Board Stiff (Xanth) Read Free Page B

impulsive.” Her face was similar, but her manner quite different, so that she hardly seemed the same.
    “I understand,” Ease said, stooping to pick up the girl’s shed clothing. He handed it to the centaur, who packed it away in a saddlebag that seemed to appear from nowhere. “I have a dream girl of my own. She keeps me in line.”
    Oh? He was aware of Kandy after all?
    “Dream girl?” the centaur inquired politely.
    “She comes only when I’m sleeping. Maybe she’s a forest nymph, or a demoness. She warned me that Cherry was underage.”
    He had been awake when Kandy did that. Maybe he misremembered.
    “She is,” the centaur agreed. “For a human.”
    Did the centaur know how to summon storks? Kandy had heard that centaurs didn’t use storks, but had some other mechanism, cutting out the middleman as it were. Regardless, it seemed that Cherry had not retained any such knowledge. She had truly been innocent, and now Ease was getting the credit for leaving her that way.
    “Farewell.” The centaur turned and galloped away, her red tresses flying behind her. She was a beautiful creature in every part.
    “That was an interesting experience,” Ease said to himself. “Too bad I didn’t meet an of-age girl.”
    Kandy suffered another instant siege of jealousy. She had been with him throughout, and she was of age. Bleep that spell!
    “Let’s see what there is to eat, before I move on.” He walked to the nearest pie tree, but all it had at the moment was pot pies and the pots weren’t ripe enough to be edible. He went to the pond and saw a round gray object growing underwater. “A navel orange!” he exclaimed, pleased. He reached down and brought it out. “The merfolk won’t mind if I eat one of these.” He brought it to his face and tried to take a bite, but its hide was metallic; he couldn’t get his teeth into it. “Bleep!”
    I CAN HANDLE THAT , Kandy thought.
    “Maybe if I bash it with my board,” he said.
    He set the fruit on a stump, then whammed it with the board. Kandy saw the key seam and oriented to score exactly on it. This had to be done just right, or the fruit would be squashed instead of opened. She scored; the fruit split apart, revealing several ship-shaped orange sections. Now it was edible.
    Ease popped a wedge into his mouth. It was soft and juicy. “I’m glad I thought of doing this.”
    I thought of it, you numskull ,” Kandy thought. But what was the use?
    He finished the orange. “I’m still hungry.”
    Well, he was a healthy young man. But there just didn’t seem to be any other food at the moment.
    “I smell something,” he said. “Tarts!”
    Kandy looked. There at the edge of the forest was a girl with a raised bed. Smoke was rising from it. It was a fire bed, probably left behind by a fireman and still smoldering. She was baking something on it. Tarts. Indeed, she looked like a tart, with a dress that was cut too low above and too high below, so that too much of her overstuffed body showed.
    “That’s for me,” Ease said.
    The stupid man! The tart was off the enchanted path, which meant she was probably not what she seemed, bad as that was. Don’t go there .
    But she had forgotten to put it into bold CAPPED italics , and he didn’t hear. He was already forging off the path, lured by the display.
    “Well, honey, what can I do for you?” the tart inquired, smiling with too many teeth.
    “I’m hungry! How about some tarts?”
    “Well of course!” She lifted a steaming tart from the hotbed and handed it to him. “Here is a really sweet one. A sweet tart.”
    Don’t eat that! But again she forgot to enhance her thought.
    “Sweetheart,” Ease agreed amiably. He took the tart and bit into it. “Oh, say! I want to kiss you!”
    Now Kandy got a good whiff of the tart. She recognized the smell.
    SPIT IT OUT!! IT’S SPIKED WITH LOVE POTION!
    This time he heard her. He spat out the biteful.
    But the woman tart was already in motion. She was leaping forward,