The introductions resumed. Sali Salamander, Fiera Cloud, and Signal Siren were acknowledged. Then Signal sipped the beverage. “This is the finest honey drink I’ve ever tasted. What is it?”

  “Mead flavored with Heaven-Can-Wait honey,” Goblette answered. “Our bee allies let us have a little.”

  “Let me try that,” Fiera said. “In this compact form I can eat and drink, though I lose it when I revert to my natural form.”

  Signal held out the cup, and Fiera sipped. “Oh, you’re right! Makes me wish I were mortal.”

  Then they watched the replay of the sixfold invasion and the defenses, applauding the several devices used to foil the soldiers. “What a lovely ploy, that dragon mother bit,” Signal said.

  “As was yours, with the panties,” Ghorgeous returned.

  “I hate to say it,” Goblette said, “But I loved seeing those goblin troops get stunk!”

  “And the way you snails stopped the gnomes was truly impressive,” Fiera said. “I never much noticed snails before, but I’ll make sure not to burn any hereafter.”

  The party dissolved into a happy confusion of spot dialogues. They were indeed becoming friends, despite being of widely different species.

  Then Demon Grossclout appeared. “Oh, yes, you belong here too,” Vinia said. “You made it all possible. You had the contacts.”

  The others applauded, agreeing. This was a girls’ party, but they all appreciated the way the Demon had helped them, individually and collectively. Signal, Ghorgeous, and Fiera even went into flirting mode.

  “Thank you,” the professor said tightly. “But I am here on other business.”

  They sobered. “What is it?” Vinia asked.

  “Something is wrong with Demesne. She has turned submissive.”

  Uh-oh. “She was feeling poorly an hour ago,” Vinia said. “She didn’t know whether it was overwork or a virus, so she was going to rest.”

  “Yes. I joined her there. She was completely amenable. Too amenable. She would not deny me anything. That’s not like her. She is normally very much her own woman and will tell me exactly what is and is not acceptable. Now she has no limits of her own: I govern completely. That is not the creature I love. There is indeed a virus. I did spot research on it. It’s a new one, with no known antidote in Magician Ion’s collection. It causes a woman, any woman, to lose all ability to deny a man, any man, anything. It was surreptitiously introduced by the surrounding kingdoms, under the cover of the invasion. This is the real attack on the feminist queendom. I fear it is spreading. Therefore, I must ask you ladies to depart immediately, lest it catch you. We shall have to isolate any woman who catches it. Demesne is amenable to that, too, herself included.”

  “But who will defend the queendom?” Vinia asked, alarmed.

  He made a humorless smile. “We males will have to defend it for the interim, until we discover the antidote. It is ironic, but we did not join the princesses merely for their beauty. We like their spirit, which is now being dissipated.”

  An unhappy look passed around and through the girls. None of them were submissive types. Then they bid hasty adieus and departed. Vinia helped those who needed it. The friendships remained, but the party had crashed.

  Now Vinia and Grossclout were alone. “But I was talking with her right before the party,” she said. “I was exposed. I should be catching it. But I don’t feel submissive. How long does it take?”

  “We don’t yet know. But the chances are that you are immune to it, at least for the time being. Because you are juvenile. We have found no cases of underage girls catching it. And of course, no men or boys. It is highly selective. Mature females only, albeit of all types, Demonesses and ghosts included.”

  “But what about when I mature? I’m twelve; it could happen next year or sooner, regardless what the bleeping Adult Conspiracy claims.” Vinia was back to her juvenile form, now that the ghost had departed. And realized that she had forgotten the adult secrets she had known moments before, to her consternation. She had come to some sort of conclusion about them, but that, too, had dissipated. The bleeping Conspiracy was still in ugly force.

  “True. You are on the verge. Remember, the virus causes an emotional change, not a physical one. As long as you don’t know the adult secrets, you should be safe.”

  Her juvenile frustration was now her prime defense? What irony! “Hilda will soon be vulnerable too. What should we do?”

