hungry, too!'
She smiled and dived below-the surface, a bare-breasted nymph swimming with marvelous facility. In a moment her head popped up, tresses glistening. 'No monsters here!' she called. 'Not even any chobees. I believe that causeway is safe; I find no pitfalls there.'
That was all Smash needed. 'Too bad,' he muttered. He waded in, sending a huge splay of water to either side.
But Tandy remained hesitant. 'I think I'll just walk around it,' she said.
'Good enough!' Smash agreed, and forged on into deeper water. The causeway dropped lower, 'but never deeper than chest height on him. He conjectured that it might have been constructed by the cursefiends to prevent large sea monsters from passing; they preferred deep water and avoided shallows.
Maybe the smaller lake had been developed as a resort region. This suggested that there could be monsters in Lake Ogre-Chobee; they just happened to be elsewhere at the moment. Maybe they represented an additional protection for the fiends, converting the whole of the large lake into a kind of moat. It really didn't matter, since he had no business with the curse-fiends. After all, they had not let his mother go willingly to marry his father. She had had no further contact with her people after she had taken up with Crunch the Ogre, and it occurred to Smash that this could not have made her feel good. So his attitude toward the fiends was guarded; he would not try to avoid them, but neither would he try to seek them out. Neutrality was the watchword. He had never thought this out before-but he had not suffered the curse of the Eye Queue before, either. He still hoped to find some way to be rid of it, as these frequent efforts of thought were not conducive to proper ogrish behavior.
He glanced across the water of the little lake. Tandy was picking her way along the beach, looking very small. He felt un-ogrishly protective toward her-but, of course, this was his service to the Good Magician. Ogres were gross and violent, but they kept their word. Also, the Eye Queue curse lent him an additional perception of the virtue of an ethical standard. It was a bit like physical strength; the ideal was to be strong in all respects, ethical as well as physical. And Tandy certainly needed protection. Besides which, she was a nice girl. He wondered what she was looking for in life and how it related to his journey to seek the Ancestral Ogres. Had old Magician Humfrey finally lost his magic, and had to foist Tandy off on an ogre m lieu of a genuine Answer? Smash hoped not, but he had to entertain the possibility. Suppose there was in fact no Answer for Tandy-or for himself?
Smash had no ready answer for that, even with his unwanted new intelligence, so had to let the thought lapse. But it was disquieting. High intelligence, it seemed, posed as many questions as it answered; being smart was not necessarily any solution to life's problems. It was much easier to be strong and stupid, bashing things out of the way without concern for the consequences. Disquiet was no proper feeling for an ogre.
Now he got down in the water and splashed with all limbs. This was proper ogre fun! The spray went up in a great cloud, surrounding the sun and causing its light to fragment into a magic halo. The whole effect was so lovely that he continued splashing violently until pleasantly winded. When he stopped, he discovered that the water level of the small lake had dropped substantially, and the sun was hastening across the sky to get out of the way, severely dimmed by all the water that had splashed on it.
But his thorough washing did not clear the Eye Queue from the fur of his head. Somehow the Queue had sunk into his brain, and the braided Eyes were providing him new visions of many kinds. It would be hard indeed to get those Eyes out again.
At last he waded out at the far side. The Siren swam up, converted her tail to legs, and joined him on the warm beach. 'You made quite a splash. Smash,' she said. 'Had I not known better, I would have supposed a thunderstorm was forming.'
'That good!' he agreed, well satisfied. Of course it wasn't all good; he was now unconscionably clean.
But a few good rolls in the dirt would take care of that.
'That bad,' the Siren said with a smile.
He studied her as she gleamed wetly, her scale-suit creeping up to cover the fullness of her front. She seemed to be turning younger, though this might be inconsequential illusion. 'I think the swim was good for you, too, Siren. You look splendid.' Privately, he was amazed at his words; she did look splendid, and her affinity to the voluptuous Gorgon was increasingly evident, but no ordinary ogre would have noticed, let alone complimented her in the fashion of a human being. The curse of the Queue was still spreading!
