Then he got a notion. Could the ants want to swing on the swing? It might be a rare experience for them.

  He looked at the baton, but it was studiedly neutral. Still no help there.

  Well, bleep. He could help the ants, if they were of a mind to accept it. It was just possible that they could communicate, as ants had antennae that enabled them to talk with one another. Why not with him?

  He sat down and put his right hand on the cave floor, fingers down, close to the throng. If they attacked by burning him, he would rise up and stomp them to stains. He suspected they knew that.

  The ants paused, as if considering. Then a large one approached his hand. It looked to be the queen ant, because she wore a fiery little crown. She did not fire at him. Instead she climbed carefully onto the back of his index finger. Her antennae seemed to spark.

  Hello.

  She was talking to him! She surely couldn’t understand his verbal speech, but maybe his thought could reach her through his skin. “Hello,” he said, focusing his thought to match.

  I am Queen Antonia Fire Ant. Who are you?

  “I am Prince Nolan Naga, presently in human form.”

  A naga prince! What is your business here?

  “I am seeking the Good Magician, so he can find me my ideal woman, preferably a sexy princess.” He smiled. “Not an ant princess, I think. No offense. How about you?”

  We are performing our Service for his Answer to our Question. But that’s irrelevant. We are part of the Challenge at the moment. We will toast you if you take the wrong path.

  “But I don’t know the correct path.”

  Indeed. That is the Challenge.

  There had to be more to it than that. The rising water would mess him up as readily as the ants. “Why should we quarrel? I bear you no malice. I just want to get safely out of here.”

  Indeed.

  She might be following a script. He just needed to learn it and find a way to turn it to his advantage. “There has to be a way we can help each other. Why do you want to reach that swing?”

  Once a year the cave wind passes the swing and generates swing music. We like to celebrate the event by dancing on it. We call it the Swing Dance. There was supposed to be a vine trailing from it that we could climb, but some idiot setting up this scene must have forgotten that detail. Now the wind is rising and we can’t get there in time. It’s a great disappointment.

  Ah. That was the script. They had to reach the swing in time to dance to the music of the wind. “You need to reach the swing. I need to find a safe route out of here. You surely know all the passages. How about a trade: I will help you reach the swing if you help me find the right path out. Deal?”

  She didn’t play coy. The wind was rising. Deal.

  The baton remained neutral.

  “I believe I can just reach the swing with my hand. You can climb up me to get there. Promise you won’t burn me.”

  She made a mental laugh. Promise. Despite your lack of interest in an ant princess. Then she scrambled off his finger to rejoin her troupe and give them the word.

  Nolan stood. He reached up and touched the bottom of the swing with the tip of his longest finger. Close call!

  The ants swarmed to his feet and scrambled up his trousers. There was no fire. They climbed to his neck, up along his lifted arm, and to the bottom of the swing. They clung to the wood and went on around to the seat of it.

  The last to pass was the queen. You may delay to watch our dance if you wish. Then I will assign a minion to guide you out of the cave.

  “Thank you, Queen Antonia.”

  You are more than welcome.

  It seemed that she liked him, now that they had made a mutually beneficial deal. She moved on up to the swing.

  Nolan lowered his arm, which was tired, and stood back to watch the dance. The cave wind was rising, and the swing swung back and forth when his stabilizing finger left it.

  Then he realized that he couldn’t see the dance because it was on the upper surface of the seat of the swing, which was out of his sight. Fortunately that was not difficult to deal with. He walked to the curving edge of the cave, climbing the wall as it were. Then he was able to see across to the upper surface of the swing.

  The baton watched too. It lacked eyes, but it was orienting itself toward the swing.

  Now the air current blew in earnest. It caught the swing and drove it forth and back. As it moved, it rocked a bit and formed lilting notes in the wind. Not only did the ants hold firm, they danced, forming patterns that swung in and out in time with the motion of the swing. It was pretty.

  Then they shot out their fire. The jets of it intersected above them and curled into fiery smoke, which wavered in the wind like a living thing in itself before it dissipated. It was beautiful.

  Nolan was enchanted. He had never seen art like this before, enhanced by the music. When the show was done he applauded. The baton nodded and beat its wings in time with the claps of his hands: it appreciated the show too.

  The wind died and the swing settled back to stillness. The show was over. Nolan returned to the swing and stretched up his arm to enable the ants to descend, but instead they dropped to the cave floor. They were so small that such a fall did not hurt them. It was only the ascent that had been beyond them.

  Then one ant dropped to his hand. Surprised, he lowered it toward the floor. But the ant demurred. I am Aurora Ant. I am no princess, but I am one of the rare ants with the talent of contact telepathy, like that of the queen. I will guide you out of the cave.

  Oh. He had almost forgotten their deal. Fortunately the queen had not. “Thank you, Aurora.” He moved his hand to his shoulder so that she could be more secure there. He realized that not just any ant could help him; there needed to be communication. The queen had made sure of that.

  The baton nodded smugly. It seemed it had not forgotten. But neither had it reminded him. Its studied neutrality was starting to annoy him.

  This way. The ant made a mental arrow, pointing.

