What was the stupidly simple answer? Immediately it came to her: bribe the spider. But what would it want, aside from a long session sucking her succulence? What else did she have that might appeal to it?
The magic marker! She no longer needed it, but maybe the spider would like it. If she made a good enough case for it, in spider terms.
She stepped toward the spider, though she was prepared to backpedal at a furious rate if she had to. “Hey, handsome creature!” she called. “How would you like something nice?”
The spider wiggled its mandibles, and a drop of slaver fell to the ground, where it smoked quietly as it digested an unfortunate little poul-tree that hadn't even yet grown its first chick, let alone the roc bird it might have made at maturity. Chlorine felt sorry for it, but knew she couldn't help the tree.
“No, you can't have me,” she said quickly. “Under this pretty exterior I'm just a plain and rather tasteless person anyway. But I have something that may appeal to you more: a magic marker.” She held it up. “This marker can change things. For example, you could use it to change a lug to a bug. Here, I'll demonstrate.” She looked around and spied a lug, which was a kind of nut from a nuts-and-bolts tree. She picked it up and set it in front of her. Then she wrote LUG on her notepad, and crossed out the letter L and replaced it with the letter B. And the lug became a bug.
“See—just the kind of magic you have always wanted,” she said enthusiastically. “Think what you could do with a big lug! You could turn it into Xanth's biggest juiciest bug. And feast on it, snug as a lug in a rug.”
The spider slavered some more. It liked the notion.
“And I will trade you this fine magic implement for one favor,” she continued persuasively. “All you have to do is become the dock and let me get on board that boat. Then you can have the magic marker and my pad of paper, so that you can—” She hesitated, paused by an awkward thought. “You do know how to write?”
But the spider shook its head no.
This was a problem. But her fine mind rose to meet it.
“Well; can you draw? Let me see if this works with pictures.” She found another lug and set it before her. She quickly sketched a crude picture of it, then crossed it out and drew an even cruder bug.
And the lug became a bug. It did work pictographically.
Maybe the Good Magician had figured she was too stupid to read and write. Which was actually a pretty accurate assessment; she had never gotten beyond the first year of Centaur School, so could handle words of only one or two syllables. If she had had to write “quintessential,” she would have expired.
“So if you can draw, you can use this marker,” she concluded. “I confess I don't know exactly how versatile it is, but since there are a number of lugs around here, at least you'll have all the bugs you want. Is it a deal?”
The spider nodded yes.
But now she had just the slightest, wee-est little tinge of apprehension. Was this spider honorable? Suppose it grabbed her and the marker? But then she concluded that it must be honorable, because Otherwise the Good Magician wouldn't use it in a challenge. So she girded her loin—no, that would be unmaidenly. She lifted her chin and walked into the spider's range. If she had misjudged the situation, and the spider grabbed her and tried to suck her juice, she would turn its juices to poison and make it sorry. But she hoped for the best.
The spider became the dock. Chlorine set dainty foot on it and went to the boat. She climbed in. Then she set the magic marker on the dock, untied the boat's tether, picked up its paddle, and shoved off. “Nice doing business with you,” she called cheerily.
The spider reappeared, holding the marker in its mandibles. It waved at her with a long forelimb. She had passed the second challenge.
Oops—-she had forgotten Nimby. “Hey, Nimby!” she called. “Can you join me?”
Nimby walked down to the dock as Chlorine returned.
The spider obligingly changed form, allowing Nimby to tread its planks and get into the boat. Maybe it realized that Nimby was actually a dragon with impenetrable scales, so wasn't anyone to fool with. Then they pushed off again.
She paddled across the moat without incident. But she knew there would be a third challenge. What would it be?
They were never the same, she understood. Just so long as it wasn't a fierce moat monster, because she didn't know what she would do in that case.
She came to land at a garden within the moat outside the Good Magician's castle. They climbed out of the boat.
The moment they did, the boat wended its own way back across, stranding them. It was now too late to change her mind.
She gazed at the garden. It was lovely, and loathsome.
The left side was overgrown with foul-looking and -smelling weeds and had statuary that was downright disgusting.
The right side had a multitude of pretty flowers, with attractive scents. Naturally that was the side she wanted to step into.
But the path led into the foul side, so that was where she went. It would have been impossible to go into the nice side without treading on flowers and ripping out beautiful vines, and she couldn't bear to do that. But the path was overgrown with burrs, thorns, nettles, stinging vines, scratchpads, and even a stink horn she just missed stepping on. That would have wiped out all her appeal in one swell foop, for nothing and nobody could stand the sound or stench of stink horn.
The farther she went, the worse it got, until it was plain that she could not get through this way. This was one mean garden half. And obviously a challenge.
She backed out and rejoined Nimby, who was innocently waiting. Her nice dress was smirched with refuse colored yuck, and her arms and ankles were scratched.
What an awful section!
She considered the nice side again. If only the path were there! But it wasn't, and though the garden was beautiful, it was just as thickly woven as the ugly side was. Not only would she do a horrible amount of damage- if she tried to forge through there, she probably wouldn't make it to the far side anyway.