'I do feel better,' she agreed. 'But it's not just the swim. It's the companionship. I have lived alone for too long; now that I have company, however temporarily, my youth and health are returning.'
So that explained it! People of human stock had need for the association of other people. This was one of the ways in which ogres differed from human beings. Ogres needed nobody, not even other ogres.
Except to marry.
He looked again at the Siren. Her nymphlike beauty would have dazzled a man and led him to thoughts of moonlight and gallivanting. Smash, however, was an ogre; full breasts and smoothly fleshed limbs appealed to him only aesthetically--and even that was a mere product of the Eye Queue. An uncursed ogre would simply have become hungry at the sight of such flesh.
Which reminded him-he needed something to eat. He checked around for edibles and spied some ripe banana peppers. He stuffed handfuls of them into his mouth.
Something nagged him as he chewed. Flesh-female-hunger-ah, now he had it. A girl in danger of being eaten. 'Where's Tandy?' he asked.
'I haven't seen her, Smash,' the Siren said, her fair brow furrowing. 'She should be here by now, shouldn't she? We had better go look for her, in case-well, let's just see. I'll swim; you check the beach.'
'Agreed.' Smash crammed another double fistful of peppers into his face and started around the beach, concerned. He blamed himself now for his selfish carelessness. He knew that Tandy was unfamiliar with the surface of Xanth, liable to fall into the simplest trap. If something had happened to her-
'I find nothing here,' the Siren called from the water. 'Maybe she went off the beach for a matter of hygiene.'
Good notion. Smash checked the tangled vines beyond the beach-and there, in due course, he found Tandy. 'Hi-ho!' he called to her, waving a hamhand.
Tandy did not respond. She was kneeling on the turf, looking at something. 'Are you all right?' Smash asked, worry building up like a sudden storm. But the girl neither moved nor answered.
The Siren came out of the water, dripping and changing in the effective way she had, and joined Smash.
'Oh-she's fallen prey to a hypnogourd.'
A hypnogourd. Smash remembered encountering that fruit before. Anyone who peeked in the peephole of such a gourd remained mesmerized until some third party broke the connection. Naturally Tandy had not been aware of this. So she had peeked, being girlishly curious-and remained frozen there. Gently, the Siren removed the gourd, breaking the connection. Tandy blinked and shook her head. But her eyes did not quite focus. Her features coalesced into an expression of vacant, continuing horror.
'Hey, come out of it, dear,' the Siren said. 'The bad vision is over. It ended when you lost contact with the gourd. Everything's all right.' Yet the girl seemed numb. The Siren shook her, but still Tandy did not respond.
'Maybe it's like the Eye Queue,' Smash said. 'It stays in the mind until removed.'
'The gourds aren't usually that way,' the Siren said, perplexed. 'Of course, I have not had much personal experience with them, since I have lived alone; there's no one to break the trance for me, so I have stayed clear. But I met a man once, a Mundane, back when I was able to lure men with my music.
He said the gourds were like computer games-that seems to be something he knew about in Mundania, one of their forms of magic-only more compelling. He said some people got hooked worse than others.'
'Tandy was raised in the caves. She has no experience with most of Xanth. She must be susceptible.
Whatever she saw in there maintains its grip on her mind.'
'That must be it. Usually people have no memory of what they see inside, but maybe that varies also.
That same Mundane spoke of acidheads, which I think are creatures whose heads-well, I can't quite visualize that. But it seems they suffered flashbacks of their mad dreams after their heads were back in normal shape. Maybe Tandy is-'
'I'll go into that gourd and destroy whatever is bothering her,' Smash said. 'Then she'll be free.'
'Smash, you may not have your body in there! I have never looked into a gourd, but I don't think the same rules apply as those we know. You could get caught there, too. It could be catastrophe.'
