Swell Foop by Piers Anthony Read Free Book Online

front gate and across the warped drawbridge. Once they were beyond the moat, Breanna put two fingers into her mouth and made a piercing whistle. Soon zombies were shuffling in from all around. It was an impressive if macabre sight. Some zombies were relatively fresh, but others were in abysmal state. Sim knew that it depended not on the length of time they had been subject to this condition, but on their state of decomposition when they had been made zombies. A zombie never really changed form, though constantly sloughing off moldering bits of itself. That was part of their magic: to live their halflives interminably, neither fully alive nor fully dead. Sim could not think of a worse situation for a person to find himself in. Surely full death would be better.
    "I dread this," Cynthia murmured, mostly to herself.
    Breanna heard her. "Why, wing-mare? Because you have to work with zombies?"
    "Well—"
    "Zombies are people too, you know. They serve Xanth loyally, and don't deserve to be stigmatized."
    "Oh, I wouldn't think of—" Cynthia started somewhat lamely.
    "And they aren't all rotten. Some are very fresh, so you wouldn't even know they're zombies if you weren't told. If you took the trouble to get to know them—"
    "Cynthia apologizes for any inadvertent slur," Che said. "Her mind is distracted by the magnitude of the task ahead."
    "I will try to get to know a zombie well," Cynthia said apologetically.
    "Okay." Breanna let it go, this time. Sim made a mental note never to imply anything negative about a zombie, at least while in Breanna's vicinity.
    Sim took a brief walk while waiting for the zombies to assemble. He didn't fly, because that would suggest that he was trying to get away from the company of zombies, and after the way Breanna lit into Cynthia about that, he knew better. So he walked and hopped along, exploring the region, for he was interested in everything and more.
    He spied two human girls looking at a brownish pool. "Hello," he squawked.
    They jumped. "Don't gobble us up!" one cried. "We don't mean any harm."
    He realized that they had not understood him. That was what came of walking alone, instead of having Che near to translate for strangers. He stopped moving, doing his best to look innocuous.
    "Oh, you're just a bird," one girl said, reassured. "A big chick." Sim nodded.
    "A beautiful one," the other agreed. Sim tried to blush, but couldn't manage this human expression. His feathers got in the way.
    "We'll introduce ourselves," the first girl said. "We're twins, twelve years old. I'm Mol, and this is Ly."
    "I'm Sim," Sim squawked.
    "We do springs," Mol said.
    "But it's random," Ly added.
    "Squawk?"
    They laughed. "That confuses everyone, even us," Mol said. "It's like this: I can make springs, but there's no telling what kind they will be. I mean, they can be water, or green jelly, or castor oil." She made a face. No one liked the oil from the wheels on chairs.
    "And I change those springs," Ly said. "But I'm random too. So I might change her jelly to happiness elixir, or purple grunge. I wish we could control it, but we can't."
    "I just made this one," Mol said, looking at the pool.
    "But we don't know what it is," Ly said. "We don't want to just leave it here if it's bad. But how do we tell?"
    "You see, we can make springs, but we can't unmake them," Mol said.
    "We have to leave them where they are," Ly said. "If they aren't too bad. We left one in the Ever-glades that's a mere."
    "A what?" Sim squawked.
    "It makes you feel insignificant," Mol explained.
    "We didn't like leaving it," Ly said, "but at least it's out of the way."
    Obviously they needed help. Sim poked his beak cautiously into the pool. And got kicked in the tail.
    Startled, he looked at the girls, but they were not close enough to kick him. No one was. So he tested the pool again, this time watching his tail, and got kicked again—by nothing.
    A bulb flashed. "Boot rear!" he squawked. It was a popular drink, though somewhat