  He went that way. Soon she made another arrow, and he took a side path he would not have recognized alone. Then another.

  While they moved, they talked. “I am Prince Nolan Naga, going to ask the Good Magician for information about my ideal woman.”

  I must confess that I, too, have a mission, she replied. There was something about her mind or tone that he liked. It was almost as if she were a pretty girl.

  I am a pretty girl, she thought. For an ant.

  Oh. “Sorry.”

  The baton nodded smugly. So it could hear her thoughts despite the lack of physical contact, just as it heard Nolan’s thoughts.

  My mission is to find a suitable location for our tribe to move. We were defending a farmer’s field from moles, but then the ungrateful wretch fired us. So we need to move. That’s why we came to see the Good Magician.

  “Oh, of course. I hope you find a suitable new home.”

  I suspect that you will go there, in the course of your travels. That’s why the Good Magician put us together.

  He realized that this could be so. “Welcome to travel with me, then.” Her pretty-girl mind made him continue to enjoy her company.

  She directed him through the labyrinth, until at last they emerged into daylight. He was through the second Challenge …

  Only to face the third. The path ahead led directly through fields of plants to a giant pair of hairy stakes that completely blocked it. Briar bushes grew close by the sides so that he could not get around the stakes.

  He glanced at the baton. It nodded. He was on his own again, to figure out the nature of the impediment, and the way to get past it. Probably the baton had no better idea than he did.

  This is interesting, Aurora thought. A whole other setting.

  He looked around. The bushes formed a nearly solid wall. He looked back. He saw that he had passed by a large field growing some kind of crop of vegetables or fruits. In fact they looked like pineapples.

  That made him pause. Pineapples were dangerous; they could explode violently, wiping out anything close.

  The baton had not warned him about that either.

  That baton is not very nice, Aurora thought.

  “You can see it?” he asked, surprised.

  Our dialogue is mental. I can see what you see, when I am with you.

  Oh. “Good enough.”

  What was the connection between the hairy stakes and the field of plants? he wondered. There had to be one, this being a Challenge.

  He returned to the stakes and peered closely at them.

  “What do you think you’re looking at, oaf?”

  Nolan was startled. Where had the voice come from? There was nothing but the stakes. “Where are you?” he asked.

  “Right before you, dullard.”

  The stakes were talking? So it seemed. “But you have no mouth. How can you talk?”

  “The same way you can generate the illusion of thinking without a brain, clod.”

  No help there. The baton seemed amused. “Are you a Challenge?”

  “Of course we are, dope.”

  Neither are those stakes very nice, Aurora thought.

  Then he made half a connection. “You look like the calves of a giant man. But I don’t see the rest of the giant.”

  “We are the ankles of a giant, dimwit,” the stakes corrected him. “An invisible giant. We are the only part of him that is visible. There’s nothing else like us. We are a legend among body parts.”

  An invisible giant. Now it made some sense. He was standing on the path, only the lower part of his legs visible. Nolan wasn’t sure how to proceed, so he stalled by rephrasing a question. “How is it you can talk? Normally body parts are silent.”

  “Normally invisible giant body parts are invisible and silent. But we became visible and also audible, idiot. Any fool understands that.”

  That did seem to make a certain sense, if he strained at it. “Why isn’t the rest of him visible?”

  “He worked too hard and got tired. Too tired to maintain his invisibility all the way down to his feet. Now he’s too tired to move out of your way. So you’re stuck, imbecile. Go back where you came from.”

  So this was the real Challenge. To get the invisible giant to move out of the way. Except that he was too tired to move.

  How could Nolan make the giant untired? That was the question.

  He cerebrated for a while, then considered, then pondered while the baton rolled its eyeless eyes impatiently. Maybe he was indeed guilty of the illusion of thinking. Nothing came.

  So he gave it up for the moment and went back to look at the field of plants. Then he saw a little sign: solar farm. The pineapples might be the farm crop. Maybe they got their dangerous energy from sitting all day in the direct sunlight.

  Still, why were they here? Their tremendous energy could be dangerous for a giant, too, if he accidentally stepped on one and set it off. They would be like land mines.

  The baton hovered patiently, waiting for his illusion mind to come up with the obvious. He was glad it couldn’t speak, because it would have said something sarcastic.

  Solar farm. Giant. What was the connection? The giant was probably getting hungry, waiting on the path. It must want him to get on with it, either succeeding or failing, so it could get off duty and go eat a snack.

  Then he got it, maybe. “Those are power plants!” he said. “And big fruits. Maybe the giant eats pineapples for energy. This is the giant’s garden.”

  He went to the nearest ripe pineapple and put his hands carefully to its sides. He pulled it ever so gently out of the ground. It did not detonate. So far so good.

  He carried the pineapple back to where the giant stood. “Back again, moron?” the ankles inquired.

  He ignored them. “Hey, Invisible Giant!” he called as loudly as he could. “Are you hungry?” He hoped the giant did have enough energy to talk.

  There was a giant-sized pause. Then a voice came from the sky. “Yes.”