There had to be a way through. But where was it, if not the path? Chlorine looked back and forth between the two garden halves, sure that she was missing something.
Now that she took the time to wake up and smell the flowers, as it were, she saw that the path was lined with purslane, which made sense for a lane, and trailing arbutus, which made sense for a trail. There were also primroses, making it a primrose path, and at the very beginning, a trail blazer jacket. So no one could be confused about where the path was.
A dim bulb flashed. That trail blazer—suppose she moved that to the other side? Would it then blaze a new path there, where she wanted it? That might be the answer.
She reached for the jacket, but it was just out of reach.
She stretched her arm out—and got scratched again. Apparently that piece of apparel wasn't supposed to be taken.
So much for blazing a new trail.
So she couldn't move the path. What else was there?
Move the gardens?
A dim bulb appeared over her head, but didn't flash. It simply hung there expectantly. She hadn't quite gotten her bright notion yet.
Was there a way to change the positions of the gardens, so that the same path led through the nice part? Now she thought there could be. It was exactly the kind of inverted thinking that the Good Magician was noted for.
Chlorine reconsidered the gardens and the path. Now she saw that the path wound past a nasty-looking well. She made her way to it, stepping carefully to avoid the nettles and thorns, and peered in. Smoky fumes smudged her face and jammed up her nose. Phew! That wasn't water in there, that was firewater. Not exactly poisonous; she knew poisoned water when she encountered it, that being her talent. But not exactly healthy, either. Mean spirits. This was one mean well.
Across the path from it was a dingy thyme plant. She turned to consider it. Thyme was tricky stuff, she knew; it could speed things up or slow them down, or even just change the time of day. No
rmally she stayed well clear of it. But could there be a reason it was growing here, so close to the path and the well? Her bulb brightened slightly.
Mean well, mean thyme. In the mean section of the garden. It figured. But there were other meanings of mean.
Such as when a person meant well. Then the intention was good, even if the result wasn't. Could this be that kind of well? And the thyme plant—it affected time, and sometimes time was sort of average, and they might call that mean time. It wasn't necessarily nasty, merely rounded off.
Suppose some of that well-meaning water were poured by the thyme plant—would that round off the time in a good way? Her bulb brightened. It well might!
She took the grubby bucket and dipped some of the smoking water out. Of course, it looked awful, because its true nature wasn't supposed to be obvious. But if she was right—
She poured the water at the base of the thyme plant. It turned greener and healthier almost immediately. Then night fell.
What? Chlorine looked around, startled. It hadn't been close to nighttime! Oh—the thyme plant, feeling its oats, as it were, had accelerated time, bringing the garden rapidly to night. Maybe she should have anticipated that.
But what good did it do her? It wouldn't be any easier to forge through this tangle by night than by day. Unless—
Now her dim bulb flashed so brightly that the entire garden lit up. Sure enough: this was now the kinder section of the garden. It was a kinder/meaner garden, and one section was as different from the other as day from night. So it was night, and suddenly this half was the nice one with the path wending pleasantly through it. She had found the way at last.
“Come, Nimby,” she said, as if this were routine. “We shall pay a call on the Good Magician.” And she marched down the path, her way lit by pretty glowworms set along the edges.
The path led right to the castle entrance. Chlorine knocked on the door, and it opened immediately. A pretty young woman stood there. “Welcome to the Good Magician's Castle, Chlorine and Nimby,” she said. “I am Wira, his daughter-in-law. Please come this way.”
So she had, indeed, been expected. She was glad she had played it straight, and found her own way through the challenges.
They followed her inside. The interior was surprisingly light, because rays shone in through the high windows.
Chlorine realized that it wasn't really night; that had just been a local effect in the garden, which passed when they left the vicinity of the thyme plant.
“How did you know our names?” Chlorine inquired.
“If my memory is correct, you—can't even see us.”
“It is true I am blind,” Wira said. “But I know this castle well, and can't get lost. And I overheard Magician Humfrey grumbling about the situation. It seems he had no trouble identifying you. Chlorine, but your friend Nimby baffled him. He had to look him up in the Big Book of Answers, sure that there was no such person. But the Book had an entry the Magician must have forgotten, and it said Nimby was a dragon ass with the magic talent of enabling himself and his companion to be whatever the companion wished them to be. That his full name was Not In My Back Yard, because most people didn't like him.
The Magician shook his head, not wanting to admit that he had been ignorant of such a creature. I fear he is beginning to feel his age.”
Chlorine smiled. “The Book of Answers spoke truly.
Nimby is not the man he appears to be, but he is much nicer than he looks in his natural form. He is welcome in my back yard, for I have come to know him by his actions, not his appearance. His only liability is that he can't speak.
He is enabling me to have a really nice time, for now.”
“For now?”
“I know it has to end all too soon, and I will return to my wretched home life. But I will always have this wonderful adventure to remember, my single shining moment, thanks to Nimby. I intend to make the most of it.”
“I fear the Good Magician means to make more of it than you expect.”
“Oh, no, my year's Service is part of it,” Chlorine said cheerfully. “I am resigned to that. It will extend my adventure.”
