Did this make any sense? Apoca had a gut feeling that it did.

  “Nolan agrees,” Nimbus said.

  The guard unlocked the door, stood aside, and they entered.

  A young woman appeared. She had fair hair, fair eyes, a fair face, and a fair figure. “Mother!” she exclaimed, coming to hug her as her hair flashed plaid. “You seem so young!”

  “It’s a long story,” Nolan said. “Collect your things. We are taking you home.”

  “But the locks, the flies, the rats!”

  Why was she protesting? “She hankers for him too,” Nimbus said, having read her mind during the contact.

  “We have them abated for now,” Nolan said. “We are here to restore your freedom, but we must act before the proprietors catch on.”

  “Yes, of course, Daddy,” the girl agreed halfheartedly.

  The guard led them down to the dungeon. There were the rats. “Oh!” Mnemonica exclaimed, dismayed. “I thought you meant they were gone.”

  “I kissed the king rat,” Apoca said.

  The girl’s hair darkened with distaste. “Oh. Of course.”

  Apoca kissed the guard again, this time with her nullifying version. “Go your way,” she told him. “Do not tell anyone of your part in this, lest you be hanged as a traitor for helping us. Resume your normal routine. If anyone questions you, refer him to Cenpal. He knows what’s what.”

  The guard nodded, looking slightly disappointed. “He rather liked being your love slave,” Nimbus explained. “No woman ever kissed him before, let alone that way.”

  The rats conveyed them in style through the passages until they emerged at the original ledge. Apoca gave the king rat a kiss of release, and the swarm disappeared into the mountain. They stepped out.

  A dragon was just arriving. They stepped back into the cave, which was too small for the creature, though if it was a fire breather that might not be enough.

  The dragon landed on the ledge and transformed to a man. “Hello, three!” he called.

  It was Cenpal.

  “For pitiful sake!” Mnemonica exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”

  “Helping you escape. You and your father can handle the descent from the ledge by changing forms, but not your mother. I will give her a ride, as I know a navigable route.” He transformed into a centaur. “She can kiss me if she wants to be sure of my reliability.”

  Apoca noted that the dragon had been much larger than the man, as was the centaur. Evidently the rule of preservation of mass did not apply to Cenpal. That probably meant that the dragon was the size of his mother’s dragon form, and the centaur matched his father’s form. Which meant in turn that he probably had no separate talent the way Nolan did, because magic tended to even out. Nolan’s talent was seeing the imaginary, while Cenpal’s would be changing mass.

  “You are helping me escape?” Mnemonica demanded incredulously.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  Cenpal glanced at Apoca. “Because I love you.”

  “Have you lost your mind? You should want to keep me at the castle, where you can ravish me if I don’t accede to your will.” She hardly seemed to fear that fate.

  “No. I love you for your indomitable spirit. You will never accede, any more than I will. I wish we had met in other circumstances, where perhaps you could have loved me. But as it is, at least I can help give you the chance to find your happiness elsewhere.”

  Her hair became a tangle of kaleidoscopic colors. “You want me to love whom I please?”

  “Yes,” he said sadly. “Whoever else it may be.”

  Her hair firmed on green. She had made her decision. “Then I suppose I will have to marry you.”

  He stared at her incredulously. “I never knew you to be a cruel tease.”

  “I’m not. I am making an unforced choice.”

  “But that can’t mean—”

  She stepped over to him and kissed him. Little hearts flew out.

  She broke the kiss. “I have wanted to do that for some time, but circumstances prevented. I did not use the power.”

  He laughed ruefully. “That’s what you think.” Then he reconsidered. “Did Mother intervene?”

  “No.”

  “Yes,” Apoca said.

  He looked at her, assimilating that. “Then it must be all right.”

  Apoca turned to Nolan, her own hair turning green. “I think our job here is done.”

  He nodded. “Of course that means that we accept this timeline, with all that implies. Unless you prefer more time to—”

  She stepped over to him and kissed him. More little hearts appeared.

