Then a third party appeared. This was another ogress. "Don't hit her. Smash!" she cried. "I just realized-"
"Smash?" the first ogress repeated questioningly. She seemed amazed.
"We must all describe exactly what we see," the second ogress said. She, too, was no true ogress, for her speech did not conform-unless she bad blundered into some Eye Queue vines-but that hardly seemed likely. "You first, Smash."
Confused by this development, he obliged. "I see two attractively brutal ogresses, each with a face mushier than the other, each hunched so that her handpaws reach almost down to her hindpaws. One is brown, the other red."
"And I see two centaurs," the second ogress said. "A black stallion and a red mare."
Oho! That would be Chem, seeing her own kind. Once she had separated from him, her own perceptions had taken over, so that she saw him falsely.
"I see a handsome black human man and a pretty brown human girl," the first ogress said.
"Then you are Tandy!" Chem exclaimed.
"Tandy!" Smash repeated, amazed.
"Of course I'm Tandy!" Tandy agreed. "I always was. But why are you two dressed up like human people?"
"We each perceive our own kind," Chem explained. "Each person instinctively generates his or her own reality from the Void. Come-take hands and perhaps we can break through to reality."
They took hands-and slowly the alternate images dissipated, and Smash saw Chem in her ruffled brown coat and Tandy in her tattered red dress.
"You were awful handsome as a man," Tandy said sadly. "All garbed in black, like a dusky king, with silver gloves." Smash realized that his orange jacket had become so dirty it was now almost indistinguishable from his natural fur. "But why did you fall down when I tried to shake your hand?"
The Eye Queue provided the insight to cause him embarrassment. "I misunderstood your intent," he confessed. "I thought you were being friendly."
"I was being friendly!" she exclaimed indignantly. "You were the first human being I was able to get close to in this funny place. I thought you might know some way out. I can't seem to go back myself; I bang into an invisible hedge or something. So I wanted to be very positive, and not scare you away.
After all you might have been lost too."
"Yes, of course," Smash agreed weakly.
"But you acted as if I'd hit you, or something!" she continued indignantly.
"This is the way ogres show affection," Chem explained.
Tandy laughed. "Affection! That's how human beings fight!"
Smash was silent, horribly embarrassed.
But Tandy would not let it go. "You big oaf! I'll show you how human beings express affection!" And she grabbed Smash's arm, pulling him toward her with small human violence. Bemused, he yielded, until his head was down near hers.
Tandy threw her arms around his furry neck and planted a firm, long, hot-blooded kiss on his mouth, moving her lips against his.
Smash was so surprised he sat down. Tandy followed him, still pressing close, locking his head to hers.
He fell all the way back on the ground, but she stayed with him, her brown hair flopping forward to cover his wildly staring eyes as she drove home the rest of the kiss.
At last she released him, as she needed a breath. "What do you think of that, ogre?"
Smash lay where she had thrown him, unable to make sense of the experience.
"He's overwhelmed," Chem said. "You gave him an awfully stiff dose for his first such contact."
"Well, I've wanted to do it for a long time," Tandy said.
"He's been too stupid to catch on."
"Tandy, he's an ogre! They don't understand human romance. You know that."
"He's an ogre with Eye Queue. He can darned well learn."
"I'm afraid you're being unrealistic," the centaur said, talking as if Smash were not present. Perhaps that was the case, mentally. "You're a spunky, pretty human girl. He's a hulking jungle brute. You can't afford to get emotionally involved with a creature like that. He just isn't your type."
"And just what is my type?" Tandy flared defiantly. "A damned demon intent on rape? Smash is the nicest male creature I've met in Xanth!"
"How many male creatures have you met in Xanth?" the centaur inquired.
Tandy was silent. Of course her experience had been quite limited.
Smash at last essayed a remark. "You could visit a human village-"
"Shut up, ogre," Tandy snapped, "or I'll kiss you again!"
Smash shut up. She was not bluffing; she could do it. She still had her arms looped around his neck, since she lay half astride him, holding him down, as it were.
"You have to be realistic," Chem said. "The Good Magician sent you out with Smash so the ogre could protect you while you searched for a husband. What good will it do you to find the destined man, as John and the Siren and maybe Goldy did, if you foolishly waste your love on an inappropriate object?
You would be undermining the very thing you seek."
"Oh, phooey!" Tandy exclaimed. "You're right, centaur, I know you're right, centaurs are always right-but oh, it hurts!" A couple of hot raindrops fell on Smash's nose, burning him with an acid other than physical. She was crying, and he found that even more confusing than the kiss. "Ever since he rescued me from the gourd and got me back my soul-"
"I'm not denying he's a good creature," Chem said. "I'm just saying, realistically-"
Tandy turned ferociously on Smash. "You monster! Why couldn't you have been a man?"
"Because I'm an ogre," he said.
She wrenched one arm clear of him and made as if to strike his face. But her hand did not touch him.
The Void spun about him, dimming. Smash realized she had hit him with another tantrum. That,
ironically, was more like ogre love. Why couldn't she have been an ogress?
An ogress. Now, his mind shaken by the double whammy of kiss and tantrum. Smash floated, half
conscious, and realized what he had been missing. An ogress! He, like every member of his party, could not exist alone. He needed a mate. That was what had brought bun to Good Magician Humfrey's castle.
That had been his unasked Question. How could he find his ideal mate? Humfrey had known.
And of course there would be ogresses at the Ogre-fen-Ogre Fen. That was why the Good Magician had sent him to seek the Ancestral Ogres. He would be able to select one who was right for him, knock her about in ogre fashion, and live in brutal happiness ever after, exactly as his parents had. It all did make sense.
He drifted slowly to earth as the horrendous impact of the tantrum eased. "Now I understand-" he began.
"I warned you, oaf," Tandy said. She leaned over and plastered another big kiss on him.
Smash was so dazed that he almost grasped the nature of the kiss, this time. Perhaps it was the effect of the Void, making things seem other than they were. It was as if she were punching him in the snoot-and with that perception she became much more alluring.
Then she broke, and the odd perspective ended. She became a girl again, all soft and pretty and nice and wholly inappropriate for romance. It was too bad.
"Oh, what's the use," Tandy said. "I'm a fool and I know it. Come on, people; we have to get out of this place."
"That may not be readily accomplished," Chem said. "We can travel in deeper, or edge sideways, but we can't back out. I'm sure it's like a whirlpool, drawing us ever inward. What we shall find in the center, I hesitate to conjecture."
"Oblivion," Tandy said tightly. She, too, had caught on.
"A maw," Smash said, climbing unsteadily to his feet.
"This land is carnivorous. It gives us respite only because it doesn't need to consume us instantly. It has herds of grazing creatures to eat first. When it gets hungry, it will take us."