  “Vinia,” he said seriously, addressing her as an equal. That would have thrilled her at any other time. “You have done so much for us! It seems unkind to ask you for yet more.”

  She laughed bitterly. “I have to save my independent attitude. I’m doing it for me, too, whatever it is.”

  “I do not know either. In any event I must stay with Demesne, to protect her from her own present nature, and help organize the defense against the second invasion that is sure to come once the kingdoms are satisfied that the feminists have been thoroughly submissioned. We need to take immediate action.”

  “What action?”

  “You must go back to the Good Magician Humfrey. He is, after all, the Magician of Information. He will know.”

  Vinia nodded. “That does make sense. We’ll go there. I’ll tell the others.”

  “They already know and are preparing. I informed them before I came here.”

  “Then I am on my way.” Vinia headed off to the carpet, as the Demon popped off to rejoin the Demoness.

  The others were indeed ready. Vinia hopped on board and the carpet took off. Soon they were flying rapidly toward the Good Magician’s Castle.

  “It’s good to be back together,” Hilda said. “We missed you, Vinia.”

  “It was only an hour for the facets of the invasion, then the party.” But Vinia was relieved too. She had been excruciatingly busy and needed to rest.

  Hilda smiled. “It seemed like six times as long.” They had of course been watching the webcam pictures.

  “I don’t want to ask anything of you, Vinia,” Ion said. “Considering the threat of the virus.”

  “So I will ask it of you,” Vinia said. “Lie down with me. Kiss my ear. Whisper sweet nothings. Be amenable.”

  He laughed. “I’m amenable!” He followed her orders precisely.

  “Do likewise,” Hilda ordered Benny. He fastened the steering stick in place and obeyed.

  After an hour Vinia checked in with the queendom via the ring. “Demesne?”

  “I am here,” the Demoness answered. “We have set up a rotation so that the others can participate. Chloe is connecting the others telepathically, as she did before. We are all interested in your progress.”

  “Good enough. I will try to report regularly, as long as I have the ring.” But she realized with sudden regret that she might not have it much longer, because she had to return it to Dara Demoness.

  “You do that, dear.”

  If she could.

  In due course they reached the castle. Benny returned to the control and guided it down to the ground. “Who tackles the Challenges this time?” he asked.

  “We all do,” Hilda said. “Vinia did it before, but now it’s our turn. We have to leave our own magic behind: it’s the rule.” She set aside her needles and cloth and determinedly led the way forward, maybe demonstrating that she had not been caught by any virus. Benny set aside his thinking cap and followed, and then Ion without his bag of vials and Vinia walking together in lockstep, as was their wont. At least her telekinesis was still working, though she was pretty sure it wouldn’t touch anything else.

  A figure loomed before her. “Oh, no,” she muttered. “I am not partial to zombies. I know they have their functions, such as guarding Castle Roogna, but I never much liked them.”

  Because the figure was a zombie in armor. It wore a plaque saying KNIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD.

  “That’s the zombie king’s champion,” Ion said. “What’s it doing here?”

  “It must have had a Question for the Good Magician,” Vinia said. “Now it is serving out its Service.”

  “What could a zombie want to know?” Benny asked. “Their minds are rotten.”

  “Maybe how to get the rot out,” Hilda said impatiently. She stepped to one side, but the knight stepped that way too, blocking her. “Ugh,” she muttered. “Its eyes are not rotten, though.”

  The truth was that nobody much liked zombies. Hilda was typical in that respect. That was part of what made them good guardians. But Hilda had a point: there was rot all over the knight’s body, showing between the joints of its armor, but its eyes were sharp. In fact, it seemed to be looking with entirely too much interest at both Hilda and Vinia. Would it try to kiss one of them? UGH!

  “There has to be a way to get around it,” Ion said. “The Challenge is to find it.”

  “I know that,” Hilda snapped. “But what?” She halted just before she collided with a large red can sitting beside the path.