Wira brought them to a rather dull-looking woman in a sewing room who was mending a pile of socks. “Mother Sofia, here are our visitors,” Wira said.
Sofia looked up. “Are you sure you want to broach Himself with your Question? He will require you to perform a most arduous Service in return.”
“Yes, of course,” Chlorine agreed. “I look forward to it. The more adventurous the better.”
“As you wish. Wira will take you to him now.”
The blind young woman led them up a dark winding stone stairway to a squeezed crowded chamber. There in the shadows sat the Good Magician Humfrey Himself. He looked grumpily up from his monstrous tome. “Yes?”
“Where is my last tear?” Chlorine asked.
“It is in your eyes, spread across them to keep them moist. Half of it keeps your right eye well, and the other half keeps your left eye well. Without that final tear, you would immediately go blind.”
Chlorine was amazed. “I never thought of that! Of course, it must be true.”
“It is true,” Humfrey said grumpily. “Now report to the cat-a-pult for your Service.”
But Chlorine, being nice but not too nice, balked. “I know I have to serve a year's Service, but for that little bit of obvious-in-retrospect information? That doesn't seem fair.”
“Please, don't argue,” Wira said worriedly. “That only makes him grumpier.”
“Nevertheless, I will answer,” Humfrey said, more grumpily. “You knew the conditions before you came to me, so if you wasted the chance to ask a significant Question and receive a significant Answer, the fault is yours.”
“Urn, that's right,” Chlorine said. “I did know the terms. I apologize for my intemperate remark.”
Humfrey looked up from his tome again and glanced at her. His eyeballs were yellowed and streaked with purple veins, but as they focused on her they brightened and the dingy colors faded out. “My, you are a pretty one,” he said, surprised. “A sight for sore eyes.”
“Thanks to Nimby,” she agreed, nevertheless pleased to have made a good impression to erase some of the bad impression she had made before. “In real life I'm plain and mean-spirited.”
“Yes, of course. Since you have done me the slight favor of resting my eyes, I will return it by amending my answer: it is not quite as insignificant as it might seem.
You do have the capacity to shed that final tear, if you ever choose to. But considering the consequence, I suggest that you never allow yourself to become that unhappy.”
“You may be sure of that!” she agreed, laughing.
“Actually, I am not sure of that, which is why I have cautioned you. There may come a time. Do not react thoughtlessly.”
Nimby, standing beside her, seemed uneasy.
Chlorine nodded. “Thank you for that amendment, Good Magician. I will remember it.” Then she smiled.
This time the gloomy study brightened, and Humfrey seemed to lose five years in age.
“Oh, I wish I could see that!” Wira murmured, aware that something good had happened. Maybe she had felt the heat of the light that had brightened the study.
“You shall,” Humfrey said, almost with the illusion of fleeting mellowness. “Imbri?”
Then Chlorine saw a replay of the incident, as if she were another person watching herself, Wira, Nimby, and the Good Magician in the study. She smiled, and the study lighted, and Humfrey youthened from about a hundred to about ninety-five.
“Oh, thank you. Day Mare Imbri!” Wira exclaimed. “I saw it!”
Chlorine was amazed. The Good Magician had actually summoned a night mare, or rather a day mare, to give them all a day dream, so that the blind girl could see the event in the only way she could: as a dream. This was surely something very special. And he must like his daughter-in-law a lot, because it was clearly for her he had done it.
Bu
t now the study faded to its natural dinginess, and the Good Magician's slightly less tired eyes reverted to his monstrous dull tome. The interview was over.
Chlorine turned and followed Wira out, and down the steps. The girl was smiling with the memory. Something briefly nice had certainly happened.
Chapter 4
TROLLWAY
Jim Baldwin looked around, bemused. This land looked a lot like Florida, at a casual glance, but any more careful look rapidly dispelled the similarity. It wasn't just a matter of the presence of the fantastic female creature, Sheila Centaur. Her phenomenal bare bosom was something he could appreciate regardless of the circumstance, though, of course, he would not admit that in the presence of his family. Mary was a reasonably liberal woman, socially, but it was plain that she was not at all easy about the filly centaur, for reasons that went beyond the fantasy element. Correction: they surely related to her concern about the male fantasy element. Especially that of Sean and David. And Jim himself, perhaps. With reason.
They were waiting on the beach beside what resembled nothing so much as a giant pillow. This was where the guide was supposed to arrive. The guide that the Good Magician was sending. After what else he had seen in this weird land, Jim was prepared to accept the notion of good and bad magicians. He hoped the guide was competent.
He hoped to get out of this situation soon; he didn't like the way the wind was building up, however intriguingly it played with Sheila's hair. The storm seemed to have been subsiding, but now it was building again. That was bad news, regardless, whether in Florida or this land they called Xanth.
The children were in animated dialogue with the centaur filly, purportedly eager to learn more about Xanth. Jim caught Mary's eye, and she joined him. “I don't want to be an alarmist, but have you noticed the wind?” he asked her quietly.
She brushed her hair out of her face. “Yes.” Her tone was grim.
“So maybe the distraction of the centaur is just as well, until we are able to get moving again.”