  Victory, maybe. “I have brought you a ripe pineapple. Can you reach down and take it?” He held the fruit up over his head, hoping that the giant’s arms were not as tired as his legs.

  Something took it from his hands. It flew on upward. That would be the giant’s invisible grasp.

  You figured it out, Aurora thought. Congratulations.

  Nolan liked her better and better.

  “Oh, beans,” the ankles muttered.

  “Not beans, dunce,” Nolan retorted. “Pineapple.”

  You told them.

  There was a giant slurping sound above. The invisible giant was eating the pineapple.

  Then the ankles started fading. The giant was regaining his strength and becoming fully invisible.

  “Noooo!” the ankles cried.

  “You thought you were a legend among body parts,” Nolan said smugly. “But instead you were just a leg end.”

  There was no response. The ankles were now invisible and silent.

  Then he stood before the castle entrance. He had conquered the third Challenge.

  The door opened. There stood a middle-aged woman. “Hello, Prince Nolan,” she said. “Hello, Aurora Ant. I am Wira, Magician Humfrey’s daughter-in-law. I will take you to the Designated Wife.”

  Nolan remembered. The Good Magician had five or six wives who alternated, because he was allowed only one at a time. “Thank you.”

  Weird.

  Wira ushered him into a pleasant room, where a rather pretty young woman waited. “Prince Nolan, this is MareAnn.” She looked like a teenager.

  “Hello, Nolan,” MareAnn said as Wira faded out. “We are so glad you made it through.” She showed him to a seat, then sat opposite him and crossed her legs. She had nice legs, and they showed to advantage.

  “Uh, I thought you’d be older. Weren’t you the Good Magician’s first wife?”

  She laughed. “Not exactly. We first met 175 years ago, when we were both fifteen and fell in love. But my talent was summoning equines, including unicorns, and I feared that if I lost my innocence I would no longer be able to fetch the magic equines. So I regretfully declined to marry him. But much later, after I died of old age and went to Hell, I discovered that Hell was almost as hard on innocence as marriage. So I was the last to marry him, in the Xanth Year 1090. It was a small ceremony, so we consider me to be only half a wife. Now it is Xanth Year 1123, thirty-three years later, so he has a half-wife of thirty-three years.”

  Nolan suspected that there was a bit of humor there, but he wasn’t sure what it was. Aurora seemed to get it; she was amused. “But you don’t look a hundred and seventy-five, or even thirty-three. You’re more like fifteen.”

  “Yes. We have youth elixir, which I use regularly to restore myself to that age. This way I feel as if I am in first love again, and he rather likes me this way too.”

  Nolan, observing her legs, could appreciate one reason why.

  “I see the Baton of Protagonism is with you,” MareAnn remarked.

  “You can see it?” he asked, surprised.

  “Here in the Good Magician’s castle, magic can’t be concealed. You are unusual in your ability to see it.”

  “That’s my talent: to see imaginary things.”

  “Ah, of course. That gives you power over them. You can make the baton obey you.”

  “I can?”

  “To a degree. You could, for example, require it to move on and make someone else the protagonist. But I don’t recommend that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because protagonists have interesting lives. They are always the center of the action, and nothing really bad happens to them. That can be a useful protection when there is danger.”

  “That’s interesting. I have found the baton somewhat unresponsive.”

  “You may not have addressed it properly. Simply say ‘Baton, turn a somersault,’ and see what happens.”

  Nolan looked at the hovering thing. “Baton, turn a somersault.”

  It somersaulted in air. Point made.

  Wira returned. “The Good Magician is occupied today. He will see you in the morning.”

  MareAnn rose, taking her legs out of display mode. “I will show you to your room.”

  Soon he was safely ensconced in a nice bedroom. Then he was summoned for dinner, where he had a nice meal, and Aurora had one too, her size. It was a single fresh seed of some sort, which she toasted with a small jet of flame. The baton did not need to eat, being imaginary.

  He turned in and slept, only to dream of a woman who had fiery hair and legs like MareAnn’s but was really someone else. “Who are you?” he asked her. The baton seemed curious too.

  She laughed. “Don’t you know me? I’m Aurora.”

  Now he recognized her voice, which in his dream had become vocal. “Oh, hello, Aurora. I didn’t feature you in human form.”

  “This is how I would look as a human girl. I have fewer legs.” She lifted her skirt waist-high to show him that there were only two. He might have freaked out had he not been asleep. He realized that she was teasing him. It seemed that girls of any species knew how to do that to any man.

  They chatted amicably. Then his dream moved on, following its own random course, and she was gone.

  In the morning he washed up and dressed, and Aurora rejoined him, perching on his head. She now had all six legs. But you are free to imagine me with two, she thought, limited as they may be. She was teasing again.

  Then he thought of something. “If you spend any significant time with me, Aurora, you will be with me when I transform to one of my other shapes. What will you do when I shed my clothes?”

  She resumed her imaginary bare human form, inhaling. Too bad we are not of similar species, or we could have some fun together without clothes. The teasing was intense.

  Nolan did not care to admit that he liked the show. “I’m not joking. You don’t want to drown when I become a fish.”