Read Online The Color Of Her Panties by Piers Anthony - Free Book Online

out water with both hands.  It flew out in gouts, lowering the level, and that saved the boat from sinking.  But that meant that they were entirely at the merciless mercy of the wind and waves.  In addition, Okra could feel an asthma attack coming on; the exertion, wind, and soaking were making her breath clog.  Asthma always waited for the worst times.
    Then the awfullest wave yet charged them.  It picked them up and carried them at a horrendous rate into obscurity.  All they could do was hang on, soaked through by the seething foam; they were doomed to go wherever the wave took them, with no argument.
    The boat crashed onto a sandy, hairy crumb of a rock.
    It overturned, dumping them out.  The water receded, leaving them sitting high and wet.  Mela was huddled and shivering, and even Okra was cool.  That had been a nasty storm, but they had after all made it to land.
    The storm moved on, leaving only a few satisfied rumbles behind.  It was through with them.
    “Oh, no!” Mela exclaimed as she straightened up and sat down, more or less in one motion.
    Okra looked.  There was a great moving mound of sand coming toward them, giggling.  “ Gotcha in my sand trap!” it said.  “Hee hee hee!”
    “No, she, she,” Okra gasped.  “Two she's, not three he's.” She hoped her breath would unclog soon.
    “It's a sandman,” Mela said.  “And he's caught us in his sand trap. That's why Fracto dumped us here.”
    “Sand trap?” Okra stood-and sat again as the sand went out from under her.
    “It catches you so you can't get out of it.  I've heard about it, but never been in it before.  The sandman will cover us over until we smother, and then we'll dissolve away until only our heads are left, and we'll be beachheads.”
    “Hee hee hee!“ the sandman repeated, agreeing.
    Okra focused her brain and thought heavily for a moment.  She knew she couldn't fight the sandman, because she could hardly breathe and was getting horribly weak.
    So she had to use her brain, such as it was.
    A dim bulb flashed, heating her head.  She had a feeble notion!  She reached into her soaking wet knapsack and pulled out her lunch:  a bottle of door jam.  She hated to waste it, but it seemed necessary.  She twisted the cap, making it ajar, and dumped the jar of it into the sand around her.
    The sand swarmed over the sticky stuff and got jammed.
    More sand came in, and it too got jammed.  Soon there was nothing but jammed sand.
    Okra got to her feet and stepped on it.  The surface was now firm because of the sand.  The jam nullified the looseness of the sand, and the sand nullified the stickiness of the jam.  She could walk on it.
    But the effect did not reach to Mela.  So Okra stood at the edge of the jammed sand and reached out to catch the merwoman's hand and draw her in.  Then the two of them stepped out of the sand trap.
    The sandman was so annoyed that he sank back into a blah mound.  Good riddance.
    But this turned out to be an island, not the far shore of the lake.  They would have to stay here overnight, for the storm could turn around and get them again if they tried to leave before it did.  Okra dumped the remaining water out of the boat and set it out to dry in the sun.
    They found a pool of firewater.  Mela decided that this was better than fresh water, so they had a bath in it, using a cake of carved soapstone they found nearby.  Soon they were free of the last of the horrible froth Fracto had dumped on them.  Okra's asthma gave it up as a bad job., and let her breath unclog.  They rubbed their hair dry with a towel from a cottonwood tree.  Then Mela sang a siren song as she combed her long tresses, making them magically lustrous.
    Okra watched, intrigued.  She pulled out a lank strand of her own hair.
    It had never occurred to her that hair could be beautiful, and it was not the ogre way to-but still...
    Mela smiled.  “Would you like me do your hair, too?”
    Okra blushed, which was another