The Dastard considered. A whole Mundane family stranded in Xanth, and the youngest member eager to stay. The Good Magician would probably find a way for her, too, and she would surely be endlessly happy, having lucked into her dream. This did seem like a worthy project.
The Dastard didn't say another word. He slid into limbo and traveled back in time two days. As he did, he guided himself toward the north, looking for the area where the Mundanes had entered Xanth.
It took a while, but it didn't matter, because he remained in limbo during his excursions in place/time and it didn't affect his real life. He slid back and forth between one and two days ago, and canvassed the general region. His sense of significance got a bit fuzzy in limbo, but he knew he would get it straight eventually. He finally saw the family enter, passing through a glitch in the magic boundary without knowing it. Good; he had it spotted.
He slid to the time one hour before their arrival. Then he emerged into real existence at the boundary. He dragged fallen branches to the trail and formed a pile that blocked it off. He laced the branches with brush to make it look entirely impassable.
He finished just in time. The odd Mundane vehicle was just arriving. It would have to stop outside Xanth, and would never know what it had missed.
He relaxed, and the place/time vortex pulled him back to the present. He emerged in the precise place and time he had left it, on the path he had been walking with the girl. But now there was no girl. Melody Irene Human had never entered Xanth.
The Dastard rubbed his hands together in glee. He had just performed another dastardly deed. He had deprived the family of its phenomenal experience, and the girl of the accomplishment of her dream. That made him feel good.
He continued in the direction he had been going, where his sense informed him that there was more significance ahead. Soon another traveler appeared. This was an old woman. "Pardon me, young man," she said. "Could you tell me what this year is?"
"It is the year eleven hundred," the Dastard replied, finding no good reason to deceive her. The woman looked old enough to have misplaced a few years, which was probably why she was uncertain.
"Eleven hundred!" she exclaimed, surprised. "Is Castle Roogna still in existence?"
For some reason, this question struck him as odd. But there still seemed to be no harm in the truth. "Yes."
"That's good. I was afraid it might have fallen or been deserted in eight hundred and fifty years."
This seemed even odder. "If I may ask," he said politely, for politeness was always best until he knew enough to make rudeness really count. "Who are you?"
"I am Sorceress Tapis. I make magic tapestries. Because of a complicated situation that I need not bore you with, my body became a magic seed, and it recently sprouted, returning me to my former state. Now I shall do my best to make do in the Land of Xanth as it is presently constituted. I trust there remains a market for magic tapestries."
The Dastard remembered the Sorceress Tapis from his centaur-school history lessons. They would certainly be glad to see her at Castle Roogna. One of her magic tapestries still hung in the children's room there. It showed all of Xanth geography and history, and was a prime source of entertainment and amusement. There would surely be a rich market for more tapestries. The Sorceress would be highly successful and renowned.
So the Dastard re-entered place/time. He quested until he found the time and spot where the Sorceress had sprouted from the seed. A heavy rain had wet it, making it come to life. He moved to one hour before that. He picked up the dry seed and put it in the dry hollow of an acorn tree. He sealed the hollow with a fragment of wood, so that no water could get in. It would not get rained on, and would not sprout this day, or for many, many days to come. In fact, maybe never.
He relaxed, and was drawn back to his place/time in the present. He resumed walking along the path. The Sorceress Tapis was gone; indeed, she had never been there. He had performed another gratifyingly dastardly deed. He felt great.
This path had been worked out, but his sense informed him that there was another significant nexus not far away, along a side path. He took that route, and continued until he encountered another female. She was twelve years old, and suddenly appeared before him on the path. "Who are you?" he inquired.
"I am Surprise, the child of Grundy Golem and Rapunzel. I have many talents, but can use each one only once. Then it is gone. I just discovered that eventually my used talents will replenish, so I can use them again, if I just have enough patience. Isn't that wonderful?"
"That should make you very happy," the Dastard said. "How did you discover it?"
"I was sitting by a pleasant pool, looking at my reflection in the clear water, and I remembered how I had once made a ball of water. Before I thought about it, I did it again. Then I remembered that I couldn't use a talent a second time. I was amazed. So I tried another old talent, and a third one. I discovered that my oldest talents had recovered, but the ones I had used recently were still gone. So I figured it out. I'm really, really pleased. I just had to tell someone, and you're the first person I've seen since it happened. Well, farewell." She spread her arms and flew away without wings.
The Dastard went back into place/time travel. He explored until he found the clear pool where the girl had seen her reflection and made her discovery. He went to the time just a few minutes before her arrival there. He scooped up handfuls of mud and stirred them into the water until it was impossible to see any reflection. It would be hours before it cleared. The girl would not see her reflection, and not think the thoughts that had led to her discovery. She would not know what she missed.
He returned to the present. Another dastardly deed accomplished. This was turning out to be a great day.