  She drew back her head. “I did not use the—”

  “That’s what you think.”

  They both laughed.

  Mnemonica turned to Cenpal. “You’d think after twenty years they’d stop being mushy.”

  “Will we stop then?”

  She laughed. “Touché.”

  Cenpal glanced at Apoca. “See you at the wedding.”

  Apoca and Nolan exchanged a glance and a thought. They knew they would soon be out of Limbo. But their later selves would still be there in this reality.

  “We’ll look older then,” Nolan said to Cenpal and Mnemonica.

  Then Cenpal became the dragon. Mnemonica became the serpent. She coiled around his torso, nonconstrictingly, so that he could safely carry her. He spread his wings and took off, flying toward the castle. She would be there, but no longer captive.

  “The three romances in chaos had a common theme,” Apoca said. “He desired her, and had the means to win her, once he discovered it. This seems similar, but I’m not sure what he had. I know that his mother has a talent, but I think it had to be more than that.”

  “Abject devotion. Her will will govern them.”

  “That would do it,” she agreed.

  “Is there a larger message for us?”

  “There must be. Once we discover it.”

  He took her in his arms. “I think we don’t need to go meet our older selves.”

  “We have our own memories to make,” she agreed.

  Then, looking over her shoulder, he spied something set in the outer wall of the mountain. “What is that?”

  “You don’t mean my supple torso?” she inquired archly.

  “It’s a tablet,” Nimbus said.

  They looked at it more closely. It was an octagonal metallic plaque with copper letters spelling out the words not here.

  He laughed. “What we have in mind to do together, we’ll do elsewhere, in privacy.”

  “And it won’t be commemorated by a plaque,” Apoca agreed.

  They kissed again. This time a single heart appeared. It expanded to carriage size and took them in. It flew back whatever way they had come. The scenery around them blurred. It hardly mattered; they weren’t paying attention to their environment.

  Chapter 7

  Imagination

  Nolan looked around when their timeless kiss finally timed out. They were back in the Fire Sail Boat, with Vinia, Gent, Gina Giantess, Dolly Llama, Ghorgeous Ghost, Squid, and an unfamiliar young woman. Had their whole adventure in Limbo been just another instant?

  “And is Mnemonica just a figment of our imagination?” Aurora asked, relaying Apoca’s thought.

  “She can’t be!” he replied aloud. “We’ll make sure of that.” He was courting Apoca, but now he knew he loved her, and that she loved him. He couldn’t wait to signal the stork with her, especially knowing the result.

  The faces around them were blank.

  Apoca looked around. “Have we been gone long?”

  “Most of a moment,” Squid said. “You blinked out, then reappeared in a heart-shaped bubble. Did you settle with the Good Magician?”

  They did not know about Limbo? “I think we have a long story to tell,” Nolan said. “The gist is that we not only saw the Good Magician, we met a number of historical figures and rescued a maiden in distress.”

  “Who happened to be our grown daughter,” Apoca said.

  “A grown daughter!” Ghorgeous exclaimed. “I envy you.”

  “Was there a boyfriend who wanted her, and you helped him get her?” Vinia asked.

  “Something like that,” Nolan said, smiling. “It does seem to be a theme.”

  Apoca glanced at the young woman, who looked to be about fourteen, with long blue-black hair, pretty and shapely. “Have we met?”

  “This is my friend Laurelai,” Squid said. “Her talent is to change her age, so she can appear adult if she chooses.”

  “She’s pretty close now,” Nolan said appreciatively. Apoca elbowed him in a rib.

  “I should explain,” Laurelai said, smiling. “I have a device that enables me to change genders at will. Normally by day I am more comfortable female, and am Squid’s friend, but at night or on special occasions I turn male. Then the Demon Chaos takes over the body and is Squid’s boyfriend.”

  “I like the one,” Squid said. “I love the other.”

