“But it would be nice to have a magic talent,” Nerine said wistfully. “We’re not really real people without talents.”

  That struck home. They might look like people, but they weren’t. Nydia realized now that talents were often attached to the souls. What else were they missing?

  Woe Betide woke. “Oh, there’s Trader Troll. He’s fun.”

  “You know him?” Nydia asked, surprised.

  “Sure. He trades for kisses. That’s how I got this neat crib.” The crib puffed into smoke, not needed at the moment.

  “But don’t trolls eat luscious maidens?” Noletta asked. “And children?” Her own template was registering.

  “Sure. Some trolls do. But they’re not all the same. Trader’s okay.” She raised her voice by floating upward. “Hi, Trader! Remember me?”

  The troll looked. “Hi, Woe! I see you made some friends.”

  “They’re nymphs on a mission. I’m showing the way.”

  “Hello, nymphs!” the troll called. “Come trade for a talent.”

  “Bleep!” Noletta swore. “I want a talent.”

  Nydia gave Woe a hard look. “The truth, child. Can she safely make that trade?”

  “Sure. I’ll show you.” The little demon skipped across the line and went up to the troll. “Give me a nice one,” she said, and floated up to plant a solid kiss on him. A tiny heart flew out.

  “Here you are,” he told her, making a gesture. “The ability to conjure eye scream.”

  “Gee.” Woe gestured, and a big cone appeared with a triple scoop of chocolate ice cream.

  “But remember, my talents aren’t worth much,” Trader warned her. “You can conjure each flavor only once. Then it’s gone.”

  “I know,” Woe said, avidly slurping. “But I can think of lots of flavors.”

  “I may regret this,” Noletta said. “But I’m going to do it.” She strode up to the troll. “Give me a useful talent.” She kissed him with such passion that three little hearts spun out wildly.

  “I haven’t had a kiss like that since I visited the Faun & Nymph Retreat,” Trader said dizzily.

  “Maybe I was the one who did it,” Noletta said. “I don’t remember.”

  “And here is your talent: the ability to see a day into the future.” He gestured. “But remember, it’s limited. You can see only one day hence, ongoing, not the intervening time or context. It will take some work to make it truly useful. I’m sorry I can’t give you a better one.”

  Noletta closed her eyes, focusing. “I’m in a bedroom somewhere, lying on a bed, looking up at the ceiling. There’s no man there. Does that make sense?”

  So the talent was working, Nydia thought. That meant it was not attached to a soul, as she had no soul. Too bad there was not a deal to get souls.

  “It surely does make sense, once you understand it. If you track it for a while it may clarify. Probably you have found shelter with a nice bed so you can safely rest. Just don’t focus on it so hard you stumble into a nickelpede nest in the present.”

  Nickelpedes. Another threat. Centipedes were harmless, but nickelpedes could be vicious. They had five scents, and could sniff out any prey nearby.

  Trader looked around. “Anyone else?”

  Nydia opened her mouth to tell him to go dunk his head in a privy, but what came out was an agreement of sorts. “I don’t want a talent. I want information. Why is a nymph a main character in a book-length story?” Because if she could get the answer here, they might not need to go to the Good Magician, sparing themselves a fair hassle.

  “I don’t know the answer, but maybe there’s a way to get a line on it. Have you considered asking Com Pewter?”

  “Asking what?” But then the Template kicked in and she remembered that this was an irascible machine with an enormous amount of information.

  “Don’t mess with Pewter,” Woe Betide said. “It’s got a smart phone that makes nothing but smart remarks.”

  “It does,” Trader agreed. “Better to do your own research. Books usually have chapters that indicate their activity. Maybe if you glimpse the chapter title for yours, or the title of the book itself, that will help.”

  She was intrigued. “How can I do that?”

  “With the talent of glimpsing.” The troll focused. “Oops, I see I am out of that one. Maybe this one: the talent of seeing the path to the Dwarf Demon of Titles, who should have the book in front of him.”

