Yon Ill Wind Read Free Page A

complete contrast to Fortune.  The collision bad been her fault, because she had been rushing along without looking, too fast for path conditions.  Thus she had given Fortune the colossal ill luck to lose her encounter with Nimby, who could have helped her so much, and had given Nimby the worse luck to have wasted his opening monologue on her.  What was he going to do with this wretch of a wench?  Because she was the one he was stuck with.
    Chlorine approached him.  “And you can't talk anymore?” She inquired.  “Not even to bray?” She giggled at her own clumsy humor.
    She was asking for it.  Nimby stood up, showing his dragon body.
    “Oh—you're a weird dragon,” she said.  “Ugliest creature I've ever seen!  Why should I ever want to keep company with you?”
    Why, indeed.  Fortune would have had some sympathy, for she was a decent girl.  But Chlorine had a harsh personality, such as there was of it.  And now, casting his awareness back across her life, he discovered something even worse:  she had once had some sensitivity, but it had been beaten out of her by her abusive family.  She had long since cried herself out, and now had only one tear left, and she did not know where that one was.  Even if so moved, she couldn't cry a tear for him.  And she wouldn't be moved, because she had become cynical and heedless of the feelings of others.  Chlorine was simply no prize.
    Nimby stared defeat in the snoot.  He could hardly have invoked a worse companion.  All because he had not been paying attention, while a girl known for her ill luck had suffered more of it.  He had come up with the perfect speech—for an undeserving girl.  He had thrown away his chance for victory.  He hung his head in remorse.
    “Still,” Chlorine said, “if what you said is true, this could be my lucky day.  I'm going to give you a chance.
    But I warn you, if you try to eat me, I'll poison your water, and you'll have one awful bladder infection.” Actually, her language was somewhat more cynically descriptive, the key phrase being “pied pee,” but Nimby wasn't quite current with inferior vernacular.
    So she wasn't afraid for her safety.  She could indeed poison any water with a touch, which meant she could kill a creature if she had to.  She couldn't do it to Nimby, because he was a Demon, but of course, he couldn't afford to let her realize that.  And she was what he was stuck with, and the contest had not yet been resolved; maybe he still had an outside chance to win.  So he nodded, showing that he understood her warning.
    “Make me beautiful,” she said.
    That was easy.  He focused on her, and transformed her various pans.  He made her straggly greenish yellow hair into luxuriant green-tinted golden tresses that curled just enough to be interesting.  He made her yellowish complexion into the fairest skin seen in Xanth.  He shifted the substance of her body so that her egg-timer torso became an hourglass figure.  He formed her thick clodhoppered feet into dainty digits in glassy slippers.  And he adjusted her shapeless dress into an elegant robe that clung to her suddenly firm curves like an artistic lover.  She was now a stunning creature of her kind.
    She looked down at herself, appreciating the change.
    “Oooo!  Is this real?  I mean, not illusion?  It feels real.”
    She pinched her delightful derriere just hard enough to verify its mind-freaking reality.
    Nimby nodded, agreeing that it was real.  As long as their association continued.
    “I need a mirror,” she said.  “I want to see my face.”
    Nimby made one of his scales mirror-shiny and turned it so she could look.  She peered at herself, thrilled.
    Then she reconsidered.  “I'm not just dull-looking, I'm dull-thinking.  I've been told that often enough.  Can you make me smart, too?”
    That was phrased as a question, but it was actually a request, just as the mirror had been.  Nimby concentrated on the spongy interior of her