  Dolly Llama had mentioned this. Now it was personal. “Thank you for that clarification,” Nolan said.

  Then Apoca spied something. “Gent and Gina—are you holding hands?”

  The two looked. “Why, so we are,” Gina said, not letting go. “I think it’s a leftover from that kiss.”

  Nolan remembered that the two had kissed when everyone else did. He himself had kissed Squid. It didn’t necessarily mean anything beyond the compulsion for everyone to be kissing at that moment.

  “But the two of you are from entirely different venues, regardless how you appear at the moment!” Apoca protested. “You’re an invisible giantess with a boyfriend of your type, and he was my love slave.”

  “We have no past and no future together,” Gina agreed. “But that kiss made our present romantic. We’ll soon enough get over it.” She smiled. “Especially when I revert to my own size and appearance. Or, more correctly nonappearance.”

  Gent nodded. “Know zoom.”

  “No hurry,” she translated. They already understood each other.

  There was a ripple in the air. The face of Ghorgeous Ghost appeared. “What’s next?”

  “We resume our Quest,” Nolan said.

  He looked at Vinia. “If your paths are ready.”

  The girl looked into space, checking the paths. “Not quite,” she said, surprised. “They’re mixed but I think will clarify in a moment.”

  Nolan glanced at the baton, which had been hovering as usual, observing without participating. It seemed confused.

  Gina looked at Apoca. “Is your time capsule vacant?”

  “I suppose it is,” Apoca agreed, surprised in her turn, because the heart-shaped bubble had remained in place instead of fading out when they arrived. It had merely become temporarily invisible.

  Gina faced Gent as they still held hands. “My invisible giant boyfriend and I are only dating. He gets together with other invisible girls on occasion, to my annoyance. I think I am entitled to a passing tryst of my own.”

  Gent grinned, catching on. “Eye know femfiend.”

  “You have no girlfriend.” She glanced around. “We’ll be only a moment, I think, outside.” She led him to the heart, and they stepped in and disappeared. It seemed it was possible to see out from inside, but not in from outside. It occurred to Nolan that that was just as well; he and Apoca had been handling each other as well as kissing and would have been chagrined had strangers along the route observed. Still, he would have liked to see into it now. How did invisible giantesses make out? Did they remove their clothes?

  Exactly one moment later the two reappeared and stepped out. His shirt was askew and her hair was mussed, but both looked quite satisfied. They had evidently spent somewhat more than a moment in the heart. Just as the Fire Sail Boat was larger inside than outside, the heart bubble was more timely inside than out.

  “There’s a green path,” Vinia said. The moment of indecision had been expended. Maybe the paths had known about the passing tryst.

  The baton seemed reassured. Now the narrative was proceeding as it should.

  “I must get outside,” Gina said, using a comb to unmuss her hair. “I feel the transformation spell coming to an end. I will hold up the glass cup.”

  Nia accompanied her up the ladder and onto the deck. The others followed, not looking up until the skirts cleared. There was the cup hovering beside the boat. Gina was of course invisible again. Was she clothed or unclothed?

  “You are thinking too much about another woman’s body,” Aurora said. “Apoca is annoyed.”

  He kept forgetting he was bugged. Then he saw Apoca’s quirk of a smile and realized he was being teased. Apoca would surely show him her body soon enough.

  The cup came to rest on its side on the deck, and they marched in. It tilted slowly upright and they slid to the bottom in half a tangle of limbs. Then the cap closed it off and it rose into the air.

  Dell, Nia, Squid, and Laurelai (after a nudge from Squid) waved farewell. Even the baton bobbed, though probably they couldn’t see it. Nolan, Apoca, Gent, and Vinia waved back. They were on their way.

  “The bugs are relaying my picture of the greenest path,” Vinia said. “It will be a while before we reach the nexus. Will you tell us what you did?”

  They told, as the scenery rushed past outside the glass. “Then Mnemonica decided to marry Cenpal after all,” Apoca concluded. “Once she wasn’t forced. Then we kissed and rode the heart bubble back to rejoin you.”

