The Journey Read online

  “More impressive,” he echoed weakly. Such as maybe her vapor becoming solid flesh.

  “Then I will gladly do with you what a lusty woman does with an attractive man.” She drew back slightly and glanced down at her blueberry-blonde nether region.

  Attractive man! He was no longer sure she was teasing him. “Time,” he said, grasping what little he could.

  “Yes. Magic forms naturally in the environment. The plants are imbued with it, gleaning it from the wonderful soil.” She kissed his smudged left eye without sensation. “We sprites harvest it like bees with nectar, a little each day, growing ever stronger. In a matter of weeks, we can be back at full strength. If.”

  “If?” he asked through her flaring blue hair.

  “If you help us solve our problem.”

  “I’ll help you!” he cried. “Just tell me how.”

  “It may be a boring discussion.”

  “Bore me!”

  “Very well.” She drew away from him, became the squirrel, scampered up the tree, perched on the low branch, and became the woman again, this time squirrel sized. She bestrode the branch, her legs dangling down on either side. “You can touch me now.”

  He reached up and touched her delicate leg with a finger. It was solid!

  “Yes, I am touchable,” she said. “But not in the way you want. Nothing would fit.” She glanced meaningfully down at her lush little torso.

  “Dang,” he said.

  “Well put,” Dia said. “Some dull history. Once the whole flat world was magic, and there were many magical creatures ranging from musical gnats to fiery dragons. Then the worms came and sucked out the magic, and left the world heart-achingly empty. Sadly depleted, it curled up into a tight ball and suffered. That was about three hundred years ago. Folk crafted what they called science to fill in the desolation, and came almost to believe that the world had always been a sphere and there had never been such a thing as magic.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed, believing it.

  “But there were two mitigating factors.” She paused, realizing that he didn’t know the word, then rephrased it. “Two things that helped. The worms did not get quite all the magic, and more was slowly being generated by the plants, especially in the hinterlands where mankind did not intrude so much. So we sprites survived, albeit in reasonably dire straits.”

  “Straights are good card hands,” he said. “So are flushes.”

  She silenced him with an impatient glance. “We stayed out of the way, because all humans saw was, well, our bodies.” She inhaled deeply, making her point. “Then the worms returned, emerging from their wormholes to suck out the restored magic. They feed on magic, destroying it. That was disaster.”

  “Worms suck,” Bad Buffalo agreed. “Can’t you chop them up or something when they come out of their holes?”

  “No. A wormhole is not exactly a hole. It’s a—a tunnel between different parts of the universe. The worms may forage anywhere, maybe on the other side of the galaxy, then come here when that’s used up. Much of the universe is sterile, because of them.”

  “Whoa, girl! Universe? Galaxy?”

  “Maybe I’m speaking a bit anachronistically,” Dia said. “Sometimes I lose track of time. You do know what stars are? The worms may come from another star. Regardless, they graze on our magic, and it’s awful. We’re really the last magic creatures on Earth, unless a few remain in Ireland or Africa. The worms won’t stop until the last magic is gone, and we’ll be, well, not even history, because human historians already don’t believe in us. They think they know everything, when really they know nothing.”

  “Nothing,” Bad Buffalo agreed, wishing she would adjust her position on the branch so that he could see between her flexing legs. She was small, but still well worth contemplating. “So how can I help?”

  “You can plug the holes.”

  “Not as long as you’re either too small or too vapory.”

  “The wormholes,” she said, not much amused. “Now please pay attention to what I’m saying, not to my legs. The holes are actually very small, maybe even singularities, but the worms squeeze through them to get here. The holes squeeze things tightly, so that if you poked your finger into one, it would be compressed into less than a grain of sand or a mote of dust. Wormholes are dangerous to approach. That’s why we can’t just walk up to one and plug it; we have to remain a safe distance from it. That means the worm has clearance to feed on the surrounding magic. It’s a real problem.”

  Bad Buffalo decided not ask what a singularity was; this discussion was bypassing his knowledge of the world. If it wasn’t for her shapely little body, he’d have broken off the lecture already. Still, it was time to get to the point. “So how did you say I could help, if I can’t even get close to a hole?”

  “I am getting to that,” she said impatiently. “We think a perfect round acorn might plug a hole, if we could manage to throw it in exactly right. Or a ball of lead. Something really solid, to choke its pipe as it were. When I saw how you shot my acorn, I thought maybe a bullet would do. You could stand back maybe twenty-five feet and fire into it, safely plugging it from there. If you can plug the holes as they form, maybe we can stop this scourge, and after a while, they’ll give up and migrate elsewhere to feed. Like another planet. Then we’d be saved, and the magic would slowly return, and I would be able to be as solid as this and as large as this at the same time.” She became full sized, lifting her spread knees to brace her feet on the branch.

  Bad Buffalo almost freaked out seeing that view from directly below and in front, as maybe she’d intended.

  “So will you do it?” she asked.

  “Uh, sure,” he said. He would have agreed to eat a whale in one mouthful, at this moment.

  “That’s so nice of you,” she said, smiling as she closed her legs and shrank back into mini-size. “You won’t regret it, in a few weeks.”

  “A few weeks,” he echoed blissfully.

  “Very good. Now we must go plug our first wormhole.”

  “Plug our first hole,” he agreed. “Where?”

  “We can sense them as they form,” she explained. “They distort space/time, radiating gravitic ripples.” She paused, seeing his blank expression. “Maybe think of it this way: we can smell them. Anyway, there’s one forming not far from here. All you have to do is shoot a bullet into it.”

  “I can shoot a bullet into anything,” he agreed.

  “I believe it. Follow me.” She jumped off the branch and flew at about his head height. Now he noticed that she had little wings; had she had them all the time? Not that it mattered; it was her torso that counted.

  He kept his eyes on her cute little bottom as he leaped onto Horse and followed her, hardly aware of the forest scenery. Would it really be as easy as shooting bullets into little holes? Would that actually get him a girlfriend like her, his size and solid? Or would something go wrong, as it usually did when there was anything he really wanted? His hopes and fears were riding high.

  They entered a glade.

  “There,” she said, pointing.

  There in the center of the glade was a tiny black spot. Bad Buffalo was almost disappointed. But she had said the wormholes were tiny.

  He took aim at the spot, not bothering to dismount. He could readily score on it from here.

  The Worm Returns

  is available at:

  Amazon Kindle * Amazon UK * Paperback

  About the Authors:

  Piers Anthony is one of the world’s most prolific and popular authors. His fantasy Xanth novels have been read and loved by millions of readers around the world, and have been on the New York Times Best Seller list twenty-one times. Although Piers is mostly known for fantasy and science fiction, he has written several novels in other genres as well, including historical fiction, martial arts, and horror. Piers lives with his wife in a secluded woods hidden deep in Central Florida.

  Please visit him at www.hipiers.com for a complete list of his fiction and
non-fiction and to read his monthly newsletter.

  J.R. Rain is an ex-private investigator who now writes full-time. He lives in a small house on a small island with his small dog, Sadie, who has more energy than Robin Williams.

  Please visit him at www.jrrain.com.