Read Online Well-Tempered Clavicle by Piers Anthony - Free Book Online Page B

flesh, found a towel and dried. Then she looked around. “I forgot my clothing!” she said. “Picka, would you fetch it for me? I don’t dare go out and risk being seen bare.”
    “But I’m seeing you bare.”
    “You don’t count, any more than my sister did when we were teens.”
    Picka suffered another realization: she missed the routine company of her sister. She didn’t like being alone. She liked being with someone who understood her without desiring her body, just as she had told him. Somehow that was more meaningful when he confirmed it with his own understanding.
    He went to her room for her clothing, glad to be of help. She had laid out underwear, heavy shirt, jacket, and trousers, evidently planning for travel rather than being princessly. That was probably just as well.
    “I had the strangest dream last night,” Dawn said when he returned. “It was that a night mare got lost and brought me a dream of romance that wasn’t mine. Can you imagine that?”
    “Maybe it was a premonition,” Picka said. And wondered whether that could be true. Probably not.
    “Yet it wasn’t a black mare. More like a bright day mare.” She shrugged, dismissing it. Picka didn’t comment. She had been asleep, but had picked up part of the daydream. It was another indication that magic of any type could have devious aspects.
    *   *   *
    In due course their party set off in search of Attila the Pun. Woofer sniffed the air and oriented, his nose pointing north.
    “North it is,” Dawn said briskly. Picka noticed that she was no longer wearing her little crown, and her long fair hair was braided. She looked a lot like an ordinary lovely girl.
    They followed the enchanted path north. Woofer moved in a dog trot, with Tweeter riding on his head. Midrange bounded along just behind. Then came Dawn and the two skeletons.
    Soon they came to a rest stop where there were several odd wheeled machines. “Bicycles!” Dawn exclaimed.
    “What are they?” Joy’nt asked. “Machine skeletons?”
    “They are for riding on. They make travel much faster, as long as there’s a navigable path. I’ll show you.”
    Dawn fetched a bicycle, flung her leg over it, and pushed off. It moved, carrying her swiftly along.
    The others just stared. They had never seen such a thing before.
    “Try it, Picka!” Dawn called. “You can do it.” She looped her machine around and returned to them, coasting to a neat stop.
    Picka tried it, following Dawn’s instructions. He put his pelvis bone on the seat, his hands on the handlebars, and pushed on a pedal with one foot.
    It worked, to his surprise. The bicycle carried him smoothly forward. When it started to fall over, he turned the front wheel, and the bicycle stayed upright.
    Joy’nt learned similarly. Before long the three of them were riding north, with Midrange riding in Joy’nt’s basket and Tweeter perching on Picka’s basket. Now their travel was much faster.
    Still, it was a distance to wherever Attila was, and it became evident that they would not make it that day. Dawn and the pets needed to rest at night, so they pulled into a camping site and parked their bicycles. Seeing that, Woofer veered back to rejoin them.
    “Midrange is nervous,” Joy’nt said. “He doesn’t want to camp here.”
    “Let me check with him,” Dawn said, drawing her bicycle to a stop beside Joy’nt’s. Picka joined them. “What’s up, Middy?”
    The cat meowed.
    “Oh, my, you’re right,” Dawn said. “That could be dangerous.”
    “What is it?” Joy’nt asked.
    “There’s a massive, horrifying creature heading this way; she’ll be here within the hour. We won’t be comfortable sharing the camp with her.”
    “That’s wrong,” Picka said. “She won’t hurt us.”
    “Maybe not bone folk,” Dawn retorted. “But what about flesh folk like me and the pets?” She eyed him narrowly. “Besides, how do you know she’s harmless?”
    “Because she wouldn’t be on the enchanted path