Now Aery began to connect. “So some outside party has been making me stormy. I don’t mind being tempestuous, but I want it to be my own decision, not someone else’s.”

  “Exactly,” Flame and Flood said almost together.

  Aery turned to Nydia. “You mentioned finding a man for me to fascinate. Who?”

  “We were thinking of the Man in the Moon.”

  “I know of him! He’s been watching me for eons, the voyeur. Now that I have a mind, I am making sense of some of my memories.”

  “We really don’t know his nature, but thought he might find you interesting.”

  Aery frowned. She was rapidly learning common expressions. “I want any relationship between us to be my choice, not his.”

  There spoke a like-minded woman, Nydia thought with a certain muted pride. “We all do.”

  Flame and Flood exchanged a glance, but didn’t comment. The problems of male and female interaction seemed to extend well beyond species, or even type. They might or might not figure it out in due course.

  “So I need to learn how to kiss with power.”

  Naturally, she had had no experience, without a body. She would need to learn.

  They tried to decide how to teach her. But the males knew better how to receive a kiss than how to deliver it, and of course they were like brothers to her. It had to be the women.

  “Women kissing women,” Noletta said. “That’s not my style.”

  “Nor mine,” Nerine agreed. “Nymphs never kissed nymphs in the Retreat.”

  “I’m too young,” Vinia said. “I’ve kissed Ion, but we’re betrothed.”

  “I’m younger,” Woe Betide said. “Metria really knows how to do it, but that’s different. She’s a messy part of the Adult Conspiracy, shame on her.” She grimaced cutely. “And our third personality, Mentia, is worse. She’s crazy. She can drive a man bonkers with a kiss.”

  “And leave me out of it,” Ecstasy said. “I never aspired to be a siren.” But she looked a smidgen sad.

  “Well, we did kiss Apoca,” Nydia said. The others nodded; the nymphs could kiss women when there was reason.

  So it was up to them. “I’ll start,” Nerine said. “I kissed men when I was a princess. Of course, that was a while ago.”

  “A thousand years,” Woe said, laughing. “You’ll be rusty.”

  Nerine faced Aery. “I will pretend you are a man I want to impress. Then you can imitate that and kiss me back, pretending I’m the man.”

  “This is all new to me.” The Element looked confused but determined.

  New to all of us, Nydia thought, and Anthem agreed. But what else could they do? Aery needed this tool.

  Nerine kissed Aery firmly on the mouth. No little hearts showed. Then Aery kissed her back. “Little or no magic there,” Nerine said regretfully. The Element sadly agreed.

  Then Noletta kissed her, evincing some fiery passion, and she kissed Noletta back. “Some there, I think,” Noletta reported. “For half an instant, I felt a whiff.”

  “That was my air stirring. Maybe I’m learning.”

  Finally, Nydia took her place. She visualized the Air Element as a handsome man, maybe like Prince Nolan, and kissed the figurine as passionately as she could.

  “Hoo!” Aery breathed. “That had force.” Then she kissed Nydia back. The kiss had impact.

  “I think you’re getting it,” Nydia said, surprised.

  “You showed me how.”

  “Where did you learn to kiss like that?” Ecstasy asked. “I could see the power of it.”

  “I have no idea. Maybe I was copying Apoca.” Certainly she had never kissed a faun like that, and she didn’t see how the Stein could have contributed.

  “The thing to do is put feeling into it,” Ecstasy told Aery. “Passion can make up for inexperience.”

  “I’ll try,” Aery said uncertainly.

  “Now we have to go corral the moon man,” Nydia said, evincing more decisiveness than she felt. It was evident that being a leader meant faking significant parts of it. “The day is getting on. We should be able to catch the moon near the horizon soon.”

  “Let’s get on it,” Noletta said.

  Sure enough, the moon was low in the sky, full and bright. At least they wouldn’t have to wrestle with the points of a crescent. She didn’t see the face of the Man in the Moon, but knew it didn’t always show. He might be taking a potty break.