  Nydia was alarmed. “That’s a capital D? Super-Demon?”

  “The Dwarves are not nearly as important as the full Demons. They handle incidental things, like talents and titles.”

  That seemed reasonable. Maybe it would work. “Very well.” She approached the troll and gave him a kiss that would have made a regular man float. A cluster of little hearts flew out, swirling around their heads before sailing blissfully into the sky to play tag with the watching sun.

  “And that one shames the prior one,” Trader said, stunned. “Here is your talent. Remember, it will fade after you reach the Demon. I regret I can’t give permanent talents, but I’d have to be a Demon to do that. The ones I have are minor ones not wanted elsewhere.” He made a gesture.

  She felt the talent land. It seemed to add half a dimension to her mind. She focused, and saw the bypath. It started at her feet and wound away through the landscape.

  “This way,” she said to the others. “And thank you, Trader Troll.”

  “Thank you.” He smacked his lips as if savoring the kiss.

  They followed the path through field and forest, mountain and valley, yon, hither, and obscure. It led to a hidden house in a bit of jungle, and on inside to where a glowing presence was snoozing. The Dwarf Demon of Titles had fallen asleep on the job. Nydia put a finger to her lips to signal silence. It was surely best to let sleeping Demons lie.

  Before him was a large book. Nydia quietly opened it to Chapter 1: “Only One Thing.” That was what a nymph was good for. That was accurate but not useful for her purpose. She turned the pages back to the Title Page, which said “Three Ugly Nymphs.” Not only was that not helpful, she didn’t like it. They weren’t ugly, they were just different.

  There was a pen beside the book. She picked it up and used it to cross out the word Ugly and write in Novel, as in new, fresh, unusual, original, extraordinary, not to mention a book-length narrative. For some reason, an image of demoness Metria crossed her mind. That word more properly described them as they chose to be known. Now the title read Three Ugly Novel Nymphs. Would that work? She didn’t know, but it was worth a try. With luck the proprietor would not notice when he woke.

  The Dwarf Demon of Titles still snoozed. Nydia signaled the others. Let’s get out of here.

  They quietly made their way back along the bypath to Trader Troll. “Did you find out?” he inquired. He had turned out to be a pretty good guy. It seemed that trolls, like regular people, varied in type. She realized that she actually liked him a bit.

  “No. But we may have accomplished something better. We’ll get the answer from the Good Magician.”

  “I wish you the best. He is said to be grumpy even on his good days.”

  Her template verified that. But they were stuck with it. “Thank you, Trader Troll,” Nydia said, smiling.

  He smiled back. “Anytime.”

  They got back on the enchanted path and walked on. Soon there was a fork. The right path was marked to the good magician’s castle. The left path was marked don’t bother.

  They took the right one, not bothering with the other. Before long they came to a several-turreted castle surrounded by a moat complete with glaring moat monster. The sign said good magician’s castle. go away.This was evidently the place. Even the sign was grumpy.

  Chapter 2

  Good Magician

  They gazed at the castle, slightly daunted. Did they really want to tackle it? Did they have a choice?

  “Just so you know,” Nydia said, “it is not supposed to be easy to reach the castle. There are always three Challenges barring the way, and if we mess up on any of them, we wash out. It’s not dangerous physically; we may be threatened, but we won’t actually get hurt. But neither will we get the answer to why a nymph is the protagonist of a significant story and other nymphs should be her Companions. We may just have to return to the Retreat and do what nymphs do.”

  “Not while I’m along,” Woe Betide said. “You can’t do adult things in my presence.”

  “You’d revert to Metria and go to seek something interesting elsewhere,” Nydia retorted. “Metria revels in adult things.”

  “Blip,” the child swore, refuted.

  “Not that what we do is a bad thing,” Noletta said, “but doing it all day? Nothing else? Losing our memories every night? Now that I have retention, I’d rather explore the world outside, dangerous as it may be. At least there should be some variety.”