But it was not over. If he hurried, he could nab yet another significant nexus. They were thick and fast, out here in unmolested Xanth. He ran back along the path to the main one, found another side path, and followed that. He encountered a man, an adult of moderate age, and handsome. "Who are you?" he inquired.
"I am Ho," the man replied. "I am traveling to see the Princess Ida, hoping she will find my talent useful. I think she will. I might even marry her, if she likes me well enough. Maybe we'll have a child named Idaho who will have a talent with potatoes."
Princess Ida was Princess Ivy's twin sister. Her talent was the Idea, and she had whole worlds of ideas. She could make any idea come true. But it had to originate with someone else, who did not know of Ida's talent; Ida could not make her own ideas come true. That was the one limit on an otherwise extraordinary talent.
"What is your talent?" the Dastard asked Ho.
"It is selective amnesia. I can make a person forget any particular thing he or she wants to. This would enable Princess Ida to forget the nature of her talent, and it would thus become far more useful to her. I think she should be very pleased."
The Dastard nodded. This could make an enormous difference. Probably Ida and Ho would like each other, and would marry, and be happy forever after, and do much good with their new ideas. A wonderful future awaited them. How dastardly it would be to deny them that.
But as yet he wasn't sure how to do it. Ho was already on his way, and had a clear notion what he wanted; it seemed to be too late to change that. But there had to be a way. Sometimes the intellectual quest was more difficult than the physical one. "What gave you the notion of doing this?" he asked.
Ho, like most innocent upright decent folk, was glad to answer openly. "It was sheer coincidence. Last month I was walking along the path from my village when I happened to stumble on a stone I didn't see. I didn't fall, but its sharp ridge caught my shoelace and broke it. So I had to replace the lace. So I turned around and went back to the village for a new shoelace from Lacey, the woman who makes them. This time her new husband was there, a man I hadn't met before. So we chatted, and he turned out to be descended from Ghost King Warren, whose talent after he died he said was making ghosts. He inquired about my talent, and I told him, and h
e said that might be useful for Princess Ida. I had never thought about that, but the more I considered it, the more intriguing it seemed, until finally I decided to do something about it. So here I am, on my way--all because of a broken shoelace."
The Dastard didn't wait. He phased into limbo, orienting on that place/time where/when Ho had broken his shoe-lace. In due course he found it, and entered regular existence just before Ho came down the path. He picked up the rock Ho was about to stumble on and hurled it into the brush. Then he returned to the present. He was alone; Ho was not making his journey to meet and marry Princess Ida. There would be no child, and no potatoes.
Oh, this was wonderful! The day was yet young, and he had already abolished four significant events.
However, there was nothing remaining in this general place or time; he had used it up. It might be another day before he found anything else.
He was hungry, so he paused at a path-side stand that served freshly harvested pies. There was a small orchard of pie trees behind it, obviously well cared for. The young woman tending the stand was unusually pretty; she practically glowed in a lovely green hue, from her blonde green hair to her fair-green complexion. The Dastard liked her immediately, so he struck up an acquaintance. "Who are you?"
"I am Jade," she replied. "My talent is to make anything into a jade stone." She indicated a number of jade stone statuettes she had converted from other substances.
"Are you married?"
She giggled, embarrassed by the directness of the question. "Of course not!"
This looked promising. One thing the Dastard lacked was a woman to appreciate him. For various reasons that escaped him, girls tended to avoid him once they got to know him, so he had had no serious romantic relationship despite being twenty-two years old. He had thought his acquisition of his wonderful talent four years before would change that, but it hadn't. So he was still looking, and maybe Jade would do.
"How about marrying me?" he asked.
"Oh, I couldn't possibly do that," she said.
"Why not?"
"Because I'm in love with Mac."
Oops. He had forgotten to ask whether she had a boyfriend. Pretty girls usually did. But maybe the situation wasn't wholly hopeless. "Who is Mac? What's his talent?"
Jade was happy to talk about her boyfriend. "He's just the most handsome, smart, wonderful person I know. He's different. He can split into three likenesses, called Mac, Mike, and Mal, and each is a bit different in looks and temperament, so it's never boring. We met three years ago, and it just got better, so now we're going to marry and be happy forever after. Oh, it's just so utterly thrilling!"
The Dastard was really getting to dislike this Mac/Mike/Mal. But maybe if he could get rid of him, Jade would be available for himself. Three years was within his range. "How did you meet him?"
"Well, I was baby-sitting for Okra Ogress three years ago. Her twins were Og and Not-Og, five years old. Og was already getting really stupid, even for an ogret boy, and Not-Og was getting really ugly, even for an ogret girl. He could lose track of how many toes he had, and she could curdle cream with one smile. In short, they were wonderful ogre children, and Okra was really proud of them. But her husband Smithereen had gone on a boulder-smashing expedition and not returned, so she knew he was lost, and she had to go find him, and so she left the twins with me, the neighbor's daughter. It was a few weeks before she returned, and the ogrets were getting bored, so I took them for a walk in the woods, where they could practice being really stupid and ugly. I didn't have to worry about safety, because nobody who isn't duller than an ogre--and there are none such--ever bothers an ogre. Or an ogret. The very greensward cringed at their approach, and the sun dimmed when they glanced at it. They both had fun twisting small trees into pretzels and teaching young dragons the meaning of fear; these are just things ogres naturally do. They are so justifiably proud of their strength, stupidity, and ugliness.