  “Problem,” Ecstasy said. “The moon is canny. You can’t just run up to it and jump on. It will set elsewhere, avoiding you.”

  Oops. Nydia realized she was right. She focused her Stein intellect on the problem—and came up with a possible answer. “We’ll hide in a tree, then use the flying carpet to get above the moon when it passes, and jump down, catching it by surprise.”

  She brought out the carpet and spread it flat, and they piled on, all nine of them neatly fitting. That seemed to be part of its magic. Nydia found herself sitting next to Aery, which was fine. Vinia took over the steering, and the carpet flew in a wide circle to a spreading acorn tree close to where the moon was heading.

  “Now the magic of perspective makes big distant things appear small and close,” Nydia explained, drawing on the information in the template as interpreted by the Stein. “The moon may look small, but it’s actually pretty big. We’ll have to catch it just right. When I say ‘Jump!’ we’ll all hop off the carpet and down on it. If this works the way it’s supposed to, we’ll be there, with it full size. Then all we’ll have to do is find the Man in the Moon.”

  “My paths will lead us there,” Vinia said.

  They peeked through the foliage, watching the approaching moon. It seemed to be about the size of a Mundane basketball, slanting slowly down through the air toward them. Could it really be big enough to land on safely, or would their weight push it down into the ground, ruining everything? Their jump was going to be a leap of faith.

  Nydia remembered a detail. She caught hold of a stray thread of the carpet and tied it around her wrist. She didn’t want to lose it when they jumped.

  The moon finally came touchingly close to the ground, about to go out of sight of any distant viewers. Its surface consisted of ridges of green cheese and dark seas. No surprises there; everyone knew the moon was made of green cheese. “Now,” Nydia whispered to Vinia.

  “I know,” the girl whispered back. “There’s green ahead.” Was that a joke?

  The carpet lurched up out of the tree and sailed over the moon, which was surprised and froze in place for a moment. “Jump!” Nydia called loudly, and leaped.

  For a moment, two things nervoused her. The first was whether the others would jump at her command or hold back, messing up the transfer. The second was whether the little ball that was the moon would actually support them. The third was whether the thread she held would haul the carpet back into the bag so they wouldn’t lose it.

  “A third?” Anthem asked as they dropped. “You said there were only two.”

  “I miscounted.”

  Suddenly, the moon was vastly larger than it had been. Nydia plopped into a pile of, yes, soft green cheese. Around her, the others landed similarly, plop, plop … plop! Eight in all. The smell of cheese was almost overpowering.

  They were on the moon. It was indeed larger than it had looked. And the carpet yarn tied to her wrist was threading into the bottomless bag, hauling the carpet with it. Even the improperly counted concern had worked.

  They stood on the cheese and looked around. The ground was spongy, of course, just soft enough to break their fall without bruising them, but firm enough to walk on, with cheese bushes and trees spotting it. Nearby was the shore of a great dark sea, which seemed to be formed of liquid cheese. Beside it was a sign: mare imbrium. Nydia recognized that from the template; it was where the night mare Imbri came from, her home pasture, as it were. The night mares brought bad dreams to deserving sleepers, punishing them for their waking transgressions. It was a useful service to keep bad folk in line. Mare Imbri had even been the Protagonist of a story; she was famous. Of course, she wasn’t here now; she would be on bad dream duty. No, Nydia remembered, she had retired, taking up with a tree faun after losing her body in the Void.

  The Void. That gave her a chill. It was the last of the Elements, and likely the one Nydia herself would have to recruit. She had no idea how she would manage that. Would the others do their parts, only to have her foul it up and maybe get them swallowed by the Void? She shuddered.

  Something charged across the surface toward them. It looked like a giant box of cheese crackers. Flame stepped up to toast it, but it stopped just out of range. The box opened and disgorged a cracker. The cracker sprouted little legs and fled toward a nearby cracker barrel. Then the box departed.

  “A moonster!” Noletta said. “Instead of gobbling prey, it spits out crackers.”

