Out of Phaze

He gazed at his limp anatomy. This was hopeless! Then he had a notion. He worked it out in his head, and then hummed to summon his magic. “Grant me the skill to perform at will,” he sang, thinking of sex.

The fog formed and dissipated—and abruptly his potency was restored. For once his magic had worked the way he wanted!

He strode back to Fleta. Without a word he took her in his arms and did what she wished. There was no special joy in it; the spell merely made him potent, not satisfied. Perhaps that was why it worked, he realized: he now had no more satisfaction in the act than she did therefore was never satiated. Then, before she could stir again, he did it again. And again. He was magically competent.

Finally, after half a dozen repetitions, she was satisfied. She embraced him and slept. He relaxed, but his anatomy did not. Sure enough, in half an hour she woke, wanting more.

So it was for the afternoon, and the night, and the following morning. Finally, in the afternoon, her cycle moved on, and she needed no more from him. It was Mach’s turn to sleep the sleep of exhaustion, as the energy drained from his body by the potency spell had to be restored. If Fleta had run hundreds of kilometers in an afternoon, he had performed a similar feat.

They resumed their journey, climbing the great Purple Mountain. But now some of the urgency was gone. Why was he going to see the Brown Adept? Mach asked himself. To find out how to return to Proton? What, then, would become of Fleta? To escape the pursuit by the various monsters? They seemed to be free of it here. Yet if he did not go—if he just stayed here—what of Bane, whose body and world these really were? He had no right to think only of himself.

Fleta paused, looking at him. “Thou’rt all right?”

“Just wishing I could stay here forever, with you. But that would be at Bane’s expense.”

“Aye. And he be an apprentice Adept. Our love be not for eternity.” She looked so forlorn as she said it, that he had to take her in his arms and kiss her. This time she responded warmly.

“Funny thing,” he said. “Yesterday, when—you wouldn’t kiss me.”

“This be love,” she said. “That be breeding.”

“But can’t the two be joined?”

Her brow furrowed. “They be two different things!”

“Not in my frame.”

“What a funny frame!”

“I suppose so.” What point to debate it with her? Her nature did not equip her to understand.

They found a niche to spend the night, well up the mountain. After they had eaten, and the darkness closed in, Mach brought up the question of the afternoon again. “When you’re out of heat, you don’t seek sex,” he said.

“Aye. It be pointless, then.”

“But can you do it?”

“Can, aye. Did, as game with Bane. But why?”

“Because I prefer to combine love and sex. That’s the way it is, with human beings.”

“But when it be impossible to breed—“

“When we did it, it was impossible to breed. But we did it anyway, for another reason.”

‘To prevent me from running away,” she agreed. “And glad I am that thou didst manage that, Mach! But now there be no danger o’ that.”

“So even your kind can do it for other reason than for breeding.”

She considered. “Aye.”

“I’d like to do it for other reason now. For pleasure.”

“Why of course, Mach, an it please thee! It meaneth naught to me, other than as a game.” She hiked up her cloak and spread her legs. “But be not long about it, so I can sleep.”

“My way,” he said. He kissed her, and kissed her again, and proceeded from there, and she cooperated warmly, though evidently confused about his progress, until at last they completed the act in the midst of another kiss.

“Oh, Mach,” she whispered breathlessly. “I think I like it thy way better!”

“Aye,” he agreed, smiling.

“Let’s do it again!”

“Tomorrow!” he said.

She sighed. But she rested her head against his shoulder and slept, instantly. Mach suspected she had been teasing him, but he was not about to inquire.

They crossed the range at a high, chill pass, where the wind cut through bitingly. Fleta changed to unicorn form for this occasion, because this body was better for both the terrain and the cold, and Mach rode her, huddling as low as he could.

But as they moved toward the shelter of the tree-line, a shape loomed in the sky. It was a harpy, and not Phoebe, for the hair was wrong. In a moment there were several harpies, closing in. They had been spotted.

Fleta raced for the trees. Then she stopped, and changed to hummingbird form, and Mach climbed a twisted tree and hid as well as he could in the foliage. The harpies flapped close and peered about, calling out curses, but could not locate the fugitives. Frustrated, they departed, for they too were getting chilled.

Mach descended, and Fleta joined him in human form. “But they will alert the goblins,” she said. “And from the goblins we cannot hide thus.”

“We’ll just have to move as far as we can, so they don’t know where we are,” Mach said. “In a direction they don’t expect.”