The Color Of Her Panties by Piers Anthony Read Free Book Online Page B

pleasant retreat, and Okra was able to hide there until the commotion above ground down into a dull roar.
    That was one of Okra's early memories, and not unpleasant as ogre experiences went.  But the knowledge that she was cursed with a magic talent haunted her thereafter.
    All ogres had magic, of course, and plenty of it; it was magic that gave them their vaunted strength, ugliness, and stupidity.  But a separate talent?  That was awful!  No wonder she was small and plain and unstupid; her natural magic had been siphoned away to make this other talent.
    But maybe with luck she would never discover what it was.
    Her other big memory was when she was thirteen.  It rained, as it did every afternoon in this season.  Thick steamy clouds wet on those below with torrents of sheets of deluge that drenched the hot rocks and cooled the hot pools.  Steam puffed up, but the freezing rain sliced on through, making a turmoil of vapor that suffused the caves and made it almost impossible to breathe.  It was wonderful.
    The dining room smelled of spoiling cabbage and stewed carcasses.  That, too, was wonderful.  Okra mussed up her unogreishly blond hair so that it would better hide the IQ vine circlet she wore as a wreath, and went inside.  IQ vines had little effect on most ogres, because twice nothing remained nothing, but it helped Okra be alert enough to conceal her other liabilities.  One was asthma; a siege of it had somehow found her, and it refused to depart.  So she had to pretend to be fashionably hoarse, though actually she was having trouble breathing.
    She remained naive enough to fancy that a birthday was important to anyone other than the owner of it.  This was the day that cured her of that notion.  It was just a pretext for another bash, and a new horror.
    She would later wish she had never had that birthday, but at the time she hadn't known how it would turn out.  She had retained a taller of innocence.
    In an effort to sweeten the air, Okra's grandmother, that great burgundy queen Opuntia, had arranged to intermix heaps of wilted flowers with the rushes strewn about the dining room.  There was a riotous show of color: white magnolias, yellow, orange, and red hibiscus, deep purple jacaranda, bougainvillea, and the famous fragrant lavender blooms from which Grandmother Ogre's medicinal soap was made.  All of this was quickly trampled under the humongous hairy feet of the ogre clan as they pounded in to eat.  Soon the dining room looked like an elegant woman dressed in soiled and tattered rags, feeling somewhat the worse for wear.
    The door from the kitchen opened, and the old servant Troika Troll tromped in, bearing the largest soup tureen.
    Behind her other servants came, each bending under the oppressive weight of the food piled on their serving platters.  The last person in was Magpie, Okra's tutor.  She was in black leather and black feathers.  Her outfit was dated by a century or two, but that was understandable, for Magpie was a demoness who had served similarly in many places and times.
    She had even been at the fabulous human Castle Roogna, with Princess Rose, serving at her wedding to Good Magician Humfrey.  Later Rose had gone to Hell in a handbasket, but remained a good person; Hell needed more roses, and roses were her talent.  Who knew what else Magpie had seen during her immortal existence!
    No wonder she liked being a servant.
    But someone tripped and dropped a platter, and its contents spewed across the table and floor.  “Incompetent!” screamed the cook.  Enraged, she threw crockery, handfuls of ground pepper, and finally Okra's birthday cake across the room.  That caused the ogres to think that there was a food fight in progress, and they gleefully pitched in, filling the air with flying food.  The original purpose of the party was forgotten.  Now the dining room smelled not only of spoiled cabbage and wilted flowers, but also of every other type of bad food.
    Okra, appalled,