The Color Of Her Panties Read Free Page B

 At the top of each hill was a human baby.
    Every so often each baby opened its mouth and let out a surprisingly loud boom.
    “Why, they're baby boomers,” Mela said, surprised.
    “There certainly are a lot of them!”
    “They will be something when they grow up,” Metria remarked.  “They'll be big boom-booms.”
    “But what's the point?”
    “There is no point.  They're just there.  They strayed from Mundania, where there are even more of them.”
    Mela shook her head.  “Mundania is a strange place!”
    “That is true.  Even the Mundanes don't understand it.
    That is why they come to Xanth whenever they can.  Fortunately most of them don't know the way, any more than you know the way to the Good Magician's castle.”
    “But if I asked you, you would merely direct me wrong. Or right, if I didn't believe you.”
    “Of course.  Isn't it beautiful?”
    “Lovely.” Despite her best effort, Mela was getting annoyed by the demoness.
    They passed beyond the baby boomers and came to a big lake.  It looked very pleasant.  Mela stood and gazed at it.
    “Aren't you going for a swim?” Metria inquired innocently.
    “No.”
    “Oh, you already know its nature.”
    This made Mela pause.  Suddenly she suspected that the demoness wasn't thinking of fresh water.  But the demoness wouldn't tell, if she asked.
    So she shrugged.  “I'll go around it.”
    “Actually, it's not as if the Kiss-Mee Lake hurts anyone.  It's not nearly as bad as a love spring.”
    So this was the Kiss-Mee Lake!  She had heard of it.
    “Wasn't there some trouble with the associated river?  I heard that your friends pulled it straight, and then it was known as the Kill-Mee River.”
    “Yes, the hummers got really bad.  That's when I had to leave, and I found the ogre's den.  But I helped him restore the river.  That was interesting.”
    “So I will just walk around it to the south,” Mela said.
    “By all means.  I will walk with you.”
    That meant that there promised to be something interesting for the demoness to the south, which in turn meant that Mela wouldn't like it.
    “Oh-the Kiss-Mee River flows from the south shore!” Mela said, realizing.  “So I can't go that way, unless I want to mess with fresh water anyway.”
    “Sure enough,” Metria agreed, disappointed.
    “So I'll have to walk around it to the north instead.”
    “By all means.”
    That did not sound promising either.  But what other choices were there?
    Mela certainly didn't want to swim across it, and she couldn't fly across it.
    She opened her invisible purse and took out her manual.
    What she wanted was surely in there, but she didn't know what to look for.  That was why she couldn't use it to locate a husband; it showed all the creatures of Xanth, but couldn't point out individuals or give their marriage status.
    Now she needed a way to cross the lake without soiling her body with fresh water, and the manual couldn't tell her how.
    The sky darkened, dimming the page.  She looked up.
    There over the water a nasty little cloud was forming.  So she flipped the pages until she came to clouds, and there it was:  King Cumulo Fracto Nimbus, the meanest of clouds.  But since she had nothing either to gain or fear from a cloud, she ignored Fracto, and he ignored her.
    Then she saw something strange.  It was a little red boat, zooming along backwards, rowed by a very big man.  No, by a very small giant.  No, something even odder.  But what?
    “Fascinating,” Metria said, and faded out.
    That surely meant trouble.  But it just might be a ruse.
    If this was someone who could help her cross the lake, the demoness might be trying to scare her away, so that she would after all be stranded.  So she couldn't be sure.
    The best thing to do was chance it.  If she got into the boat with the man, and he tried to get fresh-how she hated freshness!-she could always jump into the water, loathsome as it was, and escape.  So she waited.
    But she took the