  “And I’d like to get my hair untangled,” Nerine said.

  They looked at Woe. “Do you have any further input?” Nydia inquired.

  “I don’t know much about the adult realm, by definition,” the child replied. “But I do know that Metria is banned from the Good Magician’s Castle, just as she is from the F&N Retreat. That makes me super curious to know what’s in it. I’m afraid that if I don’t find out, Metria will be mad at me. She may even have had this in mind when she yielded the body to me. She loves to snoop into what doesn’t concern her.”

  Nydia nodded. “I think the vote is for trying it, and if we fail, well, we tried.”

  “Go for it,” Nerine agreed.

  But before they could act, a handsome young man approached from the side. “Hello, pretty girls,” he called. “Are you going to tackle the Challenges?”

  Nydia reminded herself that they no longer looked very nymphly. He thought they were real people.

  “You have a problem with that?” Noletta demanded.

  “Not at all. I’m trying to decide whether to do it myself.”

  “We have a Question we think only the Good Magician can answer,” Nydia said. “What about you?”

  “My name is Trade. Folk in my village all make fun of it, calling me Mark as if I’m from Mundania. My talent is that when I pick up any book, it is blank except for the last chapter, so I can never be surprised by the ending. They ridicule that too. So I want to travel far away where nobody knows me. But I don’t want to do it alone. I need a girlfriend who likes traveling, but none of the local girls want to leave the village. So I am trying to decide whether to ask the Good Magician where a suitable girl is.” He glanced at Noletta as if mentally undressing her. In fact, her blouse started to fade before she frowned down at it. “I don’t suppose you’d be interested?”

  “I’m a nymph,” Noletta said.

  He was taken aback. “But a nymph is good for—”

  “Only One Thing,” Noletta said. “And that’s not traveling.”

  “Sorry I asked,” he said, and walked on.

  “That is the problem,” Noletta said sadly. “He’d have liked a night with me, but in the morning he’d be on his way alone.” She was evidently catching on to the nature of outside males, which was similar to that of inside males. Their interests barely extended beyond that One Thing.

  Which only deepened the mystery of why they were here. Trade seemed like a good man. He hadn’t lied to try to get that night, but he did have more than one thing on his mind. He might indeed have to ask the Good Magician.

  They found a path leading toward the castle. The moment their feet touched it, something changed. “Uh-oh,” Nydia said. “My smarts just went.”

  “I can’t see a day ahead,” Noletta said.

  “The Magician knows I’m here,” Woe said. “And he’s not pleased.”

  “My tangle just went!” Nerine exclaimed. Indeed, now her hair hung loosely about her shoulders in a green cascade. It looked much better.

  Then Nydia caught on. “No special magic is allowed in the Challenges, as it is considered an unfair advantage. We’ve all lost ours, such as it is. But it should return once we get through.”

  “If we get through,” Noletta said, negative as always.

  “So we’re in it,” Nydia said. “We’ll just have to forge on through.”

  Noletta looked resigned. “And hope to avoid the worst.”

  They forged on. It was exciting to be doing this, even if they were destined to fail.

  They rounded a turn and almost collided with a family going the other way, a man, a woman, and a child reasonably older than Woe. All three nymphs tried not to stare, as they were now extremely interested in what real people looked like, and this was their first close contact. “Oh, are you other folk trying to get into the castle?” Nydia asked.

  “Not exactly,” the man replied. Oddly, he did not seem to be mentally undressing her; her dress remained completely intact. He was moderately tall, muscular, with blue eyes, pale skin, curly red hair, and a full beard. “We’re doing our year’s service for our Answer. I’m Pat, and this is my wife Colleen, and our granddaughter Quintessa.” Colleen was an attractive woman at least twice the nymphs’ apparent age, with slightly curly dark brown hair, green eyes, pale skin, and light freckles. Quintessa was about six years old, with almost luminescent pale skin tinged peachy pink, curly medium-length blond hair, deep blue eyes, dimples, slight freckles across her nose, and a friendly smile. None of them were cast from the same mold in the manner of the nymphs; their features were completely different.