"Then Fracto drifted by. That's Cumulo Fracto Nimbus, the worst of clouds, always looking for picnics to rain on or valuables to blow away. He thought he would have some fun with the ogrets, because he figured they couldn't do anything back to him. He made a foggy face and started blowing up a storm. But it didn't turn out the way he expected. The wind stirred up half a soul that had been half buried somewhere, and as it flew by, Og grabbed it, and held it, wondering whether to eat it or squeeze it into pulp. Just then a stone gargoyle happened to pass by, and Not-Og smiled at it, for a moment petrifying it with her un-beauty. When it stood immobile, she pulled off one of its gargoyle socks, admiring its colors. Og saw that, grabbed it, and stuffed the half soul into it. Not-Og snatched it back. Og grabbed it again and hurled it into the cloud. The half soul escaped and found Fracto. That made Fracto turn halfway good. He collapsed his storm front and sailed rapidly home to the Region of Air where his partner Hurricane Happy Bottom lived, and they did whatever clouds do to summon the stork, and after that Fray came on their scene, and she got the half soul. Just what sort of a cloud she will turn out to be we don't yet know."
"This is all very interesting," the Dastard said, expending a fair sized lie at this point, because it was really all very boring. "But what does it have to do with your meeting Mic/Muck/Mock?"
"That's Mac/Mike/Mal," Jade said sharply. "I'm coming to that." She gave him a brief green stare, then resumed her how-we-met narrative. "The day was getting on, so we started back toward home. But the ogrets heard someone declaiming heroic poetry and ran to see who it was, and I had to follow. It turned out to be a woman polishing a freshly waxed statue. It was the statue doing the declaiming. For a moment I was mystified what it all meant, but then I realized that she was waxing poetic. Fortunately poetry bores ogres, unless they are speaking it themselves, so that didn't hold the twins long. We resumed our trek, and encountered a group of big furry animals. I hadn't seen anything like them before, so I inquired: 'What kind of creatures are you?' And two of the biggest ones, who seemed to be males, replied 'We are bears. We are Bears Noting, and these are bears mentioning.' They indicated two females. 'And we are bears repeating, bears repeating,' two small ones said. That left one more, who was busy scratching figures on a pad he carried. He looked very interesting, but didn't speak. "Do you feel you are of no account? I asked. 'By no means,' he responded. 'I am an interest bearing account.' So then I understood, and we went on toward home."
"But about 3M," the Dastard said, trying to stifle his burgeoning impatience.
"I'm getting there," Jade said severely. "We had to stop, because there was an imp ass. It was just a little mule, but we realized it had strayed from a settlement of imps and needed to be returned. So Og picked it up, and Not-Og smiled around until most of the surrounding foliage wilted, and there was the imp colony. Og set the imp ass down there, so that it no longer blocked our way. The imps were very grateful, so they told us where we could find some nice varieties of thyme. A person can never get too much thyme, so we thanked them and went there; it wasn't far off the path, but we would never have found that patch on our own. There was 2/2 Thyme, and 4/4 Thyme, and 6/8 Thyme--just a great variety of very special Thymes. So I gathered a timely assortment, and we started back for home again."
"Will you get on with it!" the Dastard said, becoming foolishly impatient. He was beginning to wonder if this pretty green woman was worth the effort. Her endless talk was as dull as she was lovely.
"I'm getting there," Jade said, favoring him with a glare. "We started back--and there, coming along the path the other way, was Mac. I was so surprised that I fell back. Right on my soft bottom, as a matter of fact. A stray gust of wind came at that moment. My skirt flared up and gave him a good flash of my panties. Maybe that was just as well, because he froze in place, as men do, and remained that way until I got back on my feet. I realized that chance had enabled me to capture his attention. He was a handsome man, so I decided to keep it. And that was the beginning of it all, and soon we will be married. Meanwhile, the ogres--"
But t
he Dastard was already fading into limbo. He went back three years, then zeroed in on the thyme patch. He considered half a moment, then set about fashioning a baffle. He set it up by the path, just upwind of the place Jade would tumble, so that when the stray gust of wind came, it would be deflected before it reached her skirt, and her skirt would not flare, and the man would not see her panties. So she would not catch his attention, and they would pass without noticing each other.
He returned to the present. There was Jade, just as pretty as before. "So how about marrying me?" he asked again.
"Oh, I couldn't possibly do that," she said. "I'm in love with Eck."
"Eck?" he asked distastefully.