Disclaimer
Xanth no belong me
It belong Piers Anthony
Aside from that I still own Kassie. I have also added Chim Centaur and D. Meanor, both of whom are mine.
Chapter Three
The Centaur at the Point of Entry
Kassie had to skip work the next day to go to the amusement park, but she didn't care. It was only one day after all. She carried only her hip pack, with picture ID inside, as the directions had advised her to travel lightly. Probably a security measure to keep someone from sneaking a bomb inside. At least they worked to keep their customers safe.
The place really wasn't that far. In fact she wondered why she hadn't seen it before. Perhaps it was new and this was a grand-opening special.
She set out from her apartment at 11 am so as to arrive early. There was bound to be a huge line and she wanted to get there at least half an hour beforehand. However that bit of foresight proved to be unnecessary. When she arrived at the site fifteen minutes later she wondered it she had misread the directions or if she had just gone on a wild goose chase.
The place she had arrived at was an abandoned amusement park. Its huge iron gates were chained shut and had two lopsided signs attached to them.
The Signs read: CONDEMNED , and CLOSED TILL FURTHER NOTICE.
Definitely a prank then and she had fallen for it. She was going to pull up that page again and give Rapunzel a piece of her mind. Then she noticed a door next to the gate.
It was old and in bad repair just like the rest of the place but above it was tacked a sign which read "XANTH". Now normally she would have marched right home and vowed never to fall for anything like this again. Instead she opened the door. It swung open easily and didn't squeak. This surprised her because the hinges were bound to have significant amounts of rust on them. She felt a whoosh as she stepped through the doorway, which was strange since there wasn't any wind that day. The drunk, who had seen her walk through solid stone, walked to the spot and tried to do the same.
Inside looked exactly the way you would expect an abandoned amusement park to look, except for a large sign she noticed just as she entered which read
WELCOME TO XANTH PLEASE PRESENT YOUR PASS TO THE CENTAUR AT THE POINT OF ENTRY
'Centaur' there was that word again. Maybe they just had a bad editor. She shrugged and walked to the rundown building marked as
POINT OF ENTRY
It wasn't too bad. The place had been dusted, and there was a high counter and several nice looking chairs and end tables around. There was also a turnstile beside the counter, leading into the main fairway of the park. But no one was there to attend it.
"Hello!" she yelled. No one answered.
She noticed several signs on the counter. One sign read 'WELCOME TO XANTH'; another said 'PLEASE BE SEATED'; the third read 'ADMITTANCE ONLY AT NOON'; and the last one advised her to 'PRESENT YOUR PASS TO THE CENTAUR". These only served to confuse her even more.
In the corner was a magazine rack. The top shelf was marked as having 'XANTH MAGAZINES' and the bottom had 'MUNDANE MAGAZINES'. Above the rack hung a sign which read 'DUE TO LIMITATIONS SET BY THE ADULT CONSPIRACY, WE CANNOT OFFER CERTAIN MAGAZINES' 'THE ADULT CONSPIRACY' what was that?
She looked at the 'MUNDANE' magazines. It seemed rather rude of them to mark magazines as 'MUNDANE'. If they were so boring, why did they have them? However after looking over the magazines she decided the description of 'MUNDANE' was indeed correct.
She picked up a magazine from the top row called 'Beautiful Blooms: Gardening in Xanth' and flipped right to an article about hybridization of shoe trees and fruit leather trees, which apparently produced edible footwear. She put that magazine back and picked up one called 'Physics in Magic' this one had an article about how the triangulation of the moon, a gourd, and a piece of brain coral was significant. She put that magazine down and picked up another called 'THE MAGAZINE OF ANSWERS'. This one talked about a strange castle which apparently handed out information in exchange for a year of service. It was as weird as, if not weirder than, the other two had been.
She gave up on the magazines and decided to try the turnstile. It wouldn't budge, so she tried climbing over it.
"That won't work, Cutie!" She spun around to see the speaker.