  “Oh.” Nydia wished she had her intelligence back so she could make a smart response. As it was, she would just have to bumble along. “We’re three nymphs and a child, hoping the Good Magician will tell us what we’re doing here.” Which these folk probably already knew. “What were your Question and Answer?” Even as she spoke, she knew she was messing it up. She had no business poking into their business. They would set her straight in a hurry.

  But Pat smiled. “You’re Nymphs? From the Retreat? So you don’t have much experience with Xanth proper.”

  Why was he being so polite? Was this some sort of trap? She lacked the wit to know. So she blabbed foolishly on. “Yes. Somehow we became characters in a narrative, and we don’t know why. Nymphs are good for only one thing, and that’s not handling a meaningful story. There must be some reason.”

  “There surely is. We sympathize. We’re Mundanes who managed to find a secret avenue into Xanth. We Asked the Good Magician how we could achieve immortality, and he Answered that physical immortality is not possible for Mundanes, but a trace of literary immortality could be had merely by staying here. So we’re here, hoping to stay a while.”

  Nydia was discovering that she liked him. He did understand what it felt like to be an outsider. “I hope you succeed. We’d better get out of your way.”

  Pat laughed. “We’re going nowhere. We are here to try to prevent you from getting past us.”

  “Oh, blip!” Woe said. “And they seemed so nice. They’re the enemy.”

  “By no means,” Pat said. “Consider it more like a game where we are opponents. We will each do our best to defeat the other side, but outside of the Challenge we can be friends.”

  Nydia was taken aback. “You are telling us you are trying to stop us?”

  “Yes. And we wish you success in getting past us. But from here on be wary, because we are in the Game. It has stopped every person who encountered it so far.”

  The Game? Maybe he meant Challenge. “Uh, I suppose. What are the rules?”

  “There are only two rules. We are not allowed to tell them to you directly. But we will write them out for you.” Pat glanced at Colleen, who carefully wrote words on a piece of paper. She pressed the paper between her hands, then handed the paper to Quintessa, who took them to Woe Betide.

  Woe dropped the paper on the ground. “It’s hot!”

  “It’ll cool,” Pat said. “It’s just hot from the press.”

  Nydia suspected there was some kind of pun there, with something figurative becoming literal, but she lacked the smarts to figure it out. That was maddening after her brief experience with intelligence.

  “Now it’s cool,” Colleen said.

  Nerine picked it up, folded it in half without reading it, and brought it to Nydia.

  “I don’t trust this,” Noletta said.

  Nor did Nydia, even in her unsmart stage. “We’ll play that game another time,” she decided. “Thank you, Family. I’m sure we’ll like it when we have time to play it.” She tucked the folded paper into a pocket.

  “You’re not even going to look at the rules?” Pat asked.

  Her memory of being smart enabled her to fake it. “If we did that, we’d want to play it, and right now we have other business.” She glanced at the others. “Let’s get on with it.” She might be making a calamitous mistake, but what could she do? She was a stupid nymph, good for only one thing, and sensible thought was not that thing any more than handling a significant story.

  They walked on down the path a few steps.

  “You have crossed the line,” Pat called after them.

  “What line?” Nydia called back, not even trying to seem smart.

  “The line separating Challenges. Congratulations. You have won this one.”

  “But we haven’t even played the Game!”

  “Let me explain,” Pat said, coming to rejoin them. “You won by not playing.”

  Nydia shook her head. “I’m just a stupid nymph. This makes no sense to me.”

  “Here is the thing. The rules are: One, you must not think about the Game, as that means you have lost.”

  “How can I think about it when I don’t even know what it is?”