  So it seemed. Nydia was relieved it hadn’t attacked them. Flame would have burned it up.

  “The green path goes right into the sea,” Vinia said. “Good thing we have those socks.”

  “Socks?” Aery asked.

  “We got them from the Good Magician,” Noletta explained. “They protect us from the Elements. Even other Elements can use them, when they have to.”

  Oops. “There are not enough to go around,” Nydia said. “We’d better avoid the sea. It would be pretty messy to walk under it, and how would we get clean again?”

  “We could sail across it,” Nerine said. “I remember seeing many boats on the surface when I lived underwater.”

  “If we had a boat,” Noletta said. Oops again.

  “Maybe we could use the carpet,” Ecstasy suggested.

  Nydia reached into the bag and caught hold of the carpet. It resisted coming out, and she was cautious about yanking it, lest it unravel. “Either it’s tired from flying so many folk at once, or it doesn’t want to mess with gooey cheese.”

  “Or maybe we could make a boat,” Ecstasy said.

  That seemed to make sense. They cast about and found the old, tough rind of a long-since hardened giant cheese. Flood washed it out with a conjured blast of water, and Flame dried it with fire heat. The two Elements were working well together. They found a solid cheese pole left from twisted strands of ancient string cheese and some cheesecloth. Soon, they had their boat, floating on the edge of the sea. They piled in, with Nydia sitting beside Aery again.

  But there was no wind.

  “We need paddles,” Ecstasy said. “Maybe fashioned from fragments of rind.”

  “No, I’ll handle that aspect,” Aery said.

  Wind formed, filling the sail and propelling the craft across the sea. Vinia steered it using the rudder they had made from a flake of rind, guiding it along the path she saw. The smell of the breeze was cheesy, but bearable.

  Something appeared on the horizon. It seemed to be a flying moonster. “Um,” Noletta said, “that’s no Gouda.”

  “That’s a cheesy pun,” Nerine said.

  “Thank you. That intrusion is an Edam shame.”

  Vinia and Woe tittered, knowing that it sounded like proscribed cursing without quite getting there. They loved to see the Conspiracy get teased before they grew up and abolished it. The adults were quiet, knowing that throughout history children had had the same intention, but then meekly joined it when they came of age.

  The object seemed to be a cheesy blimp. It belched out a cloud of yellow vapor.

  Ecstasy wrinkled her nose. “Eau de Limburger.”

  “What a stench,” Vinia said.

  “Too high in the sky for me to burn,” Flame said. “And my fire would just make it smell worse. Smoked Limburger.”

  “I can’t wash it out from here,” Flood said.

  “I can blow it away,” Aery said. “But that would make a storm because I am already directing one wind in this area, for the sail, and that would complicate the local weather.”

  The cheese blimp belched another cloud of fetor. They all grimaced. “Blow it away!” Vinia gasped. “Better a storm than a cheesy stink.” The others agreed. Indeed, the odor was horrendous. Even the three Elements were having trouble with it. It was clear that the moon really knew how to cut cheese.

  “As you wish.” There was a howl as the wind around them picked up.

  In about two and a half moments, it developed into a raging storm. It caught hold of the blimp and blew it away, tumbling end over end and looking not at all pleased. But it also generated a shower of sticky cheese bits that made ready to pelt them and the boat unmercifully.

  “The sail!” Nydia cried. “Take it down and use it as a shield!”

  They quickly did so, and huddled under it as the bits splatted down.

  Then the storm faded, no longer needed. They dumped the sheetful of odoriferous bits into the brine, which seemed to like them well enough. They bubbled merrily as they dissolved, generating puffs of reeking cloudlets. “Honey sheet,” Noletta muttered, evoking more titters. She was playing to an audience. Nydia was impressed by the social expertise she was developing—and the alternate vocabulary. Indeed, the Nymphs were becoming real people.

  “If things conclude as I would like,” Flame said, “you will be good with our children.”

  Noletta froze an instant over a moment, absorbing that. Had he just asked her to marry him? Was she ready to go that route? He was an Element, no more a real person than the Nymphs were, but he was learning too.

  “Why not?” Nerine asked. “You’ll never get cold, Letta.”

  Noletta nodded. “Maybe it could work.”

  Had she just accepted? Not that Nymphs had any fear of the Conspiracy.

  The others stayed out of it, but Nerine and Flood looked thoughtful. How serious a relationship were the two pondering?

  The pelted sheet back in place as the sail and the moderate breeze again blowing, they resumed traveling.

  Other flying moonsters appeared on the horizon, but they stayed clear, evidently having gotten the message.

  Soon the boat reached the far shore. They disembarked, anchored it to a cheese boulder, and walked on, still following Vinia’s path. They were now curving around the moon into territory not normally visible from Xanth. They could see that parts of the curve were actually quite sharp. The moon was really like a dish.

  The cheese landscape turned blue. Clumps of azure mold grew all around, and music sounded.

  “That’s blues music,” Anthem said, surprised. She, of course, was familiar with all types of melody. “It will have its effect.”

  Sure enough, a pall of depression enfolded them. Was their mission here really worthwhile? It was starting to seem pointless. Would they even find the Man in the Moon, let alone recruit him? Nydia could see the dejection forming in her companions.

  “Don’t be discouraged,” she told them. “We are crossing Blue Cheese geography. It makes us sad. It has nothing to do with our natural feelings. Just ignore the music and keep going.”

  Reluctantly, they obeyed. But it wasn’t easy. Nydia was coming to appreciate that depression was not something that could be ignored; it clung to them with grim tenacity. It would not be abolished by mere smiles.

  Then they came to a Red Cheese section, and the gloom was replaced by ire. Why was this spot mission taking so long? They had better things to do than waste time here.

  “My kind of territory,” Flame said with satisfaction.

  “Oh?” Noletta said. “You like fighting?”

  “You kissed me when we argued. I’ve liked you ever since, you hot-blooded creature.”

  “Well, I’m not sure that makes sense.”

  “If you don’t shut up, I’ll kiss you again.”

  “You think that would stop me?” she demanded angrily.

  “I’m not saying where I’ll kiss you.”

  She froze in horror. “You wouldn’t dare!”

  “Wouldn’t I, hotbox?” He grabbed her and kissed her passionately. She met him two-thirds of the way.

  But they were laughing. They were putting on another show, and not just for the children. Nydia couldn’t help feeling a tinge of envy. She had never had a relationship with a male other than a faun, which hardly counted, and wasn’t sure she ever would. She saw a similar expression hovering near Ecstasy.

  After that came a Yellow Cheese section. Now they were afraid of every shadow, even though they knew Flame could readily protect them from any moonsters.

  Then on through a Black Cheese section, fearing doom. And White Cheese, feeling foolishly positive.

  They spied something ahead. Could it be?

  “That’s a cow!” Vinia said.

  Sure enough, it was a white cow with black spots that looked like small moon craters. She was grazing on something, maybe moon dust.

  “Actually, that makes sense,” Ecstasy said. “Where else is the milk going to come from to make all that cheese?”

  “It must be the cow that jumped over the moon,” Noletta said. “And she didn’t quite clear it, so she got stuck here.”

  “At least she is giving milk here,” Vinia said. “So she’s not an udder failure.”

  The cow lifted her head and saw them. “Mooooon!”

  “And she’s lonely,” Nydia said. “No bull.”

  The others sent her a groaning look. Oops! She had inadvertently punned.

  They moved on. At last they came to a Plaid Cheese Section.

  Plaid? They paused uncertainly.

  “I don’t know which way to go,” Vinia said. “The paths are tangled. I can’t see which color goes where.”

  Then Nydia remembered. “Apoca! When she’s in doubt, or changing her mind, her hair turns plaid. It must be the same with the cheese. It’s in transition, maybe not yet selected for a type. It doesn’t know whether it’s going to be Brie, or Mozzarella, or Parmesan, or Swiss, or whatever. We’ll just have to find our own way through this one.”