  “Uh-oh,” Ion said. “That could be an innocent can, waiting for someone to come kick it, as in a game. But it might also be The Can.”

  “The Can?” Hilda asked, complete with capitals and italics.

  “The one you kick when you want to end it all. It can lurk in unlikely places.”

  “Now what would The Can want with the Good Magician?” Hilda demanded. “It is not in the business of asking questions.”

  “Good point,” Vinia said. “So maybe this is some other can.”

  “Well, it’s in my way,” Hilda said. She kicked it clear.

  Only the can didn’t fly. It fragmented into a dozen or so smaller cans, which in turn puffed into red smoke. Then the puffs formed into a line of quite shapely young women wearing short bright red cans in lieu of skirts. They were dancing. In a moment they kicked their legs high, flashing white panties.

  “Oh, for sobbing out thunderously!” Hilda said. “They’re Can-Can dancers!”

  “Can-Can Cans,” Vinia agreed.

  The boys made no comment. Both girls glanced at them, as this was the sort of show the crude male gender preferred.

  Both boys were frozen in place, Benny by himself, Ion supported by Vinia. They had freaked out. Theoretically they were too young, at least Ion was, but the sheer number and quality of panties flashed at point-blank range had evidently overwhelmed them.

  Vinia looked at the zombie knight. It too was frozen. Its eyes had functioned too well, and it had freaked out also.

  Hilda, disgusted, raised her hand to snap her fingers, ending the trance. Vinia grabbed her hand. “Don’t!” she hissed.

  “What?”

  “The knight is frozen too. Don’t wake it until we are safely past it.”

  “Oh.”

  They carefully took hold of the boys, lowered them to the ground, and dragged them slowly past the statuelike knight. Vinia might have made Ion walk, but it seemed too complicated while he was unconscious. Only when they were all safely past did Hilda finally snap her fingers.

  Ion and Benny woke. So did the zombie knight. All three looked confused.

  “What happened?” Ion asked.

  “The Can-Can Cans flashed you with their panties and you freaked out,” Vinia explained. “But it got us past the zombie, whose eyes were too good for his welfare.”

  “Panties? Oh, let’s see,” Ion said, leaning forward. He could do that, because only his legs were crippled.

  Vinia hauled him back. “No, you don’t!” she said unsubmissively. “Lest you freak out again.”

  “But we’re missing—”

  “I’ve got panties too. Once we’re grown, I’ll freak you out all you want. You haven’t missed anything except trouble.”

  “Oh.” But he looked disappointed. Males were incorrigible.

  “Same to you, goat boy,” Hilda told Benny. “Now you lead the way; I took my turn.” She pushed him to the head of their little line. They resumed their progress.

  In only a few steps they came to something odd. It was a small creature with white fur and a bunny tail for a head, and whiskers on its rear side. It seemed harmless, but what was it? The four of them paused, staring.

  “It’s actually a reflection,” Vinia said after a good moment and three-quarters. “See, there’s a glass wall, and a normal rabbit beside the glass.”

  “So there is,” Ion agreed. “But its reflection is strangely reversed, with the tail where the head should be.

  “It’s a tibbar,” Hilda said. “Rabbit spelled backward.”

  “And look at our reflections,” Benny said. “Weird!”

  Now they looked into the glass at themselves. He was right. Vinia looked like a brown boy in a white dress; she was able to identify herself by pointing to her reflection, even though the reflection reacted by pointing away from her. Also, because she was right next to Ion: they were arm in arm. The others were similarly rearranged, with Ion sporting a pair of feet where his head should be, and Hilda’s skirt on her head and her face on her bottom.

  “So it’s the glass,” Benny said. “Do we need to get past it? That’s not hard. He walked around the edge of the wall to its other side. “Not much of a Challenge.”

  “So it must be the answer to a Challenge,” Vinia said. “Now we just need to find the Challenge.”

  Ion laughed. “So the glass reverses even that.”

  “The Challenge must be close,” Benny said, “because the answer to it should be in range of it, if we can just recognize it.”

