Read Well-Tempered Clavicle for Free Online Page B

course there was none.
    Woofer went out amidst the trees, sniffing. He stopped by a small tree with greenish yellow fruit. “Woof!”
    Dawn glanced across. “That’s just a lime tree, Woofer. The fruit is bitter. You need sugar to make it into sweet pies, like—” She stopped, a bright bulb flashing over her head. “Keylime pie! There’s the key! Woofer, you’re a genius!”
    Woofer wagged his tail.
    They harvested a keylime fruit. Dawn brought it to the invisible keyhole. The wall’s babbling increased, almost like a protest. It touched the indentation. There was a click. Then the invisible door swung open.
    They piled through. They had navigated the first Challenge. It had been a joint effort, with Picka thinking of the door, Tweeter finding the hole, Joy’nt realizing it was a keyhole, Woofer finding the pun for the key, and Dawn putting it all into a notion. They had worked well together.
    But there would be two more Challenges remaining. They might be more complicated.
    The way to the drawbridge was now clear. They walked to it. Picka half expected it to lift clear of the moat before they got there, but it remained in place.
    “I don’t trust this,” Dawn muttered. She set one foot on the nearest wood plank of the bridge.
    “Boo!” a funny-faced man’s head yelled, startling them all. It was a cartoon figure, all wires and hinges, with a head on a bouncy spring.
    “Jack in the Box,” Dawn said, disgusted. “Well, it’s done; we’ll go on.”
    But when she took another step, another head shot out of another box on the bridge. “Boo!”
    “Oh, go away!” Dawn snapped, trying to brush by him.
    But the figure flung his arms about her, trying to feel and kiss her. Doubly disgusted, Dawn lurched back, escaping him. “Bleep!” she muttered in a singularly unprincessly expletive that scorched the nearest planks.
    “Let me try it,” Joy’nt said. “There’s nothing on me to kiss or feel.” She stepped on the drawbridge.
    Nothing happened.
    Picka tried it, with no different result. It seemed it was Dawn alone who was barred. And of course she was the one who had to make it through.
    So the second challenge was for Dawn to pass an obnoxious Jack in the Box. How was she to do it?
    They considered. There had to be a way, because this was an arranged Challenge with an arranged solution. But what was that solution?
    “There must be something nearby that will do it,” Picka said, “just as the keylime tree was near the sound barrier. We just need to see it and understand it and use it.”
    They looked, but there was next to nothing in the immediate vicinity—only the planks of the drawbridge, nailed together, the heavy rope that hauled it up and let it down—the end of which was badly frayed beyond its terminal knot and would soon need replacement—and the assorted boxes, from any of which Jack could obnoxiously pop up.
    Midrange sat beside the end of the rope, batting its loose fibers. Then he got an idea; they saw the bulb flash over his head. “Meow!” he said.
    Dawn understood him. “The knot?” she asked. “That’s the answer? I don’t understand.”
    “Meow.”
    “Yes, the end is frayed. But how will that stop Jack?”
    “Meow. Meow,” Midrange said carefully.
    “Frayed. Knot,” Dawn repeated. “I still don’t see—”
    “Tweet!” Tweeter tweeted urgently.
    “Put them together? Frayed Knot? I still don’t see—”
    “I’m afraid not!” Joy’nt exclaimed. “That’s the phrase. Try it on Jack.”
    “Afraid not,” Dawn repeated thoughtfully. “Could that actually be it? It’s such an abysmal pun.”
    “Puns have power in Xanth,” Picka reminded her.
    “Well, let’s see.” Dawn put her foot on the plank. Jack popped out at her, leering. “I’m afraid not,” she told him firmly.
    Jack flung his ramshackle arms about her and drew her close for a smooch. She jerked back just in time to avoid it.
    “Maybe it’s not just the words,” Joy’nt said. “Maybe you