came.
'There's something ahead,' Chem said. 'I don't know what it is yet.'
In a moment they caught up to it. It was an ogress-the beefiest, fiercest, hairiest, ugliest monster he had ever seen, with a face so mushy it was almost sickening. Lovely! 'What's another centaur doing here?'
Chem asked.
Instantly the Eye Queue analyzed the significance of her observation. 'That is another anonymous creature. We had better proceed cautiously.'
'Oh, I see what you mean! Do you think it could be a monster?' The centaur, delicately, did not voice the obvious fear-that the monster could have consumed Tandy. After all, it stood astride her tracks.
'Perhaps we should approach it from opposite sides, each ready to help the other in case it should attack.' He wasn't fully satisfied with this decision, but the thought of harm to Tandy made the matter urgent.
'Yes,' Chem agreed nervously. 'As I become acclimated to this region, I like it less. Maybe one of us can draw near her and the other can hide, ready to act. We can't assume a. sleek centaur filly like that is hostile.'
Nor could they afford to assume the ugly ogress was not hostile! They had to be ready for anything.
'You hide; I will approach in friendly fashion.'
The centaur proceeded quietly to the west, and in a moment disappeared. Smash gave her time to get properly settled, then stomped gently toward the stranger. 'Hoi' he called.
The hideous, wonderful ogress snapped about, spying him. 'Who you?' she grunted dulcetly, her voice like the scratching of harpies' talons on dirty slate.
Smash, aware that she was not what she seemed, was cautious. Names had a certain power in Xanth, and he was already below strength; it was best to remain anonymous, at least until he was sure of the nature of this creature. 'I am an inquiring stranger,' he replied.
She tromped right up to him and stood snout to snout, in the delightful way of an ogress. 'Me gon' stir he monster,' she husked in the fascinatingly unsubtle mode of her apparent kind, and she clinked him in the puss with one hairy paw.
The blow lacked physical force, but Smash did a polite backflip as if knocked heels over head. What a romantic come-on! He remembered how his mother knocked his father about and stepped on his face, showing her intimidating love. How similar this ogre-she was!
Yet his Eye Queue cautioned caution, as was its wont. This was not a real ogress; she might just be roughing him
up for a meal. She might not be nearly as friendly as she seemed. So he did not reciprocate by smashing her violently into a tree. Besides, there was no suitable tree handy.
He used un-ogrish eloquence instead. 'This is a remarkably friendly greeting for a stranger.'
'No much danger,' she said. 'He nice stranger.' And she gave him a friendly kick.
Smash was becoming much intrigued. He was sure this was no ogress, but she was one interesting person! Maybe he should hit her back. He raised his hamfist.
Then a third party appeared. This was another ogress. 'Don't hit her. Smash!' she cried. 'I just realized-'
'Smash?' the first ogress repeated questioningly. She seemed amazed.
'We must all describe exactly what we see,' the second ogress said. She, too, was no true ogress, for her speech did not conform-unless she bad blundered into some Eye Queue vines-but that hardly seemed likely. 'You first, Smash.'
Confused by this development, he obliged. 'I see two attractively brutal ogresses, each with a face mushier than the other, each hunched so that her handpaws reach almost down to her hindpaws. One is brown, the other red.'
'And I see two centaurs,' the second ogress said. 'A black stallion and a red mare.'
Oho! That would be Chem, seeing her own kind. Once she had separated from him, her own perceptions had taken over, so that she saw him falsely.
'I see a handsome black human man and a pretty brown human girl,' the first ogress said.
'Then you are Tandy!' Chem exclaimed.
'Tandy!' Smash repeated, amazed.
'Of course I'm Tandy!' Tandy agreed. 'I always was. But why are you two dressed up like human people?'
'We each perceive our own kind,' Chem explained. 'Each person instinctively generates his or her own reality from the Void. Come-take hands and perhaps we can break through to reality.'
They took hands-and slowly the alternate images dissipated, and Smash saw Chem in her ruffled brown coat and Tandy in her tattered red dress.
'You were awful handsome as a man,' Tandy said sadly. 'All garbed in black, like a dusky king, with silver gloves.' Smash realized that his orange jacket had become so dirty it was now almost indistinguishable from his natural fur. 'But why did you fall down when I tried to shake your hand?'
The Eye Queue provided the insight to cause him embarrassment. 'I misunderstood your intent,' he confessed. 'I thought you were being friendly.'
'I was being friendly!' she exclaimed indignantly. 'You were the first human being I was able to get close to in this funny place. I thought you might know some way out. I can't seem to go back myself; I bang into an invisible hedge or something. So I wanted to be very positive, and not scare you away.
After all you might have been lost too.'
'Yes, of course,' Smash agreed weakly.
'But you acted as if I'd hit you, or something!' she continued indignantly.
'This is the way ogres show affection,' Chem explained.
Tandy laughed. 'Affection! That's how human beings fight!'
Smash was silent, horribly embarrassed.
But Tandy would not let it go. 'You big oaf! I'll show you how human beings express affection!' And she grabbed Smash's arm, pulling him toward her with small human violence. Bemused, he yielded, until his head was down near hers.
Tandy threw her arms around his furry neck and planted a firm, long, hot-blooded kiss on his mouth, moving her lips against his.
Smash was so surprised he sat down. Tandy followed him, still pressing close, locking his head to hers.
He fell all the way back on the ground, but she stayed with him, her brown hair flopping forward to cover his wildly staring eyes as she drove home the rest of the kiss.
At last she released him, as she needed a breath. 'What do you think of that, ogre?'
Smash lay where she had thrown him, unable to make sense of the experience.
'He's overwhelmed,' Chem said. 'You gave him an awfully stiff dose for his first such contact.'
'Well, I've wanted to do it for a long time,' Tandy said.
'He's been too stupid to catch on.'
'Tandy, he's an ogre! They don't understand human romance. You know that.'
'He's an ogre with Eye Queue. He can darned well learn.'
'I'm afraid you're being unrealistic,' the centaur said, talking as if Smash were not present. Perhaps that was the case, mentally. 'You're a spunky, pretty human girl. He's a hulking jungle brute. You can't afford to get emotionally involved with a creature like that. He just isn't your type.'
'And just what is my type?' Tandy flared defiantly. 'A damned demon intent on rape? Smash is the nicest male creature I've met in Xanth!'
'How many male creatures have you met in Xanth?' the centaur inquired.
Tandy was silent. Of course her experience had been quite limited.
Smash at last essayed a remark. 'You could visit a human village-'
'Shut up, ogre,' Tandy snapped, 'or I'll kiss you again!'
Smash shut up. She was not bluffing; she could do it. She still had her arms looped around his neck, since she lay half astride him, holding him down, as it were.
'You have to be realistic,' Chem said. 'The Good Magician sent you out with Smash so the ogre could protect you while you searched for a husband. What good will it do you to find the destined man, as John and the Siren and maybe Goldy did, if you foolishly waste your love on an inappropriate object?