  “Maybe before it,” Vinia said. “So we have to remember it was there.”

  They walked around the wall. There ahead was another oddity: it seemed to be a garden growing eyeballs. Some were huge, others dainty, many colors ranging from white to black with all shades between. They seemed to be of several species, including human. All were wide awake, staring at the visiting party disconcertingly as they waved on their stems. The path led right through the garden, but the eyes were leaning over it from either side, making passage difficult without brushing into them. Here must be the Challenge: to get past the garden without disturbing any plants. But what was hazardous about them? They looked weird but seemed harmless.

  “Hey, this could be fun,” Benny said. He reached out to pluck a deep brown one.

  “Don’t—” Vinia started warningly. But of course, she was too late. He was already touching the stem.

  The eyeball was shaken loose from the stem, but it didn’t fall. Instead it hovered in the air, eyeing Benny. “Oh, it stinks!” he exclaimed, backing away from it.

  The eye followed him. Now the others smelled it. It wasn’t as bad an odor as stink horn, but it was definitely bad news. Evidently the smell came when it came loose, because the other eyeballs didn’t reek similarly.

  “It’s going to dirty me,” Benny said, grabbing a leafy branch to brush the eye away. “It’s a stink eye!”

  That was it. The garden was filled with stink eyes, which could smirch a person merely by staring at him. If they had plowed into that garden, they would have been soiled all over.

  “We’ve got to stop it,” Hilda said, alarmed. “But how?”

  That was the question. They had not blundered into the full garden, but the one stink eye was sickeningly oriented on Benny and would soon make him smell worse than a, well, billy goat. He was holding it off now, but it would soon get around his branch and tag him.

  “There has to be an antidote,” Ion said.

  “The reverse glass!” Vinia said. “We almost forgot it despite knowing it was the answer to something.”

  They retreated to the glass wall, the stink eye following, keeping its glare on Benny. The leaves on his branch were curling up under the intensity of it: they would not shield him much longer.

  Hilda gazed at it. “Now what?”

  “Maybe it can reflect and reverse the eye,” Vinia said.

  “But it’s here, and the eyes are there,” Ion protested.

  Benny made a gesture as of putting on his thinking cap, though he didn’t have it at the moment. Nevertheless, he seemed to get an idea. It was as if ideas were all in the head, Vinia thought. “Maybe I can take a piece of it.” He reached out and took hold of the edge of the wall, jiggling it. A section came loose.

  “It’s in sections!” Ion said. “It comes apart!”

  Benny aimed the section at the stink eye. The reflection showed a much prettier and sweet-smelling eyeball. Vinia wasn’t sure how she knew it was sweet: maybe it was the little heart-shaped rose leaves surrounding it.

  The eye recoiled in horror. “Haa!” Benny said, pursuing it. “Can’t take a nice smell, eh, stinker?”

  The eyeball retreated toward the garden, with Benny following. The other three of them, acting as one, grabbed more sections of glass and followed Benny.

  They formed a phalanx and advanced on the garden, holding their glasses menacingly before them. The eyeballs saw them coming and leaned desperately away from their own horrendously nice reflections. The path cleared.

  The group of them marched on through, shielded on either side by their sections of reverse glass. Soon they were safely on the other side. The sections of glass dissipated into mist. So did the loose stink eye. They had navigated the second Challenge.

  “That was a relief,” Hilda said. “I would have hated to have you smell like a billy goat, Benny.”

  “Ha,” he said, not completely amused by this reference to his alternate half. “Ha. Ha.”

  She kissed him. “Not yet, anyway. Wait till we’re adults and have hormones.”

  Benny seemed mollified.

  “My turn,” Ion said bravely. He took the lead and walked down the path.

  The path split. One fork led to a group of talkative women who looked like mothers at a gossip session. The other led to a seemingly ordinary man who was just standing there.

  “Obviously the man is the better bet,” Ion said. “Women can talk your ear off.”