Myth-Told Tales

I studied my surroundings. The room, a high-ceilinged chamber lined with mirrored doors on three sides, was a staging area. The center of the fourth wall featured a huge staircase flanked by thick black-velvet curtains leading up into a darkened area. Dozens of makeup tables were laid out in the center of the room. Each was occupied by a beautiful woman, or one of many beings who were undoubtedly considered beautiful in their own dimensions, but to my eye could scare the pith out of a reed. Not far from me sat a huge female Pervect, like Pookie, but nearly a foot taller and half as wide. Considering that Pookie was slender, this one looked unnaturally thin. When you added in the mouthful of four-inch fangs, she looked like a smiling dragon. Wearing lipstick. I gulped. "How can I help?" I asked.

"You've probably noticed how much magik is flying around here, Skeeve. I need you to keep me from dropping too far behind in the contest."

I felt around for lines of force. Bunny was right a hugely powerful force line ran directly underneath the building, leading toward the staircase. I wondered if the place had been constructed with it in mind. I was able to tap in without difficulty, and discovered that many fellow magicians were doing the same.

"But you know I haven't made too much progress in my lessons yet," I said. Bunny was the only one of the staff of M.Y.T.H. Inc. that I had brought with me to the isolated inn where I meant to buckle down and study. "The only thing I'm really proficient in is illusion, plus a few very minor tricks."

That may be all I need," Bunny said. "I need to stand out in this crowd, and that won't be easy."

"But you're..." There was no point in denying the truth. I swallowed and plunged onward. "You're the most beautiful woman in this room. If it's really a beauty contest, you'll win it hands down."

"If it was that simple," Bunny said, "I would never have brought you into this. I would have done it for my uncle, and no one would ever know. But I admit I'm out of my depth."

"Well, I'll do my best," I said. "Where do we begin?"

"First is the beauty parade," Bunny said. "It begins in an hour. Ill need you to cover my back."

Her back wasn't covered, nor was most of her body, during the beauty parade. She wore a brief, bright red bathing suit whose color pretty much matched my face. I was far more embarrassed than she was. Bunny disappeared into a changing room and emerged in a robe. When she shed it I thought steam would come shooting out of my ears. Her outfit started inward from her shoulders and downward from her collarbone and upward and downward from her navel, and left no inch of her spectacularly long, slim legs to the imagination. My hands itched to encircle her waist, which looked small enough that my fingers could meet around it. Above and below, her feminine attributes were ... undeniable, yet very much in proportion. On her feet she wore shoes with such high, narrow heels that they made her taller than me.

Bunny's suit, if you could call three wisps and a few strings a suit, was modest compared with many of her fellow contestants assembled backstage. An Impish woman with a figure I'd once heard Aahz describe as zaftig had on three narrow strips of dark green cloth and an expression that if I gave in to the impulse to put my hands around her waist I'd shortly have no hands at all. It was no trouble at all to restrain myself. A bevy of red Deveel women glittered in silver, black, gold, and copper suits. The Pervect wore a suggestion of golden yellow to match her eyes. A sharklike female, clad in one strip of cloth far down by her tail, swam by in the air. Magik, I remembered with difficulty. That was why Bunny had called me in.

Once she'd donned her... er ... suit, she had to put on cosmetics, lots of them. The green stuff she larded around her eyes, she assured me, was harmless, as was the black stuff. The pale cream paint she rubbed onto her cheeks and forehead, I thought, must be a protective layer for the women's faces, because some of the contestants were layering it on so heavily that there was no chance of a hint of sun contacting skin. A huge, insectoid woman wearing a yellow polka-dotted garment had matching goo of bright yellow for her mandibles, with lines of black to accent her multiple eyes. Behind her stretched a queue that had to be hundreds long.

"There's only one prize?" I asked.

"Just one," Bunny assured me, stroking tar onto her eyelashes and making them stick out like combs. She put the applicator away and looked at me. Strangely enough, under the bright lights all the cosmetics did make her seem very attractive—at a distance. If you got close up, you could see where all the various colors intersected, like a mosaic.

"What happens to all the others?"