“This one’s clean, too!” someone else shouted from another point.
“Aw, we don’t even know what we’re lookin’ for, Sarge, or whether there’s anything to look for!” his soldier protested. “We can’t climb and poke every damned tree and bush in the place!”
“Whatever it was, it was pale red and it flew,” the sergeant responded. “I saw the aura briefly. But, yeah, you’re right. Come on down, you two! Whatever it is, it isn’t here or we’d have seen it or smelled it by now!” He snorted, then muttered, “This is no job for a soldier! If he thinks there’s something here, he should send those brainless mortals he’s got.”
The Bentar clambered down from the trees and remounted. The leathery wing sound came close enough to rustle the leaves.
“Start a sweep west of here, and let us know if you spot anything,” the sergeant shouted to the flyer. “If you do, we’ll come running, but I’m not going to waste time with this. It’s pointless!”
There was a gruff shouted response from above and then the wings flapped harder but grew swiftly fainter as it moved away. The Bentar turned on their horses and were soon gone as well.
In a few more minutes, it was as quiet as a grave again.
Joe, however, once more became a bit concerned about being trapped in the tree. Okay, I got in, now how do I get out?
And, after a moment, it came to him that you got out the same way you got in—by relaxing and willing yourself out. There was a gentle pushing, as if the matter at his back was firming up behind him and expanding, and he emerged from the tree.
He was relieved to find he was still a Kauri. That meant he was still a were and, therefore, still human, too. For all he knew, the wood nymph thing had nothing to do with it. This might well have been entirely a Kauri defense mechanism, since they were so close.
The leg no longer hurt very much. The were spell was repairing it, as it tended to repair almost anything except a silver wound.
If only that fairy soul business had been as a Kauri, he mused. Then he might have been able to accept it. Flying around, seeing the world, maybe even with Marge for company. But a wood nymph!
He was feeling better, even a bit stronger, but he didn’t want to test out his wings yet. No telling what was still around. Best to wait a bit, even if it meant he didn’t make it back before dawn. The object was to make it back at all. At least so long as he kept under cover here they were unlikely to come back and check this grove again, but it was a fair distance to the next cover.
Still, if he got back at all, it would have been worth it. The Baron in league with Sugasto again, and still in Mahalo’s sexy body! He wondered what happened to the real Mahalo McMahon. He’d totally forgotten to ask. She was stuck in the Baron’s nearly dead body the last he knew and being brought here, kept alive mostly by Ruddygore’s magic. Of course, Ruddygore had still had the Lamp at the time, so she could be anything or anybody. She’d have made an ideal Kauri, that’s for sure.
Make a wish. You can be anything and anybody you want to be. What would he do if offered that? He thought about it, and he had a lot more options than she had, because he knew Hu-saquahr and what was available here. There was a male counterpart to the Kauri someplace, he remembered hearing. It’d be nice to fly places and seduce all those troubled women, but as good as the Kauri life-style might be, it was, like most fairy lives, in the end, a pretty one-dimensional life that went on forever, never really adding new dimensions. That, more even than old friendship, was why Marge kept inviting herself along on these missions. It was a way, however limited, to do something a bit different.
The thing was, he realized that he’d just wish to be his old self again. He liked himself, his body, his image. He’d like to be smarter, or maybe wiser, and know a lot more, but, overall, he liked being Joe just fine.
Only he wasn’t Joe right now, he was a Kauri who looked and felt more like Marge. That body and those Kauri instincts were telling him right now what he needed to do to get his energy back, but he was going to trust to dawn first.
Still, it was worth risking a bit at this point to see if he could make at least most of the way back the easy way. He looked out and looked around and saw nothing close that was threatening. The wings spread, and he was airborne.
He was pretty weak, but flying, even from cover to cover, was sure better and faster than walking. By dawn, though, he still wasn’t back, and he was just too dead to go much farther. He felt sure he was beyond the first blockade, though, and knew it when he saw a ranch not far away. There was a barn there with a real hayloft, and he made for it, going in the top small door and collapsing on the hay stored there just as the first rays of the sun came over the horizon. Exhausted almost beyond endurance, he lay there, almost too tired to sleep, and watched the golden orb creep lazily up into the sky, its first warming rays coming right in the hayloft door and washing over him.
Suddenly he stirred himself up and looked down at himself. Wait a minute! This isn’t right! Then he sank back, too tired to even think straight anymore.
The sun was up and it was a bright, new day, and he was still a Kauri.
Marge was tired, too, but she wasn’t about to go to sleep yet. Mia had changed back to herself with the first rays of the sun, and she was frantic. “He is in the hands of those maniacs, I know it!” she wailed. “We must rescue him!”
Marge shook her head. “No, we can’t. I sure can’t do a damned thing now, even if I wanted to, and what the hell can you do? You go out there now, hollering that your master’s gone, and lots of things are gonna happen. First, they’ll all start checking to see if he’s still alive by touching your ring. When it’s established he is, they’ll turn you over to the military camp. The camp will put two and two together—spies last night, a missing master this morning—and send you right up to Sugasto and the Baron. If they’ve got Joe, then they’ve got both of you, and that’s the end of that and everybody else. You saw those poor mindless zombies. In fact, they might be able to milk you for enough information to do a great Tiana. Remember, they want the palace Ti, the demigoddess Ti, and that’s the one you knew. You’d wind up plunging the whole world into darkness.”
“What can I do, then?”
“Well, I, for one, have known Joe longer than anybody here, and I think that if they had him captured they’d already be here for us. Think about it. He’s got no more resistance to common spells than you do, and about now he’d be in his human body again. He’d talk, and we’d be taken. You see any Bentar? Any soldiers coming up the stairs?”
“No.”
“Then he’s not captured. And, thanks to your ring, we know he’s not dead. I think he got hurt, maybe badly, in that mess last night—he took that dive steeper than we did.”
“But then—”
“Hear me out. He’s a were. Folks around here, even bad folks, don’t carry around silver-tipped arrows and they sure don’t shoot them at Kauris. That means his wounds, no matter what they were, kept him down for the count but that he’ll be good as new today. Look at you—not a bruise or sore spot on you! If he’s got any sense, he’ll hole up someplace, get some sleep, then start back. Since there’s another moon tonight, goodness knows what he’ll come back as, if it’s after dark, but he’ll be back.”