She screamed when she saw him. He was dressed in a scary costume with horns and a pointy tail, and was painted red form head to toe. (She couldn't really tell what color his toes were. He appeared to be wearing some contraption which sent out red smoke to envelop the lower half of his body.) It was a terrifying sight. She should probably tell them that the freak in the costume was going to scare children. He vanished, Poof, into thin air.
Her heart stopped.
"Boo!" he shouted from behind her and her heart started again.
She turned and screamed louder.
"Wow!" he smiled "you've got a great scream!"
She grabbed a lamp from a nearby end table and brandished it like a weapon.
"Stay away from me!" she shouted at him "I'm warning you!"
"Come on, chick," he said taking a step forward.
Kassie swung as hard as she could. The lamp passed right through him, causing his body to glow momentarily.
"Well that was illuminating." he observed.
She noticed that he had positioned himself between her and the exit. She slapped him as hard as she could, which literally set his head spinning, and dived for the door. She was almost through it when something stopped her dead in her tracks. She looked down. There was a dime on the floor. Had she actually stopped on a dime?
"What is going on in here?" She spun around to see a centaur. She closed her eyes and shook her head, trying to dislodge the image. When she opened her eyes again the centaur was still there.
"Hi, Chim!" said the first freak "COM pewter told me there was a hot babe coming from Mundania today. I thought I'd check her out. He looked her up and down and whistled. Steam came out of his ears.
"Go away Meanor," said Chim menacingly.
"Aw, you can make me leave, Four-legs." Meanor stuck his tongue out at the centaur.
Chim stepped behind the counter and retrieved a large shoo, or was it a shoe, no it was definitely a shoo, which he hurled at Meanor. As soon as it hit him he vanished.
"Good riddance!" muttered Chim.
"Wow! Thanks!" breathed Kassie.
"No problem," shrugged the centaur "Just have to know how to handle them. You would be Kassie," he started rifling through the drawers behind the counter.
"That's right," she said as she recovered from the shock of Meanor "I have picture ID right her." She rummaged through her hip pack.
"No need," he told her "Rapunzel gave me a fairly good description. Although her report didn't include any words like 'hot,' or 'babe'." he looked her up and down. "You're not that bad really. I prefer fillies myself."
She laughed "Oh yeah, that's why I'm twenty-five and single."
He looked at her again "I apologize, I thought you were eighteen, or possibly nineteen, no more than twenty."
"Thanks for the compliment," she smiled "but you don't have to flatter me."
"We Centaurs do not use flattery," he informed her "You do look very young for your age."
She laughed. He was serious.
"It's nice to see D. Meanor didn't scare you entirely out of your wits." he remarked .
"I didn't?" Meanor reappeared.
Chim said nothing, but sprayed him with a mist from a can marked 'd. R.'
"Hey! That's not fair!" protested Meanor as he fled again.
"Nasty pests," muttered Chim as he sprayed more of the substance around the room. Kassie breathed deeply the mist had a sweet heavenly smell to it. "Shall we begin then?" he put the can of 'd. R.' away.
"Okay," said Kassie "Here's my pass." she unfolded it and spread it out on the counter.
"Perfect!" said the centaur barely glancing at the paper "You probably should keep that. You might need it later on."
Kassie didn't see why, but she folded up the certificate and stuffed it back into her hip pack. When she looked up again Chim had produced a bowl with several slips of folded up paper in it.
"Please close your eyes and select a magic talent," he ordered her as he shook the bowl gently "Sorry there aren't any sorceress level talents in here, but at least they took out the 'spot on the wall' ones."
She looked at the bowl suspiciously. 'Select a magic talent'? These people, or whatever they were, were insane.
He shook the bowl again. "They won't bite you." he reassured her.
Authors Notes:
1.d. R. - demon Repellant of course! Do you actually think X(A/N)th would allow Demon Repellant in his domain?
2.No the magazine of answers does not reveal the answers given to querents at the Good Magicians castle. They do however have a Mundane woman named Maxine who claims to be able to predict what the challenges will be. Lest anyone go running to enlist her aid, it should be noted that none of her predictions have ever been correct and she herself has never passed the challenges.
3.I reduced the old chapter two by splitting it in half - this will mean more chapters, but not more content - yet.