Yon Ill Wind by Piers Anthony Page B

in the brightening light of day.  It was still greenish yellow, but now the green was the luster of healthy plants, and the yellow was the burnish of gold.  She gazed into a puddle, and saw her reflection:  she resembled a princess just awakening from beauteous slumber.  It was really too bad this adventure would have to end sometime.
    She returned to where they had slept, and saw Nimby approaching with a mouthful of fresh chocolate and vanilla pies.  He must have found a good pie tree.  His mouth in this form was quite large, so there was a good collection of large pies, and none of them was damaged.
    Then she had a second thought.  “Will I get fat, eating such stuff?”
    Nimby shook his head no.  He ought to know, as he was the one who had transformed her.  So Chlorine dived in with gusto.  The dragon watched, seeming pleased.
    Until her third thought.  “Aren't you hungry.  Nimby? You should have some pie too.”
    Nimby hesitated, then nodded yes.  But still he looked at the pies somewhat doubtfully.
    “Oh, in your natural form you could gobble them all up, and leave no more for me?  Then change into your handsome man-form, and you won't need as much.”
    The dragon disappeared, and the handsome man appeared.  Nimby man took a pie and began to eat.  He seemed to like it well enough.
    Chlorine's fourth thought caught up with her.  “Biting bugs!  They must be all over, in the night—but I wasn't bitten.  Were you protecting me from that harm too?”
    Nimby nodded.
    “I don't know what I'll do without you, when this ends,” she said.  “I'm really getting to like this adventure, and we haven't even done anything significant or naughty yet.” She eyed the man, but decided that naughtiness could wait; she had three challenges to pass to get into the castle.
    In due course, not one moment overdue, they went to stand at the bank of the moat.  The castle was lovely in the early morning, too.  The moat was calm, and seemed to be without a moat monster.  There was a drawbridge, but it was raised; no way to cross by foot.  However, there was a boat tied to a stake in the bank.
    She saw something lying in the grass at her feet, and stooped to pick it up.  It was a marking pen, the kind that she had used in the past to mark children's names on clothing.  There was no sense wasting it, so she put it in her purse.
    “Well, let's get to it.  Nimby,” she said briskly.  “It's my challenge, so you just follow along as I work things out.  I'm sure you know how to handle each challenge, but I think it wouldn't count if you gave me any hints.  Besides, I should enjoy the thrill of it.  I want to put this good mind of mine to the test.”
    She stepped toward the boat—and a large ferocious bat appeared from nowhere.  It flew straight at her, then banked and veered away at the last half instant.  She saw the word COM on its underside as it did.
    Chlorine was taken aback.  In fact, she almost sat down as she was taken back too far and lost her footing.  Fortunately she recovered her feet before going down.  When she had been a plain nothing girl it wouldn't have mattered if she'd sprawled turvy-topsy and showed her panties to the sky, but now she was a luscious creature, and the humiliation would have been awful.
     “That's no ordinary bat,” she said.  “That's a com-bat! I'll never be able to pass it.”
    Nimby, behind her, shrugged, neither agreeing nor disagreeing.  He was being neutral.  That made her suspicious, not of his motive, which was surely amicable, but that there was a way, and he was trying not to give it away.
    And of course, there was a way, because otherwise it wouldn't be a legitimate Good Magician challenge.
    She pondered a moment, and cogitated an instant, and thought a while, knowing that this would not be easy unless she found the right approach.  It wouldn't do to try to get around the bat, or to fight it.  She had to outsmart it, or at least figure out the