Well-Tempered Clavicle by Piers Anthony Page B

eye sockets off that evocative tailbone. She did know how to tempt a skeleton.
    “What would you do if he kicked your donkey?” Joy’nt asked. “Fly apart and let him make a baby skeleton out of your smaller bones? Or simply dissolve into smoke like the annoyance you are?”
    “I’m not sure. Let’s try it and see.”
    Picka gave in to temptation. He kicked her tailbone so hard that she exploded into a blizzard of bones. Then they dissolved into smoke, which coalesced into the fleshly Metria form. “The latter,” she concluded.
    But she had given him a wicked thrill in the process. He knew that demonesses liked to tempt mortal men into summoning the stork with them. Now he knew that demonesses could tempt skeletons too.
    “You’re pitiful,” Joy’nt said.
    Metria glared. “How so?”
    “You’re married to a mortal. You have a half-mortal son. But you’re still out tempting other males instead of being a decent wife and mother. How can anyone respect you?”
    “Oh, bleep!” Metria said, and faded out.
    Dawn shook her head. “And I thought a demoness couldn’t be shamed.”
    “I was just mad because she has what we all want, a decent family, yet she treats it like dirt. She deserves to be shamed.”
    “I heard that,” Metria’s voice repeated from supposedly empty space. But it did not sound triumphant. The demoness knew she had been shamed. There was no more from her.
    “Where were we?” Picka asked. “We had something in mind before she distracted us.”
    “We were heading north toward the Gap Chasm,” Dawn said. “Following Woofer, who is sniffing out Granola. Whoever she is, whatever her talent is.”
    “So we were,” he agreed, remembering. The demoness’s temptation had jogged that information loose from his skull.
    They marched on northward. Joy’nt walked beside Picka. “I can’t blame you,” she said. “Temptation is hard to ignore.”
    “You suffered it too?”
    “Yes. When I had flesh, and Attila looked at me, and put his hand on my borrowed bra, I really wanted to do more with him, even though I didn’t much respect him as a person. That flesh—there was just something about it.”
    “You looked horrendous,” Picka said. “Covered in all that bulging meat.”
    “I know. I was disgusted—but also intrigued. Attila was so eager. He was really turned on. That gave me power over him, but also made me want to … to take it to the next level.”
    “The next level?”
    “To summon the stork with him.”
    “But you’re a skeleton! Skeletons don’t summon storks.”
    “True. But in that moment I wanted to, and I think I could have. Using that flesh. Maybe the storks would have ignored it, but I still wanted to make the signal. Just as you wanted to kick Metria’s tail despite knowing she wasn’t your kind.”
    It was an apt point. “Our forms of the moment, and the forms of those we interact with, do have impact,” he agreed. “That is surely a useful lesson.”
    “Yes.”
    “I hope you find a nice male skeleton,” he said. “And that I find a female skeleton who is as nice as you, only who isn’t you.”
    “I understand completely. But on this mission, we’re helping Dawn find Pundora’s Box, and maybe her ideal prince.”
    “Yes. We’re her friends, and we will help her.”
    “Tweet.”
    They had forgotten Tweeter, who was now riding on Picka’s shoulder. “And a nice lady bird for you,” Picka added.
    “Tweet,” Tweeter agreed.
    They made it back to the stop where they had parked the bicycles. “Too bad we can’t use these again,” Joy’nt said.
    “Unless Granola is actually north of the Gap Chasm,” Picka said. “Then we can ride them across the invisible bridge and on.”
    “No such luck. See where Woofer is pointing?”
    The dog was standing at the brink of the gulf, looking down. That meant that Granola was inside the chasm.
    “We can use the cycles,” Dawn said. “I happen to know a secret about the Gap. Watch, then follow.” She