  “Twenty years hence,” Dolly said. “Is this another hint for your Quest?”

  “It does match the theme,” Nolan said. “He wanted her and finally found the way to get her.”

  “As the Dwarf Demon of Talents wants the Dwarf Demoness of Transcription,” the llama agreed. “But what does he have that she wants? That is the mystery. Solve that, and you should have a better chance to persuade him to resume his job.”

  “But why is the answer so obscure?” Nolan asked, frustrated.

  “Because Demon protocol requires that one Demon not mess with the domain of another. Chaos can’t influence your Quest directly, other than by ensuring that the Dwarf Demon play fair, but Squid wants him to help more, so he is doing it via obscure hints. That way your Quest is your own doing and he is just a bystander.”

  “Some bystander!” But it did make obscure sense. The universe would be a hopeless mishmash if the Demons who ran it did not honor their agreed conventions.

  The baton seemed relieved. Maybe the Demon Chaos’s influence had been changing the story, confusing it.

  “Figure out what DD Talents has that DD Transcription truly wants, so he can win her,” the llama said. “Then all should be reasonably well.”

  Now Nolan wondered how Dwarf Demons did it. That session with Apoca had revved him up.

  “Her too,” Aurora confided. “She’s revved.” Nolan liked that news.

  “Could it be something we have, that we can give him?” Apoca asked.

  “It could be,” Dolly said. “You provided the key input in more than one of the examples.”

  “Yet even a Dwarf Demon has so much power compared to what we have, this seems unlikely.”

  “There must be something,” Dolly insisted. “Demon Chaos did not strike me as a tease, and he truly wants to please Squid. She may be an imitation girl, but she is a good person. She likes you, and of course your Quest is important. She does not want her own children to be delivered with the talent of conjuring mud pies or worse.”

  “No woman does,” Apoca agreed, and Vinia nodded. “It’s hard on cleanliness.”

  “Or man,” Nolan said. “He wants unique children.” Like Mnemonica, though there was no issue of talents there.

  The baton nodded.

  “Something else,” Nolan said. “We saw a plaque that said not here. We took that to mean we should not become unduly affectionate at that locale. But now I wonder.”

  “You should,” Dolly said. “That more likely refers to Dwarf Demon Talents, whom you seek. Demon Chaos may be providing you with a hint of the proper path.”

  Nolan’s glance collided with Apoca’s glance. Of course! They had been in Limbo to rescue their daughter, not to find the Dwarf Demon. It was a necessary bypath. Now they needed to get back to the Quest.

  “We will keep an eye out,” Apoca said.

  The passing scenery slowed. The cup descended. They landed at a nexus of six diverging paths.

  They scrambled out, except for Dolly, who would return to the pundemic region with her new friend, Gina.

  Gent had been silent throughout. He looked longingly at the cup as it lifted into the air, and Nolan knew it wasn’t the llama he was missing. He was remembering his tryst. He was a man in need of a woman.

  “These paths must represent our possible routes to Dwarf Demon Talents,” Nolan said. “He has to be on one of them, and not necessarily the last one we take. This must be the real start of our journey.”

  “Where’s the green?” Apoca asked Vinia.

  “The colors are muddled. None of them are pure green.”

  “What does that mean, normally?”

  “That we are missing something. But I don’t know what it is.”

  “So DD Talents is fudging the trail, blocking the colors,” Nolan said. “But the plaques will clarify it. If we can find them.”

  “He is quietly trying to cheat,” Apoca said. “And Chaos is quietly preventing it. But we still have to do the brute work ourselves.”

  The baton was restless, as if the script were going astray again.

  Ghorgeous formed a face. “Maybe we’re looking in the wrong direction. Is there green behind you?”

  Vinia turned around to face a path wandering away. “Yes,” she said, amazed. “Sort of. It’s not completely clear. But that’s the way we came.”