Out of Phaze

“For this cure?” Phoebe cried. “Thou canst stay a year!”

Fleta made her way back into the bower and curled up on the fern. In a moment she was asleep.

“But—how could you know that we had no quarrel with you?” he asked the harpy.

“ ‘Corns be stubborn beasts,” Phoebe said. ‘They betray not who betrays them not.”

“And she cured you—just like that?”

“Aye, the horn has power, an there be ailment. But for ‘corn to cure harpy—that be rare indeed.”

“We were looking for a place to rest in safety,” Mach said.

“Ye have it now.” Phoebe wiggled her tail, appreciating the lack of itch.

Mach went in and lay down beside Fleta. It seemed that his willingness to talk with the harpy had paid off; she was not after all an enemy. In a moment he slept.

Fleta slept all night and much of the following day. It was evident that she had seriously depleted her resources in the long run. Mach, less tired, found himself talking with Phoebe. The harpy brought fresh fruit and edible roots, but urged him to wash them in a nearby spring. “I wash, but my talons form the poison, and it gets on what I touch,” she explained. Mach was happy to wash the food.

“There be my sisters in the sky, and goblins o’er the plain,” Phoebe announced after taking a flight. “An thou knowest not why they seek ye?”

“An Adept sent them,” Mach said. “He wants me alive; he doesn’t care about Fleta. She carried me from the Lattice in a day.”

“In a single day? Lucky thou art she died not on the hoof!”

“She’s a good creature,” Mach agreed.

“And for the love o’ thee!” She shook her head. She was as awkwardly endowed as all her kind, with a human head and breasts and the wings and hind parts of a vulture. Her face was lined and her breasts sagged; her hair was a wild tangle. About the only pretty part of her was her wings, which had a metallic luster. Her voice was harsh, sounding like a screech even when she talked normally. Mach could see that if she had behaved the way the others of her kind did, allowing filth to encrust her body, she would have been monstrously ugly; as it was, she was merely homely. “My kind has no such love.”

“If I may ask—just how does your kind reproduce? I understand there are no males of your species.”

“Aye, there be none. We lay eggs and leave them scattered about; an one survive the animals long enough to hatch, an the chick not get consumed, she grows to size and lays her own eggs. Legend has it that only a fertilized egg can hatch a male harpy—but only a male of our species can fertilize it. So it be an endless circle. We be chronically bitter about that, and take it out on all creatures.” She sighed. “Sometimes I wish it were otherwise. But what else be there?”

Mach shrugged. “I don’t know. It does seem a tragedy. But why didn’t you revile me when I showed up in the night?”

“I should have, I know,” she confessed. “But after a year denied the company of mine own kind, awful as that be, I was lonely. So I was foolish.”

“And got your tail fixed.”

“It passeth all understanding.”

“Phoebe—are harpies supposed to be ugly?”

“What point to be other?”

“If you get lonely, you are more likely to find company of any kind if you look nice.”

She laughed with her raucous cackle. “What a notion!”

“Why don’t you let me do some work on your hair, and see what happens?”

“Thou canst not make me beautiful,” she said. “That would take the magic o’ an Adept!”

“I’m just curious.”

She shrugged. “It be a mere game, but I be beholden for thy company. Play with my hair, an thou wishest.”

“I need a comb.” Mach looked about. He found a piece of a fish bone with a few ragged spikes.

He pondered. Then he sang: “Give this home one big comb.”

The fish bone shimmered, and became a huge mass of wax and honey. The stuff dripped from his hand.

“A honeycomb!” Phoebe screeched, snatching it out of his hand. In a moment she was gobbling it, getting it all over her face and in her hair. Then she paused. “Oops, my harpy manner o’ercame me. Didst conjure it for thyself?”

“No, welcome to it,” Mach said. “I wanted a hair comb.”

“Check in my purse. Mayhap there be a comb there.”

Harpies had purses? Mach found her handbag and sorted through it. It contained several colored stones, a moldy piece of bread, a dozen acorns, a large rusty key, two large red feathers, a number of prune pits, a fragment of a mirror, the skeleton of a small snake, three pottery sherds—and a fine old comb.

“But we’ll have to get the honey out,” he decided. “Can you wash your hair?”

“Aye, it be time for another dunking anyway,” she said. She licked off her claws—evidently the poison didn’t affect her own system—and launched herself clumsily into the air. She flapped toward the spring, folded her wings, and dive-bombed into it.

So that was how she bathed! Mach and Fleta had drunk from that spring in the morning. Suddenly he felt queasy.

Phoebe emerged. For a moment, with just her head and bosom showing above the surface, she looked distinctly human. Then she spread her wings, and clambered into the air